Tempted By Fire

by Thea Devine

"She will write to you herself," Lady Waynflete interrupted. "Now tell me, have you seen Nick?"

  "I thought somewhere in there. Dunstan came, you know. They were talking . . . just inside. I'm sure you'll — "

  Lady Waynflete was sure she would too. She relinquished Arabella Ottershaw's hands and practically dashed into the ballroom, looking first for Nick, whose height always distinguished him in a crowd.

  Just as she departed, Nicholas strolled into the hallway and intercepted Lady Ottershaw. "Did I just see Lucretia with you?"

  Lady Arabella wrung her hands. "Yes, and she was looking for

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  you, and I said —but then of course, I hadn't—all you need do is . . . but then perhaps she'll find ... or has he gone as well?"

  All of her friends were well used to Lady Arabella's conversational perplexity; Nicholas knew exactly what she meant to say, and he touched her shoulder reassuringly.

  "No, Dunstan hasn't left yet, and I'm sure she will find him. There is nothing urgent otherwise, Arabella, so you may rest easily on that score."

  "Oh, I do ... I mean, of course—and you? But—oh, forgive me—I didn't mean ... I must—perhaps I should . . ."

  "Please," Nicholas said gently, and turned her back toward the ballroom. As always, Lady Arabella was overwhelmed with both the size and success of any of her undertakings, and her yearly party was no exception, particularly this year.

  "There are so many people," she breathed in a replete sigh of coherency, and she walked into the swell of the crowd without looking back.

  And neither did Nicholas; Lady Arabella's incessant preoccupation with navigating her own course through the eddying tide of her guests left him deliciously free of obligation to her, or Dunstan for that matter.

  Dunstan had arrived, picked him out, had his say, and was now engaged in deep and probably edifying conversation with Annesley who would keep him occupied with tales of their mutual friends run amuck in Brighton (including himself, Nicholas thought grimly, but then he had forestalled that tidbit of gossip by telling Dunstan the whole himself), and very probably how he himself had created the new Incomparable of the moment, Lady Desire.

  While he, Nicholas, was going to create havoc with the goddess queen who dared to taunt his wants, needs, desires and rights in public and thought she could get away with it.

  ******************

  Gertrude Emerlin saw him go and she went immediately to find Charlotte. "Southam has departed, you ineffectual girl. Do you have any idea where he can have gone?"

  "No, I don't. He was impossibly rude to me, mother, and he was positively trading barbs with some gaudy bit of fluff I have never

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  seen before."

  "You cannot allow any other woman to outmaneuver you this time, Charlotte. I am warning you—"

  "Your spies could tell you more than I, mother dear. You have heard nothing in a year to indicate that Southam's interest lies anywhere else but the card table. This strumpet can only be some passing fancy, if indeed she has engaged his interest at all. He looked fit to strangle her—and me, come to that."

  "My dear, you want to appeal to Southam's baser instincts, it is true, but not his murderous ones. What good can have come of such an encounter?"

  "Annesley was there," Charlotte said promptly, "and he saw the whole, including the fact that I was as brazen with Nicholas as anyone could be in this setting and that I did not back down. More than that, mother, he probably knows who this lightskirt is. I wager he knows a lot. . ."

  And in a corner of the vast ballroom, Max Annesley was, at that very moment, regaling the whole to Dunstan Carradine, who had a bored expression on his face.

  "D'you know, Max, I have heard nothing but paeans of praise to the Lady Desire for the last four or five days, and I must be the only one in the whole of London who has never seen her. And at this stage," he added darkly, "I do not think I wish to. She can only turn out to be a vast disappointment, neither as beautiful as they claim nor as desirable as they would wish. Tell me no more, Annesley, I cannot take it."

  "And you need not —here is Lucretia to entertain you further, Dunstan, and to answer the question of where the Beauty disappeared to."

  "Oh!" Lady Waynflete said in disgust as she came close and overheard Annesley's directive, "I refuse to talk about that strumpet. She has caused me nothing but grief since I took her into my house—men falling all over her, Nicholas acting totally out of character, with a mouth like a bawd and no sense of gratitude or place or anything. My blood is boiling —my dear, dear Dunstan— it has been an age," and she stepped into a brief dispassionate hug which she initiated and Dunstan could not politely escape.

  "Tell me more, my dear," he encouraged her. "This is the first I

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  have heard that this Incomparable is something more than a disdainful goddess who refuses to grant man or beast the favor of a smile."

  "Please—Nicholas shall hear the whole tomorrow. I am up to my teeth with her. She is like honeypot —no drone can resist her. . ."

  "And they drone on and on about her too," Dunstan put in acidly.

  "And she just refuses to be bound by anything like civil behavior, and I just do not know where it will end."

  "But you haven't heard the worst," Dunstan told her, eyeing An-nesley warily. "Or perhaps it is the best? In any event, perhaps you should know that all the buzzing bees have bestowed a name upon your beloved."

  "I don't want to know," Lady Waynflete said instantly, but she knew that Dunstan was going to tell her; would, in fact, delight in telling her.

  "They call her Lady Desire," he whispered, keeping his hand over his mouth so that only she could hear the words. "All up and down Bond Street and Oxford Street, in and out of Green Park, and in the environs of Mayfair and St. James, your little protegee has been anointed Lady Desire, and it will be said that the name tells the tale."

  Lady Waynflete felt faint. "Does Nicholas know?"

  Dunstan looked at Annesley's impassive face and then turned back to Lady Waynflete. "One never knows what Nicholas knows, Lucretia. You above all should be aware of that. On the other hand, he did have the good sense to select the most unimpeachable mentor in the whole of London, someone whose reputation and standing are impeccable . . . yes—you, my dear, so all this name nonsense has to be is high spirited folderol among men competing for something they know they have no chance of possessing."

  "She is the most beautiful thing," Lady Waynflete said weakly, "she has masses and masses of coal black hair, and the most glowing deep blue eyes—you should see her, tall she is, taller than most, Dunstan, perhaps as high as your shoulder she comes, and the whole point is you could not mistake her for some innocent girl out of the schoolroom. I knew it immediately, and I tried to make her

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  pass, but she would have none of it. Her worldliness bothers me so—and Nicholas has had me dress her to a fare-thee-well. The money . . . Dunstan, I am worried ... a goddess, he called her in Brighton when he first met her. I don't know what to do."

  She turned to Dunstan, seeking the reassurance he invariably gave her. Dunstan was never soppy, and he never lied either. He always spoke plainly and never had he been wrong.

  He said exactly what she needed to hear. "Put your mind at rest, Lucretia my dear. It's perfectly obvious you need do nothing. Nicholas will take care of the whole. And if a scandal breaks, I promise you, it will fall squarely on his head and no place else. I swear it, Lucretia—because I will make certain that he bears the blame, and no one else."

  ******************

  He eased open the door of the bedroom, slowly, patiently and entered it with the arrogance of a man who knew he would be expected and would not be refused.

  He had imagined the scene as he made his way there: the irksome Diana bound by his demands, dressed to his will, waiting on his whim, ready perhaps to beg his indulgence; he relished the thought even if it was out of the realm of reality.

  She
would never beg. She only knew how to provoke. And in the end, he might find out she was no better than she should be, and just what he had claimed her, but in the maddening anticipatory moment before his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light of the glowing fireplace, he wanted her. The cost and her nature were irrelevant.

  He closed the door softly behind him and stood for a moment absorbing the scene, inhaling with his memory the faint scent of chocolate that permeated the air.

  Nothing was as he had envisioned it. Everything was her way, her stage, her direction, and his instant displeasure was overborne simultaneously by his body's carnal reaction to her as the focus of her erotic setting.

  The firelight danced all over her naked body; she wore nothing but a pair of thin silky stockings banded with stretchy embroidered garters, but around her body she had wound enticing strips of lus-

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  trous material, all around her legs and up between her buttocks and around her arms and wrists, and she lay on her belly, her face to the firelight with her luscious naked breasts yearning toward the warmth.

  Her legs were splayed slightly so that nothing about her was hidden from his sight, and as she heard his slight movement behind her, she lifted her head, and those glittery "make-me" eyes acknowledged him, because nothing more needed to be said.

  She had deliberately defied his stipulations, and she lay there, bound in voluptuous satin, just begging him to take her to task for violating their agreement.

  And his first instinct was to give in to the rampaging demand of his insatiable manhood. And his second thought was to walk right out the door.

  The knowing smile on her mouth stopped him, and he slowly began to strip off his clothes as she watched him.

  Lady Desire—they had named her well. . . she was the embodiment of all they could ever ask for, and the deepest darkest of their most forbidden desires. And she was naked for him and only for him. She had created this fantasy of subjugation for him and only for him, and he did not know who would surrender to whom by evening's toll.

  He kicked off his boots and pulled off his shirt to bare his chest to her insolent gaze.

  Her eyes moved provokingly downward to the protruding bulge of his manhood; her eyes narrowed as she waited for him to remove the final barrier to his nakedness. Her eyes spoke volumes, begging him to show her the force she had incited in him.

  He dropped his hands in the act of unbuttoning his trousers and padded slowly over to the bed.

  Lady Desire wanted everything all her own way, and wasn't it too bad; Lady Desire was going to get exactly what he wished to give, nothing more, nothing less.

  He climbed over the bedframe at the foot of the bed. and straddled her legs. God, she was something, with her wanton body, her contemptuousness and that imperious challenge in her insolent eyes.

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  It was time to tame the vixen and subdue her defiance, to take what she so willingly offered and master the animal instinct of the huntress.

  He grasped her thighs, moving his hands roughly over the erotically charged satin strips, upward and upward to feel the soft cushions of her buttocks and the enticing crease between. And then upward again to the delicious curve of her spine where it joined the small of her back and flared into her writhing hips.

  Now it was his power which incited the temptress, his caresses rendering her helpless. He pinned her hands tightly above her head, and pressed his rigid body snugly against the pillowy curve of her buttocks so she would feel the hard hot jutting shaft of his desire.

  She writhed her bottom against him, deliberately teasing him and enticing him, determined to show him who truly dominated whom. It was not a matter of mastery; she had only to force him to surrender to her taunting feminine temptation, and she did not need her hands or his deep probing kisses to do it.

  She needed only his rock hard male capitulation thrust hard against her body to know that the moment of possession would not be long in coming.

  He ached for her: she felt every luscious part of his elongating member. Every move she made, every upsurge of her buttocks against his jutting manhood begged to feel his nakedness. Every twist of her body seeking the close tight conjunction against her pleaded for his possession. Every mindless thrust of his body against hers in response to her deep-throated moans demanded his surrender.

  She couldn't see; the lift of her arms high over her head obscured her vision. She could only feel; her body was electric with sumptuous sensations as his free hand roamed all over her, sliding and exploring every inch of her, stroking her satin bonds, caressing the tops of her silky stockings and the silky skin beneath.

  She felt him resisting and resisting: he would not give in to her arrogant femininity. And she would not rest until she compelled his homage to her mastery of him.

  He shifted, he worked himself out of his constricting trousers and he pressed his towering naked manhood forcefully against her

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  buttocks,

  "You will beg for my possession," he rasped in her ear, "for I will never surrender to you."

  "You will beg to possess me," she hissed, "because I will never willingly submit."

  And now he felt the rage of helplessness: he could not take her, nor bend her to his will. He pushed himself tightly, nakedly against her, his body perfectly aligned with hers, a perfect weight upon her, pressing her deeply and sensually into the heat of their bodies and the bed.

  The tension between them escalated; her body demanded she move to entice him to join with her . . . she wanted it, she wanted it, she could not rest with it: her traitorous body demanded it.

  She wanted to crawl away from him so that she would not feel the hot hard inviting heat of him jutting into her buttocks. Her breasts, crushed against the soft billowy mattress, yearned for his caresses, her nipples taut with unslaked desire to be fondled and kissed.

  Her heart pounded, her primitive need for connection overwhelming her senses. She could hear him above her, his breathing thick and resonant with his suppressed desire, his body slick from the force of withholding his passion to possess her.

  "I feel your need, goddess," he whispered against her ear.

  "I feel something else," she retorted, twisting her head away.

  Surely the potency of his need was greater than hers. She felt his taut little thrusts and the sensuous cradling of his hips against her buttocks.

  Soon he would have no choice, the primitive power of his manhood would pull him beyond reason, beyond endurance. Soon he would have to give in to the driving demand of the elemental male within him.

  Soon . . .

  Her body arched against him of its own volition, and caught his last moment of coherent thought: his free arm slipped roughly beneath her hips and pulled her onto her knees to give him purchase to tempt her with the knowledge of the wet wild delights within her grasp.

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  He played with her there, rubbing himself against her slick heat, pushing at her and withdrawing from her, to entice her to beg for his carnal possession.

  She felt the hot slip of his hard muscular manhood thrust meaningfully just within her velvet fold. And then again, and again, and then the long voluptuous slide of his nakedness against her bare skin. And then again, the tantalizing push of his nakedness into her wet heat and out again.

  Deeper the next time, and away again. And deeper still until she moaned with pleasure, and squared her hips so that when his next thrust came, she surged backwards against him so that she fully encompassed every long inch of him deep within her pulsating center.

  Who then begged, and who finally submitted? She did not know, nor did she care. The greed of her need could not differentiate anything but the driving pleasure that overrode every other consideration.

  And his savage pumping manhood surged deep within her, endlessly, unceasingly thrusting, pounding, braced by his hard hot grasp around her belly so she could never get away, never get away.

  His overpowering desire drove him a
nd drove him, his need to master her like a pungent ungovernable force within him. He had never lost control, he would never give in, never, and yet his mind was filled with the image of her voluptuous body bound and enslaved, and he was the one grovelling at her feet. He was the one enslaved and enchained by desire.

  He was just on the brink of surrender . . .

  Her swamping climax caught her by surprise, the sensation roaring through her and crashing through her veins again so forcefully she thought her heart might stop beating. It came and it came, washing over her again and again, an unrelenting spume of sensation, the same as before and different—wholly different and unexpected, and known because it had come before.

  She canted her body against him, reaching for the rest, letting it wash away in a white hot froth of feeling, letting it envelop him so that he would never let her go.

  And then he let go; in one long churning moan of capitulation, he lunged into her gyrating body and spilled his seed deep within

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  her shuddering core.

  Her body eased down, and he pressed himself against her, still nestled within, and gave in to the radiant silence, and the intimacy of touching skin on skin.

  ******************

  She slept, she must have slept —or perhaps she had dozed in some dreamland where that wrenching pleasure had engulfed her and drowned her; something heavy and forceful weighted her down.

  She shimmied her body away from it experimentally and found she could move, that she could easily maneuver her arms and legs out from under the bulk of his body without disturbing him. He rested now on his side, with his legs entangled with hers, the satin strips wound like streamers around his legs as if they flowed from the very source of his manhood.

  She pulled herself gently out from under his restraining arms and legs and rolled softly toward the fading light of the fire. There was no warmth there, and she shifted her legs over the edge of the bed and pulled at the satin bonds that were both tangled in her legs and crushed beneath his body, and she finally gave up and just removed the strips from her body.