by Isadora Rose
“Good girl.”
Even that gentle whisper was scintillating. A violent shiver ran down the length of her spine, making the urge to move in closer wholly impossible to resist. Awed by and no little afraid of the power of that unwanted compulsion, her breath hitched and she stole a furtive glance up at Cooper through lowered lashes as he led her down the length of the hall.
Every line of his reddened face was held taut in anticipation, and beneath the cool facade he displayed to everyone else she saw the truth of the lust he felt for her, a perfect mirror of the passion with which she wanted him. A sharp twist of unease contorted her stomach, for he was making no effort to disguise it despite the fact that they were far from alone yet.
Still fighting to calm the nervous pounding of her heart, Amelia stretched up onto the tips of her toes to attract the headmaster’s attention. With a low groan audible to her alone, he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and effortlessly held her wide eyes with his own.
“Do you have something you wish to say, my dear?” he said under his breath. “Be warned, though; I will heed no protest from you, not on this.”
“Oh, you have made that perfectly clear,” she whispered, biting back an irritable response to the smug superiority in his voice. “However, sir, what you did not make plain was that you would make this carry-on so very evident to the rest of the staff! Whatever will they think?”
A small smile played at the corners of his thin lips. “That we are courting, no doubt. I am sure the gentlemen of the staff will fully understand my motivation in pursuing you, my dear, and your fellow ladies will feel nothing but envy for the fortunate position I offer to you.”
Amelia’s eyes widened yet further as Cooper steered her out of the hall and into the mercifully abandoned corridor. “Fortunate?”
“Indeed. I am an attractive prospect, both physically and in regard to my standing in society. Many women have sought the position I am giving you so freely, Amelia.”
“But I thought this was for one night only -”
He held up his free hand to silence her. “Certainly not. My dear, you must surely know now how much I want you! One night could never be enough for me; and neither, I suspect, would it be enough for you.”
The arrogance of his words was breathtaking, yet he was right. Any protest she might make against him would sound hollow and false. The lust she felt for him was so ferocious and consuming that one night could never sate it, but still this forced submission rankled deeply. The conflict whirled through her mind until she lost her voice entirely, able to do nothing but bow her head as the headmaster laughed quietly, clearly secure in his triumph as they strolled arm in arm towards the cottage where her fate awaited.
Cooper did not relinquish his possessive hold on her even as he reached his free hand into his pocket for the key, and to Amelia’s consternation, she found herself nothing but relieved. His touch inflamed her, and despite her keen awareness of what was to come, she found herself surprisingly comfortable on his arm. The homely cottage was warm and welcoming, with the gas lamps lit in anticipation of their arrival, and the low burr of the headmaster’s voice when he spoke resonated deep inside her to bring a gentle flush to her skin.
“Come through to the parlour for a while, Amelia. We have all night, after all.”
“I suppose we do, thanks to your machinations.”
“Now now, my dear!” he said with a widening smile as the front door closed behind them. “You cannot pretend that you object to the thought of an entire night in my arms, for I suspect the pleasure you took from me in the space of a few minutes yesterday was more than your young lord gave you during the entirety of the affair.”
She tensed afresh at the unwanted reminder of Freddie, and her reaction did not go unnoticed. Cooper’s smile slipped away like chalk from slate, and his hold on her tightened painfully as they reached the confines of the small parlour room. The sun was slowly setting outside, and its amber rays crept in through the small gap in the drapes to throw illumination upon the armchair he descended into as she pulled away from him, intending to perch on the velvet settee opposite until his low growl of discontent rippled through the room.
“Not there, Amelia; I want you to share my seat.”
The certainty in his voice made it very plain how used he was to being obeyed without question, and to her deep frustration Amelia found herself just as unable to disobey him as any of the students were. Her body arched of its own volition as she took the hand he held out and allowed him to pull her into his lap. Aflame with anticipation that forced aside all thoughts of anything but how much she wanted him now they were so close, she silently stared up at him as he retained his grip on her hand for a moment longer, then smiled tersely again as he let it loose.
“Do you care for wine, my dear?”
On the table to their right was an open bottle of claret and two waiting glasses. When she jerked her head in silent assent, he loosened his starched collar before twisting to the side and pouring them both a glass. The powerful, heady aroma was intoxicating, but nowhere near as much as the intimacy of being held in such a way by the headmaster. He had her body entirely under the spell of lust he had cast, and when she shifted only to feel the unmistakable shape of his cock pressed up against her, she could do nothing to choke back a desperate moan that swept away the tension he held in each taut muscle.
As he began to relax, Cooper lifted her glass to her lips and waited for her to obediently sip from it then take it from him before he spoke again. “I knew you would see sense, Amelia. You are an intelligent woman, and doubtless you realise my proposition was a logical one. Two like-minded people such as ourselves are well-suited, and I am entirely confident that the pleasure we give each other will be limitless.”
Unlike the headmaster, Amelia found herself becoming tenser with every erratic beat of her heart. “Were you really so very confident, Mr. Cooper?”
“Entirely so,” he said, his voice calm and impassive despite the heat of his reddened skin. “Amelia, I know you, and I knew you would be unable to resist this.”
Her eyes widened incredulously. “You know nothing of me –”
“On the contrary, I know rather more than you might think.” Setting his glass aside, he reached up and cupped her jaw in the palm of his hand, and despite her simmering fury she let loose a soft sigh of satisfaction. Amused triumph blazed in his eyes as he lowered his voice and spoke again. “You came to Highdown Hall in search of security, Amelia; that much was apparent from the very start. You could have sought marriage, for your many attributes would have easily made up for the lack of a dowry, but instead you preferred to stand on your own two feet and support yourself.”
Amelia’s breath hitched. Cooper’s words struck far too close to the truth, and she remained silent in fearful expectation of what else he would have to say.
“Yet despite all that,” he said softly, “you risked it all; for most importantly, you have a taste for danger your staid life here cannot fulfil. Why else would you have risked the security my employment offers for the sake of a few nights with the earl’s son? You certainly do not love him, not in the truest sense of the word.”
“He suggested he would marry me -”
“Fool! He had no intention of marrying you.”
“How the hell would you know?!”
“Because I am a man, Amelia!”
He snatched her glass out of her hand and slammed it down, then slowly and deliberately wrenched each and every pin out of her hair to free it from the tidy bun it had been restrained in. She struggled against him furiously, but his free arm was around her waist to keep her trapped against him; and the strength of his lean, defined muscles was impossible to defy. She opened her mouth to rail at him, but he cut in first.
“Understand this, Amelia! When a man wants to marry a woman, he cannot bear the thought of another man so much as looking at her with lust in his eyes, let alone touching and holding her as intimately as I did with yo
u last night. Trust me, if he wanted to marry you, he would not have abandoned you to my tender care.”
“There was nothing tender about your care!”
“You did not protest against that when I brought to your climax, my dear!”
Their raised voices echoed around the ceiling beams, and in that moment Amelia felt more alive than she ever had before. She twisted around to face him, caring nothing for the fact that the intimate way in which she was now seated on him made her skirts ride up expose her stockinged thighs. As crimson blood rushed to heat her face, she tossed her loose hair back and pushed the palms of her hands against his chest in a vain attempt to win some space between them.
Thunder descended upon his face and he seized hold of her shoulders. “Still he is between us!”
Amelia shuddered. “Freddie?”
“Unless you took yet another lover beside me!”
“You are not my lover!”
“I will be your everything, Amelia! I want you to think of him no more -”
“How can I do that, sir?” She closed her eyes tightly, conflicted by the emotion she felt for the lord and the consuming, unwelcome lust she felt for the man now holding her against her will. “I cannot simply switch my emotions off, and my heart yearns for him even as my treacherous body thrills in being held by you.”
Cooper drew a sharp breath as he clenched his jaw. “Would you have assented if he had proposed?”
Amelia refused to back down from the fire in his grey eyes, ominous though it was. “Undoubtedly I would have done, yes. Perhaps I still would, for I love him -”
The headmaster cut short her biting words by forcibly covering her lips with his own in a ferocious kiss, assaulting her mouth with the strength of his passion for her; but she found she had never wanted anything more. She cried out in elation as the kiss deepened, his arms now wrapped tightly around her to crush her against his chest as his tongue thrust triumphantly into her mouth. Already her arousal had reached a breathtaking height, and tonight she knew without a doubt that it would finally be sated, for her words had clearly driven him to the same heights of desperation she felt. However hard she tried to fight and deny it, Amelia wanted him more than any other man before. No-one else had the power to make her feel like this, and so she willingly submitted to the fire now raging in her core and fisted Cooper’s shirt as she rocked against him.
With a strangled groan, he rose to his feet without breaking the kiss for even a moment. She arched into his possessive hold and wrapped her legs around his waist as he stumbled towards the door, still kissing her like a man possessed even as they began to ascend the narrow staircase. There could be only one conclusion now, and she thrilled in that certainty, in thrall to the fever of his touch.
Her low whimper must have spoken her longing without words, for when they reached the bedroom nestled into the eaves Cooper set Amelia back on her feet, one hand in the small of her back and the other resting possessively against the nape of her neck to keep her head tilted up towards his. He was breathing heavily, and his grey eyes had darkened so much now they seemed almost black in the moonlight that illuminated the room.
“Forget him,” he said quietly, though the fire in his eyes had not abated in the least despite the heady distraction of their kiss. “You are mine now, Amelia, and I will withstand no disobedience, least of all here in the bed we will share. Tell me...”
Her breath hitched as he trailed off, and she instinctively raised herself up onto the tips of her toes to rest her hand against his flushed face. “Yes, sir?”
Cooper tensed as his intent stare flickered down to where her fingers were now tracing the chiselled contours of his jaw. “Tell me, my dear; whom were you thinking of when I kissed you?” he finally said.
Amelia dropped her gaze, unable to meet his eyes as she spoke the word that would damn her. Instead, she buried her face in his shoulder even as her fingers grew bolder, moving across to dance over the bow of his parted lips. “You. Only you.”
It was the truth.
The headmaster exhaled, but when she dared look up at him again there seemed to still be a hint of caution written upon his face. His head was cocked to the side, and he lifted one brow as he slowly nodded then turned her to face the bed behind them, still without releasing his hold on her. The bedroom was laid out before her, but though Amelia’s eyes skimmed briefly over the stool beneath the window and the binoculars sat on them, as a fresh shiver of arousal sped through her veins her incredulous gaze came to rest upon the bed itself. The riding crop Cooper had used with such skill yesterday lay on top of the sheets, and upon catching sight of it she froze in his arms.
“Astute as ever, my dear,” he said with a mirthless smile. “I presume you understand just why that little treasure is waiting for us?”
Her tongue darted out across her lips. “For...for us to use?”
“Aye, and I think we shall use it to drive Lord Frederick from your mind once and for all,” the headmaster said grimly.
“Am I not here with you?!”
“Only because I left you with no choice! Deep down, there is still a part of you that fights this, a part of you still belonging to him – and that is the part I would possess in its entirety.”
Cooper finally loosened his grip on her feverish body for long enough that she could break away from him, but she took no more than two steps backwards before his hand shot out to close around her wrist. Without seeking permission, he pulled her close again and then wound one hand through her loose hair to draw her mouth towards his. A low moan of desperate longing rose out of nowhere to escape her lips, and his eyes seemed to soften when she willingly accepted the kiss he offered without words. She needed this, more than she had ever known she could need anyone else, and even if Cooper was as intent upon driving Freddie from her mind as he seemed to be, Amelia was convinced now the loss would be worth it.
Powerless to defy this any longer, she forced her right hand between their bodies to undo the buttons of his shirt, uncharacteristically clumsy as her fingers shook against the taut heat of his chest. His mouth on hers steadily coaxed her arousal higher and higher, and when his shirt finally fell open, fierce triumph sang through her heated veins. She did not need to ask, for the headmaster had made it all too plain how much he too wanted this. She tugged away both the shirt and the dinner jacket that covered it, then broke the gentle kiss with a cry of elation as her hands eagerly roamed across the sparse hair that spread across his chest.
Cooper groaned, but though his jaw was now clenched he allowed Amelia the time she craved to explore all she had exposed. The cut of the tailored suits he always wore had hidden from her a surprisingly muscular and defined body, and she felt him tense further as her hands drifted outwards to rest against his biceps. He would easily dominate her when they reached the bed – and that thought thrilled her deeply. With a forceful shiver that chased down the entire length of her spine, she shook her head in a futile attempt to clear it and slowly eased her right hand beneath the waistband of his trousers as she fell to her knees before him.
He sucked in a sharp breath as he wound one hand through her loose hair, guiding her head towards his hips in a wordless command she followed without hesitation. Impatiently tugging his belt buckle open with her teeth, Amelia cried out in delight as her hand closed around the rock hard shaft of the headmaster’s cock, for as his trousers fell away it was revealed to her hungry eyes. He had worn nothing beneath his trousers, and when her shaking hands pulled away his socks and shoes, he stood bare before her, not flinching under the weight of her lustful stare. Overcome by the force of the desire she felt for this man against her will, she glanced up to meet his eyes and placed a gentle kiss against the head of his cock. A tiny drop of pre-cum already glistened there, and she found it impossible to resist the compulsion to wrap her tongue around it and revel in both its salty taste upon her lips and the loud, desperate groan that erupted from the back of his throat in response to her bold touch.
&
nbsp; “Damn, Amelia, that is glorious!” he said hoarsely. “I shall have to force you to follow through upon the offer I see in your eyes some other time, but I have plans for you tonight that I will not be distracted from.”
Amelia deliberately moistened her lips as she held his gaze. “The crop?”
“Aye, but first it is my turn to do as you have been doing,” Cooper said, the burr of his low voice as intimate a caress as anything his hands could deliver. “I would have the pleasure of undressing my woman, Amelia, and finally having beneath my hands all of the joys your body will give to me. To your feet.”
It took her a few moments to obey, for hearing him describe her as his woman had felt so right it took her breath away. As she steadied herself, he reached down to take her hand and pulled her up against the hard lines of his bare body, so full of promise that it pushed aside all other thoughts save for how very much she needed this. By the time his deft fingers flicked open the top button of her blouse, she was once more a slave to the consuming desire that bound them together.
“There’s my girl,” the headmaster said as she arched into his touch, his voice far gentler than she had ever heard it before. “Give yourself to me, Amelia, and I promise I will give you in turn all you need. I am going to undress you now, my dear, and when I am finished there will not be as much as an inch of your bare body I have not lavished my attentions upon. Do you like the sound of that?”
With an impatient sob, Amelia nodded eagerly and lifted her arms, allowing him to pull the blouse away and begin on the tight corset beneath. “Very much so, Mr. Cooper!”
Triumphant approval blazed across his crimson skin, and he rapidly stripped away the corset then tugged her long skirt down to pool around her feet. “So damned beautiful,” he muttered under his breath, his hands already flying to unhook her stockings as he spoke. “So lovely, Amelia, and all mine tonight. I will make it so you can think of none but me, I promise you that!”