But it was far too late to back down.
Imperious as any queen, Olivia gestured in his direction. “Take off the robe.”
He’d sworn to do her bidding. And by God, that’s what he’d do. No matter how hard it was for a man of his overweening pride to submit to a woman’s command.
Without comment, he shucked the black silk garment and let it slip to his bare feet.
Nor did he speak as she contemplated his nakedness for what felt like an eon. Her eyes glided over his shoulders and chest and homed in on his cock. Which predictably rose to the unspoken challenge.
He’d have to be dead not to want her. But he didn’t feel comfortable standing before her like this. She studied him like an object. Like a marble statue in a gallery.
Slowly, she circled him, considering him with the cool gaze of an art connoisseur. Her arms were folded in front of her as if she didn’t find the work on offer worthy of particular appreciation.
Worst of all was when she passed behind him. She seemed to stare at his bare backside forever. Every muscle tensed along his legs, over his buttocks, and up his back. He had to steel himself to stand where he was and not fumble after the crumpled robe like a nervous virgin on her wedding night.
Damn it, he was an acknowledged rake, a virtuoso in the sensual arts. He’d stood naked before a host of women.
But never had he felt so bloody…naked.
He abhorred feeling like this. Loathed it to the depths of his being.
And she knew it, the witch.
He braced himself to endure. If he could break through the shell of ice that enclosed her, he’d gladly subject himself to the worst torture she could devise. Somewhere in their liaison, he’d reached a point where releasing her from the prison of her frigidity was more important to him than his next breath.
He could do this for her. He would do this for her.
What happened between them then was in the lap of a fate he’d learned to distrust.
How had he got to this point, where her wellbeing outstripped his pride and self-preservation? But he’d passed the stage where he could cavil at the obscure path he’d chosen. Now he was well and truly lost in the woods. He just hoped his instincts about this woman showed him the way home again.
The memory of how Olivia looked when she told him of her past strengthened him, and he set his shoulders. She’d borne her hardships with such courage. This silent subservience was all he could offer as recompense. He hoped to blazes it proved enough.
As if she touched him, he felt her burning eyes trace the line of his spine from his buttocks to his shoulders, which knotted with tension. He waited for the brush of her hand, but she merely shifted around to face him.
“Lie on the bed.” Her face was smooth and expressionless as alabaster. And just as cold.
The electric possibility of danger, even physical harm, hovered in the air. Her slanted tiger eyes promised retribution, punishment…pleasure.
Without protest, he prowled into the bedroom, crossed to the bed and stretched out. The room was so quiet he heard the faint swish of her skirts as she followed. On the way, she picked up his robe, which she tossed across a chair in the bedroom.
His heart raced with a strange mixture of emotions. Excitement, certainly. But trepidation as well. And a stirring of masculine resentment that he couldn’t quite stifle.
Even if he had nobody but himself to blame for his predicament.
No woman ordered him around. Especially in the bedroom. He’d always been in charge. Damn it, he liked to be in charge.
This obedience to a woman’s whim was new. Unsettling.
But something deep in his gut insisted that humbling his pride was the only way to grant her true freedom. If it cost him a moment of humiliation—he hoped to Hades she didn’t plan more than that—then he could withstand it.
If she only once showed him genuine desire, he’d face the fires of hell and smile as the flames roasted him.
The reminder of what was at stake drained his cramping tension. Even so, when she grabbed his wrist and dragged it up toward one bedpost, he started.
Her firm, completely unseductive touch shot a wild jolt of incendiary heat through him. He grit his teeth and fought for control.
She was close enough for him to snatch into his arms. But if he did that, the brittle trust building between them would shatter forever.
“Relax. This won’t hurt a bit,” she murmured as her clever fingers looped a dark blue cord around his wrist then tied it to the bedpost with an efficient knot.
“Easy for you to say.”
He sought reassurance in the fact that she felt safe enough to tease. Perhaps everything would be all right after all. A tendril of uncertain hope uncoiled in his desperate heart.
“Easy for me to do.” She looped his other wrist to the second bedpost with more of that impressive dispatch.
“You’ve done this before.”
“On my father’s estate, we learned to tie stray animals up securely or we’d be out looking for them.”
Her father’s estate? Her slip confirmed Erith’s earlier guess about her wealthy background. He bit down on another wave of futile anger at what her brother had done.
Still, it was a struggle to keep the light note. “Do you liken me to an animal, Miss Raines?”
“Let’s see.” Very deliberately, she ran her hand down his naked chest and over the vulnerable plane of his belly. Every muscle of his body clenched as he waited for her to touch him where he wanted her most.
She paused just short of his erection.
He ground his teeth, biting back a strangled plea, waiting in trembling yearning for her to move that final inch. Just one little inch.
Good God, he felt like he’d been hard for a century.
But her cool hand remained flat on his belly. Close. But not close enough.
His hips jerked upward.
The tiniest of smiles twitched her lips, and her feline eyes sparked as she withdrew her hand. Not for the first time, he imagined the velvety mole near her mouth was a witch’s mark. She certainly cast a spell on him. She had from the first moment he’d seen her.
“You torment me, she-devil,” he gasped.
His heart pumped as though he’d just run up a steep mountain. He’d only started this cycle of torture and already he was in extremis.
How in Hades would he survive?
“Mmm,” she almost hummed.
“What do you plan to do with me?” His voice was hoarse with the effort of controlling his titanic hunger.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she said musingly, moving down the bed and taking one of his ankles in a firm grip. Again the impact of her hand on his skin shuddered through him like a collision with a speeding coach.
“I think you have.”
Erith might have gone disastrously wrong with the women in his life. But he knew enough about the sex to recognize her expression. He’d seen exactly the same look on the stable cats at Selden when they had a mouse in their claws. His future unquestionably involved teasing, torment, and eventual destruction.
Even so, he didn’t resist as she bound each foot to the posts at the end of the bed. He lay spread-eagled and vulnerable in front of her.
Before buying the silk cords, he’d tested them. For all their satiny smoothness, they were terrifically strong. He wasn’t sure he could break them if he had to.
That was the trust he placed in Olivia. Tied up, he truly was defenseless. He did this right or not at all.
As if she read his mind, she spoke. “Try those knots for me.”
He noticed since he’d given himself over to her domination, she’d stopped using words like “please” or even addressing him with his title.
“As you wish.” He tugged violently at the bindings on his arms. They didn’t shift. He tried to kick his legs. Again no movement. Those animals on her mysterious childhood estate had been well and truly tethered.
“Nothing?”
She stoo
d at the base of the bed, her scrutiny more clinical than loverlike as it ran across his body. Even so, every sinew tensed. He tried not to resent her coolness but it was difficult. Especially when he was a raging furnace of need.
“Nothing.”
“Good.” She trailed one finger up his instep and along his ankle and his shin to his knee. Where she paused…and paused…
Every drop of moisture in his mouth evaporated.
Higher, higher.
The demand was a fractured scream inside his head. He gritted his teeth until they ached. He’d promised her complete power over him. He’d sworn to accept anything she did.
Even when he’d made his plans, the prospect of achieving what he set himself seemed unlikely. Now that he was actually roped down like a bull for slaughter, he wondered if his goal was impossible.
Without lifting her hand from his leg, she drifted around the side of the bed. Her alluring smoky honey scent combined with his own musk to make him dizzy. Her gaze on his nakedness sent him into a cold sweat. Although that was all that was cold about him. He’d had the fire built up before she returned so the room was warm. But hotter still was the blood pounding through his veins.
She performed a devilish little circle with her forefinger on his knee. His cock jerked as he imagined that finger sliding up to stroke him.
“Olivia,” he grated out, knowing his mind followed exactly the path she intended.
“Yes?” she asked in an indifferent tone. “Do you want me to untie you?”
Yes.
“No.”
“Good.”
As if to reward his answer, she made a foray up his thigh. Still just with one finger. His heart faltered as he waited for her to complete the caress.
Surely she knew where he wanted her. His mouth was parched and his jaw throbbed from clenching his teeth.
Olivia, please…
She lifted her hand away and stepped back from the bed. “If you need anything, call. I’m sure the servants will hear you.” She paused. “Eventually.”
“Where are you going?” He despised the begging note in his voice.
She was almost at the door to the hallway. She stopped and glanced over her shoulder with a derisive little smile. “Good-bye, Erith.”
Good-bye? What the Devil was going on?
“Hell, Olivia!” He struggled in earnest against his bonds, fighting with much more force than he’d used testing them. Still they held. “Olivia! What—”
She opened the door and slipped out of the room without another word.
Chapter 19
Erith had fallen into an uneasy, exhausted doze when the door opened again. He lifted heavy eyelids and stared sightlessly into the shadowy room. Through the fog of emotional and physical misery, he dully supposed a servant had arrived to release him at last.
The fire had burned down to embers in the grate and full night had descended. His arms blazed with agony from their unnatural position above his head. He’d been flat on his back so long, his muscles screamed with painful stiffness. He was deathly cold.
After that shocking moment when Olivia left, he’d spent fruitless energy battling like a maniac to break free. But all he’d gained were raw wrists and strained muscles. His frenzied writhing had only tightened the cords. She hadn’t exaggerated when she boasted of tethering him like a beast.
Eventually, logic had pierced his insane fury. Struggle was useless.
Hope had taken much longer to die than anger.
At first he couldn’t believe she’d gone and left him helpless. His heart had howled incredulous denial as she closed the door behind her.
She’d be back. Of course she’d be back.
She was only teasing him. He’d always known she would torment him before she relented. Hell, he’d as much as insisted she torment him when he asked her to do what she willed.
But as grim minutes advanced, turned into hours, and still no Olivia, bleak reality sank in. He saw what he should have seen much earlier.
He’d given her freedom. Like the smart woman she was, she’d taken it.
He could have called for help, as she’d so derisively suggested. But some stubborn skerrick of pride kept him silent: pride and, even more pathetic, hope that she might return to find him steadfastly waiting.
What a damned fool he was. Of course Olivia wasn’t coming back.
He closed his eyes and felt desolation creep through his veins like a slow river of frost.
“Erith?”
His heart stopped, then began to race in a crazy rhythm. Had he gone mad indeed? God help him, he’d thought never to hear that soft voice again.
His head jerked in her direction and he wrenched upward before he remembered the cords that held him. Through the gloom, his blurred gaze focused disbelievingly on her.
She leaned against the closed door. The fire’s low glow turned her red silk robe into gleaming ruby mystery. Her beautiful hair was a loose tumble of bronze around her shoulders.
Lord knew what she meant to do. But she was here. That was all that mattered.
Tense silence stretched between them.
“You came back.” His voice emerged as a croak from a mouth dry as desert sand. A wild mixture of joy and wonder clogged his throat.
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d left me,” he said rawly.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” His mind, blank with despair only seconds ago, kicked into operation under the invigorating reality that she hadn’t deserted him. “It’s what you wanted me to think.”
“Perhaps.” Her voice was enigmatic, and in the poor light, he couldn’t read her expression.
Then the greatest revelation of all. Although he should have guessed her game when she agreed to take part in this little contest. “By God, you’re testing me.”
“Yes.” She stepped farther into the room, nearer the fire. He could see her face. It was calm, almost emotionless.
“And I’m failing.”
She pursed her full lips briefly in a way that made him want to kiss her.
Would he ever kiss her again? An iron certainty grew that they’d emerge from this night bound as tightly as thread to a bobbin, or else this was the end of everything between them.
“I wouldn’t say that.” She glided closer to the bed. “You must want to get up.”
“I could have called a servant.”
“Yes, but you didn’t,” she said neutrally.
“I would have soon. I can’t feel my legs.”
That brought her rushing forward in a rustle of silk. She came close enough for him to smell her sweet floral soap and, beneath it, the warm essence of her skin. She must have just left her bath. He’d have thought he was too tired and disconsolate and racked with pain to respond to her. But immediate sexual awareness curled through his belly like a snake.
“I’ll release you.” Her mood was no longer opaque. She sounded upset and guilty. “I left you here too long.”
“Does that mean I’ve failed?”
She gave a contemptuous snort at his mulishness. “Would you rather stay there till Doomsday?”
“If I have to.” Now that he knew she hadn’t left, his determination resurfaced that tonight would mark a new beginning or the death of his every hope.
He’d reached this conclusion during the harsh, unrelenting hours of self-reflection before Olivia arrived home from Montjoy’s. He thought he’d prepared himself for the risks of his last ditch attempt to shatter the deadlock between them.
He’d had no bloody idea.
“You’re an obstinate devil.” Did he hear admiration in that low contralto?
He forced out the cruel words that needed to be said. “Has tonight given you any joy? Have you tortured me to your satisfaction? Will anything make up for what happened to you? I know the world owes you recompense. And you’re more than welcome to take it out of my hide if that helps. But, Olivia, you must see that nothing can erase the vile injustices of yo
ur past.”
He heard her startled intake of breath. Then there was a delicious slide of freshly washed hair over his chest as she leaned down and tugged at the knots fastening his left wrist to the bedpost.
“You claim to know so much about me?” He couldn’t mistake the fear that lurked under her defiance.
“Know you?” He made a derisive sound deep in his throat. “You’re more mysterious than the depths of the Pacific Ocean or the wastes of the Arctic.”
“Oh, both horribly cold and wet.” As usual when he veered too close to her essential self, she fended him off with humor. “Not sure I approve of your mode of address, Lord Erith.”
“The jungles of Peru?”
She still fiddled with the ties. “Dank and…Blast! I need more light.”
To his regret, she stopped nudging his ribs with her fragrant warmth and went across to the chest of drawers. She moved from lamp to lamp, lighting them so each detail of her beauty came into view like stars winking into life in the night sky.
The lamps lent her thick mane of hair a myriad colors. Bronze. Auburn. Rich brown. Gold. Strands of flaxen blond. It shifted as she moved, rippling and catching the light.
She bent and fed the fire, using the poker until the blaze rose high and flickered gold over her face. Only then did she return to him. “Aren’t you going to insist I let you go?”
“You’re in charge.”
“Even if I untie you?”
He stared steadily up at her. Demons from hell stabbed his body and shoveled red hot coals down his nerve endings. He could bear anything if it meant he achieved his ends. “What do you think?”
She smiled with radiant approval that made his gut twist with yearning. “You’ve earned your freedom.”
She leaned over him again and with a few deft pulls released the cords that held him down.
“Thank you,” he said through dry lips. He struggled to bend down, intending to untie his feet, but his muscles had seized up. The blood rushing back into his limbs left him light-headed with pain.
“Oh, Erith,” she cried in dismay. “I’m sorry.” Quickly, she reached down to release his ankles. “I had no right to do this.”
“Yes, you did.” He grunted as he struggled to sit. He’d spent the last hours frantic to move. Now that he could move, the agony was indescribable. “I gave you the right.”
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