The Curse of Lord Stanstead

by Mia Marlowe

  She cocked her head at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m usually able to slip a thought into other people’s minds so seamlessly they don’t recognize it as not being their own. However, you don’t appear to receive my suggestions, at all.”

  “That may be the one positive thing I’ve heard since I came to Camden House.”

  “Really?” Garret removed his cuff links and rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal beautifully muscled forearms, lightly dusted with dark hair. “Because if you could hear my thoughts, you’d know I think you’re lovely and you should think so, too.”

  “Oh.” Some of the heat sloughed off her and this time, Cassandra blushed with real pleasure. Compared to Lady Sylvia’s classic beauty, she thought of herself as comely perhaps, but in a rough-about-the-edges, milk-maidish sort of way. “Why do you suppose I can’t hear the thoughts you’re sending to me?”

  “I don’t know. Camden theorizes that in addition to being a fire mage, you may also have an ability to put up a psychic shield, but even he admits it’s a bit far-fetched.”

  “More far-fetched than being a fire mage?” She tossed a glance at the candle on her dressing table and the flame winked out.

  Garret grinned. “You’re getting good at that.”

  “Vesta says it’s the easiest trick in the arsenal.” Cassie called the fire back and the candle flickered once again.

  “You may as well put it out. At first, this will go easier in a dim room.”

  Her insides knotted with nervousness and, she had to admit, with anticipation. Garret Sterling was a devilishly handsome fellow. Even if she did still adore Roddy, a woman would have to be dead not to experience a flutter or two in Garret’s presence.

  “I don’t know what you’re expecting,” she said as the candle’s light faded again, “but I’m really not all that experienced with this sort of thing. It was only one time.”

  She admitted to disappointment over her joining with Roderick. They’d had to be so secretive about it, agreeing to meet in a broom closet while the rest of the house party played Sardines. The sneaking around had made her feel so very low. And then the act itself had been so…abrupt.

  First, Roderick had started kissing her and everything had been lovely. Then he had pulled her hem up and his trousers down. He’d wedged her legs apart and shredded the evidence of her purity in one quick thrust.

  It had burned like fire. And had continued to burn as he had jerked a few more times. Then he’d pulled out and spent himself into his handkerchief. “For your protection,” he’d said.

  If she had to endure more of that with Garret, she was almost ready to give up and go live like a hermit in a noncombustible stone cottage somewhere. If only she’d heeded the warnings of Ephigenia Oddbotham’s Pattern Behavior for the Well-Bred Young Lady. Then she wouldn’t be in this predicament, about to surrender her body to a man again and this time, without even the benefit of her heart being fully engaged.

  “What must I do?” she asked in a monotone.

  “Nothing but relax and let yourself feel,” Garret said as he pulled a length of silk from his pocket. He led her to the tufted wing chair before the fireplace and tied the silk scarf around one of her wrists.

  “What are you doing?”

  “By lightly restraining you, I’m actually freeing you to indulge your senses,” Garret explained as he slipped the scarf around the back of the chair and then tied her other wrist. It forced her to sit upright, with her breasts outthrust. “Trust me, Vesta has approved this technique.”

  “Is there anything about this arrangement that Vesta hasn’t decreed?”

  “She can’t tell me how to feel about you.”

  That surprised her. Given the way Garret seemed to resent his association with the duke’s household, she expected him to treat this as simply another duty. Yet unexpectedly, his emotions were engaged. “How…how do you feel?”

  “Inquisitive. I’ve never been with anyone like you.” His sensual mouth lifted in a half-smile. “Oddly respectful.”

  “And well you should be. Remember, I can incinerate you if I’ve half a mind to.” Actually, Cassandra hadn’t mastered that trick yet. The straw dolls she practiced with had been safe so far, but she rather liked the idea that she might be able to do it one day. “Are you saying you don’t normally respect the women you bed?”

  “Oh, I have the utmost respect for the feminine sex, but you and I won’t be bedding in the usual sense. As I understand it, we are entering a partnership of sorts. We’ll work together to rid you temporarily of some of your excess psychic power so you can more easily focus what’s left. Oh, the things I do for the Order,” he said with a grin, but then his expression sobered. “I like you, Cassandra. What’s more, I do respect you, because the gift you bear is a heavy one. I’m honored that you’ll let me lift part of it for you.”

  He pulled the tufted cassock close to her chair and braced his knees on either side of hers. Then he untied the satin bow at the neckline of her night rail and started to undo the little horn buttons that marched down the front.

  She shivered with heightened awareness. And expectation.

  …

  Your skin is beautiful. Like satin.

  Cassandra’s face was still pinched in a worried frown. Obviously, she couldn’t hear his directed thoughts. This would be so much easier without the need for spoken words.

  “Your skin is so soft. Ordinarily, I’d just Send the things I want you to hear,” Garret said with reverence as he brushed her collarbone with his fingertips. “If this seems awkward, I apologize.”

  “Of course, it’s awkward. We’ve known each other for less than a fortnight and you’re touching me as no one else ever has.”

  “Your lover didn’t?”

  “He didn’t… It all happened so quickly. There wasn’t time for gentleness.”

  “The man should be horsewhipped,” Garret said with vehemence.

  She looked away, probably hoping he wouldn’t notice the way she trembled. “Why is a directed thought better than talking to a lady outright?”

  “A woman will believe the things I Send her more readily than anything I tell her, because she thinks they are her own thoughts.”

  “Sometimes we lie to ourselves.”

  She’s probably told herself some farradiddles about the man who took her maidenhead, God rot him.

  “Wouldn’t it be better for you to know that your skin is satiny smooth rather than rely on someone else to tell you?” Garret asked.

  She shrugged. “I suppose if my own opinion mattered more to me than anyone else’s, that might be true. But isn’t the whole idea of what we’re doing to connect on some level? The least we can do is talk about it instead of just thinking madly at each other.”

  “I take your point.”

  She bit her bottom lip. The gesture was so endearing he ached to take that little lip and suckle it. But a kiss was so intimate, with its shared breath and mingling of souls. Vesta had insisted this procedure be conducted as rigidly as any mind-training assigned by the duke. The one kiss he’d given her at Almack’s still figured prominently in his most erotic dreams. Another kiss might muck up the works and make him start to care about her more than he already did. More than he ought, for the sake of her safety.

  “So, is my skin really that soft?” she asked.

  “Mmm-hmm.” He lowered his head and ran his tongue along her collarbone. She shivered. Delicious.

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  “Nicer to taste,” he said. “All sweet and lavenderish. I could eat you up.”

  Her eyelids fluttered closed as he drew her chemise apart to expose her breasts.

  “No, don’t close your eyes. I want you to watch me. I want you to see how the sight of you affects me.”

  Once she met his gaze, he looked down to take in her breasts.

  “Exquisite,” he said. Her breasts were perfect. High, firm, and topped with a little berry of a nipple that puckered unde
r the warm stream of his breath. His groin ached. This was going to be difficult since Vesta had told him not to expect release for himself.

  This was all about Cassandra.

  He rubbed his knuckles over her nipples and was rewarded by her sharp intake of breath. Then he drew slow circles around them, careful not to touch those sensitive tips again.

  “A woman’s breasts seem to be intimately connected to other parts of her body. What you feel here”—he stroked the underside of her breasts, teasing along the crease—“can evoke sensations in other places. Do you know that I mean?”

  She nodded.

  “How does it make you feel?

  “Hot. Heavy.” Her gaze swept downward. “Down there.”

  “That’s because the same sensitivity that’s in your nipples is centered in that heaven between your thighs, my dear.”

  She stiffened. “I know it’s sensitive. It hurt like the devil the first time.”

  Again, anger against the clodpole who had violated her burned in his chest. “If your experience was painful, that only means your lover was an inconsiderate sod. I will not hurt you. In fact, I’m not even going to touch you anywhere except for your gorgeous breasts.”

  He suited his actions to his words and palmed them, thrumming the nipples with his thumbs. This would be so much simpler if he could Send her his thoughts. He’d be able to direct her fantasy so minutely, helping her focus on first this sensation, then that. But since she seemed to have some sort of psychic barrier against him, he had only his hands, his mouth, and his words to move her to a shattering release simply by fiddling her breasts.

  At first, he’d warmed to the challenge, but then Vesta had given him a stern warning.

  “Her release must be shattering, Sterling,” the courtesan had said. “Either you blow the top of her head off or she may well light yours afire.”

  Feeling a bit like the male of the Black Widow species gone a-courting, he bent, took one of her taut nipples between his lips and sucked.

  …

  Cassandra’s head fell back as he suckled her. Garret was right. Her breast was sending an urgent message of desire. It streaked like heat lightning along her limbs, lighting her up and warming her almost beyond bearing “down there.” She seemed to have developed a second heart, pounding between her legs.

  Garret nuzzled her breasts. “Imagine I’m spreading your legs and doing this to that lovely spot.”

  She seemed to feel the soft prickles of his beard growth twice, once when it brushed her charged nipples and again in her imagination over the curling hairs at the apex of her thighs. Delight shivered over her, cooling the heat in some ways and building it in others.

  He ran his open mouth over her taut peaks.

  Warmth pooled at the thought of him doing the same elsewhere. His lips were magical. Everyplace they touched came alive. Even places he didn’t touch ached with the awareness of how much she wished he were touching her there.

  “There is a special spot, hidden in your secret folds that tightens and rises just like your nipples.” He gave them each a long lick. She ached so badly, she could almost feel his tongue doing the same to her intimate folds. “It’s even more sensitive than these. I’d like to taste you there.”

  She no longer smelled like soot to herself. The perfume of her arousal, musky and sweet, filled the air.

  “Lord, you smell wonderful.” His voice was thick, husky with desire as he sucked first one nipple then the other. Whichever nipple wasn’t between his lips was being tormented by his talented fingers. Cassandra arched into his touch.

  She wished suddenly that she could hear his thoughts. It would be even more intimate if their minds could somehow reach each other. But since she couldn’t accept his Sendings, he seemed determined to tell her what was on his mind.

  “I’d take that little spot, that hard nub between your legs and suck it and…” The rest of what he was trying to say was lost in mumbles as he filled his mouth with her nipple.

  She moaned. She strained at her bonds, wishing she could touch him back. Wishing he’d kiss her mouth. She wanted things. Wicked things. Harder. Wetter. Faster. Some of her longings made no sense to her mind, but they made perfect sense to her aching body.

  She was being wound up like a clockwork toy, ever tighter and tighter. Then when she thought she couldn’t take another twist of the key, he bit down on her nipple and the coil inside her was sprung. She unraveled, pulses coming hot and fast. Her limbs jerked like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  All the pent-up heat, all the stored fire rushed out of her in waves of bliss radiating from her core. She wondered that Garret wasn’t singed, but he simply held her as her body bucked. Finally, she quieted and went limp in his arms.

  Garret untied her wrists. Then he picked her up and carried her to the waiting bed.

  “I hope you’ll be able to rest now.”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice. All her frustration, all her self-loathing over her predicament had melted at his touch. When he started to turn away, she stopped him by reaching up and palming his cheek.

  “You gave without taking, Garret,” she said softly. “That was…extraordinary.”

  “What made it extraordinary came from inside you,” he said softly. “Thank you for allowing me to share in your magic.”

  Then he turned and headed for the door. “Do you want me to lock this for you?”

  “No. No need. It won’t be locked against you again.” If he knocked on her door tomorrow night, she’d allow him in with a grateful heart.

  And maybe, in the days to come, she’d learn to give to him without taking.

  Chapter Seven

  ’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

  But being too happy in thine happiness.

  —John Keats, from “Ode to a Nightingale”

  The rout at Lord and Lady Waldgren’s fussily decorated town house was in full swing. Older gentlemen had adjourned to the room set aside for cards. Society matrons lined the walls in the salon where furniture had been moved aside to make room for dancing. The younger folk moved through the prescribed steps of cotillions and reels.

  “The Duke of Camden himself has taken her under his wing,” Garret overheard Lady Waldgren tell a group of gossips gathered around her. As one, the women raised their lorgnettes to follow Cassandra’s progress along the chain of a spirited reel. “Bright, charming, and a true devotee of the arts, clearly there is more to Miss Darkin than meets the eye.”

  They had no idea.

  But Garret did. She might still be tentative and shy in social situations, but when he was in her chamber, helping her subdue the power of her fire gift, he caught a sense of the real Cassie. She was passionate and generous and playful.

  “Garret, please,” she’d say after a shattering release, “I can’t keep taking from you and never give.”

  “It has to be thus, for now,” he’d answer with regret. Vesta had been adamant that their physical relationship remain one-sided. At first, a fire mage’s consort must be responsible for her climaxes, while denying himself. It was part of how the elemental magic worked. Garret supposed it made sense. Nothing ever came freely in the realm of the Extraordinaires. Each gift demanded a forfeit. He just wasn’t accustomed to being the one doing the sacrificing.

  It was a frustrating situation, but not without certain benefits. Seeing Cassie in the altogether, her body strung taut as a bow, her brows tented in exquisite agony—since he wasn’t allowed to make love to her in the conventional way, he’d spent plenty of time getting to know her and all her delicious parts in other ingenious manners.

  It would stand him in good stead once the restrictions were lifted and he was able to take Cassandra as his lover in truth.

  For the past two weeks, Garret had been squiring her to all the invitations His Grace had accepted on her behalf. He watched her now as she danced. Her face was flushed, her smile bright. Her laugh of genuine pleasure floated toward him.

 
Why had he ever thought her less than a diamond of the first water?

  She drew him to her in a way the conventionally approved beauties of the Season, with their fashionably pale curls and limpid eyes, never could.

  At that realization, a warning bell sounded in his brain. He was in danger of letting Cassandra mean something to him. Of letting her into his heart and mind in such a way that she’d eventually slip into his destructive dreams. He stiffened his resolve. His arrangement with Cassie had to remain strictly business. In a perverse way, he was grateful that Vesta had set stringent rules for their activities that wouldn’t allow him to kiss her lips, though none of the rest of Cassandra was off-limits. A kiss on the mouth was too intimate, Vesta had explained. The duke had made her aware of Camden’s unruly dreams. If Garret kissed Cassie, Vesta warned, their souls might mingle and then Miss Darkin would be sure to find her way into one of those nightmares he couldn’t control. The ones that spilled into the waking world at unexpected times with devastating results. He couldn’t risk it.

  Yet, he longed to kiss her lips and couldn’t keep himself from making his way around the room to her side as her dance partner returned her to a seat along the edge of the room.

  “There you are, Mr. Sterling,” she said breathlessly. They’d agreed on maintaining formal address when they were in the public eye. “I haven’t seen you on the dance floor.”

  “I’ve been too busy watching you to trip the light fantastic myself. Careful,” he said, “people will suspect you’re enjoying yourself, Miss Darkin.”

  “I am. I think I’ve danced every dance.”

  The string quartet started a wistful tune in three-quarter time. A waltz. It would be a perfect excuse to hold her for a few minutes and Garret wanted to hold her very badly. He extended his hand.

  “May I have the honor of this dance?” he said correctly. She slipped her fingers into his and the effect was immediate and electric. Longing rushed into him. He wanted this woman more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.

  “The honor would be mine,” she answered, “but I wonder if you’ll do me a favor. Miss Bates hasn’t been asked to dance all evening. I know from experience how dreadful it feels to be a wallflower. Would you please dance with her, instead?”