by Mia Gabriel
Or maybe—no, most likely—it was seeing the flash of desire and hunger in his eyes as he studied me, infinitely more intense than when he’d watched me during the auction. He didn’t try to mask it, either, the way some gentlemen would. He wanted me, and he wanted me to know it.
“You are a rarity, Eve,” he said, his voice lowering to more of a growl. “From the first time I saw you in the garden, saw the excitement in your eyes as I fucked another woman, I knew it would come to this for us.”
“I did, too,” I whispered. What was it about such declarations that made them impossible to speak loudly? And why was it that when he said fucked—a word I’d never dared speak myself—I knew I had to have him fuck me as well? “I did, and I—”
“Hush, Eve, hush,” he said, placing his forefinger across his lips as a more emphatic warning. “I ask the questions, and you reply. I give the orders, and you obey.”
“Yes, Master.” I was eager in my replies now, ready to follow wherever he led. He’d been right about shedding the costume. I did feel more free without clothing, and my body was warm and quivering inside with anticipation for whatever he’d propose.
“You’re a widow,” he said, a statement, not a question.
“You’re a widower, too, aren’t you?” Lady Carleigh had told me that Lady Savage had died several years before, tragically young.
His expression didn’t change.
“Yes, I am,” he said. “But you are not asking the questions, Eve. I am. No children, I presume?”
I shook my head. I’d wanted children, lots of children, to make up for my solitary childhood. But although I’d been a wife, I had not been blessed with motherhood.
“I thought not,” he said. “Your body’s too pristine to have suffered through childbirth.”
I winced at that, the casual dismissal of my greatest disappointment, and because of it, my question in return was sharper than I’d intended.
“Have you any children?” I asked. “Legitimate ones, that is. Have you fathered a precious heir to your earldom?”
He frowned. “Eve, you forget yourself again. I ask the questions, not you. But yes, I have a single son, and yes, he is my heir.”
He said it not proudly, the way most fathers would, but with a curious finality that made it clear that he’d volunteer nothing more about the boy.
“Now tell me, Eve,” he continued. “Did your husband please you when he lived?”
“Arthur?” My husband’s face rose up in my memory like an unpleasant, potbellied ghost, one I’d done my best to banish.
Savage shifted impatiently in the chair. “If that was your husband’s name, then yes.”
“He provided for me,” I said carefully. “I never wanted as his wife.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Savage tipped his head back in the chair so that most of his face was shadowed from me. “I want to know if his cock gave you satisfaction, if he made you desire him day and night, if he could make you come until you screamed with pleasure.”
I blushed, more with shame for the unhappy marriage I’d endured than for the bluntness of his query.
And I wondered, too, how the late Lady Savage would have answered that same question.…
“No, Master,” I said softly. “I was very young when I wed, and my husband was older. Too old.”
“Did you take lovers to compensate for your husband’s inadequacy?”
“No,” I said. “Not until now.”
His smile shone in the shadows.
“You honor me once again, Eve,” he said. “And I give you my word that you will not be disappointed.”
“Yes, Master,” I whispered, my breath suddenly tight in my chest. Could he really make me experience what he’d described?
“Come here, Eve,” he said. “Come here, and kiss me.”
I nodded, taking the last steps to stand beside him, sprawled and glorious and waiting for me. I puckered my mouth, bent down, and closed my eyes. Quickly I pressed my lips against his, then drew back.
He stared at me, aghast, even angry. “My god. Is that dry little peck what you call a kiss?”
“Yes,” I said defensively, for it was all I knew how to do. “My husband didn’t believe—”
“Your husband has no place here, Eve,” he said. “Not now.”
He caught me around the waist to pull me forward, and with his other hand tangled his fingers in my hair to guide my face down to his. He slanted his mouth over mine and kissed me hard, seducing me with his lips. I was stunned by how hot, how insistent, how soft and then hard this kind of kiss was.
I broke away, gasping, but he wouldn’t let me escape.
“This is how a man kisses a woman,” Savage said, his voice low and rough. “This is how a man shows a woman how much he desires her, and wants to possess her.”
And when Savage began to kiss me again, I understood exactly what he meant.
FIVE
Savage teased my lips apart and his tongue pushed into my mouth, wetly swiping against mine with sensual purpose. He tasted of the brandy, a hint of coffee from dinner, and of himself, masculine and dark. I could have pulled away again, but this time I didn’t. Instead, I let myself be led, and found my own way as well. Tentatively I swirled my tongue against his, echoing and responding as he deepened the kiss.
How could I feel both scorched and drowning at the same time? It was enough to make me dizzy, and my legs felt so weak beneath me that I put one hand on Savage’s shoulder to steady myself.
He must have sensed my imbalance, as he put it to his advantage. Deftly he slipped his arm around my waist and tipped me into his lap. My legs hung inelegantly over the cushioned arm of the chair, and the soft wool of his trousers with his well-muscled thighs beneath pressed against my bare bottom. I flailed my arms a bit, trying to figure how to settle myself, but he kept kissing me, and I soon decided that that mattered more.
Besides, curled against him like this with my bottom against the hollow of his belly was not such a bad place to be. He smelled good, a mixture of the starch from his shirt and faint lime from his shaving soap, mingled with the purely male scent of his skin. His body was warm and strong beneath mine, his power unmistakable.
Being naked while he was still dressed made me feel more than simply free. It made me feel wicked, sinful, passionate, all things I’d never experienced but was now learning to relish very much.
Because now I was kissing him, too, my mouth working hungrily against his. One of my shoes slipped from my foot and dropped to the floor, then the second, and I paid them no heed. I’d forgotten to be shy, or that this was new to me. I simply wanted more of this, and of him.
My fingers curled around the back of his neck and slipped into the black silk of his hair, while my other hand spread across his chest, and I felt his heart beating beneath my fingers.
“What man wouldn’t want you, Eve?” he whispered fiercely, his breath warm on the shell of my ear. “You’re so damned beautiful.”
He pushed aside my hair and closed his hand over my breast, cupping and kneading the tender flesh. I gasped, startled by the heat and heaviness that instantly built within me. It was almost an ache, the finest line between pain and pleasure, and when he tugged lightly at my nipple, squeezing the tip and releasing it, I caught my breath with a shuddering sigh.
Shamelessly I arched against his hand for more. The pleasure shimmered through my body, centering low in my belly and between my legs, there in my sex.
“Do I hurt you, Eve?” he asked, again into my ear so that the words teased hotly on my skin. “Is it too much for you to bear?”
“No, Master,” I said. “It’s that—that I feel it in other places.”
“Other places, Eve?” He shifted to my other breast, the same rhythmic caress centered with an intense pull on my nipple. His breathing had changed, too, quickening like mine. “Here?”
“Noooo, Master,” I said, my words drawn out in a low moan. I drew my knees up higher over the arm of the cha
ir and pressed my thighs tightly together, hoping that would ease my needing, but it seemed only to make it worse—or better.
“Then here.” His hand slid down my belly and eased between my legs, lightly stroking the insides of my thighs until they traitorously slipped apart for him. Before I realized it, he’d parted my cleft and slipped a finger deep inside.
My back bowed and I cried out softly, startled not so much by the intrusion but by how impossibly good it felt.
“You’re so narrow and wet, Eve,” he murmured. “Wet for me, yes?”
I nodded, my eyes squeezed shut, and was too lost in what he was doing to answer. Moving against his finger was impossible to resist, easing the tension that was growing inside me and yet building it, too. He kissed me again, his tongue in my mouth echoing the pace of his finger inside my passage.
He added a second finger beside the first, pressing deep inside places of my channel that I’d never known were there, that begged for him to touch, to press, to stroke.
So good, so very good.
Fleetingly I thought of how I must look: naked and sprawled across his lap, my legs shamelessly spread as I writhed against his finger. My skin was starkly white against the black of his evening trousers. I’d hooked one leg around his calf and another over the arm of the chair, and as my hips rolled I had a glimpse of my calves in their shiny silk stockings, the brilliants on the buckles of my garters winking in the candlelight.
How foolish to think of such a thing, at such a moment. I felt tense and feverish, with all my being centered on his fingers.
“Such a greedy Innocent,” he said. “Greedy for more, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” I gasped, panting, though I’d no real notion of what that “more” would be. “Yes.”
“Then look at me, Eve,” he said, his breathing now harsh. “Open your eyes, and don’t shut them again.”
In a haze of pleasure, I dragged my eyes open. His handsome face was strained, the hard planes so taut that even the candlelight couldn’t soften them. I’d done nothing to arouse him, and besides, he was still dressed. Could touching me be enough for him? Did I really have that kind of power?
“There,” he said, smoothing my tangled hair back from my face. “I want to know the exact moment when you spend.”
With his fingers still caressing me within, he lightly stroked the pad of his thumb over a small nubbin of flesh and nerves near my opening. It was as if I’d been struck by lightning, if lightning were a bright and blinding strike of sensation.
I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t think. My entire body was coiled around this tiny place between my legs, clenching around his fingers to draw them deeper inside. He let some of my moisture slicken his thumb, and stroked more firmly over the nubbin.
And in an instant, the tension in my body broke and my release came with it, so unexpected that I cried aloud from the force. Relief and joy together overwhelmed me, finally rolling away to leave me shaken and exhausted and gasping for breath.
All the time Savage had watched me, his gaze locked with mine, and his breathing ragged. I’d thought there was something predatory about Savage—and if I was honest, it was part of his fascination for me—but the pure masculine triumph I saw now in his pale eyes belonged on some primal creature, not on an English peer.
I felt bewitched, as if he’d created a spell over us both in this candlelit world. I couldn’t look away. Even if my legs would have carried me, I couldn’t think of escape.
Nor did I wish to.
“You’ve never had that before, have you, Eve?” he asked, his voice almost a growl, thick with lust. “Not like that?”
“Never.” I’d never spoken more truthfully, either.
He swiped his hair, as black as a raven’s wing, back from his forehead. “I’ve only started with you, you know.”
“Yes,” I said, all that I needed to say. “Yes.”
He moved swiftly, scooping me into his arms and carrying me to the bed. He dropped me on my back in the center of the red velvet counterpane, my hair spreading in a tangle around my face as I sank into the feather bed. He pulled off my garters and my stockings and seized me by my ankles, his fingers surrounding my narrow bones like shackles. He pulled me forward until my bottom was on the very edge of the bed, then shoved one of the pillows beneath my hips.
I whimpered with excitement, my heart racing. I was still wet, still full and heavy with longing for him. I remembered the first time I’d seen him in the garden, when he’d been with the now-forgotten Lady Telford. I remembered the mesmerizing sight of his cock as it had plunged into the other woman, completely possessing her. Now at last I was the one who’d feel that demanding cock, and the power with which Savage used it.
I was wrong.
He knelt on the carpet beside the bed, and hooked my knees over his shoulders so that I couldn’t close my legs. I wriggled, unsure of why he’d wish to be so close to that part of me, especially now when the honey of my first release still flowed.
But he wished to be closer, much closer. He kissed the insides of my thighs, the faint stubble of his beard rough against my skin. Slowly he worked his way along my thigh to my sex. To my shock, he eased open my nether lips with his thumbs and covered my slit with his mouth. He licked me first with broad, sweeping strokes that made me melt, then sucked and teased at that same nubbin that had already brought me such pleasure.
I was still swollen, still sensitive, and each teasing lap of his tongue made me whimper. My hips bucked, striving to find my rhythm, but he was the one in maddening control, torturing my cleft with the wet velvet of his tongue.
Whenever I felt myself nearing the edge of my desire, he drew back, gentling his caress to keep me poised there until I was panting and trembling and clutching fistfuls of the coverlet. Finally he circled his tongue around my nubbin and flicked it, and I arched and cried out as my climax came again, waves and waves of it washing over me.
With my eyes closed, I murmured his name as the last tremors of pleasure rippled and faded through my body. I was limp with it, drenched with sweat. When he rose and swung my legs back onto the bed, gently settling me back against the pillows, I let him. I was exhausted with pleasure, so sated I could scarcely move myself.
He had yet to find such release himself. His face was rigid with self-control, his breathing hard, and when I glanced down at his trousers, his cock was blatantly erect and ready for me.
I smiled, holding my hand out to him and expecting him at last to shed his clothes and climb into the bed with me for more. It was his turn now, and I meant to do my best to give him the same pleasure he’d given me.
But instead he pulled the sheets and coverlet over me, and retreated to pour himself more brandy.
Stunned, I sat up. “Won’t you join me, Savage?”
“Recall who I am, Eve,” he said, keeping his back to me. His voice was severe, even harsh, and so was his manner.
I could make no sense of it, or him, after what we’d just done. “You are cruel.”
“I am your master,” he said, turning back, “and your opinion doesn’t matter to me.”
“How can you say that?” I demanded, wounded. “You said yourself we’d just begun.”
“We have,” he said curtly. “But what happens next is my decision to make, not yours.”
“Don’t you wish to—to make love to me?” I asked in a small voice.
He emptied the glass. “Do not be so missish, Eve. I will never ‘make love’ to you. I will fuck you, and you will fuck me, but we will not make love.”
I clutched the sheet tightly over my bare breasts, painfully aware of how he’d avoided answering my question. “But after the—the magic you just made me feel—”
“Your climax, Eve, your ecstasy,” he said. “You spent. You came. You were tossed off. You felt the little death. There was no magic involved, and certainly no love.”
“It’s not about the words,” I said tartly. “It’s about the—”
“You mu
st put aside this American arrogance, Eve,” he said, his words clipped and condescending. “No matter how many dollars you have to your name, you cannot buy me, nor can you order me about. It is your choice now. You may leave this house and the Game, or you may stay and abide by its rules.”
He was maddening, maddening. Standing there before the marble mantelpiece, with a crystal glass of expensive brandy in one hand and declaiming in his impeccable accent, he represented British civility at its best, and equally British superiority at its worst. Doubtless that was what he wanted me to see, the aristocrat facing down the crass American.
But I saw beyond that. That careful control was all a ruse. I saw the rumpled, unbuttoned shirt and the dark curls on his bare chest, the once-neat hair now tousled and falling across his forehead. I saw how the vein in his temple throbbed with tension, how the chiseled line of his jaw was rigid with it. I saw how his cock still thrust forward against the front of his evening trousers, and I knew my scent would be inescapable on his clothes, his hands, his lips.
He turned his head a fraction, the angles of his face sharp in the candlelight. “Your choice, Mrs. Hart.”
Breaking character to use my formal name like that was hardly a subtle way to show that he believed I was the one at fault, and I’d no intention of listening to any more of it. I threw back the covers and swung my legs over the side of the bed.
I didn’t have to look to know he was watching me as I walked across the room.
“Very well, then, my lord,” I said, retrieving my costume from the floor. “If you wish to speak further, I shall be in my own rooms.”
“No, you won’t,” he said. “You’ll sleep here.”
I pulled the costume over my head and smoothed it as best I could. “Given how odious you find my company, I don’t understand why I should—”
“Because even if you have abandoned Lady Carleigh’s house party, the rest of the company has not,” he said. “If you leave these rooms, you’ll be fair game for any other master to claim and use. I can guarantee that none of them would be as respectful towards you as I have been.”