by Mia Gabriel
Not so long ago—only a matter of days, really—I would have rebelled. Now his dominance seemed not only right but undeniably arousing. Only Savage truly knew what was best for me, and only Savage cared this much about my pleasure.
“Yes, Master,” I said, my voice husky with longing. “I will wait. For you, I will be patient.”
He smiled, and kissed my forehead, gently, a gesture of tenderness, not mastery. “I knew you would, Eve. Because of that, I’ll grant you a brief respite here, and permit you to regain your composure.”
“Thank you, Master,” I said. Sitting still, the balls quieted, and I felt less feverish. I could be patient, especially for him. “You are … kind.”
“Kind?” He cocked a single dark brow. “Not so long ago, you damned me as cruel.”
“I was wrong,” I said simply. “You are most kind, Master.”
Now he frowned, almost a scowl. “You would find very few, if any, who would agree with you.”
“I only care for my own opinion, Master,” I said. “And I—I believe you are kind.”
Abruptly he turned away, going to stand before a painting as if it were the most fascinating artwork imaginable. But I knew better, because I knew him. From the way he was standing, his legs widespread, his shoulders slightly hunched, and his hands tightly clasped behind his back over the flowing silk of his robe, I was certain he’d no idea at all of the subject of the painting he was staring at so assiduously.
Earlier in the week, I would have been unable to resist going to him or putting my arms around his shoulders to try to comfort him. Now I knew better than to do that, too. He was far too complicated a man to find solace in a predictable hug, and I respected that in him. He would come back to me when he was ready.
Perhaps even more important was how my self-confidence had grown. Being his Innocent had made me stronger. I knew he’d come back to me, and I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep away from me for long—any more, really, than I could keep apart from him.
I couldn’t explain it, because I didn’t really understand it myself, but there it was just the same. It bound us together as tightly as the silk cords that he’d used to tie my wrists and ankles: elegant, even beautiful, bindings that would not break or give way no matter how sorely they were tested.
Unconsciously I circled my thumb to meet my forefinger around one wrist, mimicking the feel of the cords as I remembered how he’d made me his prisoner. There was so much to remember between us now, and nothing I wished to forget.
“I’ve told Carleigh he should take down this wretched simpering Cupid,” he said, perhaps to me, perhaps to no one. “It’s not remotely a Titian, but an appalling copy from some hack of a studio, yet Carleigh insists on keeping it hung here.”
So this was how he would draw back from me today, behind a lecture on art forgeries.
“Perhaps the subtleties escape his lordship’s eye, Master,” I said, striving to make my conversation every bit as bland as his. “Perhaps he sees no difference between a true Titian and a forgery, and takes as much pleasure in the one as the other.”
“Carleigh wouldn’t know a Titian from an orangutan’s ass,” he declared with disgust. “He wouldn’t even know what this rubbish was supposed to be if it weren’t for the thoughtful placard one of his ancestors pasted on the frame. I could put this side by side with my own Titians, and no matter how he squinted and screwed up his face, he still wouldn’t see the difference.”
“You own a painting by Titian, Master?” I asked, thinking of the paintings that hung in his rooms here at Wrenton. I’d heard enough dinner conversations between dueling millionaire collectors at home to know that works by Titian—or any other of the Old Masters—were the prizes they all craved, and that they were almost impossible to find at any price.
“I own three,” he said proudly, at last turning back to face me. “My great-great-grandfather bought them in Rome, spiriting them across the Mediterranean under Bonaparte’s nose. They’re not here, of course, but at Thornbury.”
“Is that your country house?” I asked, unable to keep back my curiosity. It wasn’t so much that his life was one vast secret—and it was—but that he volunteered so little to me, keeping everything locked tightly inside himself.
But this time, to my surprise, he nodded. “It is, and has belonged to my family for hundreds of years,” he said. “Although we’ve made a few improvements along the way, of course.”
“Where is it?” I knew that any question could make him withdraw abruptly, but still I couldn’t resist asking.
“In Norfolk,” he said, his expression brightening with genuine fondness. “Hardly convenient to anything, and wild as can be. Yet the house has a beauty that makes the journey worthwhile, and the pictures in the breakfast room alone put all these daubs to shame. I’ve paintings in my gallery that rival those in his majesty’s collection, and he knows it, too.”
He laughed in such a way that I knew it wasn’t just an empty joke, that the king really did envy Savage’s paintings.
“Journey or not, you must enjoy going there,” I said. “It’s a mawkish sentiment, but it’s also true: there’s no place like home.”
His smile faded. “There’s no place like Thornbury, that’s true enough,” he said. “But I seldom go there now. It doesn’t hold the most fortuitous of memories for me.”
I knew better than to ask why. “But surely when your son comes home on his holidays—”
“He comes down to London,” he said briskly. “We both prefer that now. He has his own friends and amusements, and I have mine.”
I made quick calculations in my head. I doubted that Savage could be more than thirty. He must have been at least twenty when he’d wed, and likely older than that. Which meant that his son—the son with his own friends and amusements—was still a young boy, and I knew all too well the loneliness of a motherless child with a distant father.
“You must be proud of him,” I said softly. “Fathers always are of their sons. What is his name?”
“Lawton,” he said, too tersely for a father. He’d shown far more affection for the house than for his son, though apparently he saw little of both. “Thus far he has done little to merit my pride, but I have hopes that he will in time learn to choose better companions, and apply himself to his studies.”
“He’s young,” I said, my heart going out to the young Lord Lawton.
But Savage reacted as if I hadn’t spoken at all.
“He has too much of his mother in him,” he said, his bitterness so apparent that it seemed a kind of defeat. “I see it in his face, his speech, his lack of respect.”
“But half of him is also yours,” I protested, thinking how the boy could just as easily have received that lack of respect from his father as from his mother.
“Not the half I see,” he insisted. “Not the half he cares to show to the world.”
I remembered how Simpson had described Lady Savage as high-strung and impetuous. Perhaps young Lord Lawton was as well, which could be enough to trouble his father like this.
But what was even more puzzling was Savage’s reference to his dead wife. I had assumed he’d grieved for Lady Savage simply because they’d both been so young and because of the words that others used to describe her death—words like tragic and poor lady. He’d said himself that he’d wished to save her, though he hadn’t mentioned from what. Now, however, I sensed that wasn’t entirely the story of their marriage, or at least not from Savage’s point of view.
“The boy is your son,” I continued gently. “If you are willing to guide and love him as a father should, then he is certain to grow into the young man you wish him to be.”
Savage lowered his chin a fraction, his expression almost sorrowful.
“If you intended that little homily to soothe me, Eve,” he said, “then you have failed. The boy is what he is, and all your female fussing will not change him.”
“‘Female fussing’?” I repeated. “Is that what you heard? A
bit of empathy for a motherless boy is hardly—”
“Don’t begin,” he said wearily. “Please. Lawton is not your son. I come here to Wrenton to forget my private concerns, not worry them to death like a terrier.”
It was the single word please that stopped me from saying more, spoken as a request between friends, not a master’s order. Even without knowing the details of his marriage or why he was so distant toward his son, I understood. Hadn’t I come to Wrenton to escape as well?
Besides, I wasn’t going to achieve anything now by pressing him further about his son. He had become too guarded, too defensive, and nothing I could say was going to push past that. For now, distraction would be the better course; it wouldn’t help his relationship with his son, but it might ease the tension that was knotting his shoulders and standing like a wall between us.
Purposefully I shook my hair back over my shoulders, raising my chin so that my face was turned up toward him, my parted lips like an offering.
“You told me there were engravings you wished me to see, Master, as part of my education,” I said, my voice low and husky. “Pictures that you promised would inspire me.”
He didn’t answer at first, making me fear I’d misjudged. Then slowly he held out his hand, the sleeve of his silk robe sliding back along his bare arm.
“They will impress you, Eve,” he said, his voice deep, a seductive match for my own. “Even as an Innocent, you can study these engravings and learn much.”
I took his hand, letting his grasp swallow my fingers as he drew me to my feet. “Are the pictures far from here, Master?”
“Not at all.” He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. “They’re in a small chamber of their own at the far end of the gallery. Are you sufficiently composed for such a walk, Eve?”
“I am, Master,” I said. The ben wah balls were still heavy and teasing within me, but my respite on the bench had made the sensation bearable. “And I am most eager to see the engravings.”
We walked quickly past the long row of dour family portraits and murky landscapes and through the arch at the far end of the gallery. Savage had been right: this was less a room than a chamber or bijou, with eight gilded walls instead of four.
The skylight was in the shape of a hexagonal star, and even the gray light of the rainy day was magnified by the long mirrors along every other wall. Framed in gold and topped with carved cupids, the mirrors must have been very old, for their surfaces were rippled and mottled along the edges, giving their reflections a mysterious, antique cast. Another cushioned bench sat in the middle of the room, while against one of the walls stood a large, tall-backed armchair, also gilded.
But the true focus of the little room were the oversize engravings that hung between the mirrors, and I saw at once why Savage had predicted they’d be inspirational. Each of them showed a couple having sex, in the most inventive—and most improbable—of positions, with their faces contorted with passion and their heads thrown back with abandon. In every one, the artist had captured the exact moment of penetration, with the man’s large, vein-laced cock thrusting into the woman’s welcoming cunt.
As old-fashioned as the engravings were, their explicitness was exciting. I couldn’t deny it. The longer I looked at twisting, muscular limbs and exaggerated cocks and quims, the more aroused I felt myself becoming, and the more conscious I was again of the golden spheres shifting and vibrating inside me.
“Carleigh claims his grandfather bought the entire room in Venice, where it belonged to some lubricious old principe or another from several centuries past,” Savage said, “and for once I’ve no reason to doubt him. Everything’s marked with the same crown and cipher—though I doubt that’s what you’re inspecting so closely.”
“Not at all,” I admitted, leaning closer to study one of the engravings. “I’m not sure this is even physically possible.”
He smiled as he came to stand close behind me, his hands settling familiarly on my hips. “Do you mean how the lady has kept her hair and her pearls so perfectly in place while the man works her like a stallion in rut?”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” I scoffed. “It’s how she must have been an acrobat in the circus to balance on her hands with her legs in the air like that, especially when he’s fucking her so forcefully.”
“You don’t believe it’s possible, Eve?” he asked, pulling my bottom snugly back against his cock so that I could feel how hard he already was. “We could attempt it here to make certain.”
I chuckled, slowly moving up and down against him, the ben wah balls reverberating inside me at the same time. Knowing that they’d likely soon be removed made the sensation not only bearable but pleasurable.
“We might attempt it, Master, yes,” I said breathlessly. “But I fear I might break my neck in the process. I rather think it’s a posture best left in the past.”
“But the past is not such a charmless place to visit, Eve,” he said. His voice dropped lower, to a confidential whisper, as he gently turned me to face the nearest of the antique mirrors. In the rippled reflection, we were now standing side by side. “You would have been a beauty then, too.”
“Would I?” I asked archly.
“Oh, yes,” he assured me. “You would have been every bit as extraordinary a woman then as you are now.”
I blushed at the compliment. Even if it was only part of the Game, I liked being extraordinary in his eyes.
“You wouldn’t be a lady,” he continued, “but a grand courtesan, one who outshone all the other women in sixteenth-century Venice, and the one who was most famous for her wantonness. The jealous gossips would whisper that there was nothing you wouldn’t do with a man.”
I smiled seductively, following his fantasy. “Not any man,” I said. “Only one who could match my own desires.”
“Of course,” he said, smiling slyly. “I’d be such a man, wouldn’t I?”
“Oh yes,” I murmured. “I can imagine no other in your place.”
“Then imagine that I am the prince who built this room,” he said. “As soon as I saw you, I’d want to try every one of these positions with you.”
He smoothed my hair back over my shoulders and slipped my dressing gown over my arms, letting it hang in the crooks of my elbows. Then he slowly eased the neckline of my costume down lower, tugging it below my bare breasts to frame them and raise them slightly, like tempting, quivering fruit. Cradling my breasts in his hands, he gently pinched and rubbed my nipples between his fingers until they were taut and red, and I gasped as sensation rippled from my breasts to my belly, and my too-full quim.
“You have the most luscious breasts, mia bellissima,” he said. “Perfect for my hands, and for my mouth.”
I tipped my head back against his shoulder. I loved watching him caress me like this, seeing his hands move across my flesh and my response show on my face. With my lips parted and my eyes beckoning with desire, my reflection in the wavering glass really did seem as if we’d stepped from the twentieth century back into the past, as if I were some knowing, sensual Renaissance courtesan with my princely lover.
“There,” Savage said, whispering close into my ear, his dark head bent beside my white throat. “That is how the prince would see you, and being a man, he’d want to fuck you at once. He’d cover you with the richest pearls from the Orient, like the woman in the engravings, pearls to remind him—and you—of the priceless little jewel at the mouth of your cunt. And then he’d claim you, and make you his with his cock.”
I thought of the wide, cushioned bench behind us, no doubt placed there for exactly the kind of purpose that Savage was describing. I could imagine it all so well, down to the pearls I’d wear.
Except that now I was planning a different ending, just for him, and, master or not, I doubted he would object.
I slipped away from him, turning gracefully and sinking into the lowest of curtseys, fit for royalty.
“My prince,” I said. “Your highness. If you would but take your
throne, so that I might display my fealty to you.”
I wasn’t sure if fealty was quite the proper word in the situation, but from the way his eyes gleamed, it must have been close enough.
“My throne, eh?” he said, glancing back at the gilded armchair against the wall. “I will, but only if you join me.”
I bowed my head. “I will follow you wherever you lead me, your highness.”
Immediately he sat in the chair, looking every bit the imperious prince with his legs spread before him. He smiled slowly as he watched me.
“Approach,” he said, beckoning. “A shy concubine is of no use to me.”
“Yes, your majesty,” I murmured, joining him. “I assure you I will not be shy.”
I knelt between his legs, my breasts still proudly bare and my dressing gown fanning out behind me across the floor. Before me, his cock tented the front of his pajamas, rising as if in salute. It was easy enough to free it and his balls as well, my fingers sleeking lightly down his length to the nest of dark curls. His shaft was thick and ready, with a glistening drop on the end of the blunt, ruddy head. The sight alone was enough to make my pulse quicken and desire pool low within me.
I licked my lips to moisten them, my mouth poised over his cock. I glanced up at Savage. His face was fixed with anticipation, his gaze, glittering and intent, solely on me.
“Demonstrate your fealty to me, Eve,” he said, playing my game. He reached forward to trace the shape of my lips with his thumb. “Open your mouth, and take me inside.”
I widened my lips and, rising onto my knees, took him into my mouth. I relished the saltiness of his taste, and how his cock was soft and hot on my tongue, yet rigid as my lips closed around him.
He thrust deeply, surprising me. He slipped his fingers into my hair, positioning the angle of my mouth to accommodate him better.
“Relax, Eve,” he ordered, his voice rough. “Relax your jaw, so you can take more.”