by Mia Gabriel
His physical mastery over me was undeniable, and yet I was the one who’d done this to him. It excited me even more, seeing him watching me and seeing how his trousers were tented in front by his erection.
“Try,” he said harshly. “Tell me.”
I whimpered, twisting against my bonds.
“Tell me, Eve,” he said sharply. “Tell me, or I’ll stop.”
“I … I like when you stroke me with the paddle, Master,” I stammered, my voice strangled. “I … I like how you—Oh!”
He cracked the paddle hard against my bottom with the most force he’d shown yet.
“Five,” he said. “Only one more, Eve.”
I was on fire, my flesh burning from the paddle and my sex and ass so tight and on edge that I knew it would take next to nothing to make me spend. All of this felt so dark and dangerous and forbidden, so far beyond anything I’d ever imagined, let alone experienced, and yet I wanted more.
“Six, Master,” I gasped, begging. “Six!”
The paddle cracked again on my ass, for the last time and the best. I sailed forward from the impact and my sex convulsed with the first tremors of my climax. I felt as if I were flying, ready to sail on the waves of fire and pleasure.
But Savage grabbed the cord and hauled me to a stop. He swore and yanked the dildo from my quim.
“No!” I cried frantically, in shock, writhing in my bonds. I was raw with need, desperate for release, and now he’d stopped me on the very edge, leaving me aching and empty. “Please, Savage, no!”
Gasping for breath, I lifted my head to search for him in the mirrors. He’d thrown aside the paddle, now abandoned on the floor. He was behind me, stripping away his trousers and his drawers in a single motion. I’d a flashing glimpse of his cock, impossibly hard and jutting towards his belly, the head purple-red with desire. He seized my hips to position me, centering that plum-like head against my weeping slit.
It was the tiniest sliver of a second, and yet I felt my whole being balanced on his possession of me. I’d never needed anything more than to have him join with me, to take him as part of my body.
And then I had him.
He held my hips and drove his cock hard into me. Even though I’d been opened first by the dildo, his furious need had made his cock far larger than the ivory shaft. As dripping as I was, I had to stretch and yield to take him, and it took several shoves before he was buried deep within me.
I scarcely noticed. I was overwhelmed with sensation. I’d been primed to such a fever pitch that I’d begun to come again as soon as he entered me, my sex unable to hold back. With my eyes squeezed shut I shook as my climax washed over me, and the convulsions that ripped through my body were so strong that they hovered on that finest of lines between pain and exquisite pleasure.
My cries mixed with his grunts, primal animal sounds that matched the force of our union. Suspended as I was, I felt weightless. He jerked me back onto his cock to match each of his thrusts, our bodies slapping loudly against each other.
I could feel another orgasm building within me, or maybe it was the first one recoiling to claim me again. I couldn’t tell, and I couldn’t care. Because of my position in the swing Savage’s large hands were everywhere on my body, touching me, marking me, digging deep into my flesh to bend me exactly as he wished. He spread the cheeks of my heated, paddled ass even farther apart and found another inch of me that he could possess. I cried out with the sense of fullness, of completion.
This was what I’d wanted. This was what I’d needed.
He reached beneath me to take my breasts in his hands, squeezing and tugging at my nipples and sending fresh bolts of sensation directly to my sex. As I gasped with it my eyes flew open.
Before me in the mirrors, over and over, was the lewdest of tableaus: his cock, long and glistening with our juices, pounding into me and then drawing almost completely out before his hips flexed and jerked back into me again. His handsome face was fixed and hard, so intensely focused that he looked ferocious.
No, he was ferocious as he slammed into me. I was taut, tense, ready to break, and yet he fucked me harder, faster, hotter. At last he reached around me with one hand, and his thumb dipped between us, gathering our juices. He found my pearl and relentlessly rubbed the pad of his thumb across it with exactly the right, maddening pressure to slide over the engorged, slippery flesh.
It was, at last, too much. I felt the wave of my climax break and explode, shattering me into countless fragments of pleasure and release. I cried out as I rode it, rode him. My fingers and toes curling helplessly at the empty air, tears of emotion and release streamed down my face to drop unchecked on the floor beneath me.
Abruptly he stopped, buried deep, and with a guttural roar he came, too, his spendings so copious that I could feel his hot seed fill me and spill over. His hips continued to jerk, his fingers digging deep into my hips, until with a final grunt he was done. With his cock still buried in me he sagged forward and circled his arms around my waist to rest his cheek against my back. He was gasping for breath, utterly spent, and yet still he did not want to release me, nor did I wish to be released, not yet.
Finally his cock slipped from my sex, and reluctantly he lifted himself away. He didn’t turn me in the swing but walked around to my face, quickly unbuckling my wrists from the straps.
I cried out as I lowered them and the blood returned, not realizing how much strain my joints had been under. Making little nonsensical soothing noises, Savage took each hand and rubbed his thumbs along the aching muscles of my arms to soothe them.
Exhausted, I let my head drop forward. He cupped my face in his hands and tipped it upward.
“There is no other woman in the world like you, Evelyn,” he said, his voice rough and full of such unexpectedly raw emotion that fresh tears sprang to my eyes. “None.”
I tried to smile, still overwhelmed. I hadn’t missed that he’d used my real name, and I wondered if that meant the Game was over for now or if it meant—oh, I didn’t know what it meant.
But there remained an inescapable feeling that things had just grown more serious between us. With any other man what had just happened could have been no more than the Game, but with Savage it had felt like something else, something that had bound us more surely together in ways that neither of us yet understood.
“I trusted you, didn’t I?” I whispered. “I did everything you asked.”
He nodded. “You did,” he said. “I’ll never forget that.”
“Nor I,” I said, and tried to smile. “You are always right about everything.”
“Oh, Evelyn,” he said. “The only thing I’m always right about is you.”
He kissed me then, a slow, deep, inexplicable kiss that was full of both passion and promise. A promise of what, I could not say; but still I curled my arms around his shoulders, wincing at the effort, and kissed him back.
He unfastened the belt around my waist and lifted me from the swing. I cried out with discomfort. I hadn’t been aware of any pain while I’d been lost to lust, but now I felt every stretched and aching muscle, my sex oversensitized and throbbing still, and my bottom burned so from his work with the paddle that I wondered if I’d be able to sit.
He didn’t let me try but scooped me into his arms. I was so spent that I melted meekly against him, my head against his shoulder and my unkempt hair trailing over his arm.
I expected him to take me back to our bedroom as he had last night. Instead he carried me farther to his bathroom, a masculine space of polished black marble and gleaming chrome, and set me carefully on a bench covered in leopard-patterned silk. I sat gingerly on my sore bottom, leaning forward to support much of my weight on my thighs and hands.
There were already candles lit in here, too, and in my hazy state I still wondered if this was the work of his ever-present, ever-efficient manservant Barry; I didn’t want to consider Barry also tidying up after us in the mirror-lined room, dowsing the candles, and wiping off the swing.
But everything was different here with Savage. Strangely content, I smiled as I watched him. “I never would have imagined His Lordship the Earl of Savage drawing me a bath.”
He glanced over his shoulder and grinned wickedly.
“That’s because Mrs. Hart deserves it.” He took a large scoop of salts from a nearby jar and scattered them over the water. “This will help your muscles relax. I’m also told that ladies like it for their complexions.”
That made me laugh. I loved the rare times like this when he relaxed and was almost playful. Was it part of the new level of trust we now had with each other? Because I’d made myself so vulnerable to him he felt he, too, could share more of himself?
“Listen to you,” I teased lightly. “Now His Lordship is advising me on beauty regimens like a Jermyn Street apothecary.”
He laughed, too. “What will you say when I tell you I learned of these salts from an ancient groom at Tattersalls, who swore by them to rub down the fetlocks of the nags in his care after races?”
“I suppose I should say nothing, and merely neigh.” The tub was nearly full and I could not wait to sink into its depths, for I was not only sore but also sticky with sweat and Savage’s seed. But as soon as I rose I winced, every joint aching in protest.
“Let me help you,” he said, frowning with concern. He raised me up and lifted me into the tub as if I were a child and then climbed in after me. He sat back in the tub and drew me back against his chest. The water was exactly warm enough, and whatever the horse salts were, they did, in fact, ease the soreness in my stretched joints and everywhere else.
I sat between his outstretched legs, mine looking pale and slight beside his. My breasts bobbed lightly in the water. Savage twisted my hair to one side and nibbled at the side of my neck behind my ear. I smiled and sighed with contentment.
The mantel clock in the sitting room chimed four times. Soon it would be dawn and another day begun. It would be my third day in London with Savage, and a small shard of uneasiness jabbed at my happiness.
We’d shared seven days together at Wrenton Manor and had agreed to another seven here in London. We had resolved to keep our liaison purposefully uncomplicated, based on pleasure and nothing more. It was only fucking, we’d reasoned, only sex, and seven days would be enough for both of us.
Except it wouldn’t be. I could already tell that. How could I give up what I’d discovered with Savage in four days? How could I go back to my old life, a life that had been so unknowingly empty without him in it?
I threaded my fingers into his, wishing I knew the answer.
“What could be better than this, Eve?” he asked with purely male satisfaction, drawing me closer as if reading my thoughts. And I was once again Eve, his partner only in the Game.
“Nothing, Master,” I said softly, sadly. “Nothing at all.”
* * *
When I finally rose it was nearly noon and the bed was empty beside me. I wasn’t surprised. Savage had warned me that there were matters requiring his attendance, which I’d interpreted to mean the mysterious man who’d appeared at the house last night and who was supposed to be gone this morning. Besides, after last night’s activities I’d welcomed the opportunity to remain in bed to rest a little longer.
I was sore; there was no denying that. But there was also no denying that I’d do it all again without hesitation, and I smiled to myself at the memories. Part of me—the part that spoke in Hamlin’s voice—told me I’d been exceptionally wicked last night, exceptionally wicked indeed, and that I should be ashamed of myself for willingly doing such licentious, shameful acts with a gentleman like Savage. But the larger part of me reveled in those same acts and hadn’t found them shameful at all. They’d been wickedly pleasurable, or pleasurably wicked, and their very wickedness had been much of the pleasure.
Still smiling, I slipped from the bed and found my robe, folded neatly over the back of a nearby chair: more of Barry’s work. As Savage had told me to do, I rang the bell for breakfast, or luncheon, as I supposed it must now be, and strolled out to the sitting room to wait for the footman and perhaps find something to read as I ate.
With the curtains open and the sunny afternoon outside the room seemed elegant but ordinary. The door to the mirrored room was closed, and even though Savage had repeatedly asked me not to prowl about his house, I saw no harm in venturing into the little room after last night. The door wasn’t locked, and I opened it slowly, my heart racing at the memory.
But to my surprise—and disappointment—the room was not at all as I remembered. The swing was gone. In its place stood a small desk and chair, with a narrow case of books beside it, as if they’d always been there. The curtains were open, and the sunlight reflected from the mirrors as if they were a giant crystal from a chandelier. The mirrors that had reflected me naked and bound in black leather now only innocently showed me how unruly my hair was. The room had lost all its lewdness and looked almost ordinary, so ordinary that if my body didn’t ache from the contortions I’d gone through I’d wonder if I’d dreamed the entire thing.
Then I looked up and saw the large hook in the ceiling beam, the hook that last night had held the swing. I grinned, satisfied. Savage—or more likely Barry—could put things back as they were by day if he wished. I knew what happened here by night. But why, I wondered, did they bother?
I returned to the sitting room, gently closing the door after me. I’d ask Savage later. The explanation could be as simple as not wanting servants other than Barry to be privy to Savage’s more secret life. Many housemaids I’d employed would have shrieked in horror if they were confronted by that swing.
In fact, many ladies would shriek as well. In the beginning I’d felt trepidation, too, but I’d trusted Savage to lead me, and I’d be ever grateful I had. And hadn’t Savage himself said last night that he’d never known another lady who’d dare to explore the swing with him?
I glanced at the portrait of Savage’s late wife, her wide, frightened eyes staring back at me. Had he tried to introduce her to the pleasures he’d shared with me? Had she been unwilling, even frightened, by them? Could that have been enough to drive her to madness—or, even worse, did Savage believe his desires had been the cause of her death?
Poor lady, I thought sadly. Poor Savage, too, if that had been the case. As I’d learned for myself, being married was no guarantee of a match of appetites in the bedroom. Perhaps what I’d discovered with Savage was even more rare than I’d believed.
With a sigh I turned away and headed for the room across the hall where my clothes and other belongings had been put, hoping to find my hairbrush. I couldn’t arrange my hair myself, but I could at least brush and braid it so I didn’t look as if I didn’t care. I quickly found my silver hairbrush and comb and turned to cross back to Savage’s rooms.
And nearly collided with a boy.
“Who are you?” he demanded imperiously. “Why are you here?”
“I should ask the same question of you, young man,” I said, surprise making me curt. I guessed he was eight years old or so, dressed in dark knickerbockers to his knees and dark socks, a white shirt and silk necktie, and a tailored tweed jacket with engraved buttons. My first thought was that he wore quality clothing for a servant’s child, and then, as I looked at him longer, I realized he wasn’t a servant’s child at all.
He had sharp cheekbones for a child, a full mouth that now was inclined towards sulkiness but would no doubt with age turn sensual, the kind of mouth that women would on
e day love to kiss. His black hair fell over his forehead, sleek and gleaming, and his eyes were the palest gray, the color of quicksilver.
He was Savage’s son.
Suddenly it all made sense. The important messages that had drawn Savage away, that he’d never rejected or put aside, all were to do with this boy, his son, who for whatever reason had arrived here at home unexpectedly last night. Savage had only been behaving like a father. There hadn’t been some mysterious, dangerous man in the house; there was only this boy now here before me.
“I asked you your name, madam,” the boy said again. “Why are you in my father’s house? And why aren’t you properly dressed for this hour? Are you ill?”
“You ask a great many questions,” I said, wondering how best to answer any of them. I tugged the sash on my silk robe a little more tightly, acutely aware of wearing nothing beneath it. Savage had said the boy was at school, as he should be, considering it was the middle of the term. I’d little experience with children, especially boys.
Especially boys who were far too much like their fathers.
The boy narrowed his eyes in a way that was all too familiar. “Are you one of my father’s whores?”
Oh, yes, he’d been away to school, to learn such language from the other boys. I wouldn’t let anyone address me like that, particularly not a child, whether he was Savage’s son or not. I drew myself up and frowned down at him with all the considerable authority that I possessed as a Fifth Avenue resident.
“My name is Mrs. Arthur Hart, young man,” I said, “and I am not a whore, but a guest of your father’s. I do not believe he would approve of you addressing me with such rudeness, either.”
The boy scowled in return, but his earlier bravado seemed to fade.
“My father’s supposed to be here,” he said. “If you’re his guest, then you’d know that. He’s supposed to be dining with me now.”