Knightley's Tale

Maeve and Devlin are back with another erotic tale—this time featuring two of Maeve’s favorite characters as you’ve never seen them before….

Mr. Knightley is shocked that his beloved Emma would risk her reputation by visiting the scandalous pleasure garden where the ton’s sexual fantasies came to life. He’s even more astounded—and aroused—by Emma’s transformation into a sensual goddess intent on being initiated into the secrets of love…by
him
!

Begin Reading

“Is there a woman in there?”

Digging through the layers of down and fleece piled on their large bed, Devlin tried to reach his wife’s soft, sweet skin. But Maeve didn’t match his enthusiasm as she burrowed deeper into the folds.

“I’m cold.” She sniffed loudly.

“Cold? You’ve a fire blazing in the grate, luv. Blankets heaped ’top you like a Russian princess. And, of course, you have me. What more could a body want?”

“It’s December in Scotland. And you chose the lodge in which to spend the holidays instead of the resort in the West Indies. And…I miss home,” she added with a sniff.

“You’re lonely.” Devlin curled up to her, and, in a voice that was almost a purr, he enticed, “Shall I warm you…with a story?”

Maeve’s eyes became round.

“Yes. But I’ll have none of that Charlie’s Angels threesomes. I want something with depth. A plot.”

“Plot? Like Jane Austen?” He indicated the books on her nightstand. “But they don’t even kiss in those books.”

“Perhaps a little more robust. But I do love a good Regency.”

“The time period has its possibilities. As I recall, it wasn’t as virtuous as your Jane would lead us to believe. While the king forbade anyone to write about sex, he didn’t prevent anyone from having sex—no, quite the contrary. Take Prinny, for example, that perverted old sod.” Devlin paused, a far-off memory clouding his eyes.

“The Secretum has its origins in the early nineteenth century,” Maeve prodded, knowing Devlin’s penchant for the British Museum’s secluded room of erotic art.

“Precisely, my dear. Your Jane was surrounded by debauchery and I bet just a little rubbed off.” He was contemplating. “Very well, a Regency it is. Any other demands?”

“The hero must be dashing.”

“Of course.”

“The seduction must be true to the time period—no PDAs.”

“Indeed.”

“It must be set at a high-society party.”

“Hmmm.”

“They must waltz.”

“Can they touch while they dance?”

Ignoring his sarcasm, Maeve continued, “And he must pleasure her…”

“But, of course.”

“…while their clothes remain on.”

“Ah.” Devlin settled back on the pillow next to her, considering the challenge. “So, let me get this straight…you want a tale of seduction for two of your favorite Jane Austen characters that entails a situation of public lovemaking, but without nudity.”

“Precisely.”

“Very well…”

Wolves packed the floor tonight.

Swallowing his growl of frustration, Knightley shoved his way through the crowded dance floor into the entry hall where he narrowly avoided colliding with two more prowling jackals.

They dressed the part, too.

The young pups somehow—Knightley didn’t linger over them to find out exactly how—had affixed fur to their naked torsos. Full headdresses of gray hair covered their faces, complete with sharp eyes, long snouts and big ears.

Fully erect, they apparently were enjoying the spoils of London’s largest masquerade ball.

Knightley wanted no part of it tonight. He was about to turn away, but a sound—a distinctive feminine giggle coming from the vicinity of the animals—caught his full attention. Another giggle and out she flitted—a flaxen-haired girl dressed in a low-cut, simple country dress. A long braid trailed behind her, swishing like a dragon’s tail as she danced around the pups.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair,” one of the wolves barked.

Hiking up her skirt above her waist to exhibit hair that was unnaturally bright yellow, she jiggled her plump bare ass for her audience. An oil-shined leg lifted, displaying a wet, red mouth ready for sex.

The wolves howled in delight. She invited them closer, bending a leg around the torso of one wolf and roping her braid around his companion’s neck. She winked at Knightley.

“Who will be the first to climb me and come in?” she cooed.

A professional.

Knightley turned away. Definitely not his Emma.

Annoyed and semi-hard, he resumed his urgent pace out the door and into the cool spring night air. Reaching the front gate, he folded his arms across his chest and settled in.

“Go to the pleasure gardens,” Emma’s silly friends had bandied about earlier this evening at a dinner party. “Return with the cap of the gondolier and tell us all that you see and hear.”

Fools, the lot of them.

And he was the biggest fool of all, because here he stood, sentry to the gates of what very likely would be his own personal hell tonight.

As if the devil harkened, an unmarked carriage lumbered up the street and stopped in front of the gardens’ quiet entrance. Alighting without assistance, a young woman sprang to the ground. The hazy moonlight reflected a willowy outline dressed in a cream-colored lace evening gown.

Instantly, he recognized the long, lithe body, the same one he’d often seen leaping, graceful and unladylike, from carriages and trees and whatnot. But it was just recently that the figure’s soft curves and long limbs had started leaping atop him. Naked. Undulating.

In his dreams.

He shook himself, mentally and physically, from a long sigh. This was not the time, and definitely not the place, to dwell on his private fantasies.

Receding into the shadows, he prayed for her to lose her nerve and return home.

Emma, being Emma, did not. Taking a quick look around and seeing no one, she reached back into the carriage, snatched her cloak, and waved off the driver.

“I shall be ready in one hour,” she called to the servant as he urged the horses down the lane. Knightley couldn’t help but feel irritated. Did she have everyone wrapped around her finger?

Alone on a deserted London street, she approached the gardens’ front gate and stopped, surveying the grounds. The moon chose then to escape a cloud. Emma, of course, radiated in moonlight.

His breath held.

But this was not Emma. Not his Emma, at least. Not the neighbor girl whom he continually chased out of his library. Not the girl who would tease him into ridiculous debates over Sunday dinners. Not the girl who was set on mismatching everyone in the parish into marriage.

This girl—this woman—was someone you awoke next to after a night of lovemaking and loved her again and again.

Her hair, normally springy blond curls pinned atop her head, was brushed out in long waves draped over her shoulders. Even though he was a dozen feet away, his memory filled in the distance with the smell of those locks: honey and lemon. How many times had he leaned over her during supper tonight just to fill his breath with her perfume?

What heaven it would be to have the scent envelop him in a curtain of gold as she lay atop him, her velvety opening bringing him deeper and deeper inside…

STOP!

He commanded his dick to back down. It was a constant battle these days: sparring with his sex. Every match required the right balance of thrust and parry. In Emma’s presence, he was the master of restraint.

Through the wrought-iron gate his beleaguered gaze followed her as she shook out her cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders, taking care to clasp it at the base of her neck. Nimble fingers—ungloved—traced two paths along her neck, fanning out at the nape. Slowly, as if she were Venus inviting a lover, she released the mass of hair trapped within the cape. Golden strands rippled through her hands. Arching her neck, she languished in the feel of it, a soft smile curving at her lips.

All that was missing were his lips tasting the sweet spot just below her ear.

The next moment, however, was completely ruined when two revelations struck Knightley.

He could not see her eyes.

Her cloak was inside out.

The first realization came when he noticed that a gold-and-red half mask completely obliterated her features. Hidden from him were her sky-blue eyes, long blond lashes and the high cheekbones he knew were flushed pink with mischief. The mask remade her. This woman was a complete stranger who made his pulse race the exact same way Emma did.

The latter awareness came when she flipped the hood over her head and the whole cape flashed red. Bright blood-red. It was the color of the silk that lined the inside of her best wool cloak. As she tucked the loose hair into the depths of the hood, her transformation was complete.

She was Red Riding Hood.

He snorted in disbelief. Had everyone tonight adapted Grimm’s fairy tales?

She apparently heard the sound because she hesitated until he stepped into the moonlight. Her whole demeanor changed instantly: she was thrilled to see him.

“Knightley! But how did you know I would be here? I left you at your brother’s home, sitting in the library, drinking your brandy. And how did you arrive here so fast?”

“Horse. Faster than a chaise and four.” He could barely form a complete sentence. Setting aside his own thrilling response to her, he summoned up a familiar stern directive.

“Emma, you’re not going in.”

Her chin lifted.

Would she argue? Would she wheedle? Would she pout? He leaned forward to catch every nuance. She did not disappoint.

She looked down, demurely, but Knightley knew she was composing her strategy. Her jaw locked and then softened. Her lips pursed.

But when her gaze rose again, she bore an expression he had never seen on her before. Indeed, she had drawn a new weapon from her persuasion arsenal.

Sexuality.

Her lips parted slightly as she leaned toward him. One gleaming white fingertip tested the barrier between them, connecting with a black iron rung just in front of their faces. Deliberately, her finger ran down the length of the grate stopping just below his waist—pointing at the one part of his body that was capable of pointing back.

And she was smiling—both innocent and seductive, in her Emma way, revealing everything and nothing. He was left brimming and unfulfilled.

“I promise to behave,” she said quietly. The sweet dulcet tone curled through him. He could almost see its tentacles wrapping simultaneously around his heart and groin, tugging him down to the fires of Hades.

His mouth opened and shut. Dry. Speechless. For the first time he could summon no arguments to dissuade her.

“Very well,” he said finally, licking his lips. “Pull the bobbin and the latch will open.”

She smiled triumphantly and pushed open the gate. Oblivious that she was entering the wolves’ den, she skipped up to him and threw her arms around his neck.

“We’ll have a quick look around and then we’ll leave,” she said.

Her eyes danced behind the mask as she reached to place a chaste kiss on his cheek. But her leg brushed his cock and he reacted instinctively. His head turned abruptly and his lips met hers. Unbidden, his hands reached out for her, itching to pull her tightly against him so he could press the whole of himself up against her. Would she pull away?

They had never truly embraced. In fact, they had never before been in such close proximity, and he could tell she too felt the strangeness and wonder of it. Her eyes widened in huge circles behind the mask, but her lips were tight. A virgin’s kiss.

When his cock expressed its delight, he set her firmly away from him.

“You will not leave my side the entire time. Is that clear?” He growled as he grabbed her arm and dragged her along. He knew he sounded surly, but he blamed that on his cock, too.

“Perfectly,” she replied in a sing-song.

When they reached the entry to the building, Knightley hastily searched the corners and was satisfied to see the wolf pups had moved on. He had started pushing through to the anteroom when she tugged at his sleeve.

“You have no mask.”

Damn. He would not take the chance that someone would recognize them tonight.

“I hadn’t planned on coming…or staying.” He muttered, looking around until he spied a basket near the front archway. It was filled with black half masks, apparently for the ill-prepared fools chasing after unchaperoned girls hell-bent on ruining themselves. He scooped out a cloth and sized it to his face for her approval.

Emma’s expression was thoughtful.

“I suppose it will do,” she allowed. “We could say you’re costumed as a gaming-hell manager.”

Sarcastic, this was the girl he knew and loved.

Spying a gilded mirror on the wall, he turned to peer at what she was criticizing.

Ruffian, indeed. His white shirt was open at the neck, with no cravat or waistcoat. He had thrown a long black coat over his shirt and his black Hessian boots covered the lower half of his tan pants. No rightful host of a polite society party would have granted him entrance. However, this party was different; dress was casual, if not optional.

“How do you know what gaming-hell managers dress like?” He asked suspiciously.

“I read books. Many, many books. Allow me.” Coming up behind him, she pulled the mask from his hands and on tiptoes reached around his face to smooth the mask into place. Her soft breasts pressed against his back, burning him through and through.

He didn’t dare breathe. He just stared at the mirror’s reflection. It made him feel the voyeur.

A disheveled man was standing entirely too still except for a vibrating hunger that emanated from him like a steam engine. That certainly wasn’t him. And the veiled female running her fingers through his hair as she fastened the silk ties at the back of his head…well, he still didn’t know who she was, either.

The strangers’ gazes met in the mirror.

As tension swelled within him, he felt her sway then steady herself against his back. Another searing heat steamed through his coat, creating a fiery trail down his spine, along his ass and against the back of his thighs.

There was no denying it now: every fiber in his body wanted her desperately.