Lord Regret's Price: A Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 3 (7 page)

And Sig had done nothing but lightly touch her trapped nipple.

Being an extremely clever and attentive lover, he immediately leaped to give her more of that exquisite pleasure. He dipped his head and captured her other nipple in his mouth.

Her reaction shocked them all.

Her knees collapsed. She clutched desperately at his shoulders, her cry rising to embarrassing decibels. Big hands caught her from behind, or she likely would have hit the floor. Gil supported her against his chest.

Or did he trap her for the other man’s ministrations?

Because she pushed back, desperate to escape the incredible yet extreme sensations, and he didn’t budge. In fact, he lifted her off her feet, holding her higher, making it easier for Sig’s torment.

She gasped for air. She even kicked out with one dangling foot, hoping to hit Sig in the shin. He took the opportunity to capture her leg and lift her thigh around his waist.

“Stop,” she finally managed to get a coherent word to come out of her mouth.

Sig lifted his head quizzically, his lips quirked in a wicked grin of dark amusement. “My lady?”

“This is… I can’t… Oh for heaven’s sake.”

Gil laughed softly against her ear, but there was a strange vibration in his tone that skittered across her nerves. He didn’t sound like himself. His laugh was almost…cruel. A lot could be said against a man who’d hidden his true identity from her for over a year in order to win her cooperation, but he’d never been cruel.

“You must be doing something right, Sig. She can’t finish a complete sentence.”

Sig trailed a fingertip down the valley between her breasts, but he thankfully avoided the torturously swollen tips. “I see you found some interesting toys at that shop, Charlie. I never expected you to be the victim of experimentation.”

“I’m no victim,” she retorted, seizing a handful of his hair in her fist. She jerked his head back, hard, enjoying the way his eyes tightened with warning, even while his nostrils flared wide. “The intensity of this experiment merely caught me unawares.”

“You’re feeling pretty damn aware to me, Charlie.” Gil growled against her ear, his breath a hot torment. His palm edged up her rib cage, rough, calloused fingers inching toward her breasts. The thought of his big hand wrapping around her breast made her squirm helplessly, twisting in his grip—whether to flee or urge him to hurry, she didn’t know.

And the sounds…

Majel help her, she’d never made such ridiculous sounds before for a man. Never.

“If you truly want us to stop, you must tell us now.” Sig’s voice was rough, losing his normal genteel persona. Ignoring the fierce grip on his hair, he bent his head back toward her breasts. The very brush of his breath made her cry out again. “Do you like this? Do you want this? Or is it too much?”

Panting, she had to think and categorize her own reactions, because she honestly didn’t know. Her breasts hurt. Every slight touch made her want to whimper and plead and beg.

And I never beg.

Yet she couldn’t deny the intensity of her arousal. She could smell her own musk and feel the dampness growing between her legs. Sig in front of her. Gil behind. She’d loved them both, but never at the same time like this, wild and out of control and so damned desperate to have them filling her up with their desire as quickly as possible.

She tottered on the edge of a vast, bottomless pit. If she fell in, she might tumble out of control for eternity.

Sig tugged gently on the chain, but it was enough to arch her back on a harsh cry, her hand clawing at his shoulder, her head digging into Gil’s chest. Her breath exploded out of her throat. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop!”

He winked at the man holding her up. “My lady’s wish is my command. But, first, I think we need to tighten these clamps just a little.”

Gil had seen—and appreciated—her passionate side too many times to count. The woman wore pink silk stockings and glorious unmentionables. She loved pretty, feminine things, yet could wade into battle with her chin held high without a single hesitation.

Yet he’d never heard her beg before. Not once.

“Please, dear God, Sig, if you don’t stop it at once I’m going to scream.”

His head didn’t lift from her breast. “So scream.”

Gil hadn’t seen this side of the infamous assassin, either. Cool, detached and deadly, or wickedly smug and arrogant, certainly, but this dark, hard edge glinting in Sig’s eyes was new.

Like a wild beast stalking his prey, its hunger ignited by the helpless quality of her cries.

Gil feared very much that the same hard glint must be shining in his eyes because he couldn’t help but press his palm against her other breast. The peak of her nipple had never been so pronounced and hard against his palm. She loved it when he rubbed his palms on those sensitive nipples. In fact, the very first time he’d made love to her, she’d deliberately placed his hand on her breast and voiced that very desire.

With the clamps on her nipples, that simple caress shattered her.

She bucked in his arms. She threw one arm back to twist around his neck. The other hand was fisted in Sig’s hair. She must have surely yanked a handful of hair out of his scalp, but the man wouldn’t back down from licking and breathing on that tortured nipple. Her voice rose and she arched harder into Sig, grinding herself on his thigh. Shuddering, she came apart between them, groaning until her voice was hoarse.

“Good?” Gil whispered against her ear once her breathing evened out somewhat.

“No,” she panted. “Fantastic. Do it again.”

Sig twisted one of the little screws on the clamp so it pinched tighter, sending another quake through her body. “No, sweetheart, that’s not what we want to hear. We don’t want to hear orders. We want to hear your pleas.”

“Aren’t you going to put on your rings?” Her voice sounded both hopeful…and desperate. As though she wanted them as painfully aroused as she was.

Gil’s cock swelled at the thought, already so hard that the thought of squeezing that ring onto him made him want to grit his teeth on a few choice curse words. He’d do it, absolutely, if that’s what she wanted. But right now…

“I’d rather we put our cocks to better use,” Sig finished the thought aloud for him, using coarser language than Gil had ever heard in their lady’s presence. “You’ve never had both of us in you at the same time.”

Gil had enough blood left in his head to be surprised by not only the man’s sudden crudeness, but also his own reaction to it. He felt primed and loaded for bear. Muscles humming on the edge, his heart pounding, his blood hot and singing in his veins. Sex with Charlotte had always been good.

But this time…

It was going to blow the top of his skull off.

Yet he couldn’t help but wonder why. Why tonight, after Sig had walked out of the shop with such evident abhorrence? Was it only the thought of the flail—and the pain it would bring him—that had made him walk out? But then why was it so arousing to have Charlie squirming and gasping and fighting to get away, even while she moaned and begged them to hurry?

She was just as incensed with desire as they were. She tore at Sig’s cravat and shirt, sending his cufflinks flying across the room, but he wouldn’t lift his head from her breasts long enough for her to get the material over his head. She was practically sobbing with impatience.

“Gil, please help me.”

He shifted her weight over to the other man so he could strip off his trousers and waistcoat as quickly as possible, but she sank toward the floor. Sig bent down, easing her toward her knees. “Don’t you want the bed, sweetheart?”

“No,” she growled out, yanking his trousers open. “Too far away.”

Seeing her on her knees made the blood pound harder in his skull. A woman like Charlotte commanded her pleasure. It wasn’t often that she took a position of lesser authority, even in the privacy of her bedchamber. Yet he couldn’t deny the surge of visceral lust knifing through his gut. “How may I be of assistance, my lady?”

She spared a glance over her shoulder at him. Her dark, velvety hair tangled about her face, heavy curls falling out of the careful pins she’d placed this morning. Her slumberous eyes were huge and dark and so hot they shimmered with the desire blazing in her. “I need you thrusting into me from behind, filling me up until I scream.”

Her words drew him like the moon called the tides. He sank down behind her, one hand gripping her shoulder, while he ran his other in a heavy, deliberate caress down her spine. “Your wish is my command.”

“But I won’t be able to scream…” she turned and looked back up at Sig, “…because my mouth will be too busy.”

Out of control. That’s how she felt.

She’d never been out of control before. Even when she knew Queen Majel was going to have her either arrested or assassinated to silence her, Charlotte had been in control, both of her emotions and, of course, her mental faculties. No one had a brain like hers. She didn’t say that boastfully in the slightest. She’d carefully assessed the situation and developed a foolproof plan to escape the tightening net and win her freedom in a matter of hours, not days and weeks.

But tonight she had lost all control, not just of her emotions, but also of her normally impressive brain.

All she could think about was getting filled. The damnable clamps on her nipples had eaten a hole into her brain, spreading an aching pit of emptiness and desperate need. Her inner muscles kept clenching down, begging for something, anything, to fill her. Preferably Gil and that impressive erection of his. Yet even then she’d still be empty and aching.

Unless Sig was inside her too.

Maybe some of his darkness was leaking into her through their strange bond. He’d been withdrawing bit by bit, still charming and passionate and saying the right things, but emotionally and spiritually drawing away. Protecting himself…or her? She couldn’t say. But now, she had him here, close, intense and fully engaged. The reluctance he’d shown earlier today was gone, replaced by a knife-edged desire that had her racing faster out of control.

More, they’d also somehow managed to infect Gil with that reckless lust.

It wasn’t just the sex toys. Although perhaps such a simple device had managed to unlock some of the inhibitions they hadn’t even realized were holding them back.

She worked Sig’s trousers open, watching his reaction through her tumbled hair. Heavy and dark as a midnight sky, his eyes bored into her. No reluctance, no hesitation, no guilt that perhaps the blood calling him to violence would stain his hands and therefore make him unworthy.

That’s the core of our issue,
she realized in a sudden lightning bolt of clarity as he twisted his fingers in her hair and drew her closer.
He fears if I know the truth about what drives him to kill, I won’t be able to love him.

Doesn’t he realize I’ve always known the truth?

I’ve always seen that darkness in him, the coldness and detachment that allows him to kill without regret or guilt. That cold, hard edge draws me as much as his secret need to be bound.

She pulled her head back and forth, ignoring his grip on her hair so she could torment him with the strands that had fallen from her coiffure. As punishment—or reward—he gave another tug on the chain dangling between her breasts. Her mouth fell open on a low growl and he pulled her mouth to him.

She didn’t tease anymore by licking. No, she was too far gone herself for that. She took him deep into her mouth on a hard lunge, moaning around his length so that he could feel the vibrations of her need. Telling him what she needed, what she wanted, without words. And he heard. Because he dragged her head closer, forcing his length deeper. Force, command, control, when hers had disappeared. That’s what she wanted most of all.

He pushed into her mouth until she gagged, and even then, he held that thrust one long moment, another, until she almost couldn’t bear it. Until she was on the verge of struggling. Her corset was too tight to allow deep breaths, and now he’d taken even the shallow possibility away by closing off her throat. Finally he backed away, allowing her to suck in a breath deeply enough the corset creaked around her ribs.

She didn’t let him go, though. Not now that she had him.

In fact, I’m determined to make him as wild and uncontrolled as I am.

Tightening her mouth, she sucked as hard as she could while drawing her mouth up his full length. At the very tip, she carefully dragged her teeth across the sensitive skin. A long breath shuddered out of him, his grip brutal on her hair, drawing tears. But it felt so good, that small pain, blending with the throb of her breasts and the fire roaring through her veins. She leaned forward, giving him more of her upper body weight to support, so she could remind Gil where she wanted him.

Her chest heaved for air, unable to fully expand with the corset binding her. Lightheaded, she careened deeper into that looming pit. Unable to control her breathing. Unable to control her need. She ached and burned, so greedy and starved she wriggled her hips and arched her back, lifting her backside for Gil.

An invitation he couldn’t refuse.

That big, broad palm moved down her spine, a heavy weight adding to the constraint of the corset. He kneaded her hips, drawing out an impatient cry from her lips. She could imagine all too well what he was doing.