Savage Nights (The Savage Trilogy #2) (13 page)

And it worked.

My bottom felt warm, the skin tingling. To my surprise, that same warmth spread to my quim, my pearl throbbing in sympathy. I twisted restlessly against his lap, and that was all the invitation he needed.

Once again he slapped my bottom, this time covering both cheeks. This time, too, I caught my breath, but I didn’t cry out.

Again, and again.

And again he paused, rubbing and kneading my heated flesh. He ran his thumb along the length of my spine, then rubbed my bottom again.

“Your ass is even more beautiful this way,” he murmured, as if he meant to soothe me with words as he had with his hand. “Your skin is so pink and so hot, Eve. So very beautiful.”

It
was
hot. I felt feverish, and although I longed for him to stroke me between my legs and ease that burn as well, I knew better than to ask. This was part of the Game, our game. He’d only tell me that it wasn’t time, and that I must wait, and—

“Oh!”
I couldn’t keep that back. His hand had hit my ass with a glancing blow that cracked against my skin in a new way, and instinctively I clenched my muscles to brace against the next blow. I felt the tension increase in my quim, and I moaned softly in frustration.

“Don’t pull back from me, Eve,” he said, leaning over me. “If you wish to find the pleasure you crave, you know what you must do.”

Panting, I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to decipher his meaning. So this was another puzzle, another challenge. I felt him sit upright, preparing to raise his hand again.

“I—I was wrong, Master,” I blurted out. “I should have stayed in my own room. I should never have come here. Forgive me, Master; forgive me!”

He made a rumbling, wordless sound of approval as his palm smacked, then smoothed my bottom. I could have moved off his lap and away from him. He wasn’t holding me so tightly that I couldn’t have escaped. We both knew it and understood. If I didn’t want to be here I could have plucked the key from the bowl on the mantel and left.

But I did, and I didn’t.

“I disobeyed you, Master,” I said in a whispered rush, wanting to please him. “I was wrong. I see that now. Forgive me, Master; oh, please, forgive me!”

He was holding my hips steady with one hand and caressing my bottom with the other, his hand dipping across the tender skin between the top of my leg and my cunt. I felt as if my whole being was centered on his stroking hand, the heat radiating from it like the rays of the sun. Even my toes curled and clenched, and the very soles of my feet felt on fire.

“You know you were wrong, Eve,” he said, the tension in his voice unmistakable. “Coming in here where you didn’t belong, before you were invited. Prying into matters that do not—cannot—concern you. You were spying. You know how wrong that is.”

“I know it now, Master,” I said, more eagerly than perhaps a true penitent would do. “It will not happen again; I swear it.”

His hand fell again, harder, and I jerked from the impact.

“You would swear to anything now, Eve,” he said. “I know you so well.”

“Yes, Master,” I gasped, my heartbeat thumping in my ears and my blood on fire. “You … you do.”

“Yes,” he growled. “I
do
.”

My whole body tensed and quivered, waiting for his hand to come down even as I gasped and teetered on the edge of my climax. Yet still he held back, tormenting me by doing nothing.

“Please, Master,” I begged, twisting over his knees. “Please, oh, please.”

“Enough,” he said sharply. “Stand, Eve.”

Whimpering, I obeyed, though I couldn’t believe he’d abandon me like this. Reluctantly I pushed myself clear of his knees and tried to stand, the necklace swinging heavily against my chest. My thighs were trembling, and I was close to tears. I kept my head bowed so he couldn’t see the despair and disappointment that must surely be in my eyes. Still I knew he was watching me, studying me, taking note of how everything he’d done had affected me. I could only pray I’d done the same to him.

“Perfect, Eve,” he said, his voice taut with desire. “
You
are perfect.”

Then before I could react or respond he rose and hooked his arm beneath my knees. He lifted me into his arms as if I weighed no more than a feather, and I curled against his chest, weak with longing. He kicked the bedroom door open and carried me through the door and dropped me into the center of his bed.

7.

The coverlet had already been turned back, and I sank into the snowy white of fine linens. I’d a swift impression of the bed as being very large—although he’d dropped me crossways on it, I still wasn’t near the edge—with an elaborate, old-fashioned canopy overhead.

But at that moment, I was more focused on Savage himself than his bedroom, and why shouldn’t I be? I was naked in his bed, wild with desire, and he was standing not six feet away from me.

I understood now why he preferred candlelight, for surely there was no more beautiful sight in the warm, flickering light and shadows than the one before me. He jerked open the last buttons on his shirt and whipped it from his shoulders in a single fluid motion, a white flag of surrender that he flung to the floor.

I stared at him greedily, at his ridged, lean abdomen and his broad chest, the candlelight playing over the taut, bunching muscles exactly as I longed to do. He’d exactly the right amount of dark, curling hair on his chest, small whorls that accentuated the breadth of his shoulders and tapered to a thin, tantalizing trail to the waistband of his trousers.

“I didn’t want it to be like this,” he said, his voice thick, his gaze intense upon me. “Not this night. But I can’t resist you, not now.”

“You don’t have to, Master,” I said breathlessly, unabashedly pressing my legs together for relief. I pushed myself up on my elbows to watch him. He was glorious and male, putting ancient marble statues to shame. “I don’t
want
you to.”

He scowled, fighting with himself. “Oh, I know what you want, because we both want the same thing.”

I nodded, without words. I was glad he found me irresistible, considering how I felt the same about him. With a crack he pulled his belt free from the loops and tore open the buttons on his trousers and shoved them down around his legs. His powerful erection tented the front of his drawers, the linen so thin that I could make out the bell-shaped head of his cock and the drop of moisture that had already soaked through the cloth.

But soon he jerked the drawers down, too, and kicked them aside, and he was at last as naked as I was. As primed as I was, my eyes still widened hungrily at the sight of him, a sight he’d denied me earlier.

“See what you do to me, Eve,” he growled with a hint of angry despair, standing at the edge of the bed. “I’m your Master, and yet you control me.”

His cock was ferociously hard and thick, jutting forward with the veins distended, and below his bollocks gleamed hard and full between his muscular thighs. He was so male I almost couldn’t bear to look at him, he made me ache so with desire. How could he believe I controlled him when he was like this?

“You are my Master,” I said, whispering my thighs apart to demonstrate my obedience to him. The small motion reminded me of how he’d used my bottom and how sore it had become, and I winced, even though the memory alone made my blood quicken again. “All I can do is obey you.”

He glanced down at my open quim and swore, his face hard and his eyes hooded. He climbed onto the bed before me, the mattress dipping beneath his weight.

“Turn over,” he ordered. “I don’t want to hurt you any further. On your knees.”

He didn’t wait for me to obey but caught me by my waist and flipped me over. I scrambled upright onto my knees, and he pulled me back across the bed until I felt his cock bump against my hip. I held my breath with anticipation, my heart racing, knowing that at any second that thick, heavy cock would be pushing into me.

“Your skin’s so hot, Eve.” He palmed my ass with surprising gentleness and trailed his fingers deeper, pressing between the slick, swollen outer lips of my sex. “You’ve bloomed like a rose for me. My God, I cannot wait to be inside you.”

At his touch, I made a small strangled cry. He’d left me so aroused and on edge that even that slight caress was almost painful.

“Hush, hush,” he said, his voice low. “You’re shaking, Eve. Can’t you trust me to give you what you need?”

“Y-y-yes,” I stammered. “Yes,
Master
.”

He parted the lips of my slit with his fingers and I felt the blunt head of his cock pressing into me. I closed my eyes tight the better to feel him, the better to imagine him poised behind me with his cock in his hand.

“You’re so wet, so ready,” he murmured. “For me.”

He grasped my hips with both hands, his fingers sinking into my soft flesh to hold me steady. The impact of the first thrust made me cry out, a broken, strangled cry that was nearly a scream. He was so thick that he had to drive his way into my passage, opening my flesh to accept him.

One, two, three thrusts and he was buried deep, his balls pressed against my bottom. With a shuddering groan he paused to relish the sensations of us being joined.

“Put your shoulders down,” he said roughly. “Lay your head on your arms, and lift your ass up.”

I did as he asked, and immediately he sank into me even deeper. We’d never used this position before, and I was stunned by how completely he was able to fill me. As wet as I was, I had to stretch to accommodate his size, my passage yielding to the masculine force of his cock.

He began to move, a powerful glide of his hips. With each thrust he reached the end of my channel in a way that I thought was bliss, and yet his slow withdrawal, nearly complete, dragged across my inner nerves in new ways that made me shake with building pleasure. He reached around my ribs and cupped my breasts, pressing my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers until I cried out yet again. It was too much, all too much, yet still I rocked my hips to try to draw him even deeper, and it didn’t begin to be enough.

I’d never felt anything like it. My bottom still stung where he’d spanked me, and yet now the burn turned to a liquid heat, coursing through my body as his belly slapped against my skin, just as his hand had done.

He slid his hands from my breasts to hold me in the place where my hips flared. He set a punishing pace, but I matched him, arching my back to take him deeper. I grabbed fistfuls of the sheets, mindlessly twisting them in my fingers as he slammed into me, and built the fire in my body higher and higher. I was drunk with his possession, and no matter how hard he drove into me, I craved more.

“Perfect,” I felt him growl against the back of my neck, the tension in his voice and body echoing my own. “God, Eve, you feel so good.”

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that he was the one who felt good. But I’d no words: my entire body was as tight as a bow with my coming climax, and the only sound I could make was a keening, yearning cry as the spasms began to rip through me.

He must have felt it, too, roaring with the force of his own release. He raised his right hand from my hip and slapped it hard against my bottom, in exactly the same place that he’d struck earlier.

And I screamed: not with pain or shock, but with pleasure so overwhelming that I must have lost consciousness for a moment, toppling forward only to be caught and held by him as he pumped furiously into me.

“Eve, Eve,” he whispered harshly, breaking through my disorientation.

He was still holding me upright and tightly against his chest, his arm braced around my waist below my breasts. My heartbeat was still thumping in my ears, or perhaps what I heard was his; I was too dazed to be able to tell for certain. As our breathing slowed I lay limply against him, our skin slick with sweat, yet he continued to hold me with a gentleness I’d never expected from him. I still pulsed around him, little tremors that were only the last echoes of what had come before. I rested my head back against his shoulder, and he trailed small kisses along the side of my throat, nuzzling his jaw into my hair.

Finally his cock slipped free of my body with a rush of warm semen, and with a reluctant sigh I slipped free of his embrace. I began to use the edge of the sheet to wipe myself, but instead he reached into the drawer of the small table beside the bed. There was the pile of neatly pressed handkerchiefs, each embroidered with his monogram, the same as he’d had at Wrenton, and he handed me one. I should have grown accustomed to that by now, but it still was a level of indulgence that startled even me.

Afterward I sat back on my heels and gathered my damp hair into a loose knot at the back of my neck, tucking the ends in to make them stay. Now I noticed how my bottom burned and I wasn’t quite ready to sit on it yet.

Watching me, he reached out to touch one of my still-erect nipples with his fingertip.

“Look at you,” he said softly. “You are making it very difficult for me to leave this bed.”

“Then don’t.” I smiled tremulously. My emotions were as tumbled as my body, the way they often were after we’d fucked: joy and elation and satisfaction mixed with a hint of melancholy. I couldn’t say why. What I had with Savage was sex, purely carnal, and there was no real reason for me to be so foolish and quivery afterward.

“Only for a moment.” He winked at me and grinned, unexpectedly, boyishly charming. “I give you my word.”

He climbed from the bed and crossed the room, giving me a splendid view of his own muscular ass as he walked. His cock hung heavy, but it was still thick, and I loved seeing how it still carried the faint glisten of my juices. I suspected that even after what we’d just done he would be ready for more before the night was done, and so would I. As I’d learned last week, he could be tireless; it was one of his best qualities and one of the ways we were so well suited.

He plucked a silk robe from the back of a chair and threw it over his shoulders before he passed through the bedroom door and back into the front room, tying the sash around his waist. I heard him ring for a servant, and I swiftly went diving beneath the sheets.