Savage Nights (The Savage Trilogy #2) (3 page)

After I had sat so long in the darkened motorcar, the electric lights illuminating the Savoy’s entrance and lobby were so bright that I had to pause, wincing as my eyes grew accustomed to the brilliance.

“Do you require assistance, Mrs. Hart?” asked the doorman with practiced concern. “Might I summon—”

“Thank you, no,” I said, drawing myself up. If I was to survive Savage’s challenge, I would need every scrap of the hauteur that my position in New York society had required. The subservient role I’d been playing this last week as Savage’s Innocent would not do now, and with my chin high I collected myself for the long walk across the plush red carpet, up the steps, and into the hotel.

Behind me I heard the doorman close the door to the motorcar, and I imagined Savage watching me begin his test, waiting for me to falter or not do as he’d bidden. Or perhaps he wasn’t watching at all and had instead already put me from his thoughts. He’d said he’d other business to attend to, the way that men inevitably did. Perhaps he was considering that business now instead of me, resting his head back against the cushions with his eyes closed, and—

No
. In my heart I knew he was watching me. I could sense it, feel it, as surely as if his hands were still upon me. He might pretend otherwise and speak of other obligations, but I knew that we’d become so closely twined this last week that he could not help watching me, even if he wished to.

The thought gave me confidence, and I began walking. I did not walk briskly, as was my usual custom, but slowly, even languidly, for his benefit.

I kept my shoulders relaxed and let my uncorseted hips sway within the cocoon of my fur coat. Even if no one else could see it, I felt the red silk slither over my body, sliding over my skin in a private, sensuous caress. The long strand of pearls that Savage had given me hung heavy over my breasts, each luminous bead already warmed from contact with my body. With each step as my thighs whispered together I felt his seed as a lubricious reminder of how often he’d fucked me tonight.

It was all enough to make me forget my New York hauteur. Instead, for him, I walked like a goddess, proud and without shame.

I wanted that to be Savage’s last glimpse of me and his last memory of me before we met again. If the goal of his challenge for me was for me to feel the power of being temptation incarnate, then this was how I must walk—the way I’d learned while I’d been not only Savage’s Innocent but his lover as well.

I walked up the carpeted steps, my footfalls muffled by the luxuriant plush, and past the two doormen who held open the shining black doors with their polished brasses. I glanced at the tall mahogany clock: a quarter past four in the morning, roughly what I’d guessed.

At this hour, there were no other guests in the usually crowded lobby. I was the only one. The neat rows of leather-covered armchairs were unoccupied, the palm trees in their huge Chinese pots nodded with no one beneath their fronds, the signboards with the day’s menus for the tearoom, the supper room, and the dining room went unread, and even the white sand in the ashtrays was raked and pristine.

But while all the other guests might be in their rooms, the lobby wasn’t empty. Far from it. Just as Savage had predicted, the men employed by the hotel were in attendance exactly as if it had been the middle of the day: bellboys, porters, and doormen in livery uniforms, the desk clerks and managers in morning coats, and assorted other men engaged in sweeping and cleaning and polishing.

Every one of them had stopped what he was doing to watch me.

I pretended to take no notice, my eyes straight ahead and my chin high, yet I couldn’t keep the blush from my cheeks. It wasn’t there from guilt, but from the sheer force of their combined attention.

Again, Savage had been right. These men could guess what I’d done with him, and more, I sensed that they admired me for it, wishing they’d been in his place. I couldn’t say exactly how I knew this, but I did, and it was a kind of admiration I’d never felt before.

Even in my disheveled state—or perhaps because of it—I felt not only beautiful but also desired. It had nothing to do with my name or my family or my costly clothes or jewels. For the first time in my life, I was being noticed not as a lady, distant and remote and meant to be admired but not touched, but as a
woman
, primal and erotic, and I reveled in it.

Finally I reached the elaborate main desk, and I stopped as I always did after returning.

“Good evening,” I said, although it was much closer to morning. “Have there been any messages for me while I was away?”

“Good evening, Mrs. Hart,” the desk clerk said, clearly struggling to maintain his professional demeanor with me. “Yes, there have been many messages and letters, but your lady’s maid has collected them each morning for you. I expect she’ll have them waiting for you in your rooms.”

“I am sure she will,” I said. I was still clutching my coat together, but as I stood before him I lessened my grasp and let the front slip open, giving him a glimpse of red silk and black lace and my own pearly skin, and my obviously uncorseted breasts and belly.

He glanced down, unable not to, and cleared his throat. A mottled flush rose from his stiff starched color through his neatly clipped beard to his cheeks, and all the training in the world could not stop his gaze from devouring the sensual sight that I was offering.

I smiled and shifted my shoulders so the coat opened further. I realized I was toying with him, tempting him with pleasures he could never possess, and I realized, too, how exciting it was to be so unabashedly brazen.

He cleared his throat again, struggling to regain his composure. “Shall I, ah, summon a porter to carry your cases to your room for you, Mrs. Hart?”

Now I was the disconcerted one. In my haste to flee Wrenton with Savage I’d left all the belongings I’d brought there earlier—all my clothes, my jewels, my trunks. I hadn’t given them any thought at all. I assumed that all my things would be sent after me later today by Lady Carleigh, Wrenton’s mistress and our hostess, and the nearest thing I had to a friend in London, or in New York, for that matter.

Yet to arrive at my hotel without so much as the keys to my own rooms was more awkward. I should be mortified. Doubtless this, too, was part of Savage’s challenge, another lesson I must learn.

But I would triumph. My smile widened for the clerk. He might blush, but I did not.

“Thank you, no, but I’ll need no further … assistance,” I said, turning to walk to the lift. Again, I could feel a score of male eyes watching me, but I didn’t care. My coat floated around me now, alternately concealing and revealing my red silk gown and my body beneath it. I wanted them to look, and I wanted them to desire me, exactly as Savage had directed.

But I belonged exclusively to him. That was my armor. If this was another of Savage’s variations of the Game, then I’d played and I’d won, and I couldn’t wait to tell him what I’d done.

I rode in silence in the lift to my floor, and I refused the operator’s offer to accompany me to my door. It was just as well. At least he didn’t witness the spectacle of me rapping on the door of my own suite as I tried to wake my servants. Surely one of them must hear me; I’d brought a small staff with me from New York, the ones who’d claimed to be most devoted to my welfare.

Finally one of my footmen opened the door a crack, his face groggy yet startled to see me. Behind him stood my lady’s maid, Hamlin, in her nightgown and wrapper, her round face surrounded by a halo of curling papers. I pushed the door open and swept inside.

“Why did you keep me waiting?” Now that the excitement of my return was done, I was suddenly exhausted and drained, and all I wished for was my own bed. “It’s preposterous that I must be kept waiting outside my own door.”

“How were we to know you’d return at such an hour, ma’am?” Hamlin said indignantly. She had been with me since I was a girl, and she’d earned the right to be more outspoken than most servants ever dared. “You should’ve sent word to expect you, ma’am. What lady travels like a thief in the night, I ask you?”

“I am no thief, Hamlin,” I said wearily. “You know that. I returned to London by motorcar with another member of the party. Now I am very tired, and wish to go to bed immediately.”

“Of course you do, ma’am,” Hamlin said, becoming reassuringly protective. “Poor lamb! Here, let me take that heavy coat from you, and I’ll lay out a fresh nightdress.”

I gladly let the heavy fur drop from my shoulders into her waiting hands. I rubbed my hands up and down over my bare arms, my skin prickling and overly sensitized. My walk through the lobby had left me uncomfortably aroused, with no way to ease my longing. I already missed Savage more than I’d thought possible, and if I’d known where he lived I think I would have gone after him.

Behind me, Hamlin was sputtering with alarm.

“Look at you, ma’am; just look at you!” she exclaimed, shocked. “How could you go about without your corset or petticoats, ma’am? Didn’t you have a proper lady’s maid looking after you?”

“Of course I did,” I said defensively. “It was my choice to leave off my underthings. I preferred how the dress looked without them.”

“More like you’ve left your sense, ma’am,” Hamlin said grimly, attacking the hooks on the back of my dress with indignant fervor. “What lady goes about without a corset or petticoats? And look at you! You’ve lost flesh, you have, else you never could’ve worn this dress without lacing. Didn’t that Lady Carleigh feed her guests? Oh, I knew that Wrenton Manor was a wicked place, ma’am, and full of wicked persons, too, I’m sure.”

“Hush, Hamlin; it wasn’t like that at all.” I shrugged free of the dress, standing in my shoes and nothing else. With Savage I’d grown comfortable with my body and with being naked. “The company was largely charming and well-bred, with a great many titles. You would have approved.”

Hamlin sniffed, her ultimate sign of contempt. I might be at ease with my nudity, but she was not and quickly slipped a lace-trimmed nightgown over my head. As she began to tie the ribbons in the front she paused and sniffed again, as if she smelled something of a suspicious nature.

Which, in fact, she had.

“Them pearls, ma’am,” she said slowly. “Those don’t look to be the ones given you by Mr. Hart.”

I twisted away from her, placing my hand protectively over the long strand around my throat that Savage had given me.

“No, Hamlin, they are not,” I said. “They are a good deal finer than the ones that Mr. Hart gave me, and given as a mark of true regard, which was never the case with my husband. And that is all you need know of them.”

Hamlin’s face pinched with stern disapproval.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “But allow me to say, ma’am, that your poor dear husband must be spinning in his grave at the very thought of you wearing
them
pearls instead of the ones what he gave you, and—”

“That will be all, Hamlin,” I said curtly. “You may return to your bed.”

“But, ma’am, your hair—”

“I can manage myself,” I said, turning away to prove the conversation truly was done. I knew Hamlin, just as she knew me, and if I’d given her any encouragement she would have begun scolding me in earnest, servant or not. There couldn’t be a more potent reminder of my old life in New York than Hamlin’s disapproval, nor could the juxtaposition between my past and the new life I’d begun as Savage’s lover have been more jarring. “Now leave me, please.”

“Very well, ma’am,” she said, adding an extra sniff for emphasis. “Good night, ma’am.”

I heard the door click shut behind her and let out a long sigh of weary relief. I kicked off my shoes and drew the last pins from my hair without bothering to brush or braid it. I washed and turned down the lights; it was true these were little tasks that I seldom did for myself, but tonight I found peace in them, Finally I climbed into the large bed, made up with my own lace-edged sheets, and settled back against the small mountain of pillows. Given the hour and all I had done, I should have fallen asleep at once.

I couldn’t.

As exhausted as I was, I still felt too unsettled, too on edge, to give myself over to sleep. With the heavy drapes over the windows the hotel room felt as airless and muffled as a tomb, and I longed for the always-open windows of the tower room I’d shared with Savage at Wrenton.

But what I longed for far more was Savage himself.

Before I’d become his Innocent and he my Master I’d always slept by myself. One week with him had changed me forever, and now my bed seemed intolerably lonely without him in it.

I missed the heat of his male body lying close against mine, the scent of his skin, the rhythm of his breathing, the weight of his arm curled protectively around my waist and his cock pressed against the small of my back.

I missed the unpredictability of his presence, when at any moment I might be drawn from my sleep and into his world of pleasure, his fingers lightly teasing my cunt awake before the rest of me realized it.

I missed waking to see him watching me, the little flicker of connection in his pale-blue eyes when our gazes met again. I missed the security of having him there and knowing that he’d never let any harm come to me while I was with him.

Most of all, I missed the focus he’d given my life. I hadn’t realized how lost I’d become, moving like a ghost without a soul through my days and nights, until he had appeared to lead me. I’d called him Master as part of the Game, but that was exactly what he had become to me, and that was exactly what I’d wanted and needed.

Without Savage with me I was lost again, and in that oversized bed I felt like a rudderless boat drifting farther and farther from the safe shore that he’d become for me. I twisted his pearls around my fingers as my thoughts raced ahead.

That walk through the lobby—he’d called it a challenge to test my confidence, but what if instead it had been his way of casting me off? What if he’d tired of me already? Lady Carleigh had told me that his intrigues were famously brief. What if he no longer needed me while I needed him more than ever?

In desperation I pushed aside my nightgown and spread my thighs and bent my knees. I had never touched myself before I’d met Savage, but he had encouraged me to learn how to please myself as he’d watched.