Savage Nights (The Savage Trilogy #2) (5 page)

At least not to me.

“Savage would never hurt me,” I said. “You know him, and what kind of gentleman he is.”

Laura frowned, considering her words.

“I know that I have never seen him like this,” she said slowly. “The way he behaved at Wrenton—withdrawing from everyone else, keeping you to himself, coming to blows with poor Mr. Henery—that is not the Savage I know. Your maid at Wrenton told me he’d left bruises on you.”

I flushed, not from shame, but from excitement, remembering how I’d come by those bruises, how the silk cords he’d tied to the bedpost had cut into my skin only enough to bind me and no more. He’d known exactly how tightly to tie them, how far to push me towards pleasure.

“They were marks of passion,” I explained slowly, “not pain. It was all part of the Game for me, and an enjoyable part, too. You needn’t have worried. If he’d truly injured me, I would have left him.”

“Perhaps,” Laura said, clearly skeptical. “He can be very persuasive, and like most gentlemen, he is accustomed to having whatever he wants. When we first met, I assumed you were more … more worldly than you are. More experienced. You Americans are usually so forthright.”

“In most matters we are,” I said, thinking of my own puritanical upbringing as well as my sham of a marriage. “But in matters of carnal pleasure, we remain as tight-lipped and priggish as Oliver Cromwell himself.”

“A handicap you seem to have overcome,” she said wryly. “But you can understand why I thought you would be a good match for an experienced gentleman like Savage. Who would have guessed that he would become such a different man with you, Evelyn?”

“Has he?” I asked, surprised. I knew he’d had many lovers before me, and I couldn’t believe that I was so unique, being such an unpracticed novice in carnal amusements.

“Indeed he has,” Laura said. “And I must say, neither I nor Lord Carleigh knows what to make of it.”

I could not help but smile. It was oddly flattering to hear that I could have influenced Savage in any way. I thought I was the one who’d been changed by our intimacy, not the other way around.

“Since Savage and I were not acquainted before last week, I have no basis for comparison,” I said. “All I know is that he pleases me, and I please him, and that is what matters most to me.”

She looked down at her tea, tapping her fingers lightly against the sides of the cup. “I do not wish to frighten you, my dear, but there were questions surrounding the death of his wife that were never properly answered or addressed. To be sure, it was many years ago now, but still, one wonders.”

“He spoke to me himself about his wife, and how she died,” I said, eager to defend Savage. “It did not seem suspicious to me.”

It hadn’t been easy for Savage to confide in me, especially when the story of his marriage was so sad. His wife had been a childhood sweetheart who had gradually lost her wits, and despite having the best medical care that could be procured, she had finally killed herself by jumping from a window as he’d watched in horror. To spare his poor wife’s memory, he had kept both her illness and her suicide to himself, with the result that the world had wrongly suspected him in connection to her death.

Because I wasn’t sure how much of this unhappy truth was widely known, even among friends like Laura, I didn’t now want to volunteer more.

“It was tragic, yes,” I said carefully, “but he was not at fault for her death, or to blame. He did what he could to save her.”

“So the inquest determined.” Laura sighed again and shook her head, the little feathers on her hat trembling. “All I advise is that you take care, Evelyn, and guard yourself.”

I bristled at what she was implying. “Forgive me, Laura, but I do not see how—”

“Don’t become testy, I beg you,” she said, and smiled to take the sharpness from her words. “Pleasure is an excellent thing, but it shouldn’t overrule common sense. Sometimes the most exciting gentlemen can also be the most dangerous to a lady, and if—Good heavens, I cannot believe he has come
here
!”

“Savage? Here?” Eagerly I twisted about to see the tearoom’s entrance.

“Yes, yes, but you needn’t look his way, unless you want him to believe you are suffering from a schoolgirl infatuation,” Laura whispered. “It’s never wise to let a gentleman believe he is the center of your universe.”

She’d meant it as a jest, a way to lighten the somber mood of our conversation, and her sly little wink proved it.

But she’d no way of realizing that in less than a fortnight Savage had, in fact, become the center of my universe.

“I suppose your servants must have told him you were here with me,” she continued, unaware of my confusion, “and he came to seek you out. Well, it cannot be helped now. All I ask is that you remember what I have said to you, Evelyn, remember every word. Do not make me regret having introduced him to you.”

My heart was beating so rapidly with anticipation that I scarcely heard her warning, and before I could compose myself he was there, standing before our table. He first bowed to Laura, as was proper because of her rank, and then turned towards me.

We had been apart only a matter of hours, but I felt as if I were meeting him for the first time. In a way it was a second beginning, a retreat to a more formal and proper meeting with us both, for a change, fully clothed.

He was dressed in a dark morning suit with a pale-gray vest, and all impeccably tailored to his broad shoulders and tall, lean frame. Swept back from his forehead, his black hair gleamed in the sunlight from the window, and not even that afternoon sun could soften the sharp planes of his face. Only his mouth was soft, full, and sensual in dramatic contrast to the rest of his face.

It took all my willpower not to glance down at the front of his trousers and look for the telltale bulge of the cock that not even the most masterful tailoring in Savile Row could entirely mask.

No, I didn’t look. But still my nipples tightened into tight, hard buds of longing simply from having him stand here before me, and I was grateful for the many layers of clothing and corset that would hide my obvious response from the rest of the room.

From the other ladies, yes, but not from him. From the way he slowly smiled at me, he knew. He always did.

How could I dare to pretend this afternoon would be any different? He was the kind of man whose mere presence made women turn in the street to stare as he passed by, and certainly many ladies in the tearoom were twisting about in their little gilded chairs to catch a glimpse at him as he stood at our table.

But I was the only one of them who knew how heavy his cock felt in my hand, how the velvety head would weep against my palm with eagerness.

Only I knew the taste of that salty drop, or how his cock would swell against my tongue and lips when I sucked it.

And only I knew the exquisite pleasure of feeling that cock in my cunt, surging forward to fill me completely with its glorious heat and power.

To have him here and not be able to touch, to taste, to take, was an almost unbearable torment. He lifted my hand lightly in his own and bowed over it, our gazes locked. I felt sure that his pale eyes—neither blue nor gray but some subtle, silvery blending of the two—could see all my secrets, and I felt my cheeks warm beneath their scrutiny as I imagined him reading my wicked thoughts.

“Good day, Mrs. Hart,” he said, his resonant voice making desire coil deep within my belly. “How fortunate I am to find you here.”

“How lucky for Lady Carleigh and for me as well, my lord,” I said, my voice breathless in response to his. “We are the most fortunate ladies in this entire room.”

He was holding my hand longer, far longer, than etiquette required, and I felt the warmth of his touch through my gloves, a touch that was more than enough to remind me of how that same hand had learned my body so intimately.

“Will you join us, Savage?” Laura said, ever the hostess. “Perhaps the waiter can find you heartier fare than tea and scones.”

“You are very kind, Lady Carleigh, as always,” he said. He pointedly laid his hat and walking stick across one of the empty chairs—one of Society’s little signs that he would be with us only briefly—and took the other chair beside mine. “Do not trouble yourself with a special order on my account. Tea is enough. You know I am not a demanding sort.”

He smiled at me again as if this were some tremendous joke between us. Of course I understood what he meant. No matter how he behaved at the tea table, in bed he was, in fact, very demanding, very exacting. He was precise in what he wanted, and he’d taught me to be the same way, with thrilling results.

Unaware—or at least pretending to be so—Laura poured his tea herself.

“I am glad to see you are well, Savage,” she said. “You left us so suddenly last night that we feared you were ill.”

“Not at all,” he said, taking the offered cup of tea. “I had simply come to the limit of my capacity for your kind hospitality.”

The porcelain cup and saucer looked impossibly delicate in his large, tanned hands. His shirt cuffs were stiffly starched around those hands, and on them were the cuff links that I’d come to associate with him, black onyx with an overlay of a gold serpent, a diamond in its open mouth: jewels that were unique and wickedly masculine, just like he was himself.

“Oh, your
limits,
” scoffed Laura, sipping her own tea. “You have no limits, Savage. That is much of your problem.”

“My problem, or my potential?” he asked, more playfully than I’d expected from him. “To be without limits means that one has limitless possibilities, and that one is ready to embrace and experience all the world has to offer.”

Laura rolled her eyes and made a pretty moue of her lips. She might warn me to be careful with Savage, but she wasn’t above flirting with him, too.

“A foolish bit of nonsense, that,” she said. “You know perfectly well what I meant. It was ill-bred of you to depart so abruptly last night, especially since you stole this dear lady away from us as well.”

Deliberately he set his cup down, and though he answered Laura, he looked directly at me.

“It was Mrs. Hart’s choice to come with me, Lady Carleigh,” he said. “I trust she was not disappointed in her decision.”

“Oh, no, my lord,” I said, wishing I could control the breathless longing in my voice. “Not at all.”

I didn’t agree with Laura’s suggestion that it was unwise to appear too interested, but I didn’t want to seem like that foolish schoolgirl, either. When I’d played Savage’s Innocent he’d wanted me to be confident in my replies to him. I still wanted to please him in that way, even though we weren’t playing the Game any longer.

Or were we?

“I am glad you have no regrets,” he said, his quirk of a not-quite smile telling how much more than glad he was.

“I suppose it’s just as well you brought Mrs. Hart back to town when you did, Savage,” Laura said. “While she was away in the country she received an invitation to next week’s Drawing Room, and she’ll need as much time as possible to prepare. The curtseys alone require considerable practice, not to mention the agility of a wretched acrobat.”

Beneath the heavy white tablecloth, Savage pressed his knee close against mine, an insistent, suggestive pressure that was all the more exciting because above the table he was continuing his conversation with Laura.

“Ah, a Court Drawing Room,” he said. “Tedium by royal decree.”

“Hush,” scolded Laura mildly. “I know we have no choice and must go to the Palace as commanded. But for an American like Mrs. Hart, it’s a great coup simply to receive an invitation.”

He turned back to me. “Is that so, Mrs. Hart? This invitation to a crowded, overheated, and interminable ritual is something you covet?”

“It is, my lord,” I said. “Because the invitations are so seldom granted to Americans, they become all the more desired.”

He sipped his tea and pressed his knee more firmly against mine.

“That is the way with most things, Mrs. Hart, isn’t it?” he asked. “Desire increases when the object of that desire is withheld?”

Of course I understood his double meaning, and to prove it I daringly slipped my foot free of my slipper and stroked it suggestively around his ankle. His expression didn’t change, but amusement flickered through his eyes.

“I am serious, my lord,” I said. “My acquaintances in New York believe that there is a price for everything in the world, and that with sufficient funds—which most of them possess—everything can be bought. When they visit England, they expect the same.”

“True enough,” Laura said. “Consider how many scions of noble trees have been snatched up by wealthy American fathers for their daughters just so they could claim a title.”

“But they can’t buy an invitation to a Drawing Room,” I said. “I know, because I’ve heard them complain bitterly about it, and lament the dresses made for Court that were never worn.”

Savage chuckled. “So that is why you want to endure a Drawing Room, Mrs. Hart? To be able to wave the invitation in the faces of your rivals in New York and humiliate them with it?”

“In part, my lord, yes,” I admitted. I loved to hear him chuckle, a rare event, and to know I was the cause of it. “But I also believe that I must take every new opportunity that life offers me, and experience it to the fullest.”

“An excellent sentiment,” he said, “as well as the only way to survive such an unholy torment.”

Our bantering was making him want me more. I could see it in his eyes, how they’d narrowed a fraction as he’d studied me. This intrigued me, for when we’d played at Master and Innocent I’d been forbidden to speak except to answer his questions.

There’d been none of this seductive give-and-take, and as much as I’d enjoyed being the obedient Innocent, I liked this, too. It also made me want him more, just as he wanted me, and lightly I stroked my stockinged food along the hard muscle of his calf.

“Nothing is an unholy torment in the right company, my lord,” I said, lowering my chin a fraction so that I looked up at him from beneath the curving brim of my hat. “But then, I need not say that to you.”

“No,” he said. “But we can maybe test both your theory and your endurance together next week at the Palace. And here when I asked for you to be invited I thought it only to keep from being bored myself!”