Seduction in Mind (17 page)

"And with enormous success, I don't doubt."

He wasn't about to answer that. "Later on, let me know." He traced his fingertip up the warmth of her inner thigh, reaching out with his other hand to lift his hairbrush from the dresser top. "I'm always open to suggestions."

She was about to answer, when the pad of his finger touched the nub of her clitoris and a frisson of pleasure refocused her attention. With extreme delicacy, he caressed the silken tissue, over and around, up and down, in a slow, delectable massage, while she leaned back and felt the rapture travel upward and outward in rippling waves. He was painstakingly subtle, his fondling leisured, controlled, as though he understood the finite degrees of bewitchment and female arousal. As though he might have done this once or twice before and after a time, in answer to her softly undulating hips and breathy pleas, he slipped his fingers inside her honeyed warmth and explored the sweet paradise that kept his cock standing stiff.

In very short order, she was quivering under his hands, her swollen tissue weighty with blood, her senses aflame. Aching for consummation, for his primed cock and consummate skill, she turned more demanding. "I want you
now
," she said as a spoiled heiress might.

He refused, although with infinite politeness. He knew better now. "Let's try this first," he suggested, taking up the teakwood hairbrush, twisting the handle and lifting it away.

"You said—you didn't—have women here." Her breath was gone, lost to lust.

"This is for hiding diamonds." He held out the teak handle so she could see its hollowed core. "It's African, and I
don't
have women here. It's virgin."

For a flashing moment, she debated his honesty, but frenzied, nearly dizzy for wanting him, her next ravenous pulse beat vanquished unnecessary thought.

"Why don't we see how you like something virgin." The faint curve of his mouth was more a grimace than a smile. "There's a novelty…" Not sure she was listening any longer, not sure himself why her sexual experience seemed to matter so, he turned his attention to an activity sure to please them both. Slipping the smooth wooden tip of the brush handle into her pouty slit, he slid the polished wood around the verge of her throbbing labia with exquisite finesse until she lifted her hips, reaching for more. "Not just yet," he whispered, smoothing his hand over her hip as though gentling a skittish filly. "I want you wetter…"

"Sam!" Half-whimper, half-plea, she tried to brush his hand away.

"Hush, darling," he soothed, his voice velvety, holding her still. "Don't move and I'll give you more."

She instantly quieted, and his erection surged higher, submission a powerful aphrodisiac. He chided himself briefly for such uncharitable impulses, but she was lying before him in all her opulent womanhood, predaceous in her desires, and charity didn't stand a chance against primal lust.

He slid the makeshift dildo in a calculated two inches, and stopped. "More?" he inquired gently, driven by some inexplicable need for sovereignty over her.

Her lashes lifted, and the smoldering heat in her eyes was potent answer.

"You look ready," he whispered, spreading the swollen flesh of her labia with his fingers, pushing the teak handle two inches deeper.

She softly moaned as her tissue slowly yielded to the pressure of his invasion, gently arched her back at the delicious flood of rapture. He could deliver nirvana on cue, she blissfully thought, basking in a warm, gossamer ecstasy. "I might have to bring you home," she breathed. "You're so much better at this than I."

This wasn't the place to mention the extent of his practice. He bent to kiss her instead, brushing her lush mouth with his, burying the wooden handle the last providential measure into her welcoming flesh, inhaling her rapturous cry as he held it solidly in place. Then, lifting his mouth away, he gently ran his fingers over her labia, closing her pouty lips over the lodged handle.

She whimpered at the slight pressure of his fingers, her tissue stretched, filled, crammed to surfeit, the resulting jolt to her fevered senses almost too much to bear. But the continuing massage, no matter how delicate, drove the dildo deeper, brought her passions, raging and overwrought, near orgasmic, she rocked against the stunning delirium.

His palm was pressed hard against her wet cunt. She was eager, frenzied, hungry for sex, and for the first time in his life he felt an overwhelming urge to keep a woman. He didn't question his motives, self-indulgent too long; he only understood he wanted her—preferably in bondage to his whims. And all the fairy tales of women imprisoned in towers or cottages deep in the woods suddenly took on a licentious cast. The fact that he wished to keep her for himself alone, available and in rut, didn't bear close scrutiny, so he ground his hand against her flaming cunt instead, replacing disquieting thoughts with the familiar constant in his life—sex.

Her breathy scream exploded in the shadowed room, and she melted under his hand. Quickly catching her as she slipped backward, he gathered her in his arms, holding her close as her last shuddering spasms died away. He glanced at the clock, anticipating the remainder of the night with pleasure, fairytale images of the delectable Miss Ionides as his personal bond servant a decidedly lascivious fantasy. When she stirred in his arms a moment later, when her eyelids fluttered open, he said, "You can come again… soon… and then, if you're very good… next time—"

"I'll let you have sex with me," she whispered.

He leaned back, astonishment in his gaze. "You'll
let
me?"

Postcoital now, returned to the world, she smiled, sat up, and caught her breath. Her rising had stirred the dildo, stimulating already overstimulated nerves, and quickly reaching down, she moved to extract it.

He caught her hand. "I don't think you understand."

"
You
don't understand," she countered softly, shaking his hand off.

"What? About you wanting cock?"

"About this propensity of yours for supremacy."

"Or yours."

They gazed at each other for a charged moment, these two people familiar only with compliance.

"You don't stand a chance, sweetheart," he drawled gently. "Because you want to come again."

"And you don't?"

"Not with the same, shall we say, greediness."

"We can't all be libertines," she said with a sniff.

"Nor would I want you to be," he returned softly. "Except when your ready passion is conveniently mine."

"I don't find it currently convenient."

"I might disagree," he replied with despicable calmness.

"That's your prerogative, of course." She reached for the dildo again, only to find herself curtailed by Sam's firm grasp.

"Why don't we see?" Forcing her back down onto the table, he rested his hand directly above her mons. It was a light, skimming touch for a brief moment before he exerted a tempered pressure on an especially sensitive portion of her already oversensitized anatomy, bringing it into contact with the submerged dildo.

She tried not to gasp at the searing jolt, but he knew how prone that particular area was to arousal. He wasn't surprised at her sudden stillness. "Feeling a little something?" he asked impudently, massaging her susceptible flesh lightly into the unyielding dildo, watching with a knowing competence as she speedily came to fever point. This particular neat-handed skill was the result of a long-ago liaison with a celebrated French actress who had a fancy for young men, and it was always effective.

In fact it was a headlong rush to orgasm, and he took note of the unmistakable evidence of the lady's readiness in the creamy fluid issuing from her insatiable cunt. The liquid oozed in pearly rivulets down her thighs, and he was relatively sure there was no longer any question whether her passions were currently involved.

"Do you want to come?" he inquired with unabashed insolence. "All you have to do is ask."

She heard his voice through a wall of insensibility; sheer will lifted her lashes. "Go to hell."

He shouldn't care; he shouldn't insist. On an intellectual level, he disapproved of submission. "Tell me," he said.

He was leaning over her, the scent of his hair sweet in the air, his bronze skin even darker in the shadows, the powerful muscles of his arms taut as he waited for her answer. Thick black hair dusted his forearms and fingers, his virility mesmerizing. Her gaze dropped to the engorged beauty of his upthrust erection, and ultimate temptation lured and seduced. Perhaps he'd been right when he'd said she needed a man like him. Perhaps he was right about everything.

"What do I have to do to have
you
?" Her voice was strong, not needy, her gaze direct.

He raised his brows and flexed his wrist. "Instead of this?"

She shuddered at the riveting pleasure.

"Why not both?" he suggested softly.

"Together?" Shock registered in the blurted-out word.

"You decide."

"No… no," she said quickly, the look in his eyes wolfish, hungry. An instant later, she wondered if she'd imagined the wicked gleam, because his dark eyes were alight with laughter.

"You're sweet as candy underneath it all, aren't you?" he teased.

He was so damnably tempting—even his wickedness. "I don't know," she breathed, her sensibilities in chaos. "With the exception of wanting you, I don't know anything at all anymore."

He knew what she meant, but he'd been the object of pursuit too long. He was wary. "It doesn't matter." The phrase was ambiguous, as were his thoughts, but gentleman that he was, he slipped the dildo out.

"They say intellect is much overrated," she remarked, reading something different into his words, throwing caution to the wind in any event. Only ravenous desire mattered, Alex decided, pulling his head down for a kiss and making love to this man who made her forget everything but wanting him.

Meeting her passionate kiss with equal ardor, Sam decided the way he was feeling right now, he'd be more than satisfied to keep the bewitching Miss Ionides impaled on his erection for the foreseeable future and all the rest be damned. Grasping her hips, he hauled her bottom to the edge of the table, lifted her legs onto his shoulders and, bending forward, guided his erection to her alluring cunt and proceeded to execute his single-minded plan.

When he woke the next morning, he was momentarily startled to find a woman in his bed. For a dreadful moment he thought he was with Penelope again. The error immediately corrected itself in his brain, and more pleasant sensations came to the fore, along with lush memories of the previous night.

Alex was truly remarkable, unrestrained in her passion—and also in her demands, he recalled, smiling. The satisfying feel of her in his arms this morning was equally remarkable, for he preferred waking up alone. He'd have to find a larger bed, he thought, if they were to make use of his secret apartment. A moment of apprehension struck him at such an extraordinary consideration, and in the cold light of day, with his independence at stake, he decided the bed was perfectly fine. He wasn't ready to alter his life for a woman. Particularly not after having known Miss Ionides, however remarkable her talents, for less than a day.

Unsettled by his thoughts, he unconsciously shifted his position. The slight movement brought Alex awake.

When she smiled at him, his reservations vanished, and when she stretched up to kiss him, he forgot all but the tantalizing promise in her smile.

"I recall someone like you making me very happy last night," she sighed. "Are you still available, or does duty call?"

"What did you have in mind?" he drawled.

"I was thinking about something sexual," she breathed.

His brows rose. "How sexual?"

"Surprise me…"

He laughed. "I'm not sure I have any surprises left after last night."

"Something simple will be equally appreciated." She twisted her hips slightly, and her damp cleft slid up his thigh.

"As long as it's soon?" he said, smoothing his palm down her bottom, touching her slippery wetness with his fingertips.

"And long and hard… like this," she purred, lightly grasping his swelling erection.

He rolled over her a second later, plunged into her waiting sweetness, and bid the lady in his bed good morning with such extravagant lasciviousness, neither heard the sounds of the City waking outside. It was a tropical morning in Queen Elizabeth's bed; it was a dawn of obsession for two people who had until then been unaware of the concept; it was a private, sequestered world filled with dazzling pleasures.

Much later, when passions were quenched, when the level of satiation and contentment was sufficient to let in the outside world, when the chiming of the clock seemed to have become conspicuously shrill, they reluctantly rose from the bed and even more reluctantly dressed to face the events of the day.

Sam extended an impulsive invitation for breakfast, when he'd never actually shared his breakfast with a lover. Alex accepted, when she'd not been sure she could speak of mundane things after the glorious splendor she'd experienced. But they found they could converse like ordinary humans and that they both liked bacon more than eggs and not kippers at all. After three cups of coffee, they agreed as well that most of the problems of the world were entirely solvable.

When it came time for Alex to leave, Sam escorted her downstairs and helped her into his carriage. He had a meeting that morning; she had plans to work and appointments scheduled.

"You're sure you don't mind if I don't see you home," he said once again, not wishing to offend.

"I prefer you
not
see me home," she replied with a smile. "Just in case my family is parked on my doorstep."

"You know best." He leaned in and gently kissed her.

"Thank you for a most enjoyable… time," she whispered. "You certainly know how to entertain a lady."

"And I consider myself the most fortunate of men," he replied graciously.

She smiled. "Adieu, then, Ranelagh."

"Sam."

"Sam," she repeated, and after a hushed moment glanced past him to the sidewalk.