The Pleasure Garden: Sacred Vows\Perfumed Pleasures\Rites of Passions (17 page)

“I am so eager to please you, my lord,” the maid murmured between flicks of her tongue.

“How eager? So eager that you would give your body over to me?” She looked up at him through a veil of golden lashes and he saw her pupils dilate, but he did not think it was in fear. Rather curiosity, and perhaps arousal.

“I want you to do everything to me that you have ever thought about.”

“Everything?” he asked, brushing her mouth with the tip of his cock, coaxing her to take him between her swollen lips. They trembled, and he saw how she ran a shaking hand down her smooth ivory thigh, and felt himself grow
thicker, imagining that hand snaking between her thighs and playing in her plump folds.

“What if I wanted to feel my cock between your breasts? Would you let me?” He’d been thinking of that tonight, with Catherine and her beautiful breasts. He had wanted to take her out to the garden and suck them, coat them.

“Yes, my lord,”

His gaze drifted down the maid’s throat and then to her breasts. “Offer them to me.”

She did, and the sight of her breasts in her hands, and her fingers stroking her pebbled nipples, was more than he could bear. He brought her forward and gripped his cock, stroking it between the soft valley of her breasts.

“What if I wanted to come on them?” She gasped as he put his hands to her breasts and squeezed them so that they gripped his cock like her sheath. He pressed his mouth to her ear and thrust his hips once more, filling the valley of her breasts with his prick. “What if I want to come in your mouth?”

She didn’t have to answer him, for he knew she would bring him to orgasm and keep him inside her mouth until he was limp and spent. And he did that, imagining it was Catherine drinking him down.

She would soon learn her place, he thought, as he began to lose control. Soon, she would know who her lord and master was.

He cried out, finishing off in the maid’s mouth. Closing his eyes, he thought of Catherine and his plan, and how absolutely stunning she would look on her knees, sucking him.

When he opened his eyes he saw the ammunition he needed. The one thing that would bind her to him. The only thing Joscelyn could not do for her.

“My lord,” Annie purred. “Again?”

He smiled and lifted the maid onto the desk. “All night,” he said. “Till you can’t stand.”

An hour later, Catherine found herself still dressed in the scarlet gown. She had dismissed her maid, her mind a jumble of thoughts, her body quivering with emotion—desire, anger, fear.

Edward had discovered them. What would he do to Joscelyn?

She pressed her head against the windowpane. Whenever she came to visit at Fairfax, she always chose this room because it looked out over the garden—and because she had been able to watch Joscelyn return from riding, or a swim in the pond. When she couldn’t sleep, she would rise from her bed and sit on the little window bench and look down at the desolate copse, and feel some sort of comfort. The garden was as isolated as she.

Now, all she could see was the fountain, and she couldn’t help imagining how she must have looked with her chest bared and her thighs draped over Joscelyn’s shoulders. What must he think of her? They hadn’t even spoken or seen one another in three years, and there she was kissing him wildly and parting her thighs for him.

She would have given him more, too, if Edward had not come in search of her. Perhaps it was providence he had. For she surely would have allowed Joscelyn to make love to her, and then where would she be? Even more deeply in love with him, that’s where.

The bargain was set. Her role in it firmly outlined. There was no room in her life for Joscelyn, no matter how much she wished it.

The door opened with a nearly inaudible squeak and
Catherine anxiously turned her head toward the sound. The sizzle of moisture against the flickering candle flame sounded above the closing door before the room was snuffed into darkness. Blackness cloaked her and the click of a key turning in a lock sent gooseflesh erupting along every pore of her body.

Oh, God, was it Edward? Had he finally come to take her?

Curling her fingers into her fists, she stemmed the urge to whimper. She was not ready for this. To have Edward in her bed. Her body.

A deep and melodious whisper erupted in the quiet, sending her anxieties scurrying.
Joscelyn.
“I had to come and check on you.”

“I’m well.” Swallowing hard, Catherine tried to remain cool. Distant. There could be nothing between them. It was best to continue on as she meant to go along—apart from Joscelyn.

“Please, you should leave.”

The darkness in the room unnerved her. She wanted to see him. To turn and gaze upon him. She did not want this disembodied voice in the darkness.

He reached out, gathered her up, and though she protested, he ignored her weak objection and snaked his arms around her middle, bringing her flush against his chest, a chest that felt firm and warm beneath his clothing. “You were left aching. Unfinished,” he murmured. “I want to remedy that. I want to fulfill your desires.”

Joscelyn brought her up against the wall, holding her upright with his thighs pressed against hers. His fingers laced through hers, holding their entwined hands against her side, while his other hand trailed down her throat to her décolletage and down over her breasts. He cupped her
and she felt his breath hot beneath her ear, smelled the scent of him, spice and claret, beneath her nose. His thumb slid over her nipple, which hardened painfully beneath her silk gown, and he moaned deep in his throat when she whimpered and squirmed against him.

“You protest this desire, but I can feel it. Your body betrays you,” he whispered as his finger slid away from her breast and skated down her belly. “You want to know what it is to feel passion. You want the feel of my hands on you. You want to remember what it is like to have me inside you.” His fingers were now at the junction of her thighs, and he was stroking his fingertips against the curls that lay beneath her gown.

Her stomach coiled and tightened and she felt her blood thrum heavily in her veins. She whimpered as he pressed himself against her.

“Do I frighten you with my passion, Catherine?” he asked as he kissed her throat. “Or does it excite you?” She moaned and her legs weakened when he pressed his lips, then his tongue, to her breasts. “It excites you, doesn’t it? It is not a shiver of fear, but of desire, a yearning for more. You don’t want Edward. You want me.”

Despite her resolve not to, she hissed, “Yes,” when his fingers expertly reach for the edge of her bodice. Slowly he inched it down until her breasts were nearly spilling out of her gown. “Please,” she cried, arching her back when his nails caressed her flesh scant inches from her nipples.

“Are you wet?” he asked, his lips brushing her ear as he whispered the words. His knuckle traced her jaw. She shivered when his fingers touched her skin and his breath caressed her throat. “If I were to touch you, to spread your legs and feel you, would you be ready to come for me?”

She pressed against him, unable to talk or think. How
could she when he was even now lowering her bodice so that her breasts were exposed? With his thumb and forefinger, he gently rolled her nipple, and automatically she reached for his wrist, knowing she should stop this. But he refused her and instead brought her hand to his trousers and pressed it against the bulge behind the flap.

“Take my cock in your hand, Catherine, and pleasure me.”

Her blood quickened when, instead of leaving her to fumble with the buttons, he tore the flap open and she felt his erection spring free. With ruthless determination he curled her fingers around his thickness and pressed himself into her hand.

“Touch me, Catherine,” he groaned. “I am quite at your mercy. I always have been.”

She did not know what to do, other than to slide her fingers along the satiny skin. She must have been doing an admirable job for he groaned and thrust his hips forward, sliding his erection up the length of her palm. Closing her eyes, she let her head rest against the wall and allowed herself to feel his warmth covering the front of her body. His mouth was everywhere, on her throat, the tops of her breasts, her lips. His hands were roaming the contours of her figure and his fingers cupped and stroked every inch of her burning skin. Her heart was pounding so fast she felt light-headed, and yet she could not stop what was happening even if she desired to. This passion, the feel of him surrounding her, the intimacy of his tongue in her mouth as he possessed her lips, were nothing she’d ever thought she’d experience. It was heaven, bliss, an erotic sensation she could easily find herself addicted to.

In some cognizant part of her mind she tried to recall the fact that this man could not be hers. The knowledge
made her desperate to hold him, to clutch at him so that she would never be parted from him. This night must be their last together, and she wanted it never to end.

Fisting her fingers in his silky hair, she brought him closer, seeking his heat and his tongue dancing with hers. He growled and brought his hand up to her throat. His thumb rubbed the pulsating vein in her neck, lulling her into a dreamlike state.

Tearing his mouth from hers, he thrust his hips forward again and she curled her fingers tighter around his erection. Sliding her hand down, then up, she pleasured him, listening to his sucking breaths, feeling the tightening of his body.

He reached between them and placed his hand atop hers, showing her how to hold him and stroke him. When he increased the rhythm, his breathing was a ragged rasp.

Needing to explore the man who held her entranced, she let her fingers slide into his hair and then glide toward his face. With a sharp gasp he pulled away. “The bed,” he commanded, reaching for her hand. “I ache with desire to be inside you.”

“Why won’t you let me touch you?”

He cut off her words by lowering his head to her breast and circling her nipple with the tip of his tongue. “No questions tonight, Catherine. Only pleasure.”

Gripping his linen shirt, she felt his heat sear her fingers, his muscles hard and contoured beneath her hands. She sighed when he continued to lave her nipple while he palmed her other breast. Snaking her hands beneath his shirt, she slid her fingers up his smooth skin, kneading the muscles that bunched and tightened. Without warning he shoved himself out of her arms and reached for her hands.

“You don’t have to touch me. It is for me to touch and pleasure you.”

“I want to feel all of you,” she protested, trying to make out his face in the darkness.

“No,” he muttered, releasing her hands. She felt him move away from her, then heard his boot scrape against the floor.

For three years he had been waiting for this day. Six months ago he had returned to England. His hunger had only increased, becoming almost an obsession in the ensuing months while he waited for her to arrive at Fairfax House and come to him, so that he could show her everything he felt in his heart. She had kept him waiting until he thought he would go mad with wanting.

And here was his chance. To take her. She was willing, and he was…afraid.

Damn it, he was what he was. Ruined. Burned. Sooner or later she would discover the truth, and then what?
Have this night,
he told himself.
Enjoy her. Don’t run away from what she is offering you.

Stepping closer to her, he curved his fingers around her shoulders, sinking them into her soft skin, and was lost. “I’ve come for you,” he growled before he crushed her mouth with his. “I won’t deny myself.”

She went slack and crumbled into his embrace, kissing him with an open, searching mouth; clutching his hair in a fierce hold as she struggled to bring him closer while he sucked at her lips and tongue.

Wanton and willing, she told him without words that she was ready for his penetration. Already she was rubbing her pelvis against his, searching for the pleasure she knew he could give her.

Tearing his mouth from hers, he kissed a path across her cheek to her ear. “For three years I lived in that hell, and it was only the thought of you, of coming back to you, that kept me alive. I’ve had you my dreams, every position, every wicked, depraved act enacted in my mind. You know what I want,” he said in a husky whisper as he ran his hands along her hips and started to pull at the silk skirt and the layers of heavy petticoats beneath. “You know what I’ve come for.”

“Joscelyn,” she panted, trying to kiss him. But he angled his head so that he could nibble on her jaw and the tender flesh of her throat. He groaned as his hand found the front of her drawers and he discovered, as he flattened his palm against her mound, that she had already dampened the India muslin with her arousal. “You’re weeping for it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said with a frantic, eager moan. “I ache. I burn.”

“For any man, or only for me?”

She tipped her head against the wall at her back and looked at him with such honesty that he felt the edge of his anger melt away. His hunger, however, only raged more out of control.

“For you. I have lain awake all these nights thinking of you, dreaming of you. My body would not forget you. My heart could not, either. Joscelyn!”

His name was a soft, startled cry from her lips as he brought her up against the wall and pressed his body to hers. His hands, large and trembling, snaked beneath her gown, rifling among her petticoats until he found the opening of her drawers and slipped his hand inside, cupping her with his palm.

“Slick and wet. I can feel your arousal seeping between
your swollen lips. Tell me you’re ready for my tongue and cock.”

“Cock,” she admitted.

Nearly mindless now, Joscelyn pressed his cock to her hip while he captured her lips with his and began thrusting his tongue in and out of her mouth, an innuendo of what was to come. “I, too, am already wet,” he rasped as he tore his mouth from hers and bit gently at her neck with his teeth. “Your body needs what I can give you, and Lord knows that I need—I
must
—feel your quim squeezing me, milking my climax from me.”