A Devil Named DeVere (The Devil DeVere) (28 page)

He gave her a predatory smile. "How else, indeed?"

***

Her hand was
still wrapped around him, and he was still slick with oil. Diana squeezed lightly, loving the feel of him in her hand. She gazed up at him with her most seductive smile and ran her tongue slowly over her lips. "Lie down, Ludovic," she commanded. "You wanted me to take you in my mouth. It is my wish now to do so."

"So this is to be my third torture? I am to suffer the agony of your delectable mouth?" His pupils flared with desire.

"Yes," she replied.

"And such a lovely mouth it is." He brushed his thumb along the seam of her gently parted lips. "You were made for this, Diana." He kissed her again, slowly, deeply, thoroughly, gently nibbling the tender flesh of her lower lip and sucking it into his mouth before slowly releasing. It was a kiss intended to rekindle the flames smoldering deep in her belly. It did much more.

She pressed him backward. He complied readily until she attempted to straddle his legs as he had done earlier to her.

"No," he said. "Turn around."

"What?"

"You heard me. I want you to face away from me."

"But that places my—"

"Delectable bottom within reach? Precisely, my dear." His words held an underlying menace, a promise of the most illicit and decadent retaliation that set every nerve on full alert. "You may do your worst, love, but just remember, two can play the same game."

With her pulse racing in anticipation of his threat, Diana lowered her nether half onto his chest, her senses awaking to the feel of his warm, hard body against her sensitive inner thighs and the light brush of his chest hair against her bottom. She knelt forward, allowing her loose hair to cascade over his sex, caressing it in a silken fall. She was aware that the motion lifted her arse and exposed her most feminine places to his seeking gaze. Although discomposing to her, she knew he would find it unbearably arousing.

Holding his staff in one hand, she caressed his heavy sac with the other while plying whisper-soft kisses around the periphery and down the underside of his
kamış.
She closed her eyes, relishing the softness of his flesh against her mouth before parting her lips. A subtle shudder overtook him as she drew him into her mouth, and she smiled inwardly.
He will soon be reduced to wet clay, indeed!

Or so she thought...until the first touch of his hand. He
cupped the globes of her buttocks, stroking both his thumbs along her cleft in a light and rhythmic caress that was impossible to ignore. Intent on distraction, she drew another inch of him into her mouth, gliding and swirling her tongue along his length and sucking hard upon the near-release.

He slid his hands lower, his thumbs caressing the moist folds of her labia.
Dear God! It has been so long.
He delved deeper, parting her folds, tracing, teasing, locating her hidden nub, circling it with those all-too-skillful fingers. She couldn't suppress it any longer. She moaned
,
a noise that reverberated in her mouth, the vibrations eliciting a low guttural sound.

In a tit-for-tat, she focused on her breathing, relaxing, taking him deeper, to the back of her throat. She teased with her tongue and suckled with her mouth, bent on driving him mad. She could feel the tension coiling in him, his release building, but then he raised her hips.

Suddenly it was
his
tongue, swirling, teasing, licking, and laving her mindless with pleasure. The flames lapping at her belly ignited, sending heat and moisture and mayhem through a body that had been neglected for so very long. Her body quivered, her passage ached and convulsed with the need to be filled. She tried to suppress it, to focus on his pleasure and ignore her own, yet her climax continued to grow.
It is too much!
She couldn't allow him that power over her again, that mind-numbing, intoxicating pleasure that had turned her inside out and destroyed her will.

"No! Stop!" she cried out. "That was not the bargain we made. I won't let you do it again."

Grasping her hips, he pivoted her to face him, his expression perplexed. "You won't let me give you pleasure?"

Diana's heart squeezed, and her eyes burned. "Yes! No! I don't want it. I have given you all you asked and have upheld the bargain. Why isn't it enough? Why do you wish to take more? You have my body. Are you the devil that you must also demand my soul?"

"Why?" he replied in a gravelly voice. "Because I have a need to see, touch, and taste your reciprocal pleasure. It's all I can offer you. Fucking is what I'm good at. It's what I know. I am an indisputable master of it, and so it's my gift to you—mindless, bone-melting, heart-sundering pleasure."

"What do you mean it's all you can offer? You speak as if you have no capacity for greater feeling."

He laughed. "But haven't you already implied that all of my
feelings
terminate in my cock?"

"You would like me to believe that, wouldn't you? It's a convenient excuse for you. I spoke out of resentment, but I know better now. I have seen your weak moments, Ludovic—your protectiveness, your generosity. These are proofs of underlying sentiment, even of sensibility. You are more than capable of love, yet you repress it within yourself and refuse to accept it from others."

"Bollocks!" he exclaimed. "Is that what you really think?"

"It's what I
know
."

"All right, Diana. While we are at it, why can't
you
let go? Why can't
you
trust anyone?"

"You already know why. I let my guard down
once
in my life, only to later regret it."

He gripped her shoulders. "I told you why I left. Why do you still refuse to understand?"

She could no longer hold in the wave of emotion. It burst from her with violence. "Because you turned my life upside down and disappeared! I never heard from you, either while you were away, or even worse, upon your return!"

"But it never could have worked between us as things were, don't you see that? The scandal would have destroyed a woman like you. Caroline would have ensured it. That's why I left, Diana,
in hope time and distance would diminish the threat to you. Caroline wanted to use you to control me, but when I left, she could do nothing.

"I also knew I wasn't prepared
then
to give you what you needed. I thought it best that you move on with your life. I wanted you to find the contentment I denied myself by leaving."

"I found no contentment, just resignation to my misery," she said. "And what could
you
possibly know about what I needed?"

"I know you much better than you think, my dear. You have a two-sided nature, one that craves to be cherished on the one hand and to be fucked senseless on the other. The second I could easily and willingly meet, yet I suffered reservations about being able to provide the first. You know I have never believed in monogamy."

"Yes," she said tightly. "You have made that clear on many occasions."

He made a frustrated sound. "Because I have seen so few true examples of it in my life. Look no further than my own originations, for God's sake!"

"What of Ned and Annalee? And what of your own brother, Hew?" she demanded. "Do you not believe him capable of fidelity to Vesta?"

"I expect Hew will cherish his bride."

"And I believe she will adore him in turn for all of her days. But love requires a
desire
to sacrifice, Ludovic. To give up purely self-indulgent pleasure in return for something deeper and more meaningful."

"Have you ever loved before, Diana?" he asked, deftly turning the tables.

The question caught her off guard. "No," she said softly, but then her armor came up. "I once thought perhaps I could have, but I never really had the chance to find out."

"Is that what truly eats at you?" he asked. "Incessantly and relentlessly plagues you? Refuses to ever give you any peace?" He dug deeper. "The lost opportunity? Never knowing for certain whether you have the capacity for it or not?" He twisted the knife.

"Yes! Damn you!" she cried, feeling the brunt of his counterstrike full force.

"Damn me, indeed," he murmured, "for I suffer the same."

Diana was stunned by his confession. She regarded him, breathless. Speechless. Thoughtless. She searched his face long and deep, but found no trace of guile or mockery in his fathomless blue eyes.

"I told you that you were always more to me than the others," he said. "I did and still do feel
something
for you, but is it lasting? How can I know this? How can I promise you my interest won't wane in a month, a year, or perhaps two? How can I trust myself to be all that you need?"

"All?" she said at last. "You think I would expect so very much?"

"Frankly, yes." He scowled. "I
cannot
and
will not
be ruled by another, Diana."

"But I have asked nothing of you."

"But you would."

"And you actually care what I would expect? You fear you would disappoint?"

"Yes!" He raked his damp hair with a groan. "Damn, but this exchange is excruciating!"

"Why must it be so difficult, Ludovic?" She kissed one corner of his mouth. "Do you not think I have some of the same concerns?" And then she kissed the other.

"I cannot wed you," he said woodenly.

"Then it's good I haven't proposed," she replied, now tasting and fully luxuriating in his soft lips.

"I told you already this is a dangerous game. I will give you no quarter." He claimed her mouth, taking his time in a ruinous kiss.

He released her slowly, and it took another moment for her to regain both breath and senses. She cupped his sac, with a smile, lightly fondling him and then teasing his shaft. "What makes you think I will show
you
the least mercy?" His countenance darkened, and his manhood reared almost instantly, evidence of his lust roaring back to life.

At the heated look in his eyes, Diana's heart hammered an erratic tattoo. This game had at first been just a challenge to her. She had come to DeVere girded with illicitly acquired knowledge and mentally prepared to do battle, to use these newfound skills and erotic arts to his own detriment, to turn his voluptuary nature against him. She had desired to see if she did, indeed, have the capacity to enslave him, to wreak the same devastation upon him as he had done to her four years earlier, but now she found herself the victim of her own stratagem. The further they had advanced on their erotic chessboard, the more her own yearnings consumed her.

Certainly DeVere the lover knew the secrets of women and could please her beyond her wildest imaginings, but Diana's feelings, her innermost cravings, represented much more than a culmination of unslaked desire, for she had finally seen DeVere the man—the bored and jaded soul who had tired of the meaningless, carnal pursuits, the one who now thirsted for something more but feared it was beyond his capacity, beyond his reach. But this was what she yearned for above all things, to touch this man in the hidden places, to quell his doubts and fears—as well as her own.

"I am told the most expert of women can bring a man to completion by milking his
kamış
with her
kilif
alone." She boldly guided his pulsing length into the hot, wet cleft between her thighs, the most delicious torment of all, which made them both closed their eyes on a groan. "And that if I master this," she continued with her next breath, "you will belong to me and no other. I have practiced this skill,
Effendi
. Shall I show you how?"

***

"Hell yes." He moaned. "But not in here." They were both coated with oil and a light sheen of sweat. He retrieved the bar of soap and the rough mitt. "Let us finish, for if we're going to finally do this properly and thoroughly, and I promise you we shall, I will have you in my own bed."

The next few minutes were spent making brisk work of
washing each other between fevered kisses and hot, soapy caresses. The touching and mutual cleansing did nothing to palliate the intensity of desire; on the contrary, it was another erotic encounter that served to fuel their burning lust until Diana thought she would soon combust. Without ado, DeVere threw down the soap and mitt and pulled her back into his arms, crushing her against his chest and devouring her equally hungry mouth.

To Diana's chagrin, they didn't even dress before she found herself swept into his arms and carried through the second and third chambers into his apartments beyond. She closed her eyes in mortification upon encountering DeVere's valet, but a guttural curse from the viscount sent the man scrambling. "No one will dare disturb us unless summoned," he promised, kicking the door closed with such force the windows rattled. He carried her across the room and dropped her without ceremony onto the midnight-blue satin counterpane.

He came over her at once, pulling her legs apart and kneeling between. "Playtime is over." He growled. "I will have satisfaction now—as much I want for as long as I please—third heaven be damned!"