Bound to Be a Groom (2 page)

She held it slightly away from her body. “Do you fancy my reticule?”

His eyes flew up to hers.

Spectacular eyes, she had to confess. They were just like Pia’s—that familiar greenish blue that made her think of the Caribbean Sea and the places the two of them had dreamt of spending their future. Places like Cartagena or Hispaniola, where she and Pia would live a quiet life of spinsterhood, disguising their passion for one another behind practical worsted dresses and massive studded doors that hid all manner of things.

“Such eyes . . .” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but the color reminded her so much of Pia. Regardless, Sebastian seemed to enjoy the attention.
Useful information
, she thought.
He likes to be noticed.

His smile encouraged her to go on admiring him. It should have been irritating that he wanted his ego stroked—that such a gorgeous man seemed to crave endless praise—but Anna found it endearing. She was surprised to realize how much she liked the idea of Sebastian softening under her care, bending to her will. She wanted to stroke him.

“The blue of your eyes reminds me of—” She hesitated, then continued more carefully. “—places in the New World, places I’ve heard of but never seen.”

He looked interested then, and not merely in the flush of her cheeks or the moisture of her plump lower lip. “I was on my way there . . . before this transpired.” He said the last with an impatient toss of his gloved hand in the general direction of the bride and groom. She admired the way the kidskin molded to his strong fingers.

“Your hand is quite something, as well,” she said in a slightly rougher voice.

He smiled again, turning his hand this way and that, as if he’d never before taken a moment to look at it. “Really? I have two in fact.” He presented his left hand as evidence, then lifted his right forearm for her to rest her hand upon. “May I escort you into the
alcázar
, Lady Anna?”

“I’m no lady, I’m afraid. A lowly miss.”

He kept his arm extended. “The offer still stands . . . my dear Anna.”

And there it was.
My
. For a few minutes or hours or days, she would be his. He had knowledge and experience.

She needed both.

She placed her gloved hand on the fine fabric of his dark-green jacket, lightly at first, then with a grip borne of excitement as his muscles flexed and shifted beneath her fingertips. She was loath to admit that the low, throbbing heat between her legs was not entirely the result of conjuring her passion for Pia.

His eyes came to rest on her lower lip, wet from her constant back-and-forth nervous licking with the tip of her tongue. “Do stop that, please,” he begged.

But she didn’t stop. She only paused for a moment, and instead of withdrawing that flicking little pink tip, she challenged him with her eyes. The flare of her audacity sent fire into his blood. She opened her lips wider and let her tongue drag a leisurely circle around the entire red, wet opening.

He did stumble that time.

Sebastian was no longer deceived by all that virginal frailty—that impossibly elegant neck with the birthmark at the base near the lacy edge of her gown, the arms and legs that moved like delicate damselfly wings. “I see you use a convent education and a pale dress to disguise yourself, much as I use a family name and a sword.”

Her eyes widened at his brash speech, but she didn’t reply.

“I know what it is to live behind a mask, Anna.”

He also knew what rested behind her careful shell: something hot and honest and demanding.

The man he presented to the world was the strong, strapping soldier; the agile, competent horseman; the eldest son of a powerful landowner; the heir being groomed to follow in his father’s illustrious footsteps; even the rebellious rogue. Not one of them was the real man, the lover who craved nothing more than to be completely subdued by a powerful, knowing partner. Or two. To be taken in hand and made to fulfill every outrageous need, to experience the freedom he only found in submission.

He must have sighed at the thought as he looked ahead to the castle in the near distance.

Anna squeezed his arm to get his attention. “Perhaps the two of us shall find one another behind the mask, then?” she offered.

He took his time meeting her gaze, letting his eyes slowly caress the turn of her bodice. Her breasts were small, but he saw them respond to his consideration, two firm, puckering tips forming beneath the pale silk as he rudely stared. If he could please her with a look, he could only begin to imagine how he might please her with his fingers or lips.

When their eyes met, he was certain she knew the nature and extent of his thoughts. “I should like that very much,” he replied softly.

Their intimate conversation had slowed their pace somewhat, but they were nigh on the castle walls when one of his friends jabbed his ribs as he passed. “Step lively, Seb. Don’t want to hinder the lady.”

This was no lady
, he wanted to call after his mate. This was a hidden world of sensual delight, his for the plucking.

“Where did you learn to do that with your tongue?” His voice was rough around the edges, hard from repressing the urge to drop to his knees and burrow under her gown right there in the shadow of the castle’s portcullis.

She smiled, tightening her lips around her teeth, then spoke with that soft convent voice he was coming to recognize as another subtle layer of her nuanced disguise. “I’m sorry. My lips . . . they tingle sometimes, and it helps to . . . soothe them.” She tested the theory, letting her tongue pass slowly across her upper lip. “Yes. It makes them feel better somehow.”

Enough. Enough about tongues and desire and soothing the tingling feelings or some such rot. He hustled her into the castle along with the sea of other guests.

He knew the layout of the
alcázar
from several visits in his childhood. Guiding Anna gently away from the masses of people, down a separate hallway, as if he were innocently leading her to a view of the mountains from a particularly scenic balcony, he turned the black wrought iron handle on a heavy wooden door and pulled her inside.

Victory
.

He shut the door behind him and peeled off his gloves. The two of them were in a vast library with thousands of volumes and nary a human in sight.

“Do it again, please,” he asked. “With your tongue.” Slowly untying the silk ribbon of her bonnet, Sebastian let his knuckles trail along her milky skin as he spoke. She was distracted by the grandeur of the room, marveling at the countless books.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she whispered.

“Neither have I,” he agreed, touching the sensitive edge of her lower lip with two fingers.

She gasped briefly and looked so genuinely surprised by his touch that he faltered. “You can’t possibly play the blushing virgin now . . . after you . . .” But he didn’t move his fingers, and she didn’t pull away. Her dark-amber eyes were now fixed on his.

Then she did the most miraculous thing imaginable. She opened her mouth wider and drew his bare fingers into that wet, succulent warmth. Her eyes were still wide for a moment, but then they fluttered closed in sensual delight. She worked his fingers with her mouth, letting her tongue swirl and lick as she sucked and moaned.

He could have come from that—from looking at the way her cheeks drew in and from her guttural moans vibrating from the tips of his fingers to the throbbing tip of his cock.

“Good God, woman!”

She emerged from her temporary reverie—eyes glassy, lips wet—and slowly withdrew his fingers from her mouth. She still held on to his wrist with both her small hands. She’d grabbed him in that way at some point in her ecstasy, controlling his pace in and out of her mouth.

“Did it feel as nice for you?” she asked, almost innocent.

He shook his head in stunned disbelief. She was an angel from heaven. From some carnal heaven, he amended, that produced an angel born wanting to suck a man’s cock for the sheer pleasure it brought
her
.

“Yes,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “It felt very nice.”

“For me too,” she said, but she released him and wandered away toward the endless shelves of hand-tooled leather, as if her enjoyment of the act had been somewhat unexpected, something to be examined rather than indulged.

Sebastian followed her. That in itself was remarkable. He could not recall willingly following a woman. In bed, of course—more than willingly—but not like this. Anna was a lady, no matter how lowly a
miss
she claimed to be, and it was as if his two distinct worlds were colliding. Social obligation and base desire were finally making one another’s acquaintance, like two people who turn a corner and hurtle into each other.

She was trailing her fingertips lightly across the bindings of a complete set of Shakespeare.

“So you can read, I take it?” He came up behind her and circled her waist with his arms. She leaned back into him, but again, it was almost absently, as if he offered a convenient perch for her to use while she perused the library. Nothing more. The idea pleased him, the idea of making it his purpose in life to be of
use
to this woman.

“I can. I love to read.” Her finger came to rest on
The Tempest
. “But I’ve had very little access to . . . so many things.”

She turned in his arms, staring into those blue-green eyes of his, wondering how honest she could afford to be. Some version of the truth would free her to ask all sorts of relevant questions, to make him an accomplice of sorts. He seemed like he’d be game.

“Sebastian . . .” They’d been properly introduced, but it was wholly improper for her to call him by his first name. Then again, she was already alone with him, unchaperoned, having recently lost herself in the sensation of sucking his fingers until her sex was throbbing so hard she’d forgotten her own name. Calling him by his Christian name did not seem to sit quite so high on the long list of improprieties. What with one thing and another.

“Yeeessss . . .” he drawled. He’d begun swaying her gently in his arms, as if they were on the deck of a slow-rolling ship.

“I . . .” She hesitated and then cursed her unfamiliar cowardice. He was quite right in letting her know she couldn’t very well play the blushing virgin when she’d more or less lured him into their current embrace. He was staring at her mouth again—making love to her mouth with his eyes, really—which made it easier to blurt out a portion of the truth. “I would very much like to . . . do things . . . with . . . to . . . I would . . .”
Well, this is going abominably.

He smiled and kept up that gentle motion, pulling her nearer with each sway. “That all sounds positively delightful,” he said, “but perhaps a bit vague.”

“Vague?” she prompted.

He inhaled. “I tend to prefer very clear directions.” He was quite close by then. In fact, the hard pressure of his cock was resting against her stomach at that very moment.

“You do?” she asked, surprised and delighted at her good fortune.

He nodded and then looked adorably sheepish as he pressed his length along her belly.

I can do this
, she thought.

He felt big, but certainly no bigger than anything she and Pia had used to penetrate one another. Fingers at first. Then tongues. Then more fingers. Anna’s whole hand one time, after much patient, delectable coaxing. Anna felt the heat pool in her belly at the memory, at the way their shared desire had ultimately opened Pia up to her so completely.

She closed her eyes, overcome with memories.