Jess Michaels (3 page)

She was in trouble and she could only pray that Stephan could help—at least with her business woes. No one beyond herself could make her behave less foolishly when it came to Nathan and the lust he stirred in her.

“You seem distracted, Cass,” Stephan drawled, as he slowly twirled a carved ivory dildo she had been designing for a client in his hands.

Cassandra pursed her lips as she watched him turn the
object around and around, as if it were a cigar or a pencil. “That’s not a toy, you know,” she said, her tone a bit harsher than she had intended.

He smiled and just the corner of one side of his mouth lifting slowly. “Yes, it is, sweet. Remember?”

He arched both eyebrows and Cassandra rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. That isn’t yours; you shouldn’t be…
playing
with it.”

Stephan stood up from where he was sprawled on her settee and moved toward her slowly. “Are you certain you wouldn’t like to take me up on my offer to test all your designs?”

When he reached her, Cassandra snatched the toy from his hands and gave him a playful push. “I didn’t ask you here for that. But I do have another topic that perhaps you
can
assist me with.”

Stephan’s smile faltered just a fraction before he shrugged and returned to his seat. “Pity that. So what is on your mind, Cass?”

She found herself stroking the toy in her hand and shoved it back into its drawer with a huff of breath. Stephan was a bad influence. “When I first began designing my toys, you and I talked about the potential risk to my reputation and my livelihood as a seamstress.” She frowned. “And you were correct that as long as I was discreet, used trusted third-party contacts whenever I could, and chose my clientele wisely that I could continue my double life. But…”

Stephan straightened up. “But?”

She pursed her lips. There was no easy way to say this.
“What if someone knew about what I did and wanted to make my activities public? What if they wished to make my toys an issue with the upper-class women of the
ton
?”

Now it was Stephan who frowned, and the expression was so rare on his handsome face that Cassandra’s heart stuttered. She wasn’t going to like his answer and she knew it before he uttered one syllable.

“You have many powerful friends,” he began. “There is Darby, who still speaks very highly of you. And the Earl of Rothschild has remained a patron of your little side business even since his marriage.”

“Yes,” Cassandra said softly. “Both of them have been very kind, even after we ended our affairs.”

He nodded. “While I don’t have the titles of the other two, I do have some influence and money. If someone began to make trouble for you, we could probably protect you in some ways, but…”

He broke off and Cassandra clenched her fists to muster up a bit of strength. “But? Please continue, Stephan. Let us have it all.”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “But once enough people knew the truth about your second living, I cannot lie to you and tell you that it wouldn’t damage you. I would wager that a good many women would stop coming to you, preaching loudly about your bad influence on their darling daughters. And the men who utilized your toys might stay away as well.”

Cassandra swallowed. “Because the trick of such a delicate
business is discretion and there would be no discretion anymore. Too many people would be watching.”

With a nod, Stephan continued, “If it caused a big enough scandal, the papers might even pick up the story.”

Cassandra covered her eyes with her hands. “Which would spell the end of me. Yes. That is what I thought, but I suppose I held out hope that you would provide me with some magical solution.”

Stephan got to his feet and crossed the room to her. Taking her hands lightly in his own, he stared down at her. “So this is not a hypothetical, then. Someone is truly threatening you? Who is it? I promise to have him killed by noon tomorrow. Or the very least, severely terrified.”

Cassandra laughed at the gentle teasing in her friend’s voice. No matter how he tried to lighten her mood, though, the facts remained the same. “I don’t think murder is the answer, tempting as it may be. And he is not a man to be so easily terrified,” she said, as she drew her hands away and paced to her window. Down below was a pretty garden she loved to tend herself when she wasn’t overpowered by work. Even the budding evidence of eminent flowers on her rosebushes couldn’t make her feel better.

The garden, after all, was paid for by her gowns and toys, as were her servants, her food, her bills, and the money she sent home to her family. Her living was made by her own hand, and she had little to fall back on unless she returned to the life of a mistress. She hadn’t hated that role. In fact, she had found great pleasure in her protectors.

But living by another’s whim terrified her. Even her past lovers, who had been kind and good to her, were not immune to eventual boredom with what she had to offer. Once that happened, a mistress was at the mercy of the next gentleman who showed interest. And if she were shunned by good Society, that would make finding a quality protector all the more difficult.

No, she preferred her independent life. She preferred to take a lover because she wanted him, not because she needed what he could provide financially. The passion and pleasure were so much more real then.

“Who, Cassandra?” Stephan pressed. “Who would threaten you? You have been very careful about who knows your business. The few who do are rich men in no need of taking your money. And you have so many satisfied customers that I doubt any of them would threaten their own pleasure by exposing your identity.”

“He is not a customer.” She scowled. “And his price is vengeance; it has nothing to do with money. It is a man who believes I wronged him in a personal matter. A matter of the heart.”

Stephan’s eyes widened. “Ah, well, that kind of blackmail tends to be the most insidious because there is rarely satisfaction on either side in the end. What can I do?”

Cassandra looked at him, truly seeing him again for the first time since they began their conversation. As he had said, he did not have the influence of some of her other lovers, but
she was no longer close enough to any of those men to ask for their help. Even if she did, what could they do? There was no escaping Nathan’s demand, no bartering for something other than what he wanted.

He wouldn’t be satisfied until she was in his bed—controlled by him, surrendered to him sexually, physically and emotionally. She shivered and, to her dismay, it wasn’t a shiver of distaste. Damn him and damn herself.

“There is nothing that can be done,” she said softly, “except what I can do myself. But I do appreciate your hearing my plight and offering your assistance. Just your ear was enough.”

She patted him on the cheek and he caught her hand, holding it gently against the rough stubble that was beginning to form there in the late hours of the afternoon. “I could at least help you ease the tension.”

Cassandra smiled, even though there was an earnestness to his expression that made her heart ache. She had often suspected that Stephan might want her again, but now it was clear. And despite the fact that he was too damned attractive for his own good, she didn’t want him. Their friendship meant too much to threaten.

And there was another man who filled her mind with wanton desires. It wouldn’t be fair.

“No, Stephan. Though I am tempted by your offer, I don’t think so.” She gently extracted her hand from his cheek.

With a shrug, he said, “Well, if you won’t allow me to reduce the strain, I hope you’ll find some other way. If you feel
you must face this unnamed man alone, you will want to do it with as much calm as possible. And right now you are wound so tightly that I could strum you like a lute string.”

Cassandra nodded as she walked him to the door. “Perhaps you are correct. Though I’m not certain how to do that at present.”

He smiled as he paused in the foyer. “Of course you do, my dear. You make toys. Go play.”

C
assandra stood in her bedroom, staring at the open chest of drawers beside her big four-poster bed. The chamber sparkled from a dozen lit candles and the roaring fire her servants had prepared to heat the room.

As a designer of sinful toys for the rich and titled, Cassandra had spent a great deal of time testing out the merits of each design. It was an enormously pleasurable pursuit, one that had given a few of her lovers as much excitement as it had her.

But she had been increasingly busy as of late. No man had been in her bed for half a year, perhaps a little more. The sheer night shifts and sinful undergarments she had designed hung unworn in her armoire, while some of her favorite toys in her drawer had been ignored for a long while. Restraints wrapped
in soft fur, little clips to tighten and arouse her nipples or her clit, blindfolds to heighten sensation and awareness—all of them had been sadly unused.

Only one toy had come out of the drawer with any regularity. A glass dildo similar in size to the ivory one she had been working on downstairs. It was her own personal plaything.

Stephan said she was coursing with tension. And he was correct that she better face Nathan when she was relaxed and satiated. Perhaps then his presence wouldn’t make her wet and ready, as weak physically as her mind seemed to be when it came to him.

She grasped the long, heavy weight of the toy and withdrew it, then shrugged from her silken robe. Freshly bathed, she was warm and ready for pleasure after such a trying day.

Resting back on her pillows, she opened her legs and began to stroke the glass head of the substitute cock along the swollen lips of her sex. Her body had experienced this pleasure enough times that it began to react almost immediately. She shut her eyes and enjoyed the pulse of desire as her outer lips swelled and her pussy grew hot and wet in readiness.

Smiling, Cassandra felt her body relax, open, flush with excitement. This was the gift she gave her clients. She wasn’t ashamed of helping to enhance their pleasure. And she wasn’t ashamed of wanting and needing her own. She had let go of shame a long time ago.

Slowly, she let the head of the cool glass rod slip inside her waiting body. Instantly, her body tightened around the sur
face, clinging when she gently teased the shaft away. She delved deeper the next time, then withdrew a second time. Again and again, she repeated the shallow strokes until finally the toy was fully seated in her channel and she pulsed in pleasure around its rapidly heating surface.

Cassandra understood her own desire. She knew how to bring herself to swift and satisfying release. Immediately she thrust with the motion and speed that always brought her to orgasm quickly. The wet slap of the glass as she fucked herself and her low moans of pleasure were the only sounds in her quiet room. She arched her hips against the building pressure, reaching higher and higher for release.

Just as she neared the pinnacle, the image of Nathan’s face entered her mind. She cried out, recalling the feel of his arms crushing her to his chest, the scent of his skin. She could almost taste his mouth, feel the hard thrust of his aroused cock through his trousers as he ground against her.

Her orgasm was powerful, the strongest she had experienced in quite some time. She thrashed on the bed, her eyes squeezed shut, trying not to lose the erotic images of Nathan, even though she hated herself for using his blackmail—his demands—to find her pleasure.

Finally, the quaking tremors of her wet body subsided. She shivered one last time around the glass cock in her hand and then withdrew it with a soft pop.

She set the toy aside and flopped a forearm over her eyes as her heart rate slowed to a normal rhythm and her breath
became deeper and less erratic. Although she was warm and flushed with pleasure now, allowing herself release through her toy hadn’t done what she desired.

She had hoped that bringing herself to orgasm would release the tension that Nathan’s demands…no, not just his demands, the man himself had created. Instead, she now felt more tightly wound than ever. Pleasure had turned to fantasy. And soon, no matter how much she tried to pretend she didn’t want it to happen, fantasy would become reality.

As she drifted off into fitful, erotically charged sleep, she mused on how she couldn’t wait for that moment.

Nathan stood in Cassandra’s parlor. It was not the one he had intruded upon the previous day, the room she had converted into a studio for her work, but a different place. He gazed around with a frown. He preferred the cluttered disarray of her workroom, where her personality and passion invaded every corner. This chamber revealed
nothing
about Cassandra’s life. It was plain and pretty and it looked like any other parlor in any other rich person’s home in London.

But Cassandra wasn’t like anyone else. She was tempting and frustrating. She was a seductress, a liar, not to be trusted. He couldn’t forget that, no matter how much this unwanted, driving, angry need to touch her overwhelmed him.

She was the enemy.

The door to the room opened and Cassandra stepped inside. As she quietly closed the door behind her, Nathan straightened up and stared at her. When he last saw her all
those years ago, her red hair had been tangled down around her shoulders, she had been wearing a half-unbuttoned gown, well made by her tailor father, but not fancy. She had been laughing and making false promises about meeting him that night, running away with him to Gretna Green.

She had looked like exactly what she was, an upper middle class daughter of a man in trade.

Today she looked like a queen. Her green gown was the finest silk money could buy, draped perfectly over her form in what would surely be the grandest style of the Season. The cut of her bodice accentuated her full breasts, despite the fact that a more boyish figure was the current rage. And her hair was bound up in a complicated, layered and curled arrangement on the top of her head. Something that would require at least one servant to assist in creating.

Her clothing and her hair and everything about the way she held herself said that she was a lady of quality. A lie. But a well-told one.

“Good morning,” Cassandra said, intruding upon his reverie with a thin-lipped, humorless smile. “I did not expect you to return to my home so soon.”

“Hoping for a reprieve?” he asked. “That I might forget about yesterday’s conversation?”

She sighed. “If you did not forget about me during the four years we have been apart, I think it would be foolish to hope you would forget me in the span of less than twenty-four hours, especially when you are so determined to follow through with your plans.”

He turned away, hating how he had made his obsession with her so clear. His angry kiss had told her as plain as words that he had spent some part of every day while he was away from England thinking of her. Dreaming of her. Hating her and the fact that she had convinced him that she loved him.

She who loved no one but herself.

“Why should I stay away?” he asked, as he looked out the window at her small but tidy garden. “Why should I make this more comfortable for you?”

“No reason,” she said, and her voice was brittle enough that he turned. “No reason at all. Let us set the terms of this…arrangement then, shall we?”

His lips parted. Her hands were clenched behind her back and she looked for all the world like she was marching toward the guillotine rather than his bed, but the fact remained that she didn’t appear to be preparing to fight him.

“You are agreeing to my demands?” he asked, almost in disbelief. He had actually been looking forward to doing battle with her today. Her sudden surrender was unexpected.

She shrugged delicately. “It seems I have little choice. You are determined to ruin me if I do not bend to your will, and though I have doubts that you won’t simply destroy me even when this bargain has ended, this is my only option. I must do as you ask and pray you are a man of your word.”

Nathan’s cheek twitched. “
You
are daring to question my word?”

Fire flashed in her eyes for the first time since she entered the chamber. “
You
are the one making threats, Nathan.”

He crossed the room in three long strides and caught her upper arms in his grip. He yanked her against him with little gentleness. “I was never the liar between the two of us, Cassandra. I showed up that night,” he hissed.

She stared at him for a long moment, searching his eyes, his very soul. Then she shook her head with what seemed to be a combination of sadness and disdain. “Tell me what your terms are, Nathan. Let us just finish this.”

He released her and paced a few steps away. “I told you. You will come to my bed, for as long as I desire you to be there. I expect I’ll bore of you soon enough.”

“I expect so,” she said without expression or inflection.

He arched a brow, driven to hurt her now. “Besides, I am here in London to find a wife. Once I have found her, I will be a
faithful
husband and I won’t need a mistress any longer.”

She nodded once. “Very well. Then you expect our affiliation will not last out the Season?”

He examined her face carefully. She had added no special emphasis to her words and her maddeningly cool expression had not changed, yet there was a faint look of sadness in her eyes. He stared at the flicker, shocked by the fact that it shamed him to know he had put it there.

Didn’t she deserve that much? Christ, after she broke her vow and he left the country, he had spent much of a year drinking and feeling sorry for himself. Didn’t he owe her some fraction of that pain in return?

He looked away so he could no longer see her quietly accusing eyes. “I assume a Season is all it will take.”

He shrugged. He wasn’t being arrogant in that assumption. Already he was somewhat of an attention getter when he paid calls with his mother. With his money and his appearance, he was certain he would have his pick of women.

“And what is my guarantee that once you have tired of my body, you won’t simply turn around and betray me?” she asked. “You say your word is the promise you can give me, but is that all you can offer as proof?”

He did look at her then. And again he was brought back to what he thought her to be when he fell in love with her and asked her to be his bride, Society and his father be damned.

How fine she had been then. As smart as any person he had ever met, with a sharp tongue to boot. Obviously, those things hadn’t changed about her. She still had the light of intelligence and strength in her eyes. But when he met her, she was devoid of any pretense or greed…or so he thought. She had been so different from any other woman he’d ever met that he couldn’t help but be captivated by her.

A fact made more powerful by how innocent she had seemed. How pretty she was.

Now, she was different. She had certainly grown in beauty, coming into her looks with the certainty of a woman. But Cassandra had also become jaded. And why not? Certainly she had lied and double-crossed to get what she wanted. Her success in business proved that, her long string of former lovers proved it further.

Why wouldn’t she hold him to the same low standard?

“My word is my bond,” he said in a low voice. “You will have to trust it. As you say, you have little choice.”

She nodded once, the motion jerky and short. “Very well, I agree, however reluctantly. But you must realize that while I may surrender to your whims in order to save myself, I don’t promise to make any attempt to sooth your ego.”

He chuckled at that. Before he asked her to be his wife, they had been engaged in an intensely sexual affair. She had been young and inexperienced at the time, but he had pleased her. And he had never had any complaints from any other woman who warmed his bed in the interim. Of his prowess, he was very secure.

“So, you are saying you won’t pretend pleasure just to keep me happy?” he said as he moved toward her a few slow steps at a time.

Her eyes widened, but she stayed in her place, even when he threaded his fingers into her hair and began to massage her scalp. The complicated hairstyle that proved she was a lady fell around her shoulders in thick, auburn waves.

“It’s a very good thing that I won’t make you pretend, then,” he said softly, as his lips descended. “All your pleasure will be quite real, I assure you.”

She pulled back then, straining against the hold of his fingers. “What are you doing?” she asked, but her breath was short.

“There is no time like the present to begin the inevitable, my dear.”

Before she could protest, he smashed his lips to hers. He meant the kiss to be punishing and dominating, but that didn’t last for long. As soon as he tasted her, his body relaxed, his mouth grew less harsh, and he allowed himself to revel in the kiss.

In so many ways she was deceptively the same—so sweet, so warm, so fresh. And she was his, even if it was only to save her own hide.

She fought to retain her distance, he felt it in her thin lips and in the way she kept her neck stiff, even as he lightly massaged the tense muscle there. But slowly, as he licked and nibbled along the break in her lips, her barriers began to erode until finally she parted her mouth and sucked his tongue inside with a needy hunger that matched the fervor of his own.

They clawed at each other, finding fastenings and hooks as the kiss spiraled completely out of control. When he felt the delicate silk of her gown rend at a seam, he didn’t even pause, he just slid his hungry mouth over to the bare skin he had revealed at her shoulder.