Jess Michaels (5 page)

C
assandra shut the bedroom door, letting her head rest against the cool surface for a long moment as she gathered her wavering nerves. Finally, she pivoted and watched Nathan move around her room. He seemed as aware of his effect on her space as she was, and took his time looking at her furniture, examining her subdued artwork, and glancing out her window toward her garden in the dark below.

“Not what I pictured,” he said, turning back to her. “I assumed a woman with your checkered past would have much more blatant taste. Is there some other chamber where you entertained your protectors?”

She frowned, anger and hurt bubbling up in her chest. “So many insults, I can scarce keep up with them all. What has put you in such a foul mood, Nathan?”

He seemed surprised by her direct question and shook his head in response. “I was simply reminded of the past tonight, reminded of what a fool I was. I am always in a foul mood after that.”

She nodded slowly. “And just who reminded you?”

He locked eyes with her. “My parents. My father.”

Cassandra couldn’t help but stiffen as she thought of the Marquis of Herstale. He had hated her from the moment he realized she was more to his son than merely a brief affair. The man had done everything in his power to separate them. And he had won in the end, at a hefty cost to everyone involved.

“I see,” she said softly. “And so you came here tonight to punish me?”

Again, Nathan’s gaze swung to her and he stared at her for a long moment, as if he hadn’t truly seen her until that moment. He opened his mouth and shut it a few times before he whispered, “I don’t know, Cassandra. I truly do not know.”

She wanted to turn away, but it was impossible when she could finally see a glimpse of the man she had once known. When she could read Nathan’s emotions and, for the first time, they didn’t only consist of lust and hatred. There was sadness there. Regret.

She realized she was moving toward him, although she hadn’t meant to do so. He stiffened as she reached up and traced his lips with a finger, then his jaw. But he didn’t resist when she lifted to her tiptoes and gently pressed her lips to his.

They kissed for what could have been an hour or it might
have only been a moment, Cassandra wasn’t certain. Time lost all meaning when she was in Nathan’s arms, it always had. These kisses weren’t the angry demands he had issued before, and they weren’t lusty promises, even though the taste of him did arouse her.

No, these kisses were gentle, soft explorations. The reunion they hadn’t allowed for, even though their bodies had joined. The remembrance of a past that had been filled with so much love and laughter before it was cut short.

She melted against his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck, and clinging as their lips brushed and teased, tasted and retreated with a sweetness that almost brought tears to her eyes.

But then Nathan stiffened. She felt him push her away with his spirit and his heart just a fraction of a moment before he extracted himself from her arms physically.

“Don’t try to manipulate me,” he said, his breath short and rough with fresh anger. “I am immune to you now.”

Cassandra stared at him, her own anger and frustration overtaking reason and restraint. “If you are so immune, why are you here? Why are you blackmailing me for something as intimate as sex if you truly cannot stand the sight of me?”

Nathan folded his arms and glared at her, but didn’t gift her with the courtesy of a response.

She threw up her hands as she crossed the room to the chest beside her bed. “What is it that you want, Nathan? What do you have to gain?” She pulled a drawer away from the chest and dumped it unceremoniously on her bed. Toys
and restraints scattered across her coverlet. “Are these what you want to see?”

He stared at her as she made her way to the armoire and pulled it wide open, yanking down a few of her more revealing undergarments.

“These?” She turned on him and held them up before she tossed them in his direction. “Here they are. And I am yours, that is the bargain we made.” She unfastened the dainty buttons along the front of her gown and let the silky fabric fall away. “So do what you will.”

Nathan frowned, as if her surrender was less pleasing to him than he thought it would be, but then he shook the reaction away and stalked toward her bed. He grasped up her restraints, a prettier, more elaborate version of the ones she had been making downstairs. Without preamble, he swept the remaining toys away, leaving them to clatter on the floor and fall to the table beside the bed.

“Take off the chemise,” he ordered as he moved toward her.

She did as she had been told, but not in the way she had been told to do it. Unlike his barked order that implied swift, efficient action, she took her time removing the last swish of fabric that separated him from total access.

Little by little, she glided the thin strap down one shoulder, never revealing more than a little bit of skin. Then she moved to the opposite side, gliding it away just as slowly and deliberately.

When the straps had been removed, only the full curve of her breasts held the chemise in place. Nathan had stopped
moving and was staring at her, his eyes glazed with heated interest. She couldn’t help but smile as she tugged ever so gently on the fabric covering her breasts. It slipped a fraction of an inch, revealing more of the swell, but not quite everything.

Nathan caught his breath as the fabric moved even lower, just enough that the top half of her areolas were revealed.

“Enough, Cassandra,” he murmured, his voice rough with desire. “Take it off.”

Again, she smiled, enjoying the game between them, perhaps for the first time. As a young woman, she had been too inexperienced to toy with him, to utilize her feminine powers to their fullest. But now, with several lovers and a fuller understanding of sex as her guide, Cassandra
liked
knowing that as much as their current affair was a punishment and a blackmail, she could still control Nathan on some level.

She could still make him desire her like there was no other woman in the world.

With another pull, she let the chemise fold over her waist and revealed her breasts. Nathan growled low in his chest and triumph puffed her up.

“All of it,” he ordered, but he wasn’t moving to force her hand. He clenched the soft restraints in a death grip, but never overpowered her.

She shimmied and let the chemise glide down slowly, until it pooled around her feet with her discarded gown. He sucked in a breath, and suddenly Cassandra was glad she had left her fancy, handstitched red stockings and high heeled slippers on, rather than slip them off for comfort as she worked.

“You are more beautiful than…” he began, then cut himself off, as if he wouldn’t allow himself to compliment her even in the smallest way. He lifted the restraints. “Come over here.”

She moved toward him with a slow, purposeful swish of her hips. “You can fasten those to my bed,” she said, as she reached him.

His eyes widened as he looked at the bedposts. She had installed small hooks on each one during her time with one lover who liked to use and have restraints used on him. She’d never removed them.

“Lie down,” he said, and his voice was laced with frustration as well as lust.

She didn’t argue, but took a place in the middle of her big bed, perfectly positioned for the velvety restraints that dangled from his big hands. Her heart fluttered like hummingbird wings in her chest as she stared up at him, waiting for him to tie her down. She would be at his mercy then and, at the moment, he didn’t seem particularly merciful.

But never did she think he would hurt her. That was the strangest part. He could easily physically harm her, especially once she was bound and unable to defend herself, but even in the height of his anger, she knew his weapons would be pleasure, not pain.

He cupped her hand with his much larger one, the rough slide of his skin eliciting a soft groan that she couldn’t withhold. She thought she saw the fleeting shadow of a smile cross his lips before he slipped the soft binding around her wrist.
He looped the other end over the hook on her bedpost and then tightened the fabric until she couldn’t move her arm more than a few inches one way or the other.

He did the same with both her ankles and then her opposite wrist, taking his time to bind her, gentle in the way he tightened the restraints. Once she was fully at his mercy, he backed away, watching her through a hooded, unreadable gaze.

A wash of panic rushed through Cassandra as an unbidden thought pierced her haze.

“You aren’t going to leave me like this, are you?” she whispered. Though her servants were discreet, it still wasn’t a humiliation she desired.

He jerked back in surprise, then tilted his head as if he were now considering the merits of such an action. Finally, he shook his head. “As tempting as that might be, I want you more than I wish to leave you exposed and disgraced.” He sighed, as if maligning his own weakness.

Cassandra relaxed a fraction at his reassurance, but it was a fleeting reprieve from tension. The moment Nathan’s hands trailed to his waist and he began to unfasten his trousers, she stiffened.

When they had sex in her parlor the previous afternoon, she hadn’t been able to see him. He had kept his body from her, she supposed as some kind of message. But now his fingers worked deftly at divesting himself of his jacket, his crisply tailored vest and shirt, and his fitted trousers. She stared in
wonder at the slow revealing of taut, tanned flesh and muscle. When he finally was fully naked before her, she couldn’t help but lick her lips in approval.

She had dreamed of his body during their time apart. Even years later, she’d been able to conjure an easy image of his nude form, which always excited her. Sometimes just the thought of his nakedness made her come when she pleasured herself.

But this…this was better than memory. The years apart, when he had lived in a wild country with less strict codes of conduct, had been very kind to him. He was more muscular than she remembered, his skin tanned with a healthy glow like he was outside without protection on a regular basis. But there were parts of him that were as beautiful as ever. His cock, already at attention, curled up against his stomach—big and thick, and hard as granite.

She found herself straining against the bonds with a powerful desire to touch him, to see if his flesh was as warm as it appeared, to grip his erection in her palm and stroke it, to kiss the crook of his shoulder and the flat plain of his belly.

When he chuckled low in his chest, she stopped moving.
That
was part of why he had restrained her; he knew she would want to touch him. Yesterday he had not let her see, today she couldn’t touch. At no point did he ever intend to allow her all of him, in body or soul.

And he wanted her to know that fact full-well.

But even as he kept her from touching him, the heated in
tensity of his stare let it be known that he had every intention of touching her. She shivered in anticipation as he joined her on the foot of the bed, kneeling at her ankles.

“I can do anything to you,” he mused, cupping her calves with warm fingers and massaging ever so gently.

Cassandra couldn’t help arching at the touch.

“Oh, Nathan,” she groaned with great difficulty. “You could have done anything to me even without the restraints. You know that. Whatever else this blackmail is, it’s evident we still want each other.”

He cocked his head at her straightforward assessment of their current situation, but then he shrugged one muscular shoulder. “Perhaps, but I rather like seeing you at my mercy. Unable to respond. Unable to spin your web of seduction around me. Unable to squirm away…or closer…when I do this….”

He leaned down and pressed his lips to the smooth curve of her knee. Cassandra shut her eyes with a hiss of expelled breath as the pleasure of his touch ricocheted through her.

“Or this…” His mouth moved higher, his tongue teasing her inner thigh.

His mouth was almost unbearably hot against her ultra-sensitive skin. He swirled his tongue around and around, alternating between licking and then blowing the damp swirls with heated breath. Slowly, he nibbled and tasted his way higher and higher until his hair began to tickle the wet outer lips of her pussy.

Her back arched and she tugged against the restraints helplessly. How she wanted to tangle her fingers in his short, crisp hair, to cup his cheek as he pleasured her. To demand that he kiss her—and where.

Instead, all she could do was moan helplessly when he expelled a sigh against the juncture of her thighs. The steamy breath seemed to penetrate her aching, clenching channel and fill her. She bit her lip to hold back a cry of intense, unexpected pleasure.

Nathan lifted his eyes and met her gaze. His bright blue eyes were totally focused on her, a wicked, tempting glint in them that told her he knew exactly what kind of torment he was inflicting.

It told her that he had only just begun.

She couldn’t help but smile down at him, ready to be swept away by a long night of teasing and torment, of pleasure given and taken. It didn’t matter why he was with her, only that he was there.

He lowered his attention back to her already soaked pussy and pressed his lips to her. He brushed the outer shell of her body, nibbling the puffy, sensitive flesh there with lazy slowness. It seemed he had all night to claim her, so he was in no rush.