Jo Beverley - [Malloren 03] (17 page)

She had no idea except that she wanted him, wanted all he had to offer. She wanted the fornication thundered against from the pulpit, and the guilty pleasures whispered about behind fans.

All thought shattered at the touch of his hands on her shoulders, thumbs brushing her collarbone. She looked up, helpless in the first winds of a growing storm.

“I would prefer that you take off the mask,” he said softly. “I will keep your identity secret, my word on it. Carnal pleasure is best enjoyed with all barriers down.”

For an idiotic moment, she was tempted, but she shook her head and he let the matter go. With a wry smile, he traced the edge of the soft leather, and the merest brush of his fingers sparkled on her skin. Then he cradled her head, teasing the edge of her jawbone with his thumbs.

“I do wonder who you are . . . But,” he added, brushing his lips over hers, “it hardly matters now, and the element of mystery is intriguing.”

He kissed her again, a dozen wayward, fleeting kisses, kisses so tantalizing that she stretched closer, seeking to trap and relish them. His smiling lips evaded hers, but his tongue touched. A flicker of hot moistness.

She laughed and did the same to him, dancing lips and tongue at play, until he snared her close. No mechanical, testing kiss this. It rendered her wax beneath his flame.

Warm, liquid, ready to be consumed.

At last he released her lips, and she turned her dizzy head against his chest, drifting under the touch of his hands. The wide sleeve of his dark monk’s robe had fallen back to his elbow, revealing one strong forearm, sinuously decorated by raised veins.

She’d seen arms like that on the stable grooms. Were all gentlemen like that beneath the silk and lace?

Why had she never noticed before how beautiful a muscular arm could be? She curled up one hand to touch, to adore the entrancing masculinity.

A shift in position let her put lips to one line of vein and she traced it.

“What are you doing?” he asked, still for a moment.

“You have beautiful arms.” She traced back up the vein with her tongue, then looked up at him, amused by the expression in his eyes. He almost looked embarrassed.

“I am pleased if I please you. You have beautiful arms, too.” And he kissed from bare knuckle to naked elbow, then from bare shoulder—slowly—to the exposed swell of her breasts.

Letting the pleasure of his lips form the undertone, Elf continued her own exploration. She pushed up the loose sleeve to expose his upper arm, hard muscle beneath her hand.

Since leaving childhood, she’d never seen a gentleman’s bare arms. Except Walgrave’s a few nights before, she remembered. Then, however, she’d been distracted by the naked whole.

Oh, and Ferron’s, revealed by his toga. No competition there.

Men’s arms, she thought dazedly, pushing his sleeve all the way to his broad shoulder, deserved more attention. But it was perhaps as well they be kept veiled or women would be in constant danger of this madness of desire . . .

Her overdress fell open.

She looked down in surprise, then laughed. One-handed, he’d unhooked it. Now he escaped her explorations and slid it off her shoulders. Turning her, he began to loosen her laces.

For a moment, she felt deprived of touch and sight, but then the mere vibration of his touch, felt in her spine
through layers of buckram and silk, wove its own special magic. Her eyes drifted closed . . .

“Look,” he breathed, moving her slightly. “Look, Lisette.”

Opening heavy lids, Elf saw a picture . . .

No.

She saw herself in a mirror. In a long cheval mirror she saw a white-haired, white-masked woman in a glittering stomacher and scarlet petticoat being undressed by a dark-robed, black-masked monk.

Lud. It was the stuff of wicked dreams!

Perhaps that was what made it so exciting.

For it was. Over and above any love, any lust, beat the wild drum of the forbidden. Of something wicked in the air.

Perhaps he heard it too. He looked up as he began to pull the laces loose, and smiled into her eyes in the mirror. “I think you’re right, naughty Lisette, about the mask. Costumes do add a little something, don’t they? But then, you’re an innocent . . .”

That question again. How she must puzzle him. “I am a virgin,” she said into the mirror. “But I don’t feel innocent at the moment.”

“You certainly won’t feel innocent in the morning. That, I promise you.” He had the laces loose enough, and now he slipped the shoulder straps over her shift, until it no longer compacted her breasts. In fact, he moved it just beneath them so they seemed to be bursting forth, nipples standing proud through the delicate silk.

Instinctively, she covered them.

He laughed and nipped at her neck. “Comfort them then, Lisette, while I make you pure white.”

The bow of her petticoat lace surrendered to a tug, and it slithered into a scarlet pool at her feet. He pulled her hands from her breasts so the stomacher could follow it.

She was, as he had said, pure white now, from her
white-powdered hair, through her white leather mask, over white ladylike skin and filmy silk calf-length shift.

Even her stockings were white. White lace suitable, she had thought years ago when she bought them, for a bride. She’d felt defiant when she pulled them on tonight, but now it seemed so right.

Even her shoes were white, though gilded on the heels.

Only her lips and her veiled nipples gave color to the scene.

Unless black was a color. He stood, black-robed, behind her, like a shadow.

Or a devil.

Or a lover from her darkest dreams.

She shivered, but not with fear. She shivered from the look in his eyes. Surely every woman wished to be looked at in such a way by a lover.

He laid his hands on her sides—dusky against her pallor—and slid the silk against her flesh up and down her flanks. Elf watched in shocked fascination as the hem crept higher and higher, first showing her garters trimmed with white rosebuds, then exposing her pale thighs.

She’d expected to be naked, but not this. Not this slow, voluptuous exposure. She put her hands over his and challenged his eyes in the mirror. He just smiled and slipped his hands away. Her shift fell back to her calves and she idiotically straightened it. When she looked into the mirror again, he was naked and unmasked.

“Better?” he asked.

But he stood behind her. When she tried to turn, he stopped her, so she could only see his shoulders and his arms, which came around her. Brown muscular arms, paler toward the shoulders. He must spend time in the sun with his sleeves rolled up. Probably in the stables.

She wished she could see him like that in sunlight and simple activities.

He pulled her back against him, and hard heat seared
through the thin silk. Harder down low, where he clearly wanted her, wanted to burst in and invade her.

A tremor of fear shot through her, but it was easily swamped by the swimming pleasure of the moment.

Perhaps it added to the pleasure of the moment.

How strange to feel such pleasure from a casual embrace, for he merely rocked her in his arms, chin resting against her white-powdered hair, looking calm and in full control of himself. “Now, Lisette, tell me true. Just how wicked do you want to be?”

Faced with such an impossible question, the Malloren in Elf replied. “Very.”

He raised his brows, perhaps disbelievingly. “Your wish is my command tonight. But my aim is philanthropic. I intend to give you pleasure, and nothing but pleasure. If it ceases to be pleasant, you must tell me.”

“And you will stop?” She didn’t believe it for a moment.

“And I will stop,” he said, still swaying with her in a rhythm that sapped her sanity. “Stop whatever it is you do not like, that is. I’m sure I can find
something
you like, my bold adventuress.”

Elf was sure he could, too. For example, she loved this embrace, this cradling. A week ago, she’d not have believed Fort could be such a subtle lover. What little she knew of these matters suggested most men took a more direct approach.

She’d expected him to be like most men.

Now, she didn’t know what to expect, which both terrified and thrilled her. Indeed, she was at last having an adventure!

“Keep your eyes on the mirror,” he said, and disappeared from view.

Though tempted to look, Elf obeyed until he reappeared in the mirror, placing an upholstered bench by her side. She did glance down, puzzled, but then his arms returned to cradle her.

He stroked her again, but softly and over silk, his right hand sliding down to her thigh. She glanced from hand
to smiling, watchful eyes. Then he hooked his hand under her knee, raised her leg, and set her shoed foot on the bench. Elf gasped as her shift slithered all the way up to her groin, exposing her thigh entirely.

Instinct screamed,
cover yourself!
but she ignored it, relaxing back against him and waiting for the next move.

It came when he ran a finger around the flowery garter she wore beneath her knee, but he made no move to untie it. Instead he began to stroke up her thigh, brown hand against pale skin. “If you recall, I mentioned the delight of a woman’s cream-silk thighs.”

Elf watched his hand in fascination, entranced by sight and multiple sensations.

“Now that is a vision I find delightful,” he murmured into her ear. “A woman relaxed in her senses. Add to it the feel of her beneath my fingers.” Those long brown fingers danced high on her inner thigh. “Especially here.”

Elf gasped and would have reached to stop him, but he snared her hands in one of his. “Don’t. Don’t fight unless you really want me to stop. Feel how it
feels,
Lisette.”

A wicked dance on her most sensitive skin, that’s what it felt like.

She could have broken free, but she relaxed in his hold, watching as his fingers gently played, feeling every touch a hundredfold because of the mirror.

“How does it feel?” he asked.

Elf wasn’t sure there were words. Wonderful. Sinful. Dangerous. Promising.

“Wicked,” she breathed.

“Precisely.” He blew against her ear as he trailed his fingers across to her other thigh and back, watching her. “Do you feel it?”

“What?” He had just nipped her earlobe and she was drowning in sensation.

“The place where you
want
me to touch. Where already you want me inside you.”

Immediately her mind isolated one place, and a growing need there. “Yes. But . . .”

His fingers continued that leisurely, tantalizing journey. “But?”

She moved her whole body against him restlessly. “But not yet. I don’t know why . . .”

“Because then it would be over, clever one. You have an instinct for this game. It is urgent, demanding. Yet paradoxically, it is best enjoyed with torturing delay.” He released her limp hands and touched her nipples, first one, then the other, watching her, watching her as she watched him.

Elf saw her own hands flutter up, flutter down, not seeking to restrain, but wanting something to hold on to.

“Reach back. Hold on to me.”

Her hands found hot flesh. His thighs. The position made her breasts thrust. He untied the lace at the low neck of her shift and pulled the silk down to expose them, pink nipples bigger than she had ever seen them.

“My mouth wants your breasts, wants to taste them, I want to see and hear your pleasure when I suckle them. And they want me, don’t they?”

A strangled sound escaped Elf as her body remembered, and wanted.

“But from here, I cannot tend to them that way. So, we delay. We have all night.” Gently, he played with her nipples, stretching them. “I can wait.”

“No. I want—”

“Patience, Lisette. We can sample every pleasure, every taste, every touch. Sometimes, waiting is the greatest aphrodisiac. Do you know what an aphrodisiac is?”

Scarce able to speak, she just shook her head.

“Something that stimulates or enhances physical desire.”

His right hand settled between her spread thighs, pressing against the hungry place, moving slightly in a way that brought a whole new hum of excitement.

And need.

Could that woman in the mirror—gasping, moving,
stretching on tiptoe for some reason—really be Elf Malloren? “Then I don’t think I need one . . .
Please!
”

Was that her gasping voice?

It was certainly her voice that protested when he took his hands away.

“Just a little adjustment,” he soothed, moving in front of her to sit on the bench, so her raised leg arched over his like a bridge, anchored by his hand on her ankle.

“Put your hands on my shoulders.”

She obeyed, glad of some support, loving the warm firmness of his flesh.

“Now, watch yourself be wicked, Lisette.”

Elf only felt his touch between her thighs, for his back now blocked her view, but she could see his head at her breast, feel his tongue, his teeth, his lips tease and torment her until fevered sensations beat at her consciousness.

“Look!” He said it sharply to catch her fragmented senses.

Elf forced her eyes open. A wild creature gripped his shoulders, arms rigid, mouth loose with desire, breasts rosy from his loving. “Mercy on me,” she whispered and let her eyes fall shut as she stretched like a bow, as if reaching, reaching for an impossible treasure.

Not impossible after all when he continued to circle his hand firmly between her legs and play with her nipples with his mouth. Reality disappeared, swamped by something she supposed could be called pleasure.

Shattering pleasure.

Though in fact, she thought as she realized he was holding her close, she needed a new vocabulary entirely to describe that experience. He moved her back a little to look at her, then slid her down so she straddled his hips, all the while soothing her with gentle touches.

But when she relaxed and smiled at him, about to thank him, he said, “More?”

In truth, a part of her wanted to say no, wanted to spend a day, a week, a month relishing that novel experience and recovering before sampling anything new.

But there would be no other time.