Lord Savage (21 page)

Lying curled on my side, I gazed through the open window at the stars and the rising
moon. He would return to me soon. He must. I remembered how upset he’d been when he
thought I’d left him, and now that he was the one who was gone, I felt his absence
with a keenness I’d never expected.

We only had a handful of days at Wrenton, days that should be spent together, not
apart.…

“Hush, Eve, I’m here.”

I stirred, still too deeply asleep to tell if I was dreaming his voice and the brush
of his lips on my cheek.

Then the springs creaked and the mattress shifted beneath his weight, and I felt a
slight breeze of cooler air as he lifted the sheet and coverlet to join me in the
bed. I was still on my side, and he glided his hand along my body to follow the dip
of my waist and the swell of my hips. The hour was late enough that all the candles
had guttered out, but there was light enough from the moon.

Drowsy as I was, his caress was enough to wake me, and I tried to roll onto my back
to kiss him, or at least to see his face.

“Stay as you are,” he said softly as he held me steady. “I want you like this.”

He slipped his body close behind mine, fitting neatly against me like we were two
spoons. He was naked, his skin warm, and I wriggled more closely to him, relishing
his heat as much as the intimacy of our position.

But he wanted me. That was what mattered most.

Instinctively I pushed my bottom against him and felt his cock, already thick and
hard against his belly. There was the proof of his desire, and my heart quickened
in anticipation. Again I tried to twist around to face him, expecting him to take
me like that.

“No, Eve,” he said, keeping me on my side. “You’ll like this, I promise.”

His hand swept along my hip again, then raised my upper thigh, bending my knee and
easing it slightly forward to open me. I was trembling with both uncertainty and eagerness,
and when he stroked his fingers along my slit he found me wet, the lips of my quim
pouting and ready like another kind of kiss. Still, I heard him lick his fingers,
sliding his saliva across my opening to make me even wetter.

“Oh, please, Savage,” I murmured as I pressed back against his fingers. “Please, don’t
torment me any longer.”

He chuckled. “Do as I say, and I won’t. Be easy, and let me lead. You’re so tight,
and I don’t want to hurt you.”

Instead of his fingers, I felt the blunt head of his cock pressing against my opening.
I gasped, struggling to do as he’d said and not to push back, and he pressed his hand
onto my waist to hold me steady. He shifted his hips to better his aim, then pushed
into me. I gasped again as his cock opened me, sliding far into my passage. Two quick
shoves, and he’d filled me completely, his balls pressed against my bottom.

Buried deep, he paused to let me grow accustomed to taking him like this. It wasn’t
the same, the angle making his cock fill me in a new and different way that stole
my breath away. I loved how this position made him curve around me, his large, muscular
body bending to fit mine.

I gave a small shimmy of encouragement, and at once he drew back and plunged back
in, making me whimper with delight. I twisted my hands in the bedclothes, bracing
myself to take more.

“I told you that you’d like it this way,” he said, his voice a rough growl against
my ear. He drew back so far he was almost free of me, only to plunge back in with
shuddering force. “I knew you would.”

“I—I do,” I said, the last word drifting off into a groan of purest pleasure. “Ah,
Master! How well you know me!”

I’d effortlessly slipped back into the Game. Not being able to see his face seemed
to make the pleasure more intense, as if the way his cock was stretching me, pounding
back and forth so deeply inside my channel, was all I could concentrate upon. I hadn’t
expected to be so excited by the feeling of his balls slapping against my anus, something
so absolutely forbidden that I’d no words for it.

“I know you better than anyone, Eve,” he said. He shoved the thick waves of my hair
to one side so that he could kiss the side of my throat. “I know what you want and
what you need, and I know how to give it to you.”

I believed him. The sensations he was creating within me were unlike anything I’d
experienced before. He did know what I wanted, what I needed, and as for giving it
to me—ah, I was eager for everything he could offer.

“Say it to me, Eve,” he whispered. “Tell me what I’m doing to you.”

I struggled to put together the words he wished to hear—a small price in return for
the pleasure he was giving me.

“You’re fucking me, Master,” I said raggedly, no longer amazed by the power of those
simple words to send a shiver through me as well. I loved how completely he filled
me, reaching the very end of my passage with a finality that was just short of too
much. His strokes were long, nearly pulling out, only to push back into me in a steady
rhythm that was rapidly bringing me toward my release. “You’re fucking me, and I’m
fucking you, and it—it’s divine.”

“Divine?” He grunted, almost a laugh. “Then it’s my duty to make you see all the stars
in the heavens.”

“Stars, Master?” I asked breathlessly, not understanding. I couldn’t make myself focus
on anything but what he was doing to me, let along stargazing.

“Stars.” He reached over my hip and between my legs until he found my pearl.

I whimpered as he began to massage that tiny, vital part of me in light little circles,
timing the pressure with the driving of his cock. Unable to stop, my hips rocked against
the double pleasure of his teasing fingers and his driving cock. I was shaking with
the force of my building climax, clutching the sheets with feverish desperation.

I arched my spine with my head thrown back as the tension built within my core. My
breathy little cries punctuated every one of his thrusts, until at last my release
crashed over me and my quim convulsed around his cock in pure, wild joy. I fell limply
against the pillows, gasping as the last tremors rippled through me.

But Savage wasn’t done. Now that he was assured of my pleasure, he began to chase
his own. He braced himself, moving lower to increase his penetration, and moved like
a piston so relentlessly that I instantly felt another climax coiling within me.

Mindlessly I let myself go with it, with him. Our bodies were slippery with sweat,
and his balls struck heavily against my bottom with each stroke.

He shoved aside the damp curtain of my hair to kiss my shoulder, a kiss that was so
rough and passionate that it felt more like a bite, a primitive expression of mating
at the moment his climax began. It hurt, and made me cry out with the unexpected pain,
yet it excited me, too, to have his passion so beyond his control. He groaned and
swore, shuddering with the raw impact of it.

His cock ground against me so hard that the force of it echoed within me and triggered
my second orgasm. I bucked and cried out, exhilarating in the glorious moment when
he filled me with his hot seed.

And then, at last, I understood about the stars.

Utterly spent, he sank back against the pillows, drawing me with him. I settled naturally
against his chest, savoring how his arms circled me protectively and our legs were
tangled. His chest still heaved with each breath, and beneath my fingers I both felt
and heard how his heart continued to race.

I was amazed that his cock continued to fill me, awash as I was in his spendings.
Yet, I liked that, too, even as I tried not to read more into it than he likely intended.
I had to remember that the intimacy of our bodies had nothing to do with the intimacy
of our souls and hearts, and that what we did here in this bed was intended for pleasure,
and nothing more.

He didn’t speak, and neither did I. As his breathing slowed and he relaxed more fully
beside me, I suspected he’d fallen asleep. Finally his cock slipped free of my quim,
but I didn’t reach for a handkerchief, not wishing to disturb him. He shifted against
the pillows and tightened his arms around me. I smiled, letting myself enjoy the warmth
of rare happiness and contentment, and purposefully not thinking of what would come
next.

He was the one who finally broke the silence, startling me there in the dark.

“I couldn’t stay away,” he said. He spoke in a low, matter-of-fact tone, as if discussing
a topic as ordinary as the weather.

But I wasn’t fooled. I’d already learned to my sorrow that even the mildest of words
could turn treacherous with him. This didn’t feel like another part of the Game, but
I couldn’t tell for certain. How was I to reply to such a statement? How much could
I dare confide of my own thoughts?

I shifted to face him, resting my arms on his chest. In the moonlight his face was
planed with shadows, his dark hair tousled against the white linens.

“I’m glad you returned,” I said softly. “Truly.”

He paused before answering, just long enough to make me fear I’d made another misstep
and confessed too much.

“It was good to find you here,” he said finally.

Relieved, I smoothed a stray tendril of my hair behind one ear. “I was lonely.”

He grunted. “I would venture that loneliness must be an unusual condition for a woman
as beautiful as you are.”

“It’s not,” I said, trying to smile. “I believe I’ve been lonely my entire life. You
guessed that of me that first night, when we danced.”

“I said that you were alone by choice,” he said. “Being alone is not the same as being
lonely. And it wasn’t a guess. It was a certainty.”

“Because you are that way, too,” I said. “You recognized me as a renegade, exactly
as you are yourself.”

“That must not have been easy for you,” he said. “It’s been my limited experience
that New Yorkers are almost alarmingly social.”

That made me smile in earnest. “They can be, yes,” I agreed. “Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Vanderbilt,
Mrs. Whitney—they are indeed alarming in their pursuit of social esteem.”

“Then what of the beautiful Mrs. Hart?” he asked, curious. “What of her place in that
teeming, tawdry New York society of parvenus and oil magnates?”

His playfulness took me by surprise, and made me drop my guard more than I’d intended.

“My place there among those ladies is secure enough, for as long as I wish it,” I
said. “They would never dare not invite me to their balls and parties. I’m too wealthy
to scorn.”

“Then you should never be lonely,” he said easily. “Balls and parties are the very
lifeblood of ladies. Even the renegade ones.”

“Perhaps,” I said warily. “But I—I am not adept at transforming acquaintances into
friends. My father built his fortune by trusting no one, and he did the same with
me. I was never permitted from our house unattended. Servants raised me. He had me
taught at home, and I never was sent to school. He didn’t believe any other children
were worthy of my company, and thus I had none. He chose my husband, and I went from
the schoolroom to marriage. Then Arthur died, and I became a widow, and that—that
is my story.”

I gave a little shrug of my shoulders, already regretting having said so much.

“What of your sisters?” he asked. “What of your mother? Why did she permit this?”

His unfeigned interest surprised me, yet reassured me, too.

“My mother died of influenza when I was an infant,” I said, unable to keep the old
sorrow from my voice, “and I have no brothers or sisters. There was only me. So you
see why loneliness and I are old friends.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He traced his fingertips along the curve of my cheek with such
unexpected gentleness that tears stung my eyes.

“You needn’t apologize,” I said quickly, drawing back a fraction from his touch. His
tenderness was too much, too sudden, and guessing that it could not last made it unbearable.
“You are hardly to blame for anything that has happened in my life.”

His face suddenly turned guarded. “I never said it was. But things are different for
women.”

I couldn’t begin to guess what that meant. “If you are implying that only women are
lonely—”

“I didn’t intend that, either,” he said, the slightest edge of testiness in his voice.

“Although as a man, and a peer as well, you would never be lonely,” I said, more wistfully
than I realized. “The whole world is open to you, without any of the limitations that
constrict women.”

“Eve, Eve.” He sighed wearily. “I meant only what I said: that loneliness affects
women in different ways than it does men, and given the warm nature of most women,
it must be more difficult for them to bear.”

“So you have never been lonely yourself?” I asked, longing for him to share his past,
his fears, with me as I had with him. “Not once?”

His guarded expression did not change, a wall carefully composed to keep me at a distance.

“Men are different, Eve,” he repeated, and, to my disappointment, that was all.

I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then let it out in a long sigh. He was not saying
anything that was offensive or disrespectful or challenging. I was the one who’d rambled
on and then turned prickly, and with no real reason, either.

And I was the one breaking the rules of the Game, too, yearning for more from him
than sexual experience and pleasure. I was not only an Innocent but a fool as well.
I was fortunate that he didn’t climb from the bed and walk through the door again,
and not return.

Yet, I’d feel like an even greater fool if I apologized now, directly after I’d told
him he needn’t apologize. Why was it that Savage and I did so much better when we
were Protector and Innocent?

Confused and frustrated, I pushed away from him and sat upright, hooking my arms around
my bent knees with my hair falling down my back. I rested my chin on my arms and closed
my eyes, determined not to let my emotions spill over as tears. I’d never thought
of myself as a weeper, but there was something about Savage that made me feel everything,
good and bad, so much more vividly that I couldn’t help it.