Lord Savage (23 page)

But I only wished he hadn’t thought of it now when he had me in much the same position
as Lady Cynthia Telford had been. Lady Telford had been bent over a garden bench for
him, while I was now bent over the windowsill, which wasn’t much of a difference.

I longed for Savage to have better associations with me, memories that were separate
from the forgotten Lady Telford or any other woman. I didn’t want to be predictable.
I’d surprised him by watching him that night in the garden, and I was determined to
surprise him again.

Swiftly, before I lost my nerve and before he could react, I twisted free of his hand
and his deliciously teasing fingers. I darted across the room and clambered up to
stand on the bed.

“Catch me, Master,” I said breathlessly, bouncing slightly on the mattress with my
arms outstretched to keep my balance. His face was so astonished as he stared up at
me that I nearly laughed aloud. “Catch me if you can!”

“Oh, I’ll catch you,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “And when I do, you’ll wish you
hadn’t done this, you naughty Innocent.”

Despite his warning, he was grinning, a wicked grin that showed me he liked the challenge.

“You’ll have to catch me first, Master.” Defiantly I smiled back as I shoved my hair
back over my shoulders, my breath coming in quick gulps of excitement. He was staring
at my breasts, at how they must be trembling as I stood unsteadily on the bed. I bounced
a bit more to tease him. My body was still so sexually on edge that I felt wild and
reckless and daring. “I’ll be faster than Mrs. Anson, too.”

“But I’m infinitely faster than his lordship,” he said. “You don’t stand a chance
with me.”

He grabbed his paisley robe from the chair and shrugged it on, his gaze never leaving
me. I wondered why he’d bothered with the robe, then realized that he thought he’d
be chasing me not only in this room but through the house and perhaps farther, as
the other couple had done.

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I was naked, without even the dubious covering of
my Innocent’s costume, and I’d a fleeting image of myself in that state racing down
the long halls of Wrenton with him in hot pursuit.

I should have been shocked by this prospect. Instead, I found it wildly exciting,
even exhilarating. I’d no real sense of how fast I could run. In my ordinary life,
I was customarily weighed down by so many layers of clothing, corsetry, and propriety
that it was nearly twenty years since I’d last run at all. I suspected he
was
faster, exactly as he’d claimed, but I was eager for the chance to try to outrun
him—nearly as much as I was eager to be caught.

“Are you going to bounce on that bed all day, Eve?” he asked, slowly circling the
bed. He was moving like a prowling tiger, every lean muscle with a purpose, and making
me feel like his prey. “You know I can come get you there, too.”

“I will, Master,” I promised, “when the time is right.”

He chuckled, and shook his hair back from his forehead and narrowed his eyes. His
silk robe slipped open, displaying the dark whorls of hair on his chest.

I wondered if beneath that flowing, patterned silk he still had a cockstand. From
the way he was looking at me, I guessed that he did.

“What a willful little Innocent you are!” he said, almost proudly. “You’ll regret
speeches like that, you know. I fear there must be a suitable punishment after this.”

So he was enjoying this every bit as much as I was, a certainty that served only to
spur me on. He had worked his way to the far side of the bed, near one of the bedside
tables. If I jumped down now from the bedstead, I’d have a moment or two as a head
start to reach the door.

“I’m not afraid of your punishments, Master,” I said bravely. “You asked me to trust
you, and I do.”

He tipped his head to one side, considering me. “You trust me to do what is best for
your education?”

“I do, Master,” I said. “I must.”

“An excellent answer, Eve,” he said. “I shall take it into consideration as I decide
your punishment for willfulness.”

I wrinkled my nose; not exactly defiant, but not exactly believing that there’d be
any serious punishment, either. Thus far he’d shown me only kindness with a heady
mix of passion, and I suspected his “punishment” would simply be another facet of
the Game.

“Don’t make faces at me, Eve,” he warned. “I do not like impudence in my Innocents.”

Without looking away from me, he opened the table’s drawer, reached inside, and took
something out. I thought at first it was a pair of bracelets, the brightly polished
silver glinting in the sun.
A gift of jewelry,
I thought pleasurably. I did love jewelry, and it would be very nice of him to give
me a piece or two, as a memento of this week. What manner of punishment could that
be?

Then I noticed the thick chain linking the two wide cuffs together, and with a chill
I realized that what Savage was holding were not bracelets but a pair of manacles,
similar to the ones I’d once seen on prisoners being led off by policemen in New York.
Except these manacles weren’t made for large male prisoners. They were small, almost
dainty, designed to fit a lady’s wrists.

Like mine.

“What is the meaning of—of those, Master?” I said, my earlier playfulness gone in
an instant. “When you spoke of punishment, I didn’t think—that is, I didn’t know—”

“You must trust me, Eve,” he said firmly. “You were the one who was willful and impudent,
and now you must trust me to know best how to punish you.”

His voice was deep and low, resonant with seduction. Every other time, his voice alone
had been enough to make me melt. But I had never considered silver manacles part of
seduction. In truth, I’d never once in my life considered silver manacles in any fashion
at all.

Panicking, I thought of Lord Blackledge, and how roughly he’d appeared to use his
Innocent, trussing her and binding her and stopping her words with a gag. Could Savage
intend to do those things to me, too?

I folded my arms over my breasts. “I’m sorry, Savage, but I don’t believe that being
chained up like a dog would be—”

“I would never think of you like a dog, Eve,” he said, a little wounded, slipping
the offending manacles into the pocket of his robe and out of my sight. “It won’t
be like that at all. It’s only an amusement, a
petite plaisir
. Part of the Game. You’ll see. You haven’t found anything else we’ve done disagreeable,
have you?”

I sighed uneasily. “You know I haven’t.”

“Then why should it change now between us?” he reasoned wryly. That was exactly how
he presented it, too, pure male logic against my fluttery female fear of the unknown.
“Why would I suddenly do anything you did not like?”

I didn’t answer, my mind—or was it my conscience?—struggling to convince myself one
way or the other. I’d already done so many things with him, things that would have
appalled me in New York, and I didn’t regret any of them. I’d trusted him this far.
Why couldn’t I trust him in this, too?

“Trust me, Eve,” he said as if reading my mind. He was so powerfully, achingly handsome,
standing there looking at me as if I were the only woman in the world. He held his
hand out to me, to help me climb from the bed and join him. “Trust me as your Protector
to do what is best for you.”

This was what I’d come for—not just for amusement, but for him. For
him
. I wasn’t going to be a coward and not play the Game to the end.

I took a deep breath, then another.

Then I turned away from him and with an excited little whoop I hopped from the bed,
and raced to the bedroom door. This time I was able to throw it open in an instant,
and I ran down the short hall, past the bathroom and Savage’s dressing room and a
mildly bewildered Barry, and into the sitting room.

I didn’t want to waste the seconds it would cost me to look around, but I knew he
was behind me, and with each step drawing closer. I could hear his footsteps, his
breathing, and I forced myself to run faster still.

If I headed straight across the room toward the next door, he’d catch me. But if instead
I ran first around the oversize desk and through the narrow space between the desk
and the wall, where there wouldn’t be room for him to follow easily, then I might
be able to reach it before he caught me.

That was my only goal, to reach the door. I’d figure out the rest afterward.

At the last moment, I cut around the leather-covered armchair and darted around the
desk, squeezing myself through the space. Breathless and laughing, I felt clever and
lithe, and exhilarated, too, to have eluded him this far. The door to the next room
was just before me, the polished gilt doorknob almost within my reach.

Except that Savage had gotten there first.

He hadn’t followed me around the desk as I’d expected. Instead, he’d gone straight
to the door and cut me off. He was standing there now, his back to the door to block
my way. His smile was confident, even smug, and he wasn’t even breathing hard.

“You did better than I expected, Eve,” he said, “but I told you before you couldn’t
win.”

I felt decidedly less clever, but I wasn’t going to give up yet.

“You haven’t won,” I said, tossing my hair back over my shoulders.

His gaze flicked down to the desk between us. “You have to come out from behind there
at some point.”

“Perhaps I do,” I said, raising my chin. “Perhaps I don’t.”

His eyes gleamed at the challenge. “And perhaps I’ll come haul you out.”

He took one step toward me, then another, his hand outstretched to me. “Or you could
surrender, Eve. You know it’s inevitable.”

I shook my head, poised with my hands on the desk before me. “I know nothing of the
sort.”

“Oh, Eve.” He inched closer, beckoning. “You’re forgetting I’m your master. What kind
of Innocent forgets that?”

“Apparently a very wicked one, Master,” I said, teasing, almost taunting him. If I
could only get him to come closer and commit to one side of the desk, then I’d have
a chance of breaking free. “I can’t begin to imagine how much punishment I’ll need
after this.”

“I can,” he said, and the knowing way he smiled made me shiver with anticipation.
“Now come, Eve, enough of this. Out from behind that desk.”

I edged slowly to one side, letting him think I was heading that way. He did. His
smile widened with satisfaction as he stepped forward, his hand reaching out to me.
My heart racing, I smiled in return to encourage him further, and then fled in the
opposite direction.

I’d several glorious seconds of thinking I’d escaped again, and then his arm closed
around my waist like an iron band. I struggled to break free one last time, my nails
raking down across his arm. He swore, but held me fast, and finally I stopped fighting.

I twisted around to face him, my breasts crushed against his chest. I was breathing
hard, almost panting, and so was he, his heart beating fast against mine. Only the
silk of his robe separated us, a luxurious barrier that seemed to accentuate the heat
of his skin, and how his leanly muscled chest pressed into mine.

“Surrender?” he demanded, his arms tightening around my waist.

For a long moment I simply looked up at his face, so close to mine. I couldn’t look
enough at his pale blue eyes with their thick dark lashes, his stubbled jaw, his sensuously
curved mouth, with the only sound between us our own ragged breathing.

Then abruptly he kissed me, his mouth crushing down on mine as if he’d devour me.
I parted my lips for him at once and took his tongue deep, the way I craved. I’d no
doubt this was a Protector’s kiss, and I loved the forceful possession of it.

I’d guessed right: the chase through his rooms added even more fire to our morning.
He was kissing me with a feverish new intensity, and I could not get enough of it,
or of him.

I circled my hands around the back of his neck to support myself, my hands slipping
into the black silk of his hair. I arched against him to press my breasts to his chest,
rubbing my sensitized nipples against the silk of his robe.

He made a growling sound of satisfaction that reverberated between our joined mouths.
I could taste the heat of his desire, the power of it. He tipped me back into the
crook of his arm, and as I felt my balance wobble, I clung to his shoulders to keep
from falling backward.

“You’re safe, Eve,” he whispered, sliding a hand down the curving sweep of my hip.
“I will never let you fall. Not now, not ever.”

As if to prove it, he leaned me back farther and scooped his other arm beneath my
knees to gather me from my feet. I was not a small woman, and I’d never had a man
literally sweep me away like this, as if I weighed no more than thistledown. I gasped
and fluttered at the delicious novelty of it as he carried me back to the bedroom.

He didn’t make a great show of his strength; it was simply there, one more thing about
him that made me feel safe and protected and womanly and beautiful, all at once. But
most of all he made me feel desired and treasured, and for now that mattered more
than anything else in the world.

I stretched myself luxuriantly on the sheets, letting my hair fan around me on the
pillow as I gazed up at him. I loved how he was looking at me, raw hunger in his eyes,
and when he climbed over me to find my mouth again, I arched up toward him in welcome.

“I’ve never wanted any other woman like I do you, Eve,” he said, his voice rough with
it. His expression was dark, his eyes heavy-lidded and full of unspoken promise of
what he wished to do with me. “No other has ever come close.”

“Then show me, Master,” I begged, blindly reaching between us to try to untie the
sash on his robe. I was weary of all the toying and teasing that had occupied our
morning. I was ready for his cock, and shamelessly sought it. “Fuck me. I’ve waited
long enough for this fine prize of yours.”