Lord Savage (36 page)

“But you don’t
know
!” I was sure he didn’t know my mind, because I didn’t myself. Neither choice seemed
particular agreeable to me, with any of the other gentlemen at the table. How could
it be, after Savage?

“I believe I do,” he said with maddening certainty, and turned away to speak to the
man on his left.

Lord Carleigh was smiling, holding his hand up. “Very well, then. Are there any masters—or
perhaps a mistress, since Blossom does need education in Sapphic skills—willing to
accept her for training in our next session?”

“I’ll claim her,” called Lord Wessex.

“Then she’s yours, Wessex,” Lord Carleigh said with a benevolent wave of his hand.
He gave one last, smacking kiss to Mrs. Bilton, and then pinched her bottom for good
measure, making her squeal. “Good-bye to you, sweetheart. Go off to your new master,
there’s a good girl, and happy fucking to you both.”

Happily Mrs. Bilton darted around the table to join Lord Wessex, who promptly pulled
her onto his lap while the others applauded and cheered.

“An excellent resolution,” Lady Carleigh said. “Mr. Parkhurst, will you be next to
review your Innocent?”

My anxiety grew as I watched and listened. The other guests were beginning to enjoy
themselves more, and the cheering and the catcalls were growing louder and more obscene,
enough to make my head ache and my heart race with dread.

I thought that perhaps I should simply excuse myself and leave now, before it was
my turn. I could retreat to my rooms, change my clothes, order a car, and leave. I’d
already said good-bye to Savage, or rather, he’d said good-bye to me. There was no
reason to remain and be humiliated with a public cataloging and dismissal, and given
over to another man that I did not want—

“Lord Savage!” Lady Carleigh’s voice rang out from the end of the table. “Will you
please present your Innocent for review? Eve, isn’t it?”

Savage took my hand and rose slowly to his feet, pulling me unwillingly with him.

“Please don’t make me do this, Savage,” I whispered, pleading, my fingers wrapped
tightly into his. “To have to hear you say good-bye to me again will—it will break
me.”

His smile was slow and warm, which only made it worse, not better.

“Be brave, Eve,” he said softly, cradling my cheek with the palm of his hand. “I promise
this will all go exactly as you could wish.”

Then he winked, a true conspirator’s wink that took me entirely by surprise.

“Come, come, my lord,” Lady Carleigh chided. “The time for private instruction is
done. Please tell us of your Eve’s lessons, and what devilish skills you have taught
her.”

“Oh, I have taught her a great many things, Lady Carleigh,” he said, raising his voice
so that everyone could hear him. “And in turn she has taught me as well. Never underestimate
the talents of the American people.”

“Enough of your damned drivel, Savage,” Lord Blackledge called. “You needn’t go on
any further. I’ll take her next.”

“No, you won’t!” I exclaimed. “I don’t care what the rules of this foolish game might
be, I will not go—”

“You will not go anywhere,” Savage interrupted calmly. “Unless you go with me. You
see, I have decided that one week is not nearly sufficient for this lady. It has been
only the beginning for us both. Instead, I intend to take her with me tonight, to
London, to continue her further education there.”

I gasped, too stunned for words. He didn’t want to leave me. Instead, he wanted to
leave
with
me, now, just the two of us.

“To London!” cried Lady Carleigh as the other guests burst into a babble of confused
outrage and oaths. “Savage, you cannot do that. What of the rules? What of the Game?”

His smile widened, for he was so obviously enjoying every moment of this. “My dear
lady, where Mrs. Hart is concerned, the rules exist only to be broken. That is, of
course, if she agrees to come with me.”

And at last he turned to me, lifting my hand to his lips.

“My car is waiting,” he said, over the back of my hand. “My house is ready. God knows
I’m ready, Eve. All you need do is say yes.”

“You are sure of this?” I asked, unsure myself. He was an easy man to take to bed,
but he was not an easy man. Far from it. Yet, after only one week with him, I could
not now imagine my life without him in it. We belonged together.

“Give me seven more days, Eve,” he said. “One more week. That’s all I ask.”

I took a deep breath.
One week, seven days.
I smiled, a giddy, daring smile for him alone.

“Seven more days with you, Savage,” I whispered. “Seven days, and seven nights in
London. And I cannot wait for it to begin.”

Read on for a sneak peek at

SAVAGE NIGHTS

the next book in the Savage series,

coming in May 2015.

1907: On the road to London

“You’re not frightened, are you?” The seventh Earl of Savage leaned closer, curling
his long arm around the back of my shoulders in a gesture that could have been protective,
or something else entirely. “If you’ve any regrets—”

“None,” I said swiftly, determined to show no hesitation, no doubts. “And if I shiver,
it’s from excitement, not fear.”

He smiled slowly, and if I hadn’t shivered before, I did then. Desire did that to
me, and I’d never desired a man as I did Savage. Wild, reckless, burning desire, desire
that I’d never dreamed possible or ever wished to end: that was what I felt for Savage.

We sat on the curving back bench of his Rolls-Royce, racing through the inky darkness
of the Hampshire countryside toward London and away from the house party at Wrenton
Manor. There were no stars, no moon, and the only light came from the car’s headlights
and silver carriage lanterns. Sitting on the other side of the curtained glass, Savage’s
driver clearly had orders to carry us to London as quickly as possible; we traveled
at a breakneck pace, heedless of anything save each other in our luxurious haven.

“You shiver from excitement,” Savage repeated. He eased aside the front edge of my
sable coat to find the red silk of my evening gown. I’d daringly worn nothing beneath
it—no petticoats, no chemise, no corset—and as he lay his hand upon my thigh, I felt
at once the heat of his palm and his fingers through the slide of light silk.

He heard the little catch in my breath, and his smile widened. A flash of reflected
light briefly lit his face in the darkness, a glimpse that was exactly long enough
to remind me of how seductively, impossibly handsome he was. In that flash, his face
was all planes and shadows, hard in all the ways that a man’s should be, and framed
by hair as black as his evening clothes. Yet his mouth was sensuously full, and his
pale blue eyes could glow with a white-hot intensity that weakened my knees whenever
he looked at me, the way he was studying me now.

“You
are
excited, Mrs. Hart,” he said. “You’re almost feverish. It’s rather obvious, isn’t
it?”

“To you it is,” I said breathlessly. “Because of you.”

“How very scandalous,” he said with mock severity. “Were all the widows of New York
society as eager as you?”

“The past doesn’t matter.” I didn’t need to be reminded of the loveless, stultifying
life I’d left behind. In my head I’d already begun to divide my life into the time
before I’d met Savage, and the time since I’d become his. Impatiently I shrugged my
shoulders free of my fur coat, too heated now for either its warmth or its ostentation.

“Seven days together in London,” he said, his voice low. He pushed up the hem of my
gown and slid his hand beneath it, roaming higher across my silk stockings and above
my jeweled garters to the heated skin of my thigh. “That’s all I offer.”

“That’s all I want,” I said. “You, for seven days, and seven nights.”

“There will be talk, you know.” He pulled me onto his lap, where at once I felt the
hard, blunt thrust of his cock through his trousers pushing against my bottom. “It
means nothing to me, but to you—”

“Let them talk,” I said, full of bravado. I meant it, too. Considering the dramatic
exit we’d just made together from a house party that had included some of the England’s
best-bred society, I would be surprised if there wasn’t gossip. I ran my palm across
his chest, over the immaculate white linen of his shirt and the hard muscles beneath.
“They will anyway.”

“A brave declaration,” he said as if he didn’t believe me. He hooked one finger into
the deep neckline of my gown, slowly pulling it down to bare my breasts. I arched
toward him, relishing the feel of the silk sliding over my skin. Framed by the red
gown and the dark fur, my skin was as pale and luminous as moonlight, and even in
the shadows, he must have seen how my nipples were already tight and hard, aching
for his touch. “Words may not be the only risk.”

“I told you before,” I said quickly, perhaps a little too quickly to be convincing.
“I’m not afraid.”

“You never are, are you?” He was tracing the full underside of one breast with the
pad of his thumb and purposefully ignoring my aroused nipple. “Not even when you should
be.”

“Savage, if you are trying to—”

“Hush,” he said, pressing his fingertip to my lips. “All I ask is that you do not
forget the obvious: that whatever happens between us cannot be undone.”

“I’d never wish that.” Restlessly I parted my legs with a whisper of silk, feeling
the smooth wool of his evening trousers against my bare thigh. I was offering myself
to him, wanting him to take me there in the car. The speed, the darkness, even the
driver on the other side of the glass served only to heighten my desire. With Savage,
I was shameless; he’d made me like that.

“But you wish for many other things,” he said, glancing down.

“It’s been hours, Savage,” I said breathlessly. “That dinner was interminable, sitting
there beside you and not being able to touch you. I want you now, here. I
need
you.”

His hand stilled on my breast. “You’re being forward, Eve. Bold, even brazen. That’s
not how an Innocent should behave with her master.”

A guilty flush spread over my face, and I was thankful for the half-light in the car
that hid it. He was right, of course. How soon I’d forgotten what he’d spent this
last week teaching me!

“No, Master,” I murmured, instantly as obedient as he expected me to be, and as I’d
come to expect of myself as well. “I forgot, Master.”

“You forgot.” He sighed, cupping my breast in the palm of his hand and running his
thumb lightly over my nipple. “You should be punished for being so forgetful.”

“Yes, Master.” I held my breath, not daring to show how much his torturous little
caress was affecting me. “I deserve to be punished.”

“The most obvious punishment, of course, would be to deny you what you most crave.”
He shoved the hem of my dress over my hips to bare me below the waist. He slipped
his fingers through my dark curls to find the opening of my sex, and pushed one thick
finger inside. The moisture of my blatant arousal made it easy for him to thrust deeply,
finding the place inside me that was most sensitive. I gasped, unable not to, and
arched my back to take him deeper.

“There,” he said, his voice growing rougher. “That’s what you crave, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Master,” I said, the two words breaking along with my self-control.

“Yes,” he repeated, adding a second finger to stretch and stroke my swollen, greedy
passage. “Yet if I were to deny you this, then I would also be punishing myself.”

“Yes, Master,” I said, my sex tightening around his fingers. “That is, no, Master,
you do not deserve the same punishment as I.”

“What a perceptive Innocent you are, Eve,” he said, his own breath growing ragged.
“You’ve redeemed your earlier impulsiveness.”

“Thank—thank you, Master,” I whispered, my body trembling, taut and straining for
the release that he was building within me. From experience I knew he could keep me
poised here on the torturous edge as long as he wanted to, and I knew, too, that he’d
do exactly that if I couldn’t prove myself worthy.

He smiled, a devil’s smile in the half-light. “What would you like as a reward, Eve?”

My fevered quim begged for him to finish what he’d begun, and set me free. But that
wasn’t the answer he sought, and if I begged, he’d only deny me more.

“Your reward?” he asked again. “Surely there’s something you would like, something
that would please us both.”

“Your—your cock,” I managed to say. “I would like your cock, Master.”

“Exactly.” His smile widened as he drew his fingers from my sex, and I shuddered at
the sudden emptiness. “It’s yours to take.”

Quickly I turned on his lap, sitting with my knees on either side of his legs. With
shaking fingers I undid the row of black buttons on his trousers, and at last freed
his cock: hard and ruddy and as eager for me as I was for it. I pulled my gown over
my head, leaving nothing between us except the long strand of pearls he’d given me
yesterday. I loved that he was still clothed with such formality, while I was not.

With a kind of reverence, I took his cock, heavy and hot and hard as granite, in my
hands, and he groaned at my touch. Bracing one hand on his shoulder to steady myself
against the swaying motion of the car, I poised to lower myself onto his cock, rubbing
my honey-sweet on its head and prolonging this last delicious moment of anticipation
for us both.

“Now, Eve,” he ordered harshly.
“Now.”

And with a shuddering sigh, I sank down and took him as deeply as I could.…

Copyright © 2015 by Mia Gabriel

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mia Gabriel is the pseudonym of an award-winning, bestselling author of more than
thirty historical romances. She lives with her family in Pennsylvania.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed
in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.