Savage Nights (The Savage Trilogy #2) (12 page)

Which I didn’t, not while he was looking at me like this. His eyes seemed to darken beneath his brows, and the sharp planes in his face were taut and tense. I sensed how much that control cost him, and I sensed, too, where it would lead.

With Savage there was only one way, for all that tension to ultimately be released, nor could I wait.

I smoothed my hair back behind my ears, my breasts shimmying beneath the silk robe as I lifted my arms. Of course he noticed, and I wondered if he could also see how my nipples were tightening beneath his gaze.

I felt the first tendrils of desire curling within me, and this time I glanced expectantly towards the door that led to his bedroom.

He followed my glance and smiled: a tight, tense smile with no humor.

“Not yet, Eve,” he said. “In time, perhaps, if it pleases me. But as your Master, it’s my responsibility to correct you when you err, such as you have tonight.”

“Yes, Master,” I said obediently, unable to keep back my smile. I’d learned that Savage’s “corrections” often led to a great deal of pleasure. “I have erred, and I deserve your punishment.”

He frowned. “Don’t be glib, Eve,” he said sharply. “And do not try to seduce me, either. You must learn that there will be consequences when you disobey me.”

I took a deep breath and lowered my chin. My heart was racing; his tone demanded that I obey. I had never seen him this serious, and I wondered how I’d inadvertently offended him so grievously.

“Yes, Master,” I said, my smile gone and my bravado with it.

“Better,” he said, the single word curt. “Now remove your clothes.”

“But I already—”

“Do not argue with me, Eve,” he said sharply. “You’ll only make it worse for yourself.”

“Yes, Master,” I murmured. My hands were trembling, and I fumbled with the bow on my sash. At last I untied it, and I slid the robe from my shoulders. I began to walk towards a nearby chair, intending to drape the robe over it.

“Let it drop,” he said. “I don’t want you to look away from me. Now your costume. I want nothing in my way.”

I nodded, and as I drew the simple shift over my head with a
shush
of silk I surreptitiously licked my lips from nervousness. I thought by now I was accustomed to being naked before him, and certainly it seemed a small thing considering all the other intimacies that we had shared.

But this felt different. There was a flintiness to his manner that brought his mastery to a new level, and I’d no notion of what might come next. He truly
was
my master. All I could do was follow his wishes.

I dropped the shift to the floor, settled the strand of pearls between my breasts, and shook my hair back over my shoulders so he couldn’t accuse me of covering myself with it. There had been a time when I would have been too ashamed, too mortified, to be so exposed before a man, but because Savage made my nakedness his choice, not mine, I reveled in it. I was shameless, because that was how he wanted me, and because I was in his power it was thrilling.

Now I stood silently with my hands at my sides, waiting and clenching my bare toes into the plush carpet beneath me as the only outlet I had for my restlessness. I couldn’t control how my nipples had pinched into tight little buds, but that could be blamed on the cool evening air. Still, I prayed that my expression was unflinching and that my cheeks weren’t flushed and that he wouldn’t be able to notice my growing excitement.

His glance raked over me, from my unpinned hair over my breasts and belly and the curls that crowned my mount to my bare legs and feet and back again. I must have passed muster. He nodded, though even by candlelight I saw the little twitch of arousal in the vein on his temple.

Good,
I thought. Even if I’d displeased him, he wanted me. No matter what sort of punishment he’d planned, I’d have to remember that.

“Don’t move,” he ordered.

Methodically he unbuttoned and shed his riding coat and the waistcoat beneath it, his gaze still locked with mine. He dropped the garments to the floor just as he’d instructed me to do.

His motions grew quicker, as if his very fingers had become impatient while he was looking at me. He pulled the links from his cuffs—the same links I always associated with him, black onyx discs centered with a curling snake with a diamond in its open mouth—and shoved his sleeves back to his elbows. He hooked his finger into the knot of his necktie and pulled it apart, then snapped the black silk through his collar and let it, too, fall to the carpet.

Finally he opened his collar and the top two buttons of his shirt with quick little jerks, but no more. Clearly this would be another instance where I would be exposed to him but not the other way around. He would keep his clothes, and his control, while I was stripped of everything.

A narrow upholstered bench with curving mahogany legs stood before one of the windows. He went to it now and picked it up with both hands, reminding me how effortlessly strong he was for a gentleman. He brought the bench to the middle of the room, about six feet from where I stood, and set it down with a muted thump.

I couldn’t help myself from asking, “Whatever are you doing, Master?”

“Making preparations,” he said absently, as if it were perfectly obvious. “Not that it is any of your affair at this time.”

I didn’t dare ask more but watched with growing trepidation as he reached into the pocket of his trousers and withdrew the key that he’d hidden there not ten minutes before. With a little clink of metal on metal he dropped the key in a silver bowl on the mantel.

“Take note of that,” he said as he returned to the bench. “I have locked the door to keep us from being disturbed, but if you ever wish to leave this room and this house, you are free to do so.”

“But I don’t want to leave, Master!” I protested, surprised.

“So you have told me before,” he said, squaring the bench with his foot so it aligned with the pattern in the carpet, letting me think that it mattered. “But you’ve also told me, Eve, that you never want to be my prisoner. I wish to make it clear that you are not. You may leave at any time.”

I lowered my chin a stubborn fraction. I thought we’d settled this earlier, but apparently not. Did he doubt me? Had I failed him simply by coming into this room?

“Do you wish me to leave, Master?” I asked, my voice small. “Is that what you want?”

“Not at all,” he said, his expression unchanged. “What I want is you, here and now.”

I took a deep breath as relief washed over me. He was so good at masking his emotions that I seldom could guess his true feelings.

“But note this caveat, Eve,” he continued. “If you ever choose to leave, then we are done. There will be no appeals, no beseeching, no tears, that will change my mind. Quite simply, if you leave, I can never trust you again, because you would have failed to trust me.”

Slowly he sat in the middle of the bench, facing me with his long, muscular legs slightly spread. It was a flagrantly male way for him to sit, aggressively displaying his powerful erection beneath his well-tailored trousers. His need for me was written all over his face as well, in every tense muscle along his jaw and in the way his eyes were watching my every breath and move, like a hawk tracking its prey.

Oh, yes, he wanted me, and I felt his desire wash over my skin like a shimmering wave of heat.

“Do you understand, Eve?” he asked softly, his eyes hooded. “Will you trust me?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, Master,” I said, perhaps the most true thing I’d ever said.

I held my hand out to him, but instead of taking it he patted the bench beside him.

“Here,” he said. “This is where I want you now.”

I nodded and joined him, sitting close beside him on the bench. I began to put my arms around his shoulders to kiss him, but instead he took me gently by the arm and laid me across his lap. It was an odd position to be in, facing down at the carpet with my bare breasts pressed into the side of his thigh and the pearls hanging from my neck to the floor. My bottom arched over his other leg, with my own legs resting stiffly across the bench.

“This … this is strange, Master,” I said, shifting uneasily. The wool of his trousers prickled against my skin, but much more unsettling was the hard length of his erect cock, pressing unmistakably against my hip. “I do not think—”

“I don’t want you to think, Eve,” he said, his voice low and seductive as he adjusted me to his liking. “I wish you only to feel.”

I tried to do as he bid, and let out the breath that I realized I’d been holding in uncertainty. He’d asked me to do that before, and I’d only benefited. I told myself that this would be no different.

He smoothed my long hair to fall along one side of my face so that my entire back was exposed to him. He ran his palm along my spine, from the nape of my neck to the cleft of my bottom, and back again.

“Be easy, Eve; relax,” he said softly. “Trust me. That’s all I ask of you, and in return I believe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

It felt good, that long caress, especially after wearing the heavy riding habit and corset. With his thumbs he kneaded the tension from my shoulders, and I automatically stretched across his knees and arched my back like a cat, and the small
hmmm
of contentment in my throat might even have been a purr.

He chuckled and repeated the long strokes. His hands dipped low along my ribs and over the sides of my breasts, and I shifted restlessly at the unfamiliar angle. He saw it and reached lower to scoop up the globes of my breasts to fill his hands. Lightly he squeezed and tugged my nipples to draw them out until they tingled and ached for more, and I moaned shamelessly in response. I began to twist around on his knees so I could free his cock from its trouser prison, but he pushed me back down with his hand on the small of my back.

“This is for you, Eve,” he said. “I want to watch you respond as I give you pleasure.”

“Then you’ve succeeded, Master,” I said breathlessly, my voice muffled by hair. “You always please me.”

He grunted, and his strong, knowing hands moved to my buttocks. Lightly he squeezed and massaged each cheek, lifting and caressing the flesh.

“You have the most beautiful ass, Eve,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever tire of it.”

How could he find my bottom beautiful? It was the one part of my body that was undeniably plump in proportion to the rest of me, and I’d always been grateful for full skirts that masked it.

Unsure of whether he was teasing me or not, I craned my neck to try to see his face. “That’s a peculiar compliment, Master.”

“Not at all,” he said, continuing to stroke the full curves raised up before him. “Your ass is worthy of Venus herself. You are pure decadence, Eve, all for me to enjoy.”

No matter what foolishness he was saying, his actions were having their effect on me. Liquid heat coursed through me, making my breath catch in my chest. Almost without thinking I spread my legs in blatant invitation.

“Greedy creature,” he said. “I’d wager fifty pounds that if I touch your cunt, you’ll be wet.”

“Oh, Master,” I said breathlessly. “That is not a wager I would take.”

“No, I expect you wouldn’t,” he said. His fingers slipped lower, over the delicate little crease where my thigh met my buttock. He followed it higher and traced the crease slowly to prolong my sweet torment. With his other hand he pushed my thighs more widely apart and at last pressed one long finger into my slit.

I
was
wet, exactly as we’d both known I would be.

“Soaking,” he said with satisfaction. “It’s as if you hadn’t spent at all this afternoon in the stable, yet I know you did.”

“I … I cannot help it, Master,” I said, which was true, but I also knew how much he liked hearing that from me. “Not when you … you do that.”

“Or this?” His finger slid easily back and forth within my passage, so easily that he added a second beside it.

I could hear the sound of his finger stirring my juices, moist proof of his undeniable effect upon me. Even two of his fingers were a sad substitute for his cock, but they were better than nothing. Instinctively I tried to rock my hips to find a rhythm against them, but he held me firm with his other hand pressing my ass to make me lie still.

“No, Eve,” he said firmly. “Not yet. Not like that. Not until I say it’s time.”

I whimpered plaintively. “But I cannot—”

“You can,” he said patiently. “You must. It will be much better for you if you do.”

I struggled not to move, my fingers gripping the carved edge of the bench from the effort. He’d drawn his fingers from my quim and slid the moisture he’d gathered from my passage over my outer sex. He parted my now-slippery lips and circled the pad of his thumb over my pearl with just the right maddening pressure.

My breath had become a series of shuddering sighs, my body tensing as the delicious pressure built inside me. When he eased his fingers back inside me, keeping his thumb on my pearl, I felt my pleasure cresting higher and higher, and I could no longer keep from rocking my hips up toward his hand.

“No, Eve,” he repeated, raising his hand from my body. “Not yet.”

I moaned with frustration, twisting across his lap and pressing my hip against his cock. He must have felt it as a kind of caress; that was what I wanted, to torment him the same way he was doing with me.

Yet he must have viewed it as something else entirely. Swiftly he lifted his fingers from between my legs. He raised his hand, and before I realized what was happening he’d slapped my left cheek: a quick, hard, stinging smack with his open palm.

I gasped with shock and tried to pull away, but he held me fast across his lap.

“What are you doing?” I cried, panicking. “No one has ever hit me, not once in my life. Father never permitted it.”

“Your father isn’t here, is he?” he said, his voice low and seductive, as if the very Devil himself were reasoning with me. “You wouldn’t wish him to be. And this isn’t hitting, not the way you mean it.”

Part of me had already realized that. As soon as he’d spanked me he’d immediately placed his palm over the cheek he’d just slapped, gently stroking the same spot. It was almost as if he were trying to soothe away the sting he’d just caused.