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

From the moment we’d reached the edges of London, trading starry midnight skies for the harsh glow of the streetlights, things had begun to change subtly between us, and it seemed that with every passing hour the magic that had bound us together was fading as surely as those stars overhead. I felt the propriety of the city outside the motorcar’s windows pressing down upon us, as surely as a leaden weight.

Yet all of that made little difference to the desire I felt for Savage. It still excited me to feel the hard, lean muscle of his thigh beneath the soft black wool of his trousers, and even more to realize that the slight tensing of those muscles came in response to my touch.

“I cannot wait for the future,” I said, running my fingers lightly across his thigh. “As long as you will be there to share it with me.”

His hand covered mine and held it still. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Eve.”

“I do,” I insisted. “I know that with you I’m happier than I have ever been in my life.”

The hint of a humorless smile flickered across his face. “You shouldn’t look for happiness from me.”

“What if I have found it?”

“Then you are mistaken.” He turned my hand into his so our fingers were linked. “I can offer you pleasure—great pleasure—and diversion for the next seven days, and nights, but nothing else. Expect more and you will only be disappointed.”

I didn’t believe him but knew better than to challenge further. He’d his share of dark places in his soul, as I’d mine, and I’d respect his unwillingness to share them. Instead I leaned closer and curled my fingers more tightly into his.

“You never disappoint me, Savage,” I said softly. “Never.”

He made a noncommittal little grunt, but he did not pull away. “When you look at me like this, Eve, I’m almost tempted to believe you.”

I smiled and let my hand slip from his to slide down the inside of his thigh. “I tell only the truth to you, Master.”

“Wicked creature,” he said, and in the slanting light from the streetlamps I saw that his smile had widened. “I mean to test that truth tonight with your first trial here in the city.”

My breathing quickened with anticipation; oh, he’d trained me so well in this last week!

“Whatever you wish, Master,” I said. “Once we arrive at your house—”

“We’re not going to my house,” he said. “Rather,
you
are not. You will be returning to your hotel.”

“Back to the Savoy?” I asked, my disappointment keen. “Without you?”

“Exactly,” he said. “We shall consider it your first trial here in London.”

“But not alone,” I said, already bereft. “Not without you.”

“It is decided,” he said, clipping the last word so there’d be no doubt of his intentions. “This is the way things must be. We’re in London now. I have other matters that beg for my time.”

I retreated from him and sank a little lower against the motorcar’s silk cushions, hugging my arms around myself in misery. I understood all too well. Every other man I’d known in my life had had matters that he’d placed ahead of me, too: business, finance, politics. I’d thought Savage was different, but perhaps he wasn’t.

He had parted the motorcar’s curtain and was no longer looking at me. Instead he was staring through the glass, his profile sharp and angular in the half-light of this last hour before dawn.

It was an hour when respectable people were still sleeping in their beds, and yet the darkness was already losing its potency and the city was beginning to come alive for the day. Rumbling lorries and wagons were starting their first deliveries by the light of the streetlamps, and the lower kind of laborer trudged through the shadows to employment that no one else wanted. The pavements were glistening and wet with damp, and even through the motorcar’s sealed windows came the dank smell of the streets, the sewers, and the river.

In defense I drew my sable coat more closely around me for protection. London was a harsh, modern world coming to life, a reality that held no place for the rare, magical kind of passion Savage and I had shared at Wrenton. I couldn’t deny it, and I wondered if Savage felt it as well.

All of which was reason enough for us not to part now.

“You promised me another seven days with you,” I said softly. “You said my education wasn’t done.”

“The fact that you dare complain to me now proves that,” he said evenly. “Petulance is a most unattractive quality, and one I should think unworthy of you.”

“I’m not being petulant,” I said wistfully. I wasn’t, either. I was disappointed and already beginning to miss him; that was all. “Rather, I do not wish to be apart from you.”

With a sigh he turned back towards me, the slanting streetlight casting sharp shadows across his cheekbones and the starched linen of his shirt. Yet despite the chill of so much black and white, his eyes still burned when he gazed at me, as smoldering hot as coals.

“The Game as we played it at Wrenton has no place in London,” he said with more patience. “You must understand that, Eve. Here we’ll play by different rules, with different tests and trials for you to prove yourself. It can be no other way. The only thing that will not change is the prize you will earn for yourself if you do as I say.”

He leaned closer, taking my chin in his hand so I could not look away; nor did I wish to. I’d learned it was always in my own interest to pay attention to him, and my pulse quickened at his touch.

“I promise you, dear Eve,” he continued in that deep, resonant voice that could make me shiver with delight, “that if you do prove yourself, then the rewards from these challenges will be beyond your imagining. All you must do is trust me, and obey.”

“Yes, Master,” I said, my gaze locked with his. “I will trust you, and I will obey.”

A hint of a smile crossed his lips. “In all things, Eve.”

“In all things, Master,” I repeated in a whisper, and his smile widened a fraction.

“Very good,” he said. “Be sure not to forget.”

Without releasing my jaw he kissed me, his lips relentless until mine parted, and his tongue worked deep into my mouth to mark his possession.

I trembled, fighting the desire to break free of his hand and rub my body against his. It didn’t matter that I’d spent most of the journey from Wrenton riding his cock. All I wanted now was to open my coat and part my thighs and once again shamelessly offer myself to him the way I knew he—and I—liked best.

Yet I didn’t. This was not the time to forget my training as an Innocent. I’d learned that the pleasure to be found in the challenges could well outweigh even the rewards and that everything—the trust and the waiting and the obedience—served to make that pleasure even more intense.

Finally he broke away, still holding my jaw steady so that our faces remained close. He was not nearly as impassive as he was pretending to be: although his eyes were hooded, his pupils were dark with excitement, and the vein at his temple pulsed with it.

“Your challenge tonight will be a simple one,” he said in a rough whisper. “You must walk through the lobby of the Savoy, address the clerk at the desk for messages, and then proceed to your room. You must do these things alone, as you have done them countless times before.”

I couldn’t keep the little catch from my breath. Of course I’d done all those things before in many grand hotels, including the Savoy, and done them without a thought. If that were all, then this first challenge would be no challenge at all.

But I’d never done them at this hour of the night, when no respectable lady would be returning unattended by a husband, friends, or servants. Because of all that Savage and I had done in the motorcar my hair was missing pins and falling down, and without a comb or brush there was no possibility of repairing it myself. I still wore the red silk Poiret gown with the glittering black beads that had been perfectly appropriate for the final dinner at Wrenton, but I wore it without a corset, petticoats, camisole, or drawers. I was completely without the layers of lace-trimmed armor that protected a lady’s decency, and the thin silk clung provocatively to my hips and belly. I might as well have been naked, for that would have been less seductive than this lascivious second skin of scarlet silk.

As I realized exactly how exposed I would be my glance dropped down to my breasts, barely covered by the dress’s panel of black lace. Pebbled with desire, my nipples thrust lewdly against the lace, with the long strand of pearls he’d given me spilling over it. Instead of feeling shame, my heart quickened at the brazen sight and I felt my breasts become more sensitive still as the lace teased my nipples.

Savage followed my glance and smiled.

“Ah, so you understand the challenge, Eve,” he said. “Consider well what you must do. Dressed as you are, you must walk across that long marble floor, past the inquisitive eyes of the doormen, the footmen, the bellmen, and the men at the desk. All those men, all watching you, and seeing your dishevelment at this hour, and realizing how aroused you still must be. They’ll see the flush of your cheeks, how bruised your lips are from my kisses, the languid sway of your walk, and the fullness of your breasts. They’ll see you for what you are, a woman who has been fucked, and fucked well. No matter how high you hold your head, they’ll be unable to look away, and every one of them will be wishing he had been in my place.”

“I can wear my coat, can’t I?” I asked with an odd mix of desperation and desire. While I could imagine all too easily the leering men he was describing—what attractive woman has not endured a similar scene while walking past a group of men?—the fact that I would appear so wanton, so alluring, was unsettling and yet strangely arousing as well.

I had always kept my feelings private, even secret. Could strange men, in fact, tell so much from my face alone? Would they see what I’d done—what I’d do again—with Savage? Was I that vulnerable?

If so, then this challenge that Savage proposed would, in fact, be far more difficult than I’d first thought. Instinctively I reached for my fur, pulling it around me for protection.

He realized what I was doing and chuckled.

“I should make you enter wearing only your gown,” he said. “It would give you a more complete notion of the power of your effect upon men. But for this week you belong to me, not to them. As you may recall, I do not like to share.”

He was smiling, but I remembered all too well how he’d violently beaten another gentleman who’d dared to touch me at Wrenton. To say Savage did not like to share was a laughable understatement. Yet I didn’t feel trapped by his possessiveness. Instead it made me feel cherished, treasured, as if by keeping me safe from other men he’d set me free.

“You may keep your coat,” he said softly. “Let them guess, and only guess, what is hidden inside it. The challenge is for you, not them.”

Relieved, I drew the coat more closely around my shoulders. “Thank you, Master.”

He raised a single brow. “You thank me without knowing the complete challenge?”

“You said I am to walk through the lobby to the desk, then to the lift to my rooms,” I said. “Wasn’t that the challenge?”

“In part,” he said, lowering his voice as he slipped his hand inside my coat. Instinctively he found my breast, shoving aside the pearls to fill his palm with my tender flesh. A slash of light from the streetlamp illuminated his hand cupping my lace-covered breast, my nipple pressing through between his fingers, and I shuddered as much from the erotic picture as from the sensation he was drawing from my body.

“I want you to do all those things, yes,” he continued, “but at the same time I want you to be thinking of how your breasts ache for my hand and for my mouth.”

He bent his head and sucked hard on my nipple. The wet pressure of his tongue and mouth through the fine web of the lace made me shudder and clutch at the black silk of his hair. He gave my nipple one final swipe with his tongue, then grazed his cheek against the side of my throat, the stubble of his beard rough on my chin.

“I want you to think of that,” he whispered into my ear, his hand closing over my breast again. “And I want you to remember the feel of my cock when it’s buried deep inside you. I want you to remember how thick it is, how it fills you, and the heat of passion that burns you from inside. I want you to remember the pleasure of it, how wet you become as you writhe around my cock, and how I fill you with my seed until our juices run together, until you come so hard you cry out with the force of it.
That
is what I want you to remember as you walk through the halls of the Savoy, and that is what I expect you to describe to me tomorrow.”

How could I think of anything else after I’d heard that? I was close to coming again now, my breath ragged and my body arching against his. But as I turned to offer my mouth again to him more light spilled through the windows on us and I realized that the motorcar had come to a halt.

“Ah, we have arrived,” Savage said, easing away from me. He smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead as he composed himself, once again the reserved, slightly bored English lord. “Here is the Savoy now.”

I hadn’t the same ease (or perhaps it was experience) with restoring myself. I scrambled to pull down my skirts and gather my coat together, my fingers clutching deep into the plush sable just as the doorman unlatched the door and swung it open.

“Good evening, Mrs. Hart,” the liveried doorman said as he held the door for me, recognizing me as a guest of the hotel.

I looked down, avoiding his eyes as I thought of everything Savage had said earlier. I was flushing furiously, and I couldn’t help but look back at Savage, sitting in the shadows.

“Good night, Mrs. Hart,” he said. There was so many notes to his voice, the benign pleasantly underscored with challenge, and command, expectation, and perhaps a hint of amusement as well. “It was my …
pleasure
to be of service to you this evening.”

“Thank you, my lord,” I murmured, striving to respond in the same manner. “It was entirely my pleasure, and my honor.”

I stepped from the motorcar, ignoring the doorman’s offered hand—partly because I wished to be aloof and distant but also because I wanted to use both my hands to keep my coat as tightly closed as I could to hide my revealing gown.