Savage Nights (The Savage Trilogy #2) (9 page)

Yet with his climax his face had altered subtly. His angular features hadn’t exactly softened—I doubt there was any power that could make that happen—but there was something near to contentment, and the merest hint of vulnerability. It was the only time he ever let down his guard to show me this side of him, and I relished it, knowing how rare and fleeting it was.

“Master,” I murmured softly, the only reply that was necessary and likely all I could sensibly make.

“
That
is why I will never share you with any other man,” he said, his own voice rough and low and confidential. “You see how it is, Eve, how it must be. You are meant to be mine, and no one else’s.”

I smiled. Of course I was his. How could he ever doubt it? Happiness glowed within me and made me blush with contentment.

He kissed me again, a languid, leisurely kiss as he flexed his cock one last time within me, just enough to make me catch my breath and suck his tongue deeper against mine. My eyes fluttered shut again, the better to let my other senses savor him. I loved his taste and his scent, both so unabashedly male that I’d never tire of either. I was now aware of the distant voices of the grooms and stableboys in the yard and the soft snuffling and stamping of the horses in the neighboring stalls. I reached up to slide my fingers into Savage’s hair, as black and sleek as a raven’s wing, and frame his face with my palms as we kissed.

He slicked his tongue one last time over my lips and eased away. I opened my eyes in time to see his cock slide from me—turgid now but still impressive—before he tucked it into his trousers. I always hated this moment, when we ceased to be one and he again became separate from me—and became the distant Savage who kept his secrets locked tight within him.

I slipped from the ledge and smoothed my skirts over my petticoats. Joyless, sensible black wool smothered and covered me once again, even as Savage’s seed remained in a sticky trickle between my thighs. This time he hadn’t offered me his handkerchief, and while I could have employed my own, I chose not to. At least I’d that small part of him still.

My legs were unsteady beneath me, and I had to lean back against the ledge for support as I watched him briskly putting his own clothes to rights. I knew I should begin to do the same, yet all I did was watch him, my arms hanging empty at my sides.

How could I long so desperately for him while he … he did not long for me? It was as if I were no longer there or, even worse, I no longer mattered.

“Don’t leave me, Savage,” I pleaded softly. “Please.”

He paused and looked at me with surprise.

“I’ve already asked you to return to my home with me,” he said, all reason. “What would now make you believe I would abandon you here?”

I shook my head, unable to put my uneasiness into words that would not sound foolish. Perhaps it
was
foolish, and that was my real trouble. Hadn’t I left New York for London to prove my independence?

Savage closed the space between us. He cradled my jaw in his hand and turned my face back up towards his. His fingers were warm and sure against my cheek, and I found even that small touch to be electric.

“Oh, Eve, Eve,” he said softly. “What must I do to make you trust me?”

“That … that isn’t so, Master,” I whispered. Fearful of what he might see in my face, I wanted to look away from his hooded, silvery eyes, but the way he was holding my face made it impossible. “I do trust you, in all things. I
must
trust you.”

“Exactly so.” His mouth curved in the slightest of smiles, surprising me by its boyishness. “For this week, you are mine, and in return I promised to make that time … memorable. We agreed before we left Wrenton, yes?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. A week together was all he promised. Only a week, and the first day was already nearly done.

Only six days left.

His grip on my jaw had relaxed. I rubbed my cheek lightly against his palm, turning his touch into a caress.

He noticed and smiled again.

“I fully intend to keep my part of the bargain,” he continued, “and I can only hope you will likewise keep yours. Of course, if you are unhappy, you may leave. I will not keep you against your will. Perhaps I flatter myself believing that you are here by choice, not by—”

“Nothing could make me leave you now, Master,” I said fiercely. “Nothing.”

He turned his head slightly, appraising me. “No other man?”

“There is no other man than you,” I declared with breathy urgency. “There couldn’t be.”

“You are sure of this?” His hair was still tousled around his face, a bit of unruly imperfection in his usually impeccable appearance. “You are certain?”

My thoughts flew back to his earlier confrontation in the stable yard with Lord Blackledge. How a man like Savage could possibly feel threatened by a bully like the baron was beyond me. Like any woman with a breath of sanity, I would never involve myself with Blackledge.

Yet I couldn’t tell if Savage was testing me now or if he truly feared he’d a rival.

He shouldn’t, because he didn’t.

“There could never be any other man but you, Master,” I said firmly. “Not now, not forever.”

He raised a single dark brow. “Forever is a very long time, Eve.”

“It is,” I agreed. “But it still would not begin to be enough for my time with you, Master.”

Without shifting my gaze from his I turned my face into his hand and first kissed his palm, then nipped at it, my teeth finding the fleshy part of his open hand.

He didn’t flinch, but fresh desire—and amusement—flashed in his eyes. He ran his other hand in a purposeful caress along my throat, over my breast and waist, and finally cupped his fingers over my sex. The gesture was muted by the layers of my habit, but it was still arousingly possessive, enough to make me catch my breath.

“And that, Eve,” he said, his voice seductively low, “is precisely why you are so irresistible to me. Now come; it’s time I took you to a setting more worthy of your beauty than a stable.”

I repinned the tangle of my hair and retrieved my hat, my gloves, my crop. I pulled the black veil low over my face, shadowing whatever sin might show in my eyes. Sin, yes, and still-simmering excitement, but no shame. As I strolled across the stable yard beside Savage I kept my head high and shoulders back, chatting amicably with him about the pleasant weather.

To my relief, there was no sign of Blackledge, nor any of the cavalrymen who had fueled Savage’s earlier jealousy. Or perhaps that, too, had only been part of the game that Savage was playing with me ever since we’d arrived in London. I couldn’t always tell with him, nor, really, did I care.

Savage even paused to speak to the stable master about one of his horses. I waited beside him with my hand looped informally through the crook of his arm, for all the world as if the animal had been our true reason for visiting the stables. Likely any passersby would think we were a lady and gentleman who had just met over tea, instead of fucked each other mindless in a horse’s stall.

It was easy for me to pretend, too. None of it felt real: not the other riders with their horses and carriages, not the stableboys and grooms, not the late-afternoon sun slanting through the trees and over the shingled roofs and chimney pots.

Savage alone had become my reality.
For a week,
I reminded myself. For
this
week, and I curled my fingers a little more tightly into his arm.

I expected his driver and the cream-colored Rolls-Royce to be waiting for us along the street outside the stable, but instead Savage led me to a dark-blue carriage drawn by a perfectly matched team of grays. As elegant as the carriage was, it was also slightly old-fashioned; I’d already given up my carriage in New York years ago in favor of a motorcar.

Yet I couldn’t deny the pleasure of having the liveried footman open the carriage door and the little folding step for me, or the fact that that door itself was painted with Savage’s family crest, picked out in gold and silver. His family had been part of the nobility for hundreds of years, and while my father’s money had bought me every luxury, it couldn’t begin to purchase the air of long-standing grandeur that the crest represented. I was impressed and more than a little awed as I slid across the leather cushion.

Savage joined me, and as soon as the door was closed after us he rested his gloved hand on my knee and let his fingers press along the inside of my thigh through my skirts. That was all: a simple mark of possession, and one that made my heart beat faster.

“I trust traveling by carriage is not too grave an affront to your modern American sensibilities,” he said as the carriage rolled forward. “Motorcars are useful in the country, but I still prefer a carriage in town. As I have told you before, I am at heart an old soul, and I resist the harsher indignities that the twentieth century finds necessary.”

I smiled, pleased that he’d continued his conversational manner now that we were once again alone together. It wasn’t that I didn’t wish to let him be my Master—far from it—but I was also fascinated by Savage as a man. I’d already learned that he was intensely private about his own affairs and that he volunteered next to nothing of himself. There had been only a few times when he’d relaxed enough to speak of his past and his interests, and I recognized the rare trust that such confidences displayed.

“London isn’t New York,” I said, turning back my veil over the brim of my hat. “New York has to have everything that’s new because it doesn’t have anything old, the way London does. My father always said that was the way America succeeded, by always looking forward and never back.”

He turned on the seat to look at me more directly, his pale eyes filled with genuine interest. “Do you believe that as well, Eve?”

“I do,” I said, my cheeks warming beneath his scrutiny. “My father was a clever man. He could look forward and anticipate what people would want. That was how he became a rich man, you see: providing things that people didn’t realize they desperately wanted until he offered them to them.”

“Like railroads?”

“Railroads, yes,” I said. “But Father invested in all sorts of other things, like electrical iceboxes and ovens and new kinds of motors. I remember once seeing a new kind of waterproof shoe on his desk that he was considering as an investment.”

“A waterproof shoe,” Savage repeated, bemused. “So he shared such marvels with you?”

“Oh, no.” I was unable to keep the old regrets from my voice. “I was only a girl. A disappointment. I learned of what he did from overhearing his conversations. If I’d been a son, I would have been taken into his confidence and into his business, but being a girl … no.”

He frowned a little, as if I’d said something especially worth considering. “Yet you speak of your father far more than you do of your husband.”

I shook my head, not exactly denying his statement but not quite agreeing, either.

“The only real reason I married my husband was because Father wanted me to.” I smoothed the backs of my gloves, smoothing away my wretched marriage at the same time. “But both of them are gone now, so none of it matters any longer. I’m left as the dutiful daughter and widow.”

I made a tight little smile, trying to make light of what I now recognized as the greatest mistake of my life. I’d been so young, and Mr. Hart—it had taken two years of marriage before I could bring myself to call him by his given name—had been kind enough, if utterly disinterested in being more than a perfunctory husband to his sixteen-year-old bride.

But if I hadn’t married Arthur Hart, I would not now be his widow and, much more important, I would not be sitting in a carriage with the Earl of Savage, his hand on my thigh as I prattled on and on.

“That was no doubt much more than you wished to hear,” I said ruefully. Here I’d thought I’d learn more about Savage, and instead I’d only run on about myself. “I’m sorry to be so tedious.”

“You’re far from tedious, Eve,” he said softly. “I’ve told you that before. I wish to learn everything about you.”

I twisted to face him. “But you see that is how I feel about you, too, and yet I—”

“Oh, I am not very interesting at all,” he said with a careless shrug. “I am much the same as my father, and his father, and all his fathers before that. Your family may delight in change, but mine never has.”

“You
are
interesting to me,” I insisted. “That same family that you say is so boring must be fascinating. You’re an English earl, a peer of the realm. How could that be dull? I am certain there were no waterproof boots in your father’s desk.”

He smiled. “Not once.”

“Then tell me what was on his desk,” I begged. “Tell me of what you did as a boy, and where you went to school and on holidays. I wish to know
everything
. Tell me about your parents, and if you’ve any brothers or sisters, and your own son, too.”

Instantly his face shuttered against me and his smile vanished. Too late I realized I’d overstepped.

“I told you, Eve,” he said brusquely. “My life is of no interest to anyone, especially not to you. We’ve arrived.”

He turned away from me and towards the window as the carriage slowed. I was left to wonder how—and how badly—I’d misstepped. Once he’d confided to me the nightmarish details of his young wife’s death. What I’d asked now hadn’t seemed anywhere as personal as what he’d volunteered. Had I been too inquisitive? Had my questions about his family somehow offended him?

The carriage door opened, and he stepped out first and turned to hand me down. It was a courtly, old-fashioned gesture, one that had been lost with motorcars. It was also unexpectedly romantic, having him hold my hand like that as if I were a dainty, helpless creature instead of a modern American woman. I liked it.

“This is my house,” he said, pausing for a moment to let me consider the façade. Still holding his hand, I dutifully gazed upward.

By New York standards, the house would not have merited much notice and would, in fact, have been completely overlooked among the mansions that lined Fifth Avenue. But I had been in London long enough to understand that things were measured differently in England and that Savage’s house here on St. James’s Square was, in fact, very grand indeed.