Seductive as Flame (10 page)

“Or I could show you yours,” Zelda lightly replied, suddenly feeling breathless and young, as if she were fifteen again. Although Dalgliesh wasn’t her adoring Johnnie Armstrong, but a confident libertine sure of his appeal.

On the other hand, she was a confident woman.

And he
did
appeal.

“Since we’re neither adolescents as you pointed out this morning,” she murmured, offering him a captivating smile, “this won’t be a seduction so much as a lustful meeting of minds.”

“Minds? I hope not,” he drolly replied, beginning to unbutton his waistcoat as though having been given leave to proceed.

“Well, my mind at least will be involved. As for you, I’ll soon find out what’s involved, won’t I?” She lazily stretched, watching him begin to undress with delicious anticipation. “I must say, Dalgliesh,” she murmured, her voice a soft contralto, “I’ve been thinking about you, about this—a great deal.”

He paused an infinitesimal moment in his unbuttoning, she noticed, before he continued the downward progress of his fingers. She smiled. “Does that make you nervous?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Am I not allowed to think about you?”

“It depends what you’re thinking.”

She softly laughed. “We’ve agreed to dismiss your strange offer. But that aside, how many traps have there been to make you so wary?”

“None I couldn’t manage.” He sat up, shrugged out of his coat and waistcoat, and dropped them on the floor.

A gleam of amusement twinkled in her eyes. “I’m warned then.” She opened her arms wide. “Rest easy. I only want a bit of your time and your very splendid cock.”

His smile was instant and unguarded. “Those I gladly give. You’re most unusual,” he said, half musing. “No flattery or coquetry. It’s very appealing.”

“You’re too handsome and too rich, Dalgliesh, and I expect news of your enormous cock has preceded you. Why wouldn’t they all want a piece of you?”

“They want more,” he drily said.

“I don’t, I assure you.” And in the rational part of her brain, she meant it. As for the irrational part, she’d long ago learned self-discipline and self-sacrifice. Who wouldn’t with five children to raise?

He kicked off his evening shoes. “Come here.” He indicated the space between his spread thighs.

“You have to say it nicely.”

“
Please
, come here,” he dulcetly murmured, reaching down to take off his socks.

“Or you could come here,” she said as sweetly.

He looked up, amused. “Do you think I’ll say no?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’d never be so foolish.” Barefoot now, he rose from his chair with an effortless grace. “He’s been waiting for you since morning,” he said, glancing downward to his erection lifting the soft wool of his trousers. “And he’s quite willing to oblige you in just about anything.”

“
Just
about anything?” She was feeling ravenous and greedy, the ostentatious display eliciting a soft suppressed gasp as he drew near.

His smile was knowing and assured; the woman before him was ripe for mounting. “Correction—
anything.
Anything at all.”

She shut her eyes against the hot rush of desire rippling up her vagina, and when she opened them again, he was still smiling.

“Tell me what you want first.”

“Arrogant man. I should say no to you.”

“It wouldn’t matter if you did.” Blunt and unequivocal. “You’re here, I’m here”—his gaze flicked downward—“he’s here, and at least two of us are obsessed.” Jerking open the bow on his white tie, he pulled it free, dropped it, and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. “So let me show you what obsession feels like. Come, darling,” he said in a softer tone, leaning down, taking her hands, and pulling her to her feet. “You can have as many orgasms as you want. You first. How would that be?”

Her shoulders and arms were bare, her mounded breasts partially visible above the low décolletage of her gown, the flickering firelight tinting her pale flesh peach and rose and grenadine. Her brilliant hair was gilded with amber, her eyes were dark with passion, and he thought as he had that morning that she was the most stunning woman he’d ever seen.

She looked up, wide-eyed and breathless. “Tell me it’s perfectly normal to feel this way—ravaged by desire, swallowed up by unquenchable lust—shaking.” She gripped his hands harder to steady herself.

He drew her close, so their bodies lightly touched, so his rampant cock spoke for him as well, and he answered her quietly. “It’s normal for us.”

She drew in a shuddering breath. “I’m not sure that helps.”

“I know what will help.” Smoothly turning her, he began unhooking the closures at the back of her gown. “Decide what you want me to do first while I take off your gown.”

How could he speak so casually when she was already trembling on the brink and he’d barely touched her? How could he calmly unfasten the long line of concealed hooks down her back with such complacency when she didn’t know if her knees would give way under the violence of her need, if she could find breath enough to breathe. If she could resist the urge to shamelessly beg him to stop unhooking so she could feel him inside her—
now
, this instant.

“Please,” she said in a ragged whisper a moment later because she couldn’t help herself; she was sick with desire, her craving insatiable. “I don’t care about the dress.”

“A minute more, darling.” His voice was husky and low, his libido equally uninterested in delay. But he was capable of restraint—one of his great charms as a lover. Along with his stamina.

“Stop, stop!” Swinging around, trembling, flushed with arousal, her cheeks pinked from more than the fire, Zelda hissed, “Stop right now!”

“Yes, ma’am.” Reaching around her, he ripped the last few hooks free and shoved the gown down her arms, her hips, the shimmering velvet descending to the carpet in a soft whisper of sound.

He masked his surprise.

She was nude—lush, shapely, resplendent, and
naked
.

Not that he wasn’t familiar with the lined and boned evening gowns that required less lingerie. But generally a lady wore petticoats, at least, and silk stockings. He should have noticed her bare feet. Had he not been distracted by everything that made this evening both difficult and exceptional, he might have.

He liked that she’d been waiting for him. Or perhaps she was waiting for anyone to satisfy her desires, he more cynically reflected. Although with the current state of their mutual arousal, it didn’t matter because he happened to be
anyone
.

Lifting her in his arms, he quickly carried her to the bed, pulled away the embroidered coverlet, and deposited her on the cool sheets. “Is that too cold?” An automatic politesse only; he was already unbuttoning his trousers.

She shook her head, incapable of comment with her gaze on Dalgliesh’s fingers rapidly moving down his trouser placket, the buttons on his underwear. And a moment later, his erection freed, the mattress dipped under his weight, and he settled smoothly between her legs.

She fleetingly noted the vivid width of his muscled shoulders beneath the fine cambric of his evening shirt, grateful for the fact that he’d barely undressed to accommodate her. “I’m sorry—to be so—desperate,” she whispered, breathless and trembling, sliding her hands down his back to help draw him in.

“God, no, don’t be sorry.” His voice was rough and half breathless, too, as he positioned the head of his cock so it was nuzzling her cleft and invaded her sleek passage the merest distance. “You needn’t wait.” And he gave her what she wanted, penetrating slowly at first, cautious about hurting her, watching her face from under his lashes. Then as her sleek flesh yielded to the forceful pressure of his turgid cock, he drove in deeper and deeper yet until he was buried to the hilt in her hot, melting flesh.

She shivered. He was so big—the pressure extreme.

He knew why she shivered, liked that she did, her vulnerability triggering a dangerous excitement. Like a rutting animal, he growled deep in his throat and forced her thighs wider for better access, apologizing softly as he pressed deeper, not meaning it. But he waited a fraction of a second before he slid his hands under her bottom, alert to any indication of distress in her erratic whimpers.

But the small breathy sound was familiar; frenzied, feverish, asking for more.

Appreciative, not particularly surprised, he lifted her to better feel the plunging depth of his strokes, and he thrust into her hard, hard, hard, slowly, then not so slowly—to the sweet extremity of ravishment, to the soul-shattering point where excess and tolerance recklessly merged. Then rash and unthinking, he pressed home an unforgivable distance more.

She gasped, overwrought, gorged.

He whispered, “Jesus,” in mystification and wonder.

But a heartbeat later, he took a deep breath and shook off his momentary delirium because he wasn’t a romantic, this wasn’t about anything but physical sensation, and he was long past mystical wonder. Resuming the smooth ebb and flow of his lower body, he did what he’d come here to do, expertly, methodically, with unimpeachable finesse.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Zelda met his provocative rhythm, and as Alec drove in and slid out with deft, glossy ease, her world increasingly narrowed to raw feeling and prurient craving.

Very soon, he was only half aware of her, absorbed instead in the flesh-on-flesh physicality, in his driving, hotspur lust, in the shocking degree of pleasure bombarding his senses. Surprised and astonished, dazzled by the fierceness of his carnal response, he wondered if she was
indeed
a witch because none of this extravagant sensation fell within the normal range of his amorous adventures.

Simultaneously, Zelda was wondering if one could actually die of bliss. She was quivering, engulfed in a sea of indescribable sexual desire, adrift in a storm of longing, powerless against the violent, insistent, rising desperation that throbbed and swelled inside her. Hot, frenzied, blissfully glutted at the extremity of each plunging downstroke, she was frantically approaching orgasmic fever pitch.

He instinctively recognized her breathy little whimpers, the sudden tension in her body, and forced himself to concentrate on the mundane practicalities rather than the possibility of sorcery at play. And a moment later as her whimpers turned into explosive little cries, he politely suspended the rhythm of thrust and withdrawal, held his rigid cock hard against her womb, and felt her first small tremors begin.

He smiled faintly as her screams rose unchecked and she clung to him as she climaxed as if he were her lifeline in a storm, her orgasmic cries escalating to a charmingly dynamic pitch. Sorceress or not, he found her untrammeled sexual enthusiasm enchanting. Furthermore, the lady had climaxed in what was, even to his profligate history, record time. How delightful in terms of the remainder of the night.

But then she rode that way, too—hell-for-leather.

For a fleeting moment he debated climaxing with her. But ever practical and experienced, he curbed his libido and, tightly lodged in her succulent body, politely waited for the lady’s orgasm to wane.

He glanced at the clock only once as he waited, and when Zelda finally opened her eyes, he smiled. “You’re fast.”

Reaching up, she trailed a light, brushing caress down his cheek. “And you’re very good. Thank you. That was lovely.”

“But not quite enough, I’d guess,” he softly said.

Her eyes were a deep heliotrope in the dimness and suddenly wide with surprise. “I didn’t think you meant it. About having as many orgasms as I want.”

“I wouldn’t have said it unless I meant it.”

A faint smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “So
that’s
why all the ladies are in hot pursuit. I thought it was for less unusual reasons.”

“It’s not unusual for me.”

Her smile widened. “I’m awestruck, Dalgliesh.”

“Alec.”

“Alec,” she said half under her breath, starting to tremble again, the thought of such largesse as tantalizing as his hard prick moving and swelling inside her. “If you don’t mind then,” she said with a small catch in her breath as he shifted his hips. “It’s been quite a while.”

He wanted to ask,
How long?
but he didn’t because it shouldn’t matter. That it did, he chose to ignore. “I don’t mind at all. Tell me when you’ve had enough”—he grinned—“and I’ll probably stop.”

An amused delight animated her gaze. “You’re every woman’s dream. As for the stopping”—she smiled faintly—“I’m not sure I’m in the mood.”

“Lucky me,” he murmured. And he set out to please her and, ultimately, himself. No emotional involvement was required—only an expertise he’d first acquired as a youth from the duchess on a neighboring estate whose husband was much too old for his twenty-five-year-old wife. In subsequent years, he’d perfected his sexual talents to a fine art, which accounted in part for his popularity with the ladies.

Since Miss MacKenzie wanted orgasms, it wasn’t a question of acrobatics at this stage but instead a matter of positioning his rock-hard cock in exactly the right place enough times to hear that little fierce gasp so familiar to a man of his experience. With a well-honed, meticulous precision and extreme courtesy, with sweet kisses and, more importantly, an indefatigable erection, he brought the lady to climax multiple times in an amazingly short interval. She was prodigiously orgasmic—a fact he’d suspected from the moment they’d met. Having pleasantly confirmed his opinion, he now only awaited her satisfaction and, after that, his.

Her hands were strong, her grip unyielding on his back, her legs wrapped around his waist at times or pulled up to her hips other times to allow him deeper penetration. For perhaps fifteen minutes, she assuaged her lust like some goddess with a hardworking acolyte at her command. And like an imperious deity, she unabashedly made use of her virile attendant and his sturdy cock.