Seductive as Flame (26 page)

“Alec, don’t. I don’t think so.”

“You like me to take charge, darling.” A third tie came free in his hand. “Or at least your hot little clit does, as I recall. Why don’t you show me I’m wrong if I am. It’ll put the matter to rest.”

“No.”

He’d heard that kind of no before, from women who meant the opposite. From teasing women and women who found repudiation arousing. Or in this case, from a woman who liked to think she was in charge. “Why don’t I look for myself?” he said, with extreme urbanity, turning to her with three silk ties looped over his hand.

“Alec! No!” She shoved herself upward on the bed as he reached for her.

But she was smiling, so he said, “Yes,” grabbed her foot, and dragged her back. Although it wouldn’t have mattered if she wasn’t smiling. He knew how to bring a smile to a woman’s face.

“Now mind your manners and you’ll be rewarded,” he said in a low tantalizing murmur. “I promise.” Quickly seizing her pummeling hands, he smoothly trussed her wrists. “That’s better.” He tested the knot, then smiled faintly. “I prefer a little more obedience.”

It suddenly occurred to her that a good number of obedient women had proceeded her. “I didn’t know you were looking for obedience,” she said in an unmistakably pettish tone.

He grinned. “Now you know.” He slipped his fingers under her back. “Lift up a little.” She didn’t, of course, nor had he expected her to after hearing the umbrage in her voice. But he
had
done this a few times before—instructed originally by his little duchess next door to Munro Park. He knew Zelda would enjoy it. As would he, for the usual reasons and for other less benign reasons. Those having to do with Zelda’s unbridled sexuality and his continuing struggle with her past exercise thereof. At which unpleasant thought, he took the slack out of the cord he was wrapping around her waist and jerked it taut.

In the grip of her own resentments, Zelda only saw a dégagé man tying an intricate knot at her waist, managing this little sexual performance as effortlessly as he dealt with every other aspect of carnal play. It shouldn’t matter; if she was sensible, it wouldn’t. She’d ultimately profit from his expertise. But the manner in which he’d acquired his professional skills, all the women he’d pleased and who’d pleased him, brought her temper up. “Even with my hands tied, I could still kick you,” she said, sulky and sullen, green-eyed with jealousy.

“Give me a minute and you won’t want to.” He was forming a more complicated knot in the third tie and didn’t look up.

“So sure, Dalgliesh?”

He smiled faintly and looked up. “Pretty damned sure.”

“You’re really irritating me.”

“Not for long, unless I’ve lost my touch,” he murmured, intent on his task, his long slender fingers deftly manipulating the braided silk.

“Have I mentioned how I dislike arrogant men?”

“Actually, you have.”

“Well, perhaps it bears repeating. Damn you, look at me!”

“There now,” he said as if she’d not spoken. He lifted his head and deigning at last to give her his attention, met her heated gaze with an agreeable one of his own. “Let’s see how this fits.” He held up an intricate, sinuous, oval design of blue silk cord like that used as ornament on regimentals, the decorative knot work set midway down the length of the tie. Without waiting for an answer, indeed, already preoccupied, he slid one end of the tie through the bowline loop at her waist, and handily brushing aside her flailing fists, fastened it to her wrist bonds.

“Stop this, Alec!” She wrenched her hands upward and the end of the cord he was holding slipped from his grasp.

“Hush, darling. You don’t mean it,” he said, calmly retrieving the braided strand left dangling.

“I can’t imagine how you know whether I mean it or not!”

Surely not a comment he cared to answer. “Just give me a few minutes of your time, sweetheart,” he affably said.

“Do they all say yes when you ask them like that?”

Again, a question best not answered when she was glaring. “Darling, your jealousy is misplaced,” he said, instead, and holding her wrists in a firm grip, ran the length of the silk braid down her stomach with his other hand.

“Allow me to disagree,” she said with a sniff, damn his smooth penitence. “Now untie me.
Alec
, do you hear!”

He agilely sidestepped her kick and stood breathing softly, the loose end of the silk tie draped over one finger. “You’re being childish.”

“I am not!” Even as she said it, she realized how juvenile she sounded. But she jerked on the cord tied to her wrists anyway.

He laughed. “Brat. You don’t know what you want.” This time the cord was firmly trapped between his fingers. “I’m offering you unlimited orgasms,” he said expansively. “I don’t see the problem.”

“The problem is the countless women you’ve offered them to before me.”

He was smiling faintly. “Am I questioning your orgasms with other men?” He was, of course, but he was making a point, and to admit to jealousy was unthinkable. “Now don’t be obstinate. You’ll like this.” Either reading her hesitancy as consistent with female behavior or perhaps simply indifferent to her reply, he took advantage of her momentary stillness and moving a step closer, swiftly slid the braided cord between her legs, eased her pouty flesh open with his fingertips, properly positioned the ornamental knot, and at her small gasp, quickly rolled her on her side and nimbly attached the other end of the tie to the one circling her waist in back.

Seconds elapsed—five.

His satisfaction—immeasurable.

Returning Zelda to her former position, he serenely surveyed his handiwork. “Now, how does that feel?” He was pleased to see her breathing had changed, a slight flush was rising up her throat.

“I might ask the same of you,” she said, giving nothing away, her glance on his upthrust erection lying hard against his stomach, the distended veins visibly pulsing.

“As you see.” Amusement warmed his gaze.

“Then at least one of us is enjoying ourselves. For your information, I don’t like this game. I don’t like that you’ve probably done this a thousand times before. I particularly dislike the fact that—” She sucked in her breath, stunned at the hammer blow of lurid sensation that imploded outward from the targeted knot crushed against her clitoris.

Alec, smiling, was holding her wrists immobile in order to maintain the pressure on the knot. “Perhaps two of us are enjoying ourselves now,” he softly said, making a small adjustment with his free hand to the ornamental knot. “Or do you find this more pleasant?” He tugged on her wrists, lifting them a fraction higher.

Her wild, frenzied scream exploded, echoing in shimmering waves up the walls, flaring across the ceiling as hotspur, rampaging delirium shuddered unchecked through her body, seared every sexual receptor and nerve in passing. Left her a moment later, half dazed, without breath, gasping for air.

“You seemed to like that,” the earl mildly said, a modicum of his unwonted jealousy assuaged, the matter of supremacy clarified. “Try this.” Leaning over slightly, he placed his palm over the knot and exerted a precise, masterful pressure learned in his youthful apprenticeship under the tender tutelage of the charming duchess. “What do you think?”

She’d gone tense under his hand, so close to orgasm she couldn’t force her brain to deliver the required response.

“Answer me, darling, or I might take away my hand.” He began lifting the weight of his hand.

“No, no—don’t!” A breathless rush of words, impassioned, humbling.

And particularly gratifying to a man who, personal vanity aside, wouldn’t have cared three days ago what a woman liked. Nor that he have dominion over her.

With the ultimate pleasure trembling on the brink, Zelda had long since abandoned herself to the passion-filled fervor of glorious sensation. Reality had been replaced by soul-stirring ardor, and softly moaning, she sought orgasmic surcease. Restless, impatient, she moved her hips to magnify the erotic pressure of Alec’s hand, eagerly lifted her pelvis into his palm, frantically reaching for the blissful curative to her lust.

The silk knot was soaked through. Zelda’s liquid arousal was drenching his palm and fingers, his skin slippery, slick—like her cunt. The bitch was unforgivably carnal, he indignantly thought, ravenous, lustful—qualities that in any other woman would have been welcome.

Qualities that never would have provoked his resentment.

Or jealousy.

With the inconceivable word finally emergent, he sucked in an incredulous breath, immediately dismissed such aberrant thoughts, and swiftly brought Zelda to orgasm. As though to underscore the ordinariness of the transaction. The casualness. The fact that this was sex and only sex.

But the wanton hussy didn’t just come once but twice more in rapid succession before he irritably removed his hand. Then, when she finally opened her eyes and lazily gazed up at him from under the lacy fringe of her lashes like some sumptuous courtesan, she had the audacity to murmur in an outrageously sultry purr, “Damn you, Dalgliesh, I should hate you for your boorish ways. And if it didn’t feel so good, I would.”

He stood very still for a moment. Then he said, “Care to go for some records in feeling good?” His smile was offensive.

“How tempting. Under other circumstances I might be inclined to agree.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, I like men who actually smile when they offer me sex.”

It was the worst possible thing to say when he was choking on jealousy.
“Men?”
he said in a dangerous voice.

“Is that a problem?”

He didn’t answer for so long she opened her mouth to speak again. “It might be,” he said, arresting her comment.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a tone that wasn’t in the least sorry.

“A pity, I agree.” A tight smile, followed by a tick over his cheekbone, followed by a small breath of restraint. “If I can’t offer you sex, perhaps you’d like to bring yourself to orgasm. You said you liked to masturbate.” His cool blue eyes were expressionless. “And I like to watch.”

“No, thank you.” Her response was neither cool, nor expressionless. She was less skilled in artifice.

“Perhaps I can change your mind. Actually, I know I can.”

“Really, Alec, you’re much too familiar with willing women bent on pleasing you. We aren’t all submissive. In fact, I don’t—” Her sentence ended in a long throaty moan. Alec had elevated her wrists slightly, exerting a deft pressure on her clitoris, maintaining the contact—with professional finesse—just short of discomfort or climax.

He knew the exact equation.

“Submission can have its rewards,” he whispered, a faint smile on his lips with her breathy moans resonating in the air. “Come, darling, you can do it yourself. I’ll show you.” He slowly raised and lowered her wrists in a smooth, gentle rhythm, his gaze on her face, triumph in his eyes. “See . . . like that—not too fast.” He watched her take a deep breath, then he gently stroked the slippery knot just enough to make her tremble. “Now try it yourself. There—that’s the way.”

She was sick with humiliation as she obeyed; sick with longing, too, and insulted and disgusted and awed by the inexpressible magic. Desire, hot and insistent, flared deep within her, a kind of desperation melted through her body and brain, all her senses overwhelmed by an impossible craving. No other man had ever made her feel this way: insatiable, consumed with longing, mindlessly compliant. But then no other man rivaled the earl’s stark beauty, sexual ingenuity, and matchless capacity for pleasure.

A shame he was utterly faithless.

“I’m going to watch you now. Don’t stop,” he said, exacting his own form of punishment for the jealousy he couldn’t escape.

It was an order no matter how softly put. She should stop. She should refuse. She should open her eyes, tell him she wasn’t like all the others, that he was the least redeemable man on the face of the earth and she was done. But he bent down just then and gently kissed her and stroked the knot over her clitoris, and she wasn’t offended anymore, she was shaking. Then he set her hands into the appropriate rhythm again, whispered, “Show me what you can do,” and she did.

Pulling up a chair, he dropped into it, slid into a sprawl, and eyes half shut, contemplated the obscenely sensual lady in his bed pleasuring herself. Her nipples were erect, her large breasts soft, pinked, made to suckle babies, her voluptuous form made to bear babies, and he half swore under his breath at the infinite and dangerous possibilities. He shut his eyes briefly, waited for the hair at the nape of his neck to subside, and setting aside his indefensible train of thought, resumed his survey with a more familiar dispassion.

An abbreviated dispassion as it turned out.

At first, he told himself that it couldn’t possibly matter that she came so swiftly and often. He liked lascivious women. But by her third orgasm, his frown was in place and his lips were set in a grim line. After her fifth orgasm, he forcibly reminded himself that Miss MacKenzie was no different than any other woman—a transient pleasure, no more.

He tried to warn himself off. But the pulse beating at his temple negated casual and not so casual reminders, and his cock was so stiff it was seriously affecting his judgment. So much so that he surged to his feet when he hadn’t meant to and grabbed her wrists to stop her.

In the afterglow of a particularly satisfying orgasm, Zelda lifted her gaze and sweetly smiled. “My, my, do I detect some ill humor? Was it something I did?”

A mutual resentment vibrated in the air.

Two intractable individuals crossing swords.

Dalgliesh studied her for a moment where she was lying splendidly female, ripe and yielding, her skin flushed from passion, her eyes still half lidded from orgasmic surfeit, and realized he was about to succumb to savage impulse for the first time in his life. “It wasn’t anything you did,” he said, in a deliberately calm voice. “It was rather something I didn’t do. But that can be remedied.” Leaning over, he picked her up with a powerful sweep of his arms and dropped her face down on the bed.