Susan Johnson (30 page)

“I might be persuaded,” she playfully murmured, swaying in tantalizing promise.

“I thought you might,” he murmured, his mouth quirked in a smile. “Could I interest you in my bed?” He tipped his head slightly toward the lavish piece of furniture he’d had made for him in Macao.

“If you come along with it.”

“Consider it my pleasure,” he promised, taking a step toward the bed.

And she followed him in a sensuous walk as he led her, her hand warm in his, a half-smile of expectation curving her lips.

He stopped at the foot of the bed, beside one of the corner posts, and gently pulled her forward. “One small detour, darling,” he said, sliding her arms behind her.

“A swift one, I hope,” she murmured, stretching up to kiss him on his chin, her purr vibrating along his jawline.

“You
sound
ready,” he whispered, guiding her back one step against the carved bedpost, placing her arms behind it. “This won’t take long,” he added in a soft breath, looping the braided silk bed-curtain cord loosely around her wrists, binding her to the post.

“What are you doing?” A sudden apprehension appeared in her eyes, a tiny chill frisson raced through her heated body as she recalled the last time she’d been tied and abducted by this man who made his own laws.

“Entertaining you …” His voice was a negligent murmur, his eyes lazily assessing her. “Appeasing myself.”

“I’m not entertained.” She struggled against her bonds, the tumult of her emotions disordered, uncertain, her fevered senses at odds with her temper … with her unease.

“I haven’t started yet,” he said with a faint smile. Reaching out, he touched her nipples through the silk of her gown, lightly, delicately, the pads of his fingers stroking with practiced skill.

“Untie me,” she pleaded, but her words were a whisper now, desire trembling under her breath.

He heard it, and felt her nipples like hard jewels under his fingers. His smile was assured. “Eventually I
will … but first we have to take your clothes off. Now ask me nicely, with suitable wifely devotion,” he softly prompted, moving back a half-step. “Come now, ask me to unclothe you like a dutiful wife.”

“You can’t make me,” she said, her glance wary under the overt passion glittering in her eyes, “if I don’t want to.”

“I can
make
you do anything,” he gently assured her.

“Only now, when I’m like this,” she murmured, her chin slightly raised so she could look into his eyes, the heat of desire spreading languidly through her senses, the throbbing between her legs powerful, echoing a rhythm of urgency in her mind.

“But then I know how to keep you like this,” Johnnie said. “So you’ll always want more. So ask me sweetly now, puss, and if you do, I’ll undress you, and we’ll move on to more pleasant things.” He touched the white swell of her breasts visible above the sheer lace of her kerchief, his fingertips gliding lightly over their mounded fullness. “Do you like that? Can you feel the tremors slide downward between your legs? Would you like to feel
me
between your legs? Tell me what I want to hear, and I’ll satisfy you.”

Her eyes flew open at the sudden harshness in his tone.

“You must do this for me.”

He was serious, she could see. “You’ve reached your limits of grace?”

“Yes. I don’t understand it, but then, I’ve never had a wife.”

“And if I don’t?”

He took a deep breath because he’d never experienced such uncompromising feelings. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m sorry.” Perhaps he was making her pay for George Baldwin, for the fact that she’d almost given his child away. Maybe he was punishing her for his own terrible need and his submission to her the days past. Or was he unworldly enough to want recompense for the years she’d offered herself to her husband before him? A
curious sense of rage trembled within him, and without reason he required her to humble herself to him.

She looked at him for a moment, her own thoughts racing to keep pace with her emotions, with the glowing heat pulsing through her body, understanding perhaps better than he how each was subject to the other. How she needed him, too, with an unspeakable longing. Her answer reflected both her wild need and remembrance of all her years of unwanted subjection. “I do this of my own free will,” she clearly said.

His smile was wry. “One would think this was mortal.”

“It could be,” she said with a lightly suggestive smile, content with her decision, gracious in her understanding of his own struggle. And rising on tiptoe against the pressure of her bonds, she reached up to touch his lips with hers.

“I will this once,” she said in a hushed whisper. “Only this once.”

“Because you want me inside you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes … what?”

She looked at him, a vagrant flash of emotion in her emerald eyes, and then she said, “Yes, my Lord.”

“How charming to have a docile wife.” His words were a velvety murmur, his blue eyes lenient now. “And for that obedient response, I’ll accommodate you.” Taking one corner of her lace handkerchief delicately between his fingers, he slid the fabric free of her décolletage.

She felt the fine lace slip over her skin, the slow, languorous withdrawal a whisper on her flesh as if he were promising her more if she conceded more. “My dress, now,” she whispered, pliant and tractable, sensible of the pleasurable rewards in her submission. “Unhook my dress.” She rubbed her back against the bedpost like a cat in heat, her large, pale breasts spilling over the low neckline of the gown. With the modesty of the lace kerchief removed, her breasts were almost fully exposed, jutting forward like quivering ripe fruit. Tugging against the silk cord, she softly pleaded, “Now, Johnnie, please,
my dress.” Her garments seemed oppressive, stifling against her heated skin; she wished the liberation, the sensual intoxication of her skin against his.

“But you didn’t ask me properly,” Johnnie chastised, tapping his fingertip lightly on her pouty bottom lip.

“Please, my Lord,” she prudently rephrased, her green eyes on his, restless, tantalized, “please take off my dress.”

“So respectful. How can I refuse?” And bending down, he kissed her gently on the soft pink flesh of her neck.

Arching against him, she offered herself to him, wanting to feel his touch, his mouth, everywhere. “Please, Johnnie, I can’t wait.…”

Drawing away from her, he ran his palms over the luscious plumpness of her breasts, the heat of her body warming the heavy silk of her gown. “Of course you can,” he countered, exacting the price of his entangled discontent. “You have to.”

And she shut her eyes as peaking sensation made her tremble under his touch. “I can’t,” she whispered.

“You must.” So had the prerogatives of power shifted, and the woman who had rebuffed and taunted him since Hexham was pleading now for his touch. “Now stand perfectly still,” he said.

She did, because his voice held the sharp distinct threat of withdrawal, and she needed him above all things.

As she stood motionless, he slipped each dress hook free with a casualness that belied his own intense arousal. Only the delicate sound of fingers sliding over silk, muted recurring clicks, and Elizabeth’s agitated breathing resonated in the hush of the large chamber until the last covered hook opened, and the heavy fabric fell away from her body.

“I have another request,” Johnnie said.

A small hesitation while she looked at him. “Anything,” she whispered.

He smiled at her generosity. “I’m going to untie
you so I can remove your dress, but then you must return your arms behind your back.”

“Yes, yes … anything.”

Brief seconds later the magnificent gown lay in disarray at their feet. He gently placed her hands behind the massive bedpost but didn’t tie them. “And now you’re restrained only by urgent passion and your need of me.”

“Or need of one part of you,” Elizabeth murmured on a suffocated breath.

“Which you’ll enjoy in due course,” he replied with a shameless arrogance. “Should you be wearing this?” he queried the next moment, running a finger over the boning of her lace corset. “Isn’t it crushing my son?”

“Or daughter.”

He smiled. “I must consider that, mustn’t I? Does that mean I should send back the targe and sword?”

“Let me use it on you instead,” she whispered, “in the interests of speed. And now, damn you, my
sovereign
Lord,” she went on in a heated whisper, “take off the rest of my clothes if you wish, and those of yours that will do me the most good, and kindly do your duty to
me
.”

He almost complied out of kindness, until he recalled her mocking obstinacy at his offer of marriage just short minutes ago, and he changed his mind, making her wait while he stripped her chemise and corset from her.

He stood for a moment afterward gazing at her, struck suddenly by the reality of her pregnancy, seeing her former slenderness altered by a subtle new voluptuousness. “You breasts have changed with the child,” he said, thinking how rare the phenomenon of pregnancy in his life. How extraordinary.

“They feel tender, more sensitive,” she whispered, his eyes on her as sensual as his touch.

“Always?” A hushed query, tentative, venturesome, provocative with suggestion.

“Always,” she said, appeal in her voice.

He moved closer, his stocking feet on the carpet noiseless. “Would you like me to touch them?”

She nodded, unable to find sufficient air at that moment to speak.

And he gently took her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, exerted a mild pressure, watched how they instantly swelled, handled them lightly for exquisite moments more, stroking them while he marveled at their transformation. “Look how long they’ve become,” he murmured.

But Elizabeth stood trembling with desire, her eyes nearly closed.

“Look,” he softly repeated, stroking the rigid, elongated pink crests, kissing her eyelids, forcing her to look. “Will you share your milk with me,” he murmured, “when these are gorged and full?”

“Yes … yes … whatever you want …” Her voice drifted away, all her senses focused at the hot, pulsing core of her body.

He looked at her, a faint smile touching his mouth. “I want you to scream with pleasure,” he whispered. And bending his head, he took the hard, rigid jewel of a nipple in his mouth and sucked, gently at first and then with a forceful pressure, until she cried out in ecstasy.

“You’re cruel,” she breathed, holding him at her breast, half-mad from the rapture, stifling the pleasure sounds in her throat so those in the adjacent room wouldn’t hear her again.

His head came up so suddenly, her hands were dashed aside, and she stood braced against the bedpost, frightened he’d leave her, searching his face, wanting to know his thoughts so she could please him. So he would give her pleasure.

“You’re wrong,” he said, standing utterly motionless, his eyes different, like a stranger’s. “I’ve changed all my world for you.”

She’d never seen his face stripped bare—his charm and playful pretense gone. Even his formidable authority was shut away.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, understanding suddenly how wrong she’d been to so selfishly discount his feelings.

A moment later his capricious mood had passed, and his familiar smile returned. “Don’t take advantage of me,” he said in his characteristically impudent way.

“I never would, I owe you too much,” she answered, artless to his mockery. “You don’t know how much I wanted this baby … from the very first,” she softly said, wanting to offer him something in recognition of his openhearted admission, wanting to give him part of her joy, wanting to share this life inside her.

“Then you must be grateful to me,” he said with a small smile. Uncomfortable with the depth of his feelings, unfamiliar with sincere attachment, he spoke with a deliberate lightness. But an overwhelming need to hold her moved him—beyond carnal urges, more essential, as if she’d become precious to him. And slipping his arm under her knees, he swung her up into his arms.

“I will always be … grateful,” she whispered, kissing him tenderly, lacing her arms around his neck. “You haven’t just changed your world, you’ve changed mine. I’m having a baby,” she exclaimed with joy. “
We’re
having a baby.”

He smiled at her happiness, wondering if her delight were infectious. And he kissed her tenderly as he carried her to the bed. Laying her on the green silk, he joined her there and, lying propped on his elbow at her side, still dressed as though he hadn’t decided yet what to do with her, he traced a delicate finger from her collarbone down to her belly. “This is very … different,” he said, his voice low, his hand warm on her belly. “I’m not familiar … with pregnant ladies.”

“Wives …” she acceded, “if you’ll still have me.”

“I would have had you, sweet Bitsy,” he declared with a quiet gravity, “if it meant keeping you tied to my bed for a lifetime.”

“I didn’t last quite that long,” Elizabeth teased. “You have a very persuasive way.…”

“How
persuasive
can I be?” he asked, insinuation rich in his voice. His palm glided over her stomach, tentative, inquisitive. “I don’t know about babies.”

“I know nothing as well.” Less in doubt than he, she gloried in her condition. “We’ll learn together.”

A small frown appeared over his eyes. “Should I call in a midwife? Maybe we should talk to someone.”

“Now?” she said, feeling so full of lust, she couldn’t imagine it was unhealthy.

“We
could
wait,” he said with tremendous restraint, not sure he was actually capable of such devotion.

“We certainly couldn’t,” Elizabeth emphatically replied. “And since we’re concerned with lessons of duty tonight, there’s one I don’t wish you to forget.”

He laughed. “Not likely with you naked beside me and so hot, I can see the roses wilting in their vases.”

The look she cast at him was unabashedly bold. “Since pregnancy seems to make one—well … insatiable, I’ll expect you at stud service except when you’re sleeping.” Shameless and saucy, she lazily winked at him. “And even then I may wake you.”

He grinned at her, all impudence and laughing eyes. “I must have died,” he softly said, “and gone to heaven.”