The Pearl at the Gate (3 page)

“Roake, please, please…”

Every muscle in her body strained upward. Jenesta was on her toes, rosy arse pointing to the ceiling, trembling legs stretched wide for him. Roake watched her sweet arsehole pucker kisses at him as her body convulsively clenched, fractionally relaxed, clenched again.

“Roake…”

She was sobbing now, fingers so tight on the edge of the desk he could count every bone in her delicate hands.

What was it like for her, discovering pleasure in pain and subjugation? What would she feel in the morning, when she realized he had unleashed his inner beast upon her? Forced this brutal ecstasy on her body?

Roake pushed the questions aside.

One night. Let me have this one night.

With one hard tug, he pulled the remaining pearls free. Three gems slicked from her cunt and Roake administered two final sharp smacks to each side of her arse and then fell to his knees to suck her sweet wet flesh into his mouth.

Jenesta’s scream echoed into his soul, her shuddering cunt releasing a wave of moisture onto his tongue as she came. Her legs curled up off the ground and he grasped her thighs to lift them higher, fastening his lips around her clitoris to pull her into another writhing orgasm.

The taste and smell and heat of her, satin skin tight with ecstasy under his hands and face, had him growling with painful need. He wanted to be inside her, wanted her cunt squeezing and sucking his cock until his seed exploded forth and all his fears disappeared.

Jenesta cried out one more time and went limp. Roake rose to lift her off the desk but had to coax her fingers open before she would move. She lay sobbing quietly against his chest. Roake closed his mind to the sound, the feel of her tears—closed his heart to their meaning. He would not be seeking forgiveness, absolution. And he could not stop until the demon was satisfied.

Moving across the room, he held her with one arm as he removed the Holland cover from the discipline couch and laid her on it. Jenesta’s eyes were closed, moisture glistening on her lashes and cheeks. Her lips were red and slightly swollen as though she had been biting them, her nipples tightly drawn into delectable rosettes, inviting attention. She had the look of a woman lost, adrift in the aftermath of sensual satisfaction. He would have to bring her back to the now, awaken her again.

He moved away to strip off his boots and breeches, bent to gather a handful of leather straps in his hand. Turning toward her, he faltered. Jenesta had followed him across the room and stood right behind him, her eyes cast down so he couldn’t read her expression.

Slowly, she knelt in front of him and his heart stopped, a sick sensation starting in the pit of his stomach, rising into his throat as he looked down at the top of her head. He would not be able to resist her pleas. Jenesta could bring his dream to a halt with only a few well-chosen words.

Please, please, my love, do not beg me to stop.

Jenesta took his hand, bringing it to her lips. The softness of her mouth on his skin, the sweet pain of her gesture was almost too much to be borne. He tried to tell her to rise, but the words would not emerge.

Jenesta looked up at him, her irises so dark they appeared black. She licked her bottom lip, opened her mouth speak, and Roake closed his eyes. Perhaps if he didn’t look at her when she asked him not to continue, he could ignore her request.

Her mouth slipped hot and wet around the head of his cock and Roake shouted her name, surprise making him thrust forward mindlessly. He reached back to grasp the desk as the leather straps fell from his fingers. Lust weakened his legs, sent bolts of lightning streaking from his belly into his straining ballocks. The world shattered into the unimaginable suction of her mouth, her nails digging into his thighs, pulling him closer, further in. The light scrape of her teeth along his length, the vibration of her moans, the hot, frantic swirl of her tongue was too much, too much.

Roake bellowed as his body bowed and he erupted into her mouth with a rush of heat almost too powerful to survive.

Chapter Four

“What are these for?”

Roake couldn’t answer Jenesta’s soft question. Leaning back against the desk, his entire body shook with reaction, arms trembling so much he wondered if they would continue to hold him up.

She had taken his cock in her mouth. Sucked and licked it until he shot his seed into her throat. The memory of it, the residual effect of her inexperienced yet breathtaking act vibrated inside, keeping his cock hard.

Roake felt lost in a trance. The distance from reality had widened with each slap on Jenesta’s arse, each answering cry of ecstasy. The sensation of her lips closing over his cock severed the connection completely. This must be an elaborate fantasy concocted by his overwhelming desire for her, and he never, ever, wanted to awaken.

Jenesta’s scent permeated the room, clung to his skin, a combination of a light floral perfume and the musky, heady evidence of her lust. The heat radiating from his body seemed to intensify the fragrance, heightening the sense of urgency burning in his belly.

He could barely open his eyes. She was still kneeling at his feet, looking up at him, one of the straps held out in her hand. The leather lay across her palm, a vignette of contrasts created to drive him to the edge of madness—dark on light, firm on soft, decadence against innocence all but lost.

And it was all his tonight.

How much longer before the dawn?

Strength flooded back to his body.

Roake straightened but still did not reply.

Jenesta allowed her eyes to slip lovingly over his body as she lowered her lids. He was magnificent—all golden-hued skin and hard-roped muscles, the erect flesh of his penis jutting dark and proud before him. Her palms tingled to touch him again. The taste of his seed lingered at the back of her throat. She revelled in the memory of his cock, like satin-sheathed iron filling her mouth, Roake’s shout of bliss as his flesh expanded to shoot searing come deep into her. His loss of control re-ignited passion that had banked to a low shimmer after she found her own release.

Would she ever get enough of Roake? Could this desire ever be completely slaked, no matter how many times they returned to the well of love?

Jenesta trembled at the thought, a dark premonition of loss snaking into her soul.

Would he still desire her tomorrow, after he had time to think about what she had done? When it occurred to him how she had behaved?

Tears welled in her eyes, but she forced them back.

Live tonight without barriers, without fear. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

She raised her eyes to his again, held the piece of leather higher, and repeated, “What are these for?”

“They are restraints.”

“Restraints?”

Roake nodded, gesturing to the piece of furniture he had uncovered earlier. “Yes, for use with the discipline couch.”

Jenesta looked over her shoulder, understanding writhing to life in her chest with the blistering force of a firestorm. What Roake called the discipline couch appeared, at first glance, to be a narrow, malformed, cross between a bench and a four-poster bed. One end of the padded bench was short and flat, while the other side was much longer and sloped gently upward, away from where the two sides met. The entire strange contraption was set in an oversized framework of high uprights, with crosspieces holding them together. At intervals along the wooden beams of the frame were a series of hooks, some with lengths of chain attached.

Somehow she would be strapped to the couch, immobilized so she had no recourse but to submit to whatever he desired.

For one wild moment she considered fleeing. The idea of totally relinquishing her will to his thrilled and frightened at the same time. How could she trust him in that way?

Yet who was she to consider trust now? Had she not betrayed his when she opened the door to this room?

Jenesta sought his feelings in his eyes, but found no answer to the questions flooding her mind. Whatever his thoughts, Roake held them deep inside, masked behind a smoky gaze both penetrating and strangely distant. Yet determination tightened his jaw.

Roake would have his way with her body, whether she would will it or no.

Jenesta surrendered to the desire quivering and flaming through her. Trust could be earned or forever lost between them tonight, but she could not deny him, or the raging need he aroused.

Leaning forward, she picked up the remaining straps from the floor and held them out to him. Roake took them, his fingers lingering over hers, brushing gently over her knuckles. Love for him overwhelmed her, careened through her system with each beat of her unsteady heart. Then his hand slipped away and Jenesta rose to her feet to turn and walk to the couch.

Roake watched Jenesta walk away, the reddened cheeks of her arse swaying. Using the base of the frame, she climbed up to perch on the discipline couch, holding onto the uprights for balance. His feet took him toward her, seemingly of their own volition.

She was trembling again.

With fear, or with lust?

He stopped and stood looking into her eyes. There was a ferment of emotion within them—questions, answers, secrets swirled in their depths. Suddenly at a loss, he simply stayed where he was, drinking in her beauty, lost in the force of his love.

She lifted her leg, placing the ball of her foot against his stomach. Reflexively, he shaped one piece of leather around her ankle, buckling it, making it snug, but not too tight. The low murmur of her voice wove its way into his spellbound state.

“Did you get the discipline couch on your travels?”

“No.”

He finished fastening the strap and stroked his fingers up her calf to her knee before releasing her. The softness of her skin sent a shiver along his spine.

Jenesta raised her other leg for him, allowing the first to fall. “Did you have it made?”

“No. I found it here at Black Oaks when we began rebuilding.”

Her toes flexed on his belly. “Have you used it often?”

“No.”

Silently, he passed the strap through the buckle, slotted it home. Holding her ankle so she had to bend her knee to allow the movement, he stepped closer. Her skin was a temptation he could not resist, so he feathered his fingers along her leg, brushing the nest of damp curls between her thighs. Jenesta’s soft indrawn breath, which bordered on a moan, echoed into his soul.

Slowly, he traced her stomach, circled the indentation of her navel, brushed up and across the swell of her breasts. They were plump and full, rising and falling with her shallow breathing, and, as he watched, her strawberry nipples puckered.

Lips trembling apart, Jenesta curled her toes into his stomach, her eyelids drooping as a rush of rosy color swept up her chest to suffuse her cheeks. Her reactions weakened his legs again, caused his heart to pound into his throat.

Roake stepped closer yet, reaching for her wrist. Without demur, she let go of the frame.

“How often have you used it?”

Roake held silent until he affixed the final strap, then grasped her shoulders to lower her into a near-reclining position on the couch. Using her foot on his stomach as a brace, Jenesta lay back and watched as he extended her arms up and back above her head and attached chains to the rings imbedded in the wrist straps.

It was only as he stepped away that he found the strength to answer.

“This is the first time I am using it. It was kept as a curiosity, rather than with thoughts of my ever having need of it.”

Jenesta’s eyes opened wide, searching his face. Roake could not hold her gaze, turning his instead to the task of seeking the proper position for her legs. Her perch on the tiny seat had her cunt extending out past the front, at the perfect height to receive his cock. He wanted her wide open, bare to his every whim and touch.

Roake lifted her foot over to the outside of the upright and let it hang down. Turning to the other side, he repeated the action with her other leg and secured both ankle straps to the wood. The uprights kept her knees apart, the straps made her immobile.

Jenesta’s breath hitched and Roake looked up. The expression on her face jolted him from the dream state enveloping his mind. Frozen, he tried to absorb every nuance. Desire, anticipation, something almost wild he refused to put a name to—all these and more swirled in her eyes, trembled on her lips. But there was one thing he didn’t see and the lack turned his blood to fire.

Jenesta showed no fear.

Jenesta looked along her own body to where Roake stood between her thighs. With her legs spread outward, she felt completely exposed, at his mercy. Waves of tingling desire raced over her skin to intersect and become concentrated in her cunt. It throbbed, longing for his fingers or lips, empty, waiting to be filled with his hard-driving cock.

Before tonight, Roake had always been a gentle lover, taking his time, stroking in and out of her body as though afraid to hurt or damage her. It had never felt like enough. Only the final moments, when his control shattered in the dark and he slammed into her body with all the power at his command, had she felt the act complete.

All gentleness fled the moment she unlocked the door to his secret, and she rejoiced in its flight.

His face had fallen into its habitual stern lines, but tension sparked in his stillness. Reaching out, he rubbed his palm along the muscle of her inner thigh, pulled taut by her position. The passage of his fingers, slightly rough against her softness, drew a sighing moan from her throat. Just his lightest touch threw her into a whirling maelstrom of desire.

He leaned forward, kissed her thigh, and slicked his tongue toward her knee. Jenesta jerked against her bonds, sighed as her body clenched from the soft caress. Stepping closer, Roake grasped his cock and rubbed the tip along her cunt, pressed forward until the head lodged in the entrance. Jenesta mewled with desire, straining to take him all, but he only teased her with a short thrust and a full retreat.

“I am not a gentleman.” Roake’s voice was low and hoarse, as though he forced the words. “I ceased to be one a long time ago. I can pretend, Jenesta. I mix with the Ton as though to the manner born, but it is just a façade. Underneath lies the base, forceful man you see now, harsh and demanding, filled with lust so strong it could tear us both apart.”

He cupped her breast, stroked up, closing his fingers around her nipple, pinching it, sending lightning bolts of arousal into her flesh. Arching against her bonds, she pressed into his hand, gasping. He moaned in response, and twisted her tender flesh, rubbing it between finger and thumb. He positioned the head of his cock at the entrance of her cunt again. Writhing, she closed her eyes against the rising need.

His fingers stilled. “Why aren’t you afraid of me, Jenesta? Why aren’t you shocked by what I am doing to you?”

Jenesta turned her face away. A cold lump formed in her chest, making it almost impossible to breathe. Roake’s words shattered the dream, the hope of getting through this night without explanation. It had been silly to harbour such a forlorn wish.

“Tell me, Jenesta.” Roake leaned over her, his breath flooding warmth across her cheek. As his heat and scent enveloped her, his hand remained on her breast, his cock twitching between her folds. Her muscles jumped, desire for him at war with fear. “Tell me.”

It was a command, his voice demanding the same acquiescence of her mind that she gave with her body. She could fight his domination. Her mind and her actions were her own. What she had difficulty fighting was the need to speak the truth, to trust him. Yet she still feared his reaction, the end result of her confession.

“Tell me.”

His voice had fallen to a soft, low tone—almost a plea. With a slight movement, his cock nudged the opening of her cunt, promising full reward.

Let tomorrow take care of itself. Tonight he should have nothing but honesty.

But she did not look at him as she said, “Once, when I was fifteen, I saw a man and a woman together.”

Roake shifted, inserting the head of his cock inside her again. “What were they doing?”

“The man said he must punish the woman, so he made her remove her skirts and tuck up her shift so he could birch her. Before he started, he touched her, told her how wet her…cunt was, even before the whipping.”

Roake’s breathing deepened, and a little more of his cock slid tantalizingly into her. “What happened then?”

Jenesta drew in a deep breath, trying to ignore the pressure building inside. All she wanted was for him to slam forward, thrust as hard as he could. Her body was a seething cauldron of desire and he was stirring it to a full boil. “He beat her with the birch twigs. She was moaning and begging to come. When he told her she had permission, she reached down between her legs and touched herself, screaming and thrashing about.”

As though cognizant of her need, Roake gave two hard thrusts in quick succession. He stilled, chuckling softly when she moaned. Lifting away from her torso, he straightened and gripped her hips as he said, “Go on.”

“She kissed the birch and then took his…cock in her mouth. Then she lay on the ground and he fell on top of her.”