Beyond Innocence (43 page)

"I could do anything I wished?" she asked. "Give or take any pleasure I desired?"

Blood climbed his face in a swarthy tide. "Any pleasure at all." The confirmation was rough, as if her question had aroused him. "My will would be yours to command."

She smiled, helpless to conceal her amusement. That the earl of Greystowe, the dour, stone-faced
grump, would cede this power to her was almost too much to credit. Amusement, of course, was not the half of what she felt. Her body burned to accept his offer. She dropped her lashes, shielding the fire she knew must glow within her eyes.

"I believe I should like that," she said.

Edward shuddered,
then
thrust out the hand that held the ties. "Take them, then," he ordered.
"Before
I change my mind."

She took them, carefully unrolling each quilted strip and laying it on the bed, one for each of the big posts. Edward would reach, she thought, with a shiver for the picture in her mind. Edward was large enough to reach. When she returned to him, he was watching her like a hawk. She touched the lapels of his coat,
then
stopped.

"I would like to remove your clothes," she said.

This time the shiver moved through him. "You don't have to ask permission, love. Not tonight. Tonight you may do with me as you please."

At last, she began to trust.

* * *

Edward thought He'd die of lust before she finished stripping off his clothes. Piece by piece, she disrobed him.
His frock coat and his vest.
His cufflinks and his gray silk necktie.
The removal of his shoes and socks was mysteriously— almost unbearably—intimate. When they were gone, she skimmed the tops his feet with the pads of her fingers, sending strange, sensual chills along his legs.
                  

"My, what big long toes you have," she said with a fey, half-hidden smile.

His cock nearly burst through his trousers at her words. He felt like the wolf in the story: a beast with a primitive urge to claim its mate. He trembled under the onslaught of instinctive need, but did not move. She had chained him with the metal of his love. He had to bow his will to hers until he knew she was reassured.

As he did, her confidence grew. He could see it in the way she tossed her hair, in the taunting sway of
her hips as she circled his increasingly unclothed body. He loved watching the change; loved the way she ran her hands over his back and shoulders, greedily, leaving fire in her wake, seeming to measure every muscle and bead of sweat. When her fingers drifted lower, over his trousered rump, his buttocks tightened without his will.

"You're hard here," she said, her touch roaming unchecked over tensing curves.

His jaw clenched in an agony of desire. "I'm-harder than that in front."

It was a hint she could not miss. She laughed, a womanly sound, sweet and sultry. Her arms wrapped
him from behind, hands shaping the heavy muscles of his chest. When they slipped still lower, he gasped. Her fingers had dipped beneath his waistband, teasing the smooth, sweat-dewed skin of his upper belly. His shaft strained upward, outward, desperate for its share of her caresses.

"If I finish undressing you," she said, her face brushing back and forth across
bis
spine, "if I take your hardness in my hand, will you still do as I ask?"

He hesitated,
then
rasped his answer. "Yes, love. Tonight the power is yours."

She kissed the center of his back,
then
carefully opened his trousers. Because she stood behind him,
her hands moved almost as his would have. He watched them work the buttons, her fingers slim and white. He felt deliriously unmanned, rousingly unmanned, in a way he would not have thought possible. His organ surged at the release of the cloth that constrained it, and at the peculiar sense that it belonged
to her now, not to him.

<>
When she pushed his remaining garments to his ankles, her cheek rested lightly on his haunch. Her skin was hot, a flush he could not help but feel. She was excited. This aroused her. A growl threatened to rumble from his chest. His self-control was a thread stretched to breaking.

"
Florence
," he said, the sound choked, "perhaps you ought to tie me now."

To his complete astonishment, he felt her teeth nip the meat of his buttock. Before he could stop
himself, he yelped.

"Oh!" she gasped. "I'm ever so sorry. Did I hurt you?"

"No." His muscles clenched even tighter at the way her hand was rubbing the injured flesh. "You just surprised me."

"I don't know what came over me," she said, still rubbing, still contrite. "You're just so pretty back here. So small compared to the rest of you.
Your .
..
your
bottom is like an apple. I had to take a bite."

He was caught between a laugh and a groan. Her thumbs had curled a little way between his cheeks and now drew arcs towards his tailbone in a manner that was not the least bit soothing—assuming that soothing him was her intent.

"It's all right," he said. "You didn't hurt me." His voice sank. "Actually, what you did was rather sexy."

"Oh," she said, breathless now. "Well... good. I'm glad."

He fought the laugh until she slipped around him to his front. Then he could not even smile. He was too busy trying not to groan. Her fingers scratched lightly through his chest hair, then teased the beaded coppery nipples she found within. New sensations sang along his nerves, incendiary twinges that arrowed through his body to his sex. They pulsed in its tip, tapping the sensitive skin like drops of oil. Her fingers had a power no other woman's had possessed. He was drowning in lust, fighting with all his strength to keep control, to keep from frightening her with his need. She bit her lip as she watched his penis bob and darken.

"You like this," she said, still feathering her thumbs across his nipples.

What breath he might have used to admit it disappeared when she sank to her knees. Unable to resist,
his hands moved to spear her shining upswept hair.

"Don't touch me," she said. "I want to do this by myself."

"Tie me, then," he groaned.
"Because if you take me in your mouth, I'll have to touch you.
I won't be able to stop."
After a moment's hesitation, she pushed to her feet. She looked at his straining shaft, then at the bed. "I've changed my mind," she said.

His heart lurched, the reaction violent and confused. Did she mean she released him from his promise
to let her do with him as she pleased? He wanted to take her, it was true. He wanted to drag her to the floor, to rip her clothes from her silky skin and drive so deep and hard between her legs she would feel him pounding there for days. He craved that triumph with everything that made him male. And yet, despite his compulsion to conquer and subdue, part of him wanted her to take him first.

He waited for her to explain, his contrary longings at war within his breast. She pressed two fingers to
her lips in contemplation, unwittingly drawing the tension out.

"Yes," she finally
said,
the word decisive. "I want to tie you standing up."

His heart gave a second galvanic pump, this one unmistakably excited.

"If you're lying down," she explained. "I won't be able to touch as much of you."

"Perfectly all right," he rasped.

"I quite understand." She grinned, a sudden flash of humor. "Do you?" Her tone
was knowing
,
seductive. She put one hand on her hip and pointed with the other to the end of the bed. He could see
the teacher in her then, the little general who expected to be obeyed. "Please stand in front of those
posts so I can tie you."

His skin heated as he complied. His reach was just sufficient to grip the polished turns of wood. She bound his wrists with endearing concentration, more firmly than he expected, and with a great many knots. She would never make a sailor but they would hold.

"That isn't too tight, is it?" she said. He shook his head and she patted the center of his chest. "Just tell
me if you want them taken off."

But he didn't. To his amazement, he liked being at her mercy, liked wondering what she'd do next. Whatever she chose would be her idea: no coaxing, no intimidation, just precisely what she wished. He would know what she wanted to give. He would learn what she enjoyed. He looked from the hand that pressed his breastbone to her eyes. They shone with the same excitement that was building in his bones. He didn't want to shatter the magic with a word.

She smiled and took a long step back.

"I'm going to remove my clothes," she said, wonderingly, as if the announcement surprised her, too.
"And you're going to watch. You're going to be the first man I ever wanted to see."

His breath rushed out, hollowing his ribs. He couldn't have spoken to save his life. He had
an inkling
what this meant.
Florence
had never been comfortable with people's admiration of her looks; she'd
always been too shy. But if she wanted him to
watch ...

She must love him, must truly, truly care.

She removed her dress without posturing or flirtation, merely the caution a woman of modest means would use with a valuable garment. She laughed as she struggled with some of the hooks, a little nervously, but not as if she wished to stop. She wore no corset. He supposed the weight she'd lost made it unnecessary. The removal of her gown left her in chemise and drawers, a pretty concoction of lace and tucks and sheer, sheer lawn. He could see her budded nipples through the top, and the triangle of sable curls between her legs. The image drew him back to the day he'd seen her at Madame Victoire's. The arousal he'd felt then was nothing to the yearning that gripped him now. His body trembled with it, and his heart. More than his cock craved her body's tight embrace.

Florence
didn't see the tremor that swept his limbs. She was too caught up in squirming out of her underthings before she lost her nerve. The chemise had tugged her chignon halfway off her head. She
had to hop on one foot to remove the second leg of her drawers. She seemed the perfect opposite of
a coquette and Edward had never loved her more.

"There," she said with nervous, breathless pride as she threw the drawers into a corner.

His grin threatened to split his face. Another woman would have stroked those creamy breasts or palmed that luscious swatch of curls.
Florence
merely stood, biting her lip and smiling, looking as if she wished she could wring the lovely hands she'd clasped before her belly. He suspected those hands were shaking more than his.

Her courage moved him beyond belief.

"You," he said, "are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."

She smiled and ducked her head. "Now you're being foolish."

"No," he said, perfectly serious. "No one has ever seemed more beautiful to me."

"Oh. Well... well, thank you," she said, her chin still tucked. "You're rather beautiful yourself."

He laughed at that, but then she set out to prove it.

She kissed every part of him her lips could reach, standing on tiptoe to mouth the arch of his neck, kneeling down to kiss his curling toes. Her hands were pure seduction, feathering touches from his legs
to his hips to the curves of his supposedly apple-like arse.

"Oh, Edward," she sighed as she tickled the hair beneath his outstretched arms. "Everything about you is so interesting."

Apparently, she thought his sex was interesting, too. She cupped and jiggled and stroked and squeezed until his every exhalation became a groan.

When she bent to taste, he gripped the posts so hard, his fingers went briefly numb.

Her mouth was heaven, sheer soft, warm, wet, silky heaven. Steadying his shaft with one hand, she cupped his testicles with the other and sucked him to the brink of climax. Her tongue laved the cluster
of nerves beneath his crown. Her lips pulled his foreskin over the head. She sucked him as if she loved his taste and feel, as if there was nothing about him she couldn't accept.