Lord & Master (13 page)

Surely, though, luncheon wasn’t always this intricate. I supposed my alleged need for punishment was the cause. A simple meal of sandwiches and beer wouldn’t have held my feet to the fire in the same fashion.

You can do this
, I told myself. Sometimes the only way through a challenge was one leg in front of the other. I had to prove my will wouldn’t crumble at a single push from my husband.

Thus braced, I left the serving pantry. Damien and Jake sat alone at the long table, each engrossed in reading a different part of the
Daily Mail
. My first sight of them had an odd effect. The story Damien told of the intimacies they’d shared at Oxford returned to me in a rush. In his account, their hands had touched quite different objects from ink and newspaper. As to that, their hands had recently touched me. Though neither glanced in my direction, all the nerves in my face and hands fired at once.

I nearly dropped the chilled fizzy water I carried.

Sawyer nodded to me to fill my husband’s glass. The neck of my carafe clinked against the crystal as I did so.

Damien looked at me then, his hazel gaze absorbing my altered garb. Did he flush slightly? It seemed to me that he did. Perhaps my appearance in the gown and apron stirred some male fantasy. If it did, he preferred I didn’t guess.

“My friend would like to be served as well,” he said, cool and collected.

I bet he would
, retorted some imp from my subconscious.

Rather than speak, I curtsied and poured for the stable master, this time with a jot more grace. Jake grunted an indeterminate sound of thanks. Pleased with myself—if underwhelmed by his manners—I stepped back to wait by the sideboard. Sawyer handled ladling out of the consommé.

The men dipped their spoons and supped while Sawyer and I stood side by side like statues.

We repeated the process for a course of cold lobster and stuffed quail eggs. Holding my first platter was awkward. Being unused to serving, I went to the wrong side twice.

“It’s the other way around, I think,” Jake told me patiently. “I can’t maneuver the spoons from here.”

I blushed, and shifted, and that was the end of it. Neither man upbraided me or even looked annoyed. Evidently, I wasn’t in danger of being spanked for incompetence. It seemed I’d get through this, after all.

That anxiety nullified, I began to calm. I’m sure some people would have found serving tiresome, but I relished observing from the background, as if I were invisible. I admired the men’s looks of course, but their relationship intrigued me. They seemed so comfortable together, so normal: speaking quietly of things in the paper, lifting their glasses in unison. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, but their ease with each other soothed me.

Or maybe
lulled
would have been a better word.

“You look tired, Beck,” Damien said suddenly.

I jerked. I’d lost myself in a haze. He was addressing me. “I’m perfectly fine, sir,” I assured him.

“Hungry then,” he guessed.

I was that, a little.

Damien read the answer in my face. “Sit.” He gestured toward Jake’s lap. “Jake will share his plate with you.”

“Oh no.” I shook my head vigorously. Jake’s lap was not a safe place for me.

“You don’t wish to eat?”

“I don’t wish to sit on his lap!”

“Do you wish to apologize instead?”

“Why are those my only choices?”

“Sawyer,” Damien said, turning to the footman. “Do you think those are Lady Call’s only choices?”

“No, sir. She could throw the leftover lobster in your face.”

For a moment, I was tempted. “I can’t do things like that. I have to get on with you. At least for the next six months.”

Damien sighed. “Yes. For your precious financial security.”

“Our arrangement was your idea.”

“So it was.” He tapped his tempting lips as he cogitated. Seeing him thinking increased my wariness. He was cleverer than I. He might well argue me into compliance. Jake’s unruffled silence suggested he didn’t think his friend needed help.

“There are limits,” I huffed, hoping to head off my husband’s next attempt.

“Some might say you’ve already been on Jake’s lap.”

I glanced at Sawyer, and my cheeks heated. “Not like this.”

“You mean you’d obey if our footman weren’t here.”

If he weren’t, things might really get out of hand.

I wasn’t positioned far enough from the table. Before I could evade him, Jake reached out to catch my forearm. His touch went straight to my knees, weakening them unfairly. He tugged me closer without effort. Helpless, I stared down into his deep-sea eyes.

He was so calm, as if nothing could rattle him. I wondered what that was like. I didn’t think my husband or I knew.

As if he guessed my thoughts, he smiled faintly. “You could consider Sawyer’s presence a guarantee our game won’t go too far. Damien wouldn’t want anyone but me seeing much of you.”

“Maybe Sawyer doesn’t want to stay,” I ventured.

This was humorous, I guessed. The footman choked on a laugh.

“He’s a man,” Jake said. “Watching your and Damien’s little drama is better than a tall stack of French postcards.”

Jake had both my hands now, his fingers light but persuasive. I wished more energetically for gloves. The stroke of his fingertips tingled on my palms.

“You’re ganging up on me.”

“Teaming up,” he corrected.

I tried to negotiate. “If I sit on your lap, I shouldn’t have to apologize.”

“No,” he agreed. “In any case, only Damien wants that from you. I like resistance. It gives me something to work against.”

Coming from him, this sounded completely suggestive. Against my better judgment—assuming I had any—I lowered my weight to Jake’s strong thighs.

I knew at once I’d miscalculated the risk this particular perch posed to my self-control. The stable master had a full erection. The swollen rod was hard beneath me, palpable even through my skirts. When I tried to rise, he wrapped both arms around my middle.

“Trust me,” he said, his chin tucked around my shoulder. “Wriggling isn’t a good idea.”

“You’re indecent!” I objected.

“I’m not the only one,” he said.

I gasped in outrage, assuming he meant me. I was swiftly liquefying, but it wasn’t me he referred to. Jake brought his lips close beside my ear. “Damien’s napkin looks like Mount Everest.”

I jerked, unable to resist checking. The hump between my husband’s legs was indeed gigantic, the throb of it shaking the white square. I was astonished. Our battle of wills had done that to him? If it had, Jake wasn’t the only one who liked resistance.

“Maybe Sawyer
should
leave,” Damien suggested delicately.

Interestingly, the footman turned his inquiring gaze to Jake. It made me wonder who really was in charge.

I am
, I realized out of the blue. Nothing happened here without my agreement.

“He may stay,” I said loftily. “Someone must serve me lunch.”

Damien and Jake looked startled, but Sawyer smiled.

“Very good,” he said. “Would you like the quail’s eggs or the asparagus?”

I accepted both and savored them. “Marvelous,” I exclaimed. “We never eat so well in the servant’s hall.”

“See here,” Damien said. “You’re here to be disciplined.”

“I thought I was here for you to get hot and bothered over my maid’s outfit.”

Damien’s face darkened. “You go too far, Mrs. Call.”

The alarm that rose inside me was tinged with elation. “Finally, you call me what you ought.”

“I’ll call you what I wish.”

“What you wish is to call me is your belonging. As maid or wife, it makes no difference.”

He scraped his chair back and threw his napkin onto the floor. “
Out
,” he barked low and sharp to Sawyer. “No, don’t look to them for permission. I’m giving the orders now.”

Sawyer might have glanced at Jake, but he left.

“Off his lap,” Damien ordered me.

I got up with Jake’s assistance. Damien was breathing raggedly, which I confess I found exciting.

“Pull up her gown,” he said to Jake. “Push her forward over the table’s edge.”

I didn’t fight Jake maneuvering me into position. When Damien was this forceful, somehow I couldn’t. My legs shook as my hot cheek rested on the smooth tablecloth. Lying on my front relieved the pinching of my corset, but my situation wasn’t all marzipan roses. Jake also tossed up my petticoat. Though my drawers stayed where they belonged, they were silk and therefore sheer. The men would see all my secrets: what I wanted but didn’t dare admit. Deep inside me, beneath quivering nerves and raging arousal, I experienced a sense of inevitable rightness.

I was so swept up my blood roared in my ears like the sea.

“Not this time,” Damien said at some unheard query from his companion.

My husband’s hand smacked my bottom, hard and unhesitant. I realized what the question had been: Did Damien want Jake to spank me on his behalf?

That’s right
, I thought.
You’re Jake’s equal. You can master me just as he did you.

“You’re not a harlot,” he said as the blows rained on. “There’s nothing wrong with you wanting both of us.”

My flesh was stinging, my nether parts tingling with awareness. Damien caught my cheeks with his broad hard palm, roving each lush curve until every bit was warm. I knew it was wrong of me to enjoy it but couldn’t help myself. I was a bad girl, and the badness needed beating out of me. I squirmed on the table, my inner turmoil only permitting me to moan. This was what Jake had done to Damien, before he took him in his bedsit.

A
proper basting
, he’d called it.

“You deserve it,” Damien said, his voice harsh from exertion. “Both of us ought to pleasure you.”

His words were magic. A bolt of pure sensation, just short of orgasm, streaked up my clitoris. In that instant, if I could have taken both of them, I would. I moaned the loudest I had yet, fearing I was lost but hoping it as well.

I was saved by an unexpected development.

The spanking abruptly halted. Damien dropped to his knees behind me. He flung his arms around my legs, his cheek pressed tight to my thin silk drawers as my hindquarters pulsed.

Oh
, I thought.
He’s afraid he’s gone too far
.

I could have laughed. He hadn’t done that at all.

“Are you all right?” he asked, the worry in his voice touching.

I turned within his hold. To spare his pride, I kept the laugh inside. I stroked his hair from his perspiring face. “I dared you to do that. I defied your authority.”

“But I didn’t hurt you. Not really.”

“You didn’t. You gauged it exactly right.”

He sat back on his heels. “Shit. I shouldn’t have stopped to ask that. I could be taking you right now.”

Now I did laugh. He didn’t know how right he was! “You ask whatever you need to. Do you think Jake knew everything about everything the first time he spanked someone?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Damien muttered.

I wouldn’t either. Sometimes Jake seemed like the James Bond of dominants.

“Did you like it?” I asked shyly, since we were on a pause. “If you didn’t, there’s no need to force yourself. You know I enjoy lots of things.”

“I liked it,” he answered, a definite gleam kindling in his eyes. My skirt had fallen back down my legs when I turned to him. His hands rode up under it, sliding suggestively up and down my thighs. “I especially liked it with you in this getup.”

Jake stepped to him. He dropped one hand to his shoulder, rubbing the muscle there. “Are you letting her off the hook?”

Still on his heels, Damien tilted his head to consider me. “I
was
planning to find some pretext to banish her to the maids quarters. I thought we’d enjoy sneaking up to her. A room’s been prepared. And I know Mia is intrigued by the downstairs half of her Edwardian fantasy.”

“Hm,” Jake said. “How authentic is this maid’s room?”

He was probably worried about lumpy beds and drafts.

“I haven’t seen it yet. When I submitted the request, Management assured me I could leave it to them. It is in the actual attic, if that matters.”

I didn’t care. I’d been an art history major. I adored this sort of thing. “Let’s look at it,” I urged. “Since Management went to the trouble of putting it together. I could use a break. I love doing scenes, but I don’t need to role-play around the clock.”

Damien rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. “If you two went up, I wouldn’t mind a chance to check email. I hear there’s Wi-Fi in the library.”

“No!” Jake and I protested in unison. “We agreed we’d stay unplugged.”

“Just a quick check,” Damien pleaded. “To make sure no emergencies have cropped up at WorldWide. And maybe five minutes to skim the news. Those 1912 newspapers are interesting, but they’re no substitute.”

“You’re a junkie,” Jake said flatly.

“It’s my
company
. I can’t abandon it. I promise I’ll focus better once I know everything’s okay.”

He’d been focused fine, as far as I could tell, but I understood. “Oh let him. It’s too much to expect him to go cold turkey.”

“Keep it short,” Jake warned as Damien hopped up eagerly. “If I have to get you, your ass will be the one that’s tarred.”

Damien flashed a grin. He and I both knew this was no punishment.

Chapter Eleven

THOUGH
the house’s upper level wasn’t currently occupied, the maid’s room Damien commissioned was one of many in the long corridor. Jake and I read nameplate holders until we found
BECK
written on a card in fancy calligraphy.

Despite the absence of other people, we were sneaking.

“At least they didn’t give you a roommate,” Jake said in an undertone.

I gripped the old brass doorknob, which was polished from many hands. Anticipation quickened inside me. I bit my lip, and Jake laughed softly.

“This is as good as Christmas to you, isn’t it?”

“It totally is,” I said and pushed the door open.

I caught my breath in delight. The little garret was perfect, as if we’d truly stepped back in time. Two cast-iron beds stood on either side of a chestnut bureau. The beds’ frames had been painted white, but their pretty top rails were polished brass. The single dormer window was narrow, the wide floorboards dark with age. Hand hooked rugs warmed them here and there. The pale blue quilts were stitched with patterns of turtledoves.