Lord Savage (33 page)

“Nor I without you,” I said breathlessly, my heart tight in my chest. “Once, you told
me that a trouble shared is a trouble halved. It was, and is, most excellent advice.”

“Indeed it was, and is,” he said. “And you are the most exceptional woman I have ever
known.”

He kissed me then, his lips gliding over mine not in passion—that was sure to come—but
to seal his words.

I smiled and slid my hands inside his dressing gown to lie on his bare chest. His
skin was warm, his heartbeat steady and measured beneath my palms.

“I will always listen to you, Savage, whenever you wish me to,” I said. “Just as I
would never wish to hear another deceitful word from Lord Blackledge. Not one!”

He grunted, displeased by the very mention of the baron’s name. “Then why didn’t you
stay here, where you’d be safe?” he asked. “Why did you put yourself in his path like
that?”

“I didn’t,” I said. “Not willfully, anyway. I went to my rooms, and as I was returning,
he was also in the hallway. It could not be avoided.”

He frowned. “What could possibly make you go to your rooms? If you wished anything,
you could have sent Barry, or had him summon Simpson. There was absolutely no reason
to put yourself at risk as you did.”

“But there was,” I insisted. I stepped back, untying the sash on my dressing gown.
“I wanted to surprise you when you returned.”

His gaze slipped down to the shadow between my breasts, unable not to.

“I wanted to finish what we’d begun in the gallery,” I continued, fishing for the
pearl necklaces in my pocket. I shook my hair back, and let the silken dressing gown
slide from my shoulders to the floor. One by one, I reached up and dropped the necklaces
over my head, the pearls sliding and falling heavily across my bare breasts.

“There,” I said, my voice low and husky. I expected him to fall into the familiar
pattern of fantasy, exactly as he had earlier in the mirrored gallery. “This is how
I wished to surprise you, my lord.”

But while his gaze remained on my pearl-draped breasts, he didn’t join the fantasy.
“That is where you went? To find those necklaces?”

“Yes, my lord, I did it for you,” I said. I cupped my breasts with my hands, offering
them to him through the sliding curtain of the pearls. “Isn’t this what you desired?”

“Take them off, Eve,” he said. “All of them.”

“Truly?” I exclaimed, disappointed. “I thought you’d like them.”

He wasn’t smiling any longer. “They were given to you by other men, weren’t they?”

The question bewildered me, since I was certain he knew the answer. Ladies didn’t
buy jewels for themselves, especially pearls.

“My father and my husband gave the necklaces to me, yes,” I said, reluctantly beginning
to lift the first necklace over my head. “But I do not see why I cannot—”

“Because I want you to wear these instead.” He took a flat jeweler’s box from the
mantel and handed it to me. “For you, Eve. From me.”

I recognized the distinctive red case from Cartier, and I took off the last of the
other necklaces before I took the box from him. Slowly I opened the lid, prolonging
the moment, and then caught my breath.

Curled in the silk-lined case was a long rope of the most exquisite pearls I’d ever
seen, large and lustrous and perfectly matched. They were nearly identical to the
ones worn by the woman in the engravings, and more than worthy of being a gift from
a Renaissance prince.

“For you,” he repeated, lifting the strand from the box and wrapping it around my
neck. It was long enough to loop three times around my throat and still drape gracefully
over my breasts.

He led me to the dressing mirror, standing behind me in the reflection. The iridescence
of the pearls made my skin glow in comparison, and I blushed with pleasure.

“They’re so beautiful, Savage,” I said, running my fingers lightly along the strand.
I couldn’t begin to imagine its value.

“
You
are so beautiful,” he said. “I wanted to give them to you in the gallery this morning,
but the man bringing them from London was delayed.”

I turned to face him. “That was why you went downstairs, for this necklace for me?”

He nodded, studying our reflection. “Apparently at the exact time you were gathering
up those other pearls to surprise me. I much prefer these.”

“I do, too,” I said. I kissed his stubbled jaw, then trailed my lips along his throat.
“Because they came from you.”

“You will think of me whenever you wear them,” he said, sliding his hand beneath the
pearls to caress my breast. “Only me, Eve.”

“Only you, Master,” I whispered. “Always you.”

“Yes,” he said, sweeping me to the bed. “Exactly as it should be.”

*   *   *

We spent the rest of that day and the next in his bedroom, and scarcely left the bed.
In the back of my mind, I was acutely aware of the final dinner we’d agreed to attend,
looming before us. I remembered all too well what had happened the last time Savage
and I had joined the others in the dining room, and I dreaded another outburst—particularly
one involving Lord Blackledge.

Yet I said nothing of it, and neither did Savage. It was a sign of how determined
we both had become to savor each moment we had together, and to think of neither the
past nor the future, nor of anything else beyond that single room. But the moments
that remained were dwindling fast, and finally it was Savage who broke our self-imposed
spell.

“I want you to dress for dinner tonight,” he said. We were lying together on the bed
with the golden sun of late afternoon spilling around us, I on my back and Savage
on his side next to me with his head propped against his bent arm. He was lazily playing
with the pearls, trailing them slowing around and over my nipple to tease it into
puckering attention.

“Dress in what manner?” I asked, dragging myself back from drowsiness to reply, though
not far enough to open my eyes. “My Innocent costume?”

“No,” he said. “I do not wish to offer you as temptation to the buffoons. You need
not wear the costume again.”

“Thank you,” I said, more relieved than he could have known. “What will the other
ladies be wearing?”

“I care only for you,” he said, more as a matter of fact than gallantry. “Surely you
brought another dinner dress with you.”

I had in fact brought nine, so that I might have choices. “Do you have a favorite
color?”

He smiled lazily. “My favorite color is whatever you choose to wear.”

“Then you shall be surprised.”

“I suppose I’ll have to give you up to Simpson soon,” he said with philosophical regret.
“I know how long it takes for ladies to dress.”

“But not yet.” I didn’t want to think of the tedium of being formally dressed, while
I was in his bed. I arched up to kiss him, a leisurely, seductive invitation.

“And the pearls,” he said. “You must wear the pearls.”

“Of course,” I murmured, smiling warmly up at him. I had worn the pearls ever since
he’d given them to me, and I had no intention of taking them off for tonight. “Only
you and I will know of all the things we’ve already done while wearing them.”

“As it should be,” he said, but his smile was enigmatic as he leaned forward and kissed
me again. “I want you to think only of me whenever you wear them.”

He deepened the kiss and I linked my arms around his shoulders. He rolled over me
and I shifted beneath him, parting my legs in welcome. I was still wet from the last
time, still swollen enough that he had to push his thick, heavy cock hard to enter
me, and I caught my breath at the overwhelming sensation of being fucked open, and
instantly filled.

He took me with the long, measured thrusts that I’d come to associate so completely
with him, and I curled my legs high over his driving hips to take him deeper still.
The necklace slipped and slid across my body, the pearls rolling over my skin and
warmed by it. Each rhythmic stroke of his cock into my sensitized core pushed me a
little closer to my release, yet still he held me just on the edge, building my pleasure
with his own as he pounded his hips against me.

There was nothing like the need he could send licking through my body, the hot desire
that scorched me. I could not resist him, nor did I want to. I rocked up to meet his
thrusts, all sinuous energy to match his fire.

“My god, Eve.” He groaned, making a guttural demand of my name. “You’re so damned
perfect
.”

I understood, for I felt the same about him. All I wished now was to lose myself completely
with him, in him, and when he angled his hips to stroke the crown of his cock inside
my passage, it was almost more than I could bear.

“Oh, Savage, please,” I gasped, writhing against the pillows.
“Please.”

“Then come.” His voice was raspy, his handsome face contorted in concentration. “Come
with me now.”

I came hard, crying out as the waves of release rippled through my body. He shuddered
as he pumped into me, over and over, his head thrown back in his own ecstasy. He’d
said I was perfect, but the truth was that we were perfect together. Completely, utterly
perfect.

We lay together for a long time afterward, our limbs still intimately tangled and
sheened with sweat.

“I can never get enough of you, Eve,” he whispered, dragging his lips along my jaw.
“You’ve ruined me completely.”

I smiled, burrowing against him. “You’ve done the same for me.”

He pulled his arms more closely around me. “What a pair that makes us, yes?”

“Yes,” I said, the word a long whisper of contentment. I had never been more satisfied,
or happier, either. In my mind, I’d begun dividing my life into the time before I’d
met him and the time after. It didn’t matter that I’d known him only a matter of weeks.
By comparison, the time with him cast everything else into dull gray shadows of discontent.
He’d changed me forever, and I wished never to go back.

“Yes,” he repeated quietly. “Quite the pair.”

I hadn’t expected the sadness in his voice, almost a melancholy, with regret mixed
in as well. Perhaps he was thinking of his wife, and I kissed him again in wordless
sympathy.

“Ah, Eve,” he said, smoothing my hair back from my face. He smiled, but it was bittersweet,
and colored with the same sadness. He held me for a moment longer, then sighed. “I
could lie here forever with you, but if I did, Barry would have an apoplexy.”

“Hang Barry,” I said. “I’d rather stay here.”

“So would I,” he said, turning his head to see the clock by the side of the bed. “But
it’s past time I gave you over to your maid to make you presentable for dinner, and
Barry must do the same with me.”

He eased away from me and swung his legs over the side of the bed. At once I felt
his absence, and I reached for the blanket, pulling it up over my shoulders as I watched
him put on his robe.

“Don’t make yourself too comfortable,” he said. “We must go.”

I curled myself up more tightly under the blanket, relishing the last bit of warmth
his body had left on the sheets. “Why?”

“Because we owe that much to our host and hostess,” he explained. “I promised Laura
that we would be at dinner, and we will. Come, Eve, out of the bed.”

I couldn’t understand how swiftly he’d changed his manner, becoming almost brusque.
Clearly, his thoughts were already elsewhere, away from me, and the ease with which
he’d made the transition wounded me.

“You didn’t care about any of the other dinners,” I said, reluctantly sliding from
the bed. “Why should this one be so special?”

“Because it’s the last one of the Game.” He handed me my dressing gown. “I’ll walk
you to your rooms.”

He was already opening the door for me by the time I’d tied my sash, and though he
smiled as I joined him, I could sense the distance growing between us. He offered
me his arm as we began down the hall, but I claimed his hand instead, linking my fingers
into his to pull him closer.

“Will we see our hostess on a bed of fruit again tonight?” I asked, striving to be
playful.

His smile was perfunctory. “Oh, I doubt it. There will be some sort of hired entertainment,
yes, but by the end of the week, most of the guests are too spent for much more mischief.
I doubt most of the men could muster a decent cockstand among them now.”

“You could,” I said. “
We
could.”

He grunted. “Yes, but we’re not about to show them, are we?” he said. “After dinner
there will be a short ceremony—a kind of graduation, if you will—where the Protectors
will each stand and sing the praises of their Innocents and what they’ve taught them,
and pronounce their educations complete. Then other Protectors can offer to take on
any of the Innocents for future schooling, a tidy way of deciding who will be paired
with whom for the next time.”

“Then that is what the baron meant when he said he’d claim me,” I said with a shudder,
remembering how Blackledge had grabbed me in this same hallway. “I’d never agree to
be his Innocent.”

“It’s easy enough to avoid,” he said. “A word or two to the viscountess, and she’ll
arrange it. Although I suspect she’s already aware of your dislike for Blackledge.”

“I’m sure she is,” I said. We’d come to the door of my rooms. I turned to face him,
slipping my hand inside his robe to place my open palm on his bare chest. “She should
also know by now that there’s only one master I’d ever want, and that’s you.”

“Me?” He seemed pleased, though more surprised than anything. “As flattering as that
is, Eve, it cannot happen. The rules of the Game are that no Protector can have the
same Innocent twice.”

“But no other man could ever follow you, Master,” I said, looking up at him from beneath
my lashes. I slid my hand lower, loosening his sash so that I could curl my fingers
around his cock. At once he began to harden, coming to life in my hand, and with a
little thrill of excitement I wondered if he’d take me there, against the door, with
the risk of being discovered at any moment. “You will always be my only master.”