Marissa Day (15 page)

“Let me go,” she whispered as he moved to kiss her throat. “Please. Let me hold you.”

He pulled back just enough that she could see his face. Emotion flickered through his eyes, and Jane swore she saw longing there, and that it was followed swiftly by fear. But like the indecision she thought she’d seen before, this also swiftly vanished, replaced by his sly, mischief.

“Oh, no, sweet Jane,” Thomas drawled, running his thumb across her swollen, sensitized mouth and then sliding his fingers smoothly down her oiled skin to her tightly furled nipple. His balls rubbed the oiled folds of her weeping pussy as he moved over her. “You shall not touch me yet. No matter how you beg.”

An unreasoning and unexpected bolt of anger shot through her. “I do not intend to beg.”

“No?” He sat back, and his thighs squeezed hers, compressing her pussy delightfully while at the same time reminding her how completely trapped she was. “We’ll see about that.”

He pressed his hands against her hips and stroked them. The oil made her skin like silk and his hard palms slipped easily across her. His thumb found the very tip of her slit and pressed there. Jane gasped as pleasure struck, hard and immediate. Thomas grinned, an expression of pure wickedness, as he began moving his thumb in a tiny circle, stroking her clit swiftly and lightly.

“Oh,” Jane moaned. Her back arched, her breasts strained, but he did not touch them. He simply continued his swift stirring of that single exquisitely sensitive point. Jane’s hips arched, and her legs strained to open so he could slide his fingers farther inside her, but his thighs clamped hers tight and he was far too strong for her to shift. She was trapped, held helpless to his will, and his will was all to torment her with this touch that was so small, and yet so powerful.

“Is it good then, Jane?” He slid his other hand under her ass and squeezed. “My unruly, greedy Jane.”

Her hands knotted around the ropes. The velvet rubbed against her palms, a new sensuous friction to mingle with the silk and the oil and Thomas’s wicked, merciless stroking of her clit, and now his hand fondling her ass.

“Tell me, Jane. Tell me you want it.”

She clamped her mouth shut. She had said she would not beg and she would not. But oh, it felt so good. Her clit had swollen, she was sure. It was throbbing now, and the pleasure of his attentions radiated throughout her body.

“Nothing to say?” His hand underneath her slid up, and she felt his fingers probing the split between her buttocks. How could that possibly feel good? But it did. She liked the pressure there. It pushed her eager clit more firmly against his thumb. She strained, but she didn’t know what her body sought, until she felt his one finger probing her anus.

She gasped again. He couldn’t.
She
couldn’t . . .

“Trust me, Jane,” he murmured, pressing harder with both hands, his fingers pressing against her clit, and against her anus. “Let me show you how very good it can feel.”

His fingers were still thoroughly oiled. His attention to her clit and her folds was so sweet and she wanted so badly to strain open, and his other finger, his other . . .

His other finger was inside her.

“There now,” he whispered. “Isn’t that good?”

It was good. Held firmly between his hands and his thighs, helpless to do anything but feel, it was very good. He increased his movements; thumb circling, finger moving in and out, fucking her backside with small precise motions, matching the rhythm of her blood where it pounded in her clit. The caresses and the pressure swirled together to fill her with intense delight.

“Beg me, Jane. Beg for it and you’ll come. I’ll make you come so hard, but you must beg me.”

She couldn’t stand it. She’d die of his touch. His strength was nothing. The rope was nothing. It was his knowing, wicked touch calling forth this inescapable pleasure that mastered her.

“Please,” she moaned, writhing her hips against his hands, stirring her own clit, stirring the finger snug inside her ass. “Oh, please, I want to come! Make me come!”

“Yes.” His fingers plunged deep into her pussy. With both hands he fucked her, front and back, his palm grinding against her throbbing, swollen clit.

Her orgasm exploded and Jane cried out in welcome. Her body rocked wildly, but he still held her trapped, the uncontrollable motion of her hips making her fuck his hands even harder to prolong her ecstasies.

Gradually, the tumult eased. Tension and trembling faded, and Jane’s body settled deeply into the nest of rumpled silk.

“There, Jane, there,” Thomas whispered, withdrawing his fingers from her, and caressing her slowly, possessively. “You see what rewards come with obedience?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He leaned down until his chest brushed her breasts. “Yes, what?”

She did not resist. The force of the pleasure he imparted had robbed her of all her strength. “Yes, Master Thomas.”

“That’s right.” He kissed her, teasingly. “Your only master. Isn’t that so, Jane?”

“Yes. Only you.”

“Very good. Very, very good.” He rolled aside. She only stirred a little as he parted her legs and settled himself between them.

“Shall I fuck you, Jane?” He took himself in his hand and slid the tip of his cock into her slit, stroking her slowly back and forth. Oh, she couldn’t endure more, and yet it felt so very good.

“Please.”

Smiling, he slid inside her. It was a comfortable, easy fit and Jane sighed with contentment.

“Yes, it feels good, doesn’t it? You’re so very wet and ready for my cock.”

He took his weight on his knees and grasped her breasts, thumbing her nipples, and Jane almost swooned. Her breasts had so ached for his touch while he played with her pussy, now the sensation of it was overwhelming. She moaned and arched her back, knotting her fingers into the rope as she strained to press herself against him.

“And still you want more.” He rolled her nipples in his oiled fingertips in time with the easy glide of his cock in her sheath.

“Never enough,” she panted. “Oh, God, it will never be enough.”

“No.” His voice thickened, mischief gone, gentleness gone. In its place waited all the awe and longing she had only glimpsed before. “No, never.”

His thrusts increased, urgency overtaking sport and Jane rocked her hips, meeting him thrust for thrust, urging him on, driving him on. He pinched her nipples, adding bright pinpricks of pain to season the pleasure and she cried out for more. He thrust deeper and he groaned, his hands sliding swiftly down her body, to cup her ass, to lift her to him, and to slip his finger inside her anus again.

“Ah!” How could anything in the world feel so wicked and yet so good? Caught between his cock and his hand, she was screaming, begging, pleading, and he only answered by fucking her harder, which was what she wanted most of all. He was master and yet she commanded him. Faster and harder, passion raising them up closer, higher, further into the blinding light of purest pleasure until there was nothing else in the whole world.

“Y
ou promised you would answer my questions,” said Jane as she stroked Thomas’s chest.

Thomas looked down at the woman curled against his side. He had his arm around her creamy white shoulders and his fingers toyed with her chestnut hair where it tumbled around her breasts in magnificent disarray. The candlelight brought out sparks of red and gold in the luxurious tresses and he felt he could stare at them, at her, for hours. A wave of tenderness swept through him. By Heaven, she was beautiful like this; wrapped in cool green silk, her face and eyes still flushed with the glow of their mutual ecstasy. He had barely formed the thought when a warning tolled in the back of his mind.

It’s only your cock,
he told himself sternly.
It found beauty in her sheath, and wants to return.

“If you say I promised answers, I’m sure I did,” Thomas replied lightly. “But which questions are these?”

“The dreams,” she prompted exasperatedly. “This room. How any of this is possible. How
you
are possible.”

“Ah, yes.” Jane had surrendered so completely to their erotic play, Thomas had hoped that she’d lost the urge to question how such pleasures came to be. He thought about kissing her again, about rolling her under and drowning her once more in desire, but he saw the steel flash in her eyes.

I should have known better.
Lady Jane DeWitte was not one to be distracted for long.

“Magic,” he said.

“I’ll not be made light of, sir!” Jane snapped, lifting his arm from off her shoulders and flinging it aside.

“Never in life!” he cried, although he could not keep the laugh from his voice. “But you said it yourself our first night, Jane.”

Jane considered for a long moment, her eyes searching his face carefully. He would have to be more wary of those eyes. Jane saw far too much.

“Is there another explanation you would have me give? I can lie if you wish.”
I have lied so much to you, one more should make no difference to either of us.

“I do not know,” she admitted. “But . . . magic?”

Thomas sat up a little higher on the pillows. “Magic is real. It is a part of the natural world, like lightning, or the force of gravity.”

“But the ability to create dreams or speak to someone else in their sleep is not natural.”

“It is. What you’re not used to is that there are certain aspects of the natural order that can be influenced by intent. Think of sewing.”

“Sewing?”

“Yes. A stitch is formed by the needle, the thread and the skill of the hand, which is in itself shaped by the intent of the person whose hand it is. When we speak of magic, we speak of a natural force, which is like the thread, harnessed by creation of a sympathetic circumstance, which is the needle, and the will or intent of the magician, which is the hand. Be the needle so fine or the thread so tightly twisted, it is ultimately the skill and attentiveness of the tailor that makes the coat a coat rather than a jumble of cloth bits.”

“That’s a very tidy explanation. You’ve given it before?”

“That’s how it was explained to me. I also did not believe in magic when I first encountered it.”

“So when I said you were a fairy prince . . .” she began, but Thomas stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“No, Jane. Never call me that. I’ve told you, I’m as human as you are.”

“Then what am I to call you? Wizard? Sorcerer?”

“These also exist, but I cannot claim such a close command of magic. I have only been granted a few gifts.”

“Such as the gift to create dreams?”

“Dreams are doorways. They lead into the hearts and thoughts of the dreamers. Magic, if properly controlled, can open doors.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Thomas realized he’d made a mistake. Jane pulled back farther in an attitude of suspicion that ran far too deep for comfort. “So you opened my mind, and put in it these images of desire?”

Thomas drew her swiftly to him, kissing her brow. “No, Jane. It was you who opened your mind to me.”

“What? How?”

Thomas smiled. “The night before you left with the Duke of Kent’s retinue for Saxe-Coburg, you attended a ball at Carleton House.”

Jane nodded, rolling her eyes at the memory. “It was a nightmare. I couldn’t believe the drunkenness, and the Duke of Clarence, those crude stories . . . I was miserable.”

“I noticed.”

Jane pulled back once more, but in surprise this time, not in fear, so Thomas let her go. “You were there?”

“I was, and like you, I wished myself elsewhere.”

Carleton House, being a royal residence, was warded against magic. But the prince regent’s constant remodeling and expansions had created cracks in some of those wards, not large, but sufficient to allow Thomas to slip in as far as the gardens. But even from there he’d seen how unruly the gathering had become. He’d known pirate crews where the men conducted themselves better than the silk-clad sots that the prince regent surrounded himself with.

Jane brushed restlessly at the sheets, slowly taking in the realization that the two of them had been in near proximity before Lady Darnley’s. What he could not tell her was he had come there looking for her, or someone like her; a woman who could gain him entry to the household. A pang of regret touched him. He had known this time would come. What he had not counted on was how very reluctant he would feel spinning further lies for Jane. Of course telling her the whole truth was impossible, but she seemed to have awakened his conscience along with his desires, and that was very troubling indeed.

“I saw you strolling across the lawn,” he told her, hoping that telling her at least some truth would help smother his discomfort. “I thought you were meeting someone.”

“I was escaping the heat.”