My Three Masters (8 page)

“Who are you?” a dark voice growled. Hot excitement spiraled
within me. It was the Marquis, masterful and powerful, the way he’d come to me
in my nighttime dreams. I felt his hard ridge press against my buttocks. I
instantly got wet. My breathing sped up as if I were running across a field.

“I’m…a…an intruder,” I said defiantly. “Let me go.”

“Hell no. What have you stolen, intruder?”

By the way he said the word, I knew he realized who I was.
“Why should I tell you?”

“You speak so to your master?”

“I’m sorry, sir. But yes. I speak the way I speak.”

“You’re begging for trouble, aren’t you?”

He didn’t know how true that was. Or maybe he did.

He stood me up and marched me to the big four-poster bed
with its old-fashioned bed hangings. Keeping a tight hold on my arm, he bent me
over the edge so my cheek was pressed into the coverlet. The friction made my
scar throb. “Because if you don’t tell me what you’ve done, I’ll have to punish
you.”

“But, Master, I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Already you lie. You’re not supposed to be in here, so
you’ve done that wrong, have you not? Now stay still while I take your clothes
off.”

“Take my clothes off?” I cried while everything in me
rejoiced.

“How else am I supposed to tell if you stole anything?
Quickly now. I’ll release you so you can stand and remove your shift and
that…that thing you have over it. If you’re lucky I won’t throw it into the
kitchen fire.”

He let go of my arm. I straightened up, panting. I felt his
gaze burning me up, head to toe. I took off my wrapper and tossed it to the
floor. Next came my sleeping shift. I reached down to the hem and slowly drew
it over my head, feeling the cool air touch my thighs, my buttocks, my belly,
my breasts. My nipples tightened. I looked down at them, at the dark knobs
against my skin, silvered by moonlight. I looked not like myself at all. Gone
was the brown servant. I was a silvery nymph, a temptress.

Behind me, the Marquis took a sharp breath. Did I please
him? I hoped so. My body, at any rate, had never been marked, never been
touched by any but him.

“Put your hands behind your head,” came his choked voice. I
thrilled at the thought that I’d done that to him. I’d made his voice go thick
and charged with lust. “Cast your eyes down at the floor. Then turn around
slowly. I must inspect every part of you.”

My throat tightened. I couldn’t imagine being any more
exposed. A dark anticipation tightened my lower belly. I’d started this, after
all. And I knew I could walk away if I chose.

But I didn’t. I did as he said. I clasped my hands behind my
head, looked down and began a slow rotation under the scalding gaze of the
notorious Marquis de Beaumont. I was glad it was dark, but at the same time, a
powerful feeling stole over me, as if I were a goddess and he was worshipping
at my feet. I straightened my spine, allowing my breasts to thrust forward.
They felt heavy and aching—maybe longing is the right word. They longed for the
man who stood a few steps away, the man whose stillness only added to the power
he exuded.

When I’d turned enough to be face-to-face with him, I peeped
at him from under my lashes. His face was in shadow, a complex map of deep
grooves and sharp angles. He still wore his evening clothes, an exquisitely cut
jacket and snug breeches of a lighter color, though in the moonlight everything
looked various shades of silver and gray. My nakedness next to his immaculate
tailoring added another frisson of excitement. And though I couldn’t make out
his expression, the tension in his posture, the way I held his complete
attention, made heat rise between my legs.

He must have noticed. “Part your legs,” he ordered. “Wide
enough so I can get a good look at your tasty little quim.”

His command unleashed another wave of heat. I separated my
legs, but I had to close my eyes as embarrassment struck me. What if most girls
didn’t get so excruciatingly wet in their private parts? What if I was a wanton?
What if my guardian had devised the right destiny for me all along?

“You have no idea what a treasure you are, do you?” the
Marquis said. I sighed, a sweet shiver of relief. I didn’t disgust him. Quite
the opposite. I pleased him. I spread my legs wider, keeping my hands behind my
head, my gaze cast down.

“I was tending to some correspondence in the library,” he
murmured. “But if I had known I was being vandalized, I would have rushed to
the scene of the crime much earlier. I only came back because I forgot this.”
He presented a long quill made from a pheasant feather. “Everything happens for
a reason, I suppose.”

I swallowed hard. Whatever he intended to do with it, my
body was already responding. I watched, fascinated, as it came closer and
closer. Then the feather settled softly against my quim with delicate,
maddening strokes. The feeling was exquisite but also something close to
torture. It teased but offered no hope for release. It enticed like a voice
calling from afar, beckoning me onward and upward, yet never bringing me to my
destination.

I tried to push against it but he barked a sharp command at
me. “Be still.” I froze. He continued his minute application of the feather to
my mound, brushing against the hairs and the hot little kernel of need. I
closed my eyes in despair. This was worse than any punishment I could have
devised. I’d prefer chains and a paddle to this constant, unbearable teasing. I
hid in the darkness behind my closed eyelids as I lost all sense of time
passing.

Then it changed. Something hard scraped against that vital
spot. I drew in a shocked breath.

“I know you’re already well-acquainted with your own
clitoris, you naughty girl.”

Oh I was. But not the way it felt now, as if it might leap
off my body and burst into flame. “Yes,” I squeaked.

The hard thing—it occurred to me it was the point of the
quill—toyed with my clitoris. I suppressed an undignified yelp.

“Good. No woman should be a stranger to the workings of her
body. Have you felt the juices your delicious quim produces?” Here he let the
quill roam freely, even dipping a bit into my woman’s passage.

“I…I’ve noticed.”

“They exist for a reason. To welcome my cock into your
body.”

I squeaked again. It was all I could manage. Intense
sensation between my thighs captured my full attention.

“I resisted entering you earlier so as to spare you from
pregnancy. But I can’t resist any longer, and since you’ve entered my chamber
without permission and removed your clothing without protest, I intend to take
you now.”

He paused, and I knew that was my chance to protest. I did
not.

“But I still intend to protect you. There are ways to avoid
getting with child. Have you heard of a French letter?”

The feathery end was back now, brushing lightly back and
forth against the aroused tip of my clitoris. Oh it was diabolical, that
feather. Surely I would die if he didn’t do that same sweet thing to me he’d
done earlier.

I struggled to remember his question. French letters. “No.”

“It’s a pouch for my member. It will hold my seed inside so
it doesn’t come into your body. Now continue your turn. I want to see your
rear.”

I swallowed and pulled my legs together so I could rotate
again. They felt heavy, as if weighted down by my desire. When my back was to
him, he danced the feather along my spine, down the crevice between my
buttocks, and back and forth between my thighs. Shivers shuddered through me—it
was divine.

Then his big, hot hand came against my lower back and bent
me firmly down so my breasts again rested on the bed. My hands trembled but I
kept them behind my head until he told me otherwise. If I’d felt exposed
before, I was even more so now, with my vulnerable buttocks bared to him. I
squeezed my thighs together, both as protection and to feel the sweet heat. But
he stopped my motion, planting both hands firmly on the backs of my thighs and
spreading me apart. Now my quim lay open before him. Open and begging and
pulsing.

“Ahh,” he murmured, as if he’d just taken a long drink of
some soothing beverage. “Just as tender and juicy as I imagined.” He confirmed
this with his two thumbs, using them to spread my folds and press against my
clitoris.

I moaned into the coverlet and clenched my hands into fists.
I think I even felt a bit of drool drip onto the cloth. I waggled my rear
against his hands. As I did so, my clitoris rubbed against the coverlet,
unleashing more wild storms of craving. I needed more, now, or I was going to
expire.

“Please, Master…” I was so rattled I couldn’t remember his
title. All I knew was that he was the master of my body at this moment.

He bent over me, his hot breath in my ear, and spread my
arms to the side. They tingled; I hadn’t realized they’d gotten cramped, but he
had. Now he stroked them, shoulder blade to fingertips, then back up and down
my shuddering back.

“Don’t worry, my pet. You’ll get what you need.” He took one
hand away. I heard him fumble with his breeches. A chant began in my mind.
Please,
now, please, hard, now, please.

“This might hurt for a moment,” he said as he settled back
over me. I stiffened, not sure what was coming. He began to murmur in my ear as
he stroked my wet sex. “But you might have managed to break your maidenhead
with all your horse riding, so it might not. It will take a moment for your
body to adjust to the feel of me inside you. Just keep breathing. Have faith
that it will eventually be everything you’ve craved, and more.”

Something widened my opening and began pressing inside. From
the thickness and hardness, I knew it must be his male member. As he worked his
way inside me, he kept up his stream of chatter.

“I always knew you had a passionate streak lurking beneath
that dutiful exterior. I want you to let it out. Don’t worry about anything you
might say or do while we’re being intimate. I’ve always believed the sexual act
ought to be a place of utter, complete safety from judgment and doubt. Just let
yourself feel. Let yourself be free. I’m right there with you, my sweet.”

With that, he pushed all the way into me. I cried out, but
in truth it was more out of surprise at the starburst that his intrusion
created than pain. I shifted, confused by the torrent of sensations, the
feeling of being filled to overflowing, stretched and plugged.

“M-M-Marquis!” I exclaimed. “How very…odd.” But my voice
quavered and I couldn’t finish my thought, for he’d begun to move inside me.
Not only that but his hand worked its way back under me so he could diddle my
clitoris. “Oh! Ohhhhhhh!” I kept gasping. How could… What madness… What
delirium! Then he did something with his thumb against my clitoris while moving
just so within my body, and a spiral of delight swept me up as if I were being
held aloft by a fountain. Tremors shook my body; I was helpless to contain
them. But the Marquis had told me not to, so I shoved aside my caution and
surrendered to the storm.

I pushed against the hard invader inside me, and each time
more sparkles of joy danced through my belly.

“When you squirm so, I cannot stop myself,” he growled. I
knew not what he meant, though I knew I certainly had no desire for him to stop
anything. Then he gave a last, massive thrust and released a primitive howl
into the night. Spasms rocked through him—I felt them just as if they were my
own lovely convulsions. I stayed with him, wanting to show him the same care
he’d shown me. I clenched at him with my inner muscles, milking him fiercely.

“Oh my sweet,” he moaned, collapsing onto my body.

I felt as if I still soared somewhere in the upper regions
of heaven. I whimpered, “So lovely. So lovely.” Tears came to my eyes and
spilled over, dripping onto the coverlet and onto his hand.

“Are you all right?” he cried in alarm, rolling off me and
peering into my face. “Did I hurt you?”

“No…no,” I sobbed. “I simply never imagined something so
beautiful could exist.”

He fell back onto the bed. “Oh, if that’s all it is.”

“Yes.” I wiped my face so I wouldn’t get his coverlet all
wet. But he didn’t seem concerned. He scooped me up so I lay in a cozy ball
within his arms. “Is it always so…so…rapturous?”

“Rarely,” he said, tenderly stroking a strand of my hair
away from my damp face. “Only for some fortunate people who allow themselves
that pleasure, and who open themselves to trust and surrender.”

“Milord.”

At the intense tone in my voice, he stilled. “Yes?”

I buried my head in his chest so my words were muffled. I
had something to say, something that burned in my soul, that begged to be
released. “My lord,” I whispered. “My lord and master. I am yours to command.”
Part of me hoped he wouldn’t hear. That part was quickly disappointed.

“Indeed.”

* * * * *

The first command came the very next afternoon. As I heated
milk for Rose, a footman delivered a message from the Marquis. I was ordered to
report to the stables immediately. The Countess apparently had already granted
me a few hours off that afternoon. I flew up the stairs with the milk and
handed it to Graham.

“I have an urgent task to complete,” I told her, still
breathless from my dash through the halls of Sweetbriar. “Will you put Rose to
sleep for her nap?”

“Go on, child. Rose and I’ll be just fine.”

I hurried to my room, where I found another surprise. A
forest-green riding habit hung on the wardrobe door, a note pinned to it.
“Don’t keep your master waiting”, it read. Heavy excitement weighed down my
limbs and made my fingers tremble as I removed my clothes and donned the riding
habit. He’d thoughtfully provided a pair of half boots as well. When I was
dressed, I looked down at myself and saw a ghost. The ghost of the Honorable
Miranda Hampton.