The Devil's Touch (5 page)

She tried to rejoin him, embarrassed by the intensity of his scrutiny, she tightened her arms around his neck, but she had no strength and could not pull his mouth back to hers.

“You’re beautiful,” Lucien said softly, then his hot breath was on her neck, his desire becoming ravenous as he kissed a wet glistening trail down along the length of her throat and shoulders before sucking one of her nipples into his mouth.

Angelica gasped at the erotic shock and then a groan was driven from her lips that was throaty and thick with her flaming desire. Her hands moved without command, clutching at the dense hair at the back of Lucien’s head, grabbing and holding him to her.

She threw her head back and arched her body, reveling in the wet sucking draw of his lips and the dampness between her thighs reached boiling point. She felt her hips begin to rock as her body tried to grind against the thickness of his thighs.

“Please…” she groaned.

Angelica felt one of Lucien’s hands slide over the firm roundness of her backside, down her legs and then hook around the back of her knees.

He lifted her, light and trembling as she clung to him, burying her face into his neck as he carried her in his arms through to the bedroom.

* * *

Moonlight filtered through open windows, painting Angelica’s face in a pale soft glow and throwing highlights across the muscled plains of Lucien’s naked body.

He reached out to her and stroked her arm and she shuddered and closed her eyes. His fingertips touched the hot skin of her breast then closed around it, and it filled his palm as the aroused sensitive skin hardened, her nipple swelling as he gently squeezed. The feeling was so intense it was almost painful, and white lights flashed behind her eyes as the thrill rippled down her spine in wavelets.

His hands began to explore her curves and as she stood, swaying, the fabric of her dress fell away to gather around her feet. She sensed Lucien was fully in control of himself, his hands masterful and patient as he drew out each touch, each new sensation. She made soft mewling sounds deep in her throat, encouraging him – hoping to fuel his own desire so that he would take all decisions out of her hands – so that he would lead her to new places and hew heights and conceal her own inexperience.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” Lucien murmured, and she felt his thumbs in the elastic of her panties, tugging them down, leaving her standing naked and quivering before him. She opened her mouth to speak, but then suddenly one of his hands slid down the taut flat of her abdomen and hovered within reach of her aching sex. She drew a sharp gasping breath and her legs turned weak.

Angelica heard his breathing, deep and sonorous, and it was close in her ear and hot against her cheek.

“You are safe,” he said, and he eased her down onto the bed, smothering her body with his hands, lying pressed beside her so that she could feel the heat of him.

His mouth went to her breast and then to her lips, then to her throat, as he covered her with long soft wet kisses.

Angelica groaned, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence of the room. Her hand groped along his muscled flank and then brushed against the hardness of him. She felt the rigid length and her eyes opened wide in wonder.

His fingers traced long lingering circles at the tops of her thighs and her legs fell open for him. She teased him in return, lightly grazing her fingernails along his hardened shaft until she felt the urgent throb of his reaction.

Finally he covered her with his body and her senses overloaded with the sensations of skin against skin; the power and the huge strength of him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he soothed her, reaching up to brush a tendril of hair from her face. His eyes were dancing and dark.

“I’m not,” Angelica said softly. “This is what I want.”

Lucien moved his hips slowly, impaling her, gentle and yet insistent, giving her time to become accustomed to the feel and the thickness of him.

He filled her deeply and with each rocking thrust of his hips he went deeper still. She wrapped her arms around his waist and felt the tension in his muscles, understanding what it cost him to hold back like this. He was so gentle – so careful.

Lucien clenched his jaw. He screwed his eyes shut and drew his self control out to its very limits.

Angelica groaned again as his mouth suddenly came down on hers. His kiss was hot and hungry. His tongue plunged like a knife into the warm wetness of her open mouth.

The passionate intensity of his kiss was the final spark and Angelica’s body began to erupt. She went wild beneath him, her legs tensing and flexing, her hands clawing at his back, her breath exploding from her in short bursts. The pleasure started at her core and blossomed outward, and his mouth was close to her ear murmuring indistinct sounds, and somehow she recognized that he was urging her on and on.

At last she cried out as flashes of bright color exploded behind her eyelids and her whole body went stiff with electric pulses. It lasted and lasted; a sensation that seemed to tear at her soul – and then she was falling – released and relaxed and floating.

It took a long time for Angelica to drift back from the far frontiers of her mind, and when she did it was with a vague sense of foreboding.

Lucien lay on his back beside her. His breathing was rhythmic and steady, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Angelica rolled on to her side facing him and tentatively ran her fingers over the curled hair on his chest.

“That was…” she shook her head marveling, “… incredible.”

The sheets around her were still damp from the sweat of their bodies and a voluptuous satisfied pulse still throbbed deep inside her. She shuddered as her mind replayed a montage of erotic flashes – and then quite suddenly her hand on Lucien’s chest went very still, and the blood drained away from her cheeks.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. She lifted herself up onto one elbow and stared at Lucien, her face stricken. “You… you didn’t…”

He met her gaze and his eyes were unfathomable.

“It’s okay,” Lucien said softly. “I didn’t want to.”

Angelica recoiled from him, her shock giving way to a sickening sense of humiliation.

He didn’t want to?

I am sexless – I can’t turn a man on – even when I throw myself at him.

Angelica sank back down on to the bed as a surge of reaction washed over her. Desolation and despair came in waves and she began to weep slow tears.

Duncan was right. I’ll never be sexy or alluring. I’ll never be able to keep a man satisfied.

“If you’re blaming yourself, stop right now,” Lucien said harshly. Then he shook her until she turned and faced him. “And stop crying – there’s nothing to cry about.”

Anger blazed in Angelica’s eyes then. “Nothing to cry about? I’ve made a complete fool of myself,” she seethed. “I threw myself at your feet at the yacht club and humiliated myself, just to prove that I was capable of attracting a sexy, good-looking man. Then I let you take me to your bed, just so I could prove to myself that I’m not all those horrible things my ex-boyfriend called me. But guess what? I am!” Now she had given vent to her bitterness it came in a rush of words, laced with her shame.

“I couldn’t turn him on. I couldn’t turn you on.”

Lucien cut across her suddenly. “You do turn me on,” he said, “but not like this.” He spread his hands wide. “This is what doesn’t arouse me.”

Angelica checked. She frowned in confusion.

“I’m not interested in vanilla sex,” Lucien explained. “I never have been. I’m a Master, Angelica. Domination and submission is the only kind of sex that I truly enjoy.”

* * *

“I don’t understand,” Angelica said warily. “Isn’t domination about being cruel to women?”

She was sitting in the center of the king-size bed, cross-legged, looking like a child wearing only Lucien’s shirt. She had fastened two of the buttons, but the collar gaped, revealing the silky sheen of her breasts each time she leaned forward.

Beside the bed was a silver trolley that room service had delivered, stacked with a platter of toasted sandwiches and fries. She nibbled as she watched Lucien, pausing occasionally to brush at errant tendrils of hair that hung down into her eyes.

“That’s your ignorance speaking,” Lucien said. He was perched on the edge of the bed staring at Angelica, and there was a glow like an intense aura on his face when he spoke again.

“There are no hard and fast rules to the dominant submissive lifestyle,” he said. “There is no black or white – just a lot of shades of grey.”

“So how do you know if you’re doing it right?”

He smiled at the naivety of her. “Because it feels right,” he said.

He rose from the bed. He was wearing a thick white bathrobe, and he thrust his big fists into the pockets as he began to pace the room, speaking with the same passion and compelling tone that she had heard him use during his speech at the yacht club.

“For a lot of people, submission and domination is a lifestyle – and everyone’s way of living is different,” he explained. “For men like me it is all about the physical and emotional control of another person. And often that means discipline.”

“Punishment, you mean. Beatings.”

“No,” he shook his head. “Again, you have this notion, but it’s not based on experience. You know nothing about what I’m referring to, so you assume the worst.”

Angelica took another bite of her sandwich. She watched Lucien carefully. She was beginning to feel unsettled and she regarded him warily.

“I am a Master,” he said, stopping in the middle of the room and staring into her eyes. “When I have a submissive, there is very little physical punishment. Sometimes, when a sub disobeys, she will be spanked, but apart from that, I stay well away from physical pain – because I have a far better way of demanding and getting exactly what I want.”

Angelica couldn’t help herself. “And what is it you want from these women?”

“Obedience,” Lucien said. “Unquestioning obedience to all my instructions.”

“I find it hard to believe it’s that simple,” Angelica murmured. She put the crust of her sandwich back on to the serving trolley and hugged her knees to her chest with both arms. Angelica’s senses seemed heightened, for she recognized the power of Lucien Lance. He was like a handsome, dangerous cobra – weaving and mesmerizing with his words. His presence and charm were immense and even though her instincts rumbled warnings in her ear, she felt herself being drawn inexorably closer to him by his power and her fascination.

“It’s surprisingly simple,” he said, and then he smiled the most beautiful smile Angelica had ever seen. His face changed completely as there was a devilish curl on his lips. “I have no bondage equipment; no whips, no cuffs, no elaborate crosses, tables or chains. I use no rope – no restraints of any kind. If I punish a submissive it is a spanking with my bare hand.”

“And these women… what? They just accept you smacking their backsides?”

“Yes,” Lucien nodded. “They do.”

Angelica frowned. She wasn’t completely naïve. She’d seen pictures…

“Restraints and equipment are only for show, Angelica. If a Master needs to restrain his submissive it is because he fears they will not accept their punishment, which in turn means the Master does not have true control and power over them. I do.”

Angelica raised an eyebrow. He sounded smugly confident and she felt the challenge escape her lips before she had time to stop herself. “How?”

“I’m wealthy,” he said. “So I have enormous influence. I can make doors open, or I can slam them shut. And I understand women. I know their minds, and in a corner of every woman’s mind – even yours – is a primal instinct to obey. Women were made to submit. Men were made to dominate. It’s the natural order. I simply make use of this knowledge… and then I add an incentive.”

Angelica was affronted. “You think women were made to obey? That’s sexist!”

“No. It’s sense.”

There were sudden hectic spots of color high on Angelica’s cheeks and she shook her head so that her hair swished over her shoulders like an angry tail. “And you think I have an urge to submit?”

“Yes,” Lucien said. He hadn’t moved. He stood in the center of the floor, handsome and masculine – and impossibly arrogant.

“And you control these… these women by using your power and influence? So you blackmail them?”

“Yes,” Lucien nodded again. “But not in the way you think.”

“Oh,” Angelica said, feeling her outrage suddenly rising and unable – and unwilling – to control it. “So the great Lucien Lance has morals after all. He won’t blackmail women for sex!” She folded her arms tight across her chest. “I can see how you earned your reputation… and I can see why people call you Lucifer.”

There was a long silence as they stared at each other. Lucien’s smile slipped from his lips and his eyes narrowed. Angelica felt a small premonition of alarm, like a chill breeze, and a rash of goose pimples arose along the length of her arm. Lucien’s mood had changed, and Angelica lowered her eyes, dismayed and confused, but somehow compelled to look away.

“I use my power and my wealth to encourage a submissive’s obedience,” Lucien said, but now his voice was low and thin with the effort it took to suppress his anger. “As I have already told you, I want emotional and physical control of my submissives, but I’m not a monster, Angelica. And I’m no saint either. What I am is a winner. I get what I want and if I need to, I will use whatever means necessary to encourage obedience to my every command.”

“Well, despite what you think, Mr Lance,” she made a point of addressing him now by his surname, “there are plenty of women – women like me – who aren’t interested in submitting to your sexual urges. And I would never accept punishment from you, or any other man!” Angelica’s temper carried her off the bed. She began to hunt around the room for her dress. “I’m someone who can’t be blackmailed,” she added. “I quit my research job this afternoon, I have little money, no boyfriend, and I am sleeping on my friend’s sofa.” She gave Lucien a surly huff when he held out her discarded panties.