“I am not sure.”
He told her.
Her fingertips circled the tip of his cock. He all but heard her mind working. “My lord said I could say no if I want.”
“That is true.” Her lord might die if she did.
She contemplated the demand for an excruciating minute. He thought his body would split open.
Tentatively, she stuck out her tongue and tested. Shethought some more. “You do this for me, and it is wonderful. If you would know something similar—it is only fair to try.” She looked up. “You will tell me what to do?”
He told her. She kissed, then she licked, then she used her mouth fully. Keen bolts of feral pleasure prodded him to spectacular erotic heights. She did not retreat, not even at the end.
He lifted her up and dropped on the bed with her in his arms. For a long count he lost himself in a dark mist of an encompassing pleasure that spun out of his climax.
Later, he did not know if it was one minute or twenty, Padua moved. She raised up on her elbows. “Are we done, my lord?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Hardly.”
***
Padua had always known that her submission aroused Ives. She had not called it that, but it had been there, from that first night when he held her hands together during the first kisses. She had sensed it in the ways he handled her. Even in his possessive caresses.
She supposed all men liked it. They were not far from the animals in such things. Nor, she was learning, were women.
She lay on the bed, waiting for Ives to finish preparations for the next wicked game. He had stacked two pillows and told her to lie facedown with them under her hips. She now spread naked on the bed.
The waiting aroused her terribly. Again thevulnerability. Again the fear that was not fear because it excited. Her arms angled out toward the bed corners, to which they were loosely bound. Behind her Ives did the same with one of her feet.
He moved to the other foot. Her legs spread now, like her arms. Her bottom rose high, exposed. Waiting.
She could not believe what it did to her. She had never been in such a state without being touched before.
“How do you feel, Padua?”
He stood behind her, next to the bed near her leg. Even with her face turned on the mattress, she could not see him.
“I am comfortable enough.”
A small slap smacked her bottom. “That is not what I meant and you know it.”
That smack had not hurt. It had been too gentle for that. But it had— She blocked her mind against the fantasy that he might do it again. She would not like that, she was sure, but the thought of it, the waiting—
“I am surprised, my lord. I do not feel the way I expected. I am already half-mad.”
A caress fluttered up her leg in a feathery touch he had first used in Langley House. “Do you like how you feel?”
“It is intense. I grow impatient, however.”
The mattress depressed as his weight joined hers. She looked over her shoulder. He knelt high between her legs. Low, deep throbs began torturing her. She set her head down again. He caressed her bottom and she throbbed more. “And you? How do you feel?”
He warmed her back as he came over her. Braced on his arms, he dipped his head low so he spoke right into her ear. “I feel in possession, when I know I really am not. I feel as if you are mine, and I will make sure you never leave, when I know that is not true. I can want you without reservation, as I have never wanted another woman before, and make you admit your own passion, and pretend I am indeed your lord.” His lips brushed her cheek. “And I like that I can make you ache with desire, and totally surrender to the pleasure I give you.”
He moved back. “Tell me what you want, Padua.” He caressed her bottom firmly, taunting her.
“You,” she whispered. “Everything.”
He entered her slowly. She caught her breath. She closed her eyes so she might feel it all as intensely as possible. He filled her. Completed her.
