Then he drew her earlobe into his mouth, sucking on the trapped flesh, and “pleasant” flung off its drab-colored cloak with a dramatic gesture, revealing the bright, spangled form of bliss.
Alice gasped. “This isn’t on the list!”
“Yes it is,” Daniel said. “Rule three. Kissing.”
“But—but—” she stammered.
He stopped, moving back slightly. “No?” he asked. “Or yes? Your word is my command.”
This sudden requirement to choose sent Alice’s nerves into disarray all over again. She contemplated asking for a pause in proceedings so she might read a calming scene or two ofAll’s Well That Ends Wellbut remembered she’d left it in the pocket of her skirt, which was currently lying in a heap in the ballroom downstairs. Bother! That was thesecond skirt she’d lost on this mission. Very much longer and she’d be entirely naked.
Oh. Wait.
At the reminder that she was in fact going to be naked in—she glanced at the timetable—twelve minutes, Alice’s nerves jumped out of the frying pan of disarray and into the fire of absolute chaos. “No,” she said. “I mean no, it’s yes. Yes to all the yes things, unless I say no. Yes?”
“Um...”
Frustrated, she kissed him on the mouth—firmly, in the proper regulated manner.
Daniel welcomed her efforts with a response that slowly deepened, turning the kiss sumptuous. She began stroking him, getting tingles from the fine, crisp texture of his shirt. Instructions on how to murder him kept flashing through her brain, even as she slipped her tongue against his. Tiny inner Alices ran around smoothing down her tranquility, only to have the edges curl up and blacken in an intensifying heat of lust. Indeed, so busy was her interior that she didn’t even realize Daniel had unbuttoned her bodice until he began removing it.
She gasped. “Already?”
He paused. “Thisisthe scheduled time for undressing.”
“Good heavens. I now understand the phrase ‘time flies when you’re having fun.’ ”
Daniel grinned. Bending, he proceeded to kiss and lick (subclause 3b) and nibble (unnoted, but Alice was willing to let it slide) a path down her throat to her collarbone. Alice trembled. She hadn’t felt so good since the time she was allowed to arrange all the desks in the Academy classroom. Daniel’s hand slipped down her back, then lower still, tucking itself beneath the waistband of her petticoat. At this new experience of touch, she stiffened.
Immediately Daniel withdrew the hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasmoving toward point six on the schedule, but would you like me to stop? Or should I—”
Alice shook her head, not in reply but from sudden, overwhelming anxiety at having to make yet another decision. Aroused as she was by so many strange but pleasurable sensations, these choices felt like bombs in her brain.Yes! No! Maybe! Slightly! Sometimes! Stop! Go faster!A hundred consequences of her every possible answer exploded in wild, loud colors. She tapped fingers against her brow in a desperate attempt to regulate them. She tried to count her breath, but the numbers changed depending on whether she said yes or—
“Oh!”
Surprise flooded her mind with white silence as Daniel lifted her abruptly. He walked her two steps backward and pressed her against a wall. Then he set her hands at either side of her, palms to the wood paneling.
“Keep them there,” he instructed, and gave her a look—cool, untroubled,safe. She swallowed heavily, her nerves thrilling at his mastery but her pulse easing, her mind sighing contentedly now that he had relieved the burden from it.
“You have the right to remain silent,” he told her, “but anything you do say will be taken as the word of law. Do you understand this right I have just explained to you?”
“I do,” Alice replied—and suddenly envisioned them standing at a church altar, with her saying those words while he slipped a genuine ring onto her finger.
Daniel’s eyelashes fluttered, and she wondered what he was thinking. Not one hint of romantic hooliganism threatened his impeccable countenance. But his voice trembled when he asked, “Do you wish to proceed under these conditions?”
She nodded.
Reaching up under the lustrous red billows of satin, he set hishand against her drawers’ open crotch. Alice gasped delightedly, clutching at the wall, as he began deploying one finger in such a manner that several rules quit on the spot, instead setting up recliner chairs, sunglasses, and tumblers of lemonade with paper umbrellas in them, so as to bask in the heat.
Although Daniel had touched hertherebefore, this time nothing interrupted him, and he progressed further than Alice had known was possible. Indeed, should they make it back to London without being murdered by pirates, killed in a house crash, or electrocuted after using a hairbrush designed by Dr. Snodgrass, Alice would have to nominate him for promotion solely on the basis of his thumb skills. He was not gentle, and the sensations that rampaged through her body did not so much trip her alarms as smash them down and trample them. Moaning, Alice began to flounder. It was too much feeling—too much—she could not breathe. But Daniel did not pause, driving her right to the upper limit of pleasure’s level eight, then pounding her against it over and over again.
“Willows whiten,” she gasped, to no avail. Her muscles began to quiver more than a whole forest of aspens. Level eight gave a little cry and collapsed beneath the swollen, pulsing weight of levels nine and ten. Alice herself sagged against Daniel, and he stroked her hair with his free hand, whispering fragments of Tennyson until her heart no longer felt like it was going to burst.
“I estimate we’re a third of the way through our schedule,” he advised.
“I’m not going to make it,” Alice moaned into the cool linen of his shirt. Even the scent of laundry soap and masculine sweat threatened to spiral her into confounding bliss all over again. “You go ahead, leave me behind.”
Daniel smiled. “I’ll wait until you’re ready.” And he slipped his hand slowly from her drawers.
