Mastered By Love

His gaze locked on her hips, swaying naked beneath the near translucent poplin of an amazingly prim white nightgown. None of her nightgowns rated as provocative, but this one, with its long, gathered sleeves and high collar, closed all the way up to her chin with tiny buttons, seemed extreme-and erotic.

Because he knew the body inside the gown so well, the nunlike outer casing only spurred his imagination in picturing what it concealed.

She led him to the foot of his bed.

Releasing him, wordlessly she pushed until he stood with his back to the bed, his thighs against the mattress’s edge. She positioned him in the center of the four-poster, then grasped one arm, raised and slapped his palm to the ornately carved post on that side.

“Hold that. Don’t let go.”

She did the same with his other arm, setting that hand, too, level with his shoulder, against the other carved post. The bed was wide, but his shoulders were broad, his arms long; he could reach both posts easily.

She stepped back, assessed, nodded. “Good. That will do.”

For what? He was utterly intrigued over what she was planning. For all his experience, he’d never considered anything from a woman’s perspective; it was a novel, and unexpectedly arousing experience, arousing in an unusual way.

He’d been aroused from the moment he’d closed his hands about her head, painfully so once his lips had found hers; he would have taken her against the door in his sitting room if she hadn’t stopped him. Although she had, courtesy of her peculiar direction, the fire in his blood hadn’t died.

She trapped his eyes. “Under no circumstance are you to let go of the posts-not until I give you leave.”

Turning, she walked away from him, and the fires inside him burned brighter.

He tracked her across the room, aware of his hunger growing. Curiosity balanced it to some degree, let him wait with some semblance of patience.

Crossing to where he’d slung his clothes on a chair, she shifted things, then straightened; because of the sharp contrast between the shadows cloaking the room and the brilliance of the shaft of moonlight beaming like a searchlight on him, he couldn’t make out what she held in her hands until she drew near.

His cravat. Two yards of white linen. Instinctively he shifted his weight to his toes, about to step away from the bed.

She halted, caught his eye-waited.

He eased back, gripped the posts more firmly.

She uttered a small “humph,” and walked down the side of the bed. The covers rustled as she climbed up, then came silence. She was on the bed a little way behind him, doing something; her gaze wasn’t on him. “I forgot to mention-you aren’t allowed to speak. No words. This is my script, and there are no lines for you.”

He inwardly snorted. He rarely used words in this arena; actions spoke louder.

Then she moved closer behind him. He sensed her rising high on her knees; her breath brushed his ear when she murmured, “I think this might be easier if you.” He sensed her arms rising over his head. “Can’t.” His cravat, folded to a narrow band, appeared before his face. “See.”

She settled the band over his eyes, then wound the long strip multiple times around his head before tying it off at the back.

A cravat made a damned fine blindfold. The material sank across his eyes; he couldn’t lift his lids at all.

Effectively blind, his other senses instinctively expanded, heightened.

She spoke by his ear. “Remember-no speaking, and no releasing the posts.”

Her scent. The brush of her breath across his earlobe. Inwardly he smiled cynically. How was she going to remove his shirt?

She slid from the bed, and came to stand before him. The subtle beckoning heat of her. Her light perfume. The more primitive, more evocative, infinitely more arousing fragrance of her-the one scent he hungered for most strongly, that of his woman aroused and ready for him.

He’d had that taste on his tongue; it was imprinted on his brain.

Every muscle hardened. His erection grew even more rigid.

She was two feet away. With his hands locked on the posts, she was out of his reach.

“Hmm. Where to start?”

At his waistband, then head down.

“Perhaps with the most obvious.” She stepped into him, plastered her body against his, drew his head down, and kissed him.

She hadn’t told him he couldn’t kiss her back. He ravaged her mouth, seized a first taste of what he ached for.

For one heady moment, she clung, caught, helpless, in the passion he’d unleashed, her body instinctively sinking against his, yielding, promising to ease the ache in his groin, offering pleasure and earthly delight…

He sensed her find her feet, digging in so she could stand against him. On a gasp, she wrenched back. Broke the kiss.

Unable to see, he couldn’t follow and reinstate the exchange.

She was breathing rapidly. “You’re hungry.”

An indisputable fact.

He smothered a growl as her body left his, clenched his jaw to quell the impulse to seize her and haul her back.

From his shoulders, her hands trailed slowly down, over his chest, over his abdomen, provocatively assessing. One paused at his waist; the other continued on, to, through his trousers, outline his erection, fingers tracing across the broad head before her palm flattened, warm and supple, over the throbbing length.

“Impressive.” She gripped, then removed her hand.

He bit back a hiss. His fingers sank into the posts’ carving.

“Wait.”

She left him, got back on the bed behind him; her hands gripped the back of his shirt at his waist, yanked it free of his waistband. Without freeing the sides or front, she slid her hands under the fabric, pressed her palms to his back.

Ran them-slowly-over him.

Over his back, up and over his shoulders, around and across his chest. The peaks of her breasts rode against his shirt-clad back. Her knees bracketed his hips.

She was still fully covered. So was he, yet with his sight gone and his other senses alive, her blatantly possessive caresses seemed infinitely erotic.

He was a slave and she his mistress, intent on possess ing him for the first time. He sucked in a deep breath, chest swelling under her hands. Splayed, one on either side, she ran them slowly down from upper chest to waist.

They hovered for a long moment.

She drew back, warm palms and fingers trailing back over his sensitized skin, withdrawing from under the fall of his shirt, now hanging loose all around him.

Blind, he turned his head the better to sense her.

Noting the movement, Minerva smiled; sinking back on her ankles, she picked at the side seam of his shirt. “Did you know that the best tailors always use weak thread in their shirt seams, so if the shirt catches or tugs, the seam gives rather than the material?”

He stilled. She gave an experimental tug; the seam gave with a satisfying sound. Tugging, she opened the side and sleeve seams to the laces at his cuffs. The laces undone, with a wrench she had one side of the shirt hanging free.

She repeated the exercise on the other side, then swung off the bed and sauntered up before him. She flicked the hanging ends of the shirt. “I wonder what Trevor will think when he sees this.”

Decidedly pleased, she unknotted the loose laces at his throat. Excitement flashed through her as she lifted both hands, found the front center seam. “Now, let’s see…” She ripped.

The shirt parted all the way down the front.

“Oh, yes.” Eyes feasting on his bared chest, she let the ruined halves fall to frame the heavily muscled expanse.