And there would be a next time. Even had her reaction to discovering his speech debility not been as understanding as any man could wish for, Daniel knew he would’ve fought for her. Argued for her, long and loud. He would have exposed his every weakness for her sake because she made him strong.
A crack of thunder punctuated that thought, crashing right on top of the roof. For a change he didn’t flinch, the welts on his arse didn’t burn.
Because of her. The dark memories of his past had fled under the light she brought into his life.
Though the changes would no doubt take time, he was done with hiding. He had no plans to flagrantly flaunt his troubles, but neither did he want to let life—or love—pass him by.
“It’s splendid,” Thea said with an awed smile when she finally stopped looking down and met his gaze. “Thank you very much. Will I be thought unaccountably arrogant if I tell you to get in bed now?”
At her take-no-prisoner’s tone, his brows flew upward but he was much too interested in what else she might tell him to do to demur. After all, how many lords were lucky enough to be ordered about by their lovely mistresses?
Stifling his grin, Daniel walked to his elaborate bed and provocatively situated himself in the middle of the huge mattress—never before had he so appreciated the excesses of the prior century.
“You do realize, do you not,” she said from her position near his dresser, “that I’m going to have my wicked way with you and there’s nothing you can do to stop me?”
And she thought he’d object?
She took a step forward. The ruby pendant swayed. “Although…” she mused during the torturously slow step that followed, “I do expect something in return.”
Entranced by the enticing swing of that damned nipple-red ruby, he made some sort of unintelligible grunt.
“What’s that?” She just toyed with him, bringing her hand up to caress the stone. Then the vixen licked one finger and leisurely drew circles around each of her breasts. “You’ll accede to anything I ask?”
By now she’d reached the foot of his bed.
By now his prick had pokered up stiff and straight.
By now he’d gladly forsake his birthright if only she’d climb over him and—
“I need a tuner posthaste,” she said in a sensual voice that had nothing to do with her request. She brought one knee to the mattress and his heart into his loins. “My ears cannot take much more, you see.”
Daniel had no idea what she was blathering about, not with her leaning seductively over his feet, trailing that deuced ruby over the tips of his toes, then across both ankles. He’d promise her the throne if only she’d come higher, skim that ruby over parts longer—and lonelier.
“The pianoforte is woefully misaligned.” His brain refused to function when she reached up to unbind her hair, allowing it to drape past one shoulder and follow the path of the gem. “I don’t think Buttons or Mr. and Mrs. Samuels can survive much longer, not with their hearing intact.”
She laughed, dragged that stone up one shin and then the other. The strands of her hair followed, silken tendrils that wrapped around his will and tugged…tightened, rendering it nonexistent.
“I can tell I may need to remind you, when you’re not…” She ringed each knee with ruby and hair, and the muscles in his thighs rippled, drawing her gaze to his groin. “Otherwise engaged.”
His demure Thea had decamped, leaving a husky-voiced wanton in her stead. His eyes threatened to glaze over when she bent her head, pressed her lips to his skin, and marked a path for the ruby, sliding her mouth hotly over his inner thigh.
Like a man drunk on too much cheap jacky, his stomach clenched, heart hammered.
How quickly his mistress had gone from shy and trembling to bold and steady. From teasing his legs with the necklace to staring at his shaft. To approaching its hard length, the dangling chain forgotten as she climbed higher until poised above the patch of hair surrounding the root.
She licked her lips, a slow swipe of her tongue from one corner of her mouth to the other.
Her mouth—he’d always wondered what she could do with it.
What her plump lower lip would feel like curved around his anatomy.
You don’t need to, his gentlemanly side wanted to shout.
Shut the blazes up! his baser side roared.
“I do believe…” she breathed over his erection and damned if he didn’t see it give a little jump. “I’m feeling freer than I ever have in my life.”
She shifted to rest one bent arm on his thigh, dropping her chin upon her closed fist. Watching his face, she trailed the ends of her hair over his shaft, up and down, up and around.
When a deep gurgling noise came from the direction of his headboard, she smiled and swung her hair back. “Enough torture? Or mayhap not…?”
Playfully, she walked two fingers up the side of his abdomen. “I believe there exists something I’ve thought of doing,” she kept staring right at him, “only since meeting you, mind, but I was hesitant to attempt it previously, unsure whether it was acceptable. But as someone told me recently…” She leaned forward and licked the crown of his penis with the very tip of her tongue. “If it feels right, ’tis no matter what the law says, wouldn’t you concur?”
The law? Who the bloody hell had she been conversing with—about sex?
Who the bloody hell cared when she abandoned her relaxed stance and used her opened fist to clasp his cock and her walking fingers to clutch one side of his hips as she raised up and
