]Chapter Five
Drummond savored the view of exquisite feminine nudity that Gabriella presented to him as he sat in a padded wing chair musing that he was unable to cross his legs comfortably for the willful hardening of his cock. He brushed his lower lip with his fingertips, fighting the impetuous urge to take the damn thing out and stroke it. Judas, he normally applied more control than this, yet he had never quite been in this situation before. The lady of his youthful dreams was standing naked in his home, well except for the linen she clutched, which he would rid her of shortly. Still, she was standing here, elegant and beautiful, more so in her maturity than he could have imagined, with her ripe curving figure just begging to fill his hands.
Hmm, and she was his. All his or she would be once he finally set his mind to the task. The seduction of her, he had perfected in odd fantasies throughout the years, so it came easily to his mind. The securing of her, to him legally, would take much more ingenuity and he would only finalize whatever plan he conjured when he was completely certain that Gabriella would bed him and love him with abandon. He had suffered one lifelong commitment to a passion-afraid woman and he would not do so again. However, with Gabriella, even in this short time together, made him feel that he was nearly certain that she was ... Or was that just his heart?
"Drummond it appears to me, um ... or do you perchance, carry a tendre for me? From our youth together or-or ..." she asked with her voice faltering away.
Drummond felt guilty, caught for the barest of moments, and he understood that it was much too soon to hope for this in himself or her for that matter. No, he had to disabuse her of this notion, keeping her off balance, but she looked so precious standing there.
"I have a fine appreciation for beautiful women, Lady St. John, at the present it is nothing more than that I assure you." Drummond watched Gabriella's coral-shaded lips form a tantalizing moue of disappointment. He could only consider that any woman would wish their first love to be falling upon their feet in middle age. Ah well, perhaps someday, he mused, they certainly were pink-toed treasures. What was that the gentlemen, Archangels were saying, "Make the woman your mistress?" He would have to keep that in mind, he considered as he offered his hand to Gabriella.
"Come here, madame."
Gabriella gazed at him with more than uncertainty in her violet colored eyes. It was then he decided that he would have to purchase an amethyst jewel their exact incredible coloring as he watched her walk timidly toward him to stand at his bent knees. "Kneel on that linen you clutch so tightly, madame. Kneel here between my legs, so that I may gift you with your first present."
He could see quite clearly in Gabriella's open gaze the war within herself, she did not want to kneel, however, another part of her desired it. Just as he understood how secretly thrilled she was to be wholly naked before him. It was that doubt ... that self-denial of pleasure that he must overcome.
Gabriella knelt gingerly between Drummond's legs feeling scandalous. Besides feeling hot and wholly off balance, a part of her thought relentlessly of Drummond's bold fingers and the other part audaciously anticipated the gifting of a present with the excitement of a little girl. She watched Drummond pull a red velvet jewelry box from his inner jacket pocket with his lean, tanned fingers carrying it forward. Jewelry, she wondered, experiencing a shiver of excitement.
"This gift is yours and yours alone. The second gift shall be ultimately for both of us," he murmured.
Gabriella hardly had a moment to wonder at Drummond's words, before she was overwhelmed at the sight of two teardrop diamond earrings! Oh, it was really quite silly for her to react like this. She really should be indignant at Drummond for all that he was doing to her. It was all so decadent. No lady ever could...
"Drummond, they are beautiful!" she gasped despite her half-hearted efforts at silent morality lessons. They were so exquisite and no one had given her a gift since her childhood.
"Tears, my love?" Drummond questioned in a tenor murmur.
"I-I..." She gazed at him, trembling as she knelt naked between his legs, hearing the resonance of his masculine voice saying, "my love," as it echoed through her mind.
"Let me place them in your lobes, madame," Drummond murmured as he leaned forward to set the jewelry box on his knee. He took one sparkling diamond earring out of the box and Gabriella placed her hands on his steady knees, finding herself inexplicably leaning her body forward to him. His fingers were warm and this time the sleeves of his jacket did brush across her bare nipples, which were distended and-and aching. He was so close that she could smell brandy and a hint of spicy cigar on his breath, which warmed her cheek. She shivered. The cloth of his jacket brushed her nipples again and she glimpsed the pink tips jutting forward as if begging for more.
"Oh," she breathed, biting her bottom lip as she inched a tiny bit closer. Oh gracious, what would it feel like if he put his hands on my...
"There, madame, now stand, so I may view them properly."
Drummond's hands touched her waist on both sides with his long fingers hot on her flesh as they spread outward over her belly, into the small of her back. He lifted her ... easily. Her breasts pressed fully into the silk of his pristine white shirt and she could feel inch upon inch of the inflexible muscles of his chest. Then, she was standing while he reclined in the chair, gazing up at her. She was so close between his legs that she could feel the tempered tendons of his thighs, brushing along her outer thighs.
"What is it you want of me, Drummond?" she asked breathlessly.
"Everything," he stated succinctly, as his gray eyes traveled slowly, possessively, setting fire to her breasts, her belly, and then warming the curling auburn hair between her thighs.
"Drummond, I..."
"Yes," he drawled knowingly, with two of his fingers rubbing over his full bottom lip.
Gabriella wanted desperately to ask him to touch her, to put his hands on her loins. His fingers. But she couldn't. She could only stand there trembling as she watched the flicker of disappointment in his gaze, come and go so quickly that...
"And now, madame, for my second gift," he said briskly as he began to pull a long gold chain out of his pocket. The chain was as delicately wrought as a necklace, however, too long to be so, but it did have an oblong-shaped pearl-colored stone in the very middle of its length.
"This is a special stone, madame, called a passion pearl." Drummond reached forward and drew the chain around her bare waist.
"Drummond, I-I..." Gabriella stuttered, looking down at his tan fingers working to close the clasp.
"Hush now," he murmured deeply as he brought the opalescence pearl forward and the delicate chain caught on her naked hips, while the pearl-stone slid downward through the springy nest of her woman's hair ... and lower! Drummond touched the pearl with the tip of one finger and pushed it. Right into the crease of her femininity! Gabriella gasped, jumping backward, but the pearl-stone was wedged and she was completely flustered as she reached her shaking hands to the chain, trying to pull the pearl free.
"Tsk-tsk, madame."
Gabriella glanced over at Drummond just as the pearl pulled free to settle harmlessly in the curls of her woman's fleece.
"Ah well, madame, you shall wear it from now on regardless," he said as he leaned back into the chair and idly regarded her. "You are never to take it off and should I ever find it not around your waist, I will have to punish you."
"Punish," she exclaimed, grabbing a linen from beside the brass tub to cover herself as she glared at Drummond.
"Precisely, madame," he replied as he stood. "We shall commence with spankings at any time or place that I do not find you wearing my passion pearl about your waist."
Gabriella gasped when she heard Drummond say spanking and she stepped backward a step, and blurted, "How barbaric, Lord Kittridge!"
"Madame, nothing would please me more than for you to find me very barbaric," Drummond stated as he strode with a lethal grace toward the door. "I should like you to wear a low-cut gown for
dinner this evening," he drawled as he opened the door. "Because we are now both aware of how much, I do covet your breasts. Are we not, madame?"
Upon those parting words, Drummond closed the door behind him as he stepped into the hallway allowing a satisfied smile to crease his lips.
"A mistress indeed," he murmured as he set off down the hall. He would change into his evening clothes in another one of the numerous rooms here at his country manor. Thereby allowing Gabriella a brief respite to collect herself, besides they were having guests for dinner.