Wrapping her legs around him, he strode toward the shadowy bed.
She clung for fear he would drop her, and when he laid her on the cool sheets, she shivered. “Mr. Knight…Remington, please.” She lifted herself on her elbow as he peeled himself out of his shirt.
Muscles corded his shoulders and rippled across his chest and down his abdomen, a fine froth of blond hair, like cream on a golden peach. The firelight licked him as she longed to do. He unbuttoned his breeches, and as he dropped them, she turned her head away.
“Afraid?” His voice was smoky with mockery. “You should be. I’m angry. I’m angry at you. And I don’t hurt women, so I’m going to force you to climax again and again.”
“Perhaps the concubines were not clear in their explanation. Is climax supposed to be disagreeable?” As she mocked him, she looked at his face. Yet as hard as she tried to focus only on his expression, still she saw the strength of his long flanks, the ripple of his muscled belly…the length and breadth of his erection. The smooth skin was blushing, the cap was light purple, and it was long, so long. “Oh, my.”
Climbing on the mattress, he positioned himself between her legs.
Irresistibly, her hand was drawn to his spike of manhood. Brushing her fingers from the tip to the base, she reveled in the ridges and veins, the strength beneath the silky skin. “In the harem, I saw paintings and statues, but this is really magnificent.”
He braced his hands beside her shoulders and closed his eyes, his arms shaking as she explored him.
The concubines were right. Men liked to be touched—and she liked touching him.
When he opened his eyes and stared down at her, there was nothing of ice in their shadowed depths. They burned. He burned. Taking the neck of her nightgown carefully between his hands, he tore it. The fine lace resisted, but the silk gave way with a thin, violent sound.
Silk and lace, expensive and beautiful, and he’d torn it away as if she didn’t deserve it. She wanted to strike him. “Why did you do that?”
“It was in my way.” He pulled the shredded pieces back.
He looked at her body, and seeing the gleam in his eyes, she realized he meant it. He’d torn her nightgown because it had been in his way—and that was a lesson she should remember.
“You’ve never had a man before. You don’t know what I can do to you. How I can make you feel. How I can withhold pleasure, and how I can give it.” Holding himself above her, he lowered his head and suckled on her nipple.
Sensation replaced shock. She arched beneath him. Clutching at his hair, she held him there, wanting him to feed with a strong suction that sent her halfway to heaven.
He moved to the other breast, circling her nipple with his tongue, teasing her, denying her. His breath whispered against her skin as he said, “Your skin is like satin, sensitive, gorgeous satin.”
Did he realize what he was doing to her with a simple compliment?
She pressed her hips up toward him, wanting his weight on her. Wanting more than that.
He descended atop of her, and everywhere their skin touched was a flash point of heat. Her breasts nestled in the hair on his chest. The weight of his hips pressed her into the mattress. His manhood nestled between her legs, and for the first time she understood why he had used his fingers to arouse her.
Because now she knew what it was to be full, and she wanted to be filled again—in any way possible. What had seemed natural before, to be empty, to be solitary, now seemed lonely and anguished.
Pushing herself against him, she sought relief from the isolation.
But he didn’t oblige her. Instead, he took her face between his hands and held her still. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
She whimpered. Tell him? Didn’t he know?
“Tell me,” he said. “Instruct me. I’ll do whatever you crave, but you have to say the words.”
Now she understood what he demanded. He demanded that she capitulate mentally as well as physically. He demanded that she think about what they were doing and give him permission to do…whatever he wanted to do. In her whole life, she had never sworn at another soul. She did now. “Bastard!”
“You’re wrong. My parents were married before I was born.” His thumbs met under her chin and nudged her face toward his. “Possibly even before I was conceived. Eleanor…”
It was the first time he’d called her by her own name, and she well understood the significance of that.
His hips rolled in a languorous, inciteful wave. “Eleanor, tell me what you want.” They rolled again.
Deep in her womb, she felt need building.
“You’re not going to win. You’re going to do as I wish. Surrender, Eleanor. Surrender.”
He was right. He knew too much, understood her body better than she understood it herself. With a sigh, she yielded. “I want you…please…” She wrapped her legs around his hips. Tried to position herself to receive him.
His hands slid down to her breasts, cupped them, caressed them. “Please, what?”
He had perfected the art of torment. “Please, Remington.” She used his name deliberately, appeasing him. “I want you inside me. I want you to take me away…for a while. I want you to make good on your promise to give me pleasure.”
He chuckled, deep in his chest, and she felt the rumble in hers. “Demand that I fulfill my promise, will you? I knew you were a clever girl. Now you’ve proved it with your challenge. Very well.” With one hand, he spread her nether lips and positioned himself to thrust.
But he didn’t blunder so crassly. He held his hips away. He touched her only with the head of his manhood, and that with no force. No hurry. She needed…she needed movement, struggle, speed to ease this ache, and he was slow and careful.
“Hurry,” she begged. “Oh, please. Hurry.”
He laughed, a quick laugh, and didn’t increase his speed at all.
She rolled her head against the sheets. She grasped his hips and dug herself into his flesh.
“A little more, then.” His rod pressed harder, entered her, stretched her, and what had been a slight discomfort became pain.
“Wha…?” She struggled to sit up. “But you prepared me!”
He held her hips still, managing her with his greater strength and size. “My fingers aren’t long enough.”
“Or wide enough!” she flashed.
“Did you think this would be easy?” Slowly, he pulled back, easing her pain.
She relaxed, sighing. “I thought it would be satisfying.”
Straight away, he was back again, stronger, giving no quarter.
She tensed. He was occupying her as if she were a conquered country. Regardless of the advice she’d heard, the words the concubines had spoken, she wasn’t prepared for being taken. Invaded.
And he didn’t stop. He didn’t care about her virginal reluctance. His body quivered as he moved, and in the shadows of the bed, she saw his face in leaps of flame. His brows knit, his lips were folded together. The fire etched his cheekbones and jaw in sharp lines, and he stared down at her as if he could see her every thought—her rebellion, her uncertainty, the gradually eroding control she had over her body, emotions, mind.
The mattress swayed beneath her. The scent of him surrounded her: warm, sensual. The pain grew as he worked his way inside, and she put the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a moan.
Just when the anguish was at its height, he paused and held himself very still. It was as if he were bracing himself for some great event.
Then he surged forward.
Something snapped within her. She rose off the mattress, ready to fight her way free.
But now he dominated her with his power. His groin rubbed against her, inciting sensations all too briefly abandoned. This time, as he withdrew, she caught her breath on a bright spark of desire, and when he surged back, that spark became a blaze. She thought she might like this, might with time adjust, but he didn’t give her time. He set a pace that demanded and explored, and she
found herself struggling to keep up. She was like a ship on the ocean, catching surge after surge, ruthlessly driven toward some unknown destination and at the mercy of the elements. It wasn’t that the burning within her didn’t matter, but pain and pleasure mixed until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other started.
Remington would enforce his will on her, and she, who had never known a man, would pay the price for deceiving him.
She was in a different world, where everything was strange; his weight, his scent, the way he handled her, as if she were his to do with as he wished. The rhythm he set was quick, yet smooth, and her tender tissues yielded to each intrusion, then released him with reluctance. Her body knew what her mind only suspected; this claiming was as old as mankind, yet unique to them. Brought together by fate or happenstance, it didn’t matter. Their two bodies fit and formed one.
Bracing her heels on the bed, she moved her hips in his rhythm. Her hands slipped across his shoulders.
The concubines had told her it was the woman’s duty to ensure the man’s fulfillment.
Eleanor didn’t care a ha’penny about his fulfillment. Not now. Not when each thrust grazed the deepest part of her and pleasure, the pleasure he’d promised her, rushed toward her on the winds of possession.
She embraced him, hands slippery with sweat, his or hers, she couldn’t tell. His muscles stretched and tensed with his movements.
No grandeur of travel or art could compare with this excitement, and she gloried in every moment.
Each moment, it seemed he grew heavier, more domineering. As the speed of his thrusts increased, he said in a guttural voice, “Yield to me.”
“What?” Yield? No. No, how could he ask that she think? Now? Tonight? To yield, to surrender, when all she wanted was to reach that pure level of sensation that would sweep her away.
Sliding his hands behind her head, he cupped it, enfolding her, all of her, in his essence. He looked into her eyes, held them, challenged her. He kissed her with his tongue, pushed his manhood inside until it touched her womb. He filled her with himself, and he commanded, “Eleanor, give me what I want. Yield…now.”
And as if she had awaited his command, her body convulsed in glorious climax. It started deep in her womb and spread heat through her veins, through her skin, through her breasts. Her legs and arms clutched at him, trying to draw him deeper inside—when he could go no deeper. Love and fear, triumph and passion swirled through her until she was moaning and sobbing. “Remington. Remington.”
And at last, he loosed his own passion, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, ecstasy etched on his features.
Together, their passion gathered force, driving them to a sweet madness that went on and on, fusing them together, creating one person, one soul.
Together, the madness faded, and at last they came to rest on the mattress in the master’s bedchamber.
Still he held her head in his hands. Still he looked into her eyes as if weighing the depth of her surrender. Still he was hard and thick inside her while she…she was exhausted, amazed, overwhelmed. She had given him everything, all her passion, all her love.
But there was no use in telling him that. He wouldn’t believe her, because he believed nothing but the worst of her.
But she would get her revenge.
She hadn’t spent a fortnight in a harem for nothing.
Chapter 25
Blasted by lust, Remington lay with one foot hanging off the bed, the other tucked under Eleanor’s thigh, and he stared into her eyes.
She stared back, as defiant as if he weren’t still inside her, pressing as deeply as he could.
What did it take to possess this woman? She was exhausted; he could feel it. Her body trembled beneath him, and she had climaxed in rolling waves of passion that had pulled him along like a great undertow. Yet already she challenged him, silently demanding that he yield to her as she had yielded to him.
That was not going to happen. She wasn’t the wife he’d won, and she needed to be taught the penalty for duping Remington Knight.
He would do that as soon as he recovered his strength. Right now, he could scarcely summon enough energy to lift himself off her before he crushed her.
Yet he hated to exit her body. Tonight, he had done everything in his power to mark her as his, and yet…and yet…he wanted her again. In some sane corner of his mind, he knew that was ridiculous. She had been untouched. Despite his preparation, he’d hurt her. She couldn’t accept him again, yet it seemed as if this woman, with her diffidence and flashes of bravery, could so easily slip away from him.
Equally ridiculous was to imagine he could manage the act again. He had climaxed so violently that tears of pleasure had come to his eyes. He’d emptied himself inside her. He, who could pleasure a woman five times a night, had nothing left with which to fill her again.
Carefully, he separated himself from her. At last, as if she could hold them open no more, her eyes closed, and she gave a faint moan as her tissues reluctantly released him. His chest heaved as he rested beside her. He needed to cover her with the blankets, for despite the now-blazing fire, it was cool in here, he’d just driven the woman to orgasm, and the shreds of her nightgown were no protection against the chill.
He gazed on the expanse of fair skin beside him: the peaked breasts, the flat stomach, the ruff of hair that hid the entrance to paradise. Her legs were slightly apart, open and inviting, and he saw a dark smear on the pale skin of her thighs.
Blood.
He’d wanted a de Lacy sacrifice on the altar of his vengeance. He’d gotten it—although not in the way he’d imagined.
Her eyes were closed, her expression serene—and that irritated him. He’d just endured a ground-shaking event. She had to have been impacted, too.
He wanted to take her and shake her, demand she show how deeply their joining had influenced her. Instead he found himself sliding his arm under her shoulder and leaning over her.
Her eyes opened. She looked stupefied, and he enjoyed a bone-deep satisfaction. Yes, she’d been overwhelmed.
She stared around, then down as if astonished to find herself in such a state. Her gaze slid up his body, and all that she had learned came blazing to life. Oh, yes, she had liked what he’d shown her, for in the depths of her eyes he saw interest and awareness. She wanted him again, just as he wanted her.
In a soft tone, he said, “I’m going to get you out of this gown.”
Automatically, her fingers rose to cover her breasts.
He wanted to tell her it was far, far too late for modesty. Instead, he brushed her hands aside and eased the sleeves down her arms. As the shattered silk and lace slid off her hands, she caught at it, then let it go.
“I’ll buy you another.” Because he wanted to see her posed before him again, the firelight flickering behind her. She was his, to dress as he wished, to obey his will.
Blood marked the nightgown, too, and he placed it on the foot of the bed. Barbaric, yes, but he would save the evidence. Tonight had not been the triumph he had imagined, yet oddly, it had been more satisfying than his greatest fantasy.
“We’re going to move up on the pillows,” he told her. Sliding his other arm under her legs, he lifted and shifted her toward the head of the bed, covered her with the blankets, then slid in beside her.
“Go to sleep,” he murmured, and his eyes closed.
She pressed her palm over his heart. “Already?”
His eyes opened. He stared at her. What did she mean, already?
Her voice was sultry, knowing, and she challenged him with a look. Sliding off the other side of the bed, she moved into the darker shadows of the room.
“What are you doing?” He could see her pale form moving but could discern no particulars.
“Preparing myself to worship my master,” she said.
Master? Hm. He rather liked that.
“The concubines told me that a virile man would wish for many rides in an evening.”
Ah. N
ow he understood. She wanted to put the lessons she’d learned in the harem to use. “It’s not necessary tonight. We can have many rides…soon.”
Going to the fire, she dipped a cloth into the pot on the hearth and wrung it out. “The concubines taught me how to revive a man’s flagging interest, also.”
“My interest is not flagging!”
She cast him a sidelong glance, a glance that flirted and enticed.
For the first time in what seemed like years, his sense of humor stirred. “You little witch. Did the concubines happen to mention that challenging a man’s capabilities was one way to revive a man?”
“They might have,” she said demurely. Her body gleamed as if, shielded by darkness, she’d washed herself.
He surveyed her as she came toward him, holding the cloth in a basin. She was outlined by fire, her hips swaying seductively.
His certainty that he was done for the night began to fade.
She put the basin on the bedside table. Taking three of the pillows, she placed them behind him. Then she leaned against his chest and plumped them into a cozy, relaxing mass. With her hand on his shoulders, she pressed him back. “Are you comfortable?” she asked. “Can I get you anything? A drink? No?” She slid the covers away from him so shyly, she might never before have seen him naked. “Then if I may, my master, let me cleanse you after your exertions.” She didn’t wait for his permission, but with the warm, damp cloth, she began to bathe his genitals.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. With three pillows behind him, he could watch everything, and the sight of her pale hands on his swarthy skin was strange, erotic, glorious. Her fingers were warm, and she handled him tentatively, but her mere touch on his balls, on his cock, made him want to writhe and groan. The cloth reached over and around, and his skin cooled as she drew it away. He gritted his teeth in pleasure and anticipation, and his shaft grew and swelled, proving without a doubt that, brainless thing that it was, it did not realize he had come his last drop.