At Her Service

  Darley’s thoughts were less contemplative. They were exclusively about sex, as in when and where—particularly when…the sooner the better front and center in his brain. Miss Clement had interested him at first sight as well, and now contemplation was about to shift to consummation.

  Three more doors to pass.

  And here he was. He dipped his head. “Do you have a key?”

  “It’s unlocked.”

  He didn’t say You’re too trusting because it might reflect badly on him. “You must be well liked that you don’t worry about theft,” he said instead, leaning over enough to turn the doorknob with his fingertips and shoving open the door.

  “I don’t keep much here, and yes,” she said with a smile, “the hotel staff does look after me rather well. Thank you for keeping me company tonight,” she added, as they entered her sitting room. “I want you to know I’m very grateful.”

  His smile was polished. “I’m equally grateful for your company. Which door?” he asked, surveying the various possibilities.

  “That one.” She pointed. “Would you like a drink first?”

  His gaze was stark with lust. “Maybe later.”

  At so conspicuous a display of raw desire, her breath caught in her throat, a hot-blooded jolt of eagerness spiked through her vagina in response and suddenly speed was of prime urgency.

  He smiled. “I’ll hurry,” he said, as though he could read her mind.

  “I’m not usually so wildy impatient,” she breathed, the ravenous pulsing inside her bringing a blush to her cheeks. “Really, I’m not.”

  “Don’t apologize.” He grinned. “It’s my good fortune.”

  “Mine as well.” She held his gaze for a moment, her brief mea culpa overcome, her self-possessed assurance restored. “Although,” she said with the faintest of smiles, “there is something powerfully aphrodisiac about you.”

  “The feeling’s mutual, my dear Miss Clement,” he said with grace and charm, pushing the bedroom door open with his shoulder. “Or maybe we’re caught up in the karma of the East,” he added, carrying her over the threshold.

  “You believe in fate?”

  He grinned. “In the current chaos and violence, I don’t believe in much of anything. My goals are simple—keep breathing, stay out of the line of fire and outlast this war.” Having swiftly crossed the large room, he came to rest beside the bed. “And my short-term goal is to bring us both pleasure,” he said, setting her on her feet.

  “We are in accord, then. My short-term goal is to make it through the night.” She smiled up at him. “And I rather think you will delight and beguile me in the process.”

  He grinned. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Since Zania likes versatility in bed, I have no doubt you will.”

  Was that sarcasm or pettishness? “I would have much preferred you,” he said. “But I was resisting, or rather I thought the circumstances were inappropriate”—he smiled faintly—“among other things.” Untying the ribbon closure on her cape, he lifted the ermine-lined black velvet cloak from her shoulders and tossed it in the direction of a chair with the casualness of a man familiar with boudoir encounters.

  “You mean Zania was waiting for you.”

  Now that was pettishness. “I meant your brother was in hospital and gravely wounded.”

  “And Zania was waiting.”

  “For your information,” he murmured, lightly brushing his index finger over the curve of her upper lip instead of answering her question, “I spent the entire evening watching you across the dinner table and thinking about taking off your dress.”

  “While I spent the evening concerned that Zania’s breasts might actually spill from their tenuous moorings and embarrass everyone,” Aurore sardonically replied.

  “Really?” he said, amusement in his gaze. “When I thought you were watching me.”

  “I was not.”

  “I know—you were not watching me. Which is the very same thing.”

  “You think every woman is enamored of you?”

  “No. But I was hoping one woman was.”

  “I shouldn’t be.”

  “Why ever not?”

  She had no ready answer; did Gazi’s dark beauty alone prompt her powerful sexual response or was it her long celibacy? She knew the answer before she’d even completed the thought. Even darling Petros had never inspired this instant lust. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I don’t know why I’m equivocating. I’ve been celibate too long perhaps,” she added, still struggling with her irrepressible passions.

  Had he somehow known? Had he recognized her susceptibility even this morning on the road? And while he was curious about her celibacy, he wasn’t curious enough to prolong their conversation when he had better things to do. “You set the pace then. I wouldn’t want to frighten you.”

  She laughed. “I rather think the reverse might be true. So fair warning; I may go on the attack.” Her brows rose. “Provided Zania hasn’t sapped your energy.”

  “Even if she had, you’re quite capable of bringing a dead man to life, my dear Miss Clement,” he said with a grin. “I promise to keep up.”

  “What a lovely promise,” she murmured, taking a step closer.

  The scent of Parma violet struck him afresh as she lightly brushed against him, and suddenly he was twenty again and smelling it for the first time. “I like your perfume,” he said, soft and low.

  “It comes from Italy.”

  “I know. I once lived in Parma.”

  There was something in his voice. “And you’re reminded of a woman,” she murmured.

  “No,” he lied. “I was a student there.” That was the summer Lucia died, the summer that had set the course for his life. “Now, where were we?” he went on, dismissing the past out of seasoned habit. “I believe you were about to attack me.” His voice was smoothly urbane, his smile one of practiced charm.

  “Did I say, I have a special place in my heart for Circassian men? You look splendid in your evening clothes by the way.” The fine black wool of his tunic was perfectly tailored to his broad-shouldered form, his loose breeches tucked into polished black boots, the small dress dagger tucked into his wide leather belt splendidly enameled.

  “I’m not sure I appreciate the plural noun, but thank you nonetheless.”

  “I meant it in the most platonic way.”

  “Unlike now.”

  “Very much unlike now.” She glanced at the clock.

  “So then,” he said, taking note of her glance. “Should we move on?” Without waiting for an answer, he lightly gripped her shoulders and turned her around.

  She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Would you stop if I said no?” she queried, her smile teasing.

  He hesitated briefly. “I’m not sure…no, of course I would. But I might be sulky if I had to,” he added, swiftly unhooking her dress, his fingers deft on the hidden closures.

  “Hmmm,” she murmured, playfully. “Would I like that?”

  He laughed. “We’ll have to see, won’t we? Although, I was grateful you sent your military escort away,” he noted, sliding the soft, knit fabric down her arms and over her hands. “I was waiting downstairs and becoming increasingly sullen.” He turned her to face him again. “Although, maybe you’d like that as well—very nice,” he breathed, half under his breath, her uncorseted breasts beneath her sheer chemise splendid to behold. “These haven’t been touched for some time?” he whispered, trailing his fingertips over the full mounded flesh, further banter abruptly relegated to the periphery by flesh and blood reality.

  She shook her head, unable to speak with his fingers gently fondling her, with her tantalized nerves on alert, with fevered anticipation swelling inside her.

  Seemingly immune to her quiet frenzy, he continued to stroke the soft, showy plumpness conspicuous above the lacey undergarment, his touch measured, restrained.

  Unlike Aurore’s sordid cravings that had nothing of moderation in them. Clenching her thighs toget
her, she forcibly suppressed the small quivering tremor in advance of an orgasm. “This is ridiculous,” she breathed, trying to contain another trembling spasm, reminding herself that she was no untried young maid and quite capable of imposing order on her passions.

  At her hushed utterance, Darley understood that however long her celibacy, it had been too long. Not that his own sensibilities were any less greedy. Quickly lifting Aurore, he seated her on the bed, eased her onto her back, brushed aside her ruffled petticoats and skirt, slipped off her silk drawers and moved between her legs. “Just a second more,” he whispered, unbuttoning the few buttons necessary to free his erection.

  As he spread her thighs and grasped her hips, she was noticeably panting, his cue to bestir himself before it was too late. Pulling her down to the edge of the bed for better accessibility, he leaned over, quickly guided his erection to her slick, pink cleft and slid into her welcoming vagina with direct, timely, and not entirely unselfish haste.

  And fortunately he did what he did, for the exact instant he was completely submerged—she uttered a single, stifled cry and climaxed.

  Snugly engulfed in her hot cunt, braced on his hands, he gazed down at her and smiled. With her unquestionable appetite for sex, the hours until morning should pass in a blissfully sybaritic blur. Questioning neither his inordinate sense of pleasure nor his curiously altruistic impulses apropos the lady lying beneath him, he gently kissed her cheek. “Next time will be better,” he murmured.

  Her lashes slowly lifted, and she studied him for a moment as though not quite recognizing him. Suddenly, a glimmer of understanding illuminated her eyes, and she smiled. “Thank you, my dear Gazi. And I must apologize. You didn’t have time to come, did you?”

  He generally preferred more than three seconds of foreplay, but he politely said instead, “I’m not in a rush, while you, apparently, had some catching up to do.”

  “And you don’t.” The scent of Zania’s perfume still lingered on him.

  If she really hadn’t had sex for some time, he was way the hell ahead of her. But this probably wasn’t the time to discuss numbers. “I was being courteous, but if you’d rather I’m not—” He shrugged faintly. “It’s your call.”

  “No, no…by all means be polite.” Her smile was deliciously languid. “I’m quite willing to be catered to.”

  He liked her cheerful tractability. It boded well for his plans. A docile, passionate lady was just what he needed tonight. Although had he said as much to Cafer, his friend would have looked at him with surprise. Darley perennially railed against docile females, finding them not only boring but much too prevalent. Nor would he ever admit to actually needing a woman. In fact, the opposite was true, his sex life notwithstanding. “Perhaps I’ll be a believer in karma by morning if you and I continue in such rare accord. You wish to be indulged and I’m in an indulgent mood.”

  “Lucky me,” she said, sultry and low. “Let me get undressed.”

  “Let me undress you.”

  “And yourself.” Her gaze was amused. “Or are you shy?”

  “On the contrary. I was simply at pains to accommodate your headlong rush to orgasm.”

  “For which I render my profound thanks again. However—”

  “You want more,” he finished with a grin.

  She stretched lazily, her voice when she spoke both congenial and infused with a sense of entitlement. “You said you’d be obliging.”

  Chapter 10

  He quickly set about undressing, a skill long since acquired. As was his competence at dressing with equal speed. Both of which had held him in good stead in countless boudoirs over the years.

  Pleasantly assuaged, Aurore lay in postcoital languor, her blue eyes trained on Darley with both interest and appreciation. He wasn’t shy in the least, at ease in a strange bedroom, unaffected by her scrutiny, female attention apparently entirely normal. His belt and ornate kinjal came off first, his tunic as swiftly discarded, both casually dropped at his feet. His skin beneath his clothes was as darkly bronzed as his face, she noted as he stripped away the black silk collarless shirt he wore under his tunic and let it fall to the floor. With his upper body fully nude, even in the flickering gaslight, a cross-hatching of scars was conspicuous. Despite the fact that dueling was commonplace in the mountain tribes, clearly Gazi had survived more than one such encounter. “You must take offense easily,” she murmured, “with all those knife scars.”

  He looked up, a boot in his hand. “Differences of opinion come up from time to time.” He dropped the heelless boot on the floor and bent over to take off his other boot.

  She understood the traditions of dueling in the Caucasus; the black felt cloak universally worn in the mountains was spread on the ground and neither man could step beyond the boundaries of the burka until one was dead or mortally wounded. Knowing a woman’s honor was often a precipitating factor in a duel, acutely aware of Gazi’s magnetic appeal as well, Aurore said with more curiosity than tact, “I expect a woman was involved on occasion.”

  He shot her a sharp look. “God no.”

  His brusque reply gave her pause, or perhaps more correctly reminded her of the transience of this particular tryst. Like his earlier one tonight with Zania. And while his spare replies should have curbed her morbid curiosity, they did the opposite. “It was some manly disagreement, then.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, shut it and apparently overcoming his reservations, said, gruffly, “One time, my horse was stolen.”

  The warrior code of the mountains allowed swift justice for such a crime, a man’s horse sacrosanct.

  “And the other times?” She shouldn’t be so persistent, of course; his past was his own.

  “Look, my dueling days are long past,” he quietly said, opening one of the buttons on his breeches still undone. “I have become more tolerant or less willing to take a life or”—he shrugged—“weary of so much killing with this war. Now if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer talking about something else.”

  “Or not talking at all,” she replied, her inquisition having been politely curtailed.

  “Better yet,” he drawled, sliding his breeches down his hips.

  As he stepped out of his breeches a second later and stood naked before her, any further speculation apropos Gazi’s past became irrelevant, her interests having instantly shifted to the full glory of his genitalia—enormous upthrust penis, large pendent testis, his heartbeat vivid in the network of veins engorging his erection. Not that he wasn’t splendidly male in every other sense as well—tall, powerful, every taut muscle honed to the inch—but her focus was solely on his intimidating but highly provocative cock. A wild throbbing had already commenced inside her, and grateful that she’d climaxed once, she was looking forward to a more leisurely appreciation of him—it—“That is so gorgeously large,” she purred.

  “And you have too many clothes on,” he casually remarked, not unfamiliar with such compliments.

  He had but to speak and her body opened in welcome. “I couldn’t agree more,” Aurore said with a lush smile.

  “I believe it’s my job to see that you’re rid of them.” While his voice was dispassionate and cool, his pale gaze was not.

  “I like that it’s your job,” she murmured as he moved to stand between her legs, his towering presence reminiscent of some brute colossus. “It must be the late hour and unusual circumstances. I am not normally so willing to be compliant.”

  “You and I are both operating in some illusionary, highly charged universe”—he glanced around the bedroom—“this overgilded room notwithstanding.” His smile was sudden and boyish. “Although, strangely—at the moment—I even find myself partial to the Russian penchant for gilding everything in sight.”

  “Perhaps reality is eclipsed when our brains are half-asleep.”

  “Just so long as the rest of us is operating, I’m content.”

  She grinned. “No question there.”

  “Perfect.” Of the opinion he’d be
en polite long enough, conversation not particularly high on his list of priorities at the moment, he leaned over and slowly slid his palms up her inner thighs until his thumbs came to rest on the cushiony softness of her vulva. “Then again,” he murmured, sliding his thumbs up and down the slick, hot flesh of her cleft, the pearly fluid oozing over his thumb pads testament to her readiness, “maybe your undressing could wait a few minutes.”

  “But I want to feel you everywhere,” she murmured, pettishly, not an iota of compliance in her tone.

  It took him a moment to respond, consumed as he was with the notion of instant gratification, although when he spoke, it was with well-mannered restraint. “Of course. Forgive me. You’re just too enticing. All this sweetness,” he murmured, slipping his thumbs into her slick passage, one thumb detouring to gently stroke her clitoris, “is distracting as hell.”

  She shut her eyes against the rush of sensation streaking through her vagina and surging upward in blissful waves to bombard her brain.

  “How does that feel?” he whispered, massaging her clitoris with virtuoso gentleness. “Or do you like this better?” Slipping two fingers inside her with one hand, he shifted into a slow circular massaging of her clitoris with the thumb of the other hand.

  She tried to answer; she even thought about insisting he stop and help her undress. She fleetingly considered reminding him that he had said he’d indulge her until she concluded that he was indulging her—most delightfully. Her resulting sigh was one of both unalloyed pleasure and assent.

  “Is that a yes?” He smiled faintly, inexplicably pleased that she’d so readily and docilely yielded to him—the sensation so outre, he immediately tried to rationalize it away.

  In these tumultuous times, with the world seemingly out of control, perhaps one exerted mastery where one could. Or perhaps his departure from past practices was due to nothing more than Miss Clement’s extraordinary sexual appeal. She stirred his senses in a very different way, although it may be only that she had been initially unavailable—forbidden fruit as it were.