“A lovely day for it, too. At your service, dear lady.” He bowed before offering her an elbow. Although he looked excruciatingly proper in his dark frock coat and fresh white shirt, McCallum’s hooded eyes gave him a furtive air. “If you’re returning home, it would be my pleasure to escort you.”
She’d met him just two days ago, when she’d moved her belongings from her apartment, and she was not fond of answering to anyone about her comings and goings! Experience told her this man could not possibly detect the stash of letters beneath her worsted skirt, yet he seemed so intent on accompanying her. “Thank you, Quentin, but that won’t be necessary! I would hate to detain you from—”
“Not at all, Miss Palladino. Were your groom to learn I’d let his beloved walk these streets alone, I’d be out of a job! And rightly so, don’t you think?”
How could she answer that? He was correct, damn it, but she was tired of the men in her life always being right! “Your secret would be safe with me.”
Wrong thing to say!
Quentin’s sideburns shifted with his smile, suggesting he knew too much already. “Very kind of you, Miss Palladino, but please! It would be my pleasure to walk with you. A nice alternative to spending time at Mrs. Booth’s beck and call.”
Maria chuckled. The imperious housekeeper found every excuse to order Quentin around, on the pretext he was much younger and more agile than she. “Please excuse me if I seem impertinent,” she replied more politely. “I’m not accustomed to servants—”
“And we in the Daringtons’ employ will be most happy to indulge your every whim. It’s good to have you and your Jason living in town, giving the two of us something useful to do.” Quentin squeezed her hand in the crook of his elbow as they started down the street. “You’ve no idea how Ruthie baits me with her innuendo and improper advances when it’s just her and me! And frankly”—the butler shook his head dolefully—“she’s beyond that sort of thing, you know? All the pity and politeness in the world won’t compensate for slack thighs and saggy—”
“Quentin!” Maria stopped to stare at him, yet couldn’t keep from laughing.
“I’ve gone and done it now,” he said with a sigh. Then he fixed his stricken gaze on her. “Please excuse my indiscretion, Miss Palladino! I had no call to carry on about—”
“Mrs. Booth—Ruthie?—propositions you?”
“Yes, miss, and I’m running out of excuses, too! She fancies herself as my personal goddess—the one to instruct me in the ways of ladies, you see. It’s downright embarrassing!”
While the mental image of the matronly Mrs. Booth shaking a wrinkled thigh at Quentin astounded her, Maria wondered why the butler was revealing his plight to her. Wouldn’t he be better off to air his grievance to Jason? Or to Jason’s father, Phillip, Lord Darington, who owned the town house?
“I can’t tell just anyone, you see, because they won’t believe me. And Mrs. Booth would deny it all, of course.”
“Of course,” Maria murmured. She looked at him more closely: while his teeth shone in white contrast to his tawny skin and dark, silky hair, his facial shape reminded her of Jemma Darington’s pet ferret. Even so, she could foresee the distinguished features Quentin McCallum would acquire with age—if Mrs. Booth let him live that long. The old biddy was prone to fits of temper, which might explain why so many butlers had come and gone at the Daringtons’ London address. It was a joke among members of the family, but this beleaguered young man didn’t find it funny.
“Thank you for your kind indulgence, Miss Palladino. I promise to never insult you with my own petty problems again,” he murmured. “A bride’s got better things on her mind.”
“And I hope one of those things would be her groom!”
At the sound of that resonating bass voice, Maria turned to smile at Jason Darington. At last, a man to chase away the perplexing words of her brother and this butler! “And what brings you home in the middle of the day, Jason?”
“Why, you, sweet Maria,” he crooned with a suggestive grin. The sun burst out from behind the clouds as though to announce his arrival, and in his natty double-breasted suit of deep blue he seemed the handsomest, most dashing man on earth. Jason tugged his red print bow tie from beneath his collar, and as it dangled provocatively in his hand, he unfastened his top two shirt buttons. “What else could I possibly be thinking of?”
2
“Aarrrrrgh! Naughty wench! There’s no help fer yer wicked soul save to tie yer pretty arse to the mast and spank it! Like so!”
The smack! of Jason’s hand on her bare bottom made Maria squeal and clutch the bedpost. Blindfolded, with her wrists bound to the bed by his red bow tie, she laughed and then cried out again as he playfully slapped each half of her backside.
“Do ye repent of yer lewd and lascivious ways?” he teased near her ear.
“And what fun would that be?”
“Are ye sorry fer baitin’ poor Quentin? Leadin’ him astray with yer feminine wiles?”
“No! Never!” Maria squirmed with need as his warm breath tickled her neck. How she loved it when he took her captive! Jason kissed her relentlessly, until her knees went weak. As he wrapped his hot, bare body around her from behind, his erection throbbed between her thighs, preparing for entry.
“I thought as much. Ye’ve had yer eye on me young butler ever since ye met him!” He claimed a breast in each hand and held her firmly against his chest. “There’s no help fer ye then, save to let Blackbeard have his way with ye. Plunder and pillage, it is! Assume the position, lass. I’m comin’ in!”
Her moan joined his in a lusty duet as Jason entered her, bending her forward over the bed to find the best angle. He thrust into her fully, until she thought she might die from the exquisite pressure when his long cock found that sensitive spot deep inside her; held her absolutely still, with her eyes squeezed shut beneath the blindfold. Her jaw dropped in a silent scream. This man knew precisely how to control her, how to bend her to his will with his skilled finesse.
When Maria thought she might faint from the mounting suspense, the sharp sensation of feeling nailed to the bedpost, Jason eased his cock out until its tip tickled her rim. Then he began to rock, slowly and rhythmically…in and then out…in and then out, until they breathed and pulsed as one. The pace between them quickened as need overtook the urge to play.
“You drive me mad with hunger, woman,” Jason rasped against her neck. “I swear it was all I could think of from the time I arose: your hot, sweet cunt swallowing my cock. Poor Blackbeard finally stayed so hard for so long, he nearly got severed by the seam of my trousers. I had to leave the office because I could sit no longer! Were it not for my suit coat, everyone would’ve seen I was a man about to shoot like a cannon.”
Maria held her breath to keep from crying out. All the while he talked, Jason was stroking her wet passageway, quickening the pace. “I—I hope we’re not agitating poor Quentin with our noise,” she rasped. “And Mrs. Booth! She looked appalled when you grabbed my hand and we went flying up the stairs—”
“They’ll have to live with it, my love,” Jason purred. His lecherous laugh reverberated all the way down her spine. “It’s why Mother insisted we live here rather than at Wildwood, you know. Our amorous outcries would be the undoing of her prim and proper sensibilities—not to mention an education for young Jemma. But why are we talking about them?”
He leaned her farther down, slapping his thighs against the backs of hers in his urgency. Gasping her name in a frenzied whisper, Jason stiffened—and then cut loose in a series of shudders and moans.
Maria clutched the bedpost. Like a whip her climax snapped inside her, surging into a cataclysm of clenching muscles and inner spasms. On and on