And then she felt it rack through her. Lust as she’d never known it was possible to feel. Stark, raw, blistering. Sweeping everything away so she opened her legs wide, bucking now beneath the penetration of his hand, crying out for—what?
As her orgasm blasted through her, she knew. She felt the scream rise to her throat just before his mouth crashed down on hers. Muffling her impassioned shriek, knowing it was coming. Kissing her again, more insistently this time, hurtling her senses out of control as she spun and danced and floated at his command.
As she drifted down, she did so as another self. Gone was the woman she’d been, smashed beneath his hands. The new woman—the joyous wondrous woman whose body was juicy and ripe and knew, only now, that it had been starved—despaired when he began to move away. She clutched at him, wrapping her arms about his neck, seeking his astonishing mouth, moaning, “I had no idea. More…I want more.”
Slowly, with his superior strength, he eased her away from him, holding her at arm’s length. “Do you trust me now?” he asked.
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“And you’ll do anything I ask?”
“Anything. Only do stop stalling and give me more.”
She preened and stretched before him, seeking his mouth. She sensed his smile, as it was too dark to see him. The backs of his fingers grazed her breasts, dynamite to her already ragged senses. “Hurry,” she urged.
He leaned over and picked something up off the floor. She heard the rip of material, then he was winding a torn strip of lace around her wrists. When she flinched, he told her, “I can’t take the chance of you—in passion or from other motives—slipping off my mask. You’ve only had the most basic lesson in surrender. There’s so much more to experience and enjoy. A woman only learns true surrender when she’s had a thorough…and masterful…fucking. But to give you that, I must safeguard my disguise. So I ask again…do you want to know what you’ve been missing? And if so, will you trust me enough to surrender yourself completely?”
Did she trust him? She didn’t even know him. But simmering in lust, her realities were transformed. She saw silhouetted before her neither thief not hero, but an irresistibly seductive man. A man who knew how to make her body sing.
“Yes,” she told him, casting caution aside.
In a trance, she let him tie her hands deftly to the headboard so that she lay stretched out before him, her hands bound above her head, her breasts riding high.
And then he was on top of her, his manly weight welcome, his knowing hands causing her to cry out in need. He touched her, kissed her, licked her flesh like a jungle cat claiming his prize, until once again she felt delirious, tugging at the bonds at her wrists.
“Has anything in your poetry ever been as thrilling as this?”
With a single lunge, he drove himself inside. She cried out again, but his mouth came down to stifle it. He drove into her hard and strong. Beautifully. Exquisitely. Forcefully. Leaving no question as to who was in charge. Her pleasure was so intense it was almost anguish. Feeling the same catapulting sensation she had before, feeling helpless and deliciously swept away by the magnificent force of his possession.
“Nothing was ever like this,” she gasped. “I didn’t know anything could be like this.”
He clutched her face with both hands, looking down fiercely into her eyes. Then he kissed her face, her lips, moving into her with long luscious strokes, his breath one with hers until she felt herself meld into him. Carrying her with him higher and higher, hungrier than before, wild with passion. Sensing her impending climax, waiting for her, urging her on, until at last his patience was rewarded and he could let himself loose. Exploding together with her, clinging to her, catching her cries of passion in his mouth.
It seemed to Jules that the roar of the sea had consumed them. But as she lay spent beneath him and her breath slowed, she realized the roar had been in her head. It was so quiet in the room that his breathing sounded like thunder to her ears. She wanted so to hold him close, to tell him all the wonders a woman wants to tell the man who’s shown her what he had…
But she couldn’t. Her hands were still bound above her head.
“Untie me,” she whispered, still simmering in a wondrously joyful satisfaction.
Her voice roused him. He sat up and looked around as if he’d lost track of where he was. But instead of reaching up to free her as she expected, he retrieved his discarded glove, put it on again, then rose, adjusting his clothing. He came to stand beside her, his gaze scanning her prone body, as if looking for one last time.
“And now you know,” he said softly, in that husky whisper of a voice.
Yes, now she knew all that she’d been missing. She knew, too, that she would never be the same. She was about to tell him so when his voice, changed now in some indefinable way, cut her off.
“Even so, it’s not enough to convince me.”
“Convince you?” She’d been so carried away, she couldn’t think of what he meant.
“I’m not going to take on Dominic DeRohan. I have no wish to commit suicide. But thank you, just the same.”
He reached up and gave the lace binding a tug, freeing her hands. Then, as quickly as a panther leaping from peril, he stepped onto her balcony and vanished into the night.
Chapter 4
She awoke to the sound of someone moving in her room.
He’s returned!
But, no. She opened her eyes to sunlight streaming in through the open windows and to her butler, Hudson, setting down her breakfast tray.
For a moment, she couldn’t quite make the adjustment. She’d been so wrapped up in her dreams. All through the night, she’d been aware of the tingling of her body, of a quiver of excitement in the air, and strangely, of a surpassing peace. It was so unusual that a part of her sleep-drugged mind asked when she stirred: What is this feeling? And then snippets of memory would flash through her: The provocative rasp of his voice at her ear, urging her on…the feel of his strong fingers amusing themselves inside her as he watched…the dizzy, helpless bliss of coming together at last, taking his weight, his size, his very breath as her own…She’d never dreamed what ecstasy a woman could feel in submitting to such an enthralling…commanding…male. And again she would smile that smile of devilish satisfaction and burrow herself deeper into her silk bedding and drift back to sleep.
Even now, the disappointment that he hadn’t returned, along with the recollection of his abrupt departure, couldn’t dim the radiance that enveloped her. For the first time in more years than she could count, she felt girlish and young, like a sprite who might spring from her bed and dance about the room in the welcoming rays of the sun.
Hudson turned, saw the look on her face, and smiled. It was an odd smile, one she’d noticed from time to time, a secret smile as if thinking thoughts his mistress would never know. But this morning there was something about the smile that seemed faintly impertinent.
Suddenly she stilled. Had he heard the sounds of passion in the night?
But as was his custom, he proceeded to report on the happenings of the morning.