Lord & Master (9 page)

Naturally, I tore my gaze from him.

“All right,” my husband said. “Let’s get these boots and trousers off.”

I gasped as he clasped my left calf to help him tug the boot firmly. He was too quick for me. I fell back onto my hands as my footwear came free.

“Stop that!” I demanded when he repeated the process on the right.

“Don’t be silly,” Damien reproved. “I can’t massage your muscles through your clothes.”

“I’ll massage them myself. At
home
.”

“Massaging them yourself isn’t nearly as entertaining.”

He absolutely knew what he suggested.

“Mr. Reed is right behind you,” I hissed
sotto voce
.

“I told you, darling. Nothing married people do will horrify him.”

“You’re horrifying me,” I protested.

Damien had no pity. He leaned forward and kissed me. The deep wet penetration stole my senses—as I’m certain he intended. Even as I let out a tiny moan, I wished this pleasure weren’t new to me. If I’d been used to it, perhaps I could have resisted. As it was, my hands fluttered to his big shoulder blades, across which his muscles moved sexily. My toes were curling, my core molten. I felt dazed when his lips finally released me.

“You promised to honor and obey,” Damien reminded.

“You promised to cherish,” I retorted.

He smiled and rubbed my waist. The soreness in my thighs jumped upward, magically transferring to my sex. Abruptly, the ache there was unbearable. All I could think was that I wanted his hands rubbing between my legs. Very hard, preferably.

“How do you know cherishing you isn’t exactly what I’m doing?”

“You’re taking advantage of my—” I searched for a polite term “—weakness.”

“Your desire is no weakness to me, Mia. It’s a quality I treasure.”

My gaze slid to Mr. Reed, who was watching this quietly. I couldn’t read his expression, though he definitely wasn’t shocked. “It isn’t proper for him to be here while we’re kissing.”

“Jake is a good friend. He’d no more begrudge me a pleasure than I’d begrudge him. On top of which, he’ll keep our confidence.”

Our
confidence. This implied Mr. Reed would be my ally too.

“I’ve watched him with women,” my husband said. “Jake is an excellent lover.”

“As is Damien,” Jake put in.

I didn’t know who to gawp at harder. “I don’t— I can’t—”

I was squirming even as I spluttered, my body saying quite different things from my mouth. To my amazement and dismay, my pussy throbbed fiercely. It wanted me to allow these men whatever liberties they wished.

“Perhaps I should tell a story,” Damien suggested.

“A story?” My voice was weak, my vocal chords suffering from the same tumult as the rest of me.

Damien shifted to sit next to me on the bachelor bed. His weight caused the springs to creak, a sound I found unavoidably suggestive. He rubbed my thigh but not high enough to suit my traitorous sex. “I’ll tell the story of how Jake and I first became acquainted. I think it will soothe your nerves.”

I didn’t think
soothing
was what my nerves were hungriest to receive.

Chapter Eight

“AS
you may or may not know,” Damien began, “I took my degree at Oxford.”

“Oxford,” I repeated, daunted by the name. My lackadaisical governesses hadn’t so much as walked near it.

“Don’t be too impressed,” he cautioned. “It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. Because my father was in trade, the students from good families looked down on me. The serious swots hated that I excelled without trying half as hard as them. The party boys didn’t appreciate my scorn for their self-indulgence, and pretty much everyone resented my deep pockets.

“Basically, no one was fond of me.

“I wish I could say this strengthened my character, but back then, when my pride was stung, I’d turn insufferable. I was arrogant, standoffish, and all too eager to win any competition that came my way. I cared more about coming first than I did about making enemies.”

I disliked hearing him talk this way. “Surely the tutors valued your brilliant mind.”

Damien shook his head ruefully. “I enjoyed showing them up as well.”

I glanced at Jake, curious to see if he agreed. His posture declared him anything but a paid retainer. Despite his employer’s presence, he leaned one shoulder on the rustic mantle shelf, his arms folded nonchalantly—as if this conversation were less significant than what to eat for lunch.

“Damien was a bit of a wanker,” he acknowledged genially. “Not cruel, though, which is the important thing.”

I refrained from asking what a wanker was. I had a feeling I didn’t want to know. Damien turned on the covers so that his knee bumped mine. “Jake was a porter in the gatehouse at my college. He’d recently left the army. Student discipline being what it was, the administration found his air of authority useful.

“I’d seen him many times, of course. You couldn’t come in or out of Balliol without passing the porter’s lodge—couldn’t get your mail, if it came to that.

“Though I was engrossed in my own concerns, it came to my attention that Jake Reed exerted an unusual . . . fascination for my peers. The most popular among them looked up to him, sometimes going to great lengths to gain his attention and approval. If he told a joke, it would be repeated. If he slapped a shoulder, it stirred a blush. His erotic exploits were the stuff of legend. Women from our master’s too-young wife, to actresses, to not one but four graduates of a nearby secretarial school were reputed to have succumbed to him.

“In truth, my peers reminded me of debutantes at a ball, jostling each other to cadge a dance from a duke’s first son.

“In the dining hall, between the soup and meat, I heard rumors he liked to tie his lovers up and spank them.”

“No,” I protested unthinkingly.

“Yes,” Damien insisted. “What’s more, some women so enjoyed the practice they’d throw pebbles at the windows of his lodgings to inform him they wished to be let up. One fellow claimed he’d seen a queue in the street one night.”

This seemed extraordinary. My gaze strayed to Damien’s friend. He was smiling faintly, one long work-hardened finger rubbing across his lips.

“Is this true?” I dared to ask. “Did women really stand in line for you?”

The curve of his mouth deepened. His lips were different from Damien’s: slyly expressive rather than sensual. “Now and then my dance card was overfull.”

He’d affected a toff’s accent, momentarily erasing his rough edges. He was clever, I concluded, like Damien. It made me wonder if I could keep up with either one of them.

“How did you save my husband’s life?” I asked.

“Oh that,” he said. “I am too modest. Damien had better relate the tale.”

Privately I doubted he had any modesty.

“It was my luck at cards,” Damien explained. “I’m good at calculating odds in my head and, on the grounds that this was an unfair advantage, I rarely played. One of my bluer-blooded classmates mistook my abstention for inexperience. He thought to line his linty pockets at my expense. To that end, he mocked me until I couldn’t resist accepting his challenge.”

“And you won,” I guessed.

“Rather too well. In my defense, he was a nasty specimen. Fond of playing practical ‘jokes’ on his social inferiors. I disliked him heartily and didn’t hide the fact that I relished beating him. He was in debt to me when we finished, by more than he wanted to ask his father to advance him. Unfortunately, even though he’d pressured me to participate, he decided I’d cheated him.

“The next night, a Tuesday around two a.m., he and four of his cronies stole into my rooms. Catching me asleep, they gagged, trussed, and hooded me. Unable to fight, I was lugged across the quad, through a gate that should have been locked, and out into the town proper.

“It was winter and very quiet. I couldn’t see. I heard nothing but the sounds my abductors made carrying me. As far as I could tell, Oxford was abandoned.”

“You must have been frightened.”

He met my gaze. My chest tightened for the terror he must have felt, but also for the way he seemed to invite me to see inside him.

“It is difficult to avoid despair when you know no one cares enough to rescue you.”

“That’s not the case today,” I said. I thought I spoke of his staff—and Jake—but perhaps I meant myself as well. Was that odd? In that moment, I believed I might do a great deal to protect him.

I don’t know if he comprehended this. He touched my face gently. “You will never have to despair. Not while I live. Not while Jake does either.”

He’d made a similar claim before. Now he was adding Jake to the promise. I cleared my throat, far from sure I ought to rely on it. “Did Jake— Mr. Reed catch them abducting you?”

“He heard them passing down in the street. They weren’t loud, but I suppose he’d learned to recognize the signs of student skullduggery. Though he wasn’t supposed to leave his post, he came out and followed them. He caught up in Brasenose Lane, which was a cobbled, out of the way back street. They barely had a chance to start in on me. A few kicks were all I took before he confronted them.”

Damien’s gaze lifted to his friend. His expression was as intense as when he’d looked at me. To me, it seemed adoring. “Jake didn’t care that it was five to one. He was fearless and quick, and almost before I knew it, I heard my captors fleeing the scene in terror. Hands helped me up, and the ropes that imprisoned me were sawed through. I didn’t know who my savior was until Jake removed the hood. I don’t think I’d ever felt such gratitude in my life. Quite literally, Jake seemed to me an angel.”

“Oh pshaw,” Jake demurred humorously. “They were students. I was a trained soldier. They could have been twice the number, and I’d still have thrashed their bottoms.”

Damien smiled, his hand rubbing my thigh absently. “Be that as it may, Jake likely saved my life. I doubt those dimwits meant to kill me, but if they’d left me unconscious in the street, I’d have died of exposure before morning. My drawers and their hood were all I’d been wearing. As Jake helped me up, I shivered violently—both from the chill and my recent fright.

“Jake had left the porters lodge too quickly to grab a coat, but he wrapped his jacket around my shoulders. I couldn’t put it on completely. My captors had been thorough when they trussed me, and my wrists remained tied. When I asked Jake to remove the rope, he gave me the oddest sidelong look. I shivered . . . differently to receive it, though at that precise moment, I couldn’t have told you why.”

“‘My knife is dull now,’ he said. ‘Cutting your wrists free will take too long. My rooms are right around the corner.’

“I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to quarrel. Jake was the town half of Town and Gown. He leased a third floor bedsit in a small rooming house. To my surprise, he wasn’t cold. The first thing he did upon entering was remove the vest from his uniform. Then he sat me down in the blissfully heated space and poured me a stiff whiskey. Even then he left my hands bound, which made holding the glass tricky.

“Naturally, I asked him why.

“‘Your hands are beautiful,’ he explained gruffly. ‘They deserve to be shown off by that rope.’

“As you might imagine, I gaped at him. No man had ever called any part of me beautiful. I recalled the gossip that he enjoyed tying up females. ‘You’re obsessed with bondage,’ I deduced. ‘You don’t care who you do it to.’

“‘I care,’ he said, the light in his eyes mesmerizing me. ‘In truth, I’m quite selective. I’ve been hoping for a while that you’d let me select you.’

“This was flattering, though it startled me. I hadn’t been aware he’d noticed me before then. ‘You’re attracted to me,’ I said, wanting to be sure. ‘Sexually.’

“Such things weren’t unheard of at Oxford. They didn’t admit many women, and those who did get in had their own colleges. As a result, I knew men who dallied with one another. I’d never been among them; sodomy was a social risk I saw no reason to indulge in. On the other hand, I wasn’t horrified either.

“Curiosity was my primary emotion.

“Jake braced his palms on either arm of the wingchair in which I sat, effectively crowding me into it as he spoke. ‘I’m attracted to strength of mind and spirit,’ he informed me. ‘To pretty eyes and mouths I could kiss for days. A fine turn of leg is nice, and I confess to admiring a capacity for kindness.’

“‘I don’t know how kind I am,’ I said, which was simultaneously honest and vain of me. I was aware that my looks were good.

“He laughed. ‘You can be kind. You just need a good reason.’

“He removed one hand from the chair and slid it slowly down the front of his lean body. I knew he wanted me to track its progress down his white porter’s shirt. Hypnotized, I watched him grip the bulge that pushed out from his crotch. His cock was hefty, outlined against the cloth of his dark trousers. Heat flooded me as his fingers contracted around it and his scrotum.

“I knew what other men looked like. I’d compared myself to them on occasion, while skinny-dipping or spending a penny behind a public house. Nonetheless, I’d never stared so long at another man’s genitals, covered or otherwise.

“‘Is that my reason to be kind?’ I asked faintly.

“Jake caught the coil of rope that held my wrists together, lifting my hands by it until they rested on his erection’s bulk. To my own amazement, I left them there. ‘Let’s find out,’ he proposed.

“I should have resisted, but somehow I could not. I realized then how truly aroused I was. My cock pounded wildly, my breath loud with excitement. Rather than pull away, I opened his trouser buttons and eased out his hard organ.”

Damien stopped speaking to look at me. The entire universe seemed to narrow down to his greeny-gold irises. “Do you know what came next, my wife?”

I swallowed, remembering what I’d done to him last night. “You rubbed him with your bound hands?”

“I
held
him with my bound hands, but I sucked him with my mouth. I licked the head of him with my tongue and pulled his hardness between my lips. I went to town on him like I was starving, until he couldn’t help but shove his pelvis forward and groan loudly. I did everything to him that I’d wished a woman would do to me.”