The Lover (6 page)

She bit her lip, flesh throbbing. Inside. Outside. Mouth. Vagina.
Forehead
. "Your cock—you are referring to your penis?"

"My penis, my cock,
ma bitte
." His fingers dug into her buttocks. "Tilt your hips… More."

Searing pleasure jolted upward from her clitoris, sizzled along the lips of her femininity that curled around him, bolted through her painfully stretched vagina.

She had never imagined such intimacy. Man and woman, two bodies made one by their sex.

But he had known
, this man who was named for his ability to please women.

"What do I do now?"

His expression hardened, skin tightening, lips flattening. "You take your pleasure."

The muscles inside her vagina rippled around him.

Michel forced himself another inch inside her, then pulled it out. In again. Another inch—
how deeply could she take him
? Out again. He was creating a burning, stinging rhythm that she instinctively responded to—riding, sliding, gliding along his shaft while she stared into his eyes that were impossibly violet.

"There is so much passion inside you,
chérie
." His lashes lowered, banking the friction inside his gaze while his body continued pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling… "I know you want to come." Leaning forward, he grazed her mouth, pulling her closer, closer… "You gave me your cry of pain."
He gave her three more inches
. "Now give me your cry of pleasure."

Without warning, Anne exploded… and cried out at the harsh pleasure that tunneled inside her body.

The bed exploded with her.

With a grunt, Michel came to his feet, her buttocks secured with his left hand so that she remained firmly impaled. One shoe fell off of her flailing feet; it was immediately followed by its mate. He dropped down hard on the edge of the bed so that Anne sat straddling his waist.

Her head snapped back; she gasped in agonized pleasure.

He was all the way inside her.

All nine and one half inches.

Scalding heat scaled her throat, her breast… he latched onto her nipple and suckled while he ground his pelvis up into her, grinding side to side so that her labia and clitoris were smashed flat. She arched her back, no longer certain if it was pleasure or pain she felt; immediately his hand was there, hard and rough, supporting the small of her spine while he continued to suckle and suckle her as he ground himself up higher and higher inside her. He could not possibly go any deeper,
but he did
, and she cried out again in uncontrollable release.

Only to cry out yet again when the room turned upside down and a band of cold silk dug into her head and shoulders; equally cold velvet imprinted her backside. Her hair held her immobile—it was trapped between her and the bedcovers.

She stared up from where he had deposited her onto the bed. The muscles in her vagina fluttered in the aftermath of one climax, preparing for another.

Michel leaned over her, hips firmly implanted between her thighs, manhood deeply lodged inside her vagina. He was a blanket of wiry, prickly heat, chest pinning her breasts, stomach molding her womb.

Sizzling perception jolted through her.

Anne desperately gulped air.

There was only his breath to sustain her. Only his body to give her the orgasm that was again building up inside her.

"Now,
chérie
." His violet eyes glittered. "Now I will show you angels."

A gasp woke Michael just as pink dawn stretched across the ceiling.

It came from a woman.

Even as the woman's presence registered in his consciousness, she jerked out of his arms and sat up in bed. Long, silky hair concealed her back, a pale brown shield that glinted with gold and silver in the dull glow of an oil lamp.

Michael was abruptly aware of the sting of dried sweat and the scent of sex and roses. A deafening pounding commenced inside his ears—the sound of his own heart.

"What is it?" he murmured, body tensed, knowing the answer. Anne Aimes had had her night of pleasure and now she wanted to go home.

But she couldn't go home.

He had brought her to orgasm eight times, deliberately drugging her body and her mind with carnal excess. She should not be awake.

Turning, Anne's eyes swept over him. They were pale, unfocused, rimmed by lavender shadows. "I overslept. I have to get up. They need me. I need to get their medicine…"

Her parents had been dead for ten months. The mother had followed the father, two days apart.

Helen and Henry Aimes had been old when they died, outliving every other relative. They had been old when they bore Anne, their only child.

And now she was alone, this spinster woman who was no longer a virgin.

As he was alone.

A sharp pain twisted inside Michael's chest.

"You haven't overslept,
chérie
." Gently, carefully, he pulled her back down into the curve of his body, cocooning her with his arms and the silky web of her hair. "Shhh. It's all right."

She remained stiff in his arms, determined to cater to a family who no longer existed. "But their medicine…"

Michael smoothed a baby-fine strand of hair off her forehead; it clung to his scar-roughened fingers. He nuzzled her temple, savoring the smell of their commingled sweat and sexual satiation, and underneath that, the fragrance of soap, shampoo and her own unique scent, a sweetness that varied from woman to woman. "It's all right,
chérie
. You don't have to get up. It's all right… No one needs you tonight. Go back to sleep."

Anne's resistance evaporated in a sigh.

"They died," she mumbled, eyes closing, breathing slowing. "I was so tired…"

For a moment Michael thought about shaking her awake and bundling her out of his home and his life. He simultaneously realized what had disturbed her sleep.

The latch on the French doors rattled.

Someone was trying to break into his bedroom.

It was too soon, he thought on a surge of raw energy. The woman nestled against him was too inviting.

He needed more time.

The grate of metal grinding against metal sounded again.

How many men were waiting to take him? One? Two? Three?

The energy pumping through his body peaked. For one heart-stopping moment, he didn't know if he was prepared to fight or to flee.

Scalding shame was replaced with scorching anger.

He would not run, ever again.

Gently he disentangled himself from Anne's hair and lifted her head off of his shoulder. Sliding out of bed, he dimmed the lamp until the comforting yellow glow was a red tongue of fire.

A dark shadow shone through the curtains.

Only one had come for him.
This time
.

The oiled glide of hinged wood stirred the cool air—the drawer in the nightstand.

He had been prepared for Anne with a tin of condoms. He was equally prepared for the intruder.

The ivory hilt of the knife balanced in the palm of his hand, custom-fitted, as had been the French letters. One for fucking; the other for killing.

It did not matter.

He would not go until he was ready to be taken.

Crouching down on the cold wooden floor, he eased up the latch, knife poised, ready to strike.

"Either use it or put it away, Michael." The whisper was only a breath of air.

Gabriel.

He instinctively glanced toward the bed to make sure that Anne had not wakened. She lay as he had left her, on her back. He had forgotten to flip the covers up. Her breast gleamed in the dim light, as if carved out of alabaster; her right arm lay curled on top of the white silk sheet, palm turned upward.

Michael was not prepared for the rush of emotion that surged through him.

He had serviced women since he was thirteen years old—he had no right to feel pride at being Anne Aimes's first man.

He had belonged to any woman who could afford his price—he had no right to feel possessive of this one spinster.

But he did.

He did not want Gabriel to see her naked as he had seen her.

"Stay." Michael's command was a sigh of sound.

Rising, he grabbed Anne's velvet cloak off of the chaise lounge where he had earlier thrown it and wrapped it about his naked body. It reached midcalf. He stepped out onto the balcony, toes curling on the damp, icy wood, and softly closed the French doors behind him.

Pink pearled the sky. It was edged by fresh black smoke, London stoves stoked to cook breakfast for five million residents. A bird shrilly sang in the garden below.

Michael and Gabriel stood eye-to-eye, one head dark, the other fair. "I could have killed you, Gabriel."

Gabriel's breath mingled with Michael's, a plume of gray vapor. "Perhaps I wouldn't mind."

The anger simmering inside Michael eased. "I would."

"And you do not think that I will mourn you, Michael? You saved my life. Perhaps I would like to return the favor."

Gabriel had not considered it a favor when Michael had found him chained in the attic of a rich client's house. He had fought to die even as Michael had fought to save him.

"Why not enter by the front door?" Michael asked mildly. He stepped back, out of the moist cloud that was their combined breath. "You have a key."

"Perhaps because I wanted to see how prepared you are to deal with the men who will come for you. These French doors offer no protection. Why haven't you put grids over your windows?"

"Because if I do that, they cannot take me, can they?" Michael softly reasoned.

"What if it isn't you they take, but the woman?"

Michael remembered the feel of Anne's maidenhead stretching to allow him entrance.

She had screamed: first with pain, then with pleasure. Just as he had promised her she would.

He ruthlessly buried the memory. "Then she will gain me entrance. Perhaps she will die, perhaps not. I will still kill him. Or die myself, trying."

"You smell of her."

"I'm wearing her cloak."

"You smell of her sex, Michael. Of her pleasure. And yours. She did not come to you as a decoy. Will you let him do to her what he did to Diane?"

Michael closed his eyes, trying to shut out Gabriel's words.

For one infinitesimal moment he relived the experience of Diane, a woman who had walked away from her titled husband to be with him, a man whom she believed was nothing more than a French male whore. He remembered her uninhibited laughter and her unrestrained passion; her unadulterated lust for life.

When the man had taken her, she had broken in two months. Only in death had she regained peace.

Damn Gabriel.

Michael had loved Diane.

And her killer was free.

He opened his eyes. "Yes. Yes, I will let him take Anne Aimes."

They stared at each other, two fallen angels who wanted too much, dared too much, and had paid the price.

Gabriel stepped back, sudden comprehension flowing across his fair, flawless face. "He already knows."

Michael did not lie. "Yes."

He had known for the past five years that a spy had been planted in his household. He had also known that as long as he remained submersed in his own private hell he would be safe.

But then the solicitor had appeared on his doorstep.

Michael had followed the spy, who in turn had followed the solicitor.

The solicitor had led them both to Anne Aimes.

There was no doubt that the man knew who had procured Michael's services. Just as he knew that she was a lonely spinster who would not be missed until it was too late.

"And when you kill him, Michael? How will you live with yourself, knowing the price another woman will pay?"

Michael's lips quirked in a brief, ironic smile. "Perhaps I will not kill him. Perhaps he will kill me."

"Let me take her away. He knows that you are no longer content to play farmer. You lie to yourself if you think that women do not want you. There will be others, now that you're back. You do not need Anne Aimes. It is your sexuality that is the bait, not this woman."

Anger threatened to destroy Michael's sangfroid. He lashed out, wanting to hurt, knowing the tool to use. "Do not judge a woman's tastes by yours,
mon frère
."

The hurtful words hovered between them.

Both knew them for the lie that they were. Neither had chosen the life that they led.

Gabriel's eyes narrowed; they gleamed silver in the new dawn.

He did not bother denying what was so patently false. "You're a fool, Michael. Buy a mirror. Look into it.
He
didn't condemn you to hell; you did."

Michael's lips tightened. "Stay away, Gabriel. I will not lose this time."

"You're afraid I will warn her?" he mocked.

There was no trace of the thirteen-year-old boy Gabriel had once been. No vestiges of laughter or tears.

Michael did not have to buy a mirror; he was looking into one.

The coldness numbing his feet settled in the pit of his stomach. "Yes, Gabriel, I am afraid."

"And if I do warn her?"

Michael turned without comment and eased inside the French doors.

Darkness closed around him.

There was too much death.

He had almost threatened to kill his only friend.
He
was
going to kill the only woman who took pleasure in his touch
.

Movements jerky, he turned up the lamp, needing the light to hold the past at bay.

Anne had asked him to extinguish the light when he undressed her.

If he had been another man, he would have respected her modesty that one time, her first time.

But he was not another man.

There was only one thing he feared more than fire. And that was darkness.

Michael silently appraised the woman in his bed.

She lay peacefully asleep, impervious to the man who watched her. Impervious to the fate that awaited her. Impervious to the cold that would blanket her.

A curly black hair rested on the plump white flesh of her breast—a hair from his chest. Below it, her nipple was dark and swollen, like a bruised strawberry.

She was very sensitive—she had almost orgasmed when he had suckled her.

Her slender fingers were devoid of jewelry, her short, buffed nails a healthy pink. Carved half-moons throbbed in his back and shoulders.

She did not look like the passionless, anemic woman who had entered the House of Gabriel, any more than she looked like a woman marked for death.

He remembered her choked gasp when he had initially brought her to orgasm.

In the cab she claimed she had never before seen a naked man. Yet not once had she displayed the modesty or timidity society expected a well-bred virgin to exhibit.

Married women had come to him, ignorant of the names for their sex organs. How had this spinster gleaned her knowledge?

What kind of life had she lived, that she did not think she could cry out with pleasure… or pain?

Michael inhaled heavy, sweet air. The scent of roses failed to mask the pending stench of decay.

Anger fisted inside his stomach.

His muscles ached from the labor of satisfying a woman instead of the labor of working his farm in Yorkshire. The latter had exhausted his body while his mind ran rampant. Anne had occupied both his mind and his body.

Damn the man for using the one means guaranteed to destroy him.

For one rage-filled moment he wondered if Anne Aimes had been hired to bring him back to London.

The man was capable of such a scheme. He knew Michael's weakness.

Immediately the anger dissipated, leaving behind only the need.

No amount of money could buy the passion he had seen in Anne's eyes.

The trembling started deep inside him, familiar but never welcome. There was only one way to stop it.

Tossing the velvet cloak aside, he snatched a condom from the tin and skillfully rolled it over his erect manhood. Unbidden, he remembered Anne's clumsy attempt to sheathe him with rubber.

She had been so afraid of losing control, standing before him naked and trembling with her hunger. So very determined to exert power that she did not possess.