The Sweetest Revenge (25 page)

Every nerve she possessed drained from her body. The edges of his features blurred and wavered back into focus.

She should run. She couldn’t do this.

“Come to me, Belle.”

Slowly, she ascended the steps once again and settled beside him on her knees.

“Take off the blindfold.”

“Nay.”

He sighed. “Kiss me.”

“I don’t think I can do this,” she choked.

“Are you having second thoughts?”

She was. But for different reasons than he thought. He thought she feared being with him, joining with him. She didn’t fear that; she longed for it. She feared what must come afterward.

“We want each other. What is the harm? I won’t hurt you. I’ll make you happy. I’ll give you pleasure. I want to give you pleasure again. Don’t you remember how it was between us?”

Yes. She remembered it. She had remembered it every day of her life. Tremors of sensation licked through her belly and up through her chest.

She would go through with it. She’d have him one last time. He would be released. It would be over. Susan and Anna would have their vengeance, and so would she.

As much as she wanted him, as much as she ached for him, as affectionate as his words were, it did not erase who he had become. The whole world knew what he had become. He was a cruel man. He seduced women, then left them. He treated ladies like whores and laughed at their tears.

After tonight, he would know how it felt to be laughed at, mocked, left, abandoned. He would know how it felt to have someone he wanted walk away.

Leaning forward, she touched her lips to his. The contact sent an electric spark jolting through her, and she jerked back.

“More,” he whispered.

She tried again, pressing her mouth to his as her body began to vibrate in a soul-deep tremble. She closed her eyes and concentrated, drowning in the kiss, in his taste, in the feel of his skin under her lips.

“I need you, Belle. Please.”

She kissed him deeper, harder, her lips moving over his jaw, his earlobe, down the side of his neck. Her fingers fumbled with the ties on his shirt, but once she had it untied, she spread the sides open, revealing a V of warm flesh she pressed her lips to.

“Untie me, Belle. I have to touch you.”

His desires matched her own. She wanted to touch him, wanted to be touched. She released a breath through pursed lips and forced her hand upward, stroking his torso beneath his shirt.

Remember Susan. Remember Anna.

“I cannot. You will run away.”

But she longed to untie him, longed to be wrapped in his arms, longed to have him stroke her, make love to her with his hands.

She couldn’t do it. Susan and Anna had said she must leave him tied and blindfolded.

A deep laugh rumbled through his chest. “You are mad if you think I would run from you now.”

“Nay,” she whispered stubbornly.

Releasing a frustrated sigh, he said, “Touch me, then.”

Her hands moved up, stroking up his muscular torso, whispers of sensation swirling through her as her fingers glided over his virile masculinity. Her hands passed over his chest, over the tight male nipples, and a low growl emitted from his throat. He moved restlessly, his arms fighting his bonds, his head moving back and forth as if he was trying to push the blindfold off his face.

She kissed his cheek, trying to calm him, to steady him, but he was too far gone to be soothed.

He hooked one of his legs over her body and forced her down so that she lay on top of him. His hard, male body pressed against her from top to bottom. The rigid length of his erection pushed against her stomach.

“Please, Belle,” he said against her mouth. “Please.” And he kissed her again.

She dragged her mouth down his chin, down his throat. She nudged his shirt all the way up and kissed his nipple. She moved to his heart, kissing the hard band of muscle over it as it beat wildly against her lips.

“Oh God,” he groaned. “I need to touch you.”

She moved lower, kissing the ridges of his belly, running her hands over his narrow hips. And then she pulled away and studied him.

Harsh breaths emerged from his parted lips. Pink spots blazed on both his cheeks. He looked anguished, aroused, frustrated. Both of his hands clenched into fists, pulling his bonds tight against the iron bedposts.

“I’m going to die if I can’t touch you, Belle.”

Framing his hips in her hands, she slid her gaze down to his trousers. And the desire to rediscover what lay underneath suddenly consumed her.

Slowly, she opened the three buttons of his falls. Her hands moved everywhere, feeling him through the fabric, swollen, tight, and ready for her. She ached to touch him, skin to skin. Her fingertips tingled. He lifted his buttocks off the bed, and she tugged his trousers down.

So this was what a man looked like. She stared, barely noticing that he kicked his trousers the remainder of the way off.

She had seen glimpses of him in the past, but when they were together that summer, their experiences had been furtive, brief, inhibited by the ever-looming threat of discovery.

So odd.

So…large.

Different from a cucumber.

She let out a shaky breath.

“Do you remember me, Belle?” His voice was low, rasping.

“Not like…this.”

“Does it scare you?”

Aye
.

“Nay.”

His chest rumbled with repressed laughter. He didn’t believe her.

“Are you laughing at me, milord?”

He sobered immediately. “Leo. And, no. I’m not laughing.”

She raised her hand and let it hover over his sex for a long moment. Its heat radiated over her fingertips. Biting her lip, she allowed her fingers to descend.

It jumped at her touch like it had a life of its own. It felt like smooth, hot, hard satin. Leo groaned. His hips jerked, then stilled.

She skimmed her fingertips lightly over it, stroking up and down. Something within her quickened. A bloom of heat spread upward from between her legs, moving swiftly, burning away every inhibition, every fear, along its path.

She bent over him, breathing lightly. Anna said too many women feared this part of a man. But she didn’t.

Arousal made her bold.

“Is this torture, Belle?” he gritted out from somewhere far above her. “Will you torture me with the caresses of your sweet breath?”

She ignored the question. “I’ll be kissing you now.”

“Yes,” he bit out. “Please.”

She knelt down, staring in fascination as a clear bead of liquid emerged from the narrow slit at its tip. Slowly, like a cat lapping cream, she swiped her tongue over it. Above her, Leo groaned as she basked in the masculine, salty taste of him.

Pressing kisses along his long length, Isabelle gloried in the feel of him beneath her lips. So many years of fantasies—fantasies she’d never dreamed would come true. The sensation of her fantasy man’s real flesh beneath her lips made her muscles turn liquid, but at the same time, it made her feel invincible.

She flicked out her tongue and swiped it over the tip again. He rewarded her with a shudder. Encouraged, she did it again and again until he squirmed.

Sitting up on her knees, she let the wrap fall from her shoulders and drew her chemise over her head. “I’m naked, Leo.”

Some part of her registered that she was the seducer now. She was the siren, singing her beckoning song, leading him into mindlessness, manipulating him with his own lust.

A muscle worked in his jaw. “Let me touch you.”

“Nay.”

But she wanted his touch, wanted it desperately.

Pushing that thought away, she knelt over him once again, now working him with her hands as well as her mouth, losing herself in the feel of him growing ever bigger, ever harder, deep inside her mouth. The musky scent of his arousal overwhelmed her.

“Isabelle,” he groaned, “I don’t want to… It’s too fast… Stop!”

But she didn’t want to stop. She couldn’t. Beneath her lips, he was truly alive now, flowing and powerful. She stroked him everywhere, kissed him everywhere, licked him everywhere, over the taut sac between his legs, over the long shaft of his sex, hot and smooth and as hard as granite in her mouth. He was virile, magnificently male.

He cried out harshly and thrust himself deep into her throat, pulsing in her hand, under her lips and against her tongue, testing the limits of her mouth. She held on, aching, moaning over him, into him, as he exploded into her mouth. His hot seed coursed down her throat, and she swallowed every drop of his creamy, masculine release, shuddering with lust, feeling her own body contract and pulse in concert with his.

His body went limp. She closed her eyes and sighed, her lips curling into a satisfied smile over him. She had never thought she would be able to do it. She had brought him to completion.

***

Guilt. In the solid blackness behind the blindfold, Leo squeezed his eyes shut. Finally, finally he was with the only woman he’d ever really wanted, and he couldn’t love her. He couldn’t touch her. He couldn’t see her. He could hardly move. And she had taken him in her mouth and had generously given him pleasure when he should have been the one giving pleasure to her.

Why had she done it?

She brushed her mouth over his cock, then swiped her lips along his stomach and up his chest. Now she nuzzled his neck, his jaw, and finally, his mouth. Tasting his own essence on her lips, he kissed her fiercely, straining to show the extent of his feeling, his gratitude.

Breaking the kiss, she murmured, “I’m going to remove your blindfold.”

He sucked in his breath but held still as she worked the knot loose and slipped it over his head.

He blinked, trying to focus in the lantern light.

She sat completely naked beside him, her smooth white legs crossed, hiding her sex, and bent beneath her. She clasped her arms over her chest modestly, but her breasts spilled over her forearms. Her dark blonde curls bounced haphazardly over her shoulders.

Seven years had changed her. She’d been a pretty lass, her dimples and freckles a source of constant entertainment to him as he made it a point to kiss her dimples whenever they flashed at him, and grew to know every single one of her freckles on an intimate level.

Her dimples weren’t showing now, and her freckles had lightened into a sparse smatter over her nose. Her features had sharpened, her cheekbones growing more prominent. Her eyes, such a sparkling blue, had deepened and turned darker. Her hair was darker, too, by several shades.

Yet despite these changes, if he had seen her in a crowd, he would have instantly recognized her.

His throat thickened with some emotion he couldn’t name. All he could do was stare at her. At her lovely face. Her lush fall of blonde hair. The blue, guileless eyes. The pink, plump, glistening lips that had just brought him the most surprisingly intense release of his life.

Her gaze dropped into her lap. “It’s that bad, is it?”

He closed his eyes and resisted the temptation to fight his bonds. Hercules was a master of knots. The more he fought against them, the more painfully tight they would become. He knew this by now.

He wanted so badly to touch her, he could scream.

“No. You are more beautiful than…” Than she was in his dreams.

He opened his eyes to see her giving him a shy smile. The dimples were still there but shallower than they had been seven years ago. He wanted to kiss them.

“More beautiful than what?” she whispered.

“Than I remembered.”

“Your eyes haven’t changed. They are the same silver-blue color they always were. Nobody has eyes quite the same shade as yours, Leo.”

“Let me touch you.”

Her gaze dropped away. “Nay.”

Despite her refusal, he sensed the crack in her resolve. “Please, Belle.”

She stared at her lap for a long moment, then raised her head and gave him a steely look. Something had sealed the crack. Resolutely, she shook her head.

He tamped down his frustration. Where was this leading? What did she plan to do with him?

She knelt down, kissing him softly on the lips. Her breast brushed against his shoulder, and desire stirred his cock back to life. “May I lie beside you?”

An achingly sweet mixture of relief and joy swept through him. “Yes.”

Curling her soft, warm body against him, she drew the blankets over them. He watched her, unable to drag his gaze away. He wanted to watch her all night long.

Soon she began to breathe the long, deep breaths of sleep. Leo gazed at her, unable to take his eyes off her.

He couldn’t remember the last time he watched a woman while she’d slept. Had he ever?

One of her soft curls tickled his chest.

If she kept visiting him like this, he didn’t care if they ever freed him.

***

Isabelle woke in the dark with her limbs wrapped around Leo. He was warm, and his muscles cradled her body.

He was asleep. She snuggled closer to him, wondering how he could sleep with his arms bound so uncomfortably. Then again, he was probably used to it by now. She knew Pierre had kept him bound every night.

She snuggled up tighter against him, and he stirred.

He was still wearing his shirt, but otherwise he was naked, and his skin pressed against hers in all kinds of forbidden places.

So warm. So strong and masculine. Arousal began to swirl in her blood, and she rubbed her cheek over the curve of his pectoral muscle. Then she kissed it, running her lips back and forth over it, then licking the wee bud of his nipple over the fabric of his shirt.

Her hands began to roam over him. She didn’t think she’d ever get enough of touching Leo, even if she were given all the time in the world. But tonight was all she had.

“Belle,” he murmured.

Her hand wandered across his chest, then lower. He was half hard already, and when she touched him, he grew harder under her fingertips.

“Mmm,” he said.

Isabelle was warm. Sweet arousal curled in her womb. She wanted him, needed him. As she worked his cock with one hand, she slipped another between her legs, finding herself already wet with desire for him.