You Only Love Once (16 page)

“Then command quickly,” he growled. He had undone the buttons of her bodice and now pulled it down with a sharp yank. Without taking his eyes from hers, he slid his hands beneath the fabric and cupped her breasts.

For a moment she let him; she braced one hand on the wall beside her and gripped the banister with the other, spread like a sacrifice to his desire. Nate all but choked. He gave up; he surrendered. He was wholly, completely, utterly conquered, hers to command in any way she wanted. He wrapped his hands around her waist and kissed the exposed line of her throat down to the swell of her breast. Urgency and hunger roared inside him, and he started to bear her down onto the stairs. Making love on the stairs was hardly what he had planned, but who cared for plans at a time like this?

With a visible effort she gathered herself. She put her palms against his chest and pushed until Nate had to step back or fall. Her hair was coming down from the tight knot she had secured at the nape of her neck, and her eyes glittered in the dimly lit hall. Her chest heaved, the edge of her white corset rising and falling behind the loosened bodice. Her skin glowed like a pearl against the black of her clothing.
“My command,” she said, her voice husky but controlled. Standing two steps above him, she was just his height. She laid her fingers along his jaw, leaning close enough that he could see how dark and dilated her eyes were. “Tonight you are mine,” she added.

More than tonight, he thought. But when he moved toward her, she stopped him again. “Come,” she whispered in that bewitching velvety voice that made his stomach knot on itself with lust. She crooked her finger at him and led the way upstairs, and Nate followed because he couldn't not follow her.

I
n the bedroom she closed the door behind him, then turned to him, studying him. Nate's very skin seemed to stretch and prickle under her gaze, and the throbbing in his groin grew harder. “What would you have me do?” he asked, because he didn't think he could stand there much longer doing nothing.

“I find it so interesting where a man keeps his weapons,” she murmured instead. Running one hand along his shoulder, she sauntered around him, her hips rolling. As they had been last night, two lamps were left burning in her room but turned down low, and a good fire crackled in the hearth. With a soft hiss, she pulled the knife from the sheath strapped at the back of his waist. “A good blade,” she said. He cast his eyes over his shoulder to see the gleam of his hunting knife in her hand as she turned it from side to side.

“A knife is no good without a sharp blade,” he said.

She smiled darkly. “No.” She laid the knife on the dressing table behind her. “What else? Apparently you have weapons I know nothing about.”

She meant the ether, which had been in his coat pocket along with a pistol. He didn't have any more weapons on his person now. Nate gave her a slow, predatory smile. “Find them yourself.”

Somehow he stood motionless as she continued to circle him, first pulling away the dark kerchief around his neck with a sensual swish of silk, then unfastening his shirt. She gathered it up and slid her hands beneath it, up his back until she could push it over his head, and Nate had to grit his teeth to keep from coming in his trousers as her body pressed against his, from her breasts to her belly, even though she was still clothed. His breath was rasping in his throat by the time she let him remove his boots, and then his trousers.

Angelique knew she was playing with fire as she made him stand naked in front of her, his erection stiff and ready. His face was drawn taut, and his eyes never wavered from her as she moved about the room. She liked this. She liked having him await her pleasure. She liked having
him
, and by now her own body was hot and pulsing in anticipation. “Sit down,” she said.

Slowly he lowered himself onto the chair she indicated. The muscles of his shoulder tensed in hard lines as he laid his palms flat on his thighs, but still he waited for her instruction. She whisked the thin black cord from around her waist. “You held me down last night,” she murmured. “Give me your hand.” His jaw tightened as if he knew what she would do, but he put out his hand.

She knotted the rope around one wrist, then took both his arms behind the straight-backed chair and bound the wrists together, looping the rope through
the slats of the chair. His chest filled with air, and his exhalations were harsh and loud in the dim, quiet room. By the time she came around in front of him again, his head had fallen forward. His hair hung loose around his face, shadowing but not hiding the fierce control in his expression. “If you mean to kill me, do it now,” he said through his teeth.

Angelique smiled. Languidly she pulled her arms free of her bodice and untied the loose trousers she wore. She let both articles drop to the floor and stepped out of them, then kicked off her shoes. Nate's eyes devoured her as she stood in her shortened chemise, the hem just covering her hips. As she plucked at the string of her corset, she angled her head to watch him watching her. “As you can see,” she whispered, “I am completely unarmed.”

“But far more dangerous,” he growled. “My God, Angelique…”

She unlaced the corset and tossed it aside, and peeled off the chemise. With deliberate slowness she cradled his jaw in her hands, tilting his chin up as she bent down to kiss him lightly, her lips lingering on his, and for a moment the intense heat in his eyes faded to something almost yearning. He surged up against her, straining to prolong the kiss even as her rope held him to the chair. Angelique stared at him, her heart pounding. “What should I do with you?” she asked aloud, both of herself and of him. She had been right to be afraid last night; this was not a passing attraction. Something inside her responded to Nate in a deep, elemental way, and she didn't know how to control it.

“Kiss me,” he whispered. “Just…kiss me.”

She touched her lips to his again, letting herself
be pulled along by that force for a moment. His kiss lured her, tempted her to surrender to it. How could something she knew to be dangerous feel so sublime, she wondered hazily as Nate seduced her with nothing but his mouth. She had stripped him and tied him to a chair, and yet somehow she felt as though he held her captive, enslaved by that connection between them that she was helpless to deny.

She turned away, trying to recover herself. He made a low murmur of protest, but simply transferred his attentions to her neck, sucking lightly at the sensitive skin below her jaw. Angelique shivered, and pushed herself away. He would own her body and soul if she allowed that sort of thing to continue. There wasn't just lust or seduction in his kiss; there was longing, rich and sweet. That, she could not allow. Lust and seduction were all she could offer, and all she could accept.

“You called me ferocious,” she murmured, sinking to her knees. “When you gave me that knife.”

“I said the Wyandot are ferocious,” he rasped. She spread her hands over his shoulders and then raked her fingernails down his chest, and he shuddered.

“But you gave me their knife, as if I were just as cruel.” She swept her palms across his stomach and down his thighs to his knees. His muscles tensed into iron-hard readiness under her touch. “I think I must torment my captive to deserve such a gift.”

“I thought you would like it,” he said swiftly. “Not that you would—should—torment—Ahh…” His voice faded into a ragged groan as she flicked her tongue over the head of his cock and circled her hand around the shaft. Angelique looked up at him,
her lips poised above his erection. “Do you wish to beg for mercy?”

He grinned, although it was strained and feral and he didn't open his eyes. His head had fallen back against the wall behind him and the pulse beat hard in his exposed throat. Veins stood out on his arms, flexed behind the chair. “Never.”

She smiled and closed her lips around him, taking him deep in her mouth on one stroke. Nate made an otherwordly sound, half rapture, half anguish. He dug his toes into the floor and pushed, and the chair rocked back until it hit the wall. Angelique simply shifted her weight and swirled her tongue around him. Just the sound of his breathing, hard and uneven, was arousing. For tonight at least he was her captive. She meant to repay the devastation he had wrought on her body last night. She meant to exact a price for the tangle he had made of her logical, coldly pragmatic life since the day he appeared at Bow Street. By dawn, Nathaniel Avery would feel as stripped and vulnerable as she had felt this morning, when his absence seemed a thing of pain.

When she tasted the first salty drop welling up from the head of his erection, she licked him once more and released him with a last lingering stroke of her hand. Nate's eyes popped open, wild and fever-bright. “Witch,” he croaked.

“Captive,” she countered softly. “Don't you like it?” She ran the tip of her tongue around the head of his member, and his entire body spasmed in ecstasy. The chair tipped forward, the legs hitting the floor with a thud.

“No, it's…good,” he said, his breath almost panting. “God, is it good. Too good. Untie me.”

She just smiled, running the tip of her tongue over her lower lip. His eyes fixed on it, and his erection bobbed. “I like having you at my pleasure. I may not untie you until tomorrow.”

His jaw hardened. Angelique got to her feet and circled him, running her fingertips up his biceps and over his shoulder. At the nape of his neck she dug her fingers into his hair and pulled, tugging his head back until she could see his face. He met her gaze evenly. “Let me touch you.”

“No,” she replied. “But I shall touch you.”

“Then do it.” It was almost a plea—almost, but not quite. She took her time strolling around to stand in front of him once more. This really was intoxicating. She stepped up and straddled his lap, curling her toes around the rungs of the chair to keep her weight balanced above him and bracing her hands on his shoulders. Slowly she lowered herself until his erection brushed the dark curls between her legs. In spite of her desire to remain in control, that contact sent sparks across her skin. She rocked back and forth, rubbing her sex against his; his shoulders tensed and strained beneath her hands as she clung to him, sliding up and down him, losing a little bit more of her composure with every pass of his erection against her center. Nate whispered dark, guttural encouragement, daring her to move faster, taunting her to tilt her hips just a little and ride him properly, promising to pay her back for this exquisite torture.

Abruptly she abandoned her desire to drive him mad. His words, his expression, the heat of his skin against hers…it was too much for a woman to withstand. She was torturing herself at least as much as
she was him. She slipped one hand down her belly to touch herself, just once, then let her legs fall open wider. She sank down on a slow slide, taking him inside her.

With a harsh exhalation, he swept his hands up her back to cup her shoulders and pull her down, hard, at the same moment his hips bucked upward. The unexpected pressure caught her off guard; she cried out as he filled her completely. Before she had recovered, he was lifting her to do it again, and this time she could barely breathe as he thrust into her. The next time she was ready, though, and moved with him. The chair legs banged on the floor as the chair rocked back and forth under their urgency. Angelique had been on edge already, and this was too much. Without much warning her inner muscles clenched and she came with a shuddering sob. Nate growled, gripping her shoulders almost painfully hard as his hips jerked up twice more before he stiffened in his own completion.

Not until she was draped over him, feeling boneless and tingling with warmth, did she realize something. “I tied your hands,” she muttered.

Nate's arms were still locked around her. He turned his head and kissed her forehead where it lay on his shoulder. His skin was dewed with perspiration and his heart thundered beneath her cheek. “Someday I'll show you how to tie a sailor so he can't get free…but not tonight.” Her rope, still knotted around one of his wrists, trailed down her spine as he stroked her hair, and Angelique smiled in spite of herself.

“You were not at my mercy, then. We must start all over again.”

“Christ, no,” Nate said with feeling. “I was completely helpless. Powerless to resist you; like clay in your hands. If you start over, I shall lose consciousness on the spot. I didn't promise to allow that.”

“You said I could do what I wished with you.”

“Oh dear.” His breath warmed her cheek; he was laughing at her, the scoundrel. “Was that not what you wished to happen?”

“No,” she said tranquilly. Now was not a moment to argue. “But it was near enough.”

He chuckled, then rose to his feet, holding her bottom securely in his hands even when she squeaked in alarm and threw her arms around his neck. The chair clattered to the floor behind him as he strode toward the bed. “I shall try to do better, Madame,” he told her, pressing her back onto the mattress while keeping her legs around his hips. “But not tied to a chair. You may guide my hands as you wish”—he cupped her breast with a suggestive look, flicking her nipple with his thumb—“but I'll be damned if you're going to tie me up again.”

He was still inside her. She could feel him growing hard again. Angelique squeezed her intimate muscles around him, meeting his gaze with pure challenge, and he caught his breath. His eyes half closed as she did it again, and then he focused on her face.

“You minx,” he muttered. “As if you need a rope to hold me prisoner.” He began moving his hips, just a gentle movement, but enough to make her gasp and squirm as he slid through her still-swollen flesh.

He held her there, moving in her with maddening lack of urgency. His hands covered every inch of her, with skill and devotion until she was almost
sobbing from the sensations. As the tension knotted tighter in her belly and she writhed toward release, she found herself begging. “Please,” she gasped, trying to raise her hips to meet his harder and faster. “Please, Nate…”

“Command me,” he rasped, maintaining his infuriatingly slow rhythm.

“Harder,” she gasped. Obligingly he drove into her harder, making her back arch off the bed. Angelique threw back her head and cupped her own breasts, her breath burning her throat. “Touch me,” she said, her voice almost drowned by the squeak of the bed ropes. His fingers plunged into the slick, wet folds at the top of her thighs, circling and pressing on that brilliantly sensitive nub of flesh, and she almost expired; if she'd had any breath at all left in her body, she would have screamed.

“Do you cede to me?” Agonizingly, he slowed almost to a stop. Her eyes flew open and she cursed violently in French, that he could do this to her, bring her to this razor-sharp edge of pleasure and then
stop
—“Do you cede?” he demanded again.

Mutely, she nodded. Anything, to make him continue. His teeth flashed for a second in a primitive grin, then he pulled away. With a quick yank, he flipped her over onto her stomach, leaving her half on the bed, her bottom in the air and her toes touching the floor. He pressed first one foot, then the other, between her feet, sliding them apart. He splayed one hand across her lower back, and with the other guided himself back into her. With her hips angled down, he drove hard into her, seeming to rake across something raw inside her, behind her belly. At the same time he reached beneath her and
stroked her hard, in time with his increasingly powerful strokes. She gave in at once; there was no denying his mastery of her body. She bowed her head and let the climax overtake her, rolling through her in waves that made her writhe and shake. Nate's fingers dug into her hips, holding her to him as she convulsed, and then he gave a low growling cry and pulsed within her.