Corset Diaries

by Katie MacAlister

  He grinned and started toward the bathroom. “What?”

  “You grunted! I heard you! That was definitely a picking up a heavy object grunt.”

  “No, that was a I’m in a bad way sexually and can’t wait to bury myself in you grunt.”

  “Oh, right. Do I look like I just fell off the stupid wagon? Put me down.”

  He walked through the bathroom, into his bedroom beyond, pausing to kick the door closed behind him. “Why?”

  “Because you challenged me to a duel. Duelists do not haul each other around. Put me down so we can count off ten paces.”

  “My sort of duel requires you to be much closer than ten paces,” he said as he deposited me onto the biggest bed I’d ever seen. I don’t know how I missed noticing it before; it was roughly the size of Rhode Island.

  “Good lord!” I gasped, looking up at a blue-and-gold embroidered canopy. “This thing is monstrous.”

  “It is, isn’t it? It does, however, have one benefit.”

  I dragged my eyes off the canopy to look at Max. “What’s that?”

  He slipped out of his dressing gown, his skin a lovely bronze in the diffused light of the oil lamps. “It has you.”

  My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth at the sight of him.

  “You, sir, are absolutely gorgeous.” I got onto my knees. “Look at you! Just look at you! You were nice before when you were taking a bath, but now you’re even better. My lord, Max, you’re perfectly formed! Abso-bloody-lutely perfect!”

  He made an embarrassed little face and started toward me until I held up a hand. “No, stop. I want to look at you.”

  He humored me. What a sweetie—was it any wonder I was enamored with him?

  “You’ve got nice feet,” I said, figuring I’d start at the bottom and work up. “Big, but nice. And I like your legs, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You don’t have turkey legs, like so many men have, you have nice legs, really defined muscles in your calves. Do you run?”

  “Swim. Five miles every morning.”

  “Ah. That would explain your thighs, too. I mean, those are not the thighs of your average architect; those are thighs that get out and do things. You have lovely, lovely thigh contours, Max.”

  “That’s nice of you to say so.”

  I dragged my eyes up from the bulge of his thigh muscles to a bulge of a different sort. He was hot and hard and ready for action. “I’ve already admired your penis, but I’ll be happy to do it again. Do you have a pet name for it?”

  “Er . . . no. Should I?”

  “No, it’s not necessary. It’s just that some guys do. I just wondered.”

  He cleared his throat and said with great deliberation, “Tessa, I can honestly say that I don’t care what you call it, just so long as you hurry up and finish this damned examination, because I’m about at the end of my tether. I don’t know how much more of this I can stand without pouncing on you.”

  “Really? How very flattering. Moving on . . . You have a lovely stomach, Max, you really do, but I have a complaint.”

  Max looked down at his stomach. It rippled with muscles. “What?”

  “You need a little softness there. You need a little belly. I’ve always had a thing for men with a belly.”

  He unfisted one of his hands long enough to run his fingers through his hair. “You want me to have a belly?”

  “Yeah, just a little one, just a tiny one. Just a teensy, tiny little itty-bitty belly. Not a beer belly, just a little smoodge of softness there. It would melt me completely. What do you think?”

  He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “I’ll see what I can do. Are you done? Is it my turn now?”

  “No. Your chest. . . Well, Max, your chest is the chest of a god. It’s lovely, all bulgy with muscles without being too muscley, if you know what I mean, and I really like that you’re not obscenely covered with chest hair, and yet you have enough to keep you from looking like a skinned Chihuahua. And you have sexy nipples.”

  “I’m glad you think so. Tessa, could you hurry this up? I really can’t stand much more of it.”

  “Almost done. Turn around, please.”

  “What?” His eyes, which I admit were starting to show more than a hint of desperation, were wide with disbelief.

  “Turn around, I want to see the back of you. Oh, never mind,” I said, climbing off the bed, my lacy silk nightgown swirling after me. “You don’t have to move, I’ll just go around behind you to see—whoa, Nelly! Hoo!”

  “What?” Max tried to look over his shoulder. “What are you hooing at?”

  “You have the nicest butt! It’s just absolutely adorable! I love the swoopy indentations on either side. Wow. Fabulous butt muscles. Do you have to do a special exercise to get them? I just want to bite it all over.”

  “No,” Max said firmly, turning around and picking me up again. Three long strides and he was at the bed. “I’m first. I get to bite first. You’ve had your turn; now it’s mine.”

  His hand slid up my calf as he set me down on the bed, pushing the frothy nightgown confection up before him.

  “Um. Maybe this would be better if I stood up.”

  Max, climbing on the bed to straddle my legs, looked down at me. “I can assure you it will be much better in bed, my fabulous butt muscles notwithstanding.”

  “No, I wasn’t talking about that, I was talking about this. Foreplay. I think it’s better if I stand.”

  He lifted my foot to his shoulder and began kissing my ankle, dipping his tongue into the little hollows around my anklebone. “Why?”

  “Because I look fatter lying down.” He stopped laving my ankle long enough to look at me. I fluttered a hand around my torso. “Lying down, everything smooshes out to the side and makes me look broader. I don’t want you to see me all smooshed.”

  He blinked. “Would you like me to turn out the lamps?”

  I gnawed on my lip for a moment, my heart warmed by such a generous gesture. Tempted though I was to say yes, I had to admit that I wanted to see him, all of him, every glorious inch. “No. But promise me you won’t hold my smooshedness against me.”

  “I promise,” he said solemnly, then kissed a trail up my calf to my knee, pausing to repeat the process on my other leg.

  “Thank you.”

  “The only thing I plan on holding against you . . .” He shot me a look that could have melted glass. “. . . is me.”

  “Oh, yes, please!” I breathed, then my eyes rolled up in my head and I fell back into the featherbed mattress, all soft and gooshy beneath me, with Max all hot and hard above me. His mouth and hands on my flesh were a feast of sensation sending little tendrils of fire up my thighs, tendrils that erupted into an inferno as he kissed a line up one thigh, the silky brush of his hair against my sensitive skin sending shivers down my back.

  “You, my fair duchess, are not wearing your drawers,” Max said as he pushed my nightgown up to the top of my thighs. I stiffened for a minute, a stab of doubt dimming my pleasure, but I forced myself to relax. It was time, I was committed to this, I wanted it, and if he was repulsed by me . . . well, so be it. I’d die of humiliation, but so be it.

  “I’ve seen you before,” he mumbled against my thigh as he kissed higher, pushing the nightgown up over my hips. He avoided the part of me that was just about doing back flips to get his attention and kissed a hot, wet trail along the curve of my hip. I shivered again, my nipples tightening in anticipation as he nipped a side path across my belly.

  “I know, but it wasn’t like this.”

  He tickled my belly-button with his tongue, then looked up.

  “Now there’s something else at stake than just sex,” he said—a statement, not a question. My heart did a happy little flutter that he understood me so well.

  “Exactly.”

  He scooted up, capturing my thighs between his knees, his head dipped low to lick a path to my breasts.

  “This has to go,” he said, tugging the nightg
own over my head.

  Once it was off, I tightened my arms alongside my body.

  “You see, this is a perfect example of what I was talking about,” I said, a bit breathlessly to be truthful, as he nibbled a line up my breastbone. “If I weren’t flat on my back, my boobs would be just where they should be, arranged in the traditional breast layout on my chest, but lying like this they’ve swooshed to either side. Any day now I’m going to wake up and they’ll be in my armpits.”

  Max laughed and leaned forward over me. I wrapped my arms around him and tried to pull him down, but he resisted.

  “Don’t move.”

  “I just want to feel you—”

  “No. You made me stand there and let you look at me with that deliciously wicked glint to your eyes. Now it’s my turn.”

  “But you’re touching me,” I gasped, my back arching as his mouth found the underside of my left breast. I clutched the bedspread beneath me to keep from grabbing his head.

  “You could have been touching me if you’d wanted to.” He sucked an ever shrinking circle around my breast.

  “I want to now,” I shrieked as his teeth closed very gently over my nipple. “I want to rub myself all over you! I want to touch you and taste you and feel every bit of you. Oh, god, Max, I’m going to die if you don’t do the other breast.”

  He lifted his head and smiled at me with wicked delight, then lowered himself slowly so that he was propped up on his elbows, his chest hair teasing my now perky breasts. His legs clamped my thighs together as he rubbed himself lightly along me from groin to shoulder, raining hot kisses along the side of my neck. I bucked beneath him, my arms trapped next to my body, unable to move except to arch myself against him.

  “Max?”

  “Mmmrf?”

  His teeth scraped along the spot beneath my ear, until my body was as tight as a drawn bow.

  “If you’re not inside me in five seconds, I’m going to spontaneously combust and then you’ll have to explain my charcoaled corpse to Roger.”

  He sucked hard on the shivery spot on my neck, then lifted his head, his eyes a brilliant blue. “I love a woman who gets demanding with me.”

  I bit his lip. “NOW!”

  He chuckled a chuckle that I felt all the way to my toenails and shifted, sliding a hand between my thighs, pushing them apart. I skimmed my newly released hands up his arms, over the muscled shoulders and down the wonderful planes of his strong back, digging my fingers into the firm muscle of his rear as he settled between my legs.

  He flexed the muscles beneath my hands and grinned when I laughed with the sheer joy of the moment, capturing most of my laugh in his mouth when he bent down for a kiss. His tongue was just as hot as the rest of him, swooping in to dance around mine, tasting me, letting me taste him, a wonderful, wild erotic dance that matched the movement of his body as he slid forward, his hardness pressing against me, parting me, pushing himself into my tingling core.

  “Oh, hell!” I said into his mouth, and pushed back on his shoulders.

  His eyes were wild. “What?”

  “Condom!”

  He stared down at me for at least ten seconds, the very tip of him still sitting snugly inside of me, my muscles cramping with the need to wrap themselves around his hot, hard length.

  He swore.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, almost sobbing with need and desire and frustration. “I’m not on any birth control because . . . well, because I didn’t think I’d need to be. I don’t suppose you’ve been snipped?”

  He just looked at me.

  “Vasectomy?” I clarified.

  “No.” Slowly he edged out of me, then rolled off me to lie on his back, his chest heaving.

  “I’m sorry, Max. You don’t have any condoms?”

  “No,” he said again, his voice hoarse.

  A tear leaked out of my eye. “I don’t have any either. If I did I’d get them, but I don’t—”

  He shot up off the bed suddenly, diving for the dressing gown he had stripped off a few minutes before. “Stay there. I think I know where to get some.”

  He stopped at the door, looked at me oddly for a moment, then came back and kissed me. Hard. “Don’t move a muscle. Not one single muscle.”

  “OK,” I said, more than a little stunned by the heat clearly visible in his eyes. I smiled at the door as he left, stretching like a cat, digging my toes into the bedspread, burying my head into the pillow. It smelled like Max, all spicy and male and Maxish. Soon I was going to smell like Max. Well, parts of me were.

  I frowned into the pillow and sat up, looking down at the parts in question.

  “What if he doesn’t find any condoms?” I asked my crotch. It was horrified at such a suggestion, and urged me in no uncertain terms to make sure that there were condoms a-plenty, because it had plans for Max that called for his parts to come visiting often.

  “I’ll settle for one to start,” I said grimly, climbing out of bed to get my nightgown. I pulled it over my head, grabbed a night candle and lit it from one of the oil lamps, and hurried out of Max’s room, my hand in front of the candle to keep it from blowing out. I hesitated at the stairs, trying to remember where everyone’s rooms were. Max, I was certain, would have gone downstairs to where the footmen slept, figuring that Bret, at least, was sure to have a gross of condoms lying around.

  I turned and raced back down the dark hallway I’d just come from, turning right at the end and continuing down a shorter passage to the back stairs that led up to the attics, where the maids slept.

  “I feel like something out of Victoria Holt,” I grumbled as I caught my image reflected in an uncurtained window, a white-clad, ghostly figure darting through the dark shadows of the hallway. “If a dog starts howling, I’m going back to my room.”

  I hurried barefoot up the uncarpeted back stairs, stumbling over my nightgown at the top step.

  “Damn,” I swore softly, the candle having fallen and gone out when I tripped. I didn’t stop to bemoan the situation; I didn’t have the time. I wanted to find a condom and make it back down to Max’s room before he came back. I didn’t want to risk having him there with his motor all revved up and me nowhere to be found.

  The window at the far end of the hallway was unshuttered, allowing a faint haze of moonlight to drift in. It was enough to let me see the dark shapes of the doors.

  “Let’s see. . . . Alice has a room to herself at the far end, I think. Or is it this end? No, it’s the other end. Which means that Mrs. Peters and Cook are in the middle, then the two housemaids together, so that means this room should be the scullery girls‘.”

  I leaned my ear close to the door and tapped softly on it, hating to disturb them if they were sound asleep. A giggle met my knock.

  “It’s just me. Tessa,” I said, then opened the door and peeked in. “I’m sorry to bother you guys, but I just wanted to know if you had any condoms you could spare—oh. Hi, Sam. Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Tessa?” Alice pulled the covers up over her chest as Sam rolled off her, grabbing for the blanket to cover his lower parts. Her eyes were big in the dim lamplight.

  “Hi, Alice. I’m really sorry, I thought your room was at the other end, but I must have gotten them mixed up. I wouldn’t have disturbed you for the world—not that I knew Sam was with you to be disturbed. I just wouldn’t . . . have . . . um . . . oh, blast. Never mind. Just go back to what you were doing.”

  I started to close the door.

  “Tessa?”

  I peeked around the edge of the door.

  Sam reached down to the ground, then sat up, tossing something that flashed silver in the light. I caught the condom package and saluted him with it. “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver. By the way, Alice, your fake leg is very cool.”

  She looked from me over to where her prosthetic leg was leaning against the chair. “Thank you.”

  “Night!”

  I closed the door and felt my way down the hall, stopping briefly to swear at my stupidi
ty. I could have lit my candle on their lamp. Oh, well, the condom was all that mattered. I clutched it to my chest and edged down the hall to the stairs, taking them slowly, feeling for each step with my bare toes.

  The windows on the floor the family slept on were shuttered and dark, no moonlight at all coming in. Palmer must have roused himself out of his drunken stupor enough to put out all the house lights, because there were none lit in the hallway. It was black, blacker than black, a veritable black hole of blackness in that hallway. I had a nasty suspicion that the pounding of my heart had nothing to do with the arousal Max had generated, and everything to do with the age-old fear of things that couldn’t be seen.

  I remembered with sudden clarity everything Mrs. Peters had said about the house being haunted, and stood shivering for a moment at the end of the hall. Only the thought of Max could get me to walk blind into that abyss, but walk into it I did. I took a deep breath and, with the condom clutched firmly in one hand, the other outstretched to warn me of any of the chairs or tables that lined the hallway, I headed down to where Max’s room was, counting as I passed them the faint black outlines that were all that was visible of the doors. Just as I tiptoed past the shared bathroom and was almost to Max’s room, my hand brushed against something soft and warm, something that froze at my touch.

  I blinked in the inky blackness, visions of American-hating, vengeful ghosts rising before me as I reached out with a shaking hand to determine if I’d gone too far and come up against the beautiful upholstered chair that sat beyond Max’s room.

  My hand touched flesh—cold, icy lifeless flesh.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!” I shrieked, and threw myself backward, away from the ghostly thing that guarded Max’s door.

  It shrieked right back at me, a parody of my high-pitched, horrified sound. I stumbled backward, running into a half-moon table that hugged the wall.

  “Dammit!” I swore as both the table and I tumbled to the ground.

  “Tessa?”

  The word came soft and breathless out of the darkness, making my blood run cold as I struggled to extricate myself from the yards of silk that wound around my legs. It knew my name! Oh, God, the ghost knew who I was!