by Thea Devine
"In some quarters, my lady, that would be more than enough."
But Corinna knew that, though she still couldn't see a one among those currently to hand who would make a suitable wife for Simon. However, not every blooming virgin was yet in town.
Meantime, she had hoped to see Simon at the next succeeding event, an evening of music at the home of Lord and Lady Luscombe. Here too it was as much a crush as everywhere else in the high-ceilinged ballroom, but this night, only the lightest refreshment was to be served. The guests were led to chairs set out in symmetrical rows, and servants discreetly brought drinks as commanded before and during the performance.
It was one of Corinna's favorite entertainments because she did not have to make small talk, or be involved with anyone she didn't wish to. It was an opportunity to be seen, to be kind and courteous, to renew old acquaintances still further, or—if she chose—to not talk to anyone extensively at all.
But above all, she had thought it would be the next time she would see Simon, and that did not prove to be the case.
The depth of her disappointment shocked her, and she tried to shake it off. It was too soon to feel this urgency, and especially after only one kiss. It was too much to want it this keenly, this acutely. It felt almost painful, and yet, it hadn't been but a day or two since she had seen him.
Kissed him.
No, since he had agreed to…
What exactly had he agreed to?
To be willing…
She caught her breath. Willing—
She looked around at the flower girls as everyone milled in the reception room at the end of the performance. Who among them was willing? Who among them could stand toe to toe with any of the lofty bachelors on the prowl this season?
She could have done, had she not pursued Woodholme with such single-mindedness. She could have been among them, all those years ago, showing them how, and leading the way.
No pretensions now. Or ever. She had always gone after what she wanted, and what she wanted was Simon, right now, and he was nowhere around.
She bowed and spoke to a dozen people as she made her way to her hosts to relay her appreciation for the evening; and by the time she got to the door, her carriage was already in front of the townhouse.
She climbed in dispiritedly; the footman closed the door, enveloping her in a surprising darkness, and she was summarily pulled down onto the seat and her hands tied behind her with rapid expertise as a disembodied voice whispered in her ear. "Shhhh, my lady—shhhh. There is nothing to fear…"
Simon? Her heart started pounding wildly as she put up a vain little struggle against his strength. A moment later, those same expert hands wound a blindfold over her eyes, and then turned her toward him, wound his arms around her, and pulled her up hard against his body.
"Who are you?" she breathed, all-consumed with a combination of uncertainty and excitement, helplessness and potency, because he had come, and her desire and his willingness were powerful enough to make him come.
She could feel his heart pounding, feel the radiating heat of his body, his broad chest against which she lay.
"Call me… call me your shadow lover, my lady. During the day, I am a proper man seeking a proper wife, but by night, I am your lover in the shadows, dominating your body, demanding your sex, where no one can see…" He crushed his mouth on hers, ravaging hers with his tongue, seeking, sliding, boring into the wet heat of her, and then pulling away to whisper against her lips: "I will always take you in darkness. You will never know when I will come. But I will come… and I promise you will come—if you can accept those terms."
Could she? A lover in the shadows whom no one would ever know. Their every encounter in the darkness with her bound and open to him, her sex a siren call to his mastery of her body? Had she bargained for this when she had enticed him into willingness? This suddenly had become a level of sensuality that was terrifying and galvanizing all at the same time. So easy to be seduced by it. She wanted to willingly submit to it.
His lips and tongue were even now making a trail of hot wet persuasion across her lips and on her tongue, cajoling her, seducing her, sucking her in.
The utter mystery of the dark enfolding her, binding her, so that what he willed became her desire to feel, to experience, to know.
Was she willing? Her senses, whipped to a frenzy just by this one dark encounter, clamored for more. Her body shuddered with anticipation, her every nerve ending quivering, seeking, needing him to touch, stroke, fondle, anywhere, any part of her body that he wanted.
And every part of her was clothed, bound, constrained.
She could barely swallow, barely say a word, she was so aroused by just his words and her own helplessness against his potent strength.
"That was what you wanted, wasn't it, my lady?" He swiped her lips again with his tongue. "A lover in the shadows to fill you up with his manhood and his seed? One you don't have to see, or be attached to, or even speak to—just a willing body and a hard penis, isn't that just what my lady needs?" He nipped her lower lip. "Thus my lady's shadow lover is born, of a wish, a whim and a willingness…" He kissed her then, that crushing, consuming kiss. "… to lie down in the darkness with the need and the lust—"
"Yessss…" it was barely a breath against his ravaging lips. "Yes. Yes. Yes. I want more …" In the darkness. The voluptuous anticipation, the not knowing where and how he would touch her, kiss her, feel her. If he would caress her and arouse her. If he felt the same uncontrollable lust for her as she felt at this moment on the precipice…
He was a stranger this night, she knew him not, and it was well that she would surrender her body to this dark stranger whose kisses made her body feel boneless, made her soaking wet with need, and whose hot probing tongue right now was her whole sensual world.
She was not aware of the carriage movement, or of time passing, only his insistent hot tongue and the darkness and his heat, and suddenly, suddenly, his hand slipping beneath her cloak, cupping her breast. And then he was sliding that hand up to her gauzy neckline, and tearing the fragile material, so he could slip his hand into her bodice and masterfully surround her hard peaking nipple with his two fingers.
Everything in her body liquefied as she felt him squeeze her nipple—she surrendered to the darkness, the kiss, and his expert fondling of her nipple as the carriage drove on and on and he drove her on and on with his insistent fingers and his hot tongue, and he succumbed to the dark lure of her sex and her power, even as she yielded her naked nipple to him.
In the dark and bound by him and to him, her shadow lover, she took his terms, took his lust and his desire, and bound him thereby to her.
And so they lay, his fingers playing with her nipple, his tongue idly playing with hers, as the carriage meandered through the dark endless streets and finally drew up to her townhouse.
She was wet, hot, swollen with need. "Come in with me."
"No, my lady. On this I am adamant—your shadow lover can never be seen. Nor can you be seen bound and blindfolded by your lust and my desire. No, my lady, this is solely and only for us, in the darkness, in the shadows… Next time, my lady. Until next time—"
She felt him ease away from her, felt as bereft as if he had been torn from her body, felt the bonds around her wrists loosening to her dismay; she ripped them off in a frenzy, and then her blindfold.
But, as quick as she was, she was too late—somehow, like a shadow, he had merged with the darkness and slipped into the night.
The hunger to have him again raged in her like a fever. Never in her wildest imagination had she pictured such a scenario: herself bound and blindfolded and at his mercy in the dark. And yet, she felt the power of such a subversion as well. Her will drove his desire, and her submission to his need was the prize.
She knew she need only say no, and the thing would be over. And that just escalated her excitement that much more. She never thought to experience such a voluptuous response, such a wildfire of need; she had never wanted an
yone more.
Until next time . . .
But only he knew when next time would be. That was the game. And her part was to feast on the memory of his words, his kisses, and his fingers on her breast. On the unfurling of her body, and feelings long suppressed, glorying in the luxury of her sex.
From this, it could only be barely a step into her bed. Into the lust and heat and nakedness of his possession of her. The pure yearning for it made her aching and hot with longing.
She couldn't catch her breath for thinking of it. She wanted him in her bed, now. No one had ever made her this lustrous and wet and squirming with desire.
For one unseemly moment, she wished she were a man, she wished she could roam the streets, choose a body and fuck whom she would.
But that would be such a quick release, over and done in a breath. Nothing like this heart-pounding need, this lush, languid, breathless yearning, this fantasy-crazed imagining of what would happen, how it would be.
She knew some of it already. It would be in the dark. She would be unable to see, blindfolded, perhaps; bound, maybe, and all that by her leave for her pleasure… with her body taut and tight waiting for that first invasive caress that would send her spiraling out of control.
She felt out of control already thinking about it, her body taut and quivery with the rending craving for it, and in her mind, always suspended in that voluptuous moment before submission.
Dear heaven… next time.
She must wait until next time.
Whenever next time would be…
Difficult to get through the day now, with the thought of next time flirting on the edge of her consciousness like sin. She felt like stripping away her dresses and waiting, naked and vibrating, every impediment removed, just to be ready for him, available to him.
But then, she would be in daylight, and he had made it very clear: their assignations must always be in the dark.
Who had devised these terms?
She almost couldn't bear to leave the townhouse. But the daylight hours were for living her daily social life; the night alone was for her descent into unbridled lust.
She had never reckoned on that. Or her flaming response. She had thought it would be a neat coupling. He would come to her, he would kiss her and come to her bed, he would perform on her with a smooth elegance, and leave her in the morning.
But this—this opulent loss of every impulse, this velvety desire to be sucked into his lust… oh, this was something wholly stunning—and on some level, wholly known, and too real, as if it had always been close to the surface, and she had never chosen to acknowledge that part of her.
This was a greedy carnality that fed on itself and was devouring her in the process.
She needed for it to be next time.
She slept now in the sheerest of nightgowns, made of fine lawn, and utterly transparent. He could tear it off. He could burrow beneath.
He would come. Every night, she dreamt he was in the shadows, watching her in her sleep, as consumed as she with the hunger for possession.
The waiting was intolerable. And yet, she could do nothing else.
Until she was awakened one night to find her arms spread apart and bound in slings, her eyes covered once again, and the sense of the presence of her shadow lover at the foot of her bed.
"My lady…" his voice was low, and throbbing with that ineffable male lust.
"You have been a shadow truly," she whispered, deep in the dark of her imagination as she felt him climb on the bed and straddle her legs. "Nowhere could I grasp you."
"You feel me now—" He ran both hands up either leg, pushing her nightgown up toward her thighs, and then stroking her with long cupping movements all over her legs.
And so he was taking her, quick, fast, no preliminaries--she didn't care. She writhed, she moaned, she canted her hips in invitation for him to caress her bottom. She felt succulent, pliant, thick as clotted cream as he moved his hands all over her legs and closer and closer to the prime point of her body.
His hands were relentless, every which way she turned and wriggled, his hands were there, sliding all over her, hot, provoking, pushing her legs further apart as he caressed them, and stroked the outer lips of her cunt.
Keeping her hands away, her shadow lover in the dark, as his hands came closer and closer to the pleasure point.
And then, she twisted her hips one way, and her torso the opposite way, and suddenly, he penetrated her, his fingers deep in the hot satin between her legs and crease.
She almost drowned in the sumptuous surge of pleasure from feeling his fingers inside her. Her body went tight, taut, stretched to accommodate him, easing his way into her secrets in the dark.
And he rode her this way, twisting his fingers deep inside her, pushing and probing her darkness, her pleasure, her holes. And she didn't stop him; she could have pulled her arms out of the slings, she could have embraced him, but instead she embraced the violent pleasure of his invasive fingers exploring the depths of the most private parts of her.
She rode his fingers, sinking deep into the lavish darkness of this lustrous sensual ravishment, her hips undulating urgently as she sought the hardness of his fingers and the depth of his penetration.
In the dark. Everything was heightened by the dark and his total possession of her nakedness. She wanted him to root there forever, just like that, deep, dark, hard, twisting, moving, stroking, both ways. It was like a wave, rippling front to back, rising and falling, dark plummy waves of pure creamy pleasure, clotting one sensation on another until she almost could not bear the feeling.
And then it broke, thick, luscious, whipped high and hard against his finger, deep in the dark pleasurable places between her legs.
And even then she still rocked against him, draining every last feeling from her body. "More…" she whispered.
"How hungry is my lady?"
"As hungry as a shadow. No substance. Must ever be fed."
"Your shadow lover can provide you with the sustenance you crave, my lady."
"Then I must have it."
"And I will give it to you—when your way is eased."
She heaved up her body so that his hold on her slackened. "I have eased your way. I want it now."
"As you wish, my lady." He stripped away his trousers and positioned himself so she could take his penis easily in her mouth. "And now my lady…"
"This is no shadow," she murmured, as he rubbed himself against her face, and slowly inched his bulbous head between her lips. Oh yes, this. It aroused her all over again, to feel him like this, in the dark. Just the tip of his penis, so thick and pliant, luscious… "Ummm… thick…" She enclosed the tip with her mouth and began sucking eagerly…
He drowned in the wave of her sensual sucking—it would not take long, not with her lapping tongue rolling all around his shaft, as if she were feeling every inch of him; not with her rhythmic sucking on the very pleasure point of his being.
This was a Corinna he never could have conceived of—a sensual creature of the night, already opened, alluring, naked, willing, yearning for him . . . and he was gone—
Gone—over the edge and into the lust of the sensual sounds as she pulled and sucked the cream out of him, a blast of pure wanton culmination that spewed into her mouth and down her neck, to pool sticky and thick between her breasts—pulsing, throbbing, ejaculating every last drop…
Gone …
"Simon… ?" But she knew—her shadow lover was no longer in the room, leaving her on the skirling edge of pleasure, and covered in his cream.
And yet, later—he wondered. She was so well schooled, Corinna. So easily aroused and brought to point. Positively panting to live in his dark fantasy of lust. Well versed in the obverse ways of obtaining pleasure. Begging for his sex.
He hadn't expected to have such a hard time merging the old Corinna of his dreams with the new.
But it wasn't as if she had come upon this carnal knowledge out of the blue. There had been the earl. Not a ma
n to brook foolish virgins.
Corinna had caught his eye—deliberately, one might say and it was over. He was not a man, at his age, to be denied. He would have wanted to savor every last inch of her silky body. He would have taken her as he would, teaching her to please him, in all the ways a man might invent.
She could not have been in love with him. That Corinna had known nothing about love. But two years under the earl's tutelage—who knew what preferences the earl might have had? Who knew what Corinna had done to accommodate him?
It was not for him to speculate. Two years of marriage with a lusty older man could yield a world of experience that Simon had yet to imagine.
To say nothing of other lovers Corinna might have had.
The feckless Corinna he had loved as a boy existed no longer. She was a woman now, with all the passion and lust that a woman should desire, and last night had been a voluptuous surprise that he was not over yet, even while he was ruminating over the nature of her experience.
But to dwell on that was suicidal. It was enough to be her shadow lover, which was all she wanted him to be.
Until, of course, he found a wife…
Chapter Six
Now he knew everything, he knew her weakness and her desire, and every part of her body that was open to him, he knew.
Corinna stared at her reflection in the mirror the next morning and wondered if she looked any different. It didn't seem to her that there was a change, but deep inside, in all the secret pleasurable places he had touched her body, she knew there was.
She rubbed her chest where he had spilled his seed. Her skin felt softer, did it not? She was softer, like tallow—thick and malleable with this burgeoning lust she couldn't seem to contain.
She had taken a lover and given him everything, in the dark, and she was melting for him already between her legs not hours after he finger-fucked her so thoroughly.
What kind of woman was she?
The kind of woman who had a lover and no commitments, no constraints, and utter sensual freedom. The kind of woman she had long ago determined she would be.
