Pure Sin

by Susan Johnson

  A second passed, then two, and he lifted his hand to motion her forward. “Come,” he said.

  He could not.

  She slipped off the bed, obeying his curt command for heated, complex reasons that had to do with their extended separation, Adam Serre’s flagrant virility, and her own passionate lust. But as she walked toward him, the length of the large bedroom seemed endless—an infinity of Axminster carpet under his frowning scrutiny. With every step she felt her breasts sway under the fine silk, the level of tension rising with each conspicuous swing.

  “It’s obvious you’re naked and bouncing under that blouse.” His voice was gruff with displeasure.

  “I didn’t wear it intentionally.” She stopped a short distance from him, trying to gauge the extent of his moodiness.

  “James must have been pleased.” A glowering rebuff, replete with unspoken stricture.

  “He didn’t mention it.” Her voice was reasonable.

  He seemed not to have heard her as he shrugged out of his jacket, taking the time to remove the four deuces from his pocket before tossing the coat across a nearby table. Leaning back in the chair, he idly held the cards between the index and middle finger of his right hand and, lifting them slightly in her direction, said, “Have you played this particular game before—giving yourself away at the poker table? Or knowing you, perhaps it’s a naive question.”

  “I’ve never understood your sense of possession.” She refused to give him the satisfaction of the truth. He didn’t own her past. That he was the only recipient of such a wager was none of his business.

  He tossed the cards onto the table with a small sigh. “That makes two of us. Forgive the tantrum. I respond to you”—he shrugged away his unease—“with a curious barbarism.” He smiled suddenly, a seductive smile of enormous charm and appeal. “But as long as you’re standing there …” He settled back in the green velvet chair, stretched his legs out in a comfortable sprawl, and gazed at her from under the heavy dark fringe of his lashes. “Why not undress for me?”

  She responded to his enticing smile with a mischievous lift of her brows. “If you promise not to scowl.”

  “A deal,” he replied with a grin. “Is that better?”

  “Infinitely,” she answered, her own smile luscious. “Now, pay attention, Monsieur le Comte,” she huskily murmured, and kicking off her low boots, she reached for the top button on her blouse.

  Adam laughed. “As if any man with a heartbeat could look away.”

  “I’ll consider that a compliment,” she said, her voice playful, her fingers deftly loosening the second button.

  “By all means. Did I mention I find outspoken females with auburn hair and a penchant for Absarokee culture particularly enticing?”

  “Good,” she sportively replied, slipping another button loose, “because you’ve always been a special favorite of mine.” She realized immediately she’d uttered the words he was going to take issue with, so as his expression darkened, she offered him a coquettish, mitigating smile and hastily added, “You promised not to scowl.”

  Shifting slightly lower on his spine, his eyes bold, ravishing her with a studied nonchalance, he leisurely crossed his legs. “You’re absolutely right,” he said with soft deliberation. “I’m to be on my best behavior.”

  “Can you do it?”

  He smiled at the unintentional double entendre. “I’ll certainly try. You can grade me,” he impudently added, “at the end of the forty-eight hours.…”

  “And you usually score well, I assume,” she replied with a matching impertinence, her fingers sliding the last button free. “How nice for me.…” She tugged the blouse out of the skirt waistband, slid it from her shoulders and down her arms. As the turquoise silk slipped over her fingers and fell in a shimmering puddle on the dark carpet, she softly murmured, “Do you like what you see?”

  She was bare to the waist, her breasts immense, provocative. Like a pale Earth Goddess, bounty to all men. But his alone tonight, Adam thought with a strange, intoxicating violence, and tomorrow, and another day and night as well. He flexed his fingers, the impulse to sink them into her great cushiony breasts powerful. “Touch your nipples,” he lazily said, his voice trenchant in its authority despite its dulcet tone.

  A thrill blazed through her at the dispassionate command, the quiet words like a fiat. Her nipples were already gorged, her body feverish for his touch, his compelling charge tantalizing in its authority. When she gripped her nipples even the first slight pressure assaulted her senses, searing her susceptible nerve endings, and her eyes shut as she absorbed the melting heat.

  “Look at me.” He spoke in a low rasp, the sound dragged from deep within his throat. “Now.”

  It took her a moment to respond, to return to the cooler environs of reality.

  And when her heated eyes met his seconds later, he murmured, “Welcome back. If you recall, I’m your—er—current assignment for the next forty-eight hours. And I’d like you to do something more to entertain me now. I want you to squeeze your nipples so I can see them swell and grow thick and long.” His voice turned to velvet. “Do you mind?”

  He knew the answer, of course. He could see her jewel-hard nipples; he knew how she needed him. “Answer me,” he softly commanded.

  “I don’t mind,” she whispered, forcing her attention back to his sprawled form, her thoughts drifting away so easily with her body so heated. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Squeeze them hard,” he pleasantly said. “So you feel it in your cunt.”

  Her eyes widened at the coarse word, at his blunt emphasis.

  He smiled up at her. “Squeeze them so hard I can feel it in your cunt,” he softly added.

  “I shouldn’t,” she said in a small indrawn breath.

  “But we both know you will because you want to feel me inside you and”—he paused long enough to make sure he had her attention—“you don’t have a choice.”

  She touched the tips tentatively.

  “Not enough,” he casually said, lying back in his chair. “Remember I won you for two days. You must do it correctly.”

  Taking a firmer grip with a minute petulance he hadn’t seen before, she softly said, “Fuck you.”

  “In due time,” he lazily drawled. “If you’re very good.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I could leave.”

  “Really?” His dark brows rose faintly.

  “You can’t make me stay,” she persisted. But she hadn’t moved her fingers from her nipples.

  He noticed. “Of course I can make you stay,” he calmly replied. “I can do anything I want with you. Now, come, sweetheart,” he softly coaxed, “you know it feels sublime.”

  “You’re rude.” A sinfully delicious pout.

  “While you’re the hottest piece I’ve ever seen, my dear lady Flora,” he silkily murmured. “And if you recall—the wager was on your initiative.”

  “I can change my mind.” Her violet eyes were hot with resentment and another more tempting fire.

  “It’s too late,” he tranquilly replied. “Word of honor et cetera, et cetera. So you must do as I say.”

  She glared at him and he smiled back.

  She shifted her stance and he pointedly glanced at the clock.

  But under his watchful eye, she at last succumbed to the pressure of his command and her own traitorous libido and squeezed her nipple properly, to which he pleasantly said, “That’s much better.” As if he knew the workings of her body, her nipples instantly changed, elongated, hardened, the tips tingling with such exquisite sensitivity, and she felt an unnerving helplessness before the sudden surge of desire inundating her body. Pressing her thighs together, she tightened her fingers of her own accord on the hard crests, to sustain the profound throbbing that seemed to beat through her body without respect for her outrage.

  “Are you getting wet?” Adam murmured.

  It took a moment for her to speak, her
voice husky, touched with a curiously seductive temper. “I’ve been wet, Mr. Serre … since I first saw you at the gaming table.”

  He grinned. “You should have told me.”

  “You should have known.” She took a small breath to steady herself against the sustained pulsing between her legs.

  “I did,” he quietly confessed. “I smelled your heated scent.” His voice dropped in volume. “Like now. Show me how wet you are. And maybe I can help you.”

  She lifted her skirt because she desperately wanted him and because she realized too she would have him only if she was obedient to his wishes.

  With the black skirt drawn aside he could see the auburn patch of hair was darker as it slipped between her thighs, glistening with the aromatic dew of her arousal. Unmoving, his voice neutral as if he were ordering dinner, he said, “Reach inside with your finger. I want to see if you’re ready for me.”

  Holding her skirt in a crush at her waist with one hand, dark folds of gabardine framing her pale legs and belly and silky curls in erotic display, she complied, slipping her fingers deep inside. Her fingers moved, her hips swayed minutely in response, her breasts swung in counterpoint, like delectable fruit hanging from a tree, and hot pleasure bombarded her brain.

  Adam’s gaze focused on her hand, stimulated and incited her as if the wanton drama of masturbating before him was a salacious performance with a critical audience of one. And his approval was paramount to her urgent need.

  “Bring some of that over here,” Adam said after a time, his voice low, heated. “Show me your fingers.”

  She dutifully obliged, the melting friction of her fingers as she moved toward him registered in her half-lidded eyes, the world reduced to the pulsing core of her body and Adam’s overriding voice. When she reached his chair, she withdrew her hand, the slithery sound explicit in the stillness of the room, and submissively held out her fingers smeared with glossy liquor.

  “You’re soaked,” he murmured, reaching an idle finger out to trail through the gleaming liquid. Looking up at her, he slowly surveyed her from her slender legs past her lush thighs and moist pubic hair to the curve of her hips and belly, her splendid breasts flushed pink in arousal. And when his gaze rested at last on her face, he coolly inquired with the faintest of smiles, “Did you come to my room to get fucked?”

  The blunt word struck her senses like a hammer blow, the lascivious word so graphic, so exacting, so lush with promise she could feel a drenching balm flood her vagina.

  “Answer,” he gently prompted, although beneath the soft spoken word was an iron firmness.

  “Yes … no … I mean …” Gripping the bunched folds of her skirt tightly at her waist, she stood before him like a nervous schoolgirl, her carnal passions so intense she was breathless, seething, heedless of all but her frantic need for release. And he was waiting for his answer, his dark brows drawn together in a frown. “Yes,” she blurted out, avoiding his cool eyes, “yes, I came here … for that.”

  “You weren’t thinking, though, were you? You could have met a man on your way down here,” he chastised, a sudden chill in his tone, her sexuality so ostentatious she was temptation incarnate. “Anyone would have known you were naked under that blouse.”

  “I was careful not to meet anyone.” She needed him so desperately, her voice had taken on a pronounced deference.

  “What would you have done if you’d met a man? Fuck him first?” He was driven by his own unaccountable demons.

  “No. I want only you.”

  “James saw you,” he accused.

  “Only for a minute,” she hurriedly replied. “We parted at the stairs. I came down the servants’ stairway.”

  “I don’t like other men looking at you.”

  “Adam, please, I’m sorry.” Her voice was only a whisper. “I should have worn something else. I should have worn a corset and a chemise and petticoats and a heavier blouse. But no one saw me.”

  “How fortunate,” he sarcastically murmured, “because no man could resist you if he saw you like that.” With her skirt bunched at her waist, her sex was lushly on display.

  “Adam, please,” she softly pleaded. “You’re wrong.”

  “You didn’t flirt with James? Look at me,” he curtly ordered, impelled by a brutal covetousness. “You’re sure you didn’t have intercourse with anyone tonight? What about Ellis Green? Did you give him a taste of that?” Adam brusquely queried, reaching out to run his finger roughly down her damp cleft, “before the Fisks’ ball?”

  Flora moaned, a spiking rapture stabbing through her senses. “I haven’t had intercourse … with … anyone,” she said a moment later, her voice trembling, “… since you left me.”

  His head came up suddenly from the tantalizing view, and his eyes held her in a steady gaze. “Say that again.”

  “I haven’t … slept with anyone … since you.”

  Inhaling deeply, he took in her luscious form as he absorbed the extraordinary information. Why did it matter so? he wondered, awed by the possessive feelings Flora engendered. Why indeed, he more pragmatically considered as he slowly exhaled. What man wouldn’t want all that succulent female passion for himself alone? Locked away for his own private use. It was a masculine emotion as old as time. “Look what that does to me,” he quietly said, “knowing you’ve been without a man so long.” His erection stretched the fine wool of his trousers.

  “I’m dying to feel you, Adam,” she whispered. “It’s been thirty-three days.…”

  His brows rose briefly at the exactitude of her memory. “And you’re eager …”

  “Very much,” she softly replied, a drop of pearly fluid sliding down her thigh, her gaze on his enormous arousal.

  “Then all you have to do, bia, is take off your skirt,” he smoothly said, “and your celibacy will be over.”

  While Flora unhooked her skirt: with shaking fingers, Adam slipped his white satin suspenders off his shoulders and opened the buttons on his trousers. Intent on the voluptuous sight of her bobbing breasts as she struggled with the small hooks at the back of her skirt, he watched her, absorbed by the lush wiggles and jogs. At last, when she managed to wrench the final hook loose, she still had to ease the skirt over her hips, the great globes of her breasts swinging out as she bent slightly forward to force the skirt downward. Once over the flare of her hips, the riding skirt slipped down her thighs with ease and fell to the floor in a muted rustle, leaving her standing before him stupefyingly ripe and waiting.

  “Now come here, darling,” Adam softly said. “And let’s get reacquainted.”

  Still dressed, he lounged in the large chair, his embroidered silk waistcoat unbuttoned, his starched and pleated shirt crisply white in the golden lamplight, his tie loosened at the open collar of his shirt, his patent-leather dress shoes and tailored trousers the height of Parisian elegance. The only Absarokee touch in all the fashionable garb were the pink shell earrings occasionally visible beneath his long sleek hair.

  She moved forward, barefoot, nude, like a novice courtesan in her trembling meekness, overwhelmed by her wanton need, beyond sophisticated repartee, entranced by the sexual heat enveloping her.

  “Put your foot here,” Adam ordered when she came to stand by his chair, and he pointed at the cushion beside his left leg. He helped her steady her right foot when she lifted it, waiting until she was balanced before leaning back in his chair again. His view was explicitly clear. He could see how plump and swollen she was, how wet, how vividly crimson the inside of her throbbing labia. Gazing up at her wide-open sex, he reached up to gently stretch her, and she moaned at the surging rush of pleasure. “You look … very eager,” he murmured, sliding his fingers inside a small teasing distance, then out again.

  “Lord, Adam,” she whispered, quivering under his hands. “You’re torturing me.…”

  “Do you want something?” His voice was quiet, deliberate as he gazed at her, open and glistening between his splayed fingers.

  “Let me feel you.�
�” She was submerged in a great intoxicating desire, gorged with sexuality.

  “Do you want to sit on me? Do you think I’ll fit in there? It looks very small.”

  “Please, Adam.” She was trembling.

  “You always were impatient,” he murmured, removing his fingers, placing her foot gently on the floor. “Here,” he said, putting out his hand, “let me help you up.”

  He steadied her nude body as she climbed onto his lap, sliding his hands around her waist after she straddled his legs, lifting her, helping her guide the cresting head of his erection to her slick, heated entrance. As she settled down on him, he felt exquisite pressure, her passage too small despite her copious lubrication. “You’re very tight,” he murmured, adjusting his upward movement.

  “It’s been so long …,” she softly sighed, her hips gently rotating, drawing him in more deeply.

  He eased upward slowly, careful not to hurt her.

  “You’re very large.” A gasp of pleasure punctuated her declaration as Adam forced himself farther.

  “We’re happy to see you again,” he said with a smile. “Careful now,” he cautioned, holding her immobile for a moment, letting her catch her breath, caressing her hips in a soothing rhythm, as if calming her fevered body. “More?” he murmured some moments later when her trembling had quieted.

  “Yes, please.” She spoke on a small caught breath of anticipation, as though he were offering her another serving of dessert and she didn’t dare appear gluttonous.

  He invaded her another small distance.

  “Again?” he quietly asked seconds later as her breath came in small panting exhalations. “Now?”

  She nodded, and he pushed upward into her yielding flesh until she whimpered, her sounds of ecstasy unblushing ardor, a spangled flourish in the stillness. And when she could listen again, he quietly said, “Now you must do something for me. Hold your breasts up. I want to kiss them.” He remembered how she liked to have them sucked, how he could make her climax just from his sucking.