by Shirl Anders
He delighted in Gabriella’s obvious interest and held his breath, as it were, to see if she would be brave enough to scramble over the walls of propriety and ask a question of her own. However, it was not until the conversation inevitably turned to their shared profession, during the third course, that she became embolden enough to blurt.
“You’re spies . . . all of you are spies?”
“Were,” Radford amended dryly.
“And you canna let a soul know of it, lass,” Brynmore briskly added.
“All of us are entrusting you with our lives to speak of this in your company, my lady,” Saxonhurst advised.
“We will have to make the lady an official member of the Archangels,” Harrison rasped with a rare smile directed at Gabriella.
“She should speak a vow of some sort,” Wyndham said, quietly intense from his end of the lavish table.
Drummond let his gaze slip over Gabriella, who appeared amazed and a bit flustered. “What do you say, my lady, shall you join this illustrious gentlemen’s club? Shall you swear secrecy, and then we will divulge our secrets without hesitation in your company?”
“I ... would. I mean, yes,” Gabriella replied with demure hesitation, contradicting the excitement coloring her violet eyes.
“Excellent,” Drummond responded with his gaze traversing the table and each person there. “How should we officiate this momentous occasion, gentlemen?”
“I would be voting for a kiss each,” Brynmore replied, smiling rakishly. “However, I ken our leader might be vetoing this notion.”
“And you would be correct,” Drummond answered with a quiet, but possessive quality in his voice.
“You are the l-leader?” Gabriella asked in obvious wonder.
“The mastermind is more his tune,” Harrison answered in a gravelly whisper.
Drummond raised an eyebrow to Harrison, but turned to Gabriella. “Yes, madame, I was the leader of this nefarious group of information seekers.” He toyed with the stem of his wine glass for a moment. “And now to our ceremony and vow. I believe the lady should part with a secret bit of information about herself. Which we shall then keep, just as she will vow to keep our secrets.”
“Oh– I.” Gabriella gazed in a startled manner around the table. “I expect that it would only be fair,” she finished with a dainty hand pressed to her remarkable bosom.
“Hm,” Drummond pondered. “What shall it be? Something intimate enough to cause you caution, I should think.”
“Yes, of course,” Gabriella replied gazing at each man in turn.
“Then let us retire to the gaming salon for cigars and perhaps a brandy to bolster our lady’s courage,” Harrison suggested.
“Yes,” Drummond replied, watching Gabriella’s eyes widen at the suggestion that she should join gentlemen in that most sacred ritual of port, cigars, and conversation after a meal. “I for one, enjoy saving my dessert for a much later hour,” Drummond added to Gabriella’s blush as they all rose.
Chapter Eight
A few moments later and only partially down the hallway in the presumed direction of the gaming salon, Gabriella found herself whisked into a narrow, darkened hallway. This one split off from the main corridor she, Drummond, and the others had been following.
“Drummond, what is it-?” she gasped in a near squeal. Finding her back pressed into the hallway wall by the hard, lean length of Drummond’s tall frame blanketing hers. Her breasts were plumped into his rib cage and he cradled her hips warmly between his thighs as his hands closed hard around her waist on each side.
“Why is my passion pearl not affecting you, madame?” he asked with his warm lips hovering over her ear.
“How could you possibly tell?” she appealed in a whisper directed into his shoulder, he was so close.
“Your nipples are relaxed, madame, and this would not be the case if my pearl was placed properly.”
“Gracious,” she breathed, trying to call forth the proper amount of indignation, however, succeeding only halfheartedly with the whirl of sensations she was experiencing. Gabriella found her hands placed flat on the well-toned muscles of Drummond’s chest with her long crimson nails sliding downward over the shape of his abundantly formed mounds of sinew. Not in a gesture of warding him off as one would hope that she would attempt to do . . . Oh but, he felt so wonderful.
“Do you scratch, madame?” Drummond asked warmly into her ear as his hands slid downward from her waist to clasp both sides of her bottom.
“Oh my . . . I, ah– do not know,” she whispered with a sighing gasp.
Drummond chuckled, then his fingers spread wide clasping the cheeks of her flesh, until she could feel the long ridged outline of his manhood pressing into her lower-lowest belly.
“I believe that you do,” Drummond purred with the tip of his hot tongue tracing her earlobe making her shiver more as she clutched his broad shoulders for balance. “Like a sensuous little kitten with her claws extended. Shall I call you kitten, madame? My kitten?”
“Oh.” Gabriella puffed a breath into Drummond’s ear with her lips grazing the cool ice of his ruby stud, while he rocked her against him . . . breathlessly . . . indecently along the outline of his turgid sex. The length was breathtaking and the outline seduced her with a poignant urge to rub, or-or grind back!
“I believe that I have deduced your ploy, madame,” Drummond announced as the warmth of his body, abruptly left hers. And as quick, Gabriella found herself bodily twirled around to face the wall with Drummond’s hands clamped to the back of her waist. She fought the illusory need for balance with her hands pressed into the cream-colored wall.
“Drummond, what are you doing?” she whispered with a slight frantic hissing sound, wondering when they would be spied by a passing servant or the return of one of the Archangels to discover what had become of them. “Someone shall see us,” she exclaimed on a final hopeless note in what she prayed was a voice tinted with outrage, but which sounded suspiciously husky to her ears.
“Hm,” Drummond ignored Gabriella’s half-hearted protests as he bent his knee to the floor behind her flowing silk skirts. He kept her efforts to move away from him, firmly at bay with his hands now clasped to her enchanting rounded hips, stifling her movements and causing her splendid ripe ass to gyrate provocatively, directly in front of his nose. He thought for a moment about reprimanding her to cease her struggles, however, then decided to simply enjoy the feisty attempt. A maidenly bared bottom looked so much lovelier when it was squirming.
“Now we shall see if I am correct,” Drummond muttered, and then in one fluid motion he whisked the back hem of Gabriella’s skirts upward to her waist, while he held her still with his other hand. The result was as he suspected, an enticing view of very practical white linen under drawers and no less enticing for their puritanical qualities.
“Drummond!”
Drummond moved his hands quickly, catching Gabriella’s squirming hips as he realized that this position was not advantageous to him and he glanced over his shoulder, spying the perfect remedy in a marble-topped corridor table on his left. Without further ado, he had his feisty kitten planted firmly, bent face down over the end of the table’s sturdiness. He intended to secure those drawers without delay! He noted judiciously that Gabriella was sputtering, incoherent worded phrases, and he could only assume that his feminine delectable was aghast as he bent to his task.
A moment later he had the sturdy white linen pulled to the back hollow of Gabriella’s dainty knees. He could only believe that a woman’s buttocks never looked quite as thrilling as when they were completely bared and squirming in this bent over position.
“Drummond, what are you doing?” Gabriella squealed in an outraged whisper.
“Anything that I wish,” Drummond muttered, cupping one of Gabriella’s cream-filled rump cheeks in his hand.
“Oh,” she panted, wiggling up onto her toes to do what he could not imagine, nor truthfully care, while his gaze was riveted to the dark pink
folds of her paganly exposed honey pot. A honey pot, he noted vicariously, that was creamy in welcoming dew, giving him physical evidence that the lady doth protest too much!
“Step out of the drawers,” Drummond commanded as he slipped them down over Gabriella’s small slippered feet, leaving only her sheer stockings, lavender garters, and his passion pearl, while Gabriella heaved above him in agitation.
He spoke in a commanding voice once again. “You are forbidden to wear any type of under garment that will hinder my pearl in the future, madame.”
“Oh, you beast!” Gabriella sputtered.
That did it! Drummond unbent his knee to stand. He kept Gabriella pinned to the tabletop, by the length of his thigh and one of his hands, settled into the small of her back, while he lay his other palm in a stinging slap to her pearly white buttocks.
Slap!
“Oh,” Gabriella squealed in surprise, then huffing, “beast,” once again with less conviction.
Slap! Slap!
“Ow,” she gasped as Drummond watched Gabriella’s lush buttocks jiggle with a new pink tint, staining the tender curves from the punishment of his hand. He fondled the pink flesh with his fingers, then he lifted his hand intending to spank her again.
“Drummond, no!”
Slap! Slap! Drummond spanked both wiggling buttocks.
“Please!” she squealed.
Slap! Slap! Gabriella’s luscious, squirming ass was beginning to turn red.
“No more!” Gabriella pleaded.
Drummond paused, rubbing his hand over Gabriella’s wriggling lush ass cheeks, feeling the heat of her skin on his palm from where he had stung the opulent flesh. “Your cooperation, madame, or the punishment shall continue.”
“How can you be so cruel?” she asked, yelping a moment later when he slapped her pillowed rump once more.
“Oh, I will do anything-!” Gabriella cried.
Slap! Slap! Slap!
“Are you spanking her?” Extolled suddenly, an amazed masculine voice from down the hall behind them.
Drummond stalled in mid-slap and turned partially with a lazy drawl affecting his speech. “Wyndham.” Drummond paused as Gabriella squealed, while trying to rise, which he stalled easily. “I am,” he stated.
Wyndham wielded a slow calculating grin at him. “Touché, Drummond. You are a leader of our times. I shall leave you to, well-.” Wyndham inclined his head slightly and retreated.
Drummond watched Wyndham disappear around the corner just as Gabriella sobbed beneath him. She truly was crying. Damnation, he had never intended to-.
“I w-will do a-anything you say. Please, j-just release me!”
Grimly determined, Drummond lifted Gabriella, swinging her around to face him, countering his tender urges with command. “Now you have the proof of my determination, madame.”
He had not intended it. It had been the furthest notion from his engaged thoughts, however, viewing Gabriella’s lovely face, tear-stained with embarrassment and perhaps a hint of shame. He just-.
Gabriella could not think coherently, she was mortified, indignant, and more than cowed by Drummond’s superior baring. All this despite the fact that her entire body tingled strangely and her woman’s core was liquid. However, in the midst of these clamorous emotions, she abruptly found her lips smothered beneath Drummond’s mouth.
Drummond was kissing her! So unexpected was this that Gabriella forgot to breathe for several long moments beneath the determined seduction of Drummond’s warm virile lips. That was until she suddenly gasped for air and his male tongue swept inside her mouth. This was an entirely foreign endeavor to her that left her folded backward over his supporting arm as her hands made fists in his lapels. His tongue was firm and bold, lapping her lips, top and bottom, to return with a tease against the tip of her tongue, until she followed it into his gently sucking mouth. She nearly swooned then as he captured her tongue inside the heat of his inner mouth, and he began to suckle it back and forth. Just-just, like coupling!
Drummond tasted of fire and heady wicked things, and when he released her tongue, lifting his lips from hers, an actual whimper of loss cascaded out of her throat.
“I shall allow you ten minutes to repair yourself, madame, then I shall expect you in the gaming salon with your secret prepared.”
Dazed, Gabriella could only mutter a half agreeable sighing sound.
“And, your lips, kitten, after I have kissed them, are ravishing,” Drummond said, right before he released Gabriella and turned to stride away. He left conspicuously to allow Gabriella the time to collect herself and never would he admit the same need to collect himself . . . after that one devastating kiss from her lips.
Chapter Nine
Drummond paused some moments later just outside the half-chiseled, glass doors, leading into the gaming salon with his hand poised on the golden knob, shaped in the outline of a lion’s head. He admitted to himself that he was disturbed, as he slowly lifted his hand from the knob, not only by the kiss, but by Gabriella herself. Everything would have been splendid, more than he could ever have hoped to imagine, except then Wyndham had arrived unexpected.
“Christ,” he muttered, stepping backward away from the door. He could not ignore, Gabriella’s feelings completely. Of course, he could override the ones that stifled her natural passions, those devilish strictures that they bombarded into every woman in their society, with feelings of shame over their nude bodies and the denial of their sexual yearnings. These same teachings, that only a wanton or a whore would enjoy her husband’s baser needs with anything more than duty.
It was all balderdash, putrid and banal philosophies that stripped the young women in their society of any chance of happiness in a man’s arms. He could break down the barriers of these misbegotten codes. He could strip Gabriella of every misconception, by force if necessary, however what he could not do, is to lay hurtful waste to her pride and yes, even worse her honor.
Except, that is just what had happened with the untimely arrival of Wyndham. In Gabriella’s heart she would be humiliated to have been seen thus, not even the spanking, but her body’s exposure to another man, hardly an acquaintance, would shame her. And then to be brought into Wyndham’s presence once again . . . and so soon. No, he must regroup in this unexpected situation, and he told himself sternly, that none of his feelings in this had the least to do with the power and passion of that kiss.
“I will explain your absence,” Harrison rasped as he stepped forward from a shadowed alcove to Drummond’s right. “We will all be here throughout the weekend, nevertheless, as planned.”
Drummond eyed Harrison with what he knew was a fierce glare. “Your stealth is renowned, my friend,” he muttered.
Harrison merely smiled in a half glacier offering. “Wyndham is young and could hardly be expected to keep his mouth closed to such groundbreaking events, therefore, I have only to suppose what your feelings might be.”
“And you really believe that you know me so well,” Drummond questioned tightly.
“We know each other so well,” Harrison rasped. “Although, I cannot ever recall seeing you as you appear now. I only hope, should I ever be unlucky enough to take this fall into love, that it will not be quite as painful as it appears on your face.”
“Scoundrel,” Drummond growled, turning to retrace his steps.
“Most assuredly,” Harrison whispered in a ghostly inflection to Drummond’s retreating back.
Chapter Ten
Drummond found Gabriella, not surprising, exactly where he had left her, only she appeared as a morose figure spilled limply against the wall. Her small head was bent to his approach, therefore, she surprised him when she spoke with the knowledge that he was near to her.
“You shall have to beat me, my lord. Throw me into chains, before I-I ... Oh!”
Drummond swung Gabriella up into his arms to carry her, eliciting her startled squealing. “Entirely too dramatic, madame,” he muttered.
Gabriella clutched h
is neck to near strangulation proportions, allowing him to assume that no man had carried her in his arms before, as she sputtered rather indelicately. “Y-You would not think so, if you w-were the one being bullied!”
“Bullied, madame?” Drummond fairly blurted, then caught himself. “A smattering autocratic . . . perhaps,” he grumbled for a finish, while he noticed Gabriella’s release of some tension, namely her fingernails gouging his neck, when she saw that he carried her away from the direction of the salon.
“Autocratic,” she snorted delicately, with a puff of breath warming his jaw.
“I can detect that this situation calls for a gesture of proof,” he drawled, starting up the long staircase to the upper floors.
“Gesture?” Gabriella asked, tightening her hold on his shoulders as she glanced precariously downward.
“Do not look down,” he ordered. “Look at me.”
“Bully,” she whispered, burying her face into the crook of his neck.
Being so unobserved, Drummond smiled and held Gabriella a bit more tightly as he took the last five steps to the top of the stairs. “I shall allow you one objection a day, over anything you wish, except my releasing you.”
“W-What?”
“I suggest, madame, that you use the boon wisely. A full day is a long measure,” Drummond said, opening his bedroom door with a twist of his hand and a shove of his foot.
“And today . . . do I have one for today?” Gabriella asked, as he set her onto her feet beside him.
“Exactly,” Drummond stated succinctly as he dropped his chin to regard her gently uplifted face.
“Well then, of course I will use it to ...”
Drummond quickly used one finger to press over the delicate texture of Gabriella’s lips, silencing her before she could use her boon precariously. “I feel it only fair to inform you, madame, that we shall not be entertaining the gentlemen, Archangels this evening. Our plans have changed.”
