by Kait Jagger
Summoning all her remaining self-control, Luna arched above him again and commenced fucking him for all she was worth. Fast and hard, anything to distract herself from his hands and his hips, now fucking her back. And then it was too late. Her brow furrowed, the sweetness spreading all the way from her clitoris to her forehead, and Luna surrendered herself, arching upwards one last time in silence. She was still pulsing around him when Stefan joined her, baring his teeth, fucking her to the last.
Some moments later she lifted herself off of him, expertly holding the condom in place at the base of his penis, then carefully removing it, knotting it and tossing it into the bin under her bedside table.
Stefan watched this with some amusement, lifting his hands to rest casually under his head. ‘Miss Gregory, do your administrative skills know no bounds?’
‘All part of the service.’ She lay down next to him in the bed, not quite in the crook of his arm. Truth be told, she was a little amazed by what had just happened, and suddenly felt just a little slutty in her basque with her entire erogenous zone on display.
‘I assume,’ she said, ‘that you will be missed downstairs if you don’t get back.’
‘Hmm, probably.’ Stefan glanced at her and caught her drift, grinning and swinging out of the bed. Heaven help her, slut that she was, she lifted herself up onto her elbows to watch his thoroughly magnificent ass departing the room, before collapsing back onto the bed. She heard him getting dressed in the sitting room and sat up, finally unhooking and removing her basque and putting on her robe. She walked into the sitting room, where he was just retying his bowtie in the small mirror next to her door. He looked entirely unruffled, not a hair out of place, whereas Luna felt the ravages of whisker burn around her mouth and a lingering, not unpleasant dampness down below.
She felt small, suddenly, in her terrycloth robe and bare feet. Small and uncertain. Stefan’s eyes caught hers watching him in the mirror and he turned to her, swiftly taking her in his arms and planting a kiss on her lips.
‘That was a promising beginning, Luna,’ he said, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. ‘I’m looking forward to continuing this.’ She frowned slightly, wondering if this was the way he talked to his clients, and Stefan kissed her again.
‘We can’t do this again here,’ she said, mustering her best cool glance. ‘There’s too much chance we’ll be seen.’
‘Right, then, I’ll see you at the Dower House tomorrow night at, say, eight?’ He hadn’t even missed a beat and Luna bridled at the presumption of him.
‘Well—’ she began curtly. And then he was kissing her again, his tongue in her mouth. After a moment he broke off, pushing her robe off her shoulders until he’d revealed her left breast. Luna lifted her hands to his chest to push him away, but he grasped them in his own, lacing his fingers with hers and pulling them down to her side. Then he bent down and placed his mouth on her nipple, drawing it in and sucking it gently. The protests died on Luna’s lips as she looked down at him, saw and felt his mouth moving on her. Her clitoris throbbed anew as he drew his mouth away and briefly nuzzled her breast.
‘Tomorrow,’ he instructed. ‘At eight.’ And then he walked away, leaving Luna trembling, her legs literally shaking beneath her.
Chapter Nine
Inevitably over the course of the following day, doubts started to set in. Luna woke up early on Sunday morning alone in her bed, and it was as if the previous evening hadn’t happened. Yes, her lips were a little swollen when she studied them in the bathroom mirror. And she noticed that…other parts felt different too.
She quickly donned leggings and a hoodie and ran down the stairs to the garden.
‘A promising beginning,’ he’d said. What the hell was that supposed to mean? She’d rolled out some of her best moves for him last night and that was all he had to say? It didn’t help that, for her, the sex had been pretty incredible. Better than ‘promising’, that’s for sure, she told herself as she ran toward the farm shop. And she knew that he knew that she’d enjoyed it, which was galling when his assessment was one step above ‘needs more work’.
But he’d enjoyed it too, she could tell. Or thought she could tell. Luna grimaced and ran a little faster, her breath puffing out in clouds in front of her. What if he’d thought it was only…average? He’d slept with a lot of women, after all; probably some pretty inventive ones who’d put her little look, I can go on top routine to shame. Luna bit her lip, tucked her arms into her sides and kept running.
By the time the skies darkened later that day, she’d pretty much convinced herself that going to the Dower House was a mistake. She wished she was at least wearing her work clothes, her chainmail, but she didn’t think she could come up with a reasonable excuse for donning her Ferragamos and black pencil skirt on a Sunday night. So she pulled on some jeans and a pair of soft suede boots, along with a grey t-shirt paired with matching cardigan. Her lone piece of armour was her hair, which she wound up into a sloppy bun on top of her head.
She made sure to get to the Dower House fashionably late, but not insultingly so. 8.15. If she’d been less nervous, Luna would have been excited to see more of the interior. The house dated from the Jacobean era and attracted almost as much attention from English Heritage as Arborage itself, but a cover story in Past and Future magazine about an archaeological dig they’d had in the house’s yard was about as close as she’d gotten to it up till now. It was comparatively small, built by a previous marquess for his wife after he’d installed his mistress at Arborage.
Stefan came to the heavy engraved oak door wearing black skinny jeans and a cable-knit jumper. Barefooted, she noted. Lush was the first and only word that sprung to Luna’s mind. He was simply lush.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said, sounding suspiciously hearty to Luna’s ears. ‘I was just finishing my dinner. Have you eaten?’
Luna had, but she followed him through the beamed front room to the kitchen, fully and expensively kitted out by Smallbone of Devizes. There was a plate of half-finished pasta on the central island, and an open bottle of Amarone.
‘Wine?’ Stefan asked.
‘Yes please.’ Luna eyed him warily as he retrieved a wine glass and poured her a generous portion, topping up his own.
‘Cheers,’ he said, clinking her glass.
‘Skål,’ she replied.
Stefan motioned to the bar stools and Luna sat opposite him at the island, sipping her wine. All very polite.
‘Good day?’ he enquired.
‘Yes, you?’ Luna took a gulp of her wine.
‘It’s better now,’ he said, suddenly reaching behind her head and pulling her toward him for a kiss. Really, he had the nicest mouth, just the right amount of firm to her soft. Satisfied that he hadn’t brought her to the Dower House just to cut her loose, Luna returned the kiss, reaching her hand up to his recently shaved cheek. Then sat back in her chair, took a sip of her wine and remarked tartly, ‘Well, that was…promising.’
Stefan chuckled and wagged his finger at her. ‘Ah, I knew it, I knew that would eat at you, little perfectionist.’
Luna tried to unleash the cold stare, but his expression was so comical she couldn’t manage it, instead emitting a very unladylike snort of laughter. After that, she relaxed a little. Together they finished the bottle of wine and then shared a tiramisu. They talked about the party, Luna asking Stefan what Florian had wanted with him.
‘Hmm, I suspect it was a bit of a charm offensive.’ Stefan shrugged his shoulders slightly, not volunteering more, so Luna didn’t pursue it. Finishing off the last spoonful of tiramisu, he added with a strangely sexy full mouth, ‘He was very complimentary about you, by the way.’
Luna was floored. ‘No, he wasn’t.’
‘He was,’ Stefan insisted, licking a bit of cream off his finger. ‘But in such a way that I was afraid for a moment I was going to have to defend your honour.’
Luna looked at him quizzically, then twigged. ‘Ah, yes, he had a conversation with my
chest earlier in the night.’
‘And a lovely chest it is. But I liked not so much the way he talked about it.’
‘Believe me, Florian isn’t a fan of anything but my breasts,’ Luna replied. She smiled conspiratorially at Stefan. ‘My second week on the job, he came in insisting he needed to use the Marchioness’s office. She wasn’t there at the time, but…’
‘You didn’t let him.’
‘Well, no. It’s her office, after all. It has her private things in it. I offered him the conference room, but he wouldn’t have it. In the end I had to physically stand in front of her door to stop him going in. And he’s never forgotten it. “The Marchioness’s terrier”…’
After a moment, she added, ‘He said I was an Ice Princess last night. A frigid Ice Princess.’
Stefan laughed and she almost laughed with him. Almost. But then an entirely unexpected feeling of something akin to wistfulness welled up in her. She looked down at her hands, and Stefan sobered. ‘And why do you care what a man like him thinks?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t.’
‘My cousin doesn’t know you. He doesn’t know you at all.’ He leaned forward and kissed her; a simple, uncomplicated, close-mouthed kiss. ‘Come.’
He led her up to the master bedroom, where the poor, dejected Jacobean Marchioness had eked out her married life in exile. There was a mahogany four-poster bed in the room and a table with a vase of late-blooming Arborage roses, a bit like a Damask rose, with relatively few petals and prominent stamens. A token, Luna was sure, from one of the cleaning girls, who she’d heard had discovered a newfound love of tidying for their new guest.
A single small lamp on the bedside table illuminated the bed, the mattress of which sat so high that she was worried Stefan might need to give her a leg up. He swiftly resolved this concern by picking her up and apparently effortlessly setting her on the bed. Then he bent to unzip her left boot, dropping it on the floor before moving to the right.
‘So,’ he began conversationally, peeling off her socks. ‘As I said, we had a promising start last night. But I couldn’t help but notice, Luna, that you appear to have a few control issues.’
Luna made a slight noise of protest and he held up a hand. ‘Not that I have a problem with that.’ He reached to her waist and unbuttoned her jeans, quickly scooching them down her thighs. ‘There are times when I will be very happy to cater to your issues.’
Tugging gently on the hem of her cardigan and beginning to undo the buttons, he continued, ‘But you see, Stellaluna, I have a few of my own.’ As if by magic, Luna’s cardigan was on the floor – somehow Stefan had breached the space–time continuum and removed it without her even noticing. ‘Arms up,’ he instructed, pulling her t-shirt over her head.
‘I hope you’ll find it will give you pleasure, meeting my needs…’ Stefan stood between her legs and slid his hands along her thighs, his eyelids hooded. She felt her own eyelids, heavy in anticipation, mirror his.
‘Take down your hair, Luna.’
Her hand rose toward her head, till Luna temporarily regained control of her faculties and froze it in mid-flight. Her nostrils flared. She wasn’t a puppet to dance to his tune.
‘Please, take it down,’ he repeated, his voice gentle but his expression unyielding.
Please was all it took. Luna complied, untwining her bun and dropping it, letting her hair fall in a twist against her neck that trailed down to her stomach. Stefan grasped it and pulled it forward, twining it around his hand till she was forced to lower her head to his.
‘Do you trust me, Luna?’ he murmured.
She looked him in the eye for an instant, then lowered her eyes.
‘No,’ he correctly surmised. ‘Not yet.’ He appeared to think for a moment, then turned and extracted two roses from the vase on the table. Hopping up onto the bed with her, still, she noticed with some annoyance, wearing all his own clothes, he deposited the roses on the tapestry bedspread and turned to Luna, straddling her just as she had done him the night before. Again he tugged on the coil of her hair, forcing her to sit up against him while he removed her bra. Then he pressed her back onto the bed and admired her.
‘If I ever catch my cousin looking at these again, I promise you I will do him an injury,’ he assured her. He lifted first her left arm and then her right, positioning them palms up on the pillow above her head. He ran his finger down the soft inside of her right arm to the side of her breast, causing Luna to shudder.
‘Comfortable?’ he asked, and Luna nodded mutely, her mouth dry.
Stefan lifted one of the roses to his mouth, ripping his teeth into the stem just underneath the flower itself and discarding the stem. Then, delicately, he placed the remaining flower in Luna’s right hand.
‘I’d like to try a little…exercise with you. You don’t fully trust me yet, so I think restraints are out of the question – though someday we will try them, I’m sure.’ Stefan smiled wolfishly and lifted the second stem to his mouth, baring his teeth.
‘But, Luna, tonight I require you to be fully at my disposal. I want no interference from you, so let’s treat this as a game.’ He placed the second rose in her left palm. ‘Do you think you can keep your hands very still, no matter what I do to you?’
Luna wriggled a little under him, closing her fingers slightly on the roses. ‘Ah-ah,’ he warned her. ‘That’s what I mean. The object of the game is for both these flowers to remain on your palms, just as they are, completely uncrushed and unmoving, until the game is finished. Can you do that, Luna?’
She nodded at him. If this was as kinky as it was going to get, maybe she didn’t have that much of a problem with Stefan’s control issues.
‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Let’s start.’ He climbed off her and knelt beside her, pulling off the Brazilian knickers she’d rather hoped would get more of a viewing tonight. He trailed his fingertips up the top of her foot to her knee, wandering to her inner thigh, and briefly grazed the hair at her apex, lingering at her bikini line, where she squirmed slightly, ticklish at his touch. He lifted an eyebrow at this, like he was taking internal notes.
Placing his hand flat on her stomach, he ran it along the curves of her waist and her slightly protruding hip bone, smiling slightly. Then he ran both hands up her ribs, pausing to feel them moving up and down as if assessing her heart rate, before covering her breasts.
‘These may be the most perfect breasts I have ever seen,’ he said wonderingly, brushing her pink nipples with his fingertips. Again, had Luna been the blushing type, she’d have blushed under his scrutiny. Instead, she looked at his hands on her breasts, then looked away, suddenly feeling very naked.
Sensing her discomfort, Stefan reached his hands up to her face and into her scalp, rubbing it gently as he loosened her hair. He placed his hands against her temples and leaned closer to her, the bridge of his nose sliding against hers.
‘You are embarrassed, I think,’ he whispered against her mouth. ‘Close your eyes, Luna.’ And when she failed to immediately comply, her eyes meeting his with something between disquiet and pleading, he brought his palms over her forehead and down over her eyes, shutting them for her. ‘Trust me a little,’ she felt his lips say against hers. She opened her mouth and he didn’t disappoint, immediately covering it with his own, his tongue filling her mouth.
It was then that she realised that his little game would be more difficult than she’d anticipated. For she wanted nothing more than to bring her hands down to his head, to angle it so she could fully reciprocate his kiss. Seconds later he ended the kiss and his teeth ran briefly along her neck. Then nothing, for just long enough that she almost opened her eyes. Till she felt the slightest whisper of a touch on her right nipple, felt it pucker and tighten in response as his fingers grew more bold, manipulating the nipple, chafing it gently. Another whisper over her left nipple and she exhaled at the surprise of it, the pleasure of his hands on her and nothing else but darkness. Followed by his mouth, sucking first one, then th
e other nipple till her fingers twitched, aching to hold his head to her and guide it from breast to breast.
Her hips were moving involuntarily now, and warm wetness was flowing from within her. She felt him shift on the bed again, felt his lips against hers, his jumper rubbing against her nipples, now exquisitely sensitive. She arched her back, remembering just in time to keep her palms flat. Then he removed himself again, for just long enough that she wondered if the spell had broken and she should open her eyes.
Then her knees were being drawn apart and her sex entirely covered by his hand, warm as ever, pressing against her. Drawing her up and down, moulding her, slowly becoming slick with her wetness. The fact that she could neither see nor touch him suddenly became part of the pleasure. The way he touched her, the boldness and certainty of it, was a source of constant surprise and growing arousal; the fact that he seemed to instinctively know when this first, non-specific foray wasn’t enough for her, and responded by parting her begging labia. All of this, combined with her utter prostration beneath him, magnified her yearning.
And then his fingers, not directly on but around the heart of her clitoris. Surrounding it. Something she – ah, something different. Was it his knuckles? The way he touched her, it was too much. She involuntarily gasped, struggling to control herself. He was – he was kneading her. She pictured his fingers on her swollen flesh, felt them moving exactly as she saw them in her mind’s eye. She yearned. She yearned…and exploded, pelvis bucking, thighs trembling, mouth drawn back.
