Master of Love

by Catherine LaRoche

  At the quirk of her mouth, he tugged her down the corridor to the library. She didn’t have it in her to protest. The evening had been so lovely—with warm conversation, delicious food, and not a hint of scandal or censure—that she didn’t want it to end. She sank contentedly into what had become her favorite leather chair in front of the fireplace, where the coals burned low, while he shelved the Seneca among the newly completed Roman classics section.

  It gave her an excuse to watch him move—one of her greatest secret pleasures. Surely no man had ever been so beautiful, so leonine in his grace. In the dim light of the library, his hair shone that dark burnished gold and his eyes were an unfathomable black.

  As he stretched up to slip the volumes into place, his dinner coat pulled tight across the broad width of his shoulders. Just looking at him did something chaotic to her insides. She couldn’t help it—the elegant male line of his body drew a sigh of pure delight out of her.

  Turning in her direction, he lifted an eyebrow. A smug smile curved his lips into a look of arrogant male self-satisfaction.

  Oh dear, he’d heard her. And now he was stalking toward her like a tomcat on the prowl.

  “You seemed to enjoy yourself this evening, Callista.” The leather creaked as he settled into the chair beside her.

  Somehow her name, on his lips, rang differently now they were alone. She had to shake herself from the foolish idea that he was making it sound exotic and lush and that he found her to be exotic and lush as well.

  She was only the librarian, a book dealer, very proper and plain, despite Marie’s emerald silk gown and French perfume and primping.

  She cleared her throat. “It was a lovely dinner party. Your cook outdid herself, and seeing the duchess again was a great treat.”

  “You were the treat, Callista.” Dominick leaned toward her. “Do you know your inner fire glows to match your flaming hair when you let yourself relax?”

  She patted her coiffure self-consciously. “My hair is hardly flaming. It’s more auburn, surely, than red.” Far too conspicuous and ridiculous a color for her taste, but it did run in the family.

  His lips twitched in a smile. “Trust me. Glorious, flaming, glowing, passionate red. Your hair and the fire within you. I watched you glow all evening. It gave me great pleasure.”

  “Well.” She hardly knew what to say to that daring comment. He flirted with ladies all the time, but she still found herself badly tongue-tied in response. “I’m happy to provide you with pleasure.”

  As soon as the words escaped her, she flushed. Good Lord, she was an intelligent and well-read woman! Couldn’t she come up with a better reply than that she wanted to pleasure the man? To her shame, however, she recognized its truth. She did want to pleasure him. She’d even allowed herself to imagine he’d perhaps set up this evening with such an end in mind. After all, she had asked him to show her the passion between them. But now they were alone, the butterflies in her stomach testified to her rapidly fleeing nerve.

  Dominick reached over her lap to tug her twisting hands into his warm grip. “Callista”—and now he did, undeniably, pull out her name into a seductive, low-pitched drawl—“sweet Callista, there are more pleasures we could share.”

  She risked a quick glance at him. What wicked lights glinted in his dark chocolate gaze!

  He turned her palm over in his large hand and stroked it lightly with the tip of a long finger. Her stomach did a strange flip, and she struggled for control. “You have me at a disadvantage. I’m not one of your sophisticated society ladies. I don’t know how to flirt and tease.” She ducked her head and tried to pull her hand away. “I fear you mock me. Perhaps I should be heading home.”

  Dominick let go of her hand but blocked her rise by dropping to his knees in front of her armchair. “I’ll see you safely home whenever you wish, but I assure you I’m not mocking you. Your name in Greek means ‘most beautiful,’ and you are when your fire glows like this. I would have you glow more.”

  Very slowly, softly, with no more pressure than a warm breeze, he began to brush his lips across the side of her face, high on her cheekbone. She felt his breath in her ear and the sound of his low purr. When he dipped his head to set his lips at the base of her throat and trail wet kisses back up to her ear, she couldn’t stop her head from lolling against the chair and a deep shuddering breath from escaping her body.

  She wanted to arch up and pull him to her, but the wantonness of her desires confused her. She tried to think like the mature woman she claimed to be, although rational thought was fast becoming difficult. Was this merely a harmless after-dinner kiss in the library, the sort of dalliance sophisticated members of the ton engaged in regularly? Was this leading somewhere? Please, God, yes! she felt some part of her cry. Or was he only toying with her?

  He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. The earlier merriment was gone, replaced by a burning intensity and a look something like amazement. “Bloody hell,” he muttered as he took a deep breath and attempted, apparently, to regain his own control.

  “Why are you kissing me?” she squeaked out breathlessly.

  “God, how can I not?” He ran his hands up and down her arms. “I think you’re made for me to kiss. I need to kiss you. You need to be kissed,” he said firmly, as if he’d reached some decision that brooked no debate. This did not sound like the smooth-talking and self-possessed charmer of his reputation. Indeed, he sounded a little dazed himself.

  When he looked at her again, his big hands now motionless on her shoulders, his gaze fell immediately to her lips. He bent his head slowly toward her, as if a magnetic pull centered at her mouth left him helpless to resist.

  Truly, she couldn’t disagree with the man’s logic; she did need to be kissed, and by him. There seemed a quality of magic to the moment, a suspension of normal reality. When again would she, the Honorable—the prim and oh-so-proper—Miss Callista Higginbotham ever find herself in the arms of London’s most notorious lover? A beautiful man possessed of godlike looks, yes, but more importantly—so much more importantly—a powerful man of honor and keen wit and some mesmerizing ability to call her soul to his.

  For years, she’d had no illusions a life of passion and romance would ever form any part of her fate. And yet here, now, was passion—kindling that inner fire Dominick described with an intensity that shocked. If he was offering lovemaking, she’d not back down now. To say no would be like saying no to breathing, to tilting one’s face to the sun, to one’s heart beating. Here was the fire of life and living.

  Heavens, he needed to kiss her? She needed to kiss, to know what it was to be desired, to be treated tenderly and with fierce passion as a woman. Not only as a sister, a household manager, a friend, a female book dealer tottering on the edge of ridicule and financial collapse.

  As his mouth nibbled at the corners of hers, she knew she would freely give all he asked, greedily take all he offered, and deal with the damned consequences tomorrow. Tonight she wanted to be—for once in her life!—impulsive and improper and wayward and loved. Some back part of her mind, where rationality sat banished but not silenced, warned her there lay the rub. This wasn’t about love, but about bedding down; she would forget that distinction at her peril.

  “Shhh.” The sound whispered from her was meant for her wiser self. She knew she’d never have all of him. But she could have some, for now. Surely that was enough?

  It would have to be, because it was more than she could turn down. She felt a fluttering within her breast, an opening up and release of a new self beginning to stretch wings.

  “Callista?” There was inquiry in his voice but seduction in his mouth. He used his tongue to trace a wet path along the edge of her lower lip and lick into the corners of her mouth. “Mmm, delicious . . . cream and honey and wine.”

  He rubbed his smooth-shaven cheek against her own. “Rose petals and velvet,” he murmured into her ear.

  And then he dipped his head to inhale deeply along the column of her thro
at. “Gardenias, the ocean at night, and some indescribable essence of Callista.”

  He leaned his forehead into hers, his voice thickened with passion. “Let me make love to you, beauty. I’ll see no harm comes to you, I promise.”

  She wasn’t entirely certain what this promise was in reference to—her reputation? the pain of her virginity? the possibility of breeding?—but discussion seemed beside the point. She had needs of her own, and, at the moment, they involved having his mouth on hers, doing those delightful little tricks with his tongue.

  She realized with a start he’d already seduced her long ago. Perhaps from that afternoon when he’d gifted her with Pliny’s Historia and confessed abashedly that he liked to read it himself. Perhaps while he squired her around her back garden.

  For answer, she looped her arms around his neck and pulled him close. He was still on his knees in front of her low crimson leather chair. He set his hands on her own knees to spread her full skirts and push into the V of her body. It felt horribly wanton to open her legs like that and yet thrilling at the same time.

  With a low growl, he set one hand against the shoulder blades of her back and another on her bottom and slid her into full contact with his form. The breath fled her body, and she heard herself moan.

  His hard chest crushed her breasts, his hand kneaded her buttocks, and that other hard piece of him began to rock rhythmically into the juncture of her thighs. Her stomach clenched, and heat seared her. What were those secret parts of them called? The French erotica in Sir George’s collection had proven most enlightening reading but was still rather vague on specifics. Their position seemed to align them perfectly for a joining, the details of which were rapidly becoming clarified.

  “Your hair. I need it down, now.” He began to pull pins from her coiffure and toss them aside. “Do you know how much I think about this hair of yours, how often I’ve imagined you with it down, caressing your naked body as you tease me to come to you?”

  Good Lord, she thought, stunned by his words. That is me, in his fantasy!? He thought about her that way? Could she be that erotic image he painted?

  He needed two hands to get out all the pins and loosen the complicated twists and ringlets and ribbons Marie had woven for the evening. But his other hand didn’t seem to want to leave her bottom, where it kept her tightly tucked against his insistent rubbing.

  Not wanting him to stop that intoxicating pleasure herself, she reached up her arms to dismantle her coiffure. The movement caused her breasts to arch toward his face, and she watched with some amusement as his gaze dropped into her cleavage. He was like a boy opening too many presents at once and abandoning the favorite of a moment ago for a new excitement.

  He brushed a thumb pad across the tops of her breasts, pushed up by her corset. The full brilliance of Marie’s dressmaking skills became clear to her. This low-shouldered gown became more enticing the more one was seduced in it, so to speak. It gave a lover something to play with. The stiff horizontal bands of fabric pleating around the bodice shielded her bosom from the gaze of onlookers. But a lover, holding her close and gazing down, was treated to a lovely shadowy area that begged to be explored.

  Dominick was quick to comply. He undid the upper hooks at the back of her gown and loosened with practiced skill the top set of corset laces. Her ruffled silk sleeves slid down to trap her arms while freeing her breasts to spill out over the edge of her corset. Looking down, she was amazed at the picture she presented: hair tumbling around her shoulders—all right, maybe it was a rather vivid red—emerald silk binding her arms, the creamy tops of her breasts bared to the dark golden head bent over them, a puckered pink nipple disappearing into his mouth . . . Could this be her?

  The shot of sensation as he tugged at her breast with tongue and lips brought her out of her reverie. She hadn’t known her body could feel like that! Hot and tingling pleasure spiraled from her nipple in his mouth down to the base of her spine and gathered there to feed the growing fire. Her bosom and womb seemed connected in a path of glowing energy.

  He pulled back as if to inspect his handiwork and then pursed his lips to blow a stream of cool air onto the other nipple until it puckered like its twin.

  “Hmmm, Callista,” he purred, “such beauty you keep hidden under your strict façade. It’s like cutting open the pages of a new book, cracking that leather binding for the first time and unexpectedly finding the secrets of naughty French erotica inside. Look at you!” he said in a tone that sounded strangely like awe.

  She had but a moment’s hesitation, as she wondered if he used such lines with all the women he seduced. The thought was a painful one, but stopping now for the sake of her pride would be more painful still.

  He slipped both hands inside the pink silk of her loosened corset to cup her breasts and push them together. Then he bent his head anew to lick both nipples at once. The contrast of his large, warm hands with the library’s cool air on the moistened tips of her breasts sent a ripple of pleasure down her back. The feeling of need between her legs grew more insistent with his attention to her breasts, as well as with the pressure he maintained between their thighs. She moaned again and felt herself start to pant at the layers of sensation he was lavishing across her body.

  She needed more of something, and soon. But with her arms bound tight to her sides in her silk sleeves, she could do no more than grip at the fine black wool of his trousers. Suddenly, he seemed to be wearing far too much. Wasn’t there supposed to be more nudity involved in these matters? Her fingers itched to feel his flesh, to smooth and caress their way across his skin the way his were doing at her neck and bosom.

  “Dominick . . . ,” she said, but got no further as he nibbled again at her lips.

  “Mmm . . . yes, love?”

  His use of the term caught her off guard, with an odd stinging pang. “Don’t call me that,” she whispered. Surely he couldn’t mean it in any sense other than as a seducer’s blithe throwaway. “That’s what you call them. Please, just Callista.”

  She had to steel herself to the effect of such endearments, delivered in that honeyed drawl and coming from such a man as he. She didn’t want him to play the seducer with her, but simply to be himself—the man who loved books and liked to write and who was, at the moment, introducing her to more pleasure than she’d ever imagined.

  He agreed easily. “All right. I’ll call you Callista. As long as you keep calling me Dominick. Or”—he flashed a crooked grin—“just call me wicked.”

  “Yes, my wicked lord Dominick.” She wasn’t yet fully comfortable with the intimacy of his given name, any more than, she could see, he was ready to give up the mask of seducer.

  She was, however, prepared with mounting urgency to seek another kind of intimacy. “Please, umm . . .” How did one ask for this? She tried plucking at his trousers and waistcoat, which was all she could reach. “Please.”

  “Callista, in fairness to you, I want you to be sure.” He cupped her face in both hands and brushed back the tresses from her cheeks. “Is this truly what you want?”

  She knew Lady Barrington and the others from the society-page stories still hovered in the distance, that he offered no more than an evening’s dalliance, that by the dictates of society’s morality she should say no. Perhaps even more to the point, to protect her heart she ought to stop things right here. But she couldn’t. Oh, she just couldn’t. Not tonight. Not with the contrast this slow lovemaking presented to the nightmares she still had of Garforth’s hands on her and the threat of bills coming due sooner than she could pay them, and the daily fatigue and struggle of keeping her motley household together. He treated her with respect and tenderness. It was not for her to judge him or to expect the impossible. They had now, and tonight.

  “Please,” she whispered again.

  It was all the prompting he needed to finish unhooking the back of her gown and unlacing her corset.

  She freed her arms and set to work on his garments. So many buttons and fasteners! Her f
ingers stumbled on the studs of his fine cambric shirt as his skin became visible beneath. Oh my goodness. She’d never before seen a man’s naked chest. Removing the shirt was beyond her boldness, and she started to blush.

  “Beauty”—the corners of his mouth curved—“let me, why don’t you?” He worked most of their clothing into a puddle of linen and silk and fine woolens with the quick efficiency she expected, and then surprised her by scooping her up in his arms. A whoop of alarm escaped her, and she clutched her arms around his neck.

  “Dominick, I’m not a small woman!” she chided. “Have a care for your back.”

  He laughed and carried her over to the long leather settee facing the fire. She was clad in naught but the sheer ivory silk chemise and silk stockings Marie had insisted on loaning her for the evening. And he was finally, gloriously, wearing no more than his black trousers.

  As he laid her across the settee, he traced a finger over her cheek. “For a prize such as this, I would carry you over the Khyber Pass and across the endless trek of the Silk Road. I would tie you up in my tent night after night, seducing you with love words and caresses until you opened your heart to me and accepted me as your lord.”

  “At which point you would add me to your harem of a thousand other conquered ladies and forget all about me?” It was a question a little too close to reality to fit into the fantasy he spun.

  His smile grew bemused as his gaze swept down her length. “Callista, deeply unworthy of you as I am, I will never forget you.” He stood up to toss more coals on the fire and then gathered pillows and a cashmere throw from the armchairs.

  It was a line he’d surely used before to ward off the affections of a lady inclined to want more than he cared to give. “Yes, I’m sure of it,” she answered lightly. “Now come and prove how wicked you are.”

  Laughing, he sat beside her as she lay sprawled on the settee and tucked his armful of items around her on the makeshift bed. She could feel his hip pressed up against her own, heat radiating from his flesh as from a strong male animal. She felt the smooth leather under the thin silk of her chemise, the cashmere now half draped over her legs, and the velvet pillows supporting her head and shoulders. Never had she been so aware of her body, of the sensation of textiles on her skin. Never had she felt so alive!