Her first thought was that he had not yet retired, but the house was deadly quiet, and Ned and Annalee had turned in hours ago. Then it dawned on her—Caroline, and Diana cursed herself for ten kinds of fool. She knew they were lovers. Why would she ever have imagined he would have gone to his bed alone, that he would be waiting for her? Especially after she had repulsed him, not once, but thrice.
Diana tried to convince herself that it was all for the best, that she was not the kind of woman to carry on an illicit intrigue and would only live to regret it if she had carried out her plan. But the truth was heart-sundering disappointment. She had wanted—no, needed this. Desperately. She turned to depart, but froze at the angry assault to her ears.
"Damn it, Caroline! I thought you had departed this afternoon for The Oaks. I've already made my sentiments perfectly clear. Why must you make this so bloody difficult?"
She could find no voice to reply when he rose from the chair by the hearth and moved toward her with a purposeful stride. But he saw her and stopped dead in his tracks.
"You?"
"Yes. Me," she croaked from a throat made of sandpaper.
They stared at each other in interminable silence before his sensuous mouth formed a slow, wolfish smile. "Well, isn't this a surprise."
Her pulse raced. Her tongue darted nervously over her lips. "It was urgent that I see you."
"Urgent? Then why did you not sup with us? Surely we could have spoken then or shortly thereafter."
Her mind scrambled for an answer. "I wasn't well earlier."
His mouth curved a wicked turn. "You look exceedingly well to me." He took another step forward with a gaze that burned through the thin layer of silk to heat her skin beneath. He looked as if he would devour her whole.
Diana retreated two steps back, but it was not far enough to ease her sudden sense of vulnerability, nor the startling physical awareness of him.
"There is something you must know before the race tomorrow," she said.
He glanced at the mantel clock and regarded her with a sardonic lift of his brow. "By my account, tomorrow is already come."
"My apologies again for disturbing you at this late hour, but I had to speak in private. No one else must know of this."
"Disturbing me would be a vast understatement," he replied. "I find myself unusually agitated at your change of heart."
"You misunderstand," she said, the same heart now sounding a frantic beat for retreat. "This is about the race. Reggie has fixed it. He has bribed your jockey."
DeVere took possession of her hand, caressing her knuckles with his thumb. "I thank you for the warning, my dear." He drew her fingers to his mouth, kissing them with deliberate languor, his hot breath against her cool skin sending tremors racing up her arm. "But you worry needlessly. For I already know."
Her gaze fixed on his mouth. She tried in vain to ignore the warmth of it, the soft sensuous lips. "B-but how? How could you know? There was no one else about."
"I treat my people very well, and they are devoutly loyal to me for it."
Diana worried her lower lip. "What will you do now?"
"Whatever your heart desires."
She shook her head sharply, unsettled by his continued attempts to unbalance her with his persistent innuendoes. "I'm speaking of the race."
"The matter is taken care of."
"You have confronted Reggie?"
His face hardened. "No. I have quite another method of dealing with this."
"You won't tell me?"
"I will not. It is a most unpleasant topic that I would rather not dwell upon when there are far more fascinating subjects at hand." He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers, and she broke away from him with a strangled sound.
"That's not why I'm here. I came to protect my personal interests. To warn you about the race."
"In nothing but your wrapper? Tsk, tsk, my pet. Untruths are so unbecoming. Yet it is precisely your most personal interests, your intimate needs, that are foremost in my mind right now."
She opened her mouth to protest, but he advanced and silenced her with a finger across her lips. He traced the curve of her mouth with a whisper touch that made her ache for his kiss. His thumb lingered, caressing her lower lip and making it tingle with exquisite sensation. She closed her eyes and bit her tongue to suppress the urge to lick him.
"If I had had any doubts about you before..." he murmured, "they were laid to rest the instant I set eyes on that feckless husband of yours. There are no words to encompass his unworthiness of you, Diana. You were made to be worshipped. Say the word, and I swear to atone for the grievous neglect you've suffered."
He had spoken her own deepest feelings, her darkest desires. She averted her face in an attempt to ignore the heightened awareness of him. The big, strong, near-naked body. The powerful chest exposed by the loose banyan, the even more powerful urge to touch him.
"I've not given you leave—"
"To touch you? To address you with such intimacy?" He laughed. "You and I both know you crossed that boundary at the threshold to my bedchamber. Someone damn well needs to touch you, Diana. Someone, preferably me, needs to make amends for your husband's disgrace and fuck you senseless."
She stared at him, speechless.
"Don't look so affronted, my dear. I know how to give you profound pleasure, Diana. We both know that's why you came to me. You have only to admit it."
Her heart surged as he moved in for the kill with the ease of a practiced predator. Dipping his head, he drew her lower lip into his mouth, gently biting, sucking, and sending a jolt of molten lightning straight to her core. She melted into him with a whimper. He slowly released her with a feral gleam in his eye. "Just tell me you want me, and I will show you many ways I can please you until you beg for your release."
Dear God, but he was right. She had crossed the threshold. There was no turning back now.
***
Sensing her qualms, fearing she would change her mind and flee, Ludovic had let her blather on about the races, but all the while deftly and relentlessly guiding her back to the truth and compelling her to face her motives. She wanted him too. He could see it in the rapid rise of her breasts. He could smell her budding arousal and would relish bringing her to full bloom. God, how he loved this dance! She had taken the first tentative steps, yet she still fought her desire, refused to give in to it, but he would lead her now. He was a master...and a ruthless bastard.
He moved behind her, taking possession of her waist, his fingers riffled gently through her hair. He closed his eyes to inhale her faint rose scent mixed with womanly musk. He dipped his head, letting his breath tickle her ear. She shivered. He whispered low and sultry. "Do you wish me to name the ways I can please you? I am delighted to comply if that excites you...although it would please me far more to demonstrate."
She swallowed hard. His lip twitched.
His hand skirted up her waist to the outside of her breast, his thumb stroking, teasing but not quite touching her nipple. He sought with his tongue that most sensitive spot behind her ear. He licked, and she trembled. "I never make idle boasts, Diana. I have long studied the secrets of a woman's body and know many ways to bring you mindless rapture."
She tensed, her breathing quickening to a shallow rasp. "Is such a thing possible for every woman? In ten years I've never..." She flushed with the confession. "Not by my husband's hand."
He laughed. "Never by his hand? Then what of his cock? His mouth?"
"M-mouth?" She turned her head, her gaze shooting to his with another convulsive swallow.
He awarded her a wicked smile. "The mouth and tongue are but one exquisite gateway to heaven. Do you wish to know them all, Diana? You need only say the word. Confess your need, and I will be a slave to your desire."
"Yes." The word escaped from her throat, a nearly soundless whisper. "Yes," she repeated on a sob. "It is why I came to you. But then I was afraid. But I'm not anymore. I want to know what I've missed. My life has bee
n nothing but sacrifice and thankless duty. I want to know passion and pleasure. Please, Ludovic, show me what can be between a man and a woman."
At last. He closed his eyes on a smile, briefly basking in his victory. It was the sweetest surrender. He pulled her around and into his arms. "If it is truly your wish to discover paradise..." He dipped his head to her throat. "I am enchanted to be your guide."
Chapter Nine
She lifted her chin, her watery gaze meeting relentless, fathomless blue, his lovely mouth curving in a way that promised illicit delights. He found her throat in a bone-melting kiss and then drew her into his arms to claim her mouth. His lips were at once firm and soft, giving and demanding, nibbling and sucking, and Diana almost cried out in sheer bliss.
She parted her own to him, opening freely. His tongue entered her mouth, hot and wet and delicious, tasting of warm brandy and virile male. She was soon lightheaded with the combination, the intoxicating mix. She moaned into his mouth, abandoning herself to desire. Locking and releasing, nipping and gliding, their tongues met again, tangling in a jolt of sublime sensation that plummeted to a place low in her belly.
He pulled her deeper into the kiss, his tongue sliding over hers in sweet wet friction, plundering her mouth. His teeth found her earlobe, his warm breath in her ear sending rapturous ripples down her spine. He teased and traced a blazing trail along the pulse of her throat, kissing, licking, and heating her blood into a raging torrent. He lingered at the juncture between neck and shoulder, moving to the sensitive spot between her collarbones while he disengaged the sash at her waist.
In seconds, the smooth silk slithered from her shoulders to pool at her feet. Holding her arms at her side, Diana resisted the miss-ish urge to cover herself. Instead she fixed on his face, on the visibly throbbing pulse in his neck, the subtle flare of his nostrils, the pupils burning into her with dark desire. He raked over her with an appreciation that seared her flesh in its wake.
"You are nothing short of magnificent," he murmured deep and husky.
Her gaze slid over him, taking in his breadth of shoulder, the broad expanse of chest, the tapering waist and hips. She reached the generous, telltale bulge in his breeches and liquid warmth suffused the place between her thighs. As if reading her thoughts, he took her hand in his, guiding it between his legs. He pressed it firmly against the rock-hard protrusion. She sucked in a breath at the feel of him. Large. Thick. Rigid. Her insides convulsed.
The corner of his mouth kicked up. "Rest assured that I am both eager and equipped to satisfy you."
Though her hand trembled beneath his, she couldn't help a light squeeze, delighting in the way it jumped in her hand, in the sharp rise of his chest, in the way his jaw twitched, and lashes fluttered. He groaned in pleasure, and her remaining inhibitions vanished, replaced by a heady sensation in having evoked such a potent response.
He released her hand and reclaimed her mouth. He skirted up her sides to fondle her breasts, his thumbs moving over her nipples. They instantly hardened, and her entire body thrummed. She arched into him, begging for more. It was sheer heaven and beyond any of Diana's dreamscape imaginings to have his big, warm hands and hot mouth on her body.
"Do you know there are women who climax from breast play alone? I wonder, Diana, what you would do if I took that luscious peak into my mouth? Shall I? Shall I pull and tease and suckle you 'til you whimper for release?"
"Yes," she hissed.
He rumbled with pleasure. His hands and mouth played over her plush mounds, gently squeezing, teasing, biting, and tormenting her flesh with sweet agony until he drew one tight peak into his mouth. Licking, laving, pulling, suckling, every sensation built upon the last, awakening every inch of her skin with want. Urging him to the other breast, she madly riffled his silky hair, now torn loose from its queue. He complied with eagerness, continuing the delicious torture with teeth, lips, and tongue, escalating her need. Abandoned to sensation, she awoke from her stupor at the awareness of her own cry. "Please."
He slowly released her nipple from his mouth. His eyes were heavy-lidded, and his smile wicked. "Please what, Diana? I only live to please you." The promise in his words, in his heated gaze made her heart seize in a panic of anticipation. "I will do anything and everything to bring you ecstasy."
With this vow, he slid slowly down her body, cupping the generous globes of her buttocks, fondling and squeezing them while his tongue smoldered the skin of her belly. Adding soft bites and fevered kisses, he skirted the smooth contour, lasciviously laving her navel, yet always progressing southward with languorous deliberation. Until he settled on his knees and leveled his face with her sex. Profound awareness of his intent besieged her in waves of wicked wanting.
Her breath was already coming in short rasps when he slid a hand between her thighs, stroking her wetness and gently but firmly urging them apart. She already ached to be filled, but then he molded his hands to her hips and pulled her up against his mouth. Her treacherous legs trembled, her knees threatened to buckle. She gripped his shoulders. "N-no." She exhaled in hope-filled terror while a pool of liquid heat filled her sex.
"Oh, yes," he growled into her nest of curls. "I can smell your arousal, Diana, sharp and pungent, the most potent of perfumes. You are soaking my hand with liquid desire. I want to bask in it, fill my senses with your very essence, kiss and taste and tongue you until we're both blind and writhing to have my cock buried deep inside you."
Before she could voice another protest his tongue invaded her in the deepest, most decadent and devouring of kisses. Wickedly circling, swirling, sucking while his clever fingers played along her slickened folds, parting, stroking, gently probing, obliterating time and place and all reality beyond his hot mouth burrowing in her wet quim. Her hunger rose to a rabid frenzy. Dear God in heaven! It is too much!
"Ludovic," she cried, beseeching an end to the agonizing emptiness. "I can't bear it! You must…! Please!"
***
She was dripping with desire, her body quivering, her passage clenching around him. He answered her plea by plunging two fingers deep inside her. She cried out, and he slid a third into her scalding wetness, stretching her, stroking in and out, matching the urgency with which she writhed against him, losing himself in her need.
He felt her climax building with smug satisfaction, the arc of her body, her breath coming in erratic bursts. He stole a glance at her face. It was flushed, her head thrown back. She was so ready, so ripe, an enticingly erotic vision that made his engorged cock strain against his breeches like a dam about to burst. Come on, sweetheart, he silently urged. I'm going to make you come so hard you think you are dying. Then I'm going to bury my cock in you balls deep and fuck you senseless.
"Reach for it, my love," he growled aloud, ignoring the painful throb of his prick. "Seize your release. It's yours for the taking." He curled his fingers inside her, massaging that magical place just as he plied his lips to her clit. Determined to push her over the brink, into dark oblivion, he sucked hard and watched her orgasm erupt.
***
She thought she would melt from the ecstasy wrought by his mouth. Then her breathing arrested, and the world receded into a black void. Tremors began racking her body, expanding into convulsive waves that drained her of all coherent thought. Her throat tore open in a ceaseless, screaming sob.
Diana collapsed against him and felt herself lifted into his arms. She clung to his chest, breathless and helpless, feeling as if her spirit had left her body. He brought her briefly back to life with his lips on her mouth and carried her the few steps to his bed where he lay her down atop the snowy white linen. Dazed and satiated, she closed her eyes upon a sigh.
"Oh, no, you don't," he murmured, almost a threat. "We are far from finished."
She noted the strain in his face, the frustration in his voice, and realized with a flush that she had been too caught up in her own release to realize he had neither taken nor demanded his. The selflessness of it took her breath away. "What yo
u did to me…it is beyond description."
"You experienced merely the briefest taste of what can be between us. I can show you so much more." His eyes glittered with promise.
"More? How can there be more? My heart would surely burst."
He laughed. "It is much as the French say—la petite mort, the little death. I can think of no more pleasant way to go. But if one ascribes to the Greek belief in three layers of heaven, you have only achieved the first."
"And the second?" she asked, wide-eyed in anticipation of his answer.
He guided her hand to his jutting erection. "The second is achieved when I fill you with my cock."
She flushed. "You still...you haven't..."
"I'm still hard as a spike and throbbing like hell," he answered tightly. "Do you wish to explore the second heaven now, Diana?" He bent over her, murmuring low and husky against her mouth. "Let me inside you now, and I will awaken you to all the ways of love."
He kissed her again, gently, tenderly at first, a whisper-soft brush and then traced her lips with his tongue. She flicked out her own and tasted the salty, sweet tang of her own passion still lingering on his mouth. The realization renewed the empty pang inside her. He deepened the kiss, and she rose up against him. He broke away to shed his silk banyan and reached for the placket of his breeches.
She sat up. "No. Please. Allow me."
He dropped his hands to his sides. His mouth twisted wryly. "Whatever your heart desires." With anticipation and trembling fingers, Diana fumbled with the buttons containing his straining sex. Freed at last, his manhood eagerly sprang forth. She stared, mesmerized by the smooth, purplish head, the long, thick shaft jutting from the nest of dark hair. She reached out but faltered. "I want to touch you, Ludovic. I want to give you pleasure, but I don't know how."
A Devil Named DeVere (The Devil DeVere) Page 8
