Devil's Fire

by Melissa MacNeal

  ‘But I feel — unclean. Defiled.’

  His dimple winked mischievously. ‘Yu Ling was running a bath when I returned from tucking Mother in. Perhaps a hot soak is exactly what you need, considering the honey and chocolate you were wearing. And after a night’s rest, I hope you’ll feel up to a walk. I have a surprise for you, dear lady.’

  What woman wouldn’t flush with pleasure, knowing her man thought of her while she was away? Yet a sense of dread filled me. I didn’t want to disappoint Hyde Fortune, after all his kindness. I didn’t deserve him, and wanted him to be free of yet another parasite; another pariah he surely wouldn’t want to be responsible for.

  But my skin was sticky, so I agreed to the bath. As he escorted me into that steamy room, again scented with rose soap, his Celestial servant bowed with a catlike smile. ‘Missy Mary want Yu Ling’s assistance?’

  ‘I’ll be taking care of her, thank you,’ Hyde replied quietly.

  I recalled the last time I’d bathed here, when that exotic woman had climbed into the tub with me. I’d been such an innocent, I’d nearly jumped out of my skin when she put a sponge between my legs! For this bath, however, I was grateful for privacy. Hyde helped me from my nightgown and steadied my arm as I stepped into the water.

  ‘Heavenly,’ I murmured as the wet heat seeped into my skin. I closed my eyes, letting my head rest against the back of the clawfoot tub.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ came the soft reply.

  As Hyde washed my neck and shoulders, the tension left my body. He was so gentle, massaging me with the soapy washcloth as though I were an invalid in need of tender care. My nipples sprang to life at his touch, and I languidly allowed him to caress my breasts and stomach before dipping between my open thighs.

  ‘Feel good?’ he whispered, kissing my damp temple.

  ‘Wonderful…absolutely divine,’ I breathed, lifting my hips so he could wash those, too.

  ‘I hope I haven’t acted presumptuously, selecting your surprise without getting your opinion,’ he said. His breath fell upon my wet neck, giving me gooseflesh despite my exhaustion. ‘But I wanted you to see me as a man of my word, Mary Grace. I’d be ecstatic if I could call you my wife. But I don’t expect you to marry me out of gratitude, or because you feel beholden. I want it to be because you love me, and can’t conceive of spending your life with anyone else.’

  I opened my eyes, to behold a smouldering russet gaze. Hyde, however, looked nothing like the diabolical man who’d offered to care for me under more lascivious circumstances. His eyes shone with warmth and hope and love, deep emotions I longed to return, yet simply couldn’t. I smiled weakly, knowing he deserved far more.

  When he’d washed my body as well as my hair, Hyde dried me with a thick towel and carried me to bed. Could any woman feel more pampered or beloved? And when he curled himself around me from behind, bending my knees with his, slipping his arm beneath my bare breasts, I’d never felt more protected or content.

  ‘Good night, my sweet Mary,’ he murmured against my ear.

  Before I could thank him, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  Hyde’s excitement was contagious the next morning as we stepped outside. I felt like a new woman, well-fed and rested, with the song of the birds echoing in my heart. Spring was trying her best to come to the Rockies, and all around Mount Calvary the greening trees and columbine sky spoke of new life, fresh beginnings.

  I was wearing a gown Mr Fortune had commissioned from a local seamstress, in shades of gold and rust-coloured wool, trimmed in lace. Yu Ling had made a special effort with my hair, pulling it back with a bow at the crown and letting my waves cascade over my shoulders, at Hyde’s request.

  ‘You look too lovely for words,’ he told me, nearly stumbling because he couldn’t seem to watch where we were going. ‘And again, I hope you’ll pardon any presumption on my part, for I know you like to make your own decisions. I love that about you, Mary Grace.’

  I smiled at that statement, so different from the way most men spoke to their women.

  ‘But when I found this place, I could see you waving at me from the verandah, and hear you humming in the kitchen…and the bed began creaking until I went crazy from wanting you! It was like you already lived here.’

  My eyes widened when we stopped in front of a charming two-storey Queen Anne house, with a tidy white fence around the yard.

  ‘I put your quilting materials in this bedroom, thinking you’d have the perfect light and work space,’ he went on, pointing to the Palladian window on the second floor. His grin burst forth like the morning sun. ‘Come in, won’t you?’

  He swung open the gate, placing his hand at the base of my spine. I eagerly took in the stone-lined flower beds and the neatly kept lawn, for I’d never lived in a place that exuded such cosiness. The verandah gave a welcoming creak as we stepped to the door, where Hyde paused with his hand on the knob.

  ‘Welcome home, love,’ he whispered.

  He lowered his lips to mine in a sweet, confident kiss that had my arms twining around his neck. I pressed into him, seeking the affection I’d missed those long weeks at Heaven’s Gate — the love that could’ve saved me from myself, had I allowed it to.

  Hyde straightened, a sly light in his eyes. ‘It doesn’t bother me to take my pleasure while others watch, but I’d much rather make love to you without the neighbours looking on. Just you and me, Mary Grace. Naked. So brazen and hot we break the bed.’

  My insides shimmered as he opened the door. We stepped into a vestibule with a glossy walnut floor and coral walls. Clean, white moulding framed each of four doorways opening off this little hall, which ended in a spindled staircase. I peeked into the front parlour, grinning. ‘A bay window! And such a pretty shade of periwinkle. It’s perfect!’

  ‘So are you,’ he growled, grabbing me in a playful embrace.

  ‘I smell paint, don’t I? And varnish. And lemon wax.’

  ‘And I smell your rose-scented skin, and your warm hair…and a place between your legs I’m longing to fill,’ he replied, following me across the foyer.

  This sitting room featured a fireplace tiled with Delft blue designs, and a large Persian rug in greens — which complemented the walls of seafoam. I could imagine the fun we’d have choosing furniture to make these rooms uniquely ours.

  I pretended I didn’t see the desire in his eyes, or the bulge below his belt. ‘You had this house redecorated just for me, didn’t you? It’s nothing at all like Mount Calvary.’

  ‘What else did I have to do while you were away?’ he asked wistfully. ‘I chose the brightest colours from your quilts, because they reminded me of your laughter and your indomitable spirit. Except for the bedroom, which is the exact shade of your pussy…down deep, where Solomon has seen it gloriously inflamed.’

  With a rakish grin, Hyde strode from the room. His steps echoed in the hall, and then each footfall on the carpeted stairs beckoned me to follow. I did — after a quick look into a striped dining room, a kitchen of buttercup and a solarium where the windows faced the distant mountains. I felt like a child with a wonderful new playhouse, for I’d lived in manses most of my life, where the rooms were furnished as the church saw fit.

  My heart pattered rapidly as I mounted the stairs, overwhelmed by Hyde’s gift. It would be the ideal place to live and work on my quilts, just a block from Mount Calvary yet a world apart. As I propelled myself gleefully around the polished curve of the bannister, I imagined the laughter of a son discovering how fast he could slide down it in corduroy pants.

  But it was no boy who awaited me. Hyde stood framed in a bedroom doorway, backlit by the morning sun, glowing like some heavenly messenger come to issue my deliverance. His hair was tousled from removing his clothes, while his face formed a tight mask of desire as he watched me approach. His fingertips danced in anticipation, which drew my eye to his magnificent erection. It bobbed in greeting, sturdy and virile, ranging from a deep mulberry where his engorged sac
hugged its base, to a pulsing pink at the tip.

  ‘Perhaps I’m being presumptuous again, thinking you want what you’re gawking at.’ He lightly ran a hand down its length, parting his legs enough to fondle it.

  ‘Judging from this house, you know me better than I thought,’ I murmured.

  ‘Excellent. I plan to make a life out of pleasing you, Mary Grace,’ he said in a seductive voice. ‘Which means I can never stop exploring, learning where your body longs to be caressed and where a tickle works best. Memorising the delectable scents of your navel, and your ears, and your slit when it quivers with juice. Am I wrong, or have your breasts swelled enough that your nipples now rasp against the inside of your corset?’

  My jaw dropped, and as his gaze drew me closer, I felt like a girl about to have a man for her first time. It was an absurd notion, after all I’d experienced these past weeks. Yet none of those encounters were what I had previously considered normal, of a man penetrating a woman — unless I counted my final fiasco with the abbot. I closed my eyes, trying to put that ordeal from my mind.

  Hyde touched me only with his lips, teasing little pecks to make me stretch up for the contact I craved. ‘Yes, my sweet, close your eyes until your curiosity gets the best of you. It heightens the other senses.’

  With incredible dexterity he unfastened my dress, slid my shift over my shoulders, and then popped open my stiff new corset. ‘Why you need this is beyond me, but the seamstress insisted young ladies of breeding depend upon them for a fashionable profile. So — gentleman that I am — I’ll breed you, to ensure you fit the social mould. So to speak.’

  My laughter got caught in his kiss, an open-mouthed duel between two hungry tongues. Hyde backed me against the door frame, rubbing his cock against my belly, inciting my pulse with featherlight landings of his fingertips along my sides. I dug my hands into his arse-flesh.

  ‘Give it to me,’ I rasped. ‘All this talk about the future doesn’t do a thing for a hungry little puss who needs filling right now.’

  ‘Ah, there’s the Mary Grace I’ve come to love,’ he crooned, and he suddenly lifted me from the floor. Propping me against the wall, he wrapped my legs around his hips. ‘If it’s filling you want, I’ve got plenty of buttercream for you. But one of these days we’ll try chocolate — and I’ll marinate your cherry, too.’

  I squealed when he placed the knob of his cock just inside my rim. And then he stood absolutely still. And he stopped kissing me.

  I held my breath, waiting for him to plunge inside and end the unbearable tension. When that moment didn’t come, I opened my eyes to find him studying my face. Words can’t describe the wonder I saw, mingled with a sadness that nearly made me cry. ‘What’s wrong?’ I whispered.

  He shook his head. ‘Just memorising your freckles, and the way these tendrils of hair follow your face…and its colour, like the crackling fire in my office, the first time we made love.’

  I looked away. ‘Father Luc said it glowed like hellfire.’

  Hyde’s lip curled, and we were suddenly moving towards the four-poster bed. ‘Father Luc be damned,’ he muttered, sliding me on to the rumpled sheets. ‘I should never have trusted him. I’ve wished a hundred times I hadn’t listened to you that first visit, when I so badly wanted to haul you back with me.’

  ‘I wish you had. I was being brave — a woman of my word — but my foolishness cost me.’ I wriggled beneath his warm weight, trying to catch his cock again. ‘Damn you, Hyde! What’s a woman have to do to get laid around here?’

  ‘All in good time, sweet Mary,’ he teased. ‘Solomon has advised me to take a closer look at where he’s going. Somebody’s changed the landscaping, and he can’t find the bush marking the entrance to his cave.’

  Hyde kissed my breasts, leaving a damp trail of arousal from one puckery nipple to the other, and down to my very ticklish navel, and then lower, until he held my legs apart. I propped my head on my arms to watch, fascinated by the fingernail he eased around my sex.

  ‘What do you think?’ I ventured after a few moments of this delectable torment.

  ‘God, but you excite me,’ he breathed. ‘Your bud and its petals now bloom in full view, like a sultry rose. But I liked the sense of mystery in your curls, too. Maybe I should test for a change in taste — just in case Sol wants to know.’

  Hyde dipped his tongue between my folds until, with a desperate moan, I took hold of his head. ‘Inside me — please! It’s been too long.’

  ‘And getting longer,’ he murmured against my feverish inner lips. With his thumbs he gently raised my mound, and then lapped at my clitoris with firm, steady strokes. I let my body ride the waves of heat he created, setting a faster pace by wiggling my hips. Wetness slithered all over my folds, and the spasms began deep inside me.

  ‘Take me…oh, please, please fuck me, Hyde,’ I muttered in rhythm with my thrusts.

  Raising a wry brow, he glanced down the valley of my abdomen and between my breasts. ‘Such language, woman! I can recall when Miss Michaels didn’t know that word, and wouldn’t have dared say it! See how far you’ve come?’

  ‘Come? Yes, I want to come. Now!’

  ‘Patience, dear Mary. Lie back and enjoy this, because we’re saving the best for last.’

  With that, he inserted two fingers where his tongue had been. In and out he rubbed, pressing that spongy pad just inside my opening while manipulating my clit with his thumb. I spread my legs further, writhing with need. Something about his lovemaking rang familiar with what I’d heard at Heaven’s Gate, but the rising sensations felt so much sweeter, I put that thought from my mind. The inner spasms suddenly erupted into a climax like fireworks, and I couldn’t stop undulating and calling out Hyde’s name.

  When I could focus again, Fortune was lying half on top of me. ‘Ready for another round? We must reward Sol for his patience, for letting you take your pleasure first.’

  I giggled, still floating in delirium. ‘How do you do this to me? How do you know exactly where to touch and how to kiss?

  ‘Magic,’ he whispered, ‘and if you want a little more of it, turn on to your stomach, love. Face the mirror, and get an eyeful of ecstasy.’

  * * *

  Again I heard echoes. But as Hyde repositioned me, placing his cock at my slit, I realised this room was fully furnished, with a cheval mirror strategically angled nearby. ‘Whose bed is this? Does someone still live here?’

  ‘It’s ours, Mary Grace,’ he replied, coaxing me to lie flat. ‘I couldn’t resist spending a night here last week, dreaming of when you’d join me. Now point that pretty arse at Solomon, so he can slide —’

  ‘No! I don’t like it up my backside.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ he confessed, kissing the small of my back. ‘But I think you’ll enjoy the tight fit from this angle, once you lie flat again and squeeze me.’

  From the moment he slid in and began to pump, my whole body quivered. I could feel every ridge, every slow, lovely inch he moved in and out of me, including testicles that pressed my inflamed lips when he was all the way inside. I’d never heard him moan with every motion, and the guttural sound of his pleasure ignited my passion again.

  ‘Open your eyes, Mary Grace. See how beautifully right we look making love.’

  Our reflection stunned me. Hyde’s light brown hair rippled with his every move, alongside eyes that burned into mine as we gazed into the mirror. He rode me slowly, and I raised on to my elbows to watch his muscled body move in the morning sunshine, catching its light like an aura. My breasts bobbed above the mattress, and I gripped a handful of blanket to keep myself from coming too fast.

  With a triumphant grunt, the man inside me succumbed. He drove into me again and again, his head thrown back, his Adam’s apple quivering with his hoarse cries. The sight of his extreme pleasure prompted mine, and I found a sharper, sweeter release than I did the first time.

  He fell forward, bracing himself on one muscled arm while wrapping the other around my shoulders. ‘From t
he moment I first saw you, I had to have you,’ he breathed, ‘and you’re mine at last. Be my wife, Mary Grace, so we can share this pleasure forever.’

  His words should have filled me with joy, but I froze. When he pronounced me his at last, I realised why our sex sounded as much like recollection as present reality: Hyde Fortune spoke the words Father Luc had used, when he laid me on that table. Memories of the abbot’s behaviour filled me with such disgust I couldn’t stand the feel of Hyde’s flesh against mine.

  I struggled out from under him, wrapping myself in the blanket to ward off a chill.

  He scowled. ‘What have I said, to make you —’

  ‘If this is your idea of a joke, it’s unforgivable.’

  He sat back heavily. ‘You’re not making any sense, love. One moment we’re climaxing together, and now you’re accusing —’

  ‘You were there. You heard every word Father Luc said, and you’re repeating him.’ My head reeled with thoughts I didn’t want to have, and my headache returned. ‘All he wanted was to claim me. It was just a game to him, and now you’re playing the same damn thing!’

  ‘Mary Grace, how can you say that? We talked of love and marriage before you went to Heaven’s Gate.’

  ‘And how do we know it’s not true? How do we know Father Luc isn’t some demon puppeteer, pulling our strings for his own purpose — just like your poor mother said he was.’ I clutched the covers around me, deafened by my pounding pulse and the fear that had again reared its ugly head.

  ‘Then how is it I convinced the abbot to let you go?’ he asked, wincing when I shrank from his touch. ‘If he was in supreme command, and he intended to keep you for his own devious purposes, nothing I could’ve said would’ve set you free.’

  ‘You told me yourself! He got what he wanted, so he cast me aside — like he did your mother. Do you know how horrible that makes me feel? And now you’re sounding just like him.’

  Unshed tears burned my eyes. It tore me apart to have such awful thoughts, but I couldn’t go along with his idea of forever, if he was following the abbot’s example as part of some fiendish plan. ‘I don’t think I should marry you, Hyde. And I’ll only stay in this house if you allow me to repay you, as I sell my quilts. Thank you for the way you’ve helped, but —’