by The Rogue
She was compromised by anyone’s reckoning now, wasn’t she?
So why did this feel anything but dishonorable, anything but right and true and perfect?
The answer was simple. Because this was Ethan, and she loved him.
She loved Ethan Damont, shady gambler and rogue of the highest order, champion flirt and man without means that he did not cheat for. She smiled. He was everything she’d been brought up to avoid and disdain—yet there was no man she knew whom she esteemed more.
“You think you are so very worthless, my love,” she whispered. “And yet you blaze like your name—the Diamond.”
A wave of powerful emotion swept her and she reached for his hand. Not to move it aside, not to satisfy her curiosity, but to gently entwine her fingers with his and to let the heat of his palm warm hers. The heat seeped into her and ran through her veins, filling her with peace and assurance.
Yet, how could she get past Ethan’s stubborn insistence that she be preserved for—for whom? For some pasty-faced young lord, or worse, some pasty-faced old lord? For some idiot who constantly gambled and didn’t win?
How could she get past his defenses? How could she make him hers? If she made him give in by seducing him, then she would only make him more sure of his own bad nature.
She had to allow him to be good and honorable on this front, or she would shatter the new man he was trying to be.
She could let him be, let him say no. She could accept his choice and then when everything was over—let him go?
That was simply not an option she was willing to consider.
What about taking him against his own stubborn will?
If Ethan were bound, then he’d have no choice. If he had no choice, he could not blame himself for ruining her. If she took away his chance to protest—was that not what he truly wanted?
She considered the sash from her wrapper. It was quite long. The tassels at the end of the cord went nearly to the floor. Long enough to bind one hand, go behind the head-board, and come down to bind the other.
Before she could think better of her scandalous plan, she pulled it from the wrapper where it lay on the floor. The cord was twisted silk and would bind most comfortably, she was sure. She made a sliding loop like the one she once used to hobble the old mare while she cleaned the stable. Like the mare, Ethan was probably best caught by surprise, so Jane left the loop loose around his wrist while she passed the cord behind the head of the bed, then pulled it carefully back through.
His other hand was not resting so high on the bed. Jane did not want to risk moving it herself. Looking around, she spotted a stand of peacock feathers decorating the mantel. She plucked one from the display and used it to tickle Ethan just below his elbow. His response was just what she’d hoped for—he restlessly shifted his arm higher, bringing his wrist into range of her cord. She slipped the other loop over that hand and eased the knot down to bind his wrist.
Moving quickly, she trotted around the bed to do the same to his other wrist. There. He was bound, forced to hear her out.
What she had not expected was her own response to seeing him thus, naked and vulnerable before her. A thrill of excitement went through her. Ethan kept still for her exploration and pleasure? It was a secret dream she’d not even realized she had.
Still holding the jewel-toned peacock feather in her hand, Jane clambered aboard Ethan’s bed—then, on a whim, clambered aboard Ethan himself.
He shifted sleepily beneath her, his hips rising to grind gently on her center. A shock of pleasure went through her. Scandalous images flashed across her mind.
She could ride astride him like in the carriage—dear Lord, what a thought!
She wanted him to shift again. She used the feather as a braver surrogate to trace a path down that trail of fine hairs across his belly leading beneath the covers. She was rewarded by another writhing shift of him beneath her.
Emboldened, she let the feather caress his powerful chest and trace the muscles twining up his raised arms. He sleepily tried to move his arm away until it met the resistance of the cord.
Ethan woke abruptly, alarm singing through his body.
He tried to move, only to find himself bound and pinned by a slight weight. Blinking rapidly, he tried to focus on the shape above him. Someone—
“Shh,” said a soft voice. “Be still.”
“Jane?” Incredulous, he let himself fall back on the pillows. While it was a relief to find that he wasn’t being murdered in his bed, he felt an entirely new sense of foreboding. “Jane, what goes on here?”
To his astonishment, she waved a peacock feather at him. He shook his head. This was one of the stranger positions he’d woken to in his life. Then he focused his attention on Jane herself and the breath left his body. She sat astride him, her straight ladylike posture adding a bizarre flavor to the fact that her hair hung loose over her naked body. He could clearly see from the valley between her breasts down to where her nest nuzzled against his own covered groin. He found himself distracted by the charming way her navel crowned the slight swell of her soft female belly—
Then he came back to himself. “What the bloody hell is going on here?”
His roar echoed through the house. Excellent. Jeeves would come running. Thank God for interfering servants. He’d found a use for them at last.
Except that no one came. Not Jeeves, not Cook, not even that dour bloke, Uri.
Then he remembered. She’d sent them away.
She gave him a little slap with the feather. “They are not coming.”
Ethan snapped at the irritating thing. “Stop that.”
She smiled slightly. A dangerous gleam appeared in her eye. “I won’t. And you cannot make me.”
Ethan swallowed. “Jane, this is by far the worst idea you have ever had.”
She raised the feather to tap it meditatively against her chin. “I don’t think so. I think I’m brilliant. I have you right where I want you.”
He shook his head. “Jane, you don’t want me.”
She stroked the feather down his stomach, tickling the fine hairs that grew there. “Yes I do.”
“It won’t be worth it, Janet. Yes, we could give each other a night of pleasure, I won’t deny that. But nothing would come of it but your own ruin. I’m not a gentleman, remember? If I ruin a woman, she stays ruined.”
She tilted her head curiously. “Have you ever ruined a woman?”
“Of course I have!” He hadn’t actually, but this was no time to appear honorable. “I’ve broken more reputations than I can remember!”
“Oh, really?” She looked impressed. “Virgins strewn by the side of the road, is it?” She smiled meaningfully. “Good. Then you’ll be very practiced at it.” The feather began to get a bit close to home. Ethan panicked.
“Jane, I don’t love you,” he blurted. “You bore me! In fact, I can barely look at you!”
“Oh?” She considered that for a moment. He had hopes that she’d be hurt and back away from this horrendous plan. Then she smiled and he knew the game was up.
“If you can’t look at me, then I suppose there’s no need for me to stay covered.” She pushed her long hair back over her shoulders, leaving her bared in all her elegant, graceful glory.
She was the goddess Diana, the huntress, and he was her prey. Ethan knew he was the most fortunate man on earth at this moment. She whisked the covers away.
And she was the most doomed woman in the world.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Jane, stop this!” Ethan pulled against his bindings, but the clever minx had made the cord so that it tightened if he struggled. He fought them anyway, until the bed frame creaked in protest and the veins in his arms stood out. Jane merely rode him out, sitting peacefully astride him until he tired. Finally, he lay back, gasping but not defeated. He had to save her from herself!
Then he saw what she had in her hand. The sheepskin sheath caught the firelight behind its filmy translucence. Yet there was no need t
o worry. She’d never get the trick of rolling it onto him without practice.
She was regarding it contemplatively. “If this were a stocking that I was putting on . . .”
Ah. Well, that might very well count as practice. He watched with mounting horror as she rolled it rather expertly into a stiff disc. She displayed it proudly. “There, what do you think?”
“I think you should stop this n—” His voice left him with a gasp as she wrapped her fingers round his cock and gently squeezed.
“I’ve been admiring this tonight,” she said thoughtfully. “I liked it quite a bit before, but now I find it much more interesting.”
Ethan gritted his teeth, straining backward in an effort to control his growing erection. “No, Jane. I won’t—”
She stroked her hand up and down. “Do you like that? Does it feel good?” Her voice was soft and mesmerizing. He recognized the tone instantly as the one he’d used on her in the carriage.
Oh, God, he was going to pay for that now. And he still wasn’t able to touch her!
Jane wrapped her hand firmly around Ethan’s staff, enjoying the silk-over-steel feel of it. His body quivered as his member jumped in her grasp. “What does that feel like?” She didn’t really expect an answer and she didn’t get one.
If the sheath was a stocking and his staff was a leg . . .
The flexible cover rolled neatly down over Ethan’s staff. Jane realized a bit too late that she ought to have waited. Now she could not directly feel his skin, nor could he directly feel her touch.
Unfortunately, her hands were shaking badly now. The feel of him in her grasp, the way his straining body looked in the fire’s glow . . . she was becoming more aroused by the moment herself.
“If you can’t feel through that, I suppose I’m going to have to touch you in other places . . .”
Leaving his encased staff lying stiffly against his stomach, she moved up his body to his chest. “My breasts are tingling,” she whispered to him. He clenched his eyes shut and turned away, but his breathing quickened. “Do you remember how you made me touch myself for you?”
A low, primitive groan came from deep in his chest. Jane leaned over him, using all the words and intonations he had used on her. “All I wanted was your touch that night . . . all I wanted was for you to feel how hard my nipples had become.” She let her breasts trail across his bare chest. The sensation of his chest hair against her rigid nipples made her whimper even as he gasped wordlessly.
He’d stopped pulling at his bonds, she noticed. She pressed her breasts harder to his chest, straddling him again to make better contact.
His staff leaped beneath her, nearly slipping into her dampened center. The sensation made her freeze above him as the tiny shocks went coursing through her.
“You aren’t fighting anymore, darling. Do you want me now?”
His jaw worked, but he didn’t answer. Yet his hips rotated upward, pressing him closer to her. Experimentally, she reached between them and grasped him in her hand. She wanted to touch herself again, the way she had before, but he wasn’t watching now.
If he would not open his eyes, then she would touch herself with him, so he could feel it instead.
Using his pulsing rigid staff instead of her own fingers, she began to press and rotate the thickened head against her pleasure spot. Her own slickness soon coated his staff and her own shaking fingers, until her grip began to slide rather wildly as she drove herself higher.
Lost in pleasure, she took a moment to realize Ethan was hoarsely calling her name. “Janet, oh God, Janet—ride me! Please, please, take me in—”
Half mad with arousal, halfway to her own satisfaction, Jane thoughtlessly obeyed. With one motion, she positioned him at her slit and began to drive her body down on his long, thick staff without a care for her own virginity.
“No!” Ethan’s urgent cry just barely reached her in time. She halted, breathless, nearly crying with need.
“No?” she gasped.
“Oh, yes,” he growled. “But slowly, darling. Go carefully.”
Jane obeyed, slipping the thick round head just slightly into herself. Even that short length began to stretch her with a burning ache.
“Slowly,” he breathed into her hair, for she was bent low over him. “Don’t hurry. You’ll feel it when you’re ready for more of me.”
Now that she had him partially within her, she realized how daunting his size truly was. She wasn’t frightened, nor would she have stopped if Napoleon himself had burst through the door, but she did wish she dared to untie him so she could feel his strong arms about her.
No. Stubborn, so-sure-he-was-right man would stop. He would get up and leave her like this, swollen and aching, just to save her for some imaginary highborn husband she would never want to have.
She pressed him another inch within her. Gasping, she buried her face into his neck. He turned his head to kiss her hair. “Rise up and down,” he whispered. “It will ease me in.”
She did as she was told, bracing her hands on his broad, muscled chest. Every stroke stretched her further, even as every withdrawal slickened and soothed her.
Then he could enter her no further. “Ah, Ethan,” she whispered. “I think I’m full.”
His breathless laugh rumbled up through her body as well. “No, sweeting. This is the part where I break your maidenhead.”
She swallowed. It wasn’t alarming, precisely, but he did seem to go on and on. “What do I do?”
“First, hold very still.”
She braced herself above him.
“Now, kiss me.”
Oddly, she had not kissed him yet. She lowered her lips to his in a soft caress—
He surged upward in a sudden thrust of his hips.
Jane felt him burst through, driving deep within her. She cried out, just a small cry that he took into his own mouth.
He kissed her softly. “Shh, shh. Now relax for a moment. The pain will ease—”
She shook her head. She felt soft and liquid, wrapped around his thickness. “There is no pain. I want to—” She rose and fell on him, again and again.
It burned, it blazed, it sent wracking shudders through her until she could hardly continue. She heard Ethan crying out her name, his voice hoarse with passion.
She felt that precipice approach, the one he’d led her to before. There was some pain now, just a hint of ache behind the pleasure, but she knew she must reach the edge soon . . .
Ethan cried out and surged beneath her, inside her. He swelled and throbbed, adding the last bit of pressure she had needed—
She cried out as she flung them both over the edge, unable to stop her rise and fall, unable to do anything but call her lover’s name, her love’s name—
“Ethan!”
Jane awoke to the feel of something warm and damp between her thighs. She roused and opened her eyes to find Ethan sitting next to her, tending to her with a cloth.
She smiled sleepily at him. “Hello, darling.”
He did not smile back. “Hello, my lady.”
She tried to sit up, to reach for him—
Only to find that she was the one now bound with silken cord.
She eyed her beloved with wary eyes. “Ethan, what is this?” Something was wrong.
He glanced up, then went back to his task. “I would think you’d recognize the technique.”
His touch was infinitely tender as the cloth cleaned and soothed her.
“I’m sorry, Ethan—”
He went still. “No you aren’t.”
She hesitated, aware that this was a time for the truth. “No, I must confess that I am not. Not for loving you, or making love to you. I am happy. I am only sorry that you cannot be happy as well.”
“The only thing I am happy about is that you had the sense to use the sheath,” he said. “At least there will be no bastards.”
She blinked. “Oh, is that what it is for?” If she’d known, she certainly wouldn’t have used it.
&n
bsp; He stared at her. “What did you think it was for?”
She shrugged with difficulty, since her hands were bound above her. “I thought it was for pleasure.”
“No.” He looked away. “It actually feels a bit better without it.”
Jane’s jaw dropped. “It gets better?”
He let out a single gust of helpless laughter and dropped his head into his hands. “My lady, what am I going to do with you?”
Jane frowned. What was his meaning? “I want you to make love to me,” she said. “I want to stay in your arms until I die of it.”
He nodded, gazing at her with dark, hooded eyes. “That, my lady, I can provide.”
He lowered his mouth to her.
Jane started at the first touch of his lips there. Shock rippled through her. She pulled at her bonds. What was this—this outrageous—
His tongue slipped through to her pleasure spot and all coherent thought left her mind.
Soft, slippery tongue, circling over and around, then back, then again. He created suction, making her entire body convulse. Her thighs opened, spreading her helplessly before him, open and wet and exposed for him—and then he made her forget she ever had any concept of shame.
She writhed and bucked and mouthed helpless sounds as he tortured her beautifully with his tongue, lips, and teeth. The sensations consumed her, devoured her, made her forget everything but the wild untamed ecstasy of his kiss on her.
“Oh, dear God! Please, Ethan! Oh, please, I need you so!”
He went very still, his head still bowed over her. She could see his bare chest heaving and the sheen of perspiration that told her he wanted her just as much. He was nearly trembling with it. The sight of his muscled, rippling arms tensing as he hesitated—how she loved his chest, his arms, his shoulders. Soon he would move up her body, release her from her bonds, and hold her tightly in those corded arms while he drove himself into her—
“The sheath—” His words were a gasp of need.
Jane tossed her head on the pillow. “Forget the sheath! I want you. I want your child and your name!”
He froze in the act of reaching for the night table drawer.
