“I think, Heloise,” he said in a low, husky tone next to her ear, “you should surrender to your natural urges. Allow yourself to indulge in the sublime and submit to me.”
Though her body was clearly responding to him, he still wanted to hear her say it. There would be no triumph until she did. When she did not reply, he withdrew his hand. She let out an anguished cry.
“Submit to me.” He tried again.
Her hips ground against him, in search of his hand. He teased her lightly with his fingers, but not enough to make her spend. She moaned.
“Submit.”
Her voice was shaky but the sentence clear.
“Yes…yes, I submit.”
Chapter Three
An inferno of yearning engulfed her body. Desperate for his touch, for release, Heloise had agreed to submit to the Earl of Blythe. The delectable beginning—of feeling his body pressing hers into the post, of his skilled fingers teasing her body to arousal—had become a divine torture. She felt as if she would go mad if she did not spend, and yet, she exalted in the precipice from which her body dangled. She understood that she wanted to submit to him.
And she was not the only one whose desire had been sparked. His erection, hard as stone, pressed against the arch of her arse. That awareness made her cunny ache, made what he did to her all the more pleasing. Her legs threatened to buckle and her arms begged for liberation from their bonds, but she would not give in until she had attained her climax.
She waited for him to resume his stroking. She heard him take a ragged breath. Then felt him step away from her.
What the bloody…
She had agreed to submit to him! Surely he would reward her now. Her nerves trembled like the vibrations of a tuning fork, seeking the proper conclusion.
Damnation, she cursed to herself when still he did nothing. What a fool she was to think that she could expect better from a rake! Had she not accused him of lacking morals? Granted, she knew her statement to have been in the extreme—she suspected he did have a conscience or she would have thought all attempts to reason with him hopeless—but he was proving her words now. Well, if he would not help her, she would satisfy herself. She tilted her hips and attempted to grind her mons against the post.
“Stop it,” he ordered.
When she refused to obey, he found her nipple and squeezed it—hard. She yelped and stopped.
“You have much to learn, Miss Merrill.”
He was back to addressing her formally. She had liked it when he called her “Heloise”. On his tongue, the name, which she had hitherto found plain, sounded beautiful, inviting and seductive.
“You’re a blackguard,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Resorting to insults now, are we?” he responded.
“I should have known not to expect better—”
Threading his fingers through her hair, he massaged her scalp with both hands, coaxing her resistance away and easing her into a quasi-meditative state. But then he jolted her from the tender complacency when he fisted his hands in her hair and jerked her head back.
“Have you ever stood naked before a man?” he asked into her ear.
Her heart throbbed, pressing itself against her chest walls as if it had grown too large for its compartment.
There had been an attempt with the son of the squire, but her stays had exasperated the young man. He had thrown her skirts above her waist and penetrated her before prudence, made sluggish by the carnal distress in her own body, could prevail. In the most unceremonious of minutes she had lost her virtue. But amidst the aftermath of shame and fear was a guilty satisfaction, a smugness even, of having discovered the taboo reserved only for couples lawfully joined. Having given of herself already, what was left for her to forsake? Why not indulge her desires? The experiences of her youth could not compare to this though, and a part of her yearned to revel in what might come from a man of greater…artistry.
“Have you?” he repeated.
“No,” she replied.
“You are about to,” he informed her, unbuttoning the back of her gown.
Her pulse quickened. It did not take long for him to push the top part of her garment off her shoulders and toward her wrists. He unpinned the skirt and untied the petticoats. They pooled at her feet. He unlaced her stays with the swiftness of the most practiced chambermaid. In little time, she found herself standing in her chemise, stockings and shoes.
Little bumps lighted her skin at her state of undress. Did he mean to proceed further? Would she find herself, as he had suggested, naked before him? What if he did not like what he saw? He had expected the company of Josephine, after all.