“No!” she said, to herself as much as him.
“Safety word, Miss Herwood.”
His hand went to her spencer, tearing it open. The buttons clattered to the floor. She twisted against his grip.
“How dare—”
“What is the safety word?” he demanded.
She stared into his molten eyes. Good God, he wanted her. The realization heated her loins and caused her cunnie to ache.
But he will be back to Lady Isabella tomorrow.
“Have you not heard a word?” she cried in anguish.
Despite the confines of her stays, he managed to shove his hand down her bodice to cup a breast. She groaned despite herself.
Abruptly he tore her from the wall and toward a door that she recognized all too well despite her single acquaintance with it.
“I think you will want your safety word, Miss Herwood,” he said as he pulled her inside.
With chains, shackles, crops, and floggers, the room could have fit easily into the East Wing of Chateau Follet. It even had a bed not too dissimilar from the ones in the room they had shared with Lord Devon. She saw a wooden chair and treacherous memories of how he had bent her over the back of it made her hot with desire. Would he do the same tonight or did he have other plans?
“Well?” he prompted.
She said nothing, her mind searching for how she was to extract herself from the situation.
He was standing behind her, cupping her neck, tilting her chin up, his mouth beside her ear.
“Do not keep me waiting much longer, Miss Herwood.”
Chapter Nineteen
HER LEGS THREATENED to liquefy. She had always found his voice sensual, the sound of her name upon his lips wickedly enticing.
“Rati,” she whispered.
How was it she could not refrain from submitting to Lord Rockwell?
He turned her head so that he could access her lips. His mouth was more controlled this time, probing and commanding. With his lips and tongue, he enticed hers into a sensual dance. Desire pooled low and hot in her abdomen. He released her head. His mouth trailed across her jaw, down her neck, and to the edge of her décolletage. His hands grasped the spencer and pulled it down past her shoulders, pinioning her arms. As his mouth continued to caress her about the neck, he pulled down the bodice her frock. She gasped as the fabric tore a little to accommodate. He went for her stays next.
“They lace in front,” he noted with approval.
With her back still pinned to his chest, he reached around her bosom and
unlaced the ribbons with ease despite his hindered view. He pulled the stays down her arms as well. She now had three layers of garments—her spencer, frock, and stays—locking her arms uncomfortably to her body. He palmed both breasts through her shift and rubbed her nipples through the cotton fabric. They pressed against his hand. He rolled and tugged at the points of flesh between his thumbs and forefingers. She writhed against him. As she became more and more aroused, his touch became harder. The attention was devastating. She did not know whether to bend away or arch her back further into him. The ache in her cunnie throbbed angrily.
Taking her by a nipple, he pulled her over to a chair—the very chair he had bent her over the last time she was here. This time he sat in it, pulled her skirts to her thighs, and positioned her over his lap. He parted his legs, forcing hers open. With her arms pinioned, she felt unbalanced and had to concentrate to stay atop him. Reaching under her skirts, he found the moisture between her thighs.
“This pleases me, Miss Herwood,” he said, swirling his fingers in her wetness.
She groaned. Her body began perspiring. An agonizing tension had built within her, and only he could release it.
“In due time,” he murmured as if reading her mind. He began to rub and torment that rosy nodule of flesh between her legs, his gaze intent upon her reactions.
He pulled down her shift to bare a breast, then took it in his mouth. She nearly toppled from his lap as he sucked her tit while toying with her other highly sensitive nub. He put a hand to her hip to hold her steady. Moaning, she writhed at the pleasurable assault. She had been right to submit to him, her body signaled. She had already done so in the past. One more night was of little consequence and could only bring such delights as she was unlikely to ever experience again.
His mouth sucked, his hand fondled with increasing vigor. The pressure within her was just about to reach the boiling point when he released her. As if she had been hit with a wall of fresh air, she inhaled at the sudden deprivation. He put her back on her feet.