“Here we go.” Holding the strip of white silk aloft, he returned to the bed. “I’ve only heard about slave markets, so we’ll have to improvise.” Leaning over, he lifted her to her feet, drew her hands together before her, and bound them with a loose slipknot. “What is it that appeals to you about harems? Stand there.” He indicated a point near the bed with his finger.
“The exotic atmosphere, I suppose,” she said, moving the few steps. “Where women are-”
“Sexual objects, receptacles for a man’s pleasure?” His brows rose. “How does that appeal to a woman of your independence?”
She shrugged. “The departure from the norm or the blatant sexual content or-”
“Being tamed and mastered and forced to have sex?”
She took a small breath to contain the prurient rush of lust flaring through her senses, felt a need as well to meet the challenge in his soft query. “I’m not sure,” she said, holding his gaze. “Does it matter?”
He smiled. “Not to me. You’re the one on the auction block. I’m just here to make a purchase. Should I find you pleasing.”
“Then I must do my best to please you.”
This time it was he who required a small inhalation to suppress the ruttish surge bringing his penis fully erect, Mrs. St. Vincent’s whispered reply shocking in its impact. He didn’t particularly like the feeling, the lack of control she provoked. Perhaps taming her wouldn’t be exclusively a game. “Where do you come from?” His voice was crisp. “Circassia with your auburn hair?”
“Tripoli,” she said, smiling faintly, liking that she’d rattled his cool nonchalance. “And I can cook, my lord.”
“I have a cook.”
“I can also sew.”
His mouth slowly curved into a smile; the lady had an imagination. “If only I was looking for a seamstress.”
“Perhaps you need someone to warm your bed.”
“I have a large harem.”
She bit back the comment that came to her lips, his statement much too true. “I could give you fine sons, my lord.”
“What if I have enough sons?”
She held his gaze. “You don’t have mine.”
Nor did he intend to. “Open your mouth,” he brusquely said, changing the subject. When she did, he ran his finger over her teeth as if checking a horse for its age. “Adequate,” he murmured. “Turn around.”
Astonished at the fierce passion aroused by his soft commands, she hastened to comply.
He swept his hands over her shoulders, down her back and legs with a brisk efficiency. “You must not have been in the harem long; you still have muscle tone. Face me again.”
She swivelled around so quickly, her breasts quivered with the motion.
Ignoring the provocative tremor, he cupped her large breasts in his hands and cooly said, “These are serviceable. You haven’t suckled a babe, I gather.”
“No, my lord.”
“You could be barren then.”
“My late master was old and impotent.”
“And his sons didn’t want you?”
“They did, but the chief wife didn’t. She sent me away to be sold.”
“So you’re relatively untried.” He lifted her breasts slightly, weighing them in his hands. “Were you beaten?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer; a certain ambiguity echoed in his voice. “Very little, my lord.”
“For what infractions?”
“Speaking out of turn.”
He laughed, let his hands drop away from her breasts, and said, “I’m not surprised. Perhaps I could teach you obedience.”
“Perhaps you could.”
“Are you being impertinent?”
“No, my lord. On the contrary I’d find obedience to you most interesting.”
“Why don’t we find out. Turn around, bend over. Brace your hands on the bed. Let’s see if you’re worth buying.” His instructions were gently put, a mildness in his voice as if he were ordering a cup of tea.
But an underlying command echoed beneath his words, and her senses instantly responded to that unspoken presumption, as if knowing how delectable the compensation. Quickly moving into position, she suddenly understood the true meaning of unslaked lust, the concept directly related to Groveland-or rather, his highly rewarding cock, she decided with a frenzied little shiver.
Walking up behind her, he surveyed the pale expanse of opulent female flesh with rich satisfaction. That Mrs. St. Vincent offered him the ultimate submission was gratifying after her parting words this morning. That he was pleasantly anticipating having sex with her an even better feeling after experiencing a surfeit of ennui of late. “Are you ready to show me your usefulness?” he mildly inquired, even as his penis swelled larger at the prospect.
“Yes, yes.” Flushed and feverish, ravenous for him when she’d only written of the feeling before but never felt it, she breathlessly added with a quick look over her shoulder, “If it please my lord.”
“That depends. Show me what you can do.” He didn’t touch her, not so much as a steadying hand on her hips before he entered her in a swift, hard thrust and buried his erection deep inside her.
With his huge cock straining every frenzied sexual receptor in her pulsing vagina, motivated by inexorable orgasmic pressures, she quickly obeyed, swinging her hips in a swift, rocking rhythm, back and forth, side to side, undulating her bottom with hot-spur urgency. Shuddering at each thrilling, exquisitely tight downstroke, drawing in a sustaining breath at each slow withdrawal, subject to a pleasure beyond her wildest dreams, Rosalind had crossed the impressionable boundary into the untrammeled world of Lady Blessington.
By ordering Mrs. St. Vincent to service him, Fitz sought to gain control over his unnerving cravings, restore normalcy to this sexual encounter, persuade himself that her submission acquitted him of involvement.
But his involvement couldn’t be long denied, no more than Rosalind could pretend that it was someone else and not Groveland who aroused her every pleasure center and made her greedy for what he offered.
“Faster,” he murmured, thinking selfishness would absolve him of entanglement.
Shameless in her need, she complied, her lower body pumping like a piston, every swinging back stroke eliciting a little ecstatic gasp from her parted lips.
“Roll, spin… that’s it, that’s better-just like that,” he directed, gently guiding her plump bottom with his fingertips. “Good. Perfect. You follow instructions well.”
It was clearly Groveland’s voice she heard-no fantasy lord or sultan.
If his resplendent cock wasn’t sliding in and out of her, ramming and cramming her full, if she wasn’t so near to orgasm she could see nirvana through a rosy haze, she might have disputed his gross absolutism. Or ignored the flame-hot spasms of lust spiking through her body.
“Don’t you dare climax,” he growled. But leaning forward as he spoke, he freed her hands with a tug on the slipknot, slid his palm over her belly, and delicately caressed her clit.
Whether it was his rough threat or his tender touch, she felt as though he’d pressed some orgasmic button, and with a skittish, suffocated cry, she came.
Just as he knew she would.
With scarcely less restraint, he waited only until her first orgasmic frenzy had swept over her before he jerked out and climaxed in a violent, unruly trajectory. “Sorry about… that,” he murmured, breathing hard. Christ. What a mess. Although better than coming inside her. “Where are… your towels?”
She’d collapsed facedown on the bed so her reply was muffled.
Finding his underwear on the floor, he wiped himself off, used a portion of the sheet to do what he could to clean up his semen, and went in search of a bathroom and towels.
A short time later, he returned with towels, two peaches, and a half-empty bottle of champagne to find her sitting on the side of the bed, dressed in a robe, her back ramrod straight, her hands clasped in her lap. A determined look on her face.