Daring declarations, p.3
Daring Declarations, page 3
Goddammit. Why now?
As though she sought to interpret his butchered speech, her brow knit. “Are you pleased? Having me as your mistress?”
He gave a brief, wholly inadequate nod.
“Do you, ah, have any inclinations to end or alter our arrangement?”
Hell, no! An abrupt shake of his head had to suffice.
“You’re completely justified, I know, if that is your wish.”
He shook his head so hard his teeth rattled.
She still looked perplexed, so he tried again. “You d-d—” Don’t understand, damn me, I’m trying to tell you—
“’Tis all right” She shushed him with a hug. Her words brushed his ears like velvet. “I know speaking of finer emotions is difficult if not impossible for the masculine sex. Say no more. Your actions speak more clearly than any I’ve known before. You care about my happiness and that means the world to me. I care about yours too.”
After delivering that little, very welcome speech, she leaned back, eyes bright, her expression sweetly expectant. She was so understanding. So clueless. If she had an inkling—
Buxom Betsy bouncily brings brimming buckets of butter to bossy, blighted Bob. My ballocks are boiling for you.
“Been a bear tonight.” Hallelujah! “Forgive me?”
“Pffft. There’s nothing at all to forgive. You may not have been the soul of joviality but neither have you been mean or harsh.” She patted his cheek. “Just frowny.”
Which made him smile.
“Oh! You have a dimple. I don’t believe I’ve seen it before.”
“’Twas hiding.”
“It surely was.” She leaned forward to kiss the elusive dimple.
Daniel hadn’t the fortitude to tell her what he’d meant: he’d been hiding.
Still was.
Still intended to if she kept looking at him as she did when she pulled back. “Tell you what,” she posed, her eyes glittering emeralds as she stared at him. “For every frown I counted, I shall take a kiss. Voilà. They will be erased forevermore.”
Then by God, let them get started. “How many?”
“I do believe I counted seventeen frowns, eight scowls and two snarls.”
He couldn’t help it. Damned if he didn’t laugh again. Two snarls? I’ve been a grump indeed. “Seems I have much…to atone.”
“Seems I am due many kisses. Now do you simply want to jaw about them all night or start delivering—”
The little minx thought to turn bossy on him? How adorable.
Daniel’s mouth swooped to capture hers. He meant to tease, to tread lightly. He meant to nibble and savor. To suck gently upon her lips, entice her tongue out for a flirtation.
He did none of that. Pure want drove him now.
He thrust his tongue past her lips and hers slid forth to meet it. As they rubbed along each other, her fingers pushed through his hair, nails sank into his scalp.
His broad hand smoothed down her back to settle at her waist. His fingers clenched—just above the womanly flare of her arse.
Suddenly he was strangling to draw breath. A lingering swipe of his tongue along the roof of her mouth and he tore his head back. Gulped for air.
“One,” she said on an equally loud breath. “Sixteen more to go—”
With powerful motions of his legs, he scooted his chair backward until it thumped against the closed door, hid them deep into shadows. No one would interrupt what he’d needed all night. Her. Completely.
“Want you.” He sounded like a deuced caveman.
Her lips trembled but her eyes shone clear. “Then take me.”
Before he could debate further with his conscience—frisking Thea in public had not been his plan when they’d set out earlier—she took the decision from him. She leaned forward to claim his lips, whispering just before they touched, “And now for two…”
The kiss was voracious, lacking restraint or finesse. Her tongue dueled with his as she murmured deep in her throat. As for Daniel, he couldn’t get enough of her, couldn’t slow the sensual onslaught. Overpower and take. Take her and drown yourself, seemed to be the litany commanding his actions.
He shifted Thea until she was astride him, wrenching that froth of sea blue higher until her thighs were bared atop the stockings. Her pale thighs, silken skin he couldn’t wait to touch.
Only he couldn’t stop framing her face with his hands, cupping her cheeks, threading his fingers through the elaborate sweep of hair. Couldn’t bring himself to relinquish her precious face long enough to explore the tempting dainties below. Her nails scraped over his jaw as she tilted his head to the side, brushed lips and then teeth over his cheek and chin, down his neck.
“Love the scent you wear, always have,” she told him just before applying suction to a part of his neck that inflamed his entire body. He stiffened everywhere.
Scent bedamned, he had to be in her, seize her against him or go mad trying. Were those her impatient fingers grappling with the fall of his breeches, slipping inside to stroke his length? Her fingers tightening into a fist around his shaft as he gave a ragged groan?
Had to be, he thought distractedly as he became aware of pure decadence, silky hot and sinfully sweet when his intrepid fingers journeyed far, fatalistically far from her head and—to his dismay and delight—met beneath the plump halves of her arse. Met and slid boldly along the seam between.
Where were her drawers? He was touching skin. Hot, humid skin he was so damn hungry for—
Breath labored, Thea’s clasp on his cock jerked. Her whimper came soft but unmistakable.
Don’t do it, some prudent part of his brain cautioned.
Oh, aye, do it, the flex of her bum encouraged.
Coated with her heat, his hands kneaded the firm flesh of her flanks, delved a bit farther into the crevice.
“May I…” His voice was a croak. He firmed his resolve and his palms, stretched his fingers just a wee bit more and was rewarded when her constricting anus met the tip of his longest finger. Daniel circled the digit around the puckered ring. Play here… “Linger?”
“Ahh. Um… Should I let you?” she breathed hotly against his neck. “Would a…” Mistress allow it?
He could just hear her mind asking the questions—Do mistresses truly do this? Or is it too tawdry? Totally taboo?
Will I be no better than a hedge whore or street doxy—
But then her hold tightened on his shaft and her luscious derrière rotated beneath his finger, answering for her, even before she said in a low whisper, “All right.”
He exhaled in relief and spread his grip over her arse cheeks, loving the feel of the warm flesh against his palms. His middle finger? It wasn’t going anywhere. Except deeper. When he navigated the perimeter of the impossibly tight ring, exploring both her body and the boundaries of what she might accept, she pulled his penis taut.
Pressure seized his groin. Longing filled his loins.
Longing to tell her what she meant to him, what exploring her like this did to his body, his mind, his heart—
“Is it terribly wicked? For us to do this here? Now?” Upon uttering this, she angled her body and his, rocking her hips until his stiff and ready prick was nudging along slick folds.
To strum her, here of all places. A private box he’d purchased to salve his conscience and his past. A past that receded far into the shadows when she squirmed her creamy center against him again.
Daniel swore. Good God Almighty—he was close to exploding and wasn’t even in her yet. Not properly.
The hot cave of her arse threatened to suck him into its depths. He was sweating, drenched in desire.
Do it, he wanted to tell her, take me inside. No one will interrupt.
His damn finger—hell, his whole arm—shook with the force he exerted not to plunge it into forbidden territory.
Thea shifted forward, sliding along his shaft until reaching the crown. A slight wiggle of her pelvis and his cock eased into her as though greased.
She gasped, her feminine muscles pulling him deeper yet clinging together so tightly it was a marvel he could gain any friction at all. When she said, “Terribly wicked for you to touch me there,” and surged up, then back down, her feet on the floor giving her leverage, damned if her nock didn’t open and invite his finger in as well.
“T-terribly.” He covered the blunder by latching on to the smooth skin just beneath her ear. Deliberately teasing, he stifled the urge to move—he was liable to nail her to the ceiling if he let his body have its way. Speaking against her skin, he mused, “Shall I stop? With…draw and re…turn you home?”
Any answer she might have made changed to a gasp when he sucked harder. But as he eased the suction and plied his tongue over the succulent spot, she painted rainbows in his sky with her response. “Nay. ’Twould be a crime, for I believe I like being wicked with you here and now. Maybe later too.
“And not to belabor the point…” Every orifice he’d entered rippled against him as she spoke, enticed him to move, so he resisted. “But those snarls still need erased, I’ll have you know.”
When he made a sound in his throat, she consoled. “Not that I’m complaining, my lord…”
He swore her pelvis jerked against him in all the right places. Pulling him inward from both directions. “Not at all,” she offered on another gasp, her lips pressed to the newly sensitive skin of his jaw. “In fact, I understand about tonight. Your sister explained your mood.”
It wasn’t quite being dunked in an icy lake, but it was close. He tried to articulate but only managed a grunt. “Eh?”
“She said you perform a favor for Lord Wylde tomorrow, a troublesome one.” Those lithesome legs of hers lifted her up, then sank her loins back to his, gave a tiny hitch that buried him up to his ballocks. The wave of lust that rolled over him at the sinuous motions threatened to swamp him. “So I understand your fit of the sullens. ’Twill be over in mere hours, though, aye?”
Fit of the sullens? And now he sounded like a grouchy lad of eight. “Sulks b-b—” Be gone, dammit!
But her lips vanquished the urge to speak. And the lands south of her hips promised heaven if he would but listen. “’Tis more kisses you owe me, my lord. There’s the matter of several scowls… Besides, wicked or ruinous, or tawdry beyond reckoning”—she tightened around him and her breath caught when she lifted to slide along his cock again—“I don’t care if it is, not tonight.”
Daniel thought he heard a shred of guilt—tempered with defiance, perhaps—but he couldn’t have held back, not any longer. Not when he was drowning in such taboo sexual bliss with such an outwardly decorous and demure young woman.
Not when—
Her lower body soared and jerked against his groin, directing, if not controlling, his thrusts. Positioned over him as she was, Thea, his sweet, sexually shy Thea took command.
“Harder,” she whispered, swinging her pelvis against him in a tempest of need.
One his body echoed. So he canted his groin until her every downward plunge took him to the root.
She started to squeal, then muffled her lips against his cheek. “Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop,” or something similarly needy emerged.
His fingers took the message to heart. The buried one pulled free and snared a mate. Then the two of them poised to enter, circling the entrance to the hot cavern made slippery by her trickling juices. The ring of her anus was open now, the muscles slightly lax. With just a slight push, both fingers slid past that first constriction; with a firmer nudge, and the friction that his back-and-forth motion created, they sank deep.
And his prim mistress turned into a cavewoman—tugging on his hair, pummeling the muscles of her moist, private places against their invaders, clutching and clasping at him as he pumped fingers and cock both. Sweat rolled from his temples onto her desperate countenance as she marauded and plundered his neckcloth until she could kiss and suck—and bite—the skin lining his neck and collar.
“Ah-oh— Ahh!”
In tandem with her breathy cries and tensing muscles, he ground his fingers into her arse, bucked his ballocks against her buttocks and lunged faster and fiercer, more connected with her, on so many levels, than he ever had been with another. Ever could be.
Oh God. Oh gads.
What was wrong with him?
Why ponder emotional closeness when his prick was busy prigging? Time to apply himself to taking his pleasure, by damn.
Only, for once, it didn’t seem to matter. Because though he’d long forgotten how to breathe, had been seeing stars and spots and dancing little hearts for some time now, and though his wrist ached and fingers had gone numb, he didn’t slow or pause or think to stop. Not until Thea screamed—screamed, by damn—and melted over his groin. Not until her arse sucked him so far inside, she promised a home to any and every part of him that ever existed.
Not until he’d pleasured her so thoroughly that she went limp did he give serious thought to taking his own satisfaction.
Only he’d already found it.
Oh, not because he’d peaked—he hadn’t, not yet (though bridling the urge nearly did him in)—but because he’d found his satisfaction by giving Thea hers.
Was that a noose he felt tightening around his neck?
Was that why his brain box had succumbed to fevered chills?
Was this love, the deep, abiding kind he’d never sought, never expected? The overpowering, overwhelming emotion that made fools of men? That made his gut churn with nausea, his beleaguered brain with bopping, bobbing B’s? Bouncing Betties and beaming Bobs?
His mind overfloweth with nonsense, his heart with peace. Could love truly be that capricious? That fantastically fickle?
Nay, he assured himself, trying to remember how to draw breath. Nay!
’Twas simply tupping the delectable Thea that addled his wits. That was all. A good swiving with a fine mistress likely boggled finer men than him.
After his body crested the pinnacle, an explosive event that took mere seconds to reach once he quit battling the urge, instead of offering recriminations or calling him base and screeching obscenities at him for his obscene behavior, his prim and lusty little mistress only blinked at him wearing a dazed smile.
“Well now.” She blinked again, smiled a bit brighter. “I must say, I certainly did not mind being groped in that wholly un-objectionable manner.”
Then, lips and body trembling, she shakily eased off him and to her feet and started riffling inside her bodice. “Here.” She produced a wad of padding that left her bosom decidedly uneven. “Have some cotton. I’m afraid I left you all sticky.”
While he sat, benumbed and blighted (were Cupid’s arrows poison tipped? he wondered), she proceeded to use the stuffing from the other side’s enhancement to clean herself.
And a noose had never felt more welcome.
2
A Bit of Pathetic Poetry
The following morning, the day of the Dreaded Speech, found Daniel at the desk in his bedchamber, not yet dressed for the day, trying to coax the right attitude from his mind, the right words from his mouth. But all he could do was agonize over the coming hours…
Not because his neck still felt as though a viper had sunk in its fangs—a single night’s sleep had restored his muscles to their customary, on-the-edge-of-tense state; thankfully, they felt no worse for all of yesterday’s use—but because he knew he should care more about Wylde’s cause.
And frankly, he didn’t. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t seem to foment any excitement.
His thoughts—his easily aroused excitement—remained squarely with his mistress. She’d sent round a note early this morning by way of Swift John. For once, instead of lingering for a reply, the servant had delivered the letter along with a message that reached Daniel via his butler: “I’ve a number of errands to run for Miss Thea and will return for any response by nuncheon. Better yet, send John later; his lazy legs could use the jaunt.”
Though the sibling jibe had lightened his mood, it hadn’t helped his concentration. The neatly folded and wax-sealed square beckoned hordes more than his speech notes.
Notes he’d studiously avoided all morning.
He tapped the edge of Thea’s letter against his desktop, sorely tempted to tear into it. “Nay. Use it for incentive.”
That was it! He’d review his planned phrasing three times more, the last out loud, before reading her note.
How he wished the day’s events were done and over. But it was hours still until the damn meeting. Until his part in it was complete and he could visit her again.
“Enthusiasm,” he muttered, reluctantly relinquishing her missive, “need t-to garner some.”
“Woof!”
He patted Cy’s head, scratched the dog’s chin. Wiped the drool on his handkerchief and decided to go about it another way. He located the sheet Everson had written. He’d practice two letters aloud (no sense in overdoing), then apply himself to the business of reviewing his speech.
Paul was a pea-goose, a pink of the ton, yet his profound penis promised pleasure to every pudding-headed puss and Pocket Venus on the planet.
Willie had a wee little weedle, but when he grew into Walt, the girls were in alt, for what once was wee could now wiggle and wow!
After reciting the pair of ribald selections, instead of studying the compelling reasons Wylde had so passionately set forth, Daniel couldn’t stop his pen from doing a little composing of its own:
There once was a pebble in my shoe.
Cows go moooooooooooooo.
I once knew a cat,
with a sniveling nose,
“What now?” Testing options, he scratched out hedgerows, pose, close, grows and sews, frowned, and then chose to move on to more colorful pastures.
Roses are red,
Mr. Freshley was a snoacher
then a poacher and
