"Why don't we see." Easing her thighs apart, he slid two fingers inside her, slowly, delicately, gliding upward, the slick, hot tissue pulsing around his strong fingers. He avoided contact with the most sensitive areas of arousal. She was teetering on the brink, and he wanted to delay her orgasm-or at least try, he thought with a faint smile. Smoothly withdrawing his fingers awash with pearly liquid, he lightly traced a path down the deep valley between her breasts, leaving a glistening trail. "Your sweet cunt is a veritable river of desire," he murmured, holding his scented fingers up for her to see. "Such enthusiasm. Would I be right in saying you're suitably prepared for intercourse?"

It took enormous effort to respond when her entire nervous system was obsessed with voluptuous sensation. "Yes, sir," she whispered in the merest wisp of a voice, near delirious with wanting him, the throbbing ache between her legs so intense she would do anything to have him inside her.

"Soon we'll test your readiness," he promised, sliding his fingers over one plump breast. "But first I want some cherry-flavored nipples." He rested his fingertip on the turgid crest of one breast as though clarifying his statement. "You may service me after that, provided I'm satisfied with the taste. Keep those breasts up nice and high," he added, adjusting her hands under her breasts before forcing them upward. "I don't want to have to bend down too far." As she quickly complied, pushing the ripe weight of her breasts into great, high mounds, he lifted the cover from the chocolate box, took out the bracelet and snapped it around her wrist. "There's no more debate about keeping this, is there?" His voice was silken.

She shook her head.

"You're sure?" He gently stroked one nipple, and the jarring pleasure racked her body.

She nodded, unable to gather breath to speak.

"How amenable you've become," he murmured. "You'll find it more rewarding. Obedient dairy maids are allowed to serve me in a great number of ways. Would you like to serve as a receptacle for my sperm?"

She softly moaned, imagining the sensation as his monstrous erection entered her, stretched her, filled her.

"You seem like a particularly hot-blooded little piece," he whispered, watching her gently sway against the rush of heat flowing into her vagina. "Have the grooms been fucking you in my absence? Are you suitably primed for sex? Or have you been waiting just for me?" Picking up a chocolate, he held it to her mouth. "Take a bite," he quietly commanded, "and then we'll see whether you've been trained or not."

Her gaze came up and met his for a potent moment, umbrage beneath the smoldering heat. "I wouldn't do this for any other reason, you know."

"I know." His voice was like velvet or more aptly like rich chocolate cream. "Take a bite, darling… yield to me and I'll forgive you for fucking the groom."

Sudden temper flared in her eyes, and she bit down hard on his finger.

With a grunt of pain he jerked his hand away and shoved at her. As she tumbled backward, he followed her down, imprisoning her with his body. "You need a lesson in submission," he growled, his dark eyes only inches from hers.

"Maybe I need something else," she snapped, struggling against his weight.

"And maybe you'll get it if you contrive to please me." Curt and resentful, he glared at her. "Understood?" His voice was whisper-soft, his eyes as hot as hers. "Now, let's start over again, and if you're very, very good, I'll put this in you"-he slid the head of his erection just past the sleek lips of her labia, forcing open the engorged, pulsing tissue, holding himself immobile just inside the entrance to her vagina while she shivered with longing-"so you can really feel it." Abruptly withdrawing, he sat up while she tried to stop trembling.

"So whenever you're ready to cooperate," he murmured, selecting another chocolate from the box.

"Damn you," she breathed.

"At the moment, the feeling's mutual. I'm waiting," he coolly said. Why did it suddenly matter that he prevail in this ridiculous game? Why did he require submission when it was never relevant before? But his passions were as immune to logic as hers, and no facile answer materialized in the tumult of his brain.

No more did Felicia understand why she was so humbled by desire, having always regarded obsession as a flight of fancy, poetic license at best, but never real… until this moment when she was lost to all reason, desperate for what he could give her. And not compliant so much as lustful, she sat up, leaned back on her hands and offered him a seductive smile. "I'd thought I'd make myself available."

"You don't think I could take you if I wanted?"

"It would be a change, at least. You never have to take, do you?"

"Make a selection, perhaps," he insolently drawled.

"But you want me now, don't you? What if I said no?"

"You can't."

"Nor can you."

"A not unpleasant dilemma, I'd say. Are you ready to try this again?" he softly asked. "Because I'm not finished yet."

"Do you often play like this?"

He had no intention of answering. "Do you?"

"You know better."

"Somehow I like being the first," he murmured with a sinful smile, placing the chocolate against her mouth.

She did as well, the blatant beauty of his smile only one of his numerous charms. And she took the candy into her mouth to please herself and him and bit into it while he watched with a modicum of caution she found amusing. As the chocolate coating cracked, a tiny rivulet of cherry cream oozed down her chin.

"How sweet you look with pink cream running down your face," he murmured, lifting the candy away. Leaning forward, he licked a lingering path upward, devouring the sugary trickle. "Definitely good enough to eat," he whispered as his mouth came to rest on hers. "Now don't move," he warned, easing away.

His warning was unnecessary, her understanding clarified, her body taut with longing.

Tipping the chocolate, he dribbled a thin stream of pink liquid over one nipple and then the other, lightly smearing the creamy sweet over and around each tingling crest. Then dropping the chocolate shell back into the box, he sat back to admire his handiwork. "Look, darling. How do you like being my favorite bonbon?"

She glanced down, the rose crests slick with the pale confection, glossy and emblazoned because Flynn required it. "To be your bonbon is my greatest desire." Her voice was low, infused with seductive flattery. If need be, she would paint her body with sweetness to have him.

"How delightfully submissive." A slow half smile graced his mouth. "You learn quickly, my sweet dairy maid."

"If you would look on me kindly, my lord, I await your pleasure."

"I find humility a most charming asset in a servant," he said, his grin as insolent as her statement. "You may win a place in the main house for such deference."

"Would that mean I might warm your bed, my lord?"

"You'd have to take your turn, of course."

"Perhaps," she whispered, delectable promise in her voice, "I could find a way to please you best."

He gazed at her for a breath-held moment, her lush body incarnate female, voluptuous, full-breasted with a narrow waist and curving hips and soft thighs that could only have been made for love. That were made for love. "Perhaps you could," he whispered, a sudden, unnerving truth to his words. But as quickly he deflected such perilous sentiment. "I think we're done now," he abruptly said. For half his life, sex had been his entertainment and amusement, a means of keeping feeling at bay. And he reverted to type with ease.

His mouth closed over one frosted nipple, and with delicate concentration, he swiftly sucked first one, then the other clean. No longer interested in play, he was intent on the simple act of fornication, needing the physical gratification and oblivion that only a woman's body could bring. Easing her down on the bed, he slid between her thighs and plunged inside because he didn't want to think or speculate or change his life in any way; he only wanted to feel the seething rapture of an orgasm. Forcing himself deeper, he buried himself in the anonymous female sweetness that had always offered deliverance. But this time at the farthest limit of his downthrust, his throbbing erection rammed against a soft, specific, highly personalized womb.

Perhaps a fertile, life-giving womb.

The terrifying thought almost arrested the powerful rhythm of his lower body, and if not for the mindless urgency compelling him, he might have been able to stop. But he didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, and as he drove into her again, she suddenly came like she was wont to do in a swift, wild delirium that warmed his cock, his lustful soul and oddly his heart.

Heedless of all but his selfish quest for orgasm, he continued his savage hammering into her, ignoring his misgivings, immune to consequences, rash, impetuous, fevered like a callow youth when he had never been imprudent even then. But everything seemed different this time, his nerves raw to the quick, his sensory receptors so vigilant he was conscious of the pulse beats in the hot, sleek tissue of her vagina-in the answering beat of his heart. And familiar lust was overwhelmed by another kind of pleasure, finer, more pervasive, deep-felt, as though a new vista had opened in the sumptuous realm of sensation.

He was selfish when he rarely was, intent on taking, on possessing and owning her-not in play, but in fact. The rhythm of his body was so violent, she was steadily pushed upward. And even when the pillows piled against the headboard arrested his progress, he continued his assault, softly grunting with each powerful downstroke, forcing her thighs wider with each savage thrust, needing to dominate her completely.