Nicole Jordan - The Seduction

His lips were hungry, ruthless, as his hands worked the clasps of her gown. The low-cut bodice fell away easily, liberating her breasts to his mouth’s ravishment. He bent over her, sucking her straining nipples until he forced a low moan from her throat. Her heart was hammering by the time he broke off.

His eyes would not free her from their intensity as he undressed her, starting with her mask and ending with her stockings. When she was fully naked, he led her to the bed and pressed her down on the cool satin sheets.

As she lay back, she was startled to realize that a gilt mirror was affixed to the ceiling overhead. She could see herself and all of her body’s secrets, her pale skin a starkly erotic contrast to the black satin.

“So you can watch yourself being pleasured,” Damien explained in a low voice.

She lay there willingly until he reached for a silk sash and began to tie her wrist to the bedpost. Vanessa tensed, gazing up at him warily.

“Surely you don’t mean to turn shy now?” he dared her. “You insisted on experiencing a brothel. This is your chance.”

She raised her chin at his taunt. Damien had become a stranger tonight, ruthless and more than a little dangerous, but she didn’t believe he would ever actually hurt her. And she had become a stranger to herself.

“I only trust you will make the experience enjoyable,” she retorted, throwing the challenge back at him.

He smiled coolly though his eyes smoldered. “I promise to do my utmost.”

He completed his task of tying her arms overhead, but left her legs free, to her relief. She watched him as he went to the table and returned with an ivory phallus to sit beside her on the bed.

His scorching gaze swept over her nude body, touching her intimately. “This is my fantasy, angel, having you at my mercy.”

“Hasn’t that been the situation all along?” she replied tersely.

Her rejoinder was ignored. She felt the cool caress of the ivory on her skin as slowly he brushed it against her inner thigh.

Vanessa shivered as a rippling thrill of alarm and arousal ran through her. She could understand why some women enjoyed this fantasy-a powerful, sexual male, fully clothed and dominant, holding her captive, while she was naked and vulnerable to his every whim. The mound at the apex of her thighs was pulsing sweetly in anticipation of his attentions.

But Damien didn’t immediately gratify her desire. For a moment all he did was stroke her lightly with the smooth ivory.

Vanessa moved restlessly on the black satin, her thighs instinctively stretching wider, hungry for his caress. He seemed intent, however, merely on sexual torment. Without haste he brushed her feminine cleft with the ivory tip, circling the outer rim, careful not to touch the delicate bud of her sex itself.

“Damien,” she murmured in a pleading voice.

“Patience, sweet. I want you to be fully ready.”

She was ready. In the mirror she could see the ripe lips pouting beneath her moist pubic curls, shining with her own juices, sleek with readiness.

For several moments longer he toyed with her, sliding the ivory crest over her warm, slippery cleft, anointing it with the honeyed liquid that seeped from her body. His free hand moved to her tingling, hardened nipples, playing lightly.

She was throbbing with need when at last he relented.

“You’ll like the feel of this…” He slid the ivory tip slowly into her pulsing depths.

Vanessa let out a gratified sigh-a sigh that became a breathless moan as he began to work the ivory shaft in a languid rhythm within her, withdrawing it almost to the end, then carefully thrusting the cool, thick length inside her again.

“Is this not highly arousing, sweet, being forced to experience pleasure?”

It was highly arousing. Wildness raced through her blood as he pleasured her. When he thrust deeper, into the shuddering reaches of her body, Vanessa writhed, her arms straining at her bonds, her inner muscles clutching tightly on the ivory shaft. His pace quickened as his hand stroked and squeezed at her throbbing breasts. She was burning with feverish need, a heartbeat away from delicious orgasm…

And there Damien halted.

Her eyes opened in bewilderment to find him regarding her. The half-smile on his lips was slightly mocking.

“I would rather you wait for me, angel.”

He left the phallus in place, between her thighs, as he rose from the bed. Vanessa wanted to curse him. He had abandoned her on the brink of ecstasy, trembling with the frustration of unfulfilled desire, humiliated and helpless. The erotic image in the mirror showed a nude woman on the threshold of climax, her skin flushed, her nipples peaked, her white thighs glistening with her own wetness.

She bit back a moan of thwarted longing. Damien comprehended full well what he was doing to her, leaving her in such acute need.

His gaze remained locked with hers as he stood over her to undress. The golden lamplight gilded the hard planes and muscles of his body and his darkly engorged erection. When the quivering tip arched against his belly, Vanessa trembled at the enormous pulsing size of him. Her inner flesh clutched helplessly at the thick ivory between her legs. She could almost feel Damien inside her; she wanted him inside her. Desperately.

He came to her magnificently naked, magnificently aroused. Joining her on the satin sheets, he eased the ivory shaft from between her thighs.

“Would you prefer the real thing, my sweet?” he murmured huskily, covering her body with his own. “Would you?”

“Yes,” she rasped, impatient with his delay. She knew he could see how swollen she was, how sleek and ready. She felt the pulsing crest of his manhood probe for entrance, and she moaned, wildly eager to receive him.

His gaze plunged deeper into hers as her pliant flesh stretched at his slow thrust. His faint smile and glittering eyes were as triumphant and possessive as his body. He sank hilt-deep, and she knew she was lost. Her body clenched as wave after wave of shuddering tremors rippled over her, and she gave in to burgeoning ecstasy.

Damien managed only slightly more control. He’d spoken the truth earlier. With Vanessa he didn’t need games or sexual instruments to feel desire. He never had. With her he felt a brilliant, heated glory of wanting. She was a fever in his blood, a yearning in his soul.

He’d told himself he wanted to be free of her, free of his insanity for this beautiful woman, but that was a lie. He wanted to brand her as his possession, to mark her as his own. His strongest urge was the primitive need to bind her to him now, this moment.

He took her with hammering wildness, surging upward, each plunging stroke merciless, uncurbed. He would make her remember him, remember the hurtling sense of pleasure, the fierce rapture, so that she could never lie beneath any man without thinking of him, only him…

Her legs locked around him, drawing him even deeper. His breath came in harsh, rapid gasps as he plunged over and over again, but she arched and shuddered and matched his every stroke. When she cried out in another climax, he felt her joy and gritted his teeth, letting the madness take him. His body contracted as savage, unrestrained bliss exploded within him, and with one final thrust, he collapsed upon her, shaking.

For a long time afterward they lay unmoving, spent in the aftermath of passion, his chest crushing her breasts, their skin sheened with moisture.

Damien’s thudding heartbeat was beginning to slow when he heard a muffled sound that might have been a sob. Startled, he raised his head. Vanessa’s eyes were shut, but tears glistened on her flushed face.

His heart contracted. “Did I hurt you?”

For a moment she didn’t reply. Damien eased his weight off her, feeling as much bewilderment as alarm. His love-making this time had been fierce, yet no more violent than in the past.

“Vanessa?”

He could see her swallow as she made a visible effort to stem the flow of tears. She couldn’t wipe her eyes because of her bound arms.

“Did I hurt you?” he demanded, reaching to untie the silken scarf at her wrist.

Her eyes opened, while her chin lifted as if with determination.

“Not at all,” she replied tonelessly, but the hurt in her luminous eyes belied her words.

Vanessa stared blindly out the window of Damien’s traveling carriage as they sped steadily north from London, the wet, gray day mirroring her spirits.

She had lied last night. Damien had indeed hurt her. Not physically, of course. On the contrary, he’d given her body pleasure as great as any she’d known.

It was her heart he had shattered without even being aware of it. His cold, casual experiment in carnal gratification at Madame Fouchet’s had reminded Vanessa of how foolish she was to dream about impossibilities. She wanted his love, while he wanted only her body.

Strangely Damien hadn’t appeared to enjoy the visit to the brothel any more than she had. Instead, he’d seemed dangerously angry when he escorted her home last night, whether at her or himself she couldn’t tell. His brusque announcement had startled her.

“I should like to return to Rosewood tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? So soon? ”

“It is a few days early, I realize, but I should think you’ve seen enough of the demimonde by now. And I doubt there is much more I can teach you.”

Truthfully Vanessa had seen enough of the depraved side of London to last her a lifetime. Far from being disappointed, she was actually relieved to be leaving. Damien’s decadent world of luxury and license held little appeal for her, especially since the man she had fallen for so hopelessly seemed to have vanished. During their entire time in town she’d seen no evidence of the tender lover and friend she’d initially glimpsed at Rosewood. There was only the wicked rakehell known as Lord Sin.