Blood Fire (2 page)

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Authors: Sharon Page

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: Blood Fire
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Matthew gave a short laugh and moved through the crowd. Sex was everywhere. The smell of it hung in the air like a miasma.
He had brought the two invitations with him. The real one he had surrendered to a servant at the door. He drew the fake one out of a pocket in his costume.
Without the authentic one at its side, it was hard to tell this one was the fake. Gilt rimmed the edges of them both. The wording was quite similar on the two. But on the first one he had received, a week before the second, Glencairn had scrawled a personal note.
Glencairn wouldn’t bother to send him a second invitation. And, while the ducal crest on the second card was almost a perfect copy, there were some small flaws. It was a forgery.
Who was desperate to get him to attend an orgy?
 
She was in trouble.
Octavia surveyed the glittering crowd that filled the small ballroom of the duke’s house. Where was Sutcliffe? That was one flaw with her scheme. This was a masquerade, though it seemed the idea was to wear as little as possible, at least for the female guests. All the gentlemen were masked.
Even a small strip of a black mask around a man’s eyes changed his appearance to an astonishing degree.
Octavia stared at dozens of men, trying to distinguish features disguised by the various masks, but she was certain she had not seen the Earl of Sutcliffe.
He was a notorious libertine. Surely he would have taken the bait of the invitation. Most of the women here were almost
naked.
Some wore only their corsets and stockings, along with heeled slippers. Their private parts, bottoms, nipples were entirely on display. Other women wore gauzy, fanciful costumes.
Octavia sipped champagne from a flute given to her by a footman—a footman who had been bare-chested and wore only breeches and boots. Nervously, she looked around.
She saw two fairies with jewel-rimmed gossamer wings. Brightly colored satin skirts barely covered their derrieres.
In polite society, it was shocking to show one’s ankles. Here, it seemed shocking not to reveal one’s legs or breasts. One woman wore only veils in the style of Salome. Another was also dressed as a harem girl, wearing a sparkling jeweled top over which her full breasts jiggled. Her stomach was bare, and a large ruby flashed in her navel.
To think Eliza had been shocked by her costume. It made Octavia smile to remember the way her friend’s jaw had dropped when she’d emerged from behind the screen in her bedchamber. She wore a draped Grecian style dress with no underpinnings beneath. Her breasts moved freely beneath the clinging, silky fabric, and the skirt fit tightly to her hips and legs, outlining their shape. She had needed an easy costume, and one she could readily hide with a cape. Her arms and shoulders were bare, and the flowing skirt was slit, revealing her legs.
She felt deliciously shocking.
She had braided her blond hair in an elegant Grecian style, and her gold mask covered her face from her hair to the top of her lip. The excitement of wearing the costume and then sneaking out of her house had made her feel stronger. She’d felt the way she had before she became sick—happy and excited.
It had been all the more thrilling when she’d thought of what was going to happen. When she’d imagined what she would say and how bold she would be with Sutcliffe.
Yet now, she couldn’t find her quarry, and she stood on tiptoe to take another look around the crowd—
“You are unique, my dear. Unlike every other woman in this room, you are mostly covered up.”
The deep, masculine voice rippled over her shoulder at the exact same moment fingertips brushed down the length of her spine. The silk of her dress was so thin it felt as if the man touched her bare skin. Octavia jerked around, gasping.
Blue eyes gazed down at her. The man’s lids were sultry and heavy, rimmed with dark lashes, but his sapphire irises appeared empty and cold. His dark brown hair fell in waves to his shoulders and drifted over his mask.
It was Sutcliffe.
He was dressed as a wizard, with a flowing robe of black silk belted at his waist. Stars and moons were embroidered on it with silver thread. He wore a tall, pointed black hat, one that was crooked at the end. His robe was slightly open at the top, revealing his bare skin.
Was he naked underneath?
All the witty and provocative things Octavia had intended to say left her head. She stared at him, her lips slack. This was the man whose naked body she’d stared at for hours. She’d touched herself while looking at his picture. She’d put her fingers between her thighs and imagined it was his hands caressing her there. She had cupped her breasts in front of his painted eyes.
And now . . . what did she say to him to get him into bed?
It was so much easier with pictures. She could make up anything she liked.
Think, Octavia.
“Cat got your tongue, love?” he asked gently. His gaze moved slowly over her, filled with . . . not sexual interest but suspicion. “You are a pretty thing. I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
“N—no,” she managed to stutter. “I’ve never been here before.”
“Sweetly awkward, too. Just off the stage from the country, are you?”
He smiled, but it was a wry and jaded one. It appeared he didn’t suspect she had lured him here—he was suspicious because he believed she didn’t belong. She was about to reply when his large hand settled on her bottom. Just that touch made her legs quiver.
“This is too intense a place for a country innocent.” He gave her a little push. “You should go, sweetheart, before you find yourself in trouble. Come back when you’ve gained some experience.”
“I have experience,” she said desperately.
His brow lifted. Even with his mask, she could read the doubt in his expression.
“I do,” she insisted. “I came here for more.”
Good heavens, she’d imagined trading clever repartee with the earl, not blurting out these idiotic things.
Maybe she should touch him and keep her mouth shut. Taking a deep breath, she boldly pressed her hands to his chest. Her fingertips touched bare skin at the top of his robe.
And that made her knees tremble. Especially when she stroked his chest and remembered all the things she had imagined doing next. “You are very handsome, my lord,” she purred. She ran her tongue around her lips in the most sensual way she could.
He let his head fall back, and he laughed.
It was as if a wildfire had started on her cheeks. How could he laugh at her? She wanted to fall through the floor. She was accustomed to dealing with irritating, arrogant, condescending men: The Royal Geographical Society was filled with them. But she’d wanted her fantasy gentleman to be different. She’d wanted desire and passion. Now, she just wanted to kick him—
He shook his head, still laughing lightly. “Don’t, my dear. Don’t try to play games. I liked you awkward and honest. Now, why don’t you tell me your name?”
Awkward and honest.
But his gaze was tender, and that eased some of her embarrassment. “You want to know my name?” Octavia hadn’t even thought of that. She hadn’t thought she needed one. There was gossip that he seduced women and never even bothered to ask for names. “Why?”
“I’ve traveled the world. It’s my habit to name intriguing creatures—unless the fascinating specimen in question has a name.”
He cupped her cheek. The contact made an amazing sound drop off her lips—it was a strangled moan.
She’d landed in a quandary. Did she reveal that she knew him? Would it reveal who she was? While Sutcliffe and her father were rivals, their meetings and arguments had always taken place at Royal Geographical Society lectures or at their gentlemen’s club. Perhaps Sutcliffe knew her father, the Earl of Morton, had a daughter, but she doubted he would ever realize who she was.
She needed a courtesan-sounding name. But she was at a loss. She’d heard stories about mistresses, but about women with ordinary names like Harriette. “My name is . . .” Then she saw how hopeless this was. Talking would get her nowhere. She remembered she could be dead in a week, or a month, or even in days. She gathered all her courage and gazed at him evenly through the eyeholes in her mask.
“Take me to bed, my lord. No names. No questions. Just—just bedding.” She had meant to say “just sex,” but the word wouldn’t come out.
“Here? Now?” he asked.
She spotted the amused glint in his eye. Then he began to undo his wizard’s attire at his waist, and she realized what he was doing. He really did mean here.
Right
now.
“No,” she said desperately. “In a bedchamber.”
“Frightened you, did I? You should go home.”
“No, please. My lord, I came here to find you.”
“Indeed.” His fingers closed on her chin. As he held her face firmly in place, his blue eyes searched hers. He must be looking for a hint of her identity. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Perhaps I might tell you . . . once we are in a bedchamber.”
The holes of his mask revealed narrowed eyes, filled with suspicion. “Why were you looking for me?”
“I have watched you lecture, my lord. You are famous throughout England for your exploits. I have admired you for years.”
“And you want me to make love to you?”
“Y-yes.”
“All right. Let us find a bedchamber.” He offered his arm. Relieved but trembling, she laid her hand in the crook of his elbow, her fingers curled around the sleeve of the silk wizard’s robe. Without another word, he led her through the crowd.
Her heart galloped with nerves, but he had said
all right
. That meant it was going to happen. It had worked. She was going to begin on an adventure. Within minutes she would know what it was like to touch the most perfect male body in the world. She would know what pleasure was.
Nothing could go wrong.
2
Yours to Command
O
ctavia quickly discovered there was an enormous problem with pretending she had experience.
In the wild fantasies she had as she’d lain in her sickbed, she’d dreamed of Sutcliffe sweeping her into a bedchamber. He would be kissing her silly as he did it. He would push her up to the wall, trap her there by bracing his hands on either side of her head. Then he would do all sorts of hot, lovely, naughty things with his mouth. She’d dreamed of how lovingly and daringly he would kiss her. With his mouth open, his lips firm and hot, his tongue dallying with hers.
He would be wild and mad with desire for her.
Instead, Sutcliffe calmly walked her to a bedroom, shut the door behind them, and removed his robe and his hat in an instant.
Octavia gaped at him, struck mute by the cool, almost disinterested way he took off his wizard’s robe and laid it over the arm of a chair. Beneath it, he wore an open white shirt, black trousers, and shoes.
He was not acting as though he were excited at all.
She had seen young men sent to fetch punch for debutantes display more trembling excitement. The earl was behaving as though this was of no consequence. As if it was not even mildly
interesting
.
In the time she had stood, slack-jawed, stunned by the way he was stripping without even speaking to her, he had removed his mask, then pulled the hem of his shirt from his trousers. He paused.
“I thought you would be removing your dress,” he remarked. The rest came out a bit muffled as he pulled his shirt up over his head. “. . . you could manage on your own.”
She could see his abdomen. The real thing, not just a painted image. In the naughty picture, his stomach had been so muscular it looked like it had been made of rows of cobblestones.
A picture couldn’t do it justice. The light skimmed along the flat plane of his belly, highlighting the striations of muscle. His navel was a small, tight little indent of dark shadow. His trousers sat low on lean hips—heavens, his hip muscles jutted beneath his bronzed skin. She felt the most intense longing to touch them, to know what they really felt like. And, heavens yet again, his pants rode so low she could see how the line of tawny hair that ran down his tummy began to thicken at his . . . private parts.
He pulled off his shirt completely and tossed it to a chair. “Do you want help?”
I want romance. I want passion. I want your eyes glazed with desire for me, your breath coming in desperate pants, your head filled only with the need to make love to me.
But she wasn’t courageous enough to shout her demands at him. Should she go? She didn’t feel hot and quivery now. There was a painful tug in the pit of her stomach, and it was not a pleasant one. But maybe it would get better. Maybe, once they began, it would improve.
“With your gown,” he repeated, as if she were simple. “Do you want help?”
“No, I can manage.”
He was beautiful. Even if he wasn’t going to be passionate, she was going to have his gorgeous body for her own. She would be able to touch him. She would know what it was like to have a man’s body stretched over hers, to have his . . . parts inside her.
Perhaps this night could still be spectacular. Even if he had the personality and seductive skills of a marble statue, she could touch and feel and explore him. Perhaps that would be enough.
It would have to be. Fingers trembling, she undid the fastening at her shoulder. Silk tore a bit.
Hadn’t that been one of her fantasies? Tearing silk? She’d imagined
him
tearing her clothing, desperate to take it from her.
“Here, let me help you. You don’t want to rip your costume to shreds.” He prowled toward her. His scent enveloped her. She smelled the tart freshness of witch hazel astringent from his shaving, the sultry aroma of sandalwood, along with earthy hints of leather. She took a deep breath and drank in more.
His long-fingered hands moved over her dress with confidence and speed. He opened the fastenings at the sides first. Then he undid the shoulders. Sometimes his hands brushed her skin. She found she waited for his touch, almost unable to breathe. She wasn’t afraid, though. She was hungry for this. Octavia began to think he was deliberately letting his fingers brush her breasts and his palms bounce them.
It melted her. Made her feel sensuous. Made her so hot between her thighs she thought she was going to catch fire. It was actually
painful,
she wanted him so much.
Then reality stormed in. She was going to do something magnificent, something she’d dreamed of day and night, something that had kept her alive with hope and yearning. Literally, her fantasies had kept her alive.
It would happen with a gentleman who was almost a stranger.
She knew Sutcliffe. At least she’d thought she did. She had watched him lecture in the Royal Geographical Society about his journey across the cold ice of Siberia. She’d heard him tell of how he had narrowly escaped catching the malaria that had killed his traveling companions on the coast of Africa. His words there had been full of passion. He had made her feel the horror of watching a man fling himself off a cliff into the sea because he was mad with fever. He had made her know what a tiger smelled like, and how the fur looked in dappled sunlight.
But she didn’t really know him.
She felt a spurt of panic. Then he pulled her dress up.
She moved to stop him, to grasp the silk of her gown and keep it in place. Then she fought to quell her hands. She
couldn’t
turn back. After all, she didn’t know when she would die. How many nights she had left, she couldn’t guess. This might be the only one.
“You can’t take off my mask, though,” she said softly. “I want to leave it on.”
His brow rose. “All right. Who are you that you are so concerned about your identity?”
“I cannot tell you.” She looked at his eyes. He still wore his mask too. It made him look . . . dangerous and sensual. “We will both leave our masks on.”
“Fair enough. But the dress comes off you,” he said.
Taking a deep breath for courage, Octavia lifted her arms. She let him draw up her costume, take it off her, drop it to the bed.
He let out a soft whistle. “Nothing beneath. You are a fascinating creature.”
An experienced woman would be confident, wouldn’t she? Let him look his fill. Octavia pressed her back against one of the tall bed columns. The position thrust her naked bosom forward. But she couldn’t look down at her own body. She could let him look, but she wasn’t courageous enough to review what he was looking at.
Was he even pleased with her nakedness? With her sickness, she could barely eat, so she wasn’t generously proportioned anymore. Her breasts and her waist were small, her hips more lean than round. She could count her ribs. No doubt Sutcliffe could, too, even with just his gaze.
His gaze moved over her with the same slow, intense curiosity that she gave to the stuffed creatures her father brought home, when she was preparing to sketch them.
“You’ve been ill, haven’t you?” he asked.
“Yes.” Then, “I’m sorry. That’s why I am so thin.”
“Sweetheart, I am the one who is sorry. Are you recovered now?”
She shook her head before she even decided how much she should reveal. She might as well give the truth. “I am dying. I don’t know when it will happen, but doctors believe it will. It is just a matter of time.”
His face revealed nothing. His lips were set softly, his eyes devoid of feeling. “It is always a matter of time, my dear. I hope you mean you still have years left.”
Her throat closed and grew sore and aching, making it hard to speak. “Days. I think I just have days. That’s why I wanted you—”
“Did you send me an invitation to this party?”
She started. How had he known? She had thought her forgery was marvelous—
“I received two invitations. One was obviously a fake.”
Heavens, she hadn’t been thinking clearly at all. She had been certain this was the sort of event he would attend—which logically meant he would be sent a real invitation.
“So you have wanted to seduce me for weeks, and you created a fake card from a duke to lure me to an orgy.”
“I admit it sounds a bit mad—” It sounded utterly insane, as though she were pursuing and stalking him the way Caro Lamb had chased Lord Byron. “I suppose the fear of dying addled my wits. But you must understand how much I want to experience pleasure before . . .” Her lips wobbled helplessly. She fought it. “. . . I die.”
His brows were high with disbelief. “My dear girl, you sound like an obvious novice to me. I am sympathetic to your situation and flattered by your interest, but I don’t ruin women.”
“You won’t be ruining me! I am experienced. But my lovers have been . . .” She waved her hand airily, praying she wasn’t blushing again, and she tried to appear jaded. Then she remembered she was not wearing anything but her stockings and shoes, and she put down her hand. Thank heaven she still had her mask on.
“Ordinary,” she managed to say. She searched for something that made sense—that would make her seem awkward but not virginal. “My lovers were . . . pedestrian. I’ve heard there are all kinds of things that can be done in bed that I have never tried.”
“I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.” She didn’t care, even if he did. But was he going to send her away?
“I’m a lady’s dying wish?”
Tears leapt into the corners of her eyes. “I guess you are.” She tried to blink away the itchy tears, but two rolled beneath her mask to her cheeks, then dripped from her skin.
“No tears, love,” he said softly. He moved close to her, his trouser placket open and hanging to the side to reveal his underclothes. “If it’s a sexual education you want, I’ll provide it. My cock is yours to command, love.”
 
Matthew knew he’d changed.
Once he would have pleasured this woman without a second thought. Even with the mask obscuring much of her face, he could tell from her delicate chin and full lips that she was pretty. It wasn’t a complete surprise that his mysterious invitation had come from an obsessed young woman. He was a wealthy earl. And his travels, books, and lectures had given him fame.
She blushed scarlet when he told her she had command over his cock.
Innocent.
She had to be an innocent.
Though, in truth, some widows were essentially virgins. They’d been exposed to the physical act of sex, but none of the fun that went with it. His mystery lover had made no mention of a husband, and she had spoken of lovers—more than one.
She fascinated him. For a few moments, she had made him forget . . . forget his brother’s death, forget all the damned mistakes he had made, all the guilt he insisted he must carry.
He had never been a woman’s dying wish. Perhaps, for a while, he would humor her desires.
She was blushing deeply now, beneath her mask. In fact, she was blushing in many places. Her chest was rosy, as were her thighs and her shoulders.
He grinned at her, and his gaze dropped to her small, sweet breasts. The nipples were puckered and were a delicate pink. “Do you have a command for me?” Matthew asked.
“I—I don’t know.” Octavia knew she was flushing from her hairline to her toes. She knew, because she looked down and saw her skin turn as pink as her nipples. And her nipples had hardened to erect tips.
Sutcliffe’s tongue traced his lips as if she were a particularly tasty dish.
He lifted his arms and put his hands against the column above her head, an action that made the large muscles bulge in his bare arms. He bent forward. In a heartbeat, her right nipple was in his mouth. The speed left her breathless. She’d expected a . . . warning. That he would say, “I’m going to suck your nipples now.”
But he would think she knew all about this. Since she was supposed to be experienced, she would know that once he was close to her breasts he’d dive in for taste.
His mouth tightened around her nipple, his tongue flicked over the tip, and Octavia had to close her eyes. He sucked, drawing her nipple in, tugging at her entire breast. Then his tongue circled her nipple and her legs turned to fluid beneath her.
“Oh goodness,” she gasped. She grasped his shoulders, clutching them for support.
Even with his mouth filled with her breast—an astonishing sight—he chuckled, and she heard the raw, lusty tones of it. At once his laughter died away, and he worked at her breast, sucking so hard she could not bear it. Her hands pushed at his shoulders; she sought freedom. His teeth grazed her nipple and panic jolted her.
“No. It hurts. Stop.”
He moved back. “Don’t like that, love?” His voice was gruff. “You didn’t tell me what you wanted.”
“I—I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know exactly what I want.”

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