Simply Wicked (35 page)

David frowned. “If you can’t speak, Marguerite, I hardly think it is fair for Anthony to order you around, do you?”

Marguerite shook her head, her gaze fixed on the swell of Anthony’s cock, making him even harder and hornier.

“I’ll gag him, then.”

Anthony could do nothing to stop David placing a black silk scarf over his mouth and fastening it tightly at the back of 298 /
Kate Pearce

his head. He swallowed hard, his mind already anticipating the next thing, the next onslaught on his sensually beleaguered body.

“Would you like to do anything to him before I tie you up as well, Marguerite?”

Anthony tensed as Marguerite considered him and then dropped her head and used her tongue to follow the path of the red linen around his hips and under his cock. There was no give in the ropes, nowhere for his hips to go, but he still tried, still craved her mouth on him, all over him.

He made a stifled sound as her tongue stroked over the crown of his cock, lazily lapping at the wetness, creating even more. She licked his balls, bit the linen beneath them as if test-ing its ability to keep him confined. When she finally sat up, his whole body was shaking with need and straining against his bonds.

“It’s your turn now, Marguerite. Take off your shift and kneel up in front of Anthony.”

Anthony tried to look at David, heard nothing in his voice but amusement and sexual satisfaction, knew he’d kill his friend if he had appeared to want Marguerite for himself. Marguerite took off her shift, and Anthony wanted to howl with lust. Her breasts were flushed, her nipples erect and the scent of her arousal already perfumed the room.

Marguerite took a deep breath as David knelt behind her and placed the black
shibari
rope around her neck so that the long ends hung forward over the curves of her breasts and pooled on the white bed cover. She’d enjoyed seeing Anthony tied up; how would it feel to be tied up herself?

She trembled as David took control of the rope, crossed the ends under her breasts and drew them behind her back, crossed them again and brought them around her hips. Soon the thin linen circled her wrists keeping her arms imprisoned behind her.

David was so close that she could feel the pulse of his arousal SIMPLY WICKED / 299

against her buttocks, but his hands were as impersonal and efficient as a servant’s.

She studied the rope, felt a gentle tug at the back of her neck when David wound the ropes around her thighs down to the knees and back up again, leaving her mound uncovered and suddenly exposed. She watched his fingers fly over the rope, saw the intricate patterns he made and wondered what Anthony made of it, whether he liked it as much as she had.

As if he’d heard her thought, David paused and looked at Anthony. “Do you like her, like this? Do you want her bound to you?”

Anthony’s slight nod was enough to make David urge her closer to Anthony. It was difficult to move with her body restrained and on display. She gasped when David lifted her to kneel in the cramped space between Anthony’s crossed legs.

Her bound breasts brushed his chest, and his cock pressed against her stomach, making her shiver.

David braced himself behind her.

“I’m going to tighten the rope, Marguerite, are you ready?”

Before she could even nod, she felt a quickening sensation that started at her shoulders and gradually moved down to her knees, as if she were slowly being hugged, being controlled, being captured. She started to pant and rock forward, seeking Anthony’s strength to rub herself against to relieve the ache building inside her.

When David finally stopped, she was shivering uncontrol-lably, her body on fire, Anthony’s wet pulsing cock pressed hard up against her belly, his lust-filled eyes almost level with her own.

“As I’m in control of you both, I really think you should fuck.” David laughed. “Well, you are going to fuck, because you have no choice, and I want to see it.”

Marguerite moaned as he effortlessly picked her up and slowly lowered her over Anthony’s cock.

300 /
Kate Pearce

“Don’t come yet. There’s more.” David drew the black
shibari
ropes back over Marguerite’s shoulders and slid them under the red ropes that secured Anthony’s shoulders to the headboard.

“Now I pull both sets.”

David deftly removed Anthony’s gag and set about joining them even more tightly together. Anthony groaned and shoved his tongue in her mouth as the pressure increased, as they both struggled to draw breath into their lungs. Marguerite hovered on the brink of losing consciousness, and they climaxed together in a frenzy of white heat and the frustrated passion of shared, long-repressed need.

“God . . .” Anthony’s cock still pulsed inside her even though he’d come. “That was the best fuck I’ve ever had.”

Shyly, Marguerite looked up at him. “The best fuck?”

His smile was breathtaking. “I meant the best love I’ve ever made.”

Marguerite swallowed hard. “I’m trying, Anthony. I’ll try for your sake, but I can’t hide from my true nature any more than you can.”

“I’ll try too. If you are willing to explore our sexual opportunities together, I’m sure we’ll find our own particular level of pleasure.” He kissed her forehead, sighing as David eased their bonds a fraction.

“I love you, Marguerite. You might not believe me yet, but I’ll prove it to you. You’ll never be second in my life. You’ll always come first for me.”

Marguerite wanted to cry at the sincerity in his eyes, the certainty of hope for his future that she had helped him discover.

She had to tell him the truth, had to stop being a coward and follow his lead.

“I love you too, Anthony.”

He went still. “You don’t have to say that yet, Marguerite.

I’m more than willing to wait.”

She smiled up at him through her advancing tears. “Well, SIMPLY WICKED / 301

I’m not. My entire family has told me I would be a fool to lose you, and for once I agree with them.” She hesitated, casting him a provocative look from under her eyelashes. “It’s not as if you’re asking me to marry you and settle down or anything.”

His expression turned thunderous. “I bloody well am.”

“But what about all the time we need to explore the possibilities of the pleasure house?”

He glared at her—actually glared at her. “We can have our wedding trip there, if you want. It would be cheaper and safer than going abroad anyway.”

David cleared his throat. “If you are making wedding plans, perhaps I ought to wish you happiness and untie you?”

Marguerite gasped as Anthony’s cock jerked inside her and filled out again.

“In a minute, David,” Anthony said. “I still have to convince my intended to marry me.”

David sighed and climbed up onto the bed. “I really can’t leave you like this. I’ll untie you both from the headboard and leave it at that. What you choose to do with the ropes afterward is entirely up to you.”

“That suits me perfectly,” Anthony growled, his gaze still fixed on Marguerite. “I’m sure I can persuade Marguerite to agree with me. She’ll hardly want to be tied up like a parcel and taken to Gretna Green to be married. I’m sure I can make her to change her mind and consider a long engagement.”

Marguerite didn’t even hear David leave as Anthony bore her down onto the mattress, settled himself between her thighs and started pounding into her as if he’d never stop. Perhaps she should consider marrying him one of these days after all . . .

Want more of Kate Pearce’s House of Pleasure series?

Then please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of Lord Minshom’s story,

SIMPLY INSATIABLE

coming in May 2010!

1

He’d made a fool of himself.

Over a man.

Lord Minshom raised the bottle at his elbow, drank deeply, then carefully set it down again. He licked the brandy from his lips and tasted his own defeat and humiliation at the hands of that upstart, Lord Anthony Sokorvsky. A man who’d had the nerve to walk away from him—from
him
!

All of London was whispering about how his former sex slave had forsaken him for a woman. Minshom smiled bitterly in the direction of the fire and exhaled, feeling the tug of recently healed bone. At their last meeting, Sokorvsky had punched him so hard he’d ended up unconscious at the bottom of the stairs with two cracked ribs. Luckily, Robert had been there to drag him away before Sokorvsky and his nauseating lady love had descended the stairs to gloat over him.

Minshom picked up the bottle again and drank until there was nothing left. And it wasn’t even as if he was “in love” with Sokorvsky. He didn’t love anyone, didn’t believe he was capable of it anymore. All his sexual encounters were exercises in 306 /
Kate Pearce

power, opportunities to show that he was still at his peak and able to subdue or seduce anyone he wanted.

Yet Sokorvsky had found the balls to walk away from him.

And for the first time in his life, despite his threats, Minshom had given up the pursuit and allowed his former lover to follow his heart. He grimaced at his own saccharine choice of words.

Was he slipping? Was he losing his touch?

“My lord?”

He turned his head toward the door of the oak-paneled study, blinked at the blurred outline of his valet, Robert Brown.

“What?”

Robert came farther into the room, his dark red hair glinting in the meager candlelight, the only spot of color against his pale skin and somber black attire.

“Would you like to retire for the night, sir?”

Minshom held out the brandy bottle. “Get me another one of these.”

Unlike most of his staff, Robert held his ground and didn’t even hesitate.

“I’ll get you more brandy if you take it up to bed with you, how’s that?”

“Go to hell.”

“I’m already there, sir; I’ve lived with you for far too long.

You’ll have to think of something else to threaten me with.”

Minshom raised an eyebrow and threw the bottle toward the marble fireplace where it shattered into a million glittering fragments and almost put the fire out. “Get me my brandy, damn you.”

Robert sighed. “I’ll go and get someone to clean that up, sir; wouldn’t want you cutting yourself.”

“Leave it.”

Robert hesitated, his gray eyes fixed on Minshom’s. He was in his early thirties, had come to Minshom Hall as a stable boy and had stayed with his master ever since.

SIMPLY INSATIABLE / 307

“Sir . . .”

“Come here and kneel down.” Minshom pointed to the rug in front of him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go upstairs? Anyone could come in.”

“And see you sucking my cock? I’m sure they’ve all seen that before.”

Robert looked resigned, but he did as he was told and came to kneel in front of Minshom. He eyed Minshom’s groin.

“After the amount you’ve had to drink, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a rise out of you, sir.”

“You’d better try hard then, hadn’t you?”

Robert sighed again and undid the buttons of Minshom’s placket, pushed aside his underclothes to reveal his half-erect cock. Minshom reached forward to slide his hand into Robert’s thick pelt of auburn hair.

“Make it fast and hard; make me come.”

He closed his eyes as Robert’s warm mouth closed over his shaft and began to suck and pump his flesh. He hadn’t been back to the pleasure house since his injury. The discovery that Sokorvsky’s woman was Madame Helene’s daughter hadn’t helped either. Would he ever go back there? Was it time to move on?

Coward.

He could almost hear his father saying it, the way his lip would curl, the sting of the beating he would no doubt get for his impudence in begging for the punishment to end. He dug his fingers deeper into Robert’s hair, heard his valet draw in a hurried breath and suck faster. Perhaps he hadn’t completely lost his ability to make men sexually serve him after all. But then he and Robert had always been simpatico.

A slight commotion in the hallway below registered through his drunken arousal. He wasn’t expecting guests and had told his damned butler to deny anyone who inquired. He had no desire 308 /
Kate Pearce

to see the glee in his so-called friends’ eyes as they recounted yet more gossip about Sokorvsky and his new love. To be fair, he’d liked Marguerite Lockwood, had felt an unexpected stir of interest in his loins despite his refusal to fuck women. She’d reminded him of someone . . .

The disturbance was getting louder, rising up the stairs, coming closer. The agitated sound of his butler’s voice and the clearer high tones of a woman. What in damnation was going on? Robert stopped sucking and tried to raise his head. Minshom shoved him back down again.

“I didn’t tell you to stop.”

He didn’t bother to turn his head as the door flew open and his butler started apologizing.

“I’m sorry, sir, she refused to leave and . . .”

And sure enough, his vision was filled with an apparition from the darkest recesses of his personal hell.

“Good evening, Robert, good evening, Minshom.”

Minshom kept one restraining hand on Robert’s head. He used the other to wave the butler away and waited until the door shut behind him before addressing his visitor.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Visiting you?”

“I didn’t give you permission to do that.”

She raised her eyebrows and took off her bonnet, holding it at her side by its wide blue ribbons. Her brown hair was neatly parted in the center and drawn back into two coiled braids over her ears. At first glance, she still looked far too young to be anyone’s wife, let alone his.

“I don’t believe I need your permission to visit my own house.”

“It’s my house. Don’t you remember? When you married me, everything you brought with you became mine.”

“How could I forget? You’ve always been very good at making me feel like a possession.”

SIMPLY INSATIABLE / 309

He met her clear gray eyes and smiled. “And yet, here you are. Where you are not wanted.”

She sighed. “Can we stop this? I need to talk to you.”