Savage Nights (The Savage Trilogy #2) (8 page)

“Apologize,” he ordered, his voice an ominous growl. His pale eyes were hard as flint and every bit as unyielding. “Apologize now.”

“The devil I will,” Blackledge said, taking a step towards Savage. He, too, had clenched his fists, his thick fingers like leather-covered sausages in his gloves. “She’s not worth that—”

“Excuse me, m’lord,” said the stable master, deftly stepping between the two men. “We don’t need this kind of misunderstanding here in the yard. Any sort of ruckus upsets the horses, and I won’t have it.”

For a long moment, neither man flinched. It seemed as if every other person in the yard was holding his breath, unsure of how this would end.

“You, too, Baron,” said the stable master. “Gentlemen or not, I can’t have the pair o’ you brawling in my stable yard.”

And it was finally Blackledge who stepped back.

“For the sake of the beasts, then,” he said, straightening his tie and scowling in retreat. “But mark what I say, Savage. This isn’t done between us. Mrs. Hart
will
be mine, whether you like it or not.”

He looked past Savage to find me, standing several steps away with my hands folded over my chest to mask my trembling hands and racing heart. He narrowed his eyes and stared at me pointedly, his gaze flicking over my body as if he was imagining me in some obscene position. Then with a muttered oath he turned on his booted heel and crossed the yard to where he’d left his horse.

In the circumstances I wished I’d been braver. I wished I’d behaved like a true heroine and been the one who’d stepped between the two men to stop them. I wished I’d spat with contempt at Blackledge and not cowered like some cowardly, weak-minded woman.

But the truth was that seeing Savage so near to battling with Blackledge again on my behalf had frightened me, frightened me badly. I’d feared for Savage’s safety, and my own as well at the hands of Blackledge.

What had unsettled me even further, however, was that having these two men ready to fight over me had unleashed some sort of primal pleasure within me. Savage’s games while we’d been riding had kept me in a state of excited arousal for the last hour, and to watch him defend me as he had only made my blood quicken more. He wanted me badly enough that he’d fight for me, and as shameful as such a confession might be for a modern woman, it still had made me in return want him all the more.

Now he stood with his back to me, his broad shoulders still tensed. The stable master had left us soon after Blackledge had, and the others in the yard had returned to their own affairs, perhaps a little disappointed that they hadn’t witnessed anything more worthy of gossip. Grooms had taken our horses back to the stable.

Only Savage and I were left standing still in the bustling yard. It was an awkward stillness, too. I longed to reach out to touch him, to put my arms around his waist and press my face against those shoulders and breathe deeply of his scent. I wanted to thank him for what he’d done, and I wanted to reassure myself.

Yet despite how intimate we’d become, I hesitated. I was sure he wouldn’t want so public a show of affection between us, nor—with Laura’s warning still in my ears—would that be wise for me, either. To most of the world, Savage and I were no more than acquaintances, and for now it should remain that way.

But discretion wasn’t the only reason I didn’t join him. No matter how much I wished it otherwise, that well-tailored back turned towards me was like a wall that I didn’t dare challenge. I knew better than that. In the week we’d been together he’d made it clear that there were times when he prized his solitude and did not want it to be interrupted. This, apparently, was one of those times.

Or so I’d thought.

Without warning he wheeled about and grabbed my arm.

“Come with me,” he said, though from the way he was marching me across the yard I had little choice but to go with him. His expression was fixed and his jaw set, and as I hurried my steps to keep pace with his I couldn’t begin to read his mood.

He was grasping my arm hard, almost to the point of pain, but not quite. I didn’t protest; this was what I’d wanted, to be with him.

He led me into the stable and down the long row of stalls. Some held horses, snuffling and whinnying behind the gates as we passed, their scent mingling with the smell of hay and polished leather. I blinked, trying to accustom my eyes to the shadows. The lanterns had not been lit yet, and the sun of the fading day slanted through the windows and the door.

I tripped on the brick floor, but he held me up, still pulling me forward with him. The last stall was empty, and he drew me inside with him. He released my arm, shoved the gate shut, and shot the bolt to the latch. The gate would offer no degree of real privacy—most men of any height would be able to see over it—but I sensed that was not the true reason that Savage had latched the gate. He didn’t wish to keep the stable workers out so much as he wanted to keep me locked in.

Locked in with
him
.

I took a single step towards him to prove I wasn’t frightened. I wasn’t. I was insanely aroused, my blood racing through my body with desire. Slowly I lifted the veil back from my face so he could see the longing that I was sure must be there. My eyes were heavy with it, my lips aching for his.

He took off his hat and threw it aside, then crossed the short distance between us. I’d never seen him quite like this, his face furious with unabashed lust. When he’d been face-to-face with Blackledge his pale eyes had been as cold as winter. Now, when he met my gaze, those same eyes seemed to burn with desire, the same wild desire that was now licking through my body.

He seized me by the waist to pull me close, but I’d already reached for his shoulders—ah, those shoulders!—and was digging my fingers deep into the superfine woolen-covered muscles. He caught me off-balance and then pushed me back against the rough wood of the stall. The wall shoved my hat forward, and impatiently he tore it from my hair, scattering the pins that Hamlin had so carefully used to secure it.

The hat didn’t matter now. Nothing else did, except his mouth devouring me, claiming me, marking me. I could taste the possession of this kiss, the savageness that was a part of his name. I felt scorched, branded by it, and yet the more he pressed his body against mine, against the rough boards behind me, the more I wanted.

He held my jaw steady in his hand to make sure I wouldn’t escape. His thumb pressed into my cheek, and the animal scent of his leather gloves somehow made his kiss more primal and demanding.

When he broke away I gasped, as if the very source of my life had been stolen away from me.

“You’re mine, Eve,” he said, his voice as rough and demanding as his kiss. “You don’t belong to any other man but me. You are
mine
.”

“I am, Master,” I breathed. “Yours.”

What other answer could there be?

5.

“Mine,” Savage repeated, his breath warm on the skin beneath my ear. “Never forget it, either.”

I closed my eyes, relishing the pressure of his body against mine.

“Let me prove it to you, Master,” I whispered. I slipped one hand between us to find his cock. He was enormous in his trousers, straining against the confining fabric, and there was no mistaking the heat and power of his erection beneath my hand. Daring, I blindly found the first button on his fly and unfastened it.

“As soon as we reach your house, Master, I’ll—”

“No.” At once he seized my wrist, his grasp like a vise. He drew back just far enough to see my face, and for me to see his. The slightest of smiles played on his sensually full lips. His silvery-gray eyes were half-closed and unfathomable, and yet I could have gazed into them forever.

“You will prove it, Eve,” he said. “But not later. Now.”

“Now?” I repeated, breathless with both surprise and excitement. Each time one of the horses moved in the stalls around us, I imagined a groom or stableboy coming to find us. “Here?”

“Here,” Savage said. Along the edge of the stall ran a small ledge where grooms could lay brushes or bits of tack, and without warning he grabbed me by my waist and lifted me up to set my bottom on the ledge. I felt like a piece of porcelain placed precariously on a shelf, and I flailed my hands to find my balance and keep from falling.

“Hold me,” he ordered gruffly. “You’re exactly where I want you, and I won’t let you fall.”

“But what if … if we are interrupted?” I asked, and even as I asked I realized that the idea of a witness excited me. “What if one of the grooms sees us?”

“What he will see is that you are with me,” Savage said, his voice gruffly imperious. “That is all that matters.”

I nodded, accepting. It was all that mattered. I looped my arms around his shoulders and felt instantly more steady. He’d become my rock that way, my anchor, and fresh desire replaced my first uneasiness. We were nearly eye to eye now, and I leaned forward to offer him my mouth again.

But he’d other ideas. He grabbed a fistful of my habit’s skirts and swept them back over my legs. He grunted with purely male approval at what he’d discovered, and I smiled.

“It’s not my Innocent’s costume, Master,” I said. That had been a wisp of a garment, a plain white shift that had been nearly transparent, worn with nothing beneath it.

“It’s not what ladies wear for riding, either,” he said, his gaze still focused on my legs in black silk stockings and laced riding boots with curving heels.

“It’s what I wear for riding with you, Master,” I said. “Does it please you?”

He grunted again, cupping one of my knees in his hand, his palm sliding across the slippery silk.

“It does please me,” he said. “Very much.”

Beneath my severe habit, my garters were red silk with silver clasps. Instead of my usual white linen undergarments I’d worn black silk drawers edged with wide bands of black lace at the knees and trimmed with red ribbon rosettes—the kind of drawers usually reserved for a ball gown or, more likely, for an evening that began and ended in the bedroom. While I’d shocked Hamlin by my choice, I cared only for Savage’s opinion, not that of my maid. The long slit that separated the drawers’ legs was meant for ordinary convenience, but I knew now it would be put to another purpose.

He hooked his hand beneath my thigh and wrapped my leg around his waist. I rocked back on the ledge and lifted my second leg myself, crossing my ankles around his back. With my thighs raised and parted, the open slit in my drawers separated, revealing the white skin of my belly and the dark hair below, and my quim rosy and weeping with arousal.

“That’s how I like you, Eve,” he rasped, tearing at the buttons on his trousers. “Always ready for me.”

I whimpered as he ran the ridge of his finger between my nether lips and unerringly found my pearl. He dipped deeper into my cunt to gather more of my essence, gliding over the little nub in teasing small circles. I heard my lubricious wetness and the slippery sound of his fingers moving over me. I sucked in my breath and instinctively lifted my hips to meet his touch.

I felt the blunt heat of his erection bump against the bare skin of my upper thigh, and I held my breath in anticipation. I knew what was coming, and I wanted it as much as I’d ever wanted anything.

He pressed the engorged head of his cock to my opening and pushed. I felt my passage giving way for him, opening to accommodate his thickness. His dark hair slipped forward over his brow and his nostrils flared, and I glimpsed the same possessive fury that he’d shown towards the baron. It excited me, that fury. How could it not, when Savage wanted me that much?

He tightened his hold on my hips and bent his knees for a better angle, then thrust hard.

I gasped with both the force of him and the heat, my back bumping against the rough boards behind me. Because I was constricted by my corset I seemed to feel his cock filling me more snugly, more completely, as if my entire core had tightened around him.

He felt it, too, swearing under his breath and into my hair. I curled my legs higher over his back to take him deeper and ride him as if he were another horse beneath me. He drove into me with quick, powerful strokes, and I gasped each time, unable to keep quiet despite the risk of being discovered.

I didn’t care, nor did he. He finished each stroke with an upward jab that dragged over my pearl, his balls slapping hard against my outer sex. The tension building within me was overwhelming, and my fingers dug into his shoulders and I crossed my ankles high across his back.

“That’s what I want from you, Eve,” he growled, nipping at the side of my neck like a stallion with a mare. “Fuck me, and give me what I want.”

I was desperate to take every inch of him, just as he was desperate to possess me. I glanced down to where we were joined, fascinated. In sharp contrast to my white thighs, his cock was fiercely red, glistening with my juices as he drew out almost to the purplish head before pounding back into me.

The fire was burning inside me now, and I felt every muscle tense and beg for release. Helpless, I quivered on the edge and arched and twisted against him. His eyes were unfocused, his features tense as he drove us both harder, faster, hotter.

Abruptly he bowed his head and pressed his face against my shoulder and into my tousled hair. His breathing was harsh, his body jerking hard, and I knew he was as close as I was myself. I spread my legs wider, and he ground against my wet, open sex in a way that sent an extra spark of pressure against my pearl. That was enough to send me over the edge, spiraling into the flames of my climax along with him.

My head fell back against the stable wall, my breath still coming in gasps. My fingers loosed their grasp on his shoulders, and although I kept my thighs clasped tightly around his waist, my thighs felt heavy and my muscles trembled. Yet I was unwilling to break our joining or the magic of it a moment sooner than I must.

I closed my eyes, spent and limp. Savage often reduced me to this, an overwhelming sense of bliss and exhaustion.

“Eve.” His lips brushed against my cheekbone, and I dragged my heavy eyes open. His own breathing was still ragged and sweat gleamed on his forehead. His pupils were round and black, making his pale eyes uncharacteristically dark and unfathomable.