Shayla Black (19 page)

He struggled to find his next breath, a coherent thought, as Maddie stood before him dressed in a sheer golden drape, sari style—and nothing else. The thin gossamer clung to the swells of her breasts and peaked nipples, yielded to the curve of her waist, hugged lush thighs, not quite shadowing the juncture between. No doubt, she was completely bare beneath the exotic garment.

“
Dear God,” he whispered fervently.

Maddie simply replied with a kittenish smile.

Brock clenched his fists at his sides. Apparently, she had decided to force an end to their game tonight. How in the hell would he find the strength to resist her now, when he wanted her so badly?

Talons of lust clawed like fire through his belly. Staring at the creamy swells of her breasts beneath a blaze of exotic curls, Brock felt the foundation of his self-control shake.
Don’t look any lower,
he admonished himself. But he couldn’t stop.

The visible outline of tight nipples made his mouth water. He clenched his fists. The erotic indention of her navel gave way to the flat of her stomach.
Damn it, no lower
. Reddish curls, not quite hidden in damp shadows, beckoned his gaze. He remembered her taste, her response to his mouth pleasuring her.

Without a word, she swayed toward him. Her every move seduced him, devastated him, as the transparent garment alternately billowed and clung to her tempting curves, brushed her tight nipples, he hungered for her. Sweat rolled from his temple. When he caught the scent of her vanilla-jasmine skin, his desire only flared hotter.

Brock started toward her with all the patience of a bull, forgetting everything but possessing Maddie in that erotic golden drape...

#

Clasping the folds of her makeshift
sari
to keep her hands from shaking, Maddie undulated toward Brock. She felt jubilant, powerful. The pure lust in Brock’s gaze, coupled with the hardening of his manhood visible through his tight breeches, told her this reckless plot was succeeding.

But she never expected to feel the weakening of her knees, the moistening of her sex, at Brock’s rapacious gaze as he charged toward her. She meant to seduce him, not the reverse.

Drawing in a deep breath, Maddie sidled over to him, trying to remember all she’d read in Edith’s
Kama Sutra
. Pressing embraces and rubbing embraces. Bent and clasping kisses. Scratches and bites. Congress of a crow, mutual oral stimulation, the description of which still made her flush. And intercourse in so many different positions... Woman on top: The pair of tongs. Man behind the woman: The congress of a cow. Woman on top and man from behind: The mare’s position. So many different variations she had never considered. Maddie had read most of the day and found the book shocking, scintillating. Everything she had never imagined—and wanted fiercely tonight.

In addition, Vatsyayana wrote of a man’s obligation to satisfy his partner, suggesting different motions for penetration like piercing her with his member, pressing within her, churning once inside her. She wanted to feel them all, certain Brock would more than meet his responsibility.

He reached her then. He grasped her transparent sari in his firm grip, twisted the fabric, using it to pull her flush against him. He sent a green stare searching into her face, into her soul. Maddie answered with a wicked smile.

Remembering the clinging embrace described in the book, she twined herself about Brock’s heated body like a vine, grabbed his neck and brought his mouth to hers in a tangle of lips and breathy moans. He grabbed her nape and kissed her fiercely.

Need rose up from her belly, awashing her senses. His nearness sensitized her to his every touch and breath, to his rigid erection, which he pressed against her belly in demand.

Maddie returned Brock’s kiss with all the aching insistence he’d created in her over their nights together, losing herself in the flavor of brandy, the scent of spice and man and desire.

Suddenly, Brock tore himself from her embrace. His breath came in short, hard gasps. His stare accused and possessed her at once. Objection and denial formed on the hard angles of his jaw, settled in the furrow beneath his brows.

Panicked, Maddie stared back. He could not control the pace. Vema had stressed that the only way to really seduce a man was to make him forget all else. She latched onto all she had read since this morning and formed a hasty plan.

“
Brock,” she whispered, sidling closer again. “Darling.”

She took his cravat in her hands and untied it, fingers lingering about his neck, palms drifting over his chest.

“
No, Maddie.” The words came out, but he made no move to stop her.

His breathy denial infused her with triumph. She’d been right to block out Colin’s mocking voice in her head, telling her that she was too icy for any man to truly desire. Brock was proving her late husband wrong with every breath.

Tearing the cravat away, she tossed it to the carpet. His pulse pounded furiously at the base of his neck. Then she unfastened the buttons of his shirt slowly, one at a time, grazing her fingernails across his feverish golden skin, his hard male nipples, as she descended further, down toward his rigid staff.

He sucked in a sharp breath and swallowed hard. “Maddie—”

Before Brock could finish his protest, Maddie melded her mouth to his and guided him with unerring steps to the sumptuous four-poster bed against the wall. When they reached it, she pushed him down with a gentle shove and a determined smile until he sat on the mattress.

Brock sent her a hot, questioning stare. The passion etched onto his face sent her own desires flaring. Arousing him aroused her. Why had she never considered that possibility?

“
What are you doing?” he demanded.

Hovering above him, she gripped the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head. Bare to the waist, she watched the hard ridges of his chest rise and fall with every hard breath.

Maddie kissed his lower lip, dragging it between her lips, toying with his flesh between her teeth. He moaned. Encouraged and incited, she outlined his lips with her tongue. When he tried to seize her, take control of their lovemaking, she danced away.

“
Maddie, you are killing me…”

Smiling, she sauntered to the side of the bed and leaned back toward him to whisper, “I am trying.”

Groaning, Brock reached for her again, but she made her way behind him, crawling across the mattress. He turned to her, but she clutched the warm, rippling steel of his arms and turned him away.

The wide expanse of his powerful brown back lay before her. Blending her newfound knowledge with her urges, she brushed her palms across his flesh, grazed his neck with her mouth. He gasped as she nibbled on him, leaving tiny love bites along the way. She underscored his sensitivity to her touch by grazing his back with the length of her nails. Goose pimples broke out all down his arms.

According to the book, they would be compatible lovers. They would form the highest union, her feminine sheath, untouched for three years, would form a tight glove about his large member. The force of their passion seemed equal, for his hungry gaze mirrored her own growing appetite.

Teeth nipping on his earlobe, Maddie draped her arms about his neck and worked her way to his side. Brock hooked an arm about her waist, pulled her into his lap, and fastened his mouth to hers as if only she could bestow his next breath. Gladly, she gave of her lips, her passion, as she returned the kiss. With a growl, Brock grasped her hips, fingers digging with need. His unrelenting mouth continued to seduce her as he shifted to settle her aching core against his cock.

Maddie cried out, needing him, throbbing with a boundless desire Brock aroused so easily. With him, she felt secure in her desirability as a woman. She craved the chance to explore everything between, to hold the thoughtful Brock who had once invaded her soul and tenaciously stayed.

Without warning, he stood, turned, and lowered Maddie to the soft cushion of the bed. His lips never left hers as he followed her there, covering her body with the broad strength of his own. His hand probed between them, twisting, tugging. He cursed, then sighed. Maddie was too lost in the feeling of him, in the force of her desire, to take much note.

With a thrust of his hips, he wedged himself between her legs so tightly, she felt every long, demanding inch of him pressed against her—with only thin gossamer separating them.

He had unfastened his breeches. The man most equipped to fulfill every secret desire was finally ready to be her lover. She tried to remember why he’d been resisting the pleasure, but his mouth fastened on her breast, driving away rational thought. His fingers found their way past her slick folds, inside her tingling sex. Her need for him escalated to heady new heights.

“
Brock, now. No more waiting. Please!”

Her hoarse plea reverberated in the air between them. Of its own will, her body unfurled for him, thighs parting wider. Impatient, she shoved the corner of her
sari
aside until they touched flesh to flesh.

Breath held, she waited for Brock to fill her and satisfy her body’s urgent demands.

Instead, he thrust himself away and fastened his breeches, issuing a litany of curses he could only have learned in the gutter.

Aching, she sat up and peered at him. “Don’t do this to me. To us.”

He ran a tense hand across his face and glanced at her, stare trailing down her disheveled nudity. He cursed again and tore his gaze away.

“
Damn it, Maddie!” He fastened his breeches in short angry yanks of his buttons. “Don’t you do this to us. Marry me. I won’t have you until we’ve wed.”

Every muscle and sensitive nerve in her body cried out.
No!
He couldn’t leave her now to agonize in his absence, so that she thought of nothing but him while she twisted restlessly in her lone bed.

She crossed the room to him and threw her arms about him. The hot, hard feel of him pressed against her only revived the aching frustration deep within her. “Make love to me. I’ve never felt this way. Ever. I want—”

“
I want, too,” he growled. “Unless you agree to marry me, I can’t.” He swallowed and grabbed his shirt, throwing it on over his head. “You tempt me until I can scarcely breathe, but I will not give up—” He stopped himself, raking a tense hand through the thick waves of his hair. “I cannot.”

His rigid jaw, taut cheeks, and pained eyes grabbed at Maddie's heart and tugged. For an instant, she forgot their wager. She saw only the young idealist she had loved and hated knowing that she caused him distress.

Did he perhaps resist making her his mistress, clearly at great discomfort to himself, because he really did want her as a wife and did not wish to use her like a trollop?

Or was that wishful thinking? Brock did not love her. He never had. Accepting that had been one of the most bitter lessons of her life. Wondering about his emotions, wishing she could ease his mind—that was dangerous. Brock would not hesitate to use her inexplicable affection against her, if he knew of it.

“
Go, then.” She knew she sounded petulant, but it hurt to know that he wanted her…just not enough.

Taking her face in his hands, Brock positioned his mouth a mere breath from hers. “Miss me,” he demanded softly, then fled into the night.

CHAPTER NINE

Clutching Aimee’s little hand in her own, Maddie made her way up the stairs to Brock’s office in the heart of London’s financial district. She dreaded the coming encounter more with every step.

Since last night’s
Kama Sutra
disaster, she had never been more aware of her own deficiencies as a woman. The realization that Brock could focus on a wager yet leave her aching made Maddie sting with a sharp, wretched embarrassment. When she had arrived home after an hour of tears, she’d run up to Aimee’s room, as she did each night, only to have the sobs wrack her as she stared at the pale innocence of her daughter’s sleeping face. She could not risk her baby girl’s happiness. True, she began to wonder if Brock was really the sort of man who would truly condemn a child to prison or mistreat her under his roof. She didn’t think so…but that was a gamble she could not take.

Maddie was painfully aware she had been wrong about Brock before.

She paced, cried, uncertain what to do. She alone stood between her daughter’s childhood contentment and the cruelties of the real world. She could not afford to make the wrong choice, could not allow the Fleet or a workhouse to swallow Aimee in its dank, dismal claws. Exhaustion and hunger often ended the lives of the tenderly young in those hells.

Yet if she married Brock, she and Aimee both would become his property legally, to treat as he saw fit. He could beat the girl. While Maddie doubted he was that cruel, he could send the girl away to some remote school where Aimee would be raised by strangers, without the comforting familiarity of home, without love.

Colin had seemed so thrilled during her pregnancy, but once Aimee had been born, he’d regarded her with contempt. And, despite Brock’s tolerance of the girl so far, Maddie had little assurance that he would behave any better, believing her to be Colin’s offspring.