The Devil's Match (16 page)

“Six ways?” She sat up with a blink. “Are there
still so many more?”

“As I have said before, there are
countless paths to pleasure, and we have only explored a fraction
of them between us. Now I ask you,
and
only once,
for there will be no turning back—do you
still wish to carry on with this game of yours?”

She licked her lips and met his gaze with
steeliness. “I do,” she said. “I wish to explore
all
there is between us, Ludovic,
and in any way you can conceive; for how else can this
thing
”—she gestured wildly between
them—”come to its final and inevitable conclusion?”

He gave her a predatory smile. “How else,
indeed?”

Chapter Fifteen

Her hand was still wrapped around him, and he
was still slick with oil. Diana squeezed lightly, loving the feel
of him in her hand. She gazed up at him with her most seductive
smile and ran her tongue slowly over her lips. “Lie down, Ludovic,”
she commanded. “You wanted me to take you in my mouth. It is my
wish now to do so.”

“So this is to be my third torture? I am to
suffer the agony of your delectable mouth?” His pupils flared with
desire.

“Yes,” she replied.

“And such a lovely mouth it is.” He brushed his
thumb along the seam of her gently parted lips. “You were made for
this, Diana.” He kissed her again, slowly, deeply, thoroughly,
gently nibbling the tender flesh of her lower lip and sucking it
into his mouth before slowly releasing. It was a kiss intended to
rekindle the flames smoldering deep in her belly. It did much
more.

She pressed him backward. He complied readily
until she attempted to straddle his legs as he had done earlier to
her.

“No,” he said. “Turn around.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I want you to face away from
me.”

“But that places my—”

“delectable bottom within reach? Precisely, my
dear.” His words held an underlying menace, a promise of the most
illicit and decadent retaliation that set every nerve on full
alert. “You may do your worst, love, but just remember, two can
play the same game.”

With her pulse racing in anticipation of his
threat, Diana lowered her nether half onto his chest, her senses
awaking to the feel of his warm, hard body against her sensitive
inner thighs and the light brush of his chest hair against her
bottom. She knelt forward, allowing her loose hair to cascade over
his sex, caressing it in a silken fall. She was aware that the
motion lifted her arse and exposed her most feminine places to his
seeking gaze. Although discomposing to her, she knew he would find
it unbearably arousing.

Holding his staff in one hand, she
caressed his heavy sac with the other while plying whisper-soft
kisses around the periphery and down the underside of his
kamış.
She closed her eyes,
relishing the softness of his flesh against her mouth before
parting her lips. A subtle shudder overtook him as she drew him
into her mouth, and she smiled inwardly.
He will soon be reduced to wet clay, indeed!

Or so she thought...until the first touch of his
hand. He cupped the globes of her buttocks, stroking both his
thumbs along her cleft in a light and rhythmic caress that was
impossible to ignore. Intent on distraction, she drew another inch
of him into her mouth, gliding and swirling her tongue along his
length and sucking hard upon the near-release.

He slid his hands lower, his thumbs
caressing the moist folds of her labia.
Dear God! It has been so long.
He delved deeper,
parting her folds, tracing, teasing, locating her hidden nub,
circling it with those all-too-skillful fingers. She couldn’t
suppress it any longer. She moaned
,
a noise that reverberated in her mouth, the vibrations
eliciting a low guttural sound.

In a tit-for-tat, she focused on her breathing,
relaxing, taking him deeper, to the back of her throat. She teased
with her tongue and suckled with her mouth, bent on driving him
mad. She could feel the tension coiling in him, his release
building, but then he raised her hips.

Suddenly it was
his
tongue, swirling, teasing, licking, and
laving her mindless with pleasure. The flames lapping at her belly
ignited, sending heat and moisture and mayhem through a body that
had been neglected for so very long. Her body quivered, her passage
ached and convulsed with the need to be filled. She tried to
suppress it, to focus on his pleasure and ignore her own, yet her
climax continued to grow.
It is too
much!
She couldn’t allow him that power over her
again, that mind-numbing, intoxicating pleasure that had turned her
inside out and destroyed her will.

“No! Stop!” she cried out. “That was not the
bargain we made. I won’t let you do it again.”

Grasping her hips, he pivoted her to face him,
his expression perplexed. “You won’t let me give you pleasure?”

Diana’s heart squeezed, and her eyes burned.
“Yes! No! I don’t want it. I have given you all you asked and have
upheld the bargain. Why isn’t it enough? Why do you wish to take
more? You have my body. Are you the devil that you must also demand
my soul?”

“Why?” he replied in a gravelly voice. “Because
I have a need to see, touch, and taste your reciprocal pleasure.
It’s all I can offer you. Fucking is what I’m good at. It’s what I
know. I am an indisputable master of it, and so it’s my gift to
you—mindless, bone-melting, heart-sundering pleasure.”

“What do you mean it’s all you can offer? You
speak as if you have no capacity for greater feeling.”

He laughed. “But haven’t you already
implied that all of my
feelings
terminate in my cock?”

“You would like me to believe that, wouldn’t
you? It’s a convenient excuse for you. I spoke out of resentment,
but I know better now. I have seen your weak moments, Ludovic—your
protectiveness, your generosity. These are proofs of underlying
sentiment, even of sensibility. You are more than capable of love,
yet you repress it within yourself and refuse to accept it from
others.”

“Bollocks!” he exclaimed. “Is that what you
really think?”

“It’s what I
know
.”

“All right, Diana. While we are at it, why
can’t
you
let go? Why
can’t
you
trust
anyone?”

“You already know why. I let my guard
down
once
in my life, only to
later regret it.”

He gripped her shoulders. “I told you why I
left. Why do you still refuse to understand?”

She could no longer hold in the wave of emotion.
It burst from her with violence. “Because you turned my life upside
down and disappeared! I never heard from you, either while you were
away, or even worse, upon your return!”

“But it never could have worked between us as
things were, don’t you see that? The scandal would have destroyed a
woman like you. Caroline would have ensured it. That’s why I left,
Diana, in hope time and distance would diminish the threat to you.
Caroline wanted to use you to control me, but when I left, she
could do nothing.

“I also knew I wasn’t prepared
then
to give you what you needed. I
thought it best that you move on with your life. I wanted you to
find the contentment I denied myself by leaving.”

“I found no contentment, just resignation
to my misery,” she said. “And what could
you
possibly know about what I
needed?”

“I know you much better than you think, my dear.
You have a two-sided nature, one that craves to be cherished on the
one hand and to be fucked senseless on the other. The second I
could easily and willingly meet, yet I suffered reservations about
being able to provide the first. You know I have never believed in
monogamy.”

“Yes,” she said tightly. “You have made that
clear on many occasions.”

He made a frustrated sound. “Because I have seen
so few true examples of it in my life. Look no further than my own
originations, for God’s sake!”

“What of Ned and Annalee? And what of your own
brother, Hew?” she demanded. “Do you not believe him capable of
fidelity to Vesta?”

“I expect Hew will cherish his bride.”

“And I believe she will adore him in turn
for all of her days. But love requires a
desire
to sacrifice, Ludovic. To give up purely
self-indulgent pleasure in return for something deeper and more
meaningful.”

“Have you ever loved before, Diana?” he asked,
deftly turning the tables.

The question caught her off guard. “No,” she
said softly, but then her armor came up. “I once thought perhaps I
could have, but I never really had the chance to find out.”

“Is that what truly eats at you?” he asked.
“Incessantly and relentlessly plagues you? Refuses to ever give you
any peace?” He dug deeper. “The lost opportunity? Never knowing for
certain whether you have the capacity for it or not?” He twisted
the knife.

“Yes! Damn you!” she cried, feeling the brunt of
his counterstrike full force.

“Damn me, indeed,” he murmured, “for I suffer
the same.”

Diana was stunned by his confession. She
regarded him, breathless. Speechless. Thoughtless. She searched his
face long and deep, but found no trace of guile or mockery in his
fathomless blue eyes.

“I told you that you were always more to
me than the others,” he said. “I did and still do feel
something
for you, but is it
lasting? How can I know this? How can I promise you my interest
won’t wane in a month, a year, or perhaps two? How can I trust
myself to be all that you need?”

“All?” she said at last. “You think I would
expect so very much?”

“Frankly, yes.” He scowled. “I
cannot
and
will not
be ruled by another, Diana.”

“But I have asked nothing of you.”

“But you would.”

“And you actually care what I would expect? You
fear you would disappoint?”

“Yes!” He raked his damp hair with a groan.
“Damn, but this exchange is excruciating!”

“Why must it be so difficult, Ludovic?” She
kissed one corner of his mouth. “Do you not think I have some of
the same concerns?” And then she kissed the other.

“I cannot wed you,” he said woodenly.

“Then it’s good I haven’t proposed,” she
replied, now tasting and fully luxuriating in his soft lips.

“I told you already this is a dangerous game. I
will give you no quarter.” He claimed her mouth, taking his time in
a ruinous kiss.

He released her slowly, and it took
another moment for her to regain both breath and senses. She cupped
his sac, with a smile, lightly fondling him and then teasing his
shaft. “What makes you think I will show
you
the least mercy?” His countenance darkened,
and his manhood reared almost instantly, evidence of his lust
roaring back to life.

At the heated look in his eyes, Diana’s heart
hammered an erratic tattoo. This game had at first been just a
challenge to her. She had come to DeVere girded with illicitly
acquired knowledge and mentally prepared to do battle, to use these
newfound skills and erotic arts to his own detriment, to turn his
voluptuary nature against him. She had desired to see if she did,
indeed, have the capacity to enslave him, to wreak the same
devastation upon him as he had done to her four years earlier, but
now she found herself the victim of her own stratagem. The further
they had advanced on their erotic chessboard, the more her own
yearnings consumed her.

Certainly DeVere the lover, knew the secrets of
women and could please her beyond her wildest imaginings, but
Diana’s feelings, her innermost cravings, represented much more
than a culmination of unslaked desire, for she had finally seen
DeVere the man—the bored and jaded soul who had tired of the
meaningless, carnal pursuits, the one who now thirsted for
something more but feared it was beyond his capacity, beyond his
reach. But this was what she yearned for above all things, to touch
this man in the hidden places, to quell his doubts and fears—as
well as her own.

“I am told the most expert of women can
bring a man to completion by milking his
kamış
with her
kilif
alone.” She boldly guided his pulsing
length into the hot, wet cleft between her thighs, the most
delicious torment of all, which made them both closed their eyes on
a groan. “And that if I master this,” she continued with her next
breath, “you will belong to me and no other. I have practiced this
skill,
Efendi
. Shall I show
you how?”

***

“Hell yes.” He moaned. “But not in here.” They
were both coated with oil and a light sheen of sweat. He retrieved
the bar of soap and the rough mitt. “Let us finish, for if we’re
going to finally do this properly and thoroughly, and I promise you
we shall, I will have you in my own bed.”

The next few minutes were spent making brisk
work of washing one another between fevered kisses and hot, soapy
caresses. The touching and mutual cleansing did nothing to palliate
the intensity of desire; on the contrary, it was another erotic
encounter that served to fuel their burning lust until Diana
thought she would soon combust. Without ado, DeVere threw down the
soap and mitt and pulled her back into his arms, crushing her
against his chest and devouring her equally hungry mouth.