Her Mystery Duke(51)
He caressed her lower belly. “But I may well…torment you a little.”
The hard ball of aching desire within her womb tightened unbearably. She moaned.
“You were meant to be mine, to torment or to pleasure as my whim dictates. You see, that is why we had to meet as we did.”
She couldn’t tell if he were teasing her or if he believed what he said. She didn’t care. Nothing mattered but the aching inside.
“Lovers sometimes play with toys, do you know this?”
Why did the word toy suddenly fill her with dread? It must have been something in his voice. A devilish pleasure there beneath his soft tones. He arose. The sound of his boots on the floor sent shocks of panic into her. Was he leaving?
Soon his footfalls returned. She opened her eyes. He dropped down to kneel beside the divan and he opened his palm. Two shiny silver balls lay there. “These are weighted balls. They are made to employ the same type of pressure inside you as I did previously with my hand. The theory is that a lover may not always wish to exert the effort to get the same results.”
He leaned over her and parted her legs. “Christ, but you are so lovely here.” He bent to tease at her nub with feathery strokes.
Fire shot up her belly. She cried out. He continued teasing her.
He slipped the balls into her one by one. The novel sensation of cool metal sliding into her followed. He drew her legs together and the balls knocked together inside. Pinging, aching…
“Oh, God!”
He was slowly unbuttoning his waistcoat, watching her with hooded eyes. “Do you begin to guess what tonight shall be about?”
A heated chill shuddered through her. “Torment for me?”
“Well, yes, but torment only until you admit you want to be mine and that you will obey my dictates, the first and foremost of them that you shall live here and await my pleasure every Wednesday and perhaps some Saturdays.”
“But David, that’s so unnecessary.”
“It’s necessary to me.”
“But why?”
“I must have the peace of mind to know that you’re there and shall remain waiting there until I have need of you.”
“But I do want you as a lover. I just don’t want to lose my own independence.”
“You shall have your independence at all times—other than Wednesdays and Saturdays. You shall have everything a woman could ever want so long as it is in my power to give it to you.” He bent and kissed her stomach. “And I am very wealthy. I can give you a lot.”
“Why can’t we just be kind to each other?”
He chuckled softly “You mean why don’t I just make you come right now?”
“That would be kind, David.”
“It would take all the enjoyment out of tonight.” He took her hands. “Come now, up with you.”
“What do you intend?”
“Don’t ask questions, just obey.” He offered her a hand.
With no choice that she could see, she took it and let him help her to her feet. He began working the laces on her evening gown.
“We will leave the stockings and their garters. They are most charming. Do you know how to dance the minuet?”
“I have always been a poor girl. I didn’t have a dancing master.”
“Tonight, I shall play your dancing master. When you were a girl, you danced the ring around the rosie, did you not?”
“Sometimes.”
He had shed his waistcoat and was in the process of pulling his shirt over his head. He tossed it aside and raked a hand through his coal black, mussed hair. “I want you to dance for me now.”
Her mouth dropped open. Surely he did not expect something like that from her. She wasn’t some damned opera dancer he’d acquired in a green room. “David, I cannot dance. Especially not before an audience—even just an audience of one.”
“You can fuck with a measure of grace to match and exceed some of the best courtesans in London, Paris, and Rome.” He paused with his fall halfway undone and looked up. “Believe me, you can dance. You simply won’t.”
“What happens if I won’t?”
“Then I shan’t remove the balls.”
“But I cannot dance with them inside.”
“Therein lies your quandary, does it not? You must dance with them in place in order to have them removed.”
“David, that’s not fair!”
“I told you before, few things in life are fair. I think we shall call tonight’s exercise ‘Through the Fire.’”
For a moment, she considered defying him. But wait—in order to defy someone, he has to have authority over you to begin with. “You have no authority over me.”