She tilts her head, a slight curve to her lips. “Did she?”
“Of course. And everyone, from princes to paupers, was welcome in her library. But she did not stop there. She used her influence to foster a culture of reading in Pride, so that when the country celebrated the golden jubilee of her husband’s rule, there were many more bookshops in the capital than there had been when she’d dealt with books for a living.”
Grisham is back, the rubber ball held happily between his teeth. She rubs him on the head, takes the ball, and tosses it again.
Her attention returns to me. “You have interesting views of what a woman is capable of, Larkspear.”
“I am not afraid of who you are, Lady Larkspear.”
I am only afraid that she might crush my heart underfoot.
Her eyes gleam. “Really? Don’t you know that such a statement all but begs to be tested?”
My stomach tightens. “Then test me.”
She pulls down the brim of her hat and glances at me sideways. “I intend to. Most assuredly.”
THAT EVENING, BEFORE MY VALET has even left, she walks through the connecting door into my bedroom, clad in a black dressing robe embroidered with a green-and-gold Chinese dragon at the hem. Around her neck, draped like scarves, are several of the sashes I’ve used to tie her to her bed—red, blue, green, all eye-poppingly bright against the black silk of the dressing gown.
The restraints are coming back. For me.
My stomach drops even as my cock rises.
“Thank you, Matthews,” she addresses my valet. “I’m sure I can see to any further needs on Lord Larkspear’s part.”
Her words are perfectly appropriate, but the proprietary look she casts my way…Matthews, that most phlegmatic of men, hurries out with a blush on his face.
Quite unsubtly, she locks the door behind him.
My mouth turns dry. “So, my lioness leaves her cage.”
She smiles with a wolfish flash of her teeth. “It is lovely to be back in the wild, prowling and scenting prey.”
“And the hunter becomes the hunted?”
“It’s only fair, isn’t it, that everyone gets a chance?” She draws the sash from her dressing robe.
I try not to stare too obviously at what the now-gaping robe reveals, but it is not easy, given that she intends me to look. Indeed to gawk at the swell of her breasts, the dip of her navel, and the red curls that mark the very center of my life.
“Take off your shirt, darling.” There is not an iota of hesitation to her voice. She is in her element. In command.
The last time she called me darling, it was to pretend that I was someone else. My heart trembles a little at the memory. “You will make me blush.”
“Then you will be blushing all night,” she replies with mock severity. “So put aside your maidenly reticence and do what I tell you.”
My blood pounding in my ears, I pull my shirt off. She comes close and trails a hand over my abdomen. “Pretty,” she murmurs, passing the sash through her fingers. “Very pretty.”
Then she pushes me against a bedpost and binds my hands behind my back with the sash. Now I am the one in fetters. She inspects me from all angles, smiling as if she has been let in on a marvelous secret.
“I’m beginning to see why you liked it so well when I was shackled. Did it make you feel powerful, Larkspear?”
Powerful? Yes, but only in the sense that at last I had the chance I’d long craved to change her mind. The chance for a new beginning.
“I feel powerful, darling.” She lets the robe fall from her shoulders, then extracts her hairpins and shakes her head. Her hair tumbles free, a glorious cascade, strands of it brushing her taut nipples. “Sublimely powerful. I can do anything I want. And you…you will like it.”
She walks away from me, the ends of her hair brushing the very top of her bottom. My mouth becomes completely parched. She swings herself around on the next bedpost and poses as if she, too, has her hands tied behind her back. Then she laughs at her own joke, strolls to a low chest of drawers, bends over it, her sex shamelessly displayed, and looks back at me. “Is this something you like?”
“Yes.”
She straightens, sits down in a chair, her legs wide-open. “You like this too?”
“Yes.” My voice is hoarse.
She returns to the other bedpost and rubs her breasts against it. “What about this?”
“You are making me mindless with lust.”
She laughs softly. “No, Larkspear, I am going to make you mindless with lust. And the first step is the removal of the rest of your clothes.”
She hooks her fingers in the waistband of my trousers. “Your body, darling, is a thing of beauty. Let us never obscure beauty, shall we?”
It should come as no surprise to her that I am desperately aroused. But still she draws an audible breath as she pushes my trousers past my jutting cock. “What a monster,” she murmurs. “You think I want to be sodomized by this?”
“Why not? It’s your monster.”