Frayed Bonds by Diana Thorn Page B

her
slippers dancing lightly over the gravel, when he stepped from the arched bower
housing a copy of Bernini’s Daphne and Apollo. The statue was entirely
appropriate, because Peter planned to catch Amy and ravish her—but there would
be no divine intervention to save her from his embrace.
    She made no sound when he caught her, only sighed softly in
surprise when he slipped an arm around her waist, captured her flailing wrists
and drew into her the shadows of the grotto.
    “Lord Herridon,” she said, trying to get her breath back.
    “Miss Graham.”
    “I was just returning to the house.”
    “I know what you saw.”
    “I saw nothing. Really. Nothing.” She writhed in his grasp,
and it delighted him that even in her confused state, her body knew what it
wanted. She thought she was trying to escape him, but there was no mistaking
the sinuous grind of her hips, her desperate need for the hard planes of a male
body.
    “You saw Brinley and his wife and the stable boy. It made
you pant. It made your eyes dilate. It made your nipples hard and your pussy
slick. It made you ready, in short, for me.” He hooked a thumb in the bodice of
her gown and rolled down the filmy cotton evening dress, freighted with thick
glass and pearl beading, until her breast popped free.
    “No.” She said it without conviction.
    His other hand pressed lightly into the small of her back,
rubbing warm, soothing circles over her coccyx. She looked down at her own
breast, eyes widening as the nipple puckered in the night air. Then she looked
back up at him like a child discovered in some transgression.
    “No,” she said, but this time it was breathy with awe.
    “Good,” he said. “The sight of your own flesh arouses you.”
He rolled the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Her head fell back, her
mouth opened and she let out an anguished moan. Then he lowered his mouth to
the pouting areola and began to suck.
    He knew he had her when her fingers twined in his hair,
pressing his head to her swollen breast. He withdrew his mouth, cupped her
pussy through her gown, pressed her to the low stone bench that circled the
grotto and whispered, “This is a game lovers like to play. You’ll like it. Just
like Deborah. You want to be mastered, to give yourself up to a man entirely.”
    He kissed her then, letting her up for air only when she
responded, to probe him tentatively with her tongue.
    “No,” she lied once more, tilting her hips up in offering
and opening her legs as he slid her skirts up to her waist.
    “I see you understand me completely. When you really mean
no, you must call me by my middle name, Alistair.”
    He took her anguished moan as compliance in the same moment
he took the pads of his fingers to her slick opening. He avoided her clitoris,
instead circling the hood, the soft lips on either side and the thin membrane
above her perineum that was all that now separated her from womanhood. It was
his for the taking, he was certain of it, but that was for another time.
    “Have you touched yourself like this before?” he asked,
drawing her fingers down to her folds, tracing her contours as if he was
teaching a child to form letters.
    She didn’t answer. He stilled their joined hands and she
cried out, “Please!”
    “Answer me.”
    “Yes.”
    “Good girl.” He returned their joined fingers to her sex.
She sighed in contentment. “Then you know what happens next. Show me how
prettily you come.”
    “No!”
    “No, what?” he asked giving her the opportunity to stop him
with that single word. Alistair.
    “No,” she moaned, but it was more a syllable than sentience,
and he realized that he was no longer guiding her fingers through her own
folds, but that she was guiding his, circling closer to her engorged clit.
    “Do you ever put your fingers inside, Amy?”
    She shook her head.
    “Don’t stop touching yourself,” he commanded. He was pleased
to see how quickly she complied. He rewarded her with a single digit,