But his favorite memory was of Ingrede turning up in the cart on her own one sunny day, an invitation in her brown eyes that she’d never enunciate. Not then. Later, when they’d been together several years, when Misha was walking, then his wife had sometimes whispered the most sinful of welcomes in his ear.
As another woman now nipped at his earlobe and said, “I want your mouth on me, Dmitri,” in a low, husky tone that was as good as a touch. “I dreamed about it, woke up with the sheets tangled around my legs and my hand between my thighs.”
Stroking his own hand higher up her thigh, he insinuated it between her legs. She trembled, but didn’t fight him. Instead, she did that thing she did—sliding one arm around his shoulders, she used the other to cup his jaw as she tugged his head toward her.
He made the kiss a slow, languid seduction as he pressed up with the heel of his hand, pushing the seam of her jeans against her clitoris. Just that. No other intrusion. A simple, inexorable pressure that had her breath changing, her body attempting to ride against his touch. “Want me to rub, Honor?” he asked, lessening the pressure. “Be a good girl and say the words.”
She bit down on his lower lip. Hard. Mouth curving, he began to rub—tiny, tiny up-and-down motions that had her squirming, the hot scent of her rising to infuse the air inside the car. Sensitive as he was to scent, he’d catch hints of her for days to come. He was fairly certain his c**k would go rigid every single time.
“Dmitri.” Her hand gripping the side of his neck, she went stiff.
He could almost see the ripples of pleasure rolling up over her body, made a note to watch her come as she lay na**d in his bed one day soon. When she went limp against his arm, he propped that arm against the door, letting her sprawl across both seats, one long leg bent and braced on the passenger seat, the other on the floor. The flushed curves of her br**sts rose up and down in a ragged rhythm that was the most potent of seductions.
Seeing that her eyes were drugged to near blackness with pleasure, he spread his hand over her abdomen. No flinch, no hint of fear. So he slid that hand up to cup her breast, maintaining eye contact the entire time so she would know this was him, no one else. A jagged breath, her hand clenching on his side. “Like to push, don’t you?”
“If I don’t,” he purred, leaning down to kiss her while he plumped and shaped her breast with a proprietary hand, “how will I ever get you to a point where you’ll let me tie you up and use a whip on you?”
25
Her nails dug into the back of his nape. “A whip?”
“A velvet whip,” he murmured, kissing his way up over her jaw, but not down her throat. She wasn’t ready for that yet. “I’ll stroke it so soft and easy over your skin, cause only the most exquisite pleasure-pain.”
Deep green eyes filled with a sense of age, of knowledge no mortal should possess. “You’ve always been like this, haven’t you?”
Fascinated by the enigma of her, he held that haunting gaze even as he stroked and petted her, getting her used to his touch, his body. “Like what?”
“Ready to mix a little pain with your pleasure.” She made a deep sound in the back of her throat as he rubbed his thumb over her nipple. “It doesn’t have anything to do with your vampirism.” Her words awakened another memory, wrenching him back to a past that no longer seemed content to remain buried.
“Dmitri . . .” A nervous tremor in the voice of the na**d woman laid out like a sacrifice before him, her br**sts taut and high, her h*ps wide, her body all soft curves and temptation—and her hands tied to the posts of the bed he’d carved knowing she’d share it with him.
“Shh.” Lying down fully clothed beside her, he gentled her, his hand on her breast, his fingers tugging at her nipple with sensual knowledge gleaned over their courtship and marriage. “I’d never hurt you.”
“I know.” The absolute confidence of her statement would have made him hers if she hadn’t already owned his soul. “I just . . . No one ever talks about such things.”
Moving his hand down to push between her thighs, to discover her folds plump and wet for him, he touched her with leisurely strokes, felt her h*ps begin to rise and fall for him. “Are you telling me,” he said, “that you discuss our bedroom play with the other wives?”
Red filled her cheeks, but she continued to move against his hand, as generous with her sensuality as she was with her heart. “Of course not. I’m not sure anyone would believe me about you.”
He laughed and kissed her, this woman who was willing to indulge his need to play games that might well have driven another woman to fainting hysterics. Of course, he’d never wanted to play such games with anyone else. Only Ingrede.
Tangling his tongue with hers, he raised his hand from between her thighs and laid a soft, playful slap on that same delicate flesh. She whimpered . . . raised her h*ps for more. He gave it to her. Gave her everything. Because while she might have been the one with her hands tied, he was the slave.
Her slave.
“Yes,” he said, answering Honor’s question even as he curved his hand over her thigh. “The vampirism simply allowed me to refine it, indulge it to the nth degree.” As the seasons changed, as the ruin of the cabin disappeared into the mists of time, the sexual playfulness had become touched with a deep vein of cruelty.
His bedmates went home with whip marks more often than not and came back begging for more. Sometimes he tortured them in bed because it pleased him. Sometimes he did it because it amused him. But never did he do it because it gave him the same gut-clenching pleasure as when he’d tied up his wife in their simple bed in a cottage on a forgotten field where the wildflowers now bloomed.