Satisfaction Page 20

  Stupid of him to accede to the doctor pushing him to bed and leaving her downstairs with Kyger, with all his dire threats and warnings.

  As if Kyger could approach him in stamina and prowess.

  Could he... ?

  Shit—maybe he should get his ass downstairs before anything else happened between his brother and his wife . . .

  How biblical. How trite. His brother and his wife—

  But just the thought, just a flashing memory of the moment he'd walked in on her and Kyger leaning into each other this evening, not a touch away from a full, tongue-twining kiss, and he felt again that furious desire to just kill Kyger.

  178 / Thea Devine

  Shit. Enough of bed rest, even though he ached more than he would ever admit.

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, feeling dizzy—and a sudden urgency to know where Jancie was and what she was doing and who she was doing it with.

  Didn't have to think hard about that—there was only one obvious person in residence, and he was just waiting in the wings for him to fuck something up—

  And it wasn't Jancie.

  He cursed fate that he was so dizzy, so sapped right now.

  Where was Jancie? He grabbed the bell pull and yanked.

  March came running.

  "Sir?"

  "Where's my wife?"

  "She and Mr. Kyger are dining, sir."

  "Goddamn, they are not. Why didn't someone call me? Get downstairs, have them set a place for me. NOW."

  He whipped out of bed, his mind churning with the gut-encompassing image of Kyger and Jancie holding hands, gazing into each other's eyes, wanting, needing, promising everything that he had already claimed when he married Jancie.

  And he sat right down again, his head whirling. He couldn't claim anything right at this moment. Not even himself.

  No matter. Another few hours and he'd be right and tight and ready to go. He fell back against the pillows and instantly fell asleep.

  ******************

  Jancie couldn't believe it—she actually felt some sympathy for Lujan. After the way he had used her, immured her at Waybury and abandoned her while he consorted with whores, she felt a ridiculous and out-of-place sympathy for the fact that he had returned, found her and Kyger together, and then collapsed.

  She slipped into his room. He was sound asleep, and she pulled over a chair from the fireplace and sat down and contemplated him.

  He was every bit as magnetic asleep as he was awake. She felt the same pull toward him as she had the very first time she'd seen him that first day she came to the house.

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  Before he had seduced her, when she was naive enough to believe a dirty girl could become a queen.

  Asleep, he was perfect; he was a disarmed satyr in his sleep, who could harm no one, make no woman cry, and he had all the potential for pleasure and pain encompassed in his beautiful body, his sculpted mouth.

  But she was not there to forgive him. Nor would she defend that moment between Kyger and her.

  It was hardly comparable to his betrayal. Betrayals. There had to be many more of which she was unaware. Because what could one expect? The Galliards had no honor whatsoever—and she ought to have known the deeds of the father would influence the son.

  Her sympathy was wasted on the likes of him, because he would use it against her. She was certain as stones of that.

  So why was she here?

  Why was she here?

  Qowww. Emily crept in, her ow low and almost piteous.

  You're not leaving him yet.

  Emily knew. No, she was not leaving him yet. And she wasn't going to let him seduce her again with that awful proviso that she be his receptacle and nothing more.

  No, Lujan's dirty girl had learned some hard lessons in these first weeks of her marriage. No man was a prince, every man had a price, and women were chattel to be used at his will and whim.

  They had all the power, men. The only thing a woman had was what was between her legs. And that had a price, too, wife or whore.

  Better she should leave. She had accomplished nothing here, and the only thing in which she could take satisfaction was her affection for and her care of Olivia.

  Maybe that was enough.

  Lujan was too much, and she would never be sophisticated enough to play his kind of games.

  She rose up to leave—and his hand shot out and grabbed her arm, startling her so she uttered an ineffective little shriek that scared Emily under the bed.

  "Don't go."

  180 / Thea Devine

  She could almost believe the sincere note in his voice, the one he had used shamelessly when he was artfully seducing her all those months ago.

  "Nonsense, Lujan. You have had more than enough coupling to satiate your need for company—or at least that's my understanding of what you do on your trips to London. You hardly need a wife to hamper your life of debauchery."

  "Oh, but I found that I do," Lujan murmured silkily.

  "I found that I don't," Jancie said, her sympathy evaporating like a cold breath. He would never change. Even when he had spent the past year here, with Olivia, and courting her, he had only been suppressing his true nature to please his mother, and to get at her.

  But why?

  Dreams did die hard.

  "Of course you do," Lujan said. "That's the purpose of having a wife."

  "No, I distinctly recall the purpose of having a wife is to have a ready receptacle at your beck and call. However, in your absence, I have found this is unacceptable to me."

  "Nonsense. This is a fair exchange, Jancie. You have my home, my name, status, wealth, perhaps a child . .. what more does a respectable woman want?"

  There was a question. She could think of a half-dozen things more she wanted: his father's confession; half of all he took from Kaamberoo; the eighteen years of poverty erased; her father living in England, a respectable country gentleman. What more could she want. . . ?

  Lujan was watching her face—so beautiful, and yet something else there, he thought. There was something simmering below the surface that had nothing to do with him and her anger with him. And that was as much as he wanted to know about it right now. Because right now, he wanted wife cunt, and he'd be damned if she would deny him.

  "Enough talking, Jancie. Just take off your clothes."

  She bolted off the bed. "I will not."

  He jacked himself off the bed to go after her. "Wife ..." his tone was impatient as he cornered her at the door, caging her

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  with his arms and body so that she could barely move, barely

  breathe at his constricting closeness. "I won't be denied, Jancie."

  "I have no desire . . ." she murmured.

  "I can make you have desire," he interrupted her. "You know I can. And let me tell you—wife—I resisted wanting you even more resolutely than you are resisting now. It just isn't de rigueur to be whipsawed by one's own wife—"

  "As opposed—to someone else's wife?" Jancie inquired venomously. She couldn't move—he was pressing in too close, too tight. She could feel his heat, his elongating erection a long, thick bump against her thigh.

  The erection that had spent the week nesting in other naked bodies, other naked women.

  Her anger boiled over. "How many wives, Lujan? How many other women?"

  His expression darkened. "You aren't permitted to know."

  The words were a hammer. "What AM I permitted, then?"

  "You are not permitted flirtations with your husband's brother."

  "I see. While you ARE permitted to couple with anyone who takes your fancy? I think not, Lujan. T think that is not a good exchange. And I won't tolerate it."

  There, she'd said it. She never thought she'd have a chance, or even have the guts to say it right this moment in the face of his sexual intimidation.

  Not that it put a damper on his growing lust. It seemed, rather, to feed it.

  "You toler
ate me very well," he whispered insinuatingly. "You take me to the hilt, you enfold my penis and hold it so tight and hot. . . that's what I want from my wife, Jancie. That's what I need, what I came back for. What I want right now and an hour from now, and three days from now and a year from now—your cunt, hot and tight, wearing my penis."

  She made a sound.

  "I'll make you so wet, so hot, I'll just slip in and fill you. You remember how I felt inside you, Jancie. Thick. Hot. Necessary .. . I need your cunt, Jancie—"

  She turned her head away, shaking it as if she were shaking off his words. Lujan Galliard needed no one, least of all a dirty girl

  182 / Thea Devine

  with a little bit of pride that was slowly crumbling under his verbal onslaught.

  He knew her dirty little secret, and he was exploiting it shamelessly.

  And she was listening .. . growing aroused by the words, by her own need, and her own pleasure in his possession.

  She was not immune to his words. She still loved him.

  "Let me penetrate you again ..." He began working the skirt of her dress upward. "Let me feel that lush heat, that tight, wet.. ."

  She didn't resist—for all her bravado, she had ached for sex with him, yearned to feel his hands caressing her again, seeking her, rooting in her—and he was almost there, his questing fingers pulling the delicate material of her undergarment, so conveniently split to accommodate a man's hand . . .

  She drew in a sharp breath as he cupped her mound, stroked her pubic hair, and ever gently began inserting his fingers between her legs.

  "That's the way, that's the way—ease my way, spread your legs just slightly, just like that—give me your thick, wet, your heat—" He made a guttural sound as he penetrated her labia with his fingers, one two three, and she sagged against him and spread her thighs to ease the way for him to insert his fingers as deep as he could push them in.

  And then the pleasure of feeling them pumping her, twisting and stretching her, his penis like a rock against her hip as he manipulated his fingers so expertly between her legs.

  She couldn't help it—she moved her hips in the shimmering dance of an odalisque, undulating against his fingers in the eternal rhythm of sex.

  "Saints—this is what I wanted, this body, this cunt... mine ... mine—to fuck, to suck, to eat..."

  She heard him through the haze of molten pleasure, she heard him, heard the nearly uncontrollable lust in his hoarse, harsh whisper, felt it in the almost punishing pumping of his fingers.

  Remembering his hot tongue licking and nuzzling her nakedenss between her legs, seeking her slit, inserting the hot tip between her labia, and rooting into her wetness.

  Remembering—convulsions like little explosions rocketing through her body, uncontrollable, unfathomable, unending as he

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  thrust and drove his fingers between her legs again and again and again . ..

  And over. Done. Boneless. Sumptuous. If she could just sink into a puddle on the floor ... it was too much, always too much, especially from him too much . . .

  She froze.

  WHAT HAD SHE DONE?

  Stupid, stupid, stupid—no better than a dirty girl to let a man root his fingers between her legs when she was trying to take a stand with him.

  But that was ever the way with dirty girls—they were always susceptible to gifts and guile in spite of all their resolve to resist and behave.

  All he cared about was where he could put his penis.

  And she wanted so much more.

  It was just—oh, his words were so seductive, and the pleasure was the reason men went to war. And between those two things, he had destroyed her altogether. She couldn't resist either, and she had succumbed to both.

  "To the bed, Jancie," he whispered close to her ear as he maneuvered her body to face forward, with his fingers still inserted between her legs.

  There was no point to protest that statement. "I'm never removing my fingers from your cunt. So—let's get to the bed ..."

  It was less awkward than she thought, even with her watery legs. His fingers, urgently pressing against her clit, were insistent, ready to play within her again.

  He toppled her onto the bed face forward, and covered her, his fingers working deeper inside her, even as they fell.

  He lay on her, quiescent except for his throbbing penis pressed tightly against her buttocks, and his three fingers prodding and twisting in her cunt.

  This way, his mouth was right at her ear, and he could whisper deticiously in her ear, grunt and groan in her ear as her body awakened again to his ferocious touch and began its ancient seductive gyrations.

  "Oh God, I can't—" she breathed—she could barely breathe let alone speak.

  "You can. You will. You need this fuck. I want this fuck."

  184 / Thea Devine

  "... Ohhhh ..." It was too much. She had to get away from the insistent stroking and manipulation. She started scrambling away from him, clawing the bedclothes, digging her feet into the mattress to give her purchase to move.

  She couldn't get away; he was too strong, too encompassing. His weight pinned her right where he could reach her, and his roving fingers took her, rode her, and, as she heaved into her shattering climax, brought her home.

  Silence. Nakedness. His fingers still enveloped by her, quiescent. His body shifting slightly on hers ... a moment's relief, but only so that he could lift her skirt, undress himself, and then hoist her up so he could nudge himself inside her from that obverse position.

  She felt her body swallowing his penis, felt him burrowing into her full-bore, heard the low, guttural words of pleasure she couldn't understand, didn't want to understand as his release came so fast, so hard, so drenching that he barely had time for a half-dozen thrusts.

  Once again, his weight imprisoned her, as he covered her, his penis still embedded, his fingers still enfolded, all in control of the most naked part of her.

  All through the night, as she shifted and wriggled her canted hips to try to get more comfortable, she was supremely aware of the depth of his penetration, and that her every movement only served to pull him even deeper as he pushed to accommodate her.

  And then there were her clothes. Too much bulky material in the way, and now her skirt and petticoats were bunched uncomfortably around her hips so that nothing impeded his possession.

  Except her undergarments. And even she was getting a little impatient with the fact that she was not yet naked.

  "The problem is," he whispered against her ear, "I'm loath to withdraw my penis when you're so hot and tight like this." He made an upward thrust, pressing her more tightly to his hips with his still-invasive fingers. "There." He rocked against her buttocks, fingering her clit, giving a driving thrust now and again to prolong his pleasure and the gathering impulse to release. Not yet, not yet. He wanted his penis, his fingers, to be the center of her world right now, the only conscious, tactile thing she could concentrate on, the only thing that mattered—he could tell by the

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  quality of her response, her moans, the eagerness of her movements in tandem with his.. . there was nothing like owning your own cunt, nothing like wife cunt. . . nothing like owning the only penis that ever had occupied it.

  He felt the storm of possession overpower him; he couldn't stop it if he wanted to—there was something about her, her sex, and his response to it—his body seized tight, his penis poised on the edge of forever—and with one wild drive into her, he blasted free, spewing like a waterfall, heavy, foaming, drenching, life-sapping, draining ... a release like no whore had ever sucked from him, pleasure beyond price, he thought hazily as he sank down into her body once again, limp, exhausted—but with his fingers and penis still in possession of her—and moments later, despite his best effort, he was asleep and gone.

  Well, she'd certainly made her feelings clear to him, Jancie thought mordantly as she tried, under his weight and his controlling possessive
ness, to sleep.

  She was nothing more than a dirty girl—she talked a good game but when it came to reality, she succumbed to sex as easily as a whore in an alley.

  And was getting paid a whole lot less, too.

  She was horribly uncomfortable with her skirt bunched up like that; it made her feel even more like a dirty girl. Mucking around for a shilling in a carriage, or something like it, and keeping your clothes on because fifteen minutes later he'd have spewed and gone.

  There was a disrespect to it that was galling. Or at least it seemed like that to her. He wanted one thing. All men wanted one thing, and what she wanted mattered not. She was a body part, to be gotten at whenever, wherever, however he could.

  Stupid hopes, foolish dreams.

  And he just wouldn't let go of her, no matter which way she shifted her body or twisted and turned.

  She needed a new strategy, because obviously trying to withhold anything from him hadn't worked worth a damn.

  It really was a question of determining which, of all the components involved, was the most important.

  He thought the acquisition of status and wealth through mar-

  186 / Thea Devine

  riage was meaningful to her. She wanted her family's fair share— and she hadn't cared whether marriage was involved or not. Until that day when she realized just what her father's plans encompassed.

  So that point was moot. Marriage was the means to the end. Her mistake had been to fall in love with him. A dirty-girl thing to do. The question she must answer this very night was whether the exchange of his access to her body for her access to his house and home was worth her condoning his cavalier treatment of her.

  And the pleasure.

  Hard questions. Hard penis. Hard to ignore, dismiss, or say no to.

  If only she were naked, maybe things would come clearer. Only—too many buttons, undergarments, material, sleeves.

  His fingers pressed tighter against her clit. His hips shimmied, pushing him deeper. She spread her legs to accommodate his movements.

  She loved the feeling. She had her answer. And now, she could sleep.

  ******************