eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work. This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. Samhain Publishing, Ltd. 577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520 Macon GA 31201 Take A Stranger No More Copyright © 2008 by Beth Kery ISBN: 1-59998-929-8 Edited by Laurie Rauch Cover by Dawn Seewer All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: April 2008 www.samhainpublishing.com
Take a Stranger No More Beth Kery
Dedication
To EJR. Thank you for your unwavering support.
Take a Stranger No More
Chapter One Cambridgeshire County, England, 1899 Kit carefully mounted the makeshift platform she’d formed for the express purpose of spying on Max and his St. Claire servant, Audie. She had no idea why the oculus had originally been placed in the wall, but Audie informed her that it was not uncommon to find similar spy glasses in old manors such as Stangael. Last January she had clumsily fallen as she’d peered into the oculus built in the empty bedroom next to Max’s. Fortunately the woman in bed with Max and Audie had been screaming her head off in pleasure at the same moment and Kit’s spying had gone unnoticed by Maximilian St. Claire’s typically acute powers of perception. But a stranger would not be present this morning to help distract Max from Kit’s eavesdropping. No, the young beauties who occasionally arrived from London were usually entertained in Max’s bedroom in the dead of night, when Max believed Kit was deep in the midst of her virginal dreams. Ha. Showed how much smug Max St. Claire knew. True, he had the part about her never having been with a man correct, but Kit Chevalier’s dreams were far, far from virginal. And her stubborn, gorgeous guardian only had himself to thank for that. Max would be infuriated if he discovered Kit had spied on his scorching-hot sessions of lovemaking, and the reasons why were many. The first involved the obvious fact that Max believed she was an innocent and he wanted to keep her that way. He took the responsibility of his guardianship a bit too seriously, in Kit’s sage opinion. She’d been his ward since Kit’s parents were both killed ten years ago, when the ocean liner they were traveling on was lost at sea.
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The second reason concerned the fact that Max believed she didn’t have a clue as to the true nature of a St. Claire servant. Kit had known since her Christmas vacation from boarding school six months ago, although she’d had her suspicions even before that. Lastly, Max would burst a blood vessel if he ever found out she knew the name he bellowed out in the throes of climax, usually while Audie held some strange woman steady for his demanding thrusts. Kathryn. All of those poor women who came from London were mere stand-ins for Kathryn Chevalier—Kit’s mother. That was one of the devastating secrets her best friend Audie Sinclair had revealed to her last year. Kit had always suspected that Max’s heart belonged to another, but to find out the other woman was her mother was a brutal blow, indeed. Max had gazed at Kathryn with admiring eyes during his stays at Ellis Cross, her parents’ home, but so had every man and most women when they’d met Kathryn Chevalier. Kit had so many mixed feelings about Max’s love for her mother, she couldn’t begin to sort them out. She didn’t want to feel jealous toward Kathryn. Her mother had been as kind as she was beautiful. Nevertheless, envy overwhelmed her sometimes. Mostly, her heart went out to Max. She loved him like crazy after all—had ever since she was a child of six and Max became the dark, dashing Spanish knight of both her dreams and every waking moment. She hated to see him suffer for anything…even the unrequited love for her own mother. Each one of those anonymous women who shared Max’s bed luxuriated in his knowing, magical touch for one night, only to be whisked away the next morning, never to experience the heights of sensual paradise again. A cruel fate indeed. In the moments Kit didn’t want to scratch those nameless women’s eyes out in a fit of jealous rage, she felt downright sorry for them. She knew firsthand how it felt to be discounted by Maximilian St. Claire.
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Of course, Kit had never reveled in the sin-sweet feast of Max’s hard, dusky flesh, so some would say she didn’t know what she was missing. But they’d be wrong. Kit knew. She’d become the world’s foremost expert on Max St. Claire fantasies. She’d never wanted to consume anything so much in her nearly twenty-one years of existence as she did her sinfully handsome guardian. Audie had been concerned that she would be repulsed when he revealed the true nature of the St. Claire servant. He’d explained to her his role and then showed her the oculus in the empty bedroom of Stangael Manor, thinking to expose her from a distance to Max’s style of lovemaking so that she fully understood. Kit had practically been choking on her overflowing lust and love for Max ever since. Both of her parents possessed St. Claire heritage, after all. Perhaps that explained how an untouched maiden could possibly possess such a carnal nature—at least when it came to lusting after someone the way she did Max. Her guardian, however, seemed to be of the opinion that she should die a bitter old virgin. Damn that man for thinking he was the only one who was allowed any fun! Her increasing restlessness and desperation had brought her to the empty bedroom next to Max’s early this bright summer morning. Kit doubted that Audie would have told her about the oculus if he knew she would be putting it to use whenever the mood struck her. No, the handsome young Bostonian had only revealed the secret because Kit had badgered him to tell the truth about the various striking auburn-haired women who occasionally came to Stangael and stayed in Max’s bedroom. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to know the reason Max suffers as he does,” Audie had said thoughtfully while they decorated the Christmas tree together last December. Audie was on break from Cambridge and Kit was home from Kent, where she went to a prestigious women’s school. Audie’s blue eyes looked speculative as he studied Kit’s eager face. “Still…what can a green girl like you know of love and desire?” Kit glared at him, stung by the doubt in his voice. “I know more about it than you’ll ever know with your trysts with Brigit in the closet or your clandestine little rides with Caroline Moffitt down to Crystal Lake.” She gave him a smug look when his angular jaw
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dropped in shock. He grabbed her elbow, causing several nuts from the cornucopia Kit held to spill onto the carpet. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Max about Brigit. I’m not supposed to touch the maids, but that woman won’t keep her hands off me!” Audie complained in an aggrieved tone. “Wait…you…you didn’t actually watch me with Caroline. Did you?” Audie added the last in stunned disbelief when she merely gave him an arched glance. He straightened in indignation to his full height of six feet, three inches. The St. Claire family almost always produced tall men like Audie, Max, and Kit’s father, Alex Chevalier. It was an old family with branches across the world. Audie may belong to an American branch—spelled Sinclair—but he still possessed the height, depthless charm, and potent sexuality that were all attributes of a St. Claire male. Audie was related to her, Kit supposed, as was Max. Both men, however, were so distant on the family tree it made the tracing nearly impossible. “Think you’re so smart, do you?” Audie challenged with a hard look before he reached to place a blown-glass ball at the top of the Christmas tree. “I know more than you and Max think I do!” He froze, arms stretched upwards. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She gave him a disgusted look. “I’m only two years younger than you, Audie. I’m neither an infant nor a moron. I see the way you and Max look at those women who come from London sometimes and stay a night or two at Stangael. Distant family relations, my arse! If that were true, why haven’t they ever made a repeat visit to Stangael? And why, pray tell, do they all have the same color hair? And another thing,” Kit said with a shrewd glance. “I know that when you and those distant family relations disappear into Max’s room late at night, not one of you comes out until dawn.” Audie abruptly grabbed her elbow and dragged her over to a chair, dumping her in it unceremoniously. He began to pace in front of the fireplace, a worried expression on his face. “If I tell you the truth and you reveal it to Max, he’ll kill me.”
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Kit’s mouth dropped open in shock. She hadn’t expected the degree of Audie’s intensity. “Don’t be ridiculous. He loves you too much to ever harm a golden hair on your head.” Audie’s mouth pressed together grimly. “Wrong, Kitty. He loves you too much to ever allow a rake to talk dirty in the vicinity of your innocence, even if that rake happens to be me. Especially if that rake happens to be me. End of story. Now are you going to keep quiet about this if I tell you, or not?” That was when it had all come up—the truth about Max’s unrequited love for her mother and the revelation about the role of the St. Claire servant. Audie wasn’t sure when the tradition of the St. Claire servant originated, but it was more likely nearly as ancient as the family itself. Some long dead St. Claire must have decided that the men in the powerful family were becoming too selfish, too arrogant, too uncaring for the hundreds or thousands of lives for which St. Claire lords were responsible. In this day and age, St. Claires like Audie’s father and Max were barons of industry and finance, not medieval fiefdoms. Nevertheless, the responsibility for many employees, families, and their communities remained a constant throughout the centuries. So some medieval St. Claire had made the difficult decision to indenture his precious eldest son for a period of time to another male in the St. Claire family—someone in a foreign branch who would take the spoiled heir far from the comforts of his home. There, under the tutelage of a foreign lord, this young man—who would one day be responsible for vast amounts of wealth and hundreds of lives—learned humility, compassion and discipline beneath the hard hand of a St. Claire master. He was taught everything the older male had to teach him about people, diplomacy, business… …and how to serve his master best in the bedroom. Kit listened to all of this with wide-eyed wonder. “You mean…you serve him in his bed? And when you and Max disappear with those women into Max’s bedroom, you’re both…” she swallowed with difficulty, “…making love to her at once because that is Max’s desire?”
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Audie shrugged insouciantly. “Everything that is done in Maximilian St. Claire’s bedroom is done for Max’s desire. That is the way of the St. Claires.” A small grin pulled at his handsome mouth. “That doesn’t mean I don’t get my desires fulfilled beyond my wildest dreams in the process.” Audie had revealed these things to her over six months ago. On the day before she’d left for school he’d shown her the oculus. Kit had used it one night to spy on the goings on in Max’s bedroom that involved Max, Audie, and a stunning auburn-haired distant relation named Gloria Savoy, who had been the recipient of an all-expense-paid pleasuregetaway to Stangael and Max’s bed. Kit doubted she would ever be the same after she’d witnessed what had occurred that night. Maybe part of the desperation that had led her to spy on Max and Audie just past dawn on this golden summer morning related to the fact that Max wanted to get rid of her altogether. At least that was what Kit feared. He’d hinted several times in the last year that when she graduated from school he would begin to consider a husband for her. The thought made her stomach churn with panic. Not only did she not want any other man besides Max, but the thought of leaving Stangael for good felt like the equivalent of being sentenced to prison. Stangael was her home. Max was her home— He had been ever since he’d gallantly rescued her when she was six years old from a runaway horse. Max, her dark knight in shimmering armor. Kit gasped in alarm when the wooden crate that perched on top of an ancient trunk, which in turn had been stacked on a velvet hassock, wavered in the air. Kit fumbled wildly for the shelf on the bookcase and held tight until her swaying world stilled. With her heart racing like mad, she leaned forward to peer into Maximilian St. Claire’s private lair.
Max’s chin turned sharply when a rustling sound emanated from the east wall of his bedroom. “Ouch.”
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“I’m sorry sir, you jerked.” Audie reached for the linen napkin that accompanied Max’s breakfast. He tried to dry the bleeding cut on his master’s lean jaw but Max shooed him by pushing back on his forearm. “Just leave it. I’ll not bleed to death,” Max insisted impatiently. He took a sip of coffee and grimaced when he got some of the remaining shaving cream on his face on the rim of the cup. Audie glanced nervously toward the east wall after he’d wiped off the razor he held with a towel. Surely Kit wasn’t spying, was she? No, of course not, he assured himself uneasily. Kit usually slept until well past eight. “Must be rats in the wall,” Audie murmured before he straddled one of Max’s long legs and tilted his master’s jaw to shave his neck. He’d shaved Max for countless mornings, ever since he’d first come to England from Boston four years ago. First he shaved Max’s genital area when he rose from the bath. Then he shaved his master’s face while Max sat at his breakfast table. The two had fallen into a familiar, efficient routine in regard to Max’s morning grooming ritual. Stangael was north of London and not far from Cambridge, where Audie attended college. Because he’d been sent to serve Max as a St. Claire servant, he was expected to return to Stangael every weekend and during the holidays. Doing so had only occasionally felt like an onerous duty to Audie. Stangael had become Audie’s second home and he had come to love serving Max. Max’s compelling, near-black eyes studied the far wall as he leaned back and Audie resumed shaving him. “You covered that oculus in the room next door after the last time it was used, didn’t you?” Audie started at the question but thankfully refrained from cutting Max again. “Of course. There’s been no need to use it for a while now. Not since the young woman Madame Heloise sent over a year ago who was inexperienced in regards to two men. You allowed her to watch one night to ensure that it was her desire to join us. Remember?” Max grunted his assent. “She was not an easy one to forget.”
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Audie grinned as he moved closer and tilted Max’s jaw in the other direction. “You specifically requested her after you saw her at Madame Heloise’s establishment,” he reminisced, referring to the luxurious bordello in London where Max occasionally visited or arranged to have a woman sent for an evening of pleasure. Audie knew that the general populace would slap a nasty descriptor like bugger on both him and Max for their sexual preferences, but the reality was actually much more subtle. In truth, Audie possessed a more classic bisexual nature than his master, enjoying males and females as sexual partners equally. Max, on the other hand, was more interested in women than men. He did not, for instance, seek out other men to fulfill his needs, other than Audie. But he took his training of Audie very seriously and certainly had always taken his full pleasure in the sexual aspects of it. Still, Audie knew how much Max looked forward to having a female in bed, especially a woman who didn’t take offense at the fact that he wanted his servant in that bed as well. Although Max was considered one of the most desirable bachelors in Europe, he refrained from taking a lover on a long-term basis while Audie was his servant. He was unwilling to reveal such an intimate aspect of the St. Claire lifestyle to someone too narrow-minded or intolerant to understand. “I don’t recall her name…” Max muttered distractedly, obviously still thinking about the woman Madame Heloise had sent to Stangael, “…but she had the most beautiful red hair…” Audie glanced down at Max’s lap. He could tell by the growing tent pole beneath Max’s robe that the memory of the little redhead aroused him. Audie knew firsthand about all that gleaming dusky skin and hard male flesh covered only by his master’s robe. Since becoming a St. Claire servant, Audie had developed a serious fetish for darkeyed, swarthy-skinned male lovers. None of them ever matched Max in magnetic good looks or his bold, confident manner. Audie often found, however, that an Italian, French or Spanish lover had a sensual nature that was unequaled in his Anglo peers. Max was technically only half Spanish on his mother’s side, but his father had been a dark-skinned Englishman with French ancestral roots. Marcus St. Claire had been nearly as handsome
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and compelling as his son, if the portrait of him in the Grand Hall of Stangael was even remotely accurate. “She had the most luscious little breasts,” Audie added, thinking it wouldn’t hurt his cause to stoke his master’s arousal into a fire. He slowly scraped off the last of the shaving cream, not wanting to move away from Max at that moment. “Remember how sensitive her nipples were by the end of the night? She shook in climax in our arms just from having us each suck a sweet tip.” Audie’s voice grew husky from arousal. Max’s sensual lips tilted into a small smile at the memory. His long, glossy black hair was still loose while Audie attended to his morning grooming. The unbound glory of it, along with the short goatee that Audie had just trimmed into a precise black line around his shapely mouth, made him look like the most handsome devil in existence. He couldn’t help but be disappointed when Max briskly grabbed the towel draped on Audie’s arm and wiped off the excess cream from his neck and jaw. Audie backed away in disappointment, thinking he’d been dismissed. But, much to his delight, Max reached for the sash of his robe and opened it. Audie stared at the delicious sight of six feet and five inches of the most prime male flesh he’d ever seen. His mouth watered when he noticed that Max’s cock was fully erect, but he forced himself not to move. He wasn’t allowed to touch his master sexually unless Max gave him permission. Max picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. “I think it’s time to have another visitor from Madame Heloise’s soon, don’t you, Audie?” Audie nodded, forcing his eyes away from Max’s glorious cock. Please say that I can suck you, please say that I can suck you, plea— “See to it then. Although I don’t like to do it with Kit here,” Max said distractedly, interrupting Audie’s wishful thinking. “I know I’ve done it in the past when she was younger, but she’s growing up too fast. I’m going to have to marry her off soon. She’s far too beautiful and she possesses her mother’s and father’s sensual natures to boot. That spells sure trouble for a guardian.” He set down his coffee and bent to pull on the belt of his robe.
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“Turn around, Audie, and put your hands behind your back,” he said as he pulled the belt free. When Max had secured Audie’s wrists tightly together, Audie turned around, his gaze immediately leaping to Max’s face in anticipation of what he should do next. He fell to his knees immediately when Max merely nodded toward his lap and spread his long, muscular thighs. Audie panted in growing excitement when his master fisted his thick cock at the base with one hand and palmed Audie’s head from the back, delving his fingers into Audie’s hair. “It will be I who is shaving you at the end of the summer,” Max said with a fond smile. He referred to the tradition whereby the St. Claire servant was shaved by his master at the end of his servitude, signaling his newly acquired status as an adult. “Yes, sir. I will miss you and Kit when I go to Harvard to study law.” “You will be missed as well.” His brow furrowed thoughtfully. “What about you, Audie? Do you think you could make a good husband to my fiery Kitten?” Audie’s mouth fell open in shock. “Sir?” he managed, utterly floored by the question. “You act surprised?” Max mused, one glossy black eyebrow quirking up in amusement. “You know that it’s the way of many St. Claires to marry off their daughters to their servants. All sexual relations between us will cease with the end of your servitude, you know. Kit is such a treasure. You wouldn’t think twice of me or any other man or woman once she was in your bed.” “But, sir… Kit and I…we’re just…that is…” Max just chuckled softly at his stuttering and pushed gently on his head. “Put your mouth to better use, boy, since you seem to have nothing of substance to say.”
Max’s nostrils flared at the sensation of Audie vacuuming his cock into his warm mouth. For a few minutes he was content to merely watch the boy servicing him, occasionally taking sips of his coffee. It felt marvelous. He’d trained Audie to suck his cock just as he liked it, using the strap on him in the beginning when he resisted his
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demands or fumbled stupidly. The boy had never had a male lover until Max, so his technique had been extremely awkward. It hadn’t taken long for his natural sensuality to shine forth, however. Max hadn’t used the strap on Audie for years, unless one counted the occasion he’d found him in a closet with his cock in the pretty new upstairs maid’s mouth. Why would he need to punish Audie when he’d advanced to the point where he could pleasure Max with the ritualized ease that he shaved him every morning? He was doing just that presently, taking Max’s cock further and further into his throat with each stroke, building his own hunger as he increased his master’s pleasure. “You know, Kit has grown into one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever laid eyes on,” Max muttered thickly as he studied Audie’s widely spread lips. The boy was really too beautiful for his own good. He knew Audie had countless lovers, but a man needed to settle down sometime. Never mind that Max himself hadn’t. There were extenuating circumstances in his case… “I believe she will even surpass her mother in beauty,” Max continued. “It cannot be her looks that would make you refuse her.” Audie just looked up at Max helplessly as his master indicated with a slight push on the back of his head that he wanted him to increase his rate and pressure. “Yes, that’s good, Audie.” Max closed his eyes briefly and allowed himself to drown in the carnal sensation of Audie sucking his cock so skillfully. Although Max typically preferred a woman, there could be little doubt that a man’s strong, forceful manner during fellatio had its benefits. Still, a woman’s mouth was so delicious and slippery sweet on his cock, her silky softness against his steely length such an erotic contrast. A woman’s mouth was so small and delicate. He loved to stretch her feminine lips wide, lips that were full and dark pink in color, lips like Kathryn’s…or his beautiful Kitten’s— Max’s eyelids flew open at the forbidden thought. Similar ones had been popping into his head increasingly over the past year, making him feel like the lowest, most disgusting pervert in existence. Alex Chevalier had entrusted the guardianship of his precious daughter to a man he knew would gladly sacrifice whatever was necessary to ensure her happiness.
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He’d entrusted Kit to a loyal friend, not a lecher. Max would never apologize for his intensely sensual nature. His carnal needs and his guardianship of Kit were two mutually exclusive areas of his life, however, and never would the twain meet! Max’s fingers closed into a fist in Audie’s hair. He used his knuckles to push the boy down hard and deep on his straining cock. Since Audie was unable to control his movements with his hands tied behind his back, Max had to utilize a measure of restraint not to choke him. Audie gagged a few times when Max insisted that he take him deeper, but he quickly accustomed to the depth and took Max on a fluid ride that had him rising rapidly up the slope of orgasm. Max forced himself to think of Kit in a practical manner at his carnal crisis in order to prove to himself that he could. “The reason I mention marriage between you and Kit is that I find more and more that—yes just like that, boy. I want you to make me come now—I can’t bear the thought…of…of any another man touching my Kit, but—” he stopped abruptly and grunted, his eyelids clamping together as his sleek muscles contracted and rippled when orgasm slammed into him, “—but you.” Max gasped as Audie eagerly swallowed his come at the same time Max continued to pump his cock between his tightly drawn lips. Max exhaled shakily a few moments later. He lightly touched Audie’s head, signaling that he wanted the boy to release him. He usually allowed Audie to milk him for a while since he seemed to take such pleasure in it. But this morning a wicked thought made Max less generous. He watched as Audie lifted his head, making the most of his final suctioning stroke. His cock fell heavily to his lower belly when it popped out of Audie’s lips. Max grunted at the aftershock of pleasure. “Stand up and turn around,” Max directed quietly. Audie did so with surprising grace considering his size and the fact that his wrists were tied behind his back. “That will be all,” Max said after he’d released him. “Sir?” Audie asked in surprise. “I said that will be all. I set out the Monroe file for you in the office last night. Monroe’s acreage borders a large tract of land I own in Kent and features some prime
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timberland. Please be ready to give me your impression of a fair offering price by lunchtime. Also, have a go at looking for that deed for the ironworks I own in Liverpool,” Max added in an aggrieved tone. “My attorney needs it for a transaction by next week and I’ll be damned if it hasn’t disappeared from everywhere it makes logical sense for it to be.” Audie’s expression grew impassive. Max knew what the boy was thinking. For the past year or so Max usually returned the pleasure Audie provided him during Max’s morning grooming, usually by manually stimulating him to climax as he stood before Max’s chair. It hadn’t always been that way, but Audie was nearing the end of his servitude with Max. His senior status afforded him some luxuries. Audie’s brisk nod belied the bright pink stain of arousal in his fair cheeks. “Yes, sir. Consider it done.” Max toyed with his coffee cup distractedly after Audie left. He knew he’d just been petty. Denying Audie his pleasure hadn’t been done in service of the boy’s discipline, which was really the only good excuse for such sadism. No, the fact of the matter was that as Audie was milking the semen from his cock with such blinding expertise, the unwelcome thought struck Max that Audie would use the same carnal skills to make Kit scream in orgasm in their marriage bed. The realization didn’t sit well with Max. It didn’t sit well in the slightest. Still, Max had learned his duty long ago, much of it at the hands of his own demanding St. Claire master. Those lessons had been drilled so deeply they were written into his bones. Service above all else…even when the bond was officially broken. Max would do what was necessary, even if that meant cutting out his own heart. There was no doubt in his mind what was expected of him in regard to his cherished ward and it certainly didn’t involve putting her at the mercy of a sexual libertine such as himself.
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Besides, even if he was as prim and proper as Queen Victoria herself, when it came to matters of sex Max knew Alex and Kathryn would never have thought him a suitable match for their daughter. He must find a man who was worthy of Kit…a task he’d begun to suspect more and more was an utter impossibility.
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Chapter Two Kit didn’t look up when Max approached her in the stables. “May I join you?” She merely shrugged sullenly, her mood stormy and bitter after what she’d witnessed this morning through the oculus. A few seconds later Emmitt brought out a horse. “You can’t mean to ride Atlas,” Max proclaimed sharply when he saw the enormous beast. He turned to Emmitt accusingly. “What are you on about, man?” Emmitt cringed noticeably at being the focus of his formidable master’s anger. Kit made a sound of disgust before she grabbed the reins from a slack-handed Emmitt and mounted with graceful ease. “It’s not Emmitt’s fault, Max! I’m the one who asked him to saddle up Atlas.” “That horse is not meant to be ridden by a young lady. He’s half-wild and strong as his namesake. You won’t be able to hold him.” Brown eyes tinged with a hint of russet flashed with trapped fires. “You don’t know everything, Max St. Claire. I’ll handle him and I’ll do it magnificently.” She jerked the reins. Atlas pranced nervously. “Get out of my way!” Max’s face went rigid with fury when she urged the horse directly at him. “What’s gotten into you? Kit? Stop this moment…damn you, little hellion,” he finished under his breath at the same time as he stepped aside from the charging animal and grabbed the pommel with his left hand, allowing the horse’s movement to pull him forward. “Max!” Kit shrieked in alarm. For a few frightening seconds he hung precariously along Atlas’s flanks. The big horse veered drunkenly to the left with Max’s added weight. Once man and beast regained their balance, however, Max flung a long leg over the saddle. Kit doubted there was another man in England who could have done the maneuver— unless one counted circus performers. Max was the most supremely fit, naturally athletic www.samhainpublishing.com
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man she’d ever known. The next thing she knew, he’d settled behind her in the saddle. By the time they reached the stable doors, he’d pinned her forearms next to her body with his encircling arms and taken the reins away from her. “Some things never change, do they, Kitten? Still trying to ride creatures you could never hope to tame. So you’re hell-bent this morning, is that it? Well, you’ll just have to take your jaunt to Hades with me at the reins, won’t you?” he taunted in a low, soft voice that belied his obvious anger. Kit shivered at the feeling of his warm breath in her ear. His thighs felt iron-hard surrounding her backside. His riding breeches were tight, allowing her to feel his flexing muscles even through her riding habit and petticoat. Her bottom rubbed against what was between those strong thighs, as well, and that left her temporarily speechless. The memory of Audie avidly worshipping a cock that ought to be proclaimed a monument of pagan male sexuality made Kit want to weep with thwarted longing. Kit couldn’t hear anything through the oculus this morning, but she’d been driving herself mad wondering if Max had hissed her mother’s name when he came in Audie’s mouth. Or perhaps he only did that with women? Whatever the case, the fact that she’d looked on like a complete outsider while her best friend gorged himself like a kid who’d been given a free pass to the pastry chef’s kitchen had definitely soured her mood. Was this her fate, then, to forever be a stupid, passive onlooker into Max’s inner world of love and desire? “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Kit seethed helplessly as Max directed Atlas down one of the horse paths. He urged Atlas into a gallop. Kit began to sweat at the sensation of moving rhythmically between his thighs with his long, hard body pressed so intimately to her. His scent—clean, rich, and mouthwateringly male—pervaded her awareness, muddling her ability to think logically. “I am your guardian. Since when have I ever left you alone? Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you or are there still a couple of ounces left to your nasty little snit?” Max asked coldly.
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Impotent fury blazed hot in Kit’s breast. “I’ll tell you what’s bothering me. I’m tired of you treating me like a child!” “You’re behaving like a child,” he replied calmly. “That’s what you think! I could be the leader of the western world and you’d still say I was acting like a spoiled little girl. You can’t see me any other way, Max.” His right hand spread wide across her belly in a firm, implacable gesture that made Kit lose her train of thought. “What way would you like me to see you, Kitten?” Kit blinked. Surely that low, sensual rasp in his voice had been her overactive imagination. “I want you to see me like a woman.” Max’s hand applied the slightest of pressures, pushing her bottom more snugly back between his spread thighs. “Who says that I don’t?” Neither of them spoke for several tense, full moments as Max urged Atlas to a faster pace. Kit’s upper lip beaded with sweat at the sensation of moving in a smooth, sensual rhythm both with the horse beneath her and the sexy man-beast behind her. She sensed the increasing tension in Max’s body as well and wondered if his anger at her temper tantrum was increasing to a boil. When Max had first come to Ellis Cross, when she was six years old, Kit had been a spoiled brat. Her parents had denied their pretty, precious only child very little. Max had been the first person Kit had ever known who refused wholeheartedly to stand for her temper tantrums. A sharp word from him made her immediately recalcitrant. The fact that he’d turn and walk away at the first sign of one of her dramatic tantrums had been the most effective way to put a shuddering stop to them. The sound of even vague disappointment in his voice when they sat down and talked about her naughtiness later shamed Kit to the point of tears. From the very beginning, Kit would have done anything to keep Max near her…even behave.
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Presently, Kit took an uneven breath to try to calm herself. “You don’t see me as a woman,” she murmured gruffly. “You think I’m some sort of fragile idiot.” Max started behind her. “You can’t really believe that, Kit. I know how intelligent you are. My God, you just graduated from Whitmore College at the top of your class. Have I not told you repeatedly how proud I am of you?” “Yes,” Kit admitted sullenly. “But there are other things—this horse, for instance. You taught me how to ride yourself when I was a girl of six and you a young man of nineteen. Do you not recall?” “Of course I do. How could I forget? You left me no other choice but to teach you how to ride after I saw the way you ran roughshod all over that poor instructor your father hired for you.” Kit snorted. “Poor, is it? You called Mr. Abbington any number of more interesting words on that day—words I’d never heard in my entire life.” The sound of Max’s low chuckle caused goose bumps to rise on her neck. “All of those…er, colorful descriptors were entirely correct, as well. But no one would blame me for pitying the fool as well, subject as he was to the random, irrational demands of a little hellion princess.” Kit’s mouth twisted like she’d just taken a large gulp of sour milk, but she didn’t argue. She had bullied Mr. Abbington into letting her ride a horse that was too large, too strong and too wild for a small child. She’d paid for it, too. Thanks to Max, the price hadn’t been as high as it might have been. Kit could still close her eyes and see the way her small hands gripped desperately at the bolting horse’s dark brown mane as it raced at a break-neck speed across the corral, preparing to jump the fence for freedom. Kit knew that she could hold on no more, jolted as she had been from the security of the saddle. The ground zoomed by ominously beneath the pounding horse’s feet. A terror unlike anything she’d ever known gripped at her heart. Her fingers slipped through the silky mane. She finally fell, not between the wild horse’s dangerous trampling legs…but into Max St. Claire’s very capable hands.
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She’d suddenly found herself astride a steed even more powerful than the bolting one that jetted toward the corral fence like an arrow from a tightly sprung bow. The horse upon which she sat, however, obviously was controlled by a skilled master. Her stunned six-year-old self had turned and stared up through a thick veil of tears at the most wondrous sight she’d ever imagined in her life. “I called you my knight in shimmering armor,” Kit recalled, her voice husky from the memory. She sensed Max’s smile rather than saw it. “You were very kind not to correct me, Max.” “What…and tell you that the usual term was knight in shining armor not shimmering armor?” he asked in vague surprise. Kit nodded. “You saw me through a thick window of tears that first time. I understood what you meant.” “You always did. Even my mother couldn’t read my mind like you could.” Kit laughed softly. “And you did shimmer like a hero from a fairy tale before my amazed eyes, Max,” Kit murmured with a touch of wistfulness. “The first time you sat on a horse with me your head barely reached my ribcage.” He pulled at a mahogany curl that had escaped her coiffure in a familiar teasing gesture. “We’ve been riding partners for nearly fifteen years now, Kit.” The tone of fondness in his voice rekindled Kit’s frustration full-force. “It cannot be my training that leaves you in doubt as far as riding Atlas, then. If you have faith in my training, it must be my skill and wits that you find lacking.” “Nonsense!” Max said irritably, all the notes of fraternal warmth vanished from his tone. “A finer horsewoman I’ve never known.” She strained to look at him over her shoulder and inhaled sharply when she realized how close his handsome face was to her upturned one. “Well, then?” He merely stared down at her for several seconds. “I’ll grant that you are a woman and not a girl, Kit.” He tilted his chin upwards and lifted his eyebrows in a challenging gesture when she opened her mouth to speak in
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triumph. “But nature has not made a woman to have the inherent strength to command a horse like Atlas,” he finished with calm finality. “Oh…you…” Kit ground her teeth together to prevent telling His Smugness precisely what she thought of him. Her frustration swelled past her point of tolerance and transformed into hurt pride. “Why don’t you just marry me off? Did you not promise to last year? Perhaps my new husband will not view me as a silly weakling!” His face hardened. “Is that what you really want?” “Yes!” Kit spat. “And the sooner the better.” Max said nothing as he turned Atlas back toward the stables. Kit was left to stew in the juices of her impotent rage and thwarted longing as they returned in silence. Hadn’t she learned long ago that it was useless to pout and throw a tantrum in front of Max? The man could turn as cold and implacable as nearby Crystal Lake when it froze solid during the most frigid days of winter when he chose to be. Max didn’t speak again until they reached the stable. He put the reins in her hands before he dismounted. He surprised Kit by not helping her down in his usual courtly manner. “I will see to fulfilling your wish,” he said shortly. “There is, in fact, a young man who meets my standards and who I believe your father and mother would also approve of, were they still alive. Keep in mind that I do not take the trust your parents imparted to me for your care lightly.” “I know that, Max,” Kit conceded in exasperation. “They couldn’t have asked for a more caring and loving guardian for me. You have been exemplary.” His eyelids narrowed over eyes that were so deep, exotic and arresting that Kit never failed to feel as if she were falling headlong into his soulful stare. “Yet you still find fault with me,” he commented wryly. “No! I mean yes, but not in your role as my guardian. Never that,” she exclaimed heatedly. Atlas pranced beneath her, made nervous by her emotional state. Kit quieted him instinctively with a touch even though her entire focus was on Max. “It’s only that I am growing older. It’s time you saw me differently.”
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“As a woman old enough to marry, correct?” “Yes! I mean no,” Kit replied desperately. She didn’t want Max to arrange for her to be married. She would never leave Stangael willingly. She would never leave him. She didn’t want Max to see her as old enough to marry just any man. She wanted him to see her as mature enough to marry him! Max shook his head. “You vex me, Kitten. But I’ll do as I have promised and see to your marriage. I will inform you when I have the plans in order.” Kit just gaped at him as he turned to walk away. The idea of marrying someone other than Max was awful enough, but knowing that she had no one but herself to blame for hastening its occurrence made it twice as bad.
Max slammed the door of his study, causing the wall to shudder in protest. He paused for a moment to still his profound irritation over the exchange he’d just had with Kit. He was glad Audie wasn’t present, although the boy should have been, given the tasks Max had assigned him this morning. It was fortunate for Audie that he wasn’t there, Max admitted grimly as he dropped into the chair behind his enormous desk. He’d undoubtedly take out his foul mood on the boy, which would be entirely unfair to Audie. Why had he let Kit get under his skin? Max wondered with a fresh burst of frustration. As a child, Kit had frequently tested the limits of his temper, although she’d learned quickly enough that he wouldn’t tolerate her theatric shows of pique for a microsecond. Of course Kit was more than just a selfish, manipulative little imp. Much, much more. Max had recognized the inherent magnificence of Kit’s spirit immediately, even from the first time he’d caught sight of her, hanging on for dear life to a horse that was much too fast, undisciplined and strong for such a tiny girl. But what courage…what fearlessness…what audacity a mere child of six must have possessed in order to believe she could single-handedly master such a wild creature. There was foolishness there, as well, and a stubborn willfulness Max recognized immediately, perhaps due to the fact that he shared a similar flaw.
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But even as a child, Kit’s vibrant, fierce spirit shone forth like a beacon that Max could never resist. He recalled teasingly telling Kathryn once that she and Alex might have asked the devil to share their bed on the night they conceived Kit. But if that were the case, the king of the underworld himself was undoubtedly throwing up his hands in despair of ever controlling his little hell-spawn. Kathryn had just laughed in her low, sexy manner that never failed to stir Max’s loins. “Then you can do what the devil cannot. She adores her father and she needs me as all children do their mother, but she worships you, Max.” It’s I who worships you, Kathryn, Max had thought with an ache of longing before he forced himself to look away from her lovely face. They had sat in the gardens on a particularly fine spring evening waiting for Alex to join them. Max was always meticulous about ensuring that neither his master nor his wife noticed the love in his eyes when he stared at Kathryn…or when he touched her. He’d felt ashamed of his profound feelings for Alex’s wife, knowing how hopeless they were, how pointless. Ridiculous, even. Kathryn’s inner light beamed bright and beautiful only for Alex. The thought of Kathryn and Alex speaking to each other about Max’s gaucheness for having fallen in love with his master’s wife, of them laughing together softly…of them feeling sorry for him had caused a pain to rip through him like a knife twisting in his heart. He’d forced his mind away from the mortifying thought. “Kit is magnificent,” he said with simple honesty. “She would dare most anything, I’m afraid, given the right inducement. But she is an incredibly kind, generous child when one gets to know her. She gets that from you.” Max had deluded himself for a few heady seconds that Kathryn’s smile was special…meant just for him. “She loves you. I’m so glad that you came to us. She requires someone who not only cherishes her nature, but who could help her temper its more volatile qualities. Kit needs you, Max.” “She has me. I am her eternal servant, although I’d prefer you never told the little infanta outright. She’d have me twisted around her finger in a blink of the eye.”
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“Do you promise, Max?” The intensity of Kathryn’s question had caught Max off-guard, considering the fact that she’d laughed so lightly before she asked it. “Is that something you want, Kathryn?” he asked with a perplexed grin. She merely nodded. Max was touched to see tears shining in Kathryn’s green eyes. “Then you have my promise along with anything else I have to give you,” Max said feelingly as he grabbed her hand. He’d felt like Kathryn’s soul was in her eyes as she’d regarded him for those precious few seconds…and her spirit was even more exponentially beautiful than her lithesome body. Then Alex had appeared and Kathryn’s soul-light had grown so luminous for her husband that Max had turned away, too pained to see it. Had Kathryn known somehow? Max pondered as he sat morosely in his office. He didn’t see how it was possible that she could have foreseen Kit would someday be an orphan, but the poignant memory certainly seemed suggestive of that fact. Max’s mouth twisted in dissatisfaction. If Kit needed him so much, why did she want to marry someone and move far away from Stangael? Far away from him? He wondered if Kit ever had an inkling of how much he needed her, following Kathryn’s and Alex’s untimely, shocking deaths. Max had admired Alex greatly and considered his friendship one of his most valuable assets. Kathryn had been his first love. He had stood strong for Kit, of course, filled with compassion for what the little girl must have been experiencing at the sudden, cruel absence of her beloved parents. But Max had needed Kit, as well. They’d clung together like two sole survivors of a catastrophic storm. They had grieved in one another’s embrace, their mutual torment strengthening their bond. Out of necessity, Max had become Kit’s mother, father, brother and fierce protector. Kit had become everything to him. Max frowned when a shadowy realization tickled his awareness. He shoved it aside, having good practice at ignoring such disturbing thoughts as of late. He stood and headed
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for the door, abruptly determined to find Audie and apply his mind to practical business matters. The realization that he had become far more bereft at the idea of Kit leaving Stangael and marrying another man than he had become about thinking of Kathryn Chevalier left him feeling confused and uncertain—a highly unusual state of affairs for Maximilian St. Claire.
None of the servants seemed to know where Audie had disappeared to, Kit discovered later that morning as she searched for her friend. She required an ear to rant in and a shoulder to cry on following that alarming meeting with Max earlier. She finally ended up in the kitchen, where Audie could often be found feeding his insatiable appetite. Alice, the cook, seemed irritated and flustered by Kit’s intrusion into her domain. “I got no time to sit here and chat with you abou’ the young master’s activities. That good-for-nothin’ boy who delivers for the butcher in town has left me withou’ my order! I only got a chicken that’s so skinny I can see through the damn thing for supper tonight,” Alice complained bitterly. She tried to scoot Kit out the door with her as she went, but Kit spied a savory-looking ham pie cooling on the table and stayed behind in order to snitch a slice of it. She was on her second piece when she heard a muffled sound emanating from a narrow hallway that led to pantries and storerooms. The furtive quality of the noise caused her to set down her pie and creep quietly down the corridor. She paused outside a closed wooden door, listening. She plainly heard a grunt and then a voice she recognized. “Just try to relax. There…how is that?” The reply to Audie’s quietly spoken question was a low moan of pleasure. Realization slowly overcame Kit’s awareness. Stark determination soon followed. The storeroom knob turned cleanly and silently in her fist.
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She froze in the doorway of the storeroom. Audie stilled as well and his blue eyes grew as big as dinner plates when he spotted her. The young man who Kit distantly recognized as Tommy, the strapping delivery boy for the butcher in the village, groaned in protest at the fact that Audie ceased his pumping hips. Kit now fully understood the reason Alice hadn’t gotten her meat delivered for supper. Because Audie was delivering his meat to the butcher’s boy, instead. Fortunately for Kit, the chestnut-haired youth was bent over the unfinished table, arms spread out before him, his cheek resting on the wood surface and his gaze on the far wall. He hadn’t noticed Kit’s entrance. “Get out!” Audie mouthed furiously. Kit stood there for a moment, dazed. Her eavesdropping through the oculus hadn’t prepared her for something as carnally shocking as seeing two beautiful young men making love just feet away from her. It was as if she’d just walked into an intoxicating cloud of pheromones and inhaled air perfumed with the concentrated essence of sex. Her own body leapt to instantaneous, delicious sensual awareness. The delivery boy shifted his hips, protesting Audie’s stillness. Audie grunted in pleasure despite the fact that he continued to shoot deadly visual darts at Kit. He thrust his hips instinctively. Tommy gave a surprised yelp as Audie’s pelvis smacked into his rump. “Sorry, Tommy,” Audie apologized. His hand rubbed the boy’s muscular ass, soothing him as Tommy’s snug channel accustomed itself to having Audie’s cock buried in it to the hilt. “Go!” Audie mouthed again to Kit, this time more viciously. His blue, summertimesky eyes uncharacteristically shot lightning bolts of fire. Maybe it was her volatile emotions over her exchange with Max earlier that made her do it or maybe it was just her blossoming carnal nature. Whatever the case, Kit just shook her head defiantly at Audie and tip-toed into the storage room. She ever so carefully eased her slender body between a brine barrel and two enormous sacks of flour and sank quietly to the floor. She saw that Audie was about to speak out aloud in protest,
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when Tommy grabbed on to the far side of the table and tipped his body forward and back, sliding Audie’s cock halfway out and back into him once again. “Don’t tease me, Audie,” Tommy groaned. “You know I hate it when you do that.” Audie tried to continue to scowl at Kit but his focus transferred inevitably to his lover. The need to give pleasure had been carved like a mandate in his St. Claire spirit. He caressed a round, tight ass cheek gently as his other hand held the young man steady for his thrusts. He pumped into Tommy slowly and sensually. When Tommy moaned loudly in pleasure, Audie reached around and stroked Tommy’s hard cock. “Hmmm, yes…you like that, don’t you, Tommy?” Audie asked in a low, seductive tone. Tommy answered by using his muscular arms to thrust himself back and forth forcefully on Audie’s cock. Kit stared in complete enthrallment. Her drawers felt damp at the crotch. Damned if she wouldn’t have to change them yet again this morning, the first exchange occurring after she watched Audie suck Max’s delicious cock. Audie’s cock was beautiful too, Kit admitted as she watched it plunge between Tommy’s tight buns. It was not as thick as Max’s but nearly as long. As Tommy began to bounce more enthusiastically against the long, fleshy spear, Audie gave him what he asked for and pumped him harder. Kit saw that Audie’s shapely balls flung forward with each powerful thrust, slapping into Tommy’s butt cheeks. Audie’s testicles weren’t cleanshaven like Max’s. Using the oculus while bright sunlight streamed through the windows this morning had allowed Kit to notice what had not been obvious to her last January when she had spied on Max. Her guardian’s testicles were shaved clean. Every time she closed her eyes, the incredibly erotic sight of those heavy, potent balls beneath the long monument of his glistening, ruddy cock waited behind her eyelids. How was a woman supposed to remain sane when she was denied access to that? Audie and Tommy crashed together faster and faster, the arousing spectacle making Kit grind her pussy down on the hard floor to ease the pressure that built there. Tommy grunted and moaned almost uncontrollably as Audie pumped his cock with his hand and
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his ass with his dick. Audie occasionally slid his hand to Tommy’s root and massaged his testicles, the gesture bold, sure, and completely and utterly masculine. Her pussy burned unbearably by the time Tommy howled and a fountain of semen shot forth from his penis, splattering on the wood floor. Audie stilled in his fucking motions and concentrated on pumping every last drop of seed from the groaning young man. Once Tommy calmed, Audie grabbed his hips with both hands and proceeded to ride the delivery boy hard. Tommy bucked against him enthusiastically, obviously enjoying being fucked forcefully. Their flesh smacked together with staccato bursts that left Kit panting and wild to finish something that she couldn’t quite envision. “That’s right, fuck me hard, Audie,” Tommy called out in excitement as he lifted his head from the table. Kit saw that his face was tightened into a grimace of pleasure. He began to turn his head in Kit’s direction, but Audie abruptly grabbed his hair at the nape and pushed his forehead down on the table. Tommy moaned in longing at the starkly dominant gesture. “If you insist,” Audie grated out. A moment later he pressed his balls tightly to Tommy’s muscular buttocks. His long, beautiful body shuddered. He closed his eyes tightly and grunted in sublime release as he came. Kit made a trapped sound of arousal in her throat as she watched the incredibly erotic vision of Audie convulsing in climax. A moment later, her good friend fell forward with a loud gasp and caught himself on the table with his hands. He blinked several times as though he were trying to clear his head from the fumes of ecstasy. “I hope I didn’t get you in too much trouble with Alice, Tommy,” Audie murmured. He straightened and withdrew. He glanced over at Kit with a look of dire threat before he reached down for the trousers that had fallen to his ankles. Kit pressed back into the shadows wide-eyed, realizing that, now that Tommy’s attention wasn’t on being fucked by Audie, he might notice her.
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“No worries,” Tommy said as he also straightened and bent for his trousers. He gave the taller man a saucy grin. “It’ll have been worth the dressing down that I’ll get from Alice.” “If she threatens to cause problems with your boss, please inform me. I don’t want you to suffer for this. Here, let me help you get the meat into the ice box,” Audie offered. He threw one more warning glance at Kit before he vacated the room with Tommy.
Kit was in the process of dusting flour off her riding habit when Audie returned. “I should turn you over my knee for a stunt like that!” Audie thundered after closing the door. “What kind of manners did they teach you at that sham of a school any—” He stopped abruptly when Kit threw herself against him with a soft thud and looped her arms around his neck. She looked up at him with a sultry expression. “Audie, you care about me, don’t you? You have to help me. I think I’m ill. It feels as if my nerve endings are on fire.” Audie stared down at her incredulously. For the first time, he realized her cheeks were stained dark pink and her huge, russet-brown eyes were glazed with desire. Against his will, he was forced to admit that Kit Chevalier looked like the very essence of sex at that moment. “Nerve endings…on fire? What are you going on about, Kit?” he sputtered through a throat and mouth that were drying up almost as quickly as his willpower. Kit rubbed up against him sinuously. Audie nearly choked at the sensation. “Between my legs,” she hissed. “I want you to make me look like Tommy did when he left just now—relaxed and confident…and so happy. I’ve never felt that way before. I know you can do it, Audie,” she whispered seductively. Audie sprang back from her like he’d just realized she was a viper, stumbled clumsily over a wooden pail in the process and nearly fell over backward. “Are you bloody mad, Kit? I can’t…do what you just suggested, for God’s sake!” “Why not?” Kit challenged as she closed in on him.
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“Stop right there, you little demon!” Audie demanded desperately, sticking his hand out in front of him in a halting gesture. “Max would murder me if he ever found out I so much as kissed you on the cheek!” “You’re a loon, Audie,” Kit informed him, not unkindly. “You kiss me good night in front of Max almost every night.” “We’re not talking about kisses on the cheeks here!” “You’re the one who brought it up, not me.” “Well that’s just—hey, what do you think you’re doing? Kit?” He watched disbelievingly as Kit gathered the hem of her riding habit in her hands and lifted it upwards. Anxiety ghosted her features, but so did a determination Audie had long ago learned to respect. She wore underclothing suitable for riding—a streamlined petticoat and knee breaches that unfastened at the bottom. When she straightened a moment later and dropped her breeches and drawers on the wood table, Audie just stared between her legs open-mouthed. “What’s wrong?” Kit asked uncertainly when she saw him gaping. “It doesn’t look that different than any other female’s, does it?” Audie just blinked several times and swallowed convulsively. “It…you’re a great deal more beautiful than other women, Kit,” he whispered hoarsely. Heat flooded Kit’s cheeks. “Thank you, Audie.” “Uh…you’re welcome. Now put down your skirts,” he ordered. Sweat broke out on Audie’s brow when his gaze inevitably traveled back between her thighs. Bloody hell…and what thighs—long, pale and lightly muscled from years of riding, skin that looked as soft as the petals of a cream-colored rose. Those thighs would make a man want to die between them, without a doubt. If Max possessed even a hint of what Kit looked like under her skirts, he’d consider a chastity belt. Audie certainly would if she were his ward.
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The mahogany-colored bush that nestled between those luscious legs had Audie salivating despite himself. He felt his willpower wavering even further when she spread her thighs slightly and he glimpsed her fleshy pink labia. Audie was far from convinced that Kit and he were suited to one another for marriage—they’d been good friends for too long to think of each other differently at this point in their lives. But the thought occurred to him at that moment that Max had been right this morning. Kit Chevalier was the type of woman who could keep a man not just content in his marriage bed, but ecstatic. Had Max said anything to Kit about his idea for them to marry? No, Audie decided just as quickly as he thought it. He knew Kit too well to believe she would pull something as outrageous as this if she believed that Max plotted to marry her off to him. Kit was madly in love with Max, after all. “I don’t want to put down my skirts, Audie.” Tears rolled down her flushed cheeks. “You gave Tommy all of that pleasure. Do you love him so much more than me?” Audie’s face collapsed. Kit showed her vulnerability so rarely. “Of course not! You’re as dear to me as my own parents or Max. You’re my best friend, Kit.” “Then why are you making me beg?” she asked, her voice catching in misery. “I’m not asking you to take my virginity. You know I belong to Max. Just show me what it means to feel pleasure. Please, Audie.” Audie closed his eyes in anguish. “I can’t. Please understand. Max would be furious if he knew that I ever touched you without his permission.”
When Kit saw Audie’s clear torment she realized that she’d done nothing less than ask him to betray someone he loved. Guilt swamped her, but the burn between her legs ruthlessly taunted her, as well. Her gaze flicked around the storage room anxiously before fixing on the far shelf. “I have it!” she said enthusiastically as she hopped onto the wooden table and arranged herself comfortably so that her skirts were beneath her, her pussy fully exposed.
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“You have what?” Audie asked irritably. But Kit took a small measure of satisfaction in seeing how his blue-eyed stare remained fixed between her legs. “I have a solution, of course,” Kit explained. “Grab one of those out of that jar, Audie. Over there,” she directed him to the shelf. “Yes, I think that one will do.” Audie turned around slowly and pinned her with a wary stare. “What the bloody hell do you want with this?” he asked slowly as he held up a long wooden spoon. The caution on his face segued to incredulity. “Don’t tell me you fancy being spanked!” “No, I…” Kit paused in mixed confusion and piqued interest. She hardened her resolve and forced herself back to the point. “No, I thought we could use the spoon as a compromise.” She glanced down meaningfully between her legs. “You said that you couldn’t touch me but you wouldn’t have to if—” “You’ve lost your mind,” Audie grated out as he rapidly walked toward her, eyes blazing. “And how exactly would you be acting Audie Sinclair, if you’d just sat within ten feet of two beautiful young men loving each other?” Kit hissed, rising to Audie’s challenge. Audie opened his mouth to protest, seemed to see her point and then clamped it shut again with a click of his back teeth. “You are such a spoiled brat,” he accused instead. Kit smiled slowly, hearing her victory in his tone. She eyed Audie curiously as he held up the long wooden spoon and glanced at her pussy as though he were trying to work out the mechanics of the maneuver in his mind. He knelt before her. He put up a hand as if he wanted to part her thighs wider but abruptly dropped it to his side. “I…I don’t think I should touch you, Kit. To be honest I don’t think that I can touch you and still remain loyal to Max. As it is…” he swallowed thickly, “…I’m skating on very thin ice.” Kit just nodded, made speechless by the experience of having Audie’s face less than a foot away from her pussy. “Open your thighs further and scoot your bottom to the edge of the table. There,” he said after a moment. She halted with her pussy right at the edge, her thighs spread wide.
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Audie licked his perspiration-damp upper lip as he raised the spoon. “You were suffering, weren’t you? I can see how wet you are. God, you’re lovely.” “And you,” she whispered. “You looked so beautiful loving that boy, Audie. Ohhh!” Kit gasped and trembled when he placed the flat end of the wooden spoon directly over her outer lips, pressed and moved the spoon in small, tight circles. Audie’s eyes flickered up to her face. “I’m not claiming this is the ideal way to go about all of this, mind you.” “I’m not complaining,” Kit replied between pants. She shifted her hips to increase the indirect pressure on her clit. After a moment she moaned in rising pleasure. “I don’t think I should part your lips,” Audie muttered distractedly as he studied her pussy with a tight focus. “Your clit is a tender piece of flesh. The spoon may be too rough for you.” “Just don’t stop what you’re doing,” Kit begged. She wasn’t really sure what Audie was talking about, but the friction he built between her thighs felt wonderful. Audie glanced up and smiled at her tenderly. Kit’s eyes widened. He’d never looked at her remotely like that in the past. But she had no leisure to think about this new emotion in Audie’s eyes because he began rotating the spoon rapidly on her pussy in a manner that made her groan disbelievingly in pleasure. “I think I might be getting the hang of this,” he murmured. “I think you might be,” Kit agreed wholeheartedly. She bucked her hips more enthusiastically against Audie’s wicked stirring of her pussy. His grin widened. “Leave it to you, Kitty—a virgin and you teach me how to find a sex toy in a nearly barren kitchen storeroom.” His nostrils flared. “Your pussy smells delicious.” “Oh…Audie,” she moaned. “You’re making me burn.” “Then we’re doing everything just right. Ah-ah,” he cautioned her when she pushed with her hands on the table and began to buck her hips wildly against the spoon. Kit gasped loudly in disbelief when he gently swatted the fat, juicy lips of her labia with the
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spoon several times, as if she’d just been a bad girl. Her body tightened unbearably at his unexpected action. He chuckled when she gaped at him in shock. “Just because you started this show doesn’t mean you run it, Kitty,” he said softly. He lifted the spoon, his hot stare on her making the fire in her pussy rage higher. “You’re so juicy, Kit. God what I wouldn’t give to bury my tongue in all that sweetness…” “Audie,” Kit begged, tottering right on the sharp edge of unbearable tension and blissful release. “Put that damn spoon back on me or I’ll kill you.” “Put that spoon back on her and I will kill you. I may one way or the other, come to think of it.” Audie made a choking noise. Kit yelped in surprise when her friend was suddenly hauled up roughly by his collar to a standing position. “Max!” Audie rasped. “Max!” Kit squawked almost simultaneously. Oh no, Kit thought in rising misery. It appeared that her guardian was about to explode with fury. He looked impossibly tall and intimidating in the low-ceilinged storage room. Max’s face darkened another shade of red. Even though Kit knew how fit and strong he was, the wild thought struck her that he was about to have a heart attack and she would be solely responsible for his death. “It’s nice to know the two of you recall who I am,” Max muttered between tense lips. His gaze pinned Audie like two nails. “You seem to have forgotten a great deal else. Pull down your skirts, Kit!” Kit jumped in alarm at the abrupt order. To her knowledge, he hadn’t even glanced at her since he’d spoken just a moment ago. Oh God …how long had he been standing there in the entryway of the storage room observing them? “Max, I can explain,” Kit said in a pressured rush as she covered herself and hopped down from the table. “Go up to my suite and wait for me,” Max said to Audie in an eerily calm voice, ignoring Kit.
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“No, Max, listen,” Kit entreated, guilt and regret swamping her. “This was my idea! Audie had nothing to do with it. I begged him—” “I’ll deal with you later,” Max told her with a glacial look. “Max, it wasn’t what you’re thinking. Audie wouldn’t—” “It smells like come in here,” Max growled abruptly. Kit’s mouth dropped open. She looked over at Audie, wide-eyed. If she’d expected any help from him, however, she’d been mistaken. Audie’s face had gone stiff and pale. He didn’t seem to have any intention of defending himself. “Audie, tell him about—” “Leave be, Kit,” Audie said quietly but firmly before he walked past Max and exited the room. Kit looked up at Max pleadingly but a slight shake of his head silenced her. Selfconsciousness and shame flooded her awareness when she saw him studying her flushed face and mussed hair. “Wait in your suite, Kit. I’ll expect to find you there when I’ve calmed down enough to discuss this…if that should ever occur.”
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Chapter Three Audie jumped anxiously when Max entered his suite over an hour later and shut the door behind him. He knew he deserved whatever punishment Max meted out, but that knowledge didn’t diminish his heavy sense of foreboding in the slightest. Max glanced over at him coldly while he removed his coat and flung it on the back of a chair. He looked rather disheveled, as if he’d tried to cool his temper by taking a ride on one of his fastest horses. Audie stood to await his fate. Max crossed the room slowly and stopped two feet in front of him. He just stared at Audie for several uncomfortable moments. Would Max send him back to Boston unshaved? Audie wondered in growing panic. He knew that there were a few unlucky St. Claire servants throughout history who had left their indenture in ignominy. Those few young men were never given full respect or the responsibilities of an adult within the extended family hierarchy or businesses, having failed in their ability to show humility. In the St. Claire family, it was an unquestioned truth that a poor servant would make an abysmal master. Audie opened his mouth to tell Max he would do anything to make things right. How could he have been so callous as to betray the trust of a man who he loved like a father, older brother, and best friend combined? What Max said next, however, completely derailed Audie’s train of thought. “Is there a chance that she could be pregnant?” “Pregnant?” Audie asked, stunned. He blinked. “No! Absolutely not, Max.” Max’s strong Roman nose flared slightly. “Why did it smell like come in that room then?” “Because I’d been…making love with a young man in there, even before Kit arrived—the delivery boy for the butcher. It was his seed that had been spilt.”
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Max rolled his jaw as though he were trying to relieve tension there. “I asked you to look over a file for me this morning and be prepared to tell me your advice at lunch. Had you completed your task before you had your little rendezvous with the delivery boy?” Audie lowered his gaze. “No, sir.” Max nodded his head slowly. “So instead of seeing to your assigned duties, you were busy seducing a delivery boy. After which you saw fit to seduce my ward.” “I never touched her except with the spoon, Max.” “Ah, I see. That makes it so much better.” Audie exhaled dispiritedly in the face of his master’s cold sarcasm. “Have I not asked you again and again not to seduce either Stangael’s staff or the people who serve here in any capacity?” “But Tommy doesn’t work for you sir, he—” “Don’t insult me with your bullshit!” Max snapped abruptly, silencing him. “St. Claire men do not take advantage of people by using them for our own selfish ends. Who would have suffered the greatest for your passing lust if Alice or Mrs. Evans were to have walked into that storage room and seen you with that boy?” Max bellowed, referring to the cook and his fastidious housekeeper. A burst of shame colored Audie’s cheeks scarlet. “Tommy,” he replied hoarsely. “You’re damn right it would have been Tommy. What’d you think the town folk would have done to a bugger? Strung him up most likely, while you sat safe and snug in Stangael. Or if things got too rocky, you’d catch a luxury liner to Boston, eh? All expenses paid by dear daddy?” “Max, it’s not like that. I wouldn’t have let Tommy suffer—” “You don’t have a clue about anything but whatever arises in your selfish heart.” Audie closed his eyelids and felt the burn. Nothing had ever wounded him as much as Max’s words. Knowing it was at least partially true was the bitterest of poisons in his blood. “Go over to the bottom rail of the bed and lower your pants.”
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Audie experienced a surprising rush of relief. His regret was so great at that moment that the strap would feel like a cleansing blessing. After he’d lowered his pants and underwear, Audie leaned over the mahogany wood railing of Max’s enormous bed just as he had when he was a raw boy of eighteen first learning to serve his master. He listened with a familiar sense of dread and anxiety to the sounds of Max opening the wardrobe where he stored his leather strap. Max was the strongest man Audie knew and his punishments were to be avoided at all costs. “Twenty,” was the only thing Max said after he came to stand behind him. Out of the corner of Audie’s eye, he saw Max loosening his collar and rolling back the sleeves of his shirt. Even in that moment of anxiety, Audie appreciated Max’s masculine beauty. His dusky skin and the sprinkling of black hair on his forearms and chest were set off to perfection by the starkly white shirt. His heart beat escalated when he sensed that Max raised the strap. “Count,” Max ordered tersely after he’d lashed Audie’s tensed buttocks once. Audie forced himself to inhale, still recovering from the blow. “One.” Good Lord, he’d forgotten how ruthless Max could be with the strap. Add to the fact that he was more furious with Audie than he’d ever been, and this was going to be one extremely unpleasant punishment. Audie had to admit several minutes later, when he stood shakily and reached for his pants, that Max could have gone much harder on him. He realized a few seconds later that his strapping was just the start of his punishment, however. “I will be contacting your father to tell him that you will not be returning to Boston this summer as we anticipated,” Max said coldly after he’d replaced the leather strap in the cabinet and turned to face Audie. Audie paused in fastening his pants, trying to ignore the fact that the material of his underwear just touching his sore ass felt like the equivalent of having acid poured on an open wound. “What do you mean?” he asked slowly. “You will attend Cambridge to study law instead of Harvard. Your marks have been excellent. I have little doubt they will accept you there for further study.”
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“But…” “You are no more prepared to be shaved than I am to shave you. You are more selfish and thoughtless than the first day you came here as a boy.” Despite the fact that part of Audie couldn’t have agreed more with Max’s assessment, another part felt stung by his master’s harsh judgment. He finished buttoning his pants and straightened to face Max with a measure of pride. “May I remind you that you suggested Kit and I marry earlier today? Does that have no bearing whatsoever on what you saw today?” “No bearing whatsoever,” Max said as he took several predatory steps toward Audie. “But sir, if Kit and I are to marry there would be much more between us than—” “Did you make her come?” Audie blinked, unsure if he’d heard the low, menacing question accurately. “I…what…?” “Did you make her come?” Max grated out, clenched teeth flashing white in his dark face. Audie shook his head. “No. You interrupted before…” His voice faded when he saw Max’s shoulders sag in relief. Just what was going on here, anyway? Could it be…was it possible that Max wanted Kit for himself? “Are you in love with Kit?” Max demanded. Audie just stared. “Well?” “I… I don’t know, sir. I love her, yes. Kit’s like family to me and a best friend besides. She’s beautiful and spirited and just about everything a man could ever want in a wife. I’ve never met a girl I would prefer to marry more than Kit, if I must marry.” Audie swallowed when he realized Max’s compelling dark eyes seemed to bore straight down to his spirit. “You’re not in love with her.” Audie wasn’t sure what to say, not knowing the truth of the matter himself. Max blinked and glanced away. “You know when you’re in love. It’s not something you know intellectually. It’s much deeper knowledge than that.”
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“You know because of your experience with Kathryn?” Audie asked. Max had always been sparse in his communications about his love for Kit’s mother. The two men had pleasured many women in bed together over the years, however, and Audie had asked Max several times about the name he called out in the midst of orgasm and his preference for auburn-haired females. Max had only answered him once. But what he’d said in those few terse sentences had made Audie understand how deeply Max had been in love with Kathryn Chevalier and how much he suffered over the fact that she had never been his. “I know you’re not in love with Kit because I can see it in your eyes,” Max stated flatly. Audie watched him mutely as he went to the sideboard and poured himself a large glass of brandy. He fell into one of the wingback chairs before the fireplace, his grace being such that he hardly caused the brandy to stir in the snifter. “You are fortunate. Woe to the St. Claire servant who falls in love with his master’s woman. Would you like to hear something funny, Audie?” “Max…” Audie began, finding something in Max’s manner alarming despite his curiosity about what he’d said. He’d guessed that Max was Kit’s father’s St. Claire servant, of course, but not having been a servant to a married master himself, he wasn’t sure about the nature of the relationship under those circumstances. “I tasted Kathryn’s pussy,” Max muttered, as if to himself. “Sweeter than ambrosia, it was. I plumbed her depths and was burned by her fires, always under Alex’s strict guidance. He loved to test the heights of her pleasure, lived to see her happy. But in the four years of my servitude, in the four years I shared Alex and Kathryn’s bed almost every night I never once was allowed to kiss Kathryn. Never once did I feel her lips tremble beneath mine. Never once did my tongue know her taste. I wasn’t worthy to touch her so intimately.” He took a long draw on the brandy, nearly emptying the glass. “That sounds…well, cruel to put you through something like that,” Audie said in a burst of honesty.
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A small smile tilted Max’s sensual lips before he finished off the brandy and stood to retrieve more. “Neither Alex nor Kathryn were cruel, Audie. I hid the secret of my love for her from them as best I could. If they weren’t so madly in love with each other, I probably wouldn’t have been able to hide the truth so well.” He sloshed more brandy from the decanter. “Kathryn only had eyes for Alex. And well she should. Alex Chevalier was an amazing man. Kathryn ceased to realize I existed the second he walked into a room.” Audie sincerely doubted that any woman who had shared a bed with Max St. Claire could ever banish him into the realms of mental non-existence, but he suppressed his opinion for the time being. “Max, why are you telling me this? Does it have to do with the fact that you’re lengthening my servitude?” Max replaced the crystal stopper on the decanter and turned around slowly. “I’m telling you this so you understand what’s expected of you, Audie. You will never, ever touch Kathryn again without my explicit permission.” Audie’s mouth fell open. Had the stress of finding him with Kit in the storage room addled Max’s brain or was he already drunk from the brandy? “Kathryn?” Audie repeated. “Don’t you mean Kit?” Max shrugged indifferently, belying the glittering intensity of his gaze. “Kit was named after her mother. She has had the nickname as long as I can recall, but she is a Kathryn as well.” His muscular throat convulsed slightly as he swallowed more brandy. “I’ve changed my mind about you being the right man to introduce Kit to the pleasures of the flesh, Audie.” “Who, then?” Audie asked, all his previous wariness replaced by curiosity. “Someone worthy of her. She’s even more magnificent than her namesake, after all,” Max stated hoarsely. His eyes flickered up to Audie’s face. “You and she are close. Has she ever revealed to you the name of a boy who she finds appealing?” he asked. Audie scowled. “To my knowledge, Kit doesn’t find boys to be of any particular interest.” Max blanched beneath his bronzed tan. “She prefers women?”
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“No!” Audie replied in rising exasperation. How could such an otherwise intelligent individual be so dim-witted? How was it even conceivable that Max didn’t realize Kit Chevalier was almost fanatically in love with him? Audie recalled what Max had said about Kathryn’s response when Alex Chevalier walked into the room. He’d seen Kit light up like a blazing torch innumerable times in the past several years when Max approached, completely forgetting whatever she’d been saying to Audie in the process. “Kit prefers a man, not a boy,” Audie said. Max furrowed his sleek black eyebrows. “A man, eh?” he asked with a frown. “I shall have to think long and hard on that one. At least I could mold a boy into something worthy of her, but a man set in his ways…” The burn of his ass from Max’s strapping induced Audie to refrain from rolling his eyes, but barely. The thought struck him suddenly that, because of his experience with Alex and Kathryn, Max saw himself in a dead-wrong position as it related to Kit. Perhaps Max just needed a bit of a nudge to orient himself a bit to the new reality? Almost immediately Audie began scheming for a way to show Max that he need not be thwarted from love in the present just because he had been in the past. And if he could prove to Max that he was nowhere near as selfish as he’d been accused of being this afternoon in the process…well doubly fine and good. He may not love Max as much as Kit did, and he’d certainly felt fonder in the past toward the intimidating, clueless man who stood before him at the moment—especially when one considered that it felt as if his ass would burn a hole through his trousers thanks to that same handsome devil—but the truth of the matter was, Audie would have gladly died for Max St. Claire. “Your glass is empty, sir,” Audie said with a casual hitch of his head toward the snifter held loosely in Max’s big hand. “Let me get you some more brandy while you ponder the identity of a man worthy enough for Kit.”
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Kit felt as if her heart had just dropped somewhere in the vicinity of her left toe. Audie had just proposed that she make her wildest dreams come true. Now that the opportunity was upon her, however, she found herself hesitating. She paced nervously before the large bay window in her bedroom while Audie watched her calmly, one hand perched on the carved mahogany mantle. Max had given her one of the finest rooms at Stangael when she came here as a forlorn orphan at age eleven. Her suite was one of her favorite places in the world, filled with bright sunlight, wonderful memories, and mementoes and gifts from around the world, given to her by her parents, Max and Audie over the years. When she’d first been informed of her parents’ deaths, Kit had wondered if she would ever be happy again in her entire life. A gray gloom had been cast over her entire world. But then Max had come to Devonshire to retrieve her and caused a brilliant ray of sunlight to pierce her fog. Max—her dark, exotic knight in shimmering armor. Now she was considering doing something that put the most important thing in her life at risk. Could she sacrifice her relationship with Max in the hopes that it would evolve into something more than it was at present? “Maybe we should do it another night,” Kit reasoned, her voice shaking slightly with anxiety. Audie shook his head. “It has to be tonight.” “Why?” Kit hissed. “Because Max rarely drinks, that’s why. Who knows how long it will be before he ties one on again? Do you really want to wait until the night you’re engaged to be married, or worse yet, the night before your wedding? He’s sure to reach for a bottle on those occasions, just as he did earlier after seeing you being pleasured by me.” Kit blushed at his casual reference to what happened in the storage room earlier. Now that she had cooled off some, she was stunned when she recalled her uncharacteristically wanton behavior. It seemed as if another woman had stepped into her riding boots for a brief period. She cleared her throat as she tried to banish the memory.
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“How can you be sure the reason Max is so upset is due to jealousy? Couldn’t you just be misinterpreting his fury at finding his virginal ward tampered with by his St. Claire servant?” “Do you think I would propose this crazy scheme to you if I had the remote suspicion that was the case? That would be sick, wouldn’t it?” Kit frowned and began pacing again. “Yes, I suppose it would. It just seems so farfetched that Max wouldn’t think he was worthy of me. I can’t think of anything more ridiculous.” “Neither can I. But it makes sense if you consider how he loved your mother so desperately, all the while knowing that he was a distant second in her eyes. He cared deeply for your father as well. He takes the trust that Alex put in him by making him your guardian very seriously—almost like some kind of sacred oath between knights of old or something. He probably imagines that your father wouldn’t take too kindly to having his daughter exposed to Max’s demanding ways in the bedroom, either.” Kit paused in her pacing and stared at Audie with avid interest before he continued. “No, there’s little doubt in my mind that Max sees you as a woman and that he loves you as a man as well as a protector. The only problem is that he carries a lot of historical baggage on his back. Funny, I always assumed he was making love to your mother in his mind with all of those strange women. But don’t you see? As time has passed and you’ve become a woman, it slowly became you he was imagining. Most likely, he fools himself into believing it’s your mother he pleasures. You and your mother share many things in common, including a name and that mane of mahogany-colored hair. Still, your eyes are that extraordinary color that nearly matches your hair, while your mother’s were green, were they not?” Kit nodded before she glanced down at the floor, overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation. “Even if Max were to respond to me in his bedroom, how would I ever really know that it was me he made love to and not my mother?” Audie sighed. “I can’t answer that Kit. You need to be the one who decides how best to go about getting what you want.”
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She bit her full lower lip. “And do you really believe that the best plan is for us to seduce Max?” Audie gave a rakish grin. “I do. Never fear though, sweet Kit. Your seduction will only need to last for the first few seconds it takes for Max to understand the lay of the land. He’s always the one who is the seducer in the bedroom…always the one in control.” Kit shivered with excitement. She took the deep inhalation that a warrior takes before a battle, for courage. “Then tell me what to do, Audie.”
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Chapter Four Max’s eyes blinked open, but they may as well have remained shut as pitch black as the room was. His head still swam with the fumes of the copious amounts of brandy he’d consumed. Why in the dickens had he drunk so much? The image of Kit with her skirts bunched around her waist and Audie’s golden head between her sleek thighs flashed luridly into his mind’s eye. God, where was that damned decanter of brandy? He clearly hadn’t drunk enough if he could still picture that scene with such crystal clarity. He sat up and abruptly went very still at the sound of someone moving in the room. Had that been what had awakened him? “Who’s ’ere?” he slurred. “It’s Audie, sir.” “What the devil do you want?” Max asked bitterly, hardly in the mood to put up with his traitorous servant. “I’ve felt so guilty about…what happened earlier, sir. I’ve brought you something I hope will make you feel a little better—” “I don’t want anything from you. Get out!” Max ordered sourly. “I take that back. Light a lamp and find me the brandy decanter before you go.” Max waited impatiently as he listened to the muffled sounds of Audie coming alongside his bed and fumbling at his bedside table. “Here, sir,” Audie said at the same time Max felt a glass brush against his fingers. The brandy burned his throat in a satisfying manner. “Now get out,” Max barked. “But sir… I told you I have something for you. A gift to make up for what happened earlier.” “I don’t want anything from you, except maybe more of your hide, you selfish imbecile. Now get out of here before I decide to take it from you, you little—” www.samhainpublishing.com
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Max’s tirade stilled on his tongue when he felt gentle fingers brush against the hand that held the brandy snifter. He relaxed his grip almost instinctively and the glass left his fist. “Audie?” he asked tersely by way of asking for an explanation. Obviously he and the boy were not the only ones in the room. That evocative touch against his hand had most definitely been a woman’s. Despite his bemusement, his cock leapt with excitement. Yes, this was precisely what he needed. The blissful forgetfulness he could only find between a woman’s thighs. Or would that only make him recall more graphically what he couldn’t have? “She just came from London tonight, sir. Remember how you requested that I have someone sent?” Audie asked smoothly. Max groaned deep in his throat in pleasure when a pair of small, soft hands caressed his neck. Something about Audie’s explanation didn’t sit right… The magical fingers rose to his face and delicately traced his jaw and then his lips. Both the brandy and his sensual nature made him forget his temporary unease. “What’s your name, querida?” Max asked softly, aroused greatly by the woman’s gentle, sensitive touch. “Mary.” Max had to strain his ears to hear the husky whisper. The elusive sound tickled his ear and made his cock swell with excitement. He reached up and covered her small hands with his to still her stroking fingers gently. “Did Audie explain to you that he serves me, and that means he will serve you as well within the confines of my bed?” “Yes.” Max heard the tremor in her breathy whisper. The uncertainty mixed with the arousal he sensed emanating from the young woman like a perfume intoxicated him exponentially more than the brandy had. He lifted one of her hands and kissed the palm, capturing her taste with the tip of his tongue before he lifted his head. He heard her indrawn breath at his caress. That pleased him immeasurably.
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“Then Audie will light a lamp and undress you while I watch,” he explained. Something about the young woman’s manner caused him to be gentle, as if he soothed a wide-eyed doe that approached him with curious wariness. “I am already naked, milord.” As soon as Max registered her response, he reached to find her in the darkness. And from that moment on he was lost. His hands first encircled a narrow waist and lowered over the delightful curve of feminine hips. He grunted in masculine appreciation. The softest skin he’d ever touched, tautly gloved, deliciously rounded flesh. He palmed both of her tight ass cheeks possessively and gloried in how perfectly she fit his hands before he lowered to a pair of sleek, slender thighs. He swept his palms between those silky thighs and sensed the heat emanating from her core. Instinctively his head moved forward and down to capture the heady scent of her arousal. He inhaled deeply and savored the odor while his pulse throbbed dully in his swollen penis. He kissed her once on her flat, smooth belly. “You’re lovely. Come onto the bed with me, querida,” he coaxed gently. He unbuttoned his shirt rapidly as he felt her weight lower to the bed. When he touched her naked shoulder, she moved into his arms trustingly. “There,” he whispered after he’d drawn her to him and laid her on her back. He leaned over her in the darkness. Even though he hadn’t the slightest idea what she looked like, he pictured her staring up at him with huge eyes that nearly matched the color of her mahogany-colored hair. His breath stuck painfully in his lungs as he leaned down to kiss her mouth. A fragrant puff of suppressed air spilled across his lips as he caressed her. Much to his amazement, the little stranger had been tensely awaiting the kiss as much as he. The thought made him fall upon her hungrily, maddened by her taste and the whimpers that vibrated her throat. He ravaged her sweet mouth one moment and gently explored and savored it the next. She allowed him to have his way with her, which pleased him, but her
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increasingly avid reciprocal caresses aroused him even more. Soon their tongues were tangling together in a wild, sensuous dance that left Max’s head spinning. He’d been so caught up in that erotic kiss, he almost forgot that Audie was there. The mattress sagging with his weight reminded him, however, and he temporarily lifted his head. “Pleasure her with your hands. I can’t get enough of her mouth,” he admitted the last as if to himself before he delved his tongue into sex-sweet nectar once again. He felt the increased tension in her lithesome body and knew that Audie was stroking her, amplifying her inner flames. He joined him in his quest, shaping a firm breast in his palm. Mary’s moan of pleasure mixed with his own as he plucked at a fat nipple, causing it to bead tightly beneath his fingers. Her responsiveness aroused him as much as the sensation of her high, full breast in his hand. Max knew the precise moment Audie touched her pussy. She went rigid in his arms. “Shhh,” he soothed next to her slick, delicious lips. “If it doesn’t feel the way you like it, tell Audie how to please you. He is here to serve you.” “He pleases me, milord,” she whispered almost unintelligibly. “Good,” Max murmured. Doubt lingered in his mind, however. She was a woman paid, and paid well to please her clients. Max didn’t allow feigned pleasure in his bed. “Is she wet, Audie?” “Her cleft is drenched, sir,” Audie responded thickly. Max reached down and over where Audie’s fingers diddled the woman’s clit, making her pant erratically. He pushed his forefinger into her pussy. “Ohhh!” the woman cried out sharply in amazement. Max laughed softly. “He’s right. Your little pussy is filled with warm cream, Mary.” Her only response was a series of helpless whimpers and gasps as Max penetrated her clinging, juicy sheath repeatedly and Audie stimulated her clit. When he felt her cresting, Max tightened the hold he had beneath her shoulders, the better to feel her climactic tremors vibrate into his body. “Help me,” she whispered raggedly. “It feels so good…what do I do?”
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“You must give yourself to me,” Max said gently, but it was a command nonetheless. He drove his finger deep and rubbed instinctively. She broke in his arms. “That’s it,” he praised before he cut off her rampant cries of ecstasy and ravaged her mouth with his own. God, it was sweet to drown in her taste at the same time she trembled against him helplessly, battered by the storm of her pleasure. When she’d quieted, he sealed their tumultuous kiss. “Come here, Audie,” he said. He felt the boy stretch out on the other side of Mary. He found his hand in the darkness and placed it on a firm, pointed breast. “Yes, Madame Heloise has outdone herself this time,” Max chuckled, knowing he’d correctly interpreted the boy’s sound of longing at the sensation of Mary’s succulent breast in his hand. “Hold them up for me while we both taste her.” They both suckled at Mary’s sensitive breasts, sometimes one each to a peak, sometimes with their tongues mingling as they focused on one. After a minute of this, she writhed in agonized pleasure beneath them. The sensation of her undulating, sleek body against him drove Max wild. He abruptly ripped at the fastenings of his pants and shoved them down his legs. Thankfully some instinct had made him remove his riding boots and socks before he’d fallen on the bed in a drunken stupor. His shirt soon joined his discarded pants and drawers on the floor and he was back to sipping an erect nipple within seconds. He heard Audie moan, the sound muffled by Mary’s breast in his mouth, and knew that the boy was likely suffering as much as he. “Put your hands on our cocks, Mary,” he instructed before he bent and gently nipped at her rock-hard nipple, making her gasp. He closed his eyes rapturously when he felt her small hand close around the sensitive head of his cock. She stroked his length tentatively, learning his shape. It aroused him to know that she did the same to Audie’s cock beneath the cloak of impenetrable darkness. Still, Max was a man who knew what he desired in bed and he wasn’t shy about demanding it. He reached up and grabbed Audie’s hand and brought it to his cock. He placed the boy’s hand on top of Mary’s.
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“Your touch is sweet, Mary. Now let Audie show you just what I like,” he whispered, unexpectedly moved by the sensation of the delicate, uncertain touch mixing with Audie’s masculine, sure one. Sweat popped out on his brow as Audie guided her to the sensitive spot just below the head of his cock and showed her the firm, flicking motion that he preferred there. “Yes, Mary. That’s just right,” Max praised after a moment. “Hmmm, yes it is,” Audie agreed wholeheartedly. “A quick learner, isn’t she Audie?” Max murmured, realizing that Mary was immediately putting what she learned from Audie’s hand to use in pleasuring the boy’s cock as well as his own. Both men leaned down to lave, lash, and nip at her breasts while she pleasured them. When Audie’s fist closed tight over Mary’s and they pumped Max’s cock long and hard in tandem, Max knew he couldn’t restrain himself much longer. From the sound of Audie’s tense grunts and Mary’s sharp cries as they tormented her nipples, neither of them were far from the breaking point, either. Max reached down and slid his forefinger between Mary’s juicy, swollen labia. He groaned in intense arousal. God, she was delicious. He glided and pressed his finger against her slick clit until she cried out sharply. A second later a shout erupted from Audie’s throat as well. The heady scent of Mary’s release combined with the musky odor of Audie’s semen permeated the air. Max flared his nostrils to catch the divine smell. His head spun dizzyingly as Mary’s slender body shook in orgasm and Audie’s warm semen spurted on his arm as well as Mary’s belly. He leaned down and sunk his tongue between Mary’s parted lips in a possessive kiss. His own hand came up to cover Audie’s pumping hand, adding his strength to the other two. His cock erupted, his seed mingling with his servant’s on Mary’s satiny skin. Max lifted his mouth from Mary’s as he panted in the aftermath of his orgasm, but he kept his forehead pressed to hers. The sensation of her fragrant breath mixing with his own seemed to still his vertigo. He regretted greatly that he’d drunk so heavily earlier.
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Chances were that he wouldn’t be capable of getting his fill of this lovely, mysterious stranger in one night. No matter, he thought. He would pay whatever Madame Heloise demanded in order to keep Mary here until he was fully, gloriously sated. He shut his eyes when she turned her head and brushed her warm lips across his jaw. A purr of contentment vibrated his throat when she transferred her attentions to his neck. Her soft hands caressed his back and shoulders curiously. For some reason, her simple touch felt profoundly good, stirring and soothing him at once. She licked tentatively and then more boldly at the sweat on his skin. He smiled before he found her salty-sweet lips and kissed her softly. “My little kitten is thirsty,” he murmured groggily. “What do you mean?” Max’s eyes shot open as if he’d just been shaken awake from a dead sleep when he registered her voice. It was the first time that he’d heard her speak aloud and her alarmed tone made him uneasy. He felt Audie stir on the other side of her. “I mean that you’re lapping at my neck like a cat does at its cream,” he said slowly. “What did you think I meant?” A silence ensued. Max’s eyebrows quirked in puzzlement. “Nothing,” she finally replied in her husky whisper. “I…I thought you said something else, milord.” “Max.” “Beg pardon?” “Max. I want you to call out my name the next time you come,” he told her before he dropped another kiss on her parted lips and paused to bite gently at her swollen lower lip. He groaned in satisfaction. She tasted like sun-ripened cherries. He’d found the subtle, elusive flavor on her skin and nipples as well. He couldn’t wait to discover if her pussy tasted as delicious as the rest of her did. The tantalizing thought cleared the brandy fumes from his head better than sticking his head in icy cold water could have. He reached for a corner of the sheet and gently dried Audie and his combined seed from her belly.
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“Audie?” Max prompted, knowing the boy would intuit his one word command when Max moved down the bed and knelt between Mary’s silky thighs. He stroked her belly, hips and thighs as Audie moved into position next to her, soothing her, coaxing her until she opened her legs wide for him. “That’s a girl,” Max praised. He leaned down in the darkness carefully, knowing his servant’s head lowered to the same target. “Ahhhh! Oh my… Oh my!” Mary exclaimed incredulously when Audie and he both slid the tips of their tongues between her tender, dripping wet folds. Max agitated her clit with a hard ruthless stroke while Audie followed with a soothing glide. “Hush, querida,” Max instinctively lifted his head to assure her despite the bliss he’d been experiencing as her taste pervaded his awareness. The flavor of cherries mingled with musk at her pussy, but it had been distilled to an intoxicating concentrate there. He heard Audie continuing to slurp greedily in her wet folds and almost said something sharply to still the boy’s presumptuousness. Max could hardly blame his servant’s enthusiasm, however, and from the sound of Mary’s sexy little whimpers, Audie served her well. He waited with restraint for a moment, allowing the erotic sounds of Audie’s tongue plundering her juicy cleft and Mary’s moans of pleasure to amplify his excitement. When he could take no more, he nudged Audie. “Spread her,” he instructed tautly. When he sensed that the boy had spread Mary’s labia, he leaned down and opened his mouth on her. He suckled her clit gently at first as he slid a finger into her pussy. But when she cried out and bucked up against him at the sustained pressure, he held her steady with one hand at her hip while Audie held the other. He sucked more ruthlessly while he sluiced first one finger and then two into her hot, tight channel. Max felt transported by the experience, utterly drugged by her taste. Her pleas for mercy were ignored. He only eased his battering seduction when she screamed in disbelieving ecstasy and shuddered beneath him once again. “Slide beneath her and hold her for me,” Max whispered to Audie tensely a moment later as aftershocks of pleasure still rippled through Mary’s body. “I must have her now.”
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Max waited in tense anticipation while Audie lay supine on the bed and brought the woman on top of him, pressing her back to his chest and encircling her in his arms. Her soft, breathy sighs in the darkness enflamed Max to such a degree that he felt like his cock would burst then and there. He reached down, checking to see if Audie had her positioned. He did, his long, muscular legs bent at the knee, feet on the bed, thighs spread with Mary’s legs on top of his, shaping her into an identical posture. The only difference was that her feet did not reach all the way to the bed. Max moved between their spread thighs. He leaned down, placing his hands by their heads, and found Mary’s lips with his own. She whimpered into his mouth when he nudged the head of his cock to her wet, tender gate. He plucked at her lips as he gently, but firmly pushed his cock into her tight channel. “You are small, querida, but so sweet. Just relax. Don’t fight it,” he soothed between kisses. He sensed that Audie stroked her hips and belly, comforting her. He was too deep in the well of purest desire to question why a woman who regularly engaged in the sexual act needed to be eased into it presently. He acted by instinct alone. He gritted his teeth in exquisite pleasure as he slowly sheathed his cock into the sleekest, tightest pussy he’d ever experienced. God, it felt divine. Sweat began to bead his abdomen when she cried softly in discomfort and he forced himself to still. “Shhh, I have stopped for the moment, see? Try to calm yourself, querida. Give me your mouth. You like to be kissed, no?” Her hoarsely whispered “yes, milord,” charmed him even further. He tried to focus his attention solely on her exquisite taste and ignore the fact that his cock was partially buried in her warm, muscular channel. Audie’s hands moved up to play with her breasts and lightly pinch her nipples. Her vagina clamped around him as a result of Audie’s caresses and a rush of fluid heat flowed over him. He doubted there was a man alive on the planet who could have resisted flexing his hips at that moment. He lifted his head and groaned gutturally as he seated his cock to the balls in her clinging sheath. For a few seconds, all he could do was pant and utilize every ounce of his willpower not to pump her like a madman.
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Once he’d regained a measure of control, he dropped his head to Mary’s parted lips. “Are you all right, sweet?” he whispered. “Yes, Max.” He smiled. “There. I like hearing my name on your lips. How does that feel?” he asked as he began to move in and out of her with slow, sensual thrusts, lingering on the down stroke and pressing to stimulate her clit. “It feels very nice, Max,” she gasped. He laughed softly. “We shall have to do better than very nice, won’t we, Audie?” “Yes, sir,” Audie replied from just to the right of Mary’s head. Audie moved his feet further up on the bed and spread his knees further, forcing Mary’s to do the same. She cried out in pleasure at the new angle it provided Max’s thrusting cock. He felt Audie’s hand slide between his abdomen and Mary’s. He began to thrust in and out of her more forcefully when he heard Mary’s helpless cries of excitement as Audie rubbed her clit with his fingers. Her hips began to move in synchrony against his, affording him a tight, fluid ride. “Is that better than very nice?” Max asked thickly moments later as their bodies began to crash together heatedly with brisk smacking sounds. “Yes, it’s wonderful. Oh… Max?” He sensed the uncertainty in her breathy, one-word question as well as her intense arousal. “Let go, querida. I want to burn in the center of your fires,” he growled in a low voice as he thrust into her even harder. The sounds of her sharp, ecstatic cries and Audie’s occasional low moans of arousal made him frenzied with excitement. He didn’t know who this woman was. She was a complete and utter stranger to him and that fact maddened as well as excited him. He wanted to delve her spirit as well as her sweet, sublime body. He drove deeper and higher until he could go no further. She suddenly broke beneath him, around him, squeezing his straining flesh unbearably tight as she convulsed in orgasm. Max clamped his eyes shut and jumped into the inferno with her, roaring triumphantly as he did so.
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“God yes… Mary!” He collapsed over them after an electrifying moment, feeling as though the shearing fires of ecstasy had turned him inside out. He turned his head blindly and found the harbor of Mary’s perspiration-damp neck. His head swam dizzily as the familiar fragrance inundated him. He might have fallen into a deep, content sleep at that moment if Audie’s low moan didn’t make his eyelids open heavily. “Audie?” he asked gruffly. “Yes, sir.” “We haven’t forgotten you. Have we, Mary?” “No, milord. He’s a little difficult to forget…pressed to me as he is,” she whispered tentatively between pants. Max chuckled, pleased by the shyness that combined with her natural sensuality. He couldn’t wait to feast on her with his eyes. But first… “It would please me if you sucked Audie’s cock, Mary. But I think the first time that either Audie’s or my own cock slides between your lips, I want to be watching you.” He moved to the side and gently pulled Mary off Audie. He found Audie’s cock in the darkness with his hand as he leaned over Mary. Audie grunted tensely at his touch. “Ah, yes. And it’s just as I suspected. This is too much of an emergency to wait for lamp lightings. I will see to my servant myself.” He could feel Mary’s body tense next to him as he leaned over her and slid the smooth, hard knob of Audie’s cock into his mouth. Was she repulsed by his actions? Max hoped that wasn’t the case, for Audie deserved his due for bringing her to him. In fact, his actions indicated just how pleased he was with the boy. Max rarely sucked cock, keeping it in reserve as a treat for Audie. He took him deep and hard, knowing how close the boy was to his release by the sheer size and turgidity of his penis. He felt Mary’s small hand on the back of his head, caressing him softly as he moved up and down over Audie’s cock at a relentless pace. Her touch moved him greatly—it signaled her acceptance and also a great deal of tenderness. When Audie bucked up
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against him and shouted out as he came, her nails dug into Max’s scalp, and he knew that she’d not only been accepting of what he did, but aroused as well. A moment later Max collapsed on his side next to Mary. “Come here,” he said groggily. He pulled her sleek, soft body next to his own and her pointed breasts pressed into his chest. As he fell into a deep, profound sleep, he felt Audie move behind her, his arm encircling her waist, and he was glad. She wouldn’t catch a chill while she slept with two warm male bodies protecting her. He would always protect her…always.
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Chapter Five Kit resisted rising through the thick, pleasant cloak of sleep that blanketed her consciousness, but the voice was insistent. “Wake up, Kit!” “Audie?” she mumbled in confusion. Her eyelids flickered open under protest. Her body felt different than it ever had in her life—torpid and heavy and completely, utterly satiated. She inhaled and the rich, musky odor of sex struck her nose. Her eyes shot open wide. She lay in Max’s large bed, a sheet partially covering her nakedness. When she saw Audie standing next to her, fastening his pants hastily, she glanced around the dimly lit room in growing disorientation. “Where’s Max?” she asked. “Gone,” Audie said stiffly as he bent to pick up his shirt. A tense silence followed. “What do you mean gone?” “Gone. I don’t know where,” Audie replied as he shoved his arms through the sleeves. Kit sat up slowly and pulled the sheet more firmly around her. She glanced over at a window and saw that dawn had not yet broken. “But…I thought…I thought you said we would certainly wake before him since he’d been drinking and that I could return to my suite. You said that it would be too much of a shock for him to see me in his bed once he awoke sober, so we would break the news to him under more conducive circumstances.” “I know I said that, Kit,” Audie replied grimly. “But he must have got up to use the lavatory in the middle of the night. Not too surprising, considering how much he drank. Even the most drunken slumbers can be interrupted by a full bladder.”
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“I don’t understand. Where is he then?” Her face stiffened as a thought struck her. She flung her feet over the side of the bed rapidly. “Do you think he fell or something? Maybe he lost his balance and hit his head? God, Audie go and check on…” Her voice faded when Audie put up his palm and shook his head. “Don’t you get it, Kit? I didn’t light that lamp. Max did. He must have done it when he returned. I woke up seconds before you did and the lamp was lit and Max was gone.” He raked his fingers through his glossy blond hair when he noticed the shocked expression on Kit’s face. He nodded his head solemnly. “I know. He saw you, Kit. And not only you. That.” Kit glanced down dazedly to where Audie pointed. Blood smeared the sheets—a small amount, but the crimson color stood out starkly on the finely woven linen. “What are we going to do?” “Just get dressed and go to your room, Kit. I’ll go look for him and—” Audie sighed anxiously as he turned away. “Do whatever I can to make things right. I’ll come and retrieve you if he wants to speak with you.” Kit stared mutely at Audie’s retreating back as he left the luxurious suite. The words if he wants to speak with you reverberated in her brain like a taunt. If. If the anchor of her life, the man she loved more passionately after tonight than she’d ever been capable of imagining before…if Max ever wanted to speak to her again. Her legs trembled as she stood next to the bed, the ramifications of her actions striking her for the first time like a hard, nauseating punch to the gut.
After she’d washed, dressed, and composed herself as best as she could, Kit headed for the door to her suite, determined to find Max herself. She could make him understand. She knew she could. He only needed to hear how much she loved him. He needed to be made to comprehend that she hadn’t acted out of impulsivity, or wantonness…or foolishness. How long could his anger possibly coexist with the memory of their beautiful, rapturous lovemaking, anyway?
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Someone knocked briskly on the door at the moment her fingers touched the knob. She flung it open excitedly, sure it must be Max. “What is it?” she asked, dread creeping into her tone when she saw Audie’s pallor and tense expression. “He’s left for Liverpool.” “What?” Kit clutched her abdomen as she spun around, staring into her suite blankly. “I’m going after him,” she said abruptly. “Please tell Sherman to get the carriage ready.” “Kit! Hold still, dammit,” Audie growled when she tried to escape his grip on her elbow. He glanced down the hallway irritably at the sound of a servant coming up the back staircase. He shoved Kit into the room and slammed the door behind him. “Let go of me, Audie!” she exclaimed furiously. “No. Listen to me. You’ll just make a mess of things if you go gallivanting across the countryside after him. You claim to love Max so much?” he challenged with a cutting look that made Kit go still in her struggles. “Then you know him, Kit. It takes a good deal to trigger Max’s temper, but it’s terrible once his toleration level has been breached. He requires time and space to cool it.” Audie inhaled deeply and grimaced. “He might need quite a bit more time and space than usual to get over this particular episode.” Kit’s heart fluttered in her chest like a caged, panicked bird. She yanked her arm from his grip and went over to her large bay window. The eastern sky glowed golden pink as the new day broke. Kit found herself irrationally hating the dawn, longing for yesterday when she still basked in the security of Max’s love—the love of a guardian and fierce protector, but still uncontested love, nonetheless. Now he’d left Stangael. Was he furious with her? Disappointed? Disgusted? “How do you know he’s gone to Liverpool?” she asked unevenly. She heard Audie drop into one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. “I suspected it when I saw that his office looked like it’d been ransacked—as if he’d been looking for something in a hurry. There were files flung everywhere. I saw an opened one that was labeled with the name of his ironworks in Liverpool. He’d asked me to find the deed to that property yesterday, saying the solicitor needed it for an additional
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real estate transaction. Because of everything that happened yesterday, I never got around to doing it,” Audie explained, guilt flavoring his tone. “But then I saw Mrs. Evans in the hall just now and she confirmed that he’d gone to Liverpool. He asked Emmitt, the groom, to pass the message to Mrs. Evans when she awakened this morning.” “And he left no message for me?” she asked cautiously, already suspecting the answer. “No.” She turned toward the window again to hide the fact that tears filled her eyes. In all the years she’d lived with Max at Stangael, he had gone on frequent business trips. She often accompanied him when she was younger, before she went away to school. But there was never a time that he left if she was home and planning to stay at Stangael that he didn’t kiss her goodbye, teasingly pull on a lock of her hair, and tell her when to look for him to return. “How long do you expect he’ll be gone?” Kit asked after a long, dreadful pause. Audie pressed his fingers to his eyes tiredly. “Days…weeks, more likely,” he muttered. Kit fell back on the cushioned window seat with a heavy, ungraceful thud.
*** Kit rode like a demon every day of Max’s absence. But none of the prime horses in Max’s stables were fast enough to outrun her fears and anxieties. Every morning she eagerly awaited the post, but never once did she spy the bold handwriting that she recognized as easily as she did her own. The fact that he didn’t even write to her at the very least truly emphasized the breach in their relationship. What was Max thinking of her? Not knowing the answer to that question made her frantic. Was he repulsed by what she and Audie had done? Did he feel betrayed, tricked into making love to a woman who he regarded like a daughter or a sister? These thoughts and a thousand like them swarmed around in her brain constantly, exhausting and weakening her typically vibrant nature. 64
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“When he came that night he called out the name Mary,” Kit whispered miserably to Audie a week after Max had left. They were sitting in lawn chairs in the gardens before supper was served. They made a gloomy pair of late, their mood a stark contrast to the verdant, sunny summer days. Kit stared at a lush white hydrangea near her chair, but she saw only Max in her mind’s eye. “I hate the fact that I may never hear him call out my name while he loves me.” Audie grabbed her hand and squeezed it for reassurance. “He did say your name, Kit—the name he believed belonged to the incredible woman he made love to that night. It’s the only time I’ve heard him do that. Usually he calls out—” “My mother’s name,” Kit finished for him sadly. “And yours,” Audie reminded her gently. “My point is that he saw the woman he made love to that night as singular, unique…special.” “If he thought I was so special, why did he leave?” Kit asked as a tear rolled down her cheek. Audie squeezed her hand again before he dropped it. “He left because you were so special. You were a sweet, responsive, very sexy woman. And then he discovered that the sensual woman in his bed was the girl he’d always loved and been charged to protect. It’d be a fierce blow to any man.” “Then why did you suggest doing it?” Kit asked with a scowl. Audie chuckled, perhaps relieved to see her temper replace a depression that had been pervasive since Max left that early morning. “Don’t try to put this all on me, Kit. You knew there would be a risk. Life doesn’t come with guarantees.” “What if he never wants to see me again?” Kit moaned desperately, sitting forward in her chair. Audie smiled. “Do you really think Max St. Claire could exist without ever seeing you again? It’d be like ripping out his own heart, Kit.”
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Kit thought of Audie’s words a week and a half later as she dismounted in the stables. Perhaps most men would be unable to rip out their own hearts but Max wasn’t most men. He possessed a rigid self-discipline, despite his carnal nature. Now that she knew what it meant to be set afire by his intense passion, Kit wondered if he hadn’t forced himself into strict discipline in order to control it. But the crucial point was, if anyone had the ability to cut his heart asunder, as long as he believed he did it for the benefit of someone he loved, it was Max. Audie’s voice calling out to her interrupted her depressing thoughts. Something in his tone made her run instead of walk across the empty field to where he stood at the corral fence. “Max is home?” she asked immediately when she registered Audie’s tense expression. He nodded. “Not only that. He’s asked to see you, Kit. He told me just now to come and bring you to him at once.” Kit glanced down in dismay at her dusty riding habit. “I need to wash and change first.” “No.” Audie shook his head firmly. “He wants you right now.” Kit’s chin went up defiantly as she placed a boot on the lower rung of the fence. “I’m going to wash up first, Audie, and neither you nor Max is going to stop me.” “So much for being willing to do anything to set things straight,” Audie mumbled in exasperation as he followed Kit’s rapid, determined stride.
Max tossed down the legal brief he’d been attempting to read unsuccessfully when he heard the knock at his door. His eyes flickered to the clock on the mantle before he barked out permission to enter. Although he’d been mentally preparing himself for this moment for over two weeks now, his body went rigid and his mind went blank when Kit came in the room and closed the door behind her. She looked as fresh and crisp as a meadow daisy, wearing a yellow linen shirtwaist and a matching skirt. The color complemented her unique coloring, making her
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mahogany hair and russet-brown eyes more vibrant and highlighting the peach tone to her fair skin. Although her costume was simple and appropriately modest for a young woman of her age, Max saw how it emphasized the fullness of her breasts and the slenderness of her waist—a waist so narrow he’d nearly spanned it with both his hands. An urge to walk across the room and wrap his hands possessively around that beguiling feminine indentation nearly overwhelmed him at that moment. Irritation swelled in his chest at his uncontrollable thoughts. “It took you long enough.” She blinked in surprise at his terse greeting. “I’m sorry. I’d been riding and wasn’t fit to be seen.” “That would never have mattered to you before.” He immediately regretted the bitter statement when he saw her cheeks first color and then pale. She glanced away uneasily. A storm of emotions raged in him. He truly couldn’t have said what he wanted to do more at that moment—turn her over his knee and blister her impudent ass for what she’d done or take her in his arms and soothe the nearly tangible anxiety he read in her expressive eyes. “Max… I know you must be angry with me. We… Audie and I didn’t mean for you to find out that way.” Kit took several steps toward him, her gaze beseeching him to understand. The mention of her co-conspirator’s name hardened his heart. He may be utterly confused about his feelings for Kit, but he was quite confident that he was one hundred percent furious with Audie for betraying him not once, but twice within a twenty-fourhour period. The boy would be lucky if he was shaved by the time he was forty. “I fail to see what difference the manner of your revelation makes. Discovering that I’d been the one to rob you of your innocence when I’m also the one who was charged to protect it was hardly going to be pleasant news, no matter how that news was broken.” “Max…” she whispered in anguish. “You didn’t rob me of anything. I gave myself to you because I love you. Surely you know that.” “Perhaps it is best that you believe that, at any rate.”
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“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked warily. He shrugged. “It is a generally held belief that a bride should believe she loves her husband. Surely you realize we must marry now. It’s what I would demand of any rake who seduced you and possibly got you with child,” he said grimly. Her mouth hung open in shock. A queer expression slowly overcame her face. “You don’t believe that I love you?” “You’re very young, Kit. You don’t know what love is.” Her eyes flashed with fire. “Is that right? How old were you, Max, when you fell in love with my mother?” He stared at her coldly, refusing to answer. Damn Audie and his blabbering tongue— “You were nineteen years old, weren’t you Max?” Kit pushed. She stepped closer until he inhaled her singular scent. He’d bought her that perfume in France two years ago. Kit liked it so much that he’d had it delivered to Stangael regularly since then. The unique musk of her skin mixed with it in such a way as to create a singular, beguiling scent that dazed his senses. Of course he must have recognized it that night in bed. He wished that he could have convinced himself over the past eighteen days that he’d been fooled, but deep down he knew the truth. There wasn’t enough brandy on the planet to obliterate the recognition of his own heart. The knowledge of his betrayal to Alex, Kathryn, Kit—to himself—ate at him like a cancer. She came close enough to him that the hem of her skirt brushed his trousers. “Are you surprised that I know about Kathryn, Max? Are you shocked that I knew about the role of the St. Claire servant? Perhaps you didn’t know that I watched you and Audie make love to a woman through the oculus last winter. Maybe it will disgust you to hear that it made your innocent little Kit love and desire you more than she ever had before.” He forced himself not to move when she reached up and touched his jaw. “When, Max? When will you see me as I am instead of the child I once was? When will you acknowledge the love that burns inside of me is the love of a woman, not a girl?”
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His jaw clenched as fury and longing warred within him. Desire won out, but anger still spiced his actions. He reached out and pulled her to him. She gasped in surprise when he bent to ravage her mouth. The flavor of ripe cherries, sexy, throaty whimpers, soft, curving flesh—all of those things and more—blended into a delicious, voluptuous haze that thoroughly intoxicated his senses. His voice was hoarse with desire by the time he lifted his head a moment later, but bitterness laced his tone as well. “I acknowledge that you are a woman, Kit. You have forced me to do nothing less. I will never thank you for making me betray my duty to your father, though,” he told her in a hard voice. “Max, you’ve betrayed no one. My father—” “Enough,” he said sharply. “I’ll not dwell on this. You’ve forced my hand, Kit. I wouldn’t have wanted this for you. Now you must accept all that I am, not just the shadow cast by your romantic notions. You will be my wife as soon as the arrangements can be made. But starting right now, you will share my bed. Please ring for one of the maids to summon Audie.” He turned away and briskly began unfastening his collar, unwilling to continue staring at Kit’s expression of confusion and dawning hurt.
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Chapter Six By the time Audie knocked and entered the room, Max had removed all of his clothing but his black pants. He sat patiently in one of the chairs in the lounging area of his suite, reminding Kit of a dusky, sinuous panther—composed and almost lazy, but undoubtedly prepared to pounce at any given second. Kit caught Audie’s eye as he shut the door behind him. One glance at Max and Audie flipped the lock. Her heart began to thump uncomfortably in her chest. She’d thought the presence of her friend might soothe her rattled nerves. Audie’s tense, wary expression as he approached them only fueled her insecurities, however. No one spoke for a few seconds as Max stared at Audie with eyes like sharp, cutting obsidian and Audie met his gaze with strained composure. Kit glanced back and forth between the two men with rising anxiety. “Thanks to your and Kit’s pranks, it has become necessary for her and I to marry,” Max began slowly. He put up his hand for silence when Audie opened his mouth to speak. “I don’t care to hear your lame explanations. I called you here because I require your services in assisting me in showing my bride-to-be what will be expected of the wife of a St. Claire. Of course, she believes there is nothing she doesn’t fully comprehend. Kit is wise beyond her years, you see, which is why she has no difficulty leaping into an inferno because a friend tells her there will be a thrilling little burn.” Kit opened her mouth to defend Audie but Max’s quick, slicing glance silenced her. “Here are my rules in regard to Kit, Audie. You will only touch her when I command you to do so. You may not kiss her mouth. You may not have intercourse with her in the traditional sense. If I ever discover from this point onward that you have broken one of these rules, I will treat you in the same manner I would a complete stranger who touched my wife. Do you understand?” 70
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Audie nodded solemnly. “I do, sir.” Max continued to stare at Audie for a long moment. He finally nodded his head once, as though satisfied by something he’d seen. “Good. Undress her, then.” Kit’s eyes widened at the brusque order. Her protest died unformed on her tongue when Audie approached her without hesitation and found the buttons at the back of her neck. Her gaze flew to Max, but he merely watched the proceedings with a stony expression. So. This was how he thought to punish her? Kit seethed inwardly as Audie drew her shirtwaist down over her arms. He thought she would run in terror from the room when exposed to the demanding, carnal side of his nature. Well, Max St. Claire had another think coming. Audie removed her skirt, shoes, corset cover and petticoat with the adroit fingers of a seasoned libertine. Her cheeks burned with mixed embarrassment and arousal when he drew down her drawers and she saw that Max stared fixedly between her legs. When Audie began to remove her garters and pale hose, Max halted him. “Leave them on, I think. Just remove the corset,” he ordered thickly. Audie complied, eventually peeling the tight garment off her like the skin of a grape. Her blush deepened when the mounds of her breasts popped free. Her nipples tingled under Max’s gaze, the coral tips darkening in color and pulling into tight, sensitive darts. Kit glanced nervously at Audie when he stepped back. His blond hair had fallen rakishly over his forehead as he bent to undress her and his breathing had escalated noticeably. Audie was the most handsome man she’d ever seen besides Max, but when he became aroused, his good looks transformed into something even more compelling. “Now undress as well,” Max told Audie tersely. Kit moved restlessly in her stocking feet as Audie removed his clothing. Max continued to stare at her, either unaware or uncaring for her unease. His magnificent dark eyes seemed to be flashing some message that she was incapable of fully comprehending as his gaze ran over ever inch of her body.
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“Both of you come here,” Max said gruffly when Audie stood beside Kit, completely nude. Kit approached awkwardly. She wanted to say something…anything that would make her kind, loving Max reappear. But Audie seemed calm enough as he paused in front of Max’s chair and Kit didn’t want to appear the cowering novice next to her best friend or Max. Without saying a word, Max reached out and took Audie’s semi-erect cock in one hand and with the other palmed Kit’s hip. She inhaled sharply when he lightly stroked her flank and finally cradled her left breast. “You have the loveliest breasts I have ever seen…the loveliest breasts I ever will see, now that you’re mine forever,” he added gruffly. “Max,” she whispered feelingly. The deep emotion that had briefly flamed in his dark eyes nearly undid her. It was like nothing she’d ever sensed from him before—love, yes, but also a possessive, searing sexual desire, the magnitude of which left her stunned. His sensual lips curved slightly when he saw her reaction. Saw it and willfully misunderstood it, Kit realized. “You always wanted me to see you as a woman, Kit. Now you must accept me as I am, as well,” he said softly as he plucked at her nipple, making her bead tight. “I do,” she whispered passionately. “We shall see,” he replied. “Kneel down, Kit.” She was confused, but did what he ordered quickly enough. He spread his thighs wide and urged her between them. When she tried to face him, however, he pushed on her shoulder, indicating she should turn toward Audie. “You need to learn how to pleasure me with your mouth. You will practice on Audie. His girth is not quite so wide. Better for a first lesson, I think.” Kit licked her lower lip anxiously and glanced up at Audie. It was the first time she’d ever seen him totally naked and it was quite a sight to behold. He was not as broad through the shoulder and chest as Max, but his lean, rippling muscles encased in golden skin still bespoke of primal male power. She swallowed convulsively when she saw that
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his long cock had grown fully erect as Max stroked it almost lazily. Would she really be able to take that swollen spear of male flesh into her mouth? Max nudged the back of her head and she knew that she was about to find out. “Touch him with your hand,” Max murmured as he removed his own. “Lick the head with your tongue. Explore him and watch his face for a reaction.” With only these simple, general instructions, Kit took the weight of Audie’s heavy, warm penis in her hand and leaned forward. Her lips brushed against velvety soft skin that might have been stretched across stone. Her tongue darted out curiously, almost of its own volition. She felt Max’s hand on her back, stroking her softly. The gesture seemed to grant her permission. For several moments she became lost in the sensations fed to her brain by her increasingly avid fingertips, lips, and tongue. “Open your eyes and watch him,” Max said suddenly, breaking through her sensual fog. Kit’s eyelids shot open. She was a little surprised to realize that the knob and a few inches of Audie’s cock were lodged in her mouth while she fisted the stalk tightly. Her friend watched her with a narrow focus. She started back and let go, almost as if she’d awoken from a dream. Audie’s cock bobbed before her nose when it popped out of her mouth. The sight struck her funny bone for some reason. She giggled at the same time that she slapped at the bouncing head with her tongue. When she saw Audie’s familiar grin break across his handsome face, she captured the fat tip between her lips and pushed half his length greedily into her mouth. She sucked on him in the same manner she’d always teased him since they’d become friends— relentlessly. Her cheeks hollowed as she pistoned her lips along his shaft. Audie’s amused expression transformed to one of intense lust almost immediately. Max’s hand on her back tensed and then rose to cradle her head. As Kit experimented with the sensation of Audie’s thick flesh filling her mouth, Max pulsed her head ever so gently, urging her to take more, but not forcing her to do so. Kit followed his lead
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eagerly, responding as much to his touch as the expression on Audie’s face, his low groans when she took him deeper, and the glazed, hot look in his blue eyes. The tip of his cock brushed the back of her throat several times, making her gag slightly, but the sensation lessened with each successive stroke. Audie’s eyes crossed in pleasure when she pushed the tip of his cock into her throat and her gag reflex vibrated into his flesh. The knowledge that he liked it made her bolder. She withdrew to the tip and plunged her head forward forcefully. The tears that spilled down her cheeks and her temporary discomfort were a small price to pay to see Audie’s eyes open wide in stunned lust. “Enough,” Max said abruptly. His fingers tightened in her hair and he tugged her back along the length of Audie’s rock-hard cock. She glanced over at Max uncertainly when Audie popped free of her lips. His black eyes glittered with emotion as he met her gaze. “He is about to come,” he told her simply. “See how he breathes erratically? Notice the color of his cock? You recall how he seemed to swell in your mouth, becoming denser and thicker?” Kit nodded as she licked her wet lower lip. Max’s face went rigid as he trailed the movement with his gaze. “That means you gave him pleasure,” Max said as he stood and began to unfasten his pants. “You have a natural talent, it seems. Now you will test it on me.” He straightened after shoving his pants and underwear down his hard thighs. Kit’s mouth hung open in awe at the sight of Max’s erection jutting out proudly from his body. His clean-shaven testicles hung like round, fertile fruit below the thick, thrusting stalk. She clamped her mouth shut as saliva filled it. Her pussy flooded with liquid heat, as well. Her body’s response to the close-up sight of Max’s cock was complete and absolute surrender. She looked up the glorious length of his naked body. He nodded once when she met his gaze. She shifted her knees slightly and leaned forward, quivering with anticipation to taste him. Her eyes shut in sublime pleasure as her tongue polished the fat, mushroom-shaped cap. The quarter-inch thick rim beneath the head fascinated her. She detailed it again and
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again with her tongue. His taste was like nothing she’d ever known—exotic, spicy and utterly male. When she felt him stir on his feet, her eyes opened. He reached out and cradled the back of her head. She read the message in his depthless eyes like bold script. His jaws clenched tight when she vacuumed the first several inches of his cock into her mouth. Her eyes widened. Max had been right. He stretched her lips wide. His girth made the maneuver a bit trickier than she’d imagined it would be, having sucked Audie’s cock first. “Use your hand until you learn to take me deeper,” Max rasped, reading her mind. She complied. After a minute of sliding his cock in and out between her lips and pumping the stalk with her fist, she became almost frantic with excitement. He tasted so wonderful. She loved the wild, hungry look in his gaze as he watched her. He looked as if he enjoyed himself, as well, so she was disappointed when he gently tugged on her hair and pulled her off him. “Now, Audie,” he instructed quietly. Audie moved in closer to Max. Kit saw that her friend’s arousal had barely abated since he’d left her mouth. She sucked on Audie as Max palmed and caressed the back of her head. Just when Audie began to grow larger and more turgid in her mouth, however, Max tugged on her hair. As soon as Audie’s cock cleared her lips, Max presented his own cock between them. She continued like that for minutes, switching between Audie’s golden penis and Max’s thick, dusky cock. Finally, Max took her head in both of his hands and kept her steady while he thrust between her lips demandingly. Kit’s eyes went wide as she stared up at him, awed by the power that emanated from him in that moment. His expression tightened into a grimace of pleasure. He reached out and grabbed Audie’s cock. The boy moaned loudly when Max pumped his slick length with his strong fist. Max growled in pleasure as he exploded into her mouth. At the same moment, Kit felt Audie’s warm come splatter against her cheek. She swallowed as fast as she could, but Max continued to tense and shudder in orgasm, shooting more musky, flavorful come
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into her mouth than she could handle. When she choked slightly on his abundant emissions, Max opened his eyes and drew her off him. He urged her over to Audie, whose cock still erupted as Max pumped it. “Lap up all your cream, Kitten,” Max ordered thickly. Kit did so eagerly, moving back and forth between Max and his servant until both men’s penises were clean and temporarily sated. After their panting had quieted, Max reached for her and drew her up next to him. He carefully wiped Audie’s semen from her cheek with his hand and then dried his fingers on his pants. He straightened and took her in a slow, sensual kiss that made the burn between Kit’s legs escalate to a sharp ache. She moaned shakily into his mouth. Max raised his head and examined her when he heard her anguish. “Let’s go to bed. My little Kitten is in pain.”
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Chapter Seven Max joined her and Audie on the bed once he’d removed his clothing fully. He came down over Kit, where she lay supine, and palmed her jaw. “I couldn’t get enough of your mouth that night,” he muttered almost roughly. “No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t banish the memory of your taste.” He leaned down over her. “Audie, prepare her,” he said out loud before he plucked at Kit’s lips and then aggressively plunged his tongue into her depths. Kit craned up for him, so hungry for his taste. When she felt Audie’s tongue slide between her labia, her hips wiggled at the pleasure it wrought. But her entire focus was on Max as he possessed her with his kiss. The power of it was such that, to Kit’s lustbefuddled mind, it seemed as if Max stroked the depths of her mouth at the same time that he licked and sucked her clit. The sensation was intense and masterful, but also tender and loving. She had never felt so cherished in her life. She cried out in orgasm into Max’s mouth after less than a minute of being touched by both men. Pleasuring them earlier had primed her for ecstasy. Max plucked at her lips languorously after she’d quieted, while Audie soothed and aroused her at once with a gentle, laving tongue. After several moments of this sated, boneless bliss, Max lay on his back next to her and scooped her into his arms, lifting her atop him. Kit reached out to steady herself on his hard chest, her hair falling over her shoulders. “Straddle me and slide your pussy down on my cock,” he said. Kit moved awkwardly, trying to position herself to adequately take his long, reanimated cock, which he held up vertically from his body. “Audie, help her.” Audie’s hands encircled her waist, lifting her high enough so that the tip of Max’s penis nudged her entrance. Max added his strength, steadying her at her hips. Kit gasped
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helplessly as they slowly lowered her, rocking her body gently until her pussy stretched to accept Max’s girth. “Max,” she hissed through clenched teeth when both men pushed her down fully and she sat in his lap, his large cock sheathed completely in her vagina. It amazed her that she’d taken him fully that first night when she was a virgin. Presently, his invasion bordered on discomfort. Max saw her struggle to accommodate him. His thumb stretched from where his hand cradled her hip. He stimulated her clit with tight, circular motions until she moaned uncontrollably and shifted her hips against him to get more friction. The action caused the hard knob of his penis to rub a spot deep inside of her that made her eyes pop open wide. She groaned gutturally in tense pleasure. Max smiled. “Audie, get the lubrication,” Max murmured, his eyes never leaving Kit’s enraptured face. Audie’s grip on her waist tightened slightly. “But sir… Kit’s new to this. Surely that isn’t—” “Your defense of your friend is admirable. But you knew that I never take things in half-measure in my bed when you conspired for me to seduce Kit. Now Kit must learn the consequences of her actions, as well. This is the inferno that you asked her to leap into with you, Audie. Now do as I say.” Kit felt Audie’s hands linger for a second on her waist before he finally released her and moved off the bed. She opened her mouth to question Max about what he’d meant, but he cradled her hips in his hands and began rocking her on his cock. “Ohhh God,” she exclaimed. She leaned forward and gripped his shoulders mindlessly, overwhelmed by the sensation of him moving inside her. “You’ve always wanted to prove that you could handle a fierce beast. Show me now. Show me how you can ride, Kitten,” he hissed between clenched jaws. But Kit had already instinctively begun to move up and down on his length in a counter-rhythm to his strokes. Yes. This is what she had always wanted…what she’d
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always needed…to match her spirit against one even more fiery than her own…to mingle with it…to conquer it, and to be conquered by it in return. She closed her eyes and gave the ancient, poignant cry of a female who is being possessed by her true mate. Kit rode hard and fast, struggling to keep up with Max’s demanding thrusts. Her eyelids parted slightly. Max’s dark, handsome face looked rigid with pleasure as she increased the pace and pressure with her flexing thighs. After a few moments of this, she began to pant, not only with her exertions but intense, wild excitement. She cried out sharply when Max suddenly grabbed her hips and pressed his length fully into her with a smack of flesh against flesh. “You truly can, ride,” he admitted. “Come here, querida.” She lowered over him, enjoying being the one to control their kiss for once. She scraped her sensitive nipples against his chest where they poked through the cloak of her hair. Her tongue came out to trace his sleek, black goatee before she licked at his full lips teasingly. He remained immobile for a moment, letting her lap him up hungrily, allowing her to play. But then he encircled her in his arms tightly. “Audie,” he called out tersely. He spread his hand behind her head and pushed her down to him. He took her in a hard, heated kiss. Kit was left in little doubt of who was in complete control at that moment. She started in shock a few seconds later when she felt Audie’s fingers slide between her ass cheeks. She squeaked in surprise into Max’s mouth when Audie pushed a forefinger into her rectum. She tried to break free, scandalized by the intimacy of the penetration, but Max held her tightly to him, continuing to ravage her mouth. Helpless to move, Kit had no choice but to submit and focus on the sensations inundating her. Audie’s stroking finger inexplicably made her grind her pussy down on Max’s erection and flex her vaginal muscles around him, hungry for his hard, hot fullness. She was surprised when both men groaned in arousal and wondered if both her pussy and ass had tightened around them.
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It felt shameful to be touched there so intimately, but she recalled how Tommy had moaned in pleasure when Audie thrust his penis into his ass. Perhaps women enjoyed being stimulated in that private place as well? She moaned shakily a moment later into Max’s mouth when he loosened his restraint on her and grabbed both her hips. She received the answer to her own question as Max rocked her in tight, circular motions on his cock and Audie slipped another finger into her ass. Max broke their kiss when she moaned loudly in pleasure. “That’s it,” he whispered raggedly as he watched her face with fascination. “Take your pleasure when it’s given to you, querida. Never fight it.” “Oh, Max,” she cried desperately. Her hips moved frantically, making short, tight hops on his cock. He stilled her hips with his hands. “Don’t move, Kit. Stay still,” he ordered. “I can’t! Oh…oh, the pressure is too much,” she wailed. She was so lost in the fog of desire that she didn’t notice that Audie had removed his fingers from her ass. Then she felt the smooth head of his penis press to the tiny ring and her eyes sprang wide in realization. “No, Max. Not both of you,” she whispered. Perspiration trickled beneath her breasts, mingling with the sweat on his chest. “Yes. It is my desire. I will make it yours, Kitten,” he soothed. His thumb returned to press and agitate her clit. Kit wiggled her hips in arousal despite herself, gasping in disbelief when the head of Audie’s cock fully penetrated her rectum. She heard him hiss in pleasure behind her. The pressure that had built in her body unexpectedly crested at the sensation of being filled in both places while Max rubbed her clit. She grabbed on to Max’s shoulders and screamed as a powerful climax shook her. She was only vaguely aware of Max muttering terse instructions to Audie while she came. When she regained full awareness, she blinked several times in disbelief and then pressed her forehead to Max’s chest in mixed shame and arousal. Max held her hips steady for Audie while Audie thrust his cock in and out of her ass with rapid strokes. He didn’t impale her completely with his length, but the manner in which he fucked her made it clear that Max had given Audie permission to climax inside of her.
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She shut her eyes tight and tried to shut out the fact that Audie fucking such a private place aroused her greatly. So did his grunts and groans of pleasure. Max must have sensed her embarrassment. He touched her cheek lightly, willing her to lift her head and open her eyes. “There is no shame, querida. Let go. I ordered him to do this for your pleasure, not his,” he explained gently. “Max,” she mouthed in wild, unbearable ecstasy. Audie’s continued pumping of her ass while Max throbbed in her pussy made her feel so unbearably full she was ready to splinter into a million pieces. Max heard her plea and stimulated her slick clit again in a manner that made her eyes roll back into her head. Audie’s shout of release followed soon after her own. Her mouth hung open as convulsions wracked her body and she stared incredulously into Max’s glittering, wild gaze. Audie’s penis jerked in orgasm in her ass. She felt the warmth of his semen pumping into her. They shuddered in tandem until Kit fell on Max’s chest in exhaustion. “Leave us, Audie,” Kit heard Max say as if from a great distance. She whimpered at the sensation of Audie’s warm penis sliding from her ass. Her friend caressed her warmly on the hip before she felt him move off the bed. For a few moments Max just kissed her temple softly and caressed her head in his palm, soothing her. “You will not punish Audie further for my love and desire for you, will you, Max?” she murmured into his chest. “No, I think not. I question his methods, but surely the end result couldn’t be more right,” he murmured. Kit’s eyes widened in dazed disbelief at his words. She felt his cock surge in her pussy. Max smiled at her reaction. “But I doubt there has ever been a more willful, stubborn St. Claire servant to successfully complete his indenture,” he added a bit sourly. It was Kit’s turn to smile. She could imagine one possible candidate.
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Inevitably, she became exclusively focused on his penis as it throbbed inside of her. She flexed around him. He growled and grabbed her to him in a tight hold. He rolled her onto her back and slid on top of her. She watched him, struck utterly mute by his male beauty as he placed his hands next to her head and reared up over her. His black hair had come loose from the cord at his nape. It fell in glossy strands around his bold features. She reached up and caressed his cheek as he began to thrust his cock in and out of her sensually. Tears blurred her eyes. “I love you, Max. You were always my dark knight in shimmering armor.” Max shook his head bemusedly, but there was no mistaking the love that shone forth from his gaze. “Would a knight in shimmering armor treat you as I have in this bedroom today, Kit?” Kit’s hands lowered to his muscular, flexing buttocks, urging him to take her harder. Pressure and pleasure and overflowing love swamped her awareness. “Mine would,” she hissed. His hips paused at her succinct response. His gaze bored down into her…into her very spirit. “Maybe I truly am what you need, Kitten,” he said, emotion making his voice break slightly. “Given the carnal nature that you’ve developed, perhaps we are ideally suited. Even your father would have to admit that a strong hand is needed to tame you. No one could ever possibly love you more than me, that much is certain.” Kit gave a sublime smile and reached for him. “It took you long enough to figure it out, Max St. Claire,” she chided softly. She didn’t have long to wait to finally hear Max shout out her name as they crashed together in mutual climax. Kit purred in sheer ecstasy at the sound. She’d never heard anything sweeter in her life.
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About the Author To learn more about Beth Kery, please visit www.bethkery.com. Send an email to
[email protected] or join her Yahoo! group to join in the fun with other readers as well as Lacey Savage and Fiona Jayde at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Triplexposure.
An erotica writer pens a tale of medieval lust and suspense to catch the interest of the man of her dreams.
Unholy Vows © 2007 Ciar Cullen With her New Age shop Raven’s Cave making money, Jennifer knows that she will be able to keep her beach home where she had lived with her ex-husband. But the victory feels hollow, the house no longer a home as a new divorcee. She secretly desires her ex’s younger foster brother, Shawn. With Shawn’s annual visit imminent, Jennifer doesn’t want to let her attraction to him become obvious. Shawn has concealed his own deep feelings for her, as he thinks he is just a dull scientist and not worthy of her affection. But when he reads an erotic romance written by Jennifer, Shawn wonders if she has experienced or just fantasized about any of the sexual situations. When Shawn finishes reading Jennifer’s story, he wonders if the character of Simon could possibly be based on him. He feels certain Jennifer doesn’t perceive him this way, but it would be his dream-come-true if she did care for him like Gwyneth cares for Simon. Will Shawn find the perfect words to express his true feelings for Jennifer when the opportunity arises?
Enjoy the following excerpt for Unholy Vows
Simon watched her from beneath his dark hood, knowing the grey wall and bleak night hid him from human vision. There was no doubt she intended to repeat the rituals he’d witnessed on the night of the full moon, three months in a row. The tall, buxom beauty intoned strange words, as if speaking to the trees and herbs and the moon itself. She would lean to the ground to pull plants, roots and all, and place them in a rough basket. At one point, she spun in a circle, arms flying and dress swinging, as she laughed and sang in an odd tongue. And then the inevitable sight—the one he waited breathlessly
for. She pulled off her cloak, unbuttoned her simple dress, and stepped into the stream, naked except for a medallion hanging between her full breasts. The sight of her beauty shattered him each time. For years, this perfect woman had taunted him with her appearance, her intelligence, her kindness, her humor. And yet, she knew nothing of her effect on him. The nest of black curls between her creamy thighs, her dark nipples puckered in the cold night air, her long, black hair brushing perfect buttocks—all pulled at his soul. Each time he spied on her, Simon ran his hand down his hard shaft, pretending it was her hand, her hot mouth taking him in. Her hand caressing the crease beneath, her tongue licking and teasing all of him. He would bite his lip raw to stop from crying out as he spilled hot liquid. Then he would wander the seven miles back to the monastery, straining to remember every detail of her, burning the vision of her into his brain so he could repeat his release again and again before morning. By nightfall the next day, he would confess and be forgiven. Simon wondered if Brother Adrian laughed at him, ridiculed him for his obsession with the Raven, as he nicknamed her. If only Adrian knew she was a witch, how the laughter would cease. Simon wondered how much longer his confessor would be willing to keep the secret of the master of Castle Carnoor. Did the holy man know the Raven’s true identity?
Gwyneth smiled as she crossed the tiny footbridge and took the twisting, stony path up the hill towards her cottage. Perhaps the next time she would make the pathetic monk cry out for her. She would caress herself in plain view, show him her wet folds, pinch her hard nipples, and rub herself to ecstasy. It had been too long since she’d felt a man’s hardness fill her, pound into her, give her the release she missed. The release she couldn’t match by her own hand. One of the brothers would be safe enough. No chance of marriage. The Grey Cloak would care not that she could not bear him a child. Gwyneth sighed. If only her brother-in-law Simon did not need an heir. And did not hate her, she mused sadly. She would pursue him wantonly, be his whore willingly. The familiar shiver of dread and excitement filled her at the thought of her dark, brooding
brother-in-law. His eyes were the color of green leaves in the fall when the sun begins to infuse them with gold. A thin, pale scar cut across the edge of his chin, the result of a wound Gwyneth had inflicted herself years before in youthful play. Simon’s black hair was full, falling in waves to well beneath his collar, his body was hard and lean. Six years younger than his brother, four years younger than her. How many times had she watched him in swordplay, half-dressed, sweat glistening on his bronze skin, and muscles bulging? How many times had she shut her eyes against the sight of her husband, Lester, pretending that Simon hovered over her instead? How long had she craved the touch of the wrong man? She counted off the years—since Simon was but sixteen. And how many times in the last year had she pleaded with Simon to believe in her innocence? “I did not kill your brother, Simon. But I know who did,” she muttered to the night air, whispering a quick prayer for the soul of her lost husband. He had been a brutal master, and he needed all the prayers living souls could offer. No doubt the prayers were wasted, and Lester rotted in Hell with his kind. But she would keep the secret, go to her grave letting Simon believe she was guilty, lest more pain come to the murderer. No, Simon Malstron Carnoor would never be hers, and that fact would plague her heart and soul for all eternity. Gwyneth sighed again in resignation. Of course, it didn’t mean she couldn’t bed the foolish monk who hid behind the ancient wall. He would appear again in a month, would he not?
He captured her body. Now he must capture her heart.
Capture Her Heart © 2008 Cynthia Breeding Abducted at sword-point and bound to a bed aboard a fast-sailing frigate headed for Constantinople, Lady Kaitlin Coltan knows she must be mad to be attracted to the handsome Scottish captain. But perhaps seducing him will change his mind about selling her into sexual slavery. If only she knew how. The last thing Adair MacDouglas needs is overpowering lust for his beautiful captive, but the Sultan will only pay well if Adair delivers a virgin. He pushes his guilt aside, reminding himself that her sale will avenge the rape of his young sister by Kaitlin’s brother, and sets about teaching the stubborn lass the art of being a good concubine. But when Kaitlin’s life is at risk, Adair realizes his feelings for her run deep as the sea. He captured her body—now he must capture her heart.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Capture Her Heart
Damn him. Kaitlin glared at Adair. The man was infuriating, standing there with a lopsided grin on his face. Well, she’d show him. She took a deep breath and suddenly darted around him toward the ship’s rail. It was now or never. In the split second it took him to realize what she’d done, Kaitlin had one leg over the rail. An iron arm wrapped around her waist, drawing her back on deck. Adair spun her around and backed her against the cabin wall, pressing his body against hers. “What the hell were ye doing?” She didn’t want to admit—not even think—about how good he felt. “What did it look like? I told you I’d be no man’s concubine, and you can’t make me into one.” A preternatural glow made his eyes pure gold. “I think I can, lass.” He laced his fingers with hers and brought her arms over her head, pinning them to the wood. With one deft motion, his boots spread her legs just enough that she had no traction to kick him, and then he lowered his mouth to hers.
His tongue exploring her mouth sent ripples of warmth coursing through her veins. The crush of her breasts on his muscled chest made her nipples ache and she sought the friction of brushing against him. His instant reaction was to grind against her hips, causing his granite-like thing to house itself between her thighs. Ahhh! Kaitlin felt a throbbing sensation begin to pulsate through her belly. She had not known she had such a sensitive spot down there, but he obviously did, for he was teasing it now, bucking against her. Her body tingled, tiny pricks of flame igniting her skin everywhere. The area between her legs blazed with desire and need. Her thoughts centered only on the wonderful sensation of his jutting thing banging at her, begging to be released from the confines of his clothing. And then the contraction came, one great convulsive spasm that caused her to shudder uncontrollably. She gasped for air. When her mind could function again, she slowly opened her eyes to find Adair watching her, an inscrutable look on his face. He still had her hands imprisoned. Embarrassed, she looked down. “I didn’t know I could feel…” Adair shifted her wrists to one of his hands and tilted her chin up with a finger. “Ah, lass. That was only the first lesson.” He stepped back, but did not release his hold on her. “It’s obvious I can’t let ye roam the deck unless ye’re tied to me, so I’ll have to keep ye confined to the cabin.” Kaitlin stared at him. “You can’t keep me caged like an animal.” “For certes I can. It’s my ship.” I’ll never have a chance to escape! “I’ll go stark raving mad!” He leaned closer. “Ye’ll have your lessons to look forward to. Every night. By the time Ali Stafa sees ye, ye’ll be a most compliant concubine.” She had no intention of being compliant at anything, but she shivered in anticipation of what Adair might do. Having seen a stallion mount a mare once before her brothers had pulled her away, she knew where that hard thing should go. She wondered what it would feel like actually inside her and was surprised when a heated rush filled her again and started her nub pulsing. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing what her traitorous body was doing. “What if I refuse?”
For a moment he looked surprised and then he grinned. “Then the next lesson will be teaching ye to obey me.” “Obey you?” Kaitlin sputtered angrily. Even her father treaded lightly when ordering her around, and her brothers gave her a wide berth if her temper was up. “Never.” “We’ll see,” he said.
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