Seeming to sense how near she was, the assassin devoted himself to her with ever more enthusiasm, the vibration of his groans of pleasure each time she jerked against his mouth only bringing Esther closer to all her body craved. Throwing her head back, she rocked her hips and tugged desperately against the bonds around her wrists, trembling from head to toe as her body twisted in anticipation of all that was so agonisingly close.
He chuckled, clearly glorying in his complete dominance and mastery of her body, and when he captured her clit between his teeth she lurched and shattered into a million pieces, consumed by the explosion of sheer physical ecstasy that sped through her without mercy. Sobbing out her pleasure with no shame or reticence, she writhed against the chair and let her loud cries fill the little parlour room. He rose to his feet to watch her, smug and amused satisfaction burning on his face as her body convulsed in the grip of its pleasure until a smart rap on the door froze them both in place.
“Your breakfast, sir!” came the call from the hallway beyond.
The assassin’s teasing smile widened further as Esther still fought for breath, the fierce throes of her climax finally abating. “Shall we adjourn for a while, sweetheart? I rather think you could make use of a chance to regain your breath.”
She nodded, unable to do anything else, and wholly unable to tear her eyes away from him. This man was more dangerous than anyone she had faced down before, yet she was already coming to realise that the thought of walking away from him – and from this – was impossible.
Still basking in the afterglow of all they had shared, Seth exhaled and then stole a swift kiss from Esther’s parted lips. She was his now as surely as he was hers. Bound to the chair with nothing left to hide from him, it was only a matter of time now until they shared everything that had been inevitable since he first caught sight of her – and he was determined she would willingly surrender it all to him.
As the maid knocked again, he touched Esther’s face one more time before standing up straight and reluctantly leaving her side. With a wry smile, he fastened his trousers once more and opened the door wide enough to take the tray that the maid held out. “My thanks, little miss,” he said, balancing the tray on one hand and winking at her before he swiftly closed the door again.
His heart gave a wild leap as he turned back to face Esther – something he dared not think upon for any longer than he had to. Seeking a distraction, he set the tray on the nearest table and then deftly unpicked the bonds around her wrists. “Perhaps you should go through to the bedroom and attend to yourself before we eat, sweetheart,” he said, his voice still hoarse. “In fact, whilst you are there I suggest you find a shirt of mine to wear, otherwise our breakfast will be entirely forgotten the moment you walk back through the door.”
A thrill of lust flitted through her wide eyes with his words. Revelling in it, Seth took hold of her hands to guide her back to her feet and turned her to face the bedroom door, taking advantage by letting his hand dance down the full length of her back as she moved away from him. He traced out each and every tiny vertebra, caught up in such a spell of desire for the feminine curves she possessed in such abundance that it was all he could do not to snatch her into his arms when she glanced over her shoulder at him. He sensed there was something she wanted to say, but instead she sighed and disappeared into the bedroom as he slumped into a chair at the table.
Breathing far too heavily once more, he set to attacking the hearty breakfast on the tray whilst he fought to regain the composure she seemed to drive away with the briefest of touches. He could not lose control, for Esther was finally within his grasp. The intimacies they had already shared, glorious though they were, would soon fade in comparison to all that awaited them, and with that thought in mind he poured them each a coffee and sat back in his chair to await her return.
To his delight, she had taken him at his word. She had found a white shirt of his to wear – and that was all she wore. Each button was fastened and it reached halfway down her slender thighs, but the sight before him was a deeply tantalising one. The thin material clung to her breasts and hips, and when Seth knew all too well the glories that it covered, it was no wonder that his cock had already hardened again even before she warily lowered herself into the chair opposite his.
It was impossible to think of his breakfast when she was before him. Resigned to that, he allowed her no more than a mouthful before he spoke to break the tense silence that had settled between them. “You realise that as soon as this meal is through I will be carrying you back to bed, Esther,” he said coolly.
She ran her tongue across her lips in what could only have been a deliberate tease as she met his intent stare without flinching. “If I permit it, sir.”
“Permit it? Sweetheart, you will be wholly powerless to deny me!” Leaning forward, Seth reached out one hand to flick open the buttons of his shirt that she wore, daring her to tell him to stop. She drew a sharp breath as his fingers brushed her bare skin, but it seemed that he was right. Her head rolled to the side, and she let loose a low sigh of supplication as his top lip curled back triumphantly.
“You see?” he said. “It is very plain how much you want me. Why, one could almost imagine you have already forgotten I murdered your lover in cold blood, Esther.”
“If you are trying to frighten me into submission, it will not work.” With what seemed to be the greatest of effort, Esther shifted back in her seat to move away from his hand as it threatened to dance towards her bared breasts. “Sir, if and when I choose to submit to you, it will be because I want to – no other reason will do.”
Still not looking away from her, he arched one brow. “And you
do
want to, Esther. To deny it is useless, for your body speaks the answer for you. And I, in turn, want you; all of you, everything you have to give. I want to take it all, and I will. First, though...”
“First? What can possibly be more important to you than that?”
Seth shook his head ruefully, even as a smile threatened to pull back the corners of his mouth. “Minx! How well you know me already, Esther. Perhaps you know, then, what I am about to say – and what I want from you. But to save any risk of aggravation to me should you misunderstand, for it is always dangerous to provoke an assassin’s temper, I shall lay it out very clearly for you. Before I claim you, I want to hear from you the words you refused to give me last night.”
Esther took a long and languid sip of the cooling coffee, rolling it around her tongue before she finally spoke again. “You want me to tell you that I want this?”
“Aye. I want you to ask me for all I yearn to give you, sweetheart; and when you and I both know you need this just as much as I do, I see no reason for you to defy me on this.”
The smile that illuminated her flushed face threatened to steal his breath away. “A fair point, sir. But you see, I want something from you in return before I will even consider it.”
She was far too intriguing, his little captive. Content for now to play along with her game, Seth rose from his chair and held out a hand to help her to her feet, unable to resist the compulsion to touch her for even a moment longer as her wide eyes sparkled in the rising light of the sun. “Esther, I do not imagine I shall want to deny you anything you seek from me.”
“Oh, but you have denied me this since first we met, sir. Unfortunately for you, unless you give it to me, I shall not give you what you seek either.”
He stiffened. She was determined, that much was clear, and he feared he knew now what she wanted – something he had given to no one for over twenty years. Though she let him pull her up, she instantly moved back and looked up at him without even a hint of discomposure as he found himself on the back foot once more. “Go on then, Esther,” he said, his voice clipped and low. “State your demand.”
“It is very simple,” Esther said. “Sir, all I want is your name. Tell me your name and I will give you the words you so badly want to hear.”
Yet despite that promise, Seth hesitated. Two words. Two simple little words would win him all he craved, he saw that now. It was a name, though, that he had guarded for so long that keeping it hidden was second nature. But with Esther, he was coming to see he wanted to hide nothing. This woman was not one who would be allowed to simply flit out of his life, taking her secret with him – and in an instant his mind was made up.
“My name is Seth. Seth Vaccari.”
Seth exhaled as she drew nearer, her head tilted to the side and a thrill of lust flitting across her face as his gaze dropped to her breasts. He loved how she had no shame in her naked body; far too many women saw nothing but inadequacies to be masked, failing to recognise the power of the beauty they possessed. Esther knew it, and though she wielded it as a weapon, he sensed that she wanted him just as much as he craved her in turn.
“Seth,” she echoed quietly, running her tongue across her lips again as he reddened. “Seth...yes, I think it suits you.”
He had not heard his true name on a woman’s lips since he left Italy, let alone spoken with such reverent, fearful awe as Esther breathed it with. The sound of it drove him crazy with lust, and it was a lust he could defy no longer.
Closing the distance between them, he forcibly snatched her into his arms, thrilling in her startled cry of delight. “Is it a name you think you could scream at the height of your pleasure, Esther?”
Their eyes locked once more. “Shall we find out, Seth?”
Seth could bear it no longer. “Damn right we will, but you know what I want first! Beg me,” he said roughly. “Beg me, Esther, beg me for my cock and then you will have it!”
She reached up to touch his face, her hand trembling as she arched into him and slowly moistened her lips. “Seth...”
He groaned in desperation, unable to hide just how aroused the sound of his name on her devilishly full lips left him.
“Seth,” Esther said again, clearly delighted by the power that one little word had over him. “Seth, I want you. My fierce, dangerous assassin, I want everything you have to give me, and I can wait no longer. I surrender myself to you, and you may do anything you want to me as long as you give me your cock!”
Lost to her, Seth swept her off her feet and let his body answer for him.
Though Seth seemed intent upon carrying her off to his bed as he had threatened, Esther could not bear to wait even that long to have his mouth on hers again. She fisted his shirt with a low, mewling cry that was laden with a demand he instantly understood. To her fierce elation, he slammed her up against the nearest wall and held her there with the weight of his body alone as his mouth laid claim to hers, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth as she surrendered to the inevitable.
She had known this was where they would end up since the first moment their eyes locked, and to be trapped in the arms of the assassin was such a deep and searing thrill that nothing else mattered any more. Eagerly allowing him every liberty he sought, she twisted against him to pull his shirt away from his body as his mouth issued a series of passionate demands she was powerless to disobey. No man had kissed her quite like him before; or perhaps it was simply that none of the men she kissed before Seth had the power to arouse her to this dizzying height.
It was gloriously clear that he had fallen slave to the same frenzy of lust that she had. Breaking the kiss to fight for breath, he kept her pinned against the wall and slowly but deliberately ripped his shirt away from her bare body. “Damn the bed,” he said hoarsely as the torn strips fell to the floor. “Esther, I cannot wait even that long to have you!”
Seth’s desperate words thrilled Esther beyond all comprehension. Forcing her hands between their bodies, she found her way down his taut chest and abdomen and boldly sought out the fastenings of his trousers. His breath caught in his throat, and when his trousers fell open and her hand closed around his cock, gently stroking and teasing the swollen head, he cursed loudly and stumbled backwards.
She instantly moved with him, unable to bear the thought of being away from him for even a heartbeat. His trousers slipped down his broad thighs as their eyes met, mirroring each other’s with the strength of the arousal driving them on without reason. As she raised herself onto the tips of her toes to guide his open shirt away and seek out his mouth again to urge him on, he took hold of her hips to pull them tightly up against him as he twisted to evade her mouth, this time speaking directly into her ear to send a fresh shiver of aching lust racing through her body.
“Have you got a -?”
“Sheath?” Esther inhaled sharply. “In my cloak.”
Seth stilled against her. He clearly hated that potent reminder she had set out last night with the intention of sharing Fleetwood’s bed, and no wonder. For the first time the world outside threatened to intrude, and her lower lip trembled as she pulled back from him.
“Seth...”
His jaw clenched and he turned away to stare unseeing out of the window, the tiny gleam of metal against his wrist unwittingly revealing the height of his agitation. She swallowed hard, unwelcome tears stinging her eyes as she slowly circled around him to look up into his reddened face once more.
“Seth,” she said again. “Are you thinking of Fleetwood?”
His top lip curled back and he jerked away from her, running his hands through his hair as he ground out his words. “Of course I am! How can I not think of the man whom you set out to give yourself to last night, Esther? The sheaths in your cloak that you are offering up to me are all the proof I need of that, and to my deep frustration it seems that the merest thought of you in another man’s arms is enough to drive me crazy!”
His words were the very last thing she expected to hear from the enigmatic assassin, and the terse jealousy they were laden with filled her with a desperate need to soothe it away. Consumed by the urge to do all she could to drive away the outside world once more, she followed him across the room and rested one trembling hand against his chest. He tensed, but this time he did not pull away.
“Say your piece, then,” Seth said slowly. “I sense you want to speak.”
He knew everything about her, this dangerous man; everything except her most important secret. Yet even that she now wanted to share with him, but when she had kept it so close to her chest for so long, she barely knew where to begin. It stood between them, though, so she had no choice but to haltingly offer up what little of the truth she could. “I gave him nothing more than I had to, Seth,” she began. “To me it was no more than business.”
To her consternation, though, that only seemed to agitate him further. “Were you his paid whore?” he demanded roughly.
“No!”
“Then tell me, pray, why did you surrender yourself to someone like him?! Esther, surely a man like Fleetwood could give you nothing of what we both know you need.”
“No.”
“Then why did he have the honour of calling you his?”
“Because he had something I needed, as did every other man I went to before him in the course of my work – and unfortunately for me, all I had to offer up in trade to win their trust was myself.” Esther hesitated as Seth’s eyes narrowed, but she had said too much to stop now. Drawing a deep breath, she met his intent stare without blinking. “But you...you are the first man I have ever wanted to give myself to for purely selfish reasons. I want you, Seth, like I have wanted no man before you, and I fear I will never again find any man who can make me feel this way!”
He fell to his knees on the rug and pulled her down with him, his eyes feverish with lust as she instantly straddled his broad thighs and nodded urgently. “Then how can I deny you even a moment longer, Esther?” he said, his voice barely more than a low, rasping groan. “I fear I should press you further and refuse to let this progress until you have surrendered all of your mysterious truths to me, sweetheart, but my need for you is too great. All else can wait, but I cannot, not now you have finally confessed to all there is between us!”
Their bare bodies entwined as her breath hitched, her legs locked around his waist and her arms around his neck. His hands were tight around her waist, gripping her so firmly two treacherous circlets of bruises would surely follow, but the sharp pain only made her want him all the more. Aware of how near they were to finally achieving all they sought, a violent shiver chased down the full length of her spine as he twisted and stretched out one hand for her cloak where it had fallen, extracting the tiny brown envelope and the sheaths it contained.
Esther could not tear her eyes away from Seth for even a moment. Even as his hand forced its way in between their bodies to deftly slide an oiled sheath over his cock, she stared at him with a feverish intensity, all too aware now that this was far more than mere lust between them. This man had truly proved to be the most dangerous she had ever known, but it was far too late to turn back. His cock was already twitching impatiently against her slit, and the man himself lifted his hand to tilt her jaw up towards him.
“I will hold nothing back, Esther,” he said, his voice low and a fire burning in his eyes that was at once a threat and a promise. “You have made me wait too long for this, and I am not a tender man by nature. I am used to taking what I want, and that is precisely what I intend to do now.”
“And I am at your mercy, Seth, so do with me what you will!”
His thumb stroked across her parted lips, but when she raised herself in search of the kiss she sensed he sought, he jerked his hips without warning and thrust his cock deep inside her. She cried out in stunned elation as she pushed down against him, astounded by how deeply and completely he filled her – and by how near her body already was to climaxing once more for him.
“Seth,” she gasped, surrendering another loud moan to him as his eyes darkened and both his hands tightened around her waist once more. “Oh God, Seth!”
The taut lines of his face finally began to relax and a tiny smile twitched on his lips. “I do not know why you are so surprised,” he said, his voice steady despite the deep thrusts he was making into her with every breath he took. “I knew from the start it would be this way for us. Do try not to climax too soon though, sweetheart, for I fear that the feel of you coming with my cock pounding into you will be far too glorious for me to hold back my own orgasm.”
Lost for words, Esther buried her head in Seth’s shoulder, revelling in the intimacy and allowing her body to speak for her. Now she understood why he held her waist so tightly, for as they moved against each other in a rapidly increasing frenzy of lust, he lifted her up and slammed her back down onto his cock with each pump of his hips.
She was no stranger to sex. Since joining the society she had taken four lovers in the name of her work, and she had not been a virgin when the society’s former leader came knocking for her; but of all the men she had allowed into her bed before now, none of them seemed to instinctively know what she needed the way Seth did. With him it was effortless, the most natural thing in the world. Nothing would ever feel as right as this, and a fire of deep-seated contentment spread through her veins as she felt that delicious knot of tension in her core begin to inescapably build, tightening further and stealing more of her breath with every passing moment.
The heat of her skin betrayed her, and triumph blazed on his face as he threw his head back. “Already?” he said, inhaling sharply when she bore down hard on him.
“Yes, and no wonder when you make me feel like this!”
Her breathless cry seemed to tear through what little self-restraint he had left. Slipping one arm around her to crush her tightly against his chest, he reared up and shifted the angle of his deep thrusts as his mouth laid claim to hers, swallowing the torrent of throaty moans that erupted out of nowhere as she quivered like the string of a bow, her body teetering of the very edge of all it craved until she opened her eyes to stare up into his.
There was nothing but the two of them in the world. Parting her lips under Seth’s every command, Esther held nothing back. Ferocious lust exploded in every last inch of her body, stealing her strength and her breath as one as she slumped against him and sobbed out the full height of her orgasm, powerless to hold it back as it soared to an even more dizzying height than the releases he had already given her.
Crooning in delight he briefly ceased his thrusts into her, holding her tightly and stroking her tear-streaked face as she jerked helplessly in the grip of her pleasure. She thought it would never cease, but finally she felt her body begin to relax against him. With a low, drawn-out moan she buried her face in his shoulder, gently rolling her hips against his cock to urge him without words to join her in her release.
The assassin needed no further encouragement. A slow smile burning on his furiously reddened face, he began to thrust up into her again, slowly at first but rapidly losing control until her tousled hair flew around her face with every stroke he made. She did not utter even a word of protest, for what he was giving her was precisely what she needed, and the only thing that could possibly heighten the ecstasy she felt was to see him come inside her.
“Seth -”
“Again!”
“Again?”
He groaned desperately, still pounding into her without mercy even as he seized her face for another assault on her lips. The moment he broke away and she gasped for breath, their eyes locked again. “My name, Esther!” he urged her. “Each time I hear you say my name I hurtle ever closer to the climax I know you want me to reach, and I do not know that I can withstand this glorious, torturous wait much longer!”
Elated by the power she had over him, she fisted his hair and turned his head to the side to whisper directly into his ear, trailing a line of heated kisses all over his neck as she breathed his name. “Seth,” she said softly, almost unseated by the violent force of the thrust he made as she spoke. “Come for me then, Seth. I am yours, so take from me all that you seek.”
His dark eyes widened, then with a strangled groan he thrust into her one last time, so deeply that it felt as if it was far more than their bodies joined together now. Awestruck, she pulled her head back again and stared up at him to commit every moment of this to her memory, desperate never to forget the hunger for her he wore so clearly on his face as his climax ripped through his tense body.
When he finally pulled back, he stared at her as if he wanted to say something, but as her breath hitched he slowly shook his head and lifted her away, the tenderness of his touch the polar opposite to all it had been just moments before. With a wry smile, he stretched out his muscular legs and eased himself down to lie on the floor.
With a sigh of sated exhaustion Esther nestled next to Seth, unable to stay away from him for even a heartbeat, but the moment her eyes threatened to drift closed he propped himself up over her again, resting on one elbow as his free hand slipped beneath her head. A fresh thrill of lust raced through her veins, and she gave up a breathless moan when he leaned in closer still with only one intent etched into his face.
“Do not even think of sleep, my Esther,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “I am far from done with you! To your feet.”
Obeying his commands was second nature now. Though she ached from head to toe, she leapt up a heartbeat before him and instantly moved into his waiting arms. His hands roamed all over her body, the urgency of the lust that bound them together in no way lessened by the climaxes the morning had already brought them, and she nodded urgently when he began to gently but forcibly steer them towards the door of the bedroom behind them.