An image of Lucy, sitting in the library, meekly accepting the invasions of his fingers, jumped into her mind. Desire crawled over her skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake. Her heart hammering against her ribs, she glared at the earl’s approach. Ready insults swam to the fore of her mind but, as he drew near, his sloe-black eyes rendered her mute with fear and awe. She bowed her head, her lashes sweeping down.
Marldon stood before her, held light fingertips beneath her chin and lifted it. He stepped back and surveyed her, his face impassive, his gaze roaming at leisure, taking in every inch of her. He stared at her exhibited breasts. A frown of disapproval creased between his dark brows. Clarissa was stock-still, her chin just as he had positioned it, fixed in a brave thrust.
He reached out to touch the underswell of one taut, high globe. Her skin tingled beneath his cool fingers and a frisson of arousal coursed through her body. It was the breast the stablemaster had sullied, and its striations, though fading, were still visible. Marldon lifted its
weight. Gently, he bounced the fullness of her mound in a cupped hand, regarding it with a contemplative expression. A gasp caught in Clarissa’s throat. Then, tenderly, he set the flesh back.
He looked beyond her shoulder. ‘Grimshaw,’ he said blandly. ‘Come here.’
A murmuring ripple spread through the onlookers and Jake, his head hung low, shuffled into the centre of the circle.
Lord Alec curved his hand to Clarissa’s flushed breast and addressed the stablemaster with dead eyes. Before the hushed crowd, he kneaded her soft orb with a gentle caress. He teased her roseate nipple and it crinkled to a throbbing point of pleasure.
Clarissa could not stifle a light moan. She drew soft, shaky breaths, for a moment losing sense of her audience. Marldon smiled faintly. Silently, bitterly, she cursed him.
‘I doubt the lady appreciated you mauling her,’ he said to Grimshaw, his thumb scuffing over her hardened nipple. ‘Yet note how her flesh rises to a more practised touch. Did the sight prove just too tempting, Jake? Does it tempt you still?’
Jake’s anxious eyes darted from his master’s face to Clarissa’s jutting bosom, and his spittle-flecked lips sagged with appetite.
Marldon fixed him with a cold expression and spread his hand over Clarissa’s other breast. With undulating squeezes, he slowly rotated the yielding globe. Her nipple tensed beneath his massaging palm. Then his stroking fingers played over the stiffening crest, enticing it to full erection.
A violent need inflamed Clarissa’s body, a need that was somehow fiercer for the watching eyes and Marldon’s arrogant dispassion. Her cheeks glowed with shame and rage, but she did not move; she did not speak. He would only crush an outburst with mockery.
‘You must learn, Jake,’ he began serenely, ‘that Clar
issa is mine, and mine alone. Permission must be granted before other hands can touch. And I did not grant you such permission, did I?’
Before Clarissa could protest, Marldon startled her with a swift movement.
He stepped away and, with a swoop of his arm, swiped the back of his hand across the stablemaster’s face. It might have been just the blow of a master chastising his servant. But it was not, for Marldon wore a diamond ring on his middle finger.
The crowd chorused a hiss of indrawn breath as Grimshaw recoiled with a guttural cry. Recovering his balance, the man gingerly patted his cheekbone then stared in dismay at the viscid red mess coating his fingers. An inch or so below his eye a raw gash pouted with swelling blood. Clarissa winced.
‘Get out of here,’ said Marldon levelly, examining his left hand and rubbing at the gemstone.
The wounded man lumbered away. Lord Marldon turned to Clarissa.
‘I cannot abide insubordination,’ he said. ‘Allow me to apologise for his trespass.’
‘I am not your chattel,’ she returned sharply, her revulsion spurring her to boldness.
‘No?’ replied Alec with quizzically arched brows. ‘Forgive me, but I believed we were to be married soon. I planned on a honeymoon in Venice before we take up residence in Wiltshire. What do you think, Clarissa? Personally, I’m rather fond of Venice and I thought it might suit your romantic sensibilities. I toyed with the idea of Paris but, really, the city isn’t what it used to be.’
‘My father will never permit a marriage when he hears of this,’ she said, her voice low and angry.
Lord Marldon gave a short, hoarse laugh.
‘Oh, how spirited women rouse me,’ he said, trailing a finger over her breasts.
He drew her close in a tight embrace, bearing down on her mouth. He forced a sultry, probing kiss into her
mouth. Clarissa tensed her muscles in rigid defence but every thrust and lash of his tongue conspired against her. She felt the insistent power of his body, so hard against hers, and a devastating lust melted her. She smelt his masculinity, sharp and tangy beneath warm, woody cologne, and she inhaled deeply, a voluptuous throb surging through her veins. When he broke away, she was as limp as new death in his arms.
‘Do you need to sit?’ he enquired briskly.
Clarissa shook her head, staggering a little as he released her.
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘Then meet some of my household: the upper servants.’ With a matador’s flourish, Marldon gestured part way round the ring of spectators. ‘Think of them as friends, Clarissa. I would introduce them personally, but I’m afraid Jake has set my patience at rather a low ebb. Excuse my discourtesy, please. But, in the days to come, we shall have plenty of time for the humdrum of formalities.’
Clarissa’s eyes swooped over the greedy faces in cursory acknowledgement.
‘You cannot keep me here,’ she said quietly, still enfeebled by the kiss. ‘What is it you want? Is it money? Do you intend holding me to ransom?’
Marldon laughed. ‘I confess, money has its attractions, Clarissa. In fact that was the first, most tempting thing about you. Would you believe my funds are so low I was actually considering selling this place? That is, until your father came along with his very generous offer. What was it now? Twelve thousand a year until his death? Yes, I think so. And then, after that, let me see, his estate in Sussex, his properties, his holdings in Pacific Steam, his fortune, and … something else … Oh, yes, how forgetful of me: his daughter. She would be thrown into the bargain too.’
Clarissa jerked her wrists against the ropes in a storm of fury. ‘Then you have lost it all with this,’ she replied through clenched teeth.
Marldon stroked over her brow and down one scarlet-hued cheek. ‘Oh, I think not,’ he said. ‘You see, the second most tempting thing was you, Clarissa. I received quite an enchanting photograph. You were wearing pearls. Do you recall it?’
‘Then may it satisfy you as a keepsake,’ she snapped, turning sharply from his touch. ‘As a reminder of the woman who refused to be your bride.’
‘You will capitulate,’ he stated confidently. He held her chin, compelling her to look into his narrowed, black eyes, and leant close. ‘I see desires in your body, so deep that you do not even dream of them. I will open up those delights to you, Clarissa. I will explore every shadowy recess of your appetite. I will awaken lusts so base that you would rather die than share them with another.’
‘No,’ she said faintly.
‘And awakened lusts,’ he continued, ‘no matter how shameful, can sleep only in nightmares – secret nightmares which will haunt you, plague you and corrode the very depths of your soul. You will find the prospect of a life without me intolerable. I predict a willing bride.’
Clarissa shivered. ‘No. It is not so. It will not be so.’ Her words fell away into a whisper.
Marldon slid an arm beneath her bound wrists and pulled her to him. She bent backward in a show of rejection and he seized the opportunity, bending to cover a rigid nipple with his warm, hungering mouth. His teeth pressed and scraped on the roughened cone, and his hellish tongue lapped and teased. He moved slowly from breast to breast, lavishing kisses over the soft, satin curves, and all the while a thumb rubbed steadily in the small of Clarissa’s back.
A murmuring groan escaped her lips, needful and despairing. She felt hot sensation tumble through her, and the creases of her sex filled with wanton appetite. Her moisture gathered inexorably, a swelling silkiness bathing her vulva in rich fluidity, easing her folds to openness. Her body had betrayed her.
She closed her eyes, blotting out the audience, blotting out him. She tried to think of dull things, of whist parties and Sundays, but her mind could not hold them. So she concentrated on Marldon, listing every reason she had for despising him. But reason deserted her, vanquished by lust. The only thing she knew was the fierce, demanding ache which engulfed her. Gasps echoed in her throat and her breath grew ragged. A flicker stirred between her thighs, growing to a pulse, then stronger still to a frantic throb.
Lord Marldon moulded a grasping hand to the curve of her buttocks. He caressed her through layers of silk, drawing her loins closer to his. Clarissa felt his desire, a stern hard rod, digging into her belly. She imagined that imprisoned shaft of flesh violating her maidenhead and a bittersweet intensity tugged deep within her. Gabriel had valued her honour but Marldon would place no store by it. In the haze of her arousal, Clarissa was thankful for her bondage. If he should attempt to ravish her, she would be unable to fend him off.
‘Hardly a good start,’ murmured Lord Marldon, smudging kisses over her neck, ‘considering you’re supposed to be resisting me.’
Clarissa moaned weakly. His hand roved over her breasts. His lips brushed against her ear.
‘Are you wet?’ he asked softly. The closeness of his mouth blurred his voice to a low intimate tone, thick with warped sensuality and so darkly threatening. The sound speared Clarissa’s groin with a shameless clutch of longing. ‘Are you?’ he repeated. ‘Shall we find out, Clarissa?’
Marldon stepped away from her and clicked his fingers. ‘Marcus, James, get rid of her drawers.’
Clarissa shrieked as a couple of strong, slender youths stepped forward, flexing their fingers and smiling eagerly.
‘No,’ she begged, her eyes wildly beseeching. ‘Not here. I entreat you. Let us be alone, my lord. Then you can have me, I swear. But, please, not here.’
Lord Marldon could not contain a faint gleeful smile. ‘You must accustom yourself to it,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid the prospect of coupling beneath the bedclothes fails to excite me.’
Clarissa writhed, continuing to plead, as the two men hooked their arms in hers. She hated Marldon with a savage, burning passion. He could not do this to her, not before so many eyes; he could not.
The men, battling against her protests, dragged her to an ottoman and forced her to lie back on the padded red silk, an expanse almost as wide as a bed. Hands clamped her kicking feet to the ground while others rummaged beneath her petticoats, fumbling with the waist-cord of her drawers. Her tied hands pressed a lump into her back, and she twisted and flapped like a dying fish. More than anything she wanted to conceal her seeping moisture. Marldon would doubtless torment her with it, brandish it like a trophy.
One of the youths dragged down her drawers and, with the noise of shredding silk, ripped them from her legs. Then there were hands on her ankles and shoulders, pinning her jerking body.
Lord Alec toed the heap of white fabric contemptuously.
‘While I’m not averse to taking my pleasure from a woman who kicks and screams,’ he said, ‘I’d rather you stop this charade of reluctance. Or I’ll be obliged to spread your ankles and bind them. A moment’s work, granted, but all the same rather tiresome, don’t you think? And so degrading when one has an audience.’
Clarissa held her muscles tight, pushing against the restraining hands, until the sense of his words filtered into her mind. If she resisted him with force, no matter how hopeless, it would be met with force. Her body sagged in defeat and the two men released her at Marldon’s bidding. Then she would resist him with passivity.
Lord Marldon flung up her skirts, baring her ivory
pale thighs and the stark black curls of her mons. She could not help but clamp her legs together. She lay there, staring up at the ceiling’s blue and gold tiles, striving to find a steadiness of breath. The eyes on her vulnerable half-nudity seemed to increase with every beat of her frightened heart.
The earl moved around her, a panther waiting to pounce. He stood by her feet, put his hands to her knees and stretched her wide. She felt his rapacious gaze feasting on her vulva, split, glistening and ripe with desire. He slid up her tensed thighs and brushed lightly over the tremulous pouch of her labia, tickling the fronds of hair. Then, with his fingertips, he opened her plump rosy lips. He held them apart like a shining red butterfly, assessing the view. The heel of each hand rested in the hollows of her splayed inner thighs.
Clarissa was rigidly immobile.
Marldon’s finger slicked through her ready fissure and teased at the entrance to her warm opening.
‘Delicious,’ he breathed.
She made a noise of anguished pleasure, feeling the tension thaw. Her thighs lolled open. Her hips strained to rise but she would not let them. She smothered every groan as his subtle, tricksy fingers explored her tender flesh. He nudged her pouting clitoris and, with insidious slowness, began revolving the pad of his thumb over the tiny bead, tempting her to succumb, to relinquish control.
Clarissa whimpered and her hot, pulsing loins lifted, pursuing his clever ministrations. Marldon laughed quietly and dipped a pale, lean finger into her narrow opening, finding her succulence, her eagerness.
‘I see the artist has left me your virginity,’ he said with calm detachment. ‘How generous. Remind me to thank him sometime.’
He began to drive in and out, taking strokes that were long and indulgent. He stirred and tickled deeply, then trailed back, finding the sensitive pad of her inner wall.
He lingered there, rubbing and teasing. Clarissa cried out, her sex pounding, her head tossing wildly on the silk. Marldon’s thrusts grew faster and faster. She was lost, abandoned to pleasure.