The Pleasure King's Bride (6 page)

“It’s very good of you.”

“A pleasure.”

“And thank you for the delicious meal,” Christabel said belatedly, wondering just how much the old woman encompassed in her understanding. Not that it mattered. She would probably never meet Vikki Chan again. One night was one night.

“There’s some ice-cream left over if you want it, Mummy.”

“No. I’ve had enough, Alicia.” The only food she wanted now was food for the soul, her own private feast of memories that might make some sense of being a woman, not just a mother.

“I’ll look after coffee, Vikki,” Jared slid in. “Thank you for everything.”

The old woman flashed him a wise look as she finished clearing the table. “Then I shall retire, too.” Having loaded the last things onto the traymobile, she turned an indulgent smile to Alicia. “You’d best say good-night to your mother now. We have much to do.”

“Yes. We have lots to do,” came the eager agreement. “Good night, Mummy,” she cried, running towards her, arms outflung for a hug and a kiss.

Christabel had an electric few moments, hoping her daughter’s feet wouldn’t catch the hem of her dress as she scooped her up in their usual embrace. To her intense relief, she managed to negotiate the lift safely, with Alicia perched happily against her shoulder as they exchanged good-night kisses.

“Do I get a good-night kiss, too?” Jared asked teasingly, moving into an easily accessible position beside Christabel.

Alicia giggled and slid over to plant one on his offered cheek. It was done without the slightest hesitation, and although Jared wasn’t a stranger to her daughter, it was unusual for her to be so readily familiar with a man. Was it a natural affinity, an instinctive liking and trusting?

There was no future for them with Jared King, Christabel savagely reminded herself as she lowered Alicia to her feet again. There was no point in wondering about how good he might be for a fatherless child.

“Off you go,” she urged Alicia. “I’ll come and get you when it’s time to leave.”

“It’s the shell room, Mummy.”

“I’ll show her where it is,” Jared assured her.

“Good night to both of you,” Vikki Chan said, bowing benevolently before wheeling the traymobile away, back into the house, Alicia trailing after her, asking about dragons.

There were too many dragons to fight, Christabel thought, suddenly swamped by a wave of wretched misery. Money was a curse, a terrible, terrible curse, and she was powerless to make it go away. Apart from everything else, there was always the question... had the speedboat been sabotaged?

Laurens dead, Bernhard dying of cancer despite the best medical treatment in the world...no-one to question what the money men did with the Kruger fortune once Bernhard was gone. The heir was a child who could be controlled, manipulated...
disposed of if necessary!

Christabel shivered.

A warm arm encircled her shoulders. “She’s safe with Vikki.”

Safe?
Not even an army of bodyguards could keep them
safe!
And what kind of life was that—imprisoned in a golden cage, never knowing who could be trusted when there was so much money at stake?

Tonight was one little window of freedom.

She sighed away her angst, determined not to let it intrude on her time with Jared. It was too precious to lose, even one second of it.

“So now we’re alone,” she said, lifting her hands to do what she had wanted to do ever since he’d come to open the gate for her. She slid her fingers through the black curls on his chest and smiled up at him. “I want to touch you, too.”

Tiger
eyes smiling at him...

The thought crossed Jared’s mind, even as his skin seemed to leap with exultation at the sheer pleasure of her touch. There was more at stake here than fulfilling fantasies, he swiftly told himself. He sensed something deeply primitive working through her, an almost savage intent flowing through the fingers curling through his chest hair, her nails lightly scraping.

She had decided.

Now she was following through.

Was it with the heart of a tiger going for its kill, taking quickly, feasting quickly, walking away with a satisfied appetite?

No!

The fierce protest ripped through Jared.

This night would go
his
way!

One night, she’d said, but one night was never going to be enough for him. He had to make her feel it wasn’t enough for her, either.

Her palms slid sensuously up to his shoulders, moving his shirt off them. He had to seize control before she tipped him out of it, make the moves his, not hers, slow everything down. But before he could stop her, she leaned forward and ran her tongue over his nipple, then pressed her mouth around it and...he couldn’t bring himself to make any move.

His mind slid into meltdown, fired by her desire for him and exploding with the sensations she was evoking, tasting him so erotically, and her hands gliding down his arms, pushing the sleeves of his shirt ahead of them. His stomach was contracting, his heart beating like a drum, wanting her mouth to move to that side, too. His shirt was dropping off him. He caught one sleeve as it fell past his hand, not knowing why, only that it was something to catch, to hold on to.

Then her hands were stroking the sensitive flesh under his rib cage and she kissed him over his heart. He had no control over his erection. His body had a life of its own and he felt it straining upwards, wanting her touch, yet he knew it would be over then and there if she did reach down and...fingers sliding under the waistband of his shorts.

He had to stop her.

Now!

He grabbed her under her arms, hauled her up and kissed her, ravishing the mouth that had ravished his body. She came up on tiptoe, flinging her arms over his shoulders, raking his back with her nails, as passionately intense as he in her wanting, kissing him back with a wild fervour that almost took him past the point of no return again.

He carried her to the balustrade, shoved his shirt over the bare wood, sat her on it and lifted his head back to draw breath. Her eyes were glazed amber, her lips still parted. The realisation hit him she had acted instinctively, compulsively, driven by desires she hadn’t fully recognised, let alone planned on carrying out.

“Christabel...”

The soft call of her name cleared the glaze from her eyes and she looked at him with such vulnerable appeal his heart turned over. He lifted his hand to her cheek, stroking with a tender caring he hoped she felt.

“I want to love you...not take you.”

“Was I doing something wrong?” she asked anxiously.

And he knew then, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that what she was doing with him was new to her, that her struggle all along was not only with his interest in her, but with a sexual awakening she hadn’t known how to cope with, and tonight it had become a stronger force than all the other hidden forces in her life.

What manner of man had she married for her to be so unsure of herself? He shook that enigma out of his mind. The only important thing was she’d never known
this
deep an arousal with any other man. It was as unique to her as it was to him and right now she needed to be reassured.

“No. Nothing wrong. Just too fast. You would have had me coming before I could make it special for you,” he gently explained.

“Oh!”

He felt her cheek warm and to nullify any embarrassment he’d stirred, he bent and ran his tongue over the inner tissue of her parted lips. Then he kissed her slowly, sensually, determined on keeping urgency at bay, wanting to show her how it could be for them, making love.

He dropped his hand to her shoulder and gradually stretched the low neckline of her dress, shifting the bodice down below one elbow so he could lift her arm out of it, effectively baring her breast. She moaned as he filled his hand with the soft, yielding fullness of her naked flesh, and to his ears it was the sound of longing.

Sensing he had done what she wanted done to her, he bent and covered the dark areola with his mouth, swirling his tongue around it, lashing the distended nipple, tugging lightly on it with his teeth, exciting himself as her breathing quickened and he gently squeezed her breast in a pumping action. She clutched at his head, urging him on, emitting sexy little cries of intense pleasure.

She wanted more, was begging for more. He dragged the rest of her bodice down, freeing her other breast, and she actually grabbed his head and moved it across, expelling a ragged sigh as he answered the raging desire, working the deep, sensual magic he knew was coursing through her, building the ache, building the need, using his hand to keep the sensations flowing through both her breasts, and when she wrapped her legs around him and arched back, he knew she was teetering on the edge of climax.

He wound his arms around her, scooped her off the balustrade and crushed her to him, loving the naked moistness between her thighs rubbing against his bare stomach as he carried her, his face buried in the deep valley between her breasts, revelling in her lush femininity.

“Jared... what... where?” She was disoriented, confused, hanging onto his head.

“Going to turn off the light above the table,” he explained.

“Oh! Was it...was it like that for you when I...when I...?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never felt like this.” She sounded dazed, disbelieving.

“Neither have I.”

It was the truth. He was seized with an all-consuming desire to give her everything she’d never known, for him to be the one she would always remember, her first real lover. And the one man she’d want to keep in her life, the one she couldn’t resist sharing herself with.

He closed the front door, blocking any sound from carrying through the house, switched off the pool of light thrown by the lantern and spread Christabel across the table.

“What are you doing?” she gasped in bewilderment.

“Freeing my hands so I can finish taking off your dress.”

She laughed in surprise, wriggling to help him. “Your shorts, too. I want you as naked as me.”

He swiftly removed his remaining clothes, then slid her dress down her legs, ridding her feet of sandals at the same time.

“Touch your breasts, Christabel,” he softly advised her as he parted her legs and moved between them, stroking her inner thighs. “Feel them as I felt them. Know them as I did...beautiful, sensual, full of womanly excitement. Do it as I do this....”

Very gently he moved his caressing to her moist lower lips. “Close your eyes. Think only of feeling,” he murmured, swooping down to kiss and stroke and tease into intense arousal the most intimate part of her, spreading one hand through the silky hair above it to hold her still for him, sliding the other down the softly swollen folds, deepening the caress, circling the passage inwards, feeling the convulsive clutch of her muscles as he moved his mouth over and around the peak of excitement and breathed in the musky scent of her rash of desire for him...so sweet and heady and intoxicating.

“Jared...”

His name bursting needfully from her throat as she quivered, writhed, and he was filled with a wild exultation... Christabel calling for him...her man...the only one to make her feel like this.

“Jared...please...I can’t bear it.... I can’t....”

“Yes, you can,” he soothed, moving to answer her need. “Go with it. Let it happen.”

And he kissed his way up her pulsating body, deftly replacing the caress of his hand with the extension of himself she really craved...the glorious exhilaration of feeling her convulse around him in frantic welcome as he entered, pushing slowly inwards, providing the solidity for her to shatter around.

“Oh...” She arched in ecstasy.

He paused, kissing the highly thrusted peaks of her breasts.

“Oh...oh...” Tremulous waves rolling through her. She suddenly grabbed him, fiercely pulling him upwards. “More...more, Jared.”

He gave her the full length of himself, plunging hard and fast to the inner rim of her womb, and again she arched, loving all he could give, and the blissful, “Oh!” as she felt the completion of his thrust poured a sweet elation through Jared.

He kissed her mouth, passionately reinforcing the intimate link of their bodies. Her arms wrapped around him. Her legs wrapped around him. She clung to him, greedy for every sensation of this deep and mutual possession of each other, hugging him so tightly, he knew she wanted the feeling prolonged forever.

“Jared, this is so incredibly wonderful,” she breathed against his lips.

The joy of her uninhibited heart zinged through his heart, instantly compelling the urge to control his own need while giving her all the pleasure he could. “It will keep coming,” he promised. “Just ride with it now.”

One orgasm—even if it was her first—wasn’t special enough. Wanting her to feel a rolling sequence of them, Jared moved them both into alternating rhythms—fast and slow—reading her response, her need, driving her to each quivering pinnacle, riding the crest of it, sliding to the next one, loving the voluptuous roll of her body as she flowed with him and around him, the little cries of pleasure that burst from her throat, the sheer abandonment of herself to him.

His excitement in giving her this pleasure became so intense, he could not contain it any longer, and the last shred of control left him as he drove towards answering his own urgent need. She was so hot, so welcoming, so deliciously open to him, it was impossible to slow the compelling rush towards climax. Tension gripped his body, stretching it to the inevitable burst of sweet violent spasms, and again she wrapped herself around him, revelling in the gift of himself, and she was kissing him, caressing him, loving him, and for Jared it was the most perfect moment of his life.

“You truly are the pleasure King,” she murmured in husky wonderment, still pressing soft little kisses on his face. “You truly are.”

The title bemused him. “Is that how you think of me?”

“It’s in your eyes, the way you touch...even that very first night you came to the markets, you took pleasure in running your fingers over my jewellery display, and when you looked at me...” She sighed, her warm breath feathering his cheek.

“Looking at you gave me pleasure, Christabel, and I want more of it now, looking at you lying on my bed where I’ve wanted you a thousand times. And that’s where I’m taking you right this minute.”

She gave a gurgle of delighted laughter as he scooped her up and held her cradled across his chest, his legs purposefully striding down the veranda to the French doors that led into his bedroom. It was coming out right, he thought triumphantly. Christabel hung her arms around his neck and nestled her head on his shoulder, wanting what he wanted.

“The rain has stopped,” she observed in surprise.

“So it has,” he agreed carelessly.

“A storm to remember,” she murmured.

He smiled, interpreting her words as proof of the feelings he’d successfully implanted in her memory.

Once inside his bedroom, he laid her down on the pillows and switched on a table lamp, driven to match the reality of her to the fantasy he’d built up in his mind. He walked around the bed to the other side, feasting his eyes on the sheer perfection of her.

Her glorious hair was just as he’d imagined, a lustrous fan of silky waves, rippling out in sensual invitation, and her skin did gleam like smooth honey. Her body was the very epitome of femininity, lush curves and long, elegant legs, but he saw not a trace of the tiger image he’d imbued her with.

There was almost an awkward self-consciousness in the way she lay there, waiting for him to join her, not shy, but acutely aware of her nakedness and his appraisal of it. Her fingers made agitated little movements, as though uncertain of whether they should cover something, at least a little.

It made him wonder why...how she could not know the power of her sexual attraction... what had undermined the pride and confidence she should have?

Her eyes were not inviting dangerous play. Her eyes were fixed on him, avidly drinking in every detail of his physique as though it was a source of intense inner marvelling. It hit Jared forcefully that everything about this situation was new to her, being with him like this, both of them freely naked, totally unrestricted intimacy with no fear of criticism.

It was oddly moving that she was delighting in him so much, like a child being showered with gifts at a surprise party. He stretched out beside her, propping himself up on his elbow so he could watch the expressions on her face. She smiled at him, no exotic mystery in her eyes, more a twinkle of happy mischief.

“Am I allowed to touch you now?’’ she asked.

He grinned an open invitation. “All embargoes on touch removed. Go right ahead.”

“Anywhere?’’

“Whatever takes your fancy.”