A Devil Named DeVere (The Devil DeVere)(85)

"Why are you doing this to me?" she asked. "I thought we had a simple bargain. I would come to you and gratify you physically. I have come. I am willing to do as you wish. Why do play with my emotions like this?"

"Do I?" he asked innocently.

"Yes! You can never leave well enough alone. You must always be the master manipulator, Ludovic, the ultimate puppeteer, making everyone dance to your tune. It's all about you, isn't it? But I refuse to dance this time. You can take me all you like and in as many ways as you please, but just know this, when this time is over, it's over. Whether purged or branded, I will leave you and never look back."

***

"All I like and in as many ways as I please?" he repeated. "You make me an offer I cannot refuse. But contrary to your belief, this is not all about me, Diana. No, it's very much about you; for I can and will give you mindless, bone-melting, heart-sundering pleasure. And if after that, you find you can still walk away or that you can still walk at all"—he paused with a smirk—"so be it."

He reached for the neckline of her shift. "As I said before, you wear far too many clothes." A simple tug released the fabric. He lowered it by inches, first revealing her creamy white shoulders. He skirted his knuckles along her exposed skin, watching gooseflesh form in their wake. "You cannot claim to be cold this time, my dear." He lowered the garment to her elbows, trapped her lower arms in her sleeves, confining them to her sides. He captured her breast with his mouth, nipping and sucking on her tender, white flesh, feasting as if ravenous.

Though he thought she would fight it for as long as she could, Diana surprised him by arching in to him, wordlessly urging him to take more. He pulled a distended nipple into his mouth, biting lightly and then suckling hard until she cried out. A chuckle grew in his chest and erupted from his lungs. He drew back from her breast to slide her shift off to pool on the floor and then worked his mouth up her neck, murmuring hotly against her skin until he reached the hollow of her ear. "There's no point in denying yourself the pleasure now, is there?"

"No. None at all." She breathed on a sigh that he captured with his mouth. They played a breath-stealing game at first, but as their lips melded and tongues collided in that first tentative touch, the urgency flared. Moaning and clutching each other, their tongues tangled, gliding and sliding, growing in intensity to the rhythmic thrusting simulation of sex. He cupped her buttocks, drawing her closer. Their heated bodies, already slick with sweat, pressed together, his swollen shaft sliding deliciously against her hot, moist mons.

"Is there more you wished to show me?" he asked, sliding a hand between her legs and biting her shoulder.

"There was much more." She moaned. "We did not finish your massage. Six times I am told to withhold your bo?alma to bring you a rapturous release. That was only one, Effendi."

"You wish to bring me to brink again, Diana? To torment me with pleasure? Then it's good we have time, isn't it? For there are many things I yet wish to do to you." He tongued down her neck back toward her breasts. "But if it is your desire to torture me, you possess the most devastating of devices for that purpose."

"Oh?" She lifted a brow.

"God, yes." He groaned and plied open-mouthed kisses to the tops of her breasts. "Since the first moment I laid eyes on you four years ago, I have fantasized about one exquisite torture."

"And what is that?" she asked.

"This." He took the weight of her voluptuous mounds in each hand and molded them tightly together. "I have dreamed of sliding my kam?? in this lovely, lush valley of yours...sheathing myself in their milky-white softness." He heard her breath hitch and watched her eyes widen with patent surprise.

"No conditions. No constraints?" she asked breathlessly.

He smiled. "Those were the terms of the wager, as I recall."

She regarded him with a mix of surprise and something more. Curiosity? Desire? "How is such a thing even done?"

His pulse leaped at her implied acquiescence. He backed her slowly toward the table and gave her a wicked grin. "My dear odalisque, I would be most delighted to show you."

***

He rolled two more towels to support her head and neck before lowering Diana onto her back. The marble table was hot and hard beneath her, but the anticipation of what he would do to her far outweighed her discomfort. His blue gaze flickered like a flame. The intensity of the look, rife with unspent passion, stole her breath away. This was what Salime had spoken of, the ability to cloud his mind of all but desire.

Ludovic retrieved the bottle of almond oil, coating hands and gliding them over her sensitive flesh. Diana moaned with bliss at the sensations he elicited deep in her sex as he rubbed her nipples between his fingers and smoothed the oil onto her chest until the mounds of her breasts were slick and glistening. He stood back only far enough to regard his handiwork, an air of fierce desire contorting his features. He was still semierect and growing harder and longer before her eyes.

She gazed in fascination at the proud purple head, now fully exposed to view by his circumcision. "Why did you do it?" she asked.

"I told you I had already considered conversion and then there arose the situation with Salime."

"So you sacrificed your foreskin to save a damsel in distress?"

He shrugged. "It seemed a small sacrifice at the time."