grating on stone, and he was able to push the door open.
Briefly, he wondered if anyone had ever inadvertently pushed a cupboard in front of any of the doors and upset someone’s fun and games. Luckily, it hadn’t happened this time, and he was able to enter a small, unfurnished, and by the tired look of the paintwork, unused room.
However, the purpose he was using it for was perfect. It opened into a tiny chamber leading off the bathing room attached to Adriana’s bedchamber. A room forbidden to all staff.
Carefully, he closed the door from the stairs and walked with his usual stealth across the wooden floor into the anteroom, where he set down the package he had carried with him. After taking out part of the contents, he nodded to himself. He could only hope he would have a need for the rest. For, he realized, he was eager to see how Adriana would react. Better to know now, rather than in the future. He then crossed the steam-filled bathing room, still redolent of perfumed water—the heady scent he always associated with her. The door to her bedchamber was ajar, the flickering flames of the fire throwing patterns and reflections on the walls inside.
In his usual understated manner, he pushed the door open farther and saw her sitting quietly in a chair beside the hearth, a lamp beside her and an open book on her lap. Her long hair was loosened from all confines and streamed in glossy waves down her back, partially covering her gauzy robe. Seemingly she did not hear him, for she neither looked up from her book nor acknowledged his presence.
“My orders were explicit. I wish you to be naked. You knew this and chose to ignore them? As my mistress, you will always greet me on occasions such as this, unclothed. Naked except for this.” He took a string of perfectly matched and graded pearls from his pocket and let them slip between his fingers, their shimmering surfaces dancing in the firelight. Once around her neck they would be a perfect pathway all the way down her body to her cunt.
He watched as Adriana carefully placed a marker into her book before closing it and setting it on the table. Her head tilted up to look at him, and he saw the laughter and desire lurking in her eyes. She made no move to take the pearls from his outstretched hand.
“So?” he prompted.
“So?” she parroted. “As I am not yet your mistress, I see no need to follow any direction you give me. If and when I do become she, then of course I will heed your directives.”
Tease. So she chose to poke and prod. So be it.
“Then we must discern if that role is one you wish. Possibly ‘tis time for your audition.”
She rose gracefully and stood in front of him, her unfettered breasts, only covered by a thin layer of gauze, rubbing the cloth of his coat, before looking him up and down, slowly, measuring, and to his suddenly impatient cock, arousing.
“And yours, my lord. And yours. However, I cede to your superior knowledge on this occasion and look to you for direction.”
He took one soft hand and kissed her wrist before a tiny nip to the soft flesh on her Mount of Venus had her gasping and him groaning with need. Ashley, he admonished himself silently. Remember to go soft and slow will bring the fastest results.
He so wanted those results sooner rather than later. In order to hear that soft, sexy sigh again, he repeated his actions on her other wrist, reveling in the tiny bruise he created.
There and then, he determined once she was his, he would mark her in more ways than a sexy bruise. His mark, whether they became man and wife—which he devoutly hoped—or not, would be inked on her in a place only he would have access to. The thought increased the pressure in his pantaloons as his manhood, swollen already, began to demand immediate recognition and restitution for its patience. He thanked his tailor for the soft-knitted garments that stopped him from being in more agony than he already was.
“Well then, my dear, it is time
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