Savage Nights: The Savage Trilogy Read online

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  1.

  On the road to London, 1907

  “You’re not frightened, are you?” The seventh Earl of Savage leaned closer, curling his long arm around the back of my shoulders in a gesture that could have been protective, or something else entirely. “If you’ve any regrets—”

  “None,” I said swiftly, determined to show no hesitation, no doubts. “And if I shiver, it’s from excitement, not fear.”

  He smiled slowly, and if I hadn’t shivered before I did then. Desire did that to me, and I’d never desired a man more than I did Savage. Wild, reckless, burning desire, desire that I’d never dreamed possible or ever wished to end: that was what I felt for Savage.

  We sat in the curving back bench of his Rolls-Royce, racing through the inky darkness of the Hampshire countryside, towards London and away from the house party at Wrenton Manor. There was no moon, no stars, and the only light came from the car’s headlights and silver carriage lanterns. Sitting on the other side of the curtained glass, Savage’s driver clearly had orders to carry us to London as fast as was possible. Savage and I traveled at a breakneck pace, heedless of anything save each other in our luxurious haven.

  “You shiver from excitement,” Savage said. He eased aside the front edge of my sable coat to find the red silk of my evening gown. Following the rules of the house we’d just left, I’d daringly worn nothing beneath it—no petticoats, no chemise, no corset—and as he laid his hand upon my thigh I felt at once the heat of his palm and his fingers through the slide of light silk.

  He heard the little catch in my breathing, and his smile widened. A flash of reflected light briefly lit his face in the darkness, a glimpse that was exactly long enough to remind me of how seductively, impossibly handsome he was. In that flash his face was all planes and shadows, hard in all the ways that a man should be, and framed by hair as black as his evening clothes. Yet his mouth was sensuously full, and his pale gray-blue eyes could glow with a white-hot intensity that weakened my knees whenever he looked at me, the way he was studying me now.

  “You are excited, Mrs. Hart,” he said. “You’re almost feverish. It’s rather obvious, isn’t it?”

  “To you it is,” I breathed. “Because of you.”

  “How very scandalous,” he said with mock severity. “Are all the widows of New York society as eager as you?”

  “The past doesn’t matter.” I didn’t need to be reminded of my loveless, stultifying life as Mrs. Arthur Hart that I’d left behind, or of the overbearing husband who’d been impossible to mourn. In my head I’d already begun to divide my life into the time before I’d met Savage and the time since I’d become his. Impatiently I shrugged my shoulders free of my fur coat, too heated now for either its warmth or its ostentation. “The past doesn’t matter at all, not for either of us.”

  “Seven days together in London,” Savage said, his voice low. He pushed up the hem of my gown and slid his hand beneath it, roaming higher across my silk stockings and above my jeweled garters to the heated skin of my thigh. “That’s all I offer.”

  “That’s all I want,” I said. “You, for seven more days, and seven more nights.”

  “There will be talk, you know.” He pulled me onto his lap, where at once I felt the hard, blunt thrust of his cock through his trousers pushing against my bottom. “It means nothing to me, but for a woman—”

  “Let them talk,” I said, full of bravado. I meant it, too. Considering the dramatic exit we’d just made together from a house party that had included some of England’s best-bred society, I would be surprised if there weren’t gossip. I ran my palm across his chest, over the immaculate white linen of his shirt and the hard muscles beneath. “They will say what they will regardless.”

  “A brave declaration,” he said as if he didn’t believe me. He hooked one finger into the deep neckline of my gown, slowly pulling it down to bare my breasts. I arched towards him, relishing the feel of the silk sliding over my skin. Framed by the red gown and the dark fur, my skin was as pale and luminous as the moonlight, and even in the shadows he must have seen how my nipples were already tight and hard, aching for his touch. “Words may not be the only risk.”

  “I told you before,” I said quickly, perhaps a little too quickly to be convincing. “I’m not afraid.”

  “You never are, are you?” He was tracing the full underside of one breast with the pad of his thumb and purposefully ignoring my aroused nipple. “Not even when you should be.”

  “Savage, if you are trying to—”

  “Hush,” he said, pressing his fingertip to my lips. “All I ask is that you do not forget the obvious: that whatever happens between us cannot be undone.”

  “I’d never wish for that.” Restlessly I parted my legs with a whisper of silk, feeling the smooth wool of his evening trousers against my bare thigh. I was offering myself to him, wanting him to take me there in the car. The speed, the darkness, even the driver on the other side of the glass only served to heighten my desire. With Savage I was shameless; he’d made me like that.

  “But you wish for many other things,” he said, glancing down.

  “It’s been hours, Savage,” I said breathlessly. “That dinner was interminable, sitting there beside you and not being able to touch you. I want you now, here. I need you.”

  His hand stilled on my breast. “You’re being forward, Eve. Bold, even brazen. That’s not how an Innocent should behave with her Master.”

  A guilty flush spread over my face, and I was thankful for the half-light in the car that hid it. He was right, of course. Just because we had left the house where he’d introduced me to the Game (a clever house-party conceit with Masters and Innocents, rules and forfeits, that we’d played at all the time we’d been guests at Wrenton) did not mean our roles had been abandoned, too. How soon I’d forgotten what he’d spent this last week teaching me!

  “No, Master,” I murmured, instantly obedient as he expected me to be, and as I’d come to expect of myself as well. “I forgot, Master.”

  “You forgot.” He sighed, cupping my breast in the palm of his head and running his thumb lightly over my nipple. “You should be punished for being so forgetful.”

  “Yes, Master.” I held my breath, not daring to show how much his torturous little caress was affecting me. “I deserve to be punished.”

  “The most obvious punishment, of course, would be to deny you what you most crave.” He shoved the hem of my dress over my hips to bare me below the waist. He slipped his fingers through my dark curls to find the opening of my sex and pushed one thick finger inside. The moisture of my blatant arousal made it easy for him to thrust deep, finding the place inside me that was most sensitive. I gasped, unable not to, and arched my back to take him deeper.

  “There,” he said, his voice growing rougher. “That’s what you crave, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Master,
” I said, the two words breaking along with my self-control.

  “Yes,” he repeated, adding a second finger to stretch and stroke my swollen, greedy passage. “Yet if I were to deny you this, then I would also be punishing myself.”

  “Yes, Master,” I said, my sex tightening around his fingers. “That is, no, Master, you do not deserve the same punishment as I.”

  “What a perceptive Innocent you are, Eve,” he said, his own breathing growing ragged. “You’ve redeemed your earlier impulsiveness.”

  “Thank … thank you, Master,” I whispered, my body trembling taut and straining for the release that he was building within me. From experience I knew he could keep me poised here on the torturous edge of release as long as he wanted to, and I knew, too, that he’d do exactly that if I couldn’t prove myself worthy.

  He smiled, a devil’s smile in the half-light. “What would you like as a reward, Eve?”

  My fevered quim begged for him to finish what he’d begun and set me free. But that wasn’t the answer he sought, and if I begged he’d only deny me more.

  “Your reward?” he asked again. “Surely there’s something you would like, something that would please us both.”

  “Your … your cock,” I managed to say. “I would like your cock, Master.”

  “Exactly.” His smile widened as he drew his fingers from my sex, and I shuddered at the sudden emptiness. “It’s yours to take.”

  Quickly I turned on his lap, sitting with my knees on either side of his thighs. With shaking fingers I undid the row of black buttons on his trousers and at last freed his cock: hard and ruddy and as eager for me as I was for it. I pulled my gown over my head, leaving nothing between us except the long strand of pearls he’d given me yesterday. I loved that he was still clothed with such formality while I was not, the same way it had been the night he’d first fucked me.

  With a kind of reverence I took his cock in my hands, heavy and hot and hard as granite in my palms, and he groaned at my touch. Bracing one hand on his shoulder against the swaying motion of the car, I poised to lower myself onto his cock, rubbing the honey-sweet moisture of my quim on its head and prolonging this last delicious moment of anticipation for us both.

  “Now, Eve,” he ordered harshly. “Now.”

  And with a shuddering sigh I sank down and took him as deep as I could.

  Bliss.

  2.

  “It’s later than I thought,” Savage said, pushing aside the motorcar’s silk curtain a fraction to glance from the window. “The night is nearly done, and so is our journey.”

  “I wish it weren’t so.” I tried, and failed, to keep the regret from my voice. Savage and I had been nearly inseparable since the first night at Wrenton Manor, and our time together had been intoxicating, and yet it had only left me with an insatiable thirst for more. I couldn’t contain the ache of longing that marked the end of the last seven days … and nights. “I wish it could’ve gone on forever.”

  “There were some moments I’d rather not relive,” he said drily. “In life, I find it is generally best to look forward, rather than back to the past.”

  I understood. I’d no wish to repeat the unwanted attentions of Baron Blackledge or Savage’s violent reaction to them, either. At least that was what I hoped he meant, and not something I’d said or done. Seeking reassurance, I slipped my hand beneath his evening coat to rest it lightly on his thigh. I was once again dressed, of course, as was he, both of us ready for town and no longer for each other’s desires.

  From the moment we’d reached the edges of London, trading starry midnight skies for the harsh glow of the streetlights, things had begun to change subtly between us, and it seemed that with every passing hour the magic that had bound us together was fading as surely as those stars overhead. I felt the propriety of the city outside the motorcar’s windows pressing down upon us, as surely as a leaden weight.

  Yet all of that made little difference to the desire I felt for Savage. It still excited me to feel the hard, lean muscle of his thigh beneath the soft black wool of his trousers, and even more to realize that the slight tensing of those muscles came in response to my touch.

  “I cannot wait for the future,” I said, running my fingers lightly across his thigh. “As long as you will be there to share it with me.”

  His hand covered mine and held it still. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Eve.”

  “I do,” I insisted. “I know that with you I’m happier than I have ever been in my life.”

  The hint of a humorless smile flickered across his face. “You shouldn’t look for happiness from me.”

  “What if I have found it?”

  “Then you are mistaken.” He turned my hand into his so our fingers were linked. “I can offer you pleasure—great pleasure—and diversion for the next seven days, and nights, but nothing else. Expect more and you will only be disappointed.”

  I didn’t believe him but knew better than to challenge further. He’d his share of dark places in his soul, as I’d mine, and I’d respect his unwillingness to share them. Instead I leaned closer and curled my fingers more tightly into his.

  “You never disappoint me, Savage,” I said softly. “Never.”

  He made a noncommittal little grunt, but he did not pull away. “When you look at me like this, Eve, I’m almost tempted to believe you.”

  I smiled and let my hand slip from his to slide down the inside of his thigh. “I tell only the truth to you, Master.”

  “Wicked creature,” he said, and in the slanting light from the streetlamps I saw that his smile had widened. “I mean to test that truth tonight with your first trial here in the city.”

  My breathing quickened with anticipation; oh, he’d trained me so well in this last week!

  “Whatever you wish, Master,” I said. “Once we arrive at your house—”

  “We’re not going to my house,” he said. “Rather, you are not. You will be returning to your hotel.”

  “Back to the Savoy?” I asked, my disappointment keen. “Without you?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “We shall consider it your first trial here in London.”

  “But not alone,” I said, already bereft. “Not without you.”

  “It is decided,” he said, clipping the last word so there’d be no doubt of his intentions. “This is the way things must be. We’re in London now. I have other matters that beg for my time.”

  I retreated from him and sank a little lower against the motorcar’s silk cushions, hugging my arms around myself in misery. I understood all too well. Every other man I’d known in my life had had matters that he’d placed ahead of me, too: business, finance, politics. I’d thought Savage was different, but perhaps he wasn’t.

  He had parted the motorcar’s curtain and was no longer looking at me. Instead he was staring through the glass, his profile sharp and angular in the half-light of this last hour before dawn.

  It was an hour when respectable people were still sleeping in their beds, and yet the darkness was already losing its potency and the city was beginning to come alive for the day. Rumbling lorries and wagons were starting their first deliveries by the light of the streetlamps, and the lower kind of laborer trudged through the shadows to employment that no one else wanted. The pavements were glistening and wet with damp, and even through the motorcar’s sealed windows came the dank smell of the streets, the sewers, and the river.

  In defense I drew my sable coat more closely around me for protection. London was a harsh, modern world coming to life, a reality that held no place for the rare, magical kind of passion Savage and I had shared at Wrenton. I couldn’t deny it, and I wondered if Savage felt it as well.

  All of which was reason enough for us not to part now.

  “You promised me another seven days with you,” I said softly. “You said my education wasn’t done.”

  “The fact that you dare complain to me now proves that,” he said evenly. “Petulance is a most unattractive quality, and
one I should think unworthy of you.”

  “I’m not being petulant,” I said wistfully. I wasn’t, either. I was disappointed and already beginning to miss him; that was all. “Rather, I do not wish to be apart from you.”

  With a sigh he turned back towards me, the slanting streetlight casting sharp shadows across his cheekbones and the starched linen of his shirt. Yet despite the chill of so much black and white, his eyes still burned when he gazed at me, as smoldering hot as coals.

  “The Game as we played it at Wrenton has no place in London,” he said with more patience. “You must understand that, Eve. Here we’ll play by different rules, with different tests and trials for you to prove yourself. It can be no other way. The only thing that will not change is the prize you will earn for yourself if you do as I say.”

  He leaned closer, taking my chin in his hand so I could not look away; nor did I wish to. I’d learned it was always in my own interest to pay attention to him, and my pulse quickened at his touch.

  “I promise you, dear Eve,” he continued in that deep, resonant voice that could make me shiver with delight, “that if you do prove yourself, then the rewards from these challenges will be beyond your imagining. All you must do is trust me, and obey.”

  “Yes, Master,” I said, my gaze locked with his. “I will trust you, and I will obey.”

  A hint of a smile crossed his lips. “In all things, Eve.”

  “In all things, Master,” I repeated in a whisper, and his smile widened a fraction.

  “Very good,” he said. “Be sure not to forget.”

  Without releasing my jaw he kissed me, his lips relentless until mine parted, and his tongue worked deep into my mouth to mark his possession.

  I trembled, fighting the desire to break free of his hand and rub my body against his. It didn’t matter that I’d spent most of the journey from Wrenton riding his cock. All I wanted now was to open my coat and part my thighs and once again shamelessly offer myself to him the way I knew he—and I—liked best.