By Desire Bound Read online

  "You'll drive me crazy."

  "I hope so," she murmured coyly. She wandered around the room, picking up clothes. "I hardly have anything to wear."

  "You don't have to dress."

  "You're right. One of the rules." She tossed him his clothes. "What about breakfast? I'm starving."

  "I'll ring for the house steward. He'll serve it in here."

  "And Sidhu is coming today?"

  He eased himself up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "This afternoon."

  "Oh good. Lots of time to wait."

  "Darcie . . ." he said warningly.

  "Naked and willing—that's what you said . . . and ready ..."

  She watched him as he struggled into his trousers.

  "Oh ..." she pouted. "Not ready."

  Depleted was more like it. Drained to the core. En­ervated—but feeling his juices slowly heating up again as she sashayed naked around the room, and settled on the bed where she had just lain with her legs splayed.

  "Stupid rules," she said, infusing a sulky note into her voice as she wriggled around pretending to try to get comfortable. "But you'll just have to wait."

  His body leapt to attention instantly.

  "No, no. You promised me breakfast, and I'm per­fectly willing to wait."

  "You will pay for this little rebellion, Scheherazade."

  "I'm looking forward to it, Con."

  He sent her a sizzling glance as he closed the door filly behind him and went in search of breakfast.

  She turned over and buried her head in the sheets, seeking his sex and his scent.

  She had never felt so aroused in her life. She felt like she was riding on it, swamped by it, surrounded by it in a sensual haze that must be obvious to all.

  She didn't care. She didn't need love. She didn't need marriage. Those things were not important. All

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  she craved was his unrelenting lust for her body, which bound her to him more securely than any wedding ring.

  Already she had turned the tables on his little sensual fantasy. It had already cost her something—but the re­ward was worth it, even though her body still clamored for release.

  She could wait. She wanted him thinking about her all day long, about how she had rejected her pleasure, and forced him to capitulate to his. She wanted him thinking about her naked body still hot and unfulfilled.

  And she wanted him stiff as a poker, and bursting for relief. And then she would cuddle him and caress him and tell him to wait.

  By the time he returned with a tray, she was somewhat composed.

  But he was not. He was furious with her for seducing him and making him wait. He set the tray down on the table with a bang, and roughly pulled the chairs over to it.

  "Breakfast, madame,"he said curtly.

  "I am hungry," Darcie said. She sat down opposite him, extending her legs. "Ah—tea. So revivifying. Would you like some? And eggs. Fruit. Biscuits. A nice simple meal."

  "Quick, at any rate." He took one of the boiled eggs on his place. "I know what I really want for breakfast."

  "What's that, Con?"

  "Your nipples."

  She felt the twinge through her whole body. "Not on the menu, Con." She smiled at him and bit into a bis­cuit. "I guess you'll have to wait."

  Sidhu arrived at tiffin, by which time Con was in a cataclysmic state of arousal, and couldn't have cared less what he brought and what they had to do.

  It was Darcie on his mind as she dressed behind closed doors. Darcie, whipping up his fantasies of her waiting for him, ripe, hot and yearning for him to her core.

  Darcie, dressing to entice him . . .

  "You will go by wagon, sahib, "Sidhu was saying, "up through Tashkent and north to Omsk. I have procured money, supplies, clothing for several weeks. You may not be able to track the godless one until you reach Siberia. It is a long trip, sahib."

  He spread out the map that Sidhu brought, and marked his way. Through the mountain passes they had already traveled and over two borders. It felt like a life­time away.

  He could barely concentrate as Darcie sauntered into the parlor, dressed in a lightweight shirtwaist and skirt, her hair pulled back in a knot at her neck.

  "Memsahib." Sidhu bowed.

  She nodded in turn, and sat down at the table. "Let them serve now."

  Con clapped his hands—mainly to keep them off of her, and the house steward set out the meal. There was lamb, this time, and vegetables, and the inevitable tea.

  And Darcie sitting so composed; she must be squirming in her seat. Waiting, all this time . . . how could she stand it?

  Unless . . . . . . someone eke?

  In his place. That place. Embedded there, buried there—

  He would kill whoever it was . . .

  He clenched his hands, dismissing this insane, unten­able thought. She was driving him crazy with wanting her, thinking about her. He couldn't wait for Sidhu to depart.

  He left just at sundown, after going over every detail of their upcoming journey with a thoroughness that made Con clench his teeth because he wasn't listening.

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  "Don't get any ideas," Darcie told him as she moved around the room, extinguishing the lights. She was so excited she could hardly stand it, but that was not for him to know. Yet.

  "I've got a hundred ideas. Get in the bedroom and take off your clothes."

  "No. We have to wait."

  He was already ripping off his clothes. "Never deny me."

  "That seems contradictory to waiting, Con," she mur­mured as she watched him. "You can't have both."

  "I can have you," he said, pacing toward her. "I'll destroy those clothes if you don't strip now."

  "You have to learn to wait, Con," she said chidingly. "A man has to control his urges."

  "I'm going to control you," he growled, and he grabbed her; he ripped away the tissue material of her shirt, her skirt, everything, he tore to shreds, and then he pulled everything from the dining table onto the floor. "Now, I feast on you ..."

  And he lifted her onto the table and pushed her on her back, and pulled her toward him so that her pul­sating femininity just grazed his penis head. He waited, so that she could feel the jutting force of him noised to take her on.

  She pushed up on her elbows to see it, and he held her eyes as he thrust himself into her inch by delicious inch. She almost came then, watching how her body devoured him, how he rotated his hips to push into her, and how deep and far she could take him until he was stuffed to the hilt.

  "I've waited all day for this," she breathed, shudder­ing with excitement. "Don't move." She loved looking at it, the connection between them, solely and wholly to his hard hot sex. But she couldn't stop herself from

  writhing against it with hot frantic little movements that didn't escape him.

  "Beg me for it, you tease."

  She groaned. "You know I'm aching for it."

  "No one would ever know it."

  "You've been thinking about it all day," she accused him, her voice hoarse with need.

  "I think I'll let you wait."

  "Oh, no, don't," she moaned, "don't. . ."

  He gyrated his hips. "Like that?"

  "Oh yes."

  He made a little grinding movement. "Like that?"

  "Yes, more—more—"

  He drew back an inch and rammed into her. "Like that?"

  "Just like that," she whispered.

  He drew back again a little further, and drove hard again.

  "Yes ..." she moaned, grasping onto the edge of the table.

  He touched her nowhere else. He wanted nothing else, just this erotic connection, her moans, her need, her sex.

  He reared back, and took her again.

  She arched up violently. "Yes . . . !"

  And again.

 
"Oh God ... yes .. ."

  And again—and again and again in a frenzy of pos­session, again, like a piston, again, in and out of her again and again, couldn't get enough, not enough, not enough, not her cries not her moans not her spasms not her groans not enough not enough enough . . .

  He came . . . like lightning bolting through him, breaking him open sending him skyward like a shooting star . . .

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  "We leave tomorrow," Con said. "Sidhu says there have been questions about us. You were right again. They have come back to look for me in Srinagar. We have to

  go-"

  She swallowed. It wasn't for her to protest, when she had agreed to come with him. But oh, she didn't want to go. She wanted to stay here with him and spend their days and nights spending his sex.

  He touched her there, as if he knew what she was thinking.

  "This doesn't end. It's only begun."

  "But it's such a long journey, and you don't even know where to look."

  "You look where evil dwells and people are afraid."

  "What about your bargain? How can you trust this blessing will last?"

  "Truthfully? You can trust nothing, Darcie, not even me."

  And who could he trust? He walked on air, with nothing beneath him to cushion his death. They were coming for him. They knew where to find him. No, she knew they would come.

  She—sapping his life force as methodically as his enemy. She said there was a child, and there was nothing. She spoke with a different tone, a demoness in his dreams . . .

  What?

  Demons—surrounding him, tossing him on the ground . . . shifting memories and nothing—until he was found.

  Burying himself in her—

  Dead dying never see the sun . . .

  Evil, black evil, sundered in two . . .

  Lavinia, holding in her hand the last stone of the broken necklace. What have you done?

  He spiralled downward toward the truth. Lavinia. Eager. The child that never was. Survival. Lust. Dreams. The stuff of myths and death. Somewhere in there truth lies sleeping. . .

  Darcie!

  He awoke with a start, his head whirling with the im­agery of his dream, and the faint apprehension that nothing around him was what it seemed.

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  Eighteen

  Their caravan climbed to the Top of the World and beyond.

  Nowhere, on those snow-crested ridges, could they see any trace of the valley or the stone that marked the place.

  Sidhu had buried it forever.

  "The legend was that the valley was impenetrable," he told her, "and that the diamonds were scattered all over the valley floor. And the only way to recover them was to throw down a slaughtered animal; it was said that the diamonds would adhere to the flesh, and the eagles that nested in the valley would fly the carcasses out and into the waiting hands of the deserving. One of a thou­sand and one tales, Scheherazade."

  But it didn't sound like any tale she could invent, and she infinitely preferred the sensual stories they acted out with each other, in the warmth and in the dark.

  On this trip, it was bone-jarring cold and it snowed in the mountains as they headed toward Gilgit and Tashkent. Periodically, there were little cabins, crow's nests they called them, where they could take their rest from the relentless weather.

  Sidhu had provided well: maps, directions, the proper

  clothes. Provisions. A guide who was known to him and trustworthy.

  They had divided the last of the diamonds they had brought with them.

  Who can you trust?

  She carried two of the remaining diamonds in the pouch, with the shards of The Stone of Samael. He had the other two, and The Eye of God besides.

  She wondered if it were enough. If the quest were worth the reward. If going after the entity was even sane. If she even cared.

  "We've let ourselves forget about Lavinia," he said. Something about Lavinia—or was it Darcie, in his dream . . . "She took some time to send her operatives to Srinagar, but now they're there. The threat is real, just as you've always said."

  But she didn't like being so right and knowing La­vinia so well. And now it would be reported back to her that Con had an accomplice as well—

  Her time at Goole Abbey seemed a lifetime ago.

  And where he thought the danger was real, she was beginning to believe she had imagined it. Things had changed so drastically. And nothing that had happened to them could possibly be connected to Lavinia.

  Except that Lavinia was avid to get her hands on The Eye of God.

  It was getting complicated again, just when it had be­come simple. They could have had each other forever instead of a mystical diamond; they could have stayed in that carnal sanctuary in Srinagar forever.

  Instead, he had rooted her up so early in the morn­ing, it was obscene, and they had dressed, packed, eaten a rushed breakfast, taken care of the servants, and gone to the house of the guide prearranged by Sidhu.

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  She hated Sidhu for stressing the urgency of leaving at the early hour.

  It was too early up in the snowy mountains they climbed by mule road as they pressed on toward Gilgit. A day and a half later, they camped outside the outpost, and spent the night there.

  Their guide, whose name was Naib, arranged a wagon, called a tarantass, to take them on to Tashkent. Nor was there any comfort there; it was a perch and a flat bed on wheels and nothing to cushion the ride. At best, they didn't have to walk or ride the mules. At worst, they didn't have to carry their things. And it was a long journey over weather-rutted roads besides. A fool's chase . . . and broken dreams. They came to Tashkent through a large stone gate, and into a city of minarets, walled houses, tree-lined streets and garden greenery. There was a hotel, but it offered no amenities. They took a room anyway, spend­ing the night on an uncomfortable bed before explor­ing the town.

  It was a place that was Eastern and Russian both, with an unexpected level of sophistication. There were long avenues of villas and an old town with a grand bazaar. There was the English Club with a tolerable restaurant, and a reading room attached, that offered books from home and current periodicals.

  There was heat and dust and flies, and the ubiquitous women in veils.

  "If you don't count the women, it could be a city someplace in America," Darcie said in awe. "It's so much more green than I thought it would be, and warmer."

  "And English," Con said. "With churches. But prob­ably no one conies here unless they have to. Look at Naib. He's taken the wagon and gone already, even

  though I offered him a place for the night. I think we'll stay a day—maybe two—and see what we can find out."

  But that put them in the position of being outsiders, and they were going to need help. They decided to have dinner at the English Club and see what they could find out.

  Con bribed the hotel manager, and they got a bath— lukewarm water in a very small copper tub, but clean water nonetheless, and set before a roaring fire in their room.

  Luxury, after a week tramping up and down moun­tains.

  "Imagine squeezing in there," Con murmured, eye­ing the tub with real interest.

  She slipped her hand between his thighs. "Imagine squeezing there," she countered lightly.

  "Why don't we?"

  "Don't we have to wait?"

  "Isn't five days enough? I've been crazy not being able to have you in this cold."

  "It's warm now, Con."

  "And I'm damned hot."

  "You are stoked like a furnace."

  "What are you going to do about it?"

  "I'm going to take you in my mouth and make you roar."

  She knelt down and began undressing him. God— five days—
in the desensitizing cold, as they huddled un­der sheepskins and flimsy tents, their sensual hunger had been dormant. It was enough to manage to keep warm.

  So the minute she unleashed him, she felt her own desire blaze up like wind whipping the embers of a dead fire.

  She wanted to devour him, right there, right then.

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  He had never looked more luscious, more succulent. Their enforced abstinence only made her lust after him the more. She wanted to stuff the whole of him in her mouth, but he was so huge, so long, and he was on the brink of erupting, and she wanted—and she didn't want—to bring him there.

  He was ripping off the clothes that he could get t( He hauled her up and away from the taste of him an backed her against the wall. "I can't wait. I want you now."

  She held him as he tore away every impediment, and when she was naked, she eased his way. He was mean to be there; he was perfectly shaped and curved to tak her standing this way—or lying down, turned over, back­wards, forwards, in her mouth, in her hand . . .

  She didn't care where, or what he did, only that he belonged to her, and that he was always aware.

  She wrapped her arms and one leg around his hips as he began to thrust—oh, and just the way she liked it: those short hard little thrusts that she felt so sharply. He knew just how to do it, just how to keep himself hard and cocked within her while priming her there.

  She felt their coupling keenly, she envisioned it as he drove himself as relentlessly as a piston, hard, hard, hard. Perfect emphatic strokes. Inexorable and strong. Hard, hard, hard. Thick and long. Didn't want it to end. On and on. Breathless and insensate, and climaxing on a moan—long and strong in undulating glistening waves, hot as the sun—until they broke violently over the rock of his erection—and she was alone.

  He caught her—he came in her backwash as she rode him home as mercilessly as he had taken her, and still joined, he lifted her in a radiant kiss and brought her finally to bed.

  He never broke the kiss. The kiss was the aftermath

  that was never going to end. A week's worth of kisses he had to expend. Hot writhing kisses, arousing kisses . . .