He shifted, so Savannah lay under the shelter of his body. Resting his hand on her throat, just above the collar, he bent closer to speak in her ear.
“I’m the kind of Dom that feeds off just this.” His hand constricted. “I close my grip, and I feel your pulse trip. I see your body tighten, then soften, giving way to my will. I hear the whisper of your escaped breath. With only words and touch, I take you over, like the flow of water, carrying you where I want you to go.” He raised his head, met her eyes. “I need nothing but my will to have you, because I know your body and soul better than I know my own."
"How is that possible?" she said, her voice thready, eyes brilliant.
"Because I find yours far more interesting."
She smiled. Releasing her wrist and coaxing her to lie back down, her head on his chest, Matt tightened his arm around her, kissed her head. “I’m okay with the mechanics. Equipment and toys can be lots of fun.” He tossed a glance to the far corner of the bed, where he’d left the ones they used. “But in the end, it’s always been about the mind-to-mind connection. The give and take, psychological reaction. That’s where the charge is, for me.”
“I felt that from you,” she murmured. “From the first time we met. I didn’t know exactly what it was, or why it drew me so, but I can see you doing what you described with that first woman perfectly.” Her lips curved against his chest. “Though I prefer to imagine the woman as me.”
“So do I, no disrespect to the lovely lady who allowed me that honor that night.” He kissed her head again. “I think of it like business skills. You learn as much as you can, so you have a lot of tools in your arsenal, but over time, you find your own style, what’s most effective for yourself.” A smile touched his lips. “Ben, Jon and Peter took my basic understanding of restraints and toys to a higher level, so I could employ them when needed. Or when it added to the pleasure of my partner.”
She became quiet again, but he didn’t sense she was unhappy with what he’d just shared. Instead, she seemed as if she was in a nice, drifting post-coital haze, which he liked, because she was at her most relaxed and trusting, curled in his arms without further questions or worries.
He curled her long hair around his large hand, watching the strands fall. As they did, he inhaled the haunting scents they’d used to clean it. Appropriately, it didn’t overpower the familiar scent of the woman herself.
He thought about buying a place here, a cottage near the beach where they could come back as often as they liked. The Resort had a select number of properties available for purchase on the opposite side of the island.
But in truth, they both loved New Orleans. This would be a nice repeat vacation experience, though.
“I admit, the bathing part took me by surprise,” he said after another long pause. “It’s not every woman who’d have the confidence to let her husband be bathed and massaged by naked women, even if it was to prepare her Lord and Master to be pleasing to her.”
“You’ve had your fun with me, O Lord and Master,” she said sleepily. “I won’t rise to the bait.”
“But you like calling me your lord. Admit it.”
She batted away his tickling hand. “I meant the women. You were in charge of all of this. And you did it…this was beyond my wildest dreams.” She laid her arm over his chest, her hand curling around his neck as she tucked her head deeper under his chin. “I love you.”
It never failed to stir him, hearing it. But now he was getting an uneasy feeling. Best to let it lie, lest his extremely sharp-witted wife would…
Savannah shifted and propped herself up on an elbow. Her curtain of thick blond locks tumbled over one eye, but it didn’t diminish the sudden gleam in the visible one.
“Wait. That surprised you. I could hear it in your voice. What women?”
Oh hell. He cleared his throat. “I assumed you amended the scene plan.” It had fit in with his imaginings of her wrinkling her nose at the stench of the battlefield lingering on him. But he figured now was not the time to point out that his own efforts to get into the scene might have contributed to a serious oversight.
At her expression, Matt gauged how close anything sharp—or even just this side of not-too-blunt to use as a shiv—was to his very exposed sensitive parts. When Savannah slid off the bed, he manfully chose to snag his trousers and put them back on. He didn’t have time to tighten the laces, but he was at least covered by the time she rose, pushed her hands through her hair and pivoted to face him, a flush climbing into her fair cheeks.
“And exactly what did these women do?”
“Just bathed me and gave me a massage.”
He knew the spike in his gut when he’d missed a key piece of information. When it happened as a matter of business, there were usually ways to fix it. Plus, he had the help of four of the savviest businessmen he knew, in their respective fields of experience. In a relationship, reparations were quite a bit trickier, and he had no backup. As his mind scrolled rapidly through all the earlier prep and detail, his bad feeling increased exponentially. His shrewd wife reached the same conclusion only a blink before he did.
“I am going to kill Ben O’Callahan.”
A pair of robes hung on two hooks near the bed, one a feminine garment of textured white silk. She snagged it and swirled it around her like Wonder Woman about to take the battlefield. Matt barely made it around the bed in time to catch her elbow and keep her from marching out of the tent in search of his company lawyer. Who he might just kill himself, but there was judicial process to consider.
“Hold on.” He drew her back to the bed, keeping a firm grip on her. “Innocent until proven guilty.”
“Ha. That…man, has never had an innocent day in his life.” But Savannah crossed her arms, which created an interesting effect with the robe neckline parting to show her cleavage. The thin fabric outlined her nipples. Her color was high, her eyes snapping. He figured it probably wasn’t wise to try throwing her back on the bed and seducing her into forgetfulness.
Yeah. Savannah would merely pop back up after being thoroughly, repeatedly ravished, and ask if he had Ben’s head on a pike yet.
Keeping a light hand on her, he pressed the bell that summoned a servant girl. A blink later he realized he was totally off his game. Because the one who responded to his call was the redhead with the mouthwatering breasts, just as naked as before. And of course she knelt as close to his feet as she could get.
His wife was the most beautiful woman in the world to Matt. No woman could compare to her. That was what he felt and saw when he looked at her. But his wife was closing in on forty, and he knew what she was seeing. A nubile twenty-something, who might have had hands on her husband.