Since they’d been together, he’d encouraged Savannah to show her temper if things happened between them that upset her. He’d wanted her to know he wasn’t goddamn Geoffrey Tennyson, reacting with frosty disapproval if his carefully groomed ice princess didn’t keep every human emotion bottled up.
For the first time, Matt had a feeling he was going to wish he hadn’t made that helpful and loving suggestion.
“Slave.” He cleared his throat over it, but the rules were fairly strict about breaking scene while it was in progress. “Who instructed you to bathe me? Told you of the captive queen’s wishes?”
“Your Lord Seneschal, my lord,” the redhead said instantly. “He said putting such temptation in your way proved your commitment to your queen, confirming how strong and eternal your devotion and love to her would be.”
“And how does it do that?” he asked, hoping Ben had left him an out.
“Because you took nothing from what was freely offered by the both of us, and we are the most attractive and well-instructed of the pleasure slaves at your command. He directed me to remind you of this if you asked that very question. And he told me to say it word for word in the presence of the queen.”
“Does the Lord Seneschal have green eyes, dark hair and a manhood big enough for me to beat him to death with it?” Savannah asked pleasantly.
It startled the girl enough for her to look up, her expression wisely cautious. Matt figured they’d both acquired the answer from her face, however, so he dismissed her with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “It was a rhetorical question,” he murmured as he courteously guided her around his wife, keeping his body between them until the girl exited through the open tent flaps.
“You need a new lawyer. He won’t leave this island alive, and he’ll be severely maimed before he begs for death.”
She was pacing, her color still up, fists clenched. She glared at him. “I know you knew nothing of this, because you’re impossible to surprise, and you looked poleaxed. But how did he know you wouldn’t take advantage of ‘what was freely offered’?”
That he had an answer for. Plus, he was getting his feet back under him. Since the flash of her legs and sway of her breasts were not making him any less distracted, and he couldn’t deny entirely unwise amusement was building in him, he chose to act.
He caught her around the waist on her next turn and tumbled her backward into the pillows on the bed. She fought him at first, but when he pinned her wrists and held her body down with his own, her resistance grew more half-hearted. Especially when he began to kiss her throat, teasing her pounding pulse with tongue and lips.
“Because he knows me,” he murmured against her flesh. “He’s an ass, and a prankster, but he’s right.”
He lifted his head and met her blue eyes. They were still fired up, but his words had softened her mouth, somewhat. Fortunately, she had a sense of humor too, so he also saw some of that making its way through her annoyance. He pressed between her legs and went back to enjoying her throat, pleased when a thready sigh suggested he was helping move her away from anger.
“You could line up every slave girl on this island in front of me,” he said. “There’s only one woman who interests me. Only one who I want enough to kill, live or die for her. Be with her always.”
When he glanced up, he saw her blue eyes had at last warmed fully, her lips twisting. “Charmer.” She took a breath. “I’m not going to ask you about this. About how pretty, or soft, or young…”
“No. You won’t.” Raising his head to lock gazes with her, he released one wrist to touch her face. Now the Master took the upper hand in his tone, quieting her. “Because there’s nothing to tell, and all I want is you. When you walked in here and I first saw you, my knees buckled. I almost knelt at your feet.”
She tilted her head, a little smile coming back to her serious features. “You know, it’s not quite as big a fantasy for me as this was, but there is a part of me that wonders…”
With an impish look rare for her, Savannah pushed against him, indicating she wanted to get up. Intrigued by her intent expression, Matt sat back enough to let her wriggle out from under him and make her way to the side of the bed. When she reached out and took his hand, tugged him to his feet, he followed her.
Within a couple steps, though, she’d turned to face him and reversed their positions. Putting her hands on his bare chest, she backed him toward the center post. She stopped him when his shoulder blades and ass hit it. The impish look became a studied one as she ran her hands down his arms, fingers lingering in appraisal of the musculature in his biceps. Her eyes lighted with what was unmistakably female appreciation, but at a blatant level uncharacteristic for her, like a woman at a male strip joint. Matt raised his brows, bemused when he started to raise his arms to touch her and she shook her head.
Dropping her touch to his wrists, she stepped closer, pressing his arms behind him, guiding his fingers to wrap around the pole.
“There,” she purred. “You’re bound with chains, unable to move.” Her eyes on his, she pressed her mouth to his chest, her tongue teasing over his nipple and firing his blood.
“Savannah,” he growled, and that look in her gaze increased.
“Maybe, if the roles had been reversed,” she continued in that same sultry tone, “I would have been the conquering queen, you the captured warlord brought before me.”
“If you’d been in charge of that army instead of your father, it’s possible.” He cocked his head. A submissive he most definitely wasn’t. No more than she was a Domme. But intrigued by this unexpected development, he took a step back into the waters of fantasy, for her.
“And when I’m brought before you, the moment I see you, all thought of escape leaves me,” he said, still in that semi-growl. “I realize the castle means nothing. The woman is the real prize. Serving her. Making her happy. I know if she keeps talking to me in that cock-stroking voice, I’ll come, just from listening to her.”
Her cheeks pinkened and she fanned her fingertips out over his chest, caressing the coarse dark hair, the taut nipple, the layers of muscle over his ribs and abdomen, following them down to the waistband of the trousers. She played with the loosened laces coyly, wrapping one around a finger and tugging it.