Forbidden by Susan Johnson (good books to read for teens .TXT) 📕

"I don't want to fight," the Duc said, steeling himself against the intensity of his passion. "Now, please, untie me."

"How many?" she asked, driven by feelings she couldn't control.

And his temper showed at last. "A thousand," he said, as if he could read her mind.

She slapped him.

In a galvanic surge of power his right arm snapped free and then his left, tearing the welded gold rings from their moorings inside the chambers behind the hammered gold doors. Reaching down in a single powerful lunge, tumbling Daisy aside, his hands closed over the silk ropes stretching between his ankles and the fluted decorative footboard and with a strength augmented by fury, he wrenched the fastenings from the metal of the bed. In a flashing second more, Daisy was flat on her back, covered with the weight of his body. "And now," the Duc said very quietly, "we'll begin on a thousand and one."

She struggled against his weight and strength while he swiftly slid first one of his wrists and then the other through the detached silk cords, kicking his feet loose from the trailing ropes.

Reaching out, his fingers closed on a silk cord and he yanked it from its spooled compartment, unreeling its length in a sweep of braided azure. Effortlessly brushing aside her fiery defense, he lifted Daisy the scant inches necessary to slide the blue tie under her, looped it swiftly around her waist, knotted it with a jerk of his wrist and pulled another rope spinning loose from its reel to repeat his procedure in lightning seconds with a second cord of persimmon silk.

"There now," he said, lifting his weight completely free, moving back on his heels to survey her lying trussed where he had so recently lain. His smile was pleasant when he added, "I wouldn't move too much. Those slip knots tighten under pressure."

"Untie me, damn… you!" Daisy vehemently protested. But her voice caught at the last as the rope cut sharply into her waist.

"Relax, darling," Etienne softly suggested, slipping his finger under the knot to ease the restraining loop. "I wouldn't want to leave marks."

"The voice of authority speaking?" Daisy's icy voice matched the chill in her eyes.

"Only in terms of breaking polo ponies, darling, despite your insinuations." His smile was angelic. "I'm careful with their skin too. Although," he added, reaching out to touch her, "yours is—" He caught her raking fingers just short of his face, her second hand intercepted with equal ease, his voice unruffled as he finished, "more precious."

With deft speed and a cheerfully facile apology, her wrists were tied together with one of the ropes the Duc had torn from the bed. Loosely attaching them to the silk cords binding her waist, he quietly said, his voice like velvet, "Now then, why don't we familiarize you more intimately with the Sultan's toys. For educational purposes only," he added in a whisper, taking a dildo of exquisite aquamarine glass imbedded with spun-gold threads from a leather case lined in blue velvet. "Or what was it you said? For… practice?"

"I'm sorry I didn't untie you when you asked."

He grinned. "Is that the attorney negotiating? Look at the color next to your skin," he went on, placing the sleek glittering glass on her stomach, ignoring her overture, smarting though he wouldn't admit it, over her remark about Absarokee equivalents of the Sultan's aquamarine toy. "This one's larger too. You might enjoy it more."

"I don't like this." Her dark brows were drawn into a scowl.

"You will. This has the endorsement of a great number of harem beauties."

"And your lovers too?"

"I wonder if this would be an appropriate time to discuss those young men you've introduced to pleasure. Although personally, I've always preferred leaving the instruction of virgin females to their husbands. Tell me, do you find a young man's eagerness enough to compensate for his lack of experience?" His words were uttered with a mildness contrary to the heat of his temper when he thought of Daisy with other men.

"Eagerness has its charms." She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing the truth.

"How does it compare with this," he murmured, sliding the glass dildo down her stomach, over her painted labia with exquisite deliberation… so anticipation of its penetration was tantalizingly prolonged, "… in terms of charm." The smooth rounded glass invaded slightly, the pressure of the Duc's hand slight. Daisy inched backward but he followed relentlessly. The sea-green cylinder glided into her heated wet interior, sleekly, easily… deeply despite her small squirming protest.

"I'd suggest restricting your movements to a minimum, darling. This hand-blown glass is fragile," he quietly advised.

Daisy instantly calmed.

"You see. Anyone can be tamed." His smile was smug as he pressed the dildo upward a fraction more, forcing her heated passage wider.

And she felt her muscles contract with shimmering sensation, felt the slick lubricant of desire flow, oozing profusely in cool minute drops down her thighs, felt the heat of desire flare higher—inundating her body with peaking pleasure. She shouldn't be responding to the Duc's insolent invasion and domination; she should ignore somehow the rapturous feeling engendered by the Sultan's Venetian toy. But she couldn't and he knew it, damn him. Because all the women before couldn't ignore it either.

"Damn you," she whispered.

But she didn't say stop, he noted, easing the green glass out slightly to test her interest, wanting too to command her body's response. As if it broadened his authority over her life.

"No…" she moaned very low in her throat, closing her legs around his hand, raising her hips to follow the sensation of pleasure eluding her.

"No, you don't want this or no… what? Tell me," he whispered, pressing for an answer with a perverse, ungovernable resentment for all the men in her past who had garnered this same tempestuous response.

"I want…" she hesitated, weighing her nonexistent alternatives. She could deplore the women in his past or envy them or hate them but she hadn't Etienne's restraint. "… I want… you," she softly implored.

"For someone