Lisa Cach - The Erotic Secrets Of A French Maid

"Give a woman a hug and she's happy for a day. Teach a woman to reason and-"

"You did not just say that."

"No, I didn't. You interrupted me."

She raised one brow. "Excuse me. You were saying?"

"Teach a woman to reason, and she'll find seventeen ways in which you are wrong, with subparts A and B for six of them."

"You have a hostile view toward women, don't you? I thought you were just kidding, that first day when you told Kevin that gold diggers would be after him."

"It's not a hostile view."

"Then what is it?"

He chewed for a minute, then glanced her way. "Wary."

She cocked her head. "Wary? Why?"

"Alien race. Can't predict what they're going to do. How they're going to react."

Had someone hurt him, beyond the ordinary heartbreaks of love? Emma stared at him, trying to discern the truth from the subtle clues hidden in inflections of his voice and the microexpressions of his face.

"Men and women hurt each other," she said. "That's never going to change; it comes with the territory. But it's a glorious territory, all considered, and I wouldn't want to live my life without spending a good deal of time in it."

"Just not now."

"No, not at this moment. Except like this," she said, gesturing between them. She looked at him for a moment, considering. "Can I tell you something?"

"Sure."

"I wasn't certain, initially, that I wanted to do this. I mean, it's kind of sleazy-sounding on the surface, don't you think? After all, being paid for sex isn't exactly what most girls aim for in life."

"Er, no, I suppose not."

"But the truth is," she said, leaning forward confidentially, "I'm kind of having fun."

His brows rose.

"I know! It's crazy, isn't it? And the naughtiness kind of turns me on. I know that submitting to a man's sexual appetites for the sake of money is supposed to be degrading. I'm supposed to be ashamed. But I'm not. Bad me, huh? And bad, wicked you."

"I've thought a hundred times about canceling our arrangement."

That surprised her.

He went on, "You're not the only one who feels they're supposed to hold themselves to a higher standard of behavior."

"Then why didn't you call this off?"

He looked at her incredulously. "You really need to ask?"

A slow grin stretched across her lips. "You like it, don't you?"

"Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like a witch who has her victim under her spell."

"Is that what I've done? Ensorcelled you?"

Emma felt a surge of arousal. She would never have guessed that a man could want her badly enough that he would go against his own sense of decency to have her. No one had ever wanted her like that.

She stood and came around the small table to him, feeling utterly confident. She slid her hand around his neck and kissed him slowly, brushing him gently at first and then running her tongue lightly over his bottom lip.

He turned toward her, hands going to her waist, his desire answering her demands. Without thinking she straddled him, sitting on his lap with her panty-clad crotch wide open and pressed against the zipper of his trousers. She felt him thickening beneath her, and rubbed herself against him.

The kiss deepened, mouths opening, and she sucked on his tongue, sliding her own along it, reveling in the texture and the memory of what that tongue had done to her before. She felt his hand in her hair, holding her to him as if he would devour her. The strength of his arm around her waist felt better than anything else, the power of his lust and of his male body, so much larger than hers, making her feel deliciously small and desirable. She'd brought him to this state of arousal, and now she wanted him to set her free of control. She wanted to be taken.

Which reminded her. "We still have crostata to eat," she breathed, breaking the kiss.

"Forget the crostata?

She found purchase on the floor for her feet and lifted her weight off his lap. After a moment his arms around her loosened and she climbed off him, going back to her place at the table. She picked up her flatware as if to resume eating.

"Crostata?" he said in disbelief.

She looked at him and smiled with satisfaction. His shirt and hair were rumpled and he looked like someone had just woken him from a dream. "I worked very hard on it. I also worked hard on my preparations for the other things we're going to do tonight."

"Flexibility in the face of changing circumstances is very good for creativity," he said earnestly.

She laughed. "Maybe. But you still have to wait."

Emma cut herself another bite of duck and felt a quiver of doubt. Maybe it wasn't so wise to stop now. Maybe it would be better to go for it while the mood was upon them, instead of trying to make the evening fit her carefully planned script.

But after all that planning and practicing and debating and buying the right music, she couldn't bring herself to alter her plan.

She ate the last of her duck, which had turned out better than any duckly improvisation she could have made. Maybe Russ was right, and she shouldn't expect herself, with her limited experience, to be able to innovate.

But then where did that leave her chances with designing the train station? Maybe she was reaching beyond her grasp.

The small voice of her soul rebelled against the thought, just as it had always rebelled-quietly, often unobserved- when she felt that someone expected less of her than she expected of herself. She never wanted to be mediocre or settle for "good enough." It was the curse of being a perfectionist.

There must have been a hard-driven perfectionist inside of Russ, as well, to have achieved what he had. How else was a young person going to make it in this world?

"These are your instructions."

Russ took the typed sheet that Emma handed him. "Instructions?"

"For our 'entertainment' tonight."

Instructions. Great. He scanned the sheet, his attention catching at the script in the middle. "You want me to say that?" he asked in disbelief.

She nodded, her face serious. "Please."

He scanned the rest of the sheet, growing alarmed. "You're sure about this?"

She nodded.

"I don't want you to get hurt."

"I won't. And look, see there?" She reached over the top of the paper and pointed to one short sentence. "That's our 'safe' word: apple. If I say apple, then we stop."

Hell's bells. He'd never engaged in sexual activities that required a safe word. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to forget this crazy plan and just have good, plain, old-fashioned sex. But then he met her eyes and saw the uncertain, hopeful expectation there, and he remembered that she'd worked so hard on her plans for this evening. "Okay, let's give this a go."

She smiled and turned him toward her bedroom, giving him a small shove. "You go lounge on the bed while I get ready. And there's something there for you to put on."

Oh Lord. He could hardly wait to see.

The bedroom was again lit softly with candles, and this time the bed had been turned into the divan of a pasha. Jewel-toned fabrics with gold prints covered the mattress, the pillows, and lumps that were probably heaped blankets serving as the arms and back of the exotic love nest. In the center of a swath of royal blue fabric sat a red satin turban, complete with fake diamond in the front, a small gold feather sticking straight up from behind it. It looked like the turban that Johnny Carson wore whenever he played Kar-nak the Magnificent.

Russ sighed and glanced again at his instruction sheet:

You are the sultan of a small country on the Mediterranean, and have bought a young English noblewoman from pirates. Your other concubines have been training her for your service, and tonight is the first night you will have her. When the eunuchs deliver her to your room, follow the script below.