Free Her Master's Touch by Patricia Watters Page A

All I
wanted was to be with you. So, I thought I'd come find you. I hope
you don't mind."
    Damon walked up to her and kissed her. "You
look like an elegant lady," he said, "not the gypsy hoyden I
captured at the fair."
    Eliza felt awkward, knowing what she must do.
Still, she had to do it. Curving her arms around his neck, she
said, "So, you think I look like a lady?"
    Damon clasped his hands behind her waist. "I
venture to say, if you dressed in gowns of silks and satins you'd
look the proper memsahib ."
    "Where would I get these gowns of silks and
satins, my lord?" Eliza asked, gazing into dark intense eyes that
burned with a fire of their own.
    "From me," Damon replied.
    Eliza laughed lightly. "And do you plan to
keep me on as your laundry maid and pay me in gowns?" she asked,
her voice playful, though her heart was beating frantically with
the thought of what she had to do next.
    "Not as my laundry maid," Damon said. "As my
mistress."
    "Your mistress?" His proposal caught Eliza up
short, pointing out her station in life. A half-blood, someone to
become a man's mistress, never his wife. Then she realized it
didn’t matter. Soon she’d be away from Lord Damon Ravencroft and
the effect he had on her.
    Damon peered down at her. “Why so serious,
gypsy girl? Surely you like the idea of gowns and jewels and silk
against your skin? I’d have you dressed like a queen and riding in
a fine coach, and all you’d have to do is warm my bed."
    Eliza put her hands on his chest. “I’ll think
on it and let you know tomorrow,” she said, knowing there would be
no tomorrow for them. Only the next few minutes. Nothing more.
    Damon planted a kiss beneath her ear, and
said, “Is it so hard for you to choose between working in a wash
house, or wearing silk gowns and sleeping in my bed?”
    Eliza tipped her head back, allowing him
access to her throat. “I’ve never been a man’s mistress before…
umm," she moaned, as his lips moved down the column of her throat.
"Perhaps I would not meet your expectations."
    "You already have. You're everything I want
in my bed." Damon kissed her chin and her jaw and teased her lips
apart, caressing her tongue with his, sucking it deeply into his
mouth and allowing her to slowly retrieve it before sucking it into
his mouth again in a pre-mating ritual as old as time. As the kiss
deepened, his hands began to seek those places that gave her
pleasure, until she was almost overcome by the need that was
building again.
    But she would not be distracted. Not this
time.
    While the kiss deepened, she glided her hands
up his back and threaded her fingers into his hair, then moved her
palms down his sides and up his back again, then every so slowly
down his sides, and into his pocket, where her hand closed around a
smooth round object the size of a hen's egg. Heart thumping,
adrenaline rushing through her, she whispered against his ear, “Yes
I’ll be your mistress,” while feeling a flush of remorse that she
would never know the delights his intimate caresses promised.
Although she'd been distracted by his kiss and the path of his
hands, she'd obtained her objective.
    Anxious to flee before he discovered the opal
missing, she gave him a kiss, and said, "Goodnight, my lord. Until
tomorrow then..." And turned left the room.
    The opal clutched in her hand, she scurried
down the hallway and left the house. Crouching low and staying in
the moonlit shadows, she crept toward the gates where she could see
Januz's shadowy figure. But as she approached, she caught sight of
something laying in the path... A body. She recognized at once
Damon's gateman, with her ivory-handled knife in his heart. She'd
found her knife missing from the sheath on her leg when she'd
changed into the black dress. Now she knew where she'd lost it. In
the spot where she lay with Damon, and where Januz had found her.
She reached for the knife, but Januz grabbed her arm, dragging her
to where the horse stood waiting. "Let me go," she