a lute string.”
Cassandra nodded as she walked him to the door. “Perhaps you are correct. Though I’m not certain how to do that at present.”
He smiled as he paused in the foyer. “Of course you do, my dear. You make toys. Go play.”
Chapter Three
C assandra stood in her bedroom, staring at the open chest of drawers beside her big four-poster bed. The chamber sparkled from a dozen lit candles and the roaring fire her servants had prepared to heat the room.
As a designer of sinful toys for the rich and titled, Cassandra had spent a great deal of time testing out the merits of each design. It was an enormously pleasurable pursuit, one that had given a few of her lovers as much excitement as it had her.
But she had been increasingly busy as of late. No man had been in her bed for half a year, perhaps a little more. The sheer night shifts and sinful undergarments she had designed hung unworn in her armoire, while some of her favorite toys in her drawer had been ignored for a long while. Restraints wrappedin soft fur, little clips to tighten and arouse her nipples or her clit, blindfolds to heighten sensation and awareness—all of them had been sadly unused.
Only one toy had come out of the drawer with any regularity. A glass dildo similar in size to the ivory one she had been working on downstairs. It was her own personal plaything.
Stephan said she was coursing with tension. And he was correct that she better face Nathan when she was relaxed and satiated. Perhaps then his presence wouldn’t make her wet and ready, as weak physically as her mind seemed to be when it came to him.
She grasped the long, heavy weight of the toy and withdrew it, then shrugged from her silken robe. Freshly bathed, she was warm and ready for pleasure after such a trying day.
Resting back on her pillows, she opened her legs and began to stroke the glass head of the substitute cock along the swollen lips of her sex. Her body had experienced this pleasure enough times that it began to react almost immediately. She shut her eyes and enjoyed the pulse of desire as her outer lips swelled and her pussy grew hot and wet in readiness.
Smiling, Cassandra felt her body relax, open, flush with excitement. This was the gift she gave her clients. She wasn’t ashamed of helping to enhance their pleasure. And she wasn’t ashamed of wanting and needing her own. She had let go of shame a long time ago.
Slowly, she let the head of the cool glass rod slip inside her waiting body. Instantly, her body tightened around the surface, clinging when she gently teased the shaft away. She delved deeper the next time, then withdrew a second time. Again and again, she repeated the shallow strokes until finally the toy was fully seated in her channel and she pulsed in pleasure around its rapidly heating surface.
Cassandra understood her own desire. She knew how to bring herself to swift and satisfying release. Immediately she thrust with the motion and speed that always brought her to orgasm quickly. The wet slap of the glass as she fucked herself and her low moans of pleasure were the only sounds in her quiet room. She arched her hips against the building pressure, reaching higher and higher for release.
Just as she neared the pinnacle, the image of Nathan’s face entered her mind. She cried out, recalling the feel of his arms crushing her to his chest, the scent of his skin. She could almost taste his mouth, feel the hard thrust of his aroused cock through his trousers as he ground against her.
Her orgasm was powerful, the strongest she had experienced in quite some time. She thrashed on the bed, her eyes squeezed shut, trying not to lose the erotic images of Nathan, even though she hated herself for using his blackmail—his demands—to find her pleasure.
Finally, the quaking tremors of her wet body subsided. She shivered one last time around the glass cock in her hand and then withdrew it with a soft pop.
She set the toy aside and flopped a forearm