Author: Shirl Anders
Date: 2015-06-19 04:00:00+00:00
Description: ***SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION! THIS FULL BUNDLE OF SHIRL ANDERS REGENCIES WILL ONLY BE AVAILABLE UNTIL MID-SEPTEMBER. GET IT NOW BEFORE IT IS GONE *** Sizzling Regency tales of scandalous seduction, intrigue, obsessions, and passionate encounters with irresistible alpha lords that will take you on a wild ride and leave you breathless. This 9 book bundle is Regency gone sexy. Check out these hot alpha dukes, earls, and marquis’ who save their ladies, while showing that passion can be found in regency England. *378,000 words & 424 pages of evocative and edgy regency romance! My Lady Compelled (Lady

Regency Rogues: My Lady Series, Lady Gambled, Owning Arabella, Red Cloak

(Regency Romance Boxset)

By Shirl Anders

This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book maybe be reproduced, scanned, or printed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Copyright © 2015 by Shirl Anders. All rights reserved.

Spies, scarred lords, and noble rogues with high adventures of the heart and smoldering conquests. A boxset of Shirl Anders bestselling steamy regency romances.

Table Of Contents:

My Lady Compelled

My Lady Enslaved

My Lady Captive

My Lady Taken

My Lady Enthralled

My Lady Gambled Book One

My Lady Gambled Book Two

Owning Arabella

Red Cloak of Abandon

Excerpt Wicked Lord Part One

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My Lady Compelled

By Shirl Anders

Chapter One

Drummond Penhurst, Duke of Kittridge, relaxed in the lavishly furnished gaming salon of his country manor as he regarded the five gentlemen seated around the table. The game was Monte and these five men, chiefly including himself, comprised one of England’s most successful spying circuits in the last forty years. The fact that he had been the administrator of this notable spying venture brought him satisfaction. The fact that it no longer existed with Napoleon’s demise, brought him feelings of restlessness that he had seldom before encountered.

Their illustrious code name had been Hellagon. Regardless, the clandestine people in the offices at Thirteen Whipple Street had called them surreptitiously as the Queen’s Archangels. The pretentious naming had adhered and until the last throes of Napoleon’s demise, one needed only mention the Archangels on French soil to obtain a pale and fearful reaction. Yes, Drummond considered pragmatically, he had done his job with skill and even exceedingly artful at times, managing over the years to deliver them through alive. Barely.

His gaze flicked casually to Harrison, the reclusive Earl of Ravenscar and the only man present who was near to his own middle age. Together, he and Harrison had operated in the macabre world of espionage for more than eight years. His gaze followed the movement of Harrison’s leather gloved hands, dealing the next round. Harrison’s hands were perpetually gloved now, hiding the acid burns from their last spying operation gone awry, just as Harrison’s voice was now a permanent rasp from those same acid fumes.

Damnation, Drummond cursed silently. He had nearly lost Harrison in that last fateful debacle. He still questioned seriously who had betrayed their team. Who was it that had nearly cost Harrison his life and had cost Radford the Duke of Sutherlin one eye and Brynmore, Baron of Duneagan the hearing in one ear?

He felt every day since that time that he had better find the traitor before Harrison did. Harrison was set for his own style of dark vengeance and it was nearly as if Harrison knew who the betrayer was. Nevertheless, he reflected, it was unlike Harrison not to confide in him if he did indeed know. And all of this coming to pass well over a year before, so now it seemed to him like so much muddied water beneath the proverbial bridge.

What in the hell, he wondered, for the hundredth time since his return to England, did a master spy do with his life after the intrigue of espionage was no longer viable because of peace time? It appeared to him that he had arranged his life a bit too well around his spying efforts. His one and only wife had passed away several years before he had taken up the cause of spying, but not before she had given him the prerequisite heir and one daughter.

His son, Samuel, was a fine man and everything but the Duke of Kittridge in name. Samuel administered all the sundry ducal concerns with a firm hand and intelligent mind, having done so for several years now. His daughter, Tabitha, was married with a child of her own and a life completely established well without his presence. Neither of them had need of a slightly jaded, retired spy gumming up their well-ordered lives. So what did men of his age and accomplishments do, finding themselves very well unneeded at all turns and certainly not interested in the frippery of London’s ‘ton’.

Hm, he mulled as he tapped his fingers on the armrest of his chair, while he surveyed the men around him once again. It was quite clear that the gentlemen surrounding him also needed some type of settling. Not that he would consider, especially for the younger men, the possibility of foisting a wife on each of them. However, with the others injuries, there was also Saxonhurst, Marquess of Hartely’s hand lost to cannon fire and Wyndham, Earl of Hawkenge’s bad leg caught by shrapnel at Waterloo.

So he pondered soberly that all of his companions, well including himself, had definite needs of settling, perhaps there was a purpose yet. He would have to consider it. However, just then Harrison raised the ante and he turned his ear to the waggish conversation around him.

“I would favor a woman with the attributes of a courtesan for my wife, gentlemen, if you must know,” Wyndham replied, somewhat defensive, to Radford’s question.

Wyndham had gone to war, an idealistic young man and returned world-weary, but tightly honed, Drummond thought, as he watched the gilded-haired man propping his injured leg up on the brocade stool provided by his chair. Perhaps they all had, Drummond mused.

“You clearly have no one to answer to except yourself, Wyndham,” Radford said, dropping some of his sardonic veneer that went with his piratical, black satin eye patch. “What with your brother and his wife killed by way of that carriage accident, while we were all dancing the minuet of Napoleon’s demise.” Radford turned his one startling light blue eye balefully on Wyndham. “I do imagine that you are required to produce an heir for your title, and what a deliciously wicked idea  . . .  to take a whore for a wife.”

“I surely understand the man’s need to be carrying on his family line by marrying,” Brynmore interrupted. “In your position you canna do no less,” he finished with a firm tug of the red and black tartan, tossed over his shoulder as if to emphasize family pride. No one in the group had more familial pride than the Scottish, Laird Duneagan, especially after the loss of nearly all the Duneagan’s clan at Waterloo.

Radford sharply turned his vivid blue eye over the table at the Scottish Baron, then resumed his interrupted speech. “And, I must admit that I would rather have an intelligent tart in my bed for the next thirty years, if I were to choose wisely.”

“It should be possible to find,” Harrison rasped, sweeping the group with his brooding, black-eyed gaze. “Somewhere among all of the prissy and frigid daughters of our peers. There has to be a few worth training to a man’s needs. The crux of the matter is not to mount the mare while searching.”

“No cock in the pussy,” Drummond mused.

“Exactly,” Harrison replied in his raspy voice. “Last card,” he added to those around the table in general.

“Really,” Saxonhurst chuckled sadly. “Harrison, you are too ruthless at this game for my innocence,” he added as he tossed his cards down conceding Harrison’s win.

Drummond casually watched Saxonhurst maneuvering the silver hook that replaced his hand with dexterity as Saxonhurst took up the next shuffle. It was an amazing feat after only a year of dealing with the missing limb.

“Still, gentlemen,” Saxonhurst continued in his pensive way. “The ladies of our esteemed ‘ton’ are very unlikely to offer forth any sort of courtesan persona. If only they understood that life is too short not to indulge in full-blooded passion from the very beginning of their tender ages. Then by admitting that they do have the capacity of heated passions, they would secure their husbands to them more tightly.”

“What cause would any man have for a mistress outside of his marriage if he had a hot-blooded woman at home in his bed?” Wyndham asked, seriously intent.

“Think of the trouble to be spared the families lives, his wife, and their children, if a man was not driven to take up a wee doxie on the side. Those lasses can be a bit of trouble as many times as not,” Brynmore observed.

“What man does not dream of a passionate woman as his sole possession?” Drummond mused. “The facts are, gentlemen, that if you discover a lady with potential, it is for you to exploit it because the lady will never admit to herself the baser instincts that could control her. Unless the man teaches her inexorably otherwise.”

“Speaking from experience?” Harrison asked with a hedonistic glean in his ebony eyes.

“It is no mystery that I am the only man here who has been married,” Drummond replied easily. “I have incurred two such errors in my life along this very line. With my wife it was understandable, for it was an arranged marriage. Even still, with the wisdom that I have now gained, I do believe even that very proper lady could have been turned to more passionate natures if I had simply proscribed to put my wit and intelligence into the matter.”

“Put forth as much effort into making your wife your mistress as you put into plotting Napoleon’s fall?” Radford quipped with sarcasm.

“Exactly,” Drummond replied. “I know now that the feat could be well accomplished with, ah, shall we say, firm resolve and a masterful plan. I aver, gentlemen, that most women need us to thrust through their inbred moral objections and show them the way.” He paused and held forward his glass of amber colored whiskey as if in toast. “They would applaud us in the end.”

“Here-Here,” Brynmore announced, raising his glass. “Here is to wiping away all the lasses’ inhibitions.”

“Here-Here,” Radford followed. “And to instructing them each intimately on their passionate natures.”

“Here-Here,” Wyndham offered intently. “And, to provoking each of them into hot-blooded courtesans.”

“And to showing them that life is too short not to be enjoyed to the fullest.” Saxonhurst toasted with solemn brown eyes.

“Now,” Harrison rasped as he finished toasting the last decree. “Here is to discovering the second woman in Drummond’s tale and I could be just patriarchal enough to remember the lady’s name.”

Drummond gave Harrison a calculating glare, as he drawled, “Really, Ravenscar?” Harrison nodded in the sublimely venomous way that he had. It was a product of his deadly assassination skills, Drummond supposed.

“The Lady Gabriella St. John, if I recall correctly,” Harrison replied in a hoarse whisper, pausing to take a sip of his whiskey. “You were quite young and enthralled, I am told.”

“I certainly place you too well, Harrison, to find that lady’s name from my past a coincidence from your mouth,” Drummond observed, feeling a heightened sense of awareness strum along his nerve endings. He had not heard the lady’s name spoken in more than twenty-five years. However, he had never forgotten . . .

“Her husband, Lord Reginald, proposes to sell her,” Harrison conveyed. “A wife’s sale. You have heard of these sales in the lower classes before, I’m sure.”

“I see,” Drummond uttered through his throat gone suddenly dry. He was shocked and for a man who seldom let anything unravel him, this came perilously close to doing just that. He leaned forward, snuffing out his expensive cigar. “It appears, gentlemen that I have some unexpected business to which I must attend. Stay as long as you will and, Harrison, I do thank you for finally arriving at the point of your suggested gathering this evening.”

Then as Drummond strode from the salon, he heard Harrison’s last toast. “Here-Here, gentlemen. Here is to finding that right woman.”

Chapter Two

“I cannot believe you did this, Lord Kittridge. S-Saved me! I-I . . . thank you, Drummond.” Gabriella St. John voiced demurely, appearing very near to grateful tears.

“Do not thank me, Lady St. John,” Drummond uttered curtly.

“B-But, I . . . this is all so embarrassing. I just don’t know quite what to say, I . . .”

Drummond interrupted her misconception ruthlessly. “You, my lady, shall remove your clothes for me now. And say nothing.”

“Drummond!”

“Let us not be hypocrites, madame. You are now mine, completely and without recourse, to do with as I please.” He paused in vibrant tension. “Do you refute this, madame?”

“No, I . . .  No, you know that I cannot!” Gabriella cried, obviously more shaken than she had already been.

“Then, I shall see what I have purchased, madame,” he continued, relentless. “Now!”

“You have become an arrogant beast, Lord Kittridge,” Gabriella exclaimed, appearing more furious and embarrassed now as she tossed her mink muffler onto the wing chair in his study along with her trim mink hat to follow. She eyed him uncertainly through beautiful violet colored eyes, apparently gauging his resolve in this most daring scene, and then she cried, “I certainly could not begrudge you the entire twenty-thousand pounds that it cost you to purchase me!”

Her white gloves came off next, furiously following the mink accessories. “Just what do you intend to do with me?” she exclaimed as her shaking fingers worked on the black pearl buttons of her fashionable silk walking dress. “Make me into your whore,” she panted as the dove gray dress slid to her slippered feet and she shuttered in fevered distress. “How you must hate me to do this,” she despaired in obvious anguish, jerking down her petticoats one by one, until she stood in only her cream-colored, gauzy camisole.

Drummond saw at once that she was still exquisite after all these years. Infinitely more so dressed in an utterly feminine camisole. The camisole covered only to her creamy-colored upper thighs above her silk stockings held in place by frilly garters of violet satin. The lacy top edge of the camisole dipped into the sultry curves of her magnificent bosom, showing her pink nipples clearly outlined against the fragile silk. She was sumptuous with her auburn hair and purply colored eyes, little did her contemptible husband realize, but he would have paid ten times as much to have her.

“Come here to me, madame, now!” Drummond commanded. Completely ignoring Gabriella’s questions and tirade as he reclined imperiously in his high-backed leather chair behind the desk in his study.

“Answer me!” Gabriella exclaimed indignant, even as she came forward with faltering steps. She only tiptoed to the edge of his desk, with one of her hands attempting ridiculously to cover her ample breasts, while the other scrunched between her perfect thighs. He could see the pulse beating wildly in the hollow of her slender throat.

“I do not have to answer to you for anything, madame. It is you, who are now fully and completely beneath my proprietorship.” Drummond reached forward.

“Oh, you-you,” Gabriella squealed as he clasped her wrist, hauling her unceremoniously into his lap with her back plastered to his chest.

“There is nothing for you to do, madame. No place for you to go.” Drummond moved his hand then with bold rapaciousness. He slid his fingers beneath Gabriella’s camisole to aggressively capture in his hand her hot flushed little pussy, while she tried instantly to clench her legs together, eliciting a strangled screech.

Then, he uttered harshly. “You may not abandon me this time. You must submit!”

“Oh, I will escape you-you, arrogant bastard!” Gabriella cried, trying to struggle from beneath his arm clamped around her slender waist, while his fingers dipped, relentless into the hot, moist lips of her sex, making her gasp loudly in denial.

Suddenly Drummond’s fingers halted their exploring motion as Gabriella’s final words registered in his mind and he released her just as quickly. “Go then! Back to your husband. Now, madame,” he snapped.

Gabriella braced her hands upon his arms to peer back over her shoulder at him. “You know that I cannot . . . he has everything. I-I.”

“The streets then, madame, I care not!”

“B-But . . . there is nowhere for me to go.”

“Precisely, madame.” Drummond allowed his gaze to burn with demand into Gabriella’s. “Spread your legs for me now! Place them up and over mine.”

“I shall hate you . . . I-I,”

“We shall see,” Drummond replied intently as Gabriella turned her gaze forward, and then collapsed upon his chest, raising her legs, so slowly . . . faltering, up over his.

Drummond relaxed then. He had routed the first major skirmish and he did intend to win the entire battle. The woman in his arms was everything that he had ever dreamed her to be. Soft, feminine, and gracefully feisty, although she had no chance. Who would have ever thought in the grand continuum of life’s events that he would be given this second singular chance? He never questioned the mores of God’s greatest design. More appropriate, he molded those events to his own design. But this time . . .  This time, lent him nearly to believe in divine providence.

Gabriella’s shapely curves trembled where they settled over his muscular frame. Her breathing was agitated, her soft brunette hair tickled his throat from where her head moved, restless beneath his chin. Nonetheless, she struggled no more when he placed both of his palms flatly onto the gossamer flesh of her shivering inner thighs.

“What will you do to me?” she moaned, with a helpless whisper. Still, she did not fight his hands presence, nor their right to be there.

Intent, Drummond did not answer her, and he would not for a long time to come. Instead, he inhaled deeply, catching the fragrances of light orange blossoms mixed with lavender in her hair, and then the scent of hot woman’s flesh beneath it all. All the while, his palms stroked upward, caressing her tender creamy flesh, following the inner curve of her thighs. Spreading her thighs open wider to expose her voluptuous apex.

“Drummond,” she whimpered in a renewed attempt of maidenly protest that fell far short, because it sounded more like a mincing purr, as her flesh beneath his palms quivered and tensed.

“I should have a mirror placed to view you,” Drummond murmured wickedly into her ear as his fingertips slid into the dewy, hot crease of her femininity. “I should shave these damp little curls away to see.”

“Oh! You shouldn’t do-!” she gasped on a throaty squeal.

“The next time I shall, madame,” Drummond murmured as he parted the steamy folds of her pussy with his fingers, baring the fragile pearl that he sought. “We shall both watch you writhe just for me.”

Aggressively, Drummond flicked his second finger over Gabriella’s hot, protruding clitoris. That little bud that he bared to his assault. Instantly causing her to quake, then shiver as she mewled. “I shan’t . . . I’ve never. N-No one has ever touched me, like . . .”

The last of her verse was lost within an involuntary squeal as Drummond rubbed his finger greedily over her thrusting and swollen flesh, using a blatant and sensuous rhythm. He wondered briefly at what she tried to disclaim, then shrugged it aside. He would be a fool to believe that she had not reached a climax at her age. Saints, she had been married for twenty-five years, it was unimaginable that the lady had not . . .

“Oh my god, Drummond,” Gabriella mewled, clearly involuntarily as she squirmed on his hard thighs with delicious shivers running through her voluptuous body. Now she was industriously seeking his fingers motion with uplifted and sultry motions of her own.

Drummond allowed himself a satisfied smile. He was secure in the knowledge that Gabriella could not see the momentary crack in his polished veneer, as he used his other hand to finger the juicy, swollen flesh around her succulent vagina. One heady and exploratory roam around this tender circular opening and he speared his second finger straight into her tight sheath. She cried out, arching upward, seating his finger firmly with frenzied, honey-filled gasps escaping her throat.

All of his thoughts were ungodly lustful at how tight and provocative she was as he began to ambitiously fuck her with his finger . . . one . . . then two, while she cried out incoherent and quivered dangerously close to her summit. Her pale knees rose upward, spreading outward toward each armrest with increased expectancy as he inhaled the musky scent of her submission to him.

His control tottered on a fissure as a surge of lustful intent swept through his rigid control for a moment. He was hard. He had been hard this entire time, but now his shaft throbbed, demanding to be master. He battled for several straining moments with his cock’s lust, as he aggressively dipped his fingers in and out of seeping heaven. But his willpower was victorious in the end, as always. Later perhaps, he would be surprised at his loss of control, but for now, he only wished to fulfill a private dream and with his control in check, he settled back to relish this lifetime’s fulfillment.

Gabriella’s mind fractured, just as her loins exploded into star bursting rapture. She could not control her body’s spasms. She did not want to! She only desired to yield and follow the convulsing tide of pleasure as Drummond’s wicked-wicked fingers continued to move inside her. Stroking her, while she moaned embarrassingly out of control. Unable to catch her breath, she heard Drummond’s husky aristocratic voice command.

“Again.”

She was fire. An impassioned body of flesh and bone to be molded to this arrogant man’s whims. But he had the right to be arrogant, she thought incoherently, with his devilish fingers. He had a right to be anything that she could beg him for!

“Oh, Drummond,” she whimpered, caught within the throes of passion, for the first time in her life.

“Yes,” Drummond whispered in a throaty tenor against her ear, while his wide hand curved inward, cupping over her loins and taking her entire plumpness, possessively into his hand. She arched her loins upward, shamelessly against his palm as he stroked and rubbed her womanhood decadently with his fingers once again. This time her body eagerly encouraged him with undulations of its own, gnawing to feel that incredible bliss of rampant release that was ruling her now beneath its newest awakenings.

She could not think that she lay, straddled scandalously, backward over this man and exposed completely to the room . . . to him. Mindless, she wished her pompous and cruel husband could see her now, finding passion in a man’s arms, writhing brazenly for this man’s touch.

“Ah-ah . . . Oh, god,” she cried, twisting beneath the rapid flicking of Drummond’s fingers, deep in the swollen folds of her sex.

“I shall have you this way, madame, anytime that pleases me,” Drummond averred into her ear. “Anyplace that I wish it.”

“Ah . . . ah . . . Drummond,” she whimpered, clutching Drummond’s thick wrists in abandon.

“Bent over my desk, madame. In my carriage or at my dinner table. You will yield your pussy to my hand, my mouth, anything that I desire,” he murmured, hitching her up higher on his lap with his arm beneath her breasts as his fingers continued to tattoo a dance in the folds of her womanhood.

“Oh-oh . . .” Gabriella cried, tottering once again on the molten summit.

“Yes, sweet lady,” Drummond rasped. “Give me your passion . . . let me feel it, Gabriella.”

Gabriella sobbed Drummond’s name as the passion rippled through her, stronger and more intense this time. Shaking her very limbs! Tears streamed down her cheeks as she gasped at the raw pleasure, twisting . . . tickling . . . bursting from her loins!

“Again,” Drummond commanded hoarsely.

“Oh God, Drummond!” Gabriella cried.

“Yes,” he growled in near savagery.

“N-no, I c-can’t,” she whimpered.

“Yes! You will!” he commanded.

Chapter Three

Gabriella realized immediately that she must have truly lost consciousness in the last explosive throes of raw passion that Drummond commanded from her body, because she came awake reclining on a settee. Drummond was standing over her, languidly smoking a spicy smelling cigar. His slate gray eyes revealed nothing. There was not a modicum of tenderness in their reserved depths.

Gabriella quickly crossed her arm over the transparent material that was covering her breasts, placing one hand modestly between her legs as heat flooded her cheeks to burning. She was so confused, feeling indignant, shameful, and yet completely sated somehow. She never imagined in her wildest dreams that a man could bring a woman to such passion!

“Maidenly modesty does not become you at this moment, madame.” Drummond raised a perfectly sculpted silver-gray eyebrow in reprove. “Nor shall I allow it to become a part of our newest relationship.” He puffed lazily on his cigar with his gaze demanding that she move her arms.

Gabriella huffed, flustered with her familiar and graceful composure, thoroughly in shreds as she floundered, not knowing where or how to act. In one short afternoon her life had completely changed. Nothing seemed of herself anymore and she did not know where to begin to regain the pieces that had become lost or irrevocably changed.

“They prohibited slavery years ago, Lord Kittridge,” she exclaimed, principally to halt the words that she would have spoken, begging Drummond to comfort her. Still, she lowered her arms as he silently commanded and she realized in a moment of panic what possession he held over her now.

Drummond ignored her comment wholly, as appeared to be a trait of his, while his gaze boldly studied her barely concealed breasts. “It could have been worse, madame. It was only by chance circumstances that I learned your husband had intentions to sell you. Quite a barbarous ideal, selling one’s wife, however, for my purposes, effective.”

“Your purposes?” Gabriella questioned in a whisper, holding forth little hope that Drummond would answer her inquiry.

“And to a lower class patron no less.” he paused, tilting his head upward for a slow stately puff on his cigar. “Imagine my surprise?”

Gabriella shuddered, but offered no verbal comment as her gaze irrevocably slid down over the length of Drummond’s tall frame, while he was not looking at her. Even at his age, he was still the most attractive man that she had ever seen. He was muscular and trim with short cut, silver-gray hair, adding a dramatic and handsome maturity to his tanned and hawkish features.

“And for what?” Drummond mused. “This claim that you are barren?”

Gabriella’s mind suddenly fired from its confusion as pain and deep humiliation flared in her breast. She came upright, off the settee, with jerky and angry motions. Remaining mute, she stood and quickly gathered her clothing, holding it before her like a shield. She would not even take the time to dress. What difference could it make after this horrible day? She would find her cloak quickly and that would be enough.

“I choose the streets,” she muttered, gazing downward at the shambles of clothing in her arms. Just like her life. She did not hear Drummond’s approach, until suddenly he clasped his warm strong hands around her bare upper arms as he turned her to face him.

“That is no longer an option for you, madame.”

Her gaze shot to his face. Somehow, he had rid himself of his cigar and she thought she detected a fleeting second of sympathy in his charcoal-gray eyes, coming and going so quick that she was sure she had just imagined it.

“Your husband will no longer have you, madame. That paragon, whom I might mention was chosen over myself twenty-five years ago. You have no further family alive, no money, and the papers signed this day between your husband and myself, while not entirely legally binding, are enough so that if you breach the contract by leaving me without my consent, I could stretch the situation enough to have you arrested, until a lengthy courtroom battle could ascertain the ramifications.”

“Jail,” Gabriella whispered, horrified.

“The Gaol to be exact, Lady St. John.” Drummond paused searching her gaze intently as if to ascertain her complete understanding, then he released her and strode toward his desk saying, “I shall expect you to join me for dinner at seven. Your clothes have been delivered to my chambers where you may go now and refresh yourself. Rest if you need to, madame.”

Gabriella remained mute, watching in horrid fascination as Drummond sat in his high-backed desk chair, facing her nonchalantly from across his inlayed marble-topped desk. His gaze was inscrutable, his mouth outlined in perfect masculine firmness, as he casually lifted two of his fingers up to his regal nose, and he inhaled. Then, he licked the tip of his second finger . . . slowly. That same finger that had touched her-her!

Gabriella gasped and fled the room before Drummond’s warm, masculine chuckling.

Chapter Four

Gabriella came awake several hours later, sprawled on top of Drummond’s four poster bed. She had not meant to fall asleep, however the last thing she recalled was weeping uncontrollably into the plush blue quilts. How long had she cried, she had no idea, it had been as if a dam finally burst inside her, and then she must have succumbed to exhaustion after her tears abated.

She sat upright, brushing the brunette tresses of her shoulder length hair away from her face and off her forehead. It was obvious the hairstyle she had worn today, a stylish French twisting braid, was in ruins. Foolishly, that conclusion made her nearly cry again. She had always taken pride, and the time to achieve the best appearance she could present, from her deep chestnut-colored hair, which was soft and elegantly cut, to her long polished fingernails. She might now be the age of a mature woman, however she looked well for her age. Except that now one of her exceptionally long red fingernails was cracked and her life was in ruins.

So why did she feel like sighing? In truth, she felt like running her hands over her body to discover the newness lurking there. She wanted to feel. She wanted to stretch and linger, thinking of the passion, dreaming of Drummond’s wicked fingers!

“Oh . . . gracious . . . me,” she exclaimed, bringing her hands up to her hot cheeks to keep them from roaming some place on her person. “This is so dangerous . . . he is so dangerous,” she muttered. Oh God, she thought, what was she to do?

At that precise moment Gabriella heard knocking upon the bedroom door and she nearly bolted from the bed in alarm. However, when she took a moment to realize that Drummond would not knock, she gathered her tattered nerves and the quilt about her, calling entrance.

It was a maid of stoic proportions and disposition. Her name was Matilda and her clip accent proclaimed her to be of German descent. The order from Lord Kittridge, Matilda explained, was for Gabriella to bathe and dress for dinner. This followed by no less than six footmen bearing a large and intricately worked brass tub with pails of water to fill it.

“Mien lady, I will return in one half hour,” Matilda announced after the footmen left and the toweling had been placed.

After the door closed behind Matilda, Gabriella sighed, thinking that if she were a proper scion of society and breeding she would refuse the bath with indignation. The only failing with this was that she adored comforts too well and longed for the hot and soothing consolation of a bath. After that? Well, she would not dwell on that at this moment. After stripping her chemise, garters, and stockings off, she sank into the tub of hot water gratefully. She washed her hair and body vigorously, feeling as if she were washing away mounds of dirt, which could not be. It was the humiliation that she was trying to wash away, the humiliation of having her cruel and heartless husband abandon her in such a horrible and degrading fashion. No, he threw her aside as if so much trash to be discarded, completely ruining her.

“Oh,” she whimpered on a tearful note into the humid steam swirling around her, then she fought her tears. She would not succumb again, she would not! No, from this exact moment forward, she would take one moment at a time.

“Yes,” she breathed, what was it that they called it? “Carpe diem,” she whispered. She would live to survive each moment to the next.

“An excellent philosophy, madame.”

Gabriella yelped in shock and surprise. It was Drummond, tall and masculinely fluid in buff gray trousers and a sapphire blue hunting jacket, invading the intimacy of her bath. Why even her husband Reginald, had never seen her so . . .

“One which, I believe shall define our relationship,” Drummond finished.

Gabriella clasped her hands over her breasts, bringing her knees upward to her chin. The water was soapy . . . yet? “Drummond,” she gasped stupidly through her embarrassment. He was so bold and quite utterly handsome.

“Come, madame,” he said imperiously, bending forward slightly to hold his hand outstretched to her. “It is time to seize this moment.”

“You cannot mean for me to-to . . . just?” she sputtered.

“Ah, but I can, madame, and I do. I believe that I explained that quite thoroughly in my study earlier this day.” His gray eyes were rich with intelligence and resolute command. “Come, madame, take my hand and step from the bath so I may dry you.”

Gabriella understood that she had no choice, just as she knew that she was flushing pink when she reached her hand forward and Drummond clasped it. Oh too soon, she was rising upward, completely nude, from the spilling warm water, while Drummond’s gaze slowed, and then very thoroughly roamed over every inch of her naked flesh.

“Step out and turn around, madame, so I may view your exquisite endowments from behind,” he murmured with his voice sounding husky to her ears.

Exquisite, Gabriella wondered, as she stepped from the tub and hesitantly turned her back to him, while water dripped down her skin, feeling extremely sensitive. It felt somehow heady to be viewed, dripping wet and naked by a fully clothed man; a man who seemed to admire the way she looked. This confused her because Reginald had never liked . . .

“Hm, your pink bottom has a dimple. Absolutely perfect, and your legs are trim and shapely.”

A dimple, Gabriella wondered . . . perfect . . . shapely?

Drummond still held her hand and was using it to turn her fully around to face him again. “And your breasts, madame, how glorious. I have a deep desire to touch them. Nibble my teeth on those rosebud tips.” His gaze was smoldering, charcoal embers. “Shall you allow me?”

Gabriella hung hopelessly on the sensation of his words. Nibbling her breasts? Then his last words registered. He would let her choose?

“I want to, madame. I want to touch your breasts . . . to pet them. But, I will not, unless you ask it of me.”

She parted her lips, but no sound came forth, before he said, “Ah, but I have a gift for you. A perfect setting, I believe.”

“A gift,” she whispered, trying to find any strength in her voice.

“First let me dry this white velvet skin of yours, then I shall give you my gifts . . . two of them, I have, madame. Do you fancy presents?”

White velvet skin, why I never? “I l-love presents,” she blurted, feeling instantly embarrassed as the admission just spilled out of her.

“I thought so,” Drummond murmured as he began to apply a fluffy white linen to her back, bottom, and legs. And she let him! “Turn around again for me, madame,” he ordered quietly.

Drummond was so close that Gabriella could feel the heat of his body, nearly feel the brush of his hunting jacket, as she turned. She found herself gazing at the small ruby stud that he wore in his left earlobe. Such a masculine ear, she thought a bit off kilter, and the crimson ruby was unusual, but quite attractive. Then, his downy linen found her loins and her legs parted with a melting new appreciation, as he chuckled low and arresting.

“Not yet, madame. Perhaps for dessert this evening.”

Her gaze flew to his, but there was no disdain or mockery, just appreciation, heady masculine appreciation.

“I shall leave the drying of your plump beautiful breasts to you, madame. I did promise,” he murmured, gazing deeply into her eyes for long moments before he handed her the towel and stepped away. The whole while Gabriella heard the words, plump and beautiful, fluttering through her mind, so much so that she dared to peek downward. A lady never really looked upon her naked self, but...

Chapter Five

Drummond savored the view of exquisite feminine nudity that Gabriella presented to him as he sat in a padded wing chair musing that he was unable to cross his legs comfortably for the willful hardening of his cock. He brushed his lower lip with his fingertips, fighting the impetuous urge to take the damn thing out and stroke it. Judas, he normally applied more control than this, yet he had never quite been in this situation before. The lady of his youthful dreams was standing naked in his home, well except for the linen she clutched, which he would rid her of shortly. Still, she was standing here, elegant and beautiful, more so in her maturity than he could have imagined, with her ripe curving figure just begging to fill his hands.

Hm, and she was his. All his or she would be once he finally set his mind to the task. The seduction of her, he had perfected in odd fantasies throughout the years, so it came easily to his mind. The securing of her, to him legally, would take much more ingenuity and he would only finalize whatever plan he conjured when he was completely certain that Gabriella would bed him and love him with abandon. He had suffered one lifelong commitment to a passion-afraid woman and he would not do so again. However, with Gabriella, even in this short time together, made him feel that he was nearly certain that she was . . . Or was that just his heart?

“Drummond it appears to me, um . . . or do you perchance, carry a tendre for me? From our youth together or-or ...” she asked with her voice faltering away.

Drummond felt guilty, caught for the barest of moments, and he understood that it was much too soon to hope for this in himself or her for that matter. No, he had to disabuse her of this notion, keeping her off balance, but she looked so precious standing there.

“I have a fine appreciation for beautiful women, Lady St. John, at the present it is nothing more than that, I assure you.” Drummond watched Gabriella’s coral-shaded lips form a tantalizing moue of disappointment. He could only consider that any woman would wish their first love to be falling upon their feet in middle age. Ah well, perhaps someday, he mused, they certainly were pink-toed treasures. What was that the gentlemen, Archangels were saying, “Make the woman your mistress?” He would have to keep that in mind, he considered as he offered his hand to Gabriella.

“Come here, madame.”

Gabriella gazed at him with more than uncertainty in her violet colored eyes. It was then he decided that he would have to purchase an amethyst jewel their exact incredible coloring as he watched her walk timidly toward him to stand at his bent knees. “Kneel on that linen you clutch so tightly, madame. Kneel here between my legs, so that I may gift you with your first present.”

He could see quite clearly in Gabriella’s open gaze the war within herself, she did not want to kneel, however, another part of her desired it. Just as he understood how secretly thrilled she was to be wholly naked before him. It was that doubt . . . that self-denial of pleasure that he must overcome.

Gabriella knelt gingerly between Drummond’s legs feeling scandalous. Besides feeling hot and wholly off balance, a part of her thought relentlessly of Drummond’s bold fingers and the other part audaciously anticipated the gifting of a present with the excitement of a little girl. She watched Drummond pull a red velvet jewelry box from his inner jacket pocket with his lean, tanned fingers carrying it forward. Jewelry, she wondered, experiencing a shiver of excitement.

“This gift is yours and yours alone. The second gift shall be ultimately for both of us,” he murmured.

Gabriella hardly had a moment to wonder at Drummond’s words, before she was overwhelmed at the sight of two teardrop diamond earrings! Oh, it was really quite silly for her to react like this. She really should be indignant at Drummond for all that he was doing to her. It was all so decadent. No lady ever could...

“Drummond, they are beautiful!” she gasped despite her half-hearted efforts at silent morality lessons. They were so exquisite and no one had given her a gift since her childhood.

“Tears, my love?” Drummond questioned in a tenor murmur.

“I-I,” she gazed at him, trembling as she knelt naked between his legs, hearing the resonance of his masculine voice saying, “my love,” as it echoed through her mind.

“Let me place them in your lobes, madame,” Drummond murmured as he leaned forward to set the jewelry box on his knee. He took one sparkling diamond earring out of the box and Gabriella placed her hands on his steady knees, finding herself inexplicably leaning her body forward to him. His fingers were warm and this time the sleeves of his jacket did brush across her bare nipples, which were distended and-and aching. He was so close that she could smell brandy and a hint of spicy cigar on his breath, which warmed her cheek. She shivered. The cloth of his jacket brushed her nipples again and she glimpsed the pink tips jutting forward as if begging for more.

“Oh,” she breathed, biting her bottom lip as she inched a tiny bit closer. Oh gracious, what would it feel like if he put his hands on my . . .

“There, madame, now stand, so I may view them properly.”

Drummond’s hands touched her waist on both sides with his long fingers hot on her flesh as they spread outward over her belly, into the small of her back. He lifted her . . . easily. Her breasts pressed fully into the silk of his pristine white shirt and she could feel inch upon inch of the inflexible muscles of his chest. Then, she was standing while he reclined in the chair, gazing up at her. She was so close between his legs that she could feel the tempered tendons of his thighs, brushing along her outer thighs.

“What is it you want of me, Drummond?” she asked breathlessly.

“Everything,” he stated succinctly, as his gray eyes traveled slowly, possessively, setting fire to her breasts, her belly, and then warming the curling auburn hair between her thighs.

“Drummond, I . . .”

“Yes,” he drawled knowingly, with two of his fingers rubbing over his full bottom lip.

Gabriella wanted desperately to ask him to touch her, to put his hands on her loins. His fingers. But she couldn’t. She could only stand there trembling as she watched the flicker of disappointment in his gaze, come and go so quickly that . . .

“And now, madame, for my second gift,” he said briskly as he began to pull a long gold chain out of his pocket. The chain was as delicately wrought as a necklace, however, too long to be so, but it did have an oblong-shaped pearl-colored stone in the very middle of its length.

“This is a special stone, madame, called a passion pearl.” Drummond reached forward and drew the chain around her bare waist.

“Drummond, I-I,” Gabriella stuttered, looking down at his tan fingers working to close the clasp.

“Hush now,” he murmured deeply as he brought the opalescence pearl forward and the delicate chain caught on her naked hips, while the pearl-stone slid downward through the springy nest of her woman’s hair . . . and lower! Drummond touched the pearl with the tip of one finger and pushed it. Right into the crease of her femininity! Gabriella gasped, jumping backward, but the pearl-stone was wedged and she was completely flustered as she reached her shaking hands to the chain, trying to pull the pearl free.

“Tsk-tsk, madame.”

Gabriella glanced over at Drummond just as the pearl pulled free to settle harmlessly in the curls of her woman’s fleece.

“Ah well, madame, you shall wear it from now on regardless,” he said as he leaned back into the chair and idly regarded her. “You are never to take it off and should I ever find it not around your waist, I will have to punish you.”

“Punish,” she exclaimed, grabbing a linen from beside the brass tub to cover herself as she glared at Drummond.

“Precisely, madame,” he replied as he stood. “We shall commence with spankings at anytime or place that I do not find you wearing my passion pearl about your waist.”

Gabriella gasped when she heard Drummond say spanking and she stepped backward a step, and blurted, “How barbaric, Lord Kittridge!”

“Madame, nothing would please me more than for you to find me very barbaric,” Drummond stated as he strode with a lethal grace toward the door. “I should like you to wear a low-cut gown for dinner this evening,” he drawled as he opened the door. “Because we are now both aware of how much, I do covet your breasts. Are we not, madame?”

Upon those parting words, Drummond closed the door behind him as he stepped into the hallway allowing a satisfied smile to crease his lips.

“A mistress indeed,” he murmured as he set off down the hall. He would change into his evening clothes in another one of the numerous rooms here at his country manor. Thereby allowing Gabriella a brief respite to collect herself, besides they were having guests for dinner.

Chapter Six

In the end Gabriella chose a deep burgundy colored silk gown with a plunging neckline. She tried to assure herself that it had nothing to do with Drummond’s bold threats upon herself or her person. That it was simply because the rich colors of the gown set off her complexion and notably, the diamond earrings.

“Oh, you are truly hopeless,” she exclaimed to herself after Matilda had finished dressing her hair and left her alone for a few moments before she needed to go downstairs to dinner. “Utterly hopeless,” she finished in a whisper as she regarded her reflection in the mirror.

What did she see there, she wondered? Certainly not the same woman whose husband threw her aside for his pregnant mistress saying that a bastard heir was better than no heir at all. However, the most horrible thought was that she wondered deeply whether she could really blame Reginald. Being barren was such a disgraceful condition. She understood why no man could possibly want a woman who w-was . . .

Velvet white skin . . . glorious breasts . . . a dimple . . . my love. “Except perhaps, Drummond,” Gabriella murmured, thinking that she had never been more surprised and thankful to see Drummond at that hideous “wife’s sale” that her husband had commissioned. And, to see Reginald thwarted from selling her to that portly banker, as had been his intentions! Drummond had rescued her as completely as any fanciful hero. It was truly disconcerting to have the very man that you have secretly loved your entire life appear in your moment of greatest need and figuratively carry you off to safety. But was it safety? She wanted so much to believe that it was and yet, she had frivolously believed in the marriage vows also, no matter how miserable she had been through the years. The problem being, that if one man could so heedlessly throw her aside, why not the next? What could she ever hope to be to Drummond, but his lady in keeping? Yet what choice did she have, or did she really wish any other choice?

“Do I?” she whispered, remembering Drummond’s hands, his magic fingers, his words, and his gaze upon her. Oh gracious he made her feel more like a woman than she had ever felt in her life, although it was all so improper and so immoral. Just then, she could hear knocking on the door with Matilda’s voice behind it, reminding her of the time. So Gabriella gladly put her troubled thoughts aside, thinking distractedly that she truly had no wish to deal with them at all!

When she arrived downstairs to stand in front of what she presumed were the double doors to the dining room. It was then that she heard the distinct murmuring of conversation on the other side of the doors, accentuated by the tenor fluctuations of male voices, in some type of amusement. Guests? Men laughing? Startled, Gabriella looked askance of the very proper young butler. “Are there guests?” she whispered anxiously. Then finding herself without a moment to change her course of entering the room, which she would not have done except the attentive butler was already opening the doors.

“The Archangels, my lady,” the butler said as he stepped aside and waited her entrance very properly.

Archangels? Gabriella’s steps faltered at the entrance.

“Madame, you are all things that are exquisite. Please come forward, Lady St. John, and meet my accomplices,” Drummond said looking masculinely resplendent in his black evening attire.

Gabriella gladly placed her gloved hand on the slightly bent arm that Drummond offered her. It was foolish to feel so protected by this gesture, to find strength in Drummond’s nearness. She gazed up at him knowing that her uncertainty showed clearly.

He dipped his head slightly, enough so that only she may hear his words. “And you will find that they shall be your loyal champions as well, madame.”

With this assurance, he guided her into the formal dining room where five gentlemen resided in varying degrees of posture and noble rank, Gabriella was soon to discover. It was a formidable grouping of noble titles and men. Each man was handsome and distinctive in his own manner. However, simply none were more trim and attractive in their evening wear than Drummond, who stood securely at her side as she curtsied to each man’s introduction. Two dukes, two earls, a marquis, a baron, and none of these esteemed gentlemen showed her a moment of lesser regard.

Gabriella nearly sighed in audible relief, during the last introduction to the Earl of Ravenscar, when he proclaimed her enchanting. Both she and Reginald knew the earl personally, although she knew none of the other young aristocrats in the room before this gathering. That it appeared Lord Ravenscar would not directly slight her for her scandalous presence in Drummond’s country home. Nor for the deeds of the horrible “sale” this day, gave Gabriella a modicum of her dignity back.

Still, she could not fathom the presence of the five lords here. It was not as if the manor were found in London where all may arrive on a whim. Drummond’s estate was over a two-hour ride from London.

“My lady, allow me to seat you for dinner granting these hounds their proper food,” Drummond said, as he guided her to a lavishly laid dining table.

There was some hidden meaning in Drummond’s words, Gabriella thought, unable to catch its subtlety beneath the varying admiring gazes of the gentlemen around her. She could not remember seeing such appreciation in men’s gazes before. It was flattering and only the slightest bit discomforting to be found attractive by such a grouping of distinguished gentlemen.

When Drummond seated her, he stayed bent over her and for the barest moment his lips grazed her earlobe warmly, as he murmured for her ears only. “The earrings are exquisite on you, madame. However, in that gown, with your breasts bared so, I can only envy my passion pearl and where it must be nested at this very moment.”

Gabriella barely stifled her gasp as her cheeks grew warm and Drummond moved to sit at the head of the table directly beside her. She dared not look at anything but the gold-rimmed plate in front of her. She was properly shocked at Drummond’s bold dealings, but not in outrage, it was more than a bit thrilling to be flirted with so decadently. However, she had a moment of anxiety because the scandalous little pearl Drummond spoke of was laying quite innocently over her linen drawers and not at all where he envisioned it to be. She chewed the insides of her lip suddenly worried over Drummond’s reaction, should he discover this.

“Please, gentlemen, find your seats as you will,” Drummond said. “I believe my cook has surpassed himself this eve in honor of Lady Gabriella’s presence.”

Each man took his place, seeming to Gabriella as if the seating of each man were an arrangement of long standing. Lord Ravenscar sat directly across from her to Drummond’s immediate right and next to him was the Duke of Sutherlin with his piratical eye patch that only lent a mysterious quality to his already dark handsomeness. Next to him sat the Marquis of Hartley, with a noticeable silver hook in place of his left hand and the longest, most beautiful brown hair that she had ever seen on a man. The gilded-haired, Baron of Hawkenge took the seat at the end of the elegantly set table, obviously to ease what must be an injured leg up onto a stool, which he promptly did. That left the auburn-haired and colorfully dressed, Laird Duneagan directly beside her to her right. He actually winked at her when he caught her looking at his kilt, which left his knees shockingly bared.

“Gentlemen, before they serve the first course, I should like to toast to my good fortune and the lovely, Lady Gabriella,” Drummond said, raising his flawlessly fluted, crystal wine glass.

Gabriella was a bit stunned, of all that she had envisioned this evening in her life could entail, never had she thought it would allude to such fairy tale qualities from the horrible beginnings of this morning. She hesitantly raised her glass as was proper, finding her gaze captured by Drummond’s peppery-gray eyes, over the rim of her crystal wine glass.

Chapter Seven

Drummond pondered irresistibly that Gabriella’s eyes were likened to deep and rich colored violets, shimmering in the sunlight. Inexorably, he held her gaze for long moments before allowing her to escape as the butler began to serve the first course. Then, he watched her peek downward at her plate with the beginnings of a blush coloring her cheeks to petal pink, as his gaze refocused to capture the entire vision that she presented in her low-cut burgundy gown. While the gentlemen, Archangels took up varying degrees of conversation around the table, he could only wonder about Lord St. John’s sanity for ever letting this woman slip through his fingers.

Through the first and second courses served, the conversation drifted through assorted male topics including boxing, hunting, billiards, and one of his favorite pastimes fencing. All discussed to a delightfully curious Gabriella. He understood that a lady of her upbringing would not have been subjected to these bastions of male interests before. Society’s ridiculous and redundant mores, being that ladies were too delicate to be subjected to such rough and tumble male accomplishments.

He delighted in Gabriella’s obvious interest and held his breath, as it were, to see if she would be brave enough to scramble over the walls of propriety and ask a question of her own. However, it was not until the conversation inevitably turned to their shared profession, during the third course, that she became embolden enough to blurt.

“You’re spies . . . all of you are spies?”

“Were,” Radford amended dryly.

“And you canna let a soul know of it, lass,” Brynmore briskly added.

“All of us are entrusting you with our lives to speak of this in your company, my lady,” Saxonhurst advised.

“We will have to make the lady an official member of the Archangels,” Harrison rasped with a rare smile directed at Gabriella.

“She should speak a vow of some sort,” Wyndham said, quietly intense from his end of the lavish table.

Drummond let his gaze slip over Gabriella, who appeared amazed and a bit flustered. “What do you say, my lady, shall you join this illustrious gentlemen’s club? Shall you swear secrecy, and then we will divulge our secrets without hesitation in your company?”

“I ... would. I mean, yes,” Gabriella replied with demure hesitation, contradicting the excitement coloring her violet eyes.

“Excellent,” Drummond responded with his gaze traversing the table and each person there. “How should we officiate this momentous occasion, gentlemen?”

“I would be voting for a kiss each,” Brynmore replied, smiling rakishly. “However, I ken our leader might be vetoing this notion.”

“And you would be correct,” Drummond answered with a quiet, but possessive quality in his voice.

“You are the l-leader?” Gabriella asked in obvious wonder.

“The mastermind is more his tune,” Harrison answered in a gravelly whisper.

Drummond raised an eyebrow to Harrison, but turned to Gabriella. “Yes, madame, I was the leader of this nefarious group of information seekers.” He toyed with the stem of his wine glass for a moment. “And now to our ceremony and vow. I believe the lady should part with a secret bit of information about herself. Which we shall then keep, just as she will vow to keep our secrets.”

“Oh– I.” Gabriella gazed in a startled manner around the table. “I expect that it would only be fair,” she finished with a dainty hand pressed to her remarkable bosom.

“Hm,” Drummond pondered. “What shall it be? Something intimate enough to cause you caution, I should think.”

“Yes, of course,” Gabriella replied gazing at each man in turn.

“Then let us retire to the gaming salon for cigars and perhaps a brandy to bolster our lady’s courage,” Harrison suggested.

“Yes,” Drummond replied, watching Gabriella’s eyes widen at the suggestion that she should join gentlemen in that most sacred ritual of port, cigars, and conversation after a meal. “I for one, enjoy saving my dessert for a much later hour,” Drummond added to Gabriella’s blush as they all rose.

Chapter Eight

A few moments later and only partially down the hallway in the presumed direction of the gaming salon, Gabriella found herself whisked into a narrow, darkened hallway. This one split off from the main corridor she, Drummond, and the others had been following.

“Drummond, what is it-?” she gasped in a near squeal. Finding her back pressed into the hallway wall by the hard, lean length of Drummond’s tall frame blanketing hers. Her breasts were plumped into his rib cage and he cradled her hips warmly between his thighs as his hands closed hard around her waist on each side.

“Why is my passion pearl not affecting you, madame?” he asked with his warm lips hovering over her ear.

“How could you possibly tell?” she appealed in a whisper directed into his shoulder, he was so close.

“Your nipples are relaxed, madame, and this would not be the case if my pearl was placed properly.”

“Gracious,” she breathed, trying to call forth the proper amount of indignation, however, succeeding only halfheartedly with the whirl of sensations she was experiencing. Gabriella found her hands placed flat on the well-toned muscles of Drummond’s chest with her long crimson nails sliding downward over the shape of his abundantly formed mounds of sinew. Not in a gesture of warding him off as one would hope that she would attempt to do . . . Oh but, he felt so wonderful.

“Do you scratch, madame?” Drummond asked warmly into her ear as his hands slid downward from her waist to clasp both sides of her bottom.

“Oh my . . . I, ah– do not know,” she whispered with a sighing gasp.

Drummond chuckled, then his fingers spread wide clasping the cheeks of her flesh, until she could feel the long ridged outline of his manhood pressing into her lower-lowest belly.

“I believe that you do,” Drummond purred with the tip of his hot tongue tracing her earlobe making her shiver more as she clutched his broad shoulders for balance. “Like a sensuous little kitten with her claws extended. Shall I call you kitten, madame? My kitten?”

“Oh.” Gabriella puffed a breath into Drummond’s ear with her lips grazing the cool ice of his ruby stud, while he rocked her against him . . . breathlessly . . . indecently along the outline of his turgid sex. The length was breathtaking and the outline seduced her with a poignant urge to rub, or-or grind back!

“I believe that I have deduced your ploy, madame,” Drummond announced as the warmth of his body, abruptly left hers. And as quick, Gabriella found herself bodily twirled around to face the wall with Drummond’s hands clamped to the back of her waist. She fought the illusory need for balance with her hands pressed into the cream-colored wall.

“Drummond, what are you doing?” she whispered with a slight frantic hissing sound, wondering when they would be spied by a passing servant or the return of one of the Archangels to discover what had become of them. “Someone shall see us,” she exclaimed on a final hopeless note in what she prayed was a voice tinted with outrage, but which sounded suspiciously husky to her ears.

“Hm,” Drummond ignored Gabriella’s half-hearted protests as he bent his knee to the floor behind her flowing silk skirts. He kept her efforts to move away from him, firmly at bay with his hands now clasped to her enchanting rounded hips, stifling her movements and causing her splendid ripe ass to gyrate provocatively, directly in front of his nose. He thought for a moment about reprimanding her to cease her struggles, however, then decided to simply enjoy the feisty attempt. A maidenly bared bottom looked so much lovelier when it was squirming.

“Now we shall see if I am correct,” Drummond muttered, and then in one fluid motion he whisked the back hem of Gabriella’s skirts upward to her waist, while he held her still with his other hand. The result was as he suspected, an enticing view of very practical white linen under drawers and no less enticing for their puritanical qualities.

“Drummond!”

Drummond moved his hands quickly, catching Gabriella’s squirming hips as he realized that this position was not advantageous to him and he glanced over his shoulder, spying the perfect remedy in a marble-topped corridor table on his left. Without further ado, he had his feisty kitten planted firmly, bent face down over the end of the table’s sturdiness. He intended to secure those drawers without delay! He noted judiciously that Gabriella was sputtering, incoherent worded phrases, and he could only assume that his feminine delectable was aghast as he bent to his task.

A moment later he had the sturdy white linen pulled to the back hollow of Gabriella’s dainty knees. He could only believe that a woman’s buttocks never looked quite as thrilling as when they were completely bared and squirming in this bent over position.

“Drummond, what are you doing?” Gabriella squealed in an outraged whisper.

“Anything that I wish,” Drummond muttered, cupping one of Gabriella’s cream-filled rump cheeks in his hand.

“Oh,” she panted, wiggling up onto her toes to do what he could not imagine, nor truthfully care, while his gaze was riveted to the dark pink folds of her paganly exposed honey pot. A honey pot, he noted vicariously, that was creamy in welcoming dew, giving him physical evidence that the lady doth protest too much!

“Step out of the drawers,” Drummond commanded as he slipped them down over Gabriella’s small slippered feet, leaving only her sheer stockings, lavender garters, and his passion pearl, while Gabriella heaved above him in agitation.

He spoke in a commanding voice once again. “You are forbidden to wear any type of under garment that will hinder my pearl in the future, madame.”

“Oh, you beast!” Gabriella sputtered.

That did it! Drummond unbent his knee to stand. He kept Gabriella pinned to the tabletop, by the length of his thigh and one of his hands, settled into the small of her back, while he lay his other palm in a stinging slap to her pearly white buttocks.

Slap!

“Oh,” Gabriella squealed in surprise, then huffing, “beast,” once again with less conviction.

Slap! Slap!

“Ow,” she gasped as Drummond watched Gabriella’s lush buttocks jiggle with a new pink tint, staining the tender curves from the punishment of his hand. He fondled the pink flesh with his fingers, then he lifted his hand intending to spank her again.

“Drummond, no!”

Slap! Slap! Drummond spanked both wiggling buttocks.

“Please!” she squealed.

Slap! Slap! Gabriella’s luscious, squirming ass was beginning to turn red.

“No more!” Gabriella pleaded.

Drummond paused, rubbing his hand over Gabriella’s wriggling lush ass cheeks, feeling the heat of her skin on his palm from where he had stung the opulent flesh. “Your cooperation, madame, or the punishment shall continue.”

“How can you be so cruel?” she asked, yelping a moment later when he slapped her pillowed rump once more.

“Oh, I will do anything-!” Gabriella cried.

Slap! Slap! Slap!

“Are you spanking her?” Extolled suddenly, an amazed masculine voice from down the hall behind them.

Drummond stalled in mid-slap and turned partially with a lazy drawl affecting his speech. “Wyndham.” Drummond paused as Gabriella squealed, while trying to rise, which he stalled easily. “I am,” he stated.

Wyndham wielded a slow calculating grin at him. “Touché, Drummond. You are a leader of our times. I shall leave you to, well-.” Wyndham inclined his head slightly and retreated.

Drummond watched Wyndham disappear around the corner just as Gabriella sobbed beneath him. She truly was crying. Damnation, he had never intended to-.

“I w-will do a-anything you say. Please, j-just release me!”

Grimly determined, Drummond lifted Gabriella, swinging her around to face him, countering his tender urges with command. “Now you have the proof of my determination, madame.”

He had not intended it. It had been the furthest notion from his engaged thoughts, however, viewing Gabriella’s lovely face, tear-stained with embarrassment and perhaps a hint of shame. He just-.

Gabriella could not think coherently, she was mortified, indignant, and more than cowed by Drummond’s superior baring. All this despite the fact that her entire body tingled strangely and her woman’s core was liquid. However, in the midst of these clamorous emotions, she abruptly found her lips smothered beneath Drummond’s mouth.

Drummond was kissing her! So unexpected was this that Gabriella forgot to breathe for several long moments beneath the determined seduction of Drummond’s warm virile lips. That was until she suddenly gasped for air and his male tongue swept inside her mouth. This was an entirely foreign endeavor to her that left her folded backward over his supporting arm as her hands made fists in his lapels. His tongue was firm and bold, lapping her lips, top and bottom, to return with a tease against the tip of her tongue, until she followed it into his gently sucking mouth. She nearly swooned then as he captured her tongue inside the heat of his inner mouth, and he began to suckle it back and forth. Just-just, like coupling!

Drummond tasted of fire and heady wicked things, and when he released her tongue, lifting his lips from hers, an actual whimper of loss cascaded out of her throat.

“I shall allow you ten minutes to repair yourself, madame, then I shall expect you in the gaming salon with your secret prepared.”

Dazed, Gabriella could only mutter a half agreeable sighing sound.

“And, your lips, kitten, after I have kissed them, are ravishing,” Drummond said, right before he released Gabriella and turned to stride away. He left conspicuously to allow Gabriella the time to collect herself and never would he admit the same need to collect himself . . . after that one devastating kiss from her lips.

Chapter Nine

Drummond paused some moments later just outside the half-chiseled, glass doors, leading into the gaming salon with his hand poised on the golden knob, shaped in the outline of a lion’s head. He admitted to himself that he was disturbed, as he slowly lifted his hand from the knob, not only by the kiss, but by Gabriella herself. Everything would have been splendid, more than he could ever have hoped to imagine, except then Wyndham had arrived unexpected.

“Christ,” he muttered, stepping backward away from the door. He could not ignore, Gabriella’s feelings completely. Of course, he could override the ones that stifled her natural passions, those devilish strictures that they bombarded into every woman in their society, with feelings of shame over their nude bodies and the denial of their sexual yearnings. These same teachings, that only a wanton or a whore would enjoy her husband’s baser needs with anything more than duty.

It was all balderdash, putrid and banal philosophies that stripped the young women in their society of any chance of happiness in a man’s arms. He could break down the barriers of these misbegotten codes. He could strip Gabriella of every misconception, by force if necessary, however what he could not do, is to lay hurtful waste to her pride and yes, even worse her honor.

Except, that is just what had happened with the untimely arrival of Wyndham. In Gabriella’s heart she would be humiliated to have been seen thus, not even the spanking, but her body’s exposure to another man, hardly an acquaintance, would shame her. And then to be brought into Wyndham’s presence once again . . . and so soon. No, he must regroup in this unexpected situation, and he told himself sternly, that none of his feelings in this had the least to do with the power and passion of that kiss.

“I will explain your absence,” Harrison rasped as he stepped forward from a shadowed alcove to Drummond’s right. “We will all be here throughout the weekend, nevertheless, as planned.”

Drummond eyed Harrison with what he knew was a fierce glare. “Your stealth is renowned, my friend,” he muttered.

Harrison merely smiled in a half glacier offering. “Wyndham is young and could hardly be expected to keep his mouth closed to such groundbreaking events, therefore, I have only to suppose what your feelings might be.”

“And you really believe that you know me so well,” Drummond questioned tightly.

“We know each other so well,” Harrison rasped. “Although, I cannot ever recall seeing you as you appear now. I only hope, should I ever be unlucky enough to take this fall into love, that it will not be quite as painful as it appears on your face.”

“Scoundrel,” Drummond growled, turning to retrace his steps.

“Most assuredly,” Harrison whispered in a ghostly inflection to Drummond’s retreating back.

Chapter Ten

Drummond found Gabriella, not surprising, exactly where he had left her, only she appeared as a morose figure spilled limply against the wall. Her small head was bent to his approach, therefore, she surprised him when she spoke with the knowledge that he was near to her.

“You shall have to beat me, my lord. Throw me into chains, before I-I ... Oh!”

Drummond swung Gabriella up into his arms to carry her, eliciting her startled squealing. “Entirely too dramatic, madame,” he muttered.

Gabriella clutched his neck to near strangulation proportions, allowing him to assume that no man had carried her in his arms before, as she sputtered rather indelicately. “Y-You would not think so, if you w-were the one being bullied!”

“Bullied, madame?” Drummond fairly blurted, then caught himself. “A smattering autocratic . . . perhaps,” he grumbled for a finish, while he noticed Gabriella’s release of some tension, namely her fingernails gouging his neck, when she saw that he carried her away from the direction of the salon.

“Autocratic,” she snorted delicately, with a puff of breath warming his jaw.

“I can detect that this situation calls for a gesture of proof,” he drawled, starting up the long staircase to the upper floors.

“Gesture?” Gabriella asked, tightening her hold on his shoulders as she glanced precariously downward.

“Do not look down,” he ordered. “Look at me.”

“Bully,” she whispered, burying her face into the crook of his neck.

Being so unobserved, Drummond smiled and held Gabriella a bit more tightly as he took the last five steps to the top of the stairs. “I shall allow you one objection a day, over anything you wish, except my releasing you.”

“W-What?”

“I suggest, madame, that you use the boon wisely. A full day is a long measure,” Drummond said, opening his bedroom door with a twist of his hand and a shove of his foot.

“And today . . . do I have one for today?” Gabriella asked, as he set her onto her feet beside him.

“Exactly,” Drummond stated succinctly as he dropped his chin to regard her gently uplifted face.

“Well then, of course I will use it to ...”

Drummond quickly used one finger to press over the delicate texture of Gabriella’s lips, silencing her before she could use her boon precariously. “I feel it only fair to inform you, madame, that we shall not be entertaining the gentlemen, Archangels this evening. Our plans have changed.”

The relief was readily apparent in Gabriella’s violet eyes as she stepped back, releasing his finger’s impression upon her lip, while asking incredulously, “Why?”

Drummond stole a moment’s hesitation by padding further into the room, then sidestepped her query entirely by asking, “Do you play chess, madame?”

Gabriella’s delicate features showed surprise, mild reproof, and then perplexity, before she finally answered, “It has been many years, my lord, however, I did play chess with my father when I was young.”

“Excellent,” Drummond answered, watching Gabriella’s awareness dawning to realize just where they stood and what she could only assume that meant would be happening soon.

“I would challenge you to a game, my lord,” she declared suddenly, a little too suddenly he thought, suppressing a smile.

“Challenge begets a wager, madame. Is that what you are suggesting?” he asked bemused.

“Well, I ...” Gabriella’s voice faltered, then regained its footing, while her gaze skittered for a moment. “Of course,” she finished, nearly in a squeak.

“Being a gentleman, I would have to give you a lead, denoting your rustiness over the game,” he paused. “A rook and a pawn, I should think would be sufficient.”

“How honorable,” Gabriella muttered, appearing for all the world as if no matter how high the advantage was, she had no hope of winning.

“What shall we wager . . . hm?” he asked, as he eyed the white and black chess pieces already set in the beginning position, on a low table in front of the fireplace.

“I really have nothing to wager, my lord.”

“Drummond, madame, I shall have to insist that you call me Drummond.” Drummond picked up the smooth-marbled queen, running his thumb over the sculptured outline. “And, I would not say that you have nothing.” He paused, lifting his gaze to Gabriella’s. “Your diamond earrings perhaps?”

“Oh no, I ...” Gabriella’s slender hand flew to her earlobe where she fingered one of the diamond ear bobs.

Drummond chuckled warmly, looking once again at the queen. “I am pleased to see that you like them so well that you have no desire to part with them, madame.”

“We could wager a deed. If you insist,” Gabriella suggested suddenly.

“A deed?” Drummond questioned, with prompt and heightened awareness.

“I could perhaps mend your shirts or, um, cook you a meal. Oh no, possibly not that as you already have an excellent cook. No, I could ...”

“A meal,” Drummond interrupted, being that she surprised him. Women of Gabriella’s station in life did not normally lower themselves to such benign labor.

“Why yes, a meal, my lor-, um, Drummond, something you favor perhaps?”

Gabriella appeared so earnest, Drummond reflected, and in his surprise he had gotten captured carrying their game in a much different direction than he intended. Ah well, there was no hope but to regroup. “A meal . . . perhaps. However, what would I give you?” he asked, setting the chess piece down.

“Above all else, I should like your vow that you will not spank me again.” Gabriella’s cheeks turned pink as Drummond watched her struggle to hold his steady gaze, whilst he fought down a pesky smile of admiration.

“All that for a meal?” he inquired as he began to walk toward her purposefully. “Perhaps for a meal and anything that I might desire for dessert, madame.”

If possible, Gabriella’s delicate features turned pinker and she appeared about to bolt, however, she stood her ground as he stopped very near to her. “I believe that is too vague,” she replied bravely, tilting her face up to him.

“Even for such a boon as never being spanked by me again?” Drummond asked with a wicked soft infliction.

“Yes . . . you could ask for the world for dessert,” Gabriella replied with a graceful sweep of her hand.

“Your loins.” Drummond abruptly stated. “Dessert would be tasting your loins.”

Gabriella faltered a step backward, apparently in shock, with her hands clasped to her agitated bosom and her cheeks turning scarlet . . .

And, Drummond unhurriedly began to unbutton his shirt. “The wager is set, madame.”

Chapter Eleven

Drummond heard Gabriella stutter, clearly flustered as she asked, “W-What are you doing?”

Drummond hid his smile and continued to untie his cravat, then began to shrug out of his evening jacket. “Undressing,” he drawled innocently.

“But why?” she asked in a bare whisper.

“You may remain dressed for now, madame. In fact, I would prefer it.” Drummond tossed his jacket aside and began working on the ruby studs in his cuffs. “I would not have you claim that I took unfair advantage of our game. However, I prefer, residing ‘au natural’ in my bed chambers.”

“Should I retrieve your robe?” she asked, breathless.

“I do not wear one,” he replied, watching Gabriella’s lovely gaze transfix on the expanse of chest that he was baring.

“You don’t?” she whispered, looking comically mortified, yet curious at the same moment.

“Never,” he stated succinctly as he walked bare-chested to the bed where he sat and began to take off his shoes.

“But, I have never seen-,” she responded in a broken whisper.

Drummond barely caught Gabriella’s soft spoken words as he glanced up at her then down to pull off his last shoe and stocking. That was the point, he mused, however he still found it surprising that after twenty-five years of marriage, Gabriella had never seen her husband in the nude. Of course it should not surprise him, his own wife had been abashed at the same notion, not that it had stopped him, at least the first several dozen times. However, eventually, his guilt over his wife’s agitation had proved superior, because in the end he had barely lifted his robe to tup his wife.

What did it do to a man’s ego to be so reviled? A man was not that much dissimilar to a woman in wanting his appearance to be attractive to her. In fact, he would wager that it was in most men’s natures to strut their wares, as it were.

Drummond stood then, audaciously placing his fingers on the inner button loops of his calf length evening trousers with his posture, hopefully the chiseled look upon his face, daring Gabriella to choose to use her boon now. He fully realized her dilemma of course, and without any hint of compassion. Should she use the boon now, to prevent his nudity or later forbid the sexual union? If only he were a compassionate man, he would tell her that he had no intentions of . . .

“D-Drummond, you are so very handsome,” Gabriella suddenly stammered and thereby shocked him as he watched her hand reach forward tentatively, in a seeming unconscious gesture. “B-Beautiful,” she said in an awed whisper. “I have never seen a man without his shirt on before. I-I am not sure that I know what to do — to say to you, as you say such intimate things to me. B-Beautiful must be a wholly inadequate word to describe a man.” Gabriella visibly faltered, holding her hand to her breast with her breathing labored as if she were wound in the beginnings of a passionate coupling, while her gaze liberally devoured the expression of his bare arms, chest, and stomach. “Power . . . strength. It is just, I ...”

Drummond turned his back to Gabriella abruptly, haphazardly trying rather desperately to collect himself. He had expected a literal wall from Gabriella. A barricade of maidenly modesty, indignation, embarrassment, and truthfully, stubbornness, but not this-this . . . It must be complete and painful honesty.

“Drummond, I have upset you. I should not have spoken.”

“No. It is not that.” Drummond turned too quick to see that Gabriella had moved so quietly that his clamorous thoughts had not captured it, and now she stood with her hand hovering near his upper chest. She yearned to touch him so badly that he could see the need of it shimmering in her violet eyes, however she was shy and confused, so near to toppling backward into the place that she just flowered from so recent . . . so unexpected. What an enormous capitulation this must be for her, what an enormous chance. He could not think clearly in this moment, but instinct would hold him. His instinct and profound hopefulness.

Drummond clasped Gabriella’s hand placing her slender fingers flat on the taut meat of his upper chest, watching her luscious cupid lips form a perfect O as her gaze dipped timorously beneath her inky black eyelashes. He was spellbound and still incredulous, yet not so far off his footing that his maleness did not react with instinct to her femininity as he moved her hand inexorably down his chest, feeling the light scratching of her long fingernails. Her palm was cool and soft to the heat of his skin and her lowered gaze seemed to be mesmerized, following her hand’s motion, propelled by his.

“You are so strong,” she whispered. “Shaped so perfectly . . . male.”

His physical build overturned her, Drummond realized in wonder. He felt the excitement of her other hand coming to his waist, pressing hesitantly until she must feel its entire lean structure.

“Take my trousers down,” he commanded huskily making Gabriella’s delicate hands tremor on his flesh.

“I ...” She was breathless and still would not turn her gaze up to him.

“I must insist, madame,” he ordered in a low tenor feeling as though he could be regaining himself a bit. “You want to,” he cajoled lightly, when she still hesitated.

Chapter Twelve

Oh yes, I want to, Gabriella thought. If the rest of Drummond were anymore divine than his top portion, she was sure she would swoon! She had never felt like this before. She had never craved a thing as deeply as was her wish to view more of Drummond’s completely nude body. The craving was overriding her inherent modesty. The feel of him was crashing through her useless puritanical resolve, until she admitted to herself the need to let go. To be free to...

Boldly, she took hold of the top of Drummond’s pants and began to pull them downward. They stuck!

“There are buttons, kitten,” Drummond murmured near her ear as his strong fingers clasp hers and he showed her where they were. Her fingers brushed against a mysterious bulge of maleness underneath, while she nervously conquered each new button loop. The black satin material of his evening pants drooped open more with each released button as her knuckles skimmed a crown of knobbed hardness, then a rigid length. She could see his small cloth was not adequate to hide the striking beast that he carried beneath.

Drummond guided her hands to take off his pants, stepping each foot out, however left her with his brief small cloth and her hands hovering near. His hips were lean. His bare thighs were slopes of unyielding muscle and there was black and silver hair mixed in a thin patch below his navel.

Gabriella licked her lips anxiously. Dare she, her mind whispered? Dare she free herself? Give into her desire and this heightened curiosity that were inflaming her from head to toe.

“Carpe diem,” Gabriella whispered suddenly, and then she tugged Drummond’s small cloth downward gallantly.

What sprang free was fearless, a flesh-shod poker of iron muscle! Gabriella could remember feeling such as this between her thighs, entering her hurriedly in the pitched darkness of her bed chambers. However, her blinded imagination could not have predicted the reality of a man’s naked-. What should she call it?

“Cock,” Drummond murmured in a husky whispering.

Gabriella realized in surprise that she must have spoken her thoughts out loud.

“Tarse or member,” Drummond continued to say as he shifted his body and began to turn away. “A groin or phallus. However, you shall call mine, cock.”

Gabriella received a poignant view of the twin muscular hams of Drummond’s buttocks as he strode with rippling grace toward the fireplace, saying quite calmly, she thought.

“And now for our chess game, madame.”

Chess, Gabriella wanted to exclaim, how could she think of chess when she had a beautifully naked man presented before her and a passion pearl wedged provocatively between her thighs . . . stroking her innermost sanctuary to distraction? As a diversionary tactic, she smoothed down her silk skirts. Unnecessarily, trying to expand the moment to quiet her fluttering heart while Drummond sat, rather calmly, she thought in a padded wing chair before the chess game. His silver head came up, his gaze unreadable.

“White or black, madame, I shall allow you the first move.”

All Gabriella could think was that if Drummond could appear so calm, then she must strive for nonchalance also. He was so much worldlier than she was and she had no wish to be unsophisticated to his cosmopolitan. Perhaps, couples resided nude quite often, traversing their entire homes au natural . . . after they had given the servants a day off, of course. She had been sheltered in the country most of her life as her husband had preferred it, so she really did not know the brazenness of the ton, per say. This could very well be typical! With this ludicrous reasoning bolstering her, Gabriella sailed forward, finding it extremely prudent early on to gaze no lower than Drummond’s male nipples. And even those coppery-colored circlets with their taut nubs played havoc with her senses.

“Wine, madame?”

“W-Wine,” Gabriella stuttered back at him, having not been paying the least attention to anything but Drummond’s sinewy male calves, sprinkled with dark hair. Noting that even these were muscular! “Yes, please,” she finally thought to answer. Some dozen glasses, please!

The flex and draw of Drummond’s muscular biceps immediately held Gabriella’s gaze prisoner as he held forth a crystal glass of burgundy-shaded wine, which she caught precariously in her nerveless fingers. Then, she watched him unwind into the chair like a languid panther as her gaze drew downward to the edge of her wine glass. Only to capture in her sight the exciting views of Drummond’s poised cock!

The game, of course, was forgone . . . she would lose, and it was done quickly because of her mental dishabille. She could not say what she moved or where. It had to be little better than playing with a child, however, Drummond never complained. He appeared so natural, so relaxed that little by little, and with no small help from three glasses of wine, Gabriella relaxed somewhat also. In fact, to her dismay, she began to giggle when he checked her.

“Too much wine, kitten?” Drummond chuckled as he took her nearly empty fourth glass of wine and set it aside. “But I have won the prize,” he finished with a sensuous smile.

“My loins!” Gabriella exclaimed with an unladylike snort, rubbing her palms over the edges of the armrest. “To taste!”

Gabriella grinned a bit lopsided, feeling somehow as if a tremendous weight had been lifted off her shoulders, leaving her floating and delightfully unbalanced. She was twirling free. “I did not know people did such as taste each other.” She twirled the long red nail of her first finger on the armrest. “Naive,” she grumbled in a whisper. Then an entirely new thought occurred, lifting her mouth in another smile, as she asked, “Do they both taste, Drummond?”

Drummond’s return gaze to her was comical, making her giggle again. He looked stern, yet perplexed, and at the same time as though he were trying not to be amused, which barely lifted the corners of his sensuous mouth.

“You are drunk, madame,” he said sternly as he stood leaving her with an unrestricted view of a splendid piece of male anatomy. Certainly, Gabriella felt contrite over Drummond’s commanding sternness, as she chuckled and exclaimed, “You have a beautiful cock, Drummond-! Oh,” she squealed a second later, when Drummond unexpectedly lifted her up into his powerful arms.

“To bed,” he muttered, while she clasped her hands to his muscle-packed shoulders and rubbed the tip of her nose, and then her mouth along his bristly jaw.

“You never answer me, Drummond,” Gabriella pouted, feeling the swing of his powerful body as he carried her. “Two entire questions and not a peep from-.”

“Men,” he interrupted. “Do not peep, madame.”

Gabriella very industriously ran one of her long red fingernails around his ear, the masculine one with the twinkling ruby in its virile lobe. It must have tickled because he shook his head as if swishing away a fly. “And yes,” he continued succinctly, “Both men and women taste, lick, suckle, and enjoy each other’s loin’s with their mouths.”

Gabriella found herself sitting on Drummond’s lap as he sat upon the bed. She snuggled closer to his wonderfully bare chest while her satin-covered bottom squirmed over the hard rigid of that loin he had just spoken about so poignantly.

“Gabriella?” Drummond clasped her hips in his wide hands, holding them disappointingly still, so she made do with tugging his silver-black chest hair, feeling the springiness sift through her fingers. However, then disappointingly, he caught the back of her hand holding it still also. “What is the second item, madame? This second question, which you say I have not answered?”

Gabriella sighed heavily, laying her cheek comforting to Drummond’s bare shoulder as she gave one last attempt to wiggle her fingers beneath his hand. “Am I a fallen woman now?” she asked softly, sighing again. “That was my question,” she murmured with a kittenish yawn, nuzzling his warm, muscled shoulder.

“Not yet,” Drummond murmured watching as Gabriella slowly fell asleep in his arms. What a prime opportunity he was allowing to slip quietly into slumber, Drummond reprimanded himself as he continued to hold Gabriella. She was so very beautiful with her small Grecian nose and her cupid, bow-shaped lips. Her lashes were dark chocolate brown, nearing black against the porcelain fineness of her cheek and her chin was perfect in a delicate shell shape. She was a dainty piece of femininity and she made him feel overpoweringly protective, not to mention fiercely possessive. Perhaps, Harrison was right, this did indeed feel quite painful.

Chapter Thirteen

Gabriella murmured softly in her sleep, barely finding wakefulness when a husky, roughened voice whispered in her ear.

“Do not move, my sensuous little kitten. You were restless  . . .  let me ease you.”

Gabriella could only mutter dreamily, not surprised at all in her sluggish drowsiness to hear Drummond’s voice or to feel the length of his warm body so close to hers. She wriggled her toes and stretched sinuously on her stomach, languidly feeling the tempting outline of steamy male lips nibbling on her bare shoulder. Drummond’s roomy hand sifted through her hair, lifting its weight off her nape as his provocative mouth followed, tracing her sensitive skin. The contour of solid masculine lips caressing her flesh brought an awakening shiver of desire, deep inside her, until she prayed that the exquisite sensations would never end.

“You taste warm and salty,” Drummond murmured through a lingering kiss of his lips that made Gabriella wish to cuddle back against him so that he would never stop. “At times my tongue catches the flavor of flowers and a succulent hint of orange . . . hm, I could feast on you,” Drummond whispered.

“Oh-mm,” Gabriella purred with a sensuous misty feeling as she curled her naked back, encouraging Drummond further in this dreamy midnight fantasy of hers. “It feels so wondrous,” she hummed.

“I am enchanted, madame.” One of Drummond’s spacious hands slipped around her shoulder to grasp the column of her throat lightly, while his other fingers tickled nimbly from her knee to her inner thigh. During the entire time his inquisitive mouth rained humid kisses down to the very small of her back. “Spread your knees apart for me, precious lover,” Drummond commanded in a husky murmur.

She should not.

She wanted to.

She . . . did.

“Ah, that’s it, my luscious kitten. Splay them wide, just for me.” Drummond’s hand roamed erotically across the opening crack of her bottom, dipping hotly into the crevice and stroking all the way to the exposed lips of her sex.

“Drummond,” Gabriella panted, breathless, feeling his muscular forearm wedge firm into the separated crease of her buttocks as his fingers slipped into the folds of her sex. Propelling her hips off the bed and pushing her bottom in the air as her hands frantically clutched the pillows above her head. The blunt end of Drummond’s finger stroked deeply and her behind arched more, anchored by his unyielding forearm as she moaned with vibrancy. His wet tongue began to swirl at the very top crease of her bottom presented to him so wantonly. His tongue dipped lightly, causing her to quake as his finger embedded deeper into her loins, abrading her roughly, causing her to feel prickling and intense jolts of pleasure.

“Confess you crave this, madame,” Drummond demanded huskily. “Tell me that you love me to rub your clit like this.”

Abruptly, the addicting motion of his fingers stopped and she whimpered in loss, trying brazenly to move her body over his still fingers, deep in the pillows of her sex. He chuckled in a soft tenor rumble.

“You are passionate, Gabriella. Passionate beyond my hopes.” Drummond’s strong teeth nipped lightly into the tender flesh of her buttock as his hand, still clasping her throat tightened . . . imprisoning her to his will. “Tell me that you want me to rub your clit, kitten. Say the words.”

“Drummond,” she mewled, begging him shamelessly.

Drummond’s teeth caught and held tighter in the flesh of her behind as he commanded, “Say it.”

He tightened his jaw, making her quiver at the slight stinging pain as she gasped, “Rub my clit . . . please!”

Drummond’s jaw loosened and he kissed the stinging away, as he murmured, “Always and only you.” Then, his fingers moved over the sensitive peak of flesh that she now understood cradled the will of her passions. She was brazen . . . wanton . . . she was his. He teased her unmercifully with his naughty fingers, making her ride up on her hands and knees to keep his stroking fingers seated where she craved them to be . . . hungered for them to be. To her delight, he nibbled and licked her bottom shamelessly as he played a game with his fingertips, stroking ahead or behind of the place she most hungered for him to rub. She humped her body forward or back, trying to catch his roaming fingers to the spot of her pulsating clit.

“Oh, Drummond,” she mewled in heightened frustration at what proved to be too elusive to her gyrating attempts.

“You heat my blood, kitten,” Drummond murmured. “Spread out this way, on your knees with your thighs open completely for my pleasure.” He stroked her slick woman’s lips with one finger, as he whispered, “You are mine now, Gabriella.”

“Please,” Gabriella begged. “Please, Drummond!”

“Ah, sweet, if you want me to bring you to release, you must obey.”

“Anything!” she cried passionately.

“Then, I would taste my dessert now . . . with my tongue,” Drummond answered in a thrilling husky rumble.

Drummond released Gabriella, rolling onto his back, feeling the excitement grip him in a way that he had never experienced before. Gabriella was his, every passionate and lovely inch of her was his, and each new intimacy he tempted would only bind her to him more profoundly. He reached over and clasped the tender, pliable meat of Gabriella’s pale hips as he bodily lifted her over his chest.

“Drummond!”

“Clasp your hands high onto the bedpost, madame, and do not let go,” he ordered in a passion rife voice.

Gabriella’s pale body was flushed pink with arousal, carnal to his senses as she rose over him, clasping her small hands to the bedpost. The high position of her arms raised her large breasts into moonlight balls of creamy flesh, making his fingers curl in the buoyant sustenance of her hips to keep from grabbing those luscious melons into his hands.

“Crawl on your knees, up over my shoulders, Gabriella,” he expelled with a husky-rough voice.

“Oh God,” she whispered.

“Do it,” he demanded, dragging her hips forward and making her knees crawl where he bid them, until he had her humid pussy inches from his mouth. “You are my first, Gabriella,” Drummond uttered hoarsely as he pulled her downward, spreading her knees over his biceps and into the crook of his elbows. His mouth brushed the chocolate-colored curls covering her lush pussy as his tongue darted forward to taste dripping fire.

“Oh, God, my amour!” Gabriella cried out passionately above him, tilting her pelvis forward in admission of her desires as he tasted the taste of tangy, piquant woman for his first time. By god, it was carnal beyond belief and he adored it. He loved the intimacy, adored the way it made him feel as though he were branding Gabriella as his for all time.

Once the first flush of newness was expended, Drummond used his tongue industriously, exploring every inch of Gabriella’s pussy with the flat of his tongue. The flesh there was so incredibly fragile that he was in awe of its femininity and Gabriella’s passion was overriding her natural modesty, turning her into an enthusiastic partner. A demanding one actually.

Drummond held back his murmur of delight over his now equal partner. Gabriella obviously wanted him to suckle the bulb of her clit and employed energetic body movements to try to divert his tongue and mouth completely to her cause. However, he held her firmly by her soft rump, guiding her where he wished to go, which at the moment, was an astonishingly lustful thrust of his tongue into the tight sheath of her vagina.

“God,” he moaned through a mouthful of heavenly female flesh, just as Gabriella cried out deliriously with the prod of his tongue. They both seemed to enjoy this so much, he decided to expend some energy on it and soon had her bouncing up and down in a licentious fucking position, over his stiffen tongue.

“Oh, g-o-d Drummond!”

It was then, Drummond felt the first shivers of Gabriella’s convulsion deep in his throat. She was very close to the edge and he stopped mating her with his tongue and closed his mouth rigorously around the pearl of her clit, sucking hard. Gabriella screamed amorously above him, while clutching his head with both hands as she rode his face and he felt the spasms of her orgasm rippling through her. They washed over him, incredible and intimate, with her innermost thighs sending quakes through his cheekbones, her swollen clit pulsing in a strobe against his tongue, and her labia lips quivering over his mouth.

“Oh, Drummond-Drummond!” she panted, finally coming to stillness above him and he thought perhaps he ought to catch her before she swooned. However, he took one small moment to kiss his passion pearl, which had been bouncing off his chin upward into the rosy-kissed lips of Gabriella’s succulent pussy. Finished, Drummond murmured, “I shall not be jealous of you again, my little pearl.” And then, he swooped upward to catch Gabriella as she fell languidly and sated into his arms.

“Oh mercy, Drummond,” Gabriella whispered faintly as Drummond caught her in the circle of his arms.

They were wrong! Gabriella realized how many years she had denied her passion because of a husband too stodgy and cruel to share. Or by a society bent on telling her that if she desired . . . yearned with her body, she was sinful, wanton, and a corrupt woman. All of them were so horribly wrong. How could anything that was so beautiful, so loving, be anything but blessed?

Drummond took her hand and placed it with her palm down on his chest and she felt the mist of sweat clinging to his hot skin, as he murmured, “Touch me, Gabriella. Put your hands on me.”

And she did gladly. Opening her eyes to be held prisoner by the power of his smoldering gaze. There was deep carnal passion reflected in his gray eyes, raw and lustful, barely contained by his iron will. Yet there were also tenderness and yearning, with the barest hint of vulnerability.

“Drummond, show me,” Gabriella whispered, and Drummond took her hand and wrapped it around the base of his cock where the heated flesh sagged a little, but began to swell instantly with her touch. His beautiful organ lifted higher, stiffened more, stretching her fingers with its throbbing mass.

“Ah, sweetheart, I have never been so hard . . . so engorged,” he murmured huskily into her ear, making her quiver with renewed passion.

He lifted his hips then, drawing his powerful cock of masculine meat and steel through her circled fingers, until her first finger and thumb brushed the velvet head. Then, he thrust his hips forward, until her hand plunged to the base, while his gaze held hers intensely. He was allowing her to see each flare of pleasure that crossed his handsome features, making her aware that it was she who controlled his passion now.

“Hold my cock tightly, kitten, as though you will never let me go,” he commanded huskily.

Instantly, Gabriella tightened her hand around his hot, swelling organ with a murmur.

“Yes,” Drummond hissed through his teeth, lifting his head for the first time from her gaze. Baring his muscular throat to her sight as he swung his hips backward, then thrust them forward again. It was the mating rhythm and Gabriella learned from Drummond’s movements how to please him. This was so much more physically intimate than if he had entered her, for she could feel the exciting textures. Feel the passion and swell of him on the surface of her hand. Touch the power and strength trying to break her hold and feel the heartbeat deep inside him.

Drummond shifted then, to lie on his back, allowing the momentum of her hands to take control as his hands wandered warmly over her bottom. Then, rousingly, he used one lean finger to enter her in an abraded thrust, copying the rhythm she beat on the column of his cock.

“You like this,” he rasped in a barely contained groan with his hips coming off the mattress as his other hand found the throbbing heat of her clit, making her go wild.

Gabriella’s mind was a rosy haze of straining carnal lust inspired by what Drummond’s wicked fingers were doing to her body. So when he commanded her hoarsely to watch him spill his seed for her, she had only one erotic thought that would satisfy her. Gabriella leaned forward, until her breasts plumped in the cradle of Drummond’s hips and she brazenly filled her wet mouth with the crowned head of his cock.

“Oh God, Gabriella,” Drummond expelled in a drawn out groaning as his entire body shuddered, and he hissed, “I’m going to-t— come— I can’t stop.”

Gabriella suckled Drummond harder! Pumping her hand and feeling the incredible warm strength of him in her mouth as she experienced a great expectation building all around them, like a storm of magnificent proportions was about to crash down on them. She had no idea of what to expect, but what happened was so thrilling and sexy, that she climaxed herself in a furious quiver over Drummond’s fingers, just as his hot creamy juices spread into her mouth.

“Jesus,” Drummond expelled in a clipped off roaring, as she felt his cock drawing in, and then flexing outward in long rippling motions. And — she swallowed, while her thighs quaked around Drummond’s forearm in lingering, bliss-filled eruptions of pleasure.

Chapter Fourteen

The next morning, Gabriella came slowly awake to the heady fragrance of orchids. In her sleepy state she thought perhaps she was dreaming of a warm tropical island with beautiful orchids surrounding her. However, when she opened her eyes slowly to reality, she found her naked body sprinkled with the flowering blossoms of pure white orchids. There was one snowy orchid blossom adorning her womanhood and another tucked behind her ear. Lily-white orchids nuzzled the valley of her breasts down to her navel and she could feel more of the tender blossoms tickling the bottoms of her toes.

“Drummond,” she murmured in awed delight as she rose to a sitting position on the bed with snow colored orchids floating around her, kissing her flesh with velvet petals as they fell to snuggle around her like a satin blanket.

“Oh my,” she whispered, so touched that her voice was small as she spread her fingertips out to tickle the delicate petals, while her gaze assured her that she was quite alone in the room. Drummond was gone.

“And, he has left me the most beautiful present,” Gabriella sighed, allowing the feelings of cherishment and splendor to wash over her. It was sensual pampering at its most intimate and Drummond was an expert in the craft. He had taken what could have been a difficult moment for her, awakening to the harsh light of day. After such exotic intimacies of the night and he had found a way to soothe her natural shyness over such new activities. It was then that she found the note buried in the orchids and she picked it up to read aloud.

“My love, you cannot know how deeply I enjoyed flowering your exquisite body with my orchids. Each touch of the petals on my fingertips reminded me of your tender flesh. I shall ever after regard your secret place that sings to my tongue as my orchid.”

“Oh my,” Gabriella breathed, fanning her face before she continued.

“I have taken the liberty of choosing your wardrobe this morning. It is my fondest wish that you enjoy all that I have purchased for you. My personal attention throbs in anticipation of viewing you in my selections. With this in mind, I respectfully request that you join me for a light repast after your morning toilet. Further, I inform you that the gentlemen, Archangels have requested our presence at an impromptu racing event. It appears Lord Radford and Lord Brynmore are endeavoring to decide which breed of stallion is superior. I may mention that the gentlemen, Archangels are with us through the weekend.”

Gabriella folded the letter carefully. Actually, she considered it was a study in nonchalance—right before she giggled and bounced off the bed exclaiming, “Carpe diem,” as she went excitedly in search of Drummond’s presents. When she entered the dressing room, she saw the dress immediately where it was laid out across the chaise lounge, and where she ended on her knees before it.

The dress was black velvet and it displayed the relief of a stand-up, white-lace collar that ended near where her collarbone would be, to then fall into a daring diamond-shaped bodice. Gabriella could see that the black velvet bodice would cling dramatically to the inner slopes of her breasts. Also resting on top of the dress were two red satin jewelry boxes, in which she found a teardrop diamond necklace in a length that would nestle her cleavage and a finely wrought diamond anklet.

All of the gifts spoke of heady sensuality and Gabriella shivered in anticipation of wearing it all for Drummond. Only he would know that she wore no underclothing, only he would know that his diamonds circled her ankle, and only he would know that his passion pearl abraded her intimately with each movement. It was all of it, every bit of it, akin to a never before realized dream come alive and now that she knew the reality of the dream, she would have wished for it her entire life.

“I did wish for it,” she murmured, spreading her fingers over the black velvet material. “Only, I never realized just how much I missed by the betrayal.”

That was what she always called it in her mind, ‘the betrayal,’ her father’s and her husband’s. However, it had been so many years ago, and she had tried so hard to forget . . . and forgive, even believing that she had done so, until now, faced with all that she might have had in her life, but lost all those years ago.

“But, I must not think of that now,” she exclaimed as she stood and went to the armoire to throw open its doors. There she found the inner closet filled with new dresses, shoes, cloaks, and a chocolate colored mink wrap that fell to the tops of her toes when she wrapped it around herself.

“Carpe diem,” Gabriella whispered. “I must think only of my joy for the moment and not dwell in the past. The past is gone and I shall find another secret to give Drummond, because he cares for me after all these years. Even without knowing the truth about what really happened to our love so long ago.”

It was best. She need not redeem herself in Drummond’s eyes. He cared for the woman she was now with as much passion as he had in their youth. Perhaps in years to come, if they found their comfort together as she knew they must, she would tell him then of her secret . . . of the betrayal. Then, they could laugh together about all they did have and find relief that the betrayal had not doomed them forever.

Gabriella nibbled her bottom lip in concentration and spoke hesitantly aloud, her conviction. “I will gladly be Drummond’s mistress.” Then, she twirled in a pirouette with the mink flaring about her ankles, as she exclaimed again more firmly. “I will seize my joy no matter what the circumstances!”

Chapter Fifteen

An hour later, Gabriella was bathed with her hair done in a winsome, provocative chignon that allowed loose tendrils of her auburn hair to brush her nape and temples. She appeared at the top of the staircase, wearing the black velvet gown with an orchid pinned boldly to the material sloping over her left breast.

She had been aware of raised voices seeming to come from the entryway as she approached the top of the staircase. She paused at the top to look down and investigate, seeing Drummond’s young butler standing before the partially opened front door. A door which he appeared to be trying to close against an unseen force that she could not identify from her angle. Nonetheless, Gabriella watched the young butler’s failed attempt, and then the door came crashing open with a resounding thud.

“I want my wife, now!” Thundered a man’s heated voice just before her husband Reginald, shoved his way into the meridian and green-marbled foray. “Where is she?” Reginald continued to shout with his thin face mottling to vivid red.

Gabriella could only imagine that this was the most strenuous exertion her erstwhile husband Reginald had put forth in years as it appeared lately that he could only roust himself enough to gamble and wench, as he called it. Gabriella watched Reginald gaze lift suddenly to where she was standing, and she faltered a half-step backward at the earnest look of loathing that appeared in his hazel-brown eyes.

“You are to come with me immediately, Gabriella! I am rescinding this transaction,” Reginald spat, as he reached inside his dark grey overcoat and withdrew a small packet, which he tossed onto the marbled flooring at his feet, echoing a plat sound through the foray. “And-,” Reginald snapped turning to the butler, “You may inform Lord Kittridge that there is his money returned with interest!”

“But why?” Gabriella gasped incredulously.

“Because, madame-,” Drummond responded, completely surprising Gabriella, because she had been so riveted by her husband that she had not seen Drummond entering the foray. Drummond did look, she noticed immediately, resplendently masculine in his brown cutaway jacket and thigh-molding, buff-colored hunting britches as well as his polished Hessian boots. In fact, compared to Reginald with his wispy and receding hairline, Drummond was a sleek male lion to Reginald’s rather pallid lamb.

“His mistress has left him,” Drummond continued to say. “Claiming, I believe, that she was mistaken in the parentage of her child after all was said and done.” Drummond paused with a steely-eyed gaze directed at Reginald. “A slight oversight, it seems, simply cleared for all when the Prince Regent himself has come forward to claim the unborn bastard child as his very own. Quite a boon for the young lady, I am told,” Drummond finished with a lethal smile.

“How could you possibly know that?” Reginald raged. “And, it is lies! All lies! I say the bitch-!”

Reginald was choked to a stop, because Drummond grabbed him with a stranglehold by the cravat, as Drummond stated in a controlled, but menacing voice. “You will not speak foully in my lady’s presence.”

“Y-Your lady,” Reginald sputtered, grappling his hands around Drummond’s wrists in a useless attempt to remove the hand strangling him. “Your whore,” Reginald finally managed to wheeze.

“Why you!” Drummond hissed whipping his arm backward in obvious motion for a punch.

Gabriella thought impulsively, that she really should allow Drummond to punch Reginald, right before she exclaimed, “Drummond, please don’t!”

Gabriella watched Drummond uncoil very slowly as if he were using immense willpower not to carry through with his intended and righteous, but she considered secretly thrilled, passionate violence on her behalf. To have so much control over such a powerfully made man, affected Gabriella’s insides to quiver in excitement, as she further watched Drummond loosening his hold about Reginald’s neck and step backward. Then, Drummond swung his gaze to hers with a penetrating gray-colored charge making even the top of her breasts flush beneath its positively virile quality.

“I defer to you, my lady,” Drummond responded intently. “For the moment. However, should Lord St. John continue in this manner, no matter how overset he is beneath his life’s travails, I reserve the right to throw him bodily from our home, madame.”

“Of course, Drummond,” Gabriella murmured with a demur sinking of her dark eyelashes as she proceeded to take a step forward in an action that would take her down the first step.

“I would prefer, madame, that you remain where you are for the moment,” Drummond said, stopping Gabriella’s movement. “Standing beside Lord Hawkenge,” he continued to add.

Gabriella looked over and upward in surprise to see Lord Hawkenge standing beside her with a solemn expression on his golden tanned features. Lord Hawkenge sketched a slight nod of his head murmuring, “My lady,” in a quietly resonate voice, and Gabriella nodded in return. She was surprised that she felt not the least bit embarrassed in his presence, but rather grateful for his support at her side.

“And, I would prefer that she come with me, this moment,” Reginald spouted. “Before I am forced to bring the magistrate here to legally withdraw her!” Reginald twisted his ruined cravat into more of a tangle. “As it is, Kittridge, you can expect me to file charges against you, for bodily injury! Now, I want my wife back!”

“How interesting,” Drummond replied.

Gabriella moved to interrupt them with her more important question, which had not yet been answered. “But, please, Reginald, you must really tell me why. Why is it that you suddenly wish me to return?”

A strange event transpired then, for Reginald appeared, for all the world, as if he might have just at that moment swallowed a frog . . . whole. He blurted, “Because I love you!” Then, he paused and seemed to work his mouth around some more difficult words, before spewing rapidly. “And I cannot live without you!”

Once this difficulty appeared passed him, he straightened and tugged on the bottom of his yellow and royal blue diamond vest. An atrocious setting, Gabriella thought as she listened incredulously to him say, “There now I have said it, let us go home.”

Gabriella turned her gaze to Drummond in bewilderment and found Drummond’s calm assurance, before he said quietly and seeming to her alone. “I could venture to expound, my lady.”

Gabriella nodded in confusion, certain of only one thing in this calamity and that was Drummond. My how it warmed her inside to feel such unshakable unity with another person. This was how a man and woman who were meant to be together should feel, Gabriella realized, as she said, “Please, Drummond.”

“I really do not see why-,” Reginald began, only to be cut short by Drummond’s piercing gaze and further words.

“Silence!”

Reginald was left with his mouth hung open, as Drummond continued, “I really cannot abide your attempts at bullying. However, we shall all be quit of this soon enough. Now to answer my precious lady’s question of the proverbial why. Why would the husband who so disreputably sold his wife to another man, in a shamefully public forum, I might add, now show himself upon the very doorstep of the man he blatantly sold her to? Now decrying his renewed bouts of love for the lady, in the most emotionally frigid attempts, to which I have ever been a witness.”

“I say!” Reginald sputtered.

Drummond held up his hand in a silencing gesture and continued, “Because it seems, madame, that Lord St. John finds himself in a most untenable situation. It appears that he did not tend to his business as a peer of his station ought to do. Therefore, he has misplaced or perhaps had wholly forgotten that it is you who now carry the fortunes of your estate. Not one farthing of his much smaller entitlement is left any longer. We would assume gambling has expired this amount and all that he holds now, but may not touch, is through legal marriage to you.”

“It was you then,” Reginald exploded as Gabriella took hold of Lord Hawkenge’s supporting hand. “I should have known!” Reginald continued to sputter in fury. “It could only have been you, Kittridge, who set them on me!”

“Set who?” Gabriella whispered. But, Drummond apparently heard her, because he answered.

“The attorneys for the Lyndfall estate. Quite enormous holdings, I am given to understand. I, however, did not set them upon you as you so put it, St. John. It was unnecessary, as the gossip over your low-bred treatment of your genteel lady-wife has spread like wild fire upon a parched land.”

“They have even refused me entrance to my club,” Reginald whined suddenly. “All those turncoats who made boisterous claims of supporting my cause, who encouraged me to be the first to rid themselves of-. Oh, um, well . . . they turned coat, every one of them. My god, Gabriella, your attorneys are threatening to throw me off our Lyndfall estate if you do not show yourself by my side as soon as possible . . . so that we, ah, can show the world that we have reconciled.” Reginald began muttering then, tugging at his short overcoat sleeves, just before he blurted, “And, I should, I would, forgive your infidelity beside all of our happy years together!”

Gabriella sniffled into the white linen handkerchief that Lord Hawkenge had so graciously offered her, because she had been tearing silently ever since she had completely understood Reginald’s motive for coming here, superstitiously to fetch her back to him. However, at his last words, she grew quite faint, but thankfully Lord Hawkenge steadied her, as she said weakly, “Drummond, I understand nothing of these estate concerns, but I cannot listen to any more of this-.”

“Me!” Reginald yelled, interrupting her. “You will speak to me, not this-this-!”

“Oh my,” Gabriella gasped, thinking that she really was going to faint, when strong arms came around her, lifting her up off her feet. To her horrible embarrassment, she began to cry in earnest right into the corduroy fabric of Lord Hawkenge’s hunting jacket.

It was then she heard Drummond say, “Enough, St. John, there will be no more talk!”

While Reginald was beginning to rant heavily, Drummond called up to Lord Hawkenge, “Wyndham, take her to our rooms.”

“Your rooms!” Reginald shouted. “Kittridge, I shall kill you . . . and, Gabriella, you bitch, I should never have let your father convince me to bed you that night!”

Gabriella heard the men scuffling as Lord Hawkenge carried her away, she did however, catch Reginald’s last horrible shout of words.

“My God, he even gave me the key! Did you know that, Gabriella?! Your father gave me the key!”

“Oh my dear,” Gabriella whispered tearfully into Lord Hawkenge’s broad shoulder right before she truly did faint.

Chapter Sixteen

Drummond paced outside his bedchamber door gnawing on the end of a cigar gone cold, in his agitation. Damnation, he cursed silently, he usually had more control than this. He never bowed to visceral instincts such as outward displays of fury or extreme agitation.

His gaze swept over the five Archangels standing with him in the hallway, each attempting to ignore the visual display of his unsettled pacing as they faced him. Gabriella was recovering from her faint in the room behind him, with Matilda’s ministrations. He was left with the damning last words of Lord St. John ringing in his mind. Just barely hinting to him of some terrible event in history, of which he was totally clueless. But by god, he would know now!

Drummond halted abruptly and turned to face the Archangels as he spoke with suppressed authority. “Saxonhurst, you are now in charge of gossip management. The principal has been grievously harmed in these events and I demand voices out there of equal equity. Consult with Radford who will head the investigation for your base information and direction.”

Drummond paused, turning his gaze away from Saxonhurst and he pinned Wyndham with his glare as he continued to disperse orders. “Wyndham, you will use that law degree you are so fond of and gain me entitlement! I want the principal’s complete restitution and restoration.”

“Brynmore.” Drummond swiveled to face Lord Duneagan. “We need foot soldiers for further surveillance, especially for the malefactor, and we shall branch outward from there.” Drummond paused, gnawing on his cigar as he faced them all as a group. “Gentlemen, as is customary, Harrison shall be our vindicator in this endeavor . . . and gentlemen,” Drummond paused as he stressed, “I demand the first taste of justice quickly or else, I shall gut the menace myself, personally!”

Each man nodded, breaking apart to follow their orders. He had kept them up to date so far and they each knew from past experiences, what he required of them. Only Harrison hesitated in his withdrawal and instead came to his side.

“This has become even more personal?” Harrison asked.

“Yes,” Drummond replied in a clipped voice. “We will obtain the principle’s freedom by any means.” Drummond paused and took a harsh breath. “However, we will entertain all avenues, before I set the final course of action.” Drummond gazed frothily at Harrison. “If only for my lady’s sake, I will entertain lesser mercenary means. But, I shall have her, Harrison, freely and clearly as my own.”

Gabriella stepped away from the opposite side of the closed door and hurried back to the bed, before Matilda could return and find that she had been eavesdropping. Was she the principal, Gabriella wondered as she laid down on the bed? Was it she, whose freedom Drummond was seeking? Then, her mind leaped forward, wondering excitedly; could he? She had not understood most of what Drummond had said, except it seemed as though he would help to secure the estate she supposedly held. How odd that her father would do such a thing. However, she clearly remembered her father begging her forgiveness on his deathbed, and she had given it to the deflated and repentant old man, in his last breaths. Perhaps he had come beyond the grave to seek his redemption as if money or land could ever buy back-.

“Madame . . . Gabriella.”

Gabriella turned her head to see Drummond moving toward her with his special brand of fluent male grace.

“Drummond,” Gabriella whispered as Drummond took her hand and sat beside her on the bed, immediately stroking her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Did you do all of it, Drummond?” Gabriella asked.

“Hm,” he murmured, bending closer to kiss her temple, where he said, “Perhaps the bit about the prince regent, love. Priny does owe me a few favors and laments how he will ever repay them. However the rest, although completely expected, was truly gossip sparring from the events.”

“Oh, Drummond,” Gabriella sighed, and then she murmured in wonder, “The prince.”

“For you, my love,” Drummond replied as he kissed her cheek, and then the corner of her mouth. “Anything.”

Gabriella caught Drummond’s mouth soundly with her lips, languishing in a deep kiss before Drummond pulled away to look at her closely. “And now, my love, I believe you owe me a secret.”

Gabriella lightly caressed the chiseled bone of Drummond’s jaw with her fingertips, as she asked, “Must we, Drummond? It was so long ago.”

Drummond’s long and slightly roughened finger pad pressed against her lips, silencing her as he answered, “We must, Gabriella. I must.”

Gabriella understood then, more than she had before. Drummond hurt as she hurt. He needed to understand that she had not willingly turned away from their fledgling love all those years ago. Gabriella stroked Drummond’s chin with her thumb, feeling his strong cheekbone with her fingertips.

“Yes I will, Drummond, but you must let me tell you in my own way.” Gabriella paused and traced Drummond’s full bottom lip with the soft edge of her fingernail. “And, I owe you a meal first. A dinner that I would prepare. A meal for just you and I.”

Drummond’s smile was very slow and filled with sensuous promise. “A meal, a secret, and then perhaps after we shall entertain dessert.”

Drummond left her then with the promise of his lips still warming hers. She would have the day to plan . . . to decide, and in the end to try on her own to shake the sensual master’s world. Could she do it? She would have to be very brave!

Chapter Seventeen

At precisely seven o’clock, Gabriella was standing outside of Drummond’s study, repeating the litany, “seize the day,” in her mind.

Oh, she could not do this, Gabriella thought nervously, pressing her forehead to the cool wood paneling of the door. The Archangels were gone on their separate duties for Drummond so she and Drummond were alone. All day she had boldly planned this, until now she stood here hesitating in her inborn shyness.

Abruptly, Gabriella exclaimed in fierce whispering, “I have wasted twenty-five years. I love him and will not waste another moment!” Her hand reached for the doorknob bravely. “I will not!”

Gabriella swept into the room as regally as she could muster with her bare feet and her hair tumbling down around her mink-covered shoulders. It was time for her to attempt to seduce the master. Drummond’s head lifted from what he had been studying upon his desk and Gabriella noted with satisfaction that her unexpected entrance had surprised him. Drummond’s gifted gray eyes moved slowly to study her appearance, sliding over her unbound hair, her entire petite stature folded inclusively in the sable colored mink— to finally rest, for long moments on her bare feet with their crimson painted toenails. He was intrigued and it heightened the air in the room between them. Gabriella finished shutting the door firmly behind her and ran the tip of her tongue over the edge of her lightly rouged lips, to dampen them.

“I have a confession to make,” she said lightly, moving further into the room.

“You do,” Drummond murmured, leaning back in his chair as his gaze tracked her approaching movements. He had obviously been passing the time waiting in his study for the dinner hour to arrive. He was dressed elegantly in his crisp black evening attire. His ruby stud, blinked blood-red in his earlobe, as she stopped in front of his desk.

“I have given all of your servants the evening off . . . every last one,” Gabriella said, as she stroked the front edge of her mink wrap with her long red fingernails.

Drummond’s features tightened in a purely masculine way, with his square jaw notched upward. He watched the languorous motion of her hands, through his eyes now partially lidded. “Very industrious of you, madame,” he answered in a husky tenor.

Gabriella thought that she had seen Drummond exude manful intent before, however, it was nothing compared to his heightened awareness now. It was as if he scented the air and found his mate . . . perhaps his fertile mate. And, he was engaged.

“Would you escort me to dinner, amour?” Gabriella asked huskily. “I have had it placed in the small intimate dining room across the hall.” As Gabriella spoke, she feathered one hand upward in the direction of the door allowing her mink wrap to open over the bareness of one knee. A tease, before it was covered again. She felt the thrill of it heat her cheeks as she watched Drummond skim his full bottom lip with the top of one finger.

“I would be enchanted,” Drummond replied in a resonating murmur as he stood with a supple and panther-like quality, so tall and well formed.

Gabriella took his proffered arm, feeling the tractable muscle beneath the superfine material of his evening jacket as she tilted her head in a coquettish gesture and smiled upward in what she hoped was an alluring manner.

Precious, Drummond thought, however, Gabriella was alluding to a plenitude of sensual provocativeness. Interesting. His gaze followed the flow and shape of Gabriella’s fluffy mink wrap as they walked to the dining room across the hallway. It did not escape him that the wrap she wore was entirely out of place. No, it merely excited him in a way he had never experienced. It appeared his lady had not only blossomed, but effloresced into a flower of the rarest creation. His flower. His orchid.

“Please, my lord, sit and I shall serve you.” A breathy pause followed as Gabriella pirouetted, her back to him. “After you take my wrap, of course.”

Drummond imagined, knowing his lady-light as he thought he did, that she would be wearing a silky shift beneath the mink. She was newly shy of their intimacies together and she appeared to be trying mightily to seduce...

Gabriella was gloriously nude! Stunned, Drummond inhaled a startled and very heated breath as the mink wrap came away from Gabriella in his hands. By god, would it always be like this as though he were seeing her nude for the first time?

It also occurred to Drummond— quite peripherally, for his gaze was entranced by the view of Gabriella’s lusciously rounded and pale buttocks— that there appeared to be no food or summery utensil for eatery in the room. Candles flickered over a snowy-white linen tablecloth, stretched over the elongated dining table in a very provocative manner. Provocative? Since when had a mere dining linen, exacerbated in his mind, to be placed as arousing?

“Do you like my breasts, amour? I rouged the nipples a tiny bit— can you tell?”

Drummond’s head swiveled. Oh yes! He could see that. However, what stunned him and sent a lightening jolt of desire spearing his groin to turgid attention, and every place between, was Gabriella’s pink-lipped orchid. Bared!

Gabriella’s heart-shaped loins were completely shaved of auburn curls and as tender looking as some newborn baby’s bottom with his passion pearl kissed between the pouted, blossom colored lips. Drummond thought, perhaps he growled— a mating sound surely— as his much touted control snapped completely.

“Do you like it?” Gabriella asked, much too innocently, as she stroked one of her long scarlet-painted fingernails up over the plum-shaped outline of her loins. “You must shave me every morning if you wish to keep me this way.”

Drummond did growl then, a predatory mating sound, as he swept Gabriella naked against him and took her mouth beneath his impassioned lips. They had seduced. They had played. However, now every tissue that made him a man, demanded that he take her . . . fill her . . . make her his completely.

Drummond released his ravishment of Gabriella’s lips and bent, catching her thighs beneath his forearm as he quickly lifted her up high against his chest, while he walked the few steps to the table. “I presume you are this evening’s full course meal?” he asked huskily, neither really wanting nor needing an answer.

Drummond did realize, however, that he needed a breath of space to tamp down on his flaming desire. Gabriella was just too precious to him to be rough with, as his inflamed lust was challenging him to do through every excited pore of his body. So, when he reached the table, he set Gabriella fully down upon its linen surface, even her dainty feet, and then he stepped backward, a pace. “Please, madame, stand so I may view my tasty morsel.”

Gabriella appeared hesitant, but took his hand, using it as leverage to stand. By god. This was not helping at all! Gabriella was sleek, yet enticingly well rounded, toasted to an apricot sheen in the candlelight. From the outline curve of her hips, to the sleek flatness of her belly accentuated by the dangling slope of his golden chain about her hips, to the shapely line of her legs, she was ravishing. Drummond forbade himself to look at her breasts or do more than glance at the bareness of her exquisite loins. No, not for a moment or two, not until he regained some of his composure, he thought as he began to undo his cravat.

“A feast,” he managed to rasp, before he partially turned his back and began to take off his jacket.

“Are you all right, Drummond?” Gabriella asked softly.

He would lie! He would sidestep, begin to talk seductively to throw a diversion, if he could retrieve any words past his passion-cramped throat. He would ... he would. Hell!

“I am overwhelmed,” Drummond expelled, mumbling for the first time in his life. Then he turned, taking his shirt off as he did, thinking that he had best leave his pants on — perhaps through the entire encounter! Drummond glanced up at Gabriella, rather sheepishly, he supposed for him, and found that she was smiling. Actually, she was grinning, with warmth, love, and quite a dab of feminine power. The whole while she twirled the end of the chain with his passion pearl, bringing his gaze downward.

“I suspect that I deserve this completely,” Drummond muttered. Another first, he never muttered.

“You do,” Gabriella challenged with a sultry giggle, then she slanted one leg outward with her pink toes pointed, just so. She was posing for him.

“Gads, woman, you are merciless,” Drummond proclaimed, and then he was there, pulling Gabriella down to her knees in front of him. “I am begging you, madame. I am begging you to let me touch your breasts.”

Gabriella laughed, warmly and seductively, with a woman’s innate power over her man. “My amour, I will die if you do not touch my breasts.” Then, she surprised him yet again by lifting each of her breasts plump weight upward, offering them to him. Thrilling!

“Beautiful. Simply the most beautiful breasts that god has ever created,” Drummond expelled, bending his head downward to lock his lips around the pinkness of one of her distended nipples.

“Drummond,” Gabriella mewled, throatily.

Ah! He was back in control again. Drummond caught Gabriella by the back of her waist with one arm as she swayed and he suckle-bit the jutting and tight peak into his mouth.

“Oh god-god!”

“Mm,” Drummond purred, lifting Gabriella higher against him to take more of her nipple into his mouth, while his industrious free hand began shaping and molding the lush contours of her exquisitely shaped butt.

Gabriella nearly swooned. No man had ever put his mouth to her nipple before! Her husband had been want to squeeze her breasts in a fashion she always imagined must be quite like milking a cow. But no man had ever licked her nipples, biting on the nips, sucking on the tight swollen peaks and sending bolts of desire straight into her loins.

Gabriella cradled Drummond’s head in her hands, hitching her breast higher into the heat of his mouth as he tugged her lower body forward and flush against the hot skin of his tight belly. She could feel the sprinkling of his body hair crinkle against the exposed surface of her shaved loins as her toes pointed around either side of his hips. Gabriella ground her pillowed sex against Drummond’s sinewy stomach in a primitive rhythm as he moved his mouth to her other breast.

“Amour-amour,” Gabriella mewled low in her throat, feeling wild and abandoned, as though she could never get close enough to Drummond. Her fingernails scratched his muscled shoulders and down his back as his teeth nipped at the peak of her nipple with a recurring plucking motion.

Oh, dear heavens! “More,” Gabriella mewled, quaking in Drummond’s arms as he chuckled, his excitement and he gave her more, sucking the entire circle of her nipple into his hot mouth. Excitedly, Gabriella found the band of his satin evening breeches and began to try to tug them downward. She wanted his cock. Oh God, she wanted his cock! “Please, Drummond,” she pleaded squirming with fevered passion against him, frustrated at her inability to lower his pants. To see . . . to touch . . . to feel! “Please!”

“God I love you, Gabriella,” Drummond rasped as he broke away from her. But he gripped his large hand in her hair, gently tugging her head back, arching her neck up to him as he gazed down at her with his eyes sharp and lustrous in passion. “I am going to fill you, Gabriella. I am going to mate you in as many ways as possible on this table, until you are screaming your love for me.”

“Yes. Yes,” Gabriella moaned, as Drummond moved his hands to pull his pants down and kick them off his feet.

Chapter Eighteen

“First,” Drummond uttered as he grasped Gabriella’s shoulders, pulling her to her feet. “We are going to do it this way.” Drummond forcefully turned her away from him, then crowded behind her with one hand snaking over her hip, until he took hold of her naked loins.

“My god,” he groaned, and Gabriella groaned with him, while her spine and buttocks undulated backward against him excitedly. “Bend over,” Drummond rasped, not waiting for her as he pushed his chest along her back taking her down across the table. “Have you ever been fucked like this before, Gabriella?”

“Oh, God no, Drummond, please,” she whimpered, catching wads of the tablecloth in fists above her head as Drummond’s hands separated her thighs from behind and his fingers began to circle her clit. “Oh, um-um,” she moaned excitedly.

“That’s it. Your orchid is so sweet and hot,” Drummond murmured huskily as Gabriella felt the scorching head of his cock pushing against the quivering opening of her sex. “And, this begging little entrance is mine.”

“Ohmygod,” Gabriella squealed passionately as Drummond filled her with a searing, jarring thrust of his cock, lifting her feet upward as he pumped his massive organ inside her!

Drummond’s cock stretched and stretched her tightly, filling her with blissful pressure and hot torrid friction. Then as he withdrew, she could feel his entire rigid length, like a molten rod of steel, until the plumper crowned-head nearly left her, and then he thrust forward again. “Ah-Ah!”

“That’s it, kitten,” Drummond panted. “Take all of me.” Drummond pumped faster. “All of me.”

“Oh, Drummond-Drummond,” Gabriella gasped as Drummond started a staccato rhythm of thrusts, while his fingers smeared hot friction over her throbbing clit. With each rapid pump inside her, Gabriella’s bottom rose upward, and her sex speared fire, until she could barely breathe.

Then, Drummond slowed his fast-flying thrusts, moving his fingers from her impassioned clit to grab her bare buttocks with both hands as he languidly stroked his thick organ deeply inside her, over and over again. The change of tempos was intoxicating and Gabriella squirmed on the length of Drummond’s piercing column. Then, he changed position, leaning forward with his hands under her arms and his legs bent so his thighs pushed upward against the back of her thighs.

“Oh, God,” Gabriella mewled throatily as her bottom plumped upward against Drummond’s taut belly with each solid and spearing stroke that he took.

“You are so tight, kitten,” he uttered with labored breath. “Each time I try to leave you, you grab my cock back.” Drummond started pumping faster. “So hot and slick.” He rotated his hips in a circle with each thrust. “So passionate,” he hissed, losing breath as his thighs slapped Gabriella’s buttocks faster.

Gabriella’s body slid back and forth on the table, riding her toes up off the floor beneath each of Drummond’s powerful thrusts. “Rub—  my clit— Drummond—  please,” she begged in breathless pants.

“Yes,” he answered, and then he pulled the scorching heat of his throbbing cock out of her. Making her whimper at the loss, but Drummond lifted her instantly, turning her to face him at the same moment. His lips crashed down over hers and his tongue burrowed deep into her mouth as the momentum of his weight carried her spine onto the table. Instinctively, Gabriella lifted her legs upward with her inner knees catching Drummond’s flexing and sinewy buttocks. Drummond tore his lips from hers.

“Rub your clit, Gabriella, and I will watch while I am filling you.” Drummond straightened, hooking her knees behind each of his elbows, spreading her thighs open before him. Then the head of his cock was at her entrance, pushing inside her slowly. “Do it,” he commanded with fire in his charcoal eyes.

“Drummond,” Gabriella whimpered, arching her back upward as the sensation of Drummond pushing his cock deeper and deeper inside her made her pant with pleasure.

“Do it,” Drummond commanded roughly again, as he pierced her fully with one powerful thrust!

“Ah! Ah!” Gabriella could barely breathe as her fingers found her feverish clit and she petted it, piling her breasts up into mounds between her arms as she stretched to reach.

“Yes,” Drummond panted. “Your bare little pussy drives me wild!”

God, Gabriella was ravishing, Drummond thought ardently as he watched Gabriella’s opulent breasts bouncing with each of his stabbing thrusts. He took the heels of Gabriella’s feet up to his neck, holding her legs along his chest as he bent forward. He was sweating and he was on fire as he picked up the pace, pumping his jutting cock into Gabriella’s contracting sheath of liquid heat that grabbed his cock back with each stroke.

Drummond turned his gaze to see his engorged shaft sliding in and out of Gabriella’s tight vagina as she fingered her clit feverishly. This sight brought him so close to ejaculation that he had to strain to hold back. Waiting for his love . . . his life, to climax first as he coupled Gabriella harder and faster and she began to unravel.

“Oh god-god, Drummond!” Gabriella cried, arching up off the table, quaking.

Drummond could feel the spasm of Gabriella’s orgasm clutching his enamored cock in ripples so hot and tight that it drew up his balls as his vision faded and his belly clenched. “God!” He spilled his seed in an explosion of pleasure that shook him and continued with each slapping thrust he took. Each grind was rapture, gutting him until he could barely stand.

Finally Drummond slowed, dropping Gabriella’s legs to his hips, his cock now limp, but still inside her. Drummond leaned his arms over Gabriella’s shoulders as he tried to catch his breath and she began to rub his biceps languidly. She was a kitten stuffed with cream, so dreamy and sated were her lovely eyes. A woman well mated by her man. And what a woman, Drummond thought. God, she was worth everything to him.

However— he was not through with her yet, Drummond decided with an arrogant grin as he gently lifted both of Gabriella’s legs to one side. Curling them up onto the table, while he pressed his hips forward, keeping his partially stiff cock still inserted inside her. Gabriella gave him an endearing, questioning look.

“Again,” he stated.

“Oh, amour.”

It was well after midnight when Drummond finally carried Gabriella upstairs. They were both nude and he smiled, thinking there was no one to see them. He would have to remember to give his servants the night off more often. He and Gabriella were both happy and well loved. It was a night neither of them would ever forget. He had taken Gabriella on the floor, in the chair, against the wall, and several times over the table, until they were both beyond replete. As happy as he was though, he still had not forgotten their need to talk. That and the present rumble in his stomach announcing its claim that he had gone without dinner. He was therefore pleased, upon entering their bedchamber, to find food waiting in a candlelight offering before the fire.

“Did you believe that I would starve you?” Gabriella giggled as she stroked his chin. “Although, I can see that I am absolutely no judge at how long these, um – affairs could take, and our food is surely somewhat wilted.”

“Affairs,” Drummond murmured as he nuzzled Gabriella’s cheek. “As in loving my lady until her knees are weak?”

“As in that,” Gabriella agreed with a smile, while Drummond seated himself in the chair with her in his lap.

“We shall simply have to salvage, madame,” Drummond advised her as he leaned forward to take a cover from one of the dishes. “And, I am so weak you shall have to feed me,” he finished looking down to investigate his find. “Apricot tarts! Kitten, how did you know?” Drummond exclaimed, with a deep purr of pleasure.

“I remember, Drummond,” Gabriella replied sweetly.

Drummond turned his gaze to Gabriella. “You remembered,” he barely whispered. He was touched.

“Everything, Drummond. Every detail,” Gabriella replied, kissing his cheek.

“Lord, Gabriella.” Drummond hugged Gabriella to him fiercely. “I do also. Everything . . . through all these years.” He swallowed hard. “I just could never fathom why you...” Drummond stopped at the tightening in his throat.

“Oh, Drummond,” Gabriella exclaimed softly. “Drummond, I must tell you, I can see that.” She embraced him tightly. “We were so wronged, my love,” she finished in a whisper.

Drummond tightened his arms around Gabriella as he nuzzled his face into her hair. “Then, we shall eat while you tell me the story, my love.”

“Yes, Drummond, I will tell you all of it.”

The story of events Gabriella told was considerably short for all the wealth of sordidness it contained, Drummond thought sometime later as he lay on the bed. Gabriella had simply cried herself to sleep, tightly embraced in his arms. It seemed that no amount of assurances on his part could completely wipe away the guilt that she wrongly harbored. All over events that had taken place twenty-five years before . . . nearly to this day.

Did Gabriella remember that, Drummond wondered gazing down at her, sprawled comfortably across his chest? Of course she did, he admonished himself angrily. What woman could neglect to remember being raped . . . no matter how long ago it had been? Still, he could barely fathom it. Gabriella had been raped these many years ago by her only other suitor at the time, Reginald. She had been ravished in her own bedchamber in the dead of night. She had screamed, but no one had come. Of course not! Reginald had, had the key.

Gabriella had not revealed that piece of information to him, he had heard Reginald say it. Then there was Gabriella’s father— that sick, sly, old bastard. Had he hated Drummond’s suit of his daughter that much? It appeared so. At the time Drummond had only been the second son to a duke, not as fine a prospect as Reginald, who was the first son of an earl.

Greed? Could it all have been for greed, Drummond wondered? Greed of power and of position. He did not know yet, but he would. He would know every detail before he was finished and perhaps then allow this crime to rest. Possibly and nearly certainly he would find things even Gabriella did not know about because he now shared the guilt completely, even though he had not known of it for twenty-five years.

However, that was the point, wasn’t it! How could he not have questioned Gabriella’s sudden changing of affections those many years ago? How could he not have been more positive of their love and fought harder as a man convinced of that love? Nay, Gabriella had nothing to feel guilty for!

Chapter Nineteen

Gabriella sighed happily. It had been nearly two weeks since she had confessed about the rape to Drummond and she need not have worried so, because these two weeks had become the happiest weeks of her life. At first she had been a bit surprised by Drummond’s reaction, because he had not again mentioned the betrayal, nor had he mentioned it in all the two weeks past. Which was glorious with her, for she was living completely in the moment with no uncomfortable past or uncertain future.

Oh heavens, and what glorious now’s they had been. She was discovering, much to her secret and unrepentant delight that she was utterly brazen. She could flirt and tease, demand intimacies passionately and seduce! Oh, and the places that Drummond insisted on carrying on their intimate liaisons. Why once in the kitchen, then the stables, another time in the gaming salon and once outside under an oak tree in the wide open . . . and last night! She grew flushed just remembering. She had been so bold, so hedonistic perhaps, and with Drummond’s encouragement, she had gotten down on her knees and suckled Drummond’s beautifully aroused cock. All in the carriage as they were returning from a trip to the local village!

The heady part was that she had been able to drive Drummond wild. It was one of the few times that she had been in complete control of Drummond’s passion. She adored it so much that she was already planning the next place to take him unaware. Mm, Gabriella mused, lost in thought as she strolled toward Drummond’s study. It would have to be anyplace but the bedroom. That was a must! Perhaps that oak tree-.

“What seductive mechanisms are you about, madame . . . hm?”

Ohno. Gabriella refocused her gaze to find herself standing by Drummond’s desk as he rose from behind it and walked toward her. She must have been lost in her daydreaming, Gabriella thought as she gazed up at Drummond and immediately read his intent.

“But the servants,” she protested. Someone had to be the least bit reasonable.

“Would never dare enter the room without knocking,” Drummond stated firmly. Then, he oddly stepped behind her when she was expecting him to face her and take her into his arms. He was right however, the servants would not enter even though it was only midmorning, but she did think to mention.

“The Archangels?” They had been coming and going from the manor at the oddest hours for the past two weeks.

“Shall not be present again until this weekend,” Drummond replied from behind her with a decidedly husky quality to his voice as Gabriella felt his hands grip her waist firmly. “Now if there are no further questions of propriety, my love.” Drummond’s warm breath fanned the nape of her neck from where she had piled her hair high on top of her head. “I believe that I owe you for your enthusiastic generosity last evening in the carriage.” Drummond’s tongue suddenly lapped the curve of her neck hotly, making her shiver in anticipation of the unknown.

“Bend over my desk, kitten, I want to lick,” he finished in a low purring murmur.

Ohmygod. “Drummond, what will you do?” Gabriella asked, already breathless and quivering as she bent over the end of Drummond’s desk, laying her cheek to the smooth wooden surface. Immediately, Gabriella felt Drummond raising her skirts, baring her bottom to his view because he allowed her to wear no linen drawers.

“Simply returning a gift, my love,” Drummond murmured, and Gabriella could hear him shifting behind her. “Spread your legs apart for me, Gabriella.”

“Oh, Drummond.”

“Wider.”

Gabriella did, feeling the cooler air caress her moist loins.

“That’s it, kitten.”

Gabriella nearly jumped out of her skin in anticipation when she felt Drummond’s hands clasp each of her thighs beneath the curve of her bottom. It was maddening, yet completely arousing to not be able to see what he was going to do next.

“Amour,” Gabriella squealed in surprise, coming up on her toes as Drummond’s warm tongue licked right through the cleft of her pussy from behind. Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Drummond held her firmly, lifting her thighs upward and out as he buried his head deeper!

Gabriella wiggled up on her toes as she clutched her fingers around the edge of the desk, flushing hot and feverish with passion, while Drummond bathed her bare clit with rapid flicks of his tongue. “Oh — oh, more,” Gabriella mewled ardently as Drummond bent his neck and nibbled the flushed lips of her pussy with his teeth. “Ah-ah.” Gabriella could not speak, she could not breathe. Drummond’s tongue pierced her swollen channel with a stiff thrust! “Oh, Drummo–nd!”

Two of Drummond’s finger pads circled her shuddering clit as he mated her with hot pokes of his tongue. Making her rock on her toes with sexy sounds gushing from her throat with each passionate jab. Then, he slowed, making her tremble and breathe harder, while she gyrated her bottom, back and forth in begging motions. “More, Drummond, more,” she begged him shamelessly.

“My god! Excuse me!” It was a man’s tenor exclamation behind them!

Gabriella squealed in shock and Drummond answered with a growling sound of anger.

“I never-never would have entered!” The man’s voice exclaimed.

“Samuel!” Drummond expelled in an exclamation of pure surprise and not a little bit of irritation.

“Ohmygod-mygod,” Gabriella cried, trying unsuccessfully to right herself from the desk. “It’s your son!” she finished with a feminine squeal of mortification.

Drummond finally shook free of his shock and thought to help Gabriella from her more than ignoble position as he rose swiftly, tugging her skirts down.

“I’m leaving,” Samuel choked, still from behind them.

“No!” Gabriella cried, clutching her hands to her face. “Oh God no!” she sobbed running past Samuel and out the doorway in a flurry of skirts and choked sobs.

“My God, father, I never ...” Samuel blurted, with his tanned face red with embarrassment as he looked at Drummond.

“You realize that I shall never seduce her into that position again, in another twenty-five years after this?” Drummond asked, wiping his mouth without a shred of remorse over the action or situation. Children and women, Drummond thought with aggravation as he strode over to shut the door, and then toward a hefty brandy.

“Aren’t you going to go after her?” Samuel asked.

Drummond waved his hand negatively as he poured his brandy. “Not until she is done crying, son.”

“Oh,” Samuel mumbled, shifting uncomfortably.

Mm, Drummond thought, Samuel never mumbles nor looks quite so vulnerable. Samuel was a strong and determined young man with a face and shape to match. Not many things disconcerted his son. Except perhaps, realizing in such a visual fashion that his father enjoyed sex . . . lavishly, Drummond mused, allowing his irritation over the situation to relax.

“Would you care for a brandy, son, before you explain your unexpected visit?”

Samuel finally unglued himself from his pose of appearing about ready to quit the room at any moment and rolled his broad shoulders walking toward the sideboard. “It is quite early, sir, but I believe this is one of those moments of undeniable need.” Samuel appeared, if anything grim as he accepted the brandy and downed the two fingers poured in one swallow, before he set the glass back on the sideboard, saying solemnly, “And, it seems that I have my first question answered.”

“Perhaps your second also,” Drummond mused as he walked behind his desk to sit. Now that he had a moment to contemplate, Drummond thought that he had a pretty fair idea of why Samuel might be here. It should prove interesting, to say the least, Drummond decided, settling back as Samuel took a seat in front of the desk.

“I imagine that I deserve this unfair advantage which I have cornered myself into,” Samuel said tightly, looking for all the world like he was the reproving patriarch, instead of sitting in front of said patriarch. “But really, your grace, now that I discovered all of these sordid rumors I have been hearing are true. I just cannot believe ...”

Samuel paused, leaning forward from his chair to pin Drummond with and intense look. Here it comes, Drummond thought, stiffening and not a little disappointed. “What on earth has taken you so long? Good god, father, you’ve lived like a monk these past twelve years since mother’s death. Unless the stories you’ve related to me about your spying ventures were not complete and I missed something?”

Drummond tilted his head to one side, rubbing his bottom lip with two fingers . . . really to hide his surprise. “No-no,” Drummond managed to say, while trying to recover beneath the enigmatic facade of his features. “I was most detailed to you in everything.”

Samuel, still looking quite serious, leaned over the edge of the desk, resting his elbows there. “I applaud you, sir, and back you one hundred percent. It is just that I realized, I could better negotiate the scandal brewing, if I, um – had more information. That and I thought I should tell you that Tabitha sends her love and support also. In fact, sir, she has suggested a ball.”

“You’re both so certain that I have been honorable in all of this?” Drummond asked quietly.

Samuel smiled then, an immoral grin, with his dark eyes a bit sardonic. “Honorable, of course, sir, however I believe I shall neglect to tell Tabby how, um– honorably you have been addressing the situation.”

“Scoundrel,” Drummond reproached as he took a sip of his brandy. “However, in light of your unfailing support, Samuel, and I must say here, how much your good wishes mean to me.” Drummond paused and leaned forward a bit, before he continued, “That I fully intend to marry Lady St. John when circumstances right themselves to allow me to do so.”

“Then, it is just as I told Tabby,” Samuel replied. “You have a plan.”

“I am in the midst of creating one, you can be sure,” Drummond replied sublimely.

Samuel chuckled. “Of course, father. Tabby and I always knew that Napoleon never stood a chance. And, I should tell you, up until now I have answered the rumors with a monumental amount of throwing your impeccable duke’s title about.”

“Mm,” Drummond murmured. “From this point forward I would ask that you rave, to anyone who will listen, the complete truth.” Drummond paused. “Such as we see it, of course.”

“Of course, father,” Samuel said expectantly.

“And our truth you will receive from Radford,” Drummond said.

“So you are treating this as a venture then?” Samuel asked.

“Exactly,” Drummond replied.

“I certainly would not wish to be this St. John then,” Samuel said. “The man does not stand a chance.”

“Nor should he,” Drummond replied ruthlessly, then he collected himself. “Nevertheless, tell Tabby that I believe a ball should be just the thing and tell her we shall hold it in London at Kittridge house.”

“It shall be done, father,” Samuel answered, then said a bit hesitantly for him. “Ah, do you think I should try and apologize to Lady St. John now or at some later date?”

“Later,” Drummond replied. Much-much later, he thought, wondering how he would right this situation. Ah, well he supposed he would just have to fall back on being imperious.

Chapter Twenty

Gabriella clutched her arms around herself, standing in the middle of Drummond’s bedchamber. She was utterly mortified. Tears, scalded her cheeks as she moved her head from side to side in denial. His son-his son kept pounding in her thoughts just as the words, mistress . . . tramp . . . unworthy kept slamming through her with each distraught breath.

“They were right!” she cried, running to the armoire with no more thought than to escape as she grabbed her mink cloak. Not thinking of anything else in her emotional state except that she could not be Drummond’s mistress, nor ever face his son again!

A long time later, while she sat shuddering in one of Drummond’s coaches, on the road halfway to London, she wondered how she had accomplished so much. How had she managed to escape undetected from Drummond’s manor? But, it was all a blur, the last hour or more. She had been so emotional, too emotional, but the pain of believing that she would not be allowed to spend her life loving Drummond, was akin to a mortal wound. It had unnerved her completely, made her hysterical and unthinking about anything but achieving her goal and that goal had been to escape.

So she had ordered a coach brought around saying that she wished to travel to the village and she had made certain that the hood of her mink wrap was pulled low to cover her tear-stained face. However, once at the village, she had imperiously ordered the driver to take her onto London. What could the driver do? He had to obey a lady of the realm. A guest of Drummond’s.

Lord Kittridge’s whore— Gabriella sniffled, wondering how she could have any tears left, then just as easily, she broke down crying again. When next she woke, having cried herself into literal exhaustion, it was near dark and the driver told her they were close to London, and then he asked where she wished to go.

“Take me to Lyndfall House on Mayfair,” Gabriella told the driver, then she settled back on the carriage seat clutching her mink cloak around her. She could not seem to stop shivering. What was she doing?

Gabriella leaned forward again and tapped the roof of the coach, until the driver opened the small trap top. “I have changed my mind driver, please take me to, um – Lord Kittridge’s residence here in London.” She paused, “Y-Yes– that is where I will go.”

Gabriella sat back after the driver closed the door, and she exclaimed, “Oh, what am I doing?” She clutched her hands over her cheeks and shook her head. She could not go to Lyndfall House, Reginald could be there and she could not go to Drummond’s because it was not proper and what if some of his family resided there. That thought horrified her as she imagined herself saying, “Oh yes, you must allow me to stay, I am simply Lord Kittridge’s mistress and he would wish it.”

But, where could she go, Gabriella wondered miserably and now that she was calmer, after being so emotionally hysterical for most of the day, she wondered if she really should have left Drummond in the first place?

“That is just your heart speaking,” she exclaimed, but of course it was, because she loved him with all her heart. Perhaps she should try a hotel? Except it would be truly unspeakable for a lady alone and unchaperoned to do such a thing. Only that meant that she had no place at all to go, for it was too dangerous for a woman alone to try to return to Drummond’s estate at night. Oh why had she not stopped and thought! Why had she left Drummond at all?

Gabriella was so near to tears again that she had to mentally reproof herself. Tears and overly panicked emotions had gotten her into this mess to begin with. Being in love was just so emotional! Nay, having the only son of the man you love catch you ‘en flagrant delicto was-was. Oh, what Samuel must have seen-!

“No,” Gabriella exclaimed. “I will not proceed there again. I cannot bear it!” With determination, Gabriella brought herself around to her predicament and with shaky resolve she tapped the roof of the coach and said, “The Carlton Hotel, driver, take me to the Carlton Hotel.”

Gabriella sat back reasoning that her reputation was long past existence, so it no longer mattered where or with whom she resided and tomorrow she decided, she would send a messenger to Drummond. Drummond would then help her, even if she could no longer stay with him, she was certain that he would. Drummond was the only person who truly would help her if only she had realized this earlier.

It really was not as terrible as she envisioned, to acquire a room at the Carlton. She simply had Drummond’s driver procure it for her. He had been most kind, even concerned, saying that there was no way on God’s green earth he was leaving her and he would be ready with the carriage in the morning to take her wherever she wished to go. His name was Bebington and he did gently suggest that she ought to return to Lord Kittridge’s estate in the morning, where he proclaimed she would be much safer.

Bebington escorted her to her room, then he asked that she promise not to go anywhere without him. Gabriella did this faithfully before shutting the door to the room and locking it just as Bebington had shown her how to do. Once inside the room, Gabriella turned to explore because she had never been in a hotel room before. The fact was in twenty-five years of marriage, she had never been to anyplace but the townhouse in London on occasion, very few occasions, and the country estate at Lyndfall.

Gabriella realized immediately that hotel rooms were very lonely places and she found herself yearning for Drummond’s warmth, his kisses and his lovemaking. She plopped onto the bed wondering what she could do, wondering how she could ever leave Drummond permanently or perhaps she might simply acquire a thicker skin. She certainly was much too sensitive. Or perhaps, Gabriella considered, she simply must develop a thicker skin concerning certain things . . . such as an annulment!

If she truly wished to be with Drummond that was the only way it was going to happen legally. And being barren, she did have the perfect grounds for annulment if only Reginald would agree. Gabriella decided that she must think this through very carefully and calmly. She must think this through until she could speak to Drummond about it. Yes, that was it. She would speak to Drummond about it. Of course it would not solve the problem with Samuel, but she thought perhaps she could face Samuel better if she were sometime in the future going to be Drummond’s wife. That is of course, if Drummond wished her to be his wife?

Chapter Twenty One

Gabriella felt nearly human again an hour later, after a long bath and wrapped in one of the Carlton Hotel’s fluffy oversized robes, and twice as foolish over what she had done. Then, she walked out of the large ornate bathing chamber, and right into Reginald! Reginald?

“Oh, my god!” Gabriella exclaimed, and she would have stumbled backwards, away from Reginald, had he not grabbed her upper arms. “W-What are you doing here?” Gabriella finished in a stunned shriek.

“Of all the luck,” Reginald slurred. He was drunk! “To find me wife waiting for me. Ah-.”

Gabriella pushed Reginald hard and he stumbled backward finding the wall, as she edged further away from him. Further into the room. “I am not waiting for you, Reginald! This is my room and I want you gone from here!” Gabriella paused, expelling a nervous breath as she watched Reginald unsuccessfully trying to tug down his atrocious green and yellow striped vest that reeked of perfume. Then, Gabriella cried, “I do not know how or why you are here, Reginald, but you must leave immediately!”

“Oh, no, no,” Reginald, slurred, “Tis fate. You want me.” He stumbled. “And, came to me. The very same hotel. I found out when I came in.”

So that was how, Gabriella thought, wondering at the luck of picking the very same hotel where her husband was staying. He must have mentioned the hotel to her sometime in passing for her to even think of the name and he must be quite serious about the lawyers not allowing him into Lyndfall. Or should she say her home, as obviously now appeared to be the case. However, none of this explained how Reginald had gotten the key to this room! And, the very persistent fact that this seemed ominously reminiscent of the past was enough to give Gabriella a healthy shiver of apprehension.

Ohno! Reginald was tromping toward her! Gabriella drew away, backing up immediately, only that left her further into the room with no way out.

“Reginald, you must leave,” she ordered sharply, holding out her hands as if to ward him away, which she desperately wished to do. “You-You, must not be here w-when Drummond returns!” That was it! A perfect lie, only now Gabriella saw that Reginald was shaking his head with an over bright leer in his eyes.

“He’s not here, I asked!” Reginald sneered.

“R-Reginald, you must remember that you do not want me! You sold me . . . remember!” Gabriella tried anxiously, wondering what happened at the Carlton Hotel when a woman screamed, because she was going to this time.

Reginald suddenly lunged at her, and it was then that Gabriella realized how very close the bed was behind her retreat. She landed on it hard with Reginald’s heavy and breath-snatching weight on top of her. She tried to catch her breath and did beat on Reginald’s shoulders as he levered himself on top of her trying to wedge her knees open!

“I want an annulment!” Gabriella screamed. “An annulment, do you hear me!”

“No!” Reginald snarled, grabbing at her flaying hands, pushing them aside. He clutched the edges of her robe and wrenched the top open. Gabriella screamed then, shrilly and with terror, but it did not stop Reginald. “You are going to give me what you gave Kittridge!” Reginald thundered.

Gabriella struggled, tossing her body from side to side, because her arms were caught helplessly in the robe sleeves. She thought frantically to somehow unbalance Reginald. Anything to get away! She would not let this happen again. She would not!

“No-no,” Gabriella screamed as Reginald used one hand to grope her breast roughly, while he tried to kiss her, which she avoided by frantic twists of her head. Gabriella could feel Reginald fumbling with the buttons of his pants!

“You are my wife! And you will submit!” Reginald snarled in a horrific slobber over her lips.

Gabriella’s mind splintered then, it was all happening just as it had twenty-five years before and there was no one to stop Reginald, just as there had been no one before. Except herself! Embolden, angry, and more defiant then she had been in her entire life, Gabriella groped down between their twisting bodies, and then she nearly laughed hysterically when Reginald thought she meant to stroke his cock.

“Ow! Ow!” Reginald suddenly screeched, and then he lunged to the side as Gabriella continued to viciously scratch his balls with her long fingernails. “Ow, you bitch!”

Gabriella rolled off the other side of the bed, paying no attention to her dishabille, as she grabbed the foot long candlestick from the night stand. The candle fell to the floor as she went after Reginald with a furious screech of her own! She caught Reginald at the end of the bed, where he was still partially bent over, clutching his balls.

“I hate you!” Gabriella screamed, and without an inch of remorse she swung the candlestick underhanded, toppling Reginald over onto the royal blue Aubusson rug where he rolled into a fetal position.

“No no,” he groaned.

“Reginald Horatio St. John!” Gabriella screamed as she pulled back from her underhanded swing, readying for another attack. “I will dismember your cock from between your bloody legs if you do not give me an annulment this minute!”

“No-no!” Reginald screeched.

“No!” Gabriella cried shrilly as she started to swing the candlestick forward with all her might only to be stopped by arms grappling her from behind. It was then she heard a masculine voice yelling at her.

“Lady St. John— Madame!”

Gabriella was too incensed to care that it was Drummond’s son, Samuel, who grappled her arms from behind. She unwittingly struggled with the effort to strike her husband once more while Reginald lay, curled into a ball, weeping on the floor.

“Let me go, Samuel!” Gabriella huffed in a shriek. “Just let me bloody his balls!”

Samuel only grunted behind her as he lifted her. Her churning feet came up off the ground as he began a stumbling backwards gait. “My lady, you are magnificent, but I cannot allow my father’s future wife to do mayhem!”

Drummond’s running stride came to a halt at the open door to the room, where he immediately saw a bare-breasted Gabriella struggling to be released from his son’s arms about her waist. Samuel tried to cart the lady backwards, from her apparent wish to clobber her husband, yet again.

Drummond’s labored breathing strained through his lungs. He had run from the lobby. Hell, he had run a horse near to death from his estate to get here, and while running down the hallway he had heard his charming lady-love screeching about bloodying Lord St. John’s balls, of all things. The worry inside him had been wound so tight, he simply could not help it, not after seeing Gabriella was safe. He started to laugh! Nay, he started to roar!

“Father, really,” Samuel groaned. “Can’t you help me here?”

Drummond bent over at the waist, and laughed harder.

“I will give her the annulment, I swear!” Reginald cried. “Just don’t let her damage my balls!”

Drummond nearly choked as his laughing increased.

“Drummond, is that you, Drummond? Are you laughing at me?” Gabriella cried indignantly.

Drummond could not see clearly through the tears filming his eyes as he waved his hand in their general direction. He had missed Samuel at their London house by only a few minutes after the message from Bebington had come and Samuel had left immediately for the Carlton. Samuel managed to get here first without the knowledge that his father was directly behind him riding hell bent to London chasing his lady love. My god he would secure his driver Bebington’s retirement by what he would pay him in thanks for leaving word at his London home of where Gabriella was.

“So this is what it is like to be in love,” Harrison said appearing beside Drummond. “Reduces fine men to tears, m’lord,” he finished with a sublime sneer.

“What,” Drummond straightened and tried to catch his breath. “What are you doing here?”

“Following the malefactor of course,” Harrison drawled in a rasp with his dark-eyed gaze playing over the scene.

“Of course,” Drummond replied regaining most of his composure. “Then you should not mind hauling St. John out of here.” Drummond turned his gaze to Gabriella who had fixed her robe snugly back around herself, while she literally glared at her husband who was still whimpering in a bundle on the floor. “And, make certain that he gives you written agreement to the annulment that his wife has battered out of him.”

Harrison actually grinned, saying in a whisper, “Dismembered cock . . . did you teach her that, Drummond?”

Drummond casually grabbed his side to keep from laughing again, as he badly stuttered, “No-no, not me.” Then, he said in an aside, “I’m not sure he can walk.”

They both nearly burst out laughing again, as Harrison murmured, “Protect your crotch, old man.”

“Oh god, Harrison,” Drummond huffed, trying not to laugh as he watched Harrison go and retrieve St. John with Samuel’s help. It was then Gabriella came running up to him, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Oh, Drummond, I never should have left you!”

Chapter Twenty Two

A Wedding Night . . .

“You owe me many boons, my lord,” Gabriella said with a throaty purr of satisfaction as she eyed her muscular captive. The twin sinewy mounds of Drummond’s tight naked buttocks filled her gaze as she decided that her dainty hand could not possibly smack those muscled rumps hard enough to make them sting — certainly she would hurt her hand!

“While I am enthralled to be tied to the bed for your pleasure, kitten . . . and I might add, the sum total of all boons I owe to you. I still wonder why you would position me face down, wife.”

“Husband, do we have a riding quirt anywhere in this bedchamber?”

Drummond jerked his head to the side to gaze at Gabriella. She was completely not listening to him, he could see, as his mind jolted over the reason his new bride had swindled him into this helpless position. Ye gads, the woman intended to swat his naked...

Instantly, Drummond’s bare buttocks tensed in reaction as he swiveled his head to watch Gabriella searching the room for a... Quirt? Drummond flexed his bound wrists, testing them. No, he was tied securely, just as he had allowed himself to be. Champagne! He had drunk an entire bottle with Gabriella at their wedding dinner — shit!

“Kitten? Hm, are you going to spank me?” Drummond asked in a rumbling tenor. A man needed to keep his voice commanding in a situation such as this. Didn’t he? Hell, he didn’t know. He flexed his wrists again.

“Yes, amour,” Gabriella called with a muffled sound, because she was rummaging through his clothing closet. “And, do you know, Drummond?” Her head popped out of the closet. “I feel syrupy all over just thinking about it. Is that how you feel when you contemplate spanking me?”

I am doomed, Drummond thought as he dropped his nose, poof, onto the mattress, where he mumbled an incoherent response.

“I thought so,” Gabriella called happily from inside the clothing closet, where he could hear her rummaging around and where, devil take him, he knew of three . . . count them, three riding quirts to be had! Drummond began to pray foolishly that she would pick the short brown one, because it looked much less threatening to him than the others. Didn’t it?

Then, Drummond started to think over the two times in the months before their marriage this afternoon, when he had playfully spanked his lady-light. However, it was that first time, the one in the very beginning that really worried him. He bounced his forehead off the mattress a couple of times, vowing never — never, to drink champagne again, even if it was with his beautiful and blushing bride...

“Found it.”

Drummond’s head jerked upward. Ah, Christ, it was the long black one! He watched Gabriella sauntering closer with a vexing hip swinging motion that was all woman. It did not help one bit that she was completely nude down to her shaven pussy with his glossy passion pearl bouncing off her luscious pink pussy lips. And damnation, Gabriella was fondling the black knobbed riding crop as if it were an impassioned cock! Drummond tensed more from his erectile cock beneath him, than from anything else. Christ, she was beautiful . . . and he recited in his mind, she was his, all his!

Gabriella wondered whether she really ought to complete the actual spanking of her husband’s very tight and virile buttocks. He was so exciting tied there to the bed with the roped muscles of his back drawn upward by his arms stretched over his head and with his gaze trapping hers with predatory intent. A gaze that promised retribution once she released him. Gabriella sighed headily . . . sensually as she toyed with the riding quirt, watching Drummond very slowly and very deliberately lick his full bottom lip, while he gazed at her completely shaved loins.

“You are going to reap your revenge on me if I do this, amour, aren’t you?”

“Hm,” Drummond murmured. Then, he twisted his arms across each other, allowing him to roll over onto his back. “I was, kitten. However-.”

“However, what amour?” she purred, completely transfixed as the quirt fell heedless to the floor and her gaze filled with the sight of Drummond’s engorged erection. His cock was massive with a ruddy pink coloring and strident veins swelled along its jutting length. The entire male column bucked in reaction to her climbing up on the bed.

“I have resolved, madame, that I am yours to do with as you please. Just as you are mine to do the same,” he replied as he intently watched her tongue dart outward to lick his nipple, then circle it slowly.

Gabriella felt Drummond shiver beneath her tongue as she smiled and murmured against the tight pebble. “Very brave for a man tied by his wrists to my bed.”

“Our bed,” Drummond puffed in a tenor rumble as Gabriella nipped his taut nipple between her teeth. Her hands spread outward over the hilly muscular slopes of his chest and he finally groaned in excited pleasure.

“Our bed,” she murmured in agreement, crawling over him with one leg on each side, to ride her bared loins against his lean rippling belly. The sprinkling of hair on his stomach feathered her sex erotically as she purred a moan, rising upward to brace her hands on the mountains of his breastplate. She could feel his cock’s rigidness, poking along the crease of her behind.

Drummond felt his eyes dilate in sexual hunger as he lifted his head. “Give me your nipple, Gabriella. Let me suckle you.”

“Oh, Drummond,” Gabriella sighed throatily as she fell slightly forward with her hands supported on the mattress above his shoulders. Her back was arched, thrusting her exuberant pink and cream breasts at him. She undulated her sexy and dewy-hot pussy over his navel, while he took her fragile, yet stiff nipple between his lips with a longing groan of his own.

“Amour-Amour,” she cried in reaction to the toying pluck he repeated over the tight swollen peak.

“More,” he demanded, sucking the entire pink areola between his heated lips.

“Oh, my amour,” Gabriella purred gustily, as she sinuously rode his belly, while he devoured her pillowed breasts back and forth, one by one, until she was crying passionate cants deep in her throat.

He was hot. No, more correctly he was wild. The fact that he was tied was heating him in some unfathomable way and he stretched his wrists often to feel the bonds holding them as he made love to his wife’s breasts. And when his lady-love pulled her breasts away from his mouth and began to kiss and sensuously lick his body, he quivered.

Drummond was entirely defenseless against whatever Gabriella wished to do to him and it heightened his arousal. He was helpless against the moans of pleasure escaping him as Gabriella licked and nibbled hot love bites all around his belly, the top of his thighs, and even made him turn, more onto his side so she could munch great big kisses and bites all over his butt. He was bucking forward by the time she finished this and his body was shuddering in excitement, but still he managed to barely hold himself back from begging her to take his cock into her mouth.

Drummond watched Gabriella’s heavy-lidded gaze linger over his straining cock from where she knelt between his thighs as his gaze burned hers with sexual fever. Slowly . . . so slowly she dipped her tongue forward lapping the head of his cock and making him groan feverishly as his head fell backward and he thrust his hips forward. The motion embedded his thick engorged cock deep into her mouth and he could feel himself pulsing against her tongue.

Drummond shivered with the intense will to hold back his release as his precious wife had her way with his cock. She suckled the entire length, until he was arched like a bow and left panting in pure ecstasy. When she finally lifted her rosy swollen lips from the head, he was quaking.

“Turn on your side, amour,” Gabriella ordered huskily. And he did, a willing slave to anything she desired. “More,” she commanded as she lay down beside him with her spine pressed along his chest and her bottom snuggling closer to his groin. “Don’t move,” she warned, and Drummond was held suspended as she bent her upper body in an L from his chest. He felt her creamy hot vagina sucking at the head of his cock as she pressed backward and took his shaft inside her to the hilt of his rigid swollen length.

“Oh, amour,” she squealed in happiness and intense frictional pleasure Drummond imagined, because he was holding back his own incredible squeal. “Don’t move, my amour,” she warned again breathlessly.

God, he wanted to. Drummond wanted to pump so badly that he was sweating with the effort to remain still to his lady-loves command. But heaven was his wife, because she began to undulate back and forth against him in a fantastical rhythm.

“Oh, God, Gabriella!” Drummond belly-roared in blinding ecstasy.

“Again!” Gabriella, his love, his wife— his lady compelled, commanded breathlessly.

“Oh, God,” Drummond groaned.

“Carpe diem, amour!”

The End

My Lady Enslaved

By Shirl Anders

Prologue

Drummond Penhurst, Duke of Kittridge, relaxed in the lavishly furnished gaming salon of his country manor as he regarded the five gentlemen seated around the table. The game was Monte and these five men, chiefly including himself, compromised one of England’s most successful spying circuits in the last forty years. The fact that he had been administer of this notable spying venture, brought him satisfaction. The fact that it no longer existed with Napoleon’s demise, brought him a feeling of restlessness that he had seldom before encountered.

Their illustrious code name had been Hellagon. Regardless, they had been called surreptitiously as the Queen’s Archangels by the clandestine people in the offices at 13 Whipple Street. The pretentious naming had adhered and until the last throes of Napoleon’s demise one need only mention the Archangels on French soil to obtain a pale and fearful reaction. Yes, Drummond considered pragmatically, he had done his job skillfully and even exceedingly artful at times, managing over the years to deliver them through alive. Barely.

His gaze flicked casually to Harrison, the reclusive Earl of Ravenscar and the only man present who was near to his own middle age. Together, he and Harrison had operated in the macabre world of espionage for more than eight years. His gaze followed the movement of Harrison’s leather gloved hands dealing the next round. Harrison’s hands were perpetually gloved now, hiding the acid burns from their last spying operation gone awry, just as Harrison’s voice was now a permanent rasp from those same acid fumes.

Damnation, Drummond cursed silently. He’d nearly lost Harrison in that last fateful debacle. He still questioned seriously who had betrayed their team. Who was it that nearly cost Harrison his life, had cost Radford, Duke of Sutherlin an eye and Brynmore, Baron of Duneagan the hearing in one ear?

He felt every day since that time that he had better find the traitor before Harrison did. Harrison was set for his own style of dark vengeance and it was nearly as if Harrison knew who the betrayer was. Nevertheless it was unlike Harrison not to confide in him, he reflected, if he did indeed know. And all of this coming to pass well over a year before, so now it seemed to him like so much muddied water beneath the proverbial bridge.

Chapter One

Chloe hurried down the rain soaked cobblestoned street on London’s notorious westside. She knew that she should not be in this crime trodden area of London. Especially at night . . . alone! Only what choice did she have? What choices had she ever had where her twin sister Lia was concerned? Sacred Buddha help her, she knew that she should not, but she did, damn Lia’s evil heart to the devil. Especially this time for using her little baby, Sebastian, against her.

She must . . . must get Sebastian back, Chloe thought, fighting tears of anguish over her son’s fate at the hands of her sister. Only it was also fear now because someone was following her and she was not even close to the assigned drop off place where she was supposed to meet her contact. Anxiously, she checked the small package hidden in the inside pocket of her cloak. The package Lia had forced her to take.

Chloe had no idea what the package contained. She never wanted to know. She never wanted to know what price she was paying to get her son back from her own sister! How could Lia be her true sister, she agonized, for the thousandth time in her short life?

Chloe turned a sharp right corner. Immediately, she stopped and hugged the wall with her back pressed to some unknown building on the corner of the alley she stood in. The dogging footsteps had stopped also and she nearly wished that she could hear them again it was so ominous. She was praying that they would pass her by, not really even following her. But now? She looked down the obscure darkness of the alley which held a sickening sweet smell of rotting garbage. What should she do? She could hardly make herself go down the alley. She did not want to go down there.

Tap . . . tap . . . Tap. Tap. Tap. Buddha save her, it was the footsteps again! Chloe held her breath hugging the wall.

“You will not get away from me this time!” a harsh voice rasped out of the rainy obscure darkness.

Chloe screamed and her cry of terror was cut short by a damp leather-gloved hand clamped harshly over her mouth. In that same second she was jerked away from the wall to collide with a tall immovable shape. She was too terror-stricken to struggle, yet it would have been impossible because the man had a muscular arm clamped around her waist from behind.

“Fate, my little bitch, Lia. Never underestimate fate,” the man hissed in a sinister and gravelly voice.

“N-n-n!” Chloe garbled in a scream beneath the relentlessness of the gloved hand covering her mouth.

She was bodily dragged, stumbling in front of the man, toward the sound of an approaching horse and carriage. Her mind was stricken with the fact that this man thought she was Lia. Better he left her raped in the alley, she thought hysterically, than believe she was Lia!

The carriage and horses came to a high-stepping halt in front of them with Chloe’s frantic hopes of rescue dying quickly, when the rasping man called to the driver, and then he threw open the carriage door. There was no chance for escape. Not that her terror-stricken limbs would have allowed it because the man did not loosen his hold on her, but carried her with him up into the carriage as though she were a mere after thought of weight.

Once inside the carriage with the door slammed shut it was even darker than the black rainy night outside. Still, Chloe thought, this could be her chance because surely the rasping man would have to release her now, and then she would scream her true identity at him until he listened!

“I expected you to fight me more, you traitoress souillon!”

Slut! He had called her a slut in French and his angry voice was dripping revenge on the horrible naming. Chloe found the will then as she struggled to free herself, but the man subdued her too easily. He wrested her more onto his lap and brought what felt like a silk scarf around to gag her mouth! Then he used another silk wrapping to bind her wrists together behind her back before he shoved her off him and into a corner of the carriage.

She did not know where he was inside the dark carriage as she struggled to stay upright on the bouncing carriage seat while shameful sobs wracked her, making anguished whimpering sounds beneath the gag. How could she tell this man who she was if he gagged her?

“Really, Lia . . . crying? You must imagine me noble,” the man whispered harshly in his rasping voice. “I am not, souillon!”

Chloe choked hard because out of the blackness he was suddenly there beside her. He pulled the weight of her cloak down off her shoulders while his other gloved hand tugged her heavy skirts upward with a jerk! Would he rape her now? She tried to use her legs, the only part of her free to fight. Only after two small kicks he clamped his big hands over her thighs with her linen drawers scrunched beneath as he dragged her lower limbs upward until they were on the carriage seat. His weight settled immediately between her legs, pressing down until she could not move. She whimpered like a frightened trapped animal.

“No lacy drawers, Lia? You take your pretense too far, little pussy.”

OhBuddha-Buddha. Chloe jerked her head from side to side frantically, but still the rasping man used his big hands to tug at her drawers, pulling them relentlessly downward over her squirming hips. She could not breathe! She could not catch a single breath beneath the gag.

“Where is the knife and pistol that you always carry, you little bitch? Damnation.” Lord Harrison Ravenscar cursed in a haggard rasp.

It had taken him a few moments to realize that the venomous Lia had fainted. How could that be? From what he knew of her through all of his sources, if Lia were not a woman she would be sporting balls. Harrison shook her, noticing instantly how small and fragile she felt beneath his hands. What a dangerous illusion that was, he thought with a sneer. According to the surveillance reports he managed to obtain on her, this woman beneath him would have no compunction about taking on an entire military squad single handedly. And she did! He had followed her continuing career closely for the last two years until he had lost track of her two months before. Right after she’d been placed, as the assassin of six German field officers in a bordello in Prague. Six men dead without a thought.

How could she faint? Harrison shook her again uselessly before he released her to lie limply on the carriage seat. A particularly sharp rocking motion of the moving carriage threw him off balance and harder into the cradle between Lia’s thighs. His groin nestled instinctively along the contours of her exposed sex. He could feel the heat of her cunt through his pants.

“Christ,” he cursed savagely before he was able to lever himself away. He knelt between her outstretched thighs, while disgustingly, he had to catch a labored breath.

It was the bitch’s fault beneath him that he was reacting this way. He’d not been with a woman for more than two years. Not since Lia had set up the betrayal where he’d burned his hands and throat so severely. And now, she was going to pay! She was going to endure his scarred hands on her body. She was going to crawl . . . she was going to beg him . . . she was going to fuck him until she was his slave, and then and only then, was he going to walk away from her. Leaving her with what she had become. It was better than killing her. Much better, he thought, as he began to search her again for the knife and pistol he knew she must have.

However he did not find them, nothing but a small package in her cloak and a gold locket around her slender neck. Frustrated, he began to rip her demure serviceable dress down the front. He simply could not believe that she did not have a weapon concealed somewhere.

“M-m!” Lia was awake and Harrison sneered, pulling the heavy black dress away from her shoulders as he held her wriggling thighs between his knees. He reached his hand upward and snatched back the carriage curtain allowing the light from the driver’s lantern to spill across the carriage seat.

A corset? The Lia he had studied intimately but had only seen at a distance once, would never wear something so staid and so English. She must be thoroughly into her undercover character, he mused, as he reached for his thin-bladed assassin’s knife that he always carried in his boot. Lady Chloe Sang, the royal stepdaughter to a deceased Asian ambassador, was her undercover character at the moment. However, Ambassador Sang, while he’d lived had been honored at Westminster court on more than one occasion for his international negotiations. What a cover, for his sly Lia, and still he could not fathom how she was pulling it off. He only knew that from the moment he’d chanced to see her at the Carlton Hotel he had vowed that she’d just made her second major mistake since turning traitor to the Archangels spying team. Brazen bitch, coming to England. It was time. She was his!

“N-mm-mm!”

Harrison grasped the whalebone stays between Lia’s softly pillowed breasts with one gloved hand and drew his knife down with his other hand. He could feel the inner slopes of Lia’s breasts heaving against the back of his gloved hand as he cut the corset free. Her breasts spilled out of their confinement. They were plump ivory moons with areolas no rounder that a halfpenny, making the spiked pink nipples in their centers appear larger. The buxom flesh jiggled and arched upward with each of her agitated movements beneath him as she whimpered and tossed her head.

He had her bared except for her stockings, garters, and half-boots. He chuckled in a sinisterly lewd manner and deliberately ran one of his leather-gloved hands back and forth over each of her breasts in a smearing motion, while she tried unsuccessfully to squirm away from him.

“You are mine now, Lia. All mine,” he hissed with the snakelike voice he had. It was all that she’d left him. Then he lowered his hand to pet the ebony curls covering her cunt and she screamed beneath the gag.

Chapter Two

Chloe recovered consciousness reluctantly and if it was not for the discomfort in her arms, a nagging ache dragging her from the black cocoon of oblivion she wanted to hide in, she would not have wakened at all. She moaned over the numbing pain and found her mouth dry and still gagged. That realization sent panic rushing through her and with it she tried to move and found that she could not.

Her arms were tied above her head to a post! A bedpost digging into her bare back. She twisted her body trying to refocus her cloudy gaze on anything and found that she could barely stand on the tips of her toes from where she was tied. “Ah-hh,” she groaned fearfully beneath the gag.

“Ah, my ebony-gilded souillon, so you are awake.”

Chloe lifted her head and saw a man sitting in an elegantly padded chair two long paces in front of her. He had rasped! This was the rasping man. He looked and was dressed like an English nobleman. He was handsome. He was older with rich dove-gray streaks of silver in his wavy jet-black hair. His eyes were shards of black ice, cold and calculating. His face was etched and masculine. There was not a drop of softness in the man. She was doomed unless she could convince him to remove the gag. Buddha save her most worthless soul . . . she prayed to faint again.

“What did you do with your tattoo, Lia?” He stood then and stepped swiftly toward her grabbing her chin into his gloved hand. “Do you think to fool anyone by cutting it away?” he asked as his free hand clamped over the lower curve of her right buttock.

She was naked!

And now she knew why Lia had cut the back of her thigh, Chloe thought frantically, as she tried to twist away from the English nobleman’s hands. Only he held her pinned to his tall frame by one gloved hand tightening on her buttock. She could feel the press of his black satin evening clothes touching her naked skin from her knees to her breasts. All at once he tilted her head back roughly with his fingers on her chin. She whimpered in fear, caught helplessly against the heat of him.

“Who are you so afraid of, my little Asian whore, that you would mar your own beauty so?” he asked harshly, twisting her chin higher.

Take the gag off, Chloe pleaded with her eyes. Take the gag off and I will tell you.

“Do not look at me like that,” he suddenly snarled, and then he released her, backing away. “Brandy-colored doe’s eyes on a venomous bitch!” he hissed.

Chloe watched him abruptly turn away from her and stalk to the chair where he grabbed up a black leather riding quirt from the richly padded seat. She instantly jerked helplessly against the restraints holding her wrists, seeing nothing but the wicked riding quirt as she watched him turn slowly and gracefully toward her once again. He was tapping the quirt along the outside of his muscled thigh.

“Beginning to understand, are we, souillion?” The expression on his rugged features was dangerous and lethal and Chloe clenched her eyes with a terrified whimpering sound escaping her throat.

He ought to whip her, Harrison goaded himself. He ought to flay Lia’s round sleek ass red! He ought to make her cry and whimper more. Damnation, why was she doing that whimpering, he thought viciously, as he watched her. Could she play the simpering game this long and not once express any hint of defiance, anger, or lethal revenge in her dark brandy-colored eyes? Not once! Only this fear and this helplessness?

Yes! Yes, she could. Lia was the best, he savagely reminded himself. Lia had fooled Napoleon himself. She was the consummate actress in the guise of an undercover spy. He raised the quirt and watched Lia’s incredibly lovely body shuddering as large crystal teardrops slid down over the red silk gag he had tied over her mouth. He stepped closer and she sobbed, quivering like a helpless frightened doe.

“Damnation,” he swore hoarsely, throwing the quirt across his bedchamber in a violent gesture as he stood straining like a beast against its leash, clenching and unclenching his scarred hands. He dropped his chin looking down at the black leather encasing those hands. Knowing whose fault it was. Damning himself for his . . . this weakness.

How could he be weak? He’d killed men before . . . many of them and that did not allow for weakness. He had assassinated largely in stealth, yet some men face to face, skill to skill. Whether it was by sword, pistol, knife or fists, he had honored them with the chance. Those were the ones that did not haunt him, but of course he had been haunted before he ever became what he was now, a cold-blooded killer. But it was ironic because he could not place himself solidly there, as the killer he was proclaiming. It was an odd hitch in his consciousness that he fought with. The ones that nagged him into saying, “You did it for your country. You saved lives . . . countrymen’s lives.” Harrison shook his head of collar length hair and swiped a restless hand across his hard jaw. Still, he’d never killed women or children. Never that.

He stalked past his enslaved trembling victim and went in search of the whiskey decanter on his bedside table. Drinking was the only way he could sleep at times by wiping away the guilt, the dreams, or his horrible past. However it was his past no matter how tragic his youth had been, and he had risen above it. Moved beyond it, and even helped his sister out of the hell-hole that they’d lived in as children.

Catherine was his sister and she was beautiful, compassionate, loving . . . and everything good that he was not. In spite of everything, he’d never regretted that. Because he had understood by the time he was five years old and Catherine was born that if he did not do something to turn their father’s insane rage continually toward him, Catherine would be lost, just as he was. So he had, daily, weekly, and through all those years that his crazed unbalanced father had lived until . . .

Harrison took a long swallow of whiskey feeling the slow burn down the back of his throat as he left that thought unfinished. Nonetheless, he knew why he could not whip Lia, and it was because he knew what it felt like to be whipped helpless . . . and God help him he loved his sister. He swung back toward Lia. No, there had to be other ways, because he knew better than anyone that not even the lowliest beast deserved to be whipped helpless.

Christ, she was beautiful, he thought, pacing back toward her slowly in a roundabout widening arc. He could not deny it. What sane man wouldn’t be thrilled to have a woman stripped naked and tied to his bedpost? Lia’s hair was the color of black mink and hung straight and lustrous down to her tight little ass. No other women had an ass like the women of Asian descent and Lia was a mongrel Asian. She was born of an Asian whore and a French aristocrat and she was taller than most Asian women with longer legs and not as much slanting to her brown eyes. Only a provocative tilt that hinted at her ancestry above a cupid-nose and gracefully cupped chin. Her face was delicate and feminine but he imagined that it would look impish if she smiled. Her lips were the kind that begged a man to kiss them, reddened, bow-shaped, and full.

Yet after all was said and done, it was the shape of Lia’s lithely-rounded hips and what was between that really drew him. He was not a celibate man, at least he’d not been before he was disfigured. So he’d seen his share of women’s cunt’s before. Yet Lia’s, seeing it for the first time, was unique and would be delectable to any man, he argued with himself. It was the way the downy curls of her ebony-colored pubic hair did not cover her pussy lips so that a man could easily see her little girls pink slit.

He stopped beside her. Very close. Seeing that her eyes were still clenched and she was silently crying. No wracking sobs behind the gag any longer, just quivers. He found that it heightened his sense of revenge to have her quivering before him and it was then that he decided on the first way he would make her pay without using the whip. It was, he thought, brilliant.

“My name is Ravenscar and you will never call me anything else but Ravenscar,” he commanded in his grating voice, watching Lia’s eyelids scrunch tighter. “And I will call you, my pussy, my whore, or my slut!”

A small helpless sound escaped Lia’s throat. Ignoring the sound Harrison reached his gloved hand forward to touch his fingertips between the impressive cleavage of her uplifted breasts. She panted in fear, he assumed, as he watched her pink-colored nipples crimp tight into quarter-inch spikes thrusting forward in trembling shame. He languidly stroked his fingertips through her cleavage, downward over her fragile rib cage and petted further to her shivering belly. Her skin was unblemished, an ivory-cream color, and he experienced a rabid desire to feel it against his scarred flesh without the gloves. But not yet. First she must be made to learn the impersonality of the gloves she was responsible for.

“Spread your legs . . . pussy,” he whispered insidiously.

“M-m-m!” Lia’s head jerked fearfully back and forth as her voluptuous nude body undulated against the restraints holding her.

“You cannot stop me,” he rasped, pressing closer to her shivering body as he stroked his gloved hands deliberately lower to the top of her curling black pubic hair. Lia’s lush conical-shaped breasts heaved upward beneath her anguished and labored breathing, then he deliberately moved his hands, circling and plucking at the jutting spikes of her shamelessly aroused nipples. He pulled both of her nipples outward between his gloved fingertips, engorging and stiffening them further into fevered rosy-pink.

“A-! A-!”

Lia’s nude body squirmed sinuously as she tried to twist away while he abraded the swollen plump spikes of her nipples relentlessly with a rolling motion between the leather of his thumb and first finger. She tried to writhe away again, this time coming up on her toes for leverage and he stopped her quickly by pushing his knee between her bare shaking thighs. He continued pressing his knee upward until her cunt rode his leg and her back was pressed hard against the bedpost behind her.

“Now we will play, my little pussy,” he whispered harshly.

Lia’s eyelids jerked open and he saw her anguish and fear before he turned his gaze away, telling himself that he was glad, as he clasped her breasts fully into his hands slowly kneading the meaty soft flesh. Her breasts were young and firm, weighting his hands elegantly as he began to incessantly play her nude body like a finely tuned instrument beneath his gloved fingers. He fondled and petted her exquisitely rounded contours until she was writhing in passion despite herself.

She ardently rode her legs over his thigh, rolling her drenched cunt across the width of his leg as he stroked his gloved hands once again over every contour of her opulent curves. Starting high on her arms stretched upward over her head, to sweep down into the hollows of her armpits, lingering over her breasts, belly, hips, and the back of her firm thighs. Her head fell forward in defeat with her face pressed into the crook of his neck as he groped his hands around each of her buttocks deeply massaging the pliable female flesh over and over. Each kneading motion of his splayed fingers rode her cunt up over his thigh and thrust her pillowed breasts into the wall of his chest.

She began whimpering . . . erotic sounds not in fright this time but of needy arousal. The sound shocked him out of his own haze of passion and he abruptly realized that he’d been grinding his stiff dick against her hot cunt like a humping beast.

“Christ,” he swore holding himself still, gripping Lia’s buttocks tightly with their groins locked together. The posture he held her posed in lifted her shapely legs upward around his hips. “How does it feel to be a bitch in heat?” he hissed with a sneer. Trying desperately to break the tension.

Lia wailed, it was a hurt humiliated sound as she jerked over his thigh. Possibly trying to escape but with nowhere to go it only rubbed the heat of her cunt, hot over his impassioned cock. He snarled in denial yet his hands which were filled with her lush feminine ass lifted her too easily to slide up and down the raging length of his dick. God. He did it again and she mewled with the sound of longing and denial.

“Your limitless lust will make you my slave,” he hissed. Wondering vicariously as his own lust drew hard on him which one of them he truly meant. Then he angled his body back and grasped Lia’s smoldering drenched pussy into his gloved hand. Squeezing. “Look at me,” he demanded as she whimpered sharply and turned her head away from him.

He grabbed a thick pile of her waist length hair and tugged, stretching her neck as he forced her to face him. With his other hand holding her exquisitely hot cunt, he stretched his middle finger forward searching for the opening of her vagina. Her irises were black with passion and fear as he caressed her tender entrance with his gloved finger, circling more . . . prodding lightly.

Chloe died a hundred shameful deaths as Ravenscar penetrated her convulsing core with his leather encased finger. How could she respond? How could she undulate her hips so wildly and ride his fingering like the begging slut he wrongly named her! Only nothing mattered but the friction of leather abrading her and plunging deeper inside her with ever stronger thrusts.

“Ah- Ah,” she cried against the gag as Ravenscar began to smudge his thumb over the bead of her clitoris while his other finger coupled her harder. Her thighs lifted and spread wider with intense erotic begging motions as her head fell back and her breasts thrust forward brazenly.

Suddenly . . . horrifically . . . he stopped! She wailed with a muffled sound beneath the gag as he pulled away from her and stepped backward leaving her throbbing . . . and unrequited . . . and quivering in shameful lust. It was horrible! She was left in agony to watch Ravenscar smiling at her with his heavy-lidded gaze of coal black eyes and his sneer of impossibly handsome lips over arrogant white teeth.

“My slave,” he rasped venomously as he slowly began to take off his gloves and she hung there, his prisoner, knowing if the gag were not in her mouth that she would be begging him to touch her again.

Chapter Three

When Chloe saw Ravenscar’s hands, she flinched in reaction and she knew with little doubt that Lia was responsible for the scarring injuries. The man before her was seeking revenge. Seeking retribution where there could only be Buddha’s serene judgments. Yet he would take his own justice out on her because he thought she was Lia. She whimpered then, woefully in fear and with the unrequited arousal harshly riding her. What would he do to her? What would he do?

“Are you wondering who I am, Lia?” he asked with a wicked sliding whisper.

Didn’t she know, Chloe thought fearfully? Didn’t Lia know?

“It must be driving that sharp vixen’s mind of yours mad not to know . . . or why.”

Why wouldn’t Lia know, Chloe wondered with raising panic? Ravenscar neared and she twisted against the silk holding her wrists above her head.

“Perhaps when you are my complete slave I will tell you as a reward for your slavish obedience to me.”

Oh Buddha, save me, Chloe thought desperately! Save me!

“Right before I toss you out the door.”

He would release her!

“That is the moment that I live for, Lia. The moment when you will crawl on your hands and knees begging me to take you back. But I will refuse!”

Then Chloe screamed, a terrible wracking sound caught behind the gag as Ravenscar put his roughly scarred hands on her bare waist sliding them downward over her hips.

“Damnation,” Harrison rasped. His petite captive had fainted again! He quickly caught her up into his arms removing the gag and the bonds around her wrists. Then he easily lifted her, carrying her to the bed. Why was she not acting at all as he expected? How in the hell did a master spy such as Lia faint? History told that she was made of much sterner stuff than that. After he laid her on the bed, he checked her once again to make certain that she truly had fainted. Nevertheless, she had and he sat on the bed beside her where she lay limply on her back.

There was no denying that she was a beautiful erotic woman, he thought, taking an unobserved moment to stroke his fingers through her midnight-colored hair. He could not exactly feel the tresses with his scarred fingers, however he could see that the blue-black strands were sensuously silky. It was easy to envision why Bonaparte had fallen all over himself to have the little vixen as his mistress when Drummond had first planted her in Paris to be just that. She had started out as England’s spy but turned coat . . . When? Why?

What disturbed him the most were her eyes, he thought, as he stroked the part of his finger that could feel sensation over the creamy-smooth flesh of her cheek? Could any individual truly feint such innocence reflected through guileless eyes the color of chocolate-cinnamon?

“I am not, Lia! I am her twin sister, Chloe!”

Harrison reacted instinctively, grasping Lia’s wrists, piling them over her head with one hand and leaving her stretched out beneath him. He took a moment to catch his startled breath, and then he laughed. A harsh sound given the condition of his voice.

“It’s true,” Lia cried beneath him. Interestingly with puckered pink nipples and thrashing long lithe legs.

Fuck! He could not deny wanting the witch. “You will have to do better than that, my little soullion,” he charged harshly.

“No, it is true! You must believe me,” she cried, bucking her hips upward with a healthy struggle.

Harrison rolled himself on top of her, grinding her to a shaking halt. “You will be silent,” he hissed. “Or I will take the whip to your ass!”

Lia heaved a shuttering breath beneath him and he glimpsed huge teardrops in the corners of her eyes before she turned her face away from him. Why did she sound so strange? An American accent? It was another trick! “If you say one more word, vixen, I will gag you again. Do you understand?” he growled.

Lia nodded her head still turned to one side and lay still beneath him yet he could feel she was trying to hold back her tears. She was playing him! He suddenly grabbed her to push her onto her stomach. She screamed, and then she choked on some more sobs as he straddled her hips.

“Give me your wrists,” he snarled, grabbing at them but she wedged her arms beneath her chest.

“But I am not Lia!” she wailed. “I hate Lia! Lia uses me!” Harrison practically growled in frustration until he’d gotten Lia’s wrists above her head and tied to the bedpost. “Listen to me, please! Please! We are twin-n-n . . .” Harrison pulled the red satin gag snugly across Lia’s mouth. Thank god, he thought, leaning back to rest on his heels over the back of Lia’s thighs as he ran an impatient hand through his disheveled shoulder length hair. He rested there, staring at the small scar on the back of Lia’s perfectly molded thigh. She was gasping on her sobs beneath the gag, twisting her wrists against the red silk binding her to the bedpost. Damnation, he’d be a limp prick fool to believe anything she said . . . Only his prick was not limp, it was raging, and his memory was relentless.

. . . That night over two years ago was purported to simply be an information gathering operation. His team the Archangels planned to break into Josephine Bonaparte’s apartment and gather what information they could find. It should have been fairly easy. Lia, playing Napoleon’s mistress, had passed along the information that Josephine had gone to the countryside for several days, if not weeks. Napoleon did not live with his estranged wife, yet he visited her there often. That and the intelligence gathered by the Archangels showed that many top Bonaparte officials courted Josephine’s favor and visited her apartment. The chances of finding something useful there were favorable.

Their leader Drummond sent three of them. Only seven people had known of the operation. The time, the date, and the place. And those seven people were, the six men of the Archangel spying team . . . and Lia.

Harrison went to those apartments with Radford and Saxonhurst. That should have been enough. Nothing would have been enough after what they met there. It had been a setup made to look like it wasn’t. Made to appear as though the servants had just gotten lucky and discovered them. Made to appear as if those servants were just defending themselves from a burglary attempt.

But he’d fought with those servants. He’d killed two of them. They were military trained. Saxonhurst thought perhaps and Radford wasn’t sure. But he knew. They had been trained. It also explained the explosion and why the chemicals had been there in the first place. It was not just simply a cache of fireworks stored for the upcoming New Year celebration, right next to the cases of pure Russian vodka in the cellar. His hands were not scarred by fire, but by acid, and his throat was not burned by the heat, but by fumes. The tremendous explosion had cost Radford one eye and Saxonhurst his hand. They were all lucky to have made it out of there alive. Interestingly, none of the servants were harmed in the explosion . . . they had all fled just before the fire ignited. Someone went to immeasurable trouble to make it look as though this was all an accidental happening . . . and he’d never disabused Drummond or the others of this notion. They all thought it could be . . . Yet no one knew except him.

He’d gone back to the charred and ruined apartments. With his hands in bandages and his throat still so burned that he was unable to speak. In the charred remains he’d found the remnants of the broken glass beaker that must have carried the acid . . . yet he had not found one piece of bottle that would carry Russian vodka . . .

“Damn lying, bitch,” Harrison snarled, angrily coming out of his memories.

He moved his position over Lia’s back until he could wedge her thighs open with his knees. She tried to twist away from him but there was no place for her to go and the motion drew and flexed the ivory flesh of her buttock cheeks erotically beneath his gaze. She was helpless, exposed, and spread before him as he reached his bare hand between her thighs and clasped his fingers over her fevered cunt.

Lia moaned and he laughed hoarsely, delving his fingers deep into the eddy of her feminine flesh . . . so tender and wet, until he found the pearl of her clitoris. God, it had been so long since he had touched a woman this way and he was surprised at all that his scarred hands could feel. He could feel the heat of her, the pulsing sharp throbs, and the fragile texture of her clit swelling and drawing upward. He rubbed firmly over the aroused nubbin of flesh and Lia answered with the sound of a deeply sensual mewl of longing. She lifted her ass upward to him in a purely feminine begging way.

“Lusty, rosebud,” he rasped gruffly, chasing the hardening pearl of her clitoris around with his finger. Faster, faster . . . faster.

“Aa- Aa-!”

“Yes, I know,” Harrison crooned unable to stop himself from placing mouthy hot kisses along the graceful slope of Lia’s back, as he circled his finger harder on her clit bringing her to the edge of a climax. “Beg me to let you come, Lia,” he commanded hoarsely as he loosened her gag. “Beg me.”

“Ah! Ravenscar, please!” she cried.

“Swear to me that you will do anything I command,” he demanded.

“Ye-Nn! OhBuddha save me. Please!”

“Swear to me,” he hissed, and then abruptly he took his hand away from her trembling cunt.

“No! R-Ravenscar, please!” she wailed, tugging her wrists frantically against her bonds. “Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me like this.”

“Swear to me,” he hissed as he once more reached between her quivering inner thighs to cup her throbbing hot cunt into his hand. Squeezing. Dipping his fingers and wetting them in her arousal.

“Please! Please! Buddha help me, don’t do this to me,” she cried as she wriggled wantonly over his hand, spreading her knees, supplicating to him with the rise and erotic undulation of her buttocks. “Oh! I will do anything.”

“Swear, Rosebud, swear,” he snarled the command as he relentlessly tweaked her passion again with a pluck of his fingertips nipping at the thrust of her clitoris.

“Oh!” she mewled convulsively with her entire voluptuous body shuddering. “Please! I swear! I swear.” she squealed.

“Then raise up on your knees,” he commanded roughly.

Chloe knew the act was shameful somewhere in her passion raped mind, however she could not care! She quickly crawled up onto her knees grasping the bed post as an anchor because of her wrists bound to its width. All she understood was that she would surely die if her captor, Lord Ravenscar left her unrequited again on the brink of a climax! It was torture of the cruelest measure and she knew that he would do it over and over again if she did not yield. Buddha save her worthless soul, she had always been too weak.

“You are going to do exactly everything I command of you,” Ravenscar uttered as he relentlessly toyed with her sex. Keeping her agonizingly and painfully on the edge of a wrenching orgasm. “Or I will do this to you again and again. Until you go mad. Now tell me!”

“Yes, Ravens-scar,” she sobbed on a choked cry while anguished and passion-racked tears streamed down her flushed cheeks. “A-Anything you demand. Anything!”

“Excellent,” he rasped. “And now for your reward. Turn over, Rosebud.”

Chloe felt Ravenscar rising up behind her as his hand left her loins and she convulsed with torturous need. Then his roughly-scarred hands were there urging her onto her back. She was so shaken that she wobbled until he laid her stretched out on her back with her arms crossed over each other still tied to the bedpost. But she kept her eyes clenched tight against seeing him . . . seeing herself enslaved by him. And because she had her eyes closed, she did not know where he was positioned until she felt his long hair brushing her inner thighs making her jerk in reaction.

“Lift your legs to me,” he murmured roughly. “Up, over my shoulders.”

Sacred Buddha, how could she? How could she be so debase? Yet she did, lifting her legs beneath his complete domination with her body shaking in perverse anticipation. This was her reward, he would love her more intimately than any man ever had.

His tongue touched her sex! “Oh!” she cried.

“Yes, Rosebud,” he hissed. “You taste purely of heaven for such a treacherous bitch.”

Ravenscar lapped his tongue deep into the folds of her loins as she squirmed senselessly over his shoulders, but his strong hands held her outer thighs to his command. He flicked the tip of his tongue over the budding deep in her sex, making her squeal. And then he used the flat of his tongue licking deeper again, making her whimper until she was screaming his name as he flicked his tongue on her harder. The first climax followed the second simultaneously and the third came relentlessly some minutes later. In the shuddering convulsion of the third climax she lost her breath and everything went black.

Harrison gently eased Lia back down onto the mattress. God, he was shaking and he did not know if it was because he was so tightly aroused or if it was just the incredible taste and feel of Lia still lingering on him. The arousal he ignored, it was nothing new in the last two years of celibacy. More piquant . . . definitely that, he thought, as he untied Lia’s wrists from the bedpost and he laid her more comfortably on the bed. The other he passed off to exhaustion, which he was, he thought tiredly. He might even be able to sleep this evening for a few hours. To that end he considered masturbating to relieve his sexual tension, yet then decided against it once he had undressed and curled his larger body around Lia. This could just be enough.

Yes, the contact was very soothing and warm and he was extremely pleased with his progress that night. He still expected many surprises from Lia, nevertheless essentially he had command of her. He suppressed a yawn unable to stop reflecting how exciting Lia was during her climaxes. Intoxicating, ardent, and somehow precious. In one thrilling moment she had lifted herself up to him in complete abandon crying “my one” passionately, which was a purely Asian phrasing. Could she truthfully feint an endearment in the midst of a wild and thoroughly abandon climax?

Surely, Harrison thought drowsily, how else had she managed to capture Bonaparte’s interests so completely.

Chapter Four

Chloe knew he was there, she could feel every inch of his hard naked body as she came awake. Ravenscar. And he was aroused! His impossibly long male penis was nudged between the crevice of her behind from where he lay with his chest against her back and his arms wrapped tight around her. This left her cheek resting on the tightly swelled muscle of his shoulder as she listened to him lightly snoring.

At least he was asleep, she thought raggedly, because it would begin again soon . . . too soon. And now irrevocably she knew that she was his . . . his completely! She understood no matter how much she could pray otherwise that Ravenscar was stronger than her own determination and will. It was because his need for revenge was blindly driving him. He would never listen to the fact that she was not Lia. He would never believe that she had a son. A baby that she was so painfully terrified for. What had Lia done to Sebastian? And now that she’d not come back, had not delivered the package, what would Lia do to him?

She was so helpless here, Chloe thought, crying silently. And she was lying next to a powerful man. A man powerful enough to stop Lia and bring Sebastian back to her. Yet he would never believe her.

“What sneaking dramas are you concocting now, Lia?” Ravenscar asked with a husky rasp from behind her.

“I-I do not care if you believe me,” Chloe cried miserably. “But I have a baby. And he is in danger.”

Ravenscar abruptly turned her onto her back and leaned over her. “You have a child? What nonsense is this?”

Chloe gazed up at him willing him impossibly to believe her. “Even if I a-am, Lia. I could have a baby,” she whispered, and then she pushed the bed linen aside so he could clearly see her breasts. “How else could I be leaking milk, if I did not have a baby?”

Ravenscar’s aristocratically-chiseled features frowned down at her, and he slowly brought one lean finger forward to touch the droplet of milk clinging to her pink nipple. Chloe trembled uncontrollably at his touch and the droplet fell free running over the rounded slope of her bare breast. Ravenscar dipped his head with his dark irises pinning hers as he lapped the droplet of mothers’ milk with his tongue, leisurely following the path up over the curve of her breast. Chloe held back her moan with every ounce of her will, wondering desperately how he could make her feel such exquisite pleasure when she should despise him.

“It seems it could be possible that you do have a child,” he murmured, intently gazing at her with banked lust and calculation in his inky-black eyes.

“I do,” she whispered fiercely. She would not try to convince him that she was not Lia, but this!

“Even still, I do not know what it could matter to me,” he rasped. “You are still my whore until I release you.”

Chloe’s heart sank, yet she was desperate and a helpless idea formed in her mind. “I would do anything. Anything for you,” she responded ferociously “If you would just get my baby back for me. He is in danger!”

Ravenscar jerked away from her and she quickly rose after him grasping at the sinewy mounds of his muscular upper arms, trying to hold him. He instantly stilled beneath her touch and hissed. “I already have you.”

“But it is not the same!” she cried, desperate. “You know that I would always try to fight you. Or-or try to escape from you, but if you got Sebastian back for me,” she paused on a hurried breath, thinking hard. “If you held my baby against me, then I truly would be your complete s-slave.”

Ravenscar’s head dipped forward as if in deep thought making the ends of his lightly silver-streaked black hair balance and pool on the sharp ridge of his collarbone. Chloe held onto the taut muscles of his upper arms, trembling herself with desperate need. She prayed fiercely to the serene all-knowing Buddha that Ravenscar would get Sebastian back for her. Knowing as she did that she would do anything, be anything for him if he did.

“Show me,” he uttered finally, lifting his gaze to hers as she looked at him in confusion. “Suck my cock and show me how willing you will be.”

Chloe abruptly dropped her hands from Ravenscar’s hard biceps and scooted back away from him completely startled. She rested her hands on the mattress at her sides and nervously looked at him. She had never done such a thing before a-and Ravenscar would expect her to be some kind of expert! Like Lia most definitely would be. Yet what choice did she have?

“Y-Yes . . . my lord,” she answered faintly, hoping the “my lord,” would please Ravenscar in sounding subservient. He did lift his full upper lip slightly. But it could just be a sneer. Then she prudently thought to add. “If you will only guide me in the way you, um, prefer . . . my lord.” There had to be different ways, didn’t there?

“Cease playing these games with me, Lia,” he growled. “I thought you wanted your baby back?”

“I do!” she exclaimed quickly. “I only wish to please you,” she finished in a desperate whisper.

“Then simply take my cock into your pretty pink mouth, and cease using those soulful brown eyes on me, Rosebud,” he rasped as he came up on his knees before her.

Chloe gazed at Ravenscar’s jutting and thoroughly male penis. It was so long! So much longer than the only other example she’d ever witnessed. Just that once. And now Ravenscar wanted her to take the iron beast into her mouth. It was not offensive looking but rather imposing and somehow mesmerizing. A strong appendage, and the ruddy pink-colored skin looked soft even though the column beneath was rigid, while the helmeted head looked shiny smooth. Strangely her nipples rucked tightly into tiny pink spokes as she bent over bracing her hands on the bed and she crawled forward before him.

“This is just the beginning, my little traitor,” Ravenscar uttered. He dug his fingers into the back of her hair and she leaned forward on her hands and knees with the pressure from his hands coercing her mouth toward the helmeted head of his penis. When her mouth slowly closed around the warm crowned-head, she heard Ravenscar groan as she tasted his male essence on her tongue.

Christ, it had been so long. Harrison felt Lia’s wet sultry mouth close around the broad head of his prick and he burned, it felt so good. “Take more,” he commanded, pulling Lia’s head forward and holding it when she might back away. “Jesus,” he hissed when he felt the liquid cavern of Lia’s mouth slide down over the hard length of him. However then his captive remained strangely still, yet he could not wonder at this because his baser instincts took over and he rocked his hips. God! He pushed Lia’s head with his hands holding her hair like a lead at the same time he humped his hips until she was giving him the rhythm he desired.

“Suck on it, Rosebud,” he rasped harshly. “Suck my cock deep and hard.”

Christ! When Lia suckled her lips around his cock she suddenly became the expert he knew she had to be. No more innocent games now as she suckled and he thrust. In fact she was good. So deliciously good. Taking more of his rigid length than he thought possible with her greedy hot mouth as he watched her buttocks gyrate beneath each of his forward thrusts until his balls grew tight and he knew he was going to come. It was then he held Lia’s head tighter. He would never allow her to back away from this moment.

“Uh, God!”

Chloe felt the hot cream burst into her mouth and she swallowed instinctively around Ravenscar’s big throbbing organ stretching her lips. She thought somewhere in the back of her mind that she should be appalled. But she wasn’t! Crazily she was excited and she could not stop thinking about the way Ravenscar had put his mouth to her sex the night before.

He was shuddering when she pulled her mouth from around his penis and looked up at his harrowed cheeks and his glazed black eyes. But just as quick as she could blink her eyelashes, his gaze turned feral. “I want to watch you masturbate,” he said thickly.

She gasped in shock and maybe . . . maybe some excitement. She could not deny that there were times when she touched herself at night beneath the bed covers. But to have a man watch her do this! To have Ravenscar watch her. She was horribly embarrassed and confused in her feelings only she had gone so far already. She had gone so low or to such new heights she could not comprehend. Yet he allowed her no hesitations nor will of her own as he pressured her onto her back, and then he stretched on his side at an angle to her. “Bend your legs to me, Rosebud, and splay your thighs.”

He would see everything. Everything! Chloe did as Ravenscar commanded with her eyes closed and her body trembling.

“Your cunt is ripe . . . and wet,” Ravenscar whispered sinuously.

She moaned helpless in anguish and a strange compelling excitement. Then Ravenscar’s hands were on her thighs pulling her across the mattress until her naked buttocks hit his chest. OhBuddaha. He lifted one of her calves up over the bunched muscles of his shoulder.

“Put your fingers in your pussy, Rosebud.”

“Ravenscar, p-please,” she pleaded.

“You want your child,” he hissed in accusation. “Prove it to me,” he finished with a whispered snarl.

He owned her, Chloe thought desperately, as graphic visions of all the ways he might use her skittered through her mind. And there was nothing she could do to stop him. There was no way to say no. And the most terrible feeling was that she was not sure that she wanted to. She had never felt so sexually charged as when he commanded her. She had never known that she could be a sexual creature.

Arching to reach, she dipped her fingers into her sex finding the place of her secret pleasure. Feeling her own moisture and heat on her fingertips. Touching the tender folds of flesh, then finding the elusive bead, which she began to slowly rub. She whimpered in need when Ravenscar kissed her inner thigh and kneaded her buttocks with his big hands, pulling them open and closed with each massage. Compelled beyond need into hot passion she moved her fingers faster in the tissues of her sex chasing the bead that was growing bigger and tighter.

“I own you,” he murmured, splitting her buttock cheeks and digging his fingers into her flesh.

“Yes,” she mewled, senseless, jerking her hips higher at each spike of pleasure her fingers rubbed over her.

“Look at me,” he commanded, and she did, seeing the dark passion in his black irises. His gaze lowered to watch her touching herself.

“Oh, Ravenscar,” she panted, circling her fingers harder, spreading herself open more to him with arching hips, while his hands cupped and lifted her behind.

“You like this,” he accused huskily.

“Yes. Yes,” she cried, mindless, and then she cried out in surprise when one of his fingers entered her with a hard thrust and she screamed in pleasure.

Harrison fucked Lia with two of his fingers as he watched the ivory moons of her pink-nippled breasts jostle with each hard thrust of his finger. This was primeval, pagan . . . lustful, and it ate him up with heat he’d never felt before. To watch Lia’s glistening pink cunt and her delicate fingertips savaging it with erotic motions. He bit her innermost thigh and she screamed in throaty pleasure. He rumbled in response, an answer to her aroused call, and he watched her shudder as her orgasm capsized.

He came up over her swiftly then, nearly against his will or control as he embedded his cock deep inside her with one hard thrust.

“Oh God, Ravenscar,” she yelped grasping his burgeoning biceps with her fingernails.

“Ah Christ,” he hissed, feeling the contracting wall of Lia’s vagina grip his length with torrid friction. She was so small, so tight around him, it felt like a fisted glove of liquid cream. And he could feel the ripples of her climax . . . or a new one coming on.

He swung his hips fast, slapping her cunt harder and harder each time as she wound her calves into the arch of his back and scratched her nails down his sweating biceps. Christ, she was so lovely and receptive to him. A sensual creature with no barriers or control over the pleasure he reaped over her.

“Oh, Ravenscar! Oh, Ravenscar. Please.”

“Yes, Rosebud,” he hissed, out of breath as he took her higher, reaching between their bodies to stroke her clitoris while he rode her higher up on the mattress. Pounding their bodies together now with an incredible rhythm of sweating thighs.

“Ah! Ah! Ah! Raven!”

“Oh God, Rosebud,” he groaned hard, coming in a rush of pleasure so strong it shook him as he strained his cock deep inside of Lia and he convulsively spilled his seed.

Moments . . . hours . . . years later, he found himself kissing Lia’s ripe strawberry lips. He was feasting on them like a pagan. And he was shocked! Damnation, what was he doing kissing her? Why was she wrapped around him like lovers butter, and why was he engaged in the caring affection of a kiss? Had he lost his mind? It appeared so.

Harrison violently wrenched away from soft berry lips, and he rasped, “Bitch!”

“Ravensc . . .?”

He pushed Lia aside and got up off the bed, a place of lust and regrets in twisted sheets. “You will never fool me,” he rasped, glaring down at Lia’s exquisite nude body flushed in the aftermath of passion . . . No, his mind reeled, it was just lust. Just a bitch’s lust! “You are merely a slut. My slut!”

Pain and deep mortification stared horrified at him through her maple-sugar eyes, and clung to him like a foul odor as he swiveled away from her cunning deceptions, grabbing his pants as he headed toward the door.

“Ravenscar, wait, please,” she pleaded behind him.

“No,” he rasped, grabbing the doorknob with a jerk. “You will remain locked in here until I have need of your mouth again.”

“No, Ravenscar!”

Harrison slammed the door shut behind him and locked it on Lia’s cry. Damn the bitch! Damn the sweet bitch to hell, he thought raggedly, as he stalked away.

Chapter Five

Several days later Harrison closely watched Drummond, his friend the Duke of Kittridge. They were sitting in Harrison’s cherry-wood study in his fashionable townhouse on Mayfair. He had just told Drummond of Lia’s capture.

“Hm,” Drummond murmured as he rubbed a finger over his bottom lip and stared down into his half-filled glass of Scottish whiskey. “And you say that she is here now?” Drummond finished asking.

“Yes,” Harrison rasped, leaning back into his overstuffed leather chair to stare brooding at the fire popping amber sparks. “She will be down shortly so you may see for yourself. I just simply . . . ,” he faltered into silence.

“You simply wanted someone to tell you, someone who had worked closely with Lia, that this is in fact Lia. And further that her claim to have a twin sister is nonsense. And then perhaps that you have every right to perpetrate any vengeance upon her that you may wish . . . hm.”

“Scoundrel,” Harrison hissed in irritation, throwing back his snifter of whiskey in one swallow. “I needed no one’s permission,” he finished on an angry rasp.

“Tell me, my dear friend, what have you done to the young woman already?” Drummond asked leaning forward with a piercing quality in his intelligent gray eyes.

“I have fucked her if that is what you mean,” Harrison whispered venomously. “And I intend to keep on fucking her until she is nothing but my sexual slave.”

Drummond’s silver-gray eyebrows arched. “Really, Ravenscar?”

Harrison only muttered as he rose to fix himself another whiskey with his back to Drummond, as he heard him say. “No assassin’s bullet for justice. No guarded ride to the Gaol to await prosecution for treasonous acts. Hanging, I believe they call that,” Drummond drawled. “Nor even the more intimate justice of professional ruination.” Harrison grimaced as Drummond paused before saying, “But sex! My lethal and brilliant friend, has decided to reap his revenge by bedding the exquisite chit!”

“Damnation,” Harrison hissed, swiveling angrily to face Drummond, just as he heard.

“My Lord Ravenscar, you requested my presence?”

Lia was curtsying to him and Drummond, who had stood. Curtsying beautifully in the scandalous costume that he’d commanded she wear. It was simply indecent. Just a wisp of red silk from head to toe. He could clearly see the ebony shadow between her thighs and the outline of her jutting nipples. The costume was hedonistic. It was meant to debase and claim ownership. He could see Lia’s mortification in her scarlet cheeks and lowered head making him wonder yet again at what game she played.

The Lia he knew, only through several years of investigations compromising eyewitness accounts and detailed written accounts that Lia would have thrived on displaying herself this way. In fact she would have already been actively trying to seduce the only other man in the room beside himself with her barely clad body. She should be a scheming vixen trying to gain some upper hand. Any hand! Whereas this Lia was fighting not to cover her hands over the silhouette of her ebony-gilded cunt seen so clearly.

Tricks. Damnation it had to be an act. “I am sure you remember, the Duke of Kittridge . . . Lia,” Harrison finally rasped. He would not call her lady or mademoiselle or any other genteel reference, he argued with himself. “Refill his drink,” he finished with a harshly issued command.

“Y-Yes, my lord . . . your grace,” she murmured faintly to both of them, coming forward hesitantly toward Drummond.

The firelight did wicked things to the red silk skimming along her ivory flesh, in curves and hollows of sleek femininity. She could well have been naked for all it covered her lush buttocks.

“My lady,” Drummond murmured with a slight bow as he offered his glass, then he turned an arched eyebrow to Harrison.

“You are . . . ,” Harrison snapped harshly. “The same man who spanked his, now, wife’s naked bottom in the hallway of his country manor. Are you not?”

“Really, Harrison,” Drummond muttered irritably, making Harrison smile lethally in satisfaction of a point well taken. But Drummond continued. “I do however, have a wife now. One whom I love and who would not take kindly to my having viewed any other delectable feminine form but hers.”

Harrison dropped his chin to look down at Lia’s dark head from where she stood next to him trying to pour whiskey into Drummond’s glass. However, he could see that her hands were shaking too badly, and she was making a spilled mess of it. When he reached forward to take the decanter away from her, she cried out softly as though he might strike her as she stumbled back. It was then she looked up at him for the first time since entering the room. Her eyes were stormy with emotion. Fear, embarrassment, and some presence of deep yearning that held him arrested for long moments while he gazed into her dark brown irises.

“Yes, as I was saying,” Drummond murmured. “I cannot carry on a conversation with a half-dressed lady.”

Harrison reluctantly lifted his gaze and saw that Drummond had removed his black satin evening jacket and was even now placing it around Lia’s slender shoulders. She did not look at Drummond though but instead looked worriedly at him as though he would berate the gesture. She was afraid and timorous of him, and for a single moment he nearly went forward to put his arms around her in comfort. He simply could not overlook the guilelessness in her gaze. If she was acting, then he was a fool in compliance to her act!

“Keep it,” he uttered gruffly with a tilt of his head toward the jacket.

Lia’s slight grateful smile nearly undid him as did her liquid brown irises. “Thank you, my lord,” she whispered demurely, clutching the jacket tightly around her.

“And now, my lady, if you would not mind taking a seat. It seems you and I have some old adventures to reminisce upon,” Drummond murmured behind them.

Harrison watched as once again Lia looked to him for permission and the open submissiveness of the action strangely touched a suppressed dark ache deep inside him. It was a moment before he acquiesced with a nod, allowing her to follow Drummond to a chair. And then it was a moment before he followed as a chimera of lust warmed his blood at the knowledge of the control he had over this woman. A fact more blatantly tangible in Drummond’s presence, and an idea he had never fully considered the effect of before.

Of course he had dreamed of vengeance for two years since he’d been burned, and it was not until he had concluded that Lia Delconte was the traitor that he’d started to envision the methods of his revenge. At nights, in the haunting hours, under the influence of vast amounts of Scottish whiskey he would play idly over the many scenarios his revenge could take. Finally concluding the more personal the better.

Yet what he’d never considered until this moment, and his unexpected rise of passion which answered Rosebud’s call of submission to him, was that he could enjoy it. Nay, crave it. It felt as though he had a dark beast inside of him that rose upward ever more demanding to be acknowledged. And with his haunted past it might not be all that surprising. Who to trust? The person you commanded or the one that you gave a choice? Foolish question, he chided himself.

“I recall quite vividly when we first met,” Drummond said, drawing Harrison from his disturbing thoughts.

Chloe nervously fielded Lord Kittridge’s questions. She disliked Ravenscar’s deepening frown, yet she could not admit to things she did not know or things she did not do. She vainly tried not to declare outright that she was not Lia. Understanding that it would fuel Lord Ravenscar’s anger if she did. It was all very terrible and confusing because she did not know if she should pretend or not!

“This is getting us nowhere,” Ravenscar suddenly rasped in a low and harsh voice.

Chloe nearly jumped to stand . . . to flee, but managed to hold herself as she dipped her head forward. Then he was there with his big hands gripping her shoulders as he stood behind her. His voice was low and threatening when he spoke. “There never was a baby, was there?”

Buddha help her! Chloe knew what he was saying. What he was threatening. She understood that if she did not admit she was Lia that-that he would not rescue Sebastian. How could she do this? How could she explain? The words stuck in her throat and felt like shards of glass when she gasped. “I-I am, Lia!”

Oh Buddha have mercy on her. Chloe clutched her waist and winced at Ravenscar’s tightening fingers. She had to be plausible. She had no choice. “I’ve been v-very sick,” she lied, keeping her face lowered as hot tears stained her cheeks. “Before . . . after the baby. Opium,” she finally finished in an anguished whisper.

She prayed then for Sebastian and herself. She prayed that Ravenscar and Lord Kittridge would believe her. Prayed that the use of opium was enough of an excuse for her not being able to remember events that she was never going to have the answer to.

“Go to my bedchamber now,” Ravenscar hissed suddenly.

Chloe flinched as she came to a panicked stand with Ravenscar pulling the evening jacket from her shoulders as she fled to the door. She wanted to scream about her baby, Sebastian. What would he do about that? But Ravenscar’s voice had sounded so ghostly and harsh.

Suddenly he was there grabbing her from behind and making her squeal in fright as he stopped her in the hallway outside the study door. His arm came roughly around her waist as he pulled her tightly, back against him. “Strip and wait for me on the bed,” he whispered harshly into her ear before he released her and she fled again.

Harrison watched Lia flee upstairs with the provocative shimmer of red silk clinging to her womanly curves. She was crying in tight frightened sobs. Opium? Sickness? He should be pleased. He should feel some type of justice or deep satisfaction. She had admitted it! She had admitted that she was Lia.

Yet all he felt was anger. It was a soul-drenching anger and he did not fully know its source. What the hell was happening to him? He had always been very cool and calculating, the master assassin with nerves of ice. However now he was . . . now he was passionately angry and he could not seem to control its thrumming fire through his blood.

“It appears that you have your answer, Harrison,” Drummond murmured, as he strode past him toward the door leading out of the townhouse. Harrison watched Drummond shrug into his greatcoat and pause at the door the butler had opened. “However, my friend, it truly escapes me as to the significance of this package our Lia . . . Chloe carried. Empty? A wrapped, empty box carried into the bowels of one of the worst sections of our city . . . most curious,” Drummond finished on a murmur just before he stepped through the entryway.

“Damnation,” Harrison hissed turning away from Drummond’s departure. The astute Lord Kittridge, his closest friend and a man with unnerving instincts and above average intelligence, did not believe the woman upstairs was Lia!

Chapter Six

Chloe was afraid not to lay naked on Lord Ravenscar’s bed waiting for him. Too weak and-and to her confused mortification, too excited. Excited in a sexual way. Reclining, waiting for him. What would he do to her this time? What would he command her to do? Her nipples were beaded tight into rosy jutting spikes and her womanhood ached.

“Sacred Buddha, what is happening to me?” she moaned, twisting her head against the soft bed quilt that she lay naked on.

Chloe heard him then, entering the room and she could not lay still because of the fear and excitement edged tight inside her. Heedlessly, she rolled her body and came up onto her knees dragging a corner of the bed quilt with her to cover some of her nudity.

“W-What of my b-baby?” she cried with chattering teeth.

Ravenscar continued to undress while advancing toward the bed and his onyx eyes were inky with emotion. Anger? Lust? Chloe scrambled backward as he tossed a small jar onto the bed, then he impatiently tugged his shirt over his head revealing his broad muscular chest and thrusting male organ. His shirt was the last piece of clothing to discard, his pants and boots had gone before.

“I have told you that I would retrieve this baby for you,” he rasped, reaching forward to tear the end of the bed quilt away from her.

Chloe squealed at the abruptness and exposure, then she gasped, “You will?”

Ravenscar came up onto the bed after her, and growled, “Unlike you, my ebony-gilded soullion, I rarely lie.” He was kneeling before her and he bent down to grab the small jar. “Now lay on your back,” he commanded.

What would he do? Chloe wanted to plead with him, she wanted to beg him not to hurt her. But he had never hurt her before she claimed to be Lia. “Please,” she whispered.

“Now.”

Chloe flinched and quickly lay down before Ravenscar as though she were a slavish offering to him. “What will you do to me?” she asked anxiously.

Ravenscar opened the jar and she saw that it was rouge. Scarlet colored rouge? “You will find, Rosebud, that I will do anything to you that I desire.”

Rosebud? He seemed calmer now ever since she had obeyed him and laid down. His lean cheekbones were planed and his black eyes were deepening with arousal. She shivered beneath her own arousal as Ravenscar dipped his middle finger into the rouge. “Close your eyes,” he whispered.

She obeyed him yet trembled in blind anticipation of what he would do. Then she felt his finger on her lips, and she parted her mouth in surprise. He slowly traced the fullness of her bottom lip, and then the small bow-shaped arch of the top one.

“Rouge is for sexual creatures,” he murmured and she could feel his warm breath just before he took her rouged lips beneath his mouth. He was kissing her! And it was a storm of heat and possession as his tongue aggressively swept deep into her mouth. Uncontrollable sounds of longing escaped her throat and suddenly Ravenscar clasped her nape, holding her to his deeper kiss as his tongue swirled around hers. He stroked the flat of his feverish tongue over hers again . . . and again. When he finally left her lips, her arms were clinging to his shoulders without consciously realizing that she had done so.

“I will rouge your nipples, your cunt, and your tight little ass,” Ravenscar murmured. “Each of the places on your body that I intend to make mine.” One of his scarred fingers with more rouge on its tip came forward again and Chloe stared at him transfixed as he slowly rouged her lips again. “And your mouth,” he finished in a husky whisper.

Her nipples? Her bottom? Sacred Buddha, what did he mean, yet she was terribly afraid that she knew. She knew what he would do to her, and he continued to talk of dark erotic imaginings . . .

“I will fuck your mouth next time, Rosebud,” he murmured as he straddled her and the ache in her loins grew hot. “I will hold you down and put my big cock deep inside your mouth.”

He put more rouge on his finger and she sucked in a trembling breath hearing his dark carnal words and feeling his hot male penis lying on her stomach. “And you’re going to crave me, Rosebud. You are going to crave my cock thrust deep into your throat. Fucking your mouth.” He touched rouge to the tight swollen circle of her nipple and she gasped with a moan of aching need as he painted the areola with scarlet rouge. He left the thrusting spike in the center its natural pink color. “Put your arms above your head, Rosebud.”

Chloe gazed at Ravenscar gazing down at her. He was so still, waiting for her obedience. He must feel how she shivered. How excited she was. She raised her arms and his inky-black eyes lowered to watch her breasts plump and firm upward. “Raise your breasts to me,” he whispered as he lowered to a crouch over her.

“Raven,” she moaned senseless as she raised her breasts upward to him. His tongue darted outward and he licked the pink tip of her nipple. “Oh,” she cried softly.

He straightened a little and began painting her other areola with scarlet rouge as she poised, arched upward beneath him. “You were made for this, Rosebud. Made for my lust.” Then he nipped her other nipple spike between his teeth, holding it.

“Please, Raven, please,” she mewled, quivering as he held her nipple, then rolled it around the edge of his teeth.

“Do you want me to rouge your cunt, Rosebud? Do you want me to suck on your hot little clit?”

Buddha save her, she would die if he didn’t . . . “Yes, p-please, Raven . . . yes!”

“Say it,” he commanded, dipping his finger into the rouge again.

Oh Buddha help! “Rouge my p-pussy, Raven,” she pleaded breathless.

“Show me,” he demanded in a tenor rasp.

And she did, like-like his slut . . . his whore . . . or perhaps his love. She spread her legs before him. Lifting one onto either side of his lean hips. Opening herself to his gaze. Showing him how much she wanted him. Showing him how wet she was for him.

“Please, Raven,” she begged, shamelessly undulating her hips upward toward the hang of his rigid male cock. His gaze seemed to change then as though a blanket had been ripped away and she saw pain in his black irises. Pain and vulnerability. It was his hands and the rasp of his voice, she thought. He believed that no woman would desire him because of his injuries. And he believed that she was the one who had inflected them. Yet she would not let herself think of that now. Not now!

“Christ, you are as beautiful as you are vicious,” Raven rasped with no real rancor, and then unexpectedly one of his fingers thrust upward . . . plunging inside her, and she cried out with pleasure.

“Oh please, Raven, do it again,” she begged hoarsely. “Ah! Ou!”

He thrust the bluntness of his finger inside her again and her heels clipped his lean hips as she cried out and arched toward him. Then his mouth was on her sex with his tongue flicking wetly over her clitoris as his fingers mated her with hard inward thrusts.

“God, your cunt is so hot, Rosebud,” he growled as he used the fingers of his free hand to spread the lips of her sex open while his tongue burned her clitoris with rapid licking motions.

“Oh! Oh, Raven. Ah-ah! “

“That’s it, sweetheart. Come to me . . . come to me.”

“Ah-oh! Oh! Ah! Ah!”

Chloe shattered beneath Raven’s tongue, clutching his thick dark hair in her hands as her body quivered in release and her legs lost their muscle control. Tears burned her eyes from the exquisite pleasure, and then she felt Raven pumping his fingers inside her once more, as he rasped, “More, Rosebud. More.” Her legs fell open wider to his command as mewls of excitement escaped her throat and Raven ordered, “Put your feet on my shoulders, sweetheart.”

She might have fainted a little after the third time Raven wrung a rapturous climax out of her because when she opened her eyes Raven was painting rouge on the lips of her love-swollen sex. His gaze was nearly tender, but then he saw her watching him and his gaze turned more guarded. All she could think of was that Raven called her sweetheart and always gave her pleasure before he took his. What could that mean?

“I want your sweet little ass now, Rosebud.”

Chloe looked at him, suddenly terribly uncertain. She couldn’t do that, she thought, a bit frantically as she covered her rouged nipples with her hands and turned onto her side away from him. “Please no, Raven, n-not that,” she whispered.

Chloe felt him behind her, and she felt him lean over her shoulder with his warm breath on her cheek. “I am going to take it, baby girl,” he murmured in a gravelly voice as one of his hands slowly sifted through her hair. She felt the fingers of his other hand nudging the crease of her bottom and her buttock cheeks tensed, then his finger was there and she felt the creamy sensation of the rouge he applied, circling the reluctant entrance.

“Please, I can’t, please,” she pleaded, curling tightly into a ball.

Amazingly, Raven’s finger left the edges of her rear entrance and his big hand began to rub over her buttocks and down her thighs. “Soon,” he murmured. “Soon, Rosebud.”

Harrison did not know what stopped him. Christ, that was a lie, of course he knew what stopped him. It was because Rosebud was afraid and he was beginning not to care if it was some grand acting scheme on her part. In fact it was just too hard to believe that her emotions were not genuine. Never once, not in one single instance had Rosebud slipped, and now his own passions were too tightly wound up with need. Needing her. Never in his life had a woman responded to him like she did. He had certainly never been as excited.

He kept thinking of something his fellow Archangels once said. It was before Drummond married and his former spying associates had all claimed that they would prefer to have a well-taught mistress in their bed, as the one they would marry, than a frigid society wife. Drummond had gotten his wish with Gabriella. And she was a woman to be truly jealous over.

Harrison turned his gaze down to his fragile rosebud. She was shaking. He clamped down on his own rigid passions and searched for the bed quilt to cover them. She flinched when he pulled the warm quilt up over both of them. “W-what are you doing?” she stuttered in a whisper.

“Sleeping,” he rasped, and then he grabbed her, pulling her tight against him.

“S-Sleeping,” she whispered faintly.

“Mm,” he murmured, laying on his back stroking her hair from where she was turned into his side. “Go to sleep,” he finished.

He heard her puff a sigh of uncertainty, however it was only a short time before she was asleep curling into him more and nuzzling her cheek on his shoulder. He was not surprised, he had sated her well and kept both of their emotions tightly strung. The release was exhaustion. He stared at the ceiling oddly distorted from the flickering of the candles around the room. Rosebud always used candles as though she did not trust the gas lighting or perhaps had never had it before. What was happening to him, he thought vaguely, perhaps a bit sleepily? It was then he rolled over to embrace Chloe into the circle of his arms. He was determined to sleep.

Chloe? Ah, Christ.

Chapter Seven

Harrison likened himself to a mangy irritable cat the next morning. A caged panther stalking his den snarling at everything in his path. His small staff avoided him as much as they could and he wisely left his woman locked upstairs in his bedchamber. He was prickly and furious. He could not answer to be in Rosebud’s company now. Thoughts he did not want to consider tangled his mind. Urges deeper than that, gnawed at him. One salient point rose above the rest and it was madness. A crazy, delusory thought that would not leave him alone.

He might lose her.

“My lord, there has been an incident.”

Harrison raised his dark head with his black eyes sharpening as he pushed away from his seat at the breakfast table. “An incident?” he inquired, leaving his food untouched. It had been a useless gesture to try and eat anyway.

“There has been a, um, delivery, my lord. Of a nature we are unsure how to deal with,” his butler stated.

Harrison raised an eyebrow as he stalked toward the man and it was then he heard a wailing sound growing shriller by the moment and coming from the front entryway. “What the devil?” he muttered, passing his butler to come into view of his footman standing in the entrance hall holding a battered basket at arm’s length. It was from this battered basket that the heart-wrenching wails erupted, and while Harrison moved forward to view this menace, he heard his butler gasp, “Baby.”

Harrison abruptly halted, however he had gone too far and now stood over the shivering wicker conveyance. He had no choice beneath the ear splitting squalling but to look down and see the ruddy tear-stained face of what was indeed a baby.

“There is a note, my lord,” his footman informed him handing forth a scrap of twill parchment.

Harrison unlocked his unnerved muscles and grabbed the ragged missive just as the baby hiccupped and looked up at him through teary eyes the color of brandy. Doe’s eyes, he thought, with a deepening frown as he read the message. “The baby is hers. Keep them both, Scar.”

Harrison drew in a startled breath. The note was vague and it could mean anything to anyone but to him it meant . . .

“My lord, please excuse me!” his upstairs butler exclaimed as the man’s hurried feet came to a halt beside the expanding group of men, in the black and white tiled entrance hallway. Harrison noticed that the baby now merely gurgled and gnawed on its chubby fingers with its brown eyes fixed squarely on him as if in anticipation. “The lady is about to hurt herself,” the upstairs butler continued to blurt. “By pounding on the bedchamber door, my lord. And she is screaming as though...”

Harrison snatched the basket, interrupting his upstairs butler’s review, as he turned and began to mount the stairs two at a time. He heard Rosebud’s screams just before he turned the corner, and at that precise moment the baby began wailing again. The cacophony was unnerving, however when he reached the door Rosebud suddenly became eerily silent, leaving only the baby’s squalls echoing in the hallway.

“Stand aside, Madame,” Harrison growled at the door in the loudest voice his scarred throat could offer as he turned the lock and pushed the door open.

Rosebud stood there ravished by tears and emotions, however the instant she saw him and the wicker basket, she cried, “Sebastian! My baby! My baby!” She grabbed the basket from him sinking to her knees at his feet where she set the basket on the floor and began pulling the squalling child from within. “Oh Sebastian, praise Buddha! Oh my love, my love,” she cooed.

The baby screamed louder and Harrison stayed rooted to the spot with his chin dropped to his chest as he watched Rosebud rock the baby frantically. “He is hungry, Raven. Starving.” Rosebud tilted her small chin up to him with anguished brown eyes. “I-I do not know if I have milk. It’s been days! I think it may have dried.”

Harrison watched big tears forming in Rosebud’s eyes as her small half-cup chin began quivering. He ground his back teeth and rocked back on the heels of his black Hessian boots, deciding in the space of one breath that he should leave now.

“You have milk,” he rasped in the next instance, lowering to a crouch to lift Rosebud and the baby up into his arms. He lifted himself easily to his feet carrying them as he took them to the bed to set Rosebud on the edge. “I can attest to that fact,” he finished grimly, then he added, “Try.”

Rosebud was clothed in what he allowed her to wear, an armoire full of scandalous gowns. What draped her figure now was diaphanous emerald colored silk nearly black because the green was so rich. However the sheerness of the fabric showed that she was allowed no underpinnings. The bodice was gaping, nearly falling off her shoulders, giving the entire assemblage the appearance as though it might fall off her at any moment leaving her completely nude to his gaze.

He watched broodingly as without hesitation she dropped her gown baring her ripe perfectly shaped breasts. Then she held the squalling Sebastian to one of them. The boy was dead-center, he would have to give him that. Sebastian latched onto Rosebud’s pink nipple with singular greediness, and absurdly Harrison felt a brief shock of jealousy, and then instantly something else much deeper. More haunting and profound. He had never witnessed a mother taking a babe to her breast before and the scene before him was soul stretching.

“There is milk, Raven. Oh praise Buddha, there is milk,” Rosebud whispered, peeking up at him briefly.

What might he do to protect this picture set before him, Harrison wondered? His woman soft and vulnerable, involved in such an intimate chore that protective instincts he had never known he possessed were thrashing alive in his soul. Protection, possession, and need overwhelmed him, tensing and expanding his muscles as he clenched and unclenched his fists gazing down at Rosebud and now Sebastian. It was then he turned and left the room stiffly . . . and briskly.

“Raven,” Chloe whispered, watching Raven ignore her plea and shut the door firmly behind him. She listened intently for the click of the lock and sighed with relief when she heard it. Perhaps she was irrational, about to become mad, however now that she had Sebastian back there was not any place else that she would rather be. There was no other place where she was safe except in Raven’s home, behind his locked door, within his presence. Here, she and her baby were safe and she felt it deeply.

“Oh, Sebastian, my beautiful baby boy,” she cooed, rocking Sebastian and rejoicing in feeding him at her breast once again. “Raven will keep us safe now. He will keep us safe from Lia . . . Oh Buddha!” Chloe continued to exclaim, snapping out of her revere and making Sebastian squeal at losing her nipple when she jerked back to reality. Quickly, she switched Sebastian to her other breast as she patted his back quieting him. It had begun to feel so safe. Raven had not called her Lia for so long that she had made herself forget. She wanted to forget because Raven loved her body with pleasure, always giving her pleasure even though he ruled her so thoroughly. But could she ever forget that he thought she was Lia?

Later she must have fallen asleep curled on the bed with Sebastian cuddled next to her because the next moment she became aware of was waking to a muffled conversation. Immediately rising upright in alarm she saw the servants. It was Raven’s footman, butler, and it even appeared to be his cook. All were engaged in setting up a nursery in the far corner of Raven’s bedchamber. A nursery? Chloe softly gasped when the full implication dawned on her.

“My cook’s helper tells me that he has enough of a way with children to watch them sleep. I have employed him for that task this evening.” Chloe turned her gaze. It was Raven behind her. How long had he been there? Did he watch them sleep? “I will expect you for dinner at seven. Dress in this.” Raven’s gaze swept across a gown laying on the chaise lounge before returning to her as he walked toward the doorway. “You may move through my residence at your pleasure. However, you are not . . .” He paused at the door, tall, elegant, and dark. “Allowed to leave.”

Freedom? He was allowing her freedom? Chloe could not help the shiver that caught her as she clutched the gaping bodice of her gown. “You will not lock me in here?” she asked in a whisper.

Raven’s sculptured black eyebrows rose. “I have said not,” he answered mildly.

“B-But I wish it,” she exclaimed softly. “Please.”

Raven turned his face into the shadow of the doorway, and murmured, “What are you afraid of, Rosebud?”

Chloe lowered her head, gazing at her sleeping baby, and she whispered, “Everything, Raven . . . everything.”

At quarter to seven that evening Chloe looked into the mirror adjusting the finishing touches to her upswept hair style. There was no one to help her and she had never really tried to style her hair before, yet the gown Raven had given her was so beautiful it demanded the extra attention. It was not nearly as scandalous as the other garments that he required she wear. She would nearly feel comfortable being seen in the gown, even though the décolletage was extremely low and the half corset bodice pushed her breasts upward. Although, she had never moved in London society, she knew from years ago while being at her diplomatic father’s side in France and Hong Kong that women of society did wear such revealing apparel without a qualm.

Not having any jewelry, she fashioned a black velvet ribbon around her throat just like the one she used to hold up her hair. Both complemented the purple and black silk of her gown. She did not have any cosmetics and had never wished for any before, but tonight she especially wanted to please Raven. He had brought her baby back and she would never be able to repay him for that. However, she would try to be all that he wished for, and tonight was the beginning. It was nearly seven and she went to check on Sebastian one last time before she left. Raven had even thought of a screen that separated the corner from the rest of the bedchamber. His actions spoke louder than any words.

Chapter Eight

She had changed again . . . Changed again with the coming of the baby . . . damn, her. Harrison paced his study, brooding. Well this evening he would disabuse her of any notion that the features of their relationship had changed. Not even one degree. He had done what he had to do for Sebastian out of commonsense and this evening he would again begin his campaign to make Sebastian’s mother his sexual slave, until she . . .

“Raven, this gown is beautiful.”

Harrison turned quickly, not believing that he’d been so lost in thought that he’d not heard Rosebud entering the room. Christ, she was exquisite and the gown was a bare complement to her lush curves. How was he ever going to keep his commitment to . . .

“Raven, I do not know how I will ever be able to repay you for everything you have done. Bringing Sebastian back to me was . . .”

“I did not,” Harrison rasped sharply, interrupting Rosebud as he gazed down at her. She had moved so close to him the skirts of her gown brushed the tops of his evening shoes.

“You didn’t?” she exclaimed, appearing extremely startled as her hand clasped his forearm.

“No, I did not. And I will be extremely interested to hear from you just who you believe had Sebastian and how they would know to deliver him here.” His gaze raked her stunning décolletage as he lowered his voice menacingly. “And how, Rosebud, they would give him up without payment if he were truly kidnapped in the first place, and in danger.”

Rosebud immediately backed away from him, clearly upset as she clutched her arms about her small waist. “Oh, Raven,” she whispered helplessly.

He stalked her then, stalked her until she backed into the arm of the settee and could go no further while he towered over her and he finally reached out to grasp her bare shoulders. She was trembling and she dropped her gaze to his chin. “I do not know, Raven,” she whispered, tensing for his reaction.

“It is just as well, Rosebud,” he rasped. “For it would never do were I to become the least bit fond of you.” She gasped in reaction to this and tried to pull away from him, however he held her and he whispered roughly, “I have a need for you, Rosebud. A need for you now, this instant.”

He fully expected her to fight him and was taken by surprise when she relaxed beneath his hands and further stepped into an embrace of her own making. Her arms circled his waist and her cheek rested on his lapel. “Yes, Raven. Anything you desire,” she murmured.

Damn her . . . “I want you from behind,” he uttered in a harsh rasp as he grasped her buttocks through the silk of her skirts. Two lusty handfuls, then he deliberately pressed his thumb into the crease of her bottom, until . . . “Here, Rosebud, I want you here.”

She gasped once breathlessly, and shivered, clutching his biceps through the superfine material of his evening coat. Her face burrowed into the crisp linen of his shirt. “Raven, I . . .”

“You will not deny me,” he charged, swinging her around to bend her over the arm of the settee. Instinctively, she threw her hands out to catch the bottom cushion as a brace for her palms. “Lower, Rosebud, bend over more,” he commanded as he held her hips steady from behind and gazed down at the gentle expanse of her nape.

“If y-you wish it,” she finally murmured hesitantly, then she lowered her upper body to lean on her elbows over the armrest, raising her round silk-covered derriere upward to exactly the right position.

“Oh I wish it, my elusive little darling,” Harrison whispered, huskily. “My nature is perhaps darker than even yours.” Without pause he swept her purply-black silk skirts upward in one fluid and aggressive motion revealing her wholly naked ivory-fleshed buttocks. She wore nothing but black silk stockings that reached upward to mid-thigh and were held in place by red garters with tiny white satin rosebuds. Her knees instantly clamped together as he took hold of her rounded plush hips.

“R-Raven,” she gushed, with a pleading and uncertain exhale.

For himself, he was momentarily rooted. A statue of churning masculine ardor at the sight before him. What could he say? What could he think? He was hotly aroused as never before and very nearly excited. Rosebud’s siren-shaped ass was a man’s lustful dream of femininity. The crevice was intoxicating and the little peek of her rose petal pussy lips that he could see was inebriating. He rotated his hands on her hips drawing on her pearly-white flesh and separating the inspiring crease of her ass just enough too . . .

“Oh,” she gasped, squirming her entire bottom beguilingly as she tried to keep her knees clamped together. Yet it only served to firm and define the rounded contours of her delicious ass, rotating the womanly plump cheeks upward and arching the small of her back downward more. He continued to separate the sultry crease of her ass with the pressure of his fingers kneading her bottom. The entrance to her anus was pretty pink and crimped tight.

“Spread your legs, Rosebud,” he commanded. “I will see all of you.”

“Sacred Buddha,” Chloe whispered, helpless. She was hot and excited and at the same time she was coldly terrified. The mixture was so volatile that she felt as if she could struggle and faint within the same instant. Raven’s domination of her somehow engaged her sexual desires until feeling faint and then clutching the cushions beneath her; she slowly separated her legs for him. Exposing herself shamefully to him until cool air brushed the separated folds of her sex and her body quivered with the emotions assaulting her.

Raven’s long scorching fingers continued to hold open her buttocks as he whispered dark erotic urgings above her. “I will start slow, Rosebud. Just the head of my cock first. Stretching your tight little hole bit by bit.”

Chloe tried to breathe with her breasts heaving erratically as Raven’s big insistent hands heated her bottom cheeks with circular rubbing motions. Then all his fingers spread wide as he stroked over the trembling curves of her buttocks pushing her silk skirts higher until he held her bare waist nearly encircling its entirety in his large hands. “Then I am going to fuck you hard, sweet witch.”

She quaked uncontrollably as he pulled her waist toward him and her hips arched higher as her shoulders dropped lower. She clutched her fingers into the cushions above her head and a whimper escaped her throat, a sudden catching sound as her thighs and bottom quivered. She felt the brush of Raven’s satin evening pants, and then the outline of his large erection as he rolled the impression over her buttocks, teasing her with the size and length. How could she take this thick pole of him inside her-her . . .

“You will take all of me,” he murmured with a barely caught whisper. “The entire length in your tight ass,” he finished on a bare breath.

“Have mercy, Raven. I-I don’t think I can,” she whimpered jerking her hips in the first motions of escape.

But of course he held her down. “You will, Chloe. You will do anything that I desire,” he murmured deeply.

Chloe! Did Raven realize that he called her Chloe?

“Oh, Raven!” she squealed abruptly. Coming up onto her toes because Raven had gone to his knees behind her, and all in one motion he was licking his tongue deeply into the crease of her behind! There, where his hot tongue was still embedded! “Oh! Oh! Mercy, my one,” she cried uncontrollably as incredible pleasure itched down the back of her thighs and whorled tight with one hard inner pump deep into her sex. Chloe clutched the cushions above her head as Raven prodded her with his tongue again, clamping his hands above the back hollows of her knees.

“Crawl up onto the arm,” he uttered with a raspy command. Yet without waiting, he lifted her up until her knees caught the edges of the armrest and instinctively for any type of balance she came up on her straightly locked arms with her hands braced on the bottom settee cushion.

“That’s it, baby girl,” he rasped, and then his tongue was lower, inside her sex so hot that she squirmed and spread her knees brazenly wider.

The position Raven held her in was entirely submissive and completely exposed as his tongue alternated, licking deep into the pillowed folds of her pussy, and then back to slide in circles around her rear entrance. She had never felt such hot passion in her life! Mewls and whimpers of intense pleasure escaped her throat involuntarily and she heard Raven chuckle in satisfaction.

He clasped the front of her thighs pulling her to him riding her bottom higher and seating his face between as his tongue lapped her sex in devouring aggressive motions. His hungry licking rocked her back and forth with a mating motion as her knees spread further to his invasion.

Her body was begging him now. She was begging him now to use his tongue harder and faster over her clitoris from behind. “Please make me come, Raven! Please make me come,” she begged shameless, tilting her pelvis downward so her sex lips spread open more to his tonguing. And then she felt one of his fingers, slick with her own juices, prod her rear opening. He penetrated her up to his cuticle and she screamed in pleasure as she climaxed with a rippling tremor “Oh yes, Raven. Yes!” she cried.

“More,” he rasped sharply and he grasped the front of her thighs tugging her back onto his tongue again.

“Oh! Oh-oh,” she squealed as his tongue prodded deep into her trembling sex and he nibbled on her still convulsing clitoris. “Oh!” she squealed again. She was mindless with the pleasure he wrought over her, until his finger entered her rear opening again and she screamed with a shockingly hard and blinding climax!

She might have fainted, she was unsure and the next moment she realized that she was still bent over the arm of the settee with her feet now on the floor and her belly curved over the armrest. She could not move she was so languid as she felt a creamy lush sensation stroking inside her bottom.

“Oh,” she breathed softly. It was Raven’s finger stroking into her rear canal. It did not hurt. It felt-it felt . . .

“Now two,” Raven murmured.

Chloe felt her shy inner walls stretching beneath the slow pressure and she wondered at the creamy substance lubricating her. A low passionate burn began simmering in her sex again as Raven circled his fingers deeper and deeper into her shivering bottom. Then she felt him bend over her, bringing his mouth to her ear. “You were made for this, Rosebud,” he murmured as he warmly kissed and nibbled her ear. “You were made for me,” he finished in a whisper.

“Yes,” she breathed softly . . . completely his.

Harrison circled Rosebud’s tight canal one more time with his two fingers, liberally smearing the oily lubrication he had brought downstairs precisely for this occasion. He would take Rosebud’s deliciously tight ass, but he had no wish to hurt her. This was a hedonistic fantasy of his that he meant to fulfill completely and fully with Rosebud. It would be a first for both of them, an inspiring virgin adventure. And just as he knew no man had delved into Rosebud’s virgin ass before, he also perceived that she was going to enjoy it. Now that he had her so languid and relaxed that she forgot to be frightened. He could feel her undulations of pleasure as he explored and stretched the snugly fashioned sheath in her tight little ass.

He was so tight with passion himself that he nearly shook as he used his free hand to loosen his evening pants until they fell to his knees. His jutting cock fell free posing rigidly over Rosebud’s creamy white buttocks as he grasped her hips to anchor himself and her. He dipped his hips forward so that the blunt head of his cock prodded the rosy relaxed entrance that he’d worked. He continued to circle his palms over Rosebud’s plushly rounded hips in a soothing motion as he pushed forward more, “Oh!” until the head of his prick was encased. “Oh! Mmm,” she mewled.

“Christ,” he groaned involuntarily.

Harrison felt the exquisite walls of Rosebud’s ass crimp lightly at the invasion, then relax a bit and accept more of him. She was so unearthly tight around his cock that he actually shook as he pushed forward more stretching her further until he was encased inside her ass up to the hilt of his cock. He flung the damp hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head as his hard jaw clenched tight with the effort he used not to savagely fuck Rosebud’s ass. He had other plans.

“Raven.” She peeked back over her shoulder at him with her brown eyes dazed in passion.

He bent over catching her earlobe with his teeth, then he licked the side of her cheek with his tongue. “How does it feel, baby girl?” he whispered wickedly.

“As if you own me,” she gasped.

“I do,” he breathed heavily, and then his fingers sought her hot pussy, reaching it over the side of her hip.

“Raven,” she whimpered, instantly undulating her ass as soon as his fingertips tweaked her swollen clitoris. God, every movement she made was bliss along the length of his cock as his buttocks clenched in reaction.

“That’s it, baby girl, I want you to move on me,” he groaned.

“Raven. Raven!” Rosebud cried as he plucked her clitoris and she began to hump his cock. In and out of her ass without coherent thought, he suspected. The ache to be the one riding instead of ridden finally overwhelmed him and he grasped her shoulders bending her over more at the hips as he swung his hips with a rapid and driving rhythm. Yet that was exquisite because his baby girl was climaxing with passionate cries beneath him.

Chapter Nine

Chloe did not know how she could sit serenely across from Raven eating dinner when only a short time before they had been . . . Oh, every time she looked at him she felt his proprietorship, she felt her sensitive bottom, and she could not help but squirm in her seat with confusing, yet delicious feelings centering in her chest.

She had liked it! And Raven knew. Telling her with each glance of his dark seductive eyes and the way he circled the edge of his crystal wine glass with the blunt end of his finger. Around and around like . . . Oh, she looked quickly down at her plate. She could not possibly eat.

“Rosebud, come here.”

Chloe looked at Raven as she crumpled the linen napkin between her hands resting in her lap. “I want to go to my room,” she murmured.

“No.”

“But . . .” Chloe huffed indignantly, “You told me I had free rein of your home.”

“Free movement, baby girl, not rein,” he murmured. “Now come here.”

Oh she did not like it when he called her baby girl in that seductive whiskey-burned rasping voice of his. It reminded her of a warm intimate endearment. And it reminded her about what he had done to her. Well actually, she thought, standing with a pout on her lips, it was what she had fully participated in too. If she were completely honest with herself, she would have to admit that somewhere along the way she had come to crave Raven’s domination of her. Did she really want to be Raven’s complete sexual slave or was this some type of kidnapping madness come over her? The answer was lost because she had reached Raven’s side and he startled her thoughts away by pulling her onto his lap.

“Now, my love, you need to eat.”

My love? Chloe looked deep into Raven’s ebony eyes, wanting desperately to ask him what he meant by the endearment and if he could possibly . . . yet, just then he slid a strawberry between her lips. “Bite,” he murmured with a steamy sensual look in his eyes. When she had delicately bitten the tip off he’d turned the berry to his own mouth and finished it with a slow bite. His other hand was intimately cupping one cheek of her bottom through the silk of her dress as he reached forward to pick up his crystal glass of champagne. “Now a sip of this,” he murmured, pressing the cool edge of the crystal glass to her slightly swollen lips. She complied, watching him over the edge of the glass feeling the light bubbles tingle her nose as she took a sip. He was so handsome . . . no, perhaps virile was a better word or compelling and thoroughly masculine.

He reached for another strawberry, and then he asked her completely out of the blue. “Why was the package empty, Rosebud? Where were you taking an empty package?”

Chloe blinked slowly and instinctively bit into the strawberry Raven pressed to her lips. She did not know what to say! Raven did not look angry, he looked sensual and relaxed. She hated to lie and she did not want to pretend to be Lia. But she was as surprised as he would have been that the package was empty. She had been used again! But to what purpose? She was so terrible at spying games of intrigue.

“You would not believe me,” she whispered as she clutched her hands in her lap looking down at them. “It would make you angry, and I am here with you . . . Yours. What difference could it m-m . . .” The champagne glass was pressed to her lips, halting her words.

“Sip it, Rosebud,” Raven murmured. And she did. “And,” he said softly. “I want you to tell me a fable and I promise that I will try not to become angry.” He paused setting the champagne glass aside and plucked another strawberry from the china bowl in front of him. “And I will tell you, Rosebud, that before I met you I always had great control.”

Fable? Did Raven wish to believe her? Was this his way of saying it? No, Chloe thought, Raven was not sure himself, but perhaps he was torn. That lifted her heart like nothing since getting Sebastian back. Plus it appeared that she made him lose his tightly held control and he had not meant his anger or brute force . . . he meant his passion. His passion for her.

Impulsively she brought her arms around his neck and laid her cheek on his shoulder. He was so warm and he was a bit startled that she would cuddle with him so. He liked to be the aggressor, yet he relaxed and stroked her nape with gentle fingers.

She began to talk slowly. “The person who took my baby told me that I must take the package to Roe Street at midnight. I was told there would be a man there to claim it. I did not know what was in the package and it was wrapped when I received it. Just as you saw it. I-I did not want to know what was in it. I only wanted Sebastian back and the person who took him from me is vicious and evil. I know this . . . I have always known this.”

Chloe paused, rubbing her cheek against Raven’s lapel, gathering her courage. She could not read his reaction this way, he only felt safe and warm. If he was angry with disbelief yet, he was hiding it. His hand at her nape was still gently circling. “I am not witless,” she whispered. “I know that I was being used. I thought it must be because I . . . I, l-look so much like the evil person that took my son . . .” She clutched Raven’s neck. “I thought whoever came to claim the package might think that I was she, and that was why I was sent. Yet now that I know the package was empty . . . It could be so many things. I could never fathom the reasons this person would do the things that they do. There is so much subterfuge and lies . . . But I-I had to get Sebastian back even if it was dangerous. I had no choice. This was my only hope and-and this person knows that.”

“Rosebud, were there any other instructions?” Raven asked quietly with his lips close to her ear.

“Yes, I was to take a room at the Carlton Hotel.” Raven stiffened at this, but she continued wanting to say it all quickly. “I was to leave from there and I was ordered to hire a public hackney in front of the hotel. Then my instructions were to stop at Brighton road and walk from there to Roe Street.”

“And were they there with you at the Carlton?” Raven asked in an intense whisper.

“No, I was alone there overnight,” Chloe answered. “Pigot brought me the package and instructions that morning . . . Oh, Buddha!” she finished on an exclamation, having realized the mistake of using any names.

“Pigot,” Raven hissed.

Chloe looked up at him and he regarded her intently with his heated black eyes. His hands were tight on her. She wanted to run yet instead she said as calmly as she could. “Monseigneur Pigot always works with this person. He is devoted to . . .”

“How long?” Raven asked interrupting her with a harsh voice.

“I do not know exactly. Years certainly. At least ten years that I know of.”

Raven stood abruptly, handling her waist to set her before him, prior to turning and walking to the sideboard. Once there he pulled the crystal stopper out of the whiskey. “Do you know . . .” he asked in a low rasp that was filled with suppressed anger. “The note that came with Sebastian said. The baby is hers. Keep them, Scar.” Chloe pressed backward against the edge of the table as Raven poured his whiskey. “Rosebud, there are only two people who have ever called me Scar and Pigot is one of them.”

“He knew?” Chloe exclaimed. “Pigot knew that I was here? He knew to send Sebastian here?”

“Damnation,” Raven cursed as he tossed back the whiskey in a single swallow, turning to gaze at her with his black eyes smoldering. “Go to bed, Rosebud,” he said heavily. “Go to bed now.”

As much as Chloe wanted to speak and ask Raven more questions she knew by looking at him that he held his promise to her by only a thread. And she also knew as she fled the room that everything that happened this night made her look more like Lia, and a horrible liar!

Chapter Ten

The next morning after feeding and dressing Sebastian, Chloe brought him downstairs to the dining room to have tea and scones. When she asked, she was informed by the downstairs butler that Raven had left early that morning with no return time mentioned. She had only seen him one more time last evening and that was when she woke to feed Sebastian and Raven had told her to bring Sebastian into the bed to feed. She sleepily remembered that Raven had watched her feed Sebastian very intently. But she must have fallen asleep while feeding Sebastian because when she woke this morning, Sebastian was in his crib. That meant Raven had carried him. Raven had held her baby, and as much as he wanted to be angry at her last night he had kept his promise.

“My lady, you have a visitor,” the butler announced, just as Chloe was finishing her tea.

Chloe turned her head to look up at him. Her heart fluttered with a shot of fear and she clutched Sebastian closer on her lap where he was playing with a silver spoon. “A-Are you sure?”

“Oh yes, he is quite sure,” a lady replied gaily as she stepped into the room to pass the butler at the door. Chloe had never seen the woman before, yet she was quite beautiful with auburn hair and she was wearing a stylish lavender walking dress that complimented her violet eyes. “I am Lady Kittridge, and I am certain your butler will bring us some more tea.”

Lord Kittridge’s wife. Chloe stood belatedly holding Sebastian in her arms not quite sure what to do as Lady Kittridge exclaimed, “Oh a baby! Drummond did not tell me you had a baby. Is he a boy? Oh yes he is, look he is wearing these darling knickers. What is his name?”

“Sebastian,” Chloe answered as she watched Lady Kittridge hold out her white gloved hands.

“May I hold him? Please say that I can,” she asked with such sweet excitement lighting up her pretty face. “And you must call me, Gabriella, and I will call you?”

Chloe let Lady Gabriella take Sebastian. She seemed so happy about it and it gave her such obvious pleasure that Chloe did not have the heart to deny her. “Lady Sang,” Chloe mumbled, watching Lady Gabriella sit while holding Sebastian up on his chubby little legs in her lap. She had an expectant look on her face as she looked up at her. “Rosebud,” Chloe finally said. “It is a nickname, but . . .”

“Rosebud,” Lady Gabriella exclaimed. “How beautiful. And do you think, Sebastian, that your mama is very beautiful.” Lady Gabriella held Sebastian’s hands as he tiptoed on her lap and gurgled. “Oh yes, you sweet baby, look how handsome you are.”

Chloe sat again, but nearly jumped to her feet once more when she heard a voice to her left rasp. “What the hell is this?”

“Oh, Harrison,” Gabriella exclaimed, turning in her chair to look at him. “How could you keep this beautiful baby a secret from me? And when Drummond told me about, Lady Rosebud, I simply had to visit. Besides, Drummond and I are having a party this evening to celebrate my own pregnancy, and when Drummond told me that you, his closest friend in the entire world might not be there! I just had to come and make certain. All of the Archangels will be there, Harrison, and I just know, Lady Rosebud, will not deny me if I invite her face to face. Which I am.”

“Lady Rosebud,” Harrison muttered, then he turned more fully to Gabriella. “Congratulations, Gabriella,” he said warmly as he stepped forward to take Gabriella’s hand which he bowed over and kissed. Then he said, “You are much too shrewd for that husband of yours, Madame.”

Gabriella laughed gaily. “And you will come to my party and bring, Lady Rosebud, with you?”

“Of course, Gabriella, I could never deny you,” Harrison responded.

Chloe was awed by all the information she was learning, yet more so by watching Raven play the accomplished gentlemen. She now knew Raven’s first name and she wondered who the Archangels were, except, however nice this all was she just could not leave Sebastian.

“I, um,” she began to say as they both turned to her. “I could not leave Sebastian,” she managed to say.

“Oh dear,” Gabriella said. “You do not have a nanny?”

“No, my lady,” Chloe replied.

“Well then certainly I must send you Matilda and everything will be finely tended to,” Gabriella said happily.

Chloe looked at Raven and he nodded his head. She would not defy him in front of Lady Gabriella so she kept her reservations until later, and she murmured, “It would be an honor, your grace.”

“Oh my, your grace, she says,” Gabriella muttered. “I will never get used to that you know. It makes me sound too old, I am certain of it. Lady Gabriella will do, Lady Rosebud, if you must. But I certainly will campaign for just Gabriella. You will see. We are all such good friends, and now that I have met you, Rosebud, I am certain you will be one with all of us.” Gabriella turned to Harrison. “Do you not agree, Harrison?”

“I never argue with a duchess, Madame,” he muttered.

Several hours later after Lady Gabriella left, having stayed and played with Sebastian for over an hour, Chloe sought Raven in his study. He had been brooding, she could see that by the way he reclined in his chair before the fire with a glass of whiskey dangling from his scarred fingertips. She nearly backed out of the room but her mission was too important. “Raven, I cannot leave Sebastian. It is too dangerous,” she began without a preamble.

Raven barely turned his head at her voice beside him, yet his dark eyes glanced at her. “Because of the fable?” he rasped with a muttering sound.

Chloe wanted to stamp her foot. Raven was acting as if he were the petulant child, not hearing what he had wished to hear from her, so that now he was going to pout about it. Pout and drink heavily it appeared. “Of course because of the fable,” she answered in exasperation.

“I have taken care of it,” he said with a weak rise of his wrist and the whiskey glass.

“That is all you have to say,” she uttered, marching around to face him, but then she looked at him fully. “Oh, Raven,” she exclaimed softly, going down on her knees in front of him, clasping the sides of his legs as she gazed up at him.

“Do you know how beautiful you are to me?” he rasped tightly as though the words were pried from his mouth. His gaze was haunted with pain and dark vulnerability, and she had never seen him look this way before. It worried her and nearly frightened her as she offered him what comfort she could by laying her head on his thighs and rubbing his upper legs slowly.

“And you are so fine looking to me that you turn my head despite myself,” she murmured.

Raven’s hand firmed in her hair, and then went back to its gentle stroking motion. “I do not want you to worry this evening,” he murmured. “I have taken extra security precautions to ensure Sebastian’s safety. And we will only be gone several hours before you must feed him again.”

“Thank you, Raven,” Chloe sighed, willing to accept that Raven would keep them safe.

Chapter Eleven

Harrison knew that he’d had too much to drink that night in his effort to keep his demons at bay and hopefully offer a false, yet somewhat happy facade to his closest friends.

“You once said to me,” Drummond said as he appeared by Harrison’s side in the small ballroom of Drummond’s London home. “That love looked very painful upon my face and you prayed that it would not be so when you fell to it.”

“You accuse me of love?” Harrison rasped as he watched Rosebud dancing elegantly with Radford, the Duke of Sutherlin. Radford with his rakish eye patch and youthful aristocratic good looks.

“Dare I?” Drummond asked, looking pointedly at the glass of whiskey in Harrison’s hand. “Our ex-spying compatriots of the Archangels have all embraced your lady warmly,” he finished on a murmur.

“My lady,” Harrison muttered. It appeared to him that his ex-spying companions had embraced Rosebud a bit too warmly. Saxonhurst, the Marquess of Hartley with his sad brown eyes warming whenever he was near to Rosebud. And then there was Brynmore, the Laird Duneagan, that rogue, along with Radford, who were making Rosebud laugh in a delicious tingling sound that he had never heard from her before. That left only Wyndham, the Baron of Hawkenge to round out the ex-spying regal of the Archangels.

“Where is Wyndham?” Harrison asked, striving for composure beneath the alien emotion of jealousy that he was experiencing as every blood vessel in his body pumped hotly that Rosebud was his . . . his . . . his!

“He has been delayed, yet should be with us soon,” Drummond replied. “He would not miss Gabriella’s formal announcement of our splendid news.”

“You have of course,” Harrison rasped, “My congratulations at this wonderful event.”

“Yes of course,” Drummond murmured, unexpectedly reaching for the drink in Harrison’s hand as he continued to say, “And now, Harrison, go and tell that to my wife as you dance with her. And my friend, infuse some happiness into the venomous facade of yours for my wife’s sake.”

“Scoundrel,” Harrison replied, offering Drummond a rare smile

Chloe glanced at Raven as the Duke of Sutherlin turned her very closely in the steps of a waltz. Raven was dancing with Lady Gabriella and he was actually smiling down at the pretty duchess. It made Raven look nearly boyish for a fleeting moment. An impossible occurrence on his handsome hard-angled face. It startled her so much that she stumbled in the middle of a step allowing the duke to pull her even closer still. It was a ridiculous possibility to her, yet it appeared that the duke was flirting with her. Flirting seduction! Yet they all had, each of the Archangels that she had met had flirted with her in their own way. Nearly as if it were planned somehow.

She now understood that the Archangels were a group of ex-spies for England, and that Raven had been one of them. It seemed that was where he must have gotten injured and where he surely knew Lia from. None of the three Archangels gathered at the party besides Raven and Lord Kittridge seemed to know her as Lia. It appeared none of them had known Lia in appearance, just by reputation, and it seemed that only Lord Kittridge had ever seen Lia in person. Chloe wondered what Lia had done for these ex-spies . . . or more precisely what Lia had done to them. She had heard rumors at one time that Lia was Napoleon’s mistress. Could that be a part of all of this?

She did not have the nerve to ask. But she knew that she needed to escape the duke before . . . Well the gentlemen were all very nice but their flattery and appreciating glances were making her extremely nervous. She was certainly not used to the attention and nevertheless, there was only one man that she longed to be with . . .

“A walk in the garden, Lady Rosebud?” the Duke of Sutherlin murmured closely into her ear. “It is rather chilly out, yet I am certain that I could keep you warm.”

“Really, sir!” Chloe exclaimed, surprising even herself. But this really had gone too far. “And you call yourself, Lord Ravenscar’s, friend! I will tell you that he is the only gentleman that I desire to walk anywhere with,” she huffed just before she turned and marched away.

“Well, Rad, what was that all about?” Saxonhurst asked, strolling up to Radford.

“Are you losing your sweet charms, man?” Brynmore quipped, stopping his approach beside Saxonhurst.

Radford grimaced. “Well, gentlemen, it appears we have gotten entirely the wrong person to declare themselves.”

“What does that mean, ye one-eyed devil?” Brynmore asked. “I still say we are playing with fire to be prodding Harrison this way.”

“It means,” Radford sneered. “That our beautiful Lady Rosebud has declared herself quite vocally to Harrison’s side while our brooding stubborn pigheaded Harrison remains mute in voice and in action to our ploy. And you are right, Brynmore, I certainly hope Drummond knows what he is doing by ordering us to play this flirting game. Harrison certainly is no normal would be suitor!”

“He is likely to strangle our balls in the blackest of night,” Saxonhurst said. “And where is Wyndham? If my balls are at stake here, then he needs to take his chance also.”

“He will be here,” Radford replied. “It appears that he knows her, did you know? I believe that is somehow Drummond’s coup de grace.”

Chapter Twelve

Chloe sought a moment to herself in a long hallway just off the small ballroom that was filled with paintings and sculptures. It was a beautiful party and she had not been to such a gathering since she was a child attending at her diplomatic stepfather’s side. However, she knew that she needed to leave soon because her breasts were aching with milk and her head was nearly aching too. She could not believe that she had lost her temper that way. And to a duke! He had deserved it, but still he was Raven’s friend. They all were Raven’s friends, and she truly did not belong here, or with them.

Did they all know that Raven held her captive? Yet no longer against her will and that was the most confusing part because she craved his command of her. But love came in all shapes and disguises . . . Love? Chloe stopped to stare at a beautiful statue of Venus. Did she love Raven?

“My god it is you, Lia. Drummond, told me yet I could scarcely believe it!”

Chloe turned abruptly toward the masculine voice and found herself beneath the gaze of a tall blond-haired man who must be the Baron of Hawkenge, late to arrive. He was reaching for her hands.

“You lovely, wanton minx. I have never forgotten our too brief time together.” He lifted her gloved hands upward to his virile lips and turned the palms inward to kiss each. Time together, Chloe wondered in surprise. “You in my bed, my little love, is something I will never forget,” he murmured warmly against her palms.

Ohno! Chloe tried to pull away but Baron Hawkenge was a man, all strongly built man and he swung her into his arms. “Nn– ,” she garbled as his lips came down over her lips. She tried to pull away and did rap on his muscular chest with her fists.

But in the end Baron Hawkenge pulled away from her suddenly, staring down at her with intense and inquiring confusion in his deep blue eyes. “My god, you’re not . . . !”

Smack! A fist came out of nowhere, right over Chloe’s shoulder, and clipped Baron Hawkenge sharply under the chin with one powerful jab. The baron went down like a piece of timber felled. And Chloe stumbled backward in confusion and surprise just as Raven stepped forward to watch the baron fall onto polished maple-wood flooring, unconscious. How had Raven done that? The Baron Hawkenge was a large man! And-and why had he done it?

“Come with me,” Raven rasped furiously. “Now!”

Raven grabbed her wrists and began to pull her down the hallway away from the ballroom. “Raven, you do not understand!” she cried, uselessly.

“Do not understand that he fucked you! That he twisted the bed linens before, naked with you,” Raven charged, as he continued to pull her out of a side door to the mansion into the chilly night air. “I understand that you were readying to fuck him again!”

“No!” Chloe cried as Raven pulled her toward his carriage where he tugged the door open savagely. “He thought I was Lia, Raven!”

“Damn you,” Raven swore fiercely. “Get into the carriage willingly or I will tie and gag you as before!”

Chloe gulped hard and scrambled ill-gracefully over the long skirts of her gown up into the carriage to sit stiffly in the furthest corner. Raven called directions to the driver and entered, slamming the carriage door closed behind him. Chloe thought desperately to try again. “Raven, please listen!”

“Quiet!” he hissed, and he reached upward to close the carriage curtains with two sharp tugs leaving only the inside lantern to light their features. “Undress,” he bit out harshly.

“No!” she exclaimed. “Not like this, Raven, please!”

“I own you,” he replied bitterly. “And you will undress as I command or I will tear the gown from your body. And when I am through with you, you will never again question who you belong to now or forever!”

Chloe stilled as Raven’s words reverberated through her mind. He was jealous. And that meant that he loved her! Only he was haunted and a little drunk and very vulnerable. She reminded herself that he had not hurt her. Not once. And she knew with all her heart that he never would. He was angry . . .yes, but this was their way together. He commanded her and she obeyed. Willingly, because she wanted to. Because she craved to be his loving slave to passion and perhaps that was the only way he could truly love her . . . or trust her.

“As you wish, my lord,” she murmured. “Always as you wish.”

Raven appeared startled as she slowly began to remove her white evening gloves. His deep chest labored with a few harsh breaths from his exertion and his strong angular features firmed with instant sexual awareness. The power and the raw masculinity of him made her shiver.

“You will have to unhook the back of my gown.”

“Come here,” he whispered, pulling his gloves off.

Someday, they would be close enough to each other so that she could tell him how much she loved his rough-skinned hands on her skin, holding her body. She moved against the jostling of the carriage to sit beside him and she felt his hands on the back of her gown. Then he completely surprised her. He ripped the back of her gown open with a jerk!

Gasping, she clutched the bodice, but Raven tugged it relentlessly away from her hands. Small sounds of dismay escaped her throat as he continued to rip more of the silk from her body. His muscled forearm bracketed her bare waist as he pulled her spine to his chest and persisted to tear the silk skirts from her hips and legs. She did not wear a corset but merely stockings and in moments he had her stripped nude before him.

“Say you are mine,” he rasped. Biting and nibbling her neck, her ear, and her shoulder as he held her back to his chest. He lifted her until her bottom was on his lap with her legs squeezed together as her hands foolishly tried to cover her sex. That woman’s heat which he wanted access to, but she felt so vulnerable. Stripped naked to his clothed, as he commanded her in the back of his jostling carriage.

“Move your hands,” he muttered through a hot moist kiss to the nape of her neck, and when she hesitated he pried her hands away, holding her wrists beneath his strong grip. “Open your thighs. Spread your legs for me,” he ordered.

“Raven,” she denied, and he bit her earlobe holding the lobe in his teeth and making her whimper at the pleasure-pain he caused. Until she lifted her legs, splaying them open over his thighs. He held her wrists tight, pulling them downward behind her back to arch her spine and thrust her naked breast high in the shivering night air. Abruptly his free hand stroked down between her thighs as he roughly prodded one finger deep inside of her, making her cry out in pleasure.

“You are wet,” he accused. “You liked me ripping the gown from your body. Stripping you naked. It made you hot and wet for me.”

“Yes, Raven,” she whimpered with his finger prodding her again as she arched upward mounting his invading finger more.

“Say your pussy is mine,” he ordered, keeping his finger embedded inside her yet cupping her fullness with the heel of his hand.

“My p-pussy is yours,” she cried as he thrust his finger in and out of her again.

“Jesus, baby girl, you arouse me like no other woman ever has,” he rasped. “I want your ass, Rosebud. I want to feel your ass so tight around my cock.”

Chloe squirmed on his finger, incoherent with passion, as she moaned senselessly, “Yes, Raven, yes. Make me come!”

“Always,” he promised in a gruff rasp. “Now get on your knees, baby girl, and bend over the carriage seat on the other side.”

She mewled, mindless at Raven’s hot and erotic words, at his arousing sexual commands. And then he had her on her knees, bent over the carriage seat in the midst of the torn silk pieces from her gown. He was down on his knees behind her and his wide hand held her down by the nape of her neck as the silk beneath her slithered over her swollen breasts. His free hand reached between her thighs and pushed each one apart until she was supplicated at an impossibly wide angle. Positioned as he would take her, poised to his command, while her body swayed forward to back in a rocking motion with the movement of the carriage.

“Say you are mine,” he ordered.

“I am yours,” she uttered, ending on a cry of pleasure as he caught and rubbed her clitoris between two of his fingers. “Oh! Oh!” she cried. Back and forth, back and forth he rubbed, nearly pinching her, he held her clitoris so tight. “Raven, Raven,” she mewled and if she tried to move he held her down. Pinching and rubbing her until she screamed in pleasure.

“Tell me you are mine,” he hissed.

“I-I’m y-your-rs,” she choked, as her buttocks bucked upward with each blinding spark of pleasure he wrought over her.

It was then Chloe felt the broad-head of Raven’s penis pushing at her anus and she yielded beneath the pressure of his hard thrust. “Oh!” she squealed. He had her pinned to the seat he was so thick and hard inside her, embedded to the hilt of his rigid cock. “I am yours! Yours! Yours!” she panted harshly as she climaxed in a convulsion and she could feel her inner wall’s spasm around the mass of Raven’s rigid cock, and then she began to climax again.

“God,” Raven groaned. “God!” Then he began to mate her bottom in long hard stabbing thrusts that pushed her into the carriage seat and back again as she continued to climax. Her moans were shrill and abrupt with each rapid thrust that Raven took. He was branding her his, driving her forward with each pumping of his hips. Faster. Faster. Faster!

“Raven!” she screamed and he took and took and took.

Chapter Thirteen

Harrison fell forward over Rosebud’s back gripping the squabs with his hands to keep from crushing her with his weight, just as the carriage halted its motion. He was nearly senseless beneath the last raw edges of his overwhelming ejaculation. Yet he was trained beyond normal men and he knew instantly . . . But it was still too late! Too late for his lax body to respond to the fact that his driver would never open the carriage door. His gaze turned to see the barrel of a French-made dueling pistol placed to his temple.

“Get out slowly, Scar,” ordered a rough French accented voice behind the pistol.

Harrison knew at that moment without any more doubts. Yet god help him, he knew it too late. Chloe! Oh god, Chloe, his mind screamed. She was nearly unconscious beneath him. Naked. Vulnerable.

“Now!” The pistol clicked into the cocked position and Harrison slowly moved off Chloe. His sluggish mind trying to force his instincts into motion.

“Eoo, my little sister, has tamed the venomous beast!” Lia Delconte exclaimed. “Thees is too delicious, Pigot! Our, Scar, is too fucked to move more quickly than the humped beast!” Lia’s laughter rang sharp and nasty in the night air. “Did you think, Scar, that you were fucking me?” she asked, laughing crassly as he stepped from the carriage with the large Monsieur Pigot holding a pistol to his temple.

Lia stepped up to the open carriage door and tossed her cape inside. “Get out of there, little Chloe! I have need of you now.”

“No!” Chloe cried and Harrison winced at the terror in her voice.

“You have no choice!” Lia spat. “Or I will kill your lover here, and then go inside his fancy townhouse and kill Sebastian!”

“No-no,” Chloe whimpered, as she slowly made her way out of the carriage with the dark cloak wrapped tight around her.

Harrison watched Lia turn to him, a vision of Chloe yet callused and more used looking. He could never mistake them.

“Did you think I would not know that you would seek your revenge on me?” Lia asked him. “You are the only one of thees Archangels with enough balls to care that little Lia made a small mistake. But I gave you my sister, yes? Is this not sweet revenge for you, don’t you think? Perhaps we are even now?”

“We will never be even, Lia,” Harrison uttered, turning his gaze to Chloe. “Not unless you leave her with me.”

“Uo!” Lia exclaimed sharply. “You ask too much. I need her now!”

“Let me kill him,” Pigot spat.

“Non!” Lia exclaimed. “As much as I would like to, then we would have all thees Archangels down on us. And I have too much trouble like this already.”

“Please don’t take, Sebastian,” Chloe whispered.

“Oh non, little sister. I cannot take that troublesome babe. It is only you that I need now.”

Lia nodded to Pigot and without warning he butted the pistol sharply against Harrison’s temple, and the last thing Harrison heard was Chloe screaming his name.

***

Harrison held Sebastian tightly to his chest, he could not seem to let go of him. Yet he had to move quickly or he would never get Chloe back. Oh god, Chloe. As god as his witness, he did not deserve her. He never deserved her. Yet none of that mattered now. Now he had to move! He would take Sebastian to Gabriella and that would free his movements to do what he must. He just prayed that he could sidestep Drummond because Chloe’s only hope now was if he went out on his own. But he had a clue. One small clue.

It was something that Lia had said concerning not needing any more trouble equivalent to the troubles she already had. That signified that someone else was seeking her for revenge, and they were getting too close. Why else would Lia need Chloe, unless she intended to pass Chloe off again as herself? He had to assume another person wanted revenge against Lia, and Chloe was going to pay again. Unless he could find her quickly.

He only knew of two people, through all his research on Lia, who would go that far. People that would need revenge just as he had to the exclusion of all else. And he was betting on the German named Kant. It had been Kant’s team that Lia killed in Prague. Yet what was not widely known was that Kant survived, but minus a few fingers, and if the rumors were correct he also no longer sported a functioning dick. What would a man like that do to Chloe?

Harrison jerked his head in denial. He could not think of that now. He had to set that aside. So instead he descended the stairs two at a time, barely allowing his butler the time to pull open the front door for him. He warmly bundled Sebastian inside of his cloak as he ordered his driver to make all haste to Drummond’s London mansion. Then he entered the carriage to sit and stare at the torn pieces of silk on the opposite seat.

Several hours later Harrison slipped silently along one of the piers at the London docks. The early morning light was just barely catching the fog. He had done exceptionally well so far. He’d been extremely lucky in avoiding Drummond while leaving Sebastian in Gabriella’s care. And now more fortunate than that he had discovered that Kant was in London, or he had been several hours before. Now he would confirm the rumor, and then find Kant.

Even now he prayed it was Kant that Lia had given Chloe to, because he had something to trade Kant for Chloe’s release. Himself. Kant did not realize it yet, but he had been the assassin that had killed Kant’s brother five years before. Kant would know him by reputation though. They had skimmed the edges around each other for years, playing their games for their countries. He had seen Kant in person several times while spying in France. Now he just needed to find the man and convince him who he was, then offer the trade for Chloe. It would work if he could just find them.

Chapter Fourteen

“Drink more!”

Chloe tried to refuse the harsh opium-laced drink but the man called Kant forced her to drink it, slopping liquid over her chin when she tried not to. Her vision and mind were already hazy in a rippling slow motion quality. This was not the first time Kant had forced her to drink the opiate. How many times now? Three? Four? She could not remember . . .

“That’s it, Lia,” Kant coaxed, tilting the cup upward until she drained the last dredges.

Lia! That shook Chloe’s drug hazed mind. This man thought she was Lia. Another man thought she was Lia. “Raven!”

“Stop saying that name, you bitch!” Kant slapped her hard, but truly she barely felt it as she whimpered, and then Kant snarled, “Come, Lia, it is time to play again!”

Ohno! Chloe panicked for a moment, but she lost her will and direction in the haziness of the opium effects while Kant dragged her from the dirty bedroom, using the collar with the leash that he had belted around her neck. He took her to a large room. She did not know what kind of room it was. There were men’s voices. Foreign accents. Blurry men’s faces around her. She smiled. They were happy. Laughing, drinking maybe? She wanted to laugh with them now, yet her body was too lax.

“Lay down, cunt,” Kant ordered, harshly tugging on her collar and chain.

Chloe frowned at him. He was not happy. Everyone else was happy. But she wanted to lay down, she was happy to do it, feeling all languid and warm. She lay on a bed with a soft velvet quilt. She turned her head slowly feeling the blurry men’s faces around her. They were sitting around her drinking . . . yes, she could see that and one of them smoked a cigar as he watched her.

“Spread your legs, Lia!” Kant tugged hard on the chain and collar around her neck.

It hurt, Chloe thought numbly and she wondered where her clothes were . . . her clothes . . . her clothes?

Harrison clamped his jaw tight. There were at least twenty men in the warehouse room. He could not take them all at once. For now, they just watched Chloe. And that was all right, he told himself, because she was beautiful. Yet soon they would stop watching her as Kant made her touch herself. Her breasts, her belly, and between her beautiful pale legs. She had to be drugged. Opium, he would guess because she smiled and undulated on the bed for Kant. Held by a collar and leash, like a-

Harrison shook his thought away with a jerk of his head. Now there was no time to call in reinforcements. He could not let them gang rape her. Which was what it was leading to. He had to get to Kant. Kant could stop it. And he had something Kant wanted.

Harrison made his entrance dramatic. He wanted to make sure to quickly catch Kant’s attention, so he jumped with a shattering crash through the skylight window on the roof where he had been watching the scene below. The roof was slanted enough that none of the glass would fall Chloe’s way. He used the rope he’d found on the pier below and tied it off to swing down to the warehouse floor in a billow of shattering glass and his great coat.

When his feet hit the floor, he shouted one word, one damning German word at Kant. Luckily his rasping shout was loud enough over the clamor of angry men’s voices because before the crowd could mob him, Kant yelled. “Halt! He is mine!”

Chloe still lay on the raised bed held by Kant’s collar and leash. She was mindless to what was happening, naked and defenseless. Harrison desperately wanted to throw his greatcoat around her, to hold her, never letting her go. Yet he stood rigidly still and raised his hands slowly in hopes of bolstering the bald face lie that he carried no weapons.

“How did you know that name?” Kant shouted “Only my brother, Klaus, would have!”

“Because I killed him,” Harrison rasped as he began to pace slowly in a wide arc.

“Don’t move, assassin!” Kant shouted, tugging hard on the chain in his agitation and making Chloe yelp in pain.

Boldly, Harrison continued to pace. “You want the man who killed your brother, do you not?” he sneered with the arc he was pacing, tightening. “You want the man who watched your brother piss his pants before he died? Do you not?”

“Cunt! You worthless, assassins’ cunt!” Kant screamed, shaking the chain to Chloe’s collar. “Yes, I want you!” he hissed savagely. “And I have you!” he charged.

“That is an illusion, Master Kant,” Harrison hissed. “You only have me if I wish it.” His pacing began circling even closer. He had seen his savior — his salvation amongst the group of men. He should have known. But now he needed to play down his last card. “And I do wish it.” Harrison sneered at Kant “For the woman! I want her more than you. Give her to my companion and we will see if two German brothers piss their pants in death the same way!” Harrison could see that Kant was livid, Kant wanted to charge, yet held himself barely in check with his jerking gaze scanning the room. He was looking for the companion as a smart man would do.

“I believe that we have a deal,” Drummond said, pulling the hammer back on his pistol and pointing it at Kant as he tossed his cigar aside. His quickly fluid motions took him to the bed where Chloe lay.

“They will kill you both!” Kant charged of the men milling around behind them watching the highly charged scene. No doubt several were Kant’s personal men.

“I have no doubt,” Drummond drawled. “However, you have made an honest deal for an exchange. This man for the woman.”

Kant relaxed, then nodded as he threw down the leash. “I will find her later,” he hissed. Then he turned to Harrison. “Take him!” he shouted.

Bang!

“No!” Drummond shouted, pointing the pistol that he had just shot into the air once again at Kant.

“Not until they are gone!” Harrison yelled hoarsely. “I will be here standing before you.”

“All right. Ya! Take her,” Kant uttered, waving his hand for Drummond to proceed.

Harrison watched as Drummond threw his cloak over Chloe and lifted her up into his arms, still holding his pistol on Kant. “We are never alone,” Drummond said with a sneer before he quickly stalked away from the inner warehouse room.

“What did he mean?” Kant growled, right before he shouted, “Take him now!”

Harrison did not fight. He could still see Drummond and Chloe at the far end of the warehouse. One more minute and they would reach the door to the outside.

“Strip him! He is an assassin,” Kant ordered, as many hands grabbed Harrison, jostling him as they began to tear at his clothes. The greatcoat went first as a bull of a man locked his forearm around Harrison’s neck from behind. Harrison stayed unnaturally still as the door at the end of the warehouse opened.

Rip! His shirt was ripped open. The door closed—

Chloe felt the carriage swaying, as she cried out, “I am yours! Yours!” Then her neck went limp and her head fell backward...

Drummond held Chloe on his lap as he gnawed on the end of an unlit cigar while he gazed unblinking out of the carriage window into the bright afternoon sunlight. He did not believe that Harrison had a chance, and he had only made his last statement in the hopes of throwing Kant off and buying Harrison any small chance he could give him. Yet there was no hidden someone there to help Harrison. Harrison was on his own. And as much as Drummond wanted to go back and make a last stand with Harrison, he knew what Harrison needed more, and that was getting Chloe to safety.

Harrison had probably given his damn life for hers and Drummond would be damned if he would let him down now. He just fervently wished that he’d had the time earlier to gather the Archangels together before his need to move. With no time on his side he’d known then that he would only be able to save one, and he’d known then which one it would be. But damnation, if any man alive could make it out against those odds, it was his venomous best friend, Harrison.

Chapter Fifteen

Two weeks later, Chloe came downstairs to have tea with Gabriella. It was just last evening the Duke and Duchess of Kittridge had sat her down in their small formal dining room. There they had calmly explained to her that while Lord Ravenscar was alive and had made his escape from the warehouse, he would not be returning for her. She had also been told gently, that she was free to leave their company to continue on with her life as she wished. She was told that Lia had left England for the Continent, under the belief that she, her sister, was dead by the hands of Kant. In truth after they had explained to her that Raven would not be coming for her, Chloe had heard very little of what they said. And then she excused herself shortly afterward.

She had felt so dizzy and disorientated on reaching her chambers that she feared the effects of the opium she’d been given had returned. It had taken her nearly a week to feel close to normal again and she still wore high collars to hide the bruising around her neck. She could only remember bits and pieces of what had happened, yet she did remember the horrible shameful collar. The rest she was too frightened to remember, and she did wonder if that was why Raven would not come back for her. Had he seen them using her? Had he seen them raping her? Had it even happened? She did not know, and she thought, that she did not want to know.

At other times during the long night she thought that Raven no longer wanted her because he now knew that she was Chloe and not Lia. Yet he had saved her. She remembered Drummond telling her that, only her mind kept losing pieces as soon as she learned them. She was afraid to tell anyone about it, afraid they could think her crazy. She needed Raven desperately but she did not know how to ask for him.

“Come sit beside me, Chloe,” Gabriella said when Chloe entered the yellow sitting room. “I have our tea here. And I do so wish to speak to you. Is Sebastian down for his nap then?”

“Thank you,” Chloe replied automatically as she sat beside Gabriella hoping that she could hide the trembling in her hands as she drank her tea. “Yes, the nursemaid has fed him,” she murmured trying to smile. She knew that Gabriella had hired the nurse to feed Sebastian when she had been kidnapped by Lia and she had continued to use the nursemaid because of the opium. She dared not try and feed Sebastian herself. “He is sleeping now,” she finished quietly.

“He is such a good baby,” Gabriella said, patting her hand.

“You have been so kind to us,” Chloe whispered, feeling tears threaten her suddenly as one dripped down her cheek. “I do not know what is wrong with me.”

“Now-now,” Gabriella murmured, catching her hands before she could run from the room, and then Gabriella was embracing her as she wept silently. “You see,” Gabriella said. “I told Drummond that you took our news entirely too well last evening. There-there, darling, it will be all right,” she soothed.

Chloe did not know how long she cried on Gabriella’s shoulder before she calmed enough to accept a linen to blow her nose.

“You love Harrison, I know,” Gabriella said, rubbing one of her hands between both of hers. “It is because of this that I am going to tell you something and why I wanted to speak to you without Drummond here.” Gabriella smiled. “Our men can be too secretive. I suppose it is a product of their shared profession. You must believe that Drummond feels he is doing what will cost you the least harm in the end.”

Chloe imagined this was another time when her mind was confused and she could not comprehend, because what Gabriella was saying did not make sense, until Gabriella said, “That is why I have decided to tell you about the note. Our Harrison left a missive.”

“He left a note!” Chloe exclaimed hopefully. “What does it say?” Yet she realized belatedly, especially when she heard Gabriella sigh, that it might not be good news . . . probably was not.

“Chloe, I want you to understand,” Gabriella said. “That not even Drummond knows where Harrison has gone . . . or exactly why. And that is highly unusual. But here is a note that he sent to Drummond the next morning, the morning after Drummond brought you here. You must understand that Drummond hoped that he could find Harrison and that is why he waited so long to speak to you.”

Chloe opened the note slowly with trembling fingers and read it silently. “I am alive. Keep them both safe. I will not be returning.” It was signed, Lord Ravenscar. Chloe touched the scroll of his name with her fingertips. He had flourished penmanship, she would not have expected that. “What will I do without him?” she murmured, truly forgetting for a moment that she was in Gabriella’s company. “He enslaved me. Does he not know that? Does he not know that I love him? Does he not care?”

“Oh, Chloe darling, we have a wealth of evidence that Harrison cares for you and cares deeply,” Gabriella said.

Chloe was completely startled to hear Gabriella’s voice, and with her heart thudding she looked up at Gabriella. What had she said to her? How long had Gabriella been there?

“No,” Gabriella continued to say, still patting her hand. “Harrison cares for you. It must have been something that happened that evening, after the party perhaps. Or perhaps he feels badly about mistaking you for Lia. Of course he did not, yet he was too stubborn to admit it. The way he called you Rosebud clearly showed that he was torn.”

After the party . . . after the party. Those words kept circling in Chloe’s mind even after she left Gabriella’s company. And those words did not leave her. She did not forget them like so many others lately. She remembered the carriage ride. She remembered how angry Raven had been, and she remembered the feeling of him inside of her, branding her his forever . . . loving her.

At midnight that night she snuck out of the Kittridge’s fashionable London home leaving a note for Gabriella to take care of Sebastian for her. She knew that her son could not be in better hands and she knew that she had to find Raven. Not once did it enter her mind that the best master spy in all of England, Lord Kittridge, had been unable to find Raven, and what hope could she have of doing so. Instead she went home, where she felt the safest. She went to Raven’s home. That was where she would start.

The staff did not seem to find anything unusual about her sudden appearance. They treated her like royalty or the lady of the manor even hinting to find out if she knew when Lord Ravenscar would return. She retired to Raven’s bedchambers at peace there for the first time in weeks, surrounded by his lingering presence in the room. She went to his armoire and took out one of his evening jackets to wear. With nothing else against her skin but his jacket it felt as if Raven were holding her. Then she began to search the room until she found the small oval portrait, and it was then she knew that she had found her clue. The woman in the portrait was beautiful and she had Raven’s eyes.

Chapter Sixteen

Harrison stood in the garden with his boot propped on the stone bench beside where Catherine was sitting in the morning sunshine. He had not had a drink in three weeks, not since the night he had savagely and drunkenly taken Chloe in the back of his carriage. Not since he had learned what depravity he had fostered on an innocent woman, and not since he admitted that she was Chloe, and that he loved her, but had lost her because of his own need for vengeance. He wondered if he thought he could atone by not drinking again, when he knew he would never be able to atone for what he had done.

As it was, it had just been by the grace of a God that he barely believed in, and his own skills that he’d made it out of the warehouse alive. He’d had to kill four men, including Kant, to convince the others that fleeing was more profitable than mobbing together to kill him. It had also helped that day that most of the gentlemen in the warehouse were merely business associates and patrons out for the promise by Kant of an unusual event. Only three of Kant’s personal men had anything more invested than the promise of hedonistic depravity. The hedonistic depravity of gang raping Chloe. At least he had done one thing right by finding her and saving her from that vicious peril. Catherine suddenly spoke beside him, drawing him from his brooding thoughts.

“So you will go,” Catherine asked carefully. She could not believe that she was attempting what she was attempting. But it was years past time that she repay her brother for all that he had done for her. “You will go to the island on the east lake and see that old Martha is well?”

“I have said that I will,” Harrison answered distractedly. “She was my nurse also, and she kept him from beating me many times by hiding me.”

He never called him father, Catherine thought, not that she blamed him. “Yes well, with Bethany so small and my husband Robert away, I could not go myself. Yet Martha always comes for mass and when she did not come to the church yesterday. Well, I cannot help but worry.” Thank god Robert was away, Catherine thought, he would never understand what she was doing. And she prayed that God would forgive her for the small lies.

“I will leave right now so that we can both put our minds to rest,” Harrison said.

Within the hour Harrison reached the small pier on the east lake where he tied off his stallion, noticing the small rowboat tied off to the pier. He squinted his eyes in the direction of the island trying to see if another boat was tied off on its pier. It was too far to tell, yet he assumed there would be a boat kept on each side so he climbed down to the row boat and settled in grasping the oars.

It was healthy exercise, a beautiful day, and the excursion stretched his muscles. He mused broodingly, that it was too bad he could enjoy none of it because his mind kept drifting unerringly to thoughts of Chloe. He was slightly reassured to find another row boat tied off on the island’s pier when he reached it. That meant at least old Martha was here, he just hoped that it did not mean she was too ill to have left her small island.

The trail leading inland was well kept and not too steep and in a few minutes he was within sight of Martha’s two story cottage. In days gone by, this had been a hunting and fishing refuge for Catherine’s husband’s family. But years ago it had been given over to old Martha, to live out her days in happier circumstances than when she’d been a nurse employed by the old man Ravenscar.

Harrison was again relieved to see smoke coming from the chimney of the cottage as he walked closer, and upon entrance into the small well-kept kitchen he found quick evidence of old Martha’s presence. It appeared as if she were expecting visitors for tea and that she had just stepped out for a moment. There was a pot of freshly steeping tea and a plate of newly made scones on the kitchen’s tabletop. After checking all the other rooms in the cottage and around the immediate perimeter, Harrison concluded that old Martha must have gone out for a short walk and he settled down in the kitchen to wait for her return. He decided that if she did not return in a reasonable length of time he would search farther afield. But for now he poured himself a cup of tea and settled down to eat one of the blueberry scones. A true favorite of his that was impossible to overlook.

In the time since he had quit consuming vast quantities of Scottish whiskey every day, his sweet tooth had become mightily engaged. And the blueberries seemed to be fresh, he mused, as he bit into his second one, feeling unusually relaxed as he settled more comfortably into his chair. After two cups of tea and two scones, he was nearly falling asleep in his chair, and he knew that he should get up and try to find old Martha. Yet, he could not seem to find the energy as his eyelids dipped and his chin dropped onto his chest . . .

Chapter Seventeen

Harrison was afraid for a moment. Afraid that he had taken a drink again when he had sworn that he never would. His mind felt that way . . . fuzzy, and his mouth was dry as it was after a long bout with the whiskey bottle. However, it was when he tried to move his hands to wipe his mouth that his groggy mind knew something was very wrong. What had he been doing? Drinking tea waiting for old Martha, he thought?

He opened his eyes slowly, they felt gritty and he tried to twist his wrists in the bonds that held them over his head. Bonds! His eyes popped open as he fought the ropes tying his wrists and ankles to a bedpost. Bedpost? He was naked and gagged! Tied to a bedpost!

“A- A-,” he snarled against the gag in his mouth as he turned his head with his gaze sweeping the room until . . . Chloe!

“It will not do you any good to fight the ropes, Raven,” Chloe said softly, from where she sat in a high-backed chair, five paces from him. “I tied them too tight for you to escape. Thank goodness, the laudanum I put into the tea made you act like a drunken sailor or I would never have been able to manage you on my own. As it was, you were very pliable to my wants. Do you remember?”

Harrison glared at her. He glared at her beauty. She was wearing a pink-colored silk dress with a dangerously low décolletage and the pistol he always carried was in her hand. He jerked his head, “no,” angrily to her question. What was she doing here?

He thought for one brief moment that they both could have been captured somehow by any of his many enemies. However, Chloe’s words dispelled that notion. It was damned hard not to be able to speak his mind. That and his exposed dick had grown hard at just the sight of her. So now he stood gagged and tied against the bedpost with a hard jutting cock.

Chloe’s deep brown eyes lowered to his turgid dick as she idly played with the hammer on his pistol. Was this revenge? Her revenge? Weak with a sudden rush of intense emotions he sagged then unexpectedly against the ropes around his wrists. His knees weak with emotion as he tilted his head back against the post and closed his eyes. Yes! God yes, revenge. He needed to be revenged upon. His soul needed it.

“My name is Chloe and you will only call me Chloe unless I give you permission otherwise. You, I will call slave, my pet, or my cock!” Then she was there beside him with the barrel of the pistol circling his navel . . . slowly. “Do you understand?” she whispered, even as she licked his nipple with the flat of her tongue and it shivered becoming hard and beaded. He trembled. “Nod your head please,” she murmured, moving her soft wet mouth over to the peak of his other already hard nipple. He nodded, yet kept his eyes closed and his head tilted back, fighting his groans of pleasure as she licked and played with his nipples.

She stopped to blow cool air on them before she licked them again with the tip of her tongue. He did groan then, an eruption behind the gag. His cock was swollen and pounding, his sacs were taut and heavy with need. The silk of Chloe’s dress feathered across the crease in the head of his dick. He shuddered, feeling a drop of his seed seeping from the slit and grow cold against the air. He twisted against the ropes at his ankles and wrists, expanding his tense muscles to hardness with his emotion. If he had been free, he would be fucking Chloe like a raging stallion in rut. His iron control was gone . . . tied helplessly before his lover’s revenge.

“A man like you are, Raven, can only be truly held by one thing,” Chloe murmured, stroking his flinching buttocks with both hands now, she must have set the pistol aside. “I do not wish you to speak,” she continued to murmur. “Unless I request it. If I remove the gag will you honor my request?” Her fingernails scraped from the bottom curve of his buttocks, up over the muscular sinew, to the hollow of his back. He groaned nodding his head to her request.

“Good,” she whispered as she pulled the gag free from his mouth. He kept his head tilted back and licked his dry lips. He felt Chloe’s fingernails scratching over his chest, across his nipples, down his belly, and over his thighs as he clenched his jaw to keep from saying anything . . . even a groan. But that was impossible because one escaped his throat against his will.

“How does it feel to be tied, my pet?” she murmured.

Harrison dropped his head, seizing Chloe’s gaze with his. He knew that she could see his intense emotion. His need. He could not hide behind his usual cold facade. It had been ripped to shreds. “Like you own me,” he rasped . . . and then she was kissing him.

She grabbed his mouth with her mouth as she held his head between her hands. The pressure of her hands worked his head in the direction she wished to go, as she slanted her lips over his and hungrily ate at his mouth. She moaned, little sounds of need and passion, in the back of her throat as her sensuous body pressed upward against his so she could take his mouth with her tongue. And he let her. He did not try to pull away from her greedy mouth or conquer her with his own tongue and lips. He simply allowed her to conquer him.

When she broke away, they were both gasping for air as she slowly slid down his body until she was kneeling before him. “I will make you beg,” she cried, digging her fingers into the tight flesh of his pelvis as she gazed up at him over the thrust of his thickly engorged cock.

He wanted to say something desperately, yet he did not. He had given his word, his honor, his love. But there was such anguish in Chloe’s brown eyes . . . and such need, and then her mouth was on the flanged head of his dick with her pink lips sliding deep over the thickly swollen shaft.

“Ah-,” he tried. “God!” he choked with his hips bucking forward, following Chloe’s mouth as she retreated, and then she sucked him in slowly again. “Aa.” The sounds he made were of tortuous pleasure as he tried not to speak the carnal exclamations clogging his throat. He was mindless, twisting his ankles and wrists against the ropes, arching his hips forward, following Chloe’s mouth. His lover, his revenge, his life. And he knew if she stopped he would die!

But she did not. She suckled him with increasing urgency, digging her fingernails into his buttocks from behind, as she pumped her mouth over him faster and he hissed harshly as he ejaculated. “Chloe!”

His cock felt like a pump, it pitched his seed so many times into Chloe’s mouth as he jerked in ecstasy. If not for the ropes holding his wrists, he would have fallen, like a wrung out rag, to his knees. So it was sometime before he became aware that Chloe was beating her fists on his hipbones as she still knelt at his feet crying, “I could not stop! I could not make you beg! I wanted you! I want you.”

Harrison’s mind sharpened, yet not quickly enough as he watched Chloe crawl up onto the bed sobbing. She seemed so lost, he was having trouble understanding. He said her name once but she cried harder so he fell silent until he realized that she had cried herself into an exhausted sleep.

The room was cold. Too cold for Chloe’s sheer silk dress and he worried over it as he watched her sleep. For himself he would endure, but for her? He could understand her need for revenge. He could even understand his own ragged need to let her perpetrate her revenge on him. But something was wrong. Perhaps they were both lost after what he had done. So lost. He would not be surprised, especially for her. He had been surprised for himself. Yet this was something else. Chloe had seemed nearly confused.

In the end he could not stand it. He was not noble, and he would never be noble. So instead of staying where he was, as his conscious demanded of him, to receive Chloe’s revenge, he lifted his arms up over the top of the bedpost and pulled the ropes free. He could untie his ankles but not his wrists . . . not entirely true because being mobile through the cottage he could have found a way. But he left them as a small atonement to Chloe’s revenge.

He crawled up on the bed behind Chloe, curling his weight and heat around her and he pulled the corner of the bed quilt up over both of them. He relaxed for the first time in weeks with her being so near to him. He could perhaps sleep again as he had not been able to do for the weeks he had been away from her. She was his balm, even after all that he had done to her, she comforted him like no other person in his life had ever been able to do.

Could he really allow this revenge she was seeking? It would destroy her as it had destroyed him. He had learned that too late, and even as much as he deeply needed her revenge to cleanse himself . . . he could not do it. He loved her too much. He had simply gone crazy for a moment at the beginning, thinking of the healing Chloe’s revenge would give him. But now he could not allow it.

Chapter Eighteen

Chloe screamed, feeling the collar . . . the tug of the leash as large indistinct shapes moved closer and closer around her. Taking away the light. And then she felt their hands!

“Chloe!”

Chloe screamed again, then she cried, “Raven, help me!”

“Good God, Chloe, I am right here,” Raven rasped. “Hush, baby girl, I am here. You’re dreaming.”

Chloe sobbed as her eyes popped open and she shoved on Raven’s muscular chest. It was as though she were breaking through the crest of a wave as she sat upright and began gasping. Her mind did not fully comprehend that she was gaping at Raven, when she cried, “Did they rape me? I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“Jesus,” Raven expelled.

It was at that moment that Chloe realized where she was and what she might have said. Nausea overwhelmed her in an instant and she slapped her hand over her mouth as she tumbled off the bed trying to find the chamber pot quickly! Sometime during her violent retching Raven was there helping her, holding her up until she sagged weakly unable to heave anymore even though her senses rolled unsteadily. Raven lifted her and carried her to the bed laying her down, and then going to find a cool damp linen which he pressed to her temple.

“You are loose,” she murmured stupidly

Incredibly Raven smiled. A smile unlike any she had ever seen before on his chiseled aristocratic face. It was genuine and warm and it even deepened the color of his black irises. “Actually, Chloe, I was in the midst of a fierce temper tantrum, because I had just discovered that you have stranded us here.”

Chloe watched Raven’s lips with each word, then she barely whispered, “You were trying to leave?”

“No, Chloe,” he murmured as he stroked her cheek. “Not without you. But I needed to show you that I could. Only it seems that you are one step ahead of me.”

Chloe did not understand what Raven was saying and the gaps frightened her again. She rolled onto her side away from him with a small moan. “Leave if you wish. I will tell you how. I won’t hold you here.”

“Not now, Chloe. Now you need to tell me if you still feel ill.”

“Yes,” she hissed lowly.

“Just now or has it happened before?” Raven asked, smoothing the hair back from her ear.

“Two days . . . mornings.” Chloe realized at just that moment that it was morning. She had slept the entire night . . . and Raven had gotten loose, gotten dressed. Now he wanted to leave.

“Then we need to get you to a doctor,” Raven began.

“No!” she exclaimed. Sitting upright and swaying before Raven steadied her. “It passes. It is only the nightmares,” she finished on a murmur into Raven’s shoulder from where he held her.

“Chloe,” Raven expelled roughly, grasping her face between his big hands, but his touch was gentle as he made her look at him. Look at his intense, sharp black eyes. “They did not rape you. Do you understand, no one raped you?”

“They didn’t,” Chloe whispered with tears beginning to stream down her cheeks. “The opium. I could not remember, Raven.”

“Sweetheart,” he uttered emotionally, and then he pulled her back into his warm safe embrace where she clung to him. “I will tell you all that I know happened, Chloe. But first we need to take you to a doctor . . .”

“No!” Chloe exclaimed, wiggling away from him.

“But you just said, Chloe, that I could . . .”

“I have changed my mind,” Chloe interrupted blithely, while holding her stomach and glaring at him. “I do that a lot lately,” she finished with an impatient wave of her hand.

She knew what she needed she needed some dry crackers and hot tea. It had worked the other two mornings that she’d been sick after her nightmares. She certainly did not like the way Raven was staring at her with his hard chin flattening arrogantly. He was about to become the master again and she could not have that . . . yet.

“I cannot argue when I feel so sick, Raven. At least bring me some hot tea and crackers. It has helped before.”

Surprising to her, he did it without any more argument and when he came back with the tea and dry crackers, she boldly asked him for hot water for a bath. It was interesting to watch him at those domestic duties . . . interesting and soothing somehow. She had not known that Raven could brew tea and heat hot water for bathing. Most nobles were inept at such menial labor.

“I have not given up,” he said as he stood beside the small copper tub he had filled with steaming water.

“I know, Raven,” she replied lightly, swinging her legs off the bed. She felt much better now after a cup of tea and four of the dry crackers. Even better it seemed because the burden of what had happened to her at Kant’s hands had been lifted from her confusion. She had not expected to feel such relief, but she did because that meant that Raven had not left her because she had been used and raped. He had other reasons. She wondered what they were, even as she felt hope because she might be able to guess what they were.

She walked over to him slowly and turned her back to him. “Could you help me with the hooks, Raven?” she asked sweetly.

Raven growled just a bit in the back of his throat, and then put his fingers on her back. Chloe smiled. She had not known whether he would stay or leave for her bath. The Raven she knew would stay. After he unhooked her gown, he retreated to a chair by the blazing fire he had built in the fireplace. She did not turn but slowly removed her clothing. The gown first then her chemise slithered slowly over her hips. She was naked except for her stockings and garters. The room was silent except for an occasional pop from the fire until she lifted one foot to prop it on the edge of the brass tub, and then she bent over slowly to remove her stocking.

Raven’s harsh intake of breath sounded behind her and she peeked over her shoulder at him. “What are you doing, baby girl?” he asked in a strained rasp.

“Only getting ready for my bath, of course,” she answered demurely innocent. Rising then to switch legs and bend over again. “You did not offer to help me so I must do it myself,” she finished.

“What I find amazing, Chloe, is that you would flirt with me at all,” Raven said lowly.

Chloe turned to face him, fully nude now in the firelight. “Flirting, Raven? I have never flirted with anyone before.” She stepped into the tub. “I believe I like it.” She paused. “With you.”

Raven looked abruptly angry, possibly betrayed, and then he looked down at his hands. “Not even with Sebastian’s father, Chloe? Surely you flirted with him?”

He meant to hurt her, Chloe thought, he meant to try and push her away. Perhaps he was being noble? Yes, her Raven was being noble, saving her from herself, he thought. Still, he did not realize what they had found together was so rare, and so special. She could not conceive of being anything else but Raven’s woman . . . and yes, his sexual slave, always . . . of the heart, mind, and body. She trusted him with it all and loved him.

Chloe slowly dipped a hand down into the steamy water. “I never flirted with Sebastian’s father. It was a desperate thing between us. People were dying all around us in the war. I was losing the plantation. I could not hold onto it because of the war. Robert, which was his name, Robert Talbert. Robert was part of Massachusetts’ militia. That is where my stepfather built his plantation after he retired.”

“You are American,” Raven said.

“Practically, we lived there for ten years before my stepfather died of old age. He had been much older than my mother when they married. But I lived in Paris when I was a baby. I don’t remember it, and then Hong Kong, England, and eventually America. I only left Massachusetts because I lost the plantation in the war and I was pregnant. I came back to England because my stepfather had left me some property here.”

“Ambassador Sang,” Raven said.

“Yes, that was my stepfather,” Chloe replied picking up a small bar of soap from the stool beside the tub. “I know you want to ask, Raven, please do,” she finished on a murmur.

“And, Lia?” he asked in a harsh rasp.

Chloe sighed. Lia had hurt her in so many ways but perhaps just this once she had given her a greater gift than all the pain put together. “We were separated when we were but two years old. Lia stayed with our father and I was left with our mother. Lia has always resented that.”

Raven stood abruptly and turned toward the fire. His scarred hands were clenched at his sides. “You really are Ambassador Sang’s daughter,” he uttered.

“Stepdaughter,” Chloe murmured as she watched Raven stalk from the room.

Chapter Nineteen

Chloe was pregnant and did not realize it! Harrison slammed his fist into the bark of the tree he stood next to outside the cottage. He bit back his sharp cry of pain as he did it again. He knew every inch of Chloe’s body . . . every nuance. From her slightly bulged stomach to her heavier breasts. She was pregnant. And the child was his.

He wanted to rage. He wanted to cry . . . damn him, he wanted to hope. He looked down at his bruised knuckles then upward through the trees surrounding the cottage. Why would she flirt with him? Why would she blatantly display herself to his lecherous gaze? Did she not remember what he had done to her in the carriage? He had been so angry. So jealous. He had nearly raped her, and then he had let down his control and lost her when he should have kept her safe. Christ, she had nightmares because of it.

“Raven, I have cooked us lunch,” Chloe called suddenly from the cottage doorway behind him. “I can cook you know. I love to cook. Come see.”

Harrison slowly turned to look at Chloe dressed in a simple yellow gown. No bare shoulders or plunging necklines, and she had never looked lovelier. What was she doing? As a matter of course he started toward her. He was hungry, and he could not have gone in any other direction had he tried.

It was incredible. Chloe must have cooked some of the food beforehand. The soufflé and the crispy white bread, surely. When she reached to pour him some wine, he covered the top of the glass with his hand. “Not wine, Chloe.” He looked at her glass across the table. “What are you having?”

“Lemonade.”

“That will do,” he murmured. She looked at him in wonder yet stepped back into the kitchen to bring him a cold glass of lemonade. He owed her . . . he knew. “I have quit drinking,” he muttered.

Chloe set the glass down and went to sit. “Liquor, Raven? You have quit drinking liquor?”

“Yes,” he muttered uneasily, glancing at her before he turned to the meal.

“I see,” she murmured, and then she began to attack her meal with gusto.

It appeared her nausea from earlier was gone. Morning sickness! He could not help but be amused as he covertly watched her eat, she particularly liked the chocolate soufflé she served with the roast beef. Only Chloe appeared to like the chocolate with small dill pickles. She did not touch the roast beef and he could not imagine the combination with lemonade. Yet she did, consume all three . . . heartily and nothing else.

“He died you know,” Chloe said popping a chunk of dill pickle into her mouth. “Robert that is. I did not say earlier.”

“I gathered. You said, was.”

“Oh I did, didn’t I,” she reached for more chocolate soufflé, before she said, “We only had three nights. I am not sure we even liked each other. We simply did not know each other really. It was impulse. He was a soldier and I-”

“You do not have to tell me,” Harrison interrupted glancing at her.

“I know, Raven. It is just that . . .” Chloe paused, looking at him intently with her incredibly beautiful brown eyes. “I wanted to tell you. And I know that you want to know.”

“How could you think you know me?” he asked roughly.

“Because I love you!” she suddenly exclaimed, and then at that same moment she stood abruptly to walk into the kitchen.

Harrison was stunned. Shocked. He swallowed hard on a piece of roast beef, grabbing his glass of lemonade. She loved him? But? Harrison came to his feet at once and strode to the kitchen . . . however, Chloe was gone.

He found her a short time later at a small stream fifty paces behind the cottage. He found her in the stream actually with bare toes and the skirts of her yellow gown pulled up above her knees. She was a golden nymph with dappled sunlight dancing off her beauty as it filtered through the leafy trees. He had never wanted anything more. Nor had he been more afraid in his life. He hesitated on the mossy bank of the stream with the sudden overwhelming surety that he did not belong in Chloe’s sunlight dream. Inevitably he would darken any dream that she . . .

“And you love me too, Raven,” Chloe called out turning to him. It was a challenge yet in the depths of her melting brown eyes he saw her certainty, and impossibly her joy.

“Yes,” he expelled in a harsh rasp, feeling as though that singular word were torn from his soul. “Yet I would destroy you. I...”

“Would you, Raven? Destroy me how?”

“My cravings,” he spewed harshly. “I need... Christ, I need...”

“My love. My submission. My embrace. My obedience? Never once, Raven, have you harmed me,” she paused. “Yet you have given me the most extraordinary pleasures. And I ask you now after I have declared my love for you. What of my cravings, Raven, for I am truly lost without you and I would beg . . . no, I would crawl for...”

“Damnation,” Raven cursed fiercely, abruptly cutting off her words before she could finish voicing the damning prediction that he had made so long ago to her. “Never, Chloe,” he hissed. “I would crawl first. Never you.”

“Then this means that you will not send me away, or leave me again,” she replied with an instant smile of feminine triumphant.

Harrison grasped it immediately, and with shocking relief that he was neatly trapped, tied up in a simple yet elegant package. Chloe had maneuvered him unerringly right into the position that she wanted him to be in. Christ, he loved her, and it appeared that she loved him as well. He did smile then, a dangerous smile filled with intent, love, and the immediate heightening of his sexual desire. Chloe gazed at him hesitantly, instantly demure. “Raven?” she questioned with the tip of her small pink tongue wetting her lips.

He began taking off his jacket “Bare your breasts to me, Chloe. I want to see you naked in that stream.” He watched Chloe blushing, looking timid to his command as he reached for the laces on his shirt tugging them open. “Now, baby girl, or I will come into that stream after you.”

The thrill of his words and intentions coursed through his veins. The fact that Chloe was his, and she wanted to be his, humbled him, yet excited him, because she had proclaimed her love, and then bravely proclaimed her cravings that matched his. She wanted to submit to him, it aroused her as it did him and it filled him with completion, and beyond that an unwavering trust in her. He would be the master, her master . . . her love.

Chloe’s slightly slanted almond-shaped eyes peeked at him as she let the yellow skirts of her gown fall into the stream swirling around her ankles and she reached for the bodice of her gown. He stopped at his pants leaving them for the moment as he brazenly gazed at her, still hesitating, then he marched into the stream after her. She squealed of course and stumbled backward before he caught her. “I believe you need to be reminded, my love, that I will have my way,” he uttered, wrestling her into turning until her spine was caught against his bare chest. “With you,” he finished.

Chloe squirmed against him enchantingly with her sleek black hair mingling with the curling hairs on his chest. Her buttocks through her skirts did erotic things to his stiffening dick as he held her captured with his forearm, and then with his free hand he began hauling up her skirts. Chloe’s struggle against him was not of escape or defiance but of sexual arousal. Her femininity commanded that he take her, force her to surrender her arousal to him. This is what excited her. This is what freed her.

She was naked beneath her skirts and the discovery provoked him hotly, yet he clamped down on his own spiraling desires. He intended to take his woman mercilessly there in the sunlight, in the stream, to start with. His hand found her hungry cunt, already slick with eagerness.

“Raven, I need you so,” she gasped with the back of her head twisting restlessly against his collarbone while she clutched his wrist between her thighs not in forbearance but with urgency. He unveiled the shameless thrust of her clit with his two outside fingers and brought his middle finger down to bare over the hungry begging protrusion.

“Please, please,” she moaned even as he lifted his knee between her legs from behind to splay her thighs wider and open her more to his fingering. Her unbridled response to him was thrilling.

“Show me your breasts, baby girl,” he uttered gruffly. “I want to see your hard little nipples”

“Yes, Raven,” she cried. “Oh yes, anything!” Her hands frantically tugged at her bodice until her breasts were bared into the sunlight. The thrusting pink spikes of her nipples were bold with arousal, so tight they poked outward like small rosy-pink spears.

“Play with your breasts, Chloe,” he commanded. “Pluck those shameless little nipples. Let me see you.”

“My one,” she gasped with her hands cupping her breasts raising them upward as her head twisted from side to side on his chest and the backs of her thighs quivered uncontrollably over his leg. He flicked his finger faster over her jutting clit. “Oh!” she cried as she played with her breasts, lifting and fondling them, then wildly plucking the aroused spikes.

Christ, his woman was passionate beyond belief. Just for him, he thought heatedly, only for him. “Raven, I need you. I need you!” she cried and even though he knew she was senseless in the throes of passion, the desperation in her voice alarmed him.

So much so he rasped harshly, “Chloe, I am here. I will always be here for you, baby girl.”

“Oh-oh! Oh!” she cried sharply, convulsing against him like the rushing water of the stream at their feet. He felt the pulse beat wildly in her clit as she held her breasts in both hands with her graceful neck arched backward. He knew this moment as sure as his own breathing, and he caught her as she gave one last gasp of pleasure, and then she fell limp into his arms.

That he could do this to her, that she gave herself so freely, and that he could arouse her so strongly as to faint with pleasure was arrogantly fulfilling. Yet even as he carried Chloe out of the stream to lay her down upon his discarded clothing, he set that arrogance aside. Shoved it aside as the many niggling worries that something was not right with his love came around full circle in his mind.

Chloe woke slowly to the wondrous feeling of warm male hands gently stroking her breasts. It was not sexual at the moment but more soothing and she languished in the feeling of being petted so tenderly. However, her murmurs of pleasure gave away her awakening and she lazily opened her eyes to see the sharp angles of Raven’s face above hers. She could not help the blush that heated her cheeks when she saw the sure knowledge of her complete abandon in his eyes. He was arrogant in the knowledge of what he could do to her with his touch, and he was proud of it. She would not have it any other way, yet that still did not mean she could not help but be a little embarrassed.

“Your blushes only encourage me,” Raven murmured, cupping and lifting one of her breasts warmly in his scarred palm as he continued to say, “On the day we marry, when I say the vow, I will be thinking of all the years you will spend in my bed and of all the ways I might make you blush for me.”

“Raven!” she exclaimed with instant tears gathering beneath her eyelashes. He had said they would marry! She could not speak as she gazed up at him.

“When you look at me like that, Chloe, the world around me ceases to exist,” he murmured with his head lowering until his lips covered hers. The kiss was hot and male, completely possessive and she drowned in the heat of it, raising her arms upward around his neck. “I love you,” he murmured through his kissing. “I do not deserve you, but I do intend to keep you forever mine.”

“And I love you too,” she murmured within the heat of their lips touching. “And I will be forever yours.”

“Mm,” Raven murmured, breaking their kiss to lean above her. “And now, baby girl, you will tell me what is wrong and you will let me be your strength.”

Chloe’s eyes misted over again with love and uncertainty. “I might not be w-well, Raven,” she stuttered through her uncertainty. “The opium . . . or-or, I do not know,” she finished wretchedly.

“Hush,” he murmured stroking her hair, then his scarred fingertips brushed over her cheek. “Is it because you were sick earlier, Chloe? Is that what you are afraid of?” he asked.

“Yes . . . no,” she responded trying to hold back her tears. But then she blurted, “I cannot remember, Raven! I keep losing what people say to me as though . . . as though, I never heard them and-and I do not know why!” She sobbed then no longer able to hold back her weeping as she reached for him and he lifted her upright into his embrace. “What has happened to me?” she cried into his shoulder.

“Chloe, Chloe,” Raven rasped gruffly as he held her tight in his embrace. “No matter what is wrong, baby girl, I am here. Do you understand, Chloe? You do not have to be afraid.”

“It w-was j-just so h-hard to t-tell someone,” she gasped, ending with a teary hiccup.

“But you are not afraid now, are you? Here with me?” he asked as he rocked her in his embrace.

“N-no,” she answered with a watery gurgling sound as her tears abated further and she snuggled closer into his embrace.

“You need to be brave for me now, Chloe,” Raven murmured. “I want to ask you something.”

“W-What?” she asked.

“Could you be carrying our child, Chloe? Do you think perhaps you are pregnant?”

“Oh sacred Buddha!” Chloe exclaimed, clutching Raven even tighter. “Oh my one! That is it! That is it,” she cried leaning back to look up at him. “Oh, Raven, that is what is wrong. It is just the same as when I had Sebastian. I was so forgetful when I carried him. This is just the same and my sickness...”

“Morning sickness,” Raven supplied with love showing in his ebony eyes.

Chloe blushed instantly and grew suddenly shy as she asked, “T-Then you are happy? About our baby?”

“I am, baby girl, for the first time in my life a very happy man,” Raven replied.

The End

My Lady Captive

By Shirl Anders

Chapter One

“Here–here, Drummond. Congratulations, your wife must be pleased,” Wyndham the Baron of Hawkenge toasted to those gentlemen, gathered in the intimate and comfortable study of the new father Drummond, who was the Duke of Kittridge.

“My wife Gabriella wears her heart in her eyes gentlemen,” Drummond said, responding to the toast with a sip of Scottish whiskey. “For her to have been denounced in public as barren and now this. Well, I must say that even I am pleased.”

Wyndham tilted his head to hear Lord Harrison rasping a saturnine reply. “You simply revel in the fact that it proves to everyone you are still a stallion at the age of fifty-one.”

The group of five gentlemen, each of them former spies for her Queen’s own, all chuckled as they sipped their whiskey.

“I believe that each one of us comprising the Archangels, should be officially declared, by us of course, as the little chit’s godfathers,” Lord Radford drawled, tilting his dark head raffishly, so that the gaslight chandelier caught the satin of his black eye patch in a piratical manner.

“You presume the gender already?” Drummond asked with a drawl, flicking his cigar into the crystal bowl beside his hand.

“I for one, will be down on my knees praying that the wee bairn is a lass and not an ugly brute such as yourself,” Brynmore, their Scottish Archangel jested.

“Here-here,” Saxonhurst pronounced, turning Wyndham’s gaze to the last of their cloak-and-dagger group, as Saxonhurst finished his toast. “Here is to a girl child as lovely as Drummond’s wife Gabriella already is.”

Wyndham watched Drummond pursing his lips, then he smiled slowly. “Just to set all the accounts correctly, before we attend to the business I have brought you here for, my wife Gabriella has pronounced that each one of you is to be declared an uncle and nothing less.”

“Of course,” Harrison rasped with a serpentine twinkle in his sharp black eyes. “I would expect nothing less from the oh-so lovely lady.”

Wyndham eased his injured leg more firmly upon the stool in front of him, hiding the grimace of pain the move cost him, behind a weary, but unstrained look. It did no good to bemoan the consistent presence of pain. Just as he had been wounded in the battle at Waterloo, Brynmore had lost the hearing in his right ear to cannonade, and Wyndham knew that burst eardrum afflicted the man.

Then there were of course Saxonhurst, Radford, and Harrison who had all suffered injuries on a last, badly botched spying venture, while he and Brynmore had been sent to Waterloo. All of them had lost something trying to defeat Napoleon, even their leader Drummond, unscathed physically, had lost a reason for his place in society, when they had returned to England. That was until Drummond had reunited with Gabriella this last year. Wyndham thought they were all a bit like that though, lost . . . at odd ends. War did that to a man, reshaped his priorities, or more, his values.

“Now, gentlemen, to the reason for your presence,” Drummond said, leaning back in his chair to eye them all speculatively within a razor-sharp quality he had. “First the background.”

It was beginning to sound like an assignment just as in the old spying days, Wyndham thought, as he leaned forward and listened to Drummond continue.

“This meeting pertains to the young widow Orelan Becou, stepdaughter to the late French Ambassador to Spain. As we all know, Napoleon had Orelan’s stepfather Ambassador Becou and his wife killed for treasonous acts, before the end of the Spanish War. Furthermore, each of you is well aware of what Orelan did, after her stepfather’s death, to help Wyndham recover important international dispatches, at great risk to herself, from the Russian, Alexei Tropov.”

Wyndham tensed, watching as Drummond paused to take a puff of his cigar. Orelan, his mind raggedly echoed, as Drummond continued. “That same Alexei, gentlemen, who is now Count Tropov and setup as royalty in St. Petersburg, is now in possession of one Orelan Becou at his impregnable estate of Valcourt.”

“Valcourt!” Wyndham snapped. “That is nothing but a depraved miniature Russian Court, Alexei has set up with himself as the head despot.”

“Really, Wyndham,” Radford drawled. “What a thing to say about your very good friend, Alexei.”

“We were never friends,” Wyndham snapped. “Only what pretense forced me to be.” Christ, he gave away too much with his venom, Wyndham realized, moving automatically to sidetrack the slip, yet still certain that Drummond’s keen mind would not so easily be diverted, as he finished wearily. “Damnation, Orelan cannot be much more than twenty-one. How could she be a widow already?”

“Truth be told-,” Radford drawled. “Mademoiselle Becou was a ripe peach ready to be plucked, when we knew her at sixteen.”

Wyndham rubbed his injured leg with a nervous tight gesture, willing his features to remain dispassionate at the heated reprimand he would have liked to have thrown out. The one and only time he had met Orelan, she had delivered those dispatches as her father would have wished, at great risk to herself. And he . . . he had kissed her. A mere girl of sixteen . . . so beautiful, and he’d simply seen her and taken from her. Lord, but he disliked himself for that. He disliked himself for his desperate need to feel alive at the time, in the face of all the death and subterfuge that surrounded him, making him wonder who he really was. However, he had frightened her. She had been too young for his blatant lust then. Now she was a woman.

“Wyndham, we will need you to go into Valcourt and bring Mademoiselle Becou out. By any means necessary,” Drummond said with an unscrupulous look. “I thought perhaps you might insist upon the assignment,” he finished.

“I do,” Wyndham answered tightly.

“It is the least we owe the young woman and especially her stepfather,” Harrison rasped.

“Who will back Wyndham up?” Saxonhurst asked.

“No one,” Wyndham replied tersely. “No one can enter Valcourt, but myself, or it will never work.”

“Really . . .” Radford began with a sarcastic sound.

“I said no one,” Wyndham responded, sharply interrupting him.

“Bluidy hell, man, you’ll at least be needing an escape route. Once you get the lass on the outside,” Brynmore said.

At this statement, Wyndham nodded, soberly. “That I will accept.”

“How long has she been there?” Saxonhurst asked, with his soulful brown eyes full of meaning.

Wyndham tensed as Drummond answered.

“Thankfully only one week, before we became apprised of the situation. It seems Orelan was in Paris trying to see about recovering her stepfather’s estate, when Alexei arrived. The next anyone knew, she was placed with Alexei under suspicious circumstances when he returned to St. Petersburg.”

“He knows,” Wyndham stated grimly.

“It would appear that Tropov could be seeking revenge for those dispatches of her stepfather’s that she managed to lift from his residence in San Lupe,” Harrison rasped. “We understand his government was very displeased to lose them and he tottered on the assassination lists, until he managed to reestablish himself brilliantly in Vienna, at the treaty negotiations.”

“The man got them back Yugoslavia, did he not?” Brynmore asked.

“He did indeed, and now it is as Wyndham states, he is a minor Russian despot in St. Petersburg. A hedonistic one, I am given to understand,” Drummond replied.

Yes, Wyndham thought grimly, he knew Alexei’s depravities too well and one week was too damn long for any young woman to be in Tropov’s company. But Alexei would play with Orelan in the beginning . . . he always played first. Wyndham could only hope that Alexei had not changed that much.

Chapter Two

When Wyndham caught his first sight of Orelan in the white and gold marbled front salon at Valcourt, he was momentarily rocked back on his heels by the vision of her exotic beauty. Nevertheless, he allowed none of his intense feelings to show other than an involuntary tick on the left side of his firmly placed jaw. The presence of that tick was forced, because a swarthy Arabic man, at the beset of Alexei Tropov, was lewdly groping the lovely Orelan.

That Arab had one diaphanous sleeve of Orelan’s plum-colored gown shoved down to her elbow, as he burrowed his ugly mustached face into the supple pillows of her bosom, while he forcefully held her against the wall. Orelan struggled helplessly beneath him, but the Arab had her wrists clamped behind her back as Alexei watched, from an haute but relaxed pose, sitting in a gilded chair, laughing as he quipped. “Struggle, my beautiful puta that will only cost our most esteemed Sultan more rubles to bed you, if I allow him.”

The sound that escaped Wyndham’s throat was a low human snarling. He ignored the jarring pain in his right leg and stalked forward, surprising everyone, when he seemed to come out of nowhere to grab the Arab from behind and literally shove him across the room. His voice, when he spoke was a low dangerous hiss. “I have come to claim my marker, Alexei. This woman is mine!”

The Arab hit the far wall as Wyndham quickly grasped Orelan by her slender bare shoulders. He tried to gentle his hands as he pulled her forward, whispering intently beneath his breath into her startled face. “Kiss me now, you spitfire, as you would no other.”

“Wyndham!” she cried out, with a desperate and emotion filled voice as she flung herself the rest of the distance to him, just as his mouth came down roughly over her mouth.

“Bravo!” Alexei sneered behind them.

Wyndham ignored Alexei as he took his brazen kissing of Orelan’s lush lips and propositioned it into bedroom passion. Bending her flowing body over his arm as she clutched his shoulders and opened her honeyed mouth to his advancing tongue.

She was more the woman now, in the six years since he had seen her last. Tall, opulently curved at bosom, belly, and hips. But her mouth was the same. It had always been a sensual wish. Any man who looked upon her pouted lips could do nothing less than desire to ravish their erotic plumpness. She mewled, a soft ardent sound in the back of her throat. Thrilling. It was surrender, pleasure, and desire mixed as he twisted his larger tongue around the dainty petal of her tongue, while his free hand curled into the thickness of her black-sable hair. He was lost again . . . that quickly, even when he knew that he needed his wits about him.

“If you were to insure that she pays completely for her misdeeds to me, I would consider it, my most deviant friend,” Alexei’s disembodied voice sounded through the flames of Wyndham’s passion.

Wyndham tore his lips from Orelan, and rasped defiantly, “I will . . . you know I will.” He held Orelan securely with one arm about her waist as she crumpled to his chest, where he could feel her heartbeat fluttering against his.

“Da, I have enough on you to make certain of it, I am sure,” Alexei answered with an aristocratic sneer thinning his lupine mouth and shading his crystal blue eyes. “Enough to own you, Khrisinan,” he finished, preening his thin blond mustache with one tapered finger.

“Nevertheless, Alexei,” Wyndham replied evenly, contrary to the heat of his blood. “You owe me first.”

“That I do,” Alexei agreed, crossing one leg casually over the other. He wore a Russian Premier’s dark green uniform with a dozen medals on the right shoulder. His sandy head turned sharply toward the Arab stumbling upright. “Now what am I to do with him?”

Wyndham knew that he’d won the first battle in what would be an all-out nasty war as he tightened his arm around Orelan and began to move. “That, my esteemed friend, is your problem. I am taking my woman to my suite.”

He and Orelan had barely made it through the entryway when Alexei called out. “Why, Khrisinan? Why this particular woman?”

Wyndham turned slowly, looking back at Alexei as Orelan clutched his jacket lapels. He did not look down at her small head beneath his chin, but he could feel her trembling. “She spurned me once,” he hissed roughly.

Orelan gasped at his words and Alexei laughed a slashing evil sound. Wyndham ignored Orelan’s expression as he pulled her from the room and up the marbled staircase to the floor that held the bedroom suites. Once in the hallway though, leading to his suite, his leg gave out under the determination he’d been holding it to, trying to make it appear normal. He had known any sign of hidden weakness during the first round with Alexei would have been fatal. There was time enough for Alexei to discover the injury. He limped suddenly and heavily, grumbling beneath his breath he expelled, “This will not be easy.”

“You hate me!” Orelan gasped, breathless at being forced to keep up with him until now.

Wyndham ignored the question completely and the newest brace of fears showing in Orelan’s incredible golden-amber eyes as he stopped before a footman stationed in the hallway. Still holding firmly onto Orelan’s slender arm, he addressed the footman. “See that Mademoiselle Becou’s entire belongings are brought to my suite as soon as possible.”

“No!” Orelan exclaimed, trying to pull her arm free from his relentless grasp. “I will not be made your-your-.”

“Whore,” Wyndham supplied gratingly, as he pulled Orelan away from the footman, while she sputtered wordless sounds in her apparent indignation. Which ultimately suited him completely, because he needed her distraction to get her into his room and into his bed as quickly as possible. The next round was certain to begin shortly. In this, he would never give Orelan leeway. Never, until they were well away from Valcourt, and then...

“I will not do this! You-you, barbaro!” Orelan cried, as he literally twirled her into his suite, slamming the door shut behind them. His hands became filled with plum-colored silk and supple woman as he lifted Orelan easily into his arms and limped to the bed, while she pounded his shoulders ineffectually. “Wyndham, after all I do for you! How! How could you do this to me?” she cried.

She was spirited and feisty, true to her half Latin, half French heritage. However, he continued to ignore her outrage as he dumped her onto the bed in a pool of purple silk and heaving creamy-white bosoms. He was extremely perturbed, because he’d just realized in the gambit that he played, that he was going to need Orelan’s partial cooperation. Christ, it was emasculating when a man could no longer dominate on top of a good screwing, because his knee would no longer hold him up.

“If you wish to return to Alexei or to the Arab’s immediate attentions, spitfire . . .” Wyndham bowed arrogantly as he shrugged out of his shirt. “Be my guest.”

“You–you wouldn’t!” she stuttered helplessly as the apricot glow of her beautiful complexion paled. Christ, she was voluptuous in her femininity. The silk she wore did nothing to hide her splendid curves, her womanly delicate bone structure, all of which was an exquisite backdrop to her glorious head of waist-length chocolate colored black hair.

“Become my whore or theirs,” he stated grimly. “It is the only choice you have, spitfire. The only one you have had ever since you became Alexei’s possession.”

“Oh! I never would have believed this of you-u...Oh-Oh! What are you doing, Wyndha-!”

Orelan squealed, but the bed quilts from where he had unceremoniously flipped her onto her stomach moments ago muffled the sound. “I take that as a yes,” he responded tightly as he planted his good knee into the small of Orelan’s slender spine, while his fingers promptly worked to undo the hooks down the back of her gown. He quickly assessed that cooperation on Orelan’s part appeared to be out of the question. He would have to improvise. Alexei was not taking his woman. His? Damn.

“Oh, you-you beast!” Orelan shrieked, as she tried to buck her backside upward and kick her calves at the same time. Only succeeding in helping him to remove her gown and camisole, down over said . . . oh hell . . . luscious ass!

“I never should have stolen those dispatches for you, Inglès! Oh!”

Wyndham felt the sweep of rage and terror combined, leaving him senseless for a terrible moment as his broad hand grasped the graceful column of Orelan’s tender throat, from where he’d twisted her harshly onto her back. Not quite realizing his own strength, he leaned his chest forward over her plump bare breasts, until his face was inches from where he held her. She clutched the column of his wrist as his fingers flexed over her throat, barely allowing her to breathe. “Never!” he hissed viciously. “Say that in Valcourt again!”

“But-but,” she panted, while her gold eyes glazed with emotion.

Damnation, she was going to fight him. Wyndham’s hand tightened more around Orelan’s throat, making her whimper, probably leaving bruises. Why did she have to be so damn passionate? So passionate that her emotion overlooked the dangers completely and became tied in justice and reason.

He had her naked. Except for her stockings, garters, and green velvet slippers. Completely stripped bare, down to the black-mahogany curls adorning the mysteries and the fertile pull of her sex. His nostrils flared with the knowledge. His muscles tensed, like a male scenting its mate. He could have wished... He dropped his head believing that he could have wished to court this woman in another time and place, a woman exactly like this, in some fanciful notion that never existed for him, but instead he...

“Damn,” he cursed roughly as his fingers collared Orelan’s throat and he did what was necessary to save them. Especially her. “You will obey me, spitfire!” he finished with a lethal hiss.

Chapter Three

Orelan understood that she had never experienced such an expanse of raw emotion before! Would Wyndham kill her? Would he rape her? Would he save her? She wanted to cry out in anguish, and as was always her means, she wanted to spit out words and bravado in defiance at Wyndham, to hide her complete terror.

Not of Wyndham though, she suddenly realized. Strangely, never fear of him, even though he held her as though he would strangle her in any moment of his choosing. But she was not afraid of him . . . of Alexei, of being captured at Valcourt, yes. But not of Wyndham, even though she understood what he meant to do to her. How he meant to take her. However, it was better to happen with her golden puma, Wyndham. He was a fierce predatory mountain lion. Golden and sleek with steely pronounced muscle, yet most important, he had caring for her. He would take her and he would mate her, but once he possessed her and even before, he would rage his power and strength against any odds to protect her from the darkly evil Alexei.

Yes, deep inside she knew all of these things. But still, the lighter tracings of her personality, the ones closer to the surface and more engaged in the moment, these fought with her fear and did not allow her claiming to be easy or complete. It was the foolish woman inside of her. It was the one that desired Wyndham so strongly. The one that had claimed Wyndham at first sight so many years before.

“You, barbaro Ingels, you will never have me!” she cried, twisting beneath Wyndham, fighting his dominance, engaging his mastery with all her feminine power.

He rumbled once, deep inside his chest. It was a growling answer to her challenge as his purply blue eyes arced sapphire fire, and his face planed along rugged masculine bone.

“You will beg to please me, spitfire,” he hissed sharply. “Beg me!”

Orelan fought Wyndham frantically as he pulled her upright. She tried to bite and scratch him as he easily . . . too easily shifted their positions and propelled her belly and hips face down over his sinewy thighs. Then, he caught her wrists together behind her back. She screeched and tried to buck off his thighs as he lifted one iron-muscled leg and caught the back of her struggling knees, holding her in place with her bottom bared and helpless to his view.

“What are you doing?” she cried in frustration and anxious confusion. She did not understand this . . . what he might do and she was completely unprepared for...

Slap! Slap! Slap!

Wyndham was spanking her! Orelan choked on her cry, and on the burn of humiliation that caught in her throat as Wyndham’s abusing hand came down across her naked bottom harder than before. Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!

“Dios!” she yelped, and she squirmed uselessly as tears burned her eyes and Wyndham slapped her struggling buttocks again. This was a spanking! But it was also a thrashing. It hurt so badly!

Wack! Wack!

“No-no!” she gasped with a careening sound. Oh dios, her bottom stung! If Wyndham continued to spank her much more... “Oh! Oh!”

Slap! Slap! Slap!

“N-ple-ease!” she sobbed.

Smack! Smack!

“S-stop! Stop-p!” she cried in garbled sobs, tensing for the next slap of fire across her burning buttocks!

“Oh, this is superb, Khrisinan,” Alexei’s voice sneered. “Simply superb.”

Wyndham tensed, cursing under his breath. He’d known that he had little time, however he’d thought that he could gain Orelan’s compliance before Alexei showed up. This was not good. However, he thought perhaps if he acted quickly, he could keep Alexei from bringing out a whip or some other equally deviant punishing instrument, now that the seed had been planted in Alexei’s lewd and fertile mind.

Wyndham let loose of Orelan’s wrists and grasped her upper arms, turning her and roughly pulling her upright, to face him. “Beg me for leniency. Grovel!” he hissed through his teeth so that only Orelan would hear, before he loudly snapped, “Wench! You will obey me!”

“Yes-yes!” Orelan cried, raising her arms across her naked breasts and pressing her lower body into his side, to shield her nakedness. “Anything, Wyndham. P-Please, do not punish me anymore!”

Wyndham drew his arm around the supple indentation of Orelan’s back, holding her trembling nakedness to him as tightly as he dared, while he turned his face to Alexei adopting a masculine sneer of triumph. “Satisfied?”

“Oh, my handsome-handsome Khrisinan,” Alexei purred, while Wyndham watched Alexei’s heated ice-blue colored eyes devouring the lines of his bared chest. It left him with a sick crawling feeling running up his spine, as Alexei gazed at him. “You think to save your woman from me, but will you be able to save yourself?” Alexei finished in a husky murmur.

Wyndham wanted to kill Alexei more savagely in that moment than any of the countless times he had wished the same thing before. Its presence strained his brawn to tautness as a fierce tremor curled inside him. His control was snapping as his mind relentlessly taunted him. How easy it would be. How easy. So easily, he could snap Alexei’s neck, by the mere surprise of an attempt, an attempt that Alexei would not be expecting. But it was that certainty, of how Alexei simply stood in front of him, unconcerned with his own safety, because Alexei knew he held the upper hand.

Wyndham knew if he were to kill Alexei at this moment, during any moment inside Valcourt, that neither he nor Orelan would make it out of the palace alive. He knew that Alexei had assassins hidden, and because of their history together, Alexei likely had two for this suite alone. Trained killers watching every move he was making behind hidden panels in the room. Guarding Alexei. Heightening Alexei’s sport, they were voyeur guards to whatever sadistic pleasure Alexei could come up with. It would be that way throughout Valcourt. It had been that way in San Lupe. He often wondered who might have watched him in Spain, because he also knew that Alexei had become rich by charging money to nobles to watch. He knew this because Alexei had told him, he told him on the night Alexei had . . .

“Wyndham?” Orelan whispered with fear edging her voice. The anguished sound snapped him from being a killer to survivor, in an instant. He stroked Orelan’s bare waist reassuringly, in a place that Alexei could not see as she clung to his side with her face turned into his cheek.

“I will be here for exactly one week, Alexei, and that is all the time you will have to try and exact your price!” he challenged angrily.

“Ah, Khrisinan, if only you would become willing. Our destiny together would be inspired. You yielded once . . .”

“Enough!” Wyndham snapped, furious, while his hold on Orelan became harsh with tension. Then, his cheeks flushed hotly, before he could contain it, in a visual display of his ragged emotions. “One week, Alexei!” he finished through his clenched teeth.

“Ah,” Alexei sighed dramatically, while his thin fingers stroked the top of the chair he stood beside, in a momentarily effeminate gesture. “If you insist, my oh-so big and virile Puskinta. Nonetheless, you understand my house rules. They cannot change. Everything has its price and if you please me . . .” Alexei shrugged his rangy shoulders, once more adopting his elegant military officer’s poise.

“How much?” Wyndham hissed.

“Mm, you know, Khrisinan . . .” Alexei hedged, coming partially around the chair to sit with his booted heels crossed negligently. “If you were to continue to punish, our lovely puta here, I am quite certain that my mood would improve. So much so, that our negotiations would assuredly turn more favorable.”

Wyndham barely held himself from leaping up and laying his bare hands to Alexei’s throat. Nonetheless, he was distracted from his fury at that exact moment by Orelan’s sudden struggles as she tried to get away from him. “Do you want to get us both killed instantly?” he hissed beneath his breath, as he tossed Orelan onto her back, onto the bed beside him.

“Make this a good showing!” Orelan hissed under her breath, right before she slapped his cheek, hard!

“Bravo, puta,” Alexei drawled behind them.

Orelan could not believe how quick and powerful her golden puma was with his purply sapphire eyes snapping retribution and other mysterious and heightened emotions. He had her captured to his will in moments! Thank dios, Wyndham managed to wrap most of her body in the bed linen, so only her naked bottom was exposed, as he forced her belly down over his thighs, while he sat bare-chested on the edge of the bed. Her head dangled and her long black hair pooled on the carpet below as she grasped Wyndham’s strong calf for precarious support, while she bucked her hips, trying to wrestle off his lap.

Alexei wanted a good show and she was going to give it to him, she thought frantically, because she knew it was going to hurt, and the embarrassment was already overwhelming. She cringed at the thought about what view Alexei must have of her. There were parts of her body so helplessly exposed in the position she was bent into. He could see her sex, from behind. Oh, dios. The embarrassment was a living breathing creature inside her, it was so acute. Then, as she struggled over the powerful muscles of Wyndham’s thighs, she became aware of another rigid muscle. Her Wyndham was engorged! He was enjoying what he was doing.

“Oh, you beast!” she squealed as she struggled with heightened anger, just before Wyndham’s first biting slap stung her defenseless bare bottom.

Whack!

Orelan sucked in a hot breath, choking on her squeal of pain. Wyndham’s hand was so broad across her tender buttocks. Wack! Wack! Wack!

“Ow! Dios!”

“Use my belt, Khrisinan,” Alexei purred.

“No-no!” she cried. “Please, Wyndham, no!” she begged, even as she felt him lean forward to obviously grasped Alexei’s belt. She tried to use one hand to cover the vulnerability of her bare buttocks. “No, please!” she pleaded.

“Damnation,” Wyndham cursed under his breath as he grasped both of Orelan’s wrists in one hand, pulling them easily to the side as he slapped the doubled over leather belt in his hand across her already rosette ass cheeks. Thwack!

“Ow!” Orelan screeched.

Wyndham watched Orelan’s plush butt redden with a welt. Damnation, he was furious!

“More,” Alexei demanded, with excitement coloring his voice.

Wyndham’s fingers tightened around the ends of the belt as Orelan begged him helplessly not to whip her again. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

“Ow! Ow! Dios!” she squealed with choking sobs as her rounded buttocks jerked spasmodically, and three more welts lined the lustful crease of her stunning ass.

“Enough!” he snarled as he threw the belt at Alexei, before he tossed a sobbing Orelan off his thighs onto the bed. “The price?” he demanded with a heaving chest as he stood, facing Alexei.

Alexei’s face was tinted with lust as he stood also, flexing the belt between his thin hands. “I begin to believe that you do intend for this faithless puta to pay, Khrisinan.” Alexei paused, and then he began to replace his belt slowly around his slender waist. “So for you, I will exact nothing that you would not already be willing to give me. But for her release, I demand six actions of my own choosing. Then we shall see.”

Wyndham felt his gaze simmering as he stepped forward, dangerously tense. “Six and you will be paid!” he snapped. “And no other men or women, but me,” he finished angrily.

“You drive the most difficult bargains, Khrisinan,” Alexei murmured, sauntering closer. Too close. “But-,” Alexei continued, raising one hand, while asserting a challenge through his light blue eyes, which were icy with arousal. “I shall accept,” Alexei finished, placing his palm, which trembled, onto Wyndham’s bare left biceps.

Wyndham furiously jerked away from the touch, and then he strode to the bed. “Leave then, I wish to fuck my woman!”

Alexei’s laughter was offensive. “I am sure our little puta will enjoy that.” Then, Alexei strode to the door, opening it. “Just be sure that she does not enjoy it too much, Khrisinan.”

Wyndham stood by the bed watching the door close, and he was certain he heard Alexei say, “I will be watching.” Or was it only his imagination?

Chapter Four

Orelan felt the mattress moving precariously beneath her with Wyndham’s weight as he got onto the bed. In which position he came, she did not know as she scrambled upward to escape, only to find her shoulders caught by his large insistent hands. This left them kneeling, with heaving chests, facing each other as she tried to get away, but he held her powerless. The bed linen, which was wrapped crazily over her breasts, began to slip toward her waist. She attempted to grab it.

“Leave it,” Wyndham growled, shaking her, until the bed linen fell to her knees. “What are you going to do to keep me from whipping you again?” he asked harshly.

Instinctively, Orelan snatched her hands over her sore buttocks with a protective gesture, which arched her bare breasts impudently forward toward Wyndham. She watched his smoldering black-sapphire eyes lower to gaze at her naked breasts, brazenly thrust outward, seemingly as an offering to him. Yet, she would not remove her hands from her trembling bottom, she thought raggedly, with tears stinging her eyes.

“What?” he demanded again harshly.

She whimpered a small sound as he shook her and she admitted some defeat, which made her shiver, while several hot tears scorched her cheeks. “Anything,” she hissed scornfully.

“Then, you will go into my clothing closet now and bend over, face down, across my boot stool, and wait for me,” he commanded in a rough tenor voice.

Orelan gasped, not quite understanding his intentions, but realizing the sickness of its sound. What did he intend to do to her? Would he whip her again? All her thoughts scattered as he shook her again, and he exclaimed roughly. “I will take you on your knees!”

What did he mean? Orelan hesitated, afraid and anxious. Wyndham reached for his belt, pulling it loose from his pants. “No!” she squealed, and then she scrambled off the bed to rush quickly into the large clothing closet as Wyndham had demanded.

The door slammed behind her and she thought about trying to block the door closed somehow. Only she understood that however long it took, eventually, she would have to come out once again and face Wyndham. She eyed the circular knee-high boot stool with its red velvet cushion on top. Perhaps, she ought to find a weapon? Something to hit Wyndham with when he came through the door.

Wyndham limped heavily to the bathing chamber, his jaw drawing tight at the constant toothache feeling in his knee. He’d already overwhelmed his leg’s endurance and he really needed his cane, but he ignored the need. He would pay with terrible cramps that night.

When he entered the ornate gold and pink-marbled bathing chamber, he went straight to his toiletry satchel and lifted the flap. What he sought was in a small amber jar with a corked lid. Taking this, he turned to leave, hoping he was correct on the assumption that no peepholes would be placed in the clothing closet. Let Alexei wonder what he was doing, he thought, with grim satisfaction.

Before he entered the clothing closet, he steeled himself, expecting anything and everything from his spitfire, Orelan. When he did not immediately get cracked in the head, he nearly grinned. He would never mar Orelan’s exquisite beauty again so hurtfully, unless he was forced to, however a belt struck across her ripe ass seemed to have inspired some obedience...

“What are you going to do to me, Wyndham?” Orelan gasped anxiously from his right.

When he swiveled to face her, he found her wearing one of his brown hunting jackets with her spine pressed against the wall of the closet. Her slightly slanted golden-amber eyes were wide with flecks of glittering emotion in their depths as he studied her long legs, bared to mid-thigh in his hunting jacket. The backs of her calves were shapely curved, her kneecaps were dainty, and her small bare feet were arched gracefully with painted red toenails. The sight of her scarlet toenails stopped him for a moment, with an immediate and insistent fertile heat curling in his belly, as he lifted his head slowly and crooked an arrogant finger at her. “Come here,” he commanded gruffly.

Orelan’s gaze flicked anxiously to the stool, and then back to him, and then down to the belt he still carried in the same hand as the small amber bottle. “You are so cruel. I hate you!” she whispered fiercely as she quickly came to stand before him with her head lowered.

“As much as Alexei?” he asked grimly.

Her head rose sharply, tossing her long mink-colored black hair backward like a liquid waterfall down her back. His fist tightened around the belt.

“I . . .” she searched his face, moistening her peach-tinted lips with the tip of her tongue. “I do not know,” she finished in a whisper.

His jaw clenched tight and he dropped the belt and jar onto the blue rug beneath their feet, just as he grabbed Orelan to him with both arms around her. His head descended aggressively as he imprisoned Orelan’s lips between the wedge made by his hand holding her head from behind and his lips working impatiently over her lips. Why did he always burn to kiss her? The surrendering impassioned sound that escaped from Orelan moments later enslaved him even more. She had stopped struggling and simply quickened beneath his taller frame, molding her rich and sinuous curves to his body. Bare breasts, naked belly, and exposed pelvis, until her hands crept over the tense muscles of his shoulders and her mouth yielded open against the wanton sweep of his tongue.

“Oh mm,” she moaned around his tongue’s thickness sweeping her mouth with long impelling strokes. He continued to stubbornly stroke the deep recesses of her lush mouth, with thick mating thrusts of his tongue, until his arms around the heated satin of her naked body were the only things holding her upright. He understood by her eager and sensual motions against him that she did not fully realize his free hand was cupping her pussy, which was hot and undulating in his hand. The lambs-wool curls covering the split peach of her sex clung and curled around his fingers as he drew his first finger lightly along the burning welling crease beneath.

“Dios,” she suddenly gasped, tearing her lips from his as she shoved his chest with a hard push, then lifted her hand swiftly to slap him.

But he caught her wrist before she could connect and he grabbed her other wrist, piling them together into one of his hands, which he stretched over her head. He pushed her against the wall behind them with a muffled thud and anchored her wrists high against the wall. She struggled up onto her tiptoes, spitting fire at him. “Barbaro! Bastrdo! Never-never!”

Wyndham gripped Orelan’s chin with his free hand and he took her spitting mouth beneath his lips once again. He forced her, and she tried not to kiss him, but he was relentless, until she whimpered deeply in surrender.

“You will scream for me, spitfire, but not in defiance,” he promised in a low tenor, licking her kiss-swollen lips in a pagan and possessive manner. She mewled, a heated whimpering, against his mouth and he released her chin again to search out her tender fleshed peach with his hand. She was burning and moist against his fingertips as he stroked in between the velvet tissue of her pouted labia lips.

“N-n!”

When Orelan tried to wrestle her hips away from him, it merely seated his finger directly over the puckered jewel of her clitoris. It was a flushed ruby, red-hot and pulsing. He began to polish it with his finger, around and around.

“Oh. Oh,” she moaned against his mouth, melting now back against the wall as he continued to stroke her dewy peach, concentrating with one finger over the ruby of her clitoris.

“God, you feel so good,” he gasped involuntarily as he slid another finger, not working over her beading clitoris, into the slippery hot entrance of her vagina. “Jesus,” he hissed, prodding higher.

“Wyndham!” Orelan careened, and he could feel her tight sheath dragging at his finger, as he pressed higher . . . higher. “Oh, dios-dios, amour!” she cried. Wyndham suddenly stilled his movements with an overwhelming surprise. A barrier? A maidenhead? “Oh dios, Wyndham! Do not stop, amour!” she cried, writhing over his hand and fingers, which had stilled.

Wyndham shook himself from his shock and wrenched away from Orelan, who crumpled to the floor with her back pressed to the wall. “How could you be a widow . . . How?” he demanded angrily.

But Orelan only moaned, cupping her sex and looking up at him with anguished passion in her golden eyes. Damnation, she’d been nearly at the brink, he thought raggedly, as he dropped down clumsily, because of his bad knee beside her.

“Wyndham, what do you do to me?” she whimpered with an anguished and confused voice.

“I make love to you,” he growled, roughly stripping the jacket down to her elbows at the same time turning her body to press her down onto the floor. He spread kisses over her heaving breasts, and then he moved down her delicate rib cage, to linger over her belly button.

“Wyndham,” Orelan moaned, rising against him with her hands clutching in his hair.

He moved lower drawing his tongue along her pelvic bone, tasting salt and light perspiration, feeling the warmth and creaminess. “Open your legs for me,” he commanded. It was awkward with his bad knee, but he managed with his leg braced straight behind him as Orelan’s thighs spread open to his command. Then he licked the musk and heat of her tender rosy flesh that was moist peach nectar on his tongue.

“Oh dios, Wyndham!” Orelan cried, as her legs splayed passionately wider and he lifted her quaking thighs up over his broad shoulders, while she clutched his hair. “More, my puma!” she pleaded, breathless. She was all heat and all woman, she was abandon, wild, and invincible with incredibly passionate responses as he rapidly tongued her dripping peach. His lips closed tight around the moist and swollen ruby of her protruding clit, making her screamed ardently. Then he rolled the hot throbbing bud around by the tightened edge of his lips.

“Ah-ah. Dios! W-Wyndham.”

He held her gyrating hips down against the floor with his strength, so he could keep his mouth seated over the scorching inner recesses of her yielding pussy, while her legs arched over his back in complete surrender. It was then that he suckled her clit, up over the flatness of his tongue.

“Wyndham! Wyndham! Wyndham! Madre dios.”

Orelan’s thighs quaked over his shoulders, while her buttocks flexed tensely in his large hands and he felt her clitoris throb against his tongue. She squealed and rippled beneath him like passionate-hot-addicting-love. Her climax was possessive as his mind peeled a litany of ownership.

She was his . . . his . . . his.

Chapter Five

Christ, he was turgid. He was so stiffly engorged it was painful, and he shook his head of yellow-gold hair, trying to regain control of his impassioned senses. Orelan had experienced the little faint, but she was waking now and stretching sinuously beneath his muscular frame.

“Don’t move,” he ordered, growling through his clenched teeth.

“Wyndham, what is it?” she exclaimed softly, while damn her, she rocked her hips, bringing her soft hands up to his tense jaw, expressively concerned, while succeeding only in plying her young and firmly pillowed bare breasts against his naked chest. Christ, she was quicksilver, changing her moods in an instant and her bare flesh moving against his body, raped his senses. Her tumid nipples ravaged sensations across the expanded muscles of his chest, while her small soft hands tried to sooth his tense jaw.

“A man cannot do what I just did without consequences, spitfire,” he answered through his clenched teeth. If only he could force his injured leg to unlock, he would rise off her magnetizing nakedness.

“Oh, si,” Orelan breathed softly, with awareness building in her sun-gold eyes. “You are so hard. Yes? Just as when you spanked my bottom.”

“I was not aroused then, woman,” he denied harshly, in a strained and rumbling voice. “And if I could manage to move my leg, I would be off you.”

“Oh, my Wyndham, is your leg this bad?” she asked, squirming beneath him, while groping her hand downward, until . . . !

Wyndham hissed a tight inhale of breath as all his muscles locked, including the throbbing and rigid dick between his thighs, vicariously dribbling small increments of his seed. “That is not my leg, Orelan,” he finished hoarsely.

“Oh, my Wyndham, of course I knew this,” Orelan hummed softly with treacherous innocence. “I may be the virgin, my puma, but I know of a man’s...” Then, she whispered hotly into his ear, “Pene,” while she fondled him through the fabric of his pants as though testing his size and length.

“You are playing with fire, senorita,” he hissed through his gritted teeth even as he rocked his hips, spawning Orelan to clasp the outline of his cock tighter. “Stroke it,” he finished in a growling of denial and need combined.

He was insane and he knew it. Orelan was a virgin, yet hardly innocent, as she played the tormenting and sultry siren beneath him. Then his throbbing prick was loose from his pants and gripped into her soft urgent hand.

“Hold it tighter, spitfire,” he whispered tightly, finding her bobbing breast with his mouth. “Stroke it faster,” he finished on a rasp as his lips closed around her turgid nipple.

“Oh si, Wyndham,” Orelan puffed breathlessly as she felt Wyndham’s incredible masculine power sliding in the tight grip of her hand. His thick organ was an unbendable rod of male flesh. Sleek and hot skin surrounded the thickening mass sliding over her palm as she stroked from the smooth satin head down to the base, where the bottom siding of her hand grazed against his warm male sacs.

“Cup my balls, spitfire,” Wyndham uttered huskily, around the spiked protuberance of her nipple that he nipped so thrillingly with his teeth. Each love bite to the tender erection hit a nerve inside her that made her hips grind upward as her hand stroked his shaft more tightly. She was feverish again, only this time her inner core ached deeply with each solid and lengthily stroking of her hand over Wyndham’s thrusting male organ. A ram of masculine muscle, flesh, and bone. She caressed his swollen male sacs and milked his shaft harder as her thighs separated beneath her dark earthy yearnings.

“Dios, Wyndham,” she cried passionately beneath the onslaught.

“Orelan,” he hissed with a clipped groan as he held himself ridged on his forearms above her undulating body. His head was hung down and his face was buried between her jiggling breasts. She brought the head of his pene right into the lips of her sex as she stroked the length of the thick column faster. She did not know what she was doing, yet the tip of the head felt so hot and exciting, playing over the place Wyndham had lick the throbbing rapture from her with his naughty tongue.

“Oh dios, yes!” She rubbed the fiery head deeper into the lips of her sex as instinct lifted her knees upward.

“Yes,” Wyndham hissed, roughly plucking her nipple with the edges of his nipping teeth. The action sent a shock of raw pleasure into her sex as her head arched sharply backward and then... Then she screamed!

“Damnation,” Wyndham swore gutturally. His raging prick was buried to the hilt inside Orelan’s crimped and convulsing vagina. “Christ!” he uttered again explosively, trying beyond human measures to remain rooted in place and impossibly still, because Orelan was weeping and clutching him frantically. His muscles bulged and quivered as he willed his nearly passion-blank mind back from the brink. Willing it to give up control with each hard shaking breath that he took.

“It hurts. Hurts,” Orelan cried, writhing her hips beneath him.

“Hold still, baby. Please, hold still,” Wyndham whispered, urgently cupping Orelan’s face with one hand, while he held his hips solid against her movements. He heaved another hard and aching breath. “Baby, please look at me. Look at me, Orelan,” he urged raggedly. Orelan’s beautiful face was ravaged with tears and confusion as her golden gaze tripped fearfully over his, while her fingernails dug painful gouges into the muscles of his back “I will not move,” he vowed stoutly.

“Oh-h,” she gasped a panting breath that turned into a hiccup-sob.

“Baby,” he whispered rubbing his forehead against her feverish temple. “Try to breathe, sweetheart, just a few slow breaths.” She managed, and her fingernails retreated from their painful digging. “It will be all right,” he murmured against her cheek. “I promise you.”

“Si, Wyndham,” she breathed, finally hugging her arms partway around his back. Her knees, which were bent upward on either side of his hips, lost their tragic tenseness and folded inward to rest on his hips.

He plucked her lips once, tenderly and softly, with his. “Does it still hurt so badly?” He did not allow her to answer as he dipped his head again, plucking her lips and sliding the flat tip of his tongue lazily over her bottom lip.

“Oh mmm,” she purred as she followed his lips with her pouted mouth.

“Can you feel me pulsating inside you?” he asked in a murmur around her lips.

“Oh si,” she sighed and her inner muscles crimped, and then released around his cock.

“A-God,” he groaned. “You little vixen.” He hung his head and he felt sweat drip down his jaw. “I cannot move, Orelan . . . my leg. I am going to perish.”

Orelan laughed, and he groaned at the sensation along his cock. Christ, her inner muscles were strong, they were stubborn like she was. “But, my golden puma, I do not hurt for a little while now. But this, I have not said, because I love to kiss you.”

“Will you get on top of me, Orelan?” he asked in a whisper against her ear.

“On top?” she questioned, darting the tip of her tongue forward to catch a drop of sweat on his square chin.

“It is the only way we can finish this before I expire, spitfire,” he growled. Then, he rolled their bodies, ignoring the sharp pain in his leg. Orelan squealed at the surprise move, and then she was straddling him as he lay on his back. He grasped the feminine flesh of her hips as she braced her hands upon his chest. She appeared bewildered, yet then slowly calculating in a purely feminine way. He could see her mind working in her gaze as she tested the feel of this new position, and then she realized what power in their joining she might have astride. She was vibrant and alive and beautiful beyond compare. Yet, he would not allow her everything.

He was the man. Her man. But ultimately the conqueror. He rose to a sitting position holding Orelan’s satiny bare back. His bad leg was straight and his good one was bent with her settled in the cradle of his hips.

“Yum, Wyndham,” she purred at the movement, which caused his dick to jab deeply inside her heat and fire, making him grit his teeth. “This feels very good, my golden puma.”

She rubbed the hard and jutting spokes of her aroused nipples across his chest as he grasped the back of her head and pulled downward to kiss her. At that moment with one arm braced behind him, he humped his hips upward, lifting her to fall as he pumped again. “Oh, Wyndham,” she gasped. It was not a cry of pain this time. She was with him all the way, gazing at him intently, as he lifted and dropped their bodies, teaching her the rhythms.

“Oh, my Wyndham!” she cried passionately, tossing her head backward, arching her neck as he impaled her again. The heaviness of her supple breasts undulated with each strong thrust he took, bouncing her turgid pink nipples, as he ogled them with spellbinding lust. She arched her spine further, until his hands around her curving waist were the only things anchoring her. A nimble pagan offering, arched beneath his gaze, as her long sable hair pooled around his calves and he fucked her hard again. She screamed ardently, riding his pumping cock like a wild thing as she braced her hands on his ankles and humped her hips aggressively into his pounding rhythm.

“Christ,” he groaned through his teeth, trying to hold onto his unbridled woman, since she was now fucking him like a wanton courtesan. Sweat plaster his scalp, dripping into his eyes, as he lowered his gaze to see the root of his cock disappearing in and out of Orelan’s writhing pussy.

“Oh, Wyndham!” she screamed in torment and ecstasy combined. It was the call of an impassioned lover so close to their release, but unable to capture it.

“Come to me,” he commanded harshly, forcefully lifting her from her spine-bending arching toward him.

“Wyndham, Wyndham,” she mewled, clutching his shoulders as he lowered his back further down the wall behind him, until she was laying on his chest. The position rested her clitoris with splayed labia lips over the very root hold of his cock.

“Now fuck me, little spitfire. Fuck me hard,” he ordered in a ragged base voice.

Orelan moved on Wyndham as he commanded with her senses screaming for the same release he had given her earlier with his hot mouth. She was mindless, except for the desire nipping its talons at her so fiercely, as she rode her golden puma like a beastly stallion coupling heavily with its mare. Up and down his tall sweat-slicked body she rode, nipping at his chest, his nipples, and his strong neck, spearing herself on his engorged shaft over and over. The motion rubbed her desperate sex in such a way that she went faster, shuddering and panting in pleasure. Wyndham grasped her wriggling buttocks with his large hands, pushing and pulling her more rapidly over his thrusting shaft, as she screamed, scratching his shoulders. Her entire body quaked, yet the burning fire in her sex was riding the thick base of Wyndham’s pene with each pull and draw. “Oh, Dios! Dios,” she wailed.

“Come to me, baby,” Wyndham hissed fiercely. “Come to me!”

Orelan felt it then, the bursting of ecstasy that ravished her senses, making her scream shrilly. “Wyndham!” She could not control her legs or her body as exquisite tremors rippled through her sex. Each hard thrusting of Wyndham inside her, exploded the sensations a hundredfold. She heard Wyndham bellow a deep guttural sound that only a man could make, as she felt hot fluid rush deep into her womb. The wide fullness of Wyndham’s stout shaft throbbed inside her and she could not catch her breath as her mind went blank.

“Christ,” Wyndham hissed, holding Orelan to his chest. She had fainted and he was still riding out the throes of his tremendous ejaculation. It was staggering, and he’d never experienced anything closely resembling it with a woman before. When it finally eased, he was panting through his clenched teeth. The pleasure had gone on for more minutes than his passion-raped senses could count, and the one thought he had during it all . . . was that now Orelan was his . . . and he would never allow her to be quit of him again. It was damn possessive, and he knew it.

In fact his ruthless male ego reveled in it. He understood that he could not afford the savage base feelings of possession right then. It would severely interfere with his efforts to get both of them out of Valcourt alive. Yet he was helpless against it, for one lone moment, as he held Orelan tightly in his embrace. Just this moment, he told himself viciously. Just this one moment and he would let it go until...

“You are a beast, my Wyndham,” Orelan muttered huskily against his chest. Then he felt her lips pouting a kiss to the muscular center.

One more moment, he wanted to shout, yet he knew that he did not have even the grace of that. But one day, he promised himself, as he turned his body, taking Orelan to his side as he leaned over her. Her irises were sated and sultry in golden honey coloring. Feline eyes, he told himself. After their intimacy together, he severely dreaded what he had to do next. He had just taken her virginity and that was just too precious to be trampled upon, yet he had no choice.

“And you are a slut, Orelan,” he uttered. “My slut now.”

“No!” she instantly hissed with a flash of anger in her yellow-almond shaded eyes. Yet then, she crumpled with a helpless gaze. It seemed that she understood the crazy game they were being forced to play. “Wyndham, I cannot. I am too foolish,” she whispered, turning her face to the side. “I do loco things, when I am so afraid. I cannot help myself...”

“You will now,” he interrupted her roughly. “You will do everything that I command you to do. Or I will take a whip to your naked ass, instead of a leisurely belt, and I will not stop this time.”

“No! Dios,” she cried, trying to turn her body away from him. But he did not allow it, holding her shivering nakedness tight against his body.

“Are you afraid to be whipped, Orelan?” he ruthlessly asked.

“Yes, you beast!” she cried.

“And you know that I will do it?” he asked relentlessly.

“Yes,” she hissed with frustrated and frightened tears in her eyes.

“Then, show me how obedient you will become with the threat of a whip to your tender flesh,” Wyndham said mercilessly. “Go now and supplicate yourself over the stool.”

Orelan sucked in an emotional breath, trying furiously to fight her frightened and heaving emotions. A part of her believed that Wyndham would never truly hurt her. Yet, she needed to believe that he would do just that, so she could fight her unruly emotions. Emotions that would get her into such trouble beneath Alexei’s power. She thought it was possibly a good thing that she was so irrational at the moment or she would never have been able to do as her golden puma commanded.

Yet, the fear inside her was sweeping as she rose with Wyndham’s intense purple eyes watching her. Then she lowered her nakedness over the stool in an exposed defenseless position. The tears that would not come before pooled beneath her clenched eyelids as she supplicated herself to Wyndham’s greater power. What would he do to her, her mind cried as she listened to him rising behind her? Her body trembled terribly as she heard him draw nearer to her. Yet it was working, as much as she wanted to turn and spit fire at him, she could not dare herself to.

“Will you need the whip, Orelan?” he asked harshly behind her.

“No, I...” she choked, looking over her shoulder at him.

“Then, say it,” he commanded roughly.

“I am your slut! I will obey you,” she cried, and then she nearly screamed, when she unexpectedly felt one of Wyndham’s hands touch the flesh of her shuddering buttocks. But it was cream! He was putting a cooling salve on her shaking bottom. Not punishing her more fully into his power. Then she did cry. Hot silent tears of shame, and then determination. She would not let her golden puma down, and she would not allow him to be killed or harmed because of her foolish prides. And this she would do, not because she was frightened, but because she loved him and because of this love for him, she would willingly give herself over to Wyndham’s power.

Chapter Six

The gown had arrived an hour earlier with a command from Alexei that Orelan should wear it that evening. Wyndham finished the task of wrapping his knee with a supporting bandage. From the glimpse he’d gotten of the gown, he knew it was scandalous attire. Still, when he looked up to see Orelan standing in the entrance to the bathing chamber, he had to use an incredible amount of willpower to keep his features impassive. Debase, intoxicating, and carnal were the words that sprang to his mind.

The gown, if one could call it that, was composed of lavender lace widely embroidered, and so loosely that each movement of the shapely body beneath showed glimpses of peach-tinted flesh. Flashing glimpses of the under curve of one breast, the top of one pink nipple, or the dark shadow of an inner thigh, and there he stopped looking, instead glancing down at the bandage on his knee. Orelan was naked beneath the sheath of lace, he knew she had to be, and that was the point of Alexei sending the gown. He also knew that if Orelan were to turn about, it would be as though viewing her tantalizingly naked buttocks, while seen through a sheer embroidered silk screen. He dared not look closely enough to see if she had managed to cover her mons. A place he coveted as his alone.

Yet what disturbed him more than the scanty attire barely draping Orelan’s lovely body was the thick jeweled choker around her slender neck. It was nothing less than a perverted collar with a long hanging jeweled leash. The end of which, Orelan had wrapped around her delicate wrist. This collaring and leash were what disturbed her most, making her appear anxious and flushed.

Steeling himself, Wyndham raised his gaze taking in Orelan’s rouged lips, the exotic line of kohl over her eyes, and the luxuriousness of her thick hair piled in a tumble on top of her head. Exquisite. Femininity at its fullest and choicest. He lifted his hand to her, steadily, dropping his gaze to the end of her jeweled leash. She understood of course and chose for the moment obedience. He only prayed that it lasted, beneath his coarse threats to whip her. How perverted was that, and how unexpectedly heady was her submission to him? He could not answer his conflicting emotions . . . not now.

So instead, he took the end of the gilded leash that she offered him as he straightened his injured leg so that his trouser leg slid down over the bandage concealing its tenuous support. His evening shoe settled on the marbled floor as he wound the leash around his wrist drawing Orelan closer to him.

Her gaze was stark and filled with a kaleidoscope of emotion, as she whispered anxiously, “What will happen to us, Wyndham?”

He pursed his lips grimly. They would not arrive at the end of this unscathed. It was a deadly game of cat and mouse that he played for Orelan’s life, and ultimately his own. Unfortunately, Alexei was a master of such perversions. “Nothing we cannot survive,” he answered, praying it was true, yet knowing there could be worse things than death. He had nearly been there once and it frightened him now, how close he was again.

It was Sodom and Gomorrah, Orelan thought. An orgy of flesh and opulence everywhere she gazed. This was what she had been terrified at seeing each evening that she’d hidden in her chambers, since Alexei had kidnapped her. She had wondered then, why he’d not forced her to come to his regular evening parties.

She still did not know, and she also keenly felt that she was missing something. Something more than just Alexei’s need for vengeance upon her. Something still which she and Wyndham did not understand. But perhaps Wyndham did, she thought glancing up at his chiseled and masculine features. Then, she shivered, frightened even more than before.

Wyndham was too manly. So handsome and much too compelling with his collar length blond hair streaked with yellow highlights and his vivid purple-sapphire eyes. His jawline was square-boned and his build was powerful. All of the barely dressed and undressed women in the rooms that she and Wyndham passed through gazed at her Wyndham avidly. But so did Alexei and that was perhaps disturbing her the most.

Hastily, Orelan turned her shocked gaze from one man ardently kissing another man to collide with the view of a naked man coupling a naked woman from behind, while the woman took another man’s pene into her mouth. The naked threesome was on top of a raised dais in the center of the last room that she and Wyndham had just entered. These three people were on display, she finally realized. They were performing, and it seemed the crowd surrounding them was giving them instructions on what to do next.

“Dios,” she whispered, not consciously realizing that she’d stopped to gape.

But then, there was a strong masculine arm angled across her back and a sturdy shoulder to lay her cheek upon. Wyndham’s heat and strength enveloped her as he lifted her chin with his knuckles, until she gazed upward into his eyes. They did nothing more than gaze at each other, yet Wyndham’s nearly black irises spoke to her. Calming her. This was not for her innocent eyes, yet she must endure.

“Fuck her in the ass!” the crowd shouted behind them and Orelan flinched, clutching the lapel of Wyndham’s black evening jacket. She would not panic, Orelan told herself fearfully. Yet what would happen to her now, her mind cried as Wyndham’s arm tightened around her.

“Ah! Lord Hawkenge, and his, pretty Latin whore,” Alexei exclaimed from somewhere behind them and the sound of his voice, those words, made Orelan whimper in anxiousness. She could not do this, she thought angrily. But just then, Wyndham grasped her chin, forcefully lifting her skittering gaze to his. The force of his will as seen through his blackening sapphire eyes was uncompromising.

“If you believe, Orelan, that I will not force you to my will in this public place,” he uttered, “You are mistaken.” Wyndham brought her up onto her toes roughly, by his hands now clasping her bare shoulders. “What would you do to stay alive?” he hissed lowly. “Would you fuck me? Here in public, if it meant a sharp knife would not slit your graceful neck?” Agonized, Orelan tried to turn her face from Wyndham’s sneer, yet he would not allow it. He shook her. “Answer me,” he uttered with barely controlled intensity.

“Yes!” she cried, glaring at him. “I would fuck you as the lowliest puta to stay alive,” she whispered fiercely with hot tears gathering in her eyes. Then suddenly, Wyndham used his hands on her shoulders to turn her away from him, yet at the same moment he tugged her spine back against his chest. His right arm crossed over her with his palm settling across her upper left breast. The heat of his calloused palm made her gasp as he fondled her indecently, and her gaze darted upward to collide with Alexei.

Alexei had nearly reached them as he moved through the crowd. Yet Wyndham with his voice growling into her ear, while he continued to palm her breast, said, “You will obey my every command, or pay my price.”

Orelan realized at that moment she was more afraid of her Wyndham than any threat to her life. Yet, crazily she trusted him . . . even as she fought him. Why did she have to be so foolish, she wondered, as she watched Alexei’s icy blue eyes roaming over the near nakedness of her body in the gown she was forced to wear? It was shameful and so embarrassing, yet she could not stop watching Alexei as his gaze settled on the v between her thighs.

“The gown is even more decadent than I imagined,” Alexei jeered as he reached them. Wyndham watched Alexei over the top of Orelan’s head as Alexei snapped his fingers at a passing bare-chested waiter. “Champagne,” Alexei ordered.

When three fluted glasses of champagne appeared, Wyndham did not release his lewd fondling of Orelan’s nimble breast. Nor, did he drink the champagne beneath Alexei’s irritated sneer. He declined the champagne, yet he bade Orelan to take a glass. The effects could loosen her to whatever was about to transpire, he thought, watching Alexei’s every cocksure and aristocratically graceful movement.

“The gaiety of my party. To have you, my favorite gentleman, Wyndham, here once again with me,” Alexei said, tipping his glass in a salute. “Inspires me, Khrisinan.”

“To what?” Wyndham asked, slowly raising his hand from Orelan’s breast to the column of her throat, which he clasped lightly over the jeweled collar she wore.

“To a game, my lovelies,” Alexei replied, slyly. “A game of chance, Khrisinan. Will you play with me?”

Wyndham gritted his teeth, holding snugly to Orelan’s throat to keep her in place as he felt her pulse beating wildly against his fingertips. It had begun, he thought, as he uttered, “If the price is right.”

Alexei laughed, too sharply. He was inebriated and excited, a dangerous combination. “Of course, Khrisinan, I would never cheat you. Shall we say one marker is earned, of the six you owe me, if you play with me? And the game we shall play is cards. Monte. I know it is one of your favorites.”

Alexei twirled the champagne in his glass arrogantly as Wyndham stared at him. “And the currency?” he asked tersely

“Ha!” Alexei exclaimed. “We will start out slowly this evening, Khrisinan. The seduction is everything. We will play for voyeurism. I wish to see what you covet. Tits, cunt, an ass. But you will not wish to show me your puta’s charms . . . or show them to all of these people.” Alexei’s hand swept the room around him. “They will be as excited to watch as I will, Khrisinan.”

“And you,” Wyndham growled.

“The same for my chosen lover of this evening, of course.” Alexei pursed his lips with his light blue eyes languid in a serpentine way. “But of course, I will not mind as much as you, to show my lover’s nudity.”

Wyndham felt Orelan turned her head slowly to rest her temple on his chin. “Make it two markers, my puma, if I am to do this,” she whispered fiercely for his ears only.

Wyndham nearly grinned at her audacity, but the tension was too high and the cost too much. Orelan thought herself the prisoner, yet at this moment he knew that he was imprisoned as much as she was. It was not within his soul to allow his woman to be displayed nude for all to see. Yet, that was impractical . . . emotional, and he tossed it aside. He had learned very well at Drummond and Ravenscar’s side how to be ruthless or at least how to maintain the disguise of it. And since Orelan’s plans were his own, he responded tightly. “Two markers, Alexei, or I will take my woman back to my suite and fuck her privately.”

Alexei’s laughter barked as though he could not contain it. “So crude for my noble gentleman, Khrisinan. You make me jealous when you speak the fuck word so masculinely. Alas though, this I cannot allow.” Alexei paused with his hand resting on the hilt of the ceremonial sword he wore belted to his left side. Wyndham had already noticed Alexei’s guards gathering. Two approaching from the left and three from the right.

“But!” Alexei exclaimed, snapping the tension between them. “I will accept this outrageous price for you, Khrisinan. Because, I am so pleased to have you with me once again.” Alexei paused, and then he dramatically drew his sword, to flourish once at his side, before he pointed the tip to the floor. “That is of course why I set your markers so high to begin with, Lord Hawkenge. I realized to say no to you is so hard for me.”

Orelan felt the flinching tremor in Wyndham’s arm across her breasts as his fingers tightened around her throat. She was shocked to realize something that had completely eluded her before. Alexei desired Wyndham. Yet, she knew Alexei had women lovers . . . many of them. He had even said that he would bed her, willing or not, once the Arab was finished with her. But this? Of course she knew men might desire other men. But both? Women and men? This was shocking. A sexual discovery that she had never realized. And for such a man as Wyndham it must be disturbing, disgusting . . . frightening? She did not know, and she could not imagine, but the tension in Wyndham’s muscular body spoke to her. Was this the eventual price for her freedom? No, oh no!

“Calm down,” Wyndham hissed into her ear as they approached the table, where both men would play their terrible games. Before she could think clearly, Wyndham sat pulling her downward to sit upon his lap. The leash to her collar, he tossed negligently onto the table, as though he did not need it to hold her captive to his power.

Alexei, dressed in a white military uniform with glittering medals on the shoulder, sat across the round table from them. Wyndham tapped his long fingers on the red velvet tabletop with his gaze never leaving Alexei. Orelan tried not to notice the crowd of revelers gathering around the table. She wanted very badly to lean into Wyndham, to smell the warm scent of him and to feel his strength around her, yet she forced herself to sit straight. Two markers, she fiercely made herself think. Two markers, if I do this. Oh, but she prayed her Wyndham would not lose too much, for she was trying too hard to be brave.

“Angelo!” Alexei snapped suddenly, and Orelan watched a tall darkly handsome European man walk to Alexei’s side. Angelo’s eyelashes were long and dark, his eyes brown, his skin a rich olive, and his build was slender. He wore evening clothes, a black jacket, pants, and a crisp linen shirt. His cravat was starched and folded into an intricate design. Orelan watched in surprise as Alexei took Angelo’s hand, lifting it upward to kiss his knuckles. Was this . . .

“My current lover,” Alexei sneered.

Wyndham’s body tensed beneath her body as his fingers drew into a fist on top of the tabletop. He was as surprised as she was then.

“I enjoy women as much,” Alexei drawled. “And Lilith or Rosalyn, my current female companions are about here somewhere tonight. But I thought, Lord Hawkenge, that this might be much more interesting for both of us.”

Orelan turned her gaze away, looking up at the side of Wyndham’s face. His strong features were etched in masculine starkness, his eyes vivid purple against the golden hue of his skin as he nodded his head slightly. Agreement. The game would begin, yet Wyndham had seen, as she had seen, that Angelo was as much an unwilling captive as she was to the games these powerful men would play with their lives. Angelo was young. Too young. Perhaps twenty and his haunted dark eyes spoke of reluctance and acute embarrassment. Orelan wondered what hold Alexei had over the young man that he could be forced to do this thing or perhaps more. Be forced to be Alexei’s lover.

“Monte,” Alexei drawled. “I know how much you enjoy the game, Lord Hawkenge,” Alexei sneered. Then, Alexei raised his voice purposefully for the gathering crowd around them. “And the bets shall be lovely body parts. Tits, ass . . . a cock . . . perhaps,” He laughed, looking at Orelan now. “Or a cunt?”

The crowd around them murmured with excitement and Orelan gripped her hands together in her lap, gazing at Alexei with all the defiance she could muster, as her heartbeat fluttered wildly. This madness would happen and there was nothing she could do to stop it, and her worse fear was that she understood this was only the beginning.

Chapter Seven

Orelan did not understand the game of cards they played, but she knew when Wyndham lost the first round, by the sudden flexing of tension in his muscular body. “I will not lose another,” he hissed beneath his breath, and she wondered crazily if her Wyndham meant that he purposely lost the hand so that...

“Her breasts!” Alexei sneered. “And we shall wager on the exact color of her nipples!” he shouted to the crowd of people gathered around them. “I will wager one hundred rubles that they are light pink and wickedly erect.”

The crowd roared in laughter and the Arab, who Alexei had nearly sold her to, shouted. “Five hundred rubles that they are red and fat like cherries!”

Orelan did not know where to look, every inch of her skin was flinching with the demand to flee, and then Wyndham’s hand was beneath her chin. Frantically, she grasped his wrist trying to halt its motion, and yet he only cupped her chin, lifting her gaze to his as her hands fell away. His irises were so dark purple they were nearly black as she searched them anxiously with her gaze. She could see determination and strength in his gaze, strength so powerful she clung to it. Then, she saw the barest hint of regret and it was her savior, because it calmed her as nothing else could have. She felt Wyndham’s hands moving to her bodice and she clung to his gaze as even the rancorous bidding faded from her hearing.

Wyndham’s hands were hot on the iciness of her bare shoulders as they slid downward, pulling the gown with them. So slowly the fragile material moved, inching its way lower to the cusps of her nipples . . . hanging on the turgid pinnacles, and then falling loosely to her waist. Cool air flashed across her shivering flesh and goose bumps rose, light and pink, in the circle of her areolas. Her lips parted, yet no sound came forth, then suddenly Wyndham’s wide hand was clasping her throat. The torridness of his palm and fingers searing the flinching column of her throat. He used this leverage to turn her on his lap, until her spine was compressed to his chest. The angle of supplication thrust her naked and quelling breasts further outward. Her fingers clenched in the silk of her skirts as the rushing sound of the crowd around them came back into her hearing. Particularly, Alexei’s shout, “I have won! They are pink and wickedly aroused!”

Acute humiliation and embarrassment flushed her body to a fevered pitch as she turned her temple to press along Wyndham’s hard jaw with her eyes closed against the men and women gazing at her exposed nudity.

“You are more beautiful than any other woman I have ever seen,” Wyndham whispered fiercely into her ear. “These men drool over the youth and perfection of your breasts. These women drip with envy. You should be proud, spitfire. As proud and as bold, as I know you can be. Come drink champagne with me, little love, and flaunt your beauty. Flaunt it in Alexei’s face, and let him know how brave and unconcerned you are.”

Wyndham held his breath as he realized fighting in the war and maiming his leg had been easier than allowing Alexei Tropov to gaze at his woman’s naked breasts. Yet, he would be damned if he let this vanquish them, because he knew that worse was yet to come, and together he and Orelan would be stronger than this or anything else that Alexei would do to them. If only Orelan would...

Suddenly, her body moved, rising from his hand clasped to her throat as she stiffened her spine straight, while sitting in his lap. Grasping his hands firmly, she lifted his palms down over her breasts, making a cup of both of their hands as she laughed, and then she exclaimed, “My golden Lord Hawkenge loves my breasts and he promises me champagne to drink and rubies to adorn them!”

The crowd happily, although drunk, cheered their approval to her claims. They lewdly roared their acclaim when she removed his hands completely from the pale shivering globes, letting his hands drop to her waist. Then, she reached with a flourish for a fluted glass of champagne, arching her back to brazenly display her naked breasts to the crowd as she toasted them. Alexei gazed at her with sly amusement in his cobalt irises and Wyndham saw her winking at Alexei imprudently. Yet, even as she did this, she hissed beneath her breath. “My golden puma, you had better not lose to him again or you will feel your spitfire’s claws down your back.”

The tension was edgy, yet Wyndham could not help the clipped laugh that escaped him as he reached forward and knocked the table indicating the deal for the next round would begin. When he reached forward, he caught Orelan’s waist with his forearm, steadying her on his lap, as he murmured, “Be careful what you threaten, my beautiful Orelan. I already have your marks on my back, and I look forward to more.”

“You are so arrogant,” she hissed, taking another sip of champagne, then smiling to the crowd.

As uncomfortable as Wyndham was with Orelan being forced to sit bare-breasted on his lap beneath Alexei’s imprudent gaze, he was equally, or more, disturbed by the steady disrobing of Angelo. Just as Alexei knew he would be. The fact that Angelo was clearly an embarrassed and unwilling partner in the game he and Alexei played. This disturbed him profoundly. Yet, he let none of this show behind his clenched jaw and hooded eyelids. The effect of masking his emotions from Alexei was satisfying, because Alexei was not receiving the reaction from him that he desired and ultimately played the entire game for. Yet, Angelo suffered. Angelo was completely denuded now with his limp dick exposed and only his calf-high stockings left to forfeit, while Alexei groped his tight youthful ass for the hedonistic pleasure of the crowd.

Orelan, still perched gracefully on his lap, was becoming more tense and edgy with each increasing momentum of Angelo’s humiliation. When she reached for her fourth glass of champagne, he stopped her hand with his hand, instead bringing her knuckles to his lips. It was time to finish the distasteful game they played and ultimately he could not allow Angelo’s future fate to disturb him.

“Last hand,” he uttered, as he forcefully willed his hand not to reach downward to rub his cramping leg. It was time to pay for the continued ill use of his injured limb today. He would not be walking gracefully away from the table this evening. Alexei would finally realize his weakness, and one could only guess as to how Alexei would exploit it. He silently cursed his damnable masculine pride for not bringing his cane along this evening, because he realized suddenly, that the only way he could manage to leave the ballroom at all now, was with Orelan’s help.

As the last cards were dealt, Wyndham watched disgustedly as Alexei moved his hand from fondling Angelo’s tanned buttocks to lewdly grabbing the young man’s flaccid cock. The entire time, Alexei’s icy blue irises never left Wyndham’s. Even as Alexei began to stroke Angelo’s limp member, while Angelo, appearing shamefully humiliated, dropped his head. Wyndham wanted to shout at Angelo not to play the submissive enslaved captive. Alexei could only use and abuse him that way, whereas Alexei was stymied and receiving no satisfaction from Orelan, masquerading so boldly and unconcerned.

Yet, what grated on him the most, and sent an irritating tremor through his tall frame, was the unspeakable message Alexei was really sending to him. Alexei stroked Angelo’s cock for his eyes and his eyes alone. What price would he pay, Wyndham wondered? What price would he eventually be forced to pay for Orelan’s release? He had baited the serpent in his den once before, and he had not won his freedom completely unscathed.

“My hand!” Alexei quipped snidely and suddenly . . . and directly to Wyndham beneath the loudness of the crowd. Wyndham’s tall body jerked. He was shocked! Somehow he had lost his concentration, and... “My hand!” Alexei shouted to the crowd around them.

At the same instant Orelan cried, “No!” With agileness belaying his astonishment, Wyndham grabbed the end of her gilded leash, halting her attempt to flee. It left her straining against the collar as she clutched the front of her loose bodice barely over her breasts. Her lovely delicate features completely belayed the wildness in her golden irises.

“Cunt’s and asses!” Alexei shouted.

Orelan cried out, still straining against the collar and leash as Wyndham tried to catch her wild gaze. “I cannot do this! I will not,” she careened rapidly and frantically in Spanish, and then her tumultuous gaze collided with his.

God, help him, she was everything in a woman he could ever desire, Wyndham thought, as he uttered. “I cannot stand from this chair alone, Orelan. My injured leg will not hold my weight upright.”

Her entire body trembled visibly with her gaze locked onto his. Fear, embarrassment, and then anger flashed across her gold irises. And then finally, the golden starlit chips of determination lighted her gaze. He was humbled, and more in love than he could ever have imagined in that moment. Then, Orelan lifted her stubborn diminutive chin, letting her gown tumble downward in a pool about her feet. The crowd shouted lewd rabid voices of approval as she kicked her gown to the side defiantly. She was completely nude, except for her small green velvet slippers.

“Bravo!” Alexei laughed snidely, then he lowered his voice for Wyndham and Orelan’s ears. “The rest of the markers if she fucks Angelo right there on the table!”

“No!” Wyndham exclaimed harshly. He was expended beyond his limit as he began to rise out of his chair without thinking in his anger. He barely caught his gasp of pain as he tottered, and then Orelan moved to save his foolish hide.

“My lover will not share his beautiful, Orelan!” she exclaimed with an outrageous feminine squeal of delight. Then, she was beside him, grasping him with her arms, steadying him as though they were embracing. It was enough to keep him from falling flat on his face as he grappled with the pain lancing through his leg.

I will kill my golden puma, Orelan thought furiously. She would scratch his tough muscular hide into little ribbons. She would . . . she would... Oh dios, she loved him so much! She stood shaking with anger and love combined. And her fear and embarrassment, as she tried to steady Wyndham with her shivering naked body. She was, oh so foolish at times like this, she thought, trying to catch her scattering emotions. Yet, it was too late for her treacherous mouth. “My Wyndham will never want you, Alexei! You are a pig!” she cried at Alexei, who had come toward them halfway around the table.

Wyndham growled, an inarticulate exclamation of warning to her, just as Alexei spat furiously. “You dirty little, puta!”

Orelan clutched Wyndham, steadying him with her shoulder beneath his arm as she cringed at the threat in Alexei’s voice. Madre dios. She watched horrified as Alexei raised his hand sharply and gestured to two of his Russian guards. “When I am through with you, you little Spanish slut, no one will want you!” he hissed.

Then suddenly, Wyndham shoved her away from him, making her cry out in confusion as she stumbled backward. Instinctively, her hands tried to cover her naked breasts and between her thighs as her horrified gaze saw Wyndham collapse to the floor with a sharp grunt of pain. Why had he done that? What had he done? She did not understand, as she watched Alexei exclaim, in obvious shock. Alexei nearly went down to his knees beside Wyndham, but then he seemed to catch himself at the last moment, as he uttered, “Khrisinan.”

The Russian guards stood uncertainly behind Alexei. Angelo behind them, beside the table, was hurriedly grabbing his clothes. Orelan fought the intense urge to go to Wyndham, but succumb to the desperate need to retrieve her gown, which she hurriedly picked up and at least clutched it in front of her.

She watched Wyndham raise his stark purple irises to Alexei as his hands clutched his bad knee. “The woman is mine!” Wyndham growled in a harsh rasp, glaring through pain-filled eyes up at Alexei.

Alexei sucked in a hissing angry breath. “You are both mine!” he snapped with a sharp cutting motion of his hand, and then he turned his blond head to a guard behind him. “Take my guests, Lord Hawkenge and his woman, to my suite now!” he ordered sharply. Then he straightened his stance and clapped his hands to the crowd as he shouted, “Music! Everyone! We will dance!”

Chapter Eight

Wyndham lived every emasculating moment of being carried from the ballroom to Alexei’s suite by the guards. He was not the man he used to be, nor would he ever be again. Was he even man enough to help Orelan to escape their desperate fate, he wondered, as the pain from his leg washed over him in waves? Drummond or Harrison should have come. Not him. He should not have been as arrogant and foolish when he refused the Archangels help. His witless masculine pride had gotten in his way. And now, because he could not accept his disability, he had gotten Orelan into more danger.

He could only be thankful that he had managed to keep Alexei from taking Orelan away from him. He’d known that if he let Alexei see his disability, it would distract Alexei. Deep inside himself, where he had no wish to admit it, he knew Alexei’s feelings for him. Now, he’d used those feelings to his advantage again. Did that make him any worse than Alexei?

He was nearly incoherent with the pain, but he knew as Alexei’s guards carried him between them that another guard was guiding Orelan forward. Toward Alexei’s suite. The portent of that did not escape him, he only wished that the pain would let go long enough so that he could think clearly. When the guards set him down on the opulently displayed bed in Alexei’s master suite, he could do no more than let his head fall back. He had wrenched his bad leg, twisting it when he had fallen making the desperate play to distract Alexei and keep Orelan by his side. That coupled with the strain he’d already placed on the injured limb, left it feeling as bad as when the injury had first felled him at Waterloo. He’d not been this debilitated because of it since those first few months of recuperation two years ago.

“Orelan,” he rasped hoarsely. Christ, he had failed.

“Wyndham my love, I am here,” Orelan whispered.

He winced at Orelan’s words of love, if he could have, he would have shouted the denial of his worthiness. He felt her grasping his hand, bringing it to her soft lips, as he rasped. “Do not let him take you away from me.”

“Never!” she exclaimed as he felt her tears on his knuckles. “Wyndham, you never told me you were this hurt,” she whispered, as he felt her lips kissing his hand again. “You make me very angry for not telling me this. I had plans to punish you and now I cannot.” Christ, if he could have laughed, he would have roared. “But I will never leave you, my golden puma. Never-never.” Wyndham tightened his grip on Orelan’s hand. “Wyndham, please tell me what to do to help you with this terrible pain,” she asked tearfully.

“Nothing,” he hissed as a particularly sharp jolt of pain lanced through his leg, making his body arch with tension. “Whiskey,” he groaned. “Christ! The bottle!”

“Si, si, Wyndham!” Orelan exclaimed as she pried Wyndham’s fingers from around her hand. Once loose, he clenched his fingers into a fist by his side as she hurriedly turned to find some whiskey. She had put her gown back on beneath all three of the guards stares, before she’d come to Wyndham’s side. Now she was glad for the small comfort as her gaze landed on Alexei standing by a side bar with his hand on a bottle of dark liquor.

She knew that it was the whiskey as she lifted her chin and walked toward Alexei. No one could have missed Wyndham’s anguished pleas for whiskey. She also understood there was now no one standing between Alexei and Wyndham but herself. Her strong golden puma needed her strength now as never before. She needed it also to stand against Alexei for her own sake. This time she could not be foolish because of her fears. She must never be that foolish again. It was because of her that Wyndham lay helpless in Alexei’s bedchamber. Now, she must defend them both in any way that she could.

The shade of concern that she could see in Alexei’s eyes, and then his first words to her, showed her a possible way to begin her defense. “What is wrong with him?” Alexei asked tersely, as she stopped beside him to watch him pour some of the whiskey into a crystal glass.

“It is his leg. It is injured,” she answered as she reached for the glass of whiskey.

“How?” Alexei demanded sharply, as he grabbed her wrist halting her movements as she held the glass.

“I do not know. He has never told me. But it must be the war,” she answered, tense and glaring at him.

Alexei held her wrist immobile as his light blue eyes sharpened. Then, he slowly reached into his jacket pocket and lifted out a small vial of clear liquid. He dared her to move with the pressure on her wrist and his gaze, as he lifted the lid on the vial with his thumb and poured a small amount into the whiskey.

“I will not give him this!” she exclaimed, and then she yelped at the crushing pressure Alexei placed on her wrist.

“You have no choice, puta! But it is only laudanum for his pain.”

She did not have a choice really, but suddenly she knew that she would trust Alexei in this. Alexei loved Wyndham, she realized, as much as he hated her, and Alexei would not harm Wyndham because of it. “Let go of me!” she snapped anxiously. “I would do anything to take away his terrible pain.”

Alexei’s caustic gaze held her prisoner for a long moment, and then he eased his grip, lifting his hand away. “By all means, puta, nurse your English master,” he responded with a barbed tone.

Orelan waited no longer for more of their charged interplay. She turned and went quickly to Wyndham’s side. She saw immediately that his body was rigid with pain, perhaps worse than a few minutes before. Not wasting any time, she lifted his head and brought the glass to his lips. “Wyndham, here is the whiskey. Drink some, Wyndham, drink,” she murmured, encouraging him.

Wyndham never opened his eyes and it seemed difficult for him to unclench his jaw long enough to take a drink. Yet, she managed, slowly to encourage him to drink the entire glass of whiskey. His normally tanned features were pale and there were white lines bracketing his firm mouth. She smoothed his blond hair back with gentle strokes. She spoke to him with small soft words in Spanish, “hush,” “love,” “relax,” and finally he sighed and she saw some of the tensions leave his rigid features. More moments passed and slowly, so slowly, he relaxed more, until his fists uncurled at his side.

It was not until that moment, when the anxious tension relaxed somewhat inside her that she realized Alexei was there, standing beside her, looking down at Wyndham. She felt the intense urge to leap in front of Wyndham and shield him from Alexei’s penetrating gaze. But that was foolish.

“Khrisinan,” Alexei whispered, and he reached a pale slender hand to Wyndham’s shoulder. Orelan winced with the effort she used not to brush Alexei’s hand away. “Wyndham, how were you injured?” Alexei coaxed.

Wyndham’s eyelids opened slowly to reveal his dark purple unfocused irises. “W-Waterloo. Cann-non,” he slurred. When Wyndham spoke, he was looking at her, and Orelan realized that he must have thought she asked the question.

“Does it still hurt, Khrisinan?”

Wyndham’s irises sharpened for a mere moment, then dulled. “Are y-you worried, Alexei? About me?” he asked sluggishly.

“Of course, my friend, always.”

“Don’t b-be,” Wyndham said as his eyelids drooped.

Abruptly, Orelan felt Alexei’s cold hand on her arm, which he used to pull her away from Wyndham’s side. “Undress him,” Alexei ordered tartly. “Make your English Lord more comfortable.”

Orelan immediately and instinctively thought to protest, as she wondered why Alexei would not just order the guards to do it or why he would not do it himself. Valiantly, she held her tongue, instead gathering an uncomfortable look as she glanced at the three guards. Alexei’s ice blue eyes followed her gaze.

“Guards, you are dismissed now. I want complete privacy. Go now!” Alexei ordered.

Would it be easier to deal with Alexei alone, Orelan wondered, just as she wondered about Alexei’s curious emphasis on the words “complete privacy?”

“His pants, puta, I want to see his injury,” Alexei snapped as soon as the guards had left. Orelan felt just mildly relieved that this would be Alexei’s only intention. But she was beginning to believe that Alexei himself would not take advantage of Wyndham. If she tried to think about it as men and women lovers would, it could make sense. A lover desired respect from their chosen.

Softly she murmured her assurances to Wyndham, and he mumbled at the sound of her voice as she began to undress him, starting with his evening shoes, and then moving to his pants. She could sense that Wyndham was partially conscious and he moved with her motions sluggishly, not fighting what she was doing. He lifted his hips when she asked him, yet his eyes remained closed. When she pulled his pants away, she saw the wrap that he’d used earlier to bind his leg.

“Take the binding off,” Alexei ordered sharply as he stood behind her.

At the sound of Alexei’s voice, Wyndham’s broad hand clamped down over her hand, which rested on top of his bindings. Alexei glared cuttingly at her, ordering her with his gaze. “Wyndham, let me unwrap your leg,” she whispered and Wyndham’s hand relaxed as he mumbled her name, then further he murmured.

“Do not l-leave me, sweetheart.”

“I will not, Wyndham,” she responded, beneath Alexei’s icy glare. The endearment Wyndham used had sparked Alexei’s ire further. Slowly, she removed the binding, to reveal the jagged scarring on the outer side of Wyndham’s left leg. It marked him from the outside of his upper thigh, to a hand space below his knee. Tears stung her eyes as she heard Alexei’s hissed breath behind her. He was as affected as she was. Then, she heard his footsteps and she turned to see him standing at the side bar pouring himself a drink. The liquor was clear and she knew it was vodka. A healthy amount that he drank liberally.

“Take his small cloth,” Alexei rasped suddenly, with his back still to her.

Orelan winced, then exclaimed, “No!”

Alexei turned abruptly to face her. “If you do not do it, then I will,” he hissed.

Had she been wrong earlier, Orelan anxiously wondered? But, no-no, she did not think so. Alexei wanted to see Wyndham as a man would see a woman. She prayed for Wyndham and she prayed for herself that Alexei intended no more as she reached for Wyndham’s small cloth. She knew that her golden puma would tell her to be brave and unconcerned. With the cloth gone, Wyndham’s manhood lay relaxed, yet still, thick and long against his blond pubic hair. Alexei murmured an inarticulate sound behind her, but he did not approach any closer and for this she was grateful.

“His shirt,” Alexei commanded. “Open it.”

Orelan opened Wyndham’s shirt with nervous fingers, revealing his broad muscular chest. Her golden puma was strong and attractive with his body masculine, and her breath caught just gazing at him. Even in the lax state he laid in his chest was molded with hills of sinew and crisp curly blond hair covered the wide expanse. His arms were mounded and bulged with strength, while his lean belly was slightly concave with thickly stretched tendons.

“Take his cock in your hand and stroke it, puta,” Alexei rasped.

Orelan trembled with the urge to turn around and defy Alexei, but for once she held her foolishness at bay. Wyndham was unaware, and he might never realize what she was being forced to do to him. If Alexei just watched . . . if he only watched. She prayed that she could get through this, and that Wyndham would never know. What else could she do? If she refused Alexei would touch Wyndham. She was jealous of that. So possessive that anyone would touch her golden puma but herself. It was crazy frantic thinking and she forcefully calmed herself, gazing down at Wyndham. He was so beautiful and so strong, and she wanted to touch him.

“One marker,” she said with a rasp catching her voice at her audacity.

“Yes-Yes, of course,” Alexei hissed. “Now stroke him, puta. Stroke your English Master.”

The way Alexei constantly called her slut in Spanish was beginning to affect her, she thought, as she reached for Wyndham’s manhood. The warm lax fullness of him filled her hand. He was large, even relaxed, but soft, so soft was his flesh, where before when she had touched him, he had been unbendable and taut. Instantly her breasts tingled and her sex began to ache.

Wyndham groaned, murmuring her name as she began to stroke him. She never looked up at Alexei, but kept her concentration on Wyndham. Holding him in her hand and stroking him to hardness was building the arousal inside her with a craving that was deep and wild. As his pene grew into a wonderful male club in her hand, she began to stroke his inner thighs and up to his male sacs with her free hand. Wyndham moved with her, subtle thrusts against her palm. Then Alexei’s harsh voice broke the spell.

“Lick the head, puta.”

Orelan flinched, she had nearly forgotten Alexei was there, watching them. Wyndham’s male club was hard and strong in her hand. The ridged cap and the slit beckoned her. She craved to lick Wyndham with her tongue, to take his long thick shaft into her mouth. But with Alexei watching? It felt dirty and crass. Alexei must have thought she was refusing him with her hesitancy, because suddenly, he stalked toward her. Then he had a hold of her hair at the back of her head, before she could pull away from him.

“Take your Master’s cock into your mouth, slut!” he hissed. “I pray it gags you.”

She whimpered as Alexei pushed harshly on the back of her head, forcing her body to bend, until her mouth was forcefully filled with Wyndham’s invading thickness. She gagged with tears burning in her eyes as the bulky head filled the back of her throat. She would desire to make love to Wyndham’s powerful manhood. But not like this.

Alexei lifted her head and made her suck Wyndham’s organ back into her mouth again as he forced her head downward anew. This happened over and over as Alexei cruelly held her by the hair and she had no choice but to try and fit Wyndham’s large shaft into her gagging mouth. Tears spilled from her eyes and her fingernails scratched into Wyndham’s thighs. Yet even this did not wake him fully in his drugged, but fully aroused state. Beneath her sharp whimpers, she could hear Wyndham groaning harshly and beyond that she could hear Alexei’s excited breathing.

“This is the way you take a man, slut! You fuck his cock with your mouth,” Alexei rasped.

Just then, Wyndham’s shaft expanded inside her mouth, filling her throat with scalding heat and Alexei jerked her head upward and away from Wyndham’s pene as he shoved her to the side. Through her tears, she saw Wyndham spilling his seed with Alexei standing over him. It was then, she realized that Alexei held his own long thin shaft in his hand, pumping it furiously, until he too ejaculated, with the seed landing on Wyndham’s belly.

She sobbed then, crumbling to the floor beside the bed as she clutched the edges of the bed quilt in her fingers. Her body shook and her mind went horribly blank. Then, as though from a long distance away, she heard Alexei’s horrible voice.

“Clean him up, and then undress and get into bed with him. If you ever speak of this to him, I will slit your throat!”

Chapter Nine

Wyndham woke in one sudden moment with his eyes wide open and staring into Orelan’s eyes. They lay side by side facing each other and he immediately saw the haunted exhaustion in Orelan’s gold irises. Then he became aware of a presence behind his back, lying on the bed also. The light snoring behind his head intensified his knowledge.

“Alexei,” Orelan whispered. “H-He was very drunk and only fell asleep there beside you an hour ago.”

Wyndham tried to digest this, even as his mind repelled it. He knew that he was naked and he could see Orelan clutched part of the bed quilt over her body. He guessed that she was naked also. He thanked God that Alexei’s body was not touching his as he eased closer to Orelan. His mind was refusing to take on any of the implications. But he did not like the ravaged appearance of Orelan’s face or the bruised redness of her mouth. Still, his mind forcefully shied away from any answers as he whispered in a low hiss. “Let’s get out of here.”

She nodded, immediately rising slowly with him. They were both naked and Orelan’s auburn hair was in wild disarray. They quickly, yet quietly, found and put on enough clothes for decency. His pants, her gown and then, she braced her shoulders beneath his arm and they hobbled quietly to the door. There were no guards posted outside Alexei’s door and within ten minutes they were entering their suite without encountering anyone in the halls. It was still very early.

Neither of them had spoken, using the effort to return to their suite to fill up the silence. But he was not a coward, as much as he longed to be in some moments of his life. So when Orelan helped him to sit on the edge of the bed, and then she turned to leave, he grasped her wrist, holding her beside him.

“What happened?” he asked, looking up at her as she dipped her head, avoiding his gaze. He wondered why he could remember only bits and pieces, he had assumed it was the pain, but now he challenged that avoidance.

“You were in great pain, Wyndham. Alexei had laudanum and I gave it to you,” she said with her head rising and her eyes sparking a challenge. He held his features impassive as he inwardly cringed at how helpless that had made him. Of course he had been useless and defenseless with the pain as it was. He’d left Orelan alone to face the snake. “Alexei has feelings for you! You must know this?” Orelan exclaimed continuing, making him visibly wince this time. Her full lips, bruised red, pursed defiantly, before she exclaimed, “I won another marker! And Alexei never touched you,” she added quickly. “But he demanded to see your scar . . . and he wanted to see you naked.”

Catching him by surprise, Orelan jerked her wrist from his grasped, turning then she fled into the bathing chamber in a swirl of lavender. The slamming of the door snapped loudly in the room as a tense tick in his jaw quivered. Had Alexei touched Orelan? There was much more to this, and it was obvious that Orelan was not going to willingly tell him.

Wyndham looked for his cane and saw it across the room propped against the armoire. He limped to it. His leg was immeasurably better. If he soaked it in hot water, used a salve that he had, and wrapped the knee again, he would be able to manage with the use of his cane. But now, he had another use for the cane as he went to the door and jammed the cane beneath the doorknob. Anyone trying to enter the suite would have to break the door down.

A moment later, he entered the bathing chamber and immediately halted his forward motion halfway through the doorway, with his gaze resting on Orelan. She was completely nude, sitting before the dressing mirror, brushing her long dark brown hair with angry strokes. The sight was riveting and also instantly arousing. Her light caramel-colored skin was smooth and unblemished. Every sleek curving inch of it radiated feminine beauty and his eyelids flared with a hunter’s gaze, as his irises came to rest on her puckered and jutting nipple tips.

Orelan . . . Orelan, his mind growled possessively as their gazes collided in the mirror. He saw her instant awareness of his arousal as her sun-gold irises skittered away from his, then returned to look again at him more boldly. His belly bottomed out with a warm hollow feeling that tensed suddenly as though he had been slammed in the gut. It was a bewitching tease. She was beckoning him, and it was working its purely feminine magic.

With only the smaller portion of his mind that could still reason clearly beneath that look, he realized that Orelan was perpetrating a sexual ploy upon him. Turning his attention away from the questions. Then, he did not give a damn as he continued into the room and he shut the door behind him. His gaze never left Orelan’s sensual performance as her arms raised to comb strands of her long hair, elevating the firm swell of her breasts to his gaze. He stopped by the bathing tub and turned the water knob. Water spilled out of the spout, not much pressure, but the splashing sounded loudly as it hit the bottom of the tub. The sound of the water would be loud enough to obscure their words, and the rising steam would help obscure any voyeurs prying vision.

Orelan flipped her hair to one side, combing the long strands over her left breast with the rosy-peach colored spike of her nipple poking through the rich brown tresses. Her gaze lifted to his in the mirror with a vixen’s spirited promise. The ride would not be easy or tame. Her gaze promised him an exciting challenge that his masculinity could not ignore as he walked toward her.

Orelan watched Wyndham in the mirror as he walked slowly toward her with a stiff-legged gait. She was relieved to see that her ploy had worked, and she would not have to answer his questions yet. Perhaps, never as the events around them continued to spin out of control. But this moment she would take for herself and for Wyndham. She needed his strength, his power, and his love. Desperately, she needed to reaffirm herself in his arms.

The message she read in Wyndham’s black-sapphire gaze was primeval. He was readying to take his woman thoroughly. It excited her, yet at the same time it made her skittish and anxious. She wanted to fall on him, writhing the full length of her body all over him, yet at the same instant, she wanted to run from his potent male power. Fear and excitement combined lifted her breasts, as shivers raced across her skin and her breathing increased to breathlessness. Then, Wyndham stopped, standing behind her so closely that her hands still in her hair, brushed the hot skin of his lean belly.

The shock of that touch unnerved her, and the comb she had been using fell from her fingers to clatter onto the floor. Her gaze jerked upward to Wyndham’s in the mirror, but he was looking downward, lower between her thighs. As the steam swirled around them in white misty tendrils, she felt Wyndham rubbing the outline of his long rigid shaft beneath his trousers over her knuckles. Her breath caught and he did it again, slowly, with a circling of his hips. She had flirted with power and now he teased her with that power. But suddenly, the image of Alexei forcing her mouth down over Wyndham’s impossibly thick male organ flashed before her mind’s eye, making her gasp. She must have jerked her hands upward away from Wyndham’s pene, momentarily urged to flee. But the next second, she realized that he had caught her wrists into his big hands and he was stretching them over her head, further pressuring her to rise from the chair. Suddenly, the chair was toppling sideways from where he must have kicked it aside, and then he stepped forward pressing his tall muscular body against her naked back.

Her wrists were freed as quickly, and Wyndham’s arms came down around her with one of his hands clasping her left breast and his other hand palming her sex. Her inner thighs quivered against his hand, but the width of it kept her thighs separated as her hands dropped over the back of his hands at her breast and sex. She would deny him. This was her instant thought, even as her head fell backward against his shoulder and he tightened both his hands possessively over her flesh.

Orelan moaned as Wyndham circled his hips again, rubbing the lengthy outline of his shaft over her buttocks, while he held her sex in front as leverage. His middle finger split the swollen drenched lips, while he twisted the thrusting spoke of her nipple between the thumb and finger of his other hand.

“Look at yourself, Orelan,” he whispered into her ear. “See how your body begs me, naughty senorita. Look how wet you are for me.”

“Wyndham,” she gasped as his slick intimate finger burrowed deeper between the lips of her sex and her gaze involuntarily jerked downward to look. At the same moment, he twisted the spoke of her nipple and her hips undulated back against him as she moaned with excitement. It was as though they danced together as she writhed her nakedness against his timbered strength and he intimately toyed with her body. They undulated together as she willingly rode the crease of her buttocks up over his hard shaft and he rubbed the bud of her clitoris roughly . . . excitingly. He spoke carnal erotic words in her ear making her whimper with desire and glide sensuously against him. “You like my hard cock, naughty vixen, rubbing between the cheeks of your sweet ass.” She moaned, as his fingers daubed over her clitoris and his hot words burned her ear. “I am going to thrust my big cock inside you hard and fast, spitfire. Deep, Orelan, so deep inside your dripping wetness. Will you ride my cock? Will you straddle my stiff thick cock?”

“Si, Wyndham, si,” she whimpered, tossing her head against his chest as his fingers plucked and twisted her nipples, while she shamelessly rode his finger, thoroughly exploiting her swollen needy sex.

“Spread your thighs and show me, senorita. Show me how naughty you can be,” Wyndham hissed huskily, as he licked and bit her ear. He was everywhere around her with his masculinity and lust as they undulated in a sensuous dance before the mirror.

“Dios!” she cried, as she began to rub her breasts passionately, using Wyndham’s hand covering one, while she brazenly splayed her thighs, posing her drenched rubicund sex to each of their gazes in the mirror. She reached behind her, catching Wyndham’s hips, pressing her wriggling buttocks against the thickening outline of his shaft.

“Your ass is so hot,” he hissed, then he nipped her ear.

“Oh, dios,” she cried as he nipped her jawline, then down the side of her neck, while at the same time he lifted her breasts into his hands kneading the firm flesh repeatedly in his large hands. Her buttocks circled his shaft over and over as she used her hands on his hips as a guide. “Si, dios, si,” she cried, while Wyndham heatedly massaged her breasts, then returning to pluck the nipples with nipping fingertips. “Oh!”

“Turn around,” he ordered suddenly, and before she could comprehend or comply, his hands were turning her to face him, as he lifted her upward. Her bare buttocks slipped along the cold dressing counter with her back to the mirror. The mirror’s surface was wet with steam that slid along her spine as Wyndham’s thighs nudged her knees apart. She held onto his shoulders as he settled between her thighs with one hand popping the buttons on his trousers. His other hand grasped her nape as he drew her up to his lips for a rough and thorough kiss. Eagerly, she slipped her tongue between his fevered lips, and then he returned with his tongue thrusting and full inside her mouth.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, the feel of Wyndham’s tongue was too thick and wide. It was too invasive! Her fingernails curled into his shoulders as her thighs tightened with the need to repel him. A strangled sound, like a passionate cant curled from her throat, but it was really denial, as Wyndham held her nape and searched deeper with his tongue feeling as though it was raping her mouth.

Now frantic, she tried to twist her neck away from Wyndham’s hand holding her to his tongue’s invasion. The thick dripping head of his pene was pressing forward between the lips of her sex and she was pinned to the mirror behind her without any escape. Tears came hot and fast, as her fists lifted and fell upon the hot muscle of Wyndham’s bare shoulders, while her body twisted, trying to break free. He was too large! He would not stop!

Chapter Ten

“Christ,” Wyndham cursed suddenly . . . harshly, at the same moment he pulled away from Orelan’s struggling body. It had just occurred to his lust filled mind that...

“No! Please, no. Please!” Orelan sobbed, pushing on his tall body with nearly frantic intention. He yielded, allowing her to push him away as her sobs registered fully in his mind. “N-No,” she cried again, and he raised his gaze from the sight of his engorged cock, sticking straight out of his pants, to Orelan’s face. She was cowering against the mirror, turned away from him, with her legs curled up in front of her. She was crying, and the sound of it was like a knife plunged deep into his heart.

He turned away sweating and aroused, his body straining with sexual tension that took him long moments to control. Finally, he heaved a heavy breath, and then he gingerly put his stiff cock somewhat back into his pants. He had been too rough, too forceful . . . damn it, too quick. It was all he could think, yet Orelan was so fiery, so sensual, it seemed that she demanded mastery from him. He tried to think of what he had done that could have upset her so. He cursed himself for not bringing her to climax first in his randy lustfulness. All he had been able to think of was being inside her, and he had rushed, before she was ready, obviously. Then his thoughts flickered over Orelan’s bruised lips. Why would her lips appear so love-swollen? He had been kissing her roughly, driving his tongue down her throat as though he were coupling her mouth. She had liked that when he had done it before.

“Christ.” Wyndham’s head came up. Had Alexei forced Orelan to suck his cock for the marker? If Alexei had forced his cock on Orelan, he was going to kill him! Damn the consequences! Wyndham scraped his hand across his tense jaw. He had to gain control of himself, and Orelan needed him. He glanced at her, and then he stepped closer. “Orelan,” he murmured, reaching his hand forward tentatively toward her hair.

“You s-stopped,” she mumbled, with a weepy voice and her body still turned away from him.

“You were afraid,” he muttered. “Of course I stopped.”

“Oh, Wyndham,” Orelan exclaimed tearily. At the same instant she turned sharply and grasped him into an ambushing embrace. Her bare breasts were slick with her tears against the hot skin of his chest as her arms strangled the back of his neck “I am s-so s-sorry,” she cried into his neck. “I d-do not k-know what happened, Wyndham.”

“Hush, baby,” he muttered gruffly, wrapping her into his arms and hugging her tightly against him. She was a changeling. A lovely erotic changeling and he better than anyone, understood the pressure that they were under. Intent on soothing her, he lifted her up into his arms and he carried her with a stiff limp to the tub. She was still weeping softly as he bent and urged her into the tub, which he adjusted to begin filling with water.

“Wyndham,” she murmured with a watery voice.

“Hush now, Orelan,” he murmured as he persuaded her with his hands motion to recline in the rising warm water. “You need to calm down, sweetheart. Just relax,” he coaxed her as he looked down into her lovely tear-stained face. He kissed her temple as her head relaxed against the edge of the tub, and then he heard her sigh with a sound of surrendering acceptance. Slowly, he brushed and lifted her hair up over the edge of the tub with his fingers and her eyes fluttered closed with only a few errant sniffles sounding now.

He went to retrieve the chair, which he set beside the tub, so he could sit and stretch out his bad leg. Then he reached for the sponge and a cake of soap. He held them beneath the water, and then rubbed the soap into the sponge to gain some lather, before he turned the warm water off.

Orelan’s eyes lifted halfway in a slumberous way. “I am such a baby,” she murmured, with her plush bottom lip pouting outward.

“Mm,” he answered uncommitted as he grasped her arm and lifted it to begin washing it gently.

“You would bathe me?” she asked with soft wonderment in her voice.

“Yes,” he answered with a raspy gruffness in his voice, while his mind contemplated doing more than simply bathing her. She slanted her eyes at him with a catlike quality, and then she hummed a small purr leaning her neck to one side for better access as he stroked the lathery sponge over her slender collarbone. His spitfire was becoming sultry warm fire again, and he watched her relaxed nipples rucked into jutting spikes. His cock answered with a deep throbbing in its base that curled around his balls. He allowed the pleasure to seep through him, but he held back his lustier nature as he slowly slid the sponge downward between the cleavage of Orelan’s up-thrusting breasts.

“You make love to me with this sponge,” she murmured with her eyes closed as he did indeed swirl wet suds around her rising breasts. His hand was persuaded to pay particular attention to the aroused and distended tips of her nipples. “Mm mm,” she murmured, lifting her nipples to his spongy fondling.

Wyndham observed Orelan arching her toes restlessly, which were resting on the edge of the tub. The water was a sensual adornment to her lightly caramel-kissed skin. He decided that she was enjoying his bathing enough that he could move lower.

“Oh mm, Wyndham,” she moaned, raising her slumberous gaze to him. “Am I being naughty?” she asked in a husky whisper as her thighs fell open wider to his exploration.

Christ, he nearly bit his tongue as he watched the sponge moving between her sleek thighs, while her body undulated sensuously in the warm water. “I like naughty,” he rasped.

She smiled slowly, just like the Spanish vixen that she was, then she asked, “But what of you, my powerful golden puma?” Her hand strayed toward his thigh, but he caught her wrist, returning her hand to the water.

“This is for you, sweetheart. All for you,” he murmured, as she looked at him with a question in her golden irises. “And you know that I will stop at any moment. No matter what we are doing, if you want me to stop?” She nodded slowly. “Then relax, sweetheart. I will enjoy this as much as you.”

A small secret smile graced Orelan’s lips as she looked up at him. The look in her gaze giving him her complete trust, and then she slowly closed her eyes. He was left with a sumptuous feminine feast before him that he intended to enjoy, until she cried her sweet pleasure for him. He slipped his finger beneath the sponge and whispered, “Spread your legs for me, Orelan.” He heard her breath catch as she slowly opened her thighs. “Wider,” he whispered as he touched the softly swollen slit of her pussy. The fertile warm flesh quivered as he slipped his finger deeper and her mouth opened in an arousing sigh. The warm water rolled with his fingers stroking movements as he brought his other hand forward to caress her inner thighs.

“Oh, Wyndham,” she gasped softly, raising her hips to him.

“Yes, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Show me what you like.”

“Oh mm,” she moaned, and her hands dropped over the sponge with his finger beneath. She pressed, burrowing his finger deeper, as her hips rolled and her inner thighs stretched. His fingers beneath the water traced the crease of her inner thigh following it to the slick opening of her vagina. She guided his finger faster over her clitoris as he smudged the accepting opening. “Wyndham,” she gasped.

Slowly, he entered her with one finger and her hips lifted, seating the width of his finger more firmly as she moaned her acceptance. “You are mine,” he rasped, bringing his thumb forward to play against her lower pussy, while he withdrew and thrust his finger inside her again.

“Yes, Wyndham,” she cried. “Si, puma. Oh so much, puma. So hard.”

Christ. “I want to lick your pussy,” he rasped.

Her eyes opened and he could see the fevered passion in their golden depths. He did not give her time to think, he simply grasped her wrists and urged her to stand before him. He lowered his head at the same moment rubbing his nose, his mouth, and his chin over her wet pubic curls, as he used his hands on her hips as a guide. Then, his tongue darted forward and he licked deeply.

“Wyndham!” she cried.

She grasped his head, with her legs becoming wobbly. He held her nearly swooning stance by the strength in his arms as his tongue nudged the lips of her pussy apart and the tip of his tongue found the bead of her clitoris. It was swollen and fat and he quickly shimmied his tongue rapidly over it. Orelan’s answering cry of passion was arousing as he caught the crook of her knee with his forearm and lifted. He lifted her leg, until her thigh was on his shoulder and he had superb access to her splayed pussy.

“Dios!” Orelan cried, unable to help herself from wriggling her sexual nub against Wyndham’s hot flicking tongue. “Si, Wyndham, si,” she cried. “Oh, si!” She could feel Wyndham’s bristly unshaven chin rasping against her inner thighs as she clutched the heavy strands of his yellow-blond hair. Her fingers brazenly pressed his face closer between her thighs as she rolled her sex against his surging tongue. “Si, oh dios, si,” she cried, and then she screamed ardently as he entered her strongly with his stiffened finger. He withdrew and thrust his finger inside her again, doing it repeatedly, as his tongue skittered faster and faster and the explosion of passion in her sex burst free.

“Amore,” she cried. “Mio Amore!”

Chapter Eleven

Orelan woke slowly. She barely remembered Wyndham cradling her, drying her off gently, and then carrying her to the bed. He had given her such wonderful passion. So many beautiful and exciting moments to take the place of the other moments that she would make herself forget. Never again would she be afraid of Wyndham. He had stopped when she thought it not possible for a man to do so. He had been fiercely aroused, yet he had stopped himself and not taken any pleasure of his own when he realized that she was so foolishly afraid.

“Feeling better?” Wyndham murmured against her ear.

Orelan smiled and opened her eyes slowly. She could feel the length of Wyndham’s warm nakedness pressing against her breasts, belly, and upper thighs. Mm, he was so warm and strong, she thought, as she looked into his sleepy dark purple irises.

“Have we been sleeping?” she asked softly.

“Mm, for an hour, perhaps,” he murmured, and then he stretched with the muscle of his upper arm flexing impressively beneath her cheek. She wriggled her toes against the springy hair on his calves. “I wish we could stay like this forever, Wyndham,” she murmured.

“Naked in my arms?” he asked huskily.

“Yes, always,” she replied pertly.

“Is that a proposal, senorita?” he asked mildly.

Her eyes widened as she looked over his sleep-tumbled appearance gaging his seriousness. Then suddenly, because her heart would not allow her to do anything else, she took a fantastical leap. “Yes!” she blurted.

Just as abruptly as her exclamation, Wyndham came up over her, to lean on his elbow as he gazed down at her intently. His gaze was as searching as hers had been before, as he slowly but firmly said, “And I accept, sweetheart.”

Her eyelids flared wide again, as she whispered urgently. “You do?”

Wyndham’s arching lips nearly formed a smile, as he said, “I, Lord Wyndham Hawkenge take you, Orelan Becou, to be my wife.”

“Oh!” Orelan squealed, and then she was in Wyndham’s arms embracing him tightly.

“We must always remember, little love, that you asked me first,” he quipped.

“And you accepted,” she said, lifting her lips to his descending mouth. With their mouths connected, he scooped her on top of him as he rolled onto his back. An excited giggle erupted from her throat at the intense feeling of warm and hairy male muscle touching her from her naked breasts to her toes. But especially the long hard one, whose knobbed head was pressed into her belly button as the mound of her sex rode over his heated male sacs.

She was stretching to keep her lips seated over Wyndham’s soft through kisses, when he pulled her body up his body with his hands gripping her naked buttocks. She instantly remembered her desire to writhe naked over Wyndham’s nude masculinity, when she felt his strong body sliding against hers. The hair on his chest rasp her nipples and the tuft of hair on his lower belly tickled her stomach as the cradle of her hips settled between his hips. She ended with the lips of her sex spread over the searing head of Wyndham’s male organ. The burrowing friction tingled inside of her, making a steamy wetness in her sex.

“Make love to me, Orelan,” he murmured over her lips. “Anything you desire, spitfire,” he coaxed huskily.

“Mm mm,” she moaned at the heady invitation. She broke their kiss and lifted her head to look down into Wyndham’s black-rimmed sapphire irises.

“Anything you want,” he whispered again at her searching gaze.

Excitement flared in her breasts and trembled in her belly as she licked her lips slowly, and then said, “Put your arms above your head.”

The feel of Wyndham’s muscle flexing and drawing beneath her was arousing, as she gazed at his hairy armpit, and then further at the mounded tense slope of his upper arm. His chest rose in this position, to form a buttress of unyielding muscle beneath her softer breasts as his belly hollowed with stretched tendons on either side. The depression of his lean belly cradled her sex, which was saddled over the sizeable head of his pene.

They were wet together, they were hot together as she braced her hands on the raised shield of muscle across Wyndham’s chest. She pushed, lifting her upper body and both her eyelids flared with the sliding touch between them. She felt the unfurling of her sex over the head of his rigid organ. She moaned with the ends of her hair pooling over his chest and neck as she rocked the nub of her clitoris over the unyielding head of his shaft. He groaned and she did it again strongly, while hearing the slipperiness they made together.

“Oh, Wyndham,” she murmured curling her fingernails into his chest. “Lick my breasts,” she ordered, feeling the strength of her words.

Wyndham rose upward to do her bidding, and she caught the back of his head with one hand to brace him. His hands closed around both of her breasts pulling them forward as his tongue began trading between each one to rasp over the points of her nipples.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Oh, yes, Wyndham.”

Orelan’s knees fell to either side of Wyndham’s hips, until she was kneeling and she pulled him to sit upright as she straddled his lap. His pene fell below her sex. So then while he made squeezing kneading hot and wet love to her breasts, she lowered her hand to grasp his long male organ into her hand. He moaned at this touch as he slathered her breasts erotically, and she cried, “Bite the nipples, puma. Bite them! Ah,” she wailed passionately as spikes of desire traveled like sparks from her nipples to her sex, each time Wyndham nipped her nipple points. Her hand stroke Wyndham’s shaft as she played its blunt head into her sex, willfully rubbing it over her throbbing clitoris.

“Christ, spitfire,” Wyndham growled as his strong forearm caught the back of her waist and he pulled her closer to his nipping mouth.

“Si, Wyndham, si,” she cried as she lowered the wet head of his shaft to the opening of her wanting sex. “Fill me,” she hissed hotly into his ear. “Fill me, puma.”

Wyndham’s head came up as his hands fell to her buttocks, grabbing each cheek as he pulled her forward. “Look at me, Orelan,” he rasped harshly.

Their gazes collided as he thrust upward piercing her inner sheath with his hot thick mass as she screamed in passionate acceptance. “Yes,” he hissed, lifting her buttocks upward, and then dropping her again roughly over his stabbing shaft. Her wail was sharp and excited. Wyndham suddenly dropped backward on his elbows just as he jerked his hip upward thrusting inside her so strongly it lifted her upward.

She squealed her encouragement as he did it again, while she braced her hands on his sweaty chest, rolling her hips to each of his heavy thrusts. “God, Orelan,” Wyndham groaned in appreciation of this as he bounced her body more quickly with his thrusts. It was though she rode a powerful stallion and instead of rolling her hips, she began to swing them from front to back. Her pleasure over this was so intense that she cried out, scratching her fingernails down Wyndham’s chest. Wyndham was powerful and he used his strong body to buck her body on top of him with dizzying speed. Each rapid thrust seared deep inside her with a spearing hot pleasure that built to an explosive crescendo, making her scream. Her climax flashed over her as Wyndham stabbed his shaft upward rapidly and she rode him, barely hanging on as her sex convulsed along the length of his thickness.

“Orelan,” Wyndham groaned sharply with his hips lifting, followed by the jolting of her body. “Orelan!” Wyndham’s hips bucked again. “Orelan!” he bellowed and Orelan felt his hot seed filling her with the beating of massive throbs as Wyndham’s hips stilled, while they were arched upward. The thickness of him swelled inside of her, throbbed, then swelled again as Wyndham groaned harshly.

“Wyndham!” she gasped as she fell to his sweaty chest, while her body trembled in the aftermath.

Wyndham took long moments to catch his breath, and then he rolled Orelan beneath him as he leaned over her, brushing back strands of hair away from her damp face. Her body was languid and her eyes were closed as he dipped his head to place a soft kiss on her lips. Instantly her lips lifted into a smile beneath his mouth. “I love you,” he murmured, touching his tongue to the corner of her mouth.

Orelan’s eyelids popped open and she looked at him with warm happiness in her golden irises. “Wyndham,” she exclaimed softly. “And I love you too.”

“You fucking cunt!” Alexei’s voiced suddenly shouted from the foot of the bed. “You are a cunt!” Alexei yelled.

Wyndham held Orelan tightly as she gasped a stifled scream at Alexei’s sudden appearance.

“And you, Khrisinan, are a liar!” Alexei hissed, snapping the bed covers off the end of the bed. Wyndham muffled Orelan’s next scream in his shoulder as he heard Alexei order, “Guards! Take them to the dungeon! Now!”

Chapter Twelve

There had been a secret entrance to his bedroom suite. A dozen of them more likely. Wyndham gritted his teeth, he’d been a fool not to think of it. Of course his mind had been in the clouds, wrapped up in a beautiful intriguing woman. He’d even lost sight of the peepholes, places where anyone could have spied on Orelan and his conversations. They were in love, damn it! They were allowed their transgressions.

Wyndham grasped the iron bars in front of him, curling his fingers tightly around them. The fact that Alexei was jealous was his problem. Not Orelan’s. She should not have to pay for that, but he had lied to Alexei about his feelings for Orelan. Now, he was afraid that Orelan would pay the price and there might be little or nothing he could do about it. He looked over to the cell directly across from his in the circular stone dungeon. It was thirty feet from where he stood to the other side of the circle where Orelan’s cell was. Where she was being held a prisoner as naked as he was.

The wooden doors to the dungeon screeched on rusted hinges as they opened, turning his gaze. It had been an hour or more since they had been forced down into the bowels of Valcourt, into this dungeon and these cells, and now, Alexei had arrived. Next to Alexei was a small Asian man and behind them were two of Alexei’s Russian guards.

“It is me you want, Alexei!” Wyndham shouted. “Then take me! I will not fight you any longer.”

“No!” Orelan cried from her cell, but Wyndham could not see her, as she cowered against the sidewall of her cell.

“Silence!” Alexei shouted. “I will not have your sickening displays of love!” Wyndham watched Alexei turn to him at the same moment he waved the guards to Orelan’s cell, while he said, “It is not time, Khrisinan, for you to surrender to me yet.”

Wyndham’s jaw tightened, Alexei appeared disheveled and distraught. He looked edgy, as though he were cornered with no escape. Yet, that made no sense and Wyndham had a hard time believing Alexei’s behavior was strictly over jealousy.

“I will consider it,” Alexei continued, turning to watch Orelan, who was being forced naked from her cell between the guards. “But my revenge first! I will have my revenge!”

“No!” Wyndham shouted, even as the guards lifted Orelan, who struggled against their strength, up onto a wooden circular slab raised in the center of the room. She never cried out as she fought them, but she did fight them, with terrified whimpers when the guards began to tie her spread eagle onto her back.

“I will come to you willingly!” Wyndham shouted with desperation. “If you do this to her, I will fight you to my last breath!” Wyndham watched Alexei turn his fevered gaze to him as Orelan screamed a muffled sound of denial through the gag that the guards had put over her mouth.

“We will see what you might do when I am finished,” Alexei said, eerily calm. “The final game has just begun,” he finished.

Alexei was not making any sense, Wyndham thought, trying to quell his rising panic as he watched the small Asian man move to stand at Orelan’s feet.

“Shave the slut, Quay,” Alexei ordered in a sickeningly soft voice as Orelan whimpered. Wyndham sucked in a tight breath as Alexei turned his gaze to him, and he hissed, “One half a marker for this, Khrisinan.”

Wyndham could not help the hatred unmasked from his gaze as he glared at Alexei, and he spat. “I will never forgive you for this!”

“We will see,” Alexei whispered, then in a sharper voice he said, “You have lied to me about this slut, Khrisinan, yet I am still being fair. Two and one half markers, you still owe me.”

Wyndham clenched the bars as he watched the Asian, named Quay, unrolling a leather pouch of instruments between Orelan’s feet. Wyndham squinted his eyes to see, as Quay chose a straight razor, lifting it from the pouch. It was then Wyndham realized that the rest of the instruments he saw were for skin tattooing. Christ, he nearly fell to his knees in relief, but he clutched the bars holding himself upright. Alexei was going to brand Orelan, but he was not going to kill her.

Orelan looked fearfully at the small Asian man Alexei had called Quay, as Quay brought forward a bowl of water, a sponge, and a cake of soap to set beside her hip. Quay, lathered the sponge with the soap as he looked down at her exposed sex, and it was then, she finally realized what he meant to do, at Alexei’s command. She struggled then, against the ropes holding her ankles and wrists splayed wide across the wooden slab, as Quay lifted the wetly lathered sponge toward her pubic curls.

“Lay still,” Wyndham ordered her from his cell, and she heard Alexei laugh harshly as Wyndham continued to say, “He will cut you, if you do not lay still.”

Orelan sucked in a terrified breath as Quay touched her sex with the wet sponge. The position she was tied in was debased and she squirmed in humiliation as Quay scrubbed her sex with the soapy sponge.

“Look her nipples are hard,” Alexei quipped, and the guards laughed.

Orelan moaned in shame, and then she heard Wyndham shout, “I love you, Orelan! Do you hear me? I love you!”

“Silence!” Alexei shouted as Orelan closed her eyes to the sound of Wyndham’s words. Love was their strength and power, she realized. She must be brave for Wyndham. She had to be brave for their love, and she was able to stop her struggling then as she opened her eyes and saw Quay bringing the straight razor forward. Quay touched her as only one man had ever done as he began to shave her pubic hair away, while tears she could not stop leaked from her eyes. But she did not struggle again she only trembled and prayed for it to be over.

“Bravo!” Alexei exclaimed when the shaving was finished, and then, Orelan saw Alexei clamping his hand onto Quay’s shoulder as he said, “Now tattoo her the way I told you.”

The word tattoo raced through Orelan’s mind like a fiery blaze. No, madre dios, no! She tried desperately to turn her head to see Wyndham, but she could not from where she was tied.

“You are a sick bastard!” Wyndham shouted.

“Oh, Khrisinan, you do not approve of my method of revenge for your slut?” Alexei asked snidely. “I thought it was inspirational. Just wait to see what Quay is going to brand on your bitch, Lord Hawkenge.”

Orelan felt Quay’s fingers touching the slit of her sex and she gasped, jerking her body. Then she screamed silently at herself to lay still. She had to lay still! Quay’s finger lifted one lip as she quivered, trying to lie still, but then a sharp striking pain came in the tenderest place on her body. She screamed. She could not lay still! The pain struck again, and she gasped another involuntary scream beneath the gag. But the gag was cloying and she could not get enough air into her lungs as the pain of the tattooing relentlessly continued.

“It is done!” Alexei exclaimed and Orelan jerked. She must have passed out? “Another half a marker,” Alexei continued, “And that makes one marker, Khrisinan. So now you only owe me two!”

Orelan moaned as she felt her ankles being untied. Her sex throbbed unbearably, then the gag was pulled from her mouth and more hands were at her wrists untying those also.

Wyndham watched Alexei turn toward him, Alexei’s light blue eyes had a feverish quality, but there was an unexpected sadness in them. “I will give her to the guards for the last two markers,” Alexei said.

“No!” Wyndham shouted. “No, Alexei, my God, I am begging you!”

Alexei hissed a sharp intake of breath. “You see, Khrisinan, I knew you would come to me willingly in the end!”

“Yes!” Wyndham exclaimed tightly, at the same moment Orelan cried out her denial

“No, Wyndham! No, you must not do this. No, I will not let you!”

“Take her away from here!” Alexei shouted angrily. “Take her-,” Alexei turned to Wyndham.

“To the Royal Hotel,” Wyndham expelled. “To Lord Sutherlin.”

“No! No!” Orelan cried as the guards dragged her from the room.

“You see, Khrisinan,” Alexei whispered. “I always knew that you had an escape plan. Ever the consummate spy, my handsome man.”

Chapter Thirteen

It was a macabre position, Wyndham thought, he could not be absolutely certain that Alexei had freed Orelan. Yet, in some twisted fashion Alexei was honorable in his own way. For that, and the gut feeling he had that Alexei was done with Orelan, he believed him. Now, he wondered, how noble he should remain. The two guards still held him as a prisoner with their rifles, forcing him to follow Alexei, in the direction of Alexei’s suite.

At least Alexei had ordered the guards to give him a pair of pants. It was so unexpectedly chivalrous of Alexei, Wyndham thought, with his head bowed and his jaw clenched into square hardness. He was seething as he walked between the guards and it was taking every ounce of his willpower not to grapple with the guards, in an attempt to gain an opening to fall upon Alexei with his bare hands. He might never have realized how wholly possessive he was, he thought, if not for what had been perpetrated on Orelan.

Suddenly, half a dozen sharp explosions sounded in the distance. Wyndham’s head lifted as he recognized the sound of gunfire, while his gaze found Alexei’s back, just as Alexei was opening the door to his suite. Alexei never turned at the sound of the gunfire, his head cocked to the side, but he continued into the suite. “Bring him inside!” Alexei ordered.

“What is happening?” Wyndham asked, as the guards roughly shoved him into the suite.

More gunfire sounded, this time closer, as Alexei ignored his question and ordered, “Guards, leave him here, and take up your posts outside the doors!”

Wyndham was surprised to be released alone into Alexei’s company, as both guards, appearing suddenly nervous and furtive, fairly bolted to the doors. The doors slammed shut and the distinct sound of booted feet running away could be heard.

“It is impossible to bribe truly loyal help these days,” Alexei snapped, as he continued to walk further into the suite.

Wyndham looked at the door hearing more gunfire, closer still, perhaps only one floor down from where he stood, then he turned his gaze to Alexei’s retreating back. His mind was working quickly as he gauged all the possibilities of what could be happening, of whether he should just walk out, away from Alexei without the guards’ presence, when Alexei spoke.

“Two markers, Khrisinan. You begged me, Wyndham, remember this? How noble are you?”

Wyndham’s tightly held anger exploded then, and all constructive thought about his situation dissolved. “Do you want me to fuck you in the ass, Tropov, you sick bastard?” he challenged senselessly.

“Yes,” Alexei hissed, turning toward him. “You owe me two markers and your woman’s life!”

Alexei appeared nearly wild-eyed as Wyndham clenched his fists at his side and he spat. “Fuck your markers, Tropov!” He turned toward the door. “And fuck you!” he finished crassly.

“No!” Alexei wailed behind him. “You owe me, Wyndham! You owe me!”

Wyndham’s hand closed around the doorknob, but before he could open it, the door was shoved open forcefully, toppling him backward. His bad knee could not hold to this and it collapsed, taking him bodily to the floor onto his side.

“Alexei Tropov!” a voice heavily accented in Russian, shouted above Wyndham’s head. “You are under arrest for treasonous acts! To be beheaded by the Czar’s court! Take him!”

Beheaded? Wyndham lifted his gaze to Alexei’s, who was being circled by the Russian soldiers. “Who is this man?” the leader asked sharply, pointing to Wyndham.

“He is just my lover!” Alexei exclaimed.

The leader of the Russian soldiers looked down on Wyndham with disgust, then abruptly spit on his leg, pronouncing, “Cunt!” Then he ordered, “Leave this one and bring the prisoner, Tropov!”

Chapter Fourteen

Orelan cried out as one of Alexei’s burly guards shoved her out of the carriage. She landed on the brick street on her hands and knees, because the carriage had not completely stopped, and was even now racing away from the scene. Yet, she did not care about the rough treatment. She was more relieved to have at least a cloak to hide her complete nakedness. The blood on her palms from scraping the rough bricks was nothing compared to the last thirty minutes she had spent traveling inside the carriage, while she wondered if the guards would rape her. The entire time, she agonized over whether the guards would follow Alexei’s orders or perhaps ease their burden by just killing her.

But much more than that, in each harrowing half second of time, she suffered agony about what Wyndham had done. What he must be doing at the moment for her release. On one barely coherent level of her mind, she realized that insanity rested in those thoughts. It was nearly too much to bear, yet she kept hearing Wyndham’s voice whispering to her. “Be brave, spitfire. Be as brave as I know you can be.”

“Yes,” she gasped, lifting her head from where she knelt on the dirty bricks of the street, to see the Royal Hotel across the street. Wyndham’s friend was there. She knew him, Lord Sutherlin. He was also a spy. Orelan wobbled to stand upright on her bare feet, and then she grasped the cloak tightly around her body, leaving blood on the woolen material. The footmen outside the grand hotel would never let her inside appearing as she did. She lifted her chin. But they would take a message inside for her.

The footman was reluctant, yet he relented when he realized that she would only leave her stance by force, thereby creating a scene. She realized how horrible she must appear with her long hair matted in tangles and her face ravaged by too many tears. Her embarrassment was acute, as finely dressed patrons of the hotel whisked up the entryway’s red carpet, trying not to let their dignified gazes settle on her. She stood bravely, shivering on her bare feet, yet it was too much when one gentleman arriving alone did not avert his gaze distastefully, but made a point to leer at her. That blatant lecherous speculation sent her fleeing to the side of the ponderous building, to hold her breath against the possibility of the gentleman following her. He did not, and she collapsed against the side of the building, shaking. Her bare feet were so cold and she was still so afraid.

“Mademoiselle Becou!” Orelan gasped at the sound of her name, while she cowered against the wall. “Orelan, it is Radford. Lord Sutherlin.”

Radford caught Mademoiselle Orelan Becou, before she slumped to the ground. He realized immediately the lady had fallen into a faint as he lifted her up into his arms. A light from the street caught the features of her face as he looked downward. He grimaced. Orelan was beautiful, but there were obvious signs of trauma on her face. Red swollen eyes, nose, bruised lips, and dirt smudges. It had not escaped his notice that Mademoiselle Orelan could not be wearing anything beneath the woolen cloak around her. The situation was grave, and he debated whether to take her inside the hotel to see to her health and comfort more quickly.

“I am truly sorry, Mademoiselle,” he murmured in a gruff voice. Orelan’s comfort would have to wait for the more important issue of safety, and that meant that he must immediately take her to the ship. It was one of his sailing ships called Trident. As a Duke, few people realized his common pursuits, such as the shipping company that he owned, and also the distillery, three woolen factories, and the one pub. There was a certain thrill to making one’s own money, versus the fortune of old money he had inherited since becoming a Duke.

The Trident was where Wyndham would come to upon his escape. He just wished that he knew what was happening. The unexpected arrival of Orelan, showing up in such a manner did not bode well. Yet, Brynmore and Saxonhurst were stationed outside the gates of Valcourt, as close as they could be, to help in any way they could. Still, it would take Wyndham’s ingenuity to get outside the gate. What worried him immensely though was what Wyndham might have given up, such as his freedom, for Orelan’s release.

Yet, Radford knew that Drummond and Harrison were working behind the diplomatic scenes, such as it was. And the Archangels, in a group, all for one, were a formidable group. If Wyndham was a prisoner in Valcourt now, they would find a way to affect his escape, there was no doubt on that matter. Radford heard the clatter of the carriage he’d ordered, just before he had come downstairs to find Orelan. He turned to watch the conveyance turn up the alleyway he stood in. He’d not known Orelan would be waiting in the alleyway. He’d just wanted stealth when leaving the Royal Hotel with his precious cargo. A small amount of providence was on his side tonight though.

Chapter Fifteen

Wyndham gripped the polished side-rails on the bow of Radford’s sleek shipping vessel, Trident. His gaze was unseeing of the gentle blue-black sea illuminated by a full moon at midnight. Even though his face turned outward to the gradual midnight swells of the sea, his thoughts and sight were inward. The Trident sailed cleanly through the water, leaving behind a sordid time, and Wyndham had an intense urge to just dive into the cold clean sea. Perhaps, cleanse his soul with the sharp bite of the salt water.

Orelan was ensconced in the captain’s cabin below where he stood. She was safe and she had been told that he was safely aboard the ship. That had been several hours ago and now the ship was well out to sea. Yet still, he stood on the bow dressed in a borrowed shirt and pair of pants with nothing but the sea to cleanse him. At first, he’d not gone to see Orelan because of the amenities. A maid for her comfort had been neatly employed for the journey, in Radford’s ever-ready fashion, and women’s machinations took time. To be bathed, pampered, clothed, and to have her injuries attended to. Rough scraped palms and knees, Radford had said.

Wyndham’s grip tightened to nearly painful proportions around the railing. Anything else, he wondered? What had been done was enough, yet he feared the unknown. After Orelan had left him in the sole company of the guards. He was not a coward. That was not why he stood at bay for so long. No, it was too delicate Too important. He had to approach Orelan properly. He had to begin now as he intended to go on. In his callous youth, he would have rushed in, unthinking. He would have frightened a young woman with his brashness. Stolen a kiss from an innocent with his harsher more demanding lust.

“This is for a lifetime,” he murmured, looking out to the black wave swept sea. Orelan was everything, and all he could ever dream of wanting. Yet, they had been through so much. Their emotions, her emotions, must remain so delicate. He did not want to muddle it, so he made himself stop and think. They would survive. They would come through as one no matter what had happened.

Perhaps, he should... “Court her,” he murmured. It was silly and improbable after everything they had been through. “It could work,” he uttered, turning his gaze up to the moon. It was after all, and had been for years, his deepest wish.

“Do you intend to stand there barefooted, like the love-besotted fool that you obviously are? Or go to her, old man.”

Wyndham turned toward Radford’s snide aristocratic tone with a slight smile lifting his firm lips. “You were voted the emissary then?” Wyndham asked dryly.

“Of course,” Radford replied, hitching his lean hip against the railing, as he continued, “Brynmore and Saxonhurst could never attempt my finesse.”

Wyndham nearly laughed and he realized how good it was to finally be once again with Radford’s noble cockiness, Brynmore’s roguish cheekiness, and Saxon’s abiding loyalty. His gaze caught Saxon and Brynmore rounding the mast as they each speculatively eyed him. He merely nodded and they both came forward.

“What happened?” Wyndham asked, once they were all gathered at the railing. He knew Alexei’s arrest was certainly not mere providence. He also thought he had an inkling of who to thank for his, in the nick of the time, rescue. Radford smugly gazed at him with his dark head tilted to one side. Brynmore winked imprudently and Saxon actually blushed. “Not you three then,” Wyndham muttered in amazement. “Surely, Drummond or Ravenscar?”

All three of them shook their heads gazing at him, until he had to believe none of the Archangels crafted Alexei’s opportune arrest. Then Radford quipped. “Oh by the aside, Wyndham, the Captain of this ship marries . . .”

Wyndham dropped his head and suddenly his three friends and companions were there beside him, all in motion for a combined male hugging and back patting. “Thank you,” Wyndham whispered. He knew well that the three of them understood his feelings. Never again would he reject any help offered, nor would he allow any of them to refuse his help. Together they were the Archangels and apart they were obscurity.

Chapter Sixteen

Without turning around, Orelan dismissed the maid with a grateful murmur. She could nearly pretend to be normal again, she thought, smoothing down the white gossamer fiber of the vaporous nightgown she wore. She was standing at the portal looking out to the midnight sea, such a deep purply black color that it reminded her of Wyndham’s eyes. She knew Wyndham was safe, she’d been told. What she did not know, was what price he might have paid in those last fateful hours with Alexei. Perhaps, that was why he did not come to her, she thought with remorse? Maybe they were both branded now beyond repair?

“When I gaze upon you, Orelan, all that I see are the golden lights of love. All that I feel is passion and longing so deeply coiled into my soul that it brings me to my knees in reverence.” Orelan gasped at Wyndham’s deep tenor voice behind her, while his words took hopeful flight in her heart. “From this moment forward all that I will ever ask, of God or of man, is that I may love you.”

Orelan turned with a soft urgent cry upon her lips. “Wyndham.” She saw him kneeling on the polished wooden flooring, gazing up at her, and her bare feet took flight with her night gown billowing around her like a white cloud. She met him on her knees as her fingers found the chiseled lines of his face. “I love you,” she gasped.

Wyndham’s fingers clasped the sides of her face as his thumb traced her parted lips and his irises shone like sapphire embers. They gazed at each other with impassioned questions and love, as though they were seeing each other fully for the first time in their lives.

“Baby love,” Wyndham whispered with his voice husky and filled with tremendous emotion as his forehead dropped and their temples kissed once, then laying still against each other. Their breathlessness mingled together warm and sweet.

Orelan sighed, a deep longing sound of love and joy, while her fingers touched Wyndham’s silky hair, the sides of his face, down his strong neck and his very powerful shoulders. She quested with an exploration of touch, feeling through her fingertips the sureness of his strength and wholeness.

“Did they . . .” Wyndham’s voice caught on a deep bass tone.

“No, Wyndham,” she whispered urgently. “I was not touched, my golden puma.”

The sound that erupted from Wyndham’s chest was a fierce growling of sharp relief as he grasped her into his strong and forceful embrace, cradling her yielding body against his steely frame. His masculinity surrounded her, enveloping her in warmth, safety, passion, and love, and she cried out at the power and surety of it. She quivered against him as he soothed her with slow caressing hands and the sheer force of his presence.

“Did, Alexei . . .” she panted, trembling. “My golden puma, did you?” she gasped.

“No,” Wyndham expelled as fiercely, coming on the tips of her cry of relief as she buried her face into his chest. Her tears dampened his shirt as he rocked her in his embrace and she clutched him back. The relief was an acute pain in her chest, making her tears turn into sobs.

“I would have, gladly, to save you,” Wyndham uttered, tilting her face up to his, to then peck kisses on her trembling lips. “As you would have for me, my love, my life,” he finished, as he tasted her small sobs and tears again with his lips.

“Yes,” she gasped on a retreating sob against his lips. “My love, my life.” The impassioned sound Wyndham made at her love-filled endearment inflamed her senses, and crumbled her sobs into heated whimpers.

“Christ, Orelan,” he growled hoarsely as he seized the sides of her face, lifting her lips to his. Their mouths crashed together with their lips moving madly over each other’s. She pressed her body to his, ardently soaking up his strength and passion. She could feel the evidence of his love and need. She could feel the thick ridge of his power and masculinity, pressing firmly into her belly. She squirmed against it, acknowledging the male potency with her own needy and yielding softness. The knobbed head, the thickly heated shaft, burned its outline into her flesh as their lips torridly groped each other.

Wyndham’s hand, with his fingers splayed, clasped the back of her head, anchoring it as his tongue thrust deep into her mouth, while his other hand with fingers spread, clasped her bottom, lifting her body up to his body.

“Mm, mm,” she cried around his tongue, sucking on it strongly and deeply, as her arms wound around his neck. His fingers squeezed over the wiggling plumpness of her buttocks, making her gasp, as his tongue coupled her mouth with thick heated thrusts. The thinness of her night gown was no barrier to his fingers spread over her buttocks, with one finger pressing intimately into the crease. Its arousing presence was fingering her with passionate promise that wet her sex, which was riding over the impression of his timbered cock.

“God,” Wyndham exclaimed sharply, then lifting her and himself in one impossibly strong motion of his tall body. Her legs instantly wrapped around his lean hips for support as he stood upright. She straddled him as he held her aloft with his strength and their lips greedily clung together, begging each other for more.

“Oh, Wyndham, oh,” she whimpered, feeling the lips of her splayed loins rubbing against the wide base of Wyndham’s pene. It felt so good that she slid the drenched recesses of her swollen sex up and down over the stiff root, using Wyndham’s wide shoulders as balance.

He groaned a heated erotic sound. Then he used his hands, gripping the globes of her buttocks to help the motion. Lifting and lowering her, rubbing her aroused inner lips over the broad rigid mass. Tearing his lips away from her lips, he uttered a male growling. “Your pussy is so hot and wet, spitfire. Rub it on my cock, baby love, get me wet.”

“Wyndham,” she gasped as they ground their loins together. One stout, one splayed, mingling and becoming slippery against the cloth that separated them. The words Wyndham used inflamed her more, as she cried, “My pussy aches, my puma! My pussy aches for your big pene.”

“Christ, Orelan,” Wyndham rasped hoarsely. “Say it again, baby love. Say it again,” he demanded.

Orelan feverishly rubbed her sex against Wyndham, as she whimpered. “My Wyndham, my pussy aches so for your big pene, mio amore.”

“Yes,” Wyndham hissed, and then his body was in motion, walking with a limp toward the bed as he sought out Orelan’s lips for another wet and hot kiss. He was so engrossed in his fiery and sexy woman, the only way he knew that he’d reached his goal was by his knees bumping into the bed’s frame. She was fire and love . . . and she was his.

He took her quickly down to the bed, laying her on her back, while her legs around his waist propelled him down with her. His injured knee, rebelled with a spasm, as he tried to kneel on it. His hot lusty mind ignored it and he knelt just on his one good knee as he rose upward and reached forward to grip the collar of Orelan’s gauzy nightgown. A portion of his mind cautioned slowness. But his lust was master as he rent the flimsy material down the front.

Orelan gasped. Her legs falling away from his hips as her hands hastily lowered to clutch one edge of the torn nightgown over her mon’s. Her golden eyes were molten with passion, yet surprised and anxious as her perfect breasts heaved with turgid pink nipples pointing at him. He growled with an, “I am going to fuck you sound,” then he reached forward with the intention of brushing her hands away from his prize.

“No, Wyndham, please no,” she whimpered, just as his hand reached her hands covering his goal. He had her legs splayed between his knees and she was stripped nude with only a scant piece of cloth clutched between her thighs, as he knelt, while towering over her. Dripping wet thighs. Hot cunt lips, swollen and wet just for him. Nothing on this earth could have stopped him, except for Orelan’s impassioned plea.

“I beg you,” she whimpered with golden tears forming in her wide eyes. “Please,” she gasped.

A tenor groan hissed from his throat, as his body shook, becoming so tense, he thought it possible he might break. His head dropped in supplication between Orelan’s plump breasts, for one agonizing moment. Then, he pushed away strongly with his arms and fell onto his back on the bed with his chest heaving. Christ, he had fucked it up again. Even with all his good intentions, he thought. He tried to think. So difficult, knifing through his rampant lust. His chest rose and fell. Sweat glistened there, beneath his shirt and pants. Jesus, at least he was still dressed.

“Wyndham?” Orelan whispered.

Wyndham took a deep and steadying breath. “Yes, baby love?” It was a cautious question and answer as he stared at the wooden beams on the ceiling in the Captain’s cabin.

“The tattoo,” she gasped, with nearly a whimper.

Jesus. He grimaced with his gut clenching like steel. What did a man do in a situation like this one? He rolled over and reached for Orelan, bringing her resisting body into his embrace. “Please, Orelan, let me hold you,” he murmured. Thankful moments later when he felt her body relaxing a bit even though she continued to tremble.

“Orelan, I love you,” he murmured into her hair as he held her close and warm against his body.

“Oh, Wyndham,” she mumbled into his chest, where her lips touched his skin, between the opening edges of his shirt.

He valiantly ignored that and her soft warm nakedness resting so tantalizingly against him. This was for a life time. How could he explain to her that he would not be dissuaded in the least by a tattoo of any kind placed on her tender, moist, and spectacularly beckoning cove? A place he humbly called his own and intended to covet religiously. Just thinking of it, sent a spectacular throbbing into the base of his cock. Which he once again strove to ignore.

“Do you trust me, Orelan?” he asked with his voice deep in huskiness.

“Yes,” she murmured instantly and without any sound of reservation.

“With your life?” he asked in a whisper.

She lifted her head and gazed into his eyes. “Yes . . . always,” she whispered.

He smiled. It was a true honest smile. Orelan’s eyes widened as she gazed at his arching lips, then she looked up into his eyes again. There was a hint of wonder and dawning pleasure in her eyes, as she murmured, “My Wyndham, you never smile.”

“Your Wyndham is in love, Orelan.” He grinned now. “Your Wyndham is in love with a fiery woman, who has set his heart on fire. And who . . . asked him to marry her.”

“Wyndham!” A tentative smile broke across Orelan’s lips.

“And I have accepted, my fiery woman. My wonderful beautiful, spitfire,” he said, teasing. “This very night in fact,” he finished with an arched eyebrow.

“This very night?” she exclaimed.

“The Captain of the ship will marry us this very night, Orelan. Because I am allowing no chance for you to get away from me ever again. I have found that I am very possessive where you are concerned.” And then, he added on a deep murmur, “My baby love.”

“Oh, Wyndham,” Orelan exclaimed, just as their lips met in an intimate kiss.

Long moments later, he raised his mouth from her well-kissed mouth. “And now we will consummate the marriage,” he murmured, gazing into her passionate eyes. “To hell with tradition,” he added with a grin.

“To hell with the traditions,” Orelan quipped, smiling at him.

Wyndham adjusted his position, allowing his hands to cup Orelan’s face. “I have one serious question first,” he said, brushing her chin with his thumb.

“Yes?”

“Do you want to know what the tattoo says, my love? Because I could not care one wit.”

Orelan slowly licked her plush lips, gazing at him, as he watched the decision being weighed in her mind, then she whispered, “Yes, I want to know.”

“As you wish, my lady, my love,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her softly. When he was certain his lips had told her how much he loved her, he lifted his head and whispered, “Lay back, Orelan.”

“Si, Wyndham”

Wyndham smiled. Orelan always reverted to a bit of Spanish whenever she was nervous, angry, or excited, as in passion. The nuance clung to him warmly.

“Will you be honest?” she asked nervously.

“Always, baby love,” he murmured as he separated her trembling thighs, then he looked downward. He kept a hand on her warm satin belly, stroking it gently, as she jerked her hands and the piece of cloth away. The scents of her earlier arousal lifted to his nostrils, like a musky piquant dream. He looked closely on the left side of her coral pink and perfect labium’s lip. The lingering dewiness there glistened over the tattoo.

“Wyndham?” she asked anxiously.

He lifted his head, gazing deep into her eyes as she lifted her head looking down on him. “It says, Orelan, the words, I love you.” Her eyes widened as she gazed at him. “And that is all it says,” he finished on a murmur.

“Wyndham!” she exclaimed, and not at all unpleased.

“I—” Wyndham began, “Will consider this Alexei’s wedding gift to us.”

“Oh, si,” Orelan replied, smiling with him.

“And now,” he murmured, tugging off his shirt and pants. “For the consummation, hm?”

Orelan giggled. “Si, Wyndham, we will consummate together.”

“At least,” he answered, waggling his eyebrows at her, and making her giggle again. “I have one question,” he said, as he bent down again, and slowly crawled up her body. “How does a widow continue to remain a virgin?”

Orelan laughed, reaching for him. “It is a very mysterious story, my golden puma. Perhaps, I might not be a widow at all.”

“Ah,” Wyndham replied. “Using it to keep the swine away?”

“All but one, my handsome puma,” she said chuckling.

“That, baby love, is the only way I would have it,” he said with the tip of his cock, nudging her wet and welcoming opening.

“Oh, si,” Orelan gasped, clutching his shoulders as her hips rose to meet his.

The way was tight. Not an easy conquest. Just as he would have it, as he nudged and retreated and nudged a little deeper again. But the haven was dribbling and hot, clutching at the head of his cock exuberantly and making him groan as Orelan gasped. He pressed harder, demanding surrender, slipping deeper. Then, he felt the fiery circle of Orelan’s feminine flesh enclosed around the column of his throbbing dick. The inner walls were slippery and gripping. Tight then lax, tighter, then lax again. The heat sizzled along his cock and saturated him to the core.

“Christ,” he groaned hoarsely as Orelan passionately panted beneath him. It seemed that raised and tilted as he was, only on one knee, produced a riveting angle for both of them, and it also showed him that he could, if he wished, fuck his woman in any way he could imagine. Leaning on one hand he clasped Orelan by the small of her back, and thrust into her, seating himself with a groan, to the hilt of his thickening cock.

“Oh hhh hh,” Orelan cried, arching beneath him.

He instantly felt the inner walls of her vagina clench around the full length of his dick, making him tense in pleasure. But he held still, deeply embedded, and raised his head, whispering hoarsely, “Do it again, baby love. Grip my big cock inside you.”

Orelan’s red lips parted on a gasp as she looked at him with burning passion in her eyes. The intimacy of what they both felt, being joined, feeling each other, was written there, as she tightened her inner muscles stroking him deep. “Oh,” she squealed and the pleasure flashed across her lovely features, as he belly-groaned his immense approval.

“I am going to make you come like this,” he vowed in a deep tenor voice as he twitched his thick cock strongly inside her, making her squeal excitedly. He never thrust. He never left his deep haven, as he murmured, “Grip my cock, baby love. Try to push me out.”

“Wyndham,” she cried out, as she followed his command, squeezing, then releasing, in ever faster tremors around his impaled cock.

“Ah, Christ, baby,” he groaned harshly as he too twitched his broad stiff root up inside of her, while they gazed at each other, seeing each motion reflected in the other’s eyes. The pleasure was intense and expanding, rippling . . . overpowering. Suddenly, Orelan cried out, arching up against his stiffly inserted cock as her exploding climax convulsed over his dick, and he bellowed. “God!” His cock drew inward, and then burst forth with raw pleasure so deep it burned his guts, as his seed ejaculated. “Ah,” he grunted, beneath the powerful rapture, shuddering through his body.

“God, I love you, baby,” he belly-groaned.

“Oh, my Wyndham, I love you too,” Orelan gasped.

The End

My Lady Taken

By Shirl Anders

Chapter One

“You are as mad as a March hare, man,” Brynmore declared.

“I do not see why,” Radford responded. “It is a foregone conclusion that I must marry.” Radford’s sculptured lips grimaced plentifully. “This year,” he sneered, before he continued, with his more normally cultured baritone voice. “I am a fine catch, I understand, even given the eye patch.” He paused, sipping his whiskey. “Inasmuch as I am a Duke . . . and so young, they will come.”

“Yea, they will run to your side,” Brynmore agreed, interrupting. “And they do present all form of nuisances to you already, man, falling all over you. But a contest?”

“To win your hand in marriage and not the other way around?” Saxonhurst questioned. “It is nobly conceited,” he finished grimly.

“Nay, comrades,” Radford quipped. “I say it is a masterpiece of wit. A consummate plan of attack. I shall never be so fortunate as our compatriots Harrison, Wyndham, and our veritable leader Drummond, in finding the perfect woman, as they have. Each woman beautiful and classic as they stand, yet each with overflowing spoonful’s of the naughty vixen beneath their lovely exteriors.” Radford paused, striking a tall and languished pose. “Nay, it is impossible to think I could have enough time within this year alone to aspire to my companions’ good fortune... Unless, I cheat.”

Both men glared at him, thoughtful now. Yet, both of their intelligent minds were turning with the possibilities and apparently coming to the same obvious conclusions that he had. It was an amazing sight with the rogue Brynmore beginning to lecherously grin, while Saxonhurst stared at him intense but solemn. But in the end they both gambled to the same conclusions that he had.

“They will be trying to fuck you!” Brynmore blared.

“Tup you royally!” Saxonhurst exclaimed at the same moment, so that both men’s voices pounded loudly over each other’s.

“Exactly!” Radford responded, with triumphant.

“But how would ye do the thing, man?”

“And their mamas would never allow it,” Saxonhurst declared, overriding Brynmore.

“Ah, but their mamas would, gentlemen. I put forth those mothering hens are more ambitious than Napoleon and his armies put together.” Radford turned his good crystal blue eye, not covered by the eye patch he wore, toward Brynmore. “And as for your question, Bry, I really intended not to do much of anything, but to show up.” Radford paused, swirling his glass of whiskey before him and staring at the amber liquid. “A weekend event in the country I believe should do it. At my estate. Soirées, a hunt, and a masquerade ball, all that sort of trivial. The second part of the plan shall encompass both of you and White’s Gentlemen’s Club.”

“White’s?” Brynmore asked with his lilting Scottish drawl.

“What?” Saxonhurst questioned.

“Actually,” Radford responded “It shall encompass both of you and the betting book at White’s.”

“Ack, you one-eyed devil, you are as long winded as a Northeastern gale,” Brynmore muttered.

Radford winked, as he quipped, “Large minds, my friend.” But then, he leaned forward with the intent expression of pure conspiracy. “Gentlemen, you my friends, shall bet on the date of my marriage and also to whom I am aspiring to marry. The matron hounds, from all counties around, will have this momentous piece of gossip ferreted out before the ink dries. Then, when my invitations arrive on the same day, as the bet, for a weekend retreat, giving them all enough time to work out their schemes properly, I shall have my contest with none of them being any the wiser, but for you two, my dearest friends.”

“Stow it,” Saxonhurst muttered, to Radford’s outrageous outburst of embellished endearments.

“This is why Drummond always appoints our Radford here the organizer,” Brynmore addressed sagely.

“But what of the screwing, Rad?” Saxonhurst asked. “If anyone should catch you plying an over achieving maiden, the conclusion will be forgone.”

“Marriage,” Brynmore added, stating the obvious.

“Yes,” Radford muttered. He’d realized this was the only skip, in his brilliantly formulated plan. As society stood now, a man would be walking the marriage shuffle if he were just as innocently caught alone in a room with an unattached young pigeon. Oh, for the more progressive continent, he silently lamented. Yet, there had to be a perfectly good solution.

“You know with every one of them vying for you,” Saxonhurst said. “Each one will be unwilling to accuse the other, for the fear of losing the prize.”

“And some will not bring their mamas or chaperone’s if they are clever, bold, and determined enough,” Brynmore added.

“I should surely keep to those,” Radford agreed.

“And lock all doors behind you!” Brynmore advised.

“With a pocket full of French sheaths or our grand English island will be populated with snooty aristocratic rogues, looking uncommonly like vagabond pirates,” Saxonhurst said.

“It might just work,” Radford stated.

“I do not know,” Saxonhurst said. “I believe I will place my bet on the English women’s stodgy sexual morality, and I will say that they will never be so bold.”

“Ah, but if only one does. She could be the truest prize of all,” Radford murmured.

Chapter Two

“You shall be able to send your serious young brother Galen up to Oxford with the amount I have purposed in this envelope, Madam.”

A white evening glove floated out of the darkness drawing forth a fat parchment envelope tempting Nia O’Shea’s waiting grasp. She did not, however, instantly and more uncouthly snatch the small fortune tantalizing her yearning fingertips. Her momentary reticence due mostly to the alarm tripping down her delicate spine.

“A promising mind, Madame, is not something to be wasted.” The gentleman’s voice sounded deeply contrived as it issued forth out of the dimness like a mesmerizing command.

“How dare you!”

Nia turned her profile away from the shadowy gentleman standing with her in the tree-darkened alcove off one of the paths in Vaudeville Gardens. The gesture was as if she might leave. Surrounding them the well-manicured but thickly dense foliage seemed like ghostly black soldiers. There was a half-moon and perfume from the summer roses hung heavy in the night air. Off in the distance, Nia could hear the nightly fireworks display beginning. The atmosphere was dramatic and Gothic enough to make her want to shiver, but instead she chose to advance her indignation. “To think that you could know anything about me is daft, sir. I do not know this Galen you speak of and if you think to blackmail me, I will be leaving this instant!”

The white gloved hand instantly sailed aloft in the darkness before her gaze with a halting motion. Nia pouted her lips, squinting slightly in an attempt to gain a better look at the covert gentleman. He would not allow it of course and she was certain that was why he had picked the obscure and shadowed location for their final meeting. Yet, she knew that she would not leave and she could feel the confidence in which her mysterious gentleman also knew that.

“I do not suffer fools easily, Madame. Let us just say the sum of money we are concerning ourselves with allows me a modicum of privilege. Furthermore, if you cannot produce precisely what I am asking for, I shall have to look elsewhere.”

Backtracking with a fine art that barely rivaled her quickness, Nia abruptly laughed in a gay, yet flirtatious manner. She used the ploy to ease the tension. However, even as she did, she also wondered how it was that she knew that the gentleman would not look elsewhere. He needed her. Precisely her! Yet, by all the bonny Saints of Ireland, what should she care about what his reasons were? Or the fact that he knew of Galen and therefore must know of her other four parentless siblings?

She had to admit, secretly to herself, that the money enticed her beyond any objections. So with that goal firmly set in her intentions, she saucily shook back her long mane of red hair, then smiled in her best coquettish manner, while settling her mouth in the direction she knew the mysterious lord’s face must be. It was hard to ascertain, yet he appeared rather to be her same height, she thought, which was unusually short for a gentleman. “I would be the woman for you, sir, and I dare you to say that I am not!” Her rich laughter followed, while she settled her hands on her hips, swaying them in an openly provocative manner.

“Precisely the fille de joie I envisioned!” Uncharacteristically the gentleman’s white gloved hands clapped together nearly gleeful, combined with an unusually high note in his voice.

Nia nodded to him with her eyes twinkling in a suggestive manner. She would readily admit that she was that! A whore. A beautiful one she had been told, and one that was a wee bit new to the trade, but a whore nonetheless.

“I can masquerade as the best of ladies!” Nia straightened to a more proper bearing, showcasing her willowy figure, which was clad in a black taffeta silk gown trimmed in red. The gown sported an indecently lower collar and stretched tightly across her bosom. It was the classic apparel of her trade. “I can do it so well this Duke of yours, Lord Radford Sutherlin, will not know what has befallen him! Is this a practical joke then?”

Nia peered into the shadows as the gentleman cleared his throat, gaining a suddenly deeper voice than the gleeful one of moments before. “The reasons are not germane, Madame, to our dealings. Just seduce him with all the skills you possess, while following my written instruction precisely and this amount again, shall be yours.”

Nia nearly gasped at the new added offer and it was only with great effort that she held it back. Double the amount? For an instant, she wondered what instructions could be inside the envelope for such a sum. However, in the next second her hesitations disappeared as she realized that with the amount being offered she could retire, and retire nearly as quickly as she had started her newest profession. For that she might do anything this side of murder. It was not that she disliked the men. She loved men, and she’d also found out quickly and quite by surprise that she was a sexual woman. She had yet to experience a bad liaison with any gentlemen. Quite the contrary, the few men that she’d entertained thus far had all been delightful and a font of information into the variety of sexual relations to be had.

Nay, her vehemence came from need. It was the need of her five siblings, who all but for Galen, were so young. They needed her older guidance, but of course they had needed the income more. In the end the income had won out over guidance, but now with the sum of money teasing her, she could return home.

“We have a deal, sir! And, an O’Shea never breaks their word, my lord.” Nia thrust her hand forward as a gentleman might for a handshake, along with a crooked smile, for being so improper. Her impishness gained her a chuckle from the gentleman.

“You shall do, Nia O’Shea. You shall do,” he said, purposefully inflecting an Irish accent into his rather high voice.

Nia laughed as he took her hand, while further placing the hefty envelope into it. “You will find directions to Lady Nia O’Shea’s new townhouse, which is staffed with a cook, a maid, and a butler, who are all awaiting your arrival as we speak. And...” the gentleman’s voice became low in tenor, as he warned. “I shall be watching you.”

An hour later, Nia shivered beneath her silk pelisse cloak as she looked up at the lighted townhouse before her. The structure stood solidly and at the height of fashion on a well-noted London thoroughfare, she would give him that. “Hm,” she mused out loud. “You, my mysterious nobleman, need a name.” Nia smiled, gathering her cloak up above her ankles, as she announced. “Lord Benefactor! That is what I will call you and Lord Benny for short. And what’s more, Benny my love, I will vow on my sweet mum’s grave that I will do you proud!” Nia pulled the edges of her cloak snugly together. It would not do for her new servants to catch sight of the gown she wore beneath the pelisse. “Give away the wee lark, before I start!” she proclaimed, and then she said, “And now, the newly arisen lady should meet her staff.”

Nia laughed as she stepped up to the front door of the townhouse and instead of pulling the bell, she turned the knob and she waltzed inside. It was after all, completely hers for a time.

The butler’s name was Harkin, the cook Mrs. Wink, and her new lady’s maid was Penny, a good Irish girl. Each of the servants appeared amiable, yet discreet. Exactly what she expected Lord Benny to provide, Nia thought later that night.

“I’ve been fed, bathed, and royally pampered!” Nia let her body fall onto the feathered mattress in her new boudoir, like a tree might after the ax. The mattress yielded like a plush cocoon around her and she giggled in delight. “Benny is a marvelous benefactor! I’ve only been on the outside of a London townhouse such as this.” Nia turned onto her stomach, wallowing in the luxurious feel of the sheer silk chemise she wore and the opulent mattress hugging her curves. “This bonny bed was made for the lively art of tupping. Oh, it is heaven!” She wiggled her toes into the soft feather ticking. She had not had a night on her own in any type of luxury since she was a child. The word, “alone,” with five dear and sweet but rambunctious siblings, was nonexistent.

“Och, and this silk, Benny, it is if the fairies have spun a dream.” Nia rolled onto her back, fanning her waist-long red tresses across the bed as she slid her hand slowly over the gossamer silk and her softly curving body beneath. “A whole closet full of these you’ve given me, and dresses, shoes, silk stockings, and... But you know, Benny my love, I did notice the lack of under-drawers.”

Nia brushed her fingertips down over the silk laying like whispers on her belly, then she caressed lower still, until her fingers spread over her mound and the bareness beneath. “Mm, and what lady has a shaved pussy?”

She nibbled on her bottom lip pondering the dilemma, while her fingers traced the wetting lips of her pussy. She had never appreciated touching herself as well as since she’d shaved her pretty mound at the suggestion of her mentor, a fille de joie by the name of Madame Vivian. She loved the tenderly exposed feel of her pussy lips and the delicate crease. Looking at her sex now, completely nude always made her instantly aroused with a seeping wetness to prove it. The silk beneath her fingertips grew damp with the erotic soft friction of her fingers increasing motions as she petted her soft pussy lips open.

She sighed dreamily. “I wonder what our Duke looks like. He could be old, or mean, or . . . Nay, I will think of him as tall, dark-haired and...” Nia paused slipping her finger over the swelling bead of her wet clitty. “Oh, pirate-ish.”

She liked to create a dashing figure of her gentleman in her mind, just to heighten both their experiences. “Yes,” she sighed, rubbing her clitoris in tightening circles as her soft thighs separated across the mattress. “A finely darken jawline, flowing black hair, piercing eyes with a roguish smile. Oh mmm.”

Nia bowed her hips upward, pressing her needy clitty firmly against the rapid petting of her fingers. It was moments like this when she appreciated men the most. When she was fully aroused and her feminine cleft was begging to be filled. She must admit that she loved a manly cock. Strong and stout hot male cock. It aroused her, fascinated her, lured her and obsessed her.

“Oh, and my Duke will have a bonny willy!” she exclaimed. “It will be thick and round as a billiard ball, curved upward with a fat sassy head. Oh mm, that will stretch me tight and make me squirm atop it. Oh yes!”

Nia plunged her silk-encased finger deeply into her wet vagina, riding up on her heels as she brought her other fingers from pinching her nipples downward to smudge over her sharply aching clitty. Her knees drew upward to graze the aroused tips of her breasts as she imagined her pirate Duke above her, plunging his cock deep inside her, fucking her hard. Her fingers impersonated his manly cock with increasingly rapid in and out motions that rocked her hips.

“Fuck me!” she gasped, carried away into the world of carnal arousals. “Fuck me wild and true. Make me come. Oh!”

The pleasure twisted harshly, then spiked through her clitoris, while exploding deep inside her cleft. Each recurring plunge of her fingers exacerbated the intense pleasure to new heights as her climax shuddered through her body for long drawn out minutes. Slowly . . . slowly, she stilled her body’s motions. But still, she rubbed the heat of her sex gently as she smiled.

“I do not know what the purpose is to seduce you, my Duke, especially by a common whore. Yet, I cannot imagine such a thing as being harmful and I promise on my dear mum’s soul, that I will make you smile. Because you will be the wee bit o’ luck that changes my life forever, and changes it forever for the better.”

Nia giggled softly. “You will be my climax, Sir Pirate Duke!”

Chapter Three

“A what?” Radford turned his one shimmering blue eye to Saxonhurst, who for once had shed his solemn grace and was smiling devilishly.

“A bet!” Saxonhurst repeated, settling into the chair facing the desk where Radford sat in the study of his London mansion. “We placed the bet you asked us too, of course,” Saxonhurst continued. “Well, I and Brynmore’s, bet on you to be precise. Just as you asked. And then, my gaze wandered over the other new wagers placed on White’s books, and there above the one that Brynmore and I had just had the Majordomo’s write, was another wager concerning you. Bold as you please.”

Radford watched Saxonhurst flipping several strands of his ridiculously long maple-brown colored hair back over his shoulder with the use of a small hook attached to where his right hand had once been. Really, Saxonhurst must have hurried with the news to tease and irritate him, because he never wore his waist-length hair loose like he was, Radford thought.

“Well?” Radford raised his eyebrow over his black eye patch.

“The way I see it, it is clearly a challenge. A challenge that was made directly toward you. Although, I do not know her. I have never heard of the lady before.”

“Lady?” Radford felt the hawkishness of his emotions intensifying. A demoiselle betting on the books at White’s was summarily unheard of.

Saxonhurst continued grinning, persistently more, seriously nettling him, and torturing his impatience, as he still hedged. “A handful she would have to be, Rad.”

“Saxonhur—” Radford began to threaten.

“Lady Nia O’Shea. I do so love to tease you.”

“You never did before, Saxon.” Radford’s remark was banked with newfound curiosity.

“Of course I did! Before . . . well the accident where I lost my hand and you lost your eye.”

“No, you did not.”

“Well then, I think I shall start . . . with you!”

“You’ve met a woman then?” It was the only logical reason Radford could think of. It was past time finally, for his normally solemn and reticent friend.

“No, no of course not. Simply a new leaf turned for the better let’s say. I am extremely tired of the wallowing.”

“Touché, my friend.” Radford smiled slightly with the hope that this could be true.

“The Lady Nia O’Shea has bet a small fortune that she will marry you in a fortnight!” Saxonhurst blurted out in a joyful manner. “Exactly put the wager states, I will have Lord Sutherlin bridled in marriage and bedded in pleasure, by . . . so on and so on.”

“Bridled and bedded!”

He was offended. And it was ridiculous that he was, yet it felt rather demeaning in an odd sort of way. He should be thrilled. He should be puffed up like a manly peacock that a lady wanted to bed him and in this morally strict day and age, had proclaimed it so vocally and brazenly for all to witness. This was exactly the sort of woman he was hoping for, wasn’t it?

“Really, Rad, I thought you would be pleased.”

“I should be, Saxon, shouldn’t I, but...”

“Hm, feels rather odd being the pursued rather than the pursuer, perhaps, Rad?”

“Exactly. Yes, that must be it. Brazen tart, isn’t she? The language too, is meant to humble, titillate, and yet challenge.”

“Witty is good.”

“Yes, witty is number one here on my list.”

“List?”

“Yes, it occurred to me that I ought to have some idea of what I thought favorable besides nice tits, ass, and long legs.”

“I prefer short legs.”

“Really, Saxon? I did not know. Well actually, I realized after I started compiling the list that all women have beautiful endowments of one sort or another. However, when speaking of a wife these other characteristics become monumentally important. I never realized.”

“Characteristics, Rad?”

Radford turned the top piece of parchment on his desk toward Saxonhurst, who leaned forward. “Ah, loyalty, number one? As in not having affairs? Really, Radford?” Saxonhurst appeared surprised and the thought further rankled Radford, another oddity, he pondered, as Saxonhurst said. “Ah, the spying then, I see, Rad. But we no longer do that.”

Radford realized his mistake nearly too late to cover it. Really the wager must have him more rattled than he thought. He was not usually so sloppy. And he would never admit, even to himself, that the recent news that he might be losing the sight in his one remaining good eye had anything to do with this question of loyalty now. He had no aspirations of pity from anyone and so he sought to cover his faux pas quickly. “Yes, however humor and wit should be placed higher on the list. I had not set them in their proper order of importance yet.”

“You will have no argument from me. I miss humor and I am set to find it again.”

“Good for you, my friend.” Radford nodded to Saxonhurst.

“Well, you have not added brazen to your list here, Rad, and this Lady O’Shea certainly has that.”

“It is extraordinarily daring for a lady in this day and age, is it not?” Radford mused.

“Extraordinary. One might say ballsy, if we were not speaking of a woman.” Saxonhurst quipped.

“Intriguing.” Radford pushed the parchment paper around on his desk in an absent manner. His entire countenance felt energized in a way he had not experienced since the days of spying for the Archangels and England. Bittersweet. He had not allowed himself to realize how much he missed the thrilling pump of excitement thrumming through his tall frame, for an adventure about to begin.

“What will you do, Rad?”

Radford lifted his gaze to Saxon. “Nothing.” He felt oddly unsettled and he refused to acknowledge to himself the profoundness of his intrigue in this matter, so he fell back on his ever ready arrogance. “She will come to me. That is the plan and I never deviate from a perfect and brilliantly set plan. They will all come to me.”

Four hours later, Radford irritably slapped his leather gloves against his tan riding britches as he stood outside a decorous townhouse, one among many in London. Intrigue and irritation were proving to be winning combinations with him, and that coupled with the words ‘bridled and bedded’ blaring in his head, now found him standing in front of Lady O’Shea’s townhouse.

“Truly the lady has to be a minx,” he muttered, striding up to the front door. He really had no idea of what to expect. It was as unfathomable as was his presence there and for a man who assumed that he favored organization in all things to the point of an obsession, his actions now were bordering upon a nearly uncontrollable urge. Given that, he strove to hide his underlying reactions with a more arrogantly aristocratic facade. He knew that stance well.

When the door opened to an elderly, yet immaculately dressed butler, Radford merely flipped his calling card over with a snap of his fingers beneath the butler’s pinched nose. It was a wordless and pompous advance, with the word, “Duke,” blaring out of the pristine white card in so bold a manner as to have any butler worth his salt bowing and shuffling. Radford was therefore immensely surprised when this butler bared his teeth, and said, “I shall see if my lady is receiving.” Then, the short little man summarily shut the door right in his face.

“Balls.” Radford looked at the card outstretched in his hand. “What gall,” he muttered.

Then suddenly, he laughed, looking up at the door. He had arrived at birth in his cradle as a Duke and in all of his years, except for playing guises in spying ventures, he had been treated as though he was royalty to the point of irritation. He did not bemoan his good fortune, but some of the continuous trappings and attitudes were wearisome.

“The woman is completely peachy,” he declared with a chuckle and to him the word peachy meant sassy and impertinent, with touches of an original free spirit. He could not wait to meet her. Therefore, instead of turning away offended, he stood like a lower class clod upon her front door step.

He consoled himself with the fact that had the door not opened a moment later, surely he would have left, defeating the urge inside him to meet the brazen mystery woman. Also, within his few moments of reflection, he decided that his best, and for the justice of all males in any corner of the world, that his only course of action was to set a challenge to a challenge. The free spirited filly that he was about to meet needed to be set down a peg or two. Being a Duke was one thing, but more importantly first, he was a man. And his masculinity was rising to the occasion, spurred on by a witty and pernicious feminine advance.

“Lady O’Shea, has agreed to receive you, my lord, in the front parlor.”

Radford immediately noted the butler’s blatant leaving off of his proper noble calling of, “your grace.” And, he was equally certain the blaring faux pas did not come from the butler’s impertinence, but from the lady of the house’s orders.

Chapter Four

Radford sat with deceptive quietness in Lady O’Shea’s front parlor absently toying with the edge of the leather chair. The room spoke of subdued elegance with richly embroidered fabrics in reds and gold’s. There was an English hand-woven rug on the floor, in the unique color of black with honey-colored trim, and the entire room was set off with mahogany wood embellishments. Definitely not a feminine room, but highly sophisticated. The lights were low and cast a yellow glow over the books on the shelves. He considered wandering over to look at the titles to discover what might impress an overly bold femme fatale such as Lady Nia O’Shea, and he was just at the point of standing when suddenly the lights went out.

Radford stiffened. He was instantly alert and his senses jumped to heightened attention, more so than moments before. Hm. With much more blase than he was feeling, but with an innate sense of calculation, he sat back down to wait out the unusual turning of events. He knew that it certainly was not a mishap that had darkened the room, and his curiosity along with some years of trained instincts in the survival of dangerous situations, rose to his command.

Within seconds his eye adjusted to the blackness. At the same moment that he felt the distinct embodiment of a presence joining him in the room. He took a deep breath reminding himself that this was not a perilous covert mission for bloody old England, but rather a lady’s front parlor. There was not enough light for him to actually see anything, yet he could feel some airy movements off to his side. He sat completely still, trying to focus.

Yes, there it was. A tiny movement just at the edge of his vision. He turned his head slightly and lost it again. The hairs on the back of his neck tingled. There was definitely someone in the room with him. He had the impression that the shape was willowy. Then yet again, he caught a movement at his periphery, it alluded to a tall form, silently moving toward him with the subtle scent of vanilla preceding it. He knew then, with a deep and drugging instinct that it was she.

Lady Nia O’Shea was stepping carefully in the pitched darkness, walking toward him. Still, he sat in silence, awaiting the next move to be made.

“I see that you have heard of my wager, your grace.”

Somewhat startled by the sudden sound of a voice issuing forth from the darkness, Radford first noted the Irish lilting to it, along with an enticing and husky feminine quality. A minx’s bedroom voice.

“Do you always greet your male visitors in the darkness, cherie ?” Radford deliberately used an improper endearment to address the lady. She should be scandalized at the blunt forwardness. Curiously, he found himself hoping that she was not shocked at all.

The laugh that sounded was feminine, yet full-bodied and true. It stirred him instantly. “There are no secrets in the dark . . . are there? The senses do not lie, don’t you agree, your grace?”

Radford chose that moment to rise, and as he perceived, to gain a small advantage. He could readily feel the lady’s nearness to him. Her scent filled him, yet strangely he could not hear any accompanying sounds to her movements, except for her breathing. Where were the rustling sounds of a lady’s full skirts? It was a sound that was as ingrained into his hearing as his own voice. The absence of such a sound was blaring in his mind. He seriously began to wonder what it was that the lady was wearing, because he could only imagine one logical reason for the absence of that sound.

He turned suddenly and caught the briefest glimpse of pale skin. Thoroughly astounded, he realized that the lady was quite possibly nude. However, his instantaneous and incredulous amazement halted his complete belief that it could be true. No lady would do such a thing. Belatedly, he realized that he might expect the light to come crashing on with Lady Nia to be there in all her glorious nudity, as her aghast mother stormed into the room, and summarily caught them in a compromising position, to then begin the recriminations and blackmail into marriage.

It was only by a most unusual leap of faith that he stilled his inclinations of alarm. Nothing in the lady’s emboldened overtures thus far added up to ensnaring him by underhanded means. “What I do agree too,” he murmured, with less calmness than he was feeling. “Is that you have no hope of winning your flamboyant and pretentious wager, cherie.”

“Handsome, bonny lord.”

Radford tensed as the sound of Lady Nia’s purred words stirred the fine hairs on his nape. He had not sensed that she was so close to him. The realization stretched his muscular frame tautly in a sensually thrumming way.

“Can you not appreciate a lady’s willingness to try? And her sincere efforts to try to stir you, your grace.”

Out of the darkness a long strand of silky hair brushed suddenly against his jawline, then settled over his shoulder, before being whisked away. Radford had the impression of movement behind him with the air stirring around him as though Lady Nia danced slowly and closely to his back. His breathing deepened and his ever primed manhood stirred with its base tightening. The phantom minx definitely had his attention.

With heightened senses, Radford timed his movement with patience, because he knew if he were to move too quickly his ghostly sprite would flee. “Cherie, your game is dangerous.” His hand reached outward and found what he sought as he turned his body slightly with his words. His fleeting touch upon bare flesh startled them both, even though he had guessed the wanton play.

“Oh!” The lady breathed a breathless exclamation, instantly withdrawing from his touch with its sounding.

A buttock, naked and toned of satin, Radford was certain. He placed the lady twirling away in the darkness from his touch in his mind and he advanced. The time had come to take the upper hand. “How bold and naughty, cherie.”

Radford turned his head to the side, bending his voice in a misleading direction as he followed Lady Nia’s scent, warmth, and slightly hitched breathing. In his mind’s eye he had a mental picture of the room. It was a talent he’d honed to perfection during his spying days. He knew the precise placing of every piece of furniture and every nook and cranny in the room. Nocturnal spying visits were his specialty. The lady might believe her safety would lay in a fool stumbling around in the darkness, yet what she would find instead was the stealth of a panther.

His hand reached outward time and again as he advanced with his fingertips brushing glancing strokes against warm and soft female flesh. Each touch enlisting a soft gasping, and each fleeting stroke guiding the daring minx into the direction that he wanted her to retreat.

It was a fast paced waltz in the inky blackness and each time Lady Nia sought to move in the direction of escape, the bold touch of his fingers and hand startled her back into the direction of his intention. Cornered. He was certain that he touched a full breast, a bare waist, and the creamy cheek of a nicely rounded ass with his briefly stroking fingers. Each tangible feeling amazing him with the reality of her complete nudity, and proved to stroke his ardor higher.

Suddenly, the back of Nia’s bare thighs bumped a small table, rattling a crystal lamp and something else unknown crashed onto the floor, shattering. She cried out, flinging her hands upward in the attempt to keep from falling. Then, abruptly in the pitched blackness, she was engulfed against warm material and a tall hardened body beneath.

“It is not to be like this!” she gasped, senselessly overwhelmed by the masculine presence carrying her to safe equilibrium with her spine braced gently against the wall beside the table. Her fingers clutched a twill jacket and the firm broadness of muscular shoulders beneath. All at a height that dwarfed her uncommon tallness.

She was not to be caught like this. The written instructions had been clear. She was to tease, titillate, and flirt, perhaps flirting outrageously using her naked body in glancing touches to inflame the Duke. However, she was not to allow him to touch her more than briefly on their first encounter.

“Carefully laid plans gone awry, cherie?” Radford’s warm breath caressed her cheek too intimately.

She could not feel his hands touching her, only his unyielding body pressing down the entire length of her figure, pinning her to the wall at her back. “Yes, I...” she murmured in confusion, with her lips brushing the strong heated hollow of his throat as he moved his hips with a barely perceptible motion that slowly undulated the impression of his hardening cock against her lower belly.

“A little late to turn shy or moral, my sweet.”

Nia gasped as Radford’s tongue suddenly slid along the shell of her ear. She was clutching his shoulders and nearly pulling him to her, yet now her senses returned slightly with his words. What was she doing? She could barely think clearly. That had never happened to her before, not in such a simple situation. Simple? Oh Lord! She was losing her grasp. Nonetheless, just the permeation of Lord Sutherlin’s masculine heat, his smell, and the feel of his tall muscular body against her body, was overwhelming her. He was dangerous.

Nia realized in a breathless second that Lord Radford Sutherlin was a very dangerous man. Suddenly, she shoved against his shoulder wiggling her body with the purpose of freedom against his towering build. “Let me go,” she cried tightly.

The second the words left her lips, he stepped backward, completely surprising her. She turned instantly thinking to flee, yet her bare breasts encountered his straight arm braced against the wall, halting her forward motion. Instinctively, she backed up only to find herself halted by his other arm braced straight behind her.

“Hush, cherie.” His voice deepened with soothing sounds. “But we will talk.”

Talk, Nia thought, with her body shivering? If only, she could think of one clear thought. She wondered where her demeanor of being a vibrant and brazen lady of the night had fled to. “You have t-trumped me, your grace,” she managed to say, lifting her chin.

“In this intimacy of your making, amour. I insist you begin to call me, Radford.”

Crazily, Nia suddenly wished for the strength and warmth of his body back against hers once again as she shivered and cupped her hands over her naked breasts. His deeply sensual and masculine voice in the darkness alone was making her knees weak, and the desire to see his features was wreaking havoc with any common sense she held. He had to be incredibly handsome, if one were to judge by his voice alone.

“Radford,” she whispered. It was silly. She should try to push away from him. She had the feeling that he would release her, rather than frighten her, and the amount of personal honor that held in this situation was astonishing. Most of the spoiled and jaunty aristocrats that she knew of would not be so controlled or the least bit honorable under these circumstances.

“The sound of that husky Irish lilt is going to keep me awake far into the night, cherie.”

Charmer. He was all that and more, Nia thought. Somehow, she needed to regain her footing. If only his mere masculine aura were not swamping her so deeply. What would an authentic lady do in a situation like this, she wondered, then she nearly laughed outright? A truly proper English lady would never find herself in a situation such as this. Blimey, they would swoon if even too much of one of their ankles might be revealed to a gentleman.

Nia worried her front teeth over her fuller bottom lip. What she was doing was so blatant, and she knew that Radford had to be wondering about the same thing. She wondered at the sanity of Lord Benny for instructing this amorous adventure at the same time he directed her to portray herself a lady of the realm. Yet suddenly, she thought that perhaps acting like a helpless and befuddled lady might be the key to holding her disguised roll intact. She was grasping at straws, however she certainly felt befuddled and at the same time embarrassingly aroused.

“Y-You have me at a disadvantage, your grace.” Nia forced a catch of demureness into her voice, trying to ignore the stimulated and achy tips of her nipples, where her hands clutched their fullness.

“Radford,” his voice insisted lowly. “Now you will play the shrinking demoiselle, captured by the noble male, forcing you thrillingly perhaps against your will? You are on the first sense an intriguing variety of contrasts, none of which promises honest revelation.”

“Or just the breath of your nearness, noble swine, consumes my reasoned senses. The thrill of unknown chances lay bare upon my breasts, caressing mindless rapture of wet confusions,” she whispered. She startled at the feel of Radford’s cheek brushing a soft-whiskered rasp against her cheek.

“A poetess?” his voice murmured a base tone of surprise. “And a bawdy one of course.”

“It is not bawdy, yet erotic!”

Nia realized too late that she defended herself too quick, too openly, and too vocally. Her unchecked vehemence brought her stubborn chin aloft and suddenly her lips were sealed beneath Radford’s mouth. That first sparkling and astonishing touch, ignited instantly between them. Radford’s with a gruff sound in his throat that vibrated heat over her lips, while she whimpered an instant aroused response. Wildly, their mouths hummed against each other delving and exploring, and then Radford’s hand was pressed to the back of her head bearing her kissing lips deeper beneath his mouth.

Chapter Five

The first rule of a fille de joie: never let them kiss you. A woman’s heart was in her lips. Overcome, Nia flowed into Radford’s body with the tips of her sensitive nipples scraping against his linen shirt. She gasped into his mouth, feeling the twin bites of rapture, before her breasts were braced fully upon the unbending sinew of his chest. His lips and the heat of his mouth coursing over her mouth were irresistible. The texture and the firmness of his lips, coupled with the sensually exacting movements of his mouth, spun passion into her senses.

Then, he churned a deep and driving male sound in his chest that if put into words would say, “Now more. Now more until I consume you.” His tongue lashed into the recesses of her mouth. Her eager moan answered his tongue, slipping along the surface of her tongue, and she was lost. She was wholly lost with only a passionate kissing of their tongues.

Vixen! Minx! Passion! Radford understood that it was only by the smallest of degrees that he held his igniting arousal in check, when all that his hard and throbbing prick wanted was wet pussy. Vanilla cream. Vanilla cunt lips. Judas, all he could smell were vapors of aroused vanilla woman.

He had never intended to advance so far. Only one kiss to set the Lady Minx back on her delicate heels as a warning that he was not a man to be trifled with. Who was Nia? What was Nia? Nothing connected in his mind except the shivery gossamer throbs of her tongue as he suckled it with ever slower motions deeper into his mouth. Tenaciously, he slowed their urgent and wild pace with a sensuality that he had forever deeply craved, yet not until this moment had he found an allure worthy of bringing it to the surface. He had never found passions fiery and uninhibited enough to tantalize and quicken him this way.

He could feel the willowy ripeness of Nia’s body pressed eagerly against him. The ardent minx undulated her belly over the bulge of his stiff and responding cock. Her manner was not that of a shallow and innocent virgin, but more the full-bodied answer of known pleasure and where those sexual pleasures came from.

Suddenly, he had to know, and it was a catalyst of illogic in his cunningly forced and logical world. He should step away, yet even as he thought this, his free hand stroked down Nia’s satin fleshed hip. He still held his riding gloves in that hand and some devilment in his mind assured him that it was a more acceptable way of keeping his entire hand from touching. But not so his fingertips, which were tracing flowing feminine curves in the dark, like a blind man admiring the lush lines of a sculpture. Because what he was being urged beyond reason to attempt was forbidden, without class, and strictly speaking, it was dishonorable.

Not that he was ever particularly honorable in the rituals of seducing women. More aloof. He bedded whores quickly, strictly making certain they were pleased, yet he was always gone within an hour. He could flirt, however he rarely did, and he never tried to seduce or bed noblewomen. Not out of honor, but out of apathy. No women of his acquaintance, thus far, had stirred to life the sensuality within him that lay waiting.

“Oh mm, no. You should not,” Nia gasped against his lips, just as his glove and fingertips found the electrifying bareness at the top of her perfect mound.

He was staggered in lust at the discovery of the complete bareness of her ripe pussy, as even his cock bucked beneath his riding britches. “Run, if you will.” His voice was a restrained growl. He held the lady by nothing but his lips hovering over her lips and his fingertip just barely dipping into the top crease of her heated pussy. Her answering whimper of desire at his intimate petting immediately brought his lips crashing down over her mouth once more.

Bared, tender, sweet, and wet. He could not stop now if he chose to and the lust of his mind conjured ill-gained, wicked, and lusty reasons not to. Yet, logic was beyond him as smoothly bared cunt lips quivered and coated his stroking fingers with dewy arousal that could not be denied. A distant part of his mind consoled himself with the fact that his Lady Minx was as consumed by the desires flaming between them as he was.

So slowly . . . slowly, he fingered the budding of his lady’s clitoris. A lush eager love bud thrusting outward in swollen advance. Nia’s returning moan into his mouth was the sound of a tempest sea crashing onto the cliffs. Elemental and unstoppable. The sound of her surrender thrashed through his tall frame as he bore her writhing feminine curves up against the wall.

That what he was doing was illicit seemed to spur him on rather than deter him. Added to Nia’s ardent response and he was conquered within the moment. Good sense fled beneath the caress of his finger over Nia’s swollen and throbbing budding. Each faster paced twirl of his finger won him a palpitating throb and a torrid whimper from his lady. Her body moved like desire and her mouth tasted of passion fires as she suckled on the thickness of his tongue that he fed her. Her breasts buoyed deeply into his chest with her taunt nipples piercing him as he stroked her honey cunt and she drizzled her answering arousal over his fingertips and glove.

Nia moaned vividly around Radford’s tongue as her body undulated against the wall within a tempest of its own. The curling and torrid rise of pleasure enslaved her. What would she do for it to continue? What would she become to reach the explosive climax, so close within reach? Her senses were drowning on her pleasure center, drowning on the fingers of a master seducing her, controlling her, twisting her arousal to the peaks of torrid perfection. Overcome and wildly abandoned, she tore her mouth from Radford’s to helplessly pant her desire, in vibrating mewls of pleasure.

“Lady of Fire,” Radford rasped hoarsely against her ear as she whimpered the driving force of her need against his whiskered chin.

“Please! Please,” she begged, dragging her nails into his chest. “Lord, more. Faster. Oh yes, yes!” Her hips sang the song of passion, undulating wildly.

“For my name, my lady. For my name upon your lips.” Radford’s fingers shifted, placing his smudging thumb onto her clitoris as another finger settled deeper.

“Oh, Radford!” Nia cried, begging him without words, but pleading with her body’s sexual movements.

“This?” he rasped as she cried out when his lowered finger entered her with a deep and carnal upward thrust.

Nia’s head fell back in ecstasy as her breasts surged upward against Radford’s chest and her inner sheath clutched frantically against the thickness of his finger. Just then, he rotated his thumb in a new side to side motion over her clitty that lifted her up onto her toes senselessly mewling his name. But, her lord, her seducing master, was not finished with his expertise as he suddenly began to circle his finger inside her sheath . . . ever wider.

She gulped back her shrill scream with her body shuddering uncontrollably.

“And now, I shall give you what your naked splendor begs for, Lady Fire.”

Still circling, Radford withdrew his finger, then he plunged it inside her again. Nia choked on a scream, thrashing her head from side to side as he repeated his delving thrusts. Over and over. She cried out passionately as a climax, brilliant and veracious, shuddered without control through her body. The force of it undulated through her soft curves as she clutched Radford and hotly rode his finger.

“Fuck me! Yes!”

Nia choked a stifled scream when the sound of her own impassioned and senseless words broke through her mindless abandonment. She was stunned, then she was completely mortified. No lady would say such a thing! The fear of discovery quaked through her body still riding high on the soaring emotions of her climax and she shoved on Radford’s chest, crying, “Let me go!”

She realized instantly that her unexpected shoving motion had thrown Radford off balance and she found herself free. She turned, groping her hands forward in the darkness to flee, as she stumbled a few times, yet she managed in her sudden panic to find the hidden entryway and escape with tripping steps.

“Go, Lady Fire. Fly. Fly on the wings of your gossamer desire. This is not the ending, cherie, only the first note.”

Radford set his temple to the wall as a mocking tremor further tensed his body. He grimaced and forced his breathing into deeper valleys that lifted his chest in tandem with the insidious, yet slowing throb in his hardened prick. Slowly, ever so slowly, he brought his hand upward until his fingers hovered beneath his nostrils, and then he inhaled deeply, savoring the lush intimate scent.

“Firebrand, you smell of burning embers.” Radford lowered his fingers to his lips and he licked the tips languidly. “You taste of peppery challenge and erotic desires.”

Inch by inch, Radford slipped his finger into his mouth tasting every essence of Nia’s fiery passion, stroking his finger along his tongue, remembering her delicate tongue fluttering there. He did not know what she looked like. He knew not a single feature of her face. “Yet, I would know her anywhere.”

He turned then, slowly adjusting himself to the black surroundings so that he might find the door. “I leave you to your escape now, Lady Fire,” he murmured. However, he fully intended to find out all he could about Lady Nia O’Shea, and his sources were thorough and beyond the pale.

Nia flung herself into her boudoir and with her hand still on the door handle she pushed the door shut with a slam. Then, she collapsed back against the door, breathing erratically with one hand clutched over her still throbbing sex, between her quaking thighs.

“Lord,” she gasped turning her shaking body to press her cheek against the cool polished surface of the door. Then, she pressed her ear as she stilled suddenly, listening intently. Yet it was not until she heard voices murmuring from the front entryway of the townhouse, and then the front door opening and closing that she fell laxly against the polished mahogany surface.

“He is gone.”

She was thankful with relief, because she believed that Radford might follow her. However, at the same time she was bereft, confused, and worried. She was anguished for the loss of further lovemaking and she was thoroughly confused, while at the same time she worried that the well informed Lord Benny might discover the mess she’d made of his strict instructions.

“Benny cannot know Radford that well or he would never be so foolish as to think I had any bloody hope of escaping him without being touched.” She could still feel her sex pulsing on her fingertips from the climax that Radford has so urgently and sensually caressed out of her. She had been so stunned, so overwhelmed that she had run through the townhouse naked to flee him.

“Nay, from myself. I fled from myself.” She could feel the liquid of her lusty response to Radford still coating her fingers. It was strange, nearly alien, the bounty of wetness dribbling over her fingertips. In times past with the several gentlemen that she’d had intimate relations with, she had used a cream Madam Vivian had provided to ease the way.

“Radford felt this! He felt how much I-,” Nia sighed with nearly a moan. She traced her pussy lips so tender and full, while pressing to the door more closely as the bottom curving of her buttocks quivered. She was to have affected Radford, staying aloof as only a good whore should manage to do. However, she had the dismaying feeling that she was the one more truly affected in their encounter.

“Benny, I hope you free me on the next rendezvous! Yes, once I have tupped Duke Sutherlin properly this ungodly attraction will mellow. It is only the anticipation. Not unlike craving an éclair, but once you have eaten the bloody thing, you’re full!” She sighed, turning back toward the room as she slowly lifted her fingers from her sex with the evidence to the contrary drying there. “Mind over matter,” she muttered. It was something her Da used to say. “Onto the next adventure!”

Nia straightened her shoulders and stiffened up her wobbly legs, before marching to the bed and nightstand beside it, where the letter of instructions from Benny lay. She would find out what was to happen next, then bathe and sleep, putting the encounter aside.

“Aye.” She nodded firmly, picking up the second page of the letter Benny had given her. Her gaze scanned the words slowly. In truth, she was nearly praying silently for any words that meant a wild tupping could ensue between her and Radford. Yet as she read, her heart sank on that matter, while her incredulousness grew and her sense of adventure became somewhat excited.

“Aye well, it is a bloody good thing I ride as well as I do, Benny dear, for what you are asking here. And, pistols? Lord, Benny darling, you have a vivid imagination!”

Chapter Six

“Come to the whorehouse with me. Take your mind off your unsuccessful inquiries. Besides, Rad, it will be much to your advantage to arrive at your planned marriage market soirée this weekend with a sated cock in your britches.”

Radford stopped brushing his stallion’s flanks momentarily. He and Saxonhurst stood inside the stalls of his London estate after a brisk morning ride. “There has to be a history on Lady Nia O’Shea or she is an imposter. There simply cannot be nothing about her anywhere, Saxon. And since when, my solemn friend, do you visit whorehouses?”

Radford watched Saxonhurst over the steaming flanks of his stallion as Saxon ran a curry brush smoothly down his bay high-stepper. Saxonhurst’s nearly waist-length hair was loose once again this morning. It had been flying all about during their morning race through the park. It had been much too early for any noble ladies or gentlemen to promenade. However, the staff and servants of goodly establishments had been passing through the park on the way to their employ. This included a number of women of varying ages, and Radford had seen numerous of their gazes agog at the masculine display Saxonhurst provided, added with his long flowing brown hair.

“Since today, Radford. An adventure to liven the soul!”

“You miss spying as much as the rest of us.” Radford smirked, then he resumed brushing his stallion.

“I thought that I didn’t for a long time, Rad. But once the shock of losing my hand wore off, I believe that close brush with death has changed me.”

“To whores?” Radford quipped.

Saxonhurst’s deep mahogany colored eyes glanced at him. “A man should be well rounded or at least try. It never seemed to harm you or Brynmore, or Wyndham, for that matter.”

“Men make a guise of it, Saxon. Not much there of true substance.”

“She has gotten to you.” Saxon nodded.

“Aye she has . . . perhaps. Maybe she will be at the soiree, Saxon.”

“Without a doubt, my friend.”

“You should come to the ball. The prediction is that the ladies bodies will be malleable.”

“For you,” Saxon laughed. “Which should be interesting with your inclinations already tangled in one, Lady Nia O’Shea. I will certainly attend the theme ball you have titled ‘Midsummer’s Night Dream.’ The ensuing laughing at your situation and exploits should abound.”

“You are ever the friend, Saxon,” Radford quipped snidely.

“Oh I believe, your grace, that viewing your circumstances will bring merriment tenfold into my life.”

Radford shook his head. “I do not know what to think of you anymore, Saxon, but I must say I am enjoying the improvement.”

“Thank you, Rad, I believe I am also.”

Radford set down his curry brush, and then he walked around his stallion toward Saxon. “I cannot believe that I cannot find any history on her, Saxon. No going to any whorehouse now. Now, I am going to Drummond.”

“If he cannot find out anything about Lady Nia O’Shea, well then, she does not exist.” Saxon proclaimed in agreement with him.

An hour later found them in the grand ballroom of the Duke of Kittridge’s London home. The snapping of fencing swords whipping against each other was a staccato echo in the room. Radford stood beside Saxonhurst as they watched Drummond fencing with an unknown opponent. The fencing masks prevented recognition, yet Radford knew that he, as well as Saxon, would recognize Drummond’s carriage and parrying style anywhere.

Radford knew of no better fencer than Drummond, except for himself. Used to be, his mind played games with him. Used to be many things, before he lost his eye in the Archangels last and most devastating spying mission before the end of the war. Generally speaking, he was able to keep most of his diminished capabilities a secret. The balance and dimension it now took to ride a horse had nearly been overcome, but fencing would forever be beyond him now. He regretted that because it was a taxing and cunning skill that admirably fulfilled his personality.

“I take the hit. Touché!”

Radford returned his focus to the end of the match, not surprised to see that Drummond was the winner. However, he was completely surprised at the feminine voice of Drummond’s opponent issuing forth in defeat. A moment later, the lift of a hand revealed the luxurious auburn tresses of Gabriella, Drummond’s wife, with her feminine lighthearted laughter following.

“I believe, darling, that we have shocked them.”

Radford tried to keep his mouth firmly closed against his astonishment as Saxon chuckled beside him. “Touché, your grace,” Saxon called, offering a mock bow.

Gabriella’s finely arched eyebrows rose as she looked to Drummond for a moment, who was removing his fencing mask, then she looked back to Saxon. “Are you truly, my handsome and ever solemn Saxon?” Gabriella tilted her head, swaying the lush chocolate colored tresses of her hair down the back of her delicate spine. A mischievous glint rose into her violet irises. “And this free flowing mane of hair you are sporting, Saxon, is nearly making me swoon.”

Drummond laughed outright as Saxon bound forward to clasp dearly surprised Gabriella’s gloved fingers, which he lifted to his lips for a gentlemanly kiss. “And seeing britches on a stunningly beautiful duchess...” Saxon wobbled as though truly inebriated, sinking to his knees dramatically, while still holding Gabriella’s hand, as he ardently exclaimed, “You must marry me or I am doomed!”

Radford watched as Gabriella’s laughter burst out in astonished wonderment as she looked to him, and then to Drummond. “What has happened to Saxonhurst?”

Radford agreed, the transformation was amazing as it was perplexing and yet, wholly welcome.

“We are all evolving, my love,” Drummond replied sublimely, then he looked down to Saxon and smirked. “Let go of her, you Samson rogue.”

Saxon kissed Gabriella’s fingers once more, and then he stood proclaiming, “Hell of a woman, your grace!”

“I know,” Drummond replied, stepping forward and embracing Gabriella to his side. “And what brings you vagabonds here?”

“Is not your masquerade ball this weekend, Radford?” Gabriella asked. “Drummond and I will be sure to attend. The costumes alone will be risqué enough not to miss . . . or wear.” Gabriella tilted her gaze up to Radford more fully. “All of us Raven, Chloe, Wyndham, and Orelan shall be there. I have a costume picked out, however I am not letting even Drummond see it yet.”

Radford watched Drummond hug his wife closer and wink down upon her upturned face with a decidedly lecherous smile. Drummond, the lord mastermind of all seriousness, was winking? They all were truly ‘evolving’ as Drummond had stated, Radford thought, as he formed his reply to Gabriella.

“It is this weekend, Gabriella, and I will wager you ten pounds that I can guess who you are even masked.”

Gabriella laughed. “You have a wager, Radford dear!”

Just then the butler entered the ballroom saying, “Your grace, the baby, young master Avon is awake. You asked to be notified.”

“Oh yes, thank you, Jevers,” Gabriella replied, turning to kiss Drummond on the cheek, before saying, “I will leave you gentlemen to your schemes, and go feed our son, Drummond.”

Moments later found the three men sitting in Drummond’s study as Radford posed his question to Drummond, and Drummond replied.

“Your sources are excellent, Radford. Better than mine in individual instances. I find it extraordinary that they cannot unearth a single speck of history on this woman.” Drummond pursed his lips staring intently out the window. At times like this Radford could envision seeing the mechanisms and calculations of a brilliant mind churning beneath Drummond’s exterior. “What does she look like? Describe her to me,” Drummond asked abruptly.

Radford had expected this. He was not so far off his game as to completely have lost his cunning. “It was an intimate and clandestine meeting. I never saw the lady’s features.” Drummond turned his eagle gaze upon him. “Yes, Drummond, I find that suspect and disturbing.”

“Your conclusions?” Drummond asked.

“We are back in England. The war is over and the Vienna Agreement for peace is long since implemented,” Radford paused. “One would hope calmer times are upon us, yet we would all admit our great sovereign England is not without enemies still.” Radford took a breath, thoughtfully rubbing his shadowed jaw with two fingers. “Unless you conclude otherwise, Drummond, the lady could be a spy. If I were not who I am though, I would certainly think otherwise.”

“It is true, Drummond,” Saxon said. “You have always said that the Russian count, Alexei Tropov, discovered at least some of our Archangels names. He then sold them in part to win his release from his country’s assassination lists after he blundered in Spain and he failed his mission. Then we all knew for certain that he was a Russian spy.”

Saxon looked to Radford. “I remember, Rad, you were playing a rather high undercover game with the United Irishmen Society in Dublin at the time, watching for any further evidence of their possibly going with Napoleon. Drummond pulled you off that right after Alexei left Spain.”

This was exactly why he could not let it drop, Radford thought. He had run all of these possibilities through his mind and some of the connections were too startling. He was a man that had always been ahead of everyone else in the movements and directions in life. Always one step ahead of any game. Except for now. Now he was without footing, not skipping ahead. He did not like it. He did not like it one bit. Yet, what he really desired was for it to all have been just a simple, yet rousingly complex assignation with a flirtatious woman. Judas, could it not simply be thrilling without nefarious inclinations, he lamented to himself silently?

“Yes,” he answered simply, because all of their thoughts were combined. “But to what end really? I am out of the spying game for several years now.”

“Napoleon lives,” Drummond said, gazing at them. “Caged, but living and while he does he is always scheming. Or,” Drummond paused. “Others scheming for him, to use his great propensity to embolden the masses. Although I have word, he is ill.”

“She cannot be overlooked then,” Radford said. “Lady Nia O’Shea must be placed. Given a name to start with.”

“I will, of course, go through my channels to discover what I can,” Drummond said, standing. “But it appears, Radford, the discovery and placing mission is solely upon your shoulders.”

Radford nodded, standing with Saxonhurst following. “I understand,” Radford said.

“I hope this does not interfere with the artifice of your sordid woman chasing, Radford,” Drummond added with a shrewd twinkle in his gray eyes. “I am not certain if I should commend you for your audacity or give you a pocket full of French sheaths.”

Radford allowed his only comment to be a superior smirk in Drummond’s direction.

Chapter Seven

“Yer a long legged cove, ain’t ya there, Red?”

Nia looked down from under the brim of her hat at the barrel-chested man leering up at her with cockeyed smirking. The mare she sat on sensed her unease and shifted nervously beneath her. Nia wondered once again at the sanity of Lord Benny for hiring these two, ner-do-well thieves, to help in her next charade with Radford. But she knew enough from her middle class upbringing in Dublin’s rougher streets not to let her nervousness show.

“And you had just better get to doing your job, bloke, if you want to see the rest of your payment.”

Nia tried a sneer, but she thought it held little effect as the leering Jake just snorted, saying, “I’d pay that noble blighter back the same amount, just to see you in these britches. Ain’t that right, Nat?”

Nia watched Jake look to the other thin-framed ruffian named Nat, who nodded as though an eager puppet to Jake’s commands. Jake’s hefty-lined face turned back to her with his hand landing on top of her thigh, as he said with his cockney accent thick in lewd suggestion, “I bet yer a feisty ride, Red.”

There was nothing for it, Nia realized, she had to take control quickly. Damn Benny, she would be better off just doing it on her own, she thought, as she lashed her short riding crop down across Jake’s hand. She stung herself in the process as Jake yelled, and she shouted.

“Touch me again and you will get worse, you ass!” The mare beneath her danced sideways and Nia brought her to a halt with the reins. “The likes of you are a penny a dozen, Jake. I will pay someone else for this job if you cannot follow instructions!” Jake glared up at her with his unkempt jawline squared in anger as he cradled his injured hand. “What’s it to be, Jake?” Nia demanded, glaring down at him. “Convince me I should not go and find someone else!”

“We need the money!” Jake exclaimed. But his words entirely betrayed the retribution that she could see lurking in his dark gaze. He gave her one last challenging look, then he turned and marched to his horse saying, “We’ll do what you say for the money.” It was a declaration that she had little faith in, she thought, as she cautiously watched Jake turn to Nat and order, “Mount up!”

Nia nodded reluctantly to them, wishing that she did not feel that she had to follow Benny’s directions so closely. Benny had hired the two ruffian thieves, yet she sorely wanted to just ride away and find a pair of her own blimey thieves. She consoled herself with the fact that she was on a swift mare and if any more shenanigans arose she would just gallop away. Besides that, she had been very careful to make sure neither man carried any weapons. And as per Benny’s instructions on the matter, she carried the only pistol tucked into the waistband of her britches.

It was going to be, she, that was to rob Radford in his coach on the way to his country estate and Jake and Nat, were only along for realism and to help her stop the coach. It was intended to be another outrageous flirtation and attempted seduction encounter, where she would enter Radford’s coach, holding him at a sword point for all variety of seductive mischief. A thrilling lark that promised to be sexually titillating for both of them. Except for Jake and Nat, Nia thought worriedly. But the course was set, and she determinedly tried to set aside her worries with the thought that she would finally gaze upon Radford’s face. That alone, she thought, was worth any obstacles she might need to overcome. She would be able to see him, but he would not see her.

Resolutely, Nia adjusted the mask she wore, hiding her upper face, and then she flipped a lock of her loosely flowing red hair over her shoulder, before she exclaimed. “We ride then!”

“Nothing.” Radford growled to himself as he leaned into a particularly deep swaying of his coach. Two days and neither he nor Drummond had learned anything further about Lady Nia O’Shea. It was only the upcoming events at his estate and the time-consuming details involved with those events that had kept him from further seeking Nia out. That and some perverse sense inside him that wanted the lady to once again come to him. She would come to him, he was certain, for whatever it was that she was after. He had to admit that her sexual antics thus far and whatever else might ensue next had him on the edges of anticipation. She was stalking him for amorous purposes. He hoped. He could not remember a time when he was so in the dark about the events that were transpiring. It raised his ire a bit, yet it also heightened his instincts.

“Nia,” he murmured, lifting the fated riding glove that he held in his right hand up to his nostrils as he inhaled reflectively. He had her scent. Not a face. Yet, the feel of her on his hands. With a newly emerging primal instinct, he knew that he would recognize her anywhere and that deeply stirred the sensuality inside him.

Radford sighed with the musky and lilting smell of Nia so closely filling him, he began to relax, becoming lulled by the sounds and gentle rocking as the ruts and mounds were negotiated on the quiet wooded trail his coach traveled. He stared ahead, nearly unseeing and lost in his thoughts as his driver directed a pair of his matched thoroughbred horses. Occasionally, he could hear a snort from his stallion that trailed behind them, tethered to the coach itself.

His gaze turned momentarily out the coach’s window as they passed a thick corpus of trees and it was then that he heard a new set of hooves. Thinking that a fellow rider was about to pass, he leaned out the opened coach window to hale a friendly greeting. But the first thing he saw rounding the bend was a lovely galloping mare, mounted by what appeared to be a masked young man.

Long skeins of red russet hair waved behind the youngster as he rode up upon the coach, shouting, “Halt!” It was a decidedly sonorous voice.

“Halt or be shot!” This shout came from the other side of his coach and it was a heavy masculine voice.

Radford realized that his coach was effectively surrounded by the thieves and he rapped loudly on the roof of the coach with his knuckles. “Driver, stop the carriage,” he called. “It appears that we are being detained.”

The carriage stopped at a small clearing as the horses and three riders, Radford now ascertained, pulled along the side. He instantly jerked back into his seat as a light sword poked through the open coach window and nicked his throat, nearly drawing blood.

“I suggest that you ask your driver to remain still, your grace.” The Irish accent in the voice was noticeable, even though the young robber was trying to employ a deeper voice.

Radford was suddenly and wholly amazed. So much so that he nearly laughed out loud while the suspect young robber, continued to say, “Should you move, you will feel slightly more than just the tip of this blade.” At that, the young robber’s hands shook slightly, then steadied.

“You better shake, little minx, for when I get my hands on you,” Radford hissed lowly. “For this you deserve a spanking!”

“Oh!”

“Ouch,” Radford exclaimed at the startled prick he had received by the tip of the blade.

“Oh, I did not mean to!”

“Nia!” Radford exclaimed angrily.

“Get out of the coach now or yer driver is gutted!”

Radford winced at the shout that came from one of the men on the other side of his carriage. Damn and blast, he would nearly be laughing at this latest audacious escapade of the lovely Nia’s. However, the two other thugs in the crime had him extremely wary. He was uncertain whether it might be a true kidnapping, or the possible attempted murder of him for having been an English spy, or just another lady’s brazen charade. All the possibilities had merit in the stunning turn of events and with what he did not know about Lady Nia O’Shea, the last was the less likely to be true. His deeply felt attraction did not wish to believe the worst, yet his entire nature could not stand to be in a manipulated and under-dogged position any longer. He was the master manipulator that normally only a cunning few could rival, and being otherwise, was seriously beginning to anger him. Therefore it might have been wiser to employ a few more moments of patience to try and understand where the events were leading. However, his entire countenance demanded, without his normal calculated logic, to take the upper hand immediately.

Alas, when all things came to their conclusions, he was but a man with all the powerful masculine tendencies that involved, despite his wiser intelligence. He had several fencing swords on the seat before him and the ever present pistol in his right boot. Providence had the swords in front of him. It was a sad occurrence, because he was taking them to his estate to retire them. Actually, to banish them from his apparently faltering one-eyed gaze. To use one of the swords was preferable, because he was less likely to fatally harm someone with a sword. If a man picked up a pistol it was his belief that man had best be prepared to use it, and he did not care for the idea of a pistol around Nia at all.

All of these thoughts flashed through his mind in mere seconds as he covertly pulled the pistol from his boot. However, none of his fleeting thoughts mattered in the end, because in the short seconds from thought to actions, his self-preservation overrode any logic. He was vulnerable now, as he had never been before losing his eye. So by instinct alone he reacted, cocking the pistol as he pushed open the door to the coach, trying to illicit surprise by jumping out the door on the opposite side from Nia. He would learn to regret his new found cowardice.

“He has a pistol!”

“Stand down!” Radford shouted at the same moment the stoutest robber shouted his warning. Events appear in a person’s mind to move slower than they are at dangerous times. It had happened to him a hundred times or more and still caused to amaze him each time. He saw clearly that as he was raising his arm to point his pistol at the stout robber, the robber was in motion with a pistol of his own.

A high-pitched feminine screech of anger and alarm came from his left, on the other side of the carriage, along with the beginning sounds of pistol reports. Three? Even as he fell to his side from a lashing sting across his temple, Radford wondered at the sound of three pistol shots.

Chapter Eight

“No!” Nia screamed, as the smell of burnt gunpowder filled her nostrils from the pistol she had just fired.

“You bitch, you shot me!” Jake roared as he swatted at a red stain on his upper arm. “You made me kill him!”

Nia heard Jake’s bellow, but the mare beneath her was trying to bolt and all her concentration was on trying to calm the nearly bucking horse. Oh lord! She had seen Jake raise a pistol toward Radford! It was then, she had raised her pistol and pointed it toward Jake firing without thought. But Jake had already been firing his pistol and she had glimpsed Radford falling through the coach’s open window. Now, Jake proclaimed Radford dead!

The mare bucked beneath her, nearly throwing her off, as she cried, “No! It was only a charade! A charade!”

“Charade my arse!” Jake bellowed.

Nia screamed, because Jake was there beside her shouting furiously and pulling her off her mare. Jake tugged her struggling body to his side angrily, as he sat on his horse. She was shocked and confused leaving her struggles clumsy and ineffective as he held her aloft, corralled to his side and he kicked his horse into a gallop. At first, all she could do was to hang on, dangling on the side of the galloping horse as she was. Yet, her head bounced so erratically that for one jarring second she thought that she caught a brief, barely focused, glimpse of Radford’s tall body standing beside the coach.

“Radford!” she cried. Yet, in the end she could not be sure that she’d seen Radford alive at all. Then, in the next second Jake pushed her belly down over his thighs with the racing horse loping beneath him. The motion of Jake’s horse trying to gallop through the uneven brush-filled forest, stole any struggles that she could mount. She was left with just desperately trying to breathe, as jolts of pain attacked her from every direction, because of the unnatural riding position she was in.

Sometime later, Nia could do nothing but whimper as Jake finally halted his horses careening run. She felt Jake grasping the back of her shirt, lifting her upward by it alone. But the worn out man’s shirt that she had on was not strong enough to hold her body’s weight. The shirt tore open down the front, even as Jake was shoving her off the side of his horse. The fall buckled her nearly numb legs as she collided with the ground, landing on her knees with her upper body tumbling partially forward. Her hat was long gone and the coppery-red tresses of her wind-tangled hair fell wildly around her.

“They will hang me! Damn you. You red-headed bitch! I was set to just wing him without your bloody interference. And now Nat’s gone too!”

Nia could hear the overheated horse snorting with great gulps of air from its long ride as the stallion’s large hooves shifted in front of her. She could tell by the hide of the saddle creaking and the shift of the stallion’s hooves that Jake was dismounting. She tried to gather her thoughts or even her voice, yet all she could do was to gasp, bowled over toward the ground.

The crunch of Jake’s boots in the brush neared, and she managed to pant, “Not dead.” But the effort was merely a whimper of sound.

“What’s that, Red?” Jake asked with an angry shout. “Damn you’ll pay for this! Yer to stand by yer thiefin’ chums! Not shoot them in the fucking arm!”

Nia managed to peer upward through the skeins of hair fallen over her face and she saw Jake tying a bandanna around the wound on his arm, using one hand and his teeth. There was little blood and she knew the wound had to be only a glancing scratch. The turn of events was alarming and they were just now occurring to her rattled mind. However, her mind was barely grasping and her body was feeble, when Jake reached down and grabbed her by the arms, wrenching her onto her feet in front of him.

“When I go to Newgate, you’ll be going with me!”

Jake shook her angrily, as she gasped, “I saw him alive.”

“I saw him dead!” Jake shouted, shaking her so hard that her teeth clicked together sharply as she clawed at his chest trying to push him away. But the effort was useless, and she could not. “And now, Red, yer goin’ to show me how sorry ye are ye shot yer thievin’ chum!”

“He is not dead and you will never get paid!” Nia cried as Jake grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head with one hand and he began tearing her shirt off with the other. His first grab tore the shirt off her left shoulder and her arm, then his second digging grab got the right side of her shirt and the chemise beneath. Nia screamed in fearful protest as her breasts were bared to Jake’s lecherous gaze, while she tried to stop him with her nails scraping his wrists.

“Ow, damn you!” He bellowed as he hauled her bodily around by her hair, making her yelp at the sharp pain on her scalp. Then, suddenly her bare back hit the side of Jake’s horse. The force Jake used, bowed her spine backward over the stallion’s sweaty side. “Whoa, boy!” Jake exclaimed to the skittering horse as he snatched both of her wrists into his hands and jerked them upward, forcing them over her head. Nia cried out as her spine bent further over the rounded side of the anxiously shifting stallion. Horsehair abraded her tender flesh as she tried the only defense left to her and she kicked one booted foot outward, but she was only able to hit Jake’s shin.

He merely grunted, as she cried, “Let me go, you pig!”

It was then Nia felt Jake lashing her wrists to the saddle with part of the reins, effectively imprisoning her up on her toes against the side of the stallion. She was stunned and panting at events happening so quickly out of her control. He meant to rape her, suddenly flashed through her mind as tears filled her eyes and she tried frantically to think of some way to stop him.

“Now,” Jake said, with great huffs of exertion, as he stepped backward a pace to view her hung helplessly from the saddle of his horse. His gaze was bright and lustful and his eyes were centered on her naked breasts, lifted high in an unnatural position.

She moaned with feelings of defenseless vulnerability shuddering through her body, as she lied desperately, “He is my father! The man that paid you is my father and he will pay you a fortune if you let me go now and take me to him!”

“Bull!” Jake spat. “Twas a butler what paid me and promised me more, and it weren’t no gentleman that sent him. Now shut up or I’ll start smacking you each time if you don’t!” Then Jake’s hands were at the waistband of her britches tugging harshly downward and ripping the material with his force.

“No! Please, no!” Nia cried out.

She thrashed her legs trying to deter Jake, but the tips of her toes barely touched the ground and she could not get purchase against Jake renting the britches off her hips and legs, until she was entirely nude except for her riding boots. She cried then, terrified and humiliated as Jake even pulled off her riding boots and short stockings. Then, he stood back once more and she moaned again as he leered at her complete nudity. Even Jake’s gaze made her skin crawl. How could she ever survive him touching her? Then the thought that she was a novice whore rose in her mind suddenly, making her laugh hysterically as she twisted her wrists against the leather reins binding them. She was not that much of a whore! She did not want him to touch her, ever! Oh God.

“You like it,” Jake declared.

He must mean her shrill laughter, Nia thought crazily, as he stepped forward and put one of his rough hands between her thighs. She screamed, crying openly now, even thrashing against the stallion, hoping to get the horse to gallop away, because as bodily dangerous as that was, it was preferable to Jake touching her. Raping her.

“Whoa!” Jake exclaimed to the horse as he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head to the side, shouting, “Quit that bloody screaming!” He jerked her head again, but still she screamed and his horrible hand that was stuffed between her thighs and groping her bare pussy, suddenly became a clamp squeezing tight. Her screaming stopped, as she cried out in pain.

“You want more?” he demanded, shaking her by his hand squeezed over her mound.

“No!” she squealed with pain, and defeat. His hand loosened and returned to its crude invasive groping with his fingers prodding near the entrance to her dry cringing sheath. “Please, no! Please no!” she begged him, left with nothing but to plead as she tried to squirm her body away.

“Aw, come along, Red, you’ll like my big cod poked inside ya! I’ll give ya a hard ride!”

“A short ride I’m afraid. Bastard!” The cultured male voice came out of nowhere.

Nia barely heard the voice as Jake exclaimed and she heard a crack and thumping sound. Something around the stallion jerked and it started to prance forward dragging her with it. She clenched her eyes with tears splashing out against the harsh tugging on her wrists and the scraping of her toes. She could not stop crying.

“Whoa up there, boy! Whoa.”

It was Radford! When Nia realized that it was Radford’s voice, she started truly bawling. Great gulps of it that she could not stop.

Chapter Nine

“Damnation!” Radford cussed, trying to still the horse that Nia hung so naked and powerless from. He cursed himself for not finding her sooner and he damned all bad men terrorizing and harming any woman. He could not say that there was a time in his life that he’d felt more helpless. Frightened and bawling women, was certainly not his forte. The vulnerability of Nia’s stark nudity stirred his compassion deeply, and seeing the ruffian, now lying unconscious at his feet, grope her, and so abusively, made him furious.

He was not certain that Nia understood that he was with her now or that she was saved as he steadied the horse and reached upward to unwind the reins binding her wrists. “Hush, cherie,” he soothed, unable to conjure up anything more brilliantly comforting. The welts left from the reins around Nia’s wrists drew his lips back in further anger.

“R-Radford,” she sobbed with a frightened and questioning sound that tore at his feeling.

“You are safe with me, cherie,” he muttered through his constricted throat. Then, she was free and he reached to catch her, before she fell to the ground on weakened legs.

“Oh,” she sobbed. Then, she gasped as he lifted her up into his arms with one arm under her thighs and one at her back. Her eyes were still clenched with great watery tears dampening the thief’s mask she wore. The softness of her naked body shuddered in his arms.

“Put your arms around me, cherie,” he compelled gruffly, however she appeared incapable of anything more than a stiff-bodied posture as her weeping with hiccups now combined, continued on. “Sweetheart.” His chest constricted on his own impotent plea of compassion and he strengthened his embrace around her. He was overturned emotionally and he stumbled to the base of a large oak tree, where he ungracefully lowered to the ground to sit with his back to the tree and Nia cradled in his lap.

He used gentle but firm hands to tug Nia’s stiff body into his encompassing embrace. First the side of her waist and hip, hitched to his belly, then the pressure of his hand carefully forcing her upper body to unbend and lean against his chest. With the same hand he caught the side of her head and pressed slowly, until she yielded it with a tense tremor to rest on his shoulder. He took the open edges of his jacket and pulled them as far as he could, to wrap around her tightly as his cheek came to rest on her feverish temple.

“Tell me what to do,” he murmured tightly, swaying his body slightly and hugging her with small embraces over and over as she wept against the side of his neck.

In the end, he began to realize that time was the beginning of the cure. She needed the time to sob her fear out and wash away the terrorized abuse. He could only hold her and with his solid presence alone to assure her of her safety. The question as to whether she could be a spy of some sort or not was still unresolved, yet certainly one step closer to the, “nay,” category. However, in the issue about possible nefarious intentions of waylaying his coach, that had been solved clearly in his mind.

So clearly, that if it was not for Nia’s ravished state of being, he would himself, take the too brazen, too eccentric, and too foolish a lady over his knee for a lesson bearing spanking about her outrageous antics. She was completely and likely a madcap original, but the events had proven that she was not an assassin or a kidnapper.

He still might spank her, he thought somewhat angrily, so she could not sit down properly for a week. Of course, after she was recovered. Who would ever think of such an extravagant way to entice a man? Someone’s outrageously creative, he thought immediately, yet someone naive in the risks. She had nearly gotten him shot more seriously than just the graze to his temple, and she too had nearly gotten herself ravished.

He discovered that when holding a hysterically sobbing woman in his arms, it helped his continued manly bearing from collapsing, if he contemplated deeply the spanking of his lady’s lovely bottom. Distraction was the key. Until . . . well. Until she melted into you, throwing her arms around you finally, and hiccupping your name in gratitude for saving her. Yes . . . then he forgot all about spanking. For the moment.

Feelings of safety and the comfort of warm strength were all that Nia could command in the way of semi-coherent thoughts as her tear-stained lips nuzzled the side of Radford’s neck. She was limp and flexible after the torrential venting of her emotions. To be so afraid one moment, and then to wake from the nightmare into the embrace of rescue and safety, was deliverance. Gratitude and relief beyond measure for her rescue filled the crying aftereffects of her numbness. She hiccupped against Radford’s throat and he buried his fingers deeper into her hair with his fingers beginning to gently stroke her scalp on the back of her head. She wanted to crawl inside him. She wanted to be him, to be a man with the inherent strength that came with that.

She murmured his name then, with her lips brushing and catching gently on his warm flesh. She was so silly. How could she ever want to be anything but a woman in Radford’s arms, and then she realized that her coherent thoughts were returning. They were idle and drifting thoughts, yet comprehensible.

She barely knew Radford, and she wondered how she could feel so close to him, so much a part of him, or perhaps it was so much in tuned with him. Yet, somehow, in some way, an inner part of her sensed the pieces fitting together exactly as they were meant to be. She completely believed in fate. The abundance of bursting creativity inside her desperately needed its faithful existence. And if ever it was just an extraordinary coincidence of events that transpired around her, she would never admit it, yet she would compel those occurrences into the region that had to be fate.

Like now. Exactly like how she and Radford had been fatefully thrown together. And that is why it felt so natural. Because it was meant to be for this moment. One fateful moment might lead to two or three, but what mattered was this fateful moment. A moment that was completely outside her manipulations and planning. It was wholly unrehearsed or coerced, and she realized that she had the deep assurance inside her that Radford was acting out of natural occurrence now and not her manipulations.

She was surprised how much that affected her and how much that she craved it. She also was so grateful that he was intelligent enough to realize that her silly ploy had gone so wrong and she was endangered because of it. Or perhaps, he had simply been furiously following her to extract his angry reprisal from her? Yet, his honor had leaped forth, no matter which impetus, and when he’d seen her in danger, he had saved her. No one had ever stood stronger for her before

“Better, sweetheart?” Radford’s voice was low and concerned, and the heat of his breath lightly lifted tangles of her hair falling about them.

Nia sniffed loudly, nodding against the crook of his neck. She felt his lean muscular body shifting slightly, then his hand lifted up with a white linen handkerchief. She uncurled one arm from its fetal position in front of her and grasped the handkerchief.

“T-Thank you,” she mumbled with her voice cracking. She felt rather than saw his small smile as she brought the handkerchief to her nose. It was then she realized that she still had her mask on. It was askew, but still covered her upper face, except for her eyes. However, its crooked position hindered her from blowing her nose, so she reached to adjust it.

Radford’s hand brushed her hand with the same movement. “Let’s remove this, Nia. It will be easier for you.”

“No, I...” she exclaimed softly, pressing his hand to stop him from removing it. But of course she could not have stopped him, if he had not halted. He looked intensely at her, deeply into her eyes, but without visible emotion. “I cannot,” she exclaimed with heartfelt dismay.

Radford’s depth-filled gaze continued for a long moment, before he sighed, relaxing some of the tension she could feel in his body, as he murmured, “As you wish, cherie.” He lifted his hand and then he cupped her cheek gently with his thumb rising to brush her bottom lip slowly. He gazed at her thoughtfully now. “I do not want you to be afraid. Not of me, cherie.”

If she had any tears left, they would have welled into her eyes again as her features formed a stricken appearance. “I am not afraid of you, Radford.” Her words insisted this on the texture of his thumb stroking her so intimately. He was so handsome with his eye patch, shadowed jaw, and one clear crystal blue eye, whose gaze entranced her. A handsome rogue.

Her arms were around his strong square shoulders. They were so close to each other she could feel his lean muscular body everywhere. His forearm was bare that lifted his thumb to soothe her lips and chin lightly. The cuff of his shirt had been ripped somehow in the scuffles. The movement of his arms shifted as he reached to brush his thumb over her cheek and suddenly his forearm rubbed over the tip of her nipple. She gasped softly at the surprise twinge of pleasure, as they naturally both looked downward.

Nia saw her nipple peak immediately like a small lengthening post with a tightening rosy bead on the very tip. That taunt little bead pressed boldly into the flesh of Radford’s forearm. Immediately, she felt Radford’s cock slowly beginning to stiffen against her bottom. His hand was moving from her cheek to her shoulder, where it caressed her, then stiffened, then it stilled. “I need to get you out of here,” he said suddenly.

The import of his words instantly seized her, even as she was responding with an emotionally charged impulse. If she had been further away from Radford, it would have been a leap, yet as close as they were, it was frantic snatching. Her arms reached further around him as the front of her upper body turned more closely into his chest. She cried his name with soft urgency. If they were to leave now, everything would change and her delicate balance could not sustain that. To her it felt as though she might lose him, if she were to let him lift her and carry her away. The need inside her was not logical, but pure. It was born out of her gratefulness that he had saved her, out of her deep attraction for him, and out of her urgent feminine desires that held no rationality. The desperate sound of Radford’s name leaving her lips reverberated in the small heated space between them, just before her lips touched his lips seeking a frantic kiss.

Chapter Ten

“Nia.”

Radford tangled his fingers into Nia’s hair, reacting with an unthinking male instinct as he pressed the back of her head to pressure her wild kisses beneath his lips. She tasted of woman, hot and sexual, ripened with fertile needs. She was wicked honey, naughty and full-bodied. His lips caught her impetuous need and together they formed abandon. Kissing fast and uninhibited. He fed on her mouth and she fed on his, while their bodies responded without restraint. Nia’s so exuberantly that she undulated against him with a clear chorus of desire.

Her soft curves arched with demand against his body and she pushed him back by his shoulders as though to command him. Under the force of her eager passion, he yielded, stretching his back against the tree as she rose up to turn and crawl over him. Their kissing continued uncontrolled and nearly frantic as she straddled his lap, and he turned her seeking lips forcefully beneath his by the leverage of his hands tunneled into her hair.

Their passionate fight for control began then, each one dominating for moments, then becoming conquered the next. It rocked their bodies with urgency, as he tugged her hair, arching her throat to his mouth, while she snared her fingers into his shirt twisting it open. Together they were in a tempest of arousal with one stormy destination intertwined in both their minds. Material ripped as impatiently, Nia bared his chest, while his teeth grazed her throat. Winning sounds of victory and passion issued forth from her throat as her fingers and nails found the wide expanse of his chest. She stroked him as though each touch was pleasure that was incomparable as he licked her creamy flesh down to her pillowed cleavage.

The impression of her torrid pussy rocked over the hardness of his cock beneath his pants. He could feel the dampness of her love soaking the material as his tongue lapped over the inner curve of her left breast toward the peak of her aroused nipple. His hands left her hair and stroked down the undulating curve of her spine. Her skin so soft and creamy, tantalizing his finger pads, until he cupped the womanly plumpness of her ass into his hands. He squeezed, feeling the pliable yet firm flesh, just as he nibbled on the tip of her nipple.

“Radford!”

Nia’s cry was passionate and thrilling as her hips swayed more rapidly from front to back, rubbing his cock more densely with her cunt. He lashed her nipple harder with his tongue, and then he nipped it once again to her cry of ardent passion. He had to feel her bare cunt on him. He played wickedly with her nipples back and forth as he reached downward to the buttons on his pants.

“Oh,” Nia cried, throwing her head back, riding over his cock ever faster as he tore his pants open, ripping them. From one second to the next, cloth covered his cock, then his thick shaft was naked with Nia’s hot and wet pussy smearing over its throbbing shape.

They both moaned nearly mindlessly as he grabbed her ass, with his mouth full of her nipple and he pulled her thighs open from behind. Nia’s cunt lips, riding up and down his cock, spread open and the hot honey of her vicarious arousal wet his cock with her movements from the head to the base. Then back up the shaft she rubbed her pussy deep and when she reached the head, he suddenly held her there by his hands squeezing her ass.

She whimpered, struggling with him over his cock, demanding with her body for more movement. “Radford,” she cried. Then, he bit her nipple and he lifted his hips pushing the slit on the head of his cock right over her tightly swollen love button.

“Oh love!” she cried at the same moment he groaned with a shudder running through him. He did not stop, but raised and lowered his hips again and again, striking the head of his cock over her love bud and drenching it with his copiously leaking seed.

They were sticky and hot together, wild in their movements, when suddenly Nia pushed on his chest urgently. Her breasts lifted away from his mouth and she crawled backward with his hands sliding up her spine. It happens so quickly and so spontaneously that he only had time to feel her hair cascading lushly down his chest. Then, her mouth was pressing over the head of his cock with her hand firmly gripping the base.

The groan that left his chest was stunned and uncontrolled. He was felled. A complete prisoner to her mouth in that moment. Christ, it was not that he had never had his cock sucked before. Yet, it was only a rare pleasure enjoyed a few times with a good whore. He certainly never expected it to happen now. Or from a lady. Ladies just did not . . . he did not think that ladies would do this.

“Nia.” God, his hips rose mindlessly to the suction of Nia’s hot and saturating mouth. He could feel her lips stretching tight to his girth as her hand stroked the base tightly, up and down, and her tongue suckled wildly on the shaft. Unknowingly, he found his hand on the top of her head pushing downward as he raised his hips thrusting his cock into the grip of her sweet mouth.

Somehow he found the strength to try and think to stop that, even as he fucked her mouth again deeply. Yet, it was then that he felt her moaning. The vibration of it thrumming through his cock, over the head, vibrating the slit, bowing his body upward with feverish pleasure. Judas, was he simply mindless with pleasure or did she enjoy it? God help him, he was too stricken in pleasure to think clearly and heedlessly he pressured her head downward over and over his upward thrusting cock. Her mouth yielded, more and more to his mass, until the back of her throat suckled tight over the head with each plunging stroke.

Nia’s moaning increased to new heights of vibrating abandonment as she kneaded her mouth wickedly, yet greedily, over his expanding and rigid cock. Her cries became so passionate that he forced his eyes open to gaze downward. The picture lashed across his blurred vision of Nia making unbridled and passionate love to his jutting prick. Her lips were pink and rosy with friction, while her mouth guzzled his cock as he humped his hips upward. Yet, what stunned his rapture was Nia herself. The sight of her undulating and thrashing nude body. He was enthralled in the chaos of the passion-raging moment, yet his lust was riveted to the fact that Nia’s presence, her form, her voluptuous feminine shape all spoke of her imminent climax.

She did not touch herself. But she willingly took his prick as he pumped it into her mouth and it appeared that her complete abandonment was now carrying her to the brink of a climax. Her impassioned cries spoke of it. Her fingers and nails curled into his thighs, dug deeply with the pressure of it, and finally her body shuddered with it. He could see it breaking, and then course through her soft feminine frame.

“Christ!” he bellowed at the vision he saw of Nia’s shuddering climax. He strained, holding his cock back from thrusting, as she enfolded his shaft deeply into her mouth, while a climax convulsed over her lush, naked body.

The impossible strength he used to hold himself back lasted only mere seconds, then his hammering lust broke free once more. He lost himself in those moments for the first time, insane and mindless in his need. He grasped Nia upward to him. She came willingly with her body still quivering and hot with love. Out of control and demanding as never before, he sat Nia over his cock, and then with one upward thrust, he entered her to the hilt of his engorged shaft.

“Radford!”

“Nia,” He growled in passion. “Ride me, Lady Fire. Ride me hard.”

“Yes! Yes!” she cried, yet he barely let her take control, before he lifted her by her hips and dropped her, thrusting upward inside her at the same moment. “Oh!” she screamed.

“Christ!” he bellowed.

Then, he began an out of control rhythm. Never halting. Never losing pace. He plunged over and over with their thighs slapping together stinging them both with pleasure. Sweat sprayed off his temple and chest as he grabbed Nia’s upper body to him, then quickly lowering his hands to her bouncing ass. The position as he fucked her harder dragged her up and down the length of his body, while abrading her clitoris over the coarser hairs on his lower belly

“Radford! Radford!” she cried, clutching his head with her hands as her body swung forcefully up and down his body with the enlarged mass of his cock breaching her deeply each time.

“Nia, come for me,” he rasped harshly. He knew she would. He could feel it on his thickened prick that felt as though the weight were so large that it would burst.

“Please! Please!” she gasped against his jaw. “Fuck me harder, love! Fuck me!”

“Fire,” Radford panted, rising faster to Nia’s thrilling call as he felt the seed burning hot inside his cock, while rolling up his shaft in bliss. “Judas,” he groaned.

“Radford!” Nia screamed, and then he felt her climaxing with hard contractions clenching over his pumping cock, just as he bellowed.

“Nia!”

Nia went limp over Radford’s sweat-soaked chest, feeling the muscular expanse of it raise and fall with hard caught breathing that matched her own. She could feel his seed deep inside her with the large bulk of his manhood slowly receding. Her mind was passion-spent in a way she had never experienced before. There were important thoughts that should concern her, yet she could only purr softly on the lingering vestiges of pleasure flowing through her.

Suddenly, seeming to come out of nowhere, Radford’s hands were on the sides of her face, lifting her head, until his firm lips turned warmly over her lips with deep and sensual, kisses. “Nia,” he murmured huskily over her lips. “Nia.”

The affection, and then yes, the tender love of the action, filled her slowly and completely.

Chapter Eleven

Crack . . .

They both stiffened together at the sound of a branch cracking near them. Nia felt rather than saw Radford turning his gaze toward where Jake lay. Then from one second to the next, Radford had his jacket pulled off and draped around her. “He is starting to wake,” Radford said, at the same moment he was pushing her arms through the sleeves of his jacket.

Radford’s words sent some strength to her limbs and she stiffened at the same time Radford’s tall body shifted and he began to stand, lifting her to stand with him. She swayed, but he held her to his chest and she felt his ripped pants hanging about his hips. They were both in plundered dishabille.

“I carry and extra set of clothes in my saddle bags, cherie. Can you stand steady here a moment?”

She nodded against his chest, though not certain. Then she thought to brace her hand against the trunk of the tree. He stepped away slowly, adjusting his torn pants somewhat higher on his hips. Nia realized that her hair was in wild disarray as she lifted two large tangles of it out of her face, while peering at Radford. His white shirt was torn and scuffed on the back, barely managing to hang on his broad shoulders as he stopped over Jake.

Radford shoved his boot into Jake’s side, but Jake did not move. Then, Radford’s head came up and he scanned the area of forest around them. Nia found herself doing the same, following his gaze. Then, when Radford seemed satisfied, he walked toward her again. “Stay still, cherie. My horse is beyond those vines,” he murmured as he passed her.

Nia watched him, until he disappeared, trying to regain her thoughts and stiffen her spine. She had never been so completely wrung mindless before, yet her wits were returning. A few moments later, Radford returned to her, carrying a bundle of clothing.

“I will take the shirt, and you take the pants and my jacket, cherie, then I will take you safely to my estate.” Nia blinked at Radford trying to register his words as he leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss that pushed her backward slightly. “I am going to go tie that blighter up for the sheriff, while you get dressed,” he said, then he moved back to Jake.

His estate? Sheriff? Nia backed up toward the vines, where Radford’s horse was. “I would get dressed behind those vines, Radford,” she said. Then, she turned and scrambled behind the foliage. Oh what was she thinking?

Nia stumbled as she hastily began to pull Radford’s pants on, trying as best she may to hold them up around her waist. “Oh, I am so sorry, m-my love,” she whispered, reaching for the reins to Radford’s stallion.

The sleek and proud black stallion did not enjoy having and unknown rider trying to hoist clumsily up onto its back. However, she managed to climb up on the stallion and grasp the reins steadying the horse with Radford’s pants trying to slip down her hips. The first touch of her inner thighs and deeper into the saddle brought a small wince to her lips. This was the tender and abrading aftereffects of her and Radford’s abandoned joining. She knew that she would feel the lingering presence of their wilderness mating for some time to come.

She lost the battle with the waistband of his pants, because she had to use both of her hands on the reins of the stallion and the pants ended up falling down further around her hips as she turned the horse. She paid the price on her tender sex, when she pranced Radford’s horse from behind the vines.

Radford looked up as she turned the stallion in a high-stepping circle, and she exclaimed. “I must go! I beg you not to follow me!” The stallion snorted as she turned him into the motion of kicking him into a gallop. “Please, your grace, I am safe now! I will return your stallion!”

Nia held her breath as she galloped forward and away from Radford. A cry with some of the pain that she was feeling bodily, and in her heart, escaped her as the stallion sprinted away. She prayed fiercely that Radford would not follow her as she looked back over her shoulder and saw him standing tall and still as a statue, while he stared intently at her leaving.

“Damnation!” Radford swore under his breath, yet he tensely held his body still, waiting the first moment Nia would disappear from his view. It was a lush view of her bare ass bouncing on the seat of his prized black stallion. If she thought that he was going to trust her safety by remaining here, while she rushed headlong, as was becoming usual, off through this large forested countryside unescorted . . . she was exactly the mad cap minx that she portrayed herself. Just then, Nia’s fulsome and rousingly naked buttocks jiggled from his view and he sprang into action, while muttering about foolish, eccentric, beyond the pale women, who made love like wicked Goddesses of Fire.

Without time to spare, Radford simply tugged the thief’s boots off, then he leaped aboard the bastard’s horse, grabbing the reins and wheeling the horse around. He kicked the livery horse into a gallop, and then he realized that he was nearly naked with only pieces of his shirt still attached and flapping behind him, while his britches gaped open. Good Christ, they were a pair, Radford thought, as he began to laugh, while chasing after Nia.

He tossed the bastard thief’s boots off into the forest at some point, but he still held onto his fresh shirt as he followed Nia’s trail, finding her, yet keeping back to just follow her unseen. He could be a fool that was losing his cunning edge in lust. However, some emotion inside him, that he was at a loss to name, held Nia’s desire for continued anonymity as though he were her noble protector. She was foolish, headlong, vexing, beautiful and the most exciting woman that he’d ever met. Perhaps, he was indeed relishing the game she played and he wanted to continue to be a participant. His cunning edge agreed that he’d never been so ensnared or titillated. Moreover, he was certain that the game was not played out yet and she would be returning to his side for more sexual antics.

What amazed him the most was that when he’d put his outrageous betting scheme into play, he’d certainly expected the ladies to produce escapades. However, never in his wildest dreams had he imagined the play becoming so highly skilled, or for that matter, considered that he might be very affected. Somehow, he thought his sophisticated aloofness to be unshakeable. He had certainly assumed that some of the ladies would at least peak his interest in some manner or other. Yet, he’d never envisioned this headlong vaulting that sorely felt like it was snatching at the hidden wealth of passion inside him.

Which brought him squarely to a sudden and newly arising sore point in his life, he thought, as he watched Nia cantering his stallion to the very back stable at the Boars Head Inn. What the hell was he supposed to do with all the women, who must at this very moment be arriving at his country estate, not five miles down the road from the Boars Head Inn?

He decided as he watched Nia that he would have to credit her for her choice of a base for her operations, as it were. The establishment was respectable, discreet, and within easy striking distance of his estate. It appeared that she must have one of the stable boys in her employ because she was able to leave his stallion and scramble inside the back entrance to the inn without being seen in her curious dress. He knew the Boars Head Inn well, and better yet, he knew intimately that little used and hidden back entrance.

Radford pursed his lips as he put the fresh shirt on that he carried and he tied his pants beneath it. Then, he trotted his horse around the front of the quaint and well-maintained inn. Nia’s actions spoke clearly of proper prior planning, which were the three P’s in any good plan, and he had to give her another nod of admiration. As he approached the front stable, he kept a clear eye outward toward running into any of the ladies that might be traveling to his estate, who had stopped for refreshment. He did note one, overly gilded coach, that fit that description distastefully, but thankfully it appeared the occupants were inside. He knew that he would have to make quick work of his intentions, but he had history with several informants inside the inn and outside in the stables.

Nia’s industrious stable boy for one, he thought, with an inward smile. So it was, that only a short time later, he had the information that he wanted and at the same time he was not caught in the process. He did not take the main road, for the same reasons of not wanting to be seen, but he was also forced to return to his coach. He needed fresh attire and the means to arrive at his estate properly, and his present state would cause quite a scandal. Besides, all of the servants in his employ were well trained and even trained to the fact of the unusual events that might occur in his life. The life of a spy appearing quite out of the ordinary so his coachman would be waiting dutifully on the road for his return. Where any other coachman, under the circumstances, might have harried off by now.

As he rode, much more slowly than he had advanced in the opposite direction not long ago, he mused over the information that he had garnered on Nia. He knew her exact room location, how many servants she had with her, which were none. He did not care for that fact at all. A lady unescorted all alone in a roadside inn. He was daft for feeling that way, he was certain, because the lady had, on her very own, brought herself into the company of ruffian thieves. That jewel of information was an unexpected tidbit that Jim, one of the stable boys had to offer. It seemed the two thieves had drunk at the Inn the night before with one of them alluding to getting a pay day shortly.

It appeared that Lady Nia O’Shea had used her proper name to book the room for two nights. If it was her real name? And she traveled alone with no one else staying at the Inn with her. It was meager information about the still completely and mysterious lady. However, he could surmise, with the two night booking of the Inn that within the next twenty-four hours he would be in the company of his Lady Fire once again.

Chapter Twelve

Nia shut the door to her room at the Boars Head Inn and she wobbled to the bed, falling face down upon it. She would order a hot bath and food, she thought dismally, surely that would help? Then, she burst into tears, immediately disgusted that she had any left to shed, which upset her even more.

“Oh, you kissed him,” she mumbled tearily, wadding part of the bed quilt beneath her face. “Never! Never, kiss them!” And, she’d done it twice now, with both kisses combined more like a thousand kisses between them. She was blubbering and completely avoiding the real reasons she was crying, by using small distracting excuses. “Kissing is the least of your offense, you daft girl.” Nia hiccupped. “I will never get paid,” she sobbed, burying her face into the quilt. She knew it was much worse than getting paid. Much, much worse than that. She’d never felt like this before. It nearly frightened her. It did frighten her. “Oh, you blimey idiot. You’ve gone and fallen in love with him, you fool.”

Her weeping was pathetic and a small part of her mind was annoyed with her weakness. She had not cried this much since her parents were lost at sea, three short years ago, when she was but twenty. She’d cried then for nearly a full day. Yet, her younger siblings had needed her strength so badly that she’d forced herself to stop. She had not cried since, until her near rape, and now this.

“Radford!” Nia pounded the bed with her fists a few good times as though she could somehow pound him out of her system. It wouldn’t work. Love was love. She rolled over onto her back staring at the bed canopy overhead, with a blurry gaze through her tears. “What will I do now?” There was no one to answer her. There had not been for a long time, she thought, curling her fingers into fists. She hiccupped, “You must just pick yourself up and go on,” she announced bravely. “Get about the proper business you are going to be paid for.”

Oh, but she felt so badly about that. Being paid. Love should not be so tainted! “Oh blimey, you’re a whore. That’s bloody worse!” A sob caught her throat along with a hiccup.

A Duke and a whore! It was nearly laughable. But the passion still lingered on her body and in her mind. The ardor and the flame. She could smell Radford on her, and she never wanted to wash. Extraordinary things had occurred in his arms. Things she could never imagine. Her passions had become wholly unbound and completely consumed. Just the thought of him now made her ravenous with desires and deep hopeful longings. Oh lord, she loved him. She had no clue, how it could have happened so quickly. Yet each time they met, their bodies wildly spoke of it, even if their minds had not spoken the reason yet.

“What will I do?”

Nia sat upright looking about the room in an abysmal manner, seeking answers that were hiding fearfully in her heart. Love or money? She could never be with a Duke such as Radford was, once he found out. She’d already made the impossibly hard choice between love and money once before. She loved her brothers and sisters. She needed them and they needed her. All she’d wanted to do was cling to them, and yet she’d had to set that aside for practical reasons. She’d never regretted it, because what she was doing was born of love. Just a different way of giving it, and she’d also sworn to herself that she would never be ashamed. She liked men, they liked her. It was fun, until now. Now it hurt and it had the chance of making her feel shame.

Suddenly, she had to know what the next directions of Benny’s instructions were, so she snatched up the vermilion envelope off her nightstand. There were only two more envelopes inside that remained unopened, but she could not stand to wait and do each one of them at a time. She had to know the entirety and what the ending was. At once! Her fingers shook as she tore open each envelope, then she absently wiped the tears out of her eyes as she began to read the second to the last set of instructions.

A part of her mind was incredulous that there still were no specific instructions that she bed Radford. “Oh, if you only knew, Benny,” she muttered.

She’d always assumed that bedding Radford was an eventuality of Benny’s entire scheme. But this letter instructed her to yet another daring meeting of teasing and sexual torture, while saying specifically that she was not to allow Radford to do more than touch her. Nia chewed on her bottom lip. Well, Benny surely could not have envisioned how quickly and wildly Radford and she would be attracted to each other. “This must be Benny’s way of building romance,” she reasoned. Then, she looked at the final envelope. “And the coup de grace must be here in the final envelope.”

Nia quickly pulled the one page out of the envelope with her heart skipping on the fact that there was only one page. Her fingers shook as she read the four small lines written there.

“Disappear now. Go back to your home in Dublin. You have completed my services and the money will be deposited in your name at the Bank of Dublin, within one week of your return. Regards for your services, Madame.”

The paper fell from Nia’s fingers as a hard sob caught in her chest. “Oh no,” she moaned. That was it! That was all! She was never to have tupped Radford, and now if she were still going to try to take the money she must play out this last escapade, and then never see Radford again.

Chapter Thirteen

“Where have you been, Radford? There are six ladies arrived as we speak. Two without an escort and all are ravenous for the sight of you. I could have been a pickled herring for all they cared to speak to me,” Saxonhurst said.

“Damnation,” Radford replied, raking a hand through his hair in irritation. He had managed to arrive in the rear of his estate and clandestinely come up the back way to his master suite, only to find Saxon reclined in a chair by the fire with a glass of scotch in hand. “What are you doing here, Saxon?” Radford understood his tone was rather exasperated.

“Truthfully, the ladies look at me so distastefully, when they discover I am not, ‘the Duke,’ I’d rather thought to hide. Yet, I imagine you mean here, now so early. I really thought it might be a pip actually, Rad.”

“A pip?” Radford pursed his lips. “Dandified, Saxon?” After releasing this scathing remark upon Saxon’s character, Radford strode to the side bar and poured himself a scotch as well.

Saxon laughed, throwing his head back with his damnably long hair loose once again. “You are in rare form, Rad. Arrogant as hell, which means that something, somewhere is not going to your fine tuning. I will wager it has beautifully flowing red hair and places bets on White’s books.”

“Touché.” Radford saluted Saxon with his drink aloft and a sneer.

“And, Rad, the word, ‘pip’ by the way was used by a simpering and gallant Miss of the ripe old age of barely sixteen with the name of Lady Jane Oakmore. She used the word no less than a dozen times, in as many harried sentences. So that I can only imagine it is a new word among the youngsters.”

“Sixteen?” Radford questioned nearly choking on a swallow of his scotch.

“Why yes,” Saxon chuckled. “There are two sixteen year olds and one seventeen,” he sputtered, apparently trying to contain his laughter. “Had you a clue?”

“Hell no!” Radford exclaimed. “Is that not illegal, or an unspoken law among the mothers?”

“Apparently not, for so treasured a prize as a Duke.” Saxon burst out laughing again, seemingly giving up his less than valiant effort not to. “Has your plan gone a bit awry for once, Rad?” he asked through his laughter.

“Please, tell me the sixteen year olds are chaperoned,” Radford exclaimed.

Saxon, with his tanned face ruddy from suppressed laughter, shook his head chuckling harder.

“Judas priest,” Radford cursed.

“A pip!” Saxon chortled, slapping his knee. “I would not have missed this, Radford, never, never!”

There was nothing for it, no other cunning approach Radford could take upon the matter. He was at a loss.

So he hid.

It was decidedly cowardly, incredibly rude, yet if anyone had known, it was quite honorable on his part. He sent excuses to his guests that he was temporally ill and he urged them to carry on without him. Saxon behaved similarly sending his regrets that he was not feeling well also. Both of them shuddered at even the slightest chance of getting caught en flagrant delicato with a sixteen year old Miss.

The thought still caused Radford to shudder in the late hours as he lay in his bed unable to sleep. Wisely, he’d locked his bedchamber door, because already after dark he had received three bold scratches upon it. It was the ever, tried and true, way of a lady requesting amorous entrance to a gentleman’s bedchamber.

“I should be shot,” he growled, throwing his arm up over his forehead. He’d never had one of his schemes melt down into such chaotic disarray. He even found himself praying that a horde of motherly inclined matrons had this evening or would in the morning descent upon his estate with their daughters in tow. The more of them around the less likely he would be thrown in jail for stepping out of his bedchamber in his own home. He’d even broken down and sent off urgent messages to Drummond’s wife, Ravenscar’s wife, and Wyndham’s wife to come early, please, and save his worthless hide. They had been set to arrive by Sunday evening as it was for the last night’s masquerade ball. Surely they could take pity on him and come earlier? Or he was determined to hide in his bedchamber for the duration.

Yet, besides feeling like an incredible fool, he was upset because each sound outside his door, every discreetly laid scratch, could be Nia, without his knowing it. The love sick agony that caused him was simply embarrassing. Yet, by two in the morning with his bed linens thrashed asunder by his body’s heaving in remembrance, he admitted that it was love. It was illogical love and love without a reasoned backbone to stand on, but it was love, fast, wild, and furious. Nevertheless, his reasoning mind wondered how he could love so quickly. But his heart knew the answer.

So with little sleep the night before and after a morning bath and shave, he was edgy. He had asked his butler the details of who was in residence and it appeared that it might be safe to attend the scheduled brunch, but he would disappear for a ride shortly after. Perhaps to ride out his bad temperament, he thought.

From his butler he’d found out that in the course of his excused absence last evening and this morning that a much more well-rounded group of guests had arrived. Lady mothers in abundance and gentlemen attached to them or a healthy group of single ones up for the festivities. Or rather, Radford thought, they were hoping to gain advantage on the ripe pickings this misbegotten weekend soirée promised.

It appeared his friends, the other Archangels, and their wives might let him rot in the pot of his own makings. Knowing them as well as he did, he was quite certain that they were all beside themselves in laughter on his plight. “Good friends are like that,” he grumbled, as he left his bedchamber to find Saxon, another misbegotten ally, who smirked at him to no end.

“Just this brunch to show my face because I must. Then a ride. Perhaps, for the rest of the day!” Radford exclaimed. Although, in his mind, Radford knew that he would not go the whole day, for one illogical reason. Nia. He had the indescribable need to be available so that she could come to him. It was a weak, but an inescapable feeling inside him. And with the other ladies present, it really put him in a more difficult place. He would be in a sense allowing himself to be available to the many, all for the hope of the one.

“Then we shall brave the amorous masses as one!” Saxonhurst declared, chuckling. “Just like partner fencing, I shall watch your back old man!”

“Posh!” Radford expelled in irritation as they started forward.

“Now is that word not more dandified than pip?” Saxon asked.

“I am practicing not to foully curse, which will be my inclination,” Radford replied.

Saxon laughed from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Then, it was rather like a partnership fencing match, only he was the only one without a sword. He supposed, for his sins of arrogance, he deserved every agonizing second of it. He rallied forth his aloofness and arrogance as a shield, while pretending, and not too far off course, ennui and boredom. The ladies in attendance were put off their delicate feet, but by no means discouraged. He was a bloody fool.

One adventurous young Miss by the name of Lady Jane Oakmore, and yes a virgin but sixteen years old, went so far as to accost him in the stables and were it not for Saxon’s timely arrival, he shuddered to think what might have come of it. He swore he would repent all his wicked sins and take God unto his breast, because at the moment that Saxon strode whistling into the stables, he was so heart-fully grateful that he did not deride Saxon for his poorly lacking show of watching his back.

He’d gone ahead to the stables, his nervous energy pulling him into movement. His mind was so full of churning thoughts that he did not realize that someone was lurking in the shadows just inside the stable door so he did not break his stride, but continued to his horse’s stall. So immersed in thought he did not hear the soft footfalls directly behind him, until a hand settled on his shoulder and he swiftly swung around, in his usual quick response with arms raised to confront the attacker. But fortunately, he was in complete control, for his attacker was a sixteen-year-old Miss, so recently knocking upon his bedchamber door.

My God, he thought, where was the child’s mother? He was just about to speak, when a voice broke the stalemate. “Jane, you infantile child! What are you doing here? His grace does not have time for children.”

It appeared to Radford that the two aggressive ladies were about to confront each other over him and he could feel a red flush, rushing over his face. “Lady Paddington,” he said. “It seems this young lady is lost. Could you help her find her way back to the house?”

“Yes, she is very definitely lost. It seems she is trying to seduce you, your grace. Her mother has set her to it.”

Lady Jane having apparently recovered her voice, quipped, “And I suppose you did not have the same thing in mind, you–you, old woman! I saw you scratching on his door.”

“And were you waiting in line, you silly chit?”

“Child! Silly chit! Just who do you think you are? No gentleman would have you, you used up old cow!”

Radford watched in stunned silence as the two women moved toward each other and at the word ‘old cow,’ Lady Paddington suddenly screeched, and then out of nowhere, she launched herself at Lady Jane grabbing her with both hands by the hair to swing her around. He was dumbfounded. The momentum carried them both over and down onto the straw strewn floor. Speechless, Radford could only watch as the two women rolled on the floor screaming and clawing at each other. Never is his life, had he seen such a display of irrational behavior. And, he was the cause. Surely not!

By now the commotion had gathered a crowd of stable hands and to his chagrin they were making bets on the winner. So far, it seemed none of them was aware of why the women were fighting, because their screaming and screeching was unintelligible. But he did not want to take a chance they might find out and he was about to try and part the two combatants, when Saxon strode up.

Stopping next to him, Saxon whispered in his ear, “Two of your future brides, Rad. My, my, you do have an exciting life to look forward to, old boy!”

“Stuff it, Saxon. Do something, before everyone realizes they are fighting over me.” Radford lowered himself into pleading.

“Certainly, dear friend. But remember that you will owe me.”

“Anything, Saxon, just stop this fiasco.”

With that, Saxon strode to the side of the stable and picked up a wooden bucket and proceeded to fill it from the horse trough. Then, he strode toward the two struggling women, and with deliberate timing at the peak of their screeching, he poured the water over their heads and stood back to watch them sputter.

“Works with dogs every time,” he commented calmly. The mischievous sparkle in his brown eyes hidden by his full face grin. “James!” Saxon called toward the older stable man. “Take these two lovely ladies into the house by the kitchen door. We wouldn’t want anyone else to see their dishabille, now would we?”

“That is without a doubt the most hilarious solution to a very volatile situation that I have ever seen, Saxon,” Radford said, while trying not to laugh.

“Nothing to it, Rad, just a bit of experience.”

Radford just looked at Saxonhurst unable to ask the obvious of how Saxon had gotten such experience, as they both turned to retrieve their stallions and make hasty retreats.

Chapter Fourteen

Nia came to make love to Radford. One last time. She came because she was weak and she would be stronger beside him for what she must do. She came because she was helpless, and she came in the end, to tell him the truth.

Nia wondered what people were, if they were not selfish, as she adjusted the black-haired wig that she wore. Then she smoothed the apron to the chambermaid’s outfit that she had on. Yet, any more guilt that she felt was winningly overwhelmed by her elation of seeing Radford again. Being in his arms. Loving him.

She’d made a devil’s pact with herself. Irrevocable. She would allow herself the final lovemaking in payment for four words that she must speak. She made her vow in the Lord’s name. But more importantly, she made her vow to Radford. She cared for him too well to simply disappear from him without a word or explanation to him about what had occurred.

Truly, she had no measure of his feelings for her. For all she knew, she was simply a mysterious diversion to him. Sorely, she wanted to believe that in her arms he had experienced the same earth-shattering emotions that she had. Yet, she was simply not naive enough where men were concerned to place any certainty in that. Men loved women, and many men loved many women.

So her need to tell him some of the truth and not leave him in a vast limbo was as much for herself, or more. To her, love in part meant compassion and trying your very best not to hurt the one you loved. She had already failed dismally in the not hurting part; yet, she was determined to offer him what she could in the way of understanding the fullness of what had happened to him.

The money Benny offered be damned. She’d given up on it, because of the ragged distaste accepting it now would bring her. Nay, after this one last time with Radford, she would return to Dublin and find herself a wealthy gentleman who wished a young mistress. Before, she’d shied away from becoming any man’s permanent mistress for fear that the part of her heart that she could not hold back would become too attached. But now, that problem had been solved. No one could take her heart from Radford and being just a simple fille de joie was never going to garner her enough money to send Galen up to Oxford.

So she entered Radford’s bedchamber quietly carrying bed linens and wearing her disguise of being a chambermaid. In her heart was elation, but it also suffered with heaviness. She knew that sooner or later Radford would receive the message and small package that she’d paid one of his Pages to give to him. So she laid the linens down on the bed and sat beside them to wait. As soon as she heard Radford’s approach, she would turn and pretend that she was making the bed.

Radford looked out over his gardens from a balcony above, which could only be approached from one set of doors behind him. Standing on the other side of the closed doors was a butler with instructions to let no one pass. Below him, there was an afternoon garden party under way. The summer day was clear and not too hot. A small orchestra played strains of a waltz and the ladies and gentlemen attending were resplendent in their attire, as they strolled through the well-manicured garden pathways.

From his vantage point, he could nod at his guests and try without much success to smile at the up turned pretty faces eagerly looking up at him for some sign. Yet, at the same time he could manage to stay apart. It was brilliant. He might appear eccentric, yet not wholly a malcontent snob for not attending the party, or immersing himself completely in this gathering of his own making.

His butler knocked, then opened the door to ask entrance. Radford was not surprised it was the fourth time this happened. Each time the butler carried a small intimate note from one of the ladies. All the notes requested private assignations with him in provocative manners. One had used poetry and he had been mildly impressed by that one. This time, however, the butler carried a note and a small package on his silver tray. Radford took both and thanked the butler, watching him retreat back behind the door.

His heartbeat was instantly pulsing strongly with excitement that he was suppressing as a delicate vanilla scent drifted upward from the note and package. Nia. He could nearly wring her lovely neck. A full twenty-four hours he had waited, as though he were a debutante waiting for her first caller. She would pay, he vowed! Yet, by the time he’d read the note, with its seductive instructions, he realized that she had him exactly where she wanted him, yet again. As usual.

And, were he not to play along, he stood the chance of not seeing her. Actually once again, he would not be seeing her at all, he thought looking down at the blindfold that he held in his hands. Nia suggested in the note that he go to his bedchamber and don the blindfold. The minx!

Radford entered his bedchamber still deep in thought as yet unsure whether he would actually put on the blindfold and sit like a lamb, awaiting Nia’s arrival. With his mind fully occupied, he glimpsed the dark-haired chambermaid putting fresh linens on his bed and he gave her a curt order to leave. Turning his back on her, he raked his hand through his hair. Somehow, someway, Nia seemed to need this trust from him, and he knew, just as she did, that he could remove the blindfold anytime.

Once this was resolved in his mind, he let go of his hesitations and allowed the excitement of Nia’s making to course freely through him. There was no pretending that she had him anything less than enthralled with her antics. A man could silently pray his entire life to find a woman who was truly sexual, with a free and uninhibited manner. One who enjoyed it openly and fully as an intimate part of a relationship with a man? Yet, that man had better be prepared to take the unique gift shown to him with all his might and love.

Radford lifted the blindfold and tied it around his one good eye and the eye patch on the other side. Then, he reached out to touch the armrest of the chair he stood by, and just as he was turning to the side, he heard the click of the door. Something registered in his mind as he turned his blindfolded gaze toward the light sounds of a skirt swishing toward him. There was no vanilla scent, yet his nostrils did detect the scent of musky lingering feminine arousal and softly heated flesh. He could be worried that one of the ladies pursuing him had arrived unexpectedly. However, he had heard only one click of the door and that meant . . .

“You are the maid,” he murmured.

Chapter Fifteen

“I am Nia,” she whispered with her husky Irish accent that instantly sent Radford’s heart beating heavier.

Radford lifted his hand and his fingers brushed the material of a crisp linen skirt, and then the outline of a rounded hip beneath. “A wig?” he asked, cupping Nia’s hip as she swayed closer to him, and then he felt the front of her skirts pressing against his outer thigh.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I have come to make love to you.”

His cock instantly began to lift, solidly weighted, as his heartbeat raced, but before he could gather his thoughts to reply to this amorous promise, he felt Nia’s fingers lightly stroking his perpetually shadowed jaw.

“Slowly,” she murmured, with a deep sensual purring in her voice. “If you accept.” Her fingertips traced his bottom lip. “You will.” Then, her finger rounded his mouth to trace the curves of his upper lip. “Accept my finger in your mouth and,” she pressed the tip of her finger to the tip of his tongue as his lips parted, “Suckle on it slowly, love.” A harsh hiss escaped the back of his throat as Nia slid her finger down the center of his tongue. “Slowly, my heart,” she purred as the edges of his tongue curled over her sliding finger. Then with one lingering draw, Radford stopped Nia’s fingers movement with his tongue sucking on it.

“Mm, Radford,” she gasped softly and he felt her lips brush his cheek as he squeezed her hip more intimately, pulling her harder against his thigh.

The tenderness of her finger against his tongue traced back out to the tip and he grasped the tip with his lips, leaning forward to suckle it back into his mouth to the base. Nia’s purring moan enlivened him as her lips kissed down his jaw with her tongue darting out to wet his flesh. Then, her lips were next to her finger, which he suckled deep in his mouth.

“Kiss me . . . I need your lips on me,” she moaned, thrillingly.

The complete seduction of it saturated him, raising his cock stiffly as Nia’s finger left his mouth and their lips softly collided together. The kissing was deep, wet, and passionately urgent as though structured slowness were beyond their grasp. Nia’s tongue entered his mouth and he took it to him, loving it wildly. From one second to the next, he was standing with Nia lifted up into his arms. They kissed each other even more ardently with their lips curling over each other’s as he strode to the bed, misjudging the distance in his urgent and impassioned state, and he bumped into it. He let the momentum drop Nia onto the soft mattress, breaking their lips apart as a small squeal escaped her and he climbed up on the bed over her, where he knew she would be.

He felt her fingers clutching the front of his shirt. “I wanted this to be slow,” she gasped.

“Later. I cannot wait now,” he rasped, and then the sound and feel of his shirt being torn open by Nia’s fingers filled him.

“I cannot wait either,” she whimpered.

“Take your clothes off, Nia,” he hissed urgently. “God, I want you naked, Fire, now.”

“Oh yes, Radford,” she gasped.

Radford felt the bed’s jerky motions caused my Nia hurrying to strip for him as he leaned on one hand over her and he used his other hand to tug on her clothing with her. His hand slid against her creamy supple flesh in different glancing moments. Touching her delicate rib cage, the curve of her breast, her lower belly, and other sensual spots. The blindness of his gaze heightened his senses and within moments she was pulling him down into her naked embrace, where he willingly fell into the cradle of her heat.

“Nia.”

Nia tugged Radford’s shirt off, and then she delved her fingers into his hair, pulling him down, lifting up at the same time, until their lips met. The buds of her tautly aroused nipples grazed over his muscular chest and she moaned into his mouth. She felt exactly like the fire that he called her as she hooked one foot over the back of his thigh and she used it to lift her pussy up against the thickened length of his cock beneath his pants. She rode the upper mound of her cunt hard against that unyielding mass and weight. The strength of it made her core weep and flush open with an excruciating ache to feel its power bursting inside her.

“I want you. I want you,” she whimpered around Radford’s tongue plunging into her mouth with deep mating motions.

His mouth broke away from hers. “Christ, Nia,” he groaned hoarsely, then suddenly he swept her upward more tightly against his chest and rolled their bodies, until she was on top of him. His hands tunneled into her hair, tugging her head back, as he growled, “You have me.”

“Yes,” she cried, raising up over him to open his pants and pull them urgently down, not bothering with his boots. Only caring that his long ample cock was free and standing upright for her.

“Fuck me now, Nia. Take me inside you. Let me fuck you, cherie. Your hot wet pussy.”

Nia panted, looking at the seed oozing from the slit in the head of Radford’s jutting cock. The sounds cascading from her throat sounded ravenous as her mouth begged to be filled, but her inner core begged harder. Her pussy pleaded, with juices leaking down her inner thighs, to be filled with the plunging friction of Radford’s cock stretching her deeply.

She grabbed the shaft, pumping it with the motions her entire body craved, as she crawled over it. The heftiness of it excited her as Radford groaned, raising his hips upward to the motions of her tight and pumping grip on his shaft.

“Put my cock in your pussy,” he growled. “Put the head where I can feel you. Get it wet on you, Nia.”

“Oh,” she moaned, fitting the densely swollen head of his cock to her hot vagina. “Can you feel it?” she gasped, pressing the head to the opening, and circling it around the edges, while smearing it with her liquid of passionate desire.

“Yes,” he gasped, arching his buttocks upward and driving the head past the first tight resistance.

“Radford, my love, my love!” she squealed as the opening of her inner sheath yielded to the wider head of Radford’s cock pressing into her. Then her vagina closed around the smaller shaft, so that she held just the width of the helmeted head inside of her.

“Ah, Christ,” Radford groaned, with his hands scraping upward along her thighs, until he grasped her bare buttocks tight. “Ride me,” he growled. “Ride me, Nia!”

“Oh,” Nia mewled as he pulled her body downward driving his cock to her womb as her vagina clenched in ecstasy. Her nails raked the sinewy and tensely mounded buttress of Radford’s chest as her body sought a frantic up and down motion over his piercing cock. She galloped atop him, taking his cock over and over, as he see-sawed his hips upward to meet her each time. She gasped shrilly with untamed sounds of need as he growled in bass sounds of demand.

Her breasts swayed madly with her bouncing effort, while her buttocks slapped Radford’s thighs. She squealed his name, then faster and faster. She was so close. So close, it was as if there were a torrent building inside her, yet it seemed to elude her in maddening frustration. Yet, Radford seemed to know her needs more intimately than her passion-ravished mind could comprehend. He grasped her hips and pressured her upper body down and to the side, yet still above him. Her aroused whimpers willingly followed his command. Then, his hips shifted without breaking their thrusting motion and he threw one of his legs over her hips, dragging her pelvis up against him.

“Oh,” she careened at the new intense pleasure this wrung into her sex as it rubbed rapidly up and down over him.

“Move with me, cherie,” Radford’s voice grated into her ear as his hands clamped over her buttocks to help their wild, mating motions.

Radford kept their sweat-soaked bodies pressed tight together as their hips gyrated and her taunt clitty was rubbed voraciously, while his cock plunged deep inside her. Her panting was shrill sounding hiccups of pleasure, each one faster than the next, as her climax built with ferocity.

She clung to Radford now, too helpless in the vortex of her climax shooting to its pinnacle to help their body’s motion together. Yet, his strength held true as he never let her go and he rapidly continued the driving thrust of his cock, until she screamed his name.

“Yes, my love,” Radford growled harshly out of breath into her ear as her climax crashed over her and each onward plunge of his cock inside her twisted and churned the bliss higher. Her inner sheath clenched and unclenched over his stabbing cock as her orgasm continued to ring through her and she felt Radford’s manhood expand with arduous and hefty throbbing.

“Ah!” he groaned, then his body arched stiffly and a rush of his fiery seed sizzled deep inside her. Their moans combined to the cries of fulfillment and she felt his cock contracting, and then bursting forth again with a sharp bass groan from his throat. Then on the lingering dredges of her climax, his hot seed filled her again, until he lay panting beneath her and she collapsed halfway across his chest.

They were elements of a tempest in the universe together. They were a storm’s center. They were the fire of a raging flame or the sun’s searing heat. Untamed, uncontrolled together. They sparked something uncommon in each other and combined, it made a vital whole.

“I want you, Nia. I want you by my side. No more of these games.”

“Radford!” Nia’s hands stopped his hand reaching for the blindfold. “Please.”

“Judas, Nia!” he exclaimed harshly.

“I must speak to you,” she pleaded. “Please, listen to me, I...”

Radford’s hands lifted as he searched blindly, and then her hands helped him to find her face. “I would know you without sight, in any moment for the rest of my life,” he murmured as he traced the features of her face. Yet, his hand suddenly stilled, when he felt her tears. “Nia?” he uttered, with more words coming behind her name.

Yet, before he could, Nia blurted on a strangled sob, “I am a whore! Oh, Radford, a whore! Do you hear me?”

At that exact instant of her guilt-ridden exclamation, a sound clamored loudly behind where they lay tangled on the bed. Then suddenly two feminine squeals erupted, jerking Nia’s gaze upward to see two ladies gaping at her in the open doorway of Radford’s bedchamber. Nia cried out in surprised horror, just as Radford was exclaiming her name again. She shoved upon his chest with surprising strength and leaped out of the bed, managing to grasp her chemise as she ran frantically from the room.

“Nia!” Radford bellowed, tearing the blindfold away from his head. His full intention was to give chase, yet the climatic events suddenly righted themselves in his mind as he sat upright on the edge of the bed. He realized then, just exactly what Nia had said and his body’s motions came to an abrupt halt, as his glaring gaze landed on the two women gaping at him.

“Get the hell out of here!” he bellowed in a uncharacteristically maddened shout that sent them fleeing immediately. He realized that he’d raised his fist to them unconsciously and when he saw it before him, he lowered it tensely to the bed beside him. His knuckles knocked the corner of something solid on the bed bringing his gaze downward. Radford saw the corner of what appeared to be a fat envelope. He plucked at the edge of the envelope, until it came out from beneath Nia’s scattered clothing. There on the front of the packet had been written his name with the words “from Nia” underneath. He realized that Nia had intended to give him this and he began to open it up, trying to settle his heart to what explanations he might find.

What he found amazed and disturbed him more than the fact that Nia was a fille de joie. And after he read the entire set of instructions from Nia’s apparent client-benefactor, two things settled in his mind, both in opposite directions. Nia was never supposed to make love with him and she was being paid to do what she did. That piece of information alone stopped him from following her, and he wondered angrily, if all the feelings that she’d shared with him were contrived.

Chapter Sixteen

“Fuck, she is a whore,” Radford said angrily, his back stiffly turned to Saxon. He was disillusioned, hurt, and grasping. “She only did it for money! And the man who paid her could be my enemy. Although, I fail to see the gain.” The sound of Radford’s drinking glass shattering against the fireplace filled the room.

“Nia O’Shea?” Saxon asked with an exclamation.

Whom the hell else would he be speaking of, Radford thought sourly, as he turned toward Saxon. But then, he saw Brynmore, evidentially newly arrived to his estate, standing behind Saxon with a surprised, and somewhat alarmed look on his face.

“Say the name again,” Brynmore demanded.

Radford watched Saxon turn to Brynmore as he tried to understand the look on Brynmore’s face.

“Nia O’Shea,” Saxon provided once more, only this time his voice was level and devoid of the incredulousness from moments before.

“Bloody hell, I know her,” Brynmore exclaimed. Then his voice turned to angry words. “The lass is not a whore!”

“But...” Saxon glanced at Radford.

“You know her?” Radford exclaimed, then he added in a deadly quiet voice, “The lady told me this herself.”

“Then, there is some explanation,” Brynmore replied. “Nia O’Shea is from a good Irish family. Bloody hell, we are related somewhere down the line. Aye, my mother was a very dear friend with her mother, before she and her husband died.”

“Then why, the hell, could I not find any bloody O’Shea, when I looked?” Radford asked with a demanding tone.

Brynmore’s gray eyes narrowed. “O’Shea is her mother’s name, not her father’s. Dunmore was his name. There must be some reason that she is using her mother’s name.”

“Because, she is a whore,” Radford spat quietly, while perversely enjoying Brynmore’s shoulders stiffening as though he had been insulted. Then suddenly, Radford sighed as though all the air left his lungs and his anger escaped with it. “Not that I care that she is a fille de joie. Damnation, I care simply that she was paid to...” He could not finish.

“To bed you,” Saxon said quietly.

“Is, Nia, this woman, Saxon, that you told me Radford was involved with?” Brynmore asked.

Saxon nodded. “Much more than simply involved, I think,” Saxon added.

Radford looked up at them not speaking, but knowing his face spoke of his answer. “For money,” he whispered.

“There must be an answer,” Brynmore insisted. “I must see her.”

“I...” Radford hesitated, then strengthened his voice, shaking his head, then starting again. “You need to discover who did this, who paid her. For what reason, because...” He could not go on.

“I understand,” Brynmore replied. “Saxon can fill me in on the rest.”

“She was at the Boars Head,” Radford said, then as he turned away, he uttered, “Christ, make sure she is safe.” Then he stalked from the room.

Nia sniffled as she folded a shimmering dress into the small valise she’d opened on the bed in her room at the Boars Head Inn. She’d brought the dress for the masquerade ball this evening at Radford’s estate. Somehow in the back of her mind, even without knowing Benny’s further instructions she’d assumed that she would be attending the ball. It had simply seemed like to her, to be another perfect place to enhance the mysterious seduction.

“It is better this way,” she mumbled, not convincing herself at all. How could she have made such a jumble of everything? How could she so callously blurt out that she was a whore to Radford without further explanation? “Because there is no further explanation,” she chided herself miserably. “Those ladies did you a favor. They saved you from seeing Radford’s accusing face. O-Or his disgust!”

Nia’s voice broke as she tried without success to turn her attention back to her packing. She knew she was lingering, only it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. To leave now and turn her back on Radford. Even though she knew that he could not possibly want her now.

“But at least he has read Benny’s letters by now and he will k-know.” Her voice caught. “He will know that I made l-love to him instead of taking the money.” Suddenly there was a knock upon the door and Nia quickly wiped away a few tears and called, “Enter.” She’d been expecting the Inn’s maid to help her. She reached to shut her valise as she heard the door opening, and then she turned toward the person entering.

“Laird Duneagan!” Nia gasped, so thoroughly surprised that she wobbled and sat on the bed, before her knees gave way. “Blimey!” It was all she could think to say as Laird Brynmore Duneagan looked down on her with a welcoming quirk on his lips.

“Lady Nia Dunmore,” he replied with a short bow. “Bloody hell, Nia! It has been too long.” With that said, Brynmore strode forward and grasped her hands pulling her up before him. In her surprised state, Nia could do nothing more than acquiesce to his lead and before she knew it she was embraced in a huge bear hug. Late, she remembered to hug her friend back.

“Ach, lass, it is so good to see you. It has been entirely too long. Shame on us,” Brynmore rumbled and Nia could feel it in his chest, where they embraced tightly and suddenly she burst into tears. She was completely mortified, yet she could not stop as she bawled into Brynmore’s tartan, which was thrown over his shoulder.

“Aw, I thought so,” Brynmore said as he rocked her. “Let it out, lass. Let it all out.”

An embarrassing ten minutes later, found Nia sitting on the bed clutching a hand-linen to her nose that Brynmore had provided as he sat next to her on the bed.

“What brings you here, Bry?” Nia sniffled. “How in the world have you run across me like this, after all these years?”

“Ach, I truly do regret that it is so long, lass. I should have come after your parents passed. But the war.” Brynmore shrugged. “Still, it is no excuse after I returned to England.”

“No, no Bry.” Nia patted his hand. “I never expected you too. We were all so sad to hear of your family’s loss. You got my letter? So many, Bry,” Nia added sadly.

“Aye, I got your letter. It helped, Nia, surely it did. Ach, Nia, I was just so...” Brynmore paused, then said, “I just found myself avoiding anyone that would remind me how many I’d lost. Both my brothers, Da, and Uncle Claymore.”

Nia squeezed his hand. “I am so sorry, Bry.”

Brynmore lifted his head looking at her. “Aye well, you know well enough that life goes on, Nia. And as to why I have found you here, well, I should tell you that, Radford, is one of my closest friends.”

Nia’s eyes widened with her lips forming an “O” of surprise. “Oh no, I-I...” she stuttered.

“Listen to me, lass,” Brynmore said, patting her hand. “I’ve heard most of the stories concerning you and Radford. But I know there is more.”

Nia dropped her gaze, pulling her hands from Brynmore’s hands to clutch both of them into her lap. “I’m a lady of the night,” she whispered, then she lifted her head and said more strongly, “And, I am not ashamed of it. It’s honest work!”

“And it’s certain to be the money, Nia. How could I be so unthinking? I knew your parents left five siblings. Yet, I never thought to ask. How could you not come to me, lass? We are not so distantly related, and clan is clan,” Brynmore said.

“You had lost so much, Bry. And the line is long in our relation.” Nia looked at her hands twisting in her lap and stopped their motion. “I did not know I could ask anyone or expect anyone to take our cause.”

“Ach well, you know now,” Brynmore said, reaching forward and clasping her hands to pull her into another short and welcome embrace. “My mother would be chiding me from heaven that I did not take care of her best friend, Mary Dunmore’s, children.”

Nia clutched him. “Galen has been accepted into Oxford. It is so very expensive.”

“Now, now,” Brynmore soothed her. “The clan has worth and young Galen will return to us an asset. Besides you still have the land and house I’m thinking and you just need someone to help you make it profitable. One way or another, lass, I’ll not hear any more of this lady of the night shenanigans.” Brynmore lifted her chin looking down on her. “Besides, I think it might not be a problem soon.”

Nia looked up at Brynmore curiously, wondering what he meant. Then, he cleared his throat. “I think though, lass, that before you travel back to Dublin and we settle you in, you might have something here left to do.”

“Radford?” she asked. Then, she said, “I have told him all of it and left the evidence. I’m sure you know.”

“Nia, do you understand that he thinks you’ll be paid. That you left for the money.”

“No!” she exclaimed. “I could not. Not now. But, I thought...” she paused, thinking that she had been so emotional. Maybe, she’d not properly thought about what Radford would think. It would be so much crueler if Radford thought she would take the money. It would taint everything they had been together so much worse than it already was.

“He would refuse to see me. He cannot ever want to see me again.”

Brynmore held her back from him looking down on her. “Then you cannot take a, “no,” for an answer, lass. He needs to hear the whole of it. You owe that to him and your honor demands it.”

Nia lifted her chin. Brynmore was right. She must set her sins right as best as she could, no matter how difficult it would be. She just needed to tell Radford, to speak to him and to say goodbye.

“You are right,” Nia said to Brynmore finally.

Brynmore nodded, then he said, “Now tell me more about this person that hired you.”

Chapter Seventeen

Radford stood in his ballroom, lighted with the glow of chandeliers and candle sconces upon the wall. The orchestra played a soulful waltz and the large room was filled with men and women dressed in creative renditions that swept the spectrum from fairies and goddesses to the devilish mischief-maker Pan and the omnipotent Zeus. He was dressed as a phantom without a shirt, bare chested, but he wore a flowing black satin cloak with a blood red lining thrown over his shoulders. His mask was black velvet with devilish points over his brows. Everyone was masked and he was sincerely grateful for his own mask.

In the throng of revelers he was hard to identify as he stood beside a large sweeping potted plant beneath an arch on the side of the ballroom. From his vantage point he could see the room, yet nearly not be seen himself. The perfect place to brood, while his friends of the Archangels and their wives graciously took over the main hosting of his party. He had requested it and one look at him, he supposed, had sealed their questions as to why. He’d also asked that they spread the rumor that they, as his closest friends, knew that he’d asked a lady from the continent to be his bride. Yet, until she accepted, which appeared quite favorable that she would, he was not revealing her name to anyone, out of gentlemanly concern, of course. That he assumed, should quiet his life considerably from the grasp of any ladies setting their attentions upon him. He hoped!

He had also given Drummond the letters that Nia had left him in the hopes that Drummond could identify the man behind the out of the ordinary scheme. With the amount of money that must have been involved it smacked of nefarious intent. Yet, for the life of him, he could not imagine what gain it could bring. However, it made him wholly uncomfortable knowing that some gentleman had controlled his life so thoroughly for a time and anyone would be inordinately curious as to the reasons for so lavish a manipulation.

He also could not set aside his worry for Nia in the matter, no matter how hard he forcefully tried. He cared not at all for the idea of her meeting the man once again to be paid. In his opinion, whenever there were large amounts of money involved there always lay danger. Brynmore would certainly see that concern as well, and address it, warning Nia not to allow a meeting if the plan varied in any form from the intentions stated in the last letter. Especially, Radford thought, because she had not followed the instructions and the mysterious gentleman could very well pick that as a contention to her payment.

The truth was, he only attended the ball to see Brynmore’s return and the only thing keeping him from charging to Nia’s side and literally carrying her away was the fact that she was being paid for what had happened between them. It was the one hurdle, it appeared, that his male stubbornness could not leap. It injured his pride sorely in a way he was not yet willing to comprehend or deal with. He could care less that Nia was a fille de joie. For that matter, it inspired him greatly. It was literally a dream come true, and he was experienced enough to realize that she could not be very experienced in the trade. Yet it lent her an air of uninhibitedness, a quality rarely found in any ladies of his acquaintance.

Radford stared at the champagne drenched ice sculpture carved into the form of a semi-nude mermaid. It was perched on a lavishly set table across from where he stood and the melting ice reflected gold’s and blues along its crystal sleek surface from the candles burning near to it. The carver had masked the mermaid ingeniously to copy the guests of the party. Radford wondered once again in an errant thought, whether Nia could possibly be among the crowd. It was a foolish and winsome hope that had him often gazing into the crowd of masked faces. He had taunted himself before that he would know her anywhere if she was masked. The irony of a deep love, so forlorn, and the fact that he had never gazed upon her face did not escape him.

“Fuck,” he swore with a crass curse for his darkening mood. He was a fool to be letting her go like this. Damn, his stubborn pride. She was a prize within his heart to fight laborious battles over, or suffer any torture to gain. A woman like Nia was as rare as, and therefore as precious as, any of the mystical creatures portrayed that night. Nia was . . . once in a lifetime.

Radford’s head came up and his jaw stiffened. He would go to her and carry her away by force if he must. She was his! And he was a blasted fool for brooding the way he was instead of taking action as his heart was pounding to do. He strode forward into the crowd with his intentions. He would ride to Dublin if he must, yet he would never stop, until he finally saw her face.

Then, in the moment that he thought about seeing Nia’s face some sense inside him tugged his gaze upward from its brooding inward gaze. The crowd before him was parting oddly as though they were standing aside for someone approaching him. Then, he heard the combined voices ahead of him making united and excited murmurs. At that moment, the way before him parted and opened up and his gaze settled upon the only person in the ballroom not wearing a mask . . .

Chapter Eighteen

Nia.

Radford’s heartbeat thudded instantly and heavily. She was here, come to him, and her cloak of anonymity was unmasked and in so spectacular a way as to be shown blaring in contrast against all the veiled revelers. The poignant appreciation of Nia’s beauty unveiled before him, shouted of truths she would reveal and willingly lay open to his scrutiny. Her expression was wary and anxious, yet he could see the delicate stubbornness on her lovely chin. A face of character and attractiveness and her features were exactly as he’d set them in his mind. Irish green eyes, fanned by dark lashes, classic cheekbones and a gentle feminine nose. She had come to him and she knew him immediately, even though he was masked. Just as he knew her unmasked.

The gown she wore was the embodiment of sexual enticement. It was a light and shimmering green veil that clung to her curves as though his hands had caressed the material over every inch of her supple roundness. The material teased his eye with its sheerness and the wonder of what intimacy one was really seeing beneath.

His Lady Fire was dressed for any advantage she could gain to empower her cause and she completely won the advantage from him. Although, he did not allow it to show upon his face as she approached him and he backed up. He was not moving away from her, yet guiding her to privacy with a subtle nod of his head to follow as he retreated. She appeared hesitant, yet gathered her determination as she came forward with a kaleidoscope of emotions showing in her brilliant green-gold eyes.

In the moment, they were both oblivious to the people around them, with some of the people not realizing his and Nia’s connection, while others did notice their separate, yet tandem movements together. One could tell that Nia was moving toward something, yet blended back into the crowd as he was; it was not obvious that he was the goal. Except of course to his friends, watching intently, until he’d guided Nia out of the large ballroom doors, which were open to the gardens on the east side of the ballroom. Another smaller orchestra played outside with the paths and walkways of the gardens lighted by torchlights. People danced on the circular patio, while other couples lingered in the shadows.

Once Radford reached the more obscure darkness outside, he stopped, standing off to the side, waiting for Nia to approach closer. “Will you follow me, cherie?” he asked her softly.

She appeared as skittish as a frisky young fawn. However, she nodded saying, “Please, I w-would speak to you.”

He noted the catching in her voice as he raised his hand to her, silently requesting that she place her hand into his. He could see that she was set with hesitancy and determination to tell him what she must. He knew they had many things to reveal and discuss, however he had only one intention for the outcome of this fated meeting and his heart soared with the surety that it was going to culminate exactly as he intended. This time he would be the final master over their fates and any hesitance his Lady Fire would have. And he could see that she might have many as she looked at his hand, unsure what to do.

“I only came to explain, your grace,” she murmured. “Not to expect anything at all.”

It was difficult to hold back his burgeoning elation and not sweep Nia off her feet and carry her away as he would soon do. However, she needed to do this and he needed her to do it as well. So, he merely inclined his head saying, “I know, cherie.”

Nia fidgeted, but then put her hand into Radford’s hand. He would have to be bare-chested at the same time she wished to bare her soul, she thought forlornly. How was she to be honorably repentant and humble with her gaze filled with his upper muscular body? Even a fille de joie did not see the magnificence of men’s naked chests all that often for the sight not to be affecting her. At least Radford had not turned away or glared at her angrily as she fully thought he would do. Actually, she was slightly set off kilter by his gentle but intense reaction so far, coupled with the arousing flex of manly sinew that he displayed.

His hand guided her firmly and she followed anxiously rehearsing in her mind what she had to say to him. It was not a plea, but a return of honor she must give. It was her duty to clear up any hurtful misconceptions, and then it was her duty, to step away from him and leave him as graciously as she could manage. She wondered fleetingly if she were so brave, because to gaze upon Radford was to love him. But for that love she must, and she would not make a scene of herself. The Duke and a whore could never be anything more than that. And she fooled herself to think otherwise.

Radford led her to a secluded gazebo in the garden. It was dark, but once inside Radford lit several candles which cast their light across the silk furnishing of low couches and plump pillows. There were shutters around the octagon shaped room that could be lifted open to the full view of the gardens outside. But at the moment were closed and it leant an intimacy to the chamber. The seclusion and the sensual tension did not elude her, yet she was certain that the intensity that she was feeling was hers and not Radford’s. How could she expect him to be anything less than disgusted with her? She was certain that only his gentlemanly baring kept it at bay.

That he brought her to the seemingly seductive chamber was not for intimacy at all, but for privacy. Certainly he could not want to make public the embarrassing fact that he knew her at all, much less their sordid past.

Oh, she should not have come, Nia thought, turning her back to Radford as she stood uneasy in the center of the chamber, fingering the whispering silk of her gown in anxiousness. She could not turn back now. She needed to do this, then leave quickly. She only wished that Radford’s mere presence in the room did not strike the sexual cravings inside her so strongly. It was as though heady vapors were swirling in the air, and it flushed her skin and made her heartbeat flutter. “Oh blimey, just blurt it out,” she muttered under her breath.

Radford chuckled behind her and she abruptly realized that he’d caught her words in the silence, when she’d not intended him to. Further and for heightened reasons that were unfathomable to her, his chuckle infuriated her. How dare he chuckle at her distress? She turned instantly with a tart retort on the edge of her tongue. “How-!”

Luckily and by all the bonny saints, she caught her wayward tongue. But when she gobbled back any further words, she imagined that she must look rather like a fish gulping out of water. This was going awfully, she thought, trying to halt her mouth from looking like a guppy as she peered at Radford, noticing immediately that he had removed his mask. My lord, he was smiling! Nia’s bottom lip finally clamped shut against her top lip, and her chin dented with a stubborn tilt. It appeared to her that Radford’s one strikingly blue eye held . . . held . . . held. Affection? Then. Tenderness? Then. Amusement? Then. Ohmylord. Sizzling, blue heated desire.

Nia stepped backward against the conflicting emotions tearing through her. Radford’s hand lifted, as though he beckoned her, yet he did not move. “Your fear frightens me, love,” he said. Nia blinked watching the cool firm sculpture of Radford’s mouth. “Never be afraid of me, Nia. Never,” he sighed with his hand lowering. “Seeing the emotions on your beautiful face, cherie, is more precious to me than I could have imagined.”

Nia nearly stepped toward him. The lure was there as if a silk rope was attached to her tugging her toward Radford. Precious? She licked her lips slowly, and his breath caught. Her gaze lifted and she realized that he watched her every feature closely. As closely as she watched his. This was new that they could both really see each other. Everything was so ajar from what she thought it would be. Her confusion felt nearly dizzy. She could remember only one thing clearly, as her gaze lingered hungrily on Radford’s every feature. “I...” Time seemed to turn so slowly as though they revolved in a cocoon together. “I did not take the money,” she whispered. Her gaze finally settled on his with entreaty. “I-I could not.”

“I know,” he murmured.

Her chin came upward, startled. “H-How . . . c-could you.” It was not possible that Radford could know.

“I know you.” He said it so simply, with such unerring and quiet conviction.

“You don’t know me!” she exclaimed, with her body trembling. It was anguish. And it hurt. “I am a...You know I am a...”

“The woman that I love.”

Nia cried out with her legs buckling, as she moaned.

“Nia.” Radford was there kneeling beside her with his hands clasping her hands, pulling her upward toward him.

“No.” It was a whimper in her throat. “Please. You make me believe. You make me think that-,”

“Christ.” Radford stilled his motion of pulling her to him, and then he settled back on his heels. His hands were so warm over hers. “You are so beautiful, you break my heart.”

Nia bowed her head. “I am a whore,” she whispered.

“Never,” he said lowly. “You are an exciting woman of sexual wonder that fills my heart. Nia, I am completely enthralled and counting myself the luckiest of men to have found you.”

“Oh.” She shook her head, denying it. It could not be true. He was a Duke. He was beyond her.

“Yes.” Radford’s voice was firm with conviction. “Nia, why did you come here to me now? Tell me. You did not have to.”

She lifted her gaze beseechingly. “To tell you. To say that.”

“Yes,” he encouraged her.

“Oh, Radford, it was not all a lie!” she exclaimed. “Never from the very first moment that you touched me.”

“There is something here between us, Nia, that we cannot deny. We never could deny it, not from that very first moment.”

“But you are a duke,” she gasped helplessly.

“Which means that I can have anything I want.” Radford’s lips turned upward with purely seductive arrogance. “And you, Lady Fire, are exactly what I intend to have.”

“I won’t...” Nia shook her head desperately. “I cannot be your whor-”

“Wife,” Radford interjected forcefully.

“Do not say that!” she cried, tugging her hands from his. “I will go back to Dublin. I will never be that again. Brynmore will help us, and-and-,”

“Us, being your five brothers and sisters?” Radford said quietly.

Nia gasped. How could he know? Her stricken gaze lingered on his face.

“I am a former spy, Nia.” Radford said it so easily, so matter of fact. “Once, I realized that you used your mother’s name and not your father’s,” he paused, as though all his masculine countenance were honed in on her. “I indulged. Forgive me, but I had to know everything about you.”

What Radford was saying barely made sense to Nia’s overheated and emotional thoughts. He knew everything about her? It was unusual for a person to know that. “S-Should you tell me that you are a spy?” she asked, in a whisper.

“No.” He leaned closer. “I am a former spy, and now that you know, I will have to keep you forever. It is a rule.”

She nearly laughed. Her lips twitched. It was ludicrous. She was too upset to laugh. Events were too dramatic and heartbreaking. What was he saying to her? “I-I never meant you any harm,” she tried.

“I know, cherie.”

“I thought it would be a lark. Fun. I never would have done it, if I thought...”

“We would fall hopelessly in love?”

“Oh,” she moaned with an abrupt reaction and tears springing to her eyes. “I never expected that.” She bowed her head again, with her lips trembling. Did he really love her? Her body was shaking.

“It is sudden, Nia, but undeniable, my love.” Then, Radford’s arms were around her as he pulled her up into his embrace.

“This cannot be happening!” she sobbed once, then she clung tightly to him.

Chapter Nineteen

Radford knew how to cast aside Nia’s heart-felt hesitations. It was time. Now that he knew that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and that her only reservations were the questions she had in her mind about her character. Questions about him wanting someone as lovely, vivacious, and sexual as she was, because that is how he saw her, and all that mattered to him. He did understand that today’s society was not forward thinking at all. They could and would question a woman’s character, slaying them with ridicule if they found it not within their staid morals. Morals that simply cloaked their own sordid lives. For a woman it could be doubly harrowing. Although, he realized that Nia did not think of herself, but of him.

Yet, he was certain that she could not fathom the power a man of his title held. He rarely used it, however that did not mean that he would not use it. He would use it gladly, without a second thought. Nonetheless those concerns were for another time. Now, he intended to make it impossible for Nia to say no to him, or ever think of leaving him again. Some people might consider it a bit underhanded to use sex, however that had been, and was, the beginning foundation to their relationship. And he thanked God that it was, because it was exactly the thing that he had been looking for his entire life. A brilliant plan . . . seducing one’s future wife. And, he must admit that his smile was deliciously wicked. His Lady Fire had, had the upper hand in all of their encounters so far, but now he intended to be the master.

He started slowly, so as not to alarm Nia, but still to seduce her without her completely realizing. He knew, oh so well, that her hot-blooded and sexual nature would succumb before she could think to raise any objections. Her response to him was one of his joys, and his response to her had become his deepest desire.

She smelled of cinnamon, vanilla, and warm flesh. So unique and completely alluring. The gown that she wore was so sheer it hid nothing of her supple curves. Just from their embrace alone, he could feel her nipples puckered tightly into his bare chest. He smiled at the response that she could not hide, although he understood that she was unconscious of it at the moment. His fingers stroked the luxurious weight of her slightly wavy long red hair. She was tall, yet delicate of frame, with the soft ivory skin of a true redhead. Her eyes were light green with sparkling gold flecks, her nose a cupid button with her lips full-bodied and sensual. He wondered that the prize of her had never been captured before, never been captured into marriage. The nobles in Dublin were fools, he thought, yet he was overwhelmingly grateful.

His fingers stroked Nia’s nape gently and her body moved unconsciously against him. The flowing and slight undulations only the feminine form can make. The softness of her body enticing and purring against the unbending sinew of his body. Light and airy, softly oscillating movements that denoted the closeness in which they held each other. Yet more closely the movements followed the stroking of her nape. That tenderly aroused place that beckoned the male in him and heated the female in her.

They were both kneeling and he wanted her mindless before he took her to the pillows. He had all night. A lifetime of nights and for once in her company he had the control and he intended to keep it. It would be a valiant effort, he was certain, because just holding her the way he was and lightly stroking her was of heated interest to his cock. However, he willed it not to harden just yet, pressed as it was to Nia’s lower belly. He needed more time and she would become completely aware then, if she felt it.

It was a delicate balance that he wove and he needed to keep Nia talking for just a bit longer. “I thought that you might be a spy, Nia, come to waylay me, or entice secrets from me,” he murmured.

Nia instantly tilted her face upward to him. Radford smiled inwardly. It was the perfect position and his other hand took advantage as he cupped her cheek. One of his fingers tracing her jaw and the other following the petite curve of her ear, while his hand at her nape stroked deeply. She tilted into his hands caresses with pure feminine instinct.

“No, Radford, I was never a spy.” Her pearly white teeth caught her bottom lip, then released it, as her gaze, which was half troubled and half subtly aroused, looked up at him. “I could see, knowing who you are now, a former spy, how you might. It is incredible,” she breathed.

“For me to be a spy?” he asked leaning closer, bringing his mouth nearer to her lips.

“Yes,” she whispered. “A spy and a duke.”

When Nia said the word “duke,” Radford saw awareness dawn in her eyes. She had been languid and unassuming for a few moments, however that word began to stir her back to her intentions. He was out of time. His lips agreed as he opened them over the fullness of her lips and he lifted with his hand on her cheek to bring her mouth up to his.

“Mm...”

Radford noted immediately that Nia was not completely compliant and she was beginning to think about pressuring him away. “I need you,” he said deeply against her mouth. “Need me, Nia, please God, need me.”

Nia’s return moan was a leap of passion, and without allowing her to vocally answer, Radford swept his tongue into her mouth. His other hand dropped to her buttocks, cupping both by the width of his hand as he lifted her body tightly up against his body. He smiled a moment later, when Nia’s arms wound around his neck and her mouth began suckling his tongue.

He let his cock go then. He fooled himself that he could have held back the throbbing rise to thickness. It ached deep along the shaft as the head swelled and flushed outward. He had aligned their bodies with an intention in mind. It was a perfect place for his cock to grow stiff in length, and while it was engorging, it furrowed into the tender lips of Nia’s pussy, which were only barely covered by a wisp of silk. He knew that the material of his pants over his expanded erection would make more rubbing friction into the delicate cove of Nia’s heated cunt. He then added a rocking motion, lifting and lowering her body gently by his hand cupping and kneading the ripe globes of her ass.

Judas. His body shuddered as Nia wound her body against his passionately. It would take all of his control to seduce her as thoroughly as he intended and not become swept away in their normal urgency. However, this was just too important and he was going to have to force himself into more control around her. He nearly laughed and groaned at the same time at the need to have to do that. He was a lucky, lucky man.

Nia’s tongue was torrid and fiery in his mouth as he moved his body to stand, carrying her with him. He literally carried her clamped to the length of his body with her feet off the floor. Then he carried them three steps and he was at the pillows. He continued to slant his lips deeply over Nia’s mouth and she flowed into him with honeyed whimpers of longing and surrender. The sound of it stirring his blood hotly as he continued to hungrily plunder and pluck her mouth.

He maneuvered his back to the pillows, while he lifted one hand from Nia’s buttocks to pull the laces of her gown free in the front, never giving her lips a moment’s mercy. Soon the silk slipped free over her ivory shoulders to become caught on her high full breasts as he pulled her down with him as his back lay across the pillows. Their lips separated as he held carefully to her slender waist and through his heavy-lidded gaze he watched Nia’s gown slip irrevocably downward with their motions. The firm white globes of her breasts where ravishing, and her puckered and rosy nipple tips jiggled lightly, ending within inches of his mouth. He instantly lapped his tongue outward to wet one taut point.

“Oh, Radford.”

His woman was so responsive, he growled with an ardent answer, then with his mouth filled with Nia’s tenderly erect nipple. Her throaty “pleases” drew out into fervent whimpers, as he settled her hips over his stomach and spread her legs on either side of his body. Both of his hands found her ankles, to slide upward toward her bended knees, then her softly laid thighs. He carried the gown with him as he went, removing his mouth from her nipple to do so, until the gown was up over her head and tossed aside. Immediately his mouth returned to her breast as he nipped the tip, to her squeal of pleasure, while his hands settled firmly onto her bare hips. He made carnal love to her breasts then, thoroughly and completely as her nude body undulated in excitement over him. She was fire in his hands, moving over him and with him so passionately. Then when he was certain that she was thoroughly mindless with arousal, he lifted her by the strength of his arms, popping a nipple bud out of his mouth as he urged her hips higher upward onto his chest. His gaze centered now on her bare and dappled pussy. Christ, it was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen, with the crease so delicate, pink, and wet. And it was so gloriously bare.

Radford’s tongue darted outward toward the crease as he lifted Nia’s pussy over his face, and then his tongue licked fire.

“Oh, love,” Nia cried out as her fingers found purchase upon a back rest luckily right there for her to lean on. She had never had a man’s tongue on her sex before and the surprise and rapture of it broke hot on her breath. “Oh!” She squirmed wildly, grinding her pussy downward into the heat of Radford’s mouth and tongue as she pulled her thighs open wider in excitement. The action split her pussy lips open more to Radford’s licking and he groaned beneath her. The vibration nuzzled through her sex like a hot flash. “Radford!” she squealed.

Radford claimed her completely with his mouth, licking her clitty, over and over, twisting her arousal hot and wet. She loved him. She loved him so much. Her hands clutched his head as he loved her as intimately as a man could, and she knew then that he loved her as much as she did him. She knelt over his face as his tongue entered her core with circling thrusts. The mating action of his tongue called her hips to sway as she panted breathlessly to each torrid pump inside her.

Radford wanted to roar to the heavens and stay with his mouth seated in molten and scintillating squirms for the rest of his days. That he could be the master of creating such tempest passion in Nia made him growl with pleasure deep in his chest. He raised his hands high to swaddled Nia’s heaving breasts, which he began to pet, then knead deeply. He used her breasts, filling his frisking palms, to guide her body draped over his wet and nuzzling mouth.

“Oh! Oh!”

Nia’s thighs quivered and heaved against his face as he feverishly increased his assault to her spiraling and delirious moans. He had her moaning a wild and sumptuous ballad that struck the same chord of groping passion through his tendons and muscles, deep into his blood, until it danced along his hot receptive flesh and strained proudly against the buttons of his pants.

Quickly, he sought the buttons with one groping hand to release his rigid pound of flesh as he pushed his body upward off the pillows, sliding his body up Nia’s luxuriant and curving body that was ripened and damp with aroused exuberance. His head, his shoulders, his chest, and his belly moved upwards, until he caught Nia’s mouth on a scream of pleasure as he seated her, with a deep and driving thrust of his cock entering her.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” she cried.

A hoarse groan of blinding bliss expelled from deep in his chest as he lifted his knees behind Nia to sit and lock his hand onto her hips. Her head fell back and the swirling red stream of her hair fell over the tops of his boots as she arched her bare back over his knees. Then, he lifted his hips upward off the pillows, holding her hips firmly. The impelling thrust of his cock tried to raise Nia’s body, but he denied it, holding her downward to his rapid and repeating rhythm.

She screamed his name, digging her fingers into the sinew across his chest, and through his eyes halfway clenched, he watched emotions that were his own dance across her body and echo his feelings across her face. She was completely abandoned in her love, as he lost himself in her journey.

Radford was everywhere . . . around her, inside her, through her. He commanded her every sensation completely as she twisted free of the plain and simple physical boundaries beneath his pounding and giving rhythm. Nia caught her legs high up on Radford’s waist, begging him shrilly for the impossibility of going faster, deeper. She panted and whimpered as he gave her everything his strong body could command. He was magnificent and she cried her love and appreciation as she tumbled over the peak and shattered into a thousand riveting convulsions all wrapped into one agonizing jolt of pleasure.

And still, Radford thrust upward into Nia’s rippling and searing pussy. He braced his spine against a pillow and backrest behind it as his head fell back and his breathing charged from his chest. His buttocks were slapping back and forth across the pillows with a sound like pain erupting from his throat as he clenched his body, tightened, strained forward and held. He shook his head like a wild lion as he growled through the eruption, pumping his hot seed deep inside the truest creation of his pleasure-soaked death.

Long moments later, Radford’s lips sought the highest slope of Nia’s delicate cheek with a kiss that found little tear drops. She was draped over his chest with her legs still straddled over his thighs and what was left of him still embedded inside her.

“You are mine. Say it.” He breathed hoarsely.

“I am yours,” Nia moaned.

“You will forever be mine. Say it.”

“I will forever be yours, Radford.”

“And I am the master of seduction at this moment. Say it”

“You are the master.”

“Say it again.”

“You are my master.” Nia sighed happily.

“Yes, I am the master of sweet fire, my love.” Radford said leaning his lips down to kiss his woman thoroughly.

Chapter Twenty

The following morning . . .

Lady Gabriella Kittridge walked into the study at Radford’s country estate humming softly. The morning appeared filled with hopes and suffused with dreams coming true, she thought with a smile. Her smile was just a tad bit mischievous, because she had...

“There you are, my love.”

Gabriella started slightly, turning her gaze toward the desk and the voice of her husband. “Drummond, I did not know you were there.”

“You appear aglow this morning, my love,” Drummond said settling back in the chair to gaze at her with his intent gray eyes.”

“I, um, yes,” Gabriella said, smiling brightly as she walked toward him. “I am happy to be returning to our son today. You know that I do not like leaving him.”

“Nor do I,” Drummond murmured, as he lifted up several sheets of vermillion paper from the desk, glancing down at them.

Gabriella slid to a stop beside Drummond’s chair, just as his arm came around behind her to cradle her hips. She looked down at the top of Drummond head fondly as he bent over the papers he was looking at. She sighed. Now was as good a time as any, she supposed. “Did you know, Drummond, I realized just last night that I know, Nia.”

“Really,” Drummond drawled, with his head still lowered as she caressed his nape lightly.

“Yes, it is extraordinary. I was quite taken back as I am sure Nia will be when she sees me.” Gabriella knew she was gushing, yet she did so dislike lying, so in her discomfort, she just continued on, “Yes, her mother and I were friends. We went to school together those many years past.” She was hedging, she knew, because Nia’s mother and she were slightly more than just school acquaintances. They had been, up until her death, the very best of friends. “I am certain, Nia, will recognize me. I just did not want you to be startled of the fact. Although, Nia, was quite young the last time I saw her. Her mother was newly married and living then in Ireland, so far away and...”

“Quite astonishing, darling,” Drummond interrupted her fast paced flow of words.

“Ah, yes it is,” Gabriella offered, gazing down at the top of his head.

“And after her mother’s death, my love, you never had contacted, Nia?” Drummond asked.

It was a simple question, Gabriella thought. A question really that one would normally ask, however Drummond’s tone, hinted to her of other things. She squinted down at him. There was no way that he could know. Could he? No, she assured herself, there was no way that Drummond would ever guess such a thing of her. That really was why it was so brilliant, she thought, with a smile.

In a way she was, and had, out foxed the masters. The Archangels. She never intended to tell them either. It was enough to know that she’d done it, and she’d not done it in the beginning to specifically outwit them. That had not been her intention at all. It had just turned out that way. No, her intention was truly compassion with a bit of matchmaking thrown in. And why not when she knew how perfectly it would all turn out.

It had really been a lark. Dressing like a man to meet Nia, keeping her gender and appearance in disguise. Oh, and then making the plans on the best way to seduce Radford. That had been especially fun, and she had hit it square in the bull’s eye too! All was well that ends well, she thought, with a mischievous smile. Especially with a little push.

But really now, she could not help thinking about Saxonhurst lately. The change in him was astounding. “Hm,” she murmured.

“Gabriella, are you with me? I asked you a question, my love.”

“Oh.” Gabriella returned from her musing and found Drummond looking up at her. “Oh, I . . . You know, my darling, I have just thought of something I must do.” Gabriella unwound herself from Drummond’s arm and started sailing out of the room. “Is, Saxonhurst, still here? I really must find him.”

Drummond watched his wife leaving, and he chuckled. Then he looked down at the papers that he held. The papers that Radford had given him that the supposed mysterious gentleman had given Nia as her instructions. What he saw again, and had seen, was clearly his wife’s handwriting. He shook his head and smiled. He was impressed and not the least surprised by the cunningness and compassion of his wife’s mind. But he was thoroughly impressed. He chuckled again.

“Saxonhurst, you had better watch out,” he murmured.

The End

My Lady Enthralled

By Shirl Anders

Prologue

“The long hair is sublime. Can you imagine him naked with that rich river of hair flowing down his muscular back?”

“Our, Hellborn Lord, would be salaciously pleased at this specimen. Except for the ugly deformity of his missing hand. Those deep brown sexual eyes, sensual face with masculine features, but the carnal lips nearly turned toward the feminine. Strong build, he will look superb with his shirt off. Find out the length, color, and thickness of his cock. I wager it hangs down half of his thigh and with that light brown hair his hairy balls will look smooth and hairless. Mm, maybe for the length of hair one can overlook the missing hand.”

“Strength in the hair should come through to the buck’s dong.”

“The presence of the hook only adds to the perception of dominance that will be broken and subjugated.”

“Lord Incubus, he is a lord, a Marquis.”

“Succulent, always the choicest plunder. Family?”

“One uncle and an elderly aunt of no consequence, I did a thorough check, I knew you would crave this one.”

“I do. If his cock is like a beast’s, we will take him. And then we need a petite bitch with skin nearly white against his sun-browned flesh. I want her small enough so that when his cock comes to her it will look like a powerfully savage weapon going to gut her.” Lord Incubus paused. “Our, mighty Lord Hellion, will be pleased. I believe this time he will take the male also, and that will be a triumph. It has been too long since we have pleased him with our male offering.”

“Name?”

“Lord Saxonhurst, the Marquis of Hartley.”

Chapter One

For the first time in his life his cock had gotten him into trouble, Saxonhurst thought, and if his bloody head did not hurt so badly he would laugh out right. Incredible. This was a momentous occasion that any of his illustrious friends from the former Archangel spying regal would have proudly cheered him on, notwithstanding their amazement. And, she had been an exquisite piece of French muslin with fiery red hair and dark coquettish eyes. The demanding throb in his head would not allow him to remember her name or if she had given one. However, amidst the beating that was hammering in his temple he did remember her scent and it seemed he remembered a flash of pure white breasts. Was that true? Had he seen those alabaster mounds naked? Violets . . . He had smelled violets? Or was that the feisty maid, he’d dallied with on board the ship he’d taken for his voyage from England to France. What was that . . . two, three days ago? Was it longer?

Haltingly, it seemed to him that somewhere in his scattered mind he should worry over his newfound circumstances. Should his brain be as thick and muddled over a clout to the back of his skull? Why did he taste the sour dredges of wine on his tongue? Then, while thinking of the wine taste, he realized in a floating manner that sharpened for brief seconds, when he tried to raise his hand to his lips, that they had tied his wrists. But then, the thought floated away.

“I say we fuck him now. Da, Lord Hellion, will never know.”

“I like da cunts better.”

“Any tight ass on ya cock will change ya mind.”

Saxon tried to understand the words he was hearing. He tried to feel alarmed, but the throb in the back of his skull nauseated him and his mind scattered, tripping over his constantly flowing thoughts. The roll of the carriage was making him feel sick, he realized, then the knowledge fled with the next jarring bounce and simultaneous pounding of pain splitting his skull.

He heard the men’s voices again. Two men, both with German accents. One was sharper than the other. That voice led the other voice. Saxon knew that somehow. Because . . . because he was good at it, flashed through his mind . . . and then the thought fled.

“Da long hair will make ya think cunt, Baco.”

“Fuck off, Cernno! They should of let me get da woman.”

“Cernno! Baco! Quiet! This male is not to be touched by anyone other than our Lord Hellion or the handmaidens.”

A new voice. A woman’s voice and older. Saxon clenched his closed eyelids, trying to transcend the thumping in his head and the jostling of the carriage floor he laid sprawled upon. Man, think! Just this one thing. Saxon strained for control of his mind. He knew accents like the back of his hand. Missing hand. “Viennese,” he mumbled into the noise of the rattling carriage. The woman was from Vienna.

“Dame Baset, ya know you’d like da Marquis’ long dong in ya cunt right now and I’d take his ass. Ja! Two at a time!” Then, Cernno’s sharp smirking laughter filled the air.

Dame Baset’s voice hissed loudly, “Quiet!”

Saxon picked out a fleeting thought, a notion that Dame Baset held no control over Cernno, but the one called Lord Hellion did. The names of the kidnappers . . . of the players and fiends defied his befuddled brain, while he knew somewhere they meant something, and he should know it. And just then . . . it snapped through his mind for a split second. Cult. But the carriage jolted roughly beneath him, and he moaned, unable to catch the sound back.

“He awakes now,” Dame Baset said, and Saxon felt the light edge of her skirts brushing his cheek, making him realize that she sat above where he lay trussed up on the carriage floor. “But the draft I gave him will keep him pleasingly malleable.”

“Ja, and limp enough to ass fuck easily,” Cernno’s said.

“You’re just a pig, Cernno. You always liked da little boys ass better,” Baco jibed.

“Ass is ass,” Cernno returned with an angry voice.

“Quiet! Both of you! While your talk is deliciously nasty to be tempting, you will allow the sacrifice more than he needs to know,” Dame Baset said. “And you know, our Lord Hellion, likes the sacrifice’s mind pure so he can turn it.”

“Ja.” Both men affirmed, but they both sounded equally petulant.

Sacrifice? Saxon tried to wrap his mind around that word, but it was too elusive. Whatever potion Dame Baset had given him was easing the pain in his head, but it was also making his mind float to pale white breasts with pink-tipped nipples. He had seen them.

Descriptions. Listening. Melting into the background and gathering information. Those were some of his special talents. He knew them as instinctively as he could breathe. He could walk into a parlor or out on the boulevard or enter a crowded ballroom, assess the area for ten seconds or less and have the entirety memorized. Saxon realized that these details of his concentration possibly kept him more cognizant than his captors expected. Not enough to be anything but disgustingly malleable in their hands, but enough to be aware of snatches in clarity.

The two German brutes, Baco and Cernno were stocky men and everything about them seemed double in his mind. Both had reddish brown stubby cropped hair, which meant they wore wigs more often than not. Both had the same barrel chests and thick arms with their height just a head taller than his medium height. Double watery blue eyes. Double bad teeth. Double ruddy complexions.

Then, it came to him, pierced through the constriction trying to damper his mind. Twins. The two thugs were twins, however, there were two differences, Cernno led Baco more or less, and Cernno was more perverse.

Saxon tried to be disgusted, perhaps appalled at the lewd groping of Cernno’s hands, while the two brutes bodily hauled him out of the carriage. That was when Saxon realized that they had stopped, but Cernno’s rough hand groping his ass distracted him for a moment. Thank god he had his britches on. The thought fled through Saxon’s mind and at the same time he hesitated, where was his shirt? Ah, no it was there, but it was hanging open.

“Leave his ass alone. Da Hellion could be watching,” Baco hissed in warning.

Saxon wobbled on his feet between the two men, his hair wildly loose and hanging over his bared chest, but he managed to stay upright and standing. His neck was like soft wax when he tried to lift it to look upward. He smelled Dame Baset passing by him and heard the swishing of her elaborate skirts. Remember he was in France, Saxon chided his cloudy mind. Elaborate dress in France.

Dame Baset left a heavy scent of cloying perfume. Then, Saxon managed an upward glimpse before his neck fell limp again. In that brief glimpse, he took in the sight of a Gothic castle, shrouded in dark shadows with thick and vulgar creeping vines. There were even gargoyles on the turrets, Saxon thought, wanting to laugh out loud at the absurdity. He was in a veritable cesspool of major trouble here, he understood. Nevertheless, until the drugged wine they had given him wore off or he managed to conquer it better with his mind, he was a, “captive sacrifice.”

Then his mind wandered to the Archangels. The best of companions and the most stalwart of friends. But beyond that, they were skilled and capable outside of normal men. Faint hope managed to flare inside him, pushing against the lethargy, until he remembered that he was now in France and his hopeful saviors were back in England. Then, his hope fled as bleakly as the castles dark facade, while Baco and Cernno bodily dragged him into the depths of Lord Hellion’s domain.

Chapter Two

“She is perfection. What unusual race must she have been bred from, troll?” Lord Incubus asked looking down his long, too thin nose.

Yojo did not bother trying to look upward, because the height of his head only reached Lord Incubus’ upper thigh.

“Gypsy, master,” Yojo answered with an excited giggle as he swayed from side to side. Yojo could only view a sea of stocking-clad legs with buckled shoes or wide ballooned skirts in the circus atmosphere of the upper ballroom. The stiffness and the under wiring of the elaborate skirts were the most dangerous, and he wished for Baco’s presence, because Baco would willingly carry him on his stout shoulder. Lord Incubus would never consider such a feat or kindness. Lord Incubus was cruel. And, Yojo loved him. But he’d never tell, never tell, never tell...

“Hm,” Lord Incubus hummed in his throat like a lethal purring. The sound always trilled up Yojo’s miniature spine. “She is petite enough and her flesh is just that pale, delicious white. I am surprised at this deep red hair. Yes, I believe it will make the contrast between them striking.”

“She has no one, master. No one now that will be missing her,” Yojo said.

“Damnable, I can barely hear you, troll!” Lord Incubus snapped irritably.

Yojo knew that it was Incubus’ way to blame him for his midget height and Incubus would never consider bending down to hear better. It was up to Yojo to right the wrong or Incubus’ anger would flare down on him. Yojo giggled nervously, then trundled to the corner of the large sweeping balcony that stood above the ornate ballroom below. The lightweight gold leash Lord Incubus held laxly in his left hand and hooked to Yojo just reached the distance.

Yojo nimbly climbed up the railing and stood in the corner on the top rail. With one of his thick stubby hands, he held onto the column at his side, balancing himself. He wore a festive hat of dark green, blue, and red plumed feathers and he bobbed as he shuffled a little dance. Ladies tittered at him, passing behind them on the balcony, and Lord Incubus’ inscrutably drawn face showed no signs of approval. Yet, the slits of Lord Incubus’ eyes held glints of gray as he stepped forward. The elaborate black wig Incubus wore blocked Yojo’s view of the party revelers behind them and Yojo stared with fascination at the long curls upon curls hanging half down Lord Incubus’ chest. How he wished, he could wear such a handsome wig on his bald head instead of the silly hat that he wore. But he was Lord Incubus’ pet for the party. A pierrot mascot was a fashionable accessory of the times.

“Now, tell me again, runt,” Lord Incubus ordered.

“No one will miss her now!” Yojo exclaimed. “She lied, using her old dead aunt’s invitation to enter here.”

“Her only living relative that died so advantageously just last week?” Lord Incubus’ voice purred with evil intent.

“That one!” Yojo exclaimed, bouncing up and down. “Now she looks for her distant cousin. But she will never find him. Never find him!”

“Quiet down, troll,” Lord Incubus snapped irritably and Yojo pursed his lips looking about ready to explode, but silent for the moment. “That long distant relative, an elder Baron isn’t he, and he knows nothing of her. Nor does he want to?”

“Yes!” Yojo peeped.

“Hm, a Gypsy lady. Full Gypsy blood by the look of her. She had better not be coarse, this Lady Joelle Zurka.”

“Real, lady!” Yojo piped.

“Hm, well it seems you have done well picking her. And, she received a false note saying her long lost cousin would be here then?”

“Not a note,” Yojo said. “Bribed the Baron’s butler!” Yojo clapped gleefully, nearly toppling backward, but he caught the column just in time.

“And the butler?” Lord Incubus snapped.

“He belongssss!” Yojo said in one long drawn out hissing.

“A follower of Hellion?”

Yojo nodded, turning to look outward, and then down on the revelers below, but more at the beautiful Lady Joelle. She was special. He had known it for a long time. Not like other ladies around. Lady Joelle had no need to wear a false wig. Her hair was glorious. Maybe, maybe, maybe this time Lord Hellion would praise Yojo.

***

“I should not have come,” Joelle whispered harshly as she walked down the long winding road from the mansion that she’d just left. “Bi lacid,” she muttered.

It was the Romani word for, “no good” and she rarely used the Gypsy tongue unless she was very upset. Her parents Lord Gunari Zurka and Lady Yolanda Zurka had taught her the rich Gypsy traditions in her younger life, before they died. It was a legacy far removed from their higher stations. A station of nobles bought and bribed many years ago by her great-grandfather. Lord and Lady Zurka taught her all the flamboyant richness of true Gypsy blood, while also strictly advising her to keep the outward signs hidden while in society. It was like having two inner selves. The one in her blood, pounding warm and full-bodied in her veins, then the outward, more constricted one, of the proper social window-dressing that she wore.

And, she did have the price for a hackney fare, instead of walking. But her foolish pride had kept her from asking a footman at the ball to call one for her. Pride? What good was pride now, Joelle wondered? It appeared she was destined to swallow her pride for the more important virtue of survival. And she would do so if only she could find that old crow Baron Palko. He was a fifth or sixth cousin, so distantly removed that one could barely hold onto the thread.

“Why was my family not more prolific?” Joelle muttered.

But she would throw herself upon ancient cousin Palko’s mercy. At his very feet, she thought dramatically, if she could only find the dratted man. She just wanted a husband, she thought wretchedly. Simply the chance of one, yet if no one took her around, how was she expected to meet anyone, much less a husband?

“It would be the answer for both of us, Palko,” Joelle mumbled, but just then she thought enough to look about. She quickly realized that while thinking and worrying over her circumstances she’d walked quite far, and it was very dark the further she’d distanced herself from the mansion. Joelle peered into a stand of poplar trees lining the right side of the road. The tall trees looked like malevolent sentinels. She immediately quickened her pace. She calculated that it was a quarter mile from the mansion back out to the main thoroughfare, nevertheless at night, and a pitch-black and starless one at that, it would seem further.

Clop. Clop. Clop.

“Spirits!” Joelle cried.

She was completely startled at the sound so abrupt behind her. She was so goosey that she could not dare herself to look behind her as she quickly stepped toward the trees intending to hide from the oncoming carriage. It would not do for anyone to see her in the predicament she was in. Out alone and unescorted at night. Never mind that she only had one more night at her departed aunt’s home before she was out on the streets.

But besides those dark and tragic thoughts, she still wondered how she’d not heard the carriage sooner. Then, she aimed her footsteps toward the base of a wide tree. It would be good to hide behind was her last thought, right before someone abruptly grabbed her from behind!

Chapter Three

“If those blundering initiates have damaged her, I will flay them alive!”

“No, no, no, master. Only passed out. Awake soon. No magic drafts. You said no potion . . . Yet!”

Joelle’s heart thundered as she peeked through her lowered lashes at the source of the two diametric voices. She realized at once that they had gagged her mouth and tied her wrists in front of her. She was lying on a flat surface, lifted off the ground. A table perhaps, because she could just see the two men speaking as she forced her body to remain still and not quake in terror. One man was a midget and she had a clearer view of his small gnome like appearance. Of the tall man, she could only see from the top of his chest down, unless she moved to look up further.

She had no intentions of looking further up and giving away her wakefulness. That was the only small bit of comfort she had at the moment, in the terrifying turn of events. Frightening events she could not imagine and she willed herself not to imagine what their intentions were, because therein lay terror and she had to keep her wits about her as the words, “magic potion” fluttered through her mind.

“I will examine her here, Yojo, and then you will take her onto the castle.”

Examine! No, no, no. Joelle shuddered, unable to halt her body’s tremors as the import of what the tall man said rushed through her mind and the fact that he was unconcerned to use names.

“Yes, yes, Master Incubus.”

A moan churned in Joelle’s chest at the sound of the tall man’s name. Most assuredly fictitious. The name and possible meaning clamored over her, just as the moan thrashed free.

Both men turned at the sound. “Ah, she wakes. Excellent,” Incubus said.

Joelle rolled onto her back, jerking her tied hands upward in a defensive and warding off gesture as her wild-eyed gaze lifted up to see the man called Incubus. He looked like a middle-aged French aristocrat. But his gray lacquered eyes and the slash of his lips opposed any hope for noble demeanor. His charred eyes held discord, and in them she could see that the weight of his intelligence was perverted. She knew with an instinct deep inside that his intentions were warped in a sexual nature. It oozed from his lupine face with avid, yet boldly calculated interest as she uselessly swatted the air before him.

“That’s it, little mare, show me your fire.” She watched his lips moving while saying the words, and they were slim and malevolent. “Obedience is worthless without any challenge.”

The instant the word, “challenge” left his lips, Incubus caught her bound wrists in his hands, squeezing the too fragile bones and flesh into submission. Then, with her gaze bulging upon him, he wrestled her wrists above her head. Her body thrashed upon the table, but it was more a helpless gesture, because she discovered to her horror that her ankles were bound together.

Joelle tried desperately to fight her own instinct to struggle against the inevitable. It was what the deadly and wicked Incubus wanted. He wanted her terror and her sexual vehemence. It was why he had not drugged her with the magic potion. She was perceptive and quick-witted enough to understand this. She was not the normal provincial and naive lady of society. Those “ladies” of society were callow and unschooled in worldly ways. Their titles shielded them from the crassness of society.

Yet, even with the knowledge that fighting Incubus would not win her release, and that she had to stop the terror in her mind and find a better way. Still, she could not master the fear rushing through her. But, Incubus easily secured the bindings around her wrists to a hook, conveniently mounted on the table above her head. The snug material of her bodice pressed upward beneath her breasts, constricting her breath with its stretched tightness, while the mounds of her breasts nearly lurched out of the scooped neck collar. Joelle felt air rushing over her stocking clad calves at the raised position of her full skirts. Her teeth gnawed helplessly on the gag, too wide and set too far back in her mouth, forcing her lips open as though an animal bit had been fitted into her mouth.

Incubus knew all of this. He knew every feeling that assaulted her and he wallowed in it. It did not show on his stridently austere face, but it twisted in the depths of his dissonant gray eyes. Then, she watched in horror, writhing futilely beneath him as he bent over her, lifting a stout and glistening knife for her to view. Was this to be the end? Her mind cried as her bug-eyed gaze watched the sharp tip lowering. It seemed to her as though, in that moment, her mind physically snapped. Yet, instead of hysteria, her body heaved to a shuddering stand still, with only her breasts rising and falling erratically. Her breasts were in the exact direction of the tip of the knife as her mind actually slowed to eerie calmness. She felt the long black curling ends of Incubus’ wig touching the silk of her dress above her belly. She inhaled the heavy redolence of his cologne. Her sensitive nose detected the saturating odor of rosemary and muscadine, as the scents strangled her nostrils. She saw the bead of sweat on Incubus’ slim upper lip.

Then suddenly, she jerked her bound legs upward in an impossible acrobatic curl, defying yards of frothing silk that bunched up trying to impede her way. In spite of everything, her vigor and strength conquered them as she twisted to the side and kneed Incubus straight away in his chest. Her knees together hit solidly enough to sound a dull cloth on cloth thud, and Incubus fell back with surprise upon his face. Still in motion, her long cumbersome skirts landed in a tide across her waist, exposing her legs clad in black stocking, thigh garters, and the short crotch-less undergarment ladies wore. Incubus had never expected her to expose herself in such a fashion.

Joelle supposed that Incubus would believe ladies to prefer death, but she was much more than simply a lady and she would defy death or anything less with all her heart. And now her legs were free, bound at the ankles, but free in motion. She did not waste the moment of surprise, by looking at her actions furthering effect on Incubus, but instead she swung her legs two times strongly in widening arcs, and then she hefted with all her might, curling her legs over her head. Pushing . . . pushing, until the weight fell through and she landed on her feet beside the table. She looked quickly at the hook, forcing herself not to instinctively look to see where her attackers were.

There was no time and partial freedom was so close. She saw instantly that the hook was not closed and she twisted her bound wrists, tugging them free of the hook. In the same motion, she whirled toward a chair, toppling it over as she hopped past it in the direction of a huge dripping candle, set in an iron wall sconce. She understood that because they had tied her there was little hope for escape. Yet, she would not breathe her last breath in weakness and fear, but gasp it in defiance. Whether it was murder or mutilation and rape they intended, she would only fall beneath their strength fighting!

Joelle grasped the five-inch base of the candlestick between her bound hands, ignoring the burn of the hot wax as she wheeled her body around. In the same instant, she braced her back against the wall, swinging the candle before her without really seeing. She fully expected Incubus to have recovered and be lurching toward her. However, her overwrought swing met nothing but air and nearly toppled her over. Shock raced through her like fire, as she heard Incubus’ tenor voice.

“Magnificent!”

Joelle’s eyes popped open and she saw Incubus standing across the room, completely out of range of the slinging liquid wax. She screamed her frustration against the gag in her mouth, while Incubus lifted a white linen to his nose as though dallying leisurely in a ballroom. But his charred eyes held glints of excitement and wickedness. Oh spirits, how she had wished to brand him, mark him with the hot wax and fire as he was determined to do evil to her. She stood with the desire of it shaking through her body as the now useless candles weight slid through her fingers and the candle thudded to the floor.

Incubus’ gaze bore into hers, never leaving her gaze as he dropped one hand from his cocked hip. Then, he snapped his lean fingers and the midget Yojo bounced up on his toes, handing Incubus a wadded piece of white cloth. Incubus took the cloth and started toward her with an evil smirk on his features.

“You, my little mare, will be a pleasure to watch Lord Hellion tame.” His voice dripped with drawling depravity from each word.

Hellion?Incubus?Tame? It was so much more than murder or rape, Joelle realized, as she curled her fingers preparing to fight the snake approaching her.

Chapter Four

“Time was wasted. However, I would not have missed that performance. Now, I will just have to check her virginity and endowments here.”

Joelle tried to listen to Incubus’ words, fighting through the sleep that he had produced with the vaporous rag he’d earlier wrestled to her nose.

“Time, time, time,” Yojo chirped, and then Joelle heard a slapping sound, and she heard Yojo yelping.

“Quiet or you will receive worse, troll.”

“Yes, yes, master,” Yojo squeaked. Then all was quiet except for the rattle of a moving carriage. That is when Joelle realized that she was in a moving carriage, laying the length of a seat with blankness in her mind as to how she got there.

Slap. Slap. “Wake up!”

Joelle moaned at the sharp stinging on her cheeks. Slap. Slap. “No,” she half exclaimed, half mumbled.

“I want you awake for this! Open your eyes!” Joelle felt the painful harshness of her body being shaken as she willed her eyes open, to make it stop. Incubus’ blurry face bounced above her. “Ah, that’s better, little mare. Welcome back.”

She moaned and when she heard the sound she realized that she was not gagged. She tried desperately to clear her thoughts. “Bastard,” she rasped. The sound was scarcely audible through her parched mouth.

“Ah, so you think I am a bastard. Really, mare, that is so much nicer than what I actually am. Can you feel that?”

Joelle choked on what should have been a gasp at the feel of rough fingers clawing her bare breast, twisting the mound. Bare? Naked. Oh my God, she was naked and tied with her arms above her head and her ankles below.

“I see you realize your position suddenly,” Incubus said, nastily. “Answer me!”

Joelle felt the sudden spike of pain piercing her tender nipple tip from Incubus’ pinching fingers, as she yelped involuntarily. “Yes!”

“Pain could tame you,” he sneered, with his face leaning over hers, so close she could feel his humid breath emitting the odors of mint and liquor. Then, she felt the tip of his fingers on her other exposed nipple and she knew the pain would come again. He smashed his fingertips together tightly as he twisted them.

“No,” she cried at the pain. But she also cried more at his claims about her and pain.

Incubus knew that, as he chuckled. “Excellent, my succulent little Joelle. There are worse things than pain to break you.”

Joelle clamped her top teeth over her bottom lip trying to fight the lingering lethargy from the drug she had inhaled and also trying desperately to hold back her reactions. She knew Incubus fed on her. He gorged himself on her responses. Then, horribly she felt the scratchy heat of his fingers, his hands circling each breast, lifting them upward. Massaging, not painfully. He was examining her.

“Firm, young, not too big,” he drawled. “Are you too innocent to know that these hard nipples show how aroused you are? Like any, bitch-animal in heat.”

Joelle groaned low in her throat searching for saliva in her mouth, wishing that she could spit it in Incubus’ face. He leaned forward more as her body betrayed her and she squirmed in revulsion. He pressed his nasty and hot lips to her cheek as he spoke.

“But if your cunt is wet, little mare, then we will really know.”

One of his hands jerked from her breast and she felt it clamp roughly over her naked and exposed sex. She cried out at the horrifying invasion, while instinct made her desperately try to close her thighs. Nevertheless, the ropes holding her ankles apart would not allow it, and for the first time in the shocking ordeal, tears burned on her eyelashes. She tottered into hysteria with her breath panting as she felt Incubus worming his fingers through the lips of her cowering sex.

“Wet, hot, and ready as any bitch in heat,” he rasped.

Joelle’s mind splintered as she felt the repulsive groping of his harsh fingers in the most vulnerable place she had. No! No! Her mind shrieked as she choked on the dryness of her panting breath. And she was dry. Her sexual being was not aroused. Those were just words the bastard used to break her. She would never be aroused by his touch. The pig! Never! Let him touch her. It meant nothing. Nothing!

“Full cunt lips. Too much hair, we need to bare that.” Suddenly, Incubus moved and Joelle felt the fingers from both his hands pulling the lips of her sex apart. She gritted her teeth trying not to pass out, or move, or give any reaction. “Pink labia and dark rosy hole. Are you a virgin, little mare?”

Despite all her efforts. Despite the strong willpower that she’d always hoped that she possessed, she screamed. She knew she fed Incubus’ perversions with her cries of revulsion and terror as he prodded his finger inside her. Raping the virgin entrance with his rough scraping fingers and eroding sensations inside her that had never been touched before. She tried to keep him out, clamping hard around his finger, surprised that she had muscles there to control. Yet, he shoved through with his dry clawing fingers, dragging along tender tissue, initiating scratching pain where she had never felt pain before. Her body bowed upward in agony and through her hysteria she heard Incubus rasping.

“Ah, there it is, the maidenhead of life. The perfect Bacchus sacrifice for our Lord Hellion’s favor,” he finished, withdrawing his trespassing fingers, satisfied of her virginity.

Through the warping in her mind, Joelle wondered senselessly and beyond her understanding whether she truly was supposed to be some primitive virgin sacrifice? Then, Incubus left her, nude and violated, a virgin by definition, but no longer a virgin of reality as he sat on the other side of the rolling carriage, with Yojo crouched on the floor boards.

She tried to gather her thoughts, her courage, or even the will to live. Anything! She tried to think past the shame and revulsion she felt. Those feelings were worthless commodities and they would not do her any good as she tried to outwit and escape the horrifying situation that she’d been kidnapped into. But the fear was the worst. The fear of the countless possibilities of what more could happen. Of what they intended. That gnawing terror tried to steal her wits, but she fought it back with her anger. Letting her rage build and grow. It was a powerful emotion and it chased away the talons of terror clawing within her. How dare they? How dare they?

But her rage was too volatile and uncontrollable. However, her rage turned to hate, and then turned to stubborn contempt that was more manageable. Then, she twisted it to calculated vengeance, reprisal, and escape. Yes, she could think now. She walled the unusable reactions behind her anger, and as ever before, her quick mind started triggering again, and she breathed shallowly. To understand what they wanted could be power in a powerless situation. And it was, “They.”

Just the names, Incubus, Hellion, Bacchus, and sacrifice, suggested a group. That Incubus would say he was going to examine her, and that he talked of breaking her, and he searched for proof of her virginity told her clearly this involved some type of sexual rite. Her exposed nudity quelled against that comprehension, but she stubbornly willed it back.

They, he, it, Incubus, Hellion, or some false macabre deity wanted her virginity. Her virginity was the coveted prize. Suddenly, the carriage bounced to a halt, jerking her against the restraints at her wrists and ankles.

“Troll, give her the potion before the others see her,” Incubus snapped. “I have preparations to make.” Then with curt swiftness, he left the carriage slamming the door closed behind him, while the midget Yojo bounced on his heels muttering.

Joelle strained to hear what the little man was saying. It sounded like Yojo said, “Blame me, blame me,” over and over again. Joelle thought quickly about everything she’d heard since they kidnapped her. She anxiously looked for any little tidbits. It came to her abruptly. At least there was a good chance that she was right.

“Sir Yojo,” she started to say, trying to wet the aridness of her mouth. “I will swear that it was Incubus that gave me the potion and I spit it out. Not, Sir Yojo.” She paused. “Incubus slapped me also, just like he slapped you.”

Yojo turned his black jeweled eyes to her as he rocked now from side to side. “Sir Yojo? Sir? Sir?”

Joelle had hoped it would work. She could only imagine that they treated Yojo less than humanly. “Yes, I am, Lady Joelle, and you are, Sir Yojo, and I will not struggle, if you do not give me the potion. Y-You have my word.”

Yojo toddled forward with a lopsided smile as he raised his hand. His stubby fingers touched her hair. “So pretty,” he sighed. “Pretty, pretty, lady.”

Joelle thought hard. She thought with all her might, struggling to find the right words, with so little information. “I have never seen a wee little God like you before,” she tried carefully.

Yojo’s flat and out of proportion face lit up, with sudden enchanting expressions of delight. And, Joelle knew that she’d chosen right. Had she tried calling him handsome, she would not have been able to woo him at all. But she had to imagine that he aspired to be as godlike as people he served. And so, she trundled forward with more confidence.

“You never hurt me,” she said softly. “And you called me pretty. I want to serve you. I want to be your good lady.”

Yojo’s teeth were a gnarled line as he grinned, moving the cracked tips of his fingers to touch her cheek. “Serve, Sir Yojo?”

Joelle nodded. “Yes, darling sir. No blame for either of us.”

Yojo’s gaze edged to her bare breasts, then back quickly. “I picked you.” He nodded eagerly.

Then suddenly, there was a voice, outside the carriage, and Yojo’s face crumbled into near panic as his black eyes darted from the door to her. His hand dropped with awkward swiftness to a small wine skin hooked onto his belt as he nervously bounced up and down on his toes.

“No blame,” Joelle said quickly. “I won’t struggle. Just to be near, my Yojo...” Joelle snapped her mouth shut as the carriage door opened and she shut her eyes, while taking up the form of false limpness.

Chapter Five

“It’s a red-haired cunt.”

The voice was male with a thick German accent. It was a young man’s voice, not a nobleman but common. Joelle tried not to shudder at the crude opinion these men carried for women in their words and what more that foretold. She simply overrode her panic with inward congratulations at keeping Yojo occupied long enough with a convoluted and really senseless conversation, until he had no time to try to dose her with the potion. Nonetheless, she had planted the seeds with her praise of Yojo, to perhaps use and build on later.

Yes. She went over and over her triumph of being aware, when she was supposed to be incoherent, as male hands untied her, disgustingly groped her through a series of jumbles moving her body, and then a cloak was thrown over her, carrying her to the next unknown destination. She remained limp through the entire ordeal, never a more shining example of her renewed willpower. She prayed that she was acting near to the lethargy of the drug, having no clue as to what it would have produced.

“She’s da queer looking one. Ja, Yojo?”

“Gypsy queen!” Yojo exclaimed.

“Queen is it, you little runt? Nice on da eyes. Ja, I’ll agree. Can’t wait to see da new initiate, that long haired Marquis and his fat dong, raping her cunt.”

It was a miracle that Joelle held back most of her response to the German’s words. The small sound that did escape was lost with the sudden jostling of her body. The movements took precedence over her response to the German’s revelations as she worked to keep her body limp, while also trying to sense where she was and what was happening. It was considerably darker where they were now, she could tell that behind her closed eyelids. It had been getting increasingly darker the further they traveled and she knew at one point, moments ago, they had descended what felt like, and sounded like, a set of stairs.

In the jostling, Joelle felt her body being lowered by the German, and she fought to keep relaxed when her instinct was to stiffen against the unknown of what she was going to touch next. Then, she heard light crackling and she felt a momentary cushion that gave way to a hard flat support beneath her. A tick mattress on a wood frame, she guessed.

The air was colder, damp, and musty smelling. Her buttocks touched the mattress first, then her spine as the German laid her down and she remembered to let her neck fall limply. She thought that would be the end of it, at least for a little while. She assumed Yojo, the German, and whoever else might be present, after having delivered her, would step away to discuss or prepare whatever came next. So, she was suddenly surprised when the German’s hands touched her again and he began to turn her onto her stomach, as he said, “Da cunt, here is heavy unconscious. Ja, too much of da potion, little runt.”

Oh no! Joelle tried to stay lax as she was turned onto her stomach, and then she felt hands dragging the cloak up her legs.

“Baco! No touch! No touch,” Yojo chirped.

“Get back, Yojo,” Baco grumbled, then he exclaimed. “Ouch! That was my shin!”

“No, no touch!” Yojo yelped.

The cloak that had covered Joelle fell as high as her shoulders exposing her bare back and buttocks. She shuddered, fervently cheering on her little champion Yojo. Then suddenly, rough callous hands were groping the naked flesh of her buttocks. The fingers dug deep and started to pull the cheeks apart with her thighs spreading along behind.

At the same moment, she heard a shuffle and a thud with Baco exclaiming at Yojo’s kicking his shin again, while a moan churned from her throat. It was her fear and repulsion and she could not catch it back as all fell silent with the sound, and Baco’s fingers stopped moving deep in the crevice of her buttocks.

“Waking up, waking up!” Yojo exclaimed, and Joelle could just imagine the miniature man bouncing up and down. “Hellion will know! He will know! He will know! He will know!”

“Fuck!” Baco cursed, and then his hands with their lewdly groping fingers left Joelle’s buttocks. “Halt your mouth, Yojo!”

Joelle nearly cried with relief, but she managed to hold it back as she heard the obvious sounds of Baco stomping away. Then, she heard a shuffling sound and she felt the cloak being pulled down, as she heard Yojo’s whisper, “Sir Yojo, saved, Lady Joelle, for God.”

Joelle bit her lip, not moving. “Raus, move! Yojo! We have things to do for da ritual. Who cares if, da cunt, is covered?”

“Coming, coming,” Yojo chirped next to Joelle’s ear. Then, she heard his short shuffles as he moved away, and she was surprised to hear what sounded like the clatter of an iron cell door shutting.

Joelle tried to breathe slowly, unsure if she was alone in the cell, or room, or beyond. Luck was with her because without any conscious effort of her own, she’d ended with her face turned to the side that gave her the best view through her half-lifted eyelashes. The room was shadowy, but there was a torch ahead of her peeking gaze and one perhaps to her left side and beyond her feet.

The word’s Yojo had used that he’d saved her for God trembled through her again, as fresh tears clouded her glimpsing vision and she forced the thoughts back in her mind. She needed to think, or to act, or to plan as swiftly as she could, because she had no idea of how long she would be left alone. First she had to decide if she really was alone, because she had a seething need to be up, moving around, and feeling more power in the dire situation. And, she needed to look at the lock on the cell as quickly as she could, because her captors did not know her very well. The tricks she’d been taught from her Gypsy heritage might aid her escape now, or save her life, because she knew how to pick locks.

Moving her head in a slow motion, inches at a time, she cleared the area in front of her and to the left side free of any presences. Her hearing told her clearly all was quiet, yet some inner instinct made her feel that she might not be alone. The knowledge raised the light hair on her flesh as she moved slowly without perceptible movement trying to see as much as she was able.

It was a dungeon setting, vying with the ancient legends of kings and chateaus castles. Joelle guessed that it was such a place, and from her judgment it was no more than an hour or two from the east side of Paris, where they had first kidnapped her. There were blocked stone walls leaching dampness in what appeared through the half she could see of it as a circular room. She was indeed held in a cell. A large iron box with stout and rusted bars crossed on the top and on all the sides. It was a cage set in the middle of the circular dungeon and when she lifted her head slightly she saw the stone steps leading upward at a high angle to a wooden-hewed and iron-battened door.

Providence sliced through her at the exact moment she dared to raise her head, when a soft rustling sound that seemed to come out of nowhere, echoed in her hearing. The rustling collided with the abrupt pounding of her heart, more than any loudness claimed by the sound. Rats, she thought with hope, never pausing to wonder at the dichotomy of that. Rats were nasty villains, but better than any human villains she could think of at the moment. Then, with a trembling neck, she turned her head slowly toward where the sound had come from, and it was then that she first saw him.

Instantly, her breath sucked inward with surprise at him being there, but not surprise of discovery, because his head was bowed forward. Joelle realized immediately that she could have thought him female at first glance, with the fall of long brown hair hanging before him. But it was his bare chest, seen through the long strands of dark hair draping each side of the muscular expanse that proved him male. He was sitting slumped on the floor behind the stretch of her feet, and Joelle noticed abruptly that he was chained. It came to her then, as though she was struck with a sudden flash of lightening. The Marquis.

Then without forethought Joelle rolled upward to sit, staring at the man as she clutched the cloak tightly around her nakedness. He was a prisoner as she was, with his hands perhaps bound behind his back and a chain across his chest and possibly his neck. Could he be the Marquis that Baco had so crudely stated was set to rape her? Certainly her instincts and the proof of her sight told her that he was. She turned her head and her gaze quickly from the lush river of his chestnut hair and the lean, ridged outline of his lower belly. He had a cloak thrown over him, just as she did, and she had no doubt that beneath where the heavy black cloth lay across his hips and legs, he was as naked as she was. And . . . he was drugged, where she was not.

Chained meant unwilling. Drugged meant unwilling. How would he rape her? Joelle’s flesh crawled as she tried hard to think and hold back her fear at the same time. A sexual ritual, perhaps to the death, involving her, the Marquis, and her virginity. It was insanity! Hardly believable, yet she would defeat herself by not believing it completely. She had enough of the pieces to make an intelligent conclusion.

Suddenly, she rushed to stand, and then carelessly on her bare feet she ran to the cell door and she examined the lock. Her grandfather had taught her to pick locks by the time she was seven years old. Her grandmother to pick pockets. Her parents had been more reserved about such things, but they both had knowledge of unusual talents. Joelle reached through the bars lifting the heavy lock, bigger than her hand. It was a turnkey, with a hook and snap lock. If she had anything long, pointed, and sharp, she could open it. But the angle would be difficult to hold the lock, and then hold something straight and backward into the lock.

Joelle grimaced and she set the lock back down quietly. Nonetheless, when she turned away, it was with quick and agitated movements. She held the cloak tight around herself as she paced restlessly. She was avoiding a momentous decision . . . there was little time. She did look, with half-hearted attempts, for a long pointed object as she paced. A stick perhaps. But more, she kept glancing at the Marquis.

“It is useless to open the lock. They would catch you before you could escape and drag you back,” she muttered, “And then, they would know that you can pick locks. When you could have saved it for a better attempt...” She lurched through a turn in her pacing, looking at the Marquis as she did so. He looked young . . . perhaps. Yet, it was hard to tell with his head bowed forward.

Rituals. She knew of many tales of ungodly and morbid rituals through her Gypsy’s heritage. And all of them were of sacrificial innocents that were put to death in the end. This . . . this seemed more sexual and not a life threatening ritual. “You are fooling yourself,” she hissed, slashing her hand through the air. “Whatever unspeakable use they have in mind for me, without a doubt it will eventually end in death, if nothing else, just for knowing too much.”

“Indeed.”

Joelle gasped, whirling about at the sudden sound of a masculine voice. Her gaze sweeping immediately to the Marquis. He looked the same however with his head bowed.

“Are you awake?” she whispered in a rush that sounded like a hiss.

“Barely.”

She nearly jumped backward at the quickness and reality of the confirming sound, but not from any action of the Marquis. He was still slumping forward with only his chest rising and falling . . . a bit heavier perhaps. Spirits take her, he was English, not French! She could hear it in the two short words he’d spoken. And, she realized that providence really did shine harshly in moments of decision, pressing her forward, guiding her. It did not allow her to waver from the only good plan that she had, no matter how much she despised to do it.

Fate had just burst in on her, because with the Marquis semi-awake, then she really could do it. Where before, because he’d been unconscious, she’d been unsure. She knew quite a bit about sexual relations between men and women, and she knew enough about male physiology to understand that it might have been impossible to harden the Marquis’ cock if he had remained unconscious. Nevertheless, now he was regaining consciousness. A perfect time to implement her plan and use the only form of drastic diversion, vengeance, or complete insanity she had.

Virginity, verses no virginity. And being semiconscious the Marquis would be an adaptive tool.

Chapter Six

Saxon had the impressions of intelligence, petiteness, and burnt red hair. On one of his moments of clarity, through the dredges of the drug they had given him, he thought she was a ploy in the macabre game that was being played out. However, he also remembered his fury pressing through the murky fog of the drug. His rage at Baco’s rough hands on her helpless nudity, and on her alabaster buttocks, nude white globes with creamy pink-edged curves. He had seen the splendor of that soft naked ass.

Then, he heard it again, the sultry frames of an exotic voice. A voice he longed to lose himself in. A voice to hear in a never-ending rhythm of pleasure. A husky vibrato. An accent he could not claim, and therefore it intrigued him all the more.

“I am Joelle.”

Soft hands touched his chest, running curling ribbons of sensation down his sides. Tender fingers heating his bare flesh.

“You are a ploy then,” he muttered, trying to feel disappointed over the smooth caresses from small hands circling his belly.

“I am pleasure in moments of uncertainty. Can you feel that?”

A rumbling sound of acknowledged relish, rolled upward in answer through Saxon’s chest as fingers of golden heat petted, and then they circled the flaccid groin between his thighs. A male organ that until recently, he’d neglected for so many years. So that now the slightest attention sent tendrils of covetous sensitivity thrumming deep inside it. It with envy so acute that it filled and firmed, suffusing with greed, while brought to fullness by the industriously tight pumping of a feminine hand. Then, his mind sparked more fully. Abruptly, energized by the promise. Then, he found the will to lift his chin, smelling a cloud of lilies around him.

His gaze floated into irises the color of black velvet. A trembling feminine gasp filled his ears, dallying from plush lips the color of damask wine. “You are . . . beautiful,” she said with dulcet murmuring.

Saxon might have murmured the same revelation back to her . . . were his senses not wavering over the gossamer heat of her fingers stroking his roguish penis to attention. Handmaiden? The word floated through his mind on the strands of arousal being pumped deep inside him. He had heard the name somewhere and he wondered if she were of this nimble calling. His own personal handmaiden of sex.

Then, he gasped in rising bliss at the talent she displayed to her craft. “Are you my lovely handmaiden t-then?” he rasped through a deft stroke and squeeze of his stiffening, lusty penis, and through the thick dryness of his mouth that left him voiceless after one attempt.

Joelle looked into the face of erotic male seduction and beauty. Yet, she understood he did not realize that his masculine lines were so overcoming. From his shaded tea-colored skin to his sensually full lips. But it was the myriad and melting depths of his mahogany-colored eyes, framed by black-tipped lashes that pulled tremendous and immediate attraction inside her. Making her heartbeat flutter and her desperate task to harden his imposing cock so much more inviting.

What had been for her, so anxious and daring an action that she would do a moment ago, had changed into craving, just gazing into the depths of his liquid eyes. She had seen few male appendages in her life, the flesh-covered bone of virility between a man’s thighs. And she certainly had never touched one before.

Nonetheless, as a young girl, she’d visited traveling Gypsies on occasions. Friends of her grandparents and she’d sat by the fires, listening with avid and half understanding interest as the women talked intimate gossip of men, while the men sat in their own circles, perhaps discussing women’s peculiarities. It was a rich, and it was possibly at times, a very volatile knowledge for a young woman moving in grander society circles to know. She also might have put it to good use one day, attracting a nobleman to the marriage bed, had not her family obligations and deaths gotten in her way.

Now she was grateful for the semblance of knowledge that she had, in theory, but as yet untried to this point. Only, nothing could have prepared her for the reality of actually touching. If she thought about it at all before pressing forward and just doing it, in the urgency of her plan, she would have thought to find it distasteful for its complete foreignness. She would have thought to find it disagreeable besides her need to command boldness, where she felt timid and uncertain. She certainly never expected to hold the heat of a man’s bare cock in her hands and find it pleasurable and awe-inspiring. She’d not prepared for the rushing of emotions conflicting natural tendencies. The heat flushing her skin, the feeling of her breasts compressing while yearning forward, or the spiral of arousal oscillating in her sex and beginning to thrum to the male flesh stiffening in her hand.

She might have jerked her hands away as though they were stung with the flash of a flame, but she held her determination strong. What woman could understand, before feeling it, the flood of power and desire at holding a beautiful man’s cock in their hands? Feeling the warm flesh stretch and grow long. Handling the throbs of excitement beating in the shaft, while seeing the elongated miracle that it became.

And the desire was nearly impossible to overcome as she stared into the chasm of the Marquess eyes, while using his cock and pumping it erotically to the rigidness she had to have for the defiance that she’d contrived. The Marquis moaned with his chest rising and falling faster, while his lips pursed with carnal fullness. His face was lean and yearning, while his irises deepened to black with slashing red hints.

“You are not them,” he rasped hoarsely, even as his face grimaced in uncontrolled pleasure. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Stop! Ah, stop!” His head fell back further with his maple-colored hair cascading against the iron bars bracing his back. “Don’t stop,” he heaved.

“I am Joelle,” she panted, as he did.

Then, breathless, as she raised her body, lifting her knees to straddle his thighs, while the cloak she wore fell over them, draping where she stroked him so boldly in between. “I regret, I-I...” she pleaded. But then, she cast her eyes downward against the dawning light in his irises. And the feel . . . she knew he had to feel the head of his cock where she guided it and held it pressed to her woman’s entrance. The touch alone branded her in a circular motion as the Marquis groaned.

“Regret . . . or rape, demoiselle. Do not take what is not given,” he said hoarsely. Then, his hips tried to shift away between the bareness of their thighs cleaved into position.

But she would not allow it, holding him firmly by the broad-gauged circumference of his cock, while empathy and alarm vied within her. She would not empathize that this was any form of rape of him. He was merely a tool, and the suffering would be all hers. But her alarm at the weight and breath of his cock, the knowledge of plunging it within the heart of her womb, to her was shocking with uncertainty and fear. Nevertheless, she gulped it back quickly and defiantly, with the malevolent face of Incubus searing its image underneath her clenched eyelids.

Take this, her mind cried to Incubus’ preying illusion as she loosened her body’s tenseness and she fell downward upon the Marquis’ towering cock. Joelle nipped blood from her lip, holding back the cry trying to hurtle from her mouth that expelled instead from the Marquis.

“No!”

Shock shattered with violence through Joelle’s body as her downward leap was brought up short with only the head of the Marquis’ cock inserted inside her. Her free fist, braced on the Marquis’ chest, but not the one trying to force his cock into her, pummeled his chest once. “Help me!” she exclaimed in dire frustration. Why would it not go further? What was wrong? Joelle panicked then, heaving with tears burning her cheeks as whimpers etched from her throat.

“Demoiselle, demoiselle. Please, little firefly. Hold! Hold! Look at me. Look! Look!”

The tenor words broke through Joelle’s hysteria. The words commands guided her gaze upward, as she gasped, “Virgin. Take it away!” She gulped with hiccupping tears. “I beg you, Marquis. Take it away!”

His handsome face twisted with regret and churned with ravished arousal and shock. Then, it turned to compassion drenched with comprehension, flickering across his face, while his head slowly shook from side to side denying the reality. “Firefly.” His voice grated with regret, and then somehow he seemed to gather a powerful inner source within him. His eyes gathered and returned maple fire, as he abruptly commanded and pleaded at the same time. “Kiss me. Please. My God, kiss me.”

Joelle stared at him with tear-stained awe, then compelled by his aura and their intimate connection, she lowered her trembling lips to his sensually firm ones. Instantly, he breathed embers upon her lips, stroking his exquisite mouth over hers. Her mouth sighed into his being, and the jerky shuddering that had been afflicting her limbs began to loosen and still. His lips searched and plucked euphoric rhythms into her yearning soul, until she moaned with returning ardor. Then, with his lips wet and warm; their lips flushed with kissing, he spoke like a mesmerizer against her mouth.

“Move up and down slowly upon me, Joelle of the light and fire. Slowly, sweet firefly, and let me taste your lips for eternity.”

Joelle nodded against the union and the heat of his lush mouth. “I must,” she murmured upon his lips. “Make my own fate...”

“So brave, so beautiful,” he said. Then, his lips suckled once again over her mouth.

Joelle’s heart soared at the stunning find of a man so rare and at the field of emotions strongly coursing through her. This should be a tragic and despicable event with the cost so high as to breed madness. Yet, what she felt was heroic desire.

Saxon thought with his own form of disillusions that had his mind been lucid, besides chalked with avid arousal, the outcome would have certainly been different. He was after all, and always had been, a man of solemn honor. Even, he thought, with the ripe fruit of a woman’s core strangling wet bliss over the head of his prick.

He could not use his one hand, his arms, or any part of his body. But barely his hips. The chain strafing his bare chest held him fast and reminded him clearly of the dangerous situation. Nonetheless, all that seemed inconsequential to him but the woman trembling above him with lips like gossamer petals. And . . . she moved upon him. She supped his engorged penis deeper inside her fiery wet womb, until his throbbing penis reached the moment of revelation, tightly embedded inside a sheath of virgin femininity, and pressing to the tender tissue of a maidenhead. He was glad that he was bound against rapacious movement, because a fierce maleness rose inside him with the driving need to plunder beyond all reason. The demand of it beaded sweat on his body and tensed his lean muscles as he used the only way open to him, by carnally sucking Joelle’s tongue into the recesses of his mouth.

Her answer moaned wild and full, as her small hands bracing on his chest, curled inward. Her fingernails scraped his breast muscles as her body quaked with sudden straining tension. Her tongue slid abruptly from his heated suction, as she panted, “Now.”

Saxon snatched Joelle’s cry of pain back into the depths of his mouth. He felt the barrier press free and he felt the tense and wet softness of Joelle’s woman’s sheath suck him to the hilt of his penis. The way was tight. He was too enlarged for her virgin haven, yet the dripping blood of her rented maidenhead made the impossible, barely possible.

Tears stung his clenched eyelids at the tragic sacrifice, taken so shabbily from a young, brave, and beautiful woman who had deserved the full artistry of lovemaking that a man could command. But now she was left bereft and hurting with physical pain and without the knowledge of the pleasure-soaked intimacy the moment could have been.

They were still desperate captives and Saxon damned the sinister cultist to hell as his manly penis shriveled beneath what had been done, and with the edge of fear of what was yet to come. Joelle lay limp upon his chest with the dampness of their ordeal clinging, flesh to flesh. It clung in perspiration from her bare breasts to his bare chest and lower in virgin’s blood cleaving to their latched genitals. Then, he felt it. It was a kiss of promise, honor, or courage. The kiss of Joelle’s tear-stained and tender lips pressed to the left side of his chest, just above his heart.

They might have spoken then, in the unreality and desperation of the situation they had been hurled into. But a painfully loud squeaking sound of a heavy door being open on rusty hinges clattered into the stone bowels of the dungeon. Saxon heard Joelle’s anxious cry of distress and urgency at the same moment that she shoved against him, struggling to rise. He was destitute of words to offer her as his wet, flaccid penis fell free of her womb and she tossed the ends of the cloak hanging from his shoulders to cover his stomach and groin. Then, she managed to hastily stagger back to the cot, where she lay down quickly.

Saxon wondered if he had imagined the whispered plea for forgiveness that he’d heard as he bowed his head with any answer he might have given, remaining clogged in his throat.

Chapter Seven

The two attendants that came to retrieve Saxon and Joelle were the images of twisted and debauched cult fanatics. If Saxon had one note of disbelief before seeing the two herculean black men, it was swept away upon their arrival in the cell. Both men were nude, but for lewd adornments, and their flesh appeared oiled, shining with slick ebony sheens. Their huge bodies were bulky chunks of muscle with gold pins pierced through their nipples and gold chains harnessed around their obese cocks. Then there were other long chained adornments dangling from their rear quarters, and Saxon would not venture a guess as to how they held these in place.

He told himself that he had three purposes, to get unchained, to thwart the cult lunatics, and to find escape. And perhaps on the way, to discover where the missing hook that he used as a partial hand was. A person had to hold out hope otherwise nothing was ever accomplished, he told himself dutifully as the black devotees, devoted to what, he did not know, unchained him. They took off the chain holding him to the iron bars and left a heavy chain around his neck that they had somehow twisted around his upper arms, then looped around both arms to nearly his wrists, behind his back.

Two things he concluded from this action, they knew the drug had worn off and his missing left hand had caused some ingenuity as to how to restrain him. Because a simpler binding of his wrists would have fallen off his left side. He had no sword, no hook, no pistol, and since losing his hand he had lost the ability to box or use hand to hand fighting techniques with any success. He was defenseless but for his wit, and he had never considered himself intrinsically witty. Drummond or Radford, two of his former spying companions, they were the brains. He on the other hand, followed, listened, and melted in. Those were not high recommendations for escaping his diabolical situation.

Nevertheless, he had only to remember Joelle’s striking courage and quick wit. As a tactical partner, he could do no better. He simply prayed that the loss of her virginity, which he comprehended these lunatics coveted, would gain her rejection and not her death. He also understood that her need for angry defiance were part of her drastic scheme. It was as though she was spitting at them in the face, as it were. He had the same demand inside of him, and if he had possessed something like Joelle’s virginity to thwart the madmen with, he would have done the same. But he also knew that different contrasts played better in the field of dangerous adventure. Different attitudes and approaches could cover more bases and possibilities, therefore, he would try his best to play contrasts to Joelle, because they were partners in this, and he believed they were now bonded beyond the villains’ preconceived understanding.

The two naked guard-devotees-guides were completely silent and used only their greater strength to lift, shove, and guide. Saxon noticed immediately that Joelle had shed her pretense of being still drugged as her guard shoved her out of the cell. He caught her gaze for one quick moment before she was forced ahead of him and in that searching glance between them, he felt the sealing of their commitment to each other.

Just as with the Archangels spying group, that he was a former member of, it was all for one and one for all. It was better than being alone, he reflected, but it also added more anxiety and the worry about another person. And . . . a woman at that. Men could garner such courageous intentions where the harming of women was concerned. He thought he knew what tortures and humiliations he could rightly deal with and what others perhaps he could not overcome, but another personality in the mix, that cast it all into uncertainty.

Saxon realized that his natural male instincts would be to try to protect Joelle at every turn, no matter how impossible or foolish that might be to accomplish. That was not good. A more cunning man would control his instincts. The fact of the matter was they had already harmed Joelle and the possibility that they were both headed toward greater harm was undeniable. He could not let that unhinge him, in fact the least visibly he acted toward her and her circumstances the better. He simply wondered whether he could possibly manage that. However, his will-nilly plans fled his contemplation abruptly, when he realized they were turning to enter a room within the castle . . . and he fully expected to finally be meeting, the one, ominously titled, Lord Hellion.

Nevertheless, right before the heavy block of wood that served as a door opened before Joelle, who was ahead of him, Saxon looked down the long corridor. In the distance, at the very end, he could see a multiple pane window that reached from the floor to the ceiling. He firmly calculated the route. There was the dungeon stairs, with its door unlocked, but with the ability to lock from the outside, and two four-way corridors leading to a stairway of fifty-three winding steps. Then, four more two way corridors with two doors on one side and three doors on the other, a right turn at a four-way corridor, and six closed doors beyond that was where they now stood.

Then, recollecting the route he’d taken from his entrance into the castle, until this route now, he predicated they were on the south side of the castle and that window at the far end of the hall overlooked the front drive-through and portico. Remembering his first sight of the castle, he surmised that above that particular set of windows, a gargoyle was mounted. It was on the third floor and at the highest reaches of the castle other than the circular tower. And, he expected that the lord of the domain would reside above all else.

Joelle forcefully calmed her strong urges. She knew that to struggle or try to run was futile. She reasoned to save her strength and determination for other battles she might have a chance of winning. She also stoically ignored the two guards, with their alarming nakedness and primitively adorned appearances, and what that forewarned.

Instead, she tried to think of any possible way to steal the set of keys dangling from a thin gold chain at her guard’s waist. Nothing like trying to attempt nude pickpocketing, Joelle thought in disgust. It would be impossible to take the set of keys without the guard noticing. Because it jangled so obviously out in the open with each movement and step forward, and Joelle resolutely did not glance with any focus beyond the dangling keys to what lay so nakedly exposed below. She had thought she was quite worldly in sexual matters for a young woman, however the meaning and uses of the two black attendants’ adornments were beyond her comprehension or her wish to understand. She never wanted to know about it . . . ever.

One key, she thought, bringing her mind forcefully back from dark and tawdry places. She could not steal the whole set, but she could get one key. And, she thought that she knew which key was the key to the cell. It would take several more moments of contact to lift only one key from the set and the thought of having any physical contact with the large nude guard was distasteful.

Nevertheless, she ignored that emotion and picked her timing when they came to the door of a room they obviously intended to enter. Then, the guard was on her left side and just as he reached for the iron door latch, she stepped back, drawing his hand clamped to her arm with her. Instead of opening the door and pressing her through the entrance at the same time, he was left with the door swinging open and revealing the room beyond.

Joelle paid no attention to the inner room as the guard’s fingers tightened painfully on her arm and she began to pretend panic at having to enter the room, which was in reality not far from the truth. She had no idea what horrific circumstances lay waiting in the room, only that there would be another set of horrible circumstances. She shook her head, dragging her body backward, making negative sounds of refusal. The guard chose to haul her forcefully forward. One brush with the keys. She allowed herself to collide more fully. The guard hissed, shaking her by her arm as she made her knees wobble, while she whimpered a few times. “No. No.” Second brush with the keys. She wobbled against the guard and he stepped more firmly against her, reaching out his other hand to keep her upright, while tugging her forward. She nearly collapsed against him then. Third contact with the keys. It was the longest contact, as she cried. “I do not want to go in there!”

While her theatrics were in play and the guard was physically holding her upright dragging her forward, she lifted the key. Success! Quickly, she dropped it into a small hole that she’d torn on the inside of her cloak. The key fell free to the bottom hem of the cloak where it caught and she felt elation for a brief moment, before she finally allowed herself to look at the room and the man waiting within.

“Come here, my darling beauties. I have waited so long to meet you.” The voice was so resonate in cultured and deep tones, and the enticing strength and quality of the sound instantly filled Joelle with the desire to find its source. She remembered thinking that the man behind that voice had to be extraordinary, right before she gasped, thinking the man was a ghost.

Joelle tried to see beyond the light of candles placed in the otherwise dark room, with heavy drapery clinging in blackness around the edges. The man’s image seemed to waver behind the light of the flickering candles as the guards herded her and the Marquis forward. Joelle would always think of the man thereafter as, “the voice,” and the glimpse she caught of him standing in the darker recesses, beyond the candles, was of a ghostly quality. It was obvious that he had long white hair. His hair was so long, the snow-white strands appeared to trail nearly to his waist. His silhouette looked tall and thin and he wore a large piece of glinting jewelry that hung in the middle of his chest. But that was the only glimpse of him she obtained before the guards halted their forward advance, and then both guards spoke for the first time.

“Kneel before your master, Lord Hellion!” Both guards pressured she and the Marquis down onto their knees, barely using the corded muscles bulging around their arms.

Joelle fought to keep the key from clanking on the stone floor as she was forced downward unexpectedly. She succeeded, but her gaze was lowered when Lord Hellion spoke next.

“Ah, there is the hair of fire and the hair of earth, this pleases me. Giver of the red hair I bestow the christening name, Ardente, on you and giver of the earth shades of hair I bestow the christening name, Seducteur, on you.”

Giver? Joelle thought, captured by the mellifluous tones of Lord Hellion’s voice. This man, she realized suddenly, could shape legions of people with his voice alone. Alarmed, Joelle fought the urge to look at the Marquis for strength, at the same time she challenged herself not to gaze upward at the carrier of that, “voice.” Somehow, she knew Lord Hellion expected his voice to entice her gaze to turn to him, more than her natural curiosity.

Chapter Eight

Saxon’s gaze was fathomless as he looked into the face of pure white evil. Lord Hellion was an albino, with his chest bared in pastel white flesh, pink eyes, and the voice of the devil. Saxon let none of his surprise show at Hellion’s venomous and unnatural appearance. Saxon kept his gaze sultry-lidded with flecks of interest as though he was instinctively trying to hold it back, but not succeeding. He saw immediately that it worked as Hellion’s pink-veined eyes purred back at him. Saxon’s flesh itched with distaste, yet he knew Hellion was slightly surprised, because Hellion seduced with his voice, not his looks.

Hellion wore white britches and a white fur-edged cloak draping back on his shoulders, leaving his chest and arms bare. His flesh appeared ashen and his sparse lips looked bloodless. His structure was nearly skeletal, while his face was concave, with sharp ageless qualities. Had Hellion had any color to draw upon one could deem him partially handsome, if not for being so thin. Suppressed demonic energy shown from his eyes, and the voice of mastery came from those eyes. Saxon was certain that Hellion could call God vile and his listeners would hear the honeyed tones of righteousness in Hellion’s voice.

“I have waited eternity for you, Seducteur.” Hellion moved forward as though he flowed and Saxon caught a glimpse out of the side of his gaze of Joelle raising her head as she knelt beside him. Saxon heard her small gasp, then Hellion’s voice thundered as though in ecstasy, shouting, “You!” Then, Hellion shocked Saxon, and Saxon nearly cringed backward as Hellion dropped to his knees before him. “You will make me a God!” Hellion’s vociferations came with his white face twisting at odd angles.

Saxon hastily bowed his head before showing any outward reaction as his heart hammered unreasonably. He had no clue as to what to do. How to proceed. How to gain the best advantage over a madman with the voice of a God. Joelle’s hiss of fear beside him sounded like repercussions inside his ears and inside himself. Voicing things, he fought to control. Joelle’s sounds obviously turned Hellion’s attention.

“And you, Ardente, you will anoint and consecrate the last limb I need to rise up to my rightful place and forever will your hair be intertwined with this young vision of the deity Bacchus!”

Joelle made a strangled sound, causing Saxon to raise his head, as he heard her crying in outrage, “Are you utterly insane? Just listening to you is like watching a bad play! If you are going to kill us or rape us at least make some sense!” One of her hands emphasized her statement by slashing in front of her. “I wager you have people groveling at your feet with that undecipherable drivel. God at least made sense when he spoke!”

At this turn of events, and unrestrained, Joelle chose to lurch to her feet as though her fury’s heat lifted her upright. The guard, several steps behind her, came forward to roughly clasp her arms from behind, while Hellion rose with deep and charismatic laughter. Saxon stayed kneeling, silently applauding Joelle, while he took the free moments given him to quickly calculate the perimeters of the room. When confused, shaken, and uncertain, he thought dimly, fall back on what you know.

“Your fire will sustain me,” Lord Hellion chuckled, stepping toward Joelle. Joelle fought her instinct to cringe away from Hellion’s unappealing visage. “You are intelligent and I will feed on that,” Lord Hellion said, with his chalky hands, carrying long and claw-like fingernails toward her. Suddenly, he grasped her jaw, forcing her head back harshly against the guard’s chest behind her. “But,” Lord Hellion hissed. “In the end you will worship your Master and God. You will be a play thing for his pleasure!”

Hellion’s fingers dug painfully into her jaw, straining her neck as she fought the clutching fingers, working her mouth against them. “If I saw a God,” Joelle sputtered through the press of her lips. “I might worship him!”

Joelle cried out at the slashing pain of one of Hellion’s nails slicing down her cheek. She saw the Marquis rise, but the other guard quickly clasped his arms. Joelle felt blood welling on the laceration as Hellion held up a hand toward the Marquis, with his gaze turning to him also.

“It is good, Seducteur, that you wish to protect your future voluptuary slut. Possessiveness is a raw emotion and you have such seething emotions inside you.”

Hellion released her jaw then, and he moved toward the Marquis, with his upper torso and head undulating slowly, like a seductive dance, half circling from one side of the Marquis to the other. Joelle saw the beauty and underlying carnal virility of the Marquis also as she watched the serpent trying to tempt the beauty.

“Passions buried deep, my sultry Seducteur. So deep inside you.” Lord Hellion’s voice was like the lowest honeyed notes of a violin.

Joelle saw the cherry-brown color of the Marquis’ eyes deepen as he remained unnaturally quiet and accepting. She wanted to rail at the Marquis, to tell him to rise and challenge the evil. Yet, the Marquis merely stood, appearing to be a supplicant, with his long hair falling loosely around him like a rich curtain of brown and his black eyelashes covering his heavy-lidded irises. The Marquis’ gaze looked more attracted to the odd jewel in the medallion on Hellion’s chest. It was large and multifaceted with colors that changed with the light. Looking at it made Joelle feel strange, especially with Hellion’s undulating motions and she forced her gaze away from it.

“Your hair, Seducteur, is a talisman of your desires and of the erotic passions you can barely contain.” Hellion’s voice wove seductive tones as his body snaked in slow motion.

Joelle felt as though Hellion were sucking the Marquis into some unmentionable abyss and her emotions flared again, before her sense prevailed. “What bunk! Marquis, are you going to listen to this farce and say nothing?”

“Silence!” Lord Hellion snapped, flinging his head in her direction.

“Ouch! Ouc-,” Joelle’s protest came to a halt with a dark palm seriously clamped over her mouth.

Saxon felt as though he was jerked from some type of dreaming trance as his gaze pulled away from the sway of the prismatic, egg-sized gem on Hellion’s chest, to Joelle’s outcry.

“Yes, yes,” Hellion said, with his fingers reaching forward to touch Saxon’s hair covering his shoulder. “You will easily be mine, succulent Seducteur.”

Saxon wondered in alarm if that were true. There seemed to be some quality to Hellion’s voice and the jewel that was altering what should be his natural reaction.

“Let me see the rest of him,” Hellion said. Saxon kept his gaze on Joelle, whom the attendant still restrained, but the fire in her midnight irises sustained him. “Disrobe, the Seducteur, so I can see the final piece. See the male organ of ascension.”

Bloody hell, Saxon thought, Joelle was right. Hellion talked like a warped theatrical religious actor. But he also knew that it was imperative to make sense of Hellion’s mélange of meanings. Saxon thought one thing was clear, Hellion wanted to look at his prick. Saxon felt the guard behind him reach forward and fling open the cloak that had been covering him. That cleared his senses. That and keeping his gaze off the jewel. He could not remember a time when his nudity had bothered him as much.

The sound Hellion made was of instant perverted attraction and Saxon realized at once that Hellion lusted for men as well as women. He should have known it. He probably did deep inside where he had not wanted to look too closely. It was why he remained so docile, wasn’t it? So Hellion would lean toward him and not Joelle. Sometimes he did not understand his inner motivations until too late. It was as if he worked on inner instincts his conscious mind didn’t recognize. It was because of chameleon qualities that spying had forced him to play. Well, really before that.

Saxon thought he might finally erupt if Hellion touched more than his hair. But Hellion merely gazed at his nakedness, and just those pink licentious eyes on his bare flesh, without touch, had his stomach crimping and his flesh longing for cover. The guard holding his chained upper arms from behind, moved him partially to one side, and then partially to the other side, but Hellion’s gaze stayed on his prick. Saxon wondered that Hellion could not see the tints of virgin’s blood there. However, with only the candles shadowing the room, Saxon supposed that it merely made his male organ look ruddy against his medium-shaded flesh.

“Any dripping cunt hole would feel like a vise around that cock. Most women would have trouble taking you, I imagine. It is the cock of a God when hardened. The cock of a male seductress.”

Saxon felt like squirming unreasonably beneath Hellion’s words, and he tripped his gaze away from Joelle in something like embarrassment. He had never been in a position quite like this before as though he were the object of some desire. He thought for an instant that he could nearly catch hold of how an abused woman might feel.

“Unveil just her tits,” Hellion ordered suddenly. But his gaze stayed on Saxon’s penis.

Saxon watched Joelle’s struggles, but the guard managed to keep his hand clamped over her mouth and at the same time tug her cloak open and downward just enough to bare her breasts. Saxon’s lean muscles tensed with the need not to react in her defense. He willed it away at the same time he kept his gaze from her breasts.

“White flesh, young, plump, and with pink rosebud nipples,” Hellion purred.

Saxon strained not to look, but his options were becoming slim. Do not look at the jewel, do not look at Hellion, do not look at Joelle, and do not feel the stirring in his penis.

“Look at them, Seducteur, or I will order him to hurt her!” Hellion’s voice was a low bass-toned hiss.

Saxon looked. They were supple and young, perfectly molded. Both white firm globes had aureoles that were the size of a small coin stamped with powdery pink coloring and darker pink tips thrusting outward. Feminine breasts that looked pristine and untouched by a male hand. Accept, splayed across his chest.

His penis stirred and he grimaced, trying to will it back. Nonetheless, it lengthened toward those aroused pink nipples like a cad, filling out with a slight curving angle to the left. His bare feet shifted as he cursed inwardly. He had invariably been sensitive about the appearance of his prick when rigid. It did not strut outward like most men, but lengthened heavily downward.

“The Gods will be pleased with this cock of fertility,” Hellion said with his body swaying. Then, his hand swept upward toward Joelle. “Uncloak her fully. Let me see the virgin cunt.”

Saxon stiffened with his prick rigid and his mind agonized over what would transpire next. Anything that he did would give away more than he could afford, and he struggled to remain passive.

Joelle cried her distress at being stripped naked, and then she bit down harshly on the hand offending her lips. The guard made a hissing sound of pain as his hand jerked away from her mouth. At the same moment the guard overreacted, shoving her forward as though to push the pain away. But, the cloak stayed with the guard and Joelle found herself standing naked two steps away.

If she were really brave, she would have run or attacked Hellion in some way. At least tried, as useless as it might be. Nevertheless, she cowered disgustingly there, with her arm across her naked breasts and one palm cupped between her thighs.

Joelle wondered with embarrassed panic why it seemed to matter so monumentally to her that she was naked before the Marquis, while other men were there, as opposed to just naked against the Marquis. Which she had been. However, everything flew from her thoughts at Hellion’s outraged shouting. Then, before she even knew it was coming, Hellion had stepped toward her, while swinging his hand to slap her. His palm hit her cheek so hard that she lost her balance and fell to the floor on her side.

Through the ringing in her ears and the pain slicing her face, her one coherent thought was that Hellion had seen the virgin blood on her thighs.

“She is tainted! Not a virgin! Nothing but a used whore now! How could this have happened?”

Before this, Joelle had thought Hellion was acting out some horrible play he had concocted in his twisted mind. But now he really had the voice of an angry God, denied something he richly coveted. Joelle could not keep her naked flesh from cringing as she lolled on her side clutching her battered cheek.

“I suffer only idiots and fools to worship me!” Hellion thundered. “Take her to the preparation chamber! It is too late to replace her. The cock of God was anointed, and tell Incubus of this debacle!”

“Why?” Saxon asked suddenly, speaking his first words. “What type of preparations? I must have her alive.”

“You feel it then?” Hellion gasped with his pink eyes staring at him.

“Yes.” Saxon worked his mouth with difficulty around further words, while his mind pressed him to trust himself. Yet, it was so insane. “I feel the virgin’s blood scorching the cock of God, but . . .” Saxon looked to the ceiling with his long hair shifting to fall down on his buttocks. “I did not ejaculate into the virgin.”

Saxon’s body shuddered, as Hellion intoned. “The time has come. It is truly here!” Animated with an insane light in his eyes, Hellion gestured, “Sit, sit, Seducteur. She won’t be harmed. She is yours to prepare. To live or die.” The guard that had been holding Saxon’s arms let them go, stepping back. “Unchain him also,” Hellion ordered.

Saxon saw Joelle sag and stumble beside the guard holding her upright as he turned her away toward the door. For the first time ever Joelle’s head bowed with her dark red hair curling down to her ivory thighs.

“Her cloak please. No one should see her just yet,” Saxon requested softly.

“Yes, yes of course,” Hellion responded. “Keep her covered,” he ordered, to the two guards now taking Joelle away.

Saxon stayed in place, with his arms still behind his back, although they had unchained him, while the guards and Joelle left the room. Then, with the wincing of blood rushing where the chains had restricted it, he let his arm fall to his side. He flexed his right hand as he slowly moved to sit, keeping his left, handless arm behind his back.

“It bothers you that much that she should see your stump?” Hellion asked softly.

Saxon sat, nude upon the velvet-embroidered seat of a high-backed chair. He tilted his head back, slowly closing his eyes. “Yes,” he said.

Chapter Nine

Joelle sat in a chair clutching the cloak around her. She had tried the door, the barred window, and even the fireplace for any means of escape from the room they had locked her into after leaving Hellion and the Marquis. The room was small and dark. There were two chairs facing the cold fireplace with the only light coming from an oil lantern wall sconce. There was a small tapestry rug beneath the chairs covering the whitewashed stone floor beneath. The room exuded a musty odor with only the tinge of oil from the lantern in the air. It was very cold in the room as she curled her bare feet up on the chair beneath her and under the cloak. Her injured cheek throbbed and she was certain that if she could view it, a bruise would be forming there.

Joelle touched the puffiness and laceration on her cheek, wincing lightly as she worried about the Marquis, while wishing that she knew his name. “It is a silly thing to want to know now,” she chided herself. “And better not to think of becoming attached to him in anyway. Not now with everything going on.” But she already was attached, wasn’t she? How could she not be, when they had felt each other so intimately? And he was the only ally she had in this horrible nightmare.

The Marquis seemed to understand more of what was happening, while she struggled and railed against their assailants, he listened, ingested information, and then melded himself to control their reactions. Furthermore, while she was fighting and crying, he concentrated on discerning the twisted meaning of Hellion’s ranting. If anyone could understand the zealot madman’s rambling, the Marquis seemed to with his quiet and solemn ways.

Joelle tried to quiet her tumbling mind. She tried to think slower and more thoroughly. The Marquis had protected her. “No. Do not think that. Think of what Hellion said,” she muttered. Yet, it was hard not to think of the Marquis and the feelings she felt toward him.

Forcing herself, she thought of the, “cock of God.” It seemed nearly as though Hellion coveted it as a separate entity and that she with her virgin’s blood was to have consecrated it in some vulgar ceremony. What then? Would Hellion want to have sex with the cock of God as his followers watched? Joelle knew that men having sex with men existed, but it all seemed so bizarre. Hellion saying, “The last piece,” kept sticking in her mind. The Marquis had saved her, but it seemed that he was in worse physical danger than she was.

Suddenly the door opened and Joelle tensed, turning her head to look. The room was so dark that she could not make out who it was until he was nearly upon her. It was Hellion and he stopped next to her chair, holding out a small silver wine chalice.

“Drink this if you want to see, Seducteur, again,” Hellion said.

The fact that Hellion knew her thoughts and desires so well frightened Joelle more than reaching out with a trembling hand and drinking the liquid. It was dark red wine with a bitter aftertaste that slid harshly down her throat.

What happened next, Joelle always wondered if it took minutes or hours. Hellion began to talk to her, his voice never stopping with slow methodical deep tones. His fingers caressed the back of her hair, not really touching, but brushing just lightly enough so that she could feel it. At first she fought against his words. They were harsh of meaning to begin with, while he spoke in his melodious deep tones.

“You are lonely. All alone now. No family to embrace you.” Joelle bit her bottom lip. “You must dream of children to bear and cuddle to your breasts. The smiles on your husband’s face.” Joelle thought she should try to argue with him. Tell him he knew nothing, as the words continued on. “There is no one for you to tell your small tales to each day. To greet you in the morning. To touch you or to hear your voice.” But Hellion’s words and his inflection brought small tears to her eyes.

“You must miss your mother terribly. Wouldn’t you love to tell her of your worries of growing old alone, of sitting alone in a dark cold burrow with no one around you? What would you give for the feel of your mother’s arms around you?” Joelle moaned once with tears burning as she tried to speak out against Hellion’s words.

But her mouth seemed made of putty and only mumbled words came out. “N-Not true.”

“Ah, but it is true, sweet, sweet Joelle,” Hellion murmured, and then Joelle felt his fingers massaging both sides of her temple. She wondered how and when she had tilted her head back. “The Marquis is so warm. Those deep brown eyes.”

When had the subject changed, Joelle wondered, thinking of the Marquis? He was so warm and alive. “What would you give for his embrace and his warmth to chase your loneliness away?”

“A-Anything,” Joelle muttered, and she wondered where her thoughts came from to find a voice that she barely felt connected to.

“Look into the jewel, Joelle. Never stop looking.”

When had Hellion moved? Why was the jewel swaying?

“Close your eyes and listen to my voice, sweet Joelle. Nothing but my voice.”

But he was evil, Joelle thought, right before her eyelids fell shut.

“You will listen to my commands above anyone else. Tell me that you understand.”

“Yes,” Joelle whispered.

“You want to touch, Seducteur. To cleanse his body for the ceremony. And, I will let you do that. I want you to do that. Ask me, Joelle. Ask me for permission.”

“Please, may I?”

“You may. And, you want, Seducteur’s, hand on your body washing you, preparing you for the ceremony. You will listen to his voice alone, until you next hear mine. You want to serve him. But you want to serve me more.”

“Yes,” Joelle breathed.

“When you hear this bell ring once, you will do whatever my voice tells you too. When you hear this bell ring twice, your only desire is to serve and touch, Seducteur. When you hear the bell ring three times, you are to awaken and remember what you have done from the last time you heard the bell.

“Yes,” Joelle whispered.

“This time, Joelle, you will awaken when I count to three. When you hear me arrive at three, you will open your eyes and you will be as you were and remember nothing. One, two . . . three.”

Chapter Ten

When Joelle next saw him, she murmured with longing, seeing the beauty of him as nude as she was. The room was warm, draped with soft tapestries and candlelight. Steam rose in tendrils from a large sunken bath, weaving through the sparkles of the candle flames. There were velvet screens placed around the edges of the room and a padded table in the center. The red, gold’s, and blues in the room twirled through her irises, but her gaze was only for him.

They stood facing each other from either side of the room, ten steps apart. He had entered from one door and she had entered from another. She wanted to rush to him, to embrace him, even as she worried about the cloak that the guard had taken and left on the other side of the closed door. The cloak with the key hidden in its folds.

Foolishly, she stood with her hands cupping the dark-red tufted mound between her thighs, while her black-cherry colored hair covered her bare breasts. Somehow, she felt the need to do something important and it urged her, unnamed into trembling frustration. But then, suddenly she remembered. “Your name,” she gasped. “Please!”

“Saxon,” he murmured as he stood oddly with one arm bent behind his back. And then, at the same moment his name finally caressed her hearing, a small bell rang twice from within the room.

And then, the man called Saxon said, “My name is Seducteur.”

Immediately, Joelle ardently ran to him. Knowing only joy and desire with his name a blessing on her lips, and in the back of her mind she barely wondered how the bell could have rung so closely in the room. He caught her embrace against his warm flesh. Neither of them seeming to wonder why there was no hesitation.

“Ardente,” he breathed, scooping her dark red hair back on one side, bracing her spine with his arm caressing the indent there as her mound cuddled over his lax male organ. Her nipples brushed the light sandy hair on his sinewy chest as her arms curled over his shoulders and her head tilted upward to look at him. His eyes lured her into their warm and mysterious mahogany depths.

“Let me wash you, touch you. I never want to stop,” she breathed.

“Nor I you,” his full sensuous lips murmured.

They turned as one toward the steamy sunken bath, rich brown hair curling around deep red hair as they walked side by side to the steps. Joelle could not seem to stop touching Seducteur as they stepped down into the hot water together. Her hands stroked his back, and then lower to his tightly curved buttocks, until they turned to face each other in the water, with it lapping about her waist and his groin. The long ends of their hair flowed in the water beside and behind them as her hands continued their search, caressing his chest, his sides, and his lean belly.

“Your hands are like warm honey on me,” he murmured.

“I never want to stop touching you.” She yearned with uncontrolled force in her soul.

Joelle scooped water up into her palms and began cleansing Seducteur’s handsome and lean muscular body. Some part of her knew that she’d never done this with a man before, yet her craving swept the thoughts away. Seducteur used his hand to lift the hair off her back, scooping it over her shoulder. Then, he cupped water in his palm also and drizzled it down her spine as she cleansed his chest with wet sliding strokes.

Their bodies swayed closer and closer as they moved and washed, until her breasts were lilting across his chest and their sexes were touching and caressing. Her mouth and tongue found his neck and his hand cupped over her buttocks, kneading and stroking the willing curves.

Joelle’s throat ached with moans of pleasure as his cock hardened against her sex beneath the water. It lengthened and nudged between her thighs until she straddled it lightly with her soft flesh. Her lips found his jaw and their mouths moved close to each other, but not touching. Their breath heated the space between their lips as their bodies undulated. No words, just movements, light breathless panting and small moans. Then, Seducteur began pressing her backwards with his solid chest plied to her breasts and his arm across her spine.

“Back, beautiful firefly,” he murmured against her lips, still not kissing, only panting softly.

Joelle’s irises flared for one brief moment of recognition to the endearment that she remembered. But then, she was arched backward over Seducteur’s arm, bowing her spine until her long hair floated into the water up to the back of her head. Their thighs cleaved together with one of her legs bent at the knee over his hip, and the tumescence shaft of Seducteur’s cock burrowed between the lips of her aching sex.

Joelle rubbed her loins against the rigidness as he washed water through her hair. She could feel the shaft of Seducteur’s cock throbbing in the tender cleft of her loins, as her breasts stretched upward with the arch of her body. Small moans trickled from her throat as Seducteur’s hips began to move slowly and the motion coursed the stiffness of his cock through the clinging lips of her sex.

He made a sound of longing as he lifted her back upright with her hair running rivulets down her back. Their lips met then, urgently, as he used his hand lowered to her buttocks. He lifted her body upward against him. His cock cleaved between her thighs came upright, until the broad head was kissing the entrance to her core. A wild needy sound rushed from her throat as their tongues lashed passionately against each other. Seducteur’s chest heaved strongly against her breasts and she knew he was about to enter her aching womb, as a mewling of beckoning bubbled up from inside her.

Suddenly, a bell rang once.

Joelle’s body stiffened. Her mind abruptly went blank with her limbs tensing. The Marquis’ mouth shifted from her mouth as she wondered how it had been there to begin with, while her body seemed to be throbbing like the bass drums in a tormented symphony.

“No fucking. Neither of you will orgasm. Is that clear?” The deep voice seemed to come from a long way off, yet it was all around them.

Joelle found her mouth saying, “Yes.”

Joelle heard the Marquis’ voice answering the same, as the distant voice said, “You will oil each other’s body thoroughly and shave each other’s genitals, then oil each other’s sex thoroughly again.”

“Yes,” Joelle said stepping back from the Marquis to turn toward the steps leading out of the sunken bath and onto the table with oils set beside it.

Before she took her first step though, a bell rang twice.

Saxon’s penis ached as though the skin was stretched too tightly. It beat through the sacs of his testicles up into the meat of his buttocks, but most strongly it thrummed in the shaft, and rolled in throbs around the enlarged head. He sucked his ranting arousal inward as the bell rang twice again and the lovely, soft, iridescent Joelle reached her impassioned hands to his body again.

Eluding, he bent and then he swept her up into his arms to carry her to the table. She still found one side of his chest, then his nipple with one caressing hand, while her other hand stroked his back and through his hair. Saxon set Joelle on the puffy linens covering the top of the table and he urged her and her erotic fingers to lie down, until she lay on her stomach. The view of her naked feminine sumptuousness had his prick vibrating with dominate chords from the base to the tip. Yet, something inside him kept him sane. It kept him from throwing himself on top of her, and then embedding his engorged penis to the hilt. It urged him to the oil. It urged him to saturate his senses with touch instead of the tactile feel of fucking. Of ramming over and over.

He had never wanted a woman so much and it was not just his prick’s command. It was his soul. The sinewy molding of his body was tense with his desire as he reached for one of the small porcelain cups of oil set beside the table.

“Lay still, Ardente,” he murmured as he swept Joelle’s hair aside, to fall like an undulating stream over the side of the table nearly to the floor. She made a disappointed needy sound, but lay quivering to his instruction, as he drizzled the oil down the beautiful slope of her spine.

He had never touched a woman so slowly and sensually before. Never immersed himself so completely into the contours of flesh, nor felt his irises flare over the sight of oil-kissed glistening female curves. It was like working on a supple piece of art, but the masterpiece was warm and trembling with arousal. When his hand cupped the curve of her buttocks and he felt Joelle’s slow undulations, his breath caught. How would he ever survive the guise, he wondered? Because you are a man and you must be stronger, the answer came back to him.

Joelle’s skin shone like wet polished ivory when he finished the back of her thighs, calves, heels, and feet. Danger be-damned, he would have never known this moment, if it was not for the danger. Saxon lifted upright looking down at the oily contours of Joelle’s body. He pressed the wrist of his handless arm nearly into the small of his back, and then he said the fateful words . . .

“Turn over, lovely Ardente.”

Watching Joelle as she turned was a lustful event. Breasts swaying, then bouncing with taut dark-pink nipples. Hips turning, with small toes pointing, and glimpses of a rosy damp cleft. The curls topping Joelle’s pussy glinted in deep red against her white-satin thighs, as the gossamer flesh of her bottom lip pouted slightly.

“I need to touch you,” she whispered with a soulful plea.

“Soon,” Saxon murmured. Soon he would be fighting the tremendous battle even more.

Saxon lifted the cup of oil forward and drizzled oil between Joelle’s breasts, while the black in her eyes deepened to onyx as she bit her bottom lip. He set the cup down, then he followed the dripping oil with his hand. He slowly skimmed the alluring line between the full mounds of her breasts. He could feel her heartbeat as her belly concaved inward with delicate tremors and his palm and fingers slid with a molding curve over her left breast. The prod of her nipple drew across the center of his palm and she gasped a needy moan, while a drop of seed squeezed out of the slit of his penis, with a pang of lust. The tartness of the throbbing made his balls ache more as his breath came more deeply, while his hand painted oil over the curving globes of Joelle’s breasts.

A craving leached in his mouth as he gazed at her jutting and glistening nipple tips, while he lathered her breasts with oil. Each time that he thought he could stand no more carnal torment without positioning his penis for release . . . something stopped him. And it held him on the edge of pounding arousal with his hand the only outlet for the charge of passion reaching a fevered pitch through his body.

Then, he reached Joelle’s pussy as her hips rolled on the table and her thighs spread partially with equal willingness. Small whimpers of hope panted from her throat and his eyelids closed with pure survival in mind. Perhaps if he could not see, then it would lessen his torrential need. Fool, nothing would but completion, and his arousal laughed at him like a sound he’d heard only once . . . the devilish sound of a laughing jackal, as his fingers caressed the silken lips of Joelle’s torrid pussy.

Joelle moaned, half in passion and half in nerve-tingling frustration. The combination made her nearly senseless. She hung on the pinnacle of a great eruption. Yet, while the sparks flared and her loins rose higher and higher, she could not manage to topple over. Seducteur’s fingers petted rhapsody in her loins, stroking and oiling her passion to fevered heights and she undulated like a wanton. Then suddenly it stopped, with her thighs opened with lusty beckoning, but Seducteur’s fingers gone from their torment. Her loins and belly quivered with unrequited need for many throbbing beats that slowly began to ebb without the intimate stroking of Seducteur’s fingers. She wanted to touch herself. She begged herself inwardly to do so, or to beg Seducteur to touch her again to ripen the aches in her loins for climax. Yet, something held her back. Something urged her oiled and glistening nude body upright, to perform duties she had no understanding of...

“Lay down,” Joelle whispered, standing beside Seducteur with his cock rigid and engorged, while his head was bowed.

“I cannot,” he rasped, and the sinew of his back and buttocks rippled once with an erotic shiver.

“Then, I will serve you standing,” she intoned, never wondering where the strange words came from as she reached for a small cup of oil.

She oiled his body like a passionate worshiper, fondling, petting, and feeling intimately every edge, slope, bound up muscle, and lean curve he had. Seducteur remained tense, his sinewy body tight and firm to the touch. She moved his hair aside whenever she needed to, glorying in the heavy damp feel of it. She found that her fingers were magically talented as she stroked and massaged his buttocks, finding so much pleasure there. More pleasure to kneel at his feet and lubricate his legs from top to bottom. She rose and applied oil to his chest as he looked down on her with his breathing deep and the nubs of his nipples taut. She moved to his right arm, circling the mound of his biceps with her oily fingers. She leaned forward, sliding her nipples over his chest, as she did, a moan curved from her throat. But then, when she reached for his left arm, he resisted.

“No, not that one,” he whispered tightly.

Her head lifted with deeper commands inside that she must oil his entire body. But suddenly, Seducteur’s lips covered her lips and the urges of the inner command fled beneath his heated mouth. Then, their mouths instantly moved from tender to wild. Her breasts slid over his chest, pressing deeply, while their turbulent lips burned over each other’s and her slippery fingers found the turgid and heavy spike of his cock.

“Ah hh,” he groaned, with his piping breath billowing into her throat as his hips pumped instantly, and her fingers curled tighter.

Their heads turned with their lips twisting feverishly and he pressed her back into the edge of the table. His fingers slipped over the lips of her sex, impatiently burrowing between the lips to strongly rub her clitoris. She surged against him, mewling passion, while her fingers began pumping his large cock with vigorous motion.

“Mm. Mm. Mm,” she whimpered over his tongue as her buttocks edged upward onto the table with the pressure of his body and cock. Her thighs fell open, while her hand plunging hotly on his cock lifted the oozing head to the entrance to her core.

They groaned and moaned as one. Her fingernails scraped his back and his finger flicked her clitoris with hard strokes five or six times before his hand rushed to her outer thigh grabbing hold and lifting her leg high. She careened at the explosion nearly bursting in her clitoris, while she began to fall back and he came with her, just as his penis started to push and burrow its way inside her.

“Saxon! Saxon!” she panted.

Ring.

Saxon nearly fell to his knees with the ringing of the bell. He staggered back, while Joelle lay panting with an unfocused quality in her dark eyes.

“You will not fuck, my panting sluts! Shave each other’s come-soaked genitals, then put the collars on!”

A band gripped Saxon’s chest as he staggered forward. It was as though his body were a puppet on the strings of a Marionette Master. His thighs and groin were on fire as sweat beaded his nude flesh. Joelle lay whimpering helplessly on the ragged edges of passion, while her curving body trembled. Saxon knew his touch alone would bring her to the agonizing heights of renewed passion-pain again.

“Show her your handless arm, Seducteur. And, Ardente, my sopping wet, little slut, you will kiss and lick the stump as though making love to Seducteur’s mouth!”

Saxon bowed beneath the agony, unsure he could overcome it. This was his mind’s point beyond too far and tremors lashed his body with the vicious war inside him.

“Do it!” the voice commanded.

And, just before he would break, Joelle grasped his arm, tugging his handless wrist from behind him. Her lips caressed, her tongue soothed, and her mouth tasted his agony. He was shamed and it was nearly his complete undoing.

Then, the bell rang twice again...

Soft, sweet, and loving Joelle urged him onto his back. Her strength awed him as she carefully shaved his pubic hair, gently lifting his now limp penis, when she needed. Then, when she started to shave his balls, he had to raise his knees in a submissive and uncommon fashion. And . . . he knew Hellion watched him, although he could not see him. He felt it. Joelle raised his balls gently as his thighs gaped with his knees bent upward, and his chest laboring for breath. The feel of the razor on tender places beat deep tremors in his rigid prick. Then, she was through and urging his legs down as she oiled the tight swelling of his shaved balls and the come-soaked shaft of his penis. He ground his teeth, stiffening, but the stimulation of her soft hands left quickly with sympathy, perhaps.

Then, Joelle came to him with a wide black leather collar. It buckled behind his neck and enclosed his throat with captive feelings. There was a gold circle attached to the front, which he knew could be used to hook a leash to. They were nearly made into the sexual treats they had been kidnapped for. He had only to shave Joelle and attach her collar. But the shaving would be difficult, nearly impossible with one hand. Yet, Joelle sensed this and she lifted his handless arm upward as she laid down, then bringing the end to her mouth to kiss. He had no courage left to stop her and he let himself believe, for a moment, that she did it freely.

“I will help you,” she murmured with her lips against the rounded surface of the cleaved flesh.

Surprise inched down his spine. Could she mean this? And, foolish hope flared in his chest, yet it did serve to bolster him, then she bent her knees sideways, letting them drop open widely, and she reached down, flattening out the curves of her pussy for shaving. Saxon was humbled beyond measure, even as his penis throbbed. And then he vowed many things savagely, to Joelle and to himself. He vowed he would seek vengeance! Vengeance here, and on all that served to enslave and humiliate them, and he would get them both out of this alive.

So, he shaved his woman, and she was his. She trembled with it. She exuded juices of arousal with it. She bared and exposed her inner heart to him and he carefully shaved the tenderly swollen flesh of her pussy lips and the mound on top.

His penis felt the power of it, throbbing with it again as his razor strokes revealed the nude edges of ruby-pink. He could see Joelle’s clit leave its hood and jut upwards. His mouth ached to suckle it as she lay trembling and trusting, holding her pussy open to him. And then, it was done. He oiled her soft throbbing sex once more, as she undulated against the stroking of his fingers, and he tried valiantly not to linger, before he finally reached for the collar.

He had always known that difficult times were better taken in increments. Smaller slices of strife were easier to manage than the whole at once. In numerous dangerous situations it had always been odd to him which ones in the end caused him more discomfort.

Suddenly, he found that this perilous, yet erotically heightened situation was no different. Of all the increments he and Joelle had been through so far, putting the collar around her neck caused him the most adversity. It seemed to him to seal her fate and that he should be the one to do it tainted his soul. It seemed to make him in alliance with the cult. And he knew Hellion knew that. And he knew Hellion wanted him to feel that.

The bell rang three times...

Chapter Eleven

It was as if she’d been slapped in the face. Joelle remembered everything. Every last detail. It was the first moment Joelle realized that her mind had been tricked. Her mind had been altered in some way. It had to have been. She fought the urge to try and cover her nudity with her hands as her stricken gaze looked up into Saxon’s troubled frown and the fire-daggers piercing his cherry-wood colored eyes.

Damn Hellion to hell! Damn them all to vilest purgatory, her mind swore, while her body throbbed with unrequited passion. Then, Hellion’s laughter rolled forth with pleasure and lewdness combined. Joelle lost her attempts to stay strong and still defiant as she leaped upright to embrace Saxon, and stand cowering against him, while Hellion’s malicious laughter circled around them.

“You are mine, my salacious sluts. You will crawl for me!”

Joelle realized then, that Hellion stood behind one of the ornate screens placed around the room. She was not sure which one, but he had watched them throughout the preparations he’d orchestrated. The horror of the situation, what had been done, what was still to come, tumbled through her emotions, leaving her with the forceful feeling of sobbing. But she held Saxon instead, taking strength from his nearness. He was the only real thing in the nightmare of events. She had to be brave.

A door opened abruptly to their left and Joelle pressed the front of her nude body into Saxon’s side as Incubus entered the chamber. Incubus was dressed in black robes like a priest only without a collar and with a long curling black-haired wig to match; he carried something in his right hand.

“Ah, I see our human offerings are prepared,” Incubus said. “These sluts are going to be spectacular to watch. The assembled worshipers will be enthralled.”

Incubus strode toward Hellion, but Joelle saw Incubus’s sharp gaze lingered on her and Saxon. Her oiled nudity flamed with embarrassment even as part of her mind wished that her body could undulate against Saxon to culminate the pangs of her arousal. Incubus’s gaze slid over her nude buttocks and she could not stop them from quivering at the exposure.

Hellion stepped from behind the screen that had a direct view and was past the foot of the table. The implications of what Hellion had viewed shuddered through Joelle as she whispered with her mouth against Saxon’s shoulder and her gaze fixed on the two lethal opponents in the room.

“What will we do?” she breathed. She desperately needed a direction, an answer, a plan . . . anything to follow or she felt she might crumble against the weight of where everything was leading.

Incubus handed Hellion some type of red ball, saying, “Goats blood in thin intestine. Just break it against the slut’s inner thighs and a virgin is born again.”

“Survive,” Saxon murmured, and Joelle felt his handless wrist caress the side of her bare waist. “Together,” he added lowly.

“Silence!” Hellion ordered, turning partially toward them with the red ball in his hand.

Joelle’s hands clutched with the need for a weapon to defend herself as she looked, but could not hold the rapacious look in Hellion’s pink eyes.

“And always remember, firefly,” Saxon continued to murmur softly against her ear. “I would never willingly harm you.”

“Guards!” Hellion shouted, and another door to the room sprang open. The two naked black guards marched inside. “Take her behind the altar. I want her wild and fighting, so have your way with her. But do not fuck her!”

Joelle cried out, fighting the urge not to run. There was nowhere to go, but she did cry out to Saxon as the two guards forced her between them, and then from the room. “I believe you! I will always believe you!”

Saxon staggered, then fell to his knees beneath the rage to do something. He had never felt less of a man than in that moment. He had never felt more impotent. Was a courageous man one who fought against the odds he knew at the time, ones that he could not beat? Or was a courageous man, a man that waited and calculated, trying to stay alert for the opening?

“Broken so quickly?” Incubus murmured, and Saxon could hear Incubus coming nearer to where he knelt with his head bowed and tears stinging his eyelids.

“He is all things sexual. Not a fighter, but he is similar to the great Bacchus like the one he will touch. He is a deeply sexual creature. I’ve never met a man with so much allure,” Hellion spoke.

“You are pleased then,” Incubus stated, not a question. “And this cock of our young stud-stallion here, nearly convinces me to fuck men instead of exclusively women.”

Saxon felt Hellion’s hand, with his overlong fingernails, stroking the top of his bowed head and Saxon wondered at the silent movements Hellion made.

“Ah, Incubus, perhaps you will consider it after I am through. To touch the way to the Gods once. To saturate your cock inside the instrument of that ascension will only happen once!”

“Yes,” Incubus paused. “I know that you believe he is your last piece, Hellion, yet this has become very lucrative for us and Gods need opulence. It is their right, I should think.”

“What God must think of such things?” Hellion bellowed suddenly in outrage.

“All right, all right,” Incubus back-tracked quickly. “Just keep the concept in mind. You know that I live to serve you, Lord Hellion,” Incubus said, finishing on an oily note.

“As well you should, and more so when I ascend on midnight of All Souls Day.”

“Of course, of course,” Incubus replied, and then he cleared his throat. “I know you do not want to hear of finances, however, we have fifty-thousand francs each from ten of the worshipers to spew their come on the sacrifices at the close of the ceremony. Baco will make certain they are the ones that are to be up that close, so you need not worry. But I did want to mention that one Count has gone so high as to offer one-hundred-thousand francs to fuck the mouth of the woman or the ass of the man afterwards.”

“No!” Hellion charged. “He can see them as I display them at different events afterward. He can pay to decide on which sexual position of fucking he would like to see them perform in, but no one will fuck the sacredness of them, but you or I, who are the high priests!”

“Our blackmail attempts become thin lately,” Incubus muttered. “No juicy morsels about which to extort money from. The finances are stretched. We need this larger sum we have been building toward, for the most grandiose of all ceremonies, to yield more.”

“Money means nothing to me,” Hellion snapped. “You have my voice, the voice that will be a God!”

“Yes, yes,” Incubus said, sounding hasty. “But just think of how much you deserve the riches of these mere humans who wish to bask in your presence . . . that is all I ask.”

Knowledge was power, Saxon thought, and he hoped he could stay alive long enough to use it. The fact that Incubus and Hellion had spoken so freely in front of him did not bode well for staying alive being anywhere near the conclusion of their intentions for him. But he’d known that for some time. He was biding his time as well, looking for an opening, any opening before it was too late. Too late for what though, he wondered? Why, for death, he admonished himself. The rest of the humiliations he would deal with, somehow within himself. The possibility of a man . . . of men raping him, of sexual rites with him on display. Having sex with Joelle on an altar, in front of worshipers. His mind used worshipers with a vile form of inflection. Nevertheless, these seemed to be his fate. The question seemed to be what could a man endure. Saxon looked down at his handless wrist. A man could endure quite a bit, he concluded. Then, he thought of Joelle, Joelle of light and fire. She would need him and they would need each other. A man could endure anything, this side of death, for that.

“Leave us, Incubus,” Hellion ordered. “I need to prepare him for the ceremony.”

“As you wish,” Incubus said, and Saxon heard Incubus leaving the room, but before the door swished shut, Incubus said, “The ceremonial chamber will be filling with the faithful, they will be ready just before midnight as you wished.”

Saxon heard the door thud closed as he breathed deeply. What he would not give for a brace of pistols at that moment. Alone with Hellion and not drugged. But a man without two hands could not even choke a man sufficiently. And, Saxon knew there were other guards outside the doors. A swift upper cut? Perhaps, he could knock Hellion out on the first blow. He wanted to try so badly...

The bell rang once.

“Your cock...” Hellion hissed reverently as he dropped to his knees in a billowing of his white robes. Saxon refused to look at him, his right hand lying on top of his thigh clenching tightly. Hellion continued, “Will become a part of the ultimate being. You will live forever, Seducteur. And your hair will be a tribute to the Gods. To find both in one man is a sign.” Hellion’s hand stroked the hair at the side of Saxon’s head. “Normally handmaidens prepare a sacrifices cock for worship. Beautiful young girls of Bacchus. But not this time will I allow anyone to touch you.”

“You stroke your cock, Seducteur,” Hellion commanded, and Saxon let his breath out slowly. “Engorge it to fullness, so that you will be able to anoint it, and then I will anoint you.”

Saxon’s fingers twitched as his hand moved as though forced on tugging strings to his limp penis.

“Ardente is your right, Seducteur. She is yours to take, and when you see her next your only desire will be to fuck her.” Saxon’s fingers lurched as he stroked his penis. “You will think of nothing else but spilling your seed deep inside her womb. You are the power! She must submit to you!” Hellion’s hand stroked Saxon’s hair. “You feel it now growing inside you,” Hellion’s voice charged. “You feel your maleness heating and thinking of hot cunt, wet pussy.”

Saxon groaned, feeling his penis fill and stiffen as his skin flashed hotly with . . .

“Your cock demands Ardente’s pussy. It hungers for it. You will not be able to breathe once you see it, until your cock is deep inside Ardente’s cunt . . . raping it! You will be wild with it!”

Chapter Twelve

Joelle saw the chamber and the altar, and she struggled against the guards holding her by her upper arms between them. She tried to back up, to turn, to run, or fight against being forced into the chamber and behind the altar. The room was large, as big as a ballroom, hundreds could fit inside it. She tried to understand the altar, the stage it set, high up on the backdrop of Gothic arches. Then, she realized that it was a very old church and what she’d thought was a platform stage was actually a tomb inside an ancient medieval church. From what she knew about the legends of the standing stones, the Satyrs depicted on the tomb were from a time before the druids. Although Satyrs were usually seen as large-eared, horned, cloven hoofed, and partially human miniatures of man cavorting gaily. These were cavorting sexually with unclothed maidens. As she watched, other attendants were draping what appeared to be cathedral windows in black mantles and she wondered what lewd scenes might be depicted on those. The edges of the room nearest the altar were lined with huge torches leaving the latter part of the room in semi-darkness.

The altar was stone, and it appeared oiled, shining in the torch light. The top was flat with rounded edges. But more ominous was the length of chain with manacles attached on the ends. These were set in the four corners. The two forbidding guards remained mute but forceful as they wrestled her to a place behind the altar. She wished they would say something so she could scream at them, instead of the mewls of terror issuing from her throat. Her courage was completely daunted and tenfold without Saxon’s presence. The words, “I want her wild,” and, “Have your way with her,” kept pounding through her mind as her naked body thrashed powerlessly trapped between the two hulking guards.

There was some small portion of her mind scratching for logic, and she thought that maybe if she remained wild enough, they would not touch her. She had finally fallen into the abyss with the immensity of what she knew was going to happen and now she knew the only way she could survive it was with Saxon and no one else.

The guards stopped. The area was on the left side behind the stone platform and altar. One could see out into the arena, without being seen. Joelle saw phantomlike outlines of hooded and robed people entering the arena and beginning to gather around the altar. Just then, a wide scraping hand began groping the slick flesh of her bare buttocks, while another broad and forceful hand pawed her right breast. She screamed, tugging frantically on the two unyielding hands holding her upper arms. She intended to keep screaming at the top of her lungs, but the hand pawing her breast quickly lifted to clamp over her mouth. Only one hand free, she thought senselessly. Nevertheless, the two beefy guards turned her between them, until one was smashed into her front and the other into her back.

Oh God. She whimpered, uncontrollably. She could feel their large rigid cocks sickeningly branding her skin, in the front and in the back. She writhed wildly between them trying to escape, but it only rubbed her body more indecently against their hot and invasive flesh. Her screams were muted beneath one guard’s palm as they both used whatever free hands they had to crudely grope the parts of her body they could reach. Her mind wrenched from cocks like stiff sausages grinding her shaved mound in the front and the cleft of her buttocks in the rear, to one hand roughly milking her breast, while coarse fingers tried to touch the lips of her sex. She felt her eyes roll back in her head as the heavier panting of the guards filled her ears. She was caught sliding and rolling against their hot and aroused bodies as they pinched her nipples and prodded lewd fingers through the cringing lips of her sex.

“Oh, how deliciously smutty.” A woman’s accented voice slithered through the thundering in Joelle’s ears.

“Dame Baset,” one of the guards grunted.

There was a smacking sound as Dame Baset spanked one of the attendant’s hard buttocks. “Keep at it, slave! Baco and Cernno are bringing the stallion in now for this slutty mare.”

***

Saxon walked naked with a hard prick between his thighs, and with Baco and Cernno holding his upper arms on either side. The Germans both wore black hooded robes, while Hellion, in flowing white, was walking in front of them, carrying a long silver chain that was hooked to the collar around Saxon’s neck.

Saxon’s chest heaved and he stumbled on his bare feet as Cernno’s hand lewdly groped his ass. Stubby fingers feeling deep into the cleft, while Baco kept shooting warning glances at Cernno. Saxon tried not to gag. He tried to keep moving forward. Toward Joelle. He had to get to Joelle. He had to see her. He latched his mind onto those thoughts and those thoughts only, while Cernno furtively played humiliating bugger with his oil-slicked ass.

He had to imagine how he appeared nude. Thick wavy brown hair, falling nearly to his waist. His tan skin oiled, his brown-shaded eyes dead, and a wide black leather collar around his lean muscular neck. His pubic hair shaved with his prick swaying heavily and rigid between his thighs in a bluish and pink-tinged red. Men purported they were never singularly embarrassed by their nudity. God, he wished that was the case. It crawled at him, snaking with reluctance over his naked flesh. It angered him also. It was a seething cauldron in his belly, and when he finally, after what seemed like years of disgusting supplicant waiting, saw his chance, he grasped it with everything he had left inside him, after playing the ultimate acting of his ever before played chameleon parts.

It was simply a candle. A candle as wide as his hand perched on a three-foot freestanding iron candle holder, which was set in front of flowing black taffeta that was covering a wall. It was in an area behind and to the side of the main chamber where he assumed, “the event,” was about to take place. They had ascended a small flight of stairs and turned into a narrow short corridor, then into a smaller area.

Just as they left the entrance from the corridor into the small area, Saxon staggered to the left toward the candle. “Ah, do it harder, Cernno, it makes my cock throb,” Saxon mumbled.

He judged he had enough length on the leash to reach the candle without Hellion, whose back was turned to them, being aware. Cernno’s hand on his upper arm let go with a spasm as Cernno’s other hand groped his ass more lushly, nearly prodding a blunt finger into the entrance of his asshole. Saxon moaned as though he were receiving pleasure as he leaned more into Cernno like he might be trying to embrace him. The motion dragged Baco along on the other side and propelled Cernno back toward the standing candle holder and the burning fat candle.

But he was on the wrong side and he had to use his handless wrist to swipe at the candle holder. Nevertheless, Cernno’s back tapping the holder aided his swipe. The candle and flame fell backwards toward the material. Saxon had to imagine the material had been hanging for ages, dry and full of cobwebs. Instantly, the thin spider fortresses began to flame, the first willing fodder for the beginning blaze of the material.

“Stop dallying,” Hellion ordered. His exclamation came when the leash stopped him, instead of following easily behind his turned back.

Saxon was jostled between Cernno and Baco, who were quick to gather him upright between them, before Hellion was able to turn fully around and see. The two Germans did not notice the fire starting behind them right away, but Hellion would as soon as his gaze turned. It could not matter, Saxon thought, with satisfaction finally lifting his chest. He could not imagine where they could discover water quickly enough to put the flames out. He kept his gaze riveted to where Hellion’s would be. He wanted to see Hellion, when Hellion understood the portent of the fire.

Hellion’s gaze swept past him, then returned with a jerking motion, to his dark-eyed stare. Something like the flash of a question, then perhaps dawning understanding worked over Hellion’s skeletal white face. Hellion seemed to just barely grasp what it was that he wanted him to grasp in that moment. The possibility that Saxon was not hypnotized after all.

Abruptly, Hellion’s gaze jerked upward, then back and forth on either side of where Saxon and the two Germans stood. “Imbeciles! Fire! Fire, you idiots! Behind you!”

Cernno and Baco released Saxon with a rush of exclamations as they turned. “The consecrating water, you fools! Get the urn quickly!” Hellion shouted.

Saxon did not really comprehend the meaning of Hellion’s shouted words, because he had a more urgent demand driving him as he balled his fingers into a fist. He staggered toward Hellion, whose white robes billowed in agitation. At first Hellion seemed unaware of his approach as Saxon drew his arm and fist backward. Nevertheless, at the exact moment Saxon swung his fist forward, Hellion’s face turned toward him and his fist connected with Hellion’s jaw with an audible cracking sound. Saxon felt the pain explode into his hand as Hellion’s pink eyes bulged, and then Hellion staggered and began to go down.

Saxon followed, crouching with his lips hissing and his arm swinging back for another strike. But then, out of the blue, it seemed to Saxon’s centered mind, a strong hand caught his swinging arm. And then, more forceful hands than he could overpower, tugged him backwards.

It was both of the black attendants, Saxon realized, as they wrestled him, bowed forward to his knees. Their strong hands crushed the back of his neck and shoulders, barely allowing him to look upward. Nonetheless, he could see Joelle also forced to her knees beyond where Hellion was rising to his feet.

“Da fire is out!” Baco’s exclaimed. “Da water in the urn was enough. Good thing it was there!”

“Damnation,” Saxon cursed with a suppressed bellow. His body jerked hopelessly against the hands holding him down.

“What is it? What has happened?” Incubus exclaimed, with his voice suddenly entering the fray.

“Nearly a fire, but only some smoke to put up with,” Dame Baset said. “The stallion appears more untamed than we envisioned,” she added.

“I thought he was well controlled. Totally hypnotized,” Incubus started to say.

“Quiet!” Hellion’s voice snapped, and then Saxon felt Hellion’s robes slap against him, before Hellion grasped his jaw roughly, tugging his chin upward and holding it at a painful angle, straining his neck. Hellion’s pink eyes and ashen face twisted with murderous rage as he stared into his irises.

“You think you fooled me?” Hellion spat.

“Yes!” Saxon defiantly twisted his jaw beneath the crushing press of Hellion’s fingers.

The rumbled sound Hellion made was that of a demon’s outrage.

“We cannot have this now, it is nearly midnight,” Incubus interjected.

Hellion swept his body around still holding Saxon in his claw-like grip. “Bring the mare here and the Satyr knife.” Hellion’s voice resounded, carrying more of its commanding bass tones than moments before.

Chapter Thirteen

Joelle had never been more proud of another person before as she was of Saxon. It was as though something she’d known was there sprang to life before her eyes. And the wretched terror and revulsion that had been jerking through her body began to recede. Saxon’s courage alone, simply to try, helped to sustain her. Nevertheless, she barely had time to realize it, or what Saxon had tried to do. Or the fact that all this time Saxon truly had the hidden inner strength to thwart Hellion’s mind-bending voice, before she was dragged forward on her knees before Hellion and beside Saxon.

She saw the flash of a long curved knife, but more, she felt it as her head was tugged backward, arching her throat to the blade. Her naked breasts heaved as she saw the deathly twist Hellion’s hand held on Saxon’s jaw.

“Marquis, if you do not fuck her like a beast in heat, if you do not follow my exact commands, I will skin her alive!” Hellion hissed.

The knife slid on her flesh and she felt the bite of the blade, as an uncontrolled whimper escaped her throat.

“I will!” Saxon heaved through the clamp of Hellion’s fingers. “I will!”

The blade left Joelle’s throat, and then the hands tugging her hair roughly pushed her head forward as Hellion swept away, saying, “Get the slut to suck him. I need him hard shortly.”

The next thing Joelle heard as she tried to look up at Saxon was Hellion thundering with his resonate tenor voice. “The Order of the Satyr will convene fellow hedonistic worshipers!”

“Suck him or I will slice his balls,” a harsh voice rasped above and behind Joelle, just as he shoved her over onto her hands and knees between Saxon’s thighs.

Joelle tried to tell herself that a lesser woman would crumble, as she heard Saxon above her, make a strangled and desperate sound in his chest. “Gladly, I w-will,” Joelle managed to say, wondering where the brave words came from. To save yourself and Saxon of course, her mind exclaimed. To save your souls together.

Joelle grasped Saxon’s flaccid cock with courage and intention. The natural heat of it flushed against her palms as the exposure of her nude buttocks bent over from behind crawled up her spine. She did not really have a clear idea of what to do, but Saxon’s cock was already beginning to fill her palms, since she first touched it.

“My own hands gliding over your soft breasts,” Saxon whispered in an intense seesaw voice above her. “The feel of your lips moving heat against mine. Your tongue sliding against my tongue.”

Joelle realized with each intensely whispered word that Saxon spoke, his cock got harder. He was doing it to arouse himself! He was concentrating to make his cock rigid so that she would not have to...

Joelle opened her mouth, and then she lapped her tongue outward toward the bulging head. When, her tongue touched the searing flesh, Saxon hissed lowly, ending in a groan. His cock twitched in the circle of her fingers, stretching them wider.

“That’s it, slut, suck it. Suck it!”

A hand tangled into her hair, pushing the back of her head downward. There was no other choice; the head of Saxon’s cock forced her lips open. A moment of supreme choice flashed in her mind. It was only seconds to react. Horror, or compassion, disgusted refusal or open-minded acceptance. Damn them all to hell, Joelle thought, and she took what she could of the hot and expanding male meat thrusting her mouth widely open.

She sucked.

Joelle curled the sides of her tongue and she drew the bulky head to her palate and she suctioned deeply. The taste . . . the essence of Saxon that sprang into her mouth was hot, musky, and male. Out of nowhere her own body responded with a moan churning from her belly. Her breasts strained suddenly with the nipple tips feeling like little sparks snapping on the ends, while her loins flushed with an ache echoing in her vagina that connected to her clitoris with erratic throbs.

The hand tearing into her hair was harshly pulling and pushing, making her mouth suction up and down the first quarter of Saxon’s hot-fleshed cock. That was as much as she could seem to fit into her mouth. Nevertheless, the hand pumping her head seemed to think she ought to take more and on each downward plunge, the head of Saxon’s cock battered the back of her throat. Grazing her lips roughly.

“I am hard now,” Saxon hissed, above her as though he could barely speak.

“But we like watching this cunt suck on your fat dong.” The voice came from a distance behind them making Joelle realize how many watched as she tried not to gag, while Saxon’s cock became slick with her saliva. Her breasts bounced and her bare buttocks gyrated as her body lurched up and down. Her mouth being forced to mate with Saxon’s cock grew rosy with friction, while her lips grew puffy. But still her sex ached harder, while tears burned her eyelids and the fast, wet sucking sounds of her mouth filled her ears.

“I’ll come!” Saxon expelled, as though it were thrown from his chest.

“Stop then,” Dame Baset’s voice ordered. “Cernno! Stop!”

“Fuck! Cernno! Halt!”

Joelle heard grappling above her, then behind her, and suddenly she was free. But the head of Saxon’s pulsating cock was still in her mouth. Choices. There were always choices. Then, she gently swirled her tongue over the knobbed head in her mouth, tasting male seed on the edges of her tongue as she turned her gaze up to Saxon. His eyes were like dark chocolate laced with red embers. His face was harshly lean, with his hair framing his face in waves.

“Joelle,” he expelled on a sharp edge.

Her answer came in another swirl of her tongue, this time over the heated slit of his cock. Then suddenly sounds seemed to rush into her hearing.

“Bring the virgin cunt now. It’s time!”

Joelle gasped as more hands grabbed her and the head of Saxon’s cock popped out of her mouth. The hands were everywhere, tugging, lifting, and jerking. Four men, Baco, Cernno, and the two attendants lifted and turned her nude body onto her back as they held her high over their heads. Joelle could not help the panic that made her struggle as her long red hair swung free and they carried her like a flat cross, out into the altar area.

She could hear the murmurs of excitement, making her harshly aware that a large number of people filled the room. She could feel the hundreds of eyes on her gleaming nudity as the men carrying her, began to turn her slowly in a circle. They held her legs open so that her sex was gaping as she struggled uselessly to try and close her legs. The only movement she could manage was an up and down thrust of her hips as she whimpered and her bare breasts bounced. She knew that was what they wanted. An unwilling virgin sacrifice, but she could not stop or catch hold of the panic in her mind.

“I offer a virgin mare to our great God Bacchus and his symbol, the flowing-haired Satyr!” Hellion shouted with his voice a symphony of bass ecstasy.

Joelle heard the chanting of hundreds of voices. “Ohm, Bacchus! Ohm, Bacchus.”

Then, the men holding her began to lower her onto the altar. She struggled, panting when the cold stone touched her naked flesh. She twisted and writhed, trying not to allow each man to manacle her wrists, spread above her head. Then, her ankles were tugged wide and manacled also. There was some length on the chains to the manacles around her ankles and she could bring her feet back together a foot apart.

She wanted to scream, but her throat was too tight as Hellion drew near with a gilded bowl in his hands. Once she saw the demonic thinness of Hellion’s absent face with its glowing pink eyes, she shuddered to a halt in her struggling. Here was a face to defy. A single entity in the myriad assaulting her. And she knew that Hellion wanted her struggles. She knew that all in the room fed on her terror and her shame.

“You slut,” Hellion hissed beneath his breath, with his face twisting with his displeasure at her stillness. Then, his free hand not holding the bowl reached into a hidden pocket in his stark white robes. Joelle filled her lungs. Her mind had abruptly cleared enough to react, and she realized the perfect revenge.

“I am not a virg . . . !” she began to scream shrilly. But the tone of a bell ringing once, brought her mouth to a gaping halt.

“Not a virgin of God, but a virgin of Bacchus!” Lord Hellion’s shouted, falsely finishing her statement. Then, he turned his face to her, and he hissed lowly, “Every touch I place on your body will feel as though I am burning you with hot flames!”

Saxon fought against two new attendants now holding him, as Joelle’s cries filled the air. He could see her from where they held him. He could see her naked and supple body writhing and undulating against the chains holding her. Her ivory flesh gleamed like oiled alabaster, while her bare feminine pussy called rapaciously to any male within sight.

Saxon wondered what in God’s name Hellion was doing to her. It looked as though Hellion was painting her skin with his fingers dipped in blood from the bowl he carried. First, Hellion painted circles around Joelle’s breasts, then he dabbed her nipple tips. Each touch of Hellion’s finger caused Joelle to thrash and cry out.

Saxon’s chest heaved and he barely noticed Dame Baset’s hand on his penis, slithering up and down his shaft, pumping it to keep it hard. Hellion’s fingers dabbled in the blood and he intoned senseless words bastardizing all forms of religions. Then, Hellion painted a line of blood from Joelle’s cleavage to the top of her shaved slit. Joelle’s knees bent as she tried to get away, but the chains stopped her.

Saxon’s gaze swept from her torture to the crowd of worshipers watching and chanting. How could they watch this, his mind questioned with misbegotten decency? But he saw the worshipers in front had thrown open their robes and they were masturbating their pale cocks and hairy cunts. Somehow, seeing women shocked Saxon further as he thought what an innocent fool he was.

Joelle’s screams became shriller and he turned his gaze to see Hellion smearing her naked pussy with blood. Joelle’s feet kicked partially up in the air as she writhed, and Dame Baset’s hand on his prick stroke faster and harder.

Hellion finished Joelle’s pussy and he turned to the worshipers shouting. “And now! The Bacchus’ Satyr stallion will fuck the virgin to glory!”

“You will prance!” Baco snarled harshly into Saxon’s ear. “Or da little mare cunt out there will get da knife in her virgin heart.”

Saxon pranced, with his cock stiff and hard while it swayed like a heavy weight between his thighs.

Joelle panted with tears clogging her throat and burning in pools in her eyes. She heard a crowd of people raising a frenzied sound as her body seemed to shake uncontrollably. She could not see through her tears what was happening, but she realized somewhere out there, very lowly beneath the roar of the crowd, she heard music. Someone humming music over and over. A tune she knew. It was a Gypsy song her grandmother sang. Joelle turned her head on the altar, blinking hard to try to shed her tears and see. Then, she did. She saw Yojo swaying from side to side, humming the tune. “Sir Yojo,” she whispered, and his small face lit up with a crooked smile.

Joelle hiccupped over a small whimper, but the music filled her, rolling over and over her. But then, she felt fingers touch her ankles and they burned, making her scream, yet beneath it all she heard the call of the Gypsy’s music flowing in her blood.

“Rape her! Rape her!”

“No waiting! Just a sharp thrust!”

“Fuck her like an animal!”

“I’ll stab her if you don’t!”

Voices shouted chants around Saxon as he pranced toward Joelle and as they grasped her ankles, she screamed. It nearly stopped him, but the voices forced him, promising her death if he did not. His blood pumped and his penis heaved. He was ashamed at how demanding and hard it was. Hands lifted Joelle’s struggling ankles up to his shoulders. Other hands reaching from behind him grasped Joelle’s ass, pulling her toward him, while stretching her arms to the end of the chains holding her wrists above her. Her hips pitched, trying to get away, as the head of his penis targeted her female core. He knew she had to be dry with fear.

He roared in pain with moisture flinging from his eyelashes as his hair whipped wildly about him. Then, he plunged forward, crying out Joelle’s name with regret. The fake virgin’s blood was surreptitiously broken, stirring the crowds of perverted malcontents to cheer wildly with Hellion’s voice ringing forth as if in ecstasy. Saxon groaned Joelle’s name as his body shuddered uncontrollably and she writhed on his cock, bucking and crying with no place to escape.

“You are not allowed to climax!” Hellion’s orders hissed into Joelle’s ear. “Fuck him now! Fuck him now as though you have to fuck him to breathe!”

Saxon wanted to scream as he braced himself on his hand over Joelle, with his hair falling like a wet cloak over her breasts. The thought that Joelle could even begin to climax in this situation was ludicrous, riddled with horror!

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!” she cried, and his hips pumped. Hands behind him shoved his buttocks, making his thrusts more powerful. The drive of them was jolting Joelle’s buttocks with the sound of her buttocks smacking against his belly, while her breasts pitched beneath him. He tried to hold it back. He tried so hard not to be affected, but the drag and pull on his engorged penis would not be denied. His gaze locked with Joelle’s and her irises begged him for more as her reddened and bruised lips panted, “Fuck me, fuck me...”

He thrust wildly, transcending into another plane of existence, where only sensation lived. Rapture tightened his balls, bliss fired up his shaft. He never realized that hands had manacled his ankles to the altar’s base or that the leash on his neck had also been secured. Shame and lust churned like a volcano inside him as his cock plunged repeatedly into Joelle’s sucking pussy.

The bell ran three times.

Just as his seed churned up the shaft of his penis, Saxon saw Joelle’s face go blank, then contort to normal. She cried his name as his seed exploded inside her and he nearly fell forward with the force. But he was wrong! His passion-climaxing mind was mistaken. He was not falling forward to land on his elbows over Joelle’s breasts, because of the force of his ejaculation. It was because forceful hands on his shoulders had shoved him there, as his penis continued to draw and throw seed.

“Now the consecration!” Hellion shouted.

And . . . then, Saxon felt Hellion’s naked body bracing over his sweat-soaked back. Saxon felt Hellion’s fingers digging in the crevice of his ass. Then, a forceful prod that buckled Saxon’s knees as he fell supplicated on top of Joelle with his cock still embedded inside her. Pressure expanded in the opening of his anus and it was then, then that he realized...

“I love you! I love you,” Joelle whispered frantically, with her lips working on his chin. “Do you hear me, Saxon? I love you!”

Saxon groaned harshly as Hellion’s thin cock drove into his anus.

“Look at me! Look at me,” Joelle cried.

Saxon’s face twisted and his eyes bulged as Hellion began to fuck his ass. He tried to keep his eyes on Joelle as his breath gasped and his body pitched back and forth with Hellion’s fucking motions. The pain and invasion were like a disease, scouring through his body, as he jerked against Joelle’s breasts, and in between the cradle of her thighs, with each thrusting plunge of Hellion’s cock raping his ass. He had no conception of what was going on around him, until he realized that he could feel come spewing on them. The worshipers were standing around him and Joelle in orgasmic frenzies, releasing their seed on them.

But his entire existence centered on one ugly feeling as he writhed against Hellion’s seed filling his ass.

Chapter Fourteen

Joelle moaned. Saxon lay nearly unconscious on top of her. The worshipers were engaged in fanatic orgies around the altar and through the large chamber room. Hellion had pulled off Saxon after raping him and she could hear Hellion’s voice giving orders to Yojo.

“Troll, I want no one to fuck the sacrifices in their frenzy. Take them, clean them, and put them back in the cell. Use the Bacchus black slaves. And . . . Troll, tie their arms behind them so they are unable to fuck each other again like the last debacle. I will have them again at the morning ascension feast.”

Joelle realized sometime later she must have lost consciousness or she was hiding in a dark corner of her mind. Because, the next thing she became aware of was hot water caressing her body. The hands on her were surprisingly gentle and she knew they were not Saxon’s. They were too large, but it seemed they treated her with some type of reverence now. Perhaps, because of the ceremony, she thought, but her mind quickly skittered away from that as the slow-moving hands washed her hair.

She did not want to look, so she pretended to herself that she was unaware. However, in the abyss of nothingness that she sought, a melody filtered through. It was the Gypsy’s song and her eyes opened to see who was singing it. She saw one guard in the opposite corner washing Saxon, and then her gaze turned to the hummed melody...

Her hand lifted and reached out with a life of its own. “Sir Yojo,” she pleaded with tears striking her eyes. She could not comprehend why the sight of him comforted her . . . it just did. She watched him smile and totter forward, coming down on one knee to take her hand. He bent forward, then kissing her fingers, and Joelle wondered if in Yojo’s mind she was now closer to the Gods.

“Pretty lady,” he hummed.

Joelle would always realize, thereafter, that a human’s sense of survival was innate. “My cloak, just there in the other room. I so want my cloak, darling Sir Yojo.” She was battered, bruised of body and soul, yet something inside her survived despite all that had happened.

“Yes, yes,” Yojo peeped. “Warm cloak for pretty lady.”

Joelle watched him totter off and she tried to stay conscious to see his return because her numb mind still knew how important it was. Nevertheless, her next coherent thought came when she heard a clank that tapped against stone. “No, quiet. No one knows it’s there,” she muttered, trying to open her eyes.

“Go leave, leave, leave. Yojo, locks cell.”

Joelle’s eyes opened to see Yojo standing beside her as she was lying on her side on the cot in the cell. Yojo was looking down at his small out of portion hands clutching one end of a black cloak. The key. Her mind sparked as she watched him and she gained more consciousness with her intensity.

“Lady Joelle and Sir Yojo,” Yojo hummed. “Yojo not bad.”

Joelle held her breath watching Yojo move then, but gratefully he brought the cloak to lay it over her. She thought to say something, but she was too afraid to. Too afraid to topple the events, so she kept her eyes nearly closed, watching Yojo amble with side to side swaying out of the cell, then closing and locking the door.

“Jonal, you put Yojo up on your shoulder!” Yojo clapped his hands with excitement. “Yojo rides Jonal’s shoulder!”

Joelle turned her head after a moment and saw the two guards with Yojo perched atop one of their shoulders as they ascended the dungeon stairs to the top, then disappeared from view. Her people would say that many of the little people were of Gypsy blood, Joelle thought. But at the same moment, she suddenly realized that they had tied her wrists behind her back. The key was useless now, and she heard her own whimpers of dismay as she realized Saxon also lay tied at an odd angle, partially in front of her hips, toward the end of the cot. She could just see the top of his head from the way Yojo had laid the cloak. She could see that Saxon’s tied arms were sticking outward, nearly off the cot, as he lay on his side toward her.

His ass hurt, and Saxon realized that his face was all but nestled in the sweet cradle of a tender bare pussy. It smelled clean, fresh, supple, and young . . . A bit familiar. Desire incarnate was the sudden rushing aura inside him. He wondered with half-conscious ludicrous thoughts, if the powers that shaped all things were trying to tell him something. He certainly did not want to dwell on or dredge up the past at the moment. It was far too raw and emotional. Much better to contemplate a delicate and feminine pussy. It was to him the shining source of what made a man a man. The desire for it, the contemplation of it, and the mystery of it. It was the heart and core of the rest of what a man desired. The full body, mind, and soul of a woman. Lord, how he wanted to be a man. He wanted to be masculine to his teeth and his toenails. He wanted his masculinity to ooze out of him like a cloying entity that no one could ever confuse as anything else, but a man who desired women and women alone!

It ached in his chest so painfully his eyes misted. He was a man. Thoroughly . . . nothing that had happened would ever change his basic instincts or desires. It was just that . . . perhaps, in this blinding emotional aftermath, he needed proof. He needed to prove it to himself. He did congratulate himself a moment later with finding a logical motive. Joelle deserved to know pleasure in all this pain. He could not live with himself if he did not show her the possibility of joy. It truly was an honorable thing. Perhaps to strengthen them both . . . surely.

But then, he realized that his fake logic be-damned, he just simply had to do it!

Joelle felt the warm puffs of breath blowing on her sex and she murmured, lifting her eyelids halfway. Her first thoughts were that she was still so sensitive there and the heated breath was like tendrils of warm sensation stirring embers still glowing just beneath her skins tender surface. It took a few moments of lightly dawning pleasure to realize the puffs of warm air over her loins were purposeful. But still, her sex murmured with distinct feelings of pleasure, which was strange because the tender tissue ought to be wounded instead of purring.

But she shied away from the thoughts of why and she cuddled into the feelings, instead of away from them. She had never felt anything so delicious before. Yet, how could she feel any pleasure after . . . No, she did not want to think about that, instead a moan sighed from her lips as the breath got warmer and a bit closer. It was as though the sultry tingling air moved her hips in barely perceptible rolls. And, it would be lovely if she spread her thighs to feel the toasted air a bit deeper. But the actual engagement of that and the fact that she could want to do it filtered through her thoughts, beginning to raise her alarm.

But then, suddenly, her thoughts rushed away, save one. The one that left the searing emotion of full and firm lips gently placing a kiss against the bare lips of her sex. She could do nothing else reasonably, but moan at the haunting intimacy and pleasure while squirming her bottom in response. The appreciative and intrigued male chuckle that rose from beneath the cloak instantly thrilled her. Abruptly, she put a name to the sensation. Saxon! Handsome, beautiful, and sensual Saxon was kissing her naked loins with his fevered lips.

Saxon decided that God made no more savory treat in all the heavens than a woman’s sweet soft pussy, as he nuzzled the plump and torrid little lips pressed to his mouth. He felt thighs quivering and he heard a barely perceptible sigh of . . . longing, perhaps. He wanted to press his advantage. She could easily try to escape. The circumstances being what they were. Yet, he also wanted to savor this woman that he loved from the first time.

The fact that he was losing himself and fleeing from the tragedies that surrounded them did not matter. What soothed him, what moved him and aroused him, was making love to Joelle’s pussy for the first time. What compelled him forward . . . was her pleasure. So he kissed the full hot lips flushed with interest as a lover’s would be. He opened his mouth partially, sucking on them gently, feeling the incredible satin of the bare flesh. The two pillowed lips heated his mouth, while Joelle’s thighs murmured with small undulations as her knees pressed into his lower abdomen. The trick was to persuade her pussy to flower open for him.

His tongue dallied forth lightly and her thighs jerked. He felt the caution of her possible withdrawal and he begged as any sane man would do. “Please let me, firefly. Please.”

“Saxon.” Joelle pleaded and denied in the same breath, while he tickled his tongue along the clinging crevice of her pussy lips.

“Mm,” he murmured, vibrating his tenor over the swollen fruit of her rosy quim.

“Oh,” she answered with lightly puffing gasps, and he nearly chuckled, but instead he did it again.

Joelle felt the tremolo wavering to her clitoris, which responded with unashamed greed. The tapping demand rolled her hips as she caught her bottom lip, breathless and waiting for the next sensation. It came quickly with a tongue burrowing between the tingling lips of her sex. Had she not been aroused to the point of breaking so many times recently without a culmination, things couldn’t have been different. It seemed not to matter at all about the recent abuse, her clitoris trotted upward eagerly, straining toward the source of amazing pleasure. She’d never really understood that men tasted women the way Saxon was. But oh my god, it was the most, catch-a-person-unaware and hotly arousing experience she had ever had.

“Oh. Oh! Mm.” The sounds she made sounded to her like a different person as her body melted and thrived within the same moments over Saxon’s smoldering male tongue lapping with full exploration around, into, and over her sex. Her enthralled loins sent orders to her thighs to open wider for better access, while her clitoris demanded that her hips undulate to guide the sensation toward it. Little mewls of hopefulness etched from her throat, as every searing lick of Saxon’s tongue twisted elevated aching pangs into her clitoris. She amazed herself by wanting to cry, “Please! Please! Please lick my clitoris.” But her tightly throbbing throat only moaned, as she tilted her hips forward trying to guide Saxon’s tongue higher.

“You taste like fire,” Saxon murmured between the unfolding lips of her sex.

“Oh. Oh!” Joelle cried as Saxon fattened his tongue and caressed her sex from nearly her bottom lip, through the yielding torrid crevice, too... “Please!”

She could not believe she had said that.

“Here?” Saxon asked.

“Oh! Oh!” Joelle’s hips jerked as though someone was aggressively pinching her bottom, “Please,” she panted.

“I will climb the tallest mountain for, ‘pleases’ like that, firefly.” Saxon chuckled deeply. “Guide me, love.”

“Guide? Oh! Oh!” Joelle yelped. “There! There!”

Saxon’s tongue swirled over the miniature nub of her clitoris and Joelle saw bright lights flash beneath her eyelids. Then Saxon aggressively pushed forward raising his body and lifting her top leg high. He seemed to dig in further, spreading her legs shockingly wide, and then she felt his lips pressing around her jutting clitoris. “Oh!”

He sucked.

Saxon used only his mouth to hold Joelle’s passionate writhing down. And what a ride it was, having a steaming pussy squirming over his mouth, while he sucked on Joelle’s butterfly of pleasure. The butterfly pith bobbed its head and spread its wings, straining and growing taut against his flicking tongue. So, he could feel the sex juices Joelle was exuding on his chin and the greed to taste them ran rampant through his body. His mouth left her pulsing butterfly nub for one brief moment, to curl and lap his tongue over the entry to her vagina. Ecstasy. She bucked against him with a shrill cry of pleasure locked in her throat. He returned his tongue with energy to the heart of her butterfly.

He could feel the actual blood pulsing through the tautly swollen nub as he sucked it, holding it in place, licking his tongue over it. It jutted and grew stronger and he knew that Joelle was seconds away from the edge of heaven.

Her moans grew more ardent and her breath deepened and held as she forced more blood into her sex. Just then, on a release and sucking engagement of his lips and tongue, he felt it swell larger and she surged upward. Her mouth closed tightly with her scream filling her throat, swelling it, but containing it as she stiffened in a climax.

Her tensed body shook in spasms and she came again and again. And each time she rolled with more climaxing, her body jerked upward. Her thighs clamped over his head as her entire pussy throbbed in his mouth and he felt the beats drumming in his penis. He lapped her pussy repeatedly, swallowing every throe, until she finally collapsed.

Chapter Fifteen

“Thank God,” Saxon rasped. “Thank you, God.”

Then, Saxon laid his cheek on the inside of Joelle’s inner thigh, where he still felt her light tremors slowly wearing down after her sexual revolution. What man could have any tragic cause concerning his sexuality, with his woman’s essence clinging to the bold lines of his face? None! Saxon thought, none, none!

Joelle’s inner calf lowered to rest over his waist and hip. It was then, Saxon felt a slithering on his left arm, which brought his mind to the source. It felt as though half the ropes circling his left upper arm down to his wrist had slipped off. Of course they had, he thought becoming more alert. In all his gyrations he had loosened them to fall down off his handless wrist. His initial elation was brought up short when he realized that gaining freedom from the ropes would not do much good toward total freedom. They were still locked in the cell.

Nevertheless, he could hold Joelle in his arms. A precious enough gift and it would make them both more comfortable. He really did not want to think far beyond that. He was quickly learning to live in the moment.

He seesawed his arms a bit, not moving his cheek from its treasured position upon Joelle’s inner thigh. It took only a few maneuvers and the left side came off, loosening the right side to fall to his elbow. He shucked the bunched up rope downward and off his right hand with a gentle shake.

“Are you uncomfortable?” Joelle questioned. He heard the husky vibrating tone in her voice. He knew that tone, it was the sound of afterglow.

“I am...” Saxon said, then tunneled up through the cloak, until he was braced on his one hand looking down at Joelle... “Loose,” he finished, dipping his head with his lips beginning to pucker as they zeroed in on Joelle’s mouth.

He had expected many things. A returned sigh. A complimentary lush puckering of feminine lips in return. Nevertheless, what he got was Joelle’s explosive exclamation against his mouth.

“You’re loose!”

Then, Saxon fell completely off the cot that he had been rather precariously perched on. He landed with a thump and the cloak tangled around him as his gaze leveled upward. Joelle’s dark eyes sparkled with purpose as she looked down on him, while leaning over the side of the cot.

“Saxon, I have the key to the cell,” she whispered with intensity. Saxon heard Joelle’s words, however, it took a moment for them to connect in his mind. His bafflement must have looked like disbelief because she defended her claim urgently. “I really do have the key, Saxon. I nipped it from one of those black hulks, and it is in the hem of the cloak you are tangled in!”

Nipped it? Saxon knew what that meant, nevertheless, he was surprised that Joelle did, and he was further amazed that she had done it. “Talented as well as beautiful,” he concluded, watching her eyes widen at the compliment.

He most enjoyed the becoming blush that followed as he pushed upright. Then, he turned to get on his knees and bend over her. Joelle saw his intent to untie her and she levered her wrists toward him, which put her face nearly in the presence of his hardened cock. A man does not eat his love’s pussy without results. Nonetheless, he was surprised a moment later as he clumsily tried to untie the knots at Joelle’s wrist with one hand, when she nuzzled his lumbering penis, and a moment later she licked it lightly. It was an amazingly playful thing to do given their circumstances and he could have kissed her for a month for just the fact of doing it. He was amazed at what things that began the road to healing between two people. He was further impressed with the human spirit . . . with one particular human spirit.

“While I agree that what you are teasing is completely yours,” Saxon flirted back. “You will have to wait to claim it.”

“Just as long as we both understand it is mine,” Joelle said as her wrists came free. “And that you realize I do want it.”

Saxon used his one hand and both arms to help pull Joelle upright on the cot as he rose to stand before where she was kneeling. “We have little time,” he said, brushing his lips lightly against her accepting lips. “I just need to say that I am so regretful for what I did to you. I...”

Joelle’s lips quickly pressed with firmness against his lips, stopping his statement. When she pulled back, she said, “Saxon.” She shook her head, showing her intent not to let those thoughts journey any further. Then, bravely changing the subject to the necessary, she asked, “Once out of the cell do you really think there is a chance we could win our freedom?” Her dark eyes shone with measured hopefulness.

“If they have not barred the door at the head of the steps, then we have all the chances in the world. Especially with those lunatics so occupied with the aftermaths of the . . . Well.”

Joelle nodded, then she moved to stand. “Then let’s go quickly.”

“You take the cloak and your prize key. I will go en flagrante delicto.”

Joelle grasped the cloak, turning her gaze down to look for the key. “Saxon you have a humorous side. I like that. Ah, here it is,” she said, holding up the key.

“I have just recently acquired it.”

“Well, you must keep it.” Joelle put the cloak on and they went to the lock.

“I have some ideas on which direction we might want to try. And we should also try to set a diversion.”

Joelle stuck her hands through the bars and worked the key into the lock. “Very good, because I have no clue as to where we are in relation of getting out of here. They might follow quickly . . . we have to think of that. And, any diversion that involves the most destruction to these abhorrent villains gets my vote.”

“Right.”

The lock clicked open and Joelle worked it free of the bars. “I am keeping this,” she said as she put the heavy lock and key in an inner pocket in the cloak, while Saxon swung the door open.

“I will go first?”

Joelle was pleased Saxon asked instead of directing and before she nodded in agreement, she reached upward. “I know it is the only thing you are wearing, but let me take this collar off quickly and I will get mine as we go along.”

Joelle saw a light blush coloring Saxon’s umber skin as he lowered and bent a little so that she could unbuckle the wide leather collar at his throat. They were pretending between them that everything was not still affecting them. Or, still as dangerous. It was just what they had to do to proceed. When they gained their freedom, there would be time later to reflect, or perhaps even crumble.

The collar came free and she handed it to Saxon who tossed it onto the stone flooring away from them. “I want no souvenirs.”

Joelle followed him up the long incline of stone stairs, while taking her own collar off and tossing it aside to hit the floor of the dungeon below. Then, she set about tearing a couple strips from the lining of her cloak. She thought further on it, and then she tore more of the material, as much as she could gather. Then, when they reached the landing before the large door and Joelle looked up holding her breath as she saw Saxon’s hand pressing to it. It swung open and her heart thumped. They might actually escape.

Instead of easily becoming emotional, she grasped Saxon’s arm. “Here . . . here is something to wrap around you and another strip to tie your hair back.”

They kept moving forward as they made the exchange, then Saxon said a curious thing, “Firefly, you would make an excellent spy.”

Saxon led her forward, and up another set of steps. He seemed decisive, yet she remembered the myriad of corridors. It had seemed that none of them led to the ground floor from the dungeons below, but somehow bypassed that access and instead went higher into the castle. She was impressed with Saxon as he stopped at each corridor, looking around the corner first before continuing forward quickly and quietly.

Suddenly, Saxon grasped her arm and pulled her into the arch of a closed doorway. She did not see or hear anything, but Saxon looked down the hallway intently. Then, she heard the movements and saw the shadows wavering on the ceiling of someone, perhaps coming in their direction.

Saxon pushed the latch on the door, and then he entered the room silently with Joelle beside him. His gaze was everywhere at once, searching out the room. “Empty.”

Joelle stepped forward beside him. “But it is a bedchamber setup for someone to return to. Maybe there are clothes?” She turned her head quickly to him, “Do we have time?”

Saxon moved to the door adjoining the bedchamber as he spoke. He knew by the layout it must lead to the next room and it was possible the rooms connected this way all the way down the corridor. “If you see something, quickly grab it. But...” Joelle moved forward toward the armoire as she listened to him. “I want to topple the candles in these rooms as we go. Hopefully through a bit of time delay they will start some fires.”

“Our diversion?”

“Exactly.”

Crossing the room, Saxon took a candle from the wall sconce beside the bed and he tossed the candle onto the bedding. Joelle had a bundle of clothing in one arm as she picked up another candle off a side table. She lobbed it toward the curtains.

“Next room, Joelle.” Saxon stopped at the connecting door for a moment. “Slowly, dear heart, slowly.”

They continued through four rooms this way and Saxon knew there were only two rooms left until the end of the corridor. Nevertheless, in the second to last room when he stopped and he took a breath, then he peeked into the room, something instantly cautioned him. It was not someone else’s presence, but a chilling smell.

“Oh spirits, that is awful.” Joelle evidenced her distaste by nuzzling her nose against his upper arm as she leaned into him looking into the darkened room.

“Are there any candles left there, Joelle? Can you get one?”

Joelle left, then returning quickly with one. Saxon thought for one brief moment it would be wiser to just leave out the door to the room they were in. Nevertheless, some instinct made him enter the darkened room with the sickly sweet odor. He nearly wished for a cloth to cover his nose as he stepped in the room holding the candle up high. He could see that the room was different from the others in the fact there was no connecting door to the next room. Instead there was an open archway. The candlelight did not delve as far as that room, however the room they were in was dimly lit and appeared to be like a dining room with a long table and numerous chairs.

Saxon bypassed the table, moving toward the other room, where the odor was becoming stronger. Then, just before he reached the archway, he saw something glint, catching the candle’s light in the other room. Extreme caution attacked him.

“Joelle, stay here.”

But something told him that he had to see. He just assumed Joelle obeyed him as he stepped forward, finally succumbing to the need to raise his handless wrist to his nose, as he did so. Saxon lifted the candle and nearly dropped it in the same motion.

“Oh my, Lord.”

Saxon evoked God’s name with horror running violently through his brain. Joelle cried out with sharp aversion behind him, but he could not take his gaze from the abomination in front of him. It was an altar of decaying human parts, set up in a circular frame and raised above the floor. The different body parts were assembled into the shape of a human body, but all of them were not quite reaching the other that they should attach too.

“Oh, my God, my God, Saxon. The last limb. That’s why Hellion said . . . he said.” Joelle fell silent with a small cry.

The face of the pieced together monstrosity was just dried skin. Hellion had skinned a man to get it, Saxon thought, feeling nearly as if he were not really in his own body. “Burn it!” he snapped with fury. “Burn it to the ground!”

Joelle went for more candles as he rushed forward to find as many means as he could to start flames about the room. At one point he noticed his hook placed in front of the corpse-limb altar as though it was an offering and he grabbed it, while setting flame to the front of the sacrilegious abomination.

“Saxon, Saxon.” Joelle tugged his arm, coughing. “We must go, Saxon!”

“Rot in hell!” Saxon blurted as he threw the candle down onto the floor and he turned to follow Joelle. He never thought that he would view either Joelle or himself as lucky. But now he did!

Chapter Sixteen

Saxon successfully brought them to the rear of the castle without being seen. Joelle stood to the side at his gestured direction, as he looked both ways. His handsome face was a study of concentration in the waning moonlight.

“The cutlery, kitchen, and service entrance should logically be this way. Some servant’s horse, perhaps. If not, we will round the castle to the stables.”

Joelle thought it was logical and well thought out, better than her urge to simply run screaming into the burgeoning dawn. She used a Saxon term. An Englishman’s, idiosyncrasy. “Right.”

Luck was with them, because the grass they walked on made it easier for their bare feet. A short time later they came to exactly what Joelle knew Saxon hoped to find. A stand of horses tied behind the castle. The dirt and gravel road getting to the horses was a hasty bit of tiptoeing and wincing, until they arrived and Joelle saw only one horse was saddled.

“Luck is with us, although I cannot imagine this will be pleasant dressed as we are and being as bruised as you must...”

Saxon’s discourse slipped to a halt as Joelle watched him reach for the bay-colored horse’s reins.

“I will manage. It will be an adventure. I have never ridden anything but a sidesaddle.”

Saxon’s dark eyes gleamed at her. “Front or back, Madame Firefly?”

Joelle felt her cheeks heat unexpectedly at the endearment he used that she secretly cherished. “You pick. I have no clue which will be better for a hasty escape.”

Saxon turned partially away from her with his bare shoulders moving for a moment and when he turned back she saw a small hook strapped to his left wrist.

“Now, I can help you up,” he said, with a left-sided quirk to his lips, while she remembered kissing the flesh of his left wrist so passionately.

A moment later, while gingerly straddling and using as little space as she could manage on the front of the saddle, Joelle was impressed with Saxon’s dexterity using his hook, as he mounted behind her.

“Sit on the cloak too, Saxon.”

Joelle knew it was little enough barrier for a gallop. A second later her breath caught in her lungs as the first forward galloping step of the horse came. She heard Saxon grunt the same reaction behind her as he leaned up in the stirrups and she knew which part of his anatomy he was trying to protect. The initial pain grew worse, but not as shocking between her thighs as she strove to ignore it. When they rounded the east side of the castle, Saxon kept the bay-horse to the tree line, however after a good distance, Joelle was able to look back and see a partial view of the front of the castle.

They could see the fires they had set, against the dusky pre-dawn sky. And also, a clamorous hive of activity outside, spreading across the front lawn.

“Odds are they will not realize we are gone or be able to follow us for a while,” Saxon said with his mouth pressed to her ear as the horse galloped steadily beneath him. “I have a hunch there is a river back here and if there is, we can follow it.”

“Yes, they will think we took the road,” Joelle called, but her words were lost in the wind.

“Say again,” Saxon said against her ear.

Joelle turned her head back and he turned his ear to her as she repeated herself, and then she felt him nodding. She wished she could stay like that, with her cheek pressed to the side of his jaw. But the gallop was too ungainly and she had to keep her face forward and her inner thighs tensed in a manner she was unaccustomed to, to stay astride the horse.

They were both weak, without sleep and food for several days, and both their bodies were battered in the wrong places for a swift escape on a horse. It was a study in willpower that was utterly draining. Therefore sometime after, when Joelle noticed in the early morning sunshine that the stand of trees they were passing through had a uniformed look about them, without really thinking, she blurted, “Those are apples!” Less for their food value than the possibility to stop the horse’s seesawing between her thighs.

Saxon pulled upon the reins and he brought the horse to a walk. Joelle could feel the tension in his body. “We cannot keep this up. We are going to have to eat and rest. Perhaps, try on some of those clothes you have to see if they will help.”

They were both of common understanding of each other’s intimate pain without needing to overtly state it. “I say they would never guess that we would stop within five miles of the castle. They will think we have traveled further taking advantage of the time they had to spend on the fire.”

Neither she, nor Saxon, questioned the fact that Hellion or his cult followers would eventually come after them.

“Right. And they will not think of the river, which is what we are going to look for as soon as we dress, eat, and rest. A boat, somewhere down the river.”

They picked apples, filling one side of the hem of her cloak with them, while they each ate one. Now that the horse was walking, it was nearly bearable, and Joelle had never tasted anything as fine as the apples juices bursting into her mouth. Then, a little while later, she was the first one to see the field barn and she quickly pointed it out to Saxon. They found it was filled with hay and it appeared that the main farm residence must be miles away. But the best find was Saxon’s, because he found a water pump.

They both walked as though they had huge balls between their legs and Joelle could not help laughing at the picture they made. “I am sorry.” She pressed a hand to her mouth looking at Saxon where they had stopped by the water pump.

She burst out giggling again and Saxon’s chuckle followed as he bent to pump some water, while he cautioned, “Not too much at once.”

They drank, hid the horse and tended to him, then they found a spot in the hay at the rear of the barn to collapse in.

Chapter Seventeen

“Ouch,” Saxon winced, and Joelle saw that it was more than just his battered body. The straw had easy access to poke his bare skin in any willy-nilly fashion.

“Let’s lay out my cloak.”

Joelle did not allow herself a chance to think about it. They had seen each other naked for so long. Now was not the time to have hesitations about it. She just took the cloak off, then laid it out. Saxon watched the cloak and not her nudity. Then, she lay down on her side and he scooted over on his side facing her. She resisted the urge to cover her breasts or between her thighs. At this point in time, it really was a bit silly.

“I need a hug, firefly.” She was so grateful to him. She reached for him easily and they embraced, snuggling closer. Her bare breasts pressed into his chest, while her chin pressed against the side of his neck. “Just what I need,” he sighed.

“Yes,” she murmured, stroking his back slowly. She could feel the warmth of his hand pressed into the small of her back.

“That riding was quite harrowing. For you also?” Joelle nodded against his neck. “We will find a boat to take us down the river. Then, we will trade the horse or my hook for a ride. The hook is silver.”

“You are very clever.”

“I have proof that I only shine in the light of your inventiveness.” Joelle leaned back to look down on the side of Saxon’s face as he looked down at her bare shoulder.

“We will make it then?” she asked, half questioning, half answering as she felt a telltale stir firming against the thin cloth wrapped around Saxon’s waist, to which her lower belly was pressed too.

Saxon’s head lifted as he spoke. “Together we will.”

Joelle wanted nothing so much in that moment, but to kiss Saxon. A free kiss. Not coerced by a hypnotist. Her desire made her courageous. “I want to kiss you.” Her gaze lingered on his full sensual lips.

Saxon’s answer was to lean forward and their lips kissed. It was like the first kiss ever between them. It was new, soul entrancing, and gently exciting. His lips moved over her mouth slowly and her mind centered exclusively on the sensation of their mouths touching each other. As natural as time passed, their kiss deepened and her nipples thrust outward in acknowledgment, poking the firm sinew on his chest. She purred her pleasure, humming against his lips, while she felt his male organ thicken and stiffen against her.

“I live for the sounds of your purrs, firefly.” His mouth turned against her lips, “I want you.” Joelle’s answer came with an undulation against him. A woman’s sexual body stretching of beckoning. His lips abruptly pulled from hers. “But, I mustn’t.”

“Hm,” she murmured with disappointment. Nonetheless, she followed him with her lips, until his head lay back and she pressed her mouth down over his lips.

Her body shifting brought his warm hand to cup one of her buttocks as her naked mound found the lightly hairy bareness of his thigh. Then, her lips which were searching, living, and lusting with his mouth spoke to her sex and her sex agreed by riding his thigh with little craving undulations. It seemed a moment later that she conquered any hesitation Saxon had because he used his hand on her buttock to help lift and ride her mound over his thigh. She could feel the dampness she exuded, painting his flesh and making the way lightly slick.

He rumbled in his chest as his tongue dashed into her mouth. The soreness of the ride and the temple sacrifice was deeper inside her. What she did now was as arousing and tempting as Saxon’s mouth on her sex. She wanted more! Perhaps she wanted to prove the natural goodness of it, or perhaps because she was simply selfishly allured. Saxon was everything desirous to her. He was her ideal of attraction. He even tasted like more . . . more . . . more.

Saxon knew he should stop. Not that he was the soul purveyor of the igniting affair. Nevertheless, he was the man and he cared, and he would not be the sexual instrument of physically hurting Joelle again. There was no hope that after his brutish coupling upon her at the ritual that she could take his penis inside her. It loomed as a tragedy in his mind on more fronts than one. However, the exquisite feel of her over him, pressing supple female curves, riding the butterfly of her heart with wet promise over his thigh, and her lips. Oh Lord. Her lips, god help him, her lips. How could he ignore the inspiration and dedication they inspired? He was lost in the feel of her, and he did not want to be found. He was tumbling toward relenting, as his mind played, “what if’s,” with him.

What if they did not couple, what if they kept from that, “what if?” He knew it would aid his healing. It would tug his mind away from reality. But it was a decision he could pull away from. He was strong enough.

Well . . . he made the decision with a delicate mouth carnally sucking his tongue. He wanted light and fire. More, he wanted Joelle’s mind to twirl away into what pleasure he could give her. He found that love was equal degrees of greed and giving.

Their flesh warmed as their mouths played deeper and deeper into passion. Joelle’s body moved over him. Her bare breasts tantalizing his chest as her hips swayed and she wiggled her pussy from his thigh to the base of his penis, with the rigidness of his penis lying down between his thighs. The thin material he had wrapped around his waist, and hanging like a loin cloth, did not hinder the feeling of dampness or heat as Joelle rubbed her impassioned pussy on the root of his prick. His hand helped, lustily squeezing, fondling, and guiding the curves of her naked ass. He could spend hours just playing with the curving configuration of her buttocks. Her hard little nipple tips grazed up his chest, burrowing around with her increasingly aroused movements.

Saxon kept his hook out to the side, away from their entwined undulations. But the part of his brain that could still function knew it was safer to remove it in the throes of lust. Leaving Joelle’s lips was a conquest of its own, yet he finally managed . . . nearly, with just pecks of her lips as he said with a husky tenor. “Let me take my hook off.”

Joelle rotated her pussy as she kissed down his jaw, purring, and he squinted over her shoulder trying to see the straps. She was not helping as she nibbled down his throat using his body like a mat that she could sensually undulate on. However, her lower position did allow him to see better. Now if he could just get his eyes to focus. Fire and light. Fire and fire, he thought, finally able to toss his hook aside as his lady of fire suckled on the depression between his neck and shoulder. It seemed she was not willing to nibble lower and lose her seat at the base of his cock. He groped her buttock with a squeeze, tickling his finger along, and then into the crease.

“Rise up,” he ordered.

“Mm.” she moaned. The sound half-petulant at leaving her perch, but she found his lips again with a heated kiss, while she rose up on her knees. He had intentions, but it was very hard to think straight as arousal steamed through his thoughts. And then, he remembered to tug his wrap aside rather haphazardly in an awkward manner of trying to do two things at once. But he managed to get it free and himself bare as his hand returned downward for his prick, and he lifted it, until it lay on his belly.

“Now, ride this, my hot little firefly.”

Saxon used his fingers plied intimately along the sultry crevice of Joelle’s swaying ass to guide her understanding. She scooted upward on her knees, until her pussy lips spread out over the roundness of his shaft.

“Oh mm.”

Saxon agreed wholeheartedly as Joelle braced her hands on his shoulders, sliding her knees back until she could rub the soaking heat of her splayed pussy from the root to the head of his penis. Lord, and back again. The position put her breasts ripe for the picking and his mouth heated with the desire as he raised his head to nuzzle her lusty mounds.

The sound Joelle made was pure delight as she waggled her hips and her breasts pitched closer. He kissed one rounded curve, then the other with his mouth and chin grazing in the middle. His one hand latched onto the curving motions of Joelle’s ass, enabling him to stretch his fingers around the curve and down through the crease, until his fingers kissed the hot and wet backside of Joelle’s pussy.

“Mm mm.” She wiggled down the shaft of his prick until his fingertips had more contact.

“You like that,” he murmured against the soft flesh of her breast.

“Oh . . . yes,” she moaned and he lightly circled his finger around the opening to her torrid vagina.

His cock thumped at the feel of this haven and it happily oozed seed from the slit, while Joelle drew her pussy up and down his shaft.

“Higher,” he urged, fingering her sopping entrance to nudge her pussy toward the head of his prick. “Ah sweet, smear your pussy with my seed.”

“Saxon,” she gasped, and he knew his words inflamed her as they did him. Then, a moment later, when she did it and they moaned together, he knew that inflamed them more. The slit of his penis was ever sensitive, and with Joelle’s butterfly dancing over it caused his hips to lift with prodding intentions. Slick and hot prods over an ardent clit, while his fingers fondled the opening to her vagina from behind and his mouth closed over one of her swaying nipples. The long set of mewls that rolled from Joelle at these actions fed his own arousal.

Joelle saw black stars in her eyes at the piercing aches that Saxon’s mouth tugged on her nipple tip. Oh. She had never felt anything so wonderful, besides perhaps the exquisite pleasure of smudging her loins over the turgid outline of his hot cock. That was pure lively bliss, and although her clitoris was the heart of her arousals convergence, with each escalating twinge building upon each other, her core was wildly beseeching her. Saxon’s fingers skimmed that torrid opening that magnified the ache intensifying an action in her mind. Filling. Oh spirits, her core ached, upon ached, to be filled the more her clitoris tightened, and then into her mind came the need to satisfy Saxon’s hunger too. His engorged and searing cock throbbed with his desire and his seed clinging to her loins and coating his cock spoke of his desperate need.

Saxon’s teeth nibbled her nipple tip making her body shudder as her hand reached between her thighs, urgent for his pulsing cock. She grasped the scorching weight of it with her fingers slippery and sticky as she lifted the head to her vagina, while angling her hips forward. The beat inside Saxon’s cock was beating with the rhythms buffeting her inner sheath and the aches slithered down her thighs with greedy abandon. When the cumbrous head touched the entrance to her core, she gasped at the feel of it as her body eagerly began to lower.

Saxon was nearly sideswiped before he realized Joelle’s intent, so immersed was he with the feel of her and the taste of her nipples on his tongue. But the sudden pitch of his penis feeling the opening that it craved most, crashed through his senses. His hand quickly found Joelle’s hand and he closed his fingers over her fingers, stopping her motions to lead his penis inside her.

“Saxon,” she gasped with raw earthiness, as he looked up over the jut of her wet and ruddy nipple tip, into her eyes of black longing.

“Roll over with me,” he ordered suddenly, unable to deny her needs or his own needs as he moved his body taking her with him, until she was beneath him. Her knees lifted up over his hips with her pussy open and eager, a wet and rosy sight, as he braced on his hand. “You are too tender, you cannot take me. Let me lick you...” he began.

But Joelle stalled him with a passionate mewl. “I want you inside me, Saxon, please, please.” Her hand cupped his neck and she tugged him downward for an impassioned kiss. Then, she begged against his lips. “I want your pleasure too. I want your cock so badly, Saxon.”

He groaned, straining against her lips, but more straining to keep his hips from pumping forward. “Hold the base with two hands, love. Do not let go” he commanded.

“Yes!” she cried, and she grasped his heavy cock holding one hand on top of the other, until only the head and an inch down the shaft was free.

“Do not let go,” he rasped, lowering his hips, pressing the head of his penis toward her searing vagina. And he pressed slowly through the tight opening, while they both gasped. The head of his prick was soaked and Joelle was wet with hot arousal, yet still her haven was so tight at the entrance that the muscles just yielded, but then tightened again around the head, as he entered her to the top of her hands.

“Saxon, Saxon,” she cried, and he knew it was from pleasure and not pain as her heels dug into his upper buttocks. “More, more,” she panted.

Oh Lord, he would give her more, Saxon thought, with his lust drawing tight tension through his body. And then, he began to pump, slowly, in and out, dragging the head of his prick through heaven as Joelle’s head arch backward and she panted mewls of pleasure. Her hands stayed tightly around his penis not allowing it to rent deeper inside her, but what they had was all they needed as her hips strutted upward meeting his poignant, but abbreviated strokes. He watched her passion-rife face as his own features strained within the twisting grip of lust, escalating through his balls into his prick, and drawing suction from the head. His chest heaved and his buttocks clenched as he held his ejaculation back by the reins of his willpower.

“Come with me, firefly.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” Joelle cried, feeling the startling rush of a climax twining through her clitoris and yawning against the rapid friction, along the head of Saxon’s cock. “Oh hh hh!” She arched upward praying for more of the rapid thrusting as it pumped, writhing her climax higher.

Joelle’s pussy, clutching with a climax, snapped Saxon’s neck backward, while the wet and searing edges of her quim convulsed over the head of his penis. The sensation sucked his seed, like a flame, up the shaft of his prick and his body bowed forward as his hips strained to a halt, and then his penis threw bliss. Again, his prick drew and threw more rapture as his body shuddered and he groaned deep and hard.

“Firefly. Love, love,” he hissed, swamped in rapture as Joelle cried within the throes of her release beneath him. They should be devastated, too overwrought and weary to manage going on after what they had been through, yet here was the wellspring of life. It was the food and soul to sustain them, to enliven them, and to heal them.

Saxon unbent his replete body and he lowered to find Joelle’s lips and he kiss her panting into soft murmurs, until he rolled to his side, bringing her beside him, to hold her in the cradle of his arms. She lay with her head on his shoulder as his handless wrist stroked strands of her hair that had come loose from the band holding them back. She patted his chest softly with her eyelids half closed and her lips turned into a winsome smile.

“We beat them.” Her eyelids opened.

“Yes, love, and we will bring them down.”

Joelle’s irises sparked as she looked at him more intently. “We will? I hope we will.”

“You will come to England with me, Joelle, and I will show you how.”

“England?” Joelle rose slightly with her hand resting on his chest.

“Joelle, you cannot go back to Paris. I would not allow it even if you could. And in England I can promise you that we will find the means to destroy this cult and its abhorrent leaders.”

“To be with you, Saxon?”

“More importantly to be with me, Joelle.”

Joelle raised his handless wrist to her cheek “Then that is where I want to be.”

The End

My Lady Gambled: Book One

By Shirl Anders

Chapter One

“I know it is belated, everything about our relationship is turned around. Yet, I want to woo, Joelle.” Saxonhurst sighed, with one hand stuffed deep into his trouser pocket as he paced. “To court her, as it were. Foolish, I know after what we have been through, but I’m determined.”

Brynmore, Baron and Laird of Duneagan, watched his friend Saxonhurst, Marquis of Hartley, pacing the length of the lion-head carved pool table in front of him. Drummond, Duke of Kittridge, had gathered them all in his London mansion’s gaming salon. All six men of the former Archangels spy group sat or leaned in varying postures around the room.

Brynmore tried to unclench his fists. The labored tightening of his fingers was in reaction to previously hearing Saxon’s horrifying tale, a tale of kidnapping, cults, sexual depravity, and murder. Brynmore attempted to stretch the kink in his neck he’d gotten from the strain of listening to, and then realizing that Saxon and his new lady-love Joelle had barely escaped alive from the Order of the Satyr. And they had not escaped unscathed, either mentally or physically.

The tensions of the six men in the room were sharp, furious, and lethal. Brynmore fought the urge to leap forward, grab his claymore and barge from the room to find and destroy the foul and ill-serving bastards of the bloody cult.

But, it would not be that easy.

“You want Joelle out of it?” Drummond asked succinctly, from where he sat, in a red high-backed chair with the glow of a gas lamp to his left etching his austere features.

“Hell, yes.” Saxon halted his pacing and the small silver hook that replaced his left-hand rose with a sweeping gesture. “I want her nowhere near those bastards again. However, she will not see it that way at all. She has as much courage as all of us, and she’ll be set to find justice, and to find an end to the cult, Incubus, and surely Hellion. An end to any more foul deeds or murders.”

Brynmore watched Saxon’s silver hook fall to his side, and he thought with slow burning contempt about the parody of names the bloody villains used. It was like a bad play one should laugh at, however it was not a stage show, but real and very deadly. It was clear from Saxon’s rendering that The Order of the Satyr’s figurehead, Hellion, was a mass murderer.

“This could present a problem for all of us.” Drummond raised a glass of amber whiskey in his lean fingers. “We have, gentlemen,” Drummond nodded around, “Not chosen docile wallflowers for our wives and lovers.”

Brynmore nodded in agreement to this as he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his broad chest. Aye, he could attest to that. He was the only one, among the six men, without a permanent lass or wife, and he knew each man’s feisty lass quite well. Brynmore smirked for the first time that evening. He bloody well wished them all luck at keeping their women out of this!

“At the bride-to-be gathering for Nia this evening at our townhouse, where there should be simple tittering over our wedding plans, all of our women are to be present with the exception of Joelle, one wonders that they could be hatching different opinions, other than should the bride be wearing white, or the scarlet red that I hopefully requested,” Radford, Duke of Sutherlin, said ruefully.

Wyndham, Baron of Hawkenge, with his injured leg propped upon a small cushioned stool from where he sat adjacent to Drummond, snorted, “None of our women titters!”

Saxon left his statured position in the center of their gathering to lean his hip against the end of the pool table, near Radford in a similar position. Then, Saxon inserted, “Joelle, went to the bride-to-be gathering also, at the last minute. Gabriella was quite persuasive.”

“One might wonder why, my dear wife Gabriella, would be so coaxing to, Joelle. It appears congenial and inclusive on the surface.”

“Don’t wager on it,” Harrison, Earl of Ravenscar, said with a low rasp.

Brynmore watched Harrison’s black eyes scan them all once, before Harrison turned his gaze down to the fire once again and leaned his elbow against the fireplace mantel. Harrison’s gaze was brooding after the last year or more of opened and unshadowed gazes. It had Brynmore wondering. While Saxon had revealed the tale of horrendous events that he and Joelle had recently experienced, Harrison had remained extremely quiet, drinking only a new style seltzer water and staring down into the fire with a stillness that was impossible in normal men.

“So, what is the consensus, about allowing our women to be involved in this?” Drummond asked, swirling whiskey in the balloon snifter before him. He raised his gaze from the amber liquid coating the glass, not taking a drink as his slate gray eyes drew sharply around the room. “I, for one, will forbid it, no matter what machinations, my delightful wife, will be about.”

Brynmore listened to the mutters of agreement, though none stated eloquently and therefore all with an aura of trial about them. Harrison never made a sound and Brynmore wagered that the only one coming close to succeeding would be Lord Harrison Ravenscar.

Yet, Brynmore was ready to leave the other men to their trials in intimacy. He had no one to answer to, and he had a craving inside him to feel the thrill of the chase once again. The demand inside him to eradicate the pestilence that was The Order of the Satyr had not come at a better time to feed the common and insatiable yearning to satisfy that craving for the rush of aliveness that being in a dangerous situation could produce. He was not sure why this need was so overpowering and why he had been fighting it for so long. It was actually against his nature, that of being more mature reacting than his thirty-three years. Always more solid, but with a wry sense of Scottish humor nonetheless. And always with the mantle of responsibility to be the Laird one day on his shoulders.

However, that day had come more quickly than he’d anticipated with the deaths of so many of his clan’s elders in the war. Bloody hell, he should be more responsible and not lose the battle to unreasonable and erratic demands inside him. Instead, he was satisfied that he had no choice in the matter. They had to take care of this. He had to be involved. More so because he was the only single man left among the Archangels. He was glad, and that should worry him. Instead, he ignored it and waited, which was odd for him, for the instructions he knew would be coming.

“Then to the goals, gentlemen,” Drummond stated, appearing to agree to the consensus of sidestepping the issue of their women.

“It might be easier to assassinate Hellion and Incubus once we find them, however that would take the chance of leaving the murders unsolved, and the identity of the victims, unknown. We also need to know the structure of this cult, so we are certain that once we illuminate the key figures that The Order will collapse, never to rise again.”

“And the authorities?” Harrison asked, not taking his gaze from the fire.

Drummond’s eyebrow raised, and Brynmore knew that he, as well as the other men, were a bit surprised that this query should come from their lethal assassin, Harrison.

“Hmm,” Drummond slowly etched, then he said, “We would be doing the authorities a disservice allowing them to remain ignorant about this occurrence of an individual or a partnered mass murderer.”

“Aye, if there is one out there, then another one will come along in time,” Brynmore muttered, shifting his brown Hessian boots as he cocked his hip the other way and leaned back against the wall.

“We will have to appraise them, but before or after?” Radford asked, leaving the sentence hanging.

Drummond picked it up. “We shall keep it in mind and decide later, when we are further into it. For now our first step is to find them, and I predict that is not going to be easy.”

“Then, I will have to go back to Paris at once . . .” Saxon began saying.

“No,” Drummond interrupted. “Two good reasons, Saxon. They know you, and you as with most of us here have a great deal of family matters to settle before we begin. Gentlemen, the demise of The Order and its leaders will take time. I will start with a rough estimate of at least six months or more.”

“Balls,” Wyndham uttered.

“Yes.” Drummond nodded. Brynmore guessed that their thoughts were about the issues of added trouble with their women, as he heard Drummond continue. “Brynmore, will leave as soon as possible.”

Brynmore straightened his tall frame away from the wall. “Aye.”

“I’ve held two of my shipping vessels just on the odd chance we would need them quickly. They are set to sail upon your needs,” Radford said.

“Your intuitions are honed as usual, Radford,” Drummond said, then he shifted in his chair and stood. “We will use beacon-lighted messages across the channel. Brynmore, you can see Radford to set up a workable schedule. The rest of you, gentlemen, settle your affairs. We will meet here every evening to further our plans. However, it should take Brynmore a fortnight to lay the ground work and find the scent, as it were.”

“If any good can come from this,” Saxon said. Then he paused, looking at each one of them before continuing, “I am glad The Order of the Satyr selected me, because gentlemen, with your help we could be the only group with the resources and ability to destroy this evil. Those bastards made a huge mistake!”

Chapter Two

Kit stood at the weathered railing of the ship. The day was clean and sunny with the sea as calm as she’d seen it on the crossing from America. They were one day away from laying an anchor on the French coast, and then another day’s carriages ride into Paris. Her destination. Where she would finally begin to find out what had happened to her brother. Where had Clay gone?

Clayton, he preferred to be called now, she reminded herself. In his last letter six months before, he’d written to her about how the name change suited him better and suited the social climate in Paris. He went by Clayton and had angrily purged their family’s last name of Montoya, as a direct and intended insult to their father.

“You have to be more sociable. That plump gal with those pretty daughters is a Countess!”

Kit started from her thoughts to look sideways at her husband Nick standing beside her. His approach had been undetected until he’d spoken. Immediately, her gut cringed inward upon hearing his disparaging voice or feeling him anywhere near her. Lord, she hated him.

“I told, the Countess, we had been married much longer than the three month newlyweds we really are. How could I do anything less with you dressed as you are and acting as you do? I swear, Filly, the countess thought you were a man.” Nick sneered sideways at her, in his pretense of superior bearing. It was a difficult thing to accomplish for a former river-rat gambler that she’d finally discovered he’d been. “What the hell was wrong with the dress I borrowed for you? Can’t you do one thing right?”

Kit’s gloved fingers curled tightly over the splintered wood of the railing. One of the wood’s slivers poked through the leather of her glove along her inner palm. She did not care. She hoped it had drawn blood, so she squeezed harder. Nick Ralston was the biggest mistake she’d made in her life. What continued to amaze her was how she could allow his insults and verbal jabs to affect her anymore. As much as she tried to pretend to him, to everyone else, even to herself that they did not hurt, they still did. That in itself humiliated her. That she should even care!

It did not matter that she was still reeling from the consummate con Nick Ralston had perpetrated on her. He’d changed overnight from a charming suitor comforting her over her father’s death to a man who was overbearing and critical of her every opinion at every turn. He was simply a snotty and snobbish gold digger.

And, I am dressed fine, Kit thought. Little did Nick know that she’d half planned to leave him behind when the ship docked and take off riding into Paris on her own. So, she was wearing legging skirts to ride astride. What did she care what some Countess with her pretty daughters thought? Darling daughters that Nick paid too much attention to for a married man. Kit was not going to Paris to become a socialite, but to find her brother.

“You should not have come along,” Kit stated tightly.

“If you had more sense, neither of us would be here. What type of idiot goes searching for a brother that can steal our entire rightful inheritance?”

“That is all you care about! That is all you’ve ever cared about,” Kit accused hotly turning away from Nick.

She started to rush away but Nick caught her upper arm, painfully stopping her. “I expect you to act properly. As my wife.”

“Properly! How?” Kit asked, staring at his hand digging into her arm. “As the wife of nothing more than a river boat gambler?”

Nick squeezed his fingers so hard tears sprang to her eyes. “I will teach you!”

Kit’s anger flowed over, and she spat, “I swear to God, Nick Ralston, I will give away every penny, every parcel of land in my father’s estate, that you covet so greatly, if you try to get in my way now!”

Nick drew in a hissing breath and through clenched jaw and gritted teeth, he said, “That faggot brother of yours will never get my money or my land!”

Kit jerked her upper arm free with more strength than she realized she possessed, and she stalked to the entryway to go below. She did not stop her head long rush until she reached her cabin where she threw open the door, rushed inside, then she slammed it closed, bolting it behind her.

She ended with her spine pressed to the closed door and her lungs gasping for air. Where had she gotten the courage to speak to Nick that way? He frightened her, and he would make her pay, no matter how long it took. He was capable of patiently waiting to spring on her. She had to get away from Nick, before he was able to find a chance to take her to bed and land her pregnant. That was what he waited for and stalked her for, a way to force himself upon her. However, she’d slept with the door bolted and a knife clutched in her hand ever since Nick changed so drastically.

It happened when she said she was going to find her brother, and Nick thought that ownership of the Montoya Empire could be in jeopardy. Before that, he’d been an enjoyable lover and a charming husband, even though she still had not felt toward him as she thought she should, and at the time she had berated herself silently. Those had been quiet and terse arguments in her head about how Nick was a decent man, and she should be grateful. However, it had all been an act on Nick’s part, put on for her father before he’d died, then later continuing to play act upon her. There were times in the past when her gut told her that things were off or strange about Nick. Yet, she’d brushed them aside, ignoring them. Instead in her grief, she’d followed her father’s deathbed wishes that she marry.

“But that is over now!” she exclaimed, unclenching her hands, which she braced on her belly as though warding off a blow. Then, she walked to the bureau, which was built into the wall of her cabin with a small cloudy-surfaced mirror attached above it. Salty sea air and time had tarnished the mirror’s surface, but Kit could still generally make out her slender features. She was boyish with short wavy light blond hair and tan skin spotted with light freckles. She’d always worked on the land with her father and brother, before Clay left. Her mother had died giving birth to her, so there had not been a lot of female influences in her life. Nevertheless, she’d gone back east for two years, attending a school for ladies, and she’d learned all the proper manners and clothing styles a lady should present.

More than that though, she was practical, and long hair did not go well with roping and branding cattle, nor did fancy skirts go with riding a horse into Paris to escape Nick. Little did Nick know that she’d a trunk loaded with womanly gear stowed in the hold that she would have delivered to Paris?

Nick was in for a lot of surprises because this long journey aboard the ship had given her time to think about more than just the plans to find her brother. She also realized this was the best time to lose Nick’s presence beside her in the sprawl of Paris. It was time to find a lawyer to annul or divorce her farce of a marriage.

Nick would be furious, and she was afraid of him. Only his words so far, but those venomous words and opinions held the real chance of physical violence behind them. She did not intend to get caught in the eventuality that he would become violent. She would find her brother to bring him home. She would divorce Nick, and then Clay would help keep Nick from causing her further trouble.

Kit hated to bring problems like this to Clay. She really just cared more about finding him and bringing him back home where he belonged. They would deal with the difficult conditions of her father’s will after that. If nothing else, she still had land and a home left to her from her grandmother. She would not let the demands of their father’s will tear her and Clay apart. She cared for Clay more than any Montoya land empire.

Damn her father! He’d been a difficult and hard man, but normally a just one. If only he could have accepted Clay for who Clay was, a man who loved other men. However, her father’s deeply controlling personality had caused him to run roughshod over Clay until Clay finally broke. But her father had never realized Clay’s strengths, and he’d thought Clay would break down and realize that he was wrong. Instead, their father drove Clay away.

Clay broke, and then he ran.

But now, she vowed that she would find Clay, and she would convince him to come home with her. She had his last letters and she knew where he’d been residing, so she willed herself to be certain that there was a simple explanation for his six months of silence. Maybe, their father had written Clay about his illness, or perhaps Clay had found a new love and gone off with him without thinking, in the way new love could be. Kit certainly prayed so, because she was going to do anything it took to find her brother. He was the only family she had left.

Chapter Three

“I won the wager, Drummond, you must not complain,” Gabriella said. “Really, Drummond, you threw our fencing match just so that I would win, and now you have to be my love slave for the evening.”

“That is not correct, madame,” Drummond replied with his charcoal eyes calculating the see-through lavender pinafore Gabriella wore, and the bottle of amber oil she held in one hand, with a straight razor held in the other. “I have taught you fencing well enough for you to beat me now.”

“Do not pout, amour,” Gabriella said smiling with a sultry shadow in her purple irises as she gazed at his muscular frame, still dressed in fashionable riding attire. “But undress slowly, please.”

“I do not pout, madame,” Drummond said. “However, didn’t I shave your luscious pussy just this morning, I believe?” he asked with his gaze lowering to her now denuded sex. Just the touch of his gaze brought heat to Gabriella’s bare pussy lips.

She stifled the urge to squirm. “Yes, of course you did. I remember it well. And, afterward . . .” she paused.

Keenly, Drummond picked up the narrative. “You rode my face like a champion rider in a high stake horse race.”

“Really, Drummond!” Gabriella’s rouged lips formed a moue with a blush heating her cheeks. “You are a very contrary slave.”

Drummond’s broad shoulders shrugged, and then broadened as he lifted his fingers to the ties on his loose dark brown riding shirt. “Never let it be said that I do not honor my wagers, Orchid.” Gabriella smiled again, Drummond had called her Orchid now after their first night of love making, when the next morning she’d woke with his orchids scattered over her body. “I am just not certain, Gabriella, how well I will do not being the master.”

“You did quite well on our wedding night, amour,” she reminded him as she watched the flexing of sinew over his chest, belly, then upper arms as he pulled his shirt upward over his head.

“I was tied to our bed then, for your carnal ministrations,” he muttered, tossing his shirt onto one of the chairs, at the foot of their large four-poster bed.

Gabriella walked to the side of the bed and placed the straight razor next to the bottle of oil on the bedside table. “No ties this time,” she purred, looking at him through the curls of her auburn hair. “Now your pants please, my handsome love slave. And tell me, how did it feel without your small cloth beneath your riding britches during your ride, after your meeting with the Archangels this evening?”

Gabriella watched Drummond’s handsome lips firm as she sat on the side of the bed next to her mink cloak, which she’d spread out on top of the bed covers earlier. Drummond had just been downstairs for his meeting, but she’d requested as the first command of her new love slave that he take a ride through the park after his meeting. She’d also asked intimately that he wear no underpinnings beneath his britches. The ride had given her time, after visiting with Nia, Chloe, and Orelan, and after hearing the disturbing tale that Joelle had revealed to them, to walk home from Nia’s, and then to set the stage for her newly acquired love slave.

Gabriella wondered at the fate of timing, for her and Drummond to be playing this particular love game now. After hearing Joelle’s tale, she realized she would have to use every trick she could envision to convince Drummond that she and the other ladies needed to be involved in whatever retribution the Archangels undertook.

She’d stayed in the shadows of her first marriage, docile, and now she knew that her first husband had pushed her aside to the country, out of his way. She had no intentions of allowing that to happen again. Besides, she and Drummond had lost too much time together in their earlier lives, to ever be parted again. The gentlemen of the Archangels needed their women on this campaign. They just did not realize it yet.

“It was arousing, Orchid. My cock could feel more, the pounding of my stallion.”

Yum. Gabriella eyed the manly attachment that Drummond spoke of as it leaped out of the material he tugged away from it. Pounding indeed, she thought, as an answering throb beat in her pussy. Just the hard jut of Drummond’s bared cock had her seeping, but she needed control, and she had thought of that, even going so far as to help herself to a fingering climax in her bath just a short time before. Only it was not working!

She nearly got irritable at the power of Drummond’s cock over her. Then, she thought, perhaps if she just could not see it. “Lay down here, my handsome slave, on your stomach.”

Gabriella patted the mink cloak beside her, watching Drummond eyeing it, as he strode with rippling grace toward their bed. He was well fit for a man in his mid-fifties, with his short distinguished silver hair. Drummond was a sensual master, and he knew her appreciation for his physique. So, he used it to his every advantage as he crawled up onto their bed by flexing his male muscles just a bit more than necessary. With a heated breath, she nearly used a command to stop him in that position.

But his eyes told her that he knew what she was feeling, and he was slightly arrogant about nearly snatching the power back between them. That challenged her, and she changed her mind about his position because of it.

“Stay,” she commanded softly and Drummond stilled on his hands and knees, not lowering onto his belly. His gray eyes turned more peppery with sexual tension, and she realized that her command for him to kneel had just turned her back into the master. “Kiss me, amour, tongue me deep,” she ordered with a husky purr in her voice.

The sinew on Drummond’s upper arms rippled as he leaned forward with his gaze fixed on her lips. “Yes, madame.”

Without warning Drummond’s large masculine tongue aggressively thrust into her mouth. Gabriella nearly backed away from that the driving force, thinking Drummond was a true sexual devil. She moaned around his tongue as he took her mouth deeply. The well in her pussy twirled tight with heavy and insistent aches.

She nearly forgot to stop, caught in the sexual thrust and parry of Drummond’s tongue. However, then he chuckled deeply, and with inherent arrogance, as he was wont to do when his senses were alerted to her near surrender. That chuckle was enough to break the spell, and she lifted her hands to his muscle-packed shoulders, pushing as she drew her mouth away.

“Enough, slave!” Her voice encompassed a light pant as she looked deep into Drummond’s heavy-lidded and sexually sparking gaze. Having her love slave sexually excite her was not going to work, because he would have her bedded before she knew what had happened.

No, she needed to seduce Drummond, too play with him! That was what she deeply desired. She wanted him to groan and pant. There were too few times when she’d wrestled control from him and made him carnally mindless, as he was such an expert to do to her. However, it was a fine edge that she walked, because she understood, deep inside herself, that Drummond did not find sexual gratification in his surrender, but in her surrender. She could tease him and play on the edges of his control, but not go too far.

“Your body is so arousing, Drummond.” She stood and began stroking down his firm back. “I am not sure if you like this position, but it is highly arousing from my view,” she purred, as her gaze fixed on his arching male shaft.

She stroked her hand over his tight buttocks. “Not really, Orchid.”

“Mm.” Gabriella stroked the other cheek of Drummond’s ass. Then, she gave it a light pat. “Lay down then, amour, and feel the softness of the mink on your hard cock.”

Surprise! Drummond nearly lost a groan of bliss as the mink enveloped the heat of his rigid dick. He eased gingerly down against the stiffness not wanting to bend. His instant desire was to hump the mink as he felt Gabriella climbing over his back to straddle his hips. Christ. He’d taught Gabriella too many sensual tricks and now with her creative and fertile mind unfettered to do anything she could imagine sexually . . . he was in for it!

And he loved it. He might not survive, but what a way to go. Drummond felt Gabriella’s bare pussy on his buttocks as she settled in with a lust-filled undulation. Then, his lust filled. Frothing over. Tightly reined. Then, he felt her drizzling oil on his back with her massaging hands following. He laid his head to the side and fought his tension to relax. He knew this carnal teasing well. Raise sexual tension to the breaking point, then relax it. Then ... raise it again higher. Oh yes! He had taught his wife too well, and he was definitely in for it.

“Feel good, my sexy slave? It feels good to me.”

“Madame, I am yours.”

Drummond played along with the game, and while Gabriella’s hands kneading his back felt excellent, the movements of her denuded pussy riding his ass was most assuredly wreaking havoc. She enjoyed it also because he could feel her helping the undulations along and not all propelled by her massaging. The softness of her bare pussy was incredible. He could feel the plump, heated outline, and the dampness she exuded.

Without intent, his hips humped, riding his cock through the mink’s plushness and Gabriella with up and down movements on his ass. His fingers curled beneath his cheek where his chin rested. When he realized what he had done, he strained not to do it again.

Gabriella purred above him with her fingers digging deep into his muscular back. “Do not rein it in, my amour, let it free.”

Oh, he wanted to, but more than that, he wanted soft pussy around his cock. Gabriella leaned forward with the tips of her nipples scoring his oily back, while her lips kissed the side of his mouth. Her hands dug deep, massaging lower on his back, and then she rose and scooted lower over the hump of his ass. He could feel sweet hot pussy rubbing all the way, making his mouth water. Then, he felt more oil poured onto the small of his back.

“Joelle, told us all of course,” Gabriella murmured above him as her fingers began kneading his lower back, the motion moving his hips in barely perceptible thrusts, which connected to his cock.

Now? Now, she brings this up, Drummond thought, trying to change mental gears. Failing, he decided his wife was too clever by far.

“It is a horrible, shocking story, Drummond. Thank God, they are alive. I think Joelle fits Saxon to my view, like a glove.”

Her hands moved to the top of his buttocks, spreading more warm oil and allowing it to slowly run down the crease between the cheeks of his ass. It was then, he discovered a new, “erotic zone” on his body. Who knew? Then, his hips humped, lightly stroking his throbbing cock into the mink. By god, the experience was sensual, he had to give his wife that! And he knew she was not through yet.

Drummond tried to find his voice, but it rasped, “You are not going with the Archangels or be involved.”

Gabriella’s fingers found the crease of his ass, tracing it. Et oh! Another, “zone.”

“I know, darling,” she answered, much too acquiescent, he thought, when he could think, with Gabriella’s fingers now spread out over the rumps of his buttocks as she kneaded them. He had always known he was an ass man. He delighted in playing with his wife’s, but he’d never considered his own much, until . . .

A groan rumbled uncontrolled from his throat as one of Gabriella’s oily fingers slid and burrowed through the crevice of his ass. His cock seemed to be connected to the sensation and it pounded strongly. Incredibly, his ass itched to rise upward, and he fought the urge to crawl up on his knees, while his mind vicariously wondered just how far his lovely wife might go in this direction. Whether it was balking on his part or actually hidden aroused thoughts over the matter, he could not digest at the moment.

“We were cheated of twenty-five years, Drummond. Years we missed the pleasure of each other, and now it nearly makes me weep or crumble to even think of being away from you for any length of time.”

Damnation, the woman was merciless, ruthless! “Ah,” he groaned as his ass lifted and Gabriella’s small finger circled his anus. Another, “zone” of incomparable proportions. She leaned forward over his back again with her breasts rolling, as her heated breath touched his ear.

“I want to, Drummond. A little prod, but I will not if you do not find it arousing.”

Good Christ! Drummond jerked his head more to the side, getting part of Gabriella’s mouth in a heated kiss. She must have taken this as a yes, because he could feel somewhere inside him the feeling that he knew meant that she had . . .

“Ah,” His cock nearly ejaculated.

“Oh, darling!” Gabriella mewled as she scooted back more, freeing his legs and ass. Then, while his thighs spread open wider, her finger stroked shallowly, while her other oily hand began to frolic with his balls.

Heaven help him, he came up onto his knees with his engorged cock burning it was so hard, as he literally begged like a fool. “Oh Christ, Orchid, stroke my cock.”

“Oh yes!” she exclaimed passionately. “This is just as I envisioned it!”

His wife envisioned wicked and naughty things that pushed him to an edge he’d never been on before. While her finger began rhythmically stroking in his ass, her tongue suddenly lapped against his balls from behind, and her other hand squeezed around his cock . . . pumping it.

“Fuck!” he charged, losing his control, as his wife milked a thrashing ejaculation from him, while finger fucking his ass.

Fertile imagination, his ass, Drummond thought. His wife was kinky in the best and most lavish sense of the word, and his cock spewed seed, four times, until his knees nearly collapsed, and his chest heaved in great billows. He twisted his neck, shook his head, tried to catch his breath as Gabriella lifted her finger from his ass, but lovingly kept licking his ball sacs. He was on his hands and knees, with his legs spread, and he considered tentatively that it was not such a bad position, if all done properly.

“What was the razor for?” His breath still heaved.

“Mm mm,” Gabriella’s warm tongue lifted from his balls. “I was going to shave your balls, but I have decided that I really love them hairy instead.”

Drummond’s flaccid cock twitched. Impossible! “You are not going to go along with the Archangels!” he growled.

“I know,” she answered sweetly, too sweetly by far and he knew his wife’s campaign had just begun!

He was in for it...

Chapter Four

As she walked, Kit squinted again at the address on the letter in her hand. Paris addresses were hard for her American mind to make out, and Clay’s scribbled writing did not help. Thank the Lord, she had been able to lose her husband at the dock. She’d made her way into Paris, arriving last night and had managed to find a hotel that was respectable enough for her to stay in. Not that she’d gotten much sleep. She found she was much too keyed up at being so close to discovering where her brother was. She’d even thought to use a false surname at the hotel, just in case Nick was more industrious than she thought he was.

But he was behind her now and she was determined to leave the embarrassment of her monumentally bad choice in marriage behind her. She had much more important matters to attend to. It had taken a lot of willpower not to go out searching for Clay last night, feeling that all her worries could easily be set aside if he was still at his Paris apartment, just being stubborn in the end, and refusing to write to her these last six months. Hearing about their father’s illness might have made Clay retreat into himself, or he could be sitting in his flat drinking French wine, brooding, and playing his piano. His one true love in life was music.

Nevertheless, while she may have been confident enough to gallop a horse on the road to Paris on her own, she had enough commonsense to not try to wander alone in Paris at night. Paris was the largest city she’d ever been in besides New York City. The sprawl of Paris awed her, when her normal bases of reference were vast and wide-open spaces.

Kit stopped at what looked to be the address, a well-laid brick building, in what appeared to be a nice section of Paris. Clay was not without his resources. While his passion might be music, he had taken his knowledge of raising cattle and turned it into profit. From his letters, Kit understood that Clay had used his personal relationship with many cattle-ranchers in America to ship beef cattle to France, and the price was high here for the American bred delicacy.

Kit knew there would be several larger apartments in the building. It did not surprise her when she walked through the gate and stepped into a well-kept patio garden. On the far side was the front door with a large iron pull-bell placed out front. Just as her gloved hand reached upward to pull the bell, the front door pushed open toward her, and she quickly stepped back, hearing the burr of a baritone voice saying, “Aye, Mademoiselle lass, ye keep my card and think on it. I just want to look, and I’d take nothing. Maybe help, when it’s all said and done.”

Mademoiselle lass, Kit thought, what queer turn of phrasing, while her mind registered and placed the Scottish accent. The accent seemed so out of place to her mind set of Paris. Then suddenly, a large man passed her on the front steps. Kit barely saw the man as he tipped his head in a polite gesture, then he was past her. Had she turned around to watch him leave, she might have seen him pause to look back at her. Instead, she was left looking at a middle-aged woman standing in the entryway.

What passed next, to Kit, was a dance in French pantomime and American as she tried to converse with the lady and make known her wishes to see her brother. In the end, her savior was the arrival of the lady’s English speaking, twelve-year-old son. The son informed her that his name was Pier and his mother’s name was Mademoiselle Lillian. They lived on the bottom floor of the building and oversaw the tenants for the owners.

The next piece of information Pier imparted was quite disturbing. He said Monsieur Clayton lived there no more. Luckily, Kit rallied, and asked more probing questions. At first, Pier and Mademoiselle Lillian were hesitant to say anything until she showed Pier a letter from her brother. Fortunately, he could read English as well as speak it, and quickly understood that she was Clayton’s sister. This changed the dynamic considerably. Mademoiselle Lillian now saw her as a way to recover unpaid rents she adamantly felt were due to her.

Upon hearing all of this, Kit nearly had the hope that Clay had run out on them. Her mind quickly skipped to hopeful possibilities such as he’d fallen on hard times. However, that hope was dashed when Mademoiselle Lillian informed her, through Pier, that she was almost ready to sell Clay’s personal belongings to recover part of the money owed.

Kit hastily assured them that she would pay the rent owed and that she wanted all of Clay’s personal property. Once this was clear, Mademoiselle Lillian became more relaxed and conversational again. Soon, Pier, with key in hand, was taking Kit to Clay’s apartment.

“When was the last time you saw, Clayton, Pier?” Kit asked as they climbed the narrow stairs. They passed two flights and two other doors that Kit assumed were other apartments.

“It was on zee day before Bastille Day. I remember well. Monsieur Clayton would wave on his way to zee café in the morning, or he would stop and throw the ball to me. I like those days. Then, he was no more, and I think he would say adieu.”

Yes, he would, Kit thought, with a twinge. Clay was always good to children. Dread silently built inside her at the thought of how long Clay had been gone, that and the fact all his personal property was still there.

Hours later, Kit emerged from a hired carriage outside the Commissionaire de Police building in Paris. All her fears were confirmed and running rampant, really. Clay was actually missing, and for no outward or discernible reason. Foul play, screamed inside Kit’s head as she straightened the folds of her mocha-colored walking dress. She’d taken the time to return to her hotel to change her clothes after searching Clay’s apartment for clues. She’d dressed in an elegant outfit with accessories. They were clothes that by their very quality and presence spoke of money. Deep pockets, her father would say. Show them you mean business by your appearance and demeanor alone.

She did mean business, Kit thought firmly, as she adjusted her deep chocolate-colored hat with a mink-edge, set off with a black veil scripted with flowers. She meant to file a report with the Paris police that her brother was missing and she meant for them to listen to her and to take her seriously. Or at least think that she had money enough to cause a monumental fuss, Kit thought, which was halfway true. She came from money, but whether she had any money any more was up in the air. Nonetheless, she knew somewhat how to carry off the ruse of a moneyed person. After years of watching her father, she would use it like he would and bite back any hesitations she felt at trying to do so. The world was very much a man’s world and not easy for a female to get her voice heard.

But she’d been brave enough to leave Nick behind, hadn’t she? Oh yes! Only she wished she could not hear the echo of Nick’s voice in the back of her mind telling her over and over how incompetent she was. The true mystery was, why did she care what he thought?

Kit started to climb the fifty or so steps to the entrance of the Commissionaire de Police building. Perhaps, it was because she had started to care for Nick, in the beginning, but now she would not let Nick’s falseness win. She’d been a shadow in her father’s life, because she was a girl. Yet even then, she’d tried to outdo, to show her worth. She would now too, she thought. Nothing had ever felt more important to her or urgent in her life. Clay had always treated her as significant, nearly an equal. Maybe it was the adversity that Clay had to endure by being what people thought was different. A lover of men, what their father thought was perverted.

Kit nodded her head to the uniformed man who opened the doors to people entering. Then, she swept inside, hoping that she looked like she was an important presence. She’d searched Clay’s entire apartment and the more that she’d looked through his things, the more urgent the knowledge came to her that this was not a man gone off on some unexplained wandering, but a man suddenly ripped out of an active and thriving life.

While she found little to explain to her what could have happened to him, she did find things that told how abruptly he’d disappeared, leaving important matters undone in his business. There were written missives from any number of sources asking where their shipments were, what the time schedules were, and demanding Clay contact them immediately. Many of these had been unopened, collected in a pile of waiting mail that Mademoiselle Lillian had taken delivery of when she could not reach Clay. Kit had opened each one, feeling more desperate with each one that she read. Clay would not do this. He would never do this!

In Clay’s apartment, Kit had found only one good avenue to pursue, and that was the name of a man that had written Clay a love letter. She’d found it tucked in the bedside table and it looked as if it had been read many times. By Clay, she assumed. It surprised her to find that it sounded like any other love letter one might read between a man and a woman. But this was man to man with deep heartfelt feelings, and while Kit had felt like a voyeur, she’d also felt the tug of her heart. This man, Marco Remior, cared for her brother.

So, she would rouse the police to the best of her ability, and after that she would find Marco Remior and begin her own search. No matter what it took! Or what she had to do. She would find Clay, because she loved him deeply.

Thus fortified and inwardly emboldened, Kit fairly marched with authority to the reception counter inside the Commissionaire de Police of Paris.

Chapter Five

Lady Chloe Ravenscar stood in perfect stillness with her naked body freshly oiled from her neck to her toes by her husband’s roughly scarred hands. “Raven,” she passionately called him, but his real name was Lord Harrison Ravenscar.

Her oil-slick flesh gleamed, illuminated by the numerous candles lit about the bedchamber. It cast her skin to ivory with the lightest yellow tint, while touching shadows here and there over her feminine curves. Glistening darker shadows beneath her heavy full breasts, barely traced shadows over the slightly rounded protrusion of her soft belly. Never to be flat again, after bearing two children, nor her breasts as uplifted or compact.

She had given Raven a daughter, and she realized in the depths of her soul, by Buddha’s great wisdom, that with the gift of a child, she had soothed some of the wounds in Raven’s heart. Her first child, Sebastian, was not Raven’s. Yet, Raven treated him as his own. But there was a special bond between Niella, their one-year-old daughter and Raven, not because Niella was his blood, but because she was his daughter. The peace inside Raven had started after they had committed their love to each other as man and woman. Then, it had grown these several years and enlarged greatly with the arrival of their daughter.

Raven had brooded less and smiled more, even laughing with his children. He had become more open with his family and friends. The peace inside him had flourished with warmth, to be strong and true.

Until tonight.

This week a demon lurked. It thrashed its ugly head, and Chloe thought she knew why the demon had returned. It was because Raven thought they would expect him to kill again, to return to being an assassin. The moment last week when Chloe had heard Joelle telling the tale of her, Saxon, and The Order of the Satyr, Chloe had felt it too. The demon’s talons had scraped her soul and frightened her. Raven would not survive again. He could not go back to what he was, just as she could not go back to what she was. She was Raven’s woman now, which between them meant much more than simply being his wife.

Raven looked at the gleaming sculptured shapes and curves of his woman standing nude before him, while he slowly circled her. The animal within him was rising again. It was dark and lewd, filled with unnatural cravings. It aroused him to try to hold it at bay, even as he assuaged its unreasonable cravings. Chloe knew it lusted for her. He could see her reaction in the circle of her nipples, puckered a dusky rose, with her nipple tips jutting outward in deeper red. Below, the lips of her cunt took on a light rouge color. The slit clearly seen and vulnerable, glistening wet. Her ass, his personal treasure, was round with the feminine globes shivering lightly.

She feared the animal. She desired the animal. She loved his barely edged control of it. She sensed the heightened danger this time, even as she submitted to him. She would forever be the only thing that could save him.

His wife exuded the warm aroma of cinnamon and husky arousal as he stopped, fully clothed in an open edged shirt and dark britches before her. He held a roughly braided rope coiled in his left hand, one end hanging freely. Chloe’s almond eyes traveled along its length to the frayed end. He lifted the frayed end of the rope up to her lips, brushing their full bowed-shape lightly as her brandy eyes deepened to dark whiskey.

“Kiss it,” he whispered, with his rasping voice barely sounding in low insidious drawn out vibrations.

The allure of Chloe’s lips plumped as they kissed the roughened hemp. The movement swayed the lustrous and straight length of her black hair around her bare waist, as she suddenly exclaimed, “I beg to go with you! Don’t leave me!”

Harrison felt shock stiffen through his lean muscular frame, even as he rasped, “No!”

Harrison knew Chloe did not plead for him to take her into the submission and ecstasy of the moment. Their bond was not just of the body, but of the mind and soul. She would not tempt the fates to beg anything from him that he did not already give her, unless the demand inside her was forcefully out of control. But his devious and lecherous mind twisted this with the perverted logic that what he was about to do to her had just been proven, was needed.

He was completely confident that in a short amount of time he would have Chloe mindlessly aroused beneath his command of her. It was clear that she needed his direction. He would provide it, and she craved their unique kind of passion as much as he did. It was what bound them and made them one together.

Harrison moved then, walking to Chloe’s side, then behind her. He let out more length of the frayed end of the rope, while lowering his hand, until the end dangled against Chloe’s oily buttocks. He snaked the end along the plush crease of her ass, watching her ivory flesh shiver alive with the sensation.

“Please,” she whispered.

Damn it, his mind cursed. “Put your wrists behind your back, Rosebud.” Just saying his pet name for Chloe stroked his cock. Her hesitation showed her reluctance.

But her wrists still moved behind her back. “Raven, I need to talk to you,” she tried.

“No,” he uttered with his hoarse voice, and he meant more than saying no to talking. His woman knew that. He roped her wrists once, but he held the hemp closed by his grip alone, without a knot. He pulled the rope, lifting her wrists behind her, arching her back and thrusting her naked breasts outward. She gasped a sound of excitement as he stepped to her side, lifting his free hand with the rope held coiled up to her throat. He grasped the slender column knowing the rope would be rough against her silky flesh, while the looped ends would sway and abrade the bare flesh of her breasts. He arched her neck back, bending her until his lips hovered with harsh breathing over her open and slightly panting mouth.

“No!” he expelled, right before he took her mouth.

Chloe moaned as the demand of Raven’s tongue submerged into her mouth. He was not gentle, but jarring, using his hand clamped over her throat to arch her back further as her wrists twisted to be free of the rope. It was an instinctual need to brace herself or defend against the consuming carnal invasion of her mouth. Raven’s tongue lashed against her tongue as his lips twisted and sucked, bruising her tenderness. The roughness, the slight pain, and the torrid heat excited her with fear. Her mind tried to fall away into the intense moment of harsh ecstasy, but she fought its usual course. Nothing had withstood it before. Raven’s command of her had always made her mindless in complete surrender.

But this time her love for him was stronger! When Raven pulled his lips away from the ravishment of her mouth, she would have fallen into a panting puddle on the floor, but for his hand clasping her throat. Still, she had the strength of love to say, “Please, Raven! I beg you. Do not leave me! Take me with you. I will die without you!”

“Die?” Raven asked, with a harsh rasp. “I will make you die and come back to life.”

Chloe felt the effort Raven used not to shake her as he used the pressure of his hands to pull her toward their bed. She was angering the demon and not certain if Raven could keep his demons from harming her in more than pleasure-pain.

“Does your cunt throb, Rosebud?”

“Yes,” she panted. “Just as your cock throbs for it, Raven.”

Chloe shocked herself with her own blurted words, being more defiant than she’d ever been before. She expected Raven’s swift, sure punishment, yet his hand did not squeeze tighter over her throat, while he pressed the back of her knees to the side of their bed. When she dared to peek upward, she was surprised to find a hint of amusement mixed with lust in his ebony eyes. Then, she felt the rope loosen around her wrists freeing them as Raven propelled her backwards onto the bed, rasping, “Let’s see who wins, my love.”

Chloe gasped as her spine fell against the soft mattress. However, before she could gasp again, Raven’s hand had clasped one of her ankles, lifting it until her knee yielded and bent. Then, in the blinking of her fluttering lashes, he had her ankle bound to her wrist. She tugged, darting her gaze to him. The only way her body could accommodate this was with her bent leg fallen outward, stretching her inner thigh muscles, while her other leg dangled down over the side of the bed.

Raven straightened, standing between the V of her thighs, at the end of the bed. “Raise your other leg, Chloe.”

Chloe? Raven never called her Chloe during their intense sexual play, and now he waited for her to submit willingly to him, to show him that she desired this as much as he did. She would be completely vulnerable to him, and the promise on his shadowed and arrogant face showed that he intended to feed on her without remorse. Yet, she could only think that if she sated the demons, then she could perhaps get through to him, even as her pussy welled in arousal.

Raven’s body shifted with a deep and harsh chuckle. His nostrils flared, and she knew he smelled the heady vapor of need drizzling in her pussy. Then, he began to take his shirt off, arrogant again, in confidence ... as her knee bent upward.

Harrison had used ropes on Chloe once before, yet never to the extent he seemed compelled to now. Before, he’d tied her to the bed. This time he tied her to herself, wrist to ankle on both sides. Just the sight of the ropes around her delicate and glistening ivory flesh was nearly more arousing than the splayed V of her thighs exposing her cunt. It was more than exposed though, it was split wide open, sopping wet and red. Her sheath was a dark circle, unprotected and inciting his cock to engorge more and stretch the flesh so tightly that it was painful. Chloe’s protruding clit, stripped away from the folds around it was fat and sassy with need. Yet as always, it was the rosebud of her anus that jerked his cock in his britches. The perfect pink pucker spread open, exhibited and flaunting his senses.

Yes. This is what he needed. This is what the animal demanded. More! He brought the loose frayed end of the rope forward again, brushing it over his wife’s aroused clit as she panted with her dark irises shifting to an unfocused quality. He knew the rope was rough on her delicate flesh as her ass undulated and her breasts heaved.

“More?” he hissed through his sneer.

“Raven,” she moaned, not answering, not admitting to him how much she craved this and more.

“You must always answer me,” he rasped, leaning over her, nearly as though he leaped, while he began to roughly tie the rope around one of her beautiful breasts, then the other. He did this in a circle around each mound, repeatedly winding the rope, pressuring the inner mass outward, crossing over her cleavage to bind each breast, until only one half of each globe protruded outward with scarlet nipple points jutting. Chloe’s belly rolled in tremors as her wrists twisted against her ankles.

“How does it feel?” he demanded.

“I’ve n-never,” she panted. “N-never felt...”

Her head was thrown back with her entire body flushed with light perspiration. The animal within him was pleased that she was incoherent. He stood back to view his lewd, lusty, and carnal masterpiece. It was part of the lust to see it and appreciate it. He took his pants down, tossing them aside. His cock was thick and tinged nearly purple with engorged blood as he stroked it, watching Chloe bound and writhing on his bed, waiting for her to beg.

“Raven, you never have to kill again! Never!” Chloe’s sudden cry ripped the air.

Damn her! Damn her! Harrison leaped, and then his cock was thrust into Chloe’s slick sucking cunt before he realized it.

“Yes,” she cried out passionately. “Yes, my love!”

“Christ ... you! Ah! Christ, you!” Harrison spat, grasping Chloe’s hair, dragging her head back as his lips descended. “I love you!” The damning proclamation wrenched from Harrison’s throat as his lips fell over her lips and his cock pumped into her sweet and wet pussy.

Chloe arched to meet Raven’s cock, pulling against the bindings to take as much of his girth as she could. Her love had triumphed over mere insane lust, and she had shown Raven the strength of her belief.

Chapter Six

“Och, lass, what can it hurt if I have another look at your records? The ones a few months passed the last ones I looked at before.”

Kit stopped walking down the ill-lighted hallway inside the Commissionaire de Police building. She instantly recognized the voice. Then, she heard the tenor, Scottish burr sound again.

“Just the missing people, lass, no harm in that.”

A woman’s voice replied in French and partial English, as Kit inched forward toward the open doorway, she could detect the woman’s reluctance.

After an hour waiting, Kit had been directed to a door at the end of the hall, to see someone official from the Paris police. Because of her brother’s disappearance, two things struck Kit’s curiosity with alarm. The fact that in a city the size of Paris she would see Scottish man twice and now the same man would be asking Paris police about missing people. She wondered about the coincidence of seeing him at Clay’s apartment building and that alone drove her to peek around the edge of the open doorway to get a good look at him.

She immediately noticed that her original impression of largeness, she’d first felt in his presence, was quite accurate. The Scot stood over six feet to her mere five-foot-eight. He appeared attractive and was not above using his pleasing looks as he tried to charm the petite French woman. It appeared that the woman was glad there was a counter between them. As Kit watched their exchange, she couldn’t help assessing the Scotsman’s physical presence, for he had a certain charisma. He was not classically handsome in features it was more in expression and presence. His nose was a bit too large and set slightly off the center as though it could have been broken once. His hair was auburn, with coppery highlights, and it was tied back with a very short stub of hair hanging down his neck as though he were trying to grow it out or had just cut off a longer tail of it.

Kit imagined when loose and not slicked back and tied that his hair would fall to his neck, but not his shoulders. She fancied it was quite a hairy vision, with his full reddish brown beard and moustache. He had a big chest and long legs, and he was wearing more casual riding attire. His white linen shirt was tied up, and over it he wore a brown cutaway jacket, brown, buff riding pants, and nearly knee-high boots. It was obvious that the Scot was interested in people reported missing in Paris within the last year. He had managed it well, charmed the woman into showing him the records. Why? Why was he interested? Who was he? Maybe someone he loved was missing?

The Scotsman had an odd way of turning his head when the woman spoke to him, and Kit wondered about it, even as she itched to see those records as well. There could be something in them. Maybe, her brother’s name was already written there, but she was cautious about letting the Scotsman know she was watching him or had recognized him. The entire revelation of Clay’s disappearance had her on edge, scared, and apprehensive. It would be unwise to trust anyone at this point and better to look at everyone with a jaundiced eye. It simply set her instincts on alert that the Scotsman was somehow connected.

“Here they are, Monsieur Duneagan, more of zee records. You must be quick, ǹest-ce pas.”

Duneagan, well at least she had part of his name, Kit thought. However, she was not willing to let him see her, and she pondered how she would pass the doorway without being seen.

“Are you lost, mademoiselle?”

Blast! Kit flinched, then she turned toward the man’s voice, and saw him coming up behind her. How had she not heard the little Frenchman? He looked like a civilian worker and not the police. Kit realized that she had no choice but to answer him. “No, the door I want is at the end of the hall,” she mumbled, moving forward as she spoke.

Kit hoped to get past the open doorway without the Scotsman seeing her, and if she was quick and if he had his head down looking at the records she might manage it. Then, she did the unthinkable, even as she fought not to do it ... but she failed. She looked into the room as she passed with just a blink of her eyes. She simply had to know if he would see her. But their gazes collided! And then, she was beyond the open doorway. She nearly stumbled, but she managed to keep moving in spite of his vivid green irises branded in her mind. Her only solace was her veil. Perhaps, he’d not gotten a clear look at her?

Brynmore maintained his pretense of gazing out the window. He stood near a partially open door at the end of the hallway near the Records Office. Who the hell was the woman? Coincidences were never just that, not just accidents or occurrences. It was never simply fate. Brynmore listened to what he could hear of the conversation going on in the room the woman had entered.

“Mademoiselle Montoya, zees things are seldom solved, most regrettably.”

Montoya? The woman was American or her husband was. Brynmore filed that information away as he settled his hands into his pockets, continuing his contemplative gaze out the window. The missing man that he’d gone to investigate, the one with the American sounding first name, but French sounding last name, that’s where he had first seen Miss Montoya.

“So many of zee men wander off to a new woman without thinking.”

“But my brother was not interested in w- ... Never mind, please take my word that he has not wandered off to another woman or man. Clayton is not like that . . . too as you say, wandering off, and if you see his apartment you will realize...”

There was some sort of movement that cut off Brynmore’s hearing for a moment and he lost what the man said when he interrupted Miss Montoya. She had a clear voice, better for his one good ear. It was times like this that Brynmore cursed the loss of hearing in his left ear. Of course, he knew what the Paris official was saying. He was doing a jig to the tune of sidestepping all the lass’ concerns.

“I do have this one name, Marco Remior, if you will only speak to him,” Miss Montoya said.

Wait now! Brynmore had heard that name before, during his investigation of men missing in Paris. The threads of coincidence had just collapsed. Now, Brynmore needed to decide if Miss Montoya was a player or a victim. Nevertheless, his adrenalin surged for the first time days since he’d arrived in Paris and found all traces of The Order of the Satyr gone.

Not that the Archangels had but a smidgen to go on to begin with. When whittled down to the bare facts of Saxon and Joelle’s terror driven experiences, they only had one Paris country chateaus and fairly detailed descriptions of the bloody villains, but with fictitious names. Neither, Saxon nor Joelle had been kidnapped from a point of reference one could back-track from. Nevertheless, Brynmore would bet his balls in the end that a freak albino would not be impossible to find.

His first step upon arriving in France had been to go straight through Paris to the chateaus. Saxon had given him detailed directions. It had not been hard to find, but proved to be deserted. It was not a normal leave taking, but a thorough one. Something had the cultists’ backsides on alert. It could have been losing Saxon and Joelle. Although, his other comrades in the Archangels had speculated together the cult would have picked people that appeared to have no connections for their nefarious deeds and enslavement. They would choose people without close family ties or relatives. Otherwise, it would be a bold venture to choose a nobleman like Saxon. Drummond had thought it was likely this Hellion had craved noble blood. Yet the theory of no ties was holding. It was the one thing Joelle and Saxon had in common upon first glances. Of course, the cult could not have found out about Saxon’s immersion in the Archangels spying ventures. That was a seriously well-kept secret.

After visiting the chateaus without finding even a smidgen of a clue, Brynmore had gone on the assumption where one person was missing from Paris there would be others. That was a common thread with Saxon and Joelle — they’d both been kidnapped from Paris, leading to the assumption that Paris had been the cults feeding grounds. Brynmore vividly remembered Saxon’s description of the altar and how Hellion had taken appendages from different human sacrifices and sewn them together, all appearing to be male parts. This was the strongest clue, and was what had led him to start looking for missing men in Paris and any link he could follow that would lead him to the cult or at the very least, a cult member.

Now, the name Miss Montoya mentioned had come up again, and Brynmore knew if Miss Montoya did not, that her brother’s name Clayton Charette was in the Paris police records linked to someone reporting missing less than two months ago. There was no reference to who had initiated the missing person record on Clayton Charette. It was an anonymous request.

“I need to see your records,” Miss Montoya stated clearly. Brynmore thought he could hear her tone of voice better than any other.

“I am sorry, Mademoiselle, this is impossible.”

“But I just saw someone-!” Miss Montoya began to exclaim, and Brynmore stiffened. Then her voice halted with sharp arrest. She began again, “What assurances are you going to give me about this?”

Brynmore listened to the official blarney that the man gave Miss Montoya. Somehow his intuition told him that she understood what the man was trying to do was placate her without substance behind it. She was firm though, responding to every avenue a person in her position could imagine. She ended their conversation with a promise to return the next day to see what progress they had made. The French constable hastily tried to dissuade her, however Miss Montoya assured him that she would return tomorrow, and every day thereafter, until news of her brother was found.

It showed spirit, Brynmore thought, and he silently applauded her. She would be leaving the constable with a clear vision of her visiting and taking up his time, nagging him every day. Brynmore also wagered his best claymore that Miss Montoya’s next two stops would be the record’s office down the hall, and then on to find the man called, Marco Remior.

He needed to find Marco Remior also, and he decided that Miss Montoya needed further investigation herself. Victim or player? He would bet his second best claymore Miss Montoya had Remior’s address.

Chapter Seven

“Bolton, tell my wife that I have returned and will be in the study,” Wyndham said, tapping his riding gloves against his thigh before he handed them to Bolton, his middle-aged butler. He had just walked into the front foyer of his London townhouse, back from his early evening boxing exercises, which he attended thrice weekly. He had to admit, after a year of parrying, bobbing, and weaving about in a boxing ring that his war-injured leg was much stronger, coupled with the hikes through the countryside that he and his wife Orelan regularly enjoyed. He could say with confidence that his leg had returned to more than half of its normal capacity.

“My Lord Hawkenge, your wife is not in residence,” Bolton offered with solemn gray eyes.

Wyndham’s head hiked upward at this. Bolton would have mentioned where Lady Orelan had gone, if he had known. Wyndham would not suffer asking the man, or reveal the fact that he was unaware of Orelan’s plans.

Damnation. Wyndham nodded to Bolton and headed to his study with only a slight limp. He had watched Orelan closely these two weeks since he’d returned from Drummond’s after hearing of Saxon and Joelle’s dangerous encounters. That same night he knew Orelan had heard the tale also, all the wives and lovers of the Archangels had.

Wyndham well remembered returning home that evening. He’d not pretended, not eluded or sidestepped the fact that he had a new mission he would be going on soon. And the fact that Orelan would not be involved. He had known immediately by her reaction that something was amiss. She had demurred to him like a timid flower, when he’d proclaimed, “You will not be going with me. Do not even consider it!”

He’d known the moment his spirited and vivacious wife had accepted that without argument that he was in trouble. Yet, he had been quite clear. Glaringly so! There was no room for any false misunderstanding that she could fall back upon to defy his command. That was a favorite method of hers, and he predicated with a smile, more to find her turned over his knee for a sound spanking as punishment, than any other reason she had to defy him.

But he was the master of his domain! Correction, their domain, and he had one hell of a time convincing his wife of that. Which, not adversely, led them into urgent passion, still burning like a tempest bonfire after all this time married. Considering it, Wyndham realized it had been a while since he had spanked his wife’s sassy bottom, which turned his wife from purring into a wildcat spitfire.

Arriving at his study, Wyndham went straight to the daily posts. He was not a retired spy for nothing. Wyndham immediately noticed the top card left open, with the note only partially back inside the envelope. It was an invitation to an international dinner with accompanying musical soirées. Wyndham saw the implications at once. There would be ambassadors and other officials from varied countries attending. It just happened that his wife was the surviving daughter of a well renowned ambassador.

“Hell!” he cursed as he turned from within his study back to the foyer. He would wager his prize stallion that either the French ambassador or other French officials were expected to attend the gathering. Further, he would ante up the title to his baronage that his lovely and precocious wife, knew of this and was there at this moment trying to play wife-of-a-spy-proves-she-is-needed-to-help-on-a-new-mission. Thereby, directly defying his clear command and putting herself into danger, and more than likely mudding up the entire venture by not following proper plans and time lines . . . and what about stealth!

“Dios!” Orelan squealed as Wyndham bodily whirled, tugged, and pressured her quite forcibly into a ... Orelan glanced around through her hair, fallen and flying about her, in the midst of her struggles with her husband. A bedchamber! Wyndham had herded her into a small bedchamber in the Austrian Ambassador’s residence.

Wyndham was in high and feverish form, wholly commanding and thoroughly masculine. Her golden puma was pure male and therefore completely vexing to her, even as he was magnetizing. So, the desires to slap him or to urgently kiss him were both very ardent in her churning thoughts. The slapping came more quickly to the forefront. This time it was not her palm against his face, but the threat of his palm spanked against her derriere that she thought of, as Wyndham halted their moving struggle by the bed.

“Dios, Wyndham, you would leave all those influential nobles believing you are a barbaro to drag me from their company this way. And they will think I am...”

“The barbaro’s woman,” Wyndham supplied with a suppressed voice of anger as he lifted his good leg and planted his boot with his knee bent upon the bed. Then, Wyndham turned her swiftly with a hand pressed to her back, until she found her belly over the bridge of his knee.

“Oh, you cannot intend to spank me here!” she exclaimed. “How could you think to do this to begin with? I have done nothing wrong!”

“Have you not asked one foreign official downstairs about The Order of the Satyr?” Wyndham’s voice rumbled with accusation, as Orelan felt his hand hauling her voluminous skirts upward. She merely sputtered, thrashing across his thigh. It was the better part of rightful valor, not to admit to one’s angry husband that he could be right. “You did not bat your lovely eyelashes at any Ambassador’s, while flirting and inserting Hellion’s name with seeming innocence?”

Oh! Oh! This was too much. Did her Wyndham seriously believe her a complete idiot? “I will never speak to you again, Wyndham! This is too much! Let me go!”

Orelan felt cold air flash across her now bare and exposed buttocks, as Wyndham muttered to her accusations of never speaking to him again, “I should be so lucky.”

Oh, Wyndham was impossible, when all she tried to do was to help. To show the stubborn man that he needed her. He would feel so badly when he found out what she’d learned, he would kneel at her feet to beg her for forgiveness.

Smack!

Orelan yelped, catching the further sound in her throat as Wyndham’s bare hand slapped across her bottom. “I will scream so that everyone hears!” she exclaimed, wriggling her bare buttocks to and fro, trying to evade any more spanking from Wyndham’s hand.

Smack! Smack! “Go right ahead, Spitfire. I can spank you in front of an audience as not!”

Oh! Ouch! Ouch, Orelan thought, wincing at the sharp stinging Wyndham’s hand left. And, he called her Spitfire, which foretold his high passions of the moment.

Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! “Wyndham!” she yelped, feeling her body flush as the burn stripped her buttocks, and she had nowhere to escape it. The force of Wyndham’s hand rocked her mound over his hard thigh and with each sharp smacking she felt pain, then pleasure flare, as though the sting on her buttocks was connected to her pussy.

It was always like this, spanking becoming a sexual thing between them. This time Wyndham’s smacks were as hurtful, as the first time he’d ever spanked her, when he’d risk his life to save her from Alexei Tropov and he’d taken her as his woman and his wife.

She could not live not to be near him, if he were in that kind of danger again. To wait and wonder would be worse than death. Could he not see this? Did he not know that she could not survive if anything happened to him and she was left thinking she might have done something to prevent it?

Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!

“You will obey me, Spitfire. I will not stop until you swear it.” Smack! Smack!

“Ow! Never! Not in this,” Orelan cried feverishly between pain, arousal, and her heart in agony. She knew she had to do something to turn their anger and fear back from the abyss as she clutched the bed linens in her fists with her long hair falling down around her hands.

Smack! Smack!

“Ow!” she howled, but then she also moaned in the same exhaling of breath, “Oh mm.” Rising on her toes with her thighs separating.

“Damn you!” Wyndham expelled, with his palm falling onto Orelan’s upper buttocks. The smack sounded, but then his hand stopped its motion, coming to rest over his wife’s plush ass. Both cheeks were rosy red, but not as dark crimson as the wet lips of her cunt peeking out.

His nostrils flared with the heated scent of her arousal and his hard dick, imprisoned in his riding britches, palpated against the bareness of her upper right thigh. He watched Orelan use her toes to lift up and down, grinding her mound on the top of his thigh, as she moaned sounds that he knew intimately.

“Oh mm, Wyndham,” she pleaded with sexual intentions husky in her tone.

“No!” His strong body tensed with his effort to control his lustful urges. “This is too important. I must have your word!”

“Later,” Orelan quipped, grinding her cunt on his thigh, while moving her legs open wider until the sticky wetness of the lips split open. His balls grew tight as his fingers crimped on her buttocks. His fingers only urges, their only desire, was to touch hot cunt lips.

“Please, I need you now, mi amor,” she moaned, rotating her ass with carnal avarice.

“You will not dissuade me with sex,” he challenged, his voice tight with tension-filled lust.

“You will think more clearly after,” she offered, then she actually shook her luscious ass at him.

Damn her! He could not tally how much he loved her. The need clouded his brain and transmitted into unreasonable action, driving him to think that he could fuck her into compliance. It was idiotic, however, his dick held no higher intelligence, only urgency.

Therefore, despite his better intentions he accepted Orelan’s logic readily. His illogical dick applauding with a clamor in his britches as he dropped his knee, and then with a slight push of his hand to Orelan’s spine he sent her belly down over the end of the bed. The bed height was perfection to his eyes. It left Orelan bending over with her knees unable to reach the floor so that she wobbled awkwardly for purchase on the toes of her slippered feet.

He wanted to be her purchase as he went to his knees between her thighs, before the sumptuous offering she willingly or not presented. He captured her knees and guided them to his upper thighs as he knelt, settling his ass on his heels. The feast of licentiousness was before him.

What was her husband doing? Orelan wondered as she began to push up onto her elbows. Was he setting her into another prime position to spank her poor defenseless hurting bottom, just when she thought that she had turned his attention to sex? But no, then she felt him grasp her knees, giving her leverage on top of what? The large amount of orange and blossom colored silk skirts she wore to attend the elaborate gathering downstairs were billowing in huge piles about her waist and on either side. She could not see over them as she used the purchase Wyndham had offered to her knees to try to raise her upper body by her elbows.

Was Wyndham kneeling behind her?

“O’Dios!” she exclaimed, when she felt Wyndham’s warm hands grasp her upper thighs, and then he tugged them open. “Ah! Ah!” That was her husband’s tongue! He was licking right into her pussy, then around, then through the lips from behind. “Oh! Yes!” Orelan felt Wyndham’s scorching breath, she felt his big hands holding her thighs open, separating the crease of her bottom and her pussy lips. “Dios, mm mm.” She wiggled her pussy spiritedly on his tongue, humping back. Her husband had never quite licked her pussy in this behind position before. It was so sexy and hot!

He adored this sassy pussy, Wyndham’s mind shouted in a litany, as he lusted and loved on his wife’s hot cunt. The ripe folds clung to his tongue and when he stroked inside, Orelan cooed sounds of ardent passion. The feel of fucking his wife’s inner cunt on his tongue matched the pounding in his cock. Her aroused juices smeared his lower face as his nose bumped in between the crease of her ass. Christ, it was carnal and raw. It was ecstasy, and her cries of ardor became higher and tighter.

That is when he went for his wife’s clitoris.

“Oh!Oh!Oh! My Wyndham!” Orelan squealed.

Orelan felt the tight repeating suction on the bud of her sex as bright lights burst behind her clenched eyelids. A roar of pleasure lashed through her mind, through her body, through her quaking pussy. Her bottom lifted higher with each rapid pang of rapture as her breath held, and her climax reverberated. Wyndham sucked her bud, making her buttocks quaked, while she clenched her fists and moaned over and over.

Wyndham’s sucking lips left her bud. “God, I love your hot cunt,” he rumbled, and the flat of his tongue lapped around and around, and all over her pussy as the quivers of her climax lingered. “You gushed hot cunt juices all over my face, baby love.”

“Oh mm,” she purred

“Such a pretty cunt.”

“Mm Mm.”

Orelan felt Wyndham’s fingertip touching her entrance, then the thickness stroked inside her. “Oh, mm.”

“Christ, you are a volcano. A wet volcano.”

“My pussy wants your cock, my strong puma,” she purred as she squeezed her inner sheath around Wyndham’s stroking finger.

“Wicked, little Spitfire,” he rasped. “So deliciously naughty.”

“Oh! Does your big shaft want my hot little pussy, husband?”

“Aye, Orelan, I want to fuck you hard. Crawl up on the bed and lay on your belly.”

Slap!

Orelan felt the slap on her bottom. It was not a smack, but a love slap, as she eagerly crawled up on the bed. She wondered excitedly about the unusual position of lying flat on her belly and not up on her hands and knees. She felt the muscular length of Wyndham’s tall body hovering over her like a blanket. His mouth kissed her ear, as she felt the searing heat of his bare shaft burrowing between her closed thighs. Instincts made her push, trying to open her thighs, but Wyndham’s strong thighs, braced on the outside of hers held them closed.

“You want my cock,” he whispered with a husky burr, as he licked her ear.

“Yes,” she moaned, trying to raise her bottom, but his weight held her down.

“No mercy,” he said, making her aroused mind confused and wondering what he meant, but at the same moment she felt the head of his shaft thrust between her closed thighs, up the center, then deep within.

“Oh! Oh! Wyndham!”

Sweat rolled down Wyndham’s back beneath his shirt. He only had his britches pulled down past his ass as he teased his wife with shallow, then deep thrust of his cock. He might be teasing her, but he tormented himself. The grip of her closed thighs and tensed buttocks, closed like a luxurious vise around his cock with every thrust and returning gasp from his wife.

He had a plan somewhere in the burning lava of his lust. He tried to remember it, but all his existence flowed to his engorged cock, plunging into a tight, hot, and receptive cunt. Then, the memory flashed before his lust-gutted gaze. With a tremendous will of love and protection, he managed to stop his thrusting with the head of his cock just inside Orelan’s searing haven.

“Wyndham!” she wailed, begging him on.

“You must swear to me, baby love. You must swear,” he heaved, raw and heavily.

“No, not now, Puma. Fuck me! Fuck, your pretty Spitfire,” Orelan whimpered, trying to gyrate her ass beneath the unyielding weight of his belly.

“You want my cock. You want me to fuck you?”

“Yes! Yes! Dios!”

Wyndham stroked his cock once hard, then pulled back, amazing himself at his determination. “Oh!” Orelan squealed with the pleasure of the thrust.

“Promise me!” he charged.

“Wyndham, do not do this to us!”

“Swear!” He thrust again.

“Oh! Oh!” Orelan cried. Wyndham held her in a position that was unexpectedly stimulating and beyond her control. Each thrust sent shock waves to her pussy and sex bud, but as overwrought with arousal as she was she rebelled, panting with tears falling. “No! No! Never! I love you! This means we are one!” Orelan bucked her hips. “Get off me! Get off now! You cannot make me swear this way!”

“Damnation!” Wyndham swore violently. His body collapsed on top of hers, pinning her to the bed as his thick shaft throbbed deeply inside her. “I have to protect you, Orelan. I love you and cannot put you into danger! You are too precious to me.”

“Oh Wyndham,” Orelan whispered. “You know I think all these things about you.”

“Men are stronger! Men are ... damn, that is a stupid argument,” he muttered.

“I agree,” she returned, at the same moment she squeezed the muscles in her inner sheath.

“Christ, woman!” he groaned.

“You have only to pull out,” she said, as she did it again, only this time concentrating to squeeze in a ripple from the head of Wyndham’s shaft to its root. Wyndham groaned with his large body tensing above her. “But I intend not argue, but have sex with my attractive, strong, and very wise husband.”

“Christ, strong, attractive, and wise ... Ah!”

“Oh!” Orelan mewled as she continued the rapid clenching and unclenching of her inner pussy. She had never tried this before, but she was building herself to a climax with it. Now if she could just get Wyndham to come too. “Very wise,” she panted.

“Where did you learn to do this,” he asked with a groan? Then, he lost the battle as he rose upward and began thrusting rapidly.

Christ, his wife was a vexing and sassy minx. She never stopped astounding him, and he fucked her hard, bouncing her buttocks with each thrust. He took them both over the edge with Orelan’s cries of ecstasy loudly echoing throughout the room, and surely carrying down into the ballroom below.

Chapter Eight

Kit felt incompetent. She realized that she had accomplished nothing, only wasted time. Clay could have little time left. The Paris police, for all their patronizing words, were uninterested in missing people. They had more important matters to attend to ... thefts, assaults, murders, and the list went on. Her father would have known that. Blast, Kit thought, even her condescending husband would know that. They would have realized immediately this was a cause to be taken on personally or to hire an expert to investigate. It stung twice as badly that she’d been unable to persuade the records keeper to let her see the records as that Scot’s charmer had been able to do. She hated feeling useless. Somewhere in her mind, she knew that she really was not. However, that was not the way it felt. She was Clay’s only hope. She had to be better than this.

“I will be,” she said with determination, as she stared, unseeing out the hired carriage that was taking her from the Commissionaire de Police building to the address for Marco Remior. She would hire someone. Paris must have someone like the Bow Street Runners of London that her father talked about. Perhaps, if she started with a lawyer, they could recommend someone. She needed to contact a lawyer about severing her marriage to Nick, but her marriage felt like such a trivial concern at the moment. Everything seemed wrong except moving forward to find Clay. Yes, it would be wiser to take the time to hire help.

Then, with the thought of help, her mind turned to Duneagan and she wondered why? Just as easily though, she passed it off as a silly woman’s reaction to needing a strong man. She could do this on her own. Besides, she had no clue as to Duneagan’s allegiance. She would do well to have the investigator that she hired tomorrow, also look into the Scotsman, instead of having fanciful notions, wishing he was some miracle champion sent to help her find her brother.

The carriage came to a halt, and thankfully changed her contemplations to action. Once she paid the driver and stood before the entrance to Marco Remior’s presumed home, she saw that the entrance was not too dissimilar in appearance from Clay’s own apartment across town. However, Marco Remior’s address appeared much wealthier than Clay’s, with a doorman instead of an iron bell pull.

Kit went along with the doorman’s assumption that she belonged there or was expected by someone within. Inside, she saw at once that each of the five or so floors in the building were individually very large apartments. The number on the address meant Marco Remior’s was the entire second floor. Kit took the stairs up two steep flights into a narrow hallway. Ten steps later and a right turn put her at Marco Remior’s door, but not in view of the stairway. As she approached the door, she noticed an odd shadow along it, and it was not until she reached the actual dark door that she realized why.

The door was open, maybe an inch, as though someone had stepped outside it with the intent of returning quickly, and without the need to latch it. That feeling had Kit glancing around, even though there was nothing to see. She supposed the resident could have gone upstairs to see someone or simply left absent-mindedly, not pulling the door closed, or gone back inside for something they forgot and suddenly remembered.

That thought spurred Kit’s gloved hand upward to knock on the ajar door. “Mister Remior?” she called, after four raps.

What happened next completely shocked her as the door flew inward, making her gaze dumbfounded at her hand, knowing that she had not used that much force to rap on the door. But then, a large blur clouded her vision and someone grabbed her raised wrist. The wrist grabber tugged forcefully, and a man’s voice asked harshly. “So, where is that cunt, Remior?”

Kit fell forward with the tug propelling her inside, as she squawked, “Remior?” As though she were testing to see if the brute pulling her inside could be Remior.

“Grab her, Baco! Don’t let da bitch scream!”

Oh my lord. Kit finally realized that she was in danger as another hulking presence grabbed her from one side, quickly moving behind her with a huge sweaty-pawed hand clamped over her veiled mouth and nose. She screeched too late against the sour smelling hand so the only sound was furious muffled squeaking. She immediately wrestled against the arm clamped around her waist, damning her heavy skirts. She could not manage a proper kick of the other burly assailant in front of her.

Her movements were strong and violent, not dainty and helpless as she thrashed against the two assailants trying to win her freedom from them. Her twisting gaze had already told her that the room they were wrestling her through was in a shambles.

“Hold her, Baco! Damn, she’s da wild one. Take her to da bedroom, we’ll tie her.”

Tie! Kit screamed beneath the hand and lunged to and fro with enough strength to wobble both men, but not enough to stop them. She could barely catch sight of the men through her veil and her struggles. She only knew that they were both stocky, strong, and had thick accents like she’d never heard before. When they reached the bedchamber, one grasped her legs, lifting them off the ground to put her on the bed as she screeched and thrashed wildly.

“Bloody hell,” Brynmore swore. He had followed Miss Montoya and watched as she entered a residence on an upper class street of Paris. It was a large building, and he had no clue into which residence she’d gone. He should have stopped her from going in. She would tip their hand and alert Marco Remior that people were looking for him, when it would be better to identify Remior, and then follow him.

She put herself in danger. If Remior was connected to the cult and Miss Montoya’s brother was kidnapped and used ill by them, the cult was not going to like anyone who cared showing up. Brynmore’s indecision had to do with whether Miss Montoya was a player or a victim. He had enough evidence to say that she was the latter, and his gut intuition told him the same.

If he wanted the best chance for this to lead him to the cult, perhaps he should wait outside and not tip his hand. But that would leave him without a look at Remior and he needed to identify the man for future surveillance. That was why he decided to move in closer to see if he could get a look at Remior without being seen. His motives were to see Remior and definitely not any tugs of worry over a woman he did not know.

Brynmore saw the doorman. However, he’d seen Miss Montoya’s encounter, and he knew the doorman was unlikely to ask his direction. The pitfall to this was where to go once inside and he did not want the doorman to remember him by asking. So he only nodded curtly to the doorman, and then he turned directly to the stairs as though he knew exactly where he was going.

It was bloody well idiotic, because it was getting him nowhere, Brynmore thought moments later. She could be on the first floor, he reflected, climbing the stairs further, considering knocking on any door and just asking for Remior. He had about a five to one chance of not knocking on Remior’s door. Nevertheless, all his speculation and developing plans snapped to a halt when he reached the second floor and turned the corner to the only apartment door. He’d learned a long time ago, all the planning in the world was fine, but when it was time for action a man just had to trust his gut and leap right in.

When he saw the door was open, he did not knock, but he pushed it open the rest of the way. Then, he saw that the first room he entered was in shambles, and he threw all caution and stealth aside. He was dealing with murders, if this was the right direction, and he could not take the chance that it was not. He knew of perils well, and the split-seconds between life, death, injury, or averting them.

He hastily bellowed, “Miss Montoya!” If she were here in danger, his arrival, his bellow, might avert disaster.

Brynmore heard it then, the crash, then struggle deeper in the bowels of the apartment. He rushed forward, continuing to bellow Miss Montoya’s name. His fingers were at his boot top, pulling free the knife he carried by hardened instinct. He did not carry a pistol as it was too bulky and obvious for the delicate searching and surveillance work he was at, however, his knife was always with him.

When Brynmore slammed open the door to the bedchamber he saw her. Miss Montoya was tied with her wrists behind her and her ankles tied together, and then pulled up behind her with a lead binding her wrists to her ankles. She was partially naked with her voluminous gown and underskirts torn around her pale body as she lay on her side on top of the bed.

He caught a glimpse of one man already out the window, and the back of a stocky man halfway through the open window. His swift survey of the room told him that no other attackers were still in the room as he rushed to the bed. Bloody hell! The brutes had cut away the lady’s under drawers, leaving her buttocks and between her thighs exposed.

He saw no blood as he lurched onto the bed behind her, lowering his knife to cut the ropes. “Tell me you live, lass,” he hissed.

“Yes,” she gasped and he heard the sob behind it as he cut away her bonds.

He was torn, if he did not move now, the bastards would get away. He told himself when all was said and done that Miss Montoya would want him after them for herself or surely for her brother. But he was a wretched and cold-hearted man more times than he cared to admit, or had to be, to get the nasty jobs done that he’d been involved in. He felt regret, but he moved to the window instead.

“Lass, get out of here as quick as you can,” he called as he leaped through the window, cursing the foolery fouling his tongue. He did not know if they had raped her.

Kit’s entire body shuddered. Her veil was wrapped around her head like a web and for some reason, why that seemed the most important thing for her to untangle and break loose from, escaped her. But she went about it painstakingly, with jerky movements, while tears burned her cheeks because her wrists were free and she could.

They might have raped her had not the Scotsman, Duneagan arrived, bellowing into the room. The two perverted men were readying to rape her, terrifying her with their lewd words and horrible groping hands, while they kept asking harshly where Remior was.

A tremor wracked her body, as though someone had punched her. The sobs she was trying to hold back strained against her throat muscles and the pressure sounded like little squeaks. Her hat and veil finally let loose from her head and fell from her fingers. Then, her hand lurched down her body with frantic and haphazard movements trying to tug the pieces of her gown over the nakedness of her lower body as she curled inward on herself.

This was reality. This was danger. The full force of the implications hit her. “Clay,” she sobbed. “Oh lord, Clay.”

After too long lying like a victim on the bed, Kit finally tried to rise upward and gather herself. Her crying had released her terror and fears and she felt stronger. More in control. Duneagan had told her to leave quickly and she wanted to. However, she could not leave in the torn gown she wore, she thought, clutching the tattered edges over her bare breasts. She realized that she hurt everywhere, when she finally rid herself of the rest of the bindings around her ankles, and she moved to get off the bed.

“You are made of sterner stuff than this, Kit,” she muttered, reminding herself of the rough ranch work that she was used to on the high plains. The more she moved, the more her courage and strength returned.

“I will carry pistols after this,” she muttered, going to Remior’s closet to find something to wear. She was an accurate shot with a rifle or a pistol. “And, no more yards of petticoats and skirts, just to impress patronizing police officials.”

To that end, although she was surprised to find a large collection of gowns in Mr. Remior’s closet, she went for the stacks of britches. She noticed that it appeared Remior was affluent by the amount and variety of clothes he had. He was also a man of thinner stature, because the britches and shirt she put on were not overly large on her.

She grabbed one of his dark cloaks and put it on, pulling its edges around her. Surprisingly, she found herself very angry as she looked about the closet. Angry at herself for being afraid and not stronger. Furiously angry at the brutes for trying to take her free choices away. Like now, they were still assaulting her, making her run, when she should stay and search Remior’s residence for any information that she could glean. She no longer had any illusions about Clay being in danger. Extreme danger! So, even though she wanted to run from the danger, she did not. From now forward, everything had changed. She’d just gotten a taste of the reality that she was throwing herself into.

Still, she chose to continue, and she would until Clay was found. That did not mean she needed to be naive about it though, this attack left her forewarned, and she could certainly approach things better prepared for danger. With this thought in mind, she did not immediately start to search the residence, but instead went to lock the door and latch all windows. She also found a weapon in the heft and sharpness of a pantry knife. She knew how to wield knives and throw them accurately. She bolstered herself with the reasoning that life on a large ranch had offered her many unique talents not associated with women.

Her plans were that she would search the apartment, buy a brace of pistols immediately after, and then find a man to hire as both a guard, but more importantly, as a fellow investigator into her brother’s disappearance.

Chapter Nine

The hour of the day was in Brynmore’s favor. It was late afternoon and the time many people took to rest before the evening. It left the Paris streets less crowded as he followed one of Miss Montoya’s burly assailants. As much as he itched to take the brute down a deserted alleyway for the justice of his fists, he fought the urge. Over the years, he’d trained himself better than to fall prey to the Scottish barbarian heredity of his ancestors lying deep within his soul. Intelligence over fists! He had learned that with admiration at Drummond’s side.

He had a job to do, and as much as the defenseless and partially naked image of Miss Montoya plagued him, he drove through it to further his quest. His gut told him that he was on the right trail now. Even with only a view of the backs of Miss Montoya’s attackers, he was fairly certain these two were the Germans, Baco and Cernno that Saxon had described. He was lucky that they had not gotten a clear look at him. They were wary of being followed the first quarter mile, but he was better at staying out of sight than they were worried.

The Germans went another mile before they reached their destination, and then things became increasingly interesting. The lavish old baroque townhouse Cernno and Baco approached and entered showed clears signs of decamping. There was one flat board cart full of furnishings pulling away from out front when Brynmore settled behind a box-trimmed hedge across the avenue. The concealing hedge was next to the townhouse beside a narrow alleyway on the opposite side of the avenue.

He watched two male servants lifting a spectacular harp into another half cart, just as a large four-door carriage pulled up behind the cart. Brynmore waited expectantly for someone to open the door and climb down from the carriage. However, this did not happen and the driver just waited patiently up on top. A short time later, a footman and a butler came out carrying a traveling trunk with two apron-clad maids following behind carrying large valises. All were loaded onto the carriage.

Somehow, Brynmore thought, these did not belong to the suspects, Baco and Cernno. The harp and the elegant trunk with the various valises had feminine, or at the very least, a well-appointed nobleman’s look to them. The Germans were more rustic.

Some ten minutes later his theory was confirmed, when an ornately dressed woman, trailing her elaborate skirts, came out of the townhouse with Baco and Cernno. The woman spoke something to one of the two Germans as she approached the carriage. Brynmore cursed his hearing loss as he picked out details of the woman. Older, with an out-of-style powdered wig, sharp nose, and thick theatrical makeup on her face. Dame Baset, perhaps?

Brynmore could feel the crawling itch, slithering up his spine, and the scent of his prey wafted through his senses as he watched the three enter the carriage. He could try to follow, but without a carriage of his own or a horse, it would prove difficult. First, he would try a moment of information gathering while keeping the carriage in sight. To this end, he left his surveillance position and approached the servants still loading the last cart. He had a question about the harp on his tongue, and in little time, he had the owner’s destination. It was an outlying area of Paris and from there to the docks. To further ask the name of the ship that the three were boarding or the ship’s destination would leave too much suspicion of his casual attentions.

Brynmore tipped his hat and quickly headed in the opposite direction. A swift horse would get him there before his quarry. He knew that he was ultimately just going on hunches, however, too many things pointed to this being the right direction. He had to follow it. Going to the little known Aleuts docks could easily confirm his suspicions, and it would also put him near the French coast where he needed to be to send messages by lantern beacon across the channel. The times were set at midnight each night that a courier in Drummond’s employ would wait for Brynmore’s possible updates.

Now, he thought, he had something to share. His main concern was the overseas destination of the three he was following. His second concern was the fact that he might have to leave the French coast immediately to follow them overseas. That meant leaving Miss Montoya without a word. It could also mean leaving her with other players around, players she knew nothing about. He felt certain that she would keep poking and prodding after her brother, stirring up nests of potential danger everywhere she trod.

“Yer bloody daft,” he accused himself.

She was obviously of the genteel lady sort, and the trauma she’d gone through would surely send her backtracking to her home. As much as he tried to deflect the nagging war inside him traveling from one camp of reason to the other concerning Miss Montoya’s motives or further methods, it would not leave him alone. And why, he thought that he had any chance to guess what this one woman might do, he had no clue!

Nevertheless, the only way he was able to quiet his internal carping, was to write a hasty note and give it to a messenger at the nearest livery. He gave a livery boy two pence to deliver the note to one of his personal associates that he used when in Paris. This one was a former spy for England, now set up as a leisurely lawyer in Paris. Brynmore made sure his instructions to the livery boy were clear. He was to deliver the message to Mr. Barcliff and tell Mr. Barcliff to find the woman whose name was on the outside of the missive and deliver it to her. This was of the utmost importance.

He decided not to long after, while he galloped his hastily purchased stallion down the Paris streets, that what he had succumbed to with the note and inclination, were both bloody good reasons never to involve women in any mission! They distracted a man’s mind, his timing, and his direction. They caused worry, when a man needed full and sharp attention.

“I’m bloody well glad that Drummond and the others are standing firm against their women being involved with this,” Brynmore muttered, as he urged the stallion to further speed, with the wind sharpening and knifing through his clothes.

Chapter Ten

“You are the whore who married a Duke,” Nia muttered to herself, tracing her long pink-painted fingernail absently on the glass top of the table she sat beside. She was, “taking the sun” amongst the flowering gardens behind her ducal residence in London, supposedly, a noble recreation for a Duchess.

It really should not bother her. Everyone ... well, at least Radford’s closest friends, treated her like one of their own. However, some of Radford’s stuffy family had pinched noses about her pedigree, or lack of. But they were that way all the time, Radford would tease her. Radford, the rogue, the man of his own making, besides being bred a Duke. He walked his own way and cared little what noble acquaintances thought.

“My family is well taken care of too,” Nia muttered. Her younger brothers and sisters loved Radford as if he were their uncle. They were there in residence with them more times than not. Radford never bemoaned the care it had taken to continue raising them. Instead, he’d embraced it with efficiency, the right amount of sternness, and large amounts of true affection.

I am, Nia thought, living in the perfect bonny fantasy. Radford was her prince come to save her. She was the somewhat tarnished princess, saved and redeemed by love. “He does love me!” she argued, gazing out at the sun-dappled roses. “I’m just not sure that he likes me.”

She thought she had evidence too. Radford would never say that he loved her, and then just stop loving her. However, he’d never said anything about liking her, and the way they had met and fallen in love was so chaotic. It wasn’t as if they had spent great amounts of time discovering what they had in common.

“Hmm, let’s see, what common interests could a tart and a Duke have?” she exclaimed, slouching back irritably in her chair. Not that she’d been a practicing lady of the night for years. “Blimey, it was only weeks,” Nia paused, “But, I was good at it!”

It seemed that sex was the only thing she and Radford had in common, earth-shattering ground-shaking sex. But it was not enough and that is why Radford was so quiet lately. He actually brooded now, and he had never done that before. Now, he barricaded himself in his study for long hours in the evening, where before they would spend their evenings together. He never came to bed anymore unless he thought she would be asleep.

“In fact, we never make love, but in the deep of the night,” Nia muttered with the realization. They only made love now when Radford woke her early in the morning, then he always left before they really talked. “It is because he has discovered he has nothing to say to you,” she mumbled.

Had the class distinctions finally settled in, she wondered? What else could she expect? She had been a professed tart, and they were good for sex, but not for talking too. She wiped a small tear from her eye, blinking into the sunlight. Blimey! She was not reduced to crying? Was she? Hard-nosed Nia O’Shea from the best Irish stock ... weeping!

“Och!” she exclaimed. This was daft. She did not know how to be a wife with a brooding husband, a husband that did not like her. Nia tossed down the quill pen she’d held in her other hand. She’d been trying to write poetry, hoping the sunlight would improve her mood. She stood in a flurry, casting her papers and pen to the ground. Then she turned and fled into the mansion.

Radford rocked back on his heels, one hand hitched in his pocket, the other clamped to the silver knob of his cane. His blurring one-eyed gaze tried to follow his wife’s hurried leave taking. He had been watching her, hidden behind the large oak, his favorite in a well-planned landscape. At the time, his wife had been sitting still as a lovely vision in the sunlight, and he’d been able to see her more clearly. But her rapid movements just now had blurred his faltering vision, yet he had heard her sobs.

“Damnation,” he cursed. Perhaps, Nia was pregnant and over emotional? Yet, he knew that was a lie. She could be with child, yes. However, that was not the cause of her emotional state. He knew it was him.

How had he let everything go so far? He had trapped them both, because he was so afraid of giving her up. Now everything loomed, and still he’d not found the courage to tell her, and then release her. The evil part of his soul had hoped that she would become pregnant, and it would be added leverage for her to stay with him, when she discovered that he was going blind.

Yet, that was illogical and unreasonable, because he wanted her gone in that case. He intended to demand it! She was young, beautiful, and vivacious. How could he limit her? Because she is your wife until death do you part! Radford blinked his one eye up into the sun. But Nia had not had the truth when he’d foolishly and greedily married her. No one had. Somehow, in his arrogance and happiness, he’d thought his eyesight would improve. Now, he was left on the edge of a steep cliff. He had to jump. He had to tell his wife and he had to tell the Archangels. Still, he hesitated with such control in his hands to completely change his life forever.

“You, arrogant imbecile,” he berated himself. The control was out of his hands and had been out of his hands each month by darkening month as his eyesight worsened.

Radford tapped his cane in disgust, then he moved toward Nia’s strewn papers. It was a mission to read while he still could, to love for as long as he could hold on. Radford reached down and picked up Nia’s papers, lifting them up to the sunlight to read slowly.

“Passion would keep one eye blue. Love would linger with sight deep in our souls. Naked together we see our desire. Breasts to chest, loins slick. We need no light. Our sight is but love.” Radford’s fingers curled, crimping the papers with a tremor. “Damnation.” His wife knew.

His one-eyed gaze jerked upward to the windows of their bedchamber. He thought that he caught sight of a cream-colored flutter. The color of the gown his wife had been wearing. She could be looking down on him right now and he would not know it, but his heart did. His heart knew it, and shakily he lifted the papers to his lips and kissed them. Then, he started forward into the mansion to find his wife.

When Radford entered their bedchamber still holding Nia’s poetry in his hand, he could see that his wife was quite discomposed. She fluttered with agitated movements, apparently haphazardly throwing her stocking, garters, and other frilly accessories onto their large four-poster bed.

“I would try to learn about the things that interest you, Radford,” she said, glancing at him, then glancing away as she lifted two mismatched pairs of stocking with jerky movements. “I could talk to you about anything you like, really, if you would just tell me what it is. Help me along. Anything that interests you interests me.”

Radford tilted his head in confusion, raising the papers in his hand higher into view. “You knew,” he stated, in mixed wonder.

Nia tossed down the stocking with a vexed motion. “Of course I know!” She turned partially toward him, then jerked partially away again. “How could I miss that you do not like your own wife?! That we never talk!”

Radford felt the slight wish that he had two eyes so that he could cross them at the moment as he stepped closer. “Cherie, I love you. I meant that you know about my going blind!”

“Of course you love me!” Nia exclaimed, grabbing two pairs of garters upward as though she were about to try to strangle them. “You love to have sex with me. You love the color of my red hair. Blimey, you love my laugh. But, Radford! You do not like to talk to me!” The garters sailed across the large expanse of the bed, and she turned to him, with her color high and her light green eyes bright.

“No! I meant about going blind, Nia. That you know in regard to that.”

“You see!” Her hands rose upward in an expressive gesture. “There is something we can talk about. Surely you must want to!”

“But you knew!” he said, with his voice rising in exasperation. “I mean that you know!”

“Of course I know. I am your wife.”

“Of course.” he said, with an incredulous voice, as she interrupted him.

“We could talk of that, Radford. That and...” She paused, “The Archangels. This newest mission. You can tell me how I will help you. You have to tell them, and we can discuss that. Then, we can talk about what you need for me to do, by your side, to help you accomplish your mission.”

“I cannot do it. I won’t!” Radford said, setting the poems on the edge of the bed.

Nia’s hands fell from their expressive dance as she stilled. “You won’t? Why not?” She suddenly seemed to hear him. “Of course you can do it. You are the organizer. You can do that and anything else you can just direct me to do.”

Radford was awed. His wife knew that he was losing his sight, it seemed a second fact to her, old news, as it were. She assumed he would work with the Archangels as before and with her help obviously. She seemed just naturally to assume that she would help.

“My going blind does not bother you, Nia?” He seemed unable to trust himself to say or ask anything else.

“Bother?” Her expressive hands went to her hips as she tilted her head. “I’m sad for you...” Then, she added quickly, “No pity though. You will remember all the colors of the world, people’s faces and so many things. Y-You are so capable though that I predict there is barely anything you did before that you will not be able to do.”

So matter of fact. So accepting. Radford was rocked back. “I did not know that you knew.”

“You did not? How silly, of course you did.” Nia stepped closer to him. “You know I was thinking as well, sweetheart, that your other senses will be heightened. Do you want to talk about this with me then?”

Damnation, he was an idiot, in love with the most wonderful woman. Radford clasped Nia’s hands bringing them to his lips to kiss, then he looked at her, “Cherie, I want to talk to you about everything.”

Her peach-tinted bottom lip trembled as her light green eyes shone with the hints of tears. “You do?”

He smiled slowly, releasing her hands to reach for and grasp her waist. “I do.” Then suddenly, he lifted her and tossed her into the pile of frilly under garments. She squealed in surprise, then laughed as he climbed up on the bed after her and he pinned her to the bed with his longer body. “What was this about that I adore having sex with my wife?”

“You rogue!” Nia grasped his cheeks and pulled him close for a zealous kiss.

When Radford broke the rising passion of their lips, he cleared his throat. “Seriously now, Nia, if you think on it you will realize that it has only been the last two weeks or less that I have been rude and unemotionally unavailable to you.”

Nia looked over his face thoroughly, then she reached up to caress the side of his hair. “What happened two weeks ago, Radford?”

He settled in more closely between her thighs, leaning to his right to lift his left hand and caress the side of Nia’s face. “Saxon told us about The Order of the Satyr and I knew that a new mission was afoot. Really, Cherie, our combined thinking misses each other completely at times.”

“It seems more than, ‘at times.’” Nia giggled. “It never occurred to me that your loss of sight would worry or hinder you with this new mission looming.”

Radford set his chin to her chin, looking down at her, “Blind is blind, love, a hindrance for a spy. I am not the man I used to be.”

Suddenly, Radford felt Nia’s hand on his ass as she groped it warmly. “You’re better, I say Gov’,” she teased. “I wager that before ye were all soft and young. Now yer all hard. And all man!”

“You, imp!” He dipped his head and licked her lips, then he settled his chin on her chin again. Her hand stayed, fondling him at leisure.

“Seriously,” she said, using one of his most used segues. “It’s your mind that is of more use, from the stories you tell me. Let the others take care of the bobbing and weaving of fancy footwork. You must let them decide, when you tell them. You would have realized this if you were not so close to the situation. I know that none of them could do without you or would want to think of it.”

“Hmm.” He was too close. Too emotional. Yet, with Nia by his side, all things seemed possible and not so overwhelming. “They, well ... and I agreed also... We all decided that none of the wives or lovers can be involved with this. It is too dangerous.”

“You bounders!” She exclaimed, slapping his ass playfully. “Gabriella predicted that, but I did not believe her. There is no way Joelle is out of this!”

He chuckled. “Let one of you in and the rest...”

“We will follow!” she exclaimed with a tart smile.

Radford realized that he was in not a position to argue the point. Nor did he want to. His life was changing. It had changed. Different things were important to him now. The Archangels acceptance and use for him as he went blind were not as certain as Nia believed. Each and every one of them would always remain his friend, as close as brothers. Yet, his faltering eyesight could easily prove a dangerous liability. And, it seemed that he could accept that now, gracefully and without bitterness. That was because he had the one thing that mattered more, Nia’s love and acceptance, so much more important.

“Mm,” Nia purred, lifting her other hand so that both her hands were massaging Radford’s tight, sinewy buttocks. Her husband was made so bonny fine. “Think how sensitive your touch will feel, my love, so much more intense.”

Radford rolled his compact ass with the motions of her kneading hands. Even through the layers of her silk skirts and his trousers, she could feel his hard cock pressing interestingly into her pussy. Her bonny lord, handsome husband, was always so hard! She knew that it could not possibly be true. However, every time she looked, he was.

He lifted his chin from her chin, and she saw that, “look” in his crystal blue eye as he reached for one dark-black stocking. Ooh, her husband’s thoughts were turning to sex! She watched him hold one end of the stocking in one hand and the toed end in the other as he lowered it toward her eyes. He stopped with the stocking material stretched out above her blinking eyes.

“Shall we try?” Radford’s voice was like a deep red mulled wine sliding down one’s throat, she thought, licking her lips.

She tried to appear hesitant before she blurted with a smile, “Yes!”

She and her husband laughed and tumbled each other out of their clothes and her corset. Then, Radford knelt above her to put the stocking blindfold over her eyes. “We should clear off the bed,” she said, feeling nervous at the darkness.

“Leave it. Better to feel.” Radford’s voice was rich and sexy. “Lay back, we will use it.”

The silky things tickled and caressed different places on her body as she laid back. She felt as though she were nude to Radford’s clothed, because he could see all of her, every inch and she did not know where he was looking.

“It feels intense,” she said, with her fingers clutching silk stockings on one side.

“It looks delectable,” he murmured. “As though you are an exquisite feminine feast laid out just for me.”

She felt the heat of his mouth moving closer and closer to her lips as he spoke, then he was kissing her. Intensely. Her hands touched his bare skin and she felt the explosion of hot male flesh on her fingers and palm. The feeling was so much more profound without her sight as she rubbed his hairy chest. Then, she felt the lightest of caresses gliding between her lower thighs, moving upward. Her skin shivered as her nipples peaked more, and Radford’s tongue filled her mouth. The delicate and enthralling touch slid over the lips of her shaved pussy. Her returning moan was rapt and excited as she began sucking long draws on Radford’s tongue.

Radford trailed a silk-stocking over his wife’s flushed cunt lips, while her hips rolled in seduction and her thighs unfolded with open invitation. Looking down at the raspberry peaks of his wife’s breasts, at her white-satin skin, and her long flowing body, he thought, she was so beautiful. He was a lucky bastard. But his wife was as lusty and uninhabited as he was. Her hands trailed over his body, groping and fondling until she found his hardy cock. He’d never met a woman before that loved his cock. But, Nia did! She had taught him what it meant. It was incredible, but at times he could nearly be jealous of the stiffly engorged appendage his wife cooed and lusted over.

“Oh mm, so hard. So hot, Radford,” she purred, with her hand and fingers taking hold. She pumped him from the head to the base, fondling his balls warmly in passing, then she gripped and drew her tight hand up the shaft again. His breathing increased as his finger found her cunt with the silk stocking in between. His mouth latched onto one of her taut nipples drawing a long moan from her. “Oh mm, love, love.”

Nia’s pale and lush body arched beneath him as his finger covered with a silk stocking became soaked with the nectar of her increasing arousal. Her fingers battened down on his cock, drawing more rapid heat and friction.

“Lady Fire,” he moaned, humping against her hands arduous motion as he plunged his silk-encased finger into her sheath.

“Oh, blimey, love!” she exclaimed as her legs jerked upward, spreading out widely. “I have never felt anything so intense,” she gasped, while her hips rocked to his wet silk finger fucking her heat deeply, as her hand pumping his cock grew slick with his leaking seed.

“I want you inside me! Please, love, give me your cock,” she begged with her lips panting and her body humping against the motion of his mating finger.

There was little in life more powerful than hearing the woman you love begging for your cock, Radford thought, as he followed the pressure of his wife’s insistent hand guiding his cock to the swollen ardor of her cunt. Just the feel of her smearing and pressing the head into fitted position, extracted a groan from his throat. Nia’s heels blindly sought leverage and landed flatly on either side of his chest. He burned the view into his memory, to last a life time, of Nia urging his cock to her open cunt, while he pushed forward. The first ring of tightness flexed down over his cock-head and blurred the vision in his one eye with ecstasy as Nia cried her pleasure.

“Yes! Oh! Fuck me, fuck me!” She humped eagerly against him with her sheath clutching and drawing on his cock as he thrust to the base. He could feel Nia’s fingers between them rolling around, touching their connection and he knew rubbing her clitoris. He grasped her left breast and he pumped his hips.

“Oh, Radford!” She followed him, meeting him with a smack in the middle. “Your cock’s so hard. So hot. Fuck me, fuck me,” she mewled.

Nia was like wildfire, enthusiastic and earthy. She liked her man fucking her hard and deep, and she writhed every step of the way. Dragging her nails over his body, digging her toes into his chest, rocking and lifting her hips with each plunge to meet him, as her fingertips rollicked over her clitoris. They panted together as her cries became shriller, and her nails scraped him.

He could hear it, feel it, and breathe it. Nia’s climax was leaping to the edge, and he followed it, driving it on with hard and rapid thrusts, until she shattered. The sound punched him in the gut with pleasure and he let loose of the control he used holding his ejaculation back. He just relaxed, and his cock exploded seed, making him grunt as pleasure pounded through his body to each recurring release. Long plunges later, he came to rest over Nia’s slick panting breasts as his lips brushed against her lips through his own pitched breathing.

“We don’t need sight,” Nia gasped, then their lips meshed.

Chapter Eleven

Kit woke to a loud pounding on her hotel room door. Her mind immediately tripped to the two burly men that had assaulted her the day before. Her heartbeat thudded to the repeated forceful knocks as she stood, and then she stumbled, reaching for the gas lamp on the wall by the bed. Her shaking fingers managed to turn the light up as she gathered her senses. It would not be her earlier assailants. Certainly not! Not knocking at her door.

Kit heard a muffled voice saying, “Miss Montoya.” She cautiously walked to the door as though its locked presence could somehow burst open at any moment.

“Who is it?” Kit called loudly, stepping up to the door and leaning close, expecting an answer. Instead, more loud raps sounded, reverberating through the solid wood and causing her to jerk backward.

But then, she heard quite clearly, “Bloody hell, woman, you dinna send for a man with an urgent message that we must meet, then not open your bloody door!”

Mr. Duneagan! Kit gasped and leaped back to the door, turning the key and tugging it open. “Why did you not answer me when I asked who you were?”

“Sorry, lass. I dinna hear you.”

Kit barely had a chance to take in Lord Duneagan’s appearance before he was past her, stalking into the room, leaving scents of wind, rain, leather, and clove, but mostly male.

“Why the hell are you not packed and gone by now? Do you really want worse to happen to you than already has?”

Kit sputtered as she shut the door haphazardly. “Are you threatening me, Lord Duneagan?”

She now knew that he was an English Baron and a Scottish Laird, by the note she’d received from him. His first name was Brynmore, and the note had said very tersely that she was in danger. It said he would find her brother, and she was in danger and should go home. He had signed it with his full name and titles, either to impress her or to assure her that he could back up his high-handedness.

Brynmore Duneagan was quite large and very hairy, with a bushy brown-red beard, longer hair, and when he turned his body, his vivid green eyes flashed over her. Kit’s fingers clutched for the edges of her robe. Then, she realized that she’d forgotten to put it on as Brynmore Duneagan’s dynamic green eyes assessed that fact. They traveled over the too-revealing gauzy material of her long flowing nightgown. She realized that one loose shoulder had fallen down as her cheeks heated, and she was held suspended with a feeling of embarrassment, but also something else that she had no wish to examine closely. She finally broke the spell, crossing her arms over the dots of her perked nipples, and then she moved quickly, going for her robe.

The electric alertness of Brynmore’s gaze, the part that made him a male, watched the feminine outline of Kit Montoya’s heart-shaped ass as she turned, reaching for her robe. All his senses were wide awake to the fact that Kit Montoya was nude beneath the sheer nightgown she wore. From the urgent message that she’d sent to him, he now knew her first name and the false name she used to register at the hotel.

However, all that was meaningless beneath his first unadulterated look at the woman. No hat and veil to hide her short wavy blond hair the color of white gold, with smoky blue eyes, and light freckles over sun-kissed skin. No voluminous skirts to hide a lithe shape that undulated with curves over slender hips, cup-shaped buttocks, and shapely legs. No cloak to hide the swell of firm breasts with dark pointed nipples. The lass was exquisite, with a feminine, yet athletic aura that suggested his frame could lift her with one well-padded arm, but that she could quite agilely challenge him.

Nevertheless, she looked at him as if he was a large woolly bear invading her space, and he supposed that was true. He was a hairy brute at the moment. “Not a threat, lass.” His voice boomed overly loud, perhaps to hide the effect she had on him as a man. “But I see you are not packed, and that is as daft as a pixie poking a dangerous beast!”

Miss Montoya’s dusky blue eyes darkened at his pronouncement, and he watched every speck of her, until she had her robe pulled on and tied closed. She was a wee bit of feminine feast to his gaze, and he was perturbed that he let her know he liked what he was seeing . . . and that he was looking. Looking until her high cheek bones turned pink again. Then, belatedly he remembered that he barely knew the lass, and he remembered what had happened to her. They could have raped her for all he knew. Bloody hell, he was a pig!

Brynmore turned his gaze far too late to be considered a gentleman as he heard Kit’s clear Americanized accent. “I-I appreciate your concern Mister, or Lord, or Laird... What do I call you?”

“Brynmore will do, otherwise, Duneagan,” he answered gruffly, staring strategically at the gas lamp above and behind her head.

“Fine then, Mister Duneagan.” Brynmore winced slightly. “Your concern is noted. I easily could have been r-raped today. That was their partial intent after I came upon them.”

Brynmore felt a surge of relief as his gaze dropped to her. “They did not then?” The words leaped from his mouth.

Kit’s blue eyes were large with her lips pressed together as if she were trying to still their trembling, while she hugged both her arms across her waist, shaking her head slowly. His chest lifted and the urge to step forward and embrace her was unreasonable. He countered it with irritation that she had not left yet, after what had happened, combined with his subsequent warning for her to leave. It was only by chance that he was back in Paris to receive her message. The probable players of Baco, Cernno, and Dame Baset, at least, had set sail for England and right into the rest of the Archangels surveillance, leaving him free to follow any further clues here. That left the two primary hedonists, and as far as he was concerned, the true villains, yet to be found in all of this, Hellion and Incubus.

“But I stayed, and then I searched Remior’s apartment and found something very important,” Kit said.

Brynmore felt a very large urge to throttle the woman. Of all the bloody foolishness, no matter what tidbit she’d unearthed, it could not be worth the added or addlebrained danger she invited. She was no demure and shrinking violet this one, scared into returning to her country. He was about ready to blast her foolishness when, several thumps, rattles, and scraping sounds issued from behind another door in Miss Montoya’s room.

A whirling dervish could not have moved as fast as he did heading toward that door.

“No! No! That is what I need to tell you,” Kit exclaimed.

“Stay back,” he ordered, grabbing the door handle. He shoved the door open with his gaze searching the dark interior. From the light of one room into the darkness of another bedchamber, his sight did not adjust quickly enough as he advanced into the room.

“Mr. Duneagan, wait please! Let me tell you!”

What Kit was saying finally started to register through the adrenalin rush of Brynmore’s instincts as his eyes adjusted to the sight of a dark shape that seemed to bounce on top of the bed. Brynmore’s gaze followed the half-sized shape as its shadow dropped from the bed to the floor. His first thought was that it could be a dog, but then he heard the distinct clomping of feet as it rushed past him. He turned with his eyes following the stocky form into the light. A midget!

“This is who I found,” Kit exclaimed, as the small man wailed.

“No hurt me! No hurt!”

“Yojo!” Brynmore expelled.

“You know him?” Kit asked in surprise, while Yojo scampered to the door.

Brynmore waylaid Yojo before he could get the door open, using his large hand over the top of the agitated man’s head to shove the door closed. Yojo turned away from the door, waddling hastily to the bed, where he climbed the bedpost like a half-pint acrobat. “No hurt, Yojo!”

Yojo was bald with dark saucer eyes. He had a flat nose and his mouth was slightly off-centered. He stood less than four feet tall and his stocky build was as though he carried no waist. He looked just like Joelle had described him. But now his clothing was dirt-smudged and torn in places. He looked as though he’d been in a few tumbles. It seemed Yojo was not having a very easy time of it. Brynmore raised his hands with a calming gesture as he stepped slowly toward the only irrefutable link he’d found to The Order of the Satyr. A positive link!

Brynmore Duneagan was certainly imperious, Kit thought. He never listened to a thing she said, like, “Stop! Wait! Listen to me!” Instead, he ordered her about as though he had the authority to do so. Confidently, he propelled forward in any direction he thought he had a right to pursue, not listening and on the way ordering her about. It sorely reminded her of her husband.

Kit stomped forward into the theatrics. It seemed while Brynmore Duneagan did nothing but order her to go back home, as if it were his arrogant male right over any woman he barely knew, she had done something very right! She reached the edge of the bed, and Yojo bounced forward to her, stopping and clutching her waist. The small man had tremors wracking him, as she put her arms around him.

“No hurt, Yojo!”

“We won’t. We won’t,” Kit soothed him.

It had been basically impossible to get anything coherent out of Yojo since she’d discovered him cowering under the gowns in Remior’s closet. However, the one thing that obviously terrified Yojo was that Lord Incubus had deserted him. It became apparent that the strangely named Lord Incubus, Yojo’s master, was in fact Marco Remior. She was interested in Remior and his link to her brother. Furthermore, Yojo was obviously abandoned and not capable of fending on his own. Kit had convinced Yojo to come with her, to which he excitedly agreed to do, but since that time she’d not been able to untangle the mysterious bits of information Yojo babbled.

Kit looked accusingly at Brynmore for frightening Yojo as she patted Yojo’s back, and he bobbed with irrepressible energy in her arms. Brynmore’s hands fell to his side as he grimaced and stopped a few paces from them. She raised her eyebrow as if to say, see what a mere woman can find while you are so busy and high-handedly ordering her to go home. She saw his muscular chest rise and fall in a sigh, then he nodded to her, accepting her reproving look. She held back the quick smile of victory and empowerment that she felt. It appeared that Brynmore knew Yojo, and she was going to start finding some things out now.

“I’m a friend of Joelle’s,” Duneagan said quietly.

Brynmore watched Yojo bounce, and then fall with a slight thump against Kit. Yojo’s bald head turned with his black eyes wider than ever. Yojo looked up at him and mumbled one word that he could not catch, but Kit turned her gaze up to him, nodding. Brynmore assumed the little man had acknowledged Joelle’s name, and it bothered him that Kit had so quickly picked up the fact he had trouble hearing. He could not remember the last person who studied him intimately enough to figure it out.

Brynmore slowly lowered to crouch with his forearms resting casually on his knees. “Aye, Sir Yojo, Joelle told me all about you. She misses you and was worried about you. She asked that I find you.”

“Joelle!” Yojo chirped. “Pretty, pretty Joelle!”

“Aye,” Brynmore nodded. His tactic was working. Stooping and using more softly spoken words brought Yojo away from Kit to stand in front of him on the bed, swaying from side to side.

“Lady Joelle, likes me.” Yojo nodded. Then he grew excited again clapping his hands. “Can I see her? Can I see her?”

“She is not in France, Yojo,” Brynmore said. “But I might be able to take you to her, if you and I can talk a bit.”

Brynmore was unsure of Yojo’s degree of intelligence. Joelle thought he was as smart as any adult, while Saxon disagreed. Judging him now, Brynmore felt that Yojo used his childlike excitement and way of talking to placate other people into believing he was harmless. Brynmore’s reasoning was the example of Joelle’s championing of him and Kit’s maternal instincts with him. He needed Yojo’s information, not riddles. Brynmore wondered for an instant whether it would be wiser to let Kit gather information from the little man. Yojo certainly leaned toward the affection of women.

“I see that you like my friend, Kit, too, Yojo. It seems we have good deal of friends together.”

“Kit, nice!” Yojo exclaimed, waddling to Kit to grasp her robe with a small tug as she patted his head.

Brynmore looked upward at Kit’s smoky blue eyes. His gaze caught movements near her mouth, and his eyes lowered to see her mouth, voicelessly, “He has only babbled so far, making no sense.”

Brynmore rocked back on his heels with his gaze narrowing. Bloody hell, the woman knew he could read lips. How could she know that of him? He felt the irritation of being exposed, and he tried shrugging aside the odd feeling. He was momentarily distracted, so he might have spoken lacking calculation, his tone changing the outcome of his words, when he blurted, “Yojo, you and I both know about, Incubus and Hellion, but only you know where to find them.”

Yojo screeched in babbling fright, before Brynmore finished his last word. Then, in the blinking of an eyelash, Yojo dropped down to the floor and scrambled under the bed. “Yojo does not know, Lord Incubus or Lord Hellion! Yojo knows nothing! Nothing! Nothing!”

“Bloody Hell!” Brynmore cursed.

“So tactful,” Kit’s husky voice pronounced as Brynmore raised his gaze to her, standing as he did so. He saw her hands planted on the swell of her hips, after the fashion his mother used to do when disappointed and set to scold him. Yojo kept babbling under the bed, and he had no hope of understanding what he said, although he wagered that Kit couldn’t either.

“And you could do bloody well better, woman?” Brynmore asked.

“If I knew half of what is going on, which is my right, yes I believe I could!”

Balls. He’d walked right into that one. A spy never gave away his information, especially to unknown quantities. Of course, Kit was not such an unknown quantity anymore, now that appeared irrefutable. She was exactly what she seemed to be, a sister trying to find her brother with novice investigations. Any information he gave her would just feed her attempts.

“If you are thinking of taking, Yojo, and trying to leave, I will follow you wherever you go. I will make such a nuisance of myself that-,”

Brynmore held up his hand stopping Kit’s words, while his shocked mind flipped. What was it with this woman that she could read his very mind?! “You canna know what I’m thinking, woman!”

“Canna I?” she responded tartly. “You will not deter me, Mr. Duneagan! And if you do not tell me what you know now, two things will happen. First, the men I hired to help me investigate this will have your name on the top of the list. And second, you will never get Yojo to talk before you take him all the way back to, Joelle, and then you might miss this, Incubus, because he could be here, right now, in Paris!”

“Incubus left, Yojo! Left Paris!” Yojo screeched from under the bed.

Brynmore heard that! He lifted his upper lip to Kit with a male sneer. “Where did Incubus go?” Brynmore asked the bed.

“No! No! No! Yojo, never heard of Incubus!”

Kit’s pretty lips smirked back at him and her cheeks seemed to glow with challenge. Brynmore did not want to admit what a fine-looking woman she was as he stalked toward her. He grasped her arm lightly, but with purpose, guiding her further away from the bed, crossing the room.

His voice lowered. “I would explain, but you have to promise to go home and let me handle this. I give you my word on that-,”

“No,” Kit interrupted him. “I am in this all the way, Mr. Duneagan, with or without your help. Without, I am sure we will be stumbling across each other as it seems what we are both searching for might lead us in the same direction.”

“Are you daft?” he retorted, with a sharp edge to his voice. “This is dangerous. We are not playing parlor games here, Miss Montoya.”

“I’m now aware of that,” she said, lifting her arm from his grasp. “I’m afraid to think about what all this means to where my brother might be.” Brynmore had a tragic feeling of where her brother might be. However, he would never voice it. “Tell me, would you stop if it were your family?” she asked him in a fierce whisper.

Chapter Twelve

Brynmore curled his fingers into fists on both his hands. He was vehemently against involving Kit further ... ever, if at all. But he needed the information Yojo could provide. Now! Not days from now. The main villains could be getting away. Something was off somewhere. He could not trust that all the evil players were going to England. Otherwise, why would the German brothers have been ransacking Remior’s residence? Remior, who was likely Incubus. The fact that Incubus left Yojo behind did not sit well either. It appeared the group was breaking up their partnerships and not in a friendly way. Damn it, the woman had him by the balls, and some inner intuitiveness she had about him told her so. He was going to regret this.

Kit watched Brynmore’s large hand rise, and then he grasped her arm again, this time nearly dragging her behind the curtains. He began to tell her the tale in a low and intense voice. Kit could barely believe the things he told her about the macabre names, Hellion, Incubus, Dame Baset, and the others. All members in The Order of the Satyr. Her heart grew cold when she realized that Clay had gotten a love letter from Remior, the supposed Lord Incubus. Brynmore explained about his friends, Saxon and Joelle, and their kidnapping. He told her about his combined friends and their intentions to stop the cult and its leaders.

Friends indeed. Kit wagered that the male friends Brynmore spoke of were more than friends. What they were, she could not imagine, but Brynmore’s every reaction and movement told her that he was no novice at hunting down criminals. She knew without doubt that Brynmore left out large pieces. However, the parts he told her about were horrible enough, and she shuddered away from hearing the worst, glad that he did not say it. Kidnapping, raping, sexual depravity, cult worshipers. It was all so bazaar. So unthinkable!

But she believed him because too many circumstances surrounding him fit too well. She had seen him at her brother’s, and then again at the police, and he knew Yojo’s name without asking. Oh, she believed him. It was just that the details about The Order of the Satyr were so hard to believe, and she clung to that because it gave her hope. Clay could be all right. He might not be involved with this at all. No one had seen him or placed him in these circumstances.

Nevertheless, Yojo might know, and she had to ask him as much as she dreaded it. She would have to ask him, as well as the things Brynmore needed to know. Kit was surprised at how she was able to remain composed on the outside, while she was a wreck on the inside. But she held to the pretense, acting as if she was ready and strong enough to tackle what needed to be done.

“I’m in,” she said. “And I must go with you!”

Brynmore did not look happy about it, but he nodded. It was one of those trustworthy male agreements. In the end he would do what he thought was best for her and claim, if he faltered on their agreement, that it was for her own safety and protection. Well, she would keep an eye on him. He would find it hard to detach himself from her.

Then she blurted something strange, even to her, as she looked up at him. “I wonder what you look like without all that hair,” she muttered.

She told herself that it had nothing to do with anything, and she had only said it to throw him off balance. But nothing in his body moved, his eyes, his lashes, his mouth . . . even his breathing it seemed, yet his presence intensified. So much so that she stepped back with the female inside her feeling checkmated. She’d never felt such a powerful amount of maleness in a man before, and she realized in that moment that Brynmore could affect her. Woman to man. Male to female. That surprising realization, more than the duty she felt to try to unravel real-life dangerous mysteries, sent her hurrying away from Brynmore, toward Yojo, to find out what she could.

Yojo was difficult. However, having a fuller picture helped her to lead his babbling talk in a somewhat more informative direction. She got him to come out from under the bed. He sat on top of it, fidgeting, but still a bit calmer.

“We want to be friends, Yojo, to help each other.”

Yojo peered at her. “You would be my friend?”

“Yes, of course,” she promised, sitting next to him.

Kit noted that Brynmore stayed strategically across the room, trying, it seemed, for a more relaxed and nonthreatening pose for his large frame.

“Yojo, does bad things,” Yojo muttered, looking down at his square hands. Then, he bounced them on top of his short legs. “But I helped, pretty Lady Joelle!” he added suddenly, with excitement rising in his voice, then falling away.

“Yes, Brynmore, told me. She wants to thank you, I believe,” Kit tried.

“I can see, Joelle?” Yojo exclaimed.

“Yes, if you want to,” she said, patting his leg in an effort to hopefully keep him calmer. “But to do that we need your help. You need to tell us about Lord Incubus and Lord Hellion.”

At just the mention of the names, Yojo squeaked, then he turned and scrambled under the pillows at the head of the bed. “Damn,” Kit muttered.

Brynmore moved as though he would leave his station across the room, and she raised her hand stopping him. “Yojo, we know all about The Order of the Satyr. Joelle, told us everything, and we still want to be friends with you. We need your help. I need your help.”

It was a coaxing affair, lasting over thirty minutes. Yojo would reveal some things, then become afraid again, and she would coax him anew. By the end, she had likely promised him the very moon, and she wondered at Yojo’s methods, because she felt bound to her assurances and promises.

He told them in bits and pieces that he was very frightened because Hellion and Incubus had a very loud argument and falling out. Hellion was furious at Incubus because Incubus was going to leave Hellion and stop their partnership. There was more to the actual reasoning and how it happened, however Kit could only get that fact out of Yojo. The next informative jewel, she could see immediately excited Brynmore as it completely distressed Yojo, was that Incubus had left Yojo behind. But Yojo knew where he had gone ... St. Petersburg!

Hellion, it seemed, wanted to kill Incubus. There was simply no leaving Hellion’s Order of the Satyr. It was stay, or try to leave and die. Yojo was terrified that Hellion wanted to kill him also, and he said over and over that he just followed his Master Incubus’s instructions. Kit could readily see why Yojo wanted to desperately cling to his, “new,” friends and to Joelle. It seemed his life was in danger. Yojo was becoming so agitated, she knew the end was coming to what she could reasonably gather from him for the evening.

Nevertheless, she’d gotten Brynmore the essential parts that he needed, and now it was her turn. “Yojo, I think my brother, Clay knew Incubus. But now Clay is missing and I want you to think hard if you have ever seen him.”

Brynmore started forward hearing Kit’s sudden turn of direction in her questioning. “Clay has golden eyes, Yojo, nearly like a lion’s eyes. He is as tall as, Brynmore, and...”

“Golden eyes?” Brynmore uttered, at the same moment Yojo exclaimed.

“Never see him! Yojo, never, never, never sees him!”

Dread crawled up Brynmore’s spine. He knew immediately that Hellion would crave unusual golden eyes. He was thrice grateful that he’d left out Hellion’s human appendage altar from his explanation of events to Kit. Nevertheless, he could tell by the look on her lovely face that she saw Yojo’s reaction as clearly as he did to mean the opposite of what Yojo exclaimed. He had to divert her. There was no use speculating.

When he reached the bed, he interrupted something Kit was about to say, and Yojo’s excessive noise, by speaking sharply. “Pack one bag, Miss Montoya. You, I, and, Yojo, we are all going to leave for England immediately. Then, I will go onto St. Petersburg.”

Yojo fell silent, looking up at Brynmore, but Kit’s voice caught, seeming to change direction as she stood and grabbed his arm. “Tell me what happens to the missing men, Brynmore.” Her voice rose. “Tell me!”

Brynmore wanted to grab her hand, and then pull her close to comfort her in her rising panic. Instead, he shrugged off her hand and he winced inwardly at the sharpness of his voice. “We have no time for this. If you are going to accompany me, I will give you ten minutes to dress and pack, because there is a ship set to leave at midnight and, Yojo, and I will be on it!”

He moved away from Kit, lifting his hand toward Yojo’s shoulder, “Yojo, do you have things to pack. I’m taking you to see, Joelle.”

Kit followed, grasping his shirt sleeve. “Tell me what happens to them!” she exclaimed. Then, she turned to Yojo who had trundled down off the bed. “Yojo, tell me what happens to them!”

She went down on her knees before Yojo as Brynmore nudged Yojo toward the other bedroom. Only Yojo’s pitched voice could be heard clearly, and he shrieked, “Hellion God, sacrifices the worthy.”

“Sacrifices as in kill?” Kit asked, exclaiming. The sound Yojo returned, as Brynmore coerced him away, while not saying, “yes,” was a clear affirmative.

Then, an unexpected event happened to all of them, it seemed to Brynmore. The bedroom door came open with its solid surface slamming onto the wall. A tall slender man appeared and marched into the room along with the door leaping open. Brynmore turned with the intent to defend against an assailant, when he heard the thin man yelling.

“What the hell are you doing here with my wife? Kit, is this what you do? Sneak away to fuck, this bear!”

Kit gasped, then came to her feet, exclaiming. “Don’t be ridiculous, Nick. How did you find me? What are you doing here?”

Brynmore halted his attacking advance. Strangely, he felt as though he had been punched in the gut. Kit was married!

“When a man’s wife, of infantile character, disappears on some addled-minded investigation, it is her husband’s only course, to save her from her own folly! I’ve had to lower myself to bribe hotel managers to tell me the room of the short blond-haired American woman staying in this establishment!” Brynmore watched this, “Nick,” stop in front of Kit and glare down at her imperiously. “But I see I was only partially right, instead you are of cheap character and not involved with an insipid investigation, but engaged in fucking bears and midgets! My god, Kit, have you fallen completely into your idiocy?”

Brynmore shoved Yojo into the side bedchamber, charging under his breath tersely. “Get your bags. Hurry!”

“Nick, this is none of your business!”

“It is all my business! Someone must school you from your defective ways!”

Brynmore was stunned and livid at the same time. The man was an ass. However, what shocked him more was feisty Kit Montoya taking the ridicule from her donkey-assed husband. He could see she was aghast, but also shamed and somehow instantly downtrodden. It was a travesty, and he wanted to leap to her defense and show her bastard husband what a fine woman he was abusing with his demeaning words and attitudes.

Brynmore knew he would forever regret not doing so. He tried, in his mind, to defend his next unconscionable actions by telling himself that the man was Kit’s husband and he had no right to interfere. However, that was a sham, because his real intent was to immediately use the situation to leave Kit behind, and he hoped, to get her out of The Orders mess and the resulting danger. Cold hearted, aye. He was a bastard, but he would damn well catch the killers in the end.

Kit tried to tug her arm out of Nick’s grip, but Nick held her from following Brynmore and Yojo out of her hotel room.

Brynmore’s last briskly spoken words still hung in her mind. “I will leave you to this mess. Fix your marriage and dinna follow us! I will find out what happened to your brother and send word.”

Kit’s heart fell. How could she let Nick do this to her? How could she react just like he accused her of being and-and in front of Brynmore? Then with more force, and by catching Nick in a momentary lapse of his grip, she did manage to jerk her arm free. She turned angrily toward her traveling bags and she began packing them with jerky motions.

“What are you doing? You are not following them or leaving here. I forbid it!” Nick said angrily.

Kit snapped then. She could feel it like a whip cracking, and she did something she’d rarely done in her life, she yelled. “I am divorcing you, Nick Ralston! I have contacted a lawyer, and I never want to see you again!” She only regretted saying it too late, as angry tears threatened, she wondered why she cared if Brynmore Duneagan heard her say that or not. To try to regain her dignity was the answer that clamored within her mind.

Chapter Thirteen

Joelle attached the last veil to the scanty outfit she wore. The assemblage was nothing more than twenty sheer veils of varying colors draping her body from startling pinks, deep reds, to green, and even a gossamer black one. She was nude beneath and used light gold chain ropes with bangles attached, wrapped around and above her breasts with another one low around her hips to hang the veils on. It was a Gypsy dancer’s attire, a most seductive one, used specifically for a licentious belly rolling dance they did. A veil dance that she knew how to perform and intended to do for Saxon as an answer to some questions and adamant opinions he’d raised.

“Opinions he has stuck to, damn, him!” Joelle muttered, biting one fingernail as she studied herself critically in the full length mirror. She was in her bedchamber at Gabriella and Drummond’s London mansion, which to her was part of the glaring problem. “I should be at Saxon’s home in London, not here!”

However, Saxon had wanted it this way. Ever since Saxon had bought them passage to England, in separate cabins, she thought in exasperation, he’d made love to her only once on the ship. After their escape from The Order, that added up to only two times in all the weeks since. The minute Saxon’s boots had touched English soil, he’d undergone a change. Not that she knew him well enough to say that this Saxon was a change at all. It could be the real Saxon, for all she could say that she honestly knew. Being kidnapped and sexually abused by a cult did not necessarily allow one’s true bearing to show. The dangerous adventure, which she and Saxon had lived through, might not begin to portray Saxon’s everyday character.

But she really did not believe that. She might have wondered, a little at first, after his change, however, Saxon had not left her completely clueless. He’d said on several occasions that she deserved better, not better than him, but just better treatment. Then, they’d also been extremely busy. Neither of them had any intentions of letting The Order of the Satyr continue blithely on its way. Destroying The Order was of the utmost importance to them, and the swiftness of events unfolding took a lot of their time, but it shouldn’t interfere with making love.

“Regularly!” Joelle stated succinctly, undulating her hips once with a returning jingle of the bangles.

Nevertheless, she’d finally discovered Saxon’s purpose concerning her, why he would kiss her with controlled passion, but then stop when it should naturally go further. Oh, she remembered his words exactly and while it was sweet and endearing, and even loving, it was totally ridiculous compared to the reality of their life and how they’d come together or intended to stay together.

Saxon had said, when she’d confronted him in frustration last night, after he had stalled their building passion once again, “Joelle, I want to court you. I am courting you. Wooing you like the beautiful woman that you are.”

“What rubbish,” Joelle muttered, with tears sparkling in her eyes. Either one of them could die attempting to destroy The Order of the Satyr. They did not have time for courting. They needed to live, to be alive, and to feel alive.

“To love,” she sighed, as she absentmindedly fingered a fuchsia colored veil draped sheerly two inches below her belly button and falling over her mound. It followed her length to just above her ankles. Her soft belly protruded in just the right amount of enticing bareness for a seductive belly dance. Her hips were round enough to swing becomingly and her bottom plush enough to roll with an alluring display. It was her breasts that worried her. They were full globes, but one was a bit higher than the other and she had no deeply plunging cleavage. Joelle raised her arms. She could see one dark nipple through the light-blue silk scarf over it. That was better, she decided, with her arms high, her breasts looked level and her cleavage appeared.

Saxon had invited her to his home for dinner this evening, a romantic evening he called it. “And I have a surprise for you, Saxon.” Joelle teased the mirror with a seductive look as she shimmied her body and the bangles jingled all around. She was going to seduce Saxonhurst, the Marquess of Hartely, this evening. And if he did not start pulling the veils off her body until she was entirely nude, there was going to be trouble.

Saxon paced his formal dining room. The table was set elaborately with gold and crystal, the wine was breathing, candles were lit, and a fire flamed in the fireplace. The gas lamps about the room were turned down low and besides an elegant dinner, there was champagne and chocolate cooling on a table next to an intimate settee he had placed by the fire.

He brooded over the fact that it was deucedly hard to do romance, of the courting and wooing nature, without tumbling into heated sexual passions. Everything, with a woman that he loved in his mind, alluded to sex. He wondered exactly what two people could do romantically for a full evening while excluding sex? Especially when all he wanted to do was to make love to Joelle for hour upon hour. It was on his mind constantly.

Saxon was sincerely glad that he was wearing the full elegant trappings of an English nobleman this evening. He should be taking Joelle out to dine, to dance. It would be much better to stay focused on his goal of treating her like the respected and honored woman he intended to marry, easier if other people surrounded them. He just could not bring himself to share her though, even in simple social gatherings where it would be easier to respectfully court her.

He was a selfish bastard, but determined. He might never be able to wipe away his near rape of Joelle in the lewd sexual ceremony they’d been forced to perform by The Order of the Satyr. Nevertheless, he could show the woman he loved that he cherished her, respected her, and wanted to hold her up upon a pedestal of honor in his life. It was the right thing to do for the mother of his future children, however he was beginning to become disillusioned, because it was obvious that Joelle was not sailing upon the same boat as he was.

At first he’d thought that the stress of trying to bring The Order down could be upsetting her. That was until last night, when the first clue came to him that his Lady Firefly was perturbed at the sexual constraints of noble courting. It seemed that perhaps, while he was allowing her tender time to recover from their ordeal and find a romantic footing in their relationship, Joelle had a whole different outlook.

Still, he denied her.

Denied them actually, and he tried to tell himself that it was because he knew better, that he was thinking more clearly than Joelle. In time she would look back and thank him, saying that she’d not been herself in the upheaval of events, and she was glad that he was stronger and wiser. His justification had actually stood him strong, until last night, in the middle of a sleepless night, when he’d finally had to admit the real reasons to himself. After much soul searching, he was just not certain he could tell the real reasons that he’d discovered to Joelle.

Could he be so harsh to her, or was it better to keep to the idea that he wanted to court her and she deserved it? It was not an untruth, just not the entire truth, and he had himself convinced it was still the best way. At least until after they dealt with The Order, and the outcome showed them both alive and well.

As noble as he wanted to be in demanding that Joelle stay out of bringing The Order down, he could not. He could not take that away from her, even though it would likely put both of them in extreme harm’s way again. So, the entire point being that he could not say with confidence that either of them would make it out of this alive. He was not the type of man to delude himself. It was going to be dangerous, and while he could attempt to protect Joelle as much as possible, he was not a miracle worker.

Saxon angrily batted the tail end of a linen napkin sticking out over the edge of a table, then grimly he turned toward the fire. “And I will not take the chance of sending you pregnant into all of this!”

That was it, the final blow! It was the thing that he hesitated to put into words, while even becoming angry at Joelle for not thinking of it. However, he knew that his anger was really masking fear. His terror at the thought that he could lose Joelle, at the same time he did not try to stop her, but let her go along. He suddenly knew what women felt like, whom for ages watched their men go off to war.

“Put a brave face on it, man,” he muttered, adjusting the waterfall folds of his cravat. So, dressed to the nines and cloaked in evening attire that he considered dressed armor against Joelle’s sexual allure, he would put on a courageous face and live in hope for the future.

Then, Saxon heard the door opening across the room and behind him. He turned at the same moment, wondering why he did not hear his butler’s voice announcing Joelle’s arrival. Yet Joelle stood just inside the closed door. He started toward her, however her hand came up with the clear gesture that she wanted him to stop. His feet halted as he opened his mouth to speak. Yet just as before, Joelle raised a straight finger to her lips, making a shushing sound. He became aware that she still wore a deep red cloak, which was a stunning backdrop for the long waves of her richly toned black-cherry hair. It occurred to him that her hair was hanging free as his gaze traveled down the length of her cloaked body. It was unusual for her hair not to be caught upward in some style that women wore. His encompassing gaze ended its downward trail on her bare feet.

Immediate stimulation tingled in every fiber of his maleness. Bare feet, red painted toenails, and some type of gold anklet. That Joelle’s feet were bare coupled with her loose flowing hair told him something he’d not planned for was, “afoot.” That comprehension came one brief second before the red cloak sailed downward into a pool at Joelle’s feet.

Saxon resisted the urge to jerk his gaze upward to see the rest of what Joelle’s lovely bared feet promised. It was a tribute to his spying career and many intense undercover moments that he managed it all. What he did see were wisps of different colored silks floating around shapely ankles, encircled in gold bangles.

He was in trouble.

Saxon resolutely kept the small silver hook that replaced his missing hand at his side, even though he had the inclination to raise it and tug at his collar like a young man. His gaze stayed lowered as he cleared his throat, and asked in a restrained voice, “Joelle, what are you doing?”

The only answer came in a sound. The jingling of many thin metal objects in unison, then falling silent sharply. The sound so unusual, he lifted his gaze despite his effort not to. Dear Lord, he thought, with sexual awareness striking through his body, leaving instantaneous evidence arousing every nerve ending. It pooled with purpose in the eroticism of his mind, and the lust of his cock, while his gaze devoured Joelle’s attire.

Or lack thereof...

Really, he tried to think logically, it was the mystery of the delectable pieces of feminine shape that he could and could not see that were fermenting him. The bare cleavage of ripe breasts with rounded inner slopes revealed to tantalizing depths, but covered just shy of a nipple on each side. One side was barely veiled, with a single purple-colored gossamer scarf. The other breast was scantily clad in light blue sheerness.

That was the motif of the entire outfit. Skimpy! Whose origins he could barely guess, while his masculinity paid homage to whoever could be so generously creative on behalf of all men. His eyes moved from a naked and satin-smooth belly, to one rounded hip peeking through, and onto shapely shoulders, enticing feminine collarbone topped off with lush lips painted red and the kohl-shadowed eyes of pure allure.

How was he going to refuse the quite obvious intention of this? “Joelle, we have to talk!”

Joelle’s left hip rolled upward and stopped abruptly with the bangles adorning her lifting and jangling together, then falling silent with sharply cut stillness. Saxon watched Joelle’s back arching as she reached back and lifted a large quantity of her black-cherry colored hair above her head, while her sable eyes sparkled with seduction.

He raised his hand to her, in a half-hearted halting gesture. “No, really, Joelle. This is serious!”

With each single word that he spoke, Joelle’s hip rolled and the bangles sounded as she moved toward him. It was as though she spoke through her body to the bangles sound. No! No! No! No! To each word he tried. What could he do?

He backed up, and Joelle followed, speaking extraordinary and carnal things with her body until the back of his legs hit the settee by the fire. Transfixed, Saxon realized he’d never known a woman’s bare belly and hips could move with such overt and riveting male enslavement. He felt flushed and that almost embarrassed him, the part of him that could still think at all beneath the thralldom of Joelle’s lush and supple female body moving like sex.

Sex was the only way he could describe it. It was the most sexual thing he’d ever seen, and being in love with the woman performing it only exacerbated his seething inner reaction. Well, his visible outer reaction too. His cock was quite simply saluting the effort with hardened cheers. The buttons on his evening trousers were about to bust. It did not help matters that he’d been sexually denying himself for a long time.

So when Joelle stood two paces from him, shimming her breasts and belly, bangles ringing songs of lust into his ears, he only stood there, ogling her like a lecherous idiot, while she lifted the end of one scarf and placed it in his hand.

He noted that the scarf was crimson, and it had been covering the area between Joelle’s succulent thighs. But with his gaze so interested, he did not see Joelle’s hand raise to his chest. However, he felt the shove and unguardedly he fell, to end up sitting on the settee with the crimson scarf clutched into his fist, pulled free from Joelle’s scant attire.

His gaze filled with pussy, moving pussy, pussy eliciting erotic rhythms from the rolling and undulation of Joelle’s rounded hips. His heart literally pounded. He’d shaved Joelle’s pussy once at the forced behest of The Order. Be that as it may, all the dark luxurious curls had grown back. Now, he wanted to bury his face in her lavish muff. He wanted to find the crease with his tongue. Damnation, he wanted to plunge his fingers deep into her hot sheath, searing them with the juices she was effusing, readying for his cock. Saxon lifted his hook to his cravat and he tugged, pulling at it until the restrictive feeling around his throat eased, and it lay undone with his throat bare.

Joelle circled her hips, listening to the music of the bangles. She could slow it into seductive beckoning or hasten it into urgent tempos. Then she slowed, snaking her hips languidly as she lifted one bare foot to the arm rest of the settee, bending her knee as she surged her hips in slow motion. She had never done a dance this outwardly raw and sexual before, exposing her sex, even lifting her leg to reveal where the puffy lips could be seen.

She watched Saxon’s gaze attach to this display like a hunter. A sexual hunter. A mating stalker and exactly what she wanted! She could feel the excitement of attracting him thrum deep into her sex, building. After this extravagant overture, if Saxon did not grasp another scarf soon and start unwrapping her, she was going to thwack him. Just like her animated mother use to do to her, “full-of-life father,” to get his attention going into her prescribed direction.

Saxon appeared ensnared, with an aura of enormous restraint stretching him to the snapping point, but to her vexation, he did not snap. He looked like a proud and virile male predator, with his long mane of maple-colored hair flowing unbound down his back and his brown eyes showing mahogany tinted flames. She could see he lusted ... tremendously, and it tensed his body and stilled him to chiseled male. Yet, he would not leap, even as she turned her back to him and bent forward slightly shimming her barely concealed buttocks at him.

Spirits! He was so stubborn, nearly as stubborn as she was. “Saxon Hartley if you do not take another scarf off me this instant, I’m going to walk out of here and never return!” she threatened brashly, as she shook her head with emphasis. Her hair came tumbling down in front of her as she bent forward and looked over her shoulder at him.

Her words leaped the sparking fires in Saxon’s irises up to her gaze. She felt his restraint nearly snap and it seemed that he barely caught it back. The feeling of that bridled ardor flushed her arousal with poignant throbs building steadily in her sex.

“I will not take the chance of impregnating you! Not now. We cannot!” Saxon expelled through lips she could see were drawn tight.

At the same moment she exclaimed, “This is why you refuse to make love with me?” Joelle stopped her dance movements, straightening and turning to face Saxon with her hands braced on her hips. She might thwack him yet!

“I do not refuse you!” he said, in the first angry voice she could remember him using on her. That was besides the first time after they were initially kidnapped, and she’d basically raped him to destroy her virginity, which The Order coveted. “I deny us, as I think you would do also!”

That struck Joelle a little too close to sounding condescending and as if she was not intelligent enough to have thought about this. Truth was, she had not. However, she adamantly thought the cause was her lusty Gypsy blood, not her intelligence. Desire had simply distracted her.

How dare he! “Oh such a great master spy, and you cannot even figure out that we do not have to have intercourse to make love and fulfill each other!” she cried, with a touch of anger.

Suddenly, Saxon rose. One moment he was seated and the next he was in front of her. Her hands lifted from her hips as though she would steady herself in the same instant Saxon crushed her within his embrace. His lips descended, just as she lifted hers upward to exclaim at him. Their mouths collided. The kiss he wrought devastated her senses and magnified her desire. The kiss was not the gentle promise of more courting, but the lusty surety of sex.

Only now, she was angry and overturned and she pushed on his chest, tugging her lips from his. “No! I do not want this. I’m not sure!” Joelle even thought to herself that she sounded like a petulant child.

“Joelle, Joelle.” Saxon wrapped her weak struggles into his embrace as his hands smoothed warmly on the sides of her bare waist. “I have no excuse, but that I was trying to do the best for us.”

“Oh,” Joelle uttered with drawn out vowels of reluctant understanding, while worrying her nose and mouth over the base of Saxon’s throat. He was sincere. She knew he was. “We need to open up more. Talk more.” She pushed back and looked up into Saxon’s rich mahogany eyes.

“Yes we do, Firefly. This time I was just afraid to admit to myself my fears, until I looked closely.”

“Oh, Saxon, I did not even think of it, and you are right, I should have. We should have!”

“Well we complement each other, Lady Firefly, because I never thought of your, quite erotic might I add, solution.”

Joelle grinned with impish fire in her dark eyes. “What I want to know is if it is possible to do it to each other at the same time? There must be a... Oh!” Joelle squealed as Saxon lifted her upward, then with a sort of dancing tumble, they ended on the settee with her on the bottom and his strong body blanketing hers.

“We will have to experiment,” he said from above her. His arms held her arms clinched inward, which pressed her breasts together. Looking down, they looked like two big mounds ready to pop. There was her cleavage finally. Saxon looked down at it and purred a male sound of pure approval as he swayed from side to side moving her over-plump cleavage with him as he watched.

His long hair fell all around them. She certainly had his interest now. All masculine interest and he was going to culminate this time. Joelle could feel where Saxon’s very ridged cock lay, the impression from as far at the bottom of her sex as it could go, upward past her belly button. There ending where she was surprised to feel the head bared against her bare belly. It was hot and fat feeling, with something wet drizzling on her skin. It must be so hard and long, it had grown out of the waistband on Saxon’s trousers, she realized.

That set her to more sensual quivering as Saxon slid his body lower and with his teeth, he grasped the scarf over her right breast. Her mind was split with sensations. On one hand, she was aware of the head of Saxon’s exposed penis, now lowered into the crease of her sex, rubbing more arousing heat, and on the other hand, Saxon tugging free the scarf over her breast, baring it with his teeth. His lips followed closely on the removal of the scarf to kiss her breast, then nip, then lick.

“Ooh, love,” she moaned, arching her back to raise her breast into the heat of his mouth as she grasped his buttocks and used this leverage to grind her sex against the head of his cock.

She was not certain that she could last through Saxon’s determined and slow sensual tortures. She had withheld her desire for so long, along with bringing it to teasing peaks just in Saxon’s company so often without repletion, so that now, the urgency for release was consuming her body.

Saxon suckled Joelle’s nipple tip to a tight peak, feeling it prod against his tongue, as she moaned, “Please, Saxon, we will go as slow as dripping honey next time. This time I cannot wait. I cannot!”

Joelle’s nipple point left his mouth to stand turgid and wet as he raised his gaze to the dark urgent need in Joelle’s eyes. Then suddenly, she shoved on his chest, with a great amount of force for such a little package. He could have stalled his tumble, but he grinned instead, going with it, taking her with him as he landed on the floor on his back with her now on top of him.

One second later, Joelle had squirmed down his body and she had his engorged cock-head sunk into the heat of her mouth, snugging her lips tightly around it.

“Jesus!”

“Mm mm.” She licked eagerly on just the head, and he knew that she would never get the whole thing into her sweetly sucking mouth. He groaned, arching his hips and clutching masses of her hair, just the stimulation of her lips sucking rapidly over the head was so inducing that he felt the threat of ejaculation quickly rising in his cock. It was his enforced abstinence. It was his desire for Joelle. Whatever it was, he had trouble fighting it back and controlling it, when he rasped. “Turn around, Firefly love, let me taste your flame.”

Putting his mind on anything but Joelle’s lips drawing on the head of his penis, he was not certain she had heard him or understood what he wanted. However, he reached forward and bodily moved her where he wanted her. Joelle’s avidly drawing lips barely left their suctioning enthusiasm as he guided her to straddle his chest and he gazed at the luscious honey pot of her pussy. A cheer rose inside him as though he had scored the victory point in some sporting event. Hit the bull’s eye dead center.

This was a man’s nirvana. He had never experienced it in this fashion before, so earthy and lustily straddled over each other. It hit him that this was what love and relationship brought. Carnal, exotic, full-bodied adventure. He was so aroused that he forgot to undo his hook for safety purposes, but he managed to think enough to keep it to the side, as he lifted his head and touched his tongue to Joelle’s already drenched sweet pussy lips.

“Oh! Mm. Oh! Oh,” Joelle commended him with eager moans around the head of his penis as her lovely small ass quivered.

Her outer pussy lips were flushed and puffy, spreading to reveal the deep coral within, soused with her excitement. The heat coming from her pussy was humid and sweet. The scent filled him, throbbing hard into his penis. He licked and kissed the outer lips, letting his tongue lave up the outside. Then, his tongue lapped back down the center, kissing and flicking as he went, until he rubbed against Joelle’s protruding clitoris.

“Oh!”

Her answering wriggling pressed this bud of ardor with enthusiasm onto his lashing tongue, as he lifted a finger to sink into the tunnel of her clenching heat. “Oh! Oh!”

Joelle’s ass rose upward as he followed with his tongue and more rapid lunging of his finger. Her mouth latched tighter over the head of his penis as her small hands climbed up and down the shaft. Her vigor bounced her tongue on the slit, sending shock-waves of bliss spiking through him. They curled inward toward each other. Their bodies seeking more divine pleasures as Joelle’s mouth lifted and lower over the top of his penis as fast as he coupled his finger inside her and played serious attentions to her clitoris.

He felt Joelle’s hair falling like feathered silk over his belly, his groin, and caressing his balls as he used the direction of his finger mating her clutching sheath to rock her clitoris against his swiftly frisking tongue. Her staccato cries grew shriller as her inner thighs clamped down around his head and he strained to hold back his ejaculation. He could feel the burn of intense pleasure moving up his shaft. He renewed his vigor on Joelle’s clitoris and vagina with sudden and needy inspiration proposing that he wrap his lips over Joelle’s clitoris and suck hard. Score!

Thank God, because he could no longer hold back, as Joelle writhed over him with her climax erupting. When he felt her juices leaching and her body contorting, with her pussy throbbing in his mouth, he relaxed the restraint he held on ejaculating. Then, he groaned with a suppressed roar into the sweet hot quivering lips of Joelle’s pussy.

Chapter Fourteen

Kit contained her teary and trembling reactions with wobbly restraint. It had not been easy to get away from Nick, to wrest herself from the hotel room and be on her way. The row she’d had with Nick, after Brynmore had deserted her, had been loud and abusive. However, she’d yelled as loud as Nick had, and finally managed to wrestle away. She felt certain after all the things she’d screamed at him that he would not be bothering her again. More likely, he would return home to lick his wounds and connive a way to declare her insane on paper or something equally as vile. Nothing was beyond Nick Ralston and his greed to get his hands on the Montoya fortune. If Clay was dead and her lawyer did not get the divorce through quickly, Nick just might manage it.

But she did not care! She would give away the entire fortune if she could find her brother alive. That is why, when she left the hotel, she did not try to follow Brynmore and Yojo, but went in the opposite direction. Instead, she was going to the chateaus where The Order had performed its evil ceremonies. A place where her suspicions and dread were leading her too, after hearing Yojo alluding to sacrifices and murders. She was spurred on by the question, why were all the men Brynmore was searching for still missing?

Those questions were why when she reined in her lathered horse outside the Chateaus; she did not stop to go inside, but asked directions to the property’s graveyard.

“How did I know?” Kit cried, kneeling before the fresh mound of a grave. She would never understand the strength of her suspicions knowing this fresh grave, or the others, would be there. Later, someone she would come to respect would tell her it was a logical assumption, but now it felt unearthly.

There was only one fresh grave with a marker that read some esteemed nobleman’s name. She did not let that stop her as she began to dig with her fingers, clawing at the freshly turned earth. It was morbid and disrespectful, but nothing would halt her, as tears streamed down her face, while she dug.

It took her only a moment to find the first bit of debris. It was a man’s gold ring that she had never seen before. Then, she found a cuff link, next a broken piece of a pocket watch, later the skeleton of a hand, but not attached. It was black with soot. Unnerved, she set it aside with her insides crawling, and her mind crying horrors. But she did not stop. No matter how gruesome it was, she kept digging.

Then.

“Oh my God, no!” Kit cried. “No! No!” she wailed, as she pulled out a gold cross on a long chain. It was the length a man would wear around his neck and the cross was lavishly embellished.

“No, God, oh please, no,” she sobbed, holding it up to the sunlight. “Clay!” she screamed...

My Lady Gambled Book Two

By Shirl Anders

Chapter One

Drummond caressed his wife Gabriella’s soft belly. They lay sprawled nude on their linen-tumbled bed after a rambunctious bout of ardent lovemaking. He was just breathing evenly, while his wife hummed small purrs with something obviously on her mind. Blast! Women were so energetic after sex, as if it infused them with life’s vital élan, while men’s very bone structure fell limp and their minds turned to mush. He knew, of course, what was likely on his lovely wife’s enterprising mind.

He supposed in the end he’d played his reluctance for all it was worth, while receiving the many varieties of his wife’s sexual favors as she tried to influence him. Not that their normal sexual intimacies were lacking at all, however Gabriella became very creative with sex when she wanted something.

Drummond smiled into the pillow. She always got it, too. Nevertheless, far be it from him to inform her that he could deny her very little. Drummond opened one eye like a lazy cat and looked at Gabriella’s plump white breasts as she lay, still entirely naked, on her back beside him. She was playing one of her long painted fingernails around her lips and he could just see her mind whirling. Hmm, he thought, never before had discussing his intended spying mission been so visually enjoyable. He could get use to this.

“Uh mm, Drummond, amour.”

“Mm, yes, love,” Drummond responded with a slow drawl.

“Chloe spoke to me again and I have finally been able to read between the lines.”

Drummond rose up on his elbow and moved to lean over Gabriella, looking down at her. “Really?” he asked, tilting his head.

“I could tell you if I were involved,” she hinted.

“As I see it, Orchid, you are already thoroughly enmeshed despite my misgivings,” he said, as his hand gently cupped the underside of her breast and he caressed it gently.

“Drummond, I know you are worried over safety issues. It will be dangerous. However, I am quite certain your superb mind can overcome most of that.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere and from what I have heard all the Archangels wives and lovers have been flattering their men to distraction, until we are all left as puddles at your collective feet.”

“Oh, Drummond,” Gabriella exclaimed. “You will not regret letting us help you destroy The Order! And as far as danger, each of us now married and in love, worry over each of you as much as you worry over us. How you dealt with things such as this in the past needs to be revised, though. It is time now, with all the changes in our lives. I believe this wholeheartedly.”

“Then we come back to Harrison,” Drummond said. “You know we all had to kill, but he performed cold-hearted assassinations.”

Gabriella pressed her fingers to his lips stopping his words. “I know, my amour, but you can see how that would destroy him now. Really, it would any one of you.”

“Yes, I felt certain that was what was troubling, Harrison. And, Chloe, confirmed that I take it?” Gabriella nodded. “Yes, Gabriella, we have moved beyond war where outright assassinations appeared more acceptable.”

“I know, but I also know that you can find a different way, Drummond. I have faith in that extraordinary mind of yours.”

Gabriella patted both his cheeks with encouragement. He was going to need encouraging if he were to devise a plan to destroy The Order of the Satyr, while trying to keep everyone safe. Even more so with the women involved, and do it all while allowing no outright assassinations. Of course, he could not order assassinations anymore. This was not war and he was no longer a spy for England. If he did it now, they could charge him with murder. Be that as it may, he’d already been thinking quite extensively.

“I have called, Brynmore, back from St. Petersburg. He has found Incubus, who is basically remaining low-key, hiding and cowering.”

“So it begins soon?” Gabriella asked, rubbing his chest.

“Yes, love. The first step does. We need to infiltrate the new cult that The Order has resurrected and moved outside of London.”

Chapter Two

“Mrs. Birmingham, I certainly appreciate your answering my questions.” Kit looked at the pleasing, rotund lady sitting next to her in the tasteful front parlor of her home in London.

“Of course, my dear, and you must call me, Maddie. Your father was a great friend of ours. My husband, George, always regales me with tales of visiting your father in America those many years ago. Then I turn George’s ear right back with tales of the visits your father made here to London. Of course by then, George and I were married and George was right here with us, but still we love telling them.”

Lady Maddie Birmingham sighed with an over-fond light in her eyes. “We will miss him greatly. Your father, Rolston Montoya, was an extraordinary man, so different from any of the English men I’ve ever known.”

Kit was a bit surprised. If she were younger and less experienced than she was now, she might have missed the undercurrent. Yet it was obvious to her that Lady Birmingham had, had a crush on her robust father. Kit quelled the urge to discover if it were more. That was not her purpose for coming here. It was odd to think about one’s parents in that way. Kit shook off the odd feeling and turned the conversation back to her interests.

She found herself lying smoothly. It was a testament to the fact of how far she’d come and how serious she was. “There are several people my father spoke about that I would like to contact while I’m here. Unfortunately, London is so large.”

“Oh, just tell me their names, dear. I am certain I will know the names.” Maddie looked particularly proud and eager to showcase her London social standing, with her in-the-know knowledge.

Kit felt the tiny rush of moving forward in her goals, as she asked, “One is, Lord Brynmore Duneagan. Do you know of him?” Kit held her breath.

“Oh yes of course, dear, I know, Lord Duneagan. I will tell you at one time I thought my oldest daughter, Matilda, had Lord Duneagan’s eye. But the man will simply not give our society events enough chances. I lament that fact to him on the few times I see him attending.”

Kit could see that Lady Birmingham intended to relate the tale of the missed courtship, so she interjected quickly. “And, Lord Duneagan, has a residence here in London then?”

“Oh yes, some smaller bachelor’s place you know. Fashionable though. Only a few blocks from our famous Mayfair on Newburg Place. Really, Mayfair is the place to be in London,” Maddie informed Kit, while patting Kit’s hand.

Thirty minutes later, Kit stood outside a three-storied mansion on Mayfair not far from Lord Duneagan’s residence. With a surge of intuition, Kit felt certain that it was owned by the one she sought. She could have contacted Brynmore, but she did not trust that he wouldn’t try to turn her away again, as he had done so easily in Paris. Needless to say, she was a different woman now, even from such a short time ago. Revenge did that. It enraged determination. So, she was going to bypass Brynmore and go for the nameless friends that he’d spoken of. Although, it had not actually been hard to guess, once Lady Birmingham informed her that Lady Joelle Zurka was a guest at the home of Lord Duneagan’s longtime friend, the Duke of Kittridge.

“I could be wrong,” Kit muttered, approaching the mansion at a steady walk. She was arriving unasked and unannounced. Quite unacceptable and more so if she was mistaken. “But I’ve never met a Duke before.”

It seemed that the butler who answered the door was unperturbed that a lone woman should arrive upon the doorstep without a calling card or any invitation, asking to see the Duke of Kittridge. In fact, the butler solicitously invited her inside to wait in the foyer, while he went to inform his master of her presence. Kit knew all these actions were uncommon by London society’s strict rules of etiquette. It depicted the Duke to be perhaps relaxed and slightly more malleable. Much more like the society in America, Kit thought, where a single woman could move about by herself more freely without ravaging her reputation.

The butler returned shortly, his face nonplussed, with an invitation to the Duke’s study and Kit was feeling optimistic when she went through the opened doorway. The butler stood aside for her and waited for her to enter, then he closed the door behind her. Kit did not bother with digesting the decor of the room other than it appeared richly attired with a warm feeling. Her concentration centered entirely on the distinguished and quite handsome silver-haired gentleman that sat behind a large mahogany desk. The Duke had the look of a Duke, but more, he was a man’s man as her father use to say.

“Kit Montoya,” Lord Kittridge said. “I have been expecting you.”

Kit felt like rocking back on her heels in surprise, yet she managed not to, while she felt the satisfaction of having guessed right. This was the leader. His attractive arrogance showcased it admirably. She knew its presence from her father, who had the same quality.

Bull’s-eye, as her American ranch hands would claim. “And you, Lord Kittridge, are exactly what I anticipated,” Kit said, walking further into the room.

Lord Kittridge nodded his head slightly at her parry. “You, however, can only be guessing,” he said. Then, before she could attempt a retort, he intervened, saying, “Please sit, my dear.”

When Kit came to one of the ornately tufted chairs before his desk, the Duke stood until she had seated herself. Once seated, she smoothed the brown silk skirts of her gown, peeking out from the edges of the cloak she still wore.

“As I was saying, Miss Montoya, I had decided, with recent private events spurring me on, that when you appeared I would not try to, shall we say, sidestep you. Your appearance here shows your determination and were I not to invite you into the fold, as it were, I can readily see stumbling over you at every inopportune moment.”

Kit nodded her head in agreement to Lord Kittridge’s statement. The excitement rising in her was a hardened one. The Duke was correct. She would continue to try to destroy The Order and its leaders with or without his, Brynmore’s, or their friends associations.

“The fold?” she asked, with leading keenness.

Lord Kittridge leaned his elbow on his desk, then two fingers to his fuller bottom lip as he gazed at her with piercing intent in his charcoal gray eyes. This was not a man to trifle with, Kit realized, stifling a shiver up her spine. There was an edge to him, once again of the type she’d seen in her father. She had better get used to it at any rate, because Lord Kittridge was the first of many dangerous people her goals would lead her to encounter.

“Former spies, Miss Montoya. The monarch’s own. Six of us, Brynmore included.”

Kit was unsure what her thoughts about these friends of Brynmore’s might be. As accomplished as Brynmore, surely. But, spies? She had hit the jackpot. It caused her to sit straighter in her chair, since it also occurred to her what would be Lord Kittridge’s next parry in trying to eliminate her. For once, she was thankful for being her father’s daughter. For learning so much about powerful men at his knee that she could intellectually hold her own in the presence of what she was certain she would discover was Lord Kittridge’s extraordinary mind. However, she did allow him the lead before the fall, and entrapment, by letting him expound without interrupting him.

“So you can see all of your concerns about The Order of the Satyr and your brother’s whereabouts will be well met and dealt with by professionals. I can assure that I would keep you informed and I will put finding your brother on the top of my priorities.”

“My brother is dead.” Kit allowed no muscles to move in her facial expression as she stared at Lord Kittridge. She also noted on some level that this revelation did not surprise him.

“I see,” Lord Kittridge murmured. “So your intentions have changed.”

Kit gripped her gloved fingers together. “They have and I come bearing leverage of something quite weighty that you will want to see ... if we come to an agreement.”

“Proof of your brother’s death?” Lord Kittridge half asked, half astutely stated.

“Proof of his and many others. However, the proof that theirs was murder, as you and I know it was, might or might not be proven in an expert’s hands, which I’m sure you have access to.”

Drummond looked at Kit Montoya. He could easily tell that her proof of the many murders The Order had committed was irrelevant. It was the truth, but it would be impossible to prove who did the murders without straight confessions. The fact that a person or people within The Order had committed murders was heinous. The murderers themselves, one of many reasons to destroy The Order and in some form eliminate its major leaders. Nevertheless, the fact of the murders themselves and proof thereof, would not be the nail in the coffin that destroyed The Order.

Lawful men would attempt that route, to try to prove the murders and hang those guilty. He also entertained the idea, until he realized that it was worthless and he was grateful that he and his companions had no hesitations about being unlawful. Drummond knew he could tell Miss Montoya all this. Take away the leverage that she perceived she had. He could try to dissuade her with words, with threats. However, after meeting her, seeing her, reading her, he now had the information about her that he needed. Because he knew, this side of kidnapping her and locking her up, she was not going to stop doing everything in her power to eradicate The Order.

And that was exactly what he needed.

A woman who was unknown to The Orders participants and with an impetus to shed most of her self-preservation instincts for the higher goal of destroying The Order. The personal sacrifices this woman would have to make would be unthinkable to most women and he regretted the need for them. Be that as it may, he also knew Kit Montoya would do so with or without the Archangels collaborations. What price was revenge worth? What value could be placed upon allowing The Order to continue on its merry, murderous, and perverted way? High! As high as the goals of men.

“I will not dissuade you, Miss Montoya, but offer to use you.”

Kit’s fine eyebrows arched as she gazed at him through steady, but dark and dusky blue irises. A thought occurred to him that this American woman’s entire social upbringing might bring many surprising qualities, far different than the normal English ladies with whom he was more accustomed.

“I want them destroyed, Lord Kittridge. Use me,” Kit answered succinctly.

Chapter Three

Brynmore watched Drummond’s fingers tap the small table beside his chair. There had been extra chairs brought into the Kittridge library to accommodate all eleven people gathered, which included the six Archangels and their five women.

Brynmore had arrived from St. Petersburg last night after finding and doing surveillance on The Orders former, from all appearances, money man, Lord Incubus, who was now living under another fictitious name and title, Lord Markus Zurfoff. It seemed Incubus-Remior-Zurkoff had picked up the identity of a Russian Count this time and he was keeping a subdued public persona at the moment, almost sedate.

Through observing him, Brynmore had come to the opinion that Incubus was hiding and that meant to Brynmore that Incubus was afraid of something. The logical conclusion was that Incubus was afraid of Hellion’s wrath. Deadly wrath, Brynmore wagered and he hoped the blackguard Incubus strangled on his terror.

Still, he was glad to be back in England, at the center of the investigation again. It appeared events were on the move. He’d already ribbed each of his male companions for their inability to keep their women out of this, before they’d gathered in the library. He did not take a chair, but stood leaning against the end of a bookcase, whose size reached well over his head to the ceiling. The ladies were all dressed in somber, businesslike attire, leaving behind the lace and bouffant frills along with no intimate cuddling, hand holding or lap snuggling with their men. They were deadly serious about this and he was glad to see it. Yet, for some reason, he had a strange, odd-man-out, feeling. They were all couples, he realized, and since Saxon’s return with his new lady, Joelle, making them a couple, they had never been gathered like this. Brynmore shifted his shoulder against the end of the bookcase — his single status seemed to glare at him.

What he did not understand was why this nagged him now, with so many dangerous adventures hovering. However, gazes between couples and the looks where one knew, they were reading each other’s thoughts all pushed his mind to think of Kit. Brynmore held back his growl of irritation. Kit, who was married ... married and mentally stomped upon by that worthless husband of hers. But at least, he thought, he’d been able to keep her out of this, unlike the weaker showing of his friends.

“Patience is going to be our code name for this mission.” Drummond said suddenly, breaking the quiet, but expectant waiting. “We have found our prey, gathered information. Large amounts of intelligence coming from Yojo, the half angel, half devil. He is the former or perhaps not former cohort of The Order and its leaders.” Drummond paused, tapping his fingers again, looking around the room at them. “Nonetheless, we have not reached one tenth of the information we need to devise a plan. I will, however, tell you several things our future plans will have. There will be no authorities involved, save perhaps for one, and then only for the express purpose of enlightening the authorities who protect the population that a mass murderer was among us.”

Drummond paused again and with the first overt showing of affection in the room, he clasped his wife’s, Gabriella’s hand, who sat beside him, then he continued. “This plan will involve no assassinations. We, my friends, are going to stretch ourselves to move beyond that which is no longer appropriate in our lives.”

There were quiet murmurs of agreement around the room and Brynmore saw Chloe’s hand reach to Harrison’s shoulder. Harrison stood with his head bowed. There was an undercurrent of something Brynmore could feel, but could not quite identify. Then, he remembered the last meeting he had attended with Harrison, where Harrison had been so stoic, as stoic as Harrison had been before Chloe came into his life.

Brynmore realized suddenly how much they all had changed. Each man had fallen in love and found the woman they could barely dream existed. He was happy for them all. The snide and unaffected-by-love part of him, however, began to wonder if these men still had what it took to get a dangerous mission such as this accomplished.

“Also,” Drummond continued. “As we have all individually agreed upon Radford will stay apart of this mission.” Drummond turned his gaze to Radford. “I will need your mind extensively for this, Radford, if we are to accomplish our goal.”

Radford nodded without words, quite unusual for him and the feeling of change once again swamped Brynmore for a moment. He disliked seeing his friend so subdued and he vowed to do all in his power to help Radford feel part of the Archangels as he’d always been. Going blind or not, the man was a valuable asset they could not do without, and as far as friendship went, there was no question in that.

“Then, in that vein, before we get onto the meat of why we are gathered here, Radford, what ideas have you come up with to deal with Yojo?”

“From Joelle we have discovered that Yojo has an affinity for and love of animals,” Radford said. “You remember that ex-spy, Meramoth? He has a rather extensive menagerie on his estate in Cornwall. I thought with Joelle’s encouragement that her friend’s zoo needs Yojo’s help. We could cache Yojo there, out of the way. It is close enough if we find need for him. Added to that idea, I have already begun to search for any of Yojo’s family still alive in Prussia. A further incentive to bind Yojo to our cause and perhaps keep him out of trouble without physically imprisoning him.”

“Excellent,” Drummond said.

Joelle agreed, saying, “Perfect, Radford, really. We might show Yojo a new life.”

“Or remind him of an old one,” Radford said.

“Exactly.” Joelle punctuated her response with a smile.

“Now,” Drummond began again, taking up the leadership. “Our mission staging area will be here. We have given over our ballroom to the effort. That is where you will bring information of the smallest matter to Radford and Nia.” Drummond turned and nodded toward the couple. “Our first order of business is unfortunately messy. It will be personally uncomfortable for the two recipients that will have to move undercover to infiltrate and become intimate with The Order and it members residing, now, here in England.”

A murmur went around the room and Brynmore wondered how many had expected this and the full impact of it. He had not, until this moment. He was the foot soldier of the group, along with Saxon and others stepping in at times when needed. He did surveillance, reconnaissance, and yes infiltrations at times. He was intuitive and in control of any particular piece of a mission they assigned to him. However, everyone depended on Drummond for the overall and outward view of where an operation was constantly evolving. And just lately, his concentration was on Incubus and not thinking ahead.

So, Brynmore was just now realizing the full implications of what Drummond was saying, as were the others. Brynmore paused in concentration and in only a few moments he calculated the high moral and personal risks this was going to involve. The Order was a cesspool of sexual depravity. Anyone trying to infiltrate into its folds was going to have to act as perverted. A woman trying to enter The Order would be extremely vulnerable to sexually explicit abuse. He knew he sure as bloody hell was not going to allow any woman in this room to do it!

“I’ll go,” Brynmore announced loudly, so there was no mistake anyone did not hear him. “Tis obvious,” he added, still leaning against the bookcase as if it were just another lazy day. He used his unaffected posture for all he was worth.

“Not so obvious,” Wyndham casually retorted.

“Aye, it is. I’ll have me one bonny torrid little romp to remember my wild times when I’m old and rickety,” Brynmore said, winking. “Looking forward to some of that tawdry tomfoolery, I’ve been missing.”

“You will need a woman,” Wyndham said, against Brynmore’s bravado, which Brynmore was not certain had fooled anyone. “Each of us has those available,” Wyndham finished.

“I dinna see the need of a lass. I can do fine on me own ... and, I’m certain there are many married men attending The Orders depraved gatherings without their wives. Single men too,” Brynmore countered, lifting his shoulder from the wall to cross his arms over his chest.

“It would be unwise to send a lone person undercover for this venture. The risks are too high going in alone, not to go in without backup,” Drummond stated.

Brynmore knew then that two were going in. No one questioned Drummond’s reasons. He was brilliant at what he did, and truth be known, they’d never set up an undercover operation with only one person. It was a type of unspoken rule of safety, not broken until Wyndham had gone into Valcourt alone to help Orelan escape the clutches of Alexei Tropov’s. Brynmore knew he could argue that point all night against Drummond’s opinion and in the end, Drummond’s decisions would win out. Drummond would not do this lightly, he knew the personal sacrifice.

“So unless it were two men,” Drummond continued, breaking Brynmore’s thoughts. “Which, I see as appearing too suspicious looking.”

Still, Brynmore did not realize the concern and fear for his friends and their relationships that he felt, until he found himself heatedly blurting, “You cannot mean to send any of you couples in!” It came forth like an accusation, said as though he thought Drummond was crazed. “I’ll get a tart to pose!” Bloody balls. Brynmore’s gaze swept to Nia. He’d not meant to say that. She’d been a lady of the night once, but he’d not meant it that way.

“We’ll go!” Joelle exclaimed. “We will... well, we’ll disguise ourselves. Right, Saxon?” Joelle turned to Saxon. “We know best how to keep safe...” Joelle’s voice faded off.

“I will stop this now,” Drummond interceded. “I’ve already made my decision and it will involve none of the couples here.”

Brynmore felt the urge to sag with some relief.

Drummond continued, “There are many issues involved. We will not argue the point whether any of the couples here should be chosen to go and why not. One thing we learned from Yojo was the entrance fee into The Order always involved the person seeking inclusion needed to offer something of enough value that they could themselves be blackmailed with. Quite clever actually, and it shows the determination of the members to satisfy their individual depravities.”

This was news to Brynmore, but he was grateful for whatever kept his friends and their lass’ away from this particular venture. He did wonder what in the world Drummond could have in mind. Just as he knew Drummond did have something in mind.

“All of us are too visible. Our titles and our prominent places in society make it unbelievable to attempt blackmail against those of us noteworthy enough to gain entrance to The Order,” Drummond said. “Now, listen closely, dear friends. I believe that a wealthy married woman, foreign and not well known on our shores, along with her adulterous lover might do it.”

“And I will be a ring-tailed polecat!” the voice of Kit Montoya pierced the room. “Because I have two of those three.” Brynmore jerked, turning to see Kit walking through the open entrance to the library, continuing to say, “Now, compadres, I only need the third... an adulterous lover.”

Chapter Four

Brynmore paced outside the closed door to Drummond’s study. He rarely got irritated enough to pace and the fact that he was pacing fueled the anger thrumming inside him. Kit Montoya had just waltzed into their group like a bloody damned angel of vengeance, all cocky as if she had the right to be there.

“Bloody hell,” Brynmore swore out loud. He’d seen instantly that she had Drummond’s full backing. He’d never felt himself go from nothing to explosive anger so quickly before. It had taken him inhuman amounts of effort not to bellow the word, “no,” over and over. His upheaval had left him mute and straining.

That had been over an hour ago, and then Kit had been introduced, eyeing him with challenge, but saying nothing. Then he learned how the hell she’d gotten there and insinuated herself into Drummond’s plan so swiftly and so thoroughly. Damn, she was amazing. He had to give her that. She’d done the one thing that he’d never thought to do. She’d looked in the chateaus’ graveyard and found enough to fill a trunk with bones and personal effects of those murdered by The Order. That evidence had gained her entrance right back into the thick of the Archangels mission. Kit knew her brother was dead now. She had the proof, but instead of returning home in grief she was out for revenge.

“Fuck.” Brynmore slapped the wall and halted his pacing, bowing his head. He tried to tell himself that she could not possibly understand what she was getting herself into.

“If it were your brother or sister, Bry, think what you would do.” Saxon’s voice came from behind Brynmore. “Women are not so different from us in that.”

Brynmore nodded, he did not trust himself to speak. Saxon’s hand clamped on his shoulder in comfort. “I find myself having to put a brave face on it also, Bry. Once you think it through you will know that you do not have the right to ask her to stay out of harm’s way in this. As much as you want to, the best you can hope for is to be beside her and deflect harm as best as you can.”

“Bloody hell, Saxon.”

“I know, Bry, but she will surprise you. She is stronger than you believe.”

Saxon squeezed Brynmore’s shoulder, then he turned to go back down the hall. Brynmore took a few more minutes before he entered the study where Drummond and Kit waited for him. It was hard to agree with what Saxon said, but he knew Saxon was right. Kit Montoya was going to destroy her life with or without him, while searching for revenge. He understood as a man, he would do the same and not think twice, but women were so much more deeply affected. Damn it!

Roughly, Brynmore ran his hand through his unruly auburn hair. “Start out as you intend to go on,” he muttered. It was something his Ma used to say. It seemed to him that he needed an angle to all this. “What?” he groused. “Try to be professional, rise above it?” Oh yes, let us just waltz into a den of sexual depravity side by side and he would remain unaffected and professional. “Bloody balls, at least I’ll get to fuck her,” he growled.

That was the inevitability. It had to be. He could not deny that he did not want to either, only not like that. Not like it was going to happen. It was too much to think about. Too much to plan and try to find some perspective on. He did not have the time now. Now, he just had to get through this next part to gain time to decide how to go on.

“The most bloody important thing now,” he muttered to himself. “Is to keep it close to the cuff.” Brynmore took a few deep breaths. Yes, restraint and hold it in, then think later.

Brynmore turned, and then he reached for the door handle.

Kit was listening to Lord Kittridge — still all her senses were tuned to the study door opening and the man she knew entering from behind her. It was more than awareness that ignited her; it was the humming of female interest too. She’d been rather busy in Paris to acknowledge it, perhaps denying it. Earlier though it had attacked her with full force upon seeing Brynmore again. Something about Lord Brynmore Duneagan attracted her and it appeared she was not going to be able to shrug that off easily.

“I’m bloody well against this, Drummond. I’ll have you know that from the start,” Brynmore announced with no preamble. His voice sounded deep and strained as Kit stiffened with challenge, catching sight of Brynmore standing to the side of the chair, beside the one she sat in. So much for wayward attraction, Kit thought. That quickly, Brynmore had provoked her unbending determination!

“It is not your choice,” Kit expelled tightly, not turning her head to look at him.

“I dinna like being backed into a corner,” he replied, his voice holding the edge of his obviously suppressed anger. “You canna, possibly understand what this involves!”

Kit, whose voice was tinged with reflected anger, announced, “I’m not naive! I can fully imagine what is involved.” She turned her gaze to him. “I assure you now that I will do anything that it takes to destroy this evil Order and the man or men who murdered my brother!”

“Like being a naked sex slave to your master! Copulating with beasts!” Brynmore recited tightly, with defiance glowing deeply in his green eyes. “Having sex with women or being tied and whipped! Are these some of the things you considered? There are many more!”

“And together you will both have to choose one sexual fetish that you could not receive full completion of anywhere else, but within The Orders secret hospice,” Drummond said slowly, and with emphasis.

Kit was shocked as the breath of any of her retorts released sharply and she sat with her gaze transfixed on Drummond trying to take it all in. She heard Brynmore make a similar sound to hers. All she could think was that at least she’d not crumbled and made a weak feminine display of dismay, when she heard Brynmore’s asserting, “Aye!”

Kit knew Brynmore was agreeing with Drummond’s conclusion and further showing his strength above hers by readily agreeing to the lewd depravities. Quickly, she forced herself to follow. “Yes,” she said, surprised that her voice sounded as strong as it did.

“Your responsibilities are to protect each other’s sensibilities as much as you can, as well as gathering information and moving as close to Hellion as you can,” Drummond said. “Remember that. I know you will do what you must, however cleverness and clear thinking can sometimes help to elude the worst.”

Kit could only nod. The fact that she was going to do this was not in doubt. She simply had to wrap her mind around the implications.

“Tis more dangerous going undercover with an inexperienced agent than just allowing me to infiltrate on my own. I know I can do it,” Brynmore said, while Kit was thinking he was stubborn to the end.

“You will never gain entrance without her,” Drummond stated simply.

“As the lover to her, a married woman,” Brynmore retorted, with disgust shadowing his tone. Then, he asked, “What happens, Kit, when your husband does find out about this? And he will. What then?”

“I’m divorcing him.” Kit felt embarrassed to say it and admit her failure, however she also felt satisfied to rebut Brynmore’s objections so thoroughly.

“And as to the inexperience, I am sending, Miss Montoya, to Radford for a quick course in undercover spying methods and I believe, Nia, will be of some help also, advising her through her own experience.”

Brynmore held his tongue. He’d already shown more than he cared to about his feelings. He knew Drummond sensed it. Not much got passed Drummond. However, he thought Kit’s ire was raised too much for her to discern what he was revealing that he damn well wished he was not.

He also knew that he could hardly argue against the profit of sending Kit to learn the fundamentals from Radford. Oh, he could argue that it was basically worthless, giving the instruction in such a short amount of time, coupled with complete inexperience. He would be right, but he would also be arguing against Radford’s worth. He was boxed in a corner all right. Tied up tighter than the belt holding up his kilt. He did not like it either. It was going to put his hide in more danger and he would have to work on the edge, trying to quick-step both himself and Kit out of the worst depravities.

If he could...

Chapter Five

Kit paced her bedchamber, bracketing forearm over forearm in front of her, as the long blue chiffon nightgown she wore swished around her bare feet. Earlier today, in Drummond’s study it had been decided that she should move into Brynmore’s townhouse where she was now, still awake at midnight in one of the three bed chambers. The one right next to Brynmore’s master bedchamber suite.

Well, Drummond had decided, while both she and Brynmore had remained mute on the subject. What was there to say? They were going to portray that they were involved in an adulterous affair with each other. A kinky affair. Lord, but she still could not stop thinking about the fetishes that Brynmore had so bluntly stated earlier today. She stopped her pacing when she reached the window and she slid the drape aside slightly, gazing out into the foggy darkness. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a patch of light reflecting against the misty fog. At first she thought it was light from her curtained window, then she realized her curtain would dispel that and her gaze turned. It was from Brynmore’s bedchamber beside hers. He was still awake.

“Am I surprised?” she asked.

After his first outbursts in the study Brynmore had closed inward and became the typical stoic male. His demeanor seemed to be that he could care less what sexual indecencies he might have to perform. He was more concerned with life and death issues.

While she agreed that staying alive was of the utmost importance, she also wondered if he could remain aloof about the sexual side of this without piercing his masculine armor. She wanted to believe that men were also sensitive about their sexual intimacies and inclinations. Oh, she knew men from working on a large ranch with rough and tumble frontier’s men, men who could be gregarious and outspoken about sex and women, the type of bravado only men seemed to acquire. She’d always hoped it was just ego around other boasting males and not fact. Nonetheless, men were thicker-skinned about this and she had to admit it to herself and deal with it. What she was going to have to do was find large amounts of bravado herself, pretend that she did not care. It was either that or be the most consummate actress ever.

“I can do that.” She’d expelled the words sharply, letting the curtain drop as she returned to her pacing. “To start with, I had better stop examining it right now and stop caring what my feelings are one way or the other.” She knew that she needed to care about results and maneuvering with intelligence and slyness, not care about what might happen to her personally and how she felt about it. What she needed to do was to try to remain numb to it.

“All right,” Kit nodded, agreeing with herself, as she continued to pace. “I will make a private deal, here and now. I will not let any of the difficult things affect me. I will force myself to brush them off and I will not allow myself to deal with it until this is over.”

Then you can pick up the pieces, rang in her mind, however, she refused to acknowledge that thought. She was beginning from this moment forward and that meant she must shove those thoughts behind her and move forward to her next dilemma.

“No dilemma,” she chided. “No, this is just intelligent planning.”

She understood that she probably did not have an inkling about what type of things ... sexual things, she made herself add the difficult word. Kit gritted her teeth, but continued her thoughts. She probably had no real understanding of what sexual deeds she might have to perform to become part of The Order. Even so, she did know that she was going to portray Brynmore’s lover, while entering a sexual hive with him by her side posing as her favored partner. She would have to act as if she were overly attracted and intimate with him. Not that she could see too much trouble with that. However, the whole of it dictated an intimacy and comfortable awareness of each other that she and Brynmore did not have.

Yet...

That was the whole point that she was half avoiding, while half strenuously convincing herself to accept. She had to have sex with Brynmore. Now! Before they went in. It was the only way that she would have a chance to convince the patrons of The Order about this act they intended to put on. And, if she were going to have bravado and pose as unaffected, then she needed to not dissect this, but just do it!

Kit turned toward the door to her bedchamber. Then, when she reached the door to Brynmore’s bedchamber suite, she stopped with her hand raised to knock. She had no idea how she was supposed to act, how she was supposed to go about this or how to initiate sex. Be that as it may, that was the point! She needed to get a handle on what she needed to do.

“And ... and, this will be like practice,” she muttered.

So she was just going to have to pretend. Also she had a feeling that it was past time to start because she could foresee large amounts of it in her future. Any other feelings she had she brushed aside, shutting the inner door on them for the interim. The conduct she was going to assemble was going to be the boldest action ever attempted in her life.

Brynmore turned his head to the knock on his door. He was sprawled, shirtless on top of the bed linens, with his hands propped behind his head. He’d been thinking about his plans, brooding and too restless with introspection to sleep. He still had his boots on with half an idea to take an early morning wander outside, to go anywhere to clear out and center his thoughts. Aye, he’d been brooding and restless, half the time fighting the persistent knowledge that Kit was in the bedchamber next to his. His quietly intense planning in the undercurrents of his mind had yielded a few answers. Too little for the amount needed, but it was a start.

Startled at the sound from the knock on his door, it blanked everything from his mind, except for the fact that it could only be one person who was knocking. Kit. Then, the facts of that knowledge flashed visions of her, wholly nude, right to his groin. “Bloody hell!” he swore under his breath, banishing the image to Hades as he stopped his body from instinctively lifting upright. Nay, he forced himself to lie still and play impervious male to this new and unexpected turn of events. He could not imagine what the lass could want past midnight, while the devilish male lust inside provided a thought. She wants you.

Brynmore grimaced at his inevitable baser side, as he called, “Come in, whoever you be.”

Through silted eyes, Brynmore watched the door open. His gaze first caught wisps of gossamer blue, until his sight took in the whole of what entered his bedchamber on bare feet. His cock instantly thumped and he felt his entire muscular structure tense with an explosion of lust, quickly followed by reins of restraint. He fought to remain lying unaffected on the bed, while his belly muscles rippled and his breath hooked for one long second. Only his eyes would not obey his restraint as he devoured the sight of Kit swaying softly into the room, wearing a seductive see-through fluffy night gown. It was see-through when she moved further into the room, stopping between the bed and the door, putting the light from the flames in the fireplace behind her. He could see the distinction of her legs leading upward to the succulent promise of the sultry cove between her thighs.

His gaze traced the shadowy thatch between, following the slender curve of her hips, up to the bottom of her breasts etched in half circles. Her breasts showing soft, but firmly shaped conical mounds, clinging outwardly in the see-through light blue material. Brynmore crossed his heavy knee-high booted feet at the ankles with a flummoxing of nonchalance as his gaze halted on dusky nipple circles and tips taunt and jutting.

In his peripheral vision he picked up soft buttercup-colored waves of short blond hair framing Kit’s comely oval face. He knew her lips were lush, her eyes smoky colored, but anxious, and the desires that made him a man shouted that she was here for sex.

He was lust-stung, but also stunned. Caught off guard by this advance. Perhaps, if he had one chance of thinking forthrightly, he could comprehend the reasons for Kit’s barely clad presence in his bedchamber past midnight. But his mind was latched onto dark, sweaty, and vigorous couplings. He was bloody lucky to still be lying on the bed and not leaping forward to consume Kit right on the floor.

“We ... we have to talk,” she said, with a voice that sounded half-whispered huskiness to him.

Talk! Right, he thought. “Do ye often want to talk to men while yer fairly nude in their bedchamber, lass?” Brynmore watched Kit’s right hand jerk, lift, and then press, palm down over her lower belly near the top of her mound. His upper lip curled as his inner thighs twitched with one heated tremor.

“I ... I,” she hesitated, and then she seemed to find a firmer voice. “Yes, for this I do,” she finished.

Well hell, Brynmore thought. All that left him with was a hard prick, still wondering what the bloody hell she was up to. He muttered a curse under his breath as he lifted upright and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was amazed he managed to stop there with his boot heels making a soft thud on the plush rug laid out on the wooden flooring. As he moved, he watched Kit falter, stepping backward.

The chest of a bull rider or a weighty wrestler was all Kit could think. She’d never seen a man’s bared chest as magnificent or appealing to her senses. Her gaze skittered from the molded mounds of sinew, covered like a pelt of fur with dark brown hair, up to Brynmore’s eyes of green-edged potency. She felt her body flush as if an internal moan of desire swept through her at the bridled lust shimmering in Brynmore’s eyes. She tried to catch her bearings. No man had ever looked at her like this before and she’d never gazed upon a man’s physique, his presence, which she wanted so much.

Except for the abundance of hair on his face and hanging loose just above his shoulders. That part of him between his incredible eyes and his brawny fit chest looked like a bristly bear. Her ardor did not really care, as images of rubbing naked all over him flashed through her mind. Kit shoved that aside, trying to retain control. She had to be strong, confident, and in control. Not a besotted fool in Brynmore’s hands. So she latched onto that bush of hair he had on his face to gain control, even as she was secretly amazed that she was able to pull off her words and manner.

“You need to shave,” she asserted, tilting her head in what she hoped was a seductive manner as she let one sleeve of her nightgown fall off her shoulder giving it a slight undulation, until it hung above her elbow.

“I do?” he smirked at her.

“If we are to have sex you do!” she blurted out. She could not believe that she was doing this.

Brynmore laughed once, outright and sharply, moving the mounded muscles on his chest. Kit’s temper flared instantly. “Sex?” he said. “If anything, we will naught but fuck, lass.”

The word he used struck like lightening in her mind, and then sizzled down through her body straight into her sex. Oh lord! This man would fuck. And a woman would feel it to her core, she thought. Instead, she struggled to act brazen and confident, running the tip of her tongue slowly over her lips, even though they trembled. She imagined only she was aware of the trembling and that he could not see it. However, something did affect him as she saw his gaze riveted to her lips.

“So you’ve realized that to fool The Order, we have to fuck now to gain some pretense of intimacy?” Kit said wishing that she had a glass of water to gulp. Nevertheless, she said the whole without a hitch, especially that one prurient word, while her hand slid caressingly over one hip.

“No,” Brynmore said, cutting the word sharply like the edge of a knife. Then he stood, walking toward her. It took every ounce of willpower Kit possessed not to retreat, but she stood firm, until Brynmore’s presence shrouded her with his heat and male scent. He stopped so close in front of her that Kit had to tilt her chin upward to look at him. Her mouth opened to argue, but his voice continued, stopping her.

“We’ll have to fuck like rabbits from now until then to fool anyone that ye are anything but a shy... Nay, sweet wife!”

Kit’s hand leaped upward and back gathering strength, then began to swing before she realized that she could be capable of striking anyone. It was pure, furious instinct! A flash reaction and Brynmore caught her hand before she could come in contact with his face. Yet her voice was not halted, as she angrily exclaimed, “How dare you insinuate anything about me! You ... you barbarous bear!”

He tugged her hand captured beneath his large paw and she toppled forward to land against his chest. “I’ll dare anything, lass, and you’ll let me! That is the point. And this fire you are showing, that is what we need. Tis more seasoned and worldly.”

Kit wanted to stomp on Brynmore’s foot ... or punch him in the gut. How dare he call her attitude sexually inexperienced and unsophisticated? Only other sensations were snatching her attention, like her lightly veiled breasts rolling against Brynmore’s chest. The heat radiating off him was incredible as his free hand landed on her bottom. A big hand with fingers splayed some right over the crease as he grabbed hold and lifted her lower body against him. Her mound pressed vividly over a hard ridge beneath his britches.

She wanted to fight him, to push away, as her confused mind asked anxiously, where were the kisses and the long romantic buildup that any woman deserved and desired? Yet she banished those feelings away. She had to show Brynmore that she was made of a tougher spirit than he imagined. She could masquerade worldly attitudes, with the cold-hearted best of them. Besides, she was uncommonly furious. It was like a challenge that she had to beat Brynmore. More... she wanted to dominate him and take control and show the handsome, brawny oaf that he’d met his match! So she ignored the fire in her loins, the biting pleasure in her nipple tips, and the aching in her firming breasts. If she yielded to those sensations too much, it would make her weak and pliable beneath Brynmore’s hands. And it seemed as if he understood her intention of coming here without further explanation. It seemed he agreed wordlessly to the idea, but he also envisioned much more. Well, she would not shy away or back down. She could do this.

With her hands free after he plastered her body against his, she lifted her hands strongly and grasped the sides of his beard. She tugged downward, making him hiss, as she practically climbed up his body with her lips zeroing in toward his mouth.

She growled with as much feminine ardor as she could manage. “Then we will fuck like bunnies!”

Brynmore jerked his head, even with her fingers tugging his beard, so that her lips missed their target and she only caught the side of his lips with her mouth. “Fucking perverts dinna kiss,” he reprimanded her sharply.

Kit instantly retaliated by biting the side of Brynmore’s bottom lip. “Bloody hell!” he cursed, with a sharp bellow. “But that’s what we need, lass, blood.”

He smeared his bottom lip and the pinprick of blood, where her teeth had grazed, over the side of her top lip. She could feel it, taste the tinniness, smell the light copper-sweet smell as she jerked her lips away and her head back in confusion. She hung onto him as if he were a tree she had climbed, halting halfway to the top, with his hand bracing her buttocks.

“Blood?” she asked in confused disbelief with her breath panting.

“Aye.” His warm breath washed her face, smelling of whiskey and mint. “Blood will be our fetish, my sanguinary pet. However, we will discuss that later as the second part to our plans.”

Pet? Just the word from Brynmore’s lips, his deep tenor voice and the connection made from the word to her, was like a heated caress straight into Kit’s sex. She found herself blurting, “What is the first part?”

“Fucking,” he said. Then, he turned and began carrying her to the bed, just as she was, hanging to his strong hardened body. “But with wildness, like a fire is lit beneath us.”

Kit felt the back of her knees hit the bed as Brynmore lifted both his hands to clasp her wrists and tug her handhold’s free. Then he pushed, sending her flying, until her spine hit the bed. She gasped, wondering if the wildness he spoke of was a personal desire he was trying to hide beneath the guise of well-thought plans. Yet it did not matter, she needed to prove that she could rise to any occasion. She needed to prove that she could simply fuck and not fail emotionally, like a soft woman looking for romance might.

Kit rolled to her side, then she came up on her knees facing Brynmore. The nightgown she wore had fallen off both her shoulders, while the collar barely hung on the peaks of her nipples. She fought the urge to shield herself. “With your boots on?” she asked, a bit scornfully.

“Aye,” he retorted, sneering with a challenge.

Kit knew pain flashed in her irises for brief seconds before she could catch it, then she horribly, found herself asking, “Why are you doing this?” She tried to make her exclamation sound strong. A type of return challenge, only she knew Brynmore clearly understood her intention. He saw she was asking not why were they going to have sex, but why was he so intent on making it so distant and unfeeling, as if he were a crass boor that thought no more than to fuck her as if she were a receptacle of use and nothing more.

Brynmore’s returning gaze was fierce, but half of it was restrained sexual intensity. He knew he could lie. He knew that he should lie. He thought Drummond would, in this situation, and he knew Harrison would too, to get the job done. Then he suddenly wondered if that were the truth. When he thought about the women that they’d found and loved now. That was the simple truth Saxon revealed beneath other words he’d used when he offered his advice. It all melted into one thing. Honesty. That was what kept Saxon and Joelle together through their ordeal and not ripped apart. It was that leap of faith. A man could be sly with his feeling or he could choose to enact a part with clever intentions that it was the best formula for a mission. However, dishonesty between partners seemed more likely to tear them apart, than build a strong front. Even though, as a man, his first gut instinct might be to control a woman with logic, thinking that he could better protect her.

In the end, Brynmore did not know what the right answer was. With all his ruminating, he still found himself unable to continue fabricating an imaginary personality to Kit. Game up! Not standing before this Kit, so lush and alluring and with the sparks of sexual tension between them. He saw that when she tried to conjure a brave facade of worldly experience for him, it had cracked showing her vulnerability.

Aye, perhaps that was the best way. They were both vulnerable in this. They could only imagine what crass and personally humiliating things they might have to do. They would only have each other to strengthen and to hold each other together at those times. He pretended it would be worse for a woman, however he was not so personally bereft of morals and tastes that he could not be intimately humiliated with self-disgust. His body felt like tensile iron as he heaved a breath trying to loosen some of the tension, while his gaze encompassed Kit’s attractive and flushed face and her breasts, which were all but completely bare.

“I was going to try to hide,” he began, his voice like gravel. “That I want you.”

Brynmore watched Kit’s eyes widen and her pouted lips part. He knew that he’d surprised her with his complete honesty. Even though she’d practically begged him for it. He also knew that they had known each other such a short time, they were truly strangers. So she must wonder how he could want her. Even as he rationalized that she would come to the conclusion that he was just a male and the popular belief was that men were not discerning.

That could not be further from the truth where he was concerned, but he was not going to reveal every nook and cranny of his soul. Kit’s hand rose toward his chest, hesitantly, then her fingers curled inward at the last moment so that her knuckles rested on his left breast plate. However, it was the emotion in her eyes that spoke volumes, with liquid, dark, entrapping qualities.

“Lass, we are together in this. Partners,” he murmured, raising his hand to clasp over her fist.

She nodded her head in agreement and his gaze caught the slight drooping of material the motion caused, revealing one nipple tip, rucked tightly with ruddy-pink emotion. “No kissing then. You think that is the best way to do this?” she asked.

“Hell,” he expelled, overturned at the reminder of his attempts at masking his feelings with cruelness, while he tugged, and then drew Kit’s soft feminine body into his arms. His lips descended to her mouth.

Kit stopped him for a brief second, gasping, “I think I want you too.” Then their lips touched.

Brynmore thought that he might have meant to be gentle, more caressing and embracing. However, the moment he felt the heated gossamer of Kit’s lips molding and moving beneath his mouth, it was as though a volatile eruption burst into his senses. He swore that a flash of light actually burst in his brain, as he growled a groan, moving his mouth ardently against Kit’s instant and returning fervor. The near nudeness of her body slid against his chest as one of his hands sunk into her hair, while the other cupped her buttocks. Kit’s arms braced around his shoulders with her fingers burrowing into his hair as their lips turned against each other, plucking and nipping, sliding and sculpting, until the tip of Kit’s tongue offered itself for his taking. The openly torrid equality of that gesture immediately spurred his excitement about what the gesture promised. She was not coy or reluctant, but matched him desire for desire, with her murmurs increasing as their tongues played carnal jigs.

Kit rolled her firm breasts over his hairy chest with her nipple points erect and prodding, while his fingers spread out over her ass, holding her to the hip motions he used, grinding his thick and woody prick over her muff. One of his fingers holding her supple ass fell into the crease following the depression, until his fingertip found, by surprise the lowest portion of her cleft. The surprise was the wetness. It soaked his fingertip and the gauzy material of her nightgown around it, while she crooned aroused sounds over his tongue, basting it with her tongue.

Suddenly, she slipped her tongue from his mouth, with their noses touching lightly and her irises like smoky dark blue glass as she looked up at him. Her breath panted heat against his damp lips. “What do we do?” she asked.

Brynmore saw that she was willing and excited to do what before had been a challenge. His chest expanded against her nipple tips with the grateful knowledge that he’d averted disaster and chosen the right course. They were equally matched and attracted and they both wanted to build on that.

“Let’s try you taking control for a while, sugar pet. I’d guess that would be a faddy common theme. Lass’ servicing men.”

Chapter Six

Kit barely heard anything past the endearment, “sugar pet,” that Brynmore used and the throng of desire pumping through her body. She did manage to hear the rest. Even though, in just this first stage of sexual play, her senses were soaring higher that they’d ever been engaged before.

She made a lilting exclamation of rebuttal as she grasped Brynmore’s brawny shoulders, tugging and turning him where she shoved, pushing him onto his back. “You think so, do you?” she asked, with her voice dripping with teasing disbelief.

She could tell by the crinkling in the corner of his mint-colored irises that he was a bit surprised at her strength. He’d not stopped her moving him, but he’d not helped either. “Och, I do, lass, I do. Tis certain to be all about a man’s pleasure.”

Kit’s mouth dove for Brynmore’s nipple as she leaned over him from his side. She nipped the hard peak once, holding him down by her palms spread out over his rigid belly, when he jerked. “But, we should practice both,” she emphasized with a quip, as she rose halfway over him.

She felt his hand sneaking under the fluffy folds of her chiffon nightgown, until the heat of his palm caressed her bare hip. Immediately, she felt like undulating her bottom and she was amazed at the sensuality that she possessed.

“Aye, lass, I’m all for practicing.” He chuckled, with a suggestive and blatant male glitter in his eyes.

Kit immediately turned that twinkle into crimping eyelids as she moved her hand to lightly scrape her fingernails over the hardy length of his male shaft beneath the fabric of his britches. She liked the way his hairy belly muscles rippled as his irises darkened. She had to admit that she was thrilled. This was no chore, she thought.

Brynmore’s difficult admission that he wanted her, eased many degrees of her tensions. He could have handled this so many different ways. That he chose honesty demanded her honesty in return. She could see now by her feelings it would strengthen them. Her honesty was that she wanted him also. She tried not to inspect it too closely given her earlier commitment to work out later all the consequences and feeling about this mission. Somehow her desires so quickly aroused by Brynmore, having known him for such a short time, seemed more like fate. Or perhaps, she thought, it was simply pure physical attraction, because she was that. There was just something about Brynmore that made her whole inner self purr. Or yowl!

She giggled inwardly, wanting to pounce on him, like a superb male treat. To smell and to lick, to taste, and to touch. Lord, she’d never felt quite so freely impassioned before and now she even had permission. No, it was like an order, made between them. She was in charge for the moment!

His boots first, then. That she was adamant about. So instead of continuing the caressing journey of her fingertips along the arresting firmness and length of his male organ, she scooted down the bed, climbing off, to grasp one of his booted feet. Brynmore snorted a laugh at her, raising his head to give her a heated wink as she raised his heavy boot straight and began tugging. The man was a Scottish rogue devil, with his teasing that left her tingling from her nipples to her toes.

“Sugar pet, ye’ll never get them off that way.” Kit arched a fine eyebrow at him, hunched over his boot tugging with the thick leather not moving an inch. His gaze seemed all for her bare bobbing breasts. Another sizzle twirled through her at the obvious appreciation she saw in his gaze. “Lass, ye’ll have to turn around, then straddle it and tug.” He smirked suggestively at her.

Kit could hardly believe that she was practically naked, tugging on a man’s boot, while he ogled her with lust in his gaze. And she liked it! Still, some feminine devil inside her wanted to wrest part of the upper hand back and she was nearly naked in any case. So, she let go of Brynmore’s boot and stood, letting her nightgown fall off her arms, sliding down her body, until it pooled at her bare feet. Abruptly, it struck her just exactly what she’d done and the urge to cover her nakedness shouted through her.

“Fash, lass, I’ve never seen a thing more beautiful.” Brynmore’s husky voice, embedded with bass roughness, collided with her nearly desperate urge to cover herself and it allowed her to keep her hands at her side though her body quivered. Beautiful? Nick had always derided her charms in subtle and not so subtle remarks that pinpricked her confidence. Well! If Laird Brynmore Duneagan thought she was beautiful, then she was! Confidence filled her breast and she flipped her short hair back with a saucy head toss.

“Ye’ll be the death of me, woman,” Brynmore chuckled. Kit tried one of his smirks back on him, and then she added a wink too. He grabbed his belly as if she’d speared him, while he groaned dramatically. “Och, lass, just take me brawny prick once before I die.”

That made Kit laugh once outright and she suddenly realized the wonder of humor and sexual attraction combined. She tilted her head and rolled her bare hips at Brynmore. Then, she turned and straddled his booted foot lifting it up between her thighs. The picture that she must present to Brynmore and the position that she was bent into, pelted surprising aroused shivers over her nude buttocks. Then he lifted his booted foot, pressing higher between her thighs and into her slit. A moan escaped before she could catch it, at the same instant a centralized throb pierced her sex. The urge to rub her heated slit on Brynmore’s boot top quivered over her inner thighs.

Kit expected Brynmore to plant his other boot on her bottom to push and aid her tugging his first boot free, but it was his hands that clasped her buttocks. Warm strong hands that sent quivers rippling through the cheeks with instant heat and intimacy. She could not help squirming. Riding her bottom upward against Brynmore’s broad hands, and then humping her slit over his boot top. It blinked in her mind that she should be embarrassed.

“That’s it, sugar pet, rub your hot muff on the leather. You like that don’t you, sweet. Christ, you’re hot.”

Brynmore’s hands pushed and pulled her buttocks, riding her slit over his boot as if she were mounted on a moving stallion. All thought of embarrassment vaporized as pleasure began its tightening and twisting rise in her sex. Then, Brynmore dug his fingers into the hills of her bottom and pulled outward, lifting her inner thighs open, splitting her slit so the buff leather suddenly rubbed over her clitoris.

“Bry,” she gasped. She was unable to get to the end of Brynmore’s name through her clenching moan as her hands clasped the toe of his boot, like she was grasping a saddle horn.

Bloody hell! Kit was one hot, passionate woman and he did not even have his boots off yet, Brynmore thought, when he could think! The creamy globes of Kit’s ass were sculpted as she bent over his boot, riding it astraddle, rising on her toes with the small of her back curling and her bare buttocks lifting upward to him.

The view was hot-blooded and exotic. He loved the spontaneity and complete creativity of it. Finding anything more than a rowdy suck and fuck with a lass was rare. Besides, being completely in lust and filled with desire for Kit, he also felt the thrill of something he’d always itched for, but never discovered until now. It was the rear view of Kit’s cunty-muff that had him entrapped. He could see the bottom lips of her cleft, dark tea-rose colored, seeping with her distinct arousal. He suddenly fancied the thought that he could make her come. Now! In this position and the fact that she was that sensitive and capable of being orgasmic raced more excitement through him. Bloody hell, he’d asked for wild. Then the desire to see if he could coerce Kit’s climax urged him forward to smudge his finger into the opening of her cove.

“Ah, Bry!” she cried, moaning the sure woman’s song of need to him as she wriggled against his finger with her ardor raining and coating the surface.

“Ye like that, sweet,” he uttered, through his own raised puffing, as he kept the motion of her body rocking, with her undulating help, while his other hand played carnal finger tag with her creamy oven-baked tunnel.

Suddenly, she pulled his boot off and stumbled forward. She turned as she lifted his long boot from between her thighs, while she looked at him with desire blazing in her irises. He’d never really seen a woman stand before him naked and panting with the full flush of arousal. The lust inside him that he controlled, all but splintered his restraints.

“Now the other one,” she said, huffing.

“Bloody hell, forget the boot!” he exclaimed, leaping from the bed. He reached Kit swiftly, tossing the boot aside. Then he dipped, grasping her and lifting her up into his arms, quickly carrying her back to the bed. “I’ve other ideas!”

“Bry!” she gasped, clutching his neck, while her bare breasts warmed his chest.

Brynmore laid Kit down on the bed beneath him. “I want you to come for me, sugar pet. Again and again.”

Kit’s nails scored down his chest as he hunkered down over her legs. Then, he scooped her legs up under her knees lifting them toward her chest. He was not gentlemanly or sophisticated, but earthy and urgent. The demand inside him was that he taste mink-cunty now! And it was a mink, soft and velvet, spongy and wet. With Kit’s knees draped over his forearms he could see the lips of her cleft still pressed together with swollen promise, protruding slightly. Ripe mink-cunty was exposed to him as his gaze never left it, while his mouth descended.

“Bry!” Kit squealed, as his tongue lapped saliva over the pressed together lips of her muff. Her fingernails scraped his shoulders. “Oh mm, Bry. Oh yes! Yes!”

Her naked ass wiggled upward grinding her hot muff onto his tongue as the scent of her exuding arousal reached his nostrils like a high-pitched tang. That feminine ambrosia went straight to the head of his pounding prick. The material enclosing his woody-prick became irritating. He lapped the puffy lips of Kit’s fevered mink as he reached his free hand to the ties on his britches, fumbling, with hot feminine muff steaming in his mouth and Kit’s moans of eager pleasure prancing from her panting lips. Then finally, his stiff woody was free, blood hammering into his balls as it stretched fully, veins engorged, ridges pulsing. He let it jut with his britches down around his knees as he brought his hand to the back of Kit’s thigh, pushing and raising her ass higher to expose her torrid muff more, as he licked it, then looked at it, then licked it again and again. He knew that he teased Kit’s senses by not burrowing inward as her moans drew higher-pitched with begging qualities.

Kit was enraptured with her mind skipping in and out of someplace that nearly felt like another world. A world she’d never visited before. She had tried to act experienced and worldly before, but the truth was no man had ever laid his mouth to her sex. She’d suckled a man’s shaft before, beneath the type of impervious demand that it was expected of all women. She’d secretly enjoyed most of that, although the continued disparaging comments on her talent had hurt.

Never in her wildest imagination had she thought that men put their mouths to women’s slits, kissing and licking them. Lord! It was bliss! And at the same time, Brynmore licked over her sex lips like they were the best candy-treat he’d ever tasted, he would stop for seconds, lift his head slightly and praise her, and then praise her sex in his husky bass voice. The words were like the best aphrodisiac she’d ever felt. “Hot. Pretty! Gorgeous. Wet! Beautiful.” All said in a malt-whiskey slow Scottish burr, until the sounds of her pleasure became clearer and she was braver at giving voice to them.

It was as if Brynmore loved her sex-slit and he praised it over and over, while her body undulated and ground against his mouth for more. Her body knew there was more. Her sex knew and her clitoris cried for it as the rapture tightened and began pounding in her center. She’d been so close to climax before when she’d ridden Brynmore’s boot. Then she’d gotten a little frightened at showing her vulnerability alone. Her experience was a man on top of her clutching and the climaxes coming close together, but not out in the open as he watched.

So she’d panicked a little and pulled away from Brynmore to regroup and gain courage. But then Brynmore toppled her onto the bed and did the most amazing thing. There was no regrouping from this... His hot mouth suckling and his tongue lapping. It was the most unbelievably erotic feeling she’d ever encountered. To have a man, that she was so attracted to, touch her so intimately was beyond pleasure! Then suddenly, his tongue circled the entrance to her vagina and her thighs quaked uncontrollably.

“Lord! Lord!” Kit gasped, as a spike of sharp pleasure clinched deep inside her sex, while her fingers tangled frantically in the hair on the top of Brynmore’s head. “Oh, my lord,” she panted with her back arching.

Then Brynmore’s tongue slid into her vagina. “Ah!” she cried out, feeling a whorl of pleasure so different from any she’d felt before. Her clitoris throbbed as if it might burst, but there was a different, more powerful pang of feeling coming from the in and out thrust of Brynmore’s tongue. “B... B... B!” Kit could not say his name.

She could not breathe as he built speed, mating his tongue inside her, pulling it out, plunging it deep again. She squirmed her legs over his forearm trying to free them with the intense hunger to spread them wide. But he did not let her — he kept them tight as his tongue mated her so vigorously that her buttocks rocked. The deep, strange spiking of pleasure built in her core and suddenly it ruptured, bursting into her sheath. Explosive thrills vibrated through her sheath to the depths of her womb carrying her to the pinnacle of unconsciousness.

“Ah!” she screamed. The rapture twisted through her as she felt the final release. The liquid welling through the tremors of the repeating quakes, wracking through her body. Deep into the ecstasy, her body arched into tense convulsions. She could feel the liquid coating her buttocks. She gasped a breath as if she’d been drowning for long minutes and had finally reached the surface and air. A moment to breathe and still her climax rippled through her with Brynmore’s tongue edging it on.

Ejaculated cunty juices coated Brynmore’s face and chin. Blessed Mary! He’d heard of this before. Once in a late night male drunken soirée, where a lusty old coot claimed that his late wife could squirt his face with her come juice, liken to a prick ejaculating. Brynmore had never had it happen before, although he had to admit that he’d been testing Kit’s penetration climaxes as opposed to her clitty ones, by using his tongue to fuck her and never touching her clit.

Bloody hell! He wanted to shout and start the bagpipes! His woody-prick was pounding and his woman had just exploded on his mouth, marking him for life. He should want to thrust his engorged and throbbing prick deep inside her but he had more voracious cravings than that ... to propel Kit into coming again.

Brynmore loosened Kit’s knees over his forearm, running his palms on either side down the creamy heated skin of her inner thighs, pressing her legs open wide. Just as the plump lips of her mink split open revealing the thrust of her clitty, he dropped his mouth over it like a ravenous babe after its Ma’s tit.

“B ... Bry!” Kit squealed and he held her writhing body down by his hands clamped to her inner thighs, stretching the tendons tight as he held her open to him, her thatch of yellow pubic hair tickling his nose. Staccato cries issued from her mouth in incoherent pitches of ardor as he sucked the swollen bud of her clitty, drawing hard and fast with repeated ferocity.

Brynmore moved the grip of his hands under Kit’s thighs and lifted her ass upward and her cunty deeper against his mouth, as he growled and she screeched. He could feel it then, Kit’s returning climax. So quickly! He moved one of his hands so that he could plunge his finger deep into her clenching cove. When it came, Kit grounded her muff against him wildly and nearly pulled his ears off.

Brynmore twisted his head free of Kit’s clutching fingers and he rose above her. The demand to have his prick buried into Kit’s climaxing cove was beyond containing. The backs of Kit’s thighs fell to the tops of his thighs as he knelt between her legs, with his hand around the scorching heat of his shaft, as he guided the head to Kit’s entrance. Her breasts were heaving and her soft belly was still rippling with the effects of her climax as he thrust his prick head between her sopping cunty lips. The seed-soaked head of his prick combined with Kit’s drenched sex made the way slick enough that his prick slid deep into her on the first thrust.

“Fuck.” His exclamation echoed in the room at the tight heat gripping his wooden prick from the tip to the base.

“Yes, Bry!” Kit mewled as she curled up to him, her arms around his neck embracing him and wrapping her legs up over the tops of his hips. Her head nudged under his chin with her lips sucking his chest as he pumped his hips several times with aggravated groans wrenched from his throat.

Bloody hell, he’d not had but his own hand for many months. Now war raged inside him. One wanting to savor — the other wanting to fuck. Yet one thing was certain, he had an overwhelming desire to see Kit’s face as he thrust into her. He wanted to see his prick fucking her, in the storm of her blue eyes and he rolled backward taking Kit with him, until they sat face to face. His legs were bent under him as he was kneeling on his heels on the bed with Kit’s legs around his hips.

“Ah, lord,” she moaned.

And he agreed with her. That movement of his body, both of them together with his prick deep in her cove did wicked things to his body all the way down into his balls. Kit’s head came up as his hands circled her waist and he used that leverage to begin pushing and pulling. His hips helped the thrust and retreat of his prick into her searing cunty. Their eyes locked and he saw each plunge in the depths of Kit’s blue eyes. She helped by grasping his shoulders, tightening her legs around his hips to rock in motion with his thrusts. Their speed built, while her moans cascaded, he dropped his gaze during pumping intervals to look at his fiery-red thickness piercing the rosy-swollen daintiness of Kit’s sex.

His returning groan was deep, like the burn of his seed rising, as Kit’s eyes squinted and their thighs slapped. “That’s it, sweet,” he groaned. “That’s it!”

“Bry, oh!” she panted, her nails digging into his shoulders.

Brynmore pulled Kit harder to him with each plunge, making her breath pant out sharply as their slick skin made smacking sounds against each other. “Ah yes! That’s so good, Kit sweet. Ah, Christ!”

“Bry! Oh, Bry! Oh!”

Brynmore dug his toes into the mattress as his lips dropped over Kit’s mouth. “Kiss me, Kit. Give me your tongue. Deep!”

“Bry! Mm!”

Kit’s tongue surged into his mouth. He took it with hard suction as they ground and humped together even more wildly. Kit’s whimpers were shrill and he realized that she was going to climax again for him. He shifted his hands to push her belly forward and her clitty more onto the base of his cock with each hard fuck that he took. Her nails scratched his sweaty back as she wormed on his prick and he bellowed a groan calling the nearness of his ejaculation. He felt it, Kit’s cunty clenching his prick.

“Ah! Fuck! Yes!” he bellowed as his seed pumped free and he threw his head back, repeatedly surging forward, deep as possible, fucking Kit with each expansion of pleasure.

Sometime later, it seemed an eternity, or a minute, Kit slumped over his chest with their hot sweat-soaked skin gliding together, her cheek resting against his shoulder. Her breasts labored against his equally deep breathing chest as they gulped air to catch their breath. His prick, still incredibly semi-hard, was embedded in her heat. He tangled his fingers into the damp strands of her short wavy hair. Then he tugged lightly, arching her head backward as he looked down on her.

“This is more than necessity, lass, what we’ve done,” he said. His gaze skimmed her flushed features, then he noticed a bright red burn across her small chin and one cheek. It was his mark. The mark of his beard grazing her softer flesh.

“Will it hurt our cause, Bry? What do we need to do?” Kit asked, with her fingers rising to touch the side of his face.

“I don’t know,” Brynmore answered honestly. His lips fell over Kit’s lips for aftermath passion of immersed kissing or perhaps the slow igniting of renewed ardor. He lifted his lips slightly. “But you will know this time and every time after this that I want to be with you.”

“Yes, Bry, yes. Mm mm.” Kit’s voiced was muffled under their renewed kissing. She was not certain what had happened between herself and Brynmore tearing aside any plans or intentions she had for the way it would be. She only knew the feeling inside her was the intense knowledge that she would follow anywhere Brynmore led. To hell and back. And that might be enough.

Chapter Seven

Radford drummed the fingertips of his right hand against the long table set up in Drummond’s small ballroom. He slouched in his chair, his posture one of introspection. “Hmm,” he pondered. “I still do not see how we will gain Brynmore and Kit’s debut entrance into Hellion’s sphere.” Radford liked it best now. This quiet contemplation. His mind could go places his fading eyesight could not.

Nia rustled papers from the end of the table, where she’d been sorting through the daily written reports on all activities that could be seen from a distance, happening day or night, at Lord Rushborn’s estate. Hellion and some members of the cult, plus patrons who were apparently in sympathy here in England, had taken up residence there. There could be one-hundred now that they’d been able to pinpoint, where before, according to Saxon, there had been hundreds.

The patrons from England did not surprise Radford. He assumed they probably traveled abroad and had sampled Hellion’s brand of depravity when they could. If Radford could have picked one member of London nobility that Hellion and his cult might have landed with, it would have been the elder debauchee, Lord Rushborn, with his whispered deviant habits. There was still some speculation bandied about that Lord Rushborn had kidnapped and defiled young virgins in his more sordid youth. Rumor had it he’d had a group of men involved in some underhanded society they’d formed, where they kidnapped and used common women sexually, then paid them handsomely to remain quiet, playing on the women’s poverty to keep them subdued.

Radford tapped his fingers. “Bribing one of the members is too risky. We could never be assured they would keep their mouth shut. Then using Yojo as bait to attract Hellion’s attention would be too obvious. Hellion would be on guard then and we would never get close enough to learn the intimate details we need. The cult’s move from Paris to outside London has put them easily closer to us, however, the upheaval of their order is making it more difficult and they must be more wary.”

“Yes, I wonder that they will even accept new members,” Nia said, as she walked to his side, then she slid onto his lap. Radford adjusted his posture with pleasure to accommodate his soon-to-be wife comfortably, yet still be able to reach forward and tap his fingers. Nia continued, “From what Saxon and Joelle said, Incubus seemed to be The Orders new member curator, plus its money man.”

“Money?” Radford asked, more pondering than question, money was one of the most powerful sins.

“Of course you remember what Saxon said about Incubus. How, Incubus was worried over money and how Hellion was incensed that Incubus should bother him with such mundane human issues.”

“Yes, one wonders what Hellion’s money situation is now, without Incubus in charge of it?”

“Insane as he is or not, we both know Hellion’s lofty madness requires wealth to retain his position, Radford love.”

Radford stroked Nia’s soft hair, while continuing to drum his fingers on the table with his other hand. “So, they need a replacement for Incubus and that might be one within their ranks. Dame Baset would be my first choice. Then they will be very interested in gathering money to afford the perverted style Hellion is accustomed to.”

“Members,” Nia added to his list.

“Yes, it only makes sense whether it is the careful thing to do or not, they must still seek members.”

“The richer the better,” Nia added.

“Aye, and megalomaniac that Hellion is, it is what he thrives on, peons to worship his warped ideals. So, the odds are accepting new members might not be an obstacle. One would assume, with the organizer Incubus gone, the network to check aspiring cult members’ backgrounds and the blackmail side of the cult would be in disarray.

“That is good for our side and will help Brynmore and Kit’s entrance,” Nia said as she rubbed his shoulders.

Radford had to admit talking out different scenarios and methods with his wife was an unexpected pleasure. He normally did such calculations internally. But his lovely wife was quick-witted and just voicing ideas and juggling them to and fro was proving productive, besides having the lush pleasure of her womanly curves cuddled on his lap.

“What else?” Radford asked. “What else will they be looking for here? How will they find new members?”

“I would think they would be looking for women and men to perform sexual antics with,” Nia said.

“Hmm,” Radford responded. “You mean freely or using money as with prostitutes?”

Nia patted his chest. “Well, there is an entire underground society of vast and varying sexual acumen in London. No one talks about it, especially decent nobles. But they partake, masked sometimes and in private.”

“Your knowledge intrigues me, cherie. Not that I would have a clue about such things,” Radford quipped with a smile and a nibbling kiss on Nia’s cheek.

Nia giggled and slapped his chest playfully. “I do not believe that at all, you rogue. Not once?” she challenged.

Radford leaned back in his chair, rocking Nia’s plush bottom on his lap and over his attentively growing cock. “Ah. Hmm. There was one time when I was undercover, mind you, that I happened upon a situation in an exclusive bordello where a rather curvaceous nude woman was bound, wrists above her head, while an older gent lashed her pretty bottom with a fan whip.”

“Really?” Nia’s light green eyes widened with the gold specks shining brightly with interest.

Radford chuckled. “Quite a lady of the night you were, darling.”

“Oh you!” Nia quipped. “I told you that I had barely started my career when you whisked me away and I certainly never heard of activities like that!”

“I know this sparkle in your eyes, my feisty Lady Fire, it says you are intrigued as well as aroused.”

Nia rolled her buttocks seductively over his stiffening cock as she lowered her heated breath to his ear. “I’m excited at the thought of having my wrists bound as you have your way with me.”

“Hmm,” he responded with male purrs of agreement. “And your sexy nude ass whipped too?” he asked.

“Radford,” she cooed, nuzzling his ear. “Maybe we could negotiate, try it lightly to start. I remember... Oh!” Nia pushed away from him, leaning back to look at him with some sudden realization on her features. “I remember a place Madame Lilly used to talk about. It was a dungeon club called the Satyr’s Whip!” Her voice ended on excitement.

“Satyr?” he repeated sharply.

“Yes. Yes!” she nodded. “I think if Hellion or his minions go anywhere surely it will be there. It has all the elements, the name, the sex fetishes. I’m sure... maybe, Madame Lily could help us or has heard about the cult or...”

Radford interrupted. “We need to be careful about saying anything this Madame Lily could be involved already. To approach her we would want to do so carefully.”

“Of course, I’m certain you can come up with a devious way,” Nia’s said, with a sly smile aimed at him.

“Yes. This is good, we need eyes and ears in as many bordellos and hidden fetish clubs as we can manage.”

“As usual,” Drummond’s voice suddenly interjected into Nia and Radford’s theorizing. “Your strategies of action are excellent.”

Both turned to look at Drummond as he entered the small ballroom and walked toward them. Radford said, “It came about postulating on how we were to gain Brynmore and Kit’s entrance into The Order.”

Drummond stopped on the opposite side of the table with one hand in his side pocket. “Ah yes, it has given me pause, a difficult task. I just might have something tucked up my sleeve along the lines of your thinking.”

Radford cocked his raven-winged eyebrow at Drummond. Drummond merely smirked and continued on another venue without quite revealing his intentions. Radford chuckled, shaking his head lightly, as Drummond said, “And, Nia, I believe visiting these underground clubs across London, looking for signs of the cult’s movements could be some couples events, to include the women. Don’t you?”

“Definitely,” she replied.

Chapter Eight

Harrison moved like a whisper of air in the dark of night. The slender figure beside him moved in graceful tandem motions with each of his stealthy movements. They were dressed in tight-fitting black from head to toe, including masks. Harrison was pleased with his wife Chloe’s ability to move in slowly calculated secret beside him. He was not truly surprised.

He knew her body. He knew its grace, agility, and patience. Yet more than that, he knew her mind. From the mind came the control to move and not be seen. It was equally amazing because he knew Chloe was excited to be with him on this surveillance mission. That she could contain the adrenaline rush. The thrill of it pumping through her was impressive.

She would have made a skilled assassin.

He nearly chuckled at the absurd, but quite accurate thought. But now, her truest skill was lying nude beneath him, accepting their union for all that implied between them. An indulgent rise made the first thought in his cock and he shut it down immediately, even as he enjoyed the view of Chloe’s compact and supple ass wrapped in the tight britches she wore. That he knew her nipple tips were lassoed and tied with thin leather strips, beneath her form-fitting black shirt, was a sadistic pleasure he’d never invented before tonight. He told her that it would keep her alert, when in reality it was for his own dark pleasure. Later, he intended to use the leads as he fucked her. He was beginning to wonder if he would make it off Lord Rushborn’s estate before he had his cock buried into Chloe’s hot cunt.

However, he had the control. He enjoyed teasing it, regardless. The harder it was for him to control the better he relished it. Nonetheless, he turned his mind away from the distinct pleasure of having his wife by his side on this nocturnal visit to Rushborn’s country estate mansion. It was close to midnight and they stood on the second balcony of the estate’s ornate chapel. This was not a separate building on the estate but was crafted into the mansion. The balcony ran in a semicircular pattern around the main chapel below. Fortunately, the entire balcony and balcony decks that protruded outward in half circles around the chapel were all heavily curtained, masking any activities going on below, on the floor of the chapel.

It was just what Harrison expected of a nonreligious order and it served his purpose well. He stopped by the tasseled edge of one heavy black velvet curtain at the end of the circular balcony. From there he could easily escape to either the right or the left. Chloe glided to a stop beside him. Their mission tonight was to obtain an inside look at Rushborn’s mansion and The Orders newest base of operations.

Drummond wanted the layout, however whatever else came up was left to Harrison’s interpretations. He already had a few ideas. Both he and Chloe found it curious that Hellion was never observed leaving the estate. Perhaps they would come across something that would shine some light on that mystery. Nevertheless, he was only there to observe what he could safely without being caught, and then report back to Drummond. He felt confident that he could do that without being caught and he would only be there for a short time. That is why he brought Chloe along.

“There appears to be some activity below,” Harrison rasped.

“Is it safe to speak?” Chloe asked in a breathy whisper beside him.

Harrison nodded as he looked down between the curtain edges he’d pulled slightly open, while Chloe leaned closer to look also. “It seems they have converted the chapel to their own heroical shrine.”

“Look at those statues of demons set around the chamber. The sculptures clearly show the demons raping women in all manners. The demons are half-man and half-animal?” Chloe questioned.

“Satyrs,” Harrison clarified. “Half-man, half-goat, but they depict these to be more half-stallion. A liberty taken for Hellion’s pleasure no doubt.”

The former Christian chapel below was awash in pagan immorality and Harrison wondered fleetingly at God’s punishments over such desecrations. He was not a religious man, his past maniacally laughed at that. However recently, he’d warmed a bit toward Chloe’s Buddhist spirit. He also was not puritanical or even close. Much of what the cult might be involved in sexually, he more than likely would not find completely distasteful. He was not a hypocrite. He was simply a wicked man. Aside from that, murder and violent rape were things he chose to adamantly defend against, yet the reality of The Order’s biggest mistake with him was loyalty based. They’d harmed Saxon, one of the few men he called a friend, and they were intent to murder him, before he escaped.

“Is it a ceremony?” Chloe asked, whispering as she peered below, near his shoulder.

“Too few,” Harrison murmured. “A meeting perhaps.”

“I see Dame Baset, only because her skirts with all their fullness are peeking out beneath the bottom hem of her robe. All hooded like that, it is hard to tell who is who or who is male from female.”

“You have caught a clue with the skirts,” Harrison said, with his eyes narrowing.

“Could be any woman?”

“Assume it’s she. It is a small group gathered and Hellion is present and I think Rushborn also.”

“How can you tell Hellion’s there?”

“He is over six-foot. Look at the tall one. If you watch closely, you will catch a glimpse of his hands beneath his robe sleeves.”

“Startling white?”

“Yes, you have to be alert to catch it, it happens quickly, however, there is no mistaking him, and moreover Rushborn is seventy and stooped.

“Oh, I see him now. You knew to look at the skirts before I said that.”

“Perhaps, but you reminded me and I looked closer. At least we can confirm that Hellion is here.”

“Yes, unless someone has powdered or painted their hands. Which, would be a very strange thing to do.”

“Rosebud, you have a devious mind,” Harrison said, raising his gloved hand to Chloe’s nape, which he caressed lightly.

“Thank you, Raven,” she whispered. “It might not be a strange thing for a cult member to do. To emulate their leader.”

“Demigod, more like what Saxon described.”

Chloe nodded and he could feel her shiver lightly, as he said, “Your point is taken. No conclusions, unless there is irrefutable proof.”

“It seems unusual our men hired to watch this mansion never see Dame Baset or Hellion leaving, only Baco and Cernno,” Chloe said, turning into his hand covering her nape. “I know she goes out,” she added.

“Women’s intuition?” Harrison asked.

“No, women’s knowledge. Dame Baset is too fashionable to stay away from shopping and society long.”

“Irrefutable then, I say. Look closely, Chloe, something is happening.”

Chloe felt the warmth of Raven’s gloved hand cupping her nape as she leaned into his solid body. Really, Raven caressed the only part on her not covered in black. Chloe looked for what Raven spoke about, then she saw it. Two of the robed figures had moved closer to one of the lewd statues on the right side of the altar area. The statue was carved in some type of black polished stone and was as tall as two men. It depicted a satyr with a monstrous jutting phallus between its thighs. It was the only Satyr’s statue in the chamber that did not have statues of nude black stone women intertwined with it in varying lewd sexually violent poses. Like the next one in the circle of them, with its phallus entered into a woman’s ass, her hands tied to a post. The large black-onyx Satyr held her hips in place with clawed hands and its head thrown backward, mouth open, screaming lust or rage.

But the lone Satyr was so much larger and taller than the rest that it drew the most attention. As she watched, she saw one of the two hooded figures lift one arm toward the Satyr’s tremendous cock. Chloe never saw the hand of the operator that reached from the robe sleeve and manipulated the Satyr’s cock or something on it, but suddenly the Satyr moved. Its base moved outward with the whole statue rotating with it and she could hear the grinding of some mechanism.

“A priest hole. An escape,” Harrison rasped beside her. “From the Jesuit persecutions.”

Chloe did not know about the history of this, but she could clearly see that it was an opening leading to a hidden entrance or exit. The thrill of the hunt leaped inside her. There had to be at least one, or perhaps more, secret exits leading out of this four hundred-year-old mansion.

Chapter Nine

“Dios, nothing last night, Wyndham.”

Wyndham turned his gaze to Orelan sitting astride a sleek rum-colored mare beside him. The dark cocoa-colored stallion he straddled topped Orelan’s mare by half a foot and fit his more restrained personality, compared to the feisty mare that Orelan rode. They’d stopped outside London for a moment to discuss their plans, after trying this same venture last evening and coming up empty.

Orelan’s mare fidgeted with shuffling movements, as she continued, “We know someone in a carriage leaves regularly from that secret exit on the east side of, loco Rushborn’s property.”

“Aye, always late, after ten or midnight. It has to be this road,” Wyndham said, squinting as he pondered the situation.

Something unusual was happening out there and he and Orelan were in charge of finding out what and why. Once Raven and Chloe discovered the existence of the hidden exit from Lord Rushborn’s property, the surveillance crew of foot soldiers, all military, that Drummond had gathered, had been nocturnally scouring Rushborn’s property, until they found the hidden, East exit. None of the added men hired, as extra eyes, knew details of why they were doing what they were ordered. They only had minute instructions to watch, observe, and then report what they saw. Their willingness to work blindly, but with monetary compensation, spoke volumes about Drummond’s influence and the certainty of the men’s respect for him.

Several of the men doing this surveillance had worked for the Archangels for years, never knowing the real details. However, their faithful team had tried to follow any one of the carriages seen leaving the East exit, without the success one would be expecting. The carriages had been followed after hooded occupants entered them, always impossible to identify. Nonetheless, the carriages never went any place that made sense. They all went to the docks, to several different ships moored there. Not one of their team had seen anyone alight from the carriages after they halted by a ship’s gangplank and then the carriage spent the rest of the night there without activity.

Last night, he and Orelan were on this same road, intent on following a carriage themselves to see if they could learn something new. Unfortunately, there had been no nocturnal carriages last night, confirmed in the morning by two of the team set up to watch the entrance. Further, they reported nothing else along the road or in the area had appeared out of place.

Wyndham roused himself from his contemplation. On their side this evening, it was a full moon that lit up the landscape, perhaps this would be the night. Either way, they would keep trying. He had to admit that his wife’s presence enlivened the usual boredom of surveillance. She looked fetching and mysterious in her black cloak, gloves, and half mask. They really needed to be careful about being mistaken for highwaymen, Wyndham thought, a smile spreading across his face beneath his own scarf mask. The important fact was that they could not take the chance of being recognized, should it come to that. His positive side had no intentions of letting that happen, however, the spying business was fluid and unpredictable.

“Tonight we will follow the road at a slower pace the entire way, until there is no other hope but we will be seen from the entrance to the secret exit, before we turn off,” Wyndham said, with a touch of emphasis on the, “not being seen,” part. It was a new way to try other than the most natural way one would instinctively follow and break off across country by horse as they had previously done to reach the entrance.

Orelan nodded and reined her mare so that her leg brushed his. “Lead on, mi amour. I will follow.”

Wyndham chuckled, resisting the urge to haul his wife off her horse and onto his lap. Orelan rarely followed tamely, so her teasing was characteristic, but she knew the importance of this surveillance and would follow his more experience lead. He was assured of that. To both of them, this was serious business and Orelan was good under pressure.

They rode the horses along the road for about two miles, eyes alert, gaging everything. Nothing looked out of place, Wyndham thought. Then a sound caught his hearing. Wyndham reached over and grasped Orelan’s arm. Her eyes leaped to his and she slowed her mare as he did his stallion, until they were completely halted and silent on the road. Up ahead, Wyndham could see the dark black canopy of trees lining the road on either side. It looked as if the barrenness of the dusty road turned pale white in the moonlight, seeming to drop off suddenly into blackness. It was either a curve in the road or a hill. The snorting of a horse sounded into that strange distance, but they could hear no accompanying sound of a carriage or the clomping of hooves.

Still, Wyndham moved quickly, motioning Orelan off to the side of the road into the cover of the tree limbs and the darkness. He knew Orelan peered forward with the expectation of seeing some traveler coming down the road toward them. However, he did not, and he sat pondering, while absently rubbing a small ache in his leg from his old injury. As a spy he’d learned to use all his senses and the sounds did not add up to a horse traveling down the road. It sounded more like one lying in wait ... halted and restless.

Hm, Wyndham mused silently. Perhaps they had stumbled upon a true highwayman lying in wait to ply his trade. “There is someone halted up ahead, either around the curve or over the hill,” he whispered to Orelan.

She turned her gaze to him and he saw her golden eyes glistening in a rare shaft of moonlight that filtered through the leaves overhead. Exquisite, he thought. He really had not considered until just now, above her mask, the uniqueness alone that could be recognized again.

“Let’s move slowly around, baby,” he whispered to her. She silently nodded.

They moved slowly with him in the lead, and as they inched forward, he picked up the sounds of more than one horse snorting. Then, he heard bits of sound that could be the rattling of rigging, until it did not surprise him to see a carriage with two horses halted in a cutout beside the road. He noted with interest that it was right before a fork in the road.

Wyndham halted their progress. They were well hidden where they stopped, but could see the idle carriage clearly, its horses still shuffling their hooves restlessly. There were not many reasons that he could think of for carriages to halt on seldom traveled roads near midnight. His mind leaped to the obvious conclusions. However, the why of it escaped him. Could The Order realize they were being followed and this was a decoy carriage?

“Hmm,” he mulled under his breath. Abruptly, Wyndham felt Orelan tugging his jack sleeve and his attention turned from its momentary pondering. Instantly, he heard another carriage approaching. Wyndham clasped Orelan’s gloved hand in his and they watched the new carriage pull to a stop behind the one they’d been watching. Then the drivers from both carriages got down from their perches and headed to the rear of the first carriage to unload what appeared to be a rather heavy trunk. The drivers, both regular in appearance with nondescript features, apparently no one of importance within The Order, hauled the trunk to the rear of the second carriage.

Orelan’s hand squeezed within the clasp of his hand. Yes, he agreed with her unspoken feelings. It would be decidedly interesting to know what the trunk contained that required this much secrecy. The weight of it heavily jostled the boot, when the two drivers lifted it into it. They secured the trunk, pulling the canvas to cover it. Both men returned to the driver’s seats of their individual carriages. No word or sound, nor any sight from within either carriage was forthcoming. Then, as the carriages began to roll, it solved one large mystery. The first carriage that had been waiting went straight down the road, while the second carriage turned off onto the other fork of the road.

Well, well, Wyndham thought, he could easily see how their men, who had followed the carriage, could have missed this timely exchange. They would have been well back, while clandestinely following one carriage and could easily have missed that there were two. He looked at Orelan and he could see the sparkle of a grin in her eyes that he could not see upon her lush mouth, covered as it was by a black silk scarf. Another unspoken thought passed between them. They both knew, inside the second carriage that had turned off onto the fork of the road, sat the Order members leaving by the hidden entrance to Rushborn’s estate.

And now, he and Orelan were going to find out where they were going...

Chapter Ten

Kit sat at her dressing table. She tenderly touched her brother’s cross lying on top of the table, running her fingers over the engraving. She wished that she could wear it tonight to instill her resolve more firmly. Last night she’d made love with Brynmore. Not sex. Not sex as she might have intended, but passionate lovemaking. And tonight she and Brynmore would make their first attempt to contact or be noticed as interesting by the leaders The Order. She would not be able to wear her brother’s cross when she attempted this. She understood there was no way that she could imagine what might happen or what she might have to do.

Before, she’d fooled herself into thinking that she had the guts and fortitude to go through with this. Now, she realized that it was all bravado. Bravado that could easily crumble, and standing alone she would not have withstood the personal embarrassment and degradation.

“But now you have Brynmore beside you. With you,” Kit murmured.

She realized that this one fact alone, made all the difference. Not that it was a small thing, it was huge. She was afraid to consider how affected she was and she would not allow herself to think about it very much, until all this was over. Oh but lord, it had been wondrous and she was not going to deny herself the pleasure of the memories or of admitting that it had been glorious. The alive feelings she enjoyed now, ones that she’d never felt before, demanded nothing less. Beside the fact that she found herself enormously infatuated with Brynmore. It sang to every inch of her body and mind. So much so, she realized suddenly, that she needed to tamp the flow.

“This could cause problems if I do not control it,” she muttered, looking into the mirror. She even looked different, she thought, as she lifted her fingers from Clay’s cross to touch her lips. It was not the pinkish burn on her face from Brynmore’s beard, but more, an entire look of lean womanhood. She’d been married, had sex, all of those things, yet last night was the night she had transformed into a woman. A full-bodied sexual woman that desired a man as much as breathing.

“Oh, stop it,” Kit chided her image, dropping her fingers back to the tabletop, but she did want to relive it, soak in it, and fill herself with all the memories and feelings. She had been flaming last night, completely stroked by Brynmore’s ardor. They’d had urgent and explosive sex the first time, carnally exuberant and just as zealous sex the second time, and then this morning, just as soon as their eyes opened, they’d fallen upon each other for another bout of wild lovemaking.

It was as if they were feeding ravenously on one another and could not get enough. The soreness of that delight still abraded her inner core and thighs with each movement reminding her and enticing her. Drawing her. Luring her for more of Brynmore’s rigid male shaft pinning her and thrusting into her returning feverish undulations.

“Oh my.” Kit clasped her hot cheeks, then she patted them lightly. She had been wholly uninhibited. “That is good,” she muttered, nodding at her reflection. That was what she’d been trying to achieve, only her ardor had not been calculated, but wrenched mindlessly from her in rapture. Kit looked deep into the candle lit sheen of her dusky blue eyes. She really had to get a grip on herself. But her sex throbbed even now for Brynmore. His whip-hard shoulders, the range of sinew lumped over his chest and down his ridged flat-board stomach. To feel the full length of his powerful thighs undulating next to hers and the soft burr of brown hair covering it all. Mmm, she loved the feel of all that warm short hair covering his body, of it brushing against her nude flesh. “Blast!” she exclaimed, dropping her hands, she curled her fingers inward. She would have to fall into infatuation with a man at the most dire of times.

Suddenly, there was a sound behind her and she realized that it was the door to her bedchamber opening. Turning in her seat, she gasped at the sight striding toward her. Her eyes flew, darting over Brynmore’s amazing and altered appearance.

“Ye demanded I shave my beard, lass,” he said, with his lips curling in a teasing smirk as he halted in front of her. He watched her hand lifting with a gesture of surprise and land on his belly, palm against the fuzzy warm bare skin. The least of the surprises was that his chest was bare and he wore only a thigh length black cape with blood-red lining, tight black britches, and black leather boots over his trouser legs up to his knees. “I think I did fairly well with this fash silly deviant outfit. Now, you’re next, lass.”

Brynmore lowered to squat before her with his hands running up the silk of her robe on her outer thighs. His touch instantly spoke to pleasurable sensations strumming inside her, but not even that was enough to waylay her amazement as her hand raised to his forearm and she touched the powdery sparkling-gold colored dust sprinkled on his skin. The golden dust was on his hairy chest, arms, and sprinkled in his hair that hung loose to his shoulders. There was dark kohl applied to his eyelids, making his green eyes strike out dramatically. There was an intricately carved small dagger strapped to his inner left forearm. It seemed that Brynmore had a detailed theme in mind that they were going to use.

Kit remembered briefly that he’d mentioned it last evening, blood and wildness was to be their fetish. Then, she saw the small glass amulet hanging from his neck, overlaid in places with gold leaves, but not obscuring something dark red caught within. Her fingers caught the amulet from where it lay in the muscular concave of Brynmore’s chest. She lifted it and saw the red move. It was liquid.

“Blood?”

“Aye, my sanguinary pet. I have one for you also.”

Kit let go of the amulet and raised her palm to Brynmore’s cheek, which was shadowed now, only with dark bristle. His beard was gone, but he’d left enough for a lean and dangerous look. Brynmore without a beard was perhaps the one thing that astonished her the most. Lord, she’d not known it was possible, yet he was more handsome. Brynmore must have been drawn to the purely sexual appreciation she had in her gaze, because he leaned forward, until his lips touched hers. They kissed passionately, until he left her lips wet and panting. Then he pulled away with his mouth hovering just above hers.

“Are you hot, pet?”

“Yes,” she panted lightly.

“Good, Kit. That is the way you need to be tonight, the way we need to keep you continually aroused so you show it. I want you to be a cat, purring, biting, nipping, and intertwining yourself against me.”

The heat of Brynmore’s mouth left its hovering presence over her lips as he sat back on his heels once again, while his hands on her thighs slowly pushed away the silk of her robe on either side. She felt the cool air touching her naked flesh as he lifted her robe open, until only the belt at her waist stopped his progress. She watched his eyes lower as her slit ached. “We need to shave you too, lass, but we’ll leave a trim little patch.”

Oh my lord, Kit thought. Just Brynmore’s words alone spilled an answer into her sex and she wondered how she was going to keep her thoughts together throughout the evening. “What is my part, Bry? I need to know what I’m supposed to do. What is our goal?” His gaze returned to hers as her hand curled inward with her fingers nearly digging into the back of his neck, as she whispered, “I do not know if I can do this. I cannot think straight.”

Brynmore turned his roughened cheek into her palm, nuzzling it. “Kit Montoya, you lass, can do anything.”

She nearly gasped again in surprise as her heartbeat thumped in her chest. No one. Ever. Had stated their complete confidence in her or her ability. Something hot spread inside her chest, while she tried to get words past the sudden dryness in her throat. “You ... you will help me?”

“Aye, Kit, I’m here to lean on as you will be there for me to lean on.”

She nodded, then she leaped the distance for a tight embrace, taking Brynmore, she knew, a bit by surprise as he chuckled deeply and wound his strong arms around her. When he’d thoroughly hugged her, until the air barely escaped, he let her go and dropped his head to kiss the side of her neck, talking between each kiss.

“I know that.” His lips warmed her collarbone. “As aroused as I intend to keep you tonight, sanguinary pet.” Kit felt the shoulder of her robe pulling away as Brynmore kissed down the top slope of her breast. “You are going to have a hard time thinking of anything, but how your hot little muff throbs.” His lips touched her nipple, and she moaned. “And, sweet pet, all that sexual hunger we are building and you feel, you will let free tonight all over me and I’ll do the thinking for both of us.” Brynmore heated and dampened the taut point of her nipple thoroughly before he pulled away, leaving tingles trickling from her nipples to her saturating slit. “Now let’s shave you, pet. You need to come lay on the bed.”

Kit tried to not think about the reason for shaving her pubic hair was for other people that were going to see it that night. And Brynmore had her so keenly aroused that any sharpness in her anxiousness was dulled, for all intents and purposes, by the sexual vigor steadily building in her body. Abruptly, she realized that Brynmore was an incredibly clever man. What better way to overcome any hesitation and unsure feelings she had, than by overriding them with stronger and more powerful ones.

“Wyndham and Orelan followed at least two members of The Order to a place in the underbelly of London called The Satyr Whip Club,” Brynmore said, as Kit moved to take her robe off and lay down on the bed. Brynmore veered in another direction and Kit turned her head, watching him taking a small leather satchel off the top of the armoire, next to the door of the bedchamber. “That was two nights ago and two from The Order went into the club, but unfortunately, robed as they were, we could not identify them.” He returned with the satchel and sat beside her. “We will call this our cult-catching fetish kit,” he quipped, winking at her once as he patted the side of the satchel.

Kit was amazed at the giggle that bubbled up inside her. Brynmore, it seemed, could make her laugh even at the most intense times and she felt some of her bottled anxieties ease with the humor. Then, he began to open the satchel as he continued to talk, leaving her extremely curious as to what was inside that satchel. “We are in bonny luck tonight though. They saw the carriage again tonight and followed it to the club, but this time, three robed people got out and one of our watchers caught sight of a woman’s skirts or gown beneath the robe.

“Dame Baset?” Kit asked, watching Brynmore take a razor and small amber bottle out of the satchel.

“Aye, we think so. We are not taking the chance to put anyone inside the club yet. It is rather exclusive as only perverts can be.” Her lips lifted in a slight smile as he held up the small amber bottle to her. “I have it on Gabriella and Drummond’s authority that this oil is the best to use when shaving a fair lass’s muff.”

She blushed as he wiggled the bottle between his fingers and winked yet again at her. That meant the intimacy of her mon’s and its appearance or decoration had been discussed by several people. Without realizing it, her hands rose to cover her breasts as she felt her blush deepen and move down her neck.

“Shy?” Brynmore asked, setting the razor and bottle aside.

Kit shook her head vehemently, “no,” even if it were obvious that she was. She could not allow herself to be. She had to be tougher and more ... more, hmm, just brazen and experienced, she thought. She gathered her resolve and dropped her hands back to the bed. Then she bent her knees and let her legs flop open widely, only showing her dread in curling her fingers inward against each palm. Cool air instantly splashed the clinging dew on her sex making her feel how really wet she was.

“Och, lass.” Brynmore looked stricken, but with the look of burning lust simmering in his irises as he used his free hand to adjust his tight britches over the place she knew his male shaft would lay, but she couldn’t see because of the darkness of the material. His exclamation and tugging gesture were all combined to say, he thought it was unfair that she affected him so, and that he was overly affected. She was amazed. It was a unique reaction for her, and then she realized that for the first time she was tasting the richness of lovers who truly desired each other. There was no need to flinch at callous remarks made at displaying herself. It was never going to happen. Ever. That feeling could be laid to rest, in the past.

Only male appreciation and it seemed hardening reaction. Mm, and she knew that hardness. Kit licked her lips, centering her attention in on that craving, promoting her vagina to pick up renewed aching. She might be infatuated with Brynmore, but she was wholly smitten with the ramrod of his male organ. “It’s going to be pure hell, keeping my cock out of you.”

Kit lifted her hands to rub her belly near her shiny golden pubic hair. “Why do you have to?” she asked, with a low drop of huskiness in her voice.

“We need to save it for the right moment,” he huffed tightly. She nodded slightly. She did understand, even as she tried not to envision the future of this night too closely. One thing seemed slightly certain, she might get through the evening with only having intercourse with Brynmore. Somehow she thought if she, if they, could manage that, then she could handle anything else.

Brynmore’s palm suddenly slapped against her buttock for a light smack that was louder than anything else, as she jerked. “Now quit tempting me, pet.”

“Me?” Kit asked, on a high squeak. “I only lay here in obedience to you, umm, what do I call you?”

Then she winked at him, to his returning quick smile, as he tilted his head a bit. “Hmm. We’ll be using our real names, but I’ll be calling you pet or the like. My thought is that Hellion sees all types of sexual perversion. I want to try something new that might catch his attention quickly. So, I thought we’d enact some style of blood mating, where we fuck in a frenzy and draw a little blood through a small cut to suck on near or at climax. Ye’ll want to throw your head back with blood on your lips and make certain Hellion or one of them . . . Dame Baset would be our luckiest next choice, clearly sees you.”

It was really brilliant, blood for Hellion. Kit thought that would certainly intrigue him. She knew Brynmore’s nickname would have to be quite unusual, however she really was not sure. “Blood Master?” she asked him as he raised the opened amber bottle of oil over her pubic hair and he tilted it forward.

The oil drizzled on her at the same moment, he said, “Exactly. That is what we will use, pet.”

“Mm.” She rolled her hips. The oil dripping over her sex through her hair was so erotic. Brynmore’s fingers followed, rubbing the oil through her soft thatch of hair. Her slit wanted the attention so badly her hips undulated.

“Lass,” he murmured deeply. Then his fingers lowered to smear the lips of her sex.

Kit hissed lightly in reaction, with her eyelids lowering. She wanted to climax now. She wanted to build it, until she erupted with Brynmore’s ramrod embedded to her womb. Abruptly, she felt one of Brynmore’s oily fingers pierce her. She panted, digging in her heels, looking at him sharply, with pleasure radiating in the depths of her sheath.

His fierce gaze was all for her sex as she felt his finger curl upward and he tugged. “Oh.”

“Move closer, pet.”

She moved, following his finger pulling in her vagina lightly as she scooted her buttocks and her inner thighs stretched open wider. Once she’d settled near the end of the bed with her heels barely hanging on the edge and her knees had fallen open to nearly the top of the bed, Brynmore’s finger began a different movement.

It was a soft curl in and out of her vagina. It raised her sex lips, plumping them for the pressure of the razor. That and his finger’s motion stroked the escalating unique pleasure in her sheath that she only felt with him before. He raised the razor and moved it toward her pubic hair as he continued the languid curling stroke of his finger.

“You are going to shave me now?” she panted lightly with her nipple points tight and jutting, while her belly and inner thighs flexed.

“Aye,” he responded with a devilish and carnal twinkle in his green eyes that she was beginning to recognize as pure Duneagan barbarian.

The first stroke of the razor was pure blissful torture as Brynmore’s finger enticed the intensifying aches inside her sex, but at the same time she struggled to keep her aroused movements still. “Bry. Oh lord,” she gasped. Brynmore merely grinned wickedly at her as he continued to shave her thatch. “Please,” she found herself begging as the traction of pleasure raised sharply.

“You are so orgasmic, sweet Kit.”

Orgasmic? My lord, she’d never been before, however with Brynmore she was continually in that state and it certainly seemed to intrigue and satisfy him immensely. “I have never been sweet,” she retorted, through clamped teeth, because of the pangs he abraded in that stretch of her sheath that he fondled repeatedly.

“You taste sweet,” he said, with low intensity.

Kit’s inner thighs and buttock cheeks began jumping and quivering as she struggled with the intense urge to lift her knees toward her shoulders, but the moans she could not control tunneled out of her throat and her gaze sharpened with desperation. Oh lord, she wanted to climax. It was consuming her. “I have to climax,” she pleaded, with overriding need squeezing the words from her clenched mouth.

Suddenly, two of Brynmore’s fingers filled her and she felt the razor shaving closer to the lips of her slit. “Oh, Bry,” she cried, shuddering to remain still. If he stopped now and did not let her climax she would die. Oh blast, she thought fiercely, she would do it herself.

“It’s come, sexy hot pet, not climax, and you’ll come and gush hot all over me. Raise your knees to your chest,” he commanded, in a rough bass voice.

Kit’s knees leaped eagerly as if propelled by an outer force. The movement brought intense reaction inside her sheath that catapulted her past being able to stop. “I cannot hold back!” she cried sharply, with her body arching upward.

“Then do not, Kit. Come for me, lass. Let me see you come.”

At the same moment Brynmore spoke he plunged his fingers vigorously now and repeatedly into her sheath. “Oh, Bry! Oh, Bry! Bry! Bry!”

Kit tensed as an orgasm recoiled inside her sex, mushrooming toward the highest point as she drew breath, filling her lungs, to peak with the height of her surging climax. Then, reaching to the top, her mind seemed to ignite a passionate storm, and then rapture hurling upward, bursting finally deep within her womb.

Brynmore quickly grabbed the second cloth he’d set beside the one he used to wipe the razor clean after each swipe. He used the clean cloth to swiftly wipe any errant hair from Kit’s muff as the tunnel of her sex contracted wildly over his two fingers. The demand was to have Kit’s orgasmic cunty in his mouth. The urge was voracious and nothing less would be able to satisfy. He threw the cloth aside and pulled his fingers free as his mouth descended.

Kit’s cunty was hot; it felt like bubbling syrup filled his mouth as more of her climaxing juices sopped his lips, mouth, and chin. He growled like a primal male animal as he pushed on the back of Kit’s thighs rolling her ass upward, pressing her knees to her shoulders, exposing her sex completely to his mouth as he smeared his lips and tongue all over her cleft and deeper. He played like it was a deep thorough and passionate kiss, taking her mouth with no mercy, only this was her cunty. She mewled high sounds, then calming and calming more, as he licked and lapped, going ever slower, until the last quivers of her climax fled and her cunty lips lay like hot butter beneath his tongue.

His prick hammered within his tight britches like the war call of clan drums. He fought his prick’s urge. He had to save it. He knew keeping himself on the edge was going to be necessary tonight as he wrestled with it. Barely winning. His mouth hovered over Kit’s sex as he looked up between her thighs, to her face, flushed and awash with the pink tones of glowing aftermath.

One demand would not allow him respite, as he said in a rough and earthy rumble. “This cunt is mine.”

Kit curled her fingers in his hair, tugging. “Yes, Bry,” she exclaimed. “Yes!”

Just that covenant between them gave him the strength to ease his prick down from its thumping edge, as he caught a hard breath. His nostrils filled with hot musky scents as he kissed Kit’s cunt once, then he moved to stiffly stand, easing and adjusting his clothing around the board of his prick.

“A few more razor strokes — lower on the lips here and you’ll be ready to oil and powder with the gold dust,” he said. His voice tight as he began the strident process of regaining his thoughts.

Brynmore knew the reasons that he’d succumbed into driving Kit into an orgasm. Right or wrong, he knew that he’d to give Kit pleasure before what would happen later, when he envisioned having to fuck her as roughly as he could make himself and in public. Aye, he knew why he’d yielded, when he said he should be thinking of nothing but stopping evil people. He’d done it so that they both would have the poignant memory of what really mattered, before he gambled his lady to the devil.

Chapter Eleven

An hour later, holding Kit’s hand, Brynmore helped her ascend into the waiting carriage, as soon as she settled, he quickly followed her. Kit wore a long dark cloak and once they’d entered The Satyr Whip Club that would be shed. What she wore beneath to his private eyes was thrilling. Bloody hell, he had to admit it was pagan and more sexually lustful than anything he was accustomed to.

Brynmore gritted his teeth. It was one thing being thrilled in private and quite another to display it for all to see. He knew that Kit fought her own embarrassment and after he’d gathered his thoughts ... and hell, his own control, he would help her with that. He intended to arouse her and keep her there. A mind set to go with the scantily clad body she would display.

Scanty, hell. She wore only a strip of black satin as a loincloth and some high-heeled slippers. Kit had bravely pushed for it, once he’d oiled her body sufficiently for the gold powder to adhere, and then he dusted her with it. She had applied dusky black to her nipples and lips and over her eyes.

With her sleekly rounded body glimmering in gold, and a skimpy loincloth barely covering her sex in front and her supple ass behind, she looked stunning. They had added a waist leash fashioned out of thin gold chain, with a five-foot lead that he carried tautly, keeping her close to him. Her cunty had been trimmed to one small finger-thin strip of yellow curls left down the center. The blood amulet, on another gold chain around her neck rested between her breasts. He’d used black leather to strap the twin to his own dagger to Kit’s inner left arm. They’d talked over whether to wear masks or not. Masks in a fetish club like The Satyr Whip Club would be common. Brynmore realized it would help Kit bare her breasts and more in public if she had the buffer of a mask. However, she’d not pressed for it, knowing the better tactic to gain Hellion’s notice was not to be clandestine in any way.

“Should I act more slavish and obedient, or more forward and brazen?” Kit asked.

Brynmore could hear the nervousness in her voice as he watched her ebony painted fingernails, while she twisted the cloth of her cloak between her fingers. “I’m not certain, luscious pet. We will have to adjust as circumstances predict.”

Kit’s gaze lifted to his at the word, luscious. “Yes, Nia and Radford, schooled me on that, when they gave their short course on spying.” Her gaze dipped. “It’s just I think I’m so nervous, I forgot.”

Brynmore rose and moved to sit beside her, as he spoke. “You did not forget. You just wanted me to say it. So there is no assuming between us and that is as it should be.”

“Yes,” she answered, looking up at him with a hint of a nervous smile.

He lifted his arm to put around her and she slid into his embrace. “Will I undo this black on your lips if I kiss you?”

“No, I stained them so well, I fear it might not come off for weeks.”

“Mm,” he murmured as his head dipped. “I’m thinking of the sight of those lips around my cock. Weeks, please...”

Kit gasped her excited pleasure against his mouth at the image he concocted with his words. He might have shocked her, but he did intend to have her succulent lips wrapped around his prick in the near future. And he kissed her as if he meant it, until she was nearly crawling over him. Her hand was squeezing and fondling the ridge of his hard prick, throbbing beneath his tight black britches. He could not disarrange the bizarre carnal costume makeup she wore, so he was left with his hand traveling straight to her wet cleft. Poor him, he nearly laughed.

“Mm, I want to open your britches,” Kit panted against his mouth, pecking lush kisses over his lips.

By all the saints in Scotland, he wanted her too, as he gritted his teeth, lifted his finger from her soused cleft and grasped both her arms. He pushed firmly, setting her back from him, yet her fingertips clung to the hardness of his wooden prick. “The edge,” he hissed. “Stay on the edge, but do not fall over yet.”

Kit’s fingertips left his cock as her forehead pressed to his cheek. “Yes,” she offered breathlessly.

Brynmore wondered if they would always turn each other to flame so quickly. But he’d every intention of finding out. That instantaneous conviction blind-sided him. He’d not realized how deep he was in, but swiftly and with determined effort, he set the realization aside. Stalwart, he told himself, it was just the smell of hot cunty juices on his fingers that were addling his brain and he needed to get his mind back to the job at hand. This was work and he was good at it.

“We need to catch the interest of whichever leaders of The Order are there,” Brynmore said tightly. Kit nodded against his cheek. “I’ve brought something else for us to wear. One for each. It was last minute, but Drummond thought it would help catch their interest.

“What is it?” Kit leaned back looking up at him. She watched as he lifted, to his mind the most ostentatious jewelry he’d ever seen from his cloak pocket. One piece, a blood-red ruby the size of a small plum, the other smaller, yet more astounding in a multifaceted cut diamond, both individually mounted on long silver chains.

“My lord,” Kit exclaimed. “Who on earth could own jewels as large as these?”

And there, his clever lass had hit the question right at its heart. “Drummond advised, alluding to greatness. A patron.”

Kit captured the diamond in her palm. “Kings, queens, princes ... only royalty surely?”

“Aye.”

Kit lifted her gaze to his. “But Drummond did not say?”

“Drummond has his methods. It must be important for us not to know at this stage. He’ll explain, eventually. So for now, when questioned, we’ll be alluding to a rich patron.”

Brynmore thought he knew Drummond’s intended illusion was the Prince of Wales. For what reason he had no idea. However, going into undercover handiwork with only partial knowledge, while being told to allude to certain things, had proved very effective in the past. It was much harder not to say a name, when you did know it and certain finesse was required to dangle bait in prospective suspects’ directions, until their curiosity overwhelmed them and they snatched it. It did have to be the right bait. Brynmore had faith that Drummond knew exactly what he was doing and that Drummond was doing it the best way. Brynmore also knew Drummond had a devilish propensity for grandstanding the final ploys that would gain and capture the results he was after.

“The chain is so long,” Kit said.

“They are to be worn about our waists. Ruby for me, diamond for you, laid underneath what clothing we have there.”

“But they will not be seen until...” Kit exclaimed.

“Some type of devious mind Drummond has,” Brynmore said as he nodded his head curtly in response.

He and Kit would have to have both her loincloth off and his britches off or both pulled aside, for anyone to see the jewels. Their minds jumped to the same conclusion. Sex! They would have to be engaged in some type of sexual intimacy. Bloody hell. That was why they were going tonight was to publicly fuck like rabbits with the rest of the deviants. Only, they needed to do it so uniquely as to catch the attention of a mad man. Brynmore just hoped Hellion was there tonight, because as much as he was torn about doing it, he wanted to get the sick bastard more!

Kit felt the cold ice of the diamond pressing to the slick heat of her sex as Brynmore held her hand, helping her descend from the carriage. The smooth and exposed skin of her slit was much more sensitive now that it was shaved and moments before Brynmore had opened the carriage door, he’d kissed her.

Not just any kiss, but a long and deeply carnal one that flushed her senses and her body, wetting her sex and the diamond. Brynmore’s mouth had ravaged her equally wild lips, until she was left with the urgent craving to have sex with him. Here. Now. Anywhere! It shredded her fear and overrode her nervousness as she melded into arousal. Not fighting it, but letting it live and breathe like heady intoxication. That was what it was, inebriating, as she allowed it to infuse her. It changed priorities and made daring its demands, so as if she were drunk, she purred into it, letting it slide over her body like seduction, moving her figure in new ways.

She’d helped Brynmore attach the ruby, wrapping the chain around his waist and securing it. She knew the blood-red ruby lay against the top portion, of the base of Brynmore’s rigid shaft and she wondered how it felt there? She wondered how it would feel against her hot slit if Brynmore mated her on top. The ruby would press onto the lips of her sex, over and over.

“Mm. Mm.” Kit let the sounds of sexual heat murmur in her throat, while she played her hand over Brynmore’s chest as he stood beside her. She was in character. One that was creating her, nearly more than she was creating it, she thought, as she slid up Brynmore’s body and licked his lips once slowly, before settling at his side. The burn in her belly was for justice and perhaps revenge. The heat in her mind and sex was going to help accomplish that.

Brynmore glanced at the building. It was an ancient medieval styled church, long since given away to other activities. Through the centuries it could have gone through many style changes and uses. During some epoch, perhaps even more recently there had been added high Gothic embellishments with dark malevolence. The building was made from the stone of the medieval period, and it was almost hidden on a side street off a more used thoroughfare. The entrance used to enter the aged church was further down a side alleyway. The speckled, black and gray stone storied high window arches, were banded by wide gnarled tracery ledges that were boarded up. There was grotesque trim under the edges of the arched roofing and black iron bars with spiked corbels that enclosed large snarling Gryphons.

The inside would be shadowed in stark melancholy, dark with honeycombed passages and a large crypt chamber below ground. Brynmore assumed that the ancient church’s crypt was what they now called, the dungeon.

The person guarding the outside entrance wore a black mask in a characterization of horned Lucifer. The person acting as the greeter, cloak-taker, butler inside, wore nothing but a top hat, a thick black collar around his neck, and knee-high black boots. If this caused Kit any pause, she did not show it, as she continued to slink against him as if she were a cat rubbing and nuzzling against his body. She was in perfect form playing a slinky seductive fem-fatale whose entire interest was shown by her hungering need for him.

Brynmore handed the unclothed butler the invitation that Nia had garnered from a well-known Madame she knew. The lighting in the small entryway seemed to lead straight into an arched corridor lined with fat candles set in wall sconces at intervals that lit the long corridor. Several people could be seen along the way ahead and laughter rose hollowly against the stone walls of the tunnel-like hallway as he reached for the tie on Kit’s cloak.

Kit rubbed her cheek and hair against his upper arm. He knew that she peered at what could be seen of the people down the corridor. Some moving on, several of them gathered in a group talking. Further on, one man crawled naked on a leash beside a woman in a tall elaborate white wig. It was difficult to see the rest of what she wore or did not wear, as she moved in the darker side of the corridor. One man, closer to them was talking with two women scantily dressed in harem attire, he still wore his cloak. This group was all masked with decorative if not macabre designed masks.

Brynmore watched Kit barely raise her eyelids, bathing him with a slithering and seductive look, but within it he could see questions about keeping her cloak on. At the same moment they both came to the decision, as he imperiously started to shake his head, while her fingers reached over his to aid untying her cloak. They needed to be noticed, seen, and bring the panache of intrigue with them.

“Mm, we play hot tonight,” she said with her voice humming low in seduction. Then, at her final word he pulled her cloak away and without turning his gaze from her, handed the cloak to the butler. “Hot and wild,” she cooed, raising her hand to his chest and grazing her ebony nails downward as her nearly nude body undulated lightly.

The urges to carry Kit against the wall and make unrestrained love to her flipped through his prick like a heavy solid punch. He sneered through it in a lubricious way, with the chain to Kit’s waist leash wrapped around his wrist, while his hand groped the under curve of her naked ass cheek peeking out beneath her loin cloth. Kit hummed a sultry moan, leaning her pelvis forward to rub her mound against his upper thigh.

“Blood and cunt tonight, pet,” Brynmore said. Then he said to the butler, “I’ll keep my cape for now.”

“Yes, Sir,” the butler responded. Brynmore saw the butler was stroking his stiff prick, while his gaze was latched onto Kit.

Kit, looking like a voluptuous golden nymph. No one would miss sight of her. No male who preferred women would. “Follow now,” Brynmore commanded abruptly, tugging Kit’s leash and starting to walk down the corridor.

“Yes, Blood Master,” she responded.

Brynmore wrapped his arm around the small of Kit’s back and he pulled her against him, feeling soft breast and a turgid nipple pressed into his rib cage. Lowering his head with his lips near her ear, he said, “Perfect so far. Just keep rubbing against me like you’re in heat.”

Kit nodded and he licked her earlobe receiving another seductive humming from her throat. The sexual purring sounds she made spoke directly to his prick with a returning tenor rumble from him. Suddenly, the stones beneath their feet vibrated and Kit nearly stumbled as he clasped her hip, holding her against his side. The area was reverberating with sound. “Music,” he said into her ear. He urged her forward and they kept walking.

It had to be extremely loud music as it came from the bowels of the crypt where the corridor led, winding downward, until they came to the stairs. The candles were growing dimmer. Looking downward it appeared one would descend into an abyss that was beating with sound. Other attendees of the club were moving down the stairs that started straight, then took a sharp left angle. One of the harem girls glanced at Brynmore, her lips pouting at him before dropping from view around the left angle of the stairway. Then in back of them voices sounded, of people coming up behind them, as he and Kit descended the stairs.

“Like to rape da cunt’s ass there.”

“She’ll take your blood,” Brynmore said, low and menacing, as he turned his gaze. Then, Brynmore realized with a flinch, he was able to hide, that he was looking at Cernno. Brynmore curtly turned his gaze forward and away from Cernno with arrogant dismissal. Kit, beside him did not miss a beat as she turned her face on his shoulder peering back and hissing at Cernno, while she rolled her ass. But Brynmore could feel her hand trembling on his waist.

Cernno barked a laugh behind them. Their first hurtle was leaped. Cernno did not recognize them. Not that they thought he would. During the one contact made when both German brothers attacked Kit, she was concealed behind a veil twisted around her head, while he’d come in only in time to see their backs. The further hurtle leaped, was first contact with a member of The Order and more than that, could they draw their interest?

“What is da blood thing?” Cernno demanded, from behind them as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

Before Brynmore could fully react, Kit turned in the arm he held around her waist and she reached back.

“Ouch, bitch!” Cernno exclaimed.

Brynmore realized that Kit had scratched Cernno’s neck with her fingernails. She did not stop there, when Cernno’s reached the same level at the bottom of the stairway, she made a sound he could only describe as sexually induced hunger. Then she broke away from his arm, sliding her body against Cernno, until her tongue lapped over the abrasion.

It was magnificent! Brynmore tugged on the leash attached to Kit’s waist chain. “Pet,” he ordered, pulling her toward him. “She wants your blood,” Brynmore said, giving Cernno the most superiorly wicked look he could manage, which he hoped was fairly barbaric and fierce. Kit undulated and rubbed back against him, as she licked her lips slowly, peering up at the thick German. At least Cernno was clothed. He wore a vest with no shirt beneath and stained brown pants.

Kit had drawn blood and Cernno dabbed the scratch with his fat fingers as he leered at her. “Blood, huh?” he muttered. “She’d bite my dong off!” He grunted and erupted into a crass laugh. Then, he broke away from them without any more comments and he stomped toward the inner entrance to the club.

Chapter Twelve

Brynmore could feel Kit’s body shaking against him, as she exclaimed lowly against his chest. “I ruined that.”

“Nay,” he responded swiftly, cradling her to him. “It was perfect. Magnificent!”

Her irises, reflecting black in the dim light, did not look convinced as she gazed up at him. “Kiss me please. I need...”

Brynmore did not let her finish, as he latched his hand around the back of her head and he dropped his lips to kiss her roughly. He made it look more heavy-handed than it was. The friction of their lips building sexual heat. What they both needed. The rekindling of potent desire.

Kit felt the deep, disjointed bass beating of the music thrumming as though it were penetrating her bones. She felt the primitive music probing deeper with the heat of persuading sexual urges. Urges that tottered on demands to stroke Brynmore, feel every muscular inch of him, undulate against him, and have him consume her. The music compounded her need for him. Lord, she wanted him with new desperation.

Brynmore had warned her about the smoke permeating the smaller chambers and especially the large one. Narcotics, he’d said. The vile mistresses of the mind. Opium, strange mind-altering tobaccos, mystic mushrooms, and herbs or others that could alter her senses. Yet she thought it was Brynmore’s male heat that was her drug as he finished torridly mating her mouth with his tongue, leaving her tottering beneath the onslaught.

She could only reel and slide against him, keeping her hands on his warm flesh as they moved to enter the main chamber of The Satyr Whip Club. It was dark, yet with bursts of light seeming to flare in different areas of the chamber. Outlined figures moved in the smoky dimness, then she would catch sight of a person outlined in the fluctuating light. A naked body, or a hooded robed figure, or a figure where the mask caught the light. She realized that the chamber was very crowded and the shadowed outlines were moving and swaying.

Dancing? Yes, they were dancing in the middle of the chamber with varied erratic movements that were completely unfamiliar to her. This was no ball with structured minuets or waltzes, but individual gyrations and sinuously lewd styles moving to the strange, nearly unearthly music.

Cloth brushed against her, fingertips, bold swatches of naked flesh slid, and then Brynmore had guided them through the heaving throng to the outer edges. Kit clung to Brynmore, moving against him as she watched a woman with tassels on her nipples and a cloth leaf barely covering her mon’s, hold a tray up to them, of long stemmed glasses filled with pale amber liquid. Kit realized that she was The Satyr Whip Club’s version of a serving wench as Brynmore nodded to the sultry woman and he took one of the glasses, handing it to her, then turned back and retrieved one for himself.

The serving woman smiled seductively before she swayed away, buttocks bared, to another customer. Then the crack of a whip sounded behind them making Kit wince, at the same moment she discovered the champagne had bubbles, which tingled her nostrils. Kit lowered her glass, glancing around Brynmore’s shoulder to see where the constant snaps of a whip came from. Instantly, she pressed further into Brynmore, seeking strength, as she saw three naked women prancing like-like ponies with bits in their mouth’s attached to reins and fake tails trailing from... Kit’s gaze jerked forward, back to the darkly undulating mass of dancers, but the image of a man herding the women around in a circle, using the whip to guide them like the animals they portrayed was burned in her mind.

“We’ll move around the perimeter,” Brynmore said against her ear.

Kit nodded numbly. She struggled to regain her character, pushing aside her trepidation. She had to act, not wallow in dumbfounded distaste that left her reeling. She swayed turning and setting her empty glass on a passing tray. Then she began to move around Brynmore as he walked slowly forward. She created a slithering slow dance around him as he walked and she caressed him, while she threw unfocused faces they passed, the most seductive looks she could manage. She thought of Brynmore, his body and wanting him to mate her deeply to help those sexually teasing looks she gave.

She saw there was heavy drapery over broad columns around the room, helping to give the appearance of separate areas. In one area there was a large wooden rack shaped like a wheel with a nude man tied spread-eagle onto it. Chains crossed his chest and an equally nude woman knelt between his stretched thighs with her mouth sucking on his male shaft. A large hooded man stood beside the rack, turning something and Kit saw the man’s body on the rack arch and stretch. They were torturing him, pulling his limbs beyond normal.

Before she could comprehend that, the next area came into view and as she glanced, she slid her tongue across Brynmore’s right nipple, while she swayed around him and against him. The next alcove was filled with naked writhing limbs. At first it looked like a cauldron of snakes, but then she realized it was bodies involved in a crowded orgy. Copulation rampant everywhere. Men on men, women on women and men and women and mated groups. One woman with two men another man with two women.

“Dame Baset,” Brynmore uttered.

Kit broke her dazed fascination with the orgy and gazed up at Brynmore wondering how affected he was by all that they were witnessing. But his features were chiseled and his aura intensely focused. It was not just the focus of an average person, but of a determined and strong male. Kit continued slinking as she followed his gaze with peeking attempts. Through the movement of people she finally saw the one who must be Dame Baset. The woman was petite with a fully rounded figure, especially her breasts, which spilled forward beneath a unique couture corset purposely designed so that it only cupped the bottom of her ample breasts leaving the nipples bare. Copious nipples, with large dark areolas and something else that flashed, catching a ray of light. Lord, Dame Baset had jewels piercing her nipples. Kit could not tell exactly how from the distance, but it looked as if it could be hat pins, with the jewels on each end.

The outer corset cinched Dame Baset’s waist and Kit winced at the smallness achieved on such a voluptuous woman. Beneath the corset was a frilly short skirt that barely covered her sex and unique long stockings tied with ties that came from beneath the skirt. There was a young slender man wearing only a mask and dark pants trying to entice Dame Baset as she stood next to a column watching the dancers. Her wig was elaborately styled for height and probably blond, she was not masked. As they slid a bit closer, Kit thought she saw a bored expression cross Dame Baset’s slightly flaccid and mature face.

Kit wondered what Brynmore intended to do. However, with people trying to talk over the blaring of music, whips, and racks moving, it was impossible to have a detailed discussion. She leaped to the assumptions that because Brynmore wanted to draw Dame Baset’s attention somehow, the fact that he was a man and Dame Baset was a woman would help. It didn’t totally surprise her and more or less confirmed her theory, when Brynmore threw back his cape with a shrug, baring his tightly muscular chest. She took the initiative and began to get out the direct line of perhaps flirtatious scrutiny, by doing her slow undulating dance more behind him.

Suddenly, Brynmore commanded, “Stay.” The end of the leash that he held dropped to the floor at her feet as he walked away. Kit’s mouth fell open betraying her shock. Stay and do what, she wondered, watching Brynmore’s broad back with the cape draped down to his upper thighs, swirling red flashes of the inner lining as he moved away?

It was one thing to act like a pagan minx next to Brynmore, but alone it was an unnatural and nerve-wracking gamble. Abruptly the realization that her breasts were bare, but for some powder and stain on the nipples, shivered through her until the desires seized her to cower and hide. She was practically naked in a room full of people! Kit began pulling up the end of her leash slowly as she slid glances around to see if anyone was noticing her standing on the edges of the dancing area like she was lost. She saw at once several men in different locations around her were very aware of her as her gaze darted back anxiously to Brynmore’s retreating back.

Brynmore stopped nearer to Dame Baset, but he did not approach so close that she would notice him quite yet. He did not lack confidence as a man in gaining and holding a woman’s attention, and then turning it to interest. He’d done it many times, usually through bantering humor. This was not a humorous situation. Nor did he believe that he could come close to gaining Dame Baset’s interest with frivolity.

Bloody hell, the fact was he’d never simply point-blank approached any woman that he had to have find him intriguing. Brynmore watched the man trying to gain Dame Baset’s attention. The man was young and although not close enough, Brynmore imagined hearing the youth begging. Dame Baset was bored. Her heavily rouged lips pursed with boredom and her blue painted eyelids drooped with it.

Brynmore knew she had to be experienced beyond even his masculine knowledge of sexual diversity. There was no hope for it, he just going to have to leap through his hesitations and try. However, at the last instant, inspiration struck him. Who was the most mysterious, hard to get along with, brooding and taciturn man he knew, and therefore piqued every one of the Archangel ladies interests? Ravenscar. All the Archangel men had chuckled together and remarked on their ladies trying to act causal, but being fascinated with the aloof Ravenscar.

Brynmore had an image of Ravenscar expertly wielding a whip, flicking it about the lady’s ankles, until she moved where he wanted her. Blimey! He could not do that, he was not a connoisseur of whips, but he could borrow some of Ravenscar’s sardonic methods.

Dame Baset’s gaze, filled with ennui, finally slid in his direction. Brynmore lowered his eyelids to restrained predatory glaring as he crossed his arms over his lower chest, pulling tight his upper chest muscles and expanding the sinew in his arms. Dame Baset’s gaze passed him, then returned. He did not move, he just stared at her, with a suppressed cauldron of passion filling his gaze, ah-la-Ravenscar.

Suddenly, he had the lady’s attention, so by the seat of his pants, with no planning, but in pure Ravenscar style he stalked toward Dame Baset. Luck was with him, because the music changed its throbbing beat to one with a tad more melody in it. He had to do something and the only thing he could think of to surprise Dame Baset was to tug her into a lewd dance without asking. Ravenscar would not dance, but he would remain chilling and intensely quiet with his aura focused intently on the object of his interest.

Dame Baset struggled, with weak attempts, as her callow admirer fell back with startled indignation, a question poised on his lips, then with pithy, but paltry orders that Brynmore should halt his abduction.

Brynmore disdainfully ignored him, carrying Dame Baset along with him into the dancers, as she exclaimed, “You dare so much!”

Brynmore resolutely remained silent, as Ravenscar would do. Instead, he used his gaze and features to bore into Dame Baset. She was short to his height, but wore shoes with extremely high heels. His attempt at sexual ferocity met her eyes as he looked down on her face turned up to his, while her ponderous breasts piled into his rib cage. Unfortunately it left his prick, thankfully still hard from Kit’s attention, not poised directly across from Dame Baset’s mound, but more around her belly.

His intentions were to prod Dame Baset’s interest with it. Her belly would do, he decided as he unlatched his hands from her waist and lowered them to grab her abundant ass cheeks with his hands. He lifted, as she made an off-key rumble at him, but sniped no further words, keeping her gaze locked onto his as he rolled his hips gradually and pressured his prick with tempered prods to the primitive beat of the music. Her nails grazed down his upper arms and he let his gaze spike, gaining more barbarity as he growled low in his throat, undulating around with slow-pitching movements.

Dame Bastes indescribable irises flared. She had enough interest to be wondering about him. He shifted his hands, leaving just one to grab her ass, lifting the other to her nape beneath the curls of the blond wig she wore. Aggressively, he grabbed her nape, between the stretch of his finger and thumb, pulling back to the side, arching her neck.

An inarticulate protest leaped from her as he dropped his head, with teeth bared to the side of her throat. He bit down just shy of drawing blood, increasing his hips heavy humping as she screeched a small sound. He lapped and bit, lapped, and then he bit again, his nostrils filling with her sickly sweet scent. Then abruptly, he pulled back and let her weight down fully onto her heels. One second to make sure she would not fall, and then he stepped back.

He glared at her. “You know where to find me,” he said, low and arrogantly. “For blood sex only, pretty cunt.”

Brynmore whipped around and stalked away. He dare not look back to see if she considered following. It would be a leap if she did and he prepared for it in case, when he did stop, he found her trailing him. His eyes darted, looking for Kit and he did not see her at once. He needed her to enact something when he arrived. Then he caught sight of a swatch of her short blond hair, but in the next moment it disappeared again amid the dancers.

It appeared the crowd was becoming more enlivened and edgy as he glimpsed people beginning to have sex beneath the heavy beats of the music. More liquor, opium, and cannabis smoke, made for raised heartbeats. He knew it would reach a mass crescendo, becoming more openly hedonistic as the night progressed. The crowd parted and he saw Kit’s undulating dance, with the rest of the dancers. Men tried to crowd close, but she swayed away from any heavy contact, still hands grazed and touched. It appeared to Brynmore several men were becoming close to aligning a combined effort to tame and seize the elusive temptress.

He found himself very proud of Kit ... that she did not cower or shrink away from making her presence known in The Satyr Whip Club, at the same moment he wanted to solidly punch several men. It was a gigantic hurdle, for a respectable lady such as Kit, to find the courage and ability to do this. It was something so outside her upbringing and morality. But he was grateful his time with Dame Baset had not lasted one second longer.

“Pet!” he shouted above the music as he halted. “Here! Now!” he commanded.

Kit’s eyes darted to him, and then she practically leaped again, breaking away from the inner circle of dancers surrounding her. Brynmore motioned, moving his hand straight out, then pushing it downward. He did it twice as she rushed to him and he hoped that she could decipher his meaning. In the meantime he glared, establishing his ownership with the men that might try to follow her.

Kit was nothing if not quickly intelligent and she landed on her knees at his feet, just where he wanted her. He hated that she had to grovel, but she snaked around his upper thighs keeping his line of vision free to look back. Their reunion presented just that interesting sight that he hoped for. Kit petting and rubbing over his lower torso like an enamored pet seeking attention from her arrogant master.

Brynmore’s gaze collided with Dame Baset’s. She had followed, partially, but halted a good distance away to observe him. He sneered with his lips, while he gazed at her with sexual fire banked in his irises. To accomplish that fire he thought of making love to Kit, of licking her honey cleft. He watched as the hills of Dame Baset’s lax breasts heaved. She was affected and intrigued, but then abruptly Dame Baset turned, fading back into the crowd.

“Bloody hell,” he swore sharply.

“Good evening. I’m Madame Venus, proprietress of our wicked little club.”

Brynmore turned to the clear soprano voice as Kit rose from her groveling to slink against his side. The woman was nearly as tall as he was and she was beautiful with startling copper hair. She wore more clothing than most and was gowned in a lovely dark red dress with spangles and a plunging neckline.

Brynmore nodded a light bow, gazing at the woman’s abnormally long false eyelashes. “Madame Venus, Lord Duneagan, and my lover Miss Montoya,” Brynmore introduced. This was standard fare, the proprietor’s self-introduction. Never visiting a club like this before he relied on Nia’s acquaintance, Madame Lily, who told him what to expect and who helped them gain the invitation to the club, also suggesting the amount of a gratuity they expected him to offer. The Archangels following discussions on the matter had boldly tripled that amount and they unanimously decided that Brynmore should use his real name and not bandy forth a theoretical one to this key person.

“Delicious,” Madame Venus said.

Brynmore reached into his inner cloak pocket and pulled out the ridiculously large stack of folded money, presenting it to Madame Venus, as he intoned, “I am pleased.”

Madame Venus’s eyelashes fluttered at the amount, obviously impressed. “Enchante, my lord, you and your lady are always welcome here.”

Madame Venus grasped the money, curtsied slightly, beginning her turn to leave. “One favor,” Brynmore added, stepping closer to Madame Venus. “The lady’s husband,” Brynmore nodded to Kit, “Nick Ralston, an American, it would upset me to see him here and we intend to visit here regularly.”

Madame Venus’s hand lifted to touch Brynmore’s arm, the money gone from her fingers in a slight-of-hand movement. “Of course, my lord, you have my word. You will not be bothered.” Madame Venus nodded slightly. “Enjoy your evening.” Then she moved tactfully away, onto further collection rounds.

“That went well,” Brynmore said under his breath as he turned partially toward Kit so only she would hear him.

“Yes,” Kit replied lowly, using the same method of glancing around as they spoke. “What of Dame Baset?”

Brynmore clasped the end of the leash from Kit’s hand. “I caught her interest. Time will tell.”

“Excellent. What now?” she asked, beginning to rub against him. “Things are becoming heated here.”

That was an understatement, he thought. People were beginning to do all styles of unique dance fucking as the music became wilder and heavy. Just the effects of the smoke in the room, was making him feel as if his skin was pounding. “We’ll cavort through the rest of the chamber, seeing what there is to see, pet.”

Kit nodded, sliding up his body and licking his ear lobe. He slid an arm around her back with his hand clasping over one of her supple buttocks. He leaned in close swaying with her to the thrum of the music. “Bare your throat,” he ordered.

Kit arched her neck and he dropped his mouth to her jugular vein. The pulse beat wildly against his tongue as he arched her spine back and made a great show of sucking there. So sweet, warm, and satiny against his tongue. They continued on swaying and rolling against each other as they moved, many times leaning up to suck each other’s neck. Kit made a great show of laughing on and off, as if they were caught in the thrill of a grand time. All this, while they kept glancing around seeing what they could see, while fighting the effects of the smoke, and while trying to restrain the sexual tensions they kept enticing inside each other.

Chapter Thirteen

Kit was the first to see him in the midst of one man sucking another man’s cock on one side of them, two women lying on the floor licking each other’s sex on another side, and a woman being mated from the rear on the third side. Through the mess of gyrating bodies, Kit glimpsed startling white. She pressured Brynmore that way with her own oscillating body, sticky with perspiration against him.

“It’s him,” she hissed, rocking against Brynmore and nipping his ear as she spoke. She was not certain what she might feel first laying her eyes on an evil mass murderer and one that had killed her brother. What happened was the daze she’d been in, of sexual upheaval and half-altered mind because of narcotic smoke and the undulating furnace of bodies around her ... vanished with a sharp jolt.

Aghast, she found tears of fury in her eyes. She hadn’t realized she could hate so fiercely. She clutched Brynmore, gazing furious, tear-stained daggers at the gaunt and hoary visage of Hellion. He was half-reclined using large low-slung red velvet pillows as a backdrop. It made his head-to-toe sterling white appearance more jolting. He was reclining in leisure with one leg bent, one straight, an opulent bejeweled silver chalice in one hand that he sipped from. The entire scene was as if he’d set up court to observe the throng a bit below him. One very young nude man groveled at Hellion’s side, feeding Hellion pieces of fruit when he bid him.

Hellion’s gaze slid from those speaking close around him out into the center of the club with regular interest. His pink eyes filled Kit with sickly aversion and she wondered how anyone could gaze at him in close proximity without revulsion. He wore white robes lined with white fur, folded open, showing beneath white britches and a shirt with a large medallion hanging in the center of his chest.

She grappled with the compulsions to let loose the dagger strapped to her inner forearm and rush forward to plunge it above the medallion into Hellion’s heart. She literally snarled with the overpowering urge to do it, and she started to jerk away from Brynmore, driven by the intense emotions that were completely unknown to her.

“No,” Brynmore hissed, grasping her, then wresting her back into the savagely upbeat sounds of numerous drums and sharp organ music. “Use it,” he uttered, shaking her, making her gaze leap upward to his. “Use it on me,” he snarled at her with as much fierceness as she felt.

Did he know that she could not think coherently as she fought against his restraint? They were twirling in a slow tumbling circle as she scratched his chest and shoved against him. “Let me go! Let me be done with it! Let me kill him now and leave all this useless devising!”

“Ye will bloody well fuck it all over, Kit. Stop it now!” Brynmore yanked on her leash and hooked his boot around her ankle, tumbling her back against him, when she nearly broke away. “I’ll take ye down,” he threatened.

“Just try!” she cried, with her crazed anger suddenly turning her attack onto him. She balled her fingers into a fist and punched him in the gut. Ouch. But she let no sound of pain charge forth in her furious panting. Suddenly, Brynmore’s boot collided against both her ankles, collapsing their hold as they lifted and she began to tumble.

Brynmore went down to one knee with Kit’s spine falling over his thigh. Bloody hell, the woman was a banshee when murderously riled and he’d been right about the ability of her fitness. For a woman she was strong and very agile. He just managed to waylay a nasty jab Kit sprung with her elbow aimed at his groin.

“Stop it! Other people’s lives are hanging in danger with this that you know nothing about,” Brynmore hissed, as he shook her. “What we do here, does not only affect you!”

“Grr rr ahh,” Kit groaned in shuddering frustration, her wild gaze darting over his face.

Brynmore saw he’d caught a small portion of her attention. Finally! Yet he understood that he would lose it as quickly if he did not pounce on the small opening in Kit’s sudden vengeance-driven rage. Beyond putting the entire mission in jeopardy, he did not blame her for wanting to kill Hellion outright. He was from the clan and the clan lived and breathed the power of protecting its people and striking vengeance on any that would harm those within the unbreakable fold of its society. He knew what fury was raging in Kit’s heart, emotions that also gained momentum riding on the heights of the lust they’d been taunting. Provoked sexual tension of excruciating heights and any emotion so peaked, bastardized it, and could spike other calamitous emotions, such as righteous justice. An eye for an eye.

He understood, but it was also bloody idiocy. He did not need this now! Right in the midst of possibly the first contact with the devil Hellion. However, he’d learned long ago, in the spying game, how to turn disadvantages into advantages and how to do it in the fluidity of the moment. One had to work with what they had and do it swiftly. Drummond would say there were no obstacles that a quick mind could not turn to effectiveness.

Hence, his first thought was to use Kit’s rage, turning it some. Yes. They looked more realistic in outward appearance with it. Disadvantage turned into a boon. The only thing he’d planned was some type of wild feral scene between them, hoping to catch Hellion’s interest. Interest bred familiarity and that helped oil the way to contact. He could not show interest in Hellion first, he needed Hellion to believe it was himself who initiated it.

“Use it.” Brynmore commanded, once more harshly, right before his mouth fell over Kit’s gasping lips. The first contact of their mouths colliding sent Kit into a renewed struggle. He sucked the furious air out of her mouth and in return she bit his bottom lip making him jerk his head back. She tried to tug free of his hand clamped to her upper arm, followed by his forearm across her belly, holding her body curled back over his thigh.

“I hate you! Let me go!” she cried.

Brynmore felt as if he had been punched in the gut again, only this time by a brawny man. The word, “hate,” shredded him internally as he forcefully controlled his reactions. “Hate me then!” he snapped, grabbing the back of Kit’s hair and tugging. “Attack me! Put it all on me, Kit. Do you hear me?”

The sound Kit made was a cry of the challenge being met but also acute frustration or need. He could not tell which as his mouth dropped over hers again with ravaging intent. He dare not put his tongue into her mouth for fear she would bite it off, but she jabbed her own tongue into his mouth as their lips fought. Somewhere, in the riotous hot smearing of lips, Kit did turn her venom onto him. Their battle waged as he was left to claim and tame the firebrand she’d become.

Every glimpse Kit got of Hellion, perching like an imperious malignancy, spurred her anger and she turned it toward Brynmore, because he was immediate and he incited her to do it. It did not help that she knew she was confused; feeling unhinged and out of control. That just made her angrier and determined to be strong and not show any weakness. So she fought, but somehow the victory became sexual fulfillment. A war, fought with wild carnal challenges, becoming a primitive mating thrall.

Long since, she’d lost the impression of being in a crowd. That faded completely and her entire focus centered on the rugged man trying to tame her. She finally managed to do a maneuver that wrestled and rolled her spine off Brynmore’s thigh. She turned, trying to land on her hands and knees, intending to leap upward, the moment she could find leverage to do so. However, Brynmore held her nape and he used it to renew his hold on her other arm, now facing him, to tug her upright to her feet, but she leaped toward him nevertheless.

Blimey, Kit was magnificent, Brynmore thought, even as he prayed that she would not bite his nipple, as she latched her lips to it, while her hands tunneled into his hair, tugging. He assumed his nipple was the most vulnerable place she could reach, as he hissed through the sharp pleasure-pain produced by her nipping teeth. He felt the slightest bit of relief that she showed by not drawing blood or biting the damn nubbin off. It seemed despite her demeanor that she did not have it in her heart to maim or try to kill him. Her attitude implied that, as she crawled over him and he kept just enough sense, between his pounding prick and Kit’s onslaught, to turn them closer into Hellion’s line of sight.

Once he knew they were in a fair position for Hellion not to miss them if he chose to look, he forgot about Hellion. He dismissed the worry over whether Hellion would look, or be intrigued enough and be moved to speak to them. Any of it. He let it loose, as he turned his full attention to his woman and the wild scene they were creating. Bloody hell, he turned his attention to his prick finally. So hard, so stiff, so tight it hurt.

He found bits of relief grinding it roughly into Kit’s mound, just above the diamond. His prick was so woody it was climbing upward toward his belly with rigid demand, pressing against the ruby caught on the top side. That prodding in the root of his groin brought with it pounding new pleasure points as he grabbed Kit’s bare ass beneath the scant edge of her loincloth. He lifted, helping the ruby’s grinding motion as Kit tugged his hair, hands on both sides of his head, moving it from one side to the other, while she sucked and bit on different planes of his neck. The points of her nipples prodded his chest, as one of her legs curled up over his hip. His body, with deep movements of its own, followed the pagan beats of the music, bobbing, swaying, and humping.

Kit could feel the diamond, sliding around the lips of her sex, slick with her aroused juices. She whimpered at the tempo of lust-hungry pangs building in her slit, while her sweat-slick body slid like the diamond over Brynmore’s muscular tough body. The music, the heat, and the pungent smoke seemed to pummel through her and palpitate into her vagina. Irresistibly, one of her hands leaped downward, searching for the cure to her overwhelming need. Her hand found the head and the top half of Brynmore’s male shaft at the same moment his fingers stretched forward from cupping her buttocks to prod her aching sheath.

“Ah!” Her moan was wild as she clawed up Brynmore’s swaying body an inch more, while her hand, shoved into his britches, closed tightly over the head of his thick organ. His teeth nipped her ear, while her body shuddered, as she bounced on the rapturous prods of his fingers. His fingers stretched to mate her and they reached half their length with each new plunging into her vagina, propelling her ardor to one clear demand within her mind.

Kit suddenly lifted, pulled and dropped her body away from Brynmore’s. She did not let go of him, however, as her hands darted to the waistband of his britches, while their bodies combined in twirling circles. She tore at the buttons, renting them and trying to tug the flap open as Brynmore pushed forward propelling her backward. She was unaware that he moved them, while her concentration centered on his thick male shaft that her hand had reached inward and gripped through the flap on his britches. Sudden awareness jolted through her panting senses, when the back of her knees hit something solid, but soft. Immediately, she felt the sensation of falling and her hand tightened on his engorged male rod, while her other hand clutched and clawed at his arm.

Brynmore caught her fall, even as he propelled it, with a strong arm around her back, and then she was laid across one of the overlarge velvet-tufted ottomans placed around the outer edges of the inner circle of the chamber. The jolt of falling sharpened her mind to abruptly realize where she was and what she was doing. An onslaught of embarrassment, horror, trepidation, shame, with a host of other feelings meshed and started to charge through her mind and body.

But then Brynmore’s strong unyielding body was saturating her with male heat and his mouth fell over her lips. The torrid sexual demand of his mouth annihilated all thought but one and her hand pumped urgently on his hot and unbending organ, so stiff it pitched its own motions within her hand. They swayed and undulated feverishly. Brynmore lifted and lowered his body with urgent fucking movements, while she followed with arduous twisting motions of her own. They were lost in panting fire, clawing and clutching at each other’s slick flesh as he growled his lust-filled demand at her and she hissed her hunger back at him.

They were primitives, lost and consumed in a creation beyond their control.

They ripped Brynmore’s cloak aside and tore her loincloth off, then a scream of repletion crashed from her throat as his male shaft impaled her. Her body arched like a bow as the jewels clacked together and Brynmore’s male rod sparked fire and rapture inside her. Her arms fell straight above her head as he pounded and her spine bowed, arched higher with her body twisting and panting. Her mind screamed, ‘yes, more, harder,’ over and over again as she was consumed with sensations writhing swiftly to imminent climax. Her cries spoke loudly of it as her body rocked and flopped to Brynmore’s wild thrusting.

“Cut me!” Brynmore growled fiercely, trying to gain Kit’s attention over the hammering of their bodies. He could barely think of anything, but fucking his woman like the barbarian he really was and spewing his seed deep into her cunt. Yet some instinct lived in him, honed through many spying episodes and allowed him that one spark of control to remember the importance of blood at the climax of their plan.

“Take my blood. Take my blood now!” With each hissed word Brynmore expelled, he thrust into Kit’s cunt. His dagger was free and he grasped the back of Kit’s neck, tugging as his hips drilled. Through his sweat-soaked gaze he could not be sure Kit had followed his command as he expelled sharply, one last time. “Take my blood, bitch!”

He nicked Kit’s collarbone, close to the side curve of her slender neck. His gaze was a hand span above it, as his mouth dove for the small welling of blood. He growled as if he were a feral beast feasting on bloody meat, while Kit howled unearthly sounds of climax and ferocity. Brynmore felt the nick then, higher on the side of his neck as the slight pain bit, then Kit’s sucking mouth followed. His ejaculation exploded, shocking him at the last second by its surprise delivery at that moment. He knew he had been close, but. “Ah!”

Beyond control, Kit’s lips smeared in Brynmore’s blood as the most intense climax claimed her soul and vaulted through her body. The bursting shocks of rapture continued, sparking brilliant flashes behind her closed eyes, her head fell back over the edge of whatever she lay upon. She could feel Brynmore’s thick organ releasing its lust deep inside her, the sensation making her writhe and moan even more producing another climax. It seemed that every sensation she was experiencing drew her into heights beyond normal human bounds, reaching for yet another climax. She was raw.

If it was the drugging smoke, she did not know, but she wanted to believe it was the natural combustion of her and Brynmore together. That one small lucid thought after what seemed like hours of sexual senselessness brought Kit’s eyes open. Natural occurrence might have fluttered her eyelids shut again with the still rippling aftershocks of her climaxes had her sight not caught on something. The one thing that stopped them.

Pink eyes!

Hellion’s pink eyes glared at her as if daggers within his sight could pierce her skin. The shock felt as though her heartbeat stopped, then thudded to life again. Even with her head fallen back and her eyes upside down, she could never mistake, who it was glowering at her. She was arched over a railing, abutted to a small table that partly braced her spine, with her head fallen back over the edge. How had she gotten here? She had no idea how she’d ended nearly tossed into Hellion’s lap as he reclined on large pillows in a more private alcove of the club.

“Bravo!”

Chapter Fourteen

Brynmore’s head jerked upward from where he knelt on a thick railing with his hands braced on a small table beyond. Just a small knock of his hands and arms that braced him and he would fall atop Kit, whose legs curled over his upper back. Brynmore had never heard that voice before, nonetheless, with only one single word, “bravo,” he would recognize it anywhere. Hellion!

Bloody bejesus, they were nearly on top of Hellion, and at the last moment Brynmore remembered to sneer, showing his teeth and the blood on his mouth. He nodded once in superior arrogance with his flaccid prick slipping from Kit’s cunty. At the same moment he tugged his hand, bracing the back of her neck, while moving backward off the rail and pulling her with him. His gaze swept Hellion’s group. There was Dame Baset, a brown-hooded figure whose face he could not see, Hellion’s servile man, but no sign of Cernno or Baco about. He gave Dame Baset a half-lidded sardonic glare, then sharply turned his head away from the group settling Kit onto her feet as he pulled his cloak off and wrapped it around her.

“Is that blood sex?”

Brynmore recognized Dame Baset’s accented voice behind him. He turned with Kit’s cheek laid to his bare chest as his arm curled over her shoulders. “One of its many forms,” he said, embedding low intensity into his voice.

“Bring them closer.” It was Hellion’s voice behind where Dame Baset blocked the view of him. Brynmore took a calculated risk and he curled one side of his upper lip, starting to turn away in dismissal.

“No wait!” Dame Baset said, with her hand grasping his forearm. “This will interest you,” Dame Baset’s last words rose with intensity above the thrumming music and vocal menagerie of sexual sounds bloating the belly of the club.

Kit made herself hold onto some of the numbness she felt after discharging overloads of emotions. She was going to need to use deadened feelings to approach the company of Hellion, she thought. Grasping a glass of champagne from a passing servant’s tray, she gulped the liquid down with a following effort not to choke on the bubbles. Brynmore said nothing, only squeezing his wide hand over her shoulder as she hurriedly set the empty glass on the railing and turned to follow his guiding arm. So fortified, she walked into Hellion’s immediate presence. Perhaps it was the exhausting of intense emotions that cleared the way for more reasonable and intelligent thinking, or maybe it was Brynmore’s reminder that other people were risking their lives and depending on her. Whatever it was, more reasoned determination returned and she vowed silently that she would do this with as much skill as she could manage. She would outwit the devil. She had it in herself to do so and Clay’s life held, like a bright beacon in her soul, lighting her way toward that goal.

The first thing she noticed about Hellion, when she set her loathing aside, was his presence. It exuded omnipotence. She realized right away that he expected reverence as his natural due, even from people he’d not met. It was insanity in the light of his pink eyes that contorted this and she was certain that some people saw his dementia as incited prophecy from an oracle of greater things than they could imagine. That was why she followed her first, crazy ... but she knew correct instinct, and she broke from Brynmore to sink to her knees, bowing before Hellion.

It was what the crazy man expected. She knew it in her heart and a moment later when his hand lifted toward her with a royal gesture of kissing it, her instincts were confirmed. Furthermore, she knew Brynmore would not grovel and that might irate Hellion, so someone had to work around it in this game they played. She never let herself think how disgusting it was to kiss the hand of a murderer.

“Pet, come here,” Brynmore commanded.

Kit rose to her feet and dutifully slid with undulations to Brynmore, who she found sprawled on pillows across from Hellion. That put her between Hellion and Brynmore around the half circle of pillows. Dame Baset reclined on the other side of Hellion and a mysteriously robed and hooded figure sat on the other end, facing the opposite direction as if not interested or included in the group. The nude male servant was gone.

“Do you feel the power of the presence you are in, as your pet, does?” Hellion questioned in a low voice of languid, but somehow sinuous pace.

Bloody hell. With the increased noise in the club, the only way Brynmore could catch Hellion’s suddenly lowered tone was by reading his lips. The only problem with that was he thought his mind was playing tricks, incredulous that Hellion had said what he did. So therefore, doubting if he had caught it right, Brynmore slanted a glance at Hellion, then away. He shrugged. “That would depend, lord, on who ye are suggesting is powerful.”

Hellion’s thin lips flattened as his skeletal face seemed to draw inward. Brynmore noticed that Hellion’s glance returned to the ruby. It was now outside his pants and Brynmore touched it with two fingers, stroking it lightly as if he did it absently, perhaps to bring it erect. Then inspiration hit him. “I do have one so powerful that I gladly bow to,” he added.

Hellion sat forward, it was a stationary leap actually, like the attack of a white bat. Brynmore held back his flinch, with only his eyes blinking, as Kit gasped, wordlessly.

“Minion Baron, peon Laird, I can raise you to places you never dreamed of! Power, you only think you have seen. Kings and princes will be my congregation. They will seek me,” Hellion spat.

Brynmore heard Hellion now! The voice was powerful. It had Kit slightly enthralled beside him, even if the words were convoluted. But Saxon had warned him of this, hidden meanings if one looked closely. Brynmore was particularly interested that Hellion mentioned kings and princes to people he barely knew.

“The blood is very powerful,” Brynmore offered, hedging on a conversation in which he felt nearly lost in. Talking to madmen who believed they were Gods was not an easy task. He decided at the last second to add, “My patron believes in the power.”

Hellion’s pink-veined eyes drew sharply to the ruby, before he raised them to stare at Brynmore, saying, “Blood is a powerful sacrifice. It pounds in our sex and shows us the true way!”

Suddenly, Hellion stood with a flurry of his fur-lined, white robes. He began immediately to stalk away. Fuck, Brynmore cursed silently, that went over like a non-virgin bride. He’d bloody well fucked it over, he thought, turning to watch Hellion.

Hellion threw his arm outward, in a direction Brynmore could not see and the instantaneous sound of a loud gong sounded. Brynmore rose, hauling Kit with him as the gong sounded four more times, echoing throughout the club, bringing the beating music to a halt. Brynmore fought the urge to yell at Hellion and try to bring him back. He assumed Hellion was on his way out of the club, but then Brynmore saw that Hellion was climbing a stone dais in the center of the main chamber.

Kit tugged on his arm. “Come on!” she urged.

Brynmore glanced back for Dame Baset, but she was gone. His last chance possibly had vanished. Hell, if he’d not tried to act so bloody arrogant and superior. What the hell kind of plan was that, he berated himself as Kit dragged him through the crowd? She was very pushy and persistent to get them to the front and Brynmore barely considered the fact that the patrons in the club were willing to give up their sexual orgies for whatever was about to happen.

Drawn, was more like what was happening, he realized when he came out of his self-flagellating cussing festival and looked around. Suddenly, Hellion’s voice resonated, seeming to pick up strength against the stone walls of the crypt. Its booming vibrations and the quality of its bass tone would have any human being turning their ear toward it.

“Revelers! My lovely, wicked, joyfully copulating minions,” Hellion began. His arms lifted straight outward so that he posed as a hoary cross. “The great God Bacchus admires you. He covets your spirit and lewd revelry. His meaning is clear, this is the way! This is the way he meant for us to be!”

Half the crowd offered their agreeing exclamations as Hellion turned from one side to the other with his arms still outstretched. His gaze encompassed everyone.

“Do we not follow the ideals of kings and princes? Does not the royalty of this land show us the way?” Hellion’s voice thundered, demanding a response.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Shouts rose from the crowd.

“I say it has to be righteous sin not to enjoy the fruits given us!” Abruptly, Hellion stepped forward to the edge of the dais, leaned over with his hand outstretched to Kit. “Clasp my hand!” he ordered, beneath the hearing of the crowd.

Brynmore barely caught Hellion’s words, his instinctive reaction to hold Kit back. However, Kit was clearer and quicker thinking than he, because she immediately grasped Hellion’s hand.

Do it-do it, Kit cried inside her mind. Then, out of nowhere, Hellion tugged the hand she had managed to give him. Even though there were no stairs on this section of the round dais, Hellion tugged backward with enough strength to lift her up onto the dais.

“If this is sin, then I am a sinner!” Hellion shouted, grabbing Kit’s cloak and tossing it aside, he spun her by her hand to face the cheering crowd, then he spun more and stilled to face the crowd again. Desperately, Kit fought every reaction she had. Her loincloth was gone and she was nude, with a large diamond over her mon’s. Her body trembled with embarrassment, even as her nipple tips peaked.

“I am as the great God Bacchus with the Satyr Lord defending our right to fornicate! I ask you, is it justice to only fuck one person in your life?”

“No! Nay!” A great number of the crowd shouted.

“Do your kings and princes not show you the true way? Should not your prince be here with the rest of the great fornicators on this earth? The royalty you serve proves to you that the Gods did not mean for us to limit our lust! The Gods meant us to enjoy this!”

Hellion shook Kit’s hand raised above her head between them, while her gaze latched to Brynmore as she tried to pretend that he was the only one in the room. Brynmore’s gaze though, was riveted to Hellion. Kit completely lost track of what Hellion shouted to the listeners he was trying to convert as she fought the urges to cover herself and flee.

Time seemed to warp. Then abruptly, Kit heard Hellion thundering. “The great God Bacchus says come to my Lord Hellion! Bring him your virgins to feed my joy! Let the wine flow in rivers! Fornicate at Hellion’s feet and live his words. I am him! He lives through me. Bring your kings and princes to worship!”

Kit gasped, wondering how long she’d not heard Hellion speaking, but then she wondered if that were true. Had she really heard him or had he spoken in her mind. The crowd in the club was exclaiming and cheering as Hellion bowed and the gong sounded four more times. It seemed to signal the end to Hellion’s performance. Kit felt dazed, then she felt her hand being tugged and she tripped forward with the pressure landing in Hellion’s embrace. His skeletal fingers clasped the diamond, pushing and grabbing her entire sex with the diamond embedded between. He bent her back and she heroically fought the urge to scream.

“This is the fruit God’s live for,” Hellion hissed, smearing the diamond around on her sex with the rotation of his palm. Then, his bloodless lips covered hers with his tongue jabbing into her mouth. What control she had, she lost, but before she could attack, Hellion dropped her and stepped backward. The back of her hand leaped to her lips, rubbing them as her gaze fixed upward on Hellion.

“Go back to your master,” Hellion ordered. Then he turned and walked away.

Kit stood suspended. Had she ruined it? Had Hellion read the loathing in her gaze? She could stand it no longer as a whimper escaped her throat and she scrambled to retrieve Brynmore’s cloak. She snatched it off the ground and jerkily wrapped it around herself. She had to find Brynmore and she prayed that it was over because she had nothing left to give.

Abruptly, Brynmore felt long fingernails trail down his bare back. He turned to see Dame Baset, with her heavy makeup cracking in the heat of the crypt, her rouged lips smeared and the flaccid skin on her face pale. He rallied his demeanor from one of distaste.

“For you,” she said, lifting a white envelope toward him. At the same time, her other hand clasped the blood amulet still hanging around his neck and tugged. He bent with the unexpected pressure feeling her tarnished lips pressing to his. He growled, trying to use the effort to connive a response. He found it, in disgust that he disguised as anger, and he ravaged her lips back harshly.

She took from him, mewling excitement, but then she pulled away panting, “Take my blood,” she said. Then she turned away and slid back into the crowd.

Brynmore heaved a sigh wondering if Dame Baset was just taunting him and he moved toward the steps of the dais to intercept Kit as he opened the envelope. He pulled the enclosed paper out partially, to catch a glimpse. What was inside it would determine if he stalked after Dame Baset, immediately or ... It was an invitation to the Order of the Satyr. Yes. From what he glimpsed it was written like any social invitation. He pushed it back into the envelope and put the whole missive back into his pocket.

He admitted his relief that he and Kit had accomplished so much tonight that they could end it for the evening. He was more grateful for this, when he saw the bruised look in Kit’s eyes. She came to him without a word and curled against him. He put his arm around her, pulling her close.

“Time to leave,” he said.

Kit returned a relieved sigh as he guided them through the crowd still reveling throughout The Satyr Whip Club.

Chapter Fifteen

“I’ve devised a plan,” Drummond announced.

Brynmore looked over at Kit where she sat subdued and introspective in a chair off by herself. It was two days since they’d made their play at The Satyr Whip Club and Kit had been withdrawn and as much as he had tried to affectionately nudge her back, she remained stoic.

All the Archangels and their women were gathered for this evening meeting Drummond had called. Brynmore was relieved that Drummond had a plan, because he did not think that he and Kit had gathered enough information yet. All they had was that Hellion was insane, he spoke convoluted nonsense about fucking and he had fixations on royalty and kings and princes. Hellion had spouted that half a dozen times that night. Most of it they already knew about the bastard and Brynmore failed to see what miracle Drummond could produce with such slim pickings.

There was the note inside the invitation, but Brynmore thought it did not add anything they could use. It just showed the players of the cult were interested enough in him and Kit try to entice them closer. It remained a mystery who had written the unsigned note that read, “You can become a more powerful man than you realize. Many will hunger to be taught your ways. You will find haven. Send your answer to Dame Baset at the address below, she will explain the price of admittance. Not all are allowed entrance. You have been chosen. Dare to follow your destiny. It is known that you will be pleased.”

Brynmore thought it a contorted message at best. Yet if he tried to put himself in the place of being a man with hidden deviant desires, he could see where it might be alluring. Furthermore, if he truly did run in the underground hedonist crowd, rumors of Hellion’s cult would be readily rampant by now. Therefore the invitation from the cult was already assuming he was interested. Even after such a brief encounter at The Satyr Whip Club.

“Radford, what strikes you about what we have heard?” Drummond asked.

Radford did not lift his one-eyed gaze from contemplation of the cane he had propped before him as he sat beside Nia on one the settees in the room. “Kings and Princes.”

“Exactly,” Drummond said. “I had hoped-,” Drummond paused, looking introspective for a moment, then he continued. “It seemed to me that some definitive conclusions could be made about men such as Hellion, Incubus, perhaps even Dame Baset, in her own way. However, I stayed with Hellion. What are the traits about him that we could conclude with certainty and the one that struck me instantly was power-hungry. Insatiably so and never enough, I would imagine.”

“Was that part of your reasoning behind those gaudy jewels?” Brynmore asked, trying to follow Drummond’s discourse, surprising himself a bit that he’d interrupted Drummond.

“Yes it was, Brynmore. Although not a certain motive, but more of a hopeful intuition. With the profile I have set up about Hellion, it clearly shows that he could not resist being interested. The jewels themselves were so ostentatious that the immediate assumption would be power at least.”

“Or royalty,” Kit said, sitting straighter with her comely features showing the lightening of interest.

“Yes, Kit, my profile of Hellion projects quite clearly that Hellion, after thwarted in his mad attempts of accession to become a God, as he puts it, would be raising the stakes of his need for power, dramatically.”

“You said before that you believed he picked me because of my noble title,” Saxon said.

“Yes, and now Hellion’s insanity sets his sight infinitely higher. One could assume that demented megalomaniacs do not take defeat well, and by their very outrageous behavior would spiral uncontrolled like a skewed cannon shot.”

“Kings and princes,” Radford uttered again.

Murmurs sounded around the room with a few soft exclamations, and they all finally realized what Drummond was saying. Brynmore was startled when he finally realized what the implications meant.

“Hellion has set his sights on the Prince of Wales or the King of England!” Joelle exclaimed what they all were beginning to digest.

“Yes,” Drummond answered simply as Gabriella sitting beside him clasped his hand.

“But what for?” Wyndham asked.

“It really does not matter, except for the fact it is a momentous boon for us. Whether, Hellion, simply wants to bask in the company of royalty, or he wants to try to convert royalty into his servile worshipers or if he most wants to murder a royal as another demented scheme to ascend, it does not matter to us. Except for the fact of the lucky opportunity his newest obsession presents to us.”

“Treason. Of course!” Radford exclaimed, lifting his gaze in Drummond’s direction as the rest of the group made confused sounds.

Except for Harrison, who rasped, “Convictions of treason involves no assassinations.”

“Exactly, my friend,” Drummond offered with a half-smile. Then Drummond continued. “Luckily, we have Hellion’s new infatuation to fit well within this scheme. My basic plan is to make it appear that Baco, Cernno, Dame Baset, and Rushborn too, damn him, and Hellion, are all in a plot to kill the Prince of Wales.”

“Bravo!” Orelan and Chloe exclaimed at the same time. Then the rest followed with sounds and words of cheered approval.

There was a soft rap on the door and almost simultaneously Drummond’s elder and straight-spined butler appeared. “Your guest has arrived, your grace,” the butler intoned solemnly.

“Ah yes, Hennessy, please send him in,” Drummond responded.

Kit followed everyone’s gaze to see who might be arriving. During the last few moments she began to experience a better feeling of purpose filling her since the night at The Satyr Whip Club. Really, she’d been trying to hold them at bay, but just as quickly as that, those myriad emotions fell away with conquest in sight. She decided immediately that all she needed was the destruction of Hellion and The Order to set things right inside herself. Kit glanced at Brynmore, before the guest made his entrance and she found him looking at her with his green eyes rich in speculation and a bit of worry.

She could now, so she did. She smiled at him, because with the positive beginnings of a solid plan, it felt so grand. Brynmore’s outer eyelids crinkled for an instant. She could see that he was surprised, and then just as swiftly he was moving toward her. Without comment, but with a returning handsome smile, he had her scooped up and he turned, sat and settled her on his lap. Not the most serious or professional of attitudes, but she welcomed it with a snuggle.

Before she could comment a deep cultured voice said, “The head of the Home Office has said that I am not assigned to this and anything further coming from this area, he does not want to know about.”

Drummond chuckled. “Ah, Ash, so good of you to not officially join us.” Drummond gestured around. “Everyone, meet the unofficial, Ash. That is the only name we will ask or use for him.”

Kit watched the medium height gentleman nod to all in turn. He was an interesting mix, with a bowler hat over short-cropped dark hair in the style military men might wear. He wore wire spectacles that served to pronounce his very square jaw, his tweed cutaway brown suit cried barrister or financier while his posture, straight shoulders and lean fitness said military. His age was hard to determine, but she would guess late thirties.

“Reports of Prince Charles activities these last several days have the prince mentioning, Lord Duneagan’s, name no less than ten times,” Ash said quietly.

“A little bird in the prince’s ear, Ash. He knows nothing other than a simple request, nor will he,” Drummond said. Kit felt Brynmore’s surprise as his body tensed with her own, while Drummond continued, “Please sit, Ash, and join us.”

Ash strode to the chair Brynmore had vacated and he sat. “It will be interesting to have the opportunity to work with you,” Ash said as he folded his hands, linking them together over one knee, while looking directly at Drummond. After a pause, Ash glanced around and added, “And all of you, of course.”

Kit noticed Ash’s hazel-brown eyes hesitated on each woman present and she picked up the barely perceivable point in his body language that he was either unused to working with women or surprised at their presence.

“Ash, will be needed as a liaison for what we intend to do,” Drummond said. “We will not be informing any authorities on the exact nature of our plans, however, Ash, will be along to smooth out any awkward kinks. Furthermore, when events transpire, certain people knowing Ash is here will react more calmly.”

“And the nature of your plans are?” Ash asked, with a quiet, direct voice. “I’ve read all the files and reports that you compiled and briefed me on, sir. As to the rest...” Ash nodded to Drummond. “I am intrigued to hear how we can dismantle this Order of the Satyr nuisance.”

Kit immediately bristled at type casting The Order as being only an innocent sounding nuisance, instead of the lethal malignancy it was.

“We intend to make it appear as if the leaders of The Order are conspiring to kill the Prince of Wales, Ash ... and you are going to help,” Drummond said with a sublime nuance.

Kit felt satisfaction when Ash rocked back slightly. He was startled, obviously, but he contained it well. “I see,” Ash said. “Amazing.”

“Quite,” Drummond responded wryly.

Chapter Sixteen

Joelle looked at Saxon and whispered, “I cannot believe how easy it was to get them here.” She stayed bent over, making certain she was hidden in the bushes.

Saxon, with his long hair braided and tied back, crouched beside her wearing dark trim-fitting hunting attire that mirrored what she wore. Saxon had teased that she looked like the flashiest curvy mate he’d ever seen when she first appeared after getting ready for this nerve-wracking mission they were about.

“The promise of a large quantity of money always works for these types,” Saxon said lowly, as sounds from a large group gathering, not too far to the west of them, could be heard in ebbs and flows carried on the wind.

Joelle glanced in that direction. The sun was bright today and it was the Prince of Wales there to the west, heir to the throne of England. She could barely make out the colors of people moving about, with the trees obscuring her view. It was some type of afternoon outdoor gathering for the Prince involving lavish food and human chess. There was one hedgerow between them and the Prince’s party beyond. Earlier, Joelle had seen the party was set up as a large chessboard made of different blocked heights and colors of grass. She’d never seen anything like it before, but Saxon explained that the Prince was fond of this play and different people stood on the lawn chessboard acting as the chess pieces. The Prince played another visiting Prince from Germany today. It was perfect for their plan and also ideal, was the Prince’s mounted guard protecting a perimeter around the party.

Joelle peeked through the tree branches they hovered behind and in the nearer foreground she could just see Orelan and Wyndham ... mainly because of Orelan’s afternoon lawn court dress. It was light yellow with flounces and stood out against the backdrop of green. Joelle heard a clicking and she glanced down to see Saxon checking one of the rifles once more. Joelle hoped this was going to be as easy as it sounded. Their mission was to make it appear that Baco and Cernno had tried to shoot the Prince of Wales.

“Spirits,” Joelle muttered under her breath. Drummond certainly did think large when he got going. She was awed, fairly impressed and very anxious. However, more than anything she was grateful that Drummond had picked her and Saxon to begin the undertaking of sabotaging The Order and bringing about its downfall.

This venture today had started with each man in the Archangels revisiting as many of their corrupt contacts and denizens of the seamier side of London as they could recall. To pass out word on the streets that there was a large amount of money to be made for two men who did not mind breaking the law. That was it, the beginning, and then they’d turned down contacts, until the right two men approached. They’d vaguely offered the rumor that the two men were needed to beat and generally harass someone their future employer held a grudge against. Voila tout, as the French would say. That was all.

From a distance Orelan posed as the prospective employer. While Wyndham waited, hidden beside a tree near the rendezvous spot which had been directed in the written message to the German brothers, who had finally and ambitiously, applied to the sordid undertaking. The plan was to use the innocence of a woman alone to draw them closer without full wariness. Ideally, it was never intended that they should draw close enough to obtain a good look at Orelan or even realize that there was a large gathering of royalty on the other side of the hedgerow behind her.

“Here they come,” Saxon hissed suddenly.

Joelle stiffened and wiped her palms on her britches as Saxon lifted the first rifle to his shoulder, pointing it in an innocent direction. It was her task to call the timing of the first shot. It was nerve-wracking. She could not let them get too close, but also not be too far away, allowing them time to make the cover of trees before the Prince’s mounted guard saw them.

“Get ready,” Joelle advised.

Saxon tensed. Joelle held her breath as she watched the Germans lumber closer. At first they spent time darting glances around, but as they drew closer they stopped doing that and straightened up seeming to feel more secure upon seeing the lone woman.

“Now!” Joelle exclaimed tightly. The shot, sounding so close even though she was prepared for it, made Joelle flinch while fighting the urge to cover her ears. With the vibrations of the booming sound, both Baco and Cernno halted abruptly. It was as if they were suspended, trying to decide if they really had heard a shot. Then the second shot went off and Joelle saw one of them, she could not tell which, jerk his gaze toward Orelan. Only Orelan was gone.

By now, she and Wyndham were blended back into the Prince’s party, which likely was in a bit of an uproar.

“Come on,” Saxon urged, tossing both discharged rifles out onto the common-grounds in plain sight.

It had been determined that the only place that the Germans could run for hiding was in this direction, which ran through one stand of trees, then out onto the common-ground, then onto the next stand of trees, where she and Saxon had been.

Chapter Seventeen

Ash looked at Kit, saying, “You do not like me.”

Kit reversed her gaze from the hunting party in the Prince’s honor that was milling below the balcony she and Ash had stepped out on. They were toward the rear of the balcony, one of many on the face of the royal residence. The monstrosity of the monarchy was a country mansion built within the teeming city of London and encompassing many acres of land. Kit imagined it had fed some long-dead King of England’s desire to show power and importance, to have the place built where it was.

They were hidden from view of the participants, of the hunting party below, still Kit stepped back, looking up slightly at Ash. “It is not you personally, sir, it is that you don’t take seriously how lethal The Order is and especially its leader’s maniacal ambitions.” She paused. “Much more than trivial nuisances,” she added emphasizing the word she found distasteful.

“Do not take too seriously what I say. It is all carefully calculated,” Ash said, with the brown in his hazel eyes showing bronze tints flashing in the daylight.

“What would the uncalculated, Ash, say?” she countered.

Ash’s smooth, even lips curved slightly. “I am not sure I can do that anymore.” He paused, with barely perceptible hints of a mental struggle. Then he said, “I have done this too long. I am not certain there is an, ‘Ash,’ any longer, so I will calculate to trust your opinion.”

Kit did not have knowledge what Ash’s, “this,” was. Being a spy for England, perhaps, or in the military. Whatever it was, she only had an intuitive notion that, for a moment, Ash had been more honest with her and himself, than anyone else in a long, long time. Kit speculated that it was a unique experience for Ash to work beside women whether trained spies or otherwise.

The hunting horns sounded, breaking into her thoughts, bringing her reverie, and she noticed, Ash’s to an end. They stepped forward to glance down at the party gathering for the fox hunt. Brynmore was down there. There were so many people, not many would get close to the Prince, who would not participate in the hunt, but merely preside over it.

Brynmore would though, as part of the plan, he would be near enough to say a few words to Prince Charles, while Dame Baset watched from further away. That was the entire point of this first foray, to use, and then to set up Dame Baset. She needed to see Brynmore speaking to the Prince. It was why, when Brynmore had sent his first message to Dame Baset, he’d not requested a meeting and further information on how to gain entrance to The Order. Instead, Brynmore had sent her an invitation to join him at this gathering for the Prince of Wales.

Actually, Brynmore had worded it more like a command that Dame Baset attend him. Brynmore had said he knew what he was doing and Kit had laughed and replied that she knew he knew what he was doing, and she would come to his command anytime. That nearly landed them in bed, which they had not done since the night at The Satyr Whip Club. Only, it was as if there was an unspoken agreement between them that they both wanted to wait, until they could be themselves. The thought between them, believing how powerful that would be.

“There he goes,” Ash muttered.

“Where is she?” Kit asked.

“Over there by the flags,” Ash responded. “She is watching Brynmore all the way.”

“Now, won’t she just run back to Hellion and tell him this!” Kit’s half smile was curling in satisfaction.

“I believe she will,” Ash said, then he glanced at her pointedly. “It is likely you will have to attend one of the cult ceremonies.”

Kit tried not to feel uncomfortable. She wondered how detailed Ash’s knowledge was of her and Brynmore’s visit to The Satyr Whip Club. They probably all knew, she silently chided herself. And, she determined, she was just going to have to ignore that fact. Including having to do it again at a cult ceremony.

Kit sidestepped Ash’s leading question. “It feels more profitable now that the action is in place. I am glad Baco and Cernno were dealt with so quickly and efficiently. I do not think Hellion or Dame Baset have any idea that those two rattlesnakes are in prison and are never getting out.”

Ash raised an eyebrow to her colorful American phrasing. “Likely to be hung one day, protesting the entire way that they had nothing to do with it. Really brilliant. How could they explain why they were there and running away from the spot, where two rifles were found in near vicinity of the shots?”

Kit smirked. “And they dare not mention Hellion, his cult, or try to seek help from any of them. Not that there is any.”

“When all is said and done that is a plan that should go into the books. Unfortunately, it will become more difficult. Dame Baset will be a little harder, and Hellion ... hmm, well, that is going to be tricky. Yet as brilliant as Drummond’s overall plan is, and the first capture of Baco and Cernno was spectacular ... the amazing part is once these malcontents start dropping in the Gaol, one after another, in such a short amount of time, all accused of trying to kill the Prince, the authorities are going to notice and start nosing around, connecting them together into a larger conspiracy.”

“And the remnants of this perverted and murderous cult will never rise again,” Kit stated with satisfaction.

“I hope that is true for you and for all of England,” Ash said, with encouraging vehemence.

Kit was surprised at the emotion Ash showed. It was as if he gave her a glance into his real feelings and it made her think there was more to Ash and his first feigned nonchalance. She let it pass, believing that she understood him just enough to realize that he would close inward if she expanded the conversation. Instead, she changed subjects to their next victim.

“Once we give Dame Baset enough time to tell Hellion that it seems Brynmore is on intimate footing with the Prince, and she gives us a set-in-stone entrance with a date into the cult, then we can get rid of her too.”

Ash nodded as they both turned to look over the balcony railing. They watched Brynmore bowing to the Prince, then doing an about-face and strolling back to Dame Baset’s side.

***

Several hours later, Brynmore grimaced as he paced the small confines of the library-study in his London townhouse. He’d just arrived back from his assignation with Dame Baset at the Prince’s fox hunt. Really, what he wanted to do was shudder in distaste. He felt...

Brynmore turned in his pacing. Bloody hell, he felt dirty and not at all in the enjoyable lusty sense. Dame Baset had been all over him, and according to plan, he was compelled to be all over her in the carriage ride to and from the fox hunt. It had been mild to begin with going to the hunt. But after! He felt like he was unwashed with Dame Baset’s touch and scent covering him. He was surprised at how difficult this was, at how much it affected him. So much for the fallacies that men had no taste in these matters. It thoroughly disgusted him, and...

Kit rushed into the room, breaking his disturbing thoughts. He knew that she’d been upstairs when he arrived. Now with his mind still in turmoil, he backed up quickly making sure a chair was between them, stopping her from coming closer.

“Well?” she asked. Filling the room with her rush of interest, intensity, excitement, and anxiousness.

“Aye, she was impressed,” he said, rasping some of the words as he tried to clear his dry throat. “We have entrance to The Order and supposedly in a rare occurrence Hellion is to speak to us after about the price. Well...” Brynmore coughed, still trying to gain his footing. “She called it an investment, but we both know tis something they want to hold over us, if Yojo is right.”

Kit started around the chair. “That is wonderful and I think Hellion might be edging to ask you for a connection with the Prince. I do not think blackmail, but that was Incubus’s style.”

Brynmore moved around the chair away from Kit’s advance. She’d been talking, but suddenly she seemed to realize. “Brynmore, what is wrong?”

She stopped trying to get closer to him, thankfully, as his hand rose to his mouth and he rubbed his lips. Abruptly, he realized the gesture he’d used numerous times to wipe away Dame Baset’s rouge. Of course, it had to be gone by now. Helplessly, he muttered, “She was all over me. I need to bathe, rid myself of her scent, and change clothes.”

Brynmore felt like everything slammed to a halt. A wall fell, stopping all in it tracks, and what was on the other side, the next breath was forever changed. Kit’s eyes were wide as she said nothing and he stepped around her to leave. Maybe, if she’d tried to stop him, that suffocating feeling of change might have eased or fallen away. He did not blame her that she could find no words. Neither could he.

Kit knew the moment that Brynmore told her of Dame Baset’s physical demands that he’d been forced to have relations with her. In that moment, suddenly, she realized that she loved him. It was a stupid time for it to reveal itself as fact to her, she thought.

“Oh yes,” she muttered to herself as she climbed the stairs toward the bed chambers. “Brynmore had to fuck that awful woman and now you realize that you love him!”

It was his reaction. She could feel it seeping inside, she was so closely connected with him. When had that happened? They still barely knew each other, beside some nerve shattering sex. They could not know each other now because they were not acting like themselves — they were enacting these characters they had conjured for the downfall of The Order. The rest of the time they were in the thick of planning revenge or justice, no one acted like themselves during such tense and strange times.

The fact was, she did know him on a deeper level and she understood right now that he was feeling molested ... battered. There were many things she might have done, discovering she was in love, if the situation were different, silly, joyful, and unthinking things that a woman in love might do. She held that back. She would do those things someday, she promised herself. Now she quietly entered Brynmore’s bedchamber and she moved silently to the large brass bath before the fire where Brynmore reclined. He was unmoving, staring at the fire, with steam rising around him.

Kit knelt at the head of the tub behind Brynmore’s head with her gown softly rustling. Brynmore must have heard the sound because his head began to turn, but before he could turn very far, Kit clasped her arms around his shoulders from behind for a hug. Her cheek lay along the dampness of his cheek and hair as his hand rose and clasped over her hands locked together.

She wanted to tell him that she loved him... “Bry, it is all right. It will be all right,” she murmured, tightening her embrace, while rubbing her cheek along his.

Brynmore’s broad hairy chest lifted with a sigh. “That you can even touch me means...” His pause said more than his words. “It’s better.”

His head was bowed and Kit moved her lips to his ear and whispered, “Tell me, Bry. Tell me all of it. It will help.”

The sound he made was sharp, a rude laugh that cut off before it started. “Help? It tis ... was disgusting.”

But then, he kept talking, telling her what he’d done. How he’d kept his hard-edged seduction intact, controlling his dislike, through rapier flirtations. How he’d kissed and fondled, touching breasts and cunt. Always with an edge of controlled roughness. Biting Dame Baset’s neck, rolling her beneath him, trying not to, but knowing he had to.

“So I fucked her like an animal. There, on the carriage seat. Yer going to hate me, but I had to divorce myself from what lay beneath me and the only thing I could do was think of you, wanting you.”

“No,” Kit cried softly. “I do not hate you.” She tried to turn their thoughts to take away the sting even as she gulped and she tried to make it more practical. “Did you draw blood? Keep with the plan you started?”

“Aye,” Brynmore huffed. “Aye, I did on her some. She was thrilled.”

Brynmore turned his body with his large hand clasping her nape. Looking directly at her, he blurted hoarsely, “I didn’t come, Kit. I didn’t give her my seed. I just pretended. She couldn’t tell, she was heaving and panting too much in the aftermath.”

Lord, she was a fool, the biggest idiot. She never listened to her own reasoning, timing. Timing! “I love you!” Kit exclaimed and she leaped from her knees to embrace him.

“Kit?” Brynmore questioned.

“Do not say anything,” she begged him. “Not now. Just believe it.”

He tugged and skirts, gown, and all, fell into the tub with him. Water sloshed up over the sides, as he asked with desperation marking his voice, “Will ye kiss me?”

Kit grappled her hands around his neck, pulling with her body laden in drenched material, but sliding into the water. “Yes!” she whooped fiercely, pressing her lips passionately to his mouth.

Chapter Eighteen

Harrison slipped out of the bushes in Vauxhall Gardens where he’d concealed himself, waiting for the elaborately dressed, rotund woman. It was near midnight, the woman never saw him coming, He slipped the cloth filled with chloroform over her mouth and her nose as his other forearm latched her waist. She tried to struggle, but within seconds her hefty weight went lax in his arms. Dame Baset was petite of height, but heavy and Harrison welcomed Ash’s help as he arrived to grasp Dame Baset’s legs.

Chloe slipped alongside them carrying the bow and quiver of arrows, while both men quickly lugged Dame Baset in the direction of their intent.

“The Prince is going to get irritated at these close attempts to shoot, skewer, or blow him up,” Ash muttered.

Harrison shrugged and remained silent. He thought as long as the Prince stayed alive, let him be irritated. Chloe had thoughts too. “Some say he has the madness disease of his father. Let us ask Buddha’s divine help that he does not become too excited and start seeing assassination attempts everywhere and in innocent people.”

“Buddha?” Ash asked, with mild incredulousness in his voice.

Harrison smirked at Ash, while watching Chloe patted Ash’s arm, saying, “It is all right, Buddha believes in you.”

Harrison was interested to see that Ash did not condescend to Chloe with a highbrow look or words, he merely muttered, “I hope so.”

“Someone’s coming,” Harrison said abruptly, halting their forward motions. Chloe tilted her head, Ash tilted his, then Ash’s mouth opened to protest that he could hear nothing and that Harrison just imagined it. However, Chloe held her hand up to him accompanied by a quiet, shushing sound.

Ash hesitated a moment, then he acquiesced, nodding. Dame Baset was heavy and Harrison knew Ash did not want to waste time, standing, hidden behind bushes. Then, the sounds that had been there all along became clearer, laughter and conversation. Two patrons of Vauxhall Gardens nightlife strolled by their hidden spot. Two men, obviously enamored. Harrison waited with patience. Chloe did the same beside them, while Ash looked irritated. Harrison knew Ash’s thoughts, urging the two men on, hoping with irritation they did not stop to continue or consummate their rendezvous. Harrison knew what would be would be, and no silent urging was going to change that.

Luckily, the two men only kissed and moved on, so soon they were on their way to the designated position where they would drop Dame Baset. Harrison hated to admit it, however he was becoming more amazed. After years of intricate stalking and killing of men, to discover the ease one could have employed to remove those same men by other means was startling. Of course there were too many variables to count and he had to admit that employing less hands-on lethal means would not have worked for most of his targets in the past.

Still, it was eye opening to work in this new venue. How easy it was to make something appear clearly what it was not. Of course he knew that in his covert dealings in the past he’d used that theory minimally in all degrees of his profession as an assassin for the monarchy. Though he had to admit it was never to this amplified and grandiose affect. He would have to give Drummond his due — he was a master among men.

This little foray that would bag Dame Baset into the Gaol for trying to kill the Prince started simply with Brynmore requesting another assassination with Dame Baset. He had to give Brynmore his due on that, she of course appeared eager. Meanwhile, Brynmore was nowhere near there and with no intentions to be. More likely, Brynmore was intertwined with Kit, which Chloe said was becoming more of an item, than work. He personally never paid much attention to such things, but trusted his wife’s judgment on the matter.

“Here,” Harrison ordered, stopping their stealthy cavalcade. From here, Harrison could clearly see the Prince perched on a stone dais above the party of people gathered around him on a lower level.

He and Ash lowered Dame Baset to the ground. Ash rose, pulling his pocket watch out as Chloe handed Harrison the quiver and bow.

“Ten minutes,” Ash advised, the abundance of torches set around the Prince’s frivolous gathering glinted off his wire-rimmed glasses as he studied the setting on the slight incline below where they stood. “Please time it for several seconds after he has moved from the throne.”

Harrison gave Ash one of his hooded and non-committal looks. Chloe reached in to soothe. “He will,” she said simply.

Ash dug his hands into his pockets, standing stiffly with a pose a man might use aboard a ship to bolster against the dip and surge. “Are you that good with that bow?” Ash asked.

Harrison shrugged. “We shall see.”

Chapter Nineteen

Brynmore glanced at Kit, she sat nervously across from him in the carriage, and then he looked back out the window into the passing night-scape. They were on their way to a cult ceremony at Rushborn’s estate. They were dressed as they had been the night of their visit to The Satyr Whip Club, but with the addition of brown hooded robes that monks might wear.

Brynmore wished he felt better. He should, on the one side, and maybe he never would on the other. He wondered where the elation was that he should feel at Dame Baset’s downfall. It had been another masterful piece of work. An arrow shot right into the Prince’s throne seconds after he had vacated the seat. The Prince’s guard had found Dame Baset with the quiver and arrows almost immediately. Dame Baset had stood, confused, in the perfect spot to have shot the damning arrow. Her confusion and later protests of innocence were considered a ploy. The evidence was the quiver and bow and her position in the only spot where the arrow could have been shot. One thing about attempts to kill royals, Brynmore sneered to himself, was that the chances to prove innocence flew out the window beneath a Prince’s omnipotent wrath. Dame Baset was bagged, as Harrison would say, and Brynmore knew he should feel elated, if for no other reason than the fact that he would not have to touch her again.

On some level he was, but other things overshadowed it. He could kick himself for not making love to Kit between the night at The Satyr Whip Club and now. He should have pressed the point, even though he was not sure when that time could have been. Things were moving very fast. After he’d been with Dame Baset, and then later when he’d pulled Kit into the tub with him, they’d kissed with near desperation, and then their urgent kissing had melted to gentleness after the first bout, proving they could still kiss and want each other. That time was not the appropriate moment to go further, not after he’d just been with Dame Baset.

Brynmore wished he did not feel as though he should have made slow passionate and meaningful love to Kit. Especially, before what they might have to do next in their efforts to connive Hellion into their web. How, he asked himself, could he expect them to survive this and come out on the other side together, in a place that he craved for them to be? He wanted Kit. He wanted her after this, by his side, in his bed.

The carriage jostled into a turn as he braced his hand on the seat. It was not a short ride to the Rushborn mansion. Brynmore lifted his gaze to Kit. She had the carriage window curtain pulled open and the moonlight glanced in shimmers over her features, lighting and retreating over the sheen of her soft blond hair, her small delicate upturned nose, and her succulent lips. Where is your balls man, Brynmore silently goaded himself? You love her, don’t you? He sucked in a breath. Did he love her? He knew he was close. That close? Just that instant, he realized it, and it startled him.

“Sweet, Kit,” he murmured. Kit’s eyes glanced at him. “I’ve something to ask you,” he said louder. Brynmore shifted from his side, to sit beside Kit. She curled into him instantly, leaning against him. He should have known. Brynmore wrapped one hand around her and with his other he caressed her cheek. He could just make out the light freckles across the tops of her cheeks and nose as she gazed up at him. “Kit, would you come with me to Scotland after this ... or, if it’s too much of a leap, would you have dinner with me?”

“Dinner, Scotland?” she asked, with her gaze searching his.

Brynmore leaned closer. “What I’m asking for is a promise ye’ll see me after this is over. Give me a chance.” Kit’s hand lifted to his cheek as her thumb touched his bottom lip lightly. “I do not know, Bry. I want nothing more than to do that, but I don’t know.”

Brynmore swallowed hard. Kit’s words said one thing, while the look in her eyes said, “I love you.” “Is it your husband?” he asked, even as he hated touching the words.

“Yes ... no. There are problems there I cannot ignore. There are things I have never told you about.” Kit sighed as her hand lifted to his chest and settled there. It was like the settling of the realizations about how little they really knew each other.

“I want to know,” he said, stroking her hair.

“Now is so... Now is so-,” she paused.

“I know,” he said.

“Difficult,” she finished.

It left them nowhere nearer to where he wanted to be. There was no commitment. He could not stand that. A slight desperation filled him and before he realized his head dipped and his lips touched Kit’s soft mouth. Somewhere inside him were the intentions that he would bind her to him one way or another. The kiss was unlike any they had shared before with its gentle searching sensuality. It spoke of love and Kit’s mouth moved against his, speaking with heat and slowly igniting passion. Her small moans were murmurs of awakening and agreeing.

Her tones spoke of desires, when he pressed her back, searching for more. He heard the right answers in her body undulating against him to the motion of their mouths heat-filled caresses. Foolish thoughts grazed him. He would love her onto his side, until she thought of nothing but staying with him. His hand reached to respond, edging her cloak aside, cupping the supple mound of her breast. Her nipple tip was alert, tight, sending its answer.

“Bry,” she molded his name around their lips kissing. His already enamored prick thickened, pressing to her hip. There was too much cloth between then, and he began a tussle to remove it “Bry, mmm.” Kit’s mouth broke from his. “The costumes, the powder, makeup,” she gasped.

“Forget it,” he ordered. He was really begging. His hands tugged her cloak open ... off. “We have the satchel — we’ll put it on again.”

His mouth found the top of her breast, powder and all, he did not care. Her breast filled, supple and warm against his mouth. Kit’s eloquent moan sounded her surrender and agreement. Her hands eagerly tugged and removed his cloak, then her hands stroked up his back into his hair. She lifted his head, urging his lips back to hers. “I want you,” she sighed in breathless admission. “Make love with me.”

“Love.” He kissed her. “Love,” he said again, kissing her again.

They were crazy to be doing this now. They both knew it, yet they did not stop. The disregard and insanity of it created its own brand of rare attachment between them. For one moment in time, they would lose themselves in each other. Not for any cause. Not for revenge.

“I will never stop wanting you,” Kit moaned around his heated kisses as her hand nudged his hip until he lifted it and she was able to work on unbuttoning his britches. His palm skimmed the hot point of her nipple, turned, with his fingertips clasping the turgid nubbin. He rolled the point between his fingers. “Mm ... Mm,” Kit moaned into his mouth.

Her hands pulled and tugged until he felt his rigid prick out and landed on the soft valley of Kit’s belly. “Lift up, lift up,” she ordered as he moved from her speaking mouth to nibble her earlobe.

Kit pushed on his shoulders and he moved where she bid, happy to comply as long as she followed. And she did! They wrestled around removing his britches down to his knees, where they were going no further, because of his boots. The ruby was unclasped and set aside, the diamond the same. Kit’s loin cloth removed and tossed aside, all between fevered kisses and caresses, as the carriage rolled beneath them and the moonlight skittered through the open window.

Brynmore looked down at his pants, slouching around the top of his knees, his boots still on. He looked at Kit with her face inches from his, “I’m sorry, lass.” He knew in that instant that they should stop. This was not right. She deserved more ... how could he show her that he cherished her as he lusted for her with his damn boots on! A thing he knew she hated.

Kit laughed, it was not callous nor with discord, but a pure delight. “Mm, you look handsome and hard to me.” Her hand trailed down to his fully erect cock and she curled her fingers around it as his fingers curled inward with pleasure-bound response. “You cannot run from me now.” She winked, bracing her hand on his shoulder as the carriage rocked, while she stood over him.

“Run to you,” he tried to say to the generosity of spirit that showed the true depth of her affection for him. Her hand stroked his shaft once with her small fingers tight. Or her lust for him, he amended, as he watched her gaze transfix on the steeple of his engorged offering to her. He knew she felt more than simple lust for him, however, it thrilled him the way she showed her uninhibited desire for his wooden prick, with its head already wet, leaking seed for her.

Her hand stroked to the rim, then the head, then the wetness. His hips lifted with his eyes squinting as she leaned closer, her breath on his lips. “I know nothing but I want you, Bry, always want you.”

Her lips pressed to his and this time their tongues collided, sliding and curling against each other. Their kiss was torrid and she broke it, going to her knees, as close between his knees as she could get with his britches in the way. “I remember you once said, ‘my lips around your cock for a week please’.”

“Kit, love, you dinna have to... Ah. Oh, Christ, lass,” he groaned. His hands gripped on Kit’s shoulders thinking to stop her, but unable to. Bonny idiot, he thought, as if he could think to do anything but groan in bliss with Kit’s lips wrapped around the head of his greedy prick. He was bewitched by the sight of Kit’s full lips stained black, stretched over his thickness. She sucked hard around the rim several times making his gut tighten as his hand cupped her breast, squeezing the fullness. “Sweet baby, you do that so good,” he groaned.

His prick head popped out of Kit’s sucking mouth. “I do?” Her wonder was compounded with his slit bouncing against her bottom lip, while the smoldering blue of her eyes looked at him incredulously.

No talking now, his prick shouted as he barely managed to say with a voice strained to explosion, “Aye, lass, tis amazing.” Come on! Come on, his prick yelled, pounding for the attention back.

“I-I. No one ever...”

Kit fumbled her words and the realization flashed through Brymore’s mind at her vulnerably, even as his prick shouted for her lips back. His voice was hoarse with high sexual tension. “I’d say it is just because tis your lips, Kit sweet. But ye know tis more, you really feel it. It is in your hand, pounding for you.”

Her returning little smile was beautiful with belief and her sultry intentions. He had one curse for her husband slashed through his mind, who he knew had done this to her, made her insecure, The next second it was gone with the feel of Kit’s lips sliding over the head of his cock. His prick did not cheer this time, but his heart did.

“Mm. Mm.” Kit filled her mouth with Brynmore’s healthy male organ. The feel of it and the intimacy stoked flames in her sex. With all trepidations gone over her skill, she was free. Free to play and enjoy and savor. She found by surprise that the freedom brought new pleasures. Holding her man’s cock in her mouth was a treasure — his increasing groans the ultimate goal. Her sex palpitated with each new wet suctioning of her mouth and she tasted the girth that would enter her soon, deep into her core.

Brynmore’s heat and musk filled her with passion. Some of the thrill was the timing. Would they be caught? Did they care? More than that was the amazement that Brynmore would want to do this now. Throw away caution for their cause, just to be with her, just the two of them, just for their love.

“Sweet Kit, oh God, yes. Ah, Christ. That is so good... beyond pleasure.”

Kit smiled through her fervor, her lips unable to lift as they pumped over Brynmore’s wide organ ... but ... her heart did. And her heat.

Sounds of pleasure gurgled from her throat as her lips smacked wetly up and down the shaft of Brynmore’s cock. His hand clutched in her hair and at times he pushed, unable to stop his forceful response. She loved those moments, the times when she could feel the effect she had on him.

Then, his Scottish burr broke the momentum, as he rumbled. “Ye have to stop, sweet Kit, or I will come.”

She wanted that, she realized, but together they wanted more this time. Yet she promised herself she would have it in the future and the joy was the surety that it could be many times, if she let it. They could have hours, days, weeks and years.

“Bry,” she gasped as she lifted her mouth from the fiery heat of his cock, letting it slide from her wet and flushed lips. He tugged her to him, groping her to straddle him, but then he stopped, as she was poised over him.

“Just a bit,” he called hoarsely.

His lips sucked over her nipple and his fingertips touched her slit. The touch of his fingers to her slit banged a sharp ache through her sex. Then, he touched the heart of that ache and she hissed in pleasure. His fingers smudged over her clitoris.

“Oh! Oh! Mm! Bry! Oh, yes!” Her buttocks rolled as his teeth nibbled her nipple point and she dug her fingers into his shoulders.

“So hot,” he uttered.

Kit felt him separating the lips of her sex, exposing her clitoris more, then rubbing it with increased vigor. Her cries were short, rapid, and shrill as her hips bounced and her vagina picked up starving aches for his cock to fill it, mindless within the small outbursts Brynmore flicked over her clitoris. She grappled for his cock, lifting it to her need, as Brynmore hissed his answering passion to her. He never stopped smearing the hard surface of his fingers over her clitoris as she fitted the head of his cock to her longing sheath. The feel of that lance at her opening caused the needy walls of her womb to ripple.

Suddenly, the carriage bounced heavily, lifting, then hitting the road again with a jolt and a loud clatter. Kit squealed with long, “Oh’s,” at the end, while Brynmore bellowed once as the jolt embedded his cock with a hard thrust inside her.

“Blimey,” Brynmore managed, rubbing her sides where he’d caught her to steady her.

“Blimey is right,” Kit gasped. She was already moving, propelled by urges the hard thrust had excited.

“Easy,” Brynmore said, guiding her with his hands clasped around her bare waist because the way was not completely slick.

Oh yes, Kit thought, feeling the slight abrasion as she worked herself on and off Brynmore’s male rod, her nails chiseled into his shoulders holding her in place. With his head fallen back, eyes crimped shut, Brynmore was creative, using his hands to rotate her in varying direction as his rigid organ took opposing paths, until he found one motion and direction that–! “Oh! Oh! Oh! That feels, Ah, wonderful, so good, Bry. Mate me! Mate me!”

Her body vigorously took care of the up and down motions, while Brynmore found the spot and kept thrusting to it. “Fuck it, Kit,” he hissed through his gritted teeth. “Say fuck.”

“Fuck!” she cried, panting with exertion and a building climax. “Oh, fuck me, fuck me!”

“Aye!” he charged hoarsely. “So fucking good!”

Brynmore unclenched his eyelids to watch Kit in the flickering moonlight. God, she was magnificent, with her breasts lurching as they were captured in the frenzy of fucking. He listened to the direction of her rising orgasm in her shriller moans. His prick heard it too with his seed beginning to burn ecstasy up the shaft. He did not catch Kit’s moment of climax exactly, yet her cunty convulsing around his prick sucked his ejaculation to gut-wrenching bliss moments later. Through the explosion going on in his brain and body, he heard Kit careen with the sound of another orgasm following right behind the first. Just the act of his seed filling her had sent her over the top again.

Inappropriate or appropriate, he laughed with pure pleasure between the bellows his lungs used to try and catch his breath. Kit’s breasts piled into his chest as she sank onto him. “By all the saints, I love you, Kit lass,” Brynmore managed between breaths.

He could barely believe he’d said it. It shocked him that it came tumbling out of him like that. He knew it was true. It was a moment of pure honesty, however he never clearly intended to just say it. Then out of the blue, of the little world that they’d shaped in the last few moments, they came jolting back to reality as the carriage came to a bouncing halt.

“Oh lord,” Kit exclaimed, rising from his chest.

Brynmore could see the beginnings of sudden panic setting in. He felt it too, but then abruptly it came to him. “Dinna get riled, lass,” he said. “That is what they do here. They have unbridled sex all over the place!”

Kit’s eyes blinked at him, the moment suspended, and then she laughed. He picked it up with her laughing too. They gazed at each other like mischievous children. Their startled and nervous energy loosening with mirth. Then Kit sobered a bit, lifting her hand to his cheek. “Bry, I just need you to know that I love you too.”

They had no time to explore the new revelations. They both knew it, but he had to say, “Tell me that whatever we do in the future, we do it together.” Urgency filled his voice. “Say it, love.”

“Yes, Bry, yes,” she exclaimed softly, then she kissed him soundly, sealing the vow.

Their lips parted, and he said with more confidence than he’d felt since the beginning of the mission. “Let’s finish this, lass.”

Chapter Twenty

Kit noticed right away that the temple, “The great God Bacchus has built,” there on earth for Lord Hellion, as one of the inductees called it, was nothing like The Satyr Whip Club. The entire ambiance and attitude of the assembled members was completely different. Theirs was one of intense worshiping as opposed to the freedom of sexual frenzy that The Satyr Club had contained. Although the trappings of the old church had been turned to pagan devices that were overtly sexual and lewd, actually violent. The attendees were cloaked in robes and reverently silent with an aura of great anticipation.

Kit held small hopes that no public sexual display by her or Brynmore would be needed tonight as they filed in with others moving to gather in the dimly lit pagan temple.

“Greetings. You’re Lord Duneagan and his pet?”

Kit turned to the strangely accented voice. Her gaze met only a chest covered in a brown robe. She looked up, then up again, finally lighting on a man’s black face. He was huge and he had a gold pin through his nose.

“Aye, we are,” Brynmore nodded, even he had to crane his neck.

“My Master requests you watch the ceremony from a privileged place and will speak to you afterward. Please follow me.” The soft quality of the black man’s voice belied his size.

They followed Hellion’s mammoth black servant to an enclosed place in front of the stage which held the dais. Right next to a phallus jutting from a two-story high statue of a black-onyx Satyr. There were no seats, people stood, and Kit noticed the people hidden in their hooded robes were swaying. The black servant left them there and moved off toward the back of the temple. Next came a hooded person with a tray of small silver goblets. Each cult member took one, drinking the contents down in one gulp, then setting the empty goblet back on the tray.

Kit peeked from beneath the hood of her robe, up at Brynmore. She did not want to drink, being suspicious of the contents and she knew he did not either. She watched Brynmore take a goblet, lifting it in his hand as she hesitated reaching for one.

“We will keep them,” Brynmore said curtly, nodding arrogantly to the servant. Silence met this response, with only the hint of a chin seen from the depth of the hood on the servant’s bowed head. Kit held her breath, but then the servant moved on without a word.

“I’ll not be drinking this,” Brynmore proclaimed under his breath. “Find a way to get rid of it with no one noticing.”

Kit made a small sound of agreement as she lifted the goblet to her lips pretending to take a sip. She glanced around trying to figure out a way to secretly get rid of the liquid. She felt a movement beside her, turning her gaze she saw Brynmore bending forward slightly and she looked lower. She saw the liquid hit the stone flooring, spreading out slightly. Then, he stepped over it. His robes encompassed the wet spot and he winked at her from beneath his hood.

She held back her smile, remembering some of Nia and Radford’s instructions that the best deceptions were the simplest ones. Kit wished that were so with Hellion, however she knew the elaborate scheme they were trying to set up to stop him was anything but simple. It was going to take daring, perfect timing, and a great deal of acting to accomplish. Another thing Radford had told her was she had to remember the difference between the facts she was aware of hidden schemes, while the victim was unaware. He said that ninety percent of the time they never knew what had hit them.

A gong sounded, lifting Kit’s gaze to the stage where torches washed its central expanse in light. Unlike the audience arena which was cast in dimness. Kit took up swaying with the rest of the cult members as her insides tightened. None of them really knew what to expect. This would be the first cult ceremony any of them had seen, besides the one Joelle and Saxon had been in. The Archangels had speculated and agreed that ceremony had been unique, with Hellion’s intentions of madly ascending to become a God. Now, none of them could imagine fully what type of ceremony Hellion might perform with the intentions of binding the masses under his spell. An orgy, a virginal sacrifice or Hellion spouting his mad ravings had all been bandied forth and speculated upon, but no one knew for certain.

Kit nearly jumped backward when Hellion rushed out onto the stage, nearly as though he flew, with his arms outstretched and his white cloak billowing outward like wings on either side of him. Immediately behind him, Kit saw two big black male attendants pushing out a large cross set on a square base with wheels.

What happened in the next interminable hour or longer was a series of traumatic events to Kit’s mind. She saw it all clutching Brynmore’s hand, hearing all Hellion’s insane, but hypnotizing diatribes of his convoluted visions of godly rhapsodies. For her, the entire events unfolding seemed to collect like a nightmare. Horrors blinking in and out of her mind. Perhaps it was the only way she could accept it and still stay standing. In between her careening thoughts, she fought with everything she possessed not to think about the fact that this could have happened to Clay. No! She could not allow herself to believe that, she would not go there as she and Brynmore witnessed the true abominations of Hellion for the first time.

Brynmore clenched his fist, gritting his teeth, wondering whether he could actually stand by and watch Hellion kill the young man on stage. The images seemed to come in short epochs, blinking one after the other, always with Hellion’s voice booming its blasphemous filth.

First an obviously unwilling and naked young man was forced, struggling onto the stage. He was forced to the cross and tied there, begging to be let go. That desperate pleading seeming to feed the depraved masses. Then next came watching the black attendants slice the young man’s wrists on Hellion’s instructions. Then they held up golden chalices under the dripping blood, collecting the very life flowing from the terror-stricken man.

Blinking sweat from his eyes, Brynmore next saw Hellion manipulating the dying young man’s cock in a form of masturbation. Around them the cult members hummed chants while Hellion screamed in frenzies about the power of sex in life and death. As much as the young man struggled, he still became hard and Hellion forced a sweating ejaculation from him into another chalice. The force of the ejaculation increased his blood pumping faster from his body, flowing swifter from his wrists. Brynmore huffed, while his body twitched beneath the tight restraint he forced against it. His mind screamed repeatedly that if he acted now he would ruin the chances of capturing Hellion. Hellion would get away to do this over and over again. Still, it nearly was not enough conviction to let an innocent life perish before him as he watched Hellion mix the man’s seed with his blood in another chalice. This chalice Hellion raised, staring at it with a maniacal gleam in his pink eyes, and he drank from it as the crowd’s chanting rose in excitement.

Fiends, murderers, perverts shouted through Brynmore’s mind as Kit started to move and he had to forcibly tug her back. They would be mobbed if they tried to stop it.

“Blood!” Hellion shouted, looking straight at Brynmore. “I know the blood!” he hissed, communicating his insanity to Brynmore.

Then the gong sounded with Hellion shouting his crazed endings to his ceremony through three more gong soundings, before it all finally fell silent on the filth. The torches around the stage went out as if by magic and Brynmore saw the black attendants rolling the young man off the stage. Unconscious or dead, how could he live with himself, Brynmore wondered, as Kit curled into him, both of them heedless of where they were or who would see them.

Ash stood enfolded in a thick-hooded brown robe behind the stage as Hellion marched past him. Hellion stopped, not turning to face him, but saying to Ash, “You, and your father, Lord Rushborn, we will all meet, Lord Duneagan. I will find a way to meet the Prince and where is that bitch Dame Baset? Get your father and come now!” Hellion finished, then he continued stalking away.

Ash watched Hellion leave through slitted eyelids and the moment Hellion disappeared he unwound his body and moved into action. He just prayed that he’d not gambled too long and he would be able to save the young man’s life. As Ash moved toward trying to save the young man hoping no one would discover his intervention, he wondered again at his own twisted morality. He did not have the right to pray, but he did hope that the Archangels could put an end to this madness.

Brynmore realized that both he and Kit were trembling, in the next moment he became aware that the people around them were beginning to engage in sexual orgies. Some of them, it appeared, were passing around and drinking the vile concoction of blood and semen Hellion had made. Brynmore’s stomach turned over, and for the first time in his life in the midst of a mission, he wanted to flee. Only one thing halted that urge inside him, his rage and determination to get Hellion. “Let’s get the bastard,” he growled into Kit’s ear.

He also hoped to bolster Kit with purpose over their horror. They had several seconds to gather their resolve, when before them once again stood one of Hellion’s black attendants. “The Master would see you now.”

Glancing at Kit’s face, Brynmore could see she looked fierce and he knew she had the same rage inside her that she’d had the moment she first looked at Hellion. He knew he had to be careful however, in an odd way, he was glad he had a task to work on. Without the attendant ahead of them noticing, Brynmore tugged Kit’s hand sharply until she looked at him as they continued walking. Line for line, he stared at her, boring into her mind his sympathy and cautions. Without using words, he spoke to her with his gaze until she gained her control back. Finally she nodded, raising her hand to stroke his jaw once, quickly, but with meaning. Her returning gaze told him everything he needed to know. They were one again, of the same mind, and they were going to play these last scenes with all the heart and artifice they could muster.

The black attendant led them to a richly attired sitting room within Lord Rushborn’s mansion. When the attendant led them inside, Brynmore saw Hellion, an uncloaked Lord Rushborn and, peeking his sharp instincts immediately, he saw a robed figure like the one that had been beside Hellion that night at The Satyr Whip Club.

Brynmore finally asked the question to himself. Who was this? However, Hellion was in a self-proclaimed omnipotent frenzy that distracted his inner questions. It seemed Hellion was riding a high on his own self-importance as he stalked around the room with his white cloak billowing and his voice vociferating.

“Power, Lord Duneagan, power is what I offer you and your intimates! The power to touch Gods! To speak to them! You feel it, do you not? In the power of the blood!”

Brynmore opened his mouth to speak, unsure what he might say to the frenzied Hellion as he and Kit tried to stay out of Hellion’s lurching path, a path that kept Brynmore from getting any type of look at the hooded figure’s face. It was man though, he was sure the build was that of a man. Before he could say anything, Hellion continued. “It flows in me now, Lord Duneagan! Let me show you my power!”

Alarms struck Brynmore as he glanced at Lord Rushborn, sitting stooped in a chair. He was a very old man with rum-glazed eyes locked on Hellion in some crazed worshiping way. Brynmore immediately wondered if Hellion were drugging Lord Rushborn as he braced himself for Hellion’s newest power play.

“My powerful visions say that you have come here tonight with an invitation that your patron implores me to meet him!” Hellion announced, with crackling flourish, as if he were revealing world changing prophecies.

Brynmore tried not to rock back on his heels in astonishment as Kit reacted by going down on her knees bowing before Hellion’s still-agitated claims of irrepressible power around the room. Brynmore couldn’t believe the stroke of luck that had just fallen into their plans so completely and because he was unsure how to act, he partially followed Kit’s lead by exclaiming, “Amazing!”

Hellion barely seemed to hear him, perched upon the deity-high he was emulating. “And my power tells me that it is the Prince of Wales! He begs to see me!” Hellion proclaimed. “How can I know that if the Gods do not speak to me?”

This was too good to be true, Brynmore thought, nearly afraid to follow it and take full advantage of it. He’d come there tonight with what he believed would be a difficult task. That task was to make Hellion believe that the Prince of Wales, through his emissary Brynmore, was ordering Hellion’s presence before him. Now Hellion, riding higher in madness after his ceremony, was creating delusions that were eerie. It sent a shiver through Brynmore that some supernatural occurrence was actually happening.

Immediately, he quelled that notion as ridiculous, it was simply coincidence and luck, not some power Hellion really had. Of course, he never believed in coincidence, but this time he would make an exception. Whatever was happening, without any reasons of why or how, he had to follow it.

“Then, my great lord,” Brynmore began, inwardly wincing at having to use such genuflections to Hellion’s ego. “You will be knowing that I am to take you to him right now.”

Brynmore held his breath. “Of course!” Hellion announced, then he turned, finally stopping his agitated movements. “Where is, Dame Baset, you were with her and she deserves not to miss this?”

Brynmore was glad he had a ready answer for that one. It had been discussed. “Aye, you will be pleased to know she waits, all ready with the Prince, for you to arrive. Tis on her assurances I came here knowing you would grace the Prince’s curiosity with your presence.”

“Excellent!” Hellion proclaimed. “We leave now for this momentous occasion. Lord Rushborn, my generous and faithful supporter, and his son, will accompany us for this historic event.”

Rushborn’s son? Brynmore had watched Hellion’s hand sweep toward the aloof hooded figure as he included the title, “Rushborn’s son.” Hellion swept from the room, Brynmore hesitated, bending as though to adjust his boot top, trying to catch a look at the hooded figure’s face, but he was unable to.

However, when Kit rose to follow beside him, she whispered, “I saw glasses beneath the hood.”

Brynmore nodded, and on the way out of Rushborn’s mansion, he signaled that the game was now afoot, to Harrison who was hidden and waiting for just that purpose. The Archangels first plan had been to try for today, however they had further bogus planned meetings between the Prince and Hellion if this one had failed to move Hellion into participating.

Chapter Twenty One

Brynmore sat uncomfortably in the elaborately adorned carriage with Hellion and Rushborn across from him and the mysterious Rushborn’s son conveniently beside him. That this, “son,” had picked the position he did to sit in, was too convenient, because Brynmore still could not obtain a good look at him. It was going to be a long and excruciating ride in such close proximity to Hellion, but he was relieved to see that some of Hellion’s deity-aspiring adrenaline had worn off. He was also glad that when he’d told Hellion, his pet would not be accompanying them because the Prince had no interest in having her at the meeting, Hellion had accepted it easily. Kit had known that was the plan. Brynmore knew even as much as Kit wanted revenge on Hellion that after witnessing the ceremony and the aftermath she was grateful not to be included. He’d seen it in her eyes when he’d roughly kissed her goodbye sending her on her way to their own carriage. Time for a brief second for her to whisper, “Be careful, love, I will be waiting for you.”

Aye, he thought of her now. He thought about their carriage ride earlier that now seemed a lifetime ago. The thought helped him endure the eerie close company of Hellion. Brynmore made certain his cloak was lying open and the ruby showed above his britches for Hellion to see. Added incentive, you bastard, Brynmore thought, to keep Hellion moving right where they wanted him to go. It was going to be tricky as hell, however he believed completely in Drummond who predicted reactions and had so far pinned Hellion’s down in a way that was uncanny.

Hellion was so caught up in his deity manifestations that he was not questioning anything, but rather giving his own brand of future predicting credit for it. Brynmore knew Drummond would say one word about this, “Superb.”

Unfortunately, he still had an incredibly long carriage ride to get through with Hellion, meanwhile he had to maintain his fictitious persona. He would have to be the master at concocting conversation about things that did not exist. He admitted it was his weak point, especially with Hellion whom he could not fathom most times. Radford was the expert at flummoxing conversations. The man could wax poetic and believable on all types of things he never had knowledge of. Radford could create identities with entirely believable stories created out of thin air. Brynmore knew one thing in his own favor was he’d admitted the trepidation of his skill for this phase of the plan. That was the way the Archangels were, one reason he believed they were so successful in the past. Not one of them hesitated or tried to hide their shortcomings.

They all knew from past experience that each other’s lives depended on them and they could not let false pride get in the way of that. He’d told them his misgivings and Radford had spent several hours working with him. Then Harrison had also come along to lend a hand. It had helped. They had created a play for the life of this character he was acting out. He used it with Hellion and it was working as they talked. He was bloody well glad, because the things Hellion talked about were unnatural, alien concepts. Brynmore noticed that Hellion was also shrewd in his own way. Hellion asked him in what seemed innocent ways about his association with the Prince, how that had come about. Always, Hellion’s pink eyes piercing his answers.

“The Prince came to be interested in the idea of blood sex. He has large curiosity and tastes. It was just a chance encounter, at first. One of his close mates asked me to attend one of the Prince’s lusty weekend parties he’s famous for.”

“I knew it was because of the blood,” Hellion said.

The more and more Brynmore talked, he noticed Hellion expressing to all, “I knew that.” Until Hellion said, “Your Prince will be impressed with the way I can predict the future, his future. The future of all.”

Brynmore nodded. “I’m impressed. I dinna really accept before last night what power I was bringing to my patron, the Prince.”

A wicked smile spread Hellion’s thin bloodless lips. “Power meets power and can only make the God of all Gods.”

The carriage began to slow and rattled to a halt. They’d entered the city thirty minutes ago and Brynmore earlier explained to Hellion that the Prince had a military procession to oversee in the streets of London. Afterward they would attend the Prince at his private pavilion on the Thames River. Quickly, to distract Hellion from the carriage halting, Brynmore voiced something he’d been saving for this moment. “You’ll not be able to bring, Lord Rushborn or his son, nor any of yer servants inside when you meet the Prince. His orders are strictly a private meeting.”

“I knew that,” Hellion said distractedly, looking at the closed curtains on the windows as if he could see through them. “Why is this carriage stopped?” he demanded.

“Tis likely the soldiers procession I spoke of clogging the streets,” Brynmore offered.

“I will check, my lord.”

Brynmore flinched at Lord Rushborn’s son’s voice. It was on the side of his bad ear, but still he thought... The son’s hand opened the carriage door. “I’ll be looking with you. I’ve some influence,” Brynmore said, quickly following. “Wait here, Lord Hellion. I be apologizing for the inconvenience,” Brynmore added over his shoulder as he jumped down from the carriage and turned to shut the door.

The second it was shut, Brynmore placed a small metal bar he’d been carrying in his inner pocket through the door handles. He knew that the Archangels were doing the same to the door on the other side. No one was getting out of the carriage now, because with the doors barred, the windows were too small for a full-sized man like Hellion to fit through. Hellion was now a captive inside the carriage. Wasting no time, Brynmore leaped after Lord Rushborn’s son. The unknown quantity.

Brynmore grabbed the slightly shorter man from behind with one arm locked over his windpipe to forestall the man from yelling and warning anyone. His other hand grabbed the man’s arm wrenching it backward. Brynmore pushed the man forward a few paces away from the carriage as his peripheral vision caught the actions of other Archangels around the carriage.

The hilly street was not very crowded, picked for that purpose and the people around were more interested in the procession of brightly uniformed soldiers marching in the street below. No one paid much attention to Brynmore who shoved the man he clutched up against one of the avenue’s gas lantern poles used to light the streets at night.

Brynmore knew how critical time was, it seemed to be moving slowly, yet only a few seconds had passed when he reached upward and tore down the man’s hood. Even through the adrenalin rush, his thought noted and wondered about the man not struggling.

“Ash,” Brynmore hissed, tossing Ash around to face him, grabbing the collar of Ash’s robe and lifting as he shoved Ash’s body into the pole. Brynmore thrust his face into Ash’s. The only thing he could think of at the shocked moment flew with a rage from his mouth. “You let that young man die! You stood by and watched him bleed to death and told us nothing!” Each word Brynmore used was punctuated with a shove.

“He lives,” Ash blurted tersely. “I saved him and many others. There is no time for this if we do not continue acting now, we will lose Hellion.”

Brynmore hissed in anger and he would admit to astounded confusion as his gaze swept back to the carriage. Harrison was up top now from where he’d hidden shortly after the carriage pulled away from Rushborn’s estate. Harrison had knocked out the driver and taken up his task on top. Now he tied off the reins of the horses so if the carriage were moving they would gallop straight. Wyndham was helping Harrison lower the tied and gagged driver down from the driver’s seat. They all were trying to work swiftly, but also trying not to jostle the carriage as much as possible.

Saxon was at the boot of the carriage with Joelle beside him. They worked to lift a crate inside but needed his help. Saxon looked at him in confusion mouthing the name, “Ash?”

Brynmore let go of Ash, and hissed, “I will fucking kill you if you make one wrong move,” even as he was moving to the boot of the carriage.

“I will explain later,” Ash offered tightly moving to follow.

Brynmore reached the crate, grabbing one end to lift it into the boot with Joelle and Saxon on its opposite end. They were extremely careful to let it down as gently as they were able, then at the same moment Brynmore heard Ash say loudly, “Lord Hellion, the procession should be only another few minutes, but the horses are restless.”

The partially opened crate met the bottom of the boot with only a small sway at about the same moment that Hellion complained, “This is inconvenient, find another way around now!”

“Yes, Lord Hellion, right away.”

Ash sprinted over to Brynmore. “Hurry we must get this carriage moving!”

Joelle sparked a flint and touched it to a fuse coming out of the crate as Saxon sprinted to the side of the carriage, raising his arm high. It was the signal for Harrison and Wyndham on the opposite sides of the horses to set them into galloping by sticking hat pins into the flanks of the leading two horses. The horses leaped forward into a headlong rushing gallop down the hill, while a rather impressive display of sparks lit the back of the carriage flying in every direction.

The five from around the carriage stood in the middle of the street watching as the carriage raced down the hill toward the procession. At the bottom of the hill on both sides of the street, Drummond, Gabriella, Chloe, Orelan, Nia, Radford and Kit spread out in different areas, began shouting, “Runaway carriage, get out of the way! Move! Move! Runaway carriage!”

It was an amazing sight as people ran out of the way along with the soldiers. In the pandemonium, no one saw the block tossed beneath one of the careening carriage wheels so that at the bottom of the street, just one hundred yards from the podium where the Prince of Wales sat presiding over the procession, the carriage overturned onto its side.

The horses still tried to gallop forward, even twisted in the reins as they were, they managed to drag it onto its side for another fifty feet before the soldiers caught them and stopped them. When the whole twisted conveyance stopped, it could not have happened better, it was as if the hand of God directed it, because the crate in the boot fell free, sparks still flying. Soldiers rushed to stamp out the sparks and discovered the broken crate with gunpowder spilling out of it.

Brynmore huffed a huge breath of victory, but quickly turned his mind and gaze from the amazing spectacle toward Ash.

“God damn it. Bloody balls!” Brynmore swore. Ash was gone...

Several weeks later . . .

“I did not know,” Drummond said to Brynmore and Kit as they sat in his study. “I had asked discreetly for a volunteer. Ash came.” Drummond sighed. “Apparently, Ash, is part of an extremely secret underground section of England’s own varied covert operations that I had not heard of, only had hints of from time to time.”

“So he is not Rushborn’s son?” Brynmore asked.

“No, Ash, sent me a message explaining as best he could and I might add against the rules he must live by to not expose himself. So we are privileged to get this or any information about him at all,” Drummond advised.

Both Brynmore and Kit nodded. Not all the Archangels were going to hear the details of this, only the overview; it seemed Ash had specifically requested in his missive that Kit and Brynmore be privy to it all.

“It seems that Rushborn owed Ash a large favor from years ago when Ash broke up Rushborn’s nefarious club of virgin defilers. At the time, Ash kept Rushborn out of the Gaol with Rushborn’s promises to repent, but more important to Ash, Rushborn agreed to compensate the victims with cash to improve their broken lives. However, that gets ahead of ourselves.”

Drummond turned his gaze out the window in contemplation, as he said softly, “Ash’s connection to Hellion and his cult starts with the disappearance and subsequent murder of Ash’s brother by the cult. Ash’s brother was Marco Remior.”

Kit gasped. Brynmore grasped her hand leaning forward with Drummond’s gaze returning to them. “Marco Remior, was a real person and not just a name that, Incubus, made up?” Brynmore asked.

“It appears so. According to, Ash, that is Incubus’s style. He never takes fictitious names, only ones of real people that are dead.”

“Then the love letter I found from, Marco, to my brother was real? Not from Incubus?” Kit asked.

“Yes, Ash wanted you to know, Kit, that the love affair between Clay and Marco was very real and very deeply felt.”

“Oh my lord,” Kit said, dabbing at her tearing eyes.

“Another part of the story we might get from Ash if our paths should cross again someday, is how it all came about. How Clay and Marco became involved with the cult. Ash only said he began trailing the money. That was what was in the trunks. He followed it to Hellion.”

“But why would he not tell us to begin with?” Brynmore demanded.

Drummond raised a hand, then lowered it. “I will get to that shortly. One thing you both need to know is that Ash had only infiltrated The Order a short time before we did, and before he knew we were even there. The night at The Satyr Whip Club he was there, but he did not know about us yet. It appears his following the cult was not something his superiors had sanctioned, he was doing it on his own without their knowledge.”

Drummond paused, seeming to let that sink in, then his knuckles rapped the tabletop once. “We told Ash more than he’d been able to discover about the cult yet. However, his main focus was and will be Incubus. Because where we felt just destroying the order was enough Ash is after the name of every person The Order murdered and the name of the killer. Incubus has that.”

“He is going after Incubus?” Brynmore punctuated the question with surprise.

“Yes, as we speak.”

“I’m glad,” Kit declared, still dabbing her eyes.

“Although, I will tell you I believe Ash’s superiors think he has gone rogue and that will be a good deal of trouble for him. Even though I understand why he cannot tell them, and I cannot reveal his reasons.

“Even though he busted my blimey balls over this,” Brynmore said. “I’m wagering on Ash.”

Drummond nodded. “I tend to also. As for why he did not tell us, I can only speculate. Timing was one factor, trust another. Ash has a lot to lose should his superiors find out he was working on something personal on his own. They are still not certain what he is about. Only that he is missing. I have only said that he helped us admirably, and then he disappeared.

“Fact is we could not have done as well without him.” Brynmore admitted grudgingly.

“Well it seems when the question of why Hellion would remain in a carriage about to explode and kill the Prince of Wales, someone whispered in the Chancellor’s ear all about Hellion’s belief that he could ascend to become a God if he died at the same moment a person of royalty did. Hellion bellowed his denial, however our furious Prince is not listening and does not care.”

“Bravo,” Kit said quietly, looking up at Brynmore.

Brynmore lifted her hand to his lips, kissing the knuckles as he gazed at her. “Bravo, to you to, love. None of this would have been possible without you.”

The End.

Red Cloak Of Abandon

By Shirl Anders

Chapter One

The door suddenly burst open to Affinity’s bedchamber, causing her quill pen to slide dark ink across the letter she was writing to her brother James.

“I didn’t do it!” Anne Fotts, the Redgrift house chambermaid cried. Affinity leaned back quite taken by surprise at Anne’s unusual theatrics and uncommon entrance into her room. “I swear, Miss Affinity, on my dead mum’s grave. I didn’t do it!”

Affinity watched Anne sail toward her like a battleship stalwart on its course. The little maid, embroiled in her histrionics wasn’t going to stop, Affinity realized as she dropped the quill pen. The bouncing pen left a rather large blot on her letter, right on the part where she’d been explaining to James about the new Brown Bess marksman rifles. Affinity hastily turned in her chair, apparently thinking to catch the maid. How unusual; she couldn’t remember the last time she had embraced anyone.

Affinity was quite grateful a moment later when Anne fell to her knees instead of hysterically embracing her. Anne’s dramatic supplication came to a halt at Affinity’s feet, with Anne clutching Affinity’s skirts, while tears streamed down her normally pleasant face. Not knowing what else to do in her concern, Affinity patted one of Anne’s white knuckled hands gripping her skirts.

She peered over her writing spectacles at Aunt Fuchsia to see what effect the commotion was having on her, but of course Aunt Fuchsia was lost to the events happening around her as she hummed softly while rocking in a chair by the window. Aunt Fuchsia could barely hear any longer and her mind wandered lately more and more into her own fanciful world of events.

But Affinity thought surely Aunt Fuchsia would hear Anne’s crying screech. “You cannot let Lord Redgrift fire me, Miss Affinity. I’d never steal! I swear it!”

Ah oh. Affinity patted Anne’s hand more vigorously. She’d never believe Anne of stealing. Anne was as loyal as they came, and that was implying a lot for a maid that was employed by her uncle, the frugal and waspish Lord Redgrift. However, Affinity understood sadly that she held absolutely no sway over her irritable old uncle in a domestic matter such as this, or truths be told, in any other matter.

Yet with her spine straight, the way she normally confronted life, she did offer her loyalty. “I will never believe you stole a crumb of bread, dear Anne. How could this come about?”

“It was John Hanson,” Anne sniffled with imploring eyes and a red nose. “I wouldn’t take his advances and the evil bastard done this to me. Lied, he did! So spiteful he was, saying I stole Lord Redgrift’s war medal!”

Affinity gasped, stealing herself as if her uncle’s vengeful wrath were present in the room right at that moment. John Hanson was more than merely spiteful, if this were true, he was abominable. There was no greater prize in all Lord Redgrift’s memorabilia than that medal. The entire household would pay dearly for that act of malice, and poor Anne the worst.

“I demand that strumpet thief out of my household at once!”

Affinity flinched at her uncle’s bellowing coming from the foyer, while Anne cried, “This will ruin me! I’ll never work again. I don’t know what I’ll do!”

Suddenly, tromping feet sounded in the hallway, and two of the Redgrift footmen appeared, coming with resolution through the open doorway. Affinity acutely felt the invasion arrow down her spine as Anne stood and she stood with her. The fact that she had to do something raced in Affinity’s thoughts, yet the way to do it, eluded her overturned mind.

Then suddenly, Affinity dragged the small opal ring she wore from her third finger, snatching Anne’s hand just as the footmen took hold of poor Anne from either side. Affinity managed to close Anne’s fingers around the ring right before the footmen began pulling a sobbing Anne from the room. It was Affinity’s mother’s ring, one of only two pieces she had left of her mother’s legacy.

She had so little to give, as she gasped, but too late for Anne to hear, “I’m so sorry!”

Early the next morning, Affinity was ashamed of her actions as she paced the oiled oak floorboards in her bedchamber.

“I should have tried to speak for her!” It didn’t matter that she had given dearly of what little she owned, because she understood Anne’s dire fate. If only Anne had some family of her own to fall back on. “If only this weren’t so unfairly a man’s world!” Affinity muttered.

Men controlled every event, every action, and every woman in one form or another; to no good at all. It could be said that she was bias with the horrible uncle that she was sacked with. However, at all turns in her life it seemed that men thwarted her desired pursuits.

For goodness sakes, because of her gender, she was not allowed to read the very public London newspaper. It was considered unseemly and unladylike that she should even have the desire to do so. A lady, or any woman for that matter, less prostitutes she imagined, were not allowed to approach any man of their interest in the partisan world she lived.

“How in the world will they know that I am interested in them, if I’m not even allowed to approach them?” The answer, of course, was to wait for them to approach the lady, which was never going to happen as far as Affinity could tell from her first disastrous half-season in London so far. “I really question how men ever won the first war, the ninnies!”

“My lady, I have gotten the address.”

“Mrs. Todd, that is excellent,” Affinity said, turning to the Redgrift cook standing in the open doorway to her bedchamber.

Mrs. Todd was a thin and pinched looking woman of undeterminable age, but with a secret heart of gold. “Yes, my lady, and I sent the note along for Anne to meet you in the park by the statue of Admiral Nelson.”

Affinity clapped her hands together, and then reached for her gloves. “Then, I shall go straight away. I’ll not want to miss her. I know I will be able to find her another position with one of my friends soon. She must have heart and I will relay that to her. Thank you, Mrs. Todd!”

Mrs. Todd’s gaze darted down the hallway, then back to Affinity, while her voice lowered. “I have a small packet of food, Miss Affinity.”

Affinity whispered also, “Of course, Mrs. Todd, as much as you can and should Aunt Fuchsia ask, just say that I’m napping.”

Chapter Two

Affinity entered St. James Park at a brisk walk, adjusting the veil pulled down from her jaunty walking hat beneath her chin more firmly. It was not quite proper for her to be unescorted anywhere, much less the park. However, for her mission it was necessary, and she really bristled on the bits of societies constraints continually hemming her in. Therefore this was not the first time, nor would it be the last time, that she would move about unescorted as she wished. This being true, she strove for the upright and confident carriage of a married lady about town. She felt quite lucky to have an absentminded chaperon like Aunt Fuchsia. It allowed her all types of liberties other young ladies never hoped to entertain.

Yet, her stolid friends, Brevity, Caprice, and Diversity all seemed to manage clandestine freedom from their various families when needed. They were all young ladies, having met and formed a closely bound group of friendship, while attending Lady Whitmore’s Academy for Young Ladies. They had all received their letters of graduation from the academy at the same time, and this year found them ensconced in their first London season.

“Not that it is doing one of us any blasted good in finding husband material!” Affinity muttered as she came in sight of the rather pompous bronzed statue of Lord Nelson atop a stallion.

Suddenly, the sounds of a dog’s sharp yelping came from Affinity’s left, stopping her forward motion as she turned her gaze toward the hurtful sound. She saw a gentleman, in great agitation, whipping the quirt he carried down upon an apparently loose Gordon setter with a lush coat of russet. Affinity yelped at the same moment that the dog did upon receiving another cruel blow from the quirt, then she hastily found her voice. “I say there! Is that your dog?” she cried, somewhat shrilly as she marched toward the pair. She immediately saw the loose leash dangling from the setter and realized the poor animal was backed into bramble bushes and could not escape the angry nobleman.

“Away!” the elderly man shouted, raising his quirt again.

“Do not thrash him again!” Affinity cried, boldly running between the livid elderly nobleman and the setter.

“The beast is dangerous!” he shouted, yet just as the overturned patriarchal gentleman shouted his warning, Affinity heard a sharp whistle coming from behind them and to the left of where she and the setter stood. In her mind she was certain the agitated nobleman would not bring his quirt down upon her as she turned toward the setter’s answering bark of welcome.

Affinity’s gaze lifted and it was as though the normally overcast skies parted in a unique ray of sunlight to shine down on the obvious Master of the setter. By her intervention, she had given the setter enough room to escape, and she watched the beautiful dog bound toward his Master, some thirty paces away.

Black eyes as deep and ponderous as a sleeping volcano glanced at her beneath a widely-rimmed country top hat. The brim on the top hat was so sweeping that Affinity could not identify the color or shape of the gentleman’s hair. She could only see those depth-filled eyes, a square masculine nose, and a jawline shadowed by the scraped bristles of what would be a darker beard if allowed to grow out.

The man appeared only slightly taller than her height as she stood in her walking boots. He wore a great coat with its charcoal-colored capes billowing out in the slight wind. He appeared rather majestic, yet somehow mysterious, Affinity thought, even as she was unsure where the conclusions came from. However, there was no mistaking the slight increase in her heartbeat. A reaction she knew instantly as attraction. She found him appealing. That was odd. Yet, that revelation could not be denied as the gentleman grasped the setter’s leash and turned to leave, his entire bearing was quite pleasant to gaze upon, with his high riding boots, tightly fitted tan-shaded buckskin breeches, and firm shoulders.

“Masculine and not foppish at all,” Affinity whispered, finding herself fighting the urge to follow the manly gentleman as she realized her attraction came from precisely the fact of his effervescent male bearing. So many of London’s fashionable and eligible bachelors ended up looking dandified with their frills, lace, buckled shoes, and curled hair. All of this was done for the Belles of the Ball, of course, those young ladies most popular at all the London seasons events. Apparently, they wanted their men as such, because they tittered over them enough.

“But not me,” Affinity whispered, taking one step toward the path where her masculine gentleman and the setter had disappeared down. Then, she brought herself to a reluctant stop, what she would not give to see more of this man, perhaps discover his name. But she had to meet Anne and that was more important.

She was glad to see, when she turned back to her mission, that the dog beating nobleman had disappeared. It was only a short distance to the statue and Affinity could see that Anne had not arrived yet. Immediately, she began to worry over whether Anne would come at all.

“Of course she will,” Affinity muttered, arriving at the statue and circling it slowly with her eyes cast out into the park for a glimpse of Anne’s approach. She knew that her uncle’s angry dismissal of Anne, while labeling her a thief, left Anne with only two choices. One of factory worker or two, prostitution, and likely not the factory worker with the brand of thief upon her. It was unique that she should understand these sordid affairs, yet she was an avid student of life and the world around her was her classroom. Many ladies of her station would be aghast that she wished to understand the realities of life. But they were fools for their compliance and living only half a life with half the emotions that could be experienced.

Affinity caught glimpses of yellow out of the corner of her eye and she turned her gaze more fully toward it. Anne’s bonnet was yellow, but the glimpse through the trees was gone. “No wait, there it is again.” Yet, Affinity could not decide if it was coming closer or moving further away. It was not far, so she walked in that direction to obtain a closer look. It appeared as if the yellow swatches were bouncing amidst the clutter of green leaves, but also staying in one singular spot. Then abruptly, Affinity heard a woman’s cry that moved her forward hastily. She was instantly reminded of the setter just a short time ago, because the woman’s cry was certainly distressed. Then, just as soon as she broke through the leafy tree branches, she spied Anne.

“Oh my God!” Affinity exclaimed, halting suddenly, uncertain how to proceed. Uncertain, how to rescue Anne? “Anne!” she cried, realizing instantly that her cry was foolish, because it was Anne who was being accosted by a thick, short-set, and greasy-haired ruffian.

Anne and the man struggled beside a little used path with the ruffian obviously accosting Anne in a sexual nature. One of his dirt-stained hands was pawing Anne’s breasts through her linen gown, while his other arm was gripped around her waist. Affinity gathered her courage, even though her limbs were shaking, and she started forward, because her exclamation had not stopped his advances at all.

“Come on, ye sassy bird! I got a halfpence here for ye to suck me pud.”

Affinity gasped at the scoundrel’s lewd language and meaning, as Anne cried. “I’m not a bird! I am no prostitute! Let me go!”

Just then, Affinity swung her carrying bag at the scrappy ruffian’s thick head with all the force she could muster. It was the only weapon she could conceive of and it did hold a rather hefty book. However, the weight of the lift and the swing were feebler than she’d hoped for and the bag only thumped against the scoundrel’s shoulder, as she exclaimed, “Release her at once! She is my maid and I will call a Bow Street runner . . . Oh!” Affinity cried out as the awful smelling ruffian swung his arm around knocking her backward.

Over the din, severe barking sounded as Affinity tottered, then she thankfully regained her balance, just as the barking turned into a threatening growl with what sounded like the word, “Attack!” Swiping her falling bonnet upright, Affinity was able to lift her gaze and she saw the Gordon setter attacking the lecherous villain.

“Go, Beauty!” Affinity cried enthusiastically, quite surprising herself. But then Anne, who was released from the villain’s clutches by the setter’s intervention, began cheering also. The man who was overturned and overpowered, leaped back to flee with the setter after him.

“Oh no!” Affinity exclaimed, when she saw that the setter meant to give chase. Affinity hastily glanced around not seeing the setter’s Master and she knew the brave setter could be lost in the chase if someone did not restrain him. Then without really considering it, because events were transpiring so quickly, she simply rushed forward after the setter in the heat of the moment. She did not know the setter’s name, so she called him Beauty as she excitedly tried to call him back.

It was quite unseemly for a lady to run as she was, but she had to admit it felt extremely good and enormously freeing. Her young limbs stretched and her breath labored as she gave her full effort to the task. She was never one to do anything halfheartedly. However, she would not have caught the setter, except the villain leaped a short wrought-iron fence enclosing the edges of the park. He did it so clumsily that he snagged his leg and tore his brown-stained breeches, while she cheered at his discomfort. But she also cheered the fact that the setter was unable to pass the barrier of the fence, and she was able to halt her running a short distance away from him. Then, really without meaning to do so and with her breath catching, Affinity sank to her knees.

She had to find a soothing voice to coax the setter to her, however her breathing was such she could not manage it for long moments. But by then, the setter had come to her side nuzzling her happily as though they were old comrades together. Affinity supposed that by now they were as she petted him fondly, wishing heartily that she could undo her corset.

But that was a lady’s lot in life, to be so constrained and tied up tightly in the misguided guise of attractiveness and morality.

“Oh but I have run, Beauty!” Affinity exclaimed to the setter, petting him faithfully with one hand, while she grasped his leash with the other. “I might never have a chance to do this again. It was glorious!”

Affinity stood then, looking around the park to see if any were aghast at her display. Surely seeing her catch the setter would relieve any censure, and while she noticed that most people were about their business, her gaze did halt on two ladies sitting on a bench across the park.

“Oh no,” Affinity muttered, turning her gaze immediately away from them.

It was Lady Jane Strickland and Lady Anna Pommel. How could they possibly be up this early in the morning? Both those young ladies were pampered and beautiful snobs of the worst kind. They lived their lives looking down their classically perfect noses at others while pronouncing judgments and maligning them with vicious gossip. Only the truly popular and beloved of London’s society could do that, and they were the ringleaders of the group of ladies that were Affinity’s nemesis. She and her three friends, Brevity, Caprice, and Diversity had somehow, within the first two events of this season, been found undesirable or lacking. Nonetheless, she was intelligent enough to realize this must happen every season. The natural law of human nature proclaimed there would always be the most popular, the midrange popular, and then the wallflowers.

“Yet it is so unfair,” Affinity muttered, turning with the leash in her hand to walk back and hopefully find Anne. “The gentlemen do not seem to have these same rules.” Gentlemen were popular no matter what their appearance or demeanor, but especially popular depending on their income and title. “But now,” Affinity grumbled, “I have given Lady Jane and Lady Anna more fuel to lower me into the already deep pit that I reside in. Hell!”

Oh yes, and they would gleefully use it. As if they did not have enough handsome suitors swarming around them already that they needed to ensure every last one remained attentively beside their most glorious and beautiful refinement.

“Pfftt,” Affinity scoffed. “I would not want one of those gentlemen if they find such women attractive and desirable.”

But Affinity knew it was an empty bit of bravado exclaimed by every girl in her position in London society before her. And she also knew, that she, and every unfortunate girl before her, dreamed of just one dance with a gentleman, or just one stolen kiss in the garden, or simply a small bit of attention.

Affinity frowned because she knew how cruel Lady Jane and Lady Anne could be and now she would have to make certain at the next soirée to remain invisible. Nevertheless, it was not as if that was difficult to do, as designated wallflowers, she and her friends spent many hours being invisible. What she would not give just one time to stir things up! Do something outrageously and set everyone aghast at her original boldness. Not necessarily for the attention she might yearn for, but to break the mold of society’s strict etiquette. She did not imagine that most ladies, having never been in her position, ever yearn just to ask a gentleman to dance.

“My Lady Affinity! Oh my goodness, are you all right?”

Affinity’s head lifted from her musing as she hurried toward Anne. This time she did not hold back her feelings of affection and relief. “Yes, yes, Anne, I am fine,” she said embracing Anne.

“Oh thank goodness, my lady. That bellswagger pimp thought that he would force me into the bird trade, he did. But look, look, Miss Affinity, I’ve been saved! It is the Benefactor, my lady. The Benefactor of women!”

Affinity’s gaze turned down to the card clutched in Anne’s hand. It was pristine white and the size of a gentleman’s calling card, yet what arrested her attention was the symbol embellished in gold stamped upon the card. The Benefactor, my god, she had heard of it.

Of him? Of them? No one knew for certain if it was a group or a single individual, yet all of the working class or lower knew of this symbol and name. The symbol was a circle with a cross directly beneath it. Some proclaimed it was a symbol for women, and others just shook in relief at the chances of being saved from the life of prostitution, just as Anne was with her face glowing in hope.

“I cannot say more about it,” Anne said. “I know you understand, Miss Affinity, but I had to tell you. To let you know that I will be all right.”

Affinity nodded mutely, embracing Anne once again. Part of the Benefactor’s price was secrecy. The woman being so sponsored, such as Anne, must not speak of the details, and as much as Affinity wanted to ask Anne who, a man or a woman, had given her the card, she did not. She also realized that she might never know what would become of Anne and that was the hardest part. However, many before had trusted the Benefactor and she did as well, realizing this was in effect saving dear Anne’s life.

“Be well,” Affinity said, with feeling and a few tears. “You will be in my thoughts and prayers, dear Anne.”

“Oh, Miss,” Anne sniffled. “Oh and here, my lady,” Anne said as she stepped back from their embrace, then she pulled a hand linen from her pocket, opening it. “The ring, Miss, I won’t be needing it now.”

“Oh, Anne!” Affinity exclaimed at the clear evidence of Anne’s honesty. “Are you sure, Anne, it is yours, you know? Perhaps, you should keep it a while, just in case. You can always return it to me if you do not need to use it.”

Anne kept the ring and they said their rather tearful goodbyes, then Affinity watched Anne leave from her sight, before she looked down at the setter. “Well, Beauty, so many adventures this morning, and all that turned out well.”

The setter’s expressive brown eyes looked exactly as though he agreed as he sat patiently by her side. Then, a whistle sounded off in the distance and the setter immediately rose and pounced to the end of his leash. It was the setter’s Master calling him, Affinity knew, as her heartbeat quickened unaccountably. She could take the setter to him personally, it might not be stretching etiquette too far, if they were to be introduced that way for the first time. Nevertheless, she hesitated, something inside her unsure and speaking to her that this was much too important to leave to chance. She had been on the receiving end of chance for far to long now and it had not once gotten her a gentleman caller or even asked to dance. Somehow, she needed to be in more control. Perhaps, she needed to try to shape events herself?

Affinity let go of the setter’s leash, watching him bound through the trees, then the large meadow further on. She immediately started forward at a brisk walk this time and not a run as she wondered briefly at the timing of the setter’s Master calling him back. Well, to begin with, the setter providentially coming to the rescue was rather odd. The setter’s Master did not appear to be the type of man to lose his dog’s leash twice. Then, Affinity saw him, well truthfully just the outline of him in the distance as he and the setter were reunited once again. Affinity moved closer, yet not near enough to be seen, as she watched the gentleman turn to leave the park with the setter.

Affinity quickly followed at a discreet distance. She was determined to find out the gentleman’s name and rank, in this her first foray into shaping events. Yes, she really did like the sound of that, “Shaping events to her desires.”

Chapter Three

His name was Lawrence Fabier and he was a Duke. Affinity had heard little about him before. He was the Duke of St. Martin and in hushed tones people spoke of him being rather reclusive and mysterious. She had caught the topic twice being speculated on in quiet tones by a few mothers noting his marriageable eligibility and his candid absence at all the season’s events.

The aura of his mystic behavior livened her immediately, while at the same moment the title he carried of Duke served to make her feel daunted. That was surprising to her and very irritating. What? Did she believe she was not worthy enough for an exalted Duke? My-My, the difficulties of this London season and the undesirable category that they had slotted her into had taken more of a toll on her than she’d realized.

It was probably her anger then that set her onto her next course of indescribably bold action. Affinity saw what looked to be a pantry maid leaving the Duke’s well-maintained townhouse. The maid was very young and possibly on her way to the market for the cook, because she carried a basket. Affinity fell into step behind the maid. She was quite determined that she was going to bribe the Duke of St. Martin’s pantry maid for information about her employer.

Oh, and it had worked! Hours later, Affinity could not believe her brashness as she unpinned her veiled bonnet and tossed it on the bed in her bedchamber. She immediately took to pacing briskly across her room, unable to contain her excitement. It felt wondrous, this thrum of excitement. It felt as though she finally had a small piece of her life back in her hands and she was controlling it.

“Oh and I want more,” Affinity exclaimed.

She had successfully bribed the Duke of St. Martin’s pantry maid and the young woman had been a wealth of information. The pantry maid’s name was Nell and she’d seemed at once worldly for all her youthful appearance. However, Nell was not completely disloyal to her employer, there were certain things she would not discuss, such as the timing of the Duke’s comings and goings.

“It wouldn’t be proper to tell you that,” Nell had exclaimed. “But a nice lady such as yourself wanting to know if he is married, that’s another thing all together.”

So, Nell had told her that the Duke of St. Martin was not married, and they all, meaning the household staff, really thought he should be. It was here that Affinity realized that Nell, and it seemed all of the Duke’s staff, adored him. Nell spoke of the Duke with the fondness of a family member and not an employer, and Affinity instantly felt drawn closer to him in spirit. It was also revealed that, “Law,” as Affinity had secretly been calling him, did not have a mistress, nor the presence of any steady lady friends that he called upon. He was a bachelor living alone with only one elderly aunt still living, but she resided in the country.

Affinity sorely wondered what the mysterious Duke of St. Martin did with his time. However, on these subjects Nell was vague or mute and that only fueled Affinity’s curiosity. She was smart enough to realize that Nell gave out this information to a lady she perceived as interested in the Duke. In fact, Affinity considered, given Law’s apparent semi-reclusiveness, other ladies might have inquired after him in this same fashion. The thought of that left Affinity feeling slightly deflated. She did not wish to be one among many, because that had already proven unsuccessful. No, if she were to set her sights on Lawrence Fabier, the Duke of St. Martin, she would have to be much more original and aggressive.

So, she wondered, how did a woman, a creative, intelligent, and witty woman, catch a man? Certainly not the way the ladies of the ton went about it. She must think outside the normal. And Affinity wondered if the question were, could she do it, or was she brave enough to do it?

***

“The young lady’s name was, Lady Affinity Redgrift, your grace.”

Law gazed at Nell thoughtfully. “Did she have straight long hair, pulled back, yet falling to her waist? Brown hair with red highlights in the sunlight.”

“Could have been her,” Nell paused expectantly.

“Did she possess rather large-,” Law found his hands mimicking mounds on his chest and he quickly dropped them, as Nell exclaimed,

“Boobies! Yes she did, your grace, and she wore a plum-colored walking dress like the ladies wear. So you’ve met her then?”

Law nodded absently. “I have seen her.”

“Well, the young Miss, did not realize how much she told me of herself, you see. But I’m positive she was a real lady and not a prostitute pretending to be one. That one could not lie well if she tried.”

That should be the end of it, Law thought. He shouldn’t have any further reason to ask any more questions or to be curious. This Lady Affinity was not a prostitute seeking his help. He had no need to inquire further on her behalf. However, the image of her in the park had not left his thoughts.

That was odd.

He’d barely been able to see her, veiled as she was, only her long hair and the constrained outline of those breasts. He remembered thinking upon seeing the shape of those healthy mounds that they were certainly held back by a corset or such and they would be that much larger if freed. The thought had not startled him overly, because he had fleeting lustful thoughts most days. He would catch sight of something that would strike him, then set his mind turning. A ripe peach in the marketplace, a glimpse of a lady’s bare ankle as she stepped up into her coach, or a mare that was sleek and sweating after a long gallop.

But Lady Affinity had asked after him . . . And she was not a prostitute. “I would not care for her to find out my secret profession, Nell.”

“Oh, I would never tell, your grace. You know that.”

“I could not do what I do, if they found out . . . you understand?”

“I only told her that you weren’t married.”

“She asked such a thing?” Law was immediately surprised, even as he wondered, just what it was he thought she’d asked Nell then. Ladies, he’d assumed, did not really ask after gentlemen, except in social circles.

“Yes, it was her first question, your grace.”

He really should let this go. “And her second question, Nell?”

“Did ye have a mistress or a lady friend?”

Law swiveled in his study chair to look directly at Nell, because he’d been gazing out the windows into the gardens at the rear of his property.

“Aye, your grace, interesting isn’t it,” Nell pronounced with a gregarious smile that showed a few missing teeth.

That was an understatement, Law thought. A lady asking intimate questions about him was singularly unique. He strictly stayed out of social gatherings just because of his glaring marriage eligibility. His mission in life was not to find a wife. He knew to well he did not deserve that. However, he could not help longing for the touch of a woman and he wondered if he was damned from ever having the pleasure again. So Lady Affinity’s curiosity and interest excited him slightly and he took his pleasures, small as they were, wherever he could savor them.

He’d been out of touch too long and he had not realized that young ladies had become so emboldened. Of course with what he now knew about womens natures, he should not be at all surprised. He’d long pondered that some ladies must have the feelings of a prostitute beneath their soft veneers, and that was either his long-felt and foolish hope . . . or possibly a truth.

“If she should approach you again, Nell, please tell her that you have spoken to me, out of your undying loyalty.”

Nell snorted, bobbing her short black hair. “Undying loyalty is it, Gov’? I would go to hell for you.”

“Well then say that,” Law replied quietly. “And I would for you also, Nell.”

“Yer bating her, I see!” Nell grinned. “Oh I like that, yer grace.”

Chapter Four

Affinity nibbled at her bottom lip and her one crooked front tooth made the effort more rewarding, and she supposed because of it that she did it more often than most. She knew that she did it especially industriously when she was worried or anxious as she was now.

It was eight o’clock in the evening and dark outside. A moonless night that she’d specifically picked for the absence of the moon. Aunt Fuchsia had long since gone to bed after hearing Affinity was not feeling well and would be spending the evening in her room. A small white lie, Affinity thought, looking at her attire in the full length mirror once more. It was an odd menagerie of clothing that she’d managed to piece together.

She wore brown twill breeches. They were the darkest color she could find, when she’d rummaged through her uncle’s old clothing in the attic. They were surely from his younger days, being slimmer now than his portly weight. However, she still had to take them in considerably, and the buttoned up, square-pocketed, front of the breeches were unique to her. Of course, she had seen them before, but certainly never had them on to see them work. It made that unique place between a man’s legs seem that much more mysterious, and it made her feel strangely heated to know that a few buttons undone in the front and her sex would be exposed.

Of course she’d seen a male organ twice in her life. One time when her uncle had been ill and circumstances left her, in one instant, the only one available at the precisely urgent moment to help him. It had been a fleeting glimpse and it had shocked her. She’d been a young girl then, nearly the age of fifteen, and when she’d imagined such things, somehow they were vaguely majestic and commanding. Certainly not withered and red looking. Up until that time she had no idea of the size, shape, position, or the condition of that area between a man’s legs. She was quite disappointed, but that was until she’d seen Bartley, who was the Redgrift’s head groom. She’d been innocently passing by the stables in her seventeenth year, when a swatch of color had caught her eye through a wider slat on the side of the stable building. Immediately curious that she could see it, she’d stopped and leaned forward to peek. That was when she had seen Bartley pissing in the hay or more precisely she’d seen his organ, a long healthy pink-skinned organ. What a revelation that had been to enliven her.

Since that day and through many whispered conversations with her best of friends Brevity, Caprice, and Diversity, she had a vague understanding of the look and function of the male organ, this pocketed front concealed in a man’s breeches. She was certain that most of the function they imagined was vastly fanciful, gleaned from bits and pieces the girls had been able to pick up along the way. They would take these bits of information, not enough to obtain a truly clear picture, and they would twist them around in their talks, until they seemed to fit logically. Of course, that meant it really was only fictional imagery. It was sad that such sexual things were kept so secret. Of course, it also fueled their desires to know the truth of it.

All of them had learned the art of touching themselves to climatic conclusion. Never together of course, but they’d spoken about it as true friends do when revealing secrets. They spoke, giggling of stroking between their legs to relieve the insistent aches that built there upon odd occasions. Such as the one that was beginning to happen between her thighs now, Affinity thought, looking at the dark woolen sweater she wore.

She could not wear a corset with this attire and it left her breasts free flowing beneath a light chemise and the sweater. She could feel the wool grazing her nipple tips with each shift of her body, and she was surprised, but had to admit wearing the outfit alone was arousing her.

“Of course, it cannot be that I intend to sneak into Law’s home,” Affinity declared as she grabbed her veiled bonnet and stuffed it on top of her head. It did not fit well because she had piled her hair in a large bun on the top of her head. The bonnet and veil also looked quite ridiculous with the rest of her clandestine outfit. However, she felt the need to be masked and this was the best she could come up with.

Affinity assured herself that the entire objective was that no one was to see her, so it mattered little what she actually looked like. She was even going so far as to walk to Law’s home, rather than hiring a hackney. She would stealthily keep to the alleyways and the shadows. So, she picked up the last bit of her furtive costume, a small black billy club that she had found in the attic. She could not go out alone through the back alleys without protection.

This week, she had watched Law’s home nearly every day until as late in the evening as she could manage. What she’d learned was that none of his servants stayed in residence overnight, which was very odd. But she’d also learned today quite by chance of overhearing Law’s groom say that the carriage needed to be brought out because his grace was going out to a boxing event.

Affinity had quickly left then to check the times of this boxing event. Luckily there was only one boxing match that it could be and that left the field open if she was brave enough to raise the game she wanted to play higher.

Really, curiosity drove her commonsense in this matter entirely astray. She’d already admitted to herself that she had a complete and overblown crush on the Duke of St. Martin. She had never experienced one before and it was quite breathtaking. Brevity had once had a crush over a mature and refined school master at Lady Whitmore’s Academy for Young Ladies. The crush had been quite dramatic and Affinity now understood why. The feelings inside her had no real logic to them. They were simply bold and nearly overpowering. They created this momentous desire inside her to discover more about the object of her affection.

But she was not doing this completely because of her amorous urges. She had a plan. The infancy of a plan at least. She would learn all that she could about Law, in the process making certain he was worthy of her amorous intent, and then she would use that knowledge to entice Law’s mind and his soul. She would be all that he desired. In fact, she would seduce him if that were possible.

So determinedly, Affinity managed to make good time and was not seen as she made her way to Law’s home some five blocks away. She approached his townhouse from the rear, having to physically climb a stone wall to do so. It was quite an event for her, and she resolved that she was physically weak for all the effort it cost her. Luckily, the stone wall had shifted and become uneven over time, allowing her to find handholds and footholds to lift herself and draw her cumbersome body over the top.

She resolved, as she sat atop the stone fence, puffing hard breaths, that she was immediately going to start a physical regiment to overcome this irritating weakness. “Women just sit on their posteriors too long,” she muttered, looking for a way to lower herself down the inside of the stone wall.

What she spied was the low hanging branch of a tree next to the wall. So very daring, she used this with a small leap and managed to catch the branch in her hands, which dangled her feet closer to the ground below. Then, she let go and it was only a short distance to land on her feet. She smiled vividly, realizing how brave and determined she was in her goal. It felt glorious to take charge, and the humming of excitement filling her body was like an aphrodisiac.

Carefully and silently, Affinity picked her way through the garden to the back of Law’s townhouse. There were a few lights burning, yet they appeared dim and they did not overly worry her because many people left a few lights on for their return. Now came the tricky part. How to get inside? She had thought this over and, as of yet, had not come up with many good answers. She could only hope that some part of the townhouse had been left open.

So with this hope, she began to systemically try every window and door as quietly as she could. She was down on her hands and knees trying a lowercase window outside what appeared to be Law’s study, when suddenly a face loomed before her on the other side of the window pane. Affinity yelped, rearing back and clamping a hand over her mouth to contain any further sounds, with her gaze leaping from a short distance unfocused, to a longer distance focused.

“Beauty,” she whispered through her fingers, looking at Law’s russet setter gazing back at her eagerly through the window pane. “Oh, shush, shush,” she added quickly, hoping he would not bark at her.

But Beauty just sat there gazing at her hopefully with his tail wagging. Still, he looked as though he could start barking at her at any moment, so she backed away slowly. It would be better to try the other rooms’ windows where Beauty was not perched, she decided as she moved back into the shadows. Next, she tried the dining room windows and she was standing on her tiptoes, industriously intent on a side window, when something poked her on her bottom.

“Oh my God!” Affinity squealed, jumping and turning and tripping all in what felt like the same motion. Then, she found herself landing on her posterior in the flower patch under the window. A large shape loomed over her and before she could think, the next thing that happened made her laugh outright. It was Beauty’s wet tongue licking her cheek.

“Oh you!” Affinity gushed fondly, grasping Beauty in a hug, then raised herself to sit beside him. “You scared the devil out of me,” Affinity scolded him as she thoroughly petted him, to his happily wagging tail. It took her a few minutes to catch her breath and her wits, when she finally realized . . . “How did you get outside, Beauty?”

Immediately, Beauty trotted away as though he understood her question and Affinity got to her feet to follow, hoping this did not mean someone had let Beauty outdoors. But what Beauty led her to was a small door within a door. “How clever,” Affinity whispered, watching Beauty push through the small door that moved inward with his nudge. This door was obviously built specially for Beauty to let him in and out of the gardens whenever he wished.

If she had been a man or just inches wider, she would not have made it through the door. However, she just fit sideways with only a few scrapes. Once inside, she found herself in a darkened pantry, and as she got to her feet, dusting herself off, she patted Beauty’s head. “Well I have gone and done it now,” Affinity whispered, looking down into Beauty’s loyal brown eyes.

She stood still for several minutes listening silently to the quiet house. There were no noises at all and she felt certain with some inner sense added that she was alone. Her goal in this search was to find some of Law’s interests and likes, as in the boxing that she now knew he favored. By the time she met him, she would know all there was to know about boxing. Wouldn’t that surprise any gentleman? A lady knowing how to converse intelligently about any sport and not just her next embroidering projects? These ideas that kept coming to her had such merit! A man and a woman could have true companionship, if they had things in common. It was so much better to have things in common than relying upon appearance and social standings. Yes, Affinity thought, these thoughts bolstered her. It was much different planning to do something as opposed to actually doing it . . . as in right now.

She started out very timidly, but quickly her curiosity and interest overcame her hesitations and she was quite enjoying herself. And that was when she found the journal. She’d looked through Law’s library finding a great many clues to his nature there. He was currently reading Mystery Island by Jules Vern set on a table by a comfortable reading chair that appeared well used. The library shelves held a great many books about military history and warfare, making her wonder if he had ever been to war. There was a chess set opened on the table, so she assumed that he liked chess. The room itself smelled wonderful also, like smoky cherries, pine, and books. The smoky cherry flavor in the air had her wondering, until she found a box of cigarillos, which were small thin cigars. She had heard of these. They were not a usual find in England and it took a lot of her willpower not to pocket one and later perhaps daringly try a puff. Then, as much to keep herself from taking a cigarillo, as to further her explorations, she moved from Law’s library into his study.

She’d come directly to his desk, naturally looking down, and spied what appeared to be a private journal set on top of the oak-inlaid desk. She fingered the brackish-brown and worn tooled leather on the outside cover of the journal, thinking that she’d not yet decided whether or not she would actually explore closed drawers or closets, which felt more like an invasion, just as opening this journal would be perhaps. The journal could simply be his household bookkeeping, but the look and feel of it spoke of being more special than that. And yet, she fully intended to look at his bedchamber. She could not come so far and not see the most intriguing part. That was very personal . . . a person’s bedchamber, and if she could do that?

“Of course I’m fooling myself,” Affinity muttered, suddenly snatching up the journal. “I certainly intend to look!” The solace in the back of her mind was that no one would ever know of this event. And that made it better. Didn’t it? “Well, of course,” she muttered, opening the journal to the first page.

It was prefaced by a short prologue.

. . . All that I do now, I do in memory of Magdalena. Please forgive my human frailties before a true courageous heart . . .

Affinity found herself sincerely hoping that Magdalena was a relative of the Duke of St. Martin, as she turned to the next page.

. . . The one named Molly with her red hair and a buxom build confided the sensitive nature of her breasts to me. The nipples to be exact. I never request these confessions, they came unbidden in the language of the streets that few of my station have ever entertained, I understand.

I often wonder if the confessions are pride on the ladies part or perhaps a cleansing to the new life that I beg them to consider. Yet oft times, I fear they simply see the need in my gaze. I must let it through to convince them. To show them my demons also and therefore our commonality.

Then I also wonder, if my nipples could be as sensitive if touched. They have risen and hardened upon occasion. Occasions of cold . . . or perhaps arousal. I wonder why women never conceive to touch a manly nipple. To perhaps take it to their lips and suckle upon it. I have never considered requesting a woman to do so. I imagine that I fear her repulsion or confusion at such a request. Yet in the same consideration, I have never been asked expressly from a woman to caress her nipples. I have simply yearned to do so and therefore have done it. I ponder in my masculinity, whether I would be brave enough to touch my own nipples and see what reaction I would find.

Molly of the delicate nipples has found herself as a grand cook at a modest household and married now to the huntsman there with one sweetly faced daughter to their credit. Whenever I chance by to sample a cobbler, Molly always praises her blessing in being found by the Benefactor . . .

“Oh my God.” Affinity fumbled for the chair behind the desk and sat down, nearly falling into it with a hard plop. The intimacy and the honesty of Law’s words overwhelmed her, heaped immediately upon the discovery that he was the elusive and compassionate Benefactor. “Oh my God,” she muttered senselessly again.

No one thought that the Benefactor was a nobleman by any means. Also this meant that it was he that would help Anne. She had the proof of it in her hand, and she’d had the proof of it that day Law was in the park. He’d set Beauty to help them, then he’d privately given Anne the card. The Benefactor’s secrecy now made so much more sense. The nobles across the breath of England would be aghast should it be known that one within their ranks helped common street prostitutes. Law could never keep doing what he was doing if this were known.

But why did he do it? Were there others that helped him? It was obvious this Molly he wrote of was a prostitute that he’d helped, sponsored to a better life as his moniker suggested. Yet all the unanswered questions and revelations seemed to become muted beneath Affinity’s thoughts about the discovery of a man’s sexual yearnings. It was so tangible, so raw, it drew her like a child to the seductive sweetness of candy.

. . . Young Nell with her black mop of hair and wide nearly toothless grin, has claimed to be the best knob sucker in all of London. I note that she started out being the best in the lower east end of the city and expanded with her slightly gaping grin. As with any great craftsman the details that Nell gives are prided in the finer points of her craft. And I must admit here to myself, that upon hearing the accounting, I was unable to keep my own cock from responding with more than simple interest. Duly noted by Nell of course, and I gather she enjoyed the response as though she had snuck a part of me, therefore, allowing me to sponsor her from the squalor life that she’d been driven to.

But I must admit that I was stunned to hear the verbal description of this art. It served to excite me beyond anything I have yet to feel. I have never had a woman’s mouth pressed to my cock before and have to believe that it would be every man’s dream. Of course I had heard rumors of such a thing. Vague names called out that left much to the imagination and less to knowledge. Names such as cock sucking, mouth fucking, pecker blowing, cob sucking, or the delightful, gobble the sausage. Yet any man knows these nearly forbidden sexual acts will only be entertained by a woman paid for the effort. And somehow in my mind before, I envisioned, performed by the lowliest of creatures driven to such pursuits by poverty, like a slave.

Nonetheless, after listening to Nell, my perspective has changed tenfold and my yearning has increased as much. Would that I could set my own mouth to the project to relieve my enticement, curiosity, and anxieties. The wonders of the descriptions Nell revealed are not to be denied. Her tongue lay upon the cock-head lovingly, then caressed through the slit with vigor. Then, her soft lips pressed tightly to the rim, encasing the knobbed head compactly in her mouth and against the caress of her tongue. The wetness that she gives from her mouth to the cock that she proclaims most important. How she would grip the shaft firmly with one hand pumping the base of the shaft as her lips clench around the head while vigorously sucking.

. . . Even writing this, I am heated beyond what I could ever before imagine.

Then, Nell describes the art of mouth fucking and taking as much of the cock into her mouth as she is able. Rapid movements of her mouth up and down the shaft. In one mouth suction taking the cock deeper, and on the next, taking it shallowly. But always and I quote here, “Sucking that fine stiff pud with all yer heart.”

Ah, my heart beats rapidly at such wonder, yet then Nell paid me back for what little I will offer her in help, by telling me of the swallowing of a man’s seed. One of the most intimate pursuits I could imagine to this date.

And while I blessed Nell for the fantastical knowledge I now possess. Knowledge that I took freely. I also find myself silently cursing the knowledge, because I am set as the Benefactor and as such completely honor-bound never to take advantage. Therefore, from the ladies of the night that I seek to help, I must always remain respectable and above reproach, leaving me with the certainty that I will never have a chance to feel such delights.

But Magdalena’s suffering and death, caused by me, was so much worse. I am lowly to even envision regrets. Oh but if there was one lady out there that would consider freely pressing her lips to my cock . . .

Affinity felt her heart palpitating as though she were running, as her fingers curled over the worn pages within Law’s journal. She vaguely realized that each of the pages worn appearance meant that it had been read many times over. Yet, she was senseless, she had to admit, completely stunned. Never in her life had she heard or conceived of such a thing between a man and a woman. However, more amazing than this was that she was completely and thoroughly aroused.

She was shivering and flushed all at the same moment over what must be a pagan act. Why even her mouth watered strangely, and her sex. Affinity glanced down at the pocketed front of her breeches where her sex insistently ached more strongly than she’d ever felt before. A heated vapor seemed to rise from between her legs with a clinging scent filling her nostrils that instantly enlivened the aching thrum in her sex to new heights. Abruptly, she clamped her legs together with her body shuddering.

“Nell,” she stated, stubbornly trying to turn her thoughts from the overpowering images dancing in her mind. She needed a little more space to breathe or surely she would faint. “This, Nell, is my Nell,” she muttered, still breathless.

Creak . . . Slam!

Affinity nearly fell out of the chair as the sounds of the front door opening and closing walloped her hearing. Thank God, she did not cry out as she moved with more speed than she’d ever known she possessed.

Chapter Five

How in the world could a boxing match be erotic, Law pondered, setting his top hat and evening jacket to the coat rack in the entryway? He loved women, not men. He desired women, never men. Yet tonight he found eroticism in boxing. Two men stripped to their breeches, one with a dark hairy chest and arms and the other with a smooth chest. Both men were intent upon winning and were strong of limbs with pronounced muscular definition. It was not arousing at first, yet as they fought more and the sweat began to glisten upon their straining bodies, it became riveting.

Law strode to his study for a brandy and contemplation. Warrior, his faithful dog greeted him as he entered the study and he stopped to pet the russet colored setter as he continued to contemplate his feelings. Truthfully, it had been as though the dark complected boxer was the hunter and the smooth chested boxer was the prey. The prey had held his own for longer than the crowd had thought possible, yet in the end he’d succumbed to the hunter. No matter where the prey turned the hunter was there. And somewhere during the middle to the end of the fight, visions of a veiled woman with long flowing brown hair had come to Law. A woman that had asked after him.

“Really, I am writing too deeply in my journal,” Law muttered beneath his breath as he lifted his hand from Warrior and he went in search of that fortifying brandy. Still, he found himself unbuttoning his shirt before he grasped the glass of brandy and went to sprawl nearly disgustedly in a chair by the fire.

Law knew what was going to happen at the same time he wondered why he dreaded it. Why dread? He was in his own home. No one could see him. Damnation, he had needs, didn’t he? He was a healthy man. A young healthy man, who had made one tragic mistake, one inexperienced miscalculation. Damn, he would not think of that now!

Law shook his head, throwing off his memories to attack him relentlessly later as they always did. But now he would relieve himself, or exorcise a vision, or just be a man. He did not know which, but he did know he would not use his willpower to stop it, and he wondered why he would want to.

Then he purposely tilted his head back and set his mind to a vision. The woman was faceless, but her gown was split open with her large flowing bare breasts exposed. They were pale fleshed, dripping with sweat as they bounced heavily with her movements around the inner sanctum of the boxing ring. Her long chestnut colored hair with strands of deeper red and honey colors swayed and flowed around her petite height as she moved, while her nipples jutted outward like small defying lances. This was not a boxing fight with fists raised. This was a sexual dance where she challenged him to see all that she was and capture it, seduce it, and claim it.

Affinity clutched Law’s journal to her breasts, standing nearly on her tiptoes as she peered around the open doorway into the almost completely dark study. Her heart was hammering in her chest at nearly being caught sneaking around Law’s house, like a thief, by his unexpected swift return. Suddenly there was a resounding bong sound down the hallway from her and Affinity started, darting her gaze in that direction. It was only the grand clock in the hallway ringing the time of midnight. Midnight? Heavens, had she been prying through Law’s home that long? It had been hours, but then of course she’d found Law’s personal journal . . . a personal sexual journal, and reading it had engrossed her immediately. For hours it appeared.

A journal that she needed desperately to return to the study where Law now moved about. The only light was from the fire which Law now went over to stir, adding another piece of wood and making the flames dance higher. The golden reds of the fire in the room illuminated the side of his face and caught the dark highlights in the thick strands of his brownish-blond hair, while the ever-present dark shadow on his jaw seemed chiseled at sharper angles in the firelight.

Affinity’s heartbeat fluttered erratically and it was not because she’d broken into Law’s home and wantonly rifled through his things. It was because when Law straightened and turned away from the fire, she saw that since entering the study, he’d completely unbuttoned his shirt.

. . . I ponder in my masculinity whether I would be brave enough to touch my male nipples . . .

That passage from Law’s journal flitted through Affinity’s thoughts unexpectedly and took on new meaning as she gazed at Law’s chest. She found herself foolishly praying that wherever he moved inside the room, it would afford her a clear view of his tight-muscled and lightly hairy chest. The pangs of pleasure that had been throbbing ever higher in her sex and in her clit, while reading Law’s intimate journal, now took up intense bites that nipped into her core. It rooted her to the spot and whitened her fingers gripping the journal to her oversensitive breasts. That grip of her fingers was fighting the urge to rush her hand lower and rub deeply between her thighs at the aches bouncing in her sex. Then, her gaze widened and a second later her eyelids lowered as though a husky purr had run through her mind at the sight of Law sprawling in a wing chair. The angle of the blue-tufted chair gave her an unfettered view of him, relaxed into its folds, yet with some unnamed tension about him.

Perhaps that tension was the intensity of her gaze clinging to the sight of him with his shirt fallen open, showing the rippled muscles of his belly. My god, nothing she’d seen in her young life had looked as utterly masculine and divine as Law’s body, chipped and lean with his sinew tautly defined. He held a glass of liquor in one hand, yet it was his other hand that mesmerized her gaze. He was completely unaware of her presence. He was relaxing alone in his home, perhaps relaxing after helping another prostitute come-into-the-light this evening. The benefactor of another lady of the night who might have told him other sexual feats that he could ponder in his private journal. And that was why his hand was slowly rubbing over the outline of his male organ beneath the black material of his breeches.

Affinity’s core quivered as she watched him, trying fiercely to keep her breath from gasping. She should leave! She should set the journal on the hallway table and sneak away. Maybe he would never know. Perhaps he would always wonder how it got there. He might blame a servant. They could be fired for thievery. Touching something so private would make anyone furious. She could steal it, stuff it into her breeches now and flee. She wanted it. She never wanted to let it go. How could she wonder the rest of her life what else was written there?

Then, without realizing it, while her gaze was watching Law’s hand with his strong lean fingers slowly caressing . . . She just did it! She stuffed the journal into the back of her breeches. It was held by the banded waist and covered by her wool sweater. To keep her hands free, she assured herself as a passage from Law’s journal spirited unbidden through her mind.

. . . I have never had a woman’s mouth pressed to my swollen cock before . . .

She could not leave. Nothing in her soul could make her take that first step. It might be a sin or damnation upon her soul, but she had to watch. It was a living breathing thing inside of her and the desire of it made her knees weak.

Then, Law’s fingers began to unbutton the narrow pocketed front of his evening trousers. His head was tilted backward with his muscular throat bared and his male nipples hard. Oh my god. Affinity sucked in a climatic breath. Law’s nipples were tan circles on his raised breastplates with the tips taut and poking outward. Just like hers would be pink, but flushed to a deep rose, while lancing outward twice as far as Law’s aroused nubs. The desire in her clit strained, gnawing deeply at her.

Then, it was as though a curtain flashed open before her eyes and Law’s manly organ was lifted upward into naked view. Hastily, Affinity bit her bottom lip so hard she tasted blood as her fingers clenched over the open doorway molding. She was shocked, blinded, and stunned at the suddenness of a climax bursting inside her sex. The pleasure contorted repeatedly as her body shuddered in uncontrolled amazement, while her eyes glazed over the head of Law’s bared organ.

It looked as though a large ruddy flesh-colored nut had been attached to the sleek shaft. The entire male cock was rigid and bowing upward into Law’s hand, like a powerful lancing entity. It appeared, jutting out of the black material as it was, as though it might not be attached to Law’s body at all.

But then, he grasped the root of it, drawing his hand from the ponderous base to the red-swollen bullet-shaped head. His grip had to be so tight, so purposeful, because when he reached the rimmed head, he continued lifting his entire rigid organ upward toward his chest, and suddenly his full testicles sprang free from the folds of black material, two twin sacks, full and heavy.

The clashing of exotic pleasure thrashing through Affinity’s sex multiplied in throes that pinnacled . . . receded, then pinnacled again. She was nearly choking and feeling faint at the exquisite rapture bursting inside her sex, and some sound or movement must have escaped her because Law’s gaze turned toward her at just that moment!

Affinity did not realize that Law’s eyes were still closed as he stroked his male cock fiercely. In her passionately clouded vision she saw only discovery as she leaped backward away from it on legs too weak and shaky to hold her steady. That was when the sound reverberated in her mind like a hundred drums beating with a singular stroke. It was the solid thump of her spine hitting the wall in the silence.

“Oh no!” she gasped, forgetting to remain quiet in her panic. A panic that was stubbornly lethargic to her imminent needs, because of the last pangs of a climax thrashing through her body.

Law’s head dropped forward from its tilted back position as a growl and half groan scraped his throat tightly. The sound was arousal combined with challenge as his straining and heated body fought the backlash of interruption. There was a disassociated breach in his mind, when he clung to the imminent ejaculation of his cock at the same moment his instincts rose with alarm.

His heartbeat raced in his chest as his pumping hand stopped abruptly, then he squeezed his cock furiously to keep it from erupting. At the same moment, he was rushing to stand and meet the danger or challenge of that sound in his home, where no loud thumping sounds should be other that his suppressed groan of release.

His mind finally started to partially work, even as his body was meeting the unknown threat by pushing his strong limbs forward. Was it an intruder? Law’s gaze quickly found Warrior stretched out calmly in front of the fireplace. His mind registered that as quite odd, just as he rushed into the hallway.

The apparition he found there let out a high-pitched and clearly frightened squeal at the sight of him. This person, he could not tell gender, had their small hands raised forward as though warding him off.

“What in the hell are you up to?” Law demanded, with a suppressed shout.

The sound of his shout made the apparition jerk as if slapped, then immediately the person began to spring forward down his hallway away from him. Law forgot his shirt hanging open and his bare cock jutting through the sagging vent of his trousers, as he gave chase in his anger and alarm. He grabbed the petite apparition quite roughly in his agitation, swinging the person around, then jostling that person up against the wall. He realized just then that the apparition wore the most ridiculous veiled bonnet, at the same moment his chest pitched into soft and overly large mounds of breasts. Breasts!

“My God,” Law exclaimed.

“Let me go!” His apparition’s voice was shrill and indignant for all that she was an intruder in his home, Law thought just as indignantly. In his normal demeanor, he would have let her go immediately. He did not jostle around women, even the thief that she might be. However, his aggrieving predicament now was that his naked and very aroused cock was between her gaze and his body. And at the moment, pressed together as they were, she could not see it.

It rather infuriated him that he should have to worry over such a thing. Yet damn him, he did! His entire senses were centered on that one thing. Certainly she must feel it, so stiffly aroused as it was. Hell, even he could feel the beating of it, that and her breasts crushed into his chest. She smelled of violets.

“Who are you?” It was an inane question, useless, but the only rational thing that came into Law’s lust-tinged mind, as he coarsely thought how easy it would be to strip this womanly apparition’s sweater and rub his body against those breasts. Her head shook to his question as he knew it would. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“I-I,” she stuttered with her breath coming hotly beneath his chin. “Please, let me go,” she pleaded in a small feminine voice.

Lord, Law realized that she could be a prostitute looking for his help. They had shown up at his back door before, never inside though, that was highly irregular, only her voice was cultured and that did not fit. Then, there was this devilish voice rooting around loudly inside his head for the insane hope that she was not a prostitute. This was due to the fact that his body was pressed, quite tautly aroused, to her body, and the lengthy celibacy that he’d sustained up until this time was furiously mocking him.

He nearly sagged beneath his tension-filled arousal and now oncoming confusion. His body must have literally sagged a bit, because he felt his forehead lightly pressed to her temple and he realized that she had her face tilted up to him.

“Are you all right?” The woman’s question came whispered and soft, and the tones of caring in her voice could not be denied.

Law understood he could accuse her, interrogate her, or overpower her, but all his senses denied that. “Do you need money, little one? Or perhaps you came here looking for a benefactor. I would gladly give you either freely.”

Oh my God, Affinity thought in bafflement, he thinks I’m a prostitute!

Of course he would, but her mind was so confused that she was hardly thinking clearly. In fact, her tottering mind was alternately focused on only two paramount events. The first was the warmth she could feel of Law’s body pressed more intimately to her body than she’d ever experienced before, and then more stunningly spectacular was the feel of his rigid organ pressed solidly into her belly. This bold impression was so near to the place of her recent climatic eruption that the sensitivity there was tenfold and humming to life again, only this time in a different way that did not necessarily attract her clit as much but lower in her woman’s portal. A woman’s portal which throbbed, as though beckoning the perfectly shaped organ lying heavily against her body. An organ that she could feel palpitating.

Oh my God, the craving of it nearly made Affinity faint, while shivers ran down her inner thighs. Thighs that wanted to be lifted open and pressed wide somehow. A small moment of breathless pants escaped her and she realized that she had never come close to the fonts of physical desire before.

She should try to wrestle free. She should scream and yell at him, try to startle him, break free and run. She should do any number of things not to be discovered, yet her fingers were so close and her mind was not one she recognized at all.

. . . The wetness that she gives from her mouth to the cock that she proclaims most important. How she would grip the shaft tightly with one hand, pumping the base of the shaft as her sucking lips clenched around the head…

“I am not myself!” Affinity gasped sharply, and then her fingertips were touching the incredibly soft but molten hot head of Law’s male organ. Law jerked toward her as though someone had punched him between the shoulder blades. The movement caught her hand tightly between their bodies and pressed her fingers into a snug circle around the knobbed head of his rigid organ. The smooth flesh held heat enough to toast her fingertips as her head fell back inexplicably and Law’s head fell forward, until their cheeks pressed together over her veil.

“What are you doing?” Law’s voice groaned deeply, as though he were in torture.

“I am not myself,” she whispered tragically, sounding as tortured as he sounded. Then, she caressed one of her fingertips longingly through the slit, dabbing creamy heat on the tip of her finger.

“My God!” he exclaimed, then he roughly shoved away from her. The movement was so abrupt and forceful that the open collar of his shirt snagged the veil on her bonnet. The bonnet was jerked off her head and it sailed through the air, landing on the polished wood flooring between them.

Law’s back hit the wall. He could go no further as his wild gaze took in the woman pressed to the wall across from him. There was a riotous battle waging inside of him between a ravenous need, denial, and morality. Yet his pitching gaze landed on the woman’s hands clutched between her thighs and grasping her mound. He knew then, before even looking at her face that she was being consumed by uncontrollable temptations also. She was not just a cock tease in these events, but perhaps driven beyond normal constraints by lawless desire as he was.

Then, before he could raise his gaze to fully look upon her face, she sprang free from the wall with a strangled gasp and rushed down the hallway. All that he could glimpse in an unfocused offering was the side of her pale and delicate face. However, more amazing to him was watching the bun of hair on top of her head lose the law of gravity and spiral free into waves of long brown hair falling down her back. It was light brown hair with strands of honey and russet intertwined.

And . . . he had seen it before.

“She asked after you, your grace. She asked if ye be married.” The sound of Nell’s voice filled Law’s mind as he watched the lady scamper from his house. He’d lost the choice to stop her moments ago, when he’d broken away from her, instead of clinging to what she might offer. Damn his reasoning mind to hell! However, he knew he would appreciate it better later, when he could think more clearly, when he could think with his mind and not his cock. A cock still rigid with lust that he gingerly set back into his trousers, buttoning the fall front. Then, he strode forward grasping his top hat and coat as he strode out the open front doorway of his townhouse. He would not accost the lady or be accosted by her again, yet at the same time he would not allow her to travel home unattended. At least, he severely told himself these were his reasons for following hidden behind her, until she made it to her residence some five blocks away.

But of course, the fact still remained that he now knew where she lived.

Chapter Six

“I wish I were you!” Caprice declared, nodding her head so firmly that the lustrous black waves of her hair bounced around her pretty, yet plump oval face.

“It is sso daring,” Brevity lisped excitedly, with her pixie like beauty animated in the glow of her periwinkle blue eyes.

“So plucky,” Diversity proclaimed, while her six-foot tall hourglass figure paced with suppressed energy behind the settee Brevity and Caprice sat upon.

Affinity gazed hopefully at her friends from where she sat across from them in Brevity’s front parlor. She’d not told her friends everything about her investigation of Law and the subsequent encounter with him. Some of the events were too intimate and too private. But she needed their help.

“I am so completely jealous,” Caprice said.

“I sso envy you,” Brevity lisped wistfully.

“And I wish I were half so brave,” Diversity declared, coming to halt in her pacing with her hands on her hips as though she were overseeing hard-pressed workers. “To take your own life in hand, and to shape the events . . .”

“It is the thing to do!” Caprice exclaimed. “We cannot sit here on our behinds and all become old maids.”

“Which is what will happen if we do not do ssomething,” Brevity said anxiously

“Tell us more of these extraordinary ideas, Affinity,” Diversity said.

“Oh, do tell us more of what happened with the Duke!” Caprice added, enthusiastically.

“I am desperate,” Affinity announced. “I am not going to lose what I have gained, but . . .”

“But, what?” Diversity asked, immediately prodding her.

“But-,” Affinity hesitated again, chewing her bottom lip. A person had to be quite brave in all matters to take life into their own hands, or they had to be mad. But she certainly had incentive now, where before it had only been a half-formed dream. So, she found herself blurting quite boldly, “Sex, ladies! I desperately need to know about sex before I advance.”

Affinity was certain that if she’d been a sexual veteran, events would have turned out momentously different than they had. She had no intention of being on the short end of sexual knowledge during the next meeting with Law. And there would be another meeting! But right now there just had to be a way for a young lady to discover the practical applications of sexual play. The encounters, she’d read about in Law’s journal were explicit, but maddingly incomplete, and now she also knew with all her heart that sexual relations were of paramount importance between a man and a woman. Perhaps the most important, and certainly not her knowledge of boxing. Although, she had been studying boxing and teaching herself to play chess, while she read Mystery Island.

“Sex!” Caprice proclaimed, outright.

“SSex, Sex!” Brevity and Diversify both piped in right after Caprice, and Affinity knew that her friends did this so stalwartly and loudly to keep her from feeling embarrassed.

“It must be on the top of the list about how to seduce a man and completely capture his attention,” Affinity said seriously.

“We need to form a group! A bold and forthright group, not afraid to dare anything in our quest to interest men,” Diversity said.

“Oh, just like they call men rogues sometimes, they-,” Caprice started, then was thoroughly interrupted by Brevity’s squeal of excitement.

“Roguesss!” Brevity exclaimed, with a harder hiss to her lisp than normal in her excitement. “The Lady Roguess!”

“That is it!” Diversity nearly shouted. “Just like men have their groups for sometimes open reasons and sometimes nefarious reasons. We shall have ours.”

Then all three of Affinity’s friends declared with three voices becoming one, “The Lady Rogues!” as they all looked at Affinity with hope and determination.

Well, why not, Affinity thought? This was just what they all needed, and she began nodding her head slowly. The plan had merit, four together would be stronger and more inventive than one.

Then, she looked up at all of them with more determination than joy, as she said decisively, “Yes!” Her three friends cheered as she stood and started to pace. “Now we must vow as one that there is nothing we will not consider doing, just this side of murder,” she said.

They all nodded, then Caprice said, “We must vow to think and act outside of our normal social conformities.”

“And we must utilize our wit and our intelligence,” Diversity added.

“And we must be each other’s ssupport in anything we do,” Brevity said

“Exactly,” Affinity announced. “And that will be the start of the Lady Rogues motto until each one of us has found the man of our dreams and has him secured.” Affinity dusted her hands together. “Now, ladies, our first mission is to become sexual experts like no woman of our social standing would ever dare to do. It can only help each one of us in our quests and I believe that it will give all of us a momentous upper hand,” Affinity paused. “Now the larger question is how?”

“We do not want superficial knowledge. We already have that,” Caprice said.

“So asking older women of our acquaintance is out,” Diversity said. “I cannot imagine they are anything but stiff and suffering like martyrs.”

“Gentlemen, sshould know,” Brevity said. “Any man sshould, but I cannot ssee any of us finding one we could sspeak to about it.”

“A woman seems preferable.” Affinity said. “An older woman. I can only think of prostitutes or madams-,”

“Yes!” Diversity exclaimed, interrupting Affinity. “A madam would be perfect. Think of all that we could learn. Why, she would actually teach us the art of it.”

“But how does one find a madam?” Brevity asked.

“Or approach a madam?” Caprice echoed.

“Hmm.” Affinity paused. “I do not think we could just go to her establishment. That would appear at first glance to be out of the question. However, we should not overlook it entirely. We are daring now,” Affinity said with positive tones.

“I could try to trick a name from my brother,” Caprice said. “I am certain he knows a name and I know that I could do it without him realizing.”

“A name is paramount,” Affinity agreed.

“And we can use, Able, my butler and all about man, to deliver messages. You all know how loyal he is to me, since my parents died sso long ago,” Brevity said.

“If we send a forthright note stating clearly what we desire, in addition to the promise of a hefty fee if she agrees, that could do it,” Affinity said, looking around for agreement from all, which she received. “Well then, Lady Rogues, this shall be our first daring adventure.”

Chapter Seven

“I had my faithful, Able, deliver the mess-sage to, Madam Vivian DeJonge, just as we all agreed. I know, Able, must have wondered, but you all know how loyal he is-s to me,” Brevity said, to the three young ladies sitting nervously in her sitting room.

Affinity barely heard Brevity’s ever present lisping, it was so normal to her now. It was frightfully sad that the other ladies of London society, the younger and pompous ones especially, could not be so compassionate. Their ridicule of Brevity for her lisps and pixie like stature was a binding reason she was a member of their secretly conceived group the Lady Rogues. Brevity’s lisp, Caprice’s plump weight, and Diversity’s statuesque tallness were the beginnings of a long list that seemed to portray them as outcasts in this year or any year of the London season.

But we are not having it, Affinity reminded herself firmly. They were the Lady Rogues now and with that adventurous and bold name attached, they would outwit all of them. Between them, they’d decided to treat Madam DeJonge with respect and equality, even to treat her a tad grandly. It could not hurt to start out on the high road as none of them had a clue how to treat a Madam, who was the procuress of ladies for the sole purpose of gentlemen’s pleasure and fornication.

And just the word fornication sent shivers down Affinity’s spine . . . all because she’d held a stout and hot fornication rod in her hand. And she vowed she would do so again!

So the formal tea was set before them as she and her friends nervously awaited the promised arrival of Madam DeJonge into Brevity’s luxuriant front parlor. At times Brevity’s parentless state and hefty wealth was an advantage. Although, all her friends knew that Brevity would trade all the money she inherited simply to have her parents by her side or even one kindly relative at her young age.

Suddenly, all their heads came up at the sound of a carriage arriving outside. This was it then, Affinity thought, brushing nonexistent wrinkles out of the peacock-blue morning gown that she wore. It had been decided that she should be the principal spokesperson as she was the unofficial leader and the one with the most eminent need of knowledge. So she rose, smiling brightly at her friends and she went to the front door to take up the unusual position of greeting an expected guest. Able and all the other servants had been ordered away on lengthy tasks this afternoon.

The knocker sounded firmly and quick with no hesitations, so Affinity forced herself to react similarly. She placed a welcoming half-smile on her lips, and she tugged open the door decisively. Her smile immediately fell into disconcertion as she gazed upon a man and not a woman standing before her. He was tall and more dark-complected than anyone she’d happened upon before. His brown eyes were at once seductive and held a depth that when combined with his handsome features were totally compelling and exotic.

“Senorita Hope?”

Spanish? His dialect was saturated with Latin accents and the pieces of his longer black-tinged hair, curling on the ends, and his features fell into place.

“Yes?” Affinity answered to the false name she’d used in the missives to Madam DeJonge.

“My mistress, requests funding, before she enters, my lady.”

Your mistress? Was he a prostitute? Did they have male lovers of . . . who? Women? Men?

“Your mistress is, Madam DeJonge?” Affinity asked, watching him nod with his sensualistic brown eyes gazing into her very soul it seemed. “Ah . . . yes.” She turned her head, trying to catch her thoughts, as she said, “Brevity, bring the packet please.”

Affinity thought that being paid first seemed logical, however, it did not seem intelligent to simply hand the entire packet of money promised over to this man and a waiting carriage beyond. When Brevity approached, the Spanish courier’s eyes turned directly to her and Affinity heard Brevity’s catch of breath. Affinity did not blame Brevity, because the Spaniard was a man that women had to adore looking upon. Affinity quickly took the packet from Brevity, but before she handed it to Madam DeJonge’s handsome-Spanish-courier-possible-male-prostitute, she quickly opened the packet and removed roughly half of the contents.

“Tell, your mistress, that we offer her half in good faith, and to please come in and join us for tea,” Affinity said firmly.

The handsome Spaniard took the money, with a respectful half-bow, and then both she and Brevity watched his tall and well-made form stride back to the waiting carriage. His physical form was one to sigh upon, it was lean and muscular, yet not so well turned as Law’s, Affinity decided.

“A man?” both Diversity and Caprice exclaimed from their position standing at the entrance to the parlor.

Brevity turned to them nodding, as she conspiratorially whispered, “But, the madam, is-s with him, waiting in the carriage-,”

“Here she comes,” Affinity said quickly as she watched a somber dressed and completely veiled figure alight from the carriage. “At least she appears discreet,” Affinity added hopefully.

“S-Should I wait or go back?” Brevity asked, sounding as anxious as Affinity felt.

“Wait in the parlor with the others. I will bring her in if all proceeds well,” Affinity advised Brevity, but she did not turn to look at her, instead keeping her eyes on the approaching Madam DeJonge and the handsome Spaniard as they approached. It seemed they were to have two guest, and Affinity wondered frivolously if the Spanish courier could overtake her and her friends for nefarious reasons at the madam’s orders. He was likely brought for Madam DeJonge’s own protection, Affinity chided herself, and this was the daring part of being daring.

Madam DeJonge was a petite and well-rounded woman and as she drew near, Affinity saw that her gown was very expensively made in deep midnight purple and not black. Not knowing how to proceed, especially since ladies did not normally meet visitors on their doorstep, Affinity held out her hand in welcome. It was best to be forthright, she thought. “Madam DeJonge, I am Affinity and I want to welcome you.”

Madam DeJonge stopped before her with the handsome Spaniard at her side. Affinity could not make out much of Madam DeJonge’s features through the shadowy veil that she wore. However, her voice when she spoke was light and airy with a French accent. “Lady Affinity, I simply had to meet the woman of the most unusual request.”

Affinity nodded and said, “But sincere request, Madam DeJonge.”

“Oh, I think I like you,” Madam DeJonge declared, with her gloved hand reaching forward to take Affinity’s hand. “Perhaps honest, appearing sincere,” Madam DeJonge continued as though adding up a list of Affinity’s qualities. “Yet mature. All would be lost, if you were a silly girl, I would throw up my hands and leave. I must say I feared this.”

Affinity released Madam DeJonge’s hand. “I am honored for the compliment, madam. Would you like to come inside and have tea with my friends and me?”

“Oh, Sebastian, she has invited me to tea. How cultured you are mon Lady Affinity. This is good . . . all good.” Madam DeJonge proceeded through the door with the handsome Spaniard named Sebastian directly behind her, as she advised, “Sebastian will accompany me, yes?”

“Of course,” Affinity offered, feeling on the one hand that she did not wish to upset the deal, as it were, however on the other hand wondering how forthright the discussion could become with a man present.

Affinity started forward to guide Madam DeJonge and Sebastian toward the parlor, but it was then that she noticed that Sebastian was carrying a small leather satchel. How she’d missed it in all the excitement, she did not know, and the sudden knowledge of it now made her very nervous. Thieves surely carried satchels such as this filled with the underhanded tools of their trade.

“Might I take that for you, Mr. Sebastian?” Affinity offered lamely, as she halted right before the parlor entryway.

“Non-Non, Lady Affinity,” Madam DeJonge said, sailing past Affinity as she was removing her veil and bonnet. “I must have the satchel. These things we will be needing.”

Oh my. But Affinity lost her immediate concern for the next few moments, over the possible nefarious reasons for the satchel’s presence, as more important events came to light, like the first view of Madam DeJonge’s face and the introduction to her friends. Madam DeJonge was an attractive older woman with rich auburn hair and dark eyebrows, perhaps wearing a bit too much lavender coloring over her eyes and red rouge on her slightly plump cheeks. But her smile appeared genuine and her manner was forthright. Introductions were made quickly, and Affinity’s friends all sent questioning looks at her, and then at the Spaniard.

Madam DeJonge broke the awkwardness, as she said, “My Lady Brevity, Lady Caprice, and Lady Diversity, this is Sebastian and he will be helping us in this most unusual instructions today.” Then, Madam DeJonge added, “Oh, you are all so bravura. I am impressed and I might try to convince you to come work for me as Sebastian does.”

The tea cup Affinity was handing to Madam DeJonge rattled noticeably, then Sebastian chuckled, sitting beside Madam DeJonge on the settee with the satchel at his feet. Brevity beside her, at the intimate sound coming from the handsome exotic, nearly spilled the tea out of the cup she was handing to Sebastian.

Madam DeJonge was clearly pleased at being served tea. “Ladies, there are none of the parents about that would set the Bow Street Runner on Madam DeJonge is there?”

“No, none at all,” Affinity said, as they all shook their heads solemnly. “We are completely private.”

“Very good then,” Madam DeJonge said, sitting forward and setting her teacup and saucer on the table between them. “Now what is it you young ladies wish to know from Madam DeJonge?”

The moment had arrived, and Affinity glanced uncomfortably at Sebastian. She’d stated quite clearly in her missive to Madam DeJonge that they wished instruction to the fullest extent on intimate relations between a man and a woman. However, Affinity understood if this conversation were to be open and the least bit comfortable, it must begin now.

“We desire, Madam DeJonge, that you would share with us all things sexual,” Affinity stated briskly, with as unaffected manner as she was able. “Ah, from the very beginning that is,” she added.

“And the purpose, ladies?” Madam DeJonge paused expectantly. “You will tell me the purpose.”

“To catch husbands-s-s,” Brevity blurted, with long edges to her lisp.

“Oh, how clever of you!” Madam DeJonge exclaimed. “And this sound that you have, Lady Brevity, when you speak, is very seductive and foreign. Men will love this. Just as Sebastian’s and mine. It will, how you say, intrigue . . . yes, Sebastian?”

“Titillate, Madam DeJonge,” Sebastian practically purred with his rolling tenor accent. “Captura, completely.” Sebastian’s suggestive gaze, filled with darkening brown heat was all for Brevity, whose cheeks washed pink beneath his scrutiny.

Every one of the Lady Rogues felt instantly relieved, and then burgeoning with confidence that they’d made the right choice, after Madam DeJonge’s generous compliment of Brevity.

“Oui,” Madam DeJonge agreed with Sebastian, then she turned her dark eyes on all of them. “And this is why we have, Sebastian, with us today. Have any of you ladies seen the male body before?” Madam DeJonge paused . . . then she said slowly. “Naked?”

“P-Perhaps parts,” Affinity stuttered, reprimanding herself for her wavering words. The rest of her friends shifted in their seats trying to remain blasé in their appearance, however, the excited energy newly formed in the room could not be denied. Then, Sebastian stood suddenly, taking off his jacket as he did so, and Affinity lately thought to add, “But we do not want sex, here and now, just to learn about it.”

Sebastian’s answering chuckle shivered down all of their spines, as Madam DeJonge said, “I would not be, how do you say, a good business woman, if I did not offer the services of the handsome gentleman. So I say, that should any of you lovely ladies change your mind, Sebastian, can be enjoyed intimately for another fee.” By then, Sebastian had continued untying his shirt and had just pulled it off as Madam DeJonge added, “Even so, ladies, I think it is best for you to become familiar with the naked skin on a man.”

All of them sat in varying degrees of appreciation, curiosity, and embarrassment, over the spectacular view of Sebastian’s naked upper torso. A torso that was lean, but physically roped with muscle made of warmly browned flesh.

Yet they boldly kept their seats, every one of them, as the bare-chested Sebastian walked forward and paused in front of each of them, taking one hand and bowing over it for a moment, while he placed their hand briefly on his bare chest. Steadfastly, causing a bit of serious blushing among her friends. And Affinity noticed that when Sebastian came to Brevity last, he added a kiss to her hand as well.

“Men desire to be touched as much as women. Is this not so, Sebastian?” Madam DeJonge asked, as she looked at each of them. Sebastian responded with a sensuous grin, but said nothing. “They love for their lovers to be adventurous and playful. No pouts. This is most important, to not say, ‘no,’ to your man. There is nothing a good man can do with his woman that she will not enjoy to try, yes.”

Sebastian returned to Madam DeJonge’s side and she reached up stroking her hand over the bronzed-skin and dark hair on his muscular chest. “They in turn appreciate a woman who is open and receptive. She must be willing to give the pleasure as well as receive it. Have you ever given your body joy from the female’s lower lips?” Pausing, Madam DeJonge looked at them. “Ah, I see you have felt between your thighs. Have you touched this place and made it weep the pleasure?”

Affinity was taken by surprise from watching Madam DeJonge’s fingers lightly tracing over the mounded sinew on Sebastian’s chest, and she, as all her friends found herself blurting out, “Yes.”

“Excellent,” Madam DeJonge said, “Then, all of you know how you want to be touched and caressed. Perhaps, you dream how you wish a man would put his breath on your skin, or his mouth, or the lick of his tongue. Men have the same pleasure and dreams. Do you see?” Madam DeJonge asked, as she stroked lower over the obvious bulge in Sebastian’s breeches. “Just speaking of this has aroused, our beautiful Sebastian.”

Affinity saw Diversity waving her napkin in front of her face as she sucked in her own heated breath. The long outline beneath the black of Sebastian’s breeches was impressive looking, and while Madam DeJonge stroked the projecting length, the tanned-skinned and lightly ridged muscles in Sebastian’s belly tighten visibly to show six well-defined ribs of sinew.

“This is the essence, my ladies. The shaft of a man’s passion. A woman who worships this freely has her gentleman’s desire captured. I instruct all my ladies to love this with abandon.”

“But h-how?” Affinity asked, clearing her throat with a catch.

“I could do this now with, Sebastian’s, lovely cock? Or I have another way. It is important to love a man’s cock, cherie. The woman must adore it with her hands, her lips, her mouth, her tongue, the breath . . . her sex . . . and her bottom.”

“It is called a cock then?” Diversify asked.

“It is called many-many things, the cock, the dick, the penis, prick, or en bitte as they say in French,” Madam DeJonge replied.

“A dong,” Sebastian added suddenly, in his deep voice.

“Oui, your favorite, I am certain,” Madam DeJonge said to Sebastian, obviously squeezing his personal, “dong,” to the flattening of Sebastian’s lips. Then, Madam DeJonge’s fingers patted his penis several times, as she said, “Now hand me the satchel and sit beside me, Sebastian. I can see the ladies are not quite ready for the sight of your lovely cock.”

Affinity tried to become alarmed again about the satchel, however, her senses were distracted by the undertow of arousal thrumming through her body. She watched Sebastian hand the satchel to Madam, and then Madam DeJonge’s gloved fingers were opening it.

“Have any of you ladies heard of a godemiché before?” Madam DeJonge asked, reaching into the satchel. Affinity’s laden mind tried to place the French phrase without any success as she watched Madam DeJonge pulling a long black object out of the satchel. “This means leather shaped, like the penis, yes?”

They all gasped in varying degrees of wonder as Madam DeJonge stroked the leather padded and rather large penis-shaped object. “I have one of these for each of you at a small extra fee, yes?”

Affinity nodded rather stupidly, agreeing, she imagined. She had no idea anything like this existed, and if she’d not seen Law’s real one, she would say the size and length of the godemiché was unbelievable.

“You will each take one of these, then and I will instruct you how to stroke it, yes?” Madam DeJonge said enticingly.

It could have been a comedy, four proper ladies, sitting in a front parlor, with a real Madam, and each stroking godemichés. However, they were all quite serious about the need to learn, and then strangely the entire encounter was becoming arousing.

“Circle the base firmly with your fingers snug around.” Madam DeJonge demonstrated with her own example. “Stroke the cock to the top, skimming over the head like so.” All eyes were on her hand. “Now tightened your fingers and slide back down the shaft.” As Madam DeJonge watched their attempts, she kept talking. “Now you must do this many times, and as you stroke your lover, the cock, you will slowly begin to increase your stroking. You will start at the small pace and move faster as your gentleman gets more excited.”

Sebastian shifted and his bent legs opened wider as though he could not hold them closed, with Madam DeJonge glancing sideways at him, patting his thigh. “Yes, Sebastian?” she asked.

“Spit,” he answered in a rather husky-roughened voice.

“Oui,” Madam DeJonge acknowledged, turning her gaze to their industrious stroking methods. “Men love earthy, my ladies, the sweat, la blanc, the juices that flow from our bodies, and as Sebastian reminds me, they enjoy the spit.” Madam DeJonge shifted slightly sideways in her seat so everyone had a good view. “You can wet your palm slowly with your tongue, enticing your gentleman as you do, yes. Then, take the liquid back to the cock and lubricate it . . . Another way is to wet the cock with your mouth and tongue and this brings us to another way to stroke a man . . . Male cock sucking, and ladies, I say this here, that your mamas would never tell you. This is a man’s favorite request at my salon and you must always take the seed that is ejaculated into your mouth.”

“Swallow,” Sebastian added, in a near male purring.

Then, suddenly Brevity’s godemiché toppled out of her fingers landing with a clatter on the polished wood flooring at her feet.

“Senorita,” Sebastian said, immediately rising to go and pick up the leather penis. However, Brevity was bowing over and reaching forward for it at the same time, so that their heads knocked lightly. Sebastian grasped her hand, steadying her, as he brought the lengthy artificial penis up between them. “Let me help you, sweet,” he said lowly with his brown eyes shining.

“Is this the true s-s-size?” Brevity asked, seemingly caught in the moment with Sebastian kneeling before her.

“For some men, yes. For me, Senorita, it is-,” Sebastian paused, then he added quite by all their surprise, “Longer.”

“Oui, our Sebastian is un étalon,” Madam DeJonge, proclaimed. A stallion, Affinity translated the French word in her mind as Madam DeJonge continued on. “And most men are not this. Six or seven inches is most common.”

“How on earth do you get that into your mouth?” Diversity, blurted.

Both Madam DeJonge and Sebastian laughed, and it was not an ungenerous sound of ridicule, but true delight. Then, Sebastian settled slowly onto the floor next to Brevity’s skirt-covered feet as he handed the godemiché fully into her small hands.

Madam DeJonge waved her gloved hand, “It can be done, cherie, but more often we pretend enthusiastically that we are taking more than we are.” Sebastian cleared his throat, raising a questioning glance at her and Madam DeJonge laughed, saying, “You are learning also, yes, Sebastian?”

“Apparently so,” he said, nodding his dark head slightly.

Madam DeJonge countered, “Well, darling, can you remember any woman taking your full harden cock into their mouths, over and over on each stroke.” Sebastian started to answer, but Madam DeJonge raised her hand to him, and finished saying, “Or did you even care they might not be, because you were in such bliss, darling?”

Instead of looking at Madam DeJonge to answer, Sebastian looked up at Brevity and answered. “Bliss,” he said deeply. “I realize now through the bliss, I never noticed that not one has taken my entire dong into their mouths, stroke after stroke.”

Brevity gasped, of course they all did, each in varying degrees of rising sexual turmoil. Some of them confused that the very thought of taking a man’s cock into their mouth could be arousing in the first place. But not Affinity, she knew the thought was climatically arousing. She just needed to know how!

“Show us please, Madam DeJonge,” Affinity found herself pleading softly.

Madam DeJonge smiled at her. It was a knowing smile, but it had hints of kindness in it. “You have the most need. I already felt this. You have someone in mind, yes?” Affinity nodded. “Then, cherie, take your godemiché and lick your tongue slowly over the head in circles, while stroking the base firmly.”

Affinity looked down at her godemiché with her mouth suddenly watering. Her need was so great that no perceived shame could over shadow it. She pretended in her mind that she might be alone for a moment to embolden herself. Then, she lapped her tongue outward and over the head.

“Feel for the slit, then feel the rim with your tongue, cherie,” Madam DeJonge encouraged.

“Never have I seen anything more erotic,” Sebastian said suddenly in a husky whisper.

Affinity barely heard Sebastian’s awe. She was too entranced with the feel of the godemiché beneath her tongue, with the shape of the wide bullet head and the smooth texture gliding beneath her tongue. Amazingly, the godemiché was anatomically correct. There was a slit embedded where she knew it to be and the rim had a notched V underneath. The feel of it stretching her lips and rubbing the tender inner reaches of her mouth, awoke new feelings inside her for more contact, more stretching, feeling and rubbing deep in her mouth.

Madam DeJonge’s instructions, sounded hushed, and seemed to come to her in slow motion. “Lick the rim underneath. Press the head in your mouth slowly. Suckle. Stroke this base. Faster. Deeper. Oui, Oui!” Madam DeJonge exclaimed, and clapped her hands, jolting Affinity out of her mesmerizing endeavor. “You see, and some of this strokes into your mouth you have taken the cock to the base and they never know it is not each time.”

Affinity released the godemiché from her mouth, barely able to believe what she’d done . . . and in the presences of others. But bless her friends, and then especially Caprice for her empathy.

“Oh, and can we use the godemiché on ourselves?” Caprice asked excitedly, breaking Affinity’s embarrassed tension at her outlandish carnal display with a provocative question that fit the situation.

“Of course,” Madam DeJonge nodded. “But if you are the virgin, you will want to be very careful. You should not take the godemiché more than three inches inside, or your mamas will be so very angry if you lose your precious virginity.”

Then, the afternoon wore on with intimate instructions of French kissing, clitoris and pussy licking, fortification and the different positions used. Their knowledge grew as their vocabulary expanded also, so that copulation became, “fucking,” their sex was called, “pussy or cunt,” and a male’s seed was called, “come.” Such heady words, earthy sounding, but now they knew their actions. So much intimacy, so much extraordinary knowledge and frankly so much arousal, left all of them, save perhaps Madam DeJonge and Sebastian, dazed.

Madam DeJonge, who was ever the business woman, sold them the godemichés, and a creamy lubricant used for sexual purpose, and tins of French condoms. She also said discreetly, should any of their friends be interested in instructions such as this, she would be available for the same fee. Then, she also suggested that they could see all of Sebastian’s anatomy for a soaring fee and double that, they could practice their newly formed skills upon him . . . in privacy of course!

Affinity declined for all of them. Somehow, it seemed that paying for such intimacy made it feel involuntary, as though taking from Sebastian something he would not freely give. Brevity in particular appeared quite relieved as she caressed a strand of Sebastian’s hair without him realizing it.

Then, the most amazing afternoon was over and Madam DeJonge and Sebastian were taking their leave. “I might not have agreed had you not treated me with this generosity of spirit and respect that you did,” Madam DeJonge said. “The tea was very beautiful.”

Affinity thanked Madam DeJonge, while noticing Sebastian bowing over Brevity’s hand, kissing it, and when he rose he leaned forward to whisper something in her ear. Then, Sebastian and Madam DeJonge were both gone, and the door shut firmly.

“What did he say?” Diversity and Affinity asked Brevity at the same time.

“He s-said,” Brevity answered, clutching her bosom with her skin flushing pink. “Come to me.”

They all gasped, now they all knew the double entendre of the before seemingly innocent word, “come.”

Chapter Eight

Law stood beneath a droopy elm tree in front of Lady Affinity Redgrift’s London abode. It was midnight, one week to the hour of their last encounter. He was angry and it was hard to contain, and he was intrigued and that was even more impossible to control. She’d touched his dick. No lady did such a thing, but Affinity was a lady. A pure bred one. He’d not been idle in learning all he could about Lady Affinity Redgrift in his week of confusion and simmering anger.

Damnation, she had his journal. The seductive minx had his life in her hands. It was disconcerting to have his private sexual thoughts pried into, but more than that it was devastating that anyone of Affinity’s station learn his secret . . . that he was the Benefactor. One wrong word from her petal soft lips, or one wrong excited tittering of gossip and his mission would be at an end. Then how could he atone, he thought, even as he knew there was no possible way he could ever right his wrong doing?

Law settled his shoulder against the roughened bark of the elm tree as he inhaled slowly on a cigarillo. The fog was dense enough that his darkly clothed figure became a shadow in the shifting mists. The fog condensed everything around him, holding the smoke from his cigarillo like a tangible thing, with the scent wafting strongly in his nostrils. The sudden image of Magdalena laughing as she coughed ridiculously after trying a puff of one of his cigarillos’ sprang into his mind. Thoughts of that time always seemed to haunt him more when he could smell the smoke the strongest.

He’d seemed so young then, yet it had only been three years ago that he was a first captain in England’s finest military. Then, he’d been a second son and all second son’s dutifully joined the military. His joining found him immediately embroiled in the Spanish War. A hellish action that no proper English gentleman would have fathomed in their wildest dreams. There was no way a man could prepare for the horror of war and the complete foreignness of a country so far away, and he knew that logically, yet one had to live it to understand the compelling strangeness of it all.

Nonetheless, that was no excuse for his inexperience and for his devastating naiveté. It had cost Magdalena her life. Magdalena, the beautiful whore who had saved his life, just as he’d ended hers. He had berated himself a thousand times and in a thousand different hells for not realizing that an English officer’s presence in a Spanish whore’s adobe hut could get her killed.

But she had to know, Law thought, tilting his head back against the tree, she had to know how dangerous it was. He’d simply thought that if the Spanish found him, they would capture him as a prisoner. A truly naive Englishman’s thinking. But Spain was not England and war was not civilized, it was ugly and dirty.

He’d only been two weeks off the ship, when in a horrible and bloody fight, in a dark, dank, and nearly impassible jungle, he’d been injured and splintered from his main fighting regiment. He had alternately walked and hid for days without water with a piece of shot in his arm. By that time, he supposed he was hallucinating, when he’d stumbled into a fair sized Spanish town. However by then, if they took him as a prisoner, he might have counted it a blessing. But this town was far north of the fighting, and at first glance as he’d stumbled through what appeared to be the main dirt street, none of the people looked like the Mexican military, but like peasants and common folks.

That was where Magdalena found him crumpled against an adobe wall, nearly unconscious. He’d hoarsely begged her for water, then he’d passed out, and when he woke days later he was laying in her scarce adobe hut. She was young and kind, but poor beyond description, and the first thing she’d asked him for was money. He gave her his father’s gold watch, and just that simple action brought such joy to her.

He had healed and basked in her youth, and they’d become lovers. Many times she’d asked about England, and he’d known as one does, that part of her continued interest and kindness in him was with the hope he might take her there. Take her away from the squalor she lived in, and her firm young body, so sexually eager to please him, had thrilled his masculinity, but also obscured the horrors that he’d seen. The ones that he knew it was his duty to return to.

Then, he’d made the fatal mistake. He’d felt so alive and he had seen so much death, the spirit of life inside him was unreasonable. He’d left the adobe hut and wandered the village. He’d been seen. Tragically, he’d even been seen wearing his uniform. How mindless he was not to think that men from his country had killed brothers, husbands, and the loved ones of the people from the village.

He was never certain who it was, which man in the village or perhaps it was someone from the Mexican military. He’d never known. He’d only known that a trap must have been set to kill him, not simply capture him as he would so naively think, if he thought of it at all. And plans set with no thought to Magdalena’s presence beside him. Magdalena must have heard about the plan somewhere, because she’d tried to stop it, and that is when she had been killed in the shots fired on him. She’d died in his arms, broken and bleeding, still begging him to take her to England.

He could still remember the blood, and the joy in Magdalena’s dark eyes when he’d said, “Yes,” he would take her with him. Then she’d died, as he’d known she would in that horrible moment and nothing had ever devastated him as much as having a woman die in his arms. To die because of him. He’d barely made it out alive after leaving Magdalena’s bleeding body behind.

Law winced, grating his head against the tree. They said time healed and the memory did not bleed as badly as it once had. He’d fought the rest of his term of service in a daze, surprised still that he had survived. It had seemed at times that he willed his death. Then, upon his return to England, he’d found his own brother dead of a simple and foolish horse racing accident, leaving him now the Duke of St. Martin. Yet, he’d been too fanatic in his grief. It had suffocated him, until in a drunken motley state he’d come across a street walker being attacked. Her screams had jolted his drunken mind and without a second thought he’d plowed into her attacker. The blackguard had fled, but the prostitute was injured by a knife wound to her chest.

Rosie was her name and she was as plump and pleasant as a tart cherry pie. He’d saved her, and then suddenly he’d found the pain of his existence eased. Rosie had lived and as she did, he found himself speaking to her of a different life. Each word he spoke seemed to heal him and make him more whole, and when she had agreed to finally take his help . . . he’d smiled.

He’d felt guilty about that smile immediately afterwards, yet twenty dozen smiles later in his life, he did not feel guilty any longer. He wondered now, as anger simmered inside him while looking up at Affinity Redgrift’s bedchamber, if the time had not nearly come for him to forgive himself.

Law extinguished his cigarillo, then he turned and climbed the elm tree and followed the largest branch over to the balcony he knew to be outside Affinity Redgrift’s bedchamber. What he was doing was completely out of his nature. He intended to get his journal back, that part was true, but he also intended to find a way to blackmail Affinity into not speaking of his hidden work.

Nevertheless, it was the other intentions inside him that he dared not look at too closely. Like the fact that he’d never taken his cock in hand and relieved his arousal of that night or the fact of his intrigue about Affinity’s intense curiosity over him and her seemingly unconventional methods of doing . . . What?

All that he knew for certain was that he could still feel Affinity’s body pressed to his body and her finger sliding over the wet slit of his cock.

Chapter Nine

Affinity squinted at the page she was reading as she lay on top of her bed covers with her night gown pulled upward and bunched around her waist. The godemiché lay beside her on the bed as she read a passage in Law’s journal.

. . . Mary, with her dusty blond hair and her blush petal lips, so thin as to be emaciated, has revealed to me the greatest gift a man could possess. It is the art of cunt licking. And I must say here that I am invigorated. My dreams each night since hearing of this have been fulsome with images of women’s bared pussy’s that are wet, swollen, and rosy. Each dream-filled pussy is splayed and begging for my tongues caresses. The wonder that a man can give a woman such pleasure is emboldening.

I understood before, have witnessed it in fact, that a woman does receive pleasure from the thrust of a man’s cock, but never with this method and to these heights as I now understand. Ah, and the method. Could the method be more enticing for a man to do? Taking your woman’s sex into your mouth and tasting the heat of it. Feeling the pinpoint throbs and the deep inner flesh leaving wetness on your mouth from the musky lips or deeper.

To take a woman and hold her down so. To have her spread her thighs and raising her long soft limbs as though an altar for a man to worship upon. Then, the talent of it that Mary described. She instructed me to long slow licks of the tongue to start. She named the bud of every woman’s pleasure as the clit, clitty, or love button. How a man should stroke this furrowed button with the tip of his tongue. In doing so it fills with passion and thrusts upward to meet his tongue pleading for more attention. Then, as the woman’s excited moans quicken, the man’s tongue should follow them in speed, circling, then licking . . .

I am uncertain if I can continue here, my senses are so heightened that my fingers tremble and my cock throbs stiffly between my thighs.

(Hours later . . . I could not stop myself, nor in my damnation did I want to. I took my insolent cock to my hand as my mind filled with dreams of a woman’s pussy beneath my eager mouth. I am sated now, beyond understanding. My seed is spent. Yet, I promise myself to write again of this masturbation. I want to explore a man’s masturbation and my deep feeling toward it . . . )

“Oh,” Affinity moaned, clenching her eyes. Why could she not climax? What was holding her back? Then she sighed, long and drawn out, releasing the tension in her body as she tucked Law’s journal under the pillow beneath her head, then she lay staring at the canopy overhead. All she had to do was touch the throbbing place between her thighs, but something held her back. Some unseeable force made it seem less than fulfilling.

She had wanted to insert the godemiché partially inside herself to see how it felt. Dream more of Law, if she were honest. She needed a plan to see him again. Another scheme. He would be angry that she had his journal. Oh yes, he would be, and she needed to return it. But how could she intrigue him and try to seduce him, when she had committed this crime against him.

It was very complex. She had to come up with a brilliant scheme, first to override his anger, then to entice him. Perhaps, she could pretend to be a prostitute? He was so sympathetic toward them. If she just did not admit being a prostitute outright, but hinted at it, therefore not exactly lying to him, yet letting him assume.

Hmm, Affinity yawned, she needed to think on this very carefully. If her campaign for Law were to work at all, she needed to find ways to spend time in his company. Perhaps, she could blackmail him with her knowledge of his Benefactor’s exploits. Surely some type of kindly blackmailing had possibilities? Affinity sighed again as her eyes closed and she let her thoughts float freely through her vivid imagination.

Click . . .

The French door was open, and the room beyond was dark, but not so dark that it only took a few moments for Law’s eyes to adjust. His cock was hard and beating a heavy timbre in his skin-tight riding breeches. The erotic quality of the moment was whirling around him, nagging him incessantly. But he needed to act decisively, even though everything about this was horribly improper, nearly criminal. However, Affinity Redgrift had set the stage, not him, so he let his anger rise to the forefront, overriding his moral unrest, and then he strode forward to the bed and his victim.

He was unclear as to exactly what his next action would be. Perhaps to pounce, certainly to cover Affinity’s mouth and capture her wrists, holding her prisoner to his voice and commands. However, he was instantly pulled up short, to a jerking halt in his stride at the end of her bed, by the sight that met him.

Lord, she was naked . . . naked splendor with her waist, hips, curving legs, and her cunt exposed. A tufted mound, bared to his view. Lady Affinity Redgrift lay tumbled on top of her bed, not beneath the covers, with a filmy white nightgown rustled upward and lying just underneath her breasts. Her lower half was nude and beside her lay a large black artificial penis. Godemiché, he had heard the prostitutes call them, and suddenly Law realized that his hand was stretched outward to her. His fingers reaching toward the moist pearly slit of her sex as his body was bending.

He nearly stopped himself for his folly, for the complete wrongness of what he wanted to do. That was only one split moment of sanity in the drenching lust pounding through his body. That devil-lust that said she was asking for it. She was not like other woman, but a sexual creature of need. No logic or sanity would serve him in this moment of avid need. She’d touched his seeping tumid slit. She’d dipped her finger in the seed oozing from that slit, and now he would finger her wet puffy cleft.

The pillowed tops of her cunt were outlined with soft brown-shaded ringlets. The curls were backdrops for the beckoning cleft, and his finger met the delicate hair, then the tender wet flesh beneath. Wetness.

Oh God, it clung to his finger as he traced the hot cleft of Affinity’s cunt from deep below, up to the very top. Sweat beaded on his upper lip as the top of his gaze caught sight of the quivering satin flesh of Affinity’s belly. Instantly, his gaze raised with his finger still seated on the tender lips of Affinity’s pussy. Their gazes collided. He could not tell the color of her eyes other than the darkness and arousal clinging deeply within them.

“Law,” she beckoned softly, not fearful or alarmed, but husky sounding with desire.

Then his cock made his finger move, dipping down once more and stroking over the quivering petals of her cunt. Lord, she was the most desirable thing he’d ever envisioned and he watched her face, seeing it for the first time, as it molded in pleasure. A pleasure beyond her control, because she was a slave to it as he was. She was ready for him, laying needy and wanting. She must have fallen asleep that way, and his every finger petting of her cunt moved her body to his rhythm.

Her moans escaped, tripping from her throat in the dark shadows of the room. She was soft and helpless with need, and begging him with her gaze. Her hips undulated upward as her thighs quivered open, baring her soul to him. The carnal eroticism of the big black cock lying next to her pale woman’s body raped his senses.

“Taking your woman’s sex into your mouth and tasting the heat of it,” Affinity murmured with enticement, command, and pleading all in her sensual purring.

“Lord, you wicked vixen,” Law rasped with a husky growling in his voice. She used his own words to enslave him. But his fingers were prisoners in her cunt.

“Feeling the pinpoint throbs,” she moaned. “And the deep inner flesh leaving wetness on your mouth from the musky lips or deeper,” she moaned again, and it was to the lust throbbing in his body.

Then, Law did growl as the meaning of his words, but her voice, thrashed his senses and he came up onto the bed, gripping her thighs now and tugging them apart. He split her femininity open to his gaze. “I should thrash you,” he uttered harshly. “I should turn your ass up and whip it. Not-!”

“I am defenseless beneath you,” Affinity cried passionately. “I beg you. I will give you anything. I beg you!” she mewled with her body shaking in need.

The scent of her lust clung to his nostrils and wormed through his veins. The sight of her cunt forced open to his gaze, began leaking seed out of the slit of his cock in throbs, straining his breeches. Her clit jutted upward, swollen and rosy, and the words, “love button,” fevered his senses. His hands had wills of their own as they tugged her toward him bouncing her buttocks and breasts, while his head lowered. He was insane in that moment for even considering doing what he would do, what he had to do, and what the woman beneath him was begging him to do.

Affinity cried out, clutching Law’s thick hair sluicing between her fingers as the heat of his mouth branded her. His lips followed his hot breath, kissing her tender flesh as nothing had ever caressed her before.

She could believe nothing else. She could be nothing else, as her desire soared beyond any of her imaginings, and Law’s voice growled with a sound of triumph and pleasure against her pussy lips. Her hips bowed upward as she gasped, and then he rucked her legs up over his shoulders. His hands grasped the cheeks of her buttocks, groping each, as his tongue lapped deeply, between her smoldering pussy lips.

She panted, nearly screaming as she stuffed her fist into her mouth, and then Law lapped her clitoris with the flat of his tongue. Her entire body jolted in bliss and Law growled again answering her reaction. He drank on her clitoris as if he was parched and her hips began to rock in a frantic rhythm. It was as though he wanted to smear her essence on his mouth, and the tip of his tongue tortured pleasure again and again over her clit.

He would never get enough of this. Never! It was the life blood of any male, licking his woman’s sex, readying her, taking her beneath him, smelling and tasting her desire for him. Law had to hold Affinity down to his licking, because her hips were so wildly wanting to move. But she was his in this moment. Completely his . . . and he’d never felt such power. Then, he took her fully with his tongue, thrusting it deep inside her vagina, while his upper lip covered her clit. Her curving and plush body arced upward beneath him, sliding his tongue deeper into her hot sheath, a sheath that leaked musky juices on his face and clutched in quivers around his tongue.

Lord. Nothing had ever ravaged him this deeply before. This was perfection! This was ecstasy. This was blinding uncontrollable need. And he did it again. He lapped his tongue from her sheath, and then plunged it inward once more. Affinity jolted beneath him with an elongated moan that he knew was a scream muffled beneath her fist.

It was then that he felt on his tongue and mouth, what his cock had only felt before. A woman’s climax. Affinity’s thighs clamped against his face as her pussy throbbed ecstatically over his tongue. He could feel the bliss-filled torture of it and it ran through his body like wild fire. It hit his cock like a ram and suddenly out of nowhere he ejaculated. The rapture of it slammed into him, bowing his body as he voraciously drank Affinity’s climax into his mouth and against his tongue. His cock bucked in his tight breeches and threw seed again, tearing a groan from his throat.

Still, he held Affinity’s cunt to his mouth with his body rigid, least he fall over, and he felt the last throes of her climax thrash against his mouth. He could barely breathe or think for several moments, but his first coherent thought was that he wanted to do it again.

How could a man ever be the same after something like this and for the first true time in his life he understood the lure of prostitutes. Something as powerful as he’d just experienced could obsess anyone into a lifetime pursuit. And he did not think that proper English ladies, the married wives of noblemen, would ever consider anything so earthy in their beds. He now knew some of the reasons his fellow noblemen sought mistresses so heartily.

But Affinity had. Affinity, who had to be a virgin, she, a young Miss in her first London season, husband hunting. He knew that because he’d inquired about her, and all single young women within her age group were. But now, he was not thinking as much with his cock as he had all week, and his anger had never been abated, only side tracked. Law looked at Affinity’s naked body with her legs thrown up over his shoulders and his mouth still seated to her pussy. Now was not the time for regrets or recrimination, because he had a vexing and completely unnatural woman, at her most vulnerable.

His tongue rasped leaving her sheath, then bringing her juices onto the roof of his mouth. He was marked with her scent and taste, and he was also vulnerable, however, he was stronger than she. She was soft and pliable, nearly fainted in the aftermath of pleasure, as he lowered her buttocks to the bed. Her legs fell down to the crook of his arms and the position brought them full-circle. He clothed, shielded now and stronger, while she lay naked and open before him. The trust in that tried to cool his anger and determination, yet he thrust that aside. Questions had to be answered and motives needed to be revealed.

“Your pleasure,” Affinity whispered, clasping her hand over his hands where he held her bare hips. She started to lift her body upright with her words. “I want to give you as much pleasure as you have given me.”

“I see. Would you like me to take your virginity so that you could plot to ensnare me into marriage?” Law accused her harshly, dragging Affinity down onto the bed again with his hands clamped over her wrists.

He tugged her wrists over her head with the weight of his body cradled between her bare thighs, as she cried softly, “No, that is not my intention!”

He glared down at her noticing her crooked front tooth and the light freckles across her nose. Lady Affinity Redgrift was a terrible liar, it shown straight through her hazel eyes sprinkled with gold flecks. Her long brown hair fanned out on the bed around them as she looked up at him seriously. “I would want no one that did not want me. I just . . . I just wanted to investigate the possibility.”

“These events are absurd for a lady,” he accused.

She huffed with telltale tears shining in her eyes. “I am original or trying to be and I would never try to ensnare you with the taking of my virginity!”

“And my proof lies here?” Law asked roughly, as he humped his hips against her.

“Oh,” she gasped, and if it was from what he said or the feel, he was unsure. “I swear I would never ensnare you and I would put it to paper vowing it. I simply find you attractive, besides I won’t let you take my virginity!”

Law snorted. The woman was completely mad, yet her voluptuous body moving beneath his was waking his cock again. Incredible! “So all this is simply because you find me attractive? You pry like a criminal into my life, break into my home, steal my possessions . . . And this is supposed to endear me to you?”

Affinity gasped, biting her bottom lip with that endearing crooked tooth of hers, and then she blurted, “Well you are here and-and, I want to do it again!”

“Lord.” Law swore, just as he pushed his body forcefully upward, releasing Affinity’s wrists. Then, he shoved upright off the bed. If he stayed in that position any longer he would be, “doing it,” again as Affinity put it.

Affinity came upright in the bed as he landed on his feet beside it and as she did so the nightgown’s exposure traded places. The filmy white material fell down over her hips, but the top with its loose collar slid down over her breasts baring them. Some buttons must have come undone surely, he thought, as he ogled her very large breasts. “Cover yourself!” he charged. It was furthest from what he really wanted, which was to play in the bounty of her tits for hours.

“No,” Affinity quipped “Don’t you like them?”

She came up on her knees on the bed letting the gown fall to her hips and upper arms as she thrust the large melons of her breasts at him. It was as though she challenged him and her nipples were rucked outward like twin bullets. He had never seen anything so extraordinary. His fingers curled into his palms. “I ought to turn you over my knee,” he accused harshly, turning his gaze away from those opulent breasts with a great deal of willpower.

“Is that exciting, Law?” Affinity asked with an eager voice. “In a sexual way?”

“Good Lord,” he swore with his gaze tracing back to her breasts. “Is that all you think of?”

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation, and while swaying those beautiful breasts before him. “With you, about you, it is all that I think about!”

He was rather stunned. She appeared so honest. It shown heatedly through her hazel eyes and he had to admit she was bared to him. He did not think that he’d ever experienced being the object of another person’s desire before. It was unsettling. Could that be all that this was? Could all these events that had transpired simply be because of Affinity’s lust and interest in him? He was well read and knowledgeable about the fact that women were purporting to revel in the use of their sexual wiles to ensnare men in the great meanderings of fiction. Purposely, he began to move about the room, looking at Affinity’s things, but mostly to keep his gaze from Affinity’s compelling posture.

And added to that, he left her answer hanging a lonely death.

Oh no, he was not going to acknowledge her confession! Affinity bit her bottom lip, watching Law’s tall shape traverse her room. How could he ignore her enticing near nakedness? Everything that Madam DeJonge had said meant that Law should be on the bed with her with a hard penis, not looking through her things. She really wished that he would quit doing that also. However, she imagined that he had the right to do it. But she was going to lose him! And here she had him beside her without any scheme of her own and now she was going to lose him.

Then suddenly, Affinity’s gaze focused on what Law held up in his hand. It was her diary! She bounced off the bed with her gown falling below her belly button. “Give that to me! That is mine!”

Affinity stopped at Law’s back as he turned to face her with his hands and her diary behind his back. “And this is your personal journal?” he asked, with his voice dripping in newfound slyness.

“It is mine!” she exclaimed, trying to reach behind him, but each time his larger body turned blocking her reach. “Oh you cannot have that, give it back!”

“Where is my journal, Affinity?” Law asked firmly.

Affinity stopped bouncing around in front of Law and looked up into his dark eyes. Of course, what an idiot she was! Then abruptly she turned and ran back to the bed, diving under the pillow for Law’s journal. Once her fingers curled around the leather binding she turned and rushed back to him.

“I never should have taken this and I do so apologize. I had every intention of returning it!” Affinity exclaimed breathlessly, holding the journal up to Law, who snatched it from her immediately.

Affinity watched Law’s journal disappear behind his back and when his hand returned it was empty. “But where is my diary?” she started to exclaim, however, she never got to finish, because suddenly Law’s free arm was clamped over the small of her back. He tugged her up against his unmoving body, jostling her breasts highly, as the air jerked from her lungs. Then, his upper body pressed forward, further and further, until the buttons on his jacket were biting into the bare flesh of her breasts and she was dangling arched over his forearm.

Oh dear. Affinity clutched Law’s broad shoulders on either side with her long hair pooling on the floor. His lips were a breath away, over the top of her lips. “I will keep both.” His warm breath seared her lips. “Kiss me,” he commanded.

Then, in her heightened confusion and well . . . to be honest, her arousing excitement, she only really registered the, “kissing,” part of Law’s words. That compelled her, as her entire body and mind were already allured to do, into the kissing him in a most urgent fashion. However, if she started out the first to kiss, as Law commanded, within one second she was the one being kissed. Consumed was a better word. Oh my God, and she could smell the scent of her desire still clinging to him. She could taste herself on his mouth. A mouth that plucked her lips open, just before his tongue swept inside. She moaned senselessly beneath the deeply wild kiss, and she remembered only one instruction coherently from Madam DeJonge’s edification on French kissing. Suck.

Lord, where had she learned that? He should not be surprised, Law thought as he plunged his tongue repeatedly into Affinity’s sweetly hot mouth and she sucked his tongue with abandon. The feel of her dainty inner mouth suckled around his wider tongue nearly lost him again as he carried her back to the bed. Yet this time he kept his will stronger . . . barely, as he kissed Affinity senseless for long drugging moments. He knew that she was completely dazed, when he lifted his lips from hers, because he was nearly so himself.

“If you speak one word of my hidden work as the Benefactor, Affinity Redgrift, I will publish your diary,” Law said in a deep husky-roughened voice against Affinity’s lips.

“W-What?” Affinity squeaked, trying to drag her mind into clearing her thoughts. She had heard the words, published and diary. Publish, diary? Her eyes popped open, though lethargically.

“Law!” she exclaimed, but her voice was too husky to sound sharp, and she suddenly realized that Law was gone! She propped up on her elbows with a wobble, looking about the room and the open French door beyond. Law had seduced her with a kiss, and then he’d stolen her diary.

Affinity’s bottom lip quivered, and then she burst out laughing. Oh she should not be joyous, because it was terrible that Law now had her personal diary. But all she could truly think of in her befuddled and aroused state was that this was all going rather well!

Chapter Ten

. . . My life changed today. It is amazing that it can happen as quickly as that. I have been warring against my existence for a long time. I know the anger inside me has been simmering with indignation for months since starting this first London season. Since I first realized that I have been marked as unwanted and undesired by London’s finest.

What a large hole to crawl out of with my silly young dreams of simply wanting to dance with a gentleman. A dance I shall never have.

However, today I threw away those silly young girl dreams and became a woman instead. A woman that will dare to do or to try anything to create the possibilities that I so long for . . .

Law dipped his head looking at the toes of his boots with his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. He knew about dreams and longing. However, he wondered if he were truly as brave as Affinity? He thought not as he looked down at the open page of her diary. He’d decided that he would not rifle through her entire life by reading the larger part of her written words. Nonetheless, he was compelled, well actually overpowered, to read her thoughts since they’d first met. He consoled himself with the fact that it was now his right.

Simply a dance, he thought. Magdalena had danced with him once, just a silly twirl around the room. They’d known each other so briefly, actually one week all told, but for some unfathomable reason he knew that Magdalena would like Lady Affinity Redgrift. They both possessed true spirit of life and dauntless bravery to see it through. He realized now, they both possessed much more courage than he did. He who had hidden, afraid to try again, afraid to forgive himself. A forgiveness that Magdalena would have demanded of him if she were alive. Her life and spirit showed him that.

Law turned his gaze to the next passage in Affinity’s diary and he saw his name written there.

. . . Lawrence Fabier St. Martin. How can one look . . . one feeling of a man’s aura, enamor me so? Am I so desperate? Am I so lost? . . .

“No,” Law muttered. “No, Affinity.”

. . . Yet, I will follow my heart. I will say that I deserve to, for if I am not brave enough to do this, then I am not worthy enough. But oh, he attracts me so and each new thing that I learn about him makes my heartbeat flutter and my senses come more alive. Dare I say, even to myself, how much I long to be close to him . . .

Law tilted his head back closing his eyes. Affinity was simply attracted to him. There was no other nefarious reason. She was simply a woman using her god given and sweetly turned wiles upon him. Should he be aghast at her audacity, taken back by her complete boldness, concerned about her unconventional methods or should he simply be flattered?

He chuckled then, unbidden, and the image of Affinity with her hair flowing about her and her breasts bared to his gaze, slipped through his mind. She had vowed passionately that she was not out to catch him by seducing him into taking her virginity, then crying foul. And now he believed her. What was it that he’d written to himself in his journal . . . that he wondered if a woman ever thought to touch a man’s nipple? Affinity would. Surely, she was a creature of passion. He began reading again

. . . I climaxed, just watching Law. With only my gaze upon him . . .

Law inhaled an instantly heated breath.

. . . The pleasure of it thrashed through my pussy like a tempest storm as I looked at Law’s hard cock bared to my view . . .

My God, she’d been watching him! Of course she had, yet he’d never realized. Those moments, those events were obscured in his voracious arousal at the time. Now his cock was hard, now his cock was calling to her with the thought that she had secretly watched him so intimately and what her reaction to it had been. Then, he realized in his pondering that he’d only scratched the surface of erotic nature. This, here . . . them. That was the stuff of full-bodied carnal making.

. . . The heat of Law touching my cheek, my throat, searing my skin. The feel of his chest compressing my breasts. The power of his body encompassing me. His thighs so unyielding and his height over me. But then, I felt true desire . . . Law’s rigid cock pressed into my belly. The feel of it flooded my pussy, making the sheath inside me ache and throb. Then, I touched him. I could not help myself. I had to! I touched the heated head of a man’s cock this day. I caressed my finger through the slit and it became wet with his seed dripping there . . .

“Lord,” Law swore, nearly tossing the diary aside as his cock pitched heavily in his breeches. If he kept reading Affinity’s diary, he would easily find himself with his cock in his hand. So determinedly, he rose from his chair before the fire in his study, setting the diary aside to adjust his evening jacket. Then, he tugged gingerly on the narrow pocketed front of his breeches, adjusting his hard cock to a more comfortable tilt beneath. He had a feeling that the boxing match he was set to attend this evening would be at a loss of entertainment for him. His mind would be elsewhere . . . it already was elsewhere.

Where was she? It had been three days since he’d visited Affinity’s bedchamber in the dark of night. By his reckoning it was her turn for the next move. Law sighed and went to get his evening coat. He really needed to decide what he was going to do about Lady Affinity Redgrift. However, at this precise moment, all he could come up with was his desire to see her naked upon her bed again.

Chapter Eleven

“He wants me,” Affinity muttered as she continued to dress carefully for her planned adventure that evening. “A man does not give a woman heated and mind-bending cunnilingus, just to get his journal back. He could have easily just taken it.”

Her voice sounded certain, she just wished that she was certain, she thought, as she adjusted the black lace corset beneath her breasts. It lifted the weight of her breasts to a pertly naked position, held by the corset beneath. Madam DeJonge had said that men wanted to look at their woman, the less dressed the better, but some scanty clothing was reported to be enticing.

Well, this was certainly scanty, Affinity thought, looking at herself in the mirror. It was lucky that her mother had started her daughter’s trousseau before her death, because that allowed her to find this beautiful black corset, which she would never have been able to afford to buy now.

She wore the corset because she had to wear stockings, because she ultimately had to wear evening shoes, otherwise she might not wear anything at all beneath her red mink-lined cloak. The luxurious cloak was a gift from Brevity to all the Lady Rogues, along with the red high-heeled slippers. It would be the Lady Rogues uniform of sorts and Affinity agreed with them in the fact that it fit their mission and design daringly. Her plan this evening was to visit Law in a place that he least expected, while wearing nothing under her cloak but the black corset and stockings.

She could ruin her reputation just by going where she was going, a place that only gentlemen, their mistresses, and prostitutes attended. Yet did she really have a reputation to ruin to begin with? Still, she added a bonnet and veil to her ensemble. It was a good thing that she had Aunt Fuchsia and that her uncle paid so little attention to her. Although, Aunt Fuchsia had asked after her health this afternoon, when she’d once again used the tried and true lie of not feeling well. Affinity grinned, she had never felt better. She was nervous, but it thrummed in her veins like a heady liqueur.

After she’d snuck out of the house, Affinity took a rented hackney to the boxing match. She realized that the one sticking point in this adventure was that she did not have the funds to buy a ticket, nor was she certain how to go about doing so to get inside. That was why they called them adventures though, she decided, never once considering what the other men attending the boxing event would be assuming about her presence there. Her thoughts were focused only on one man.

Affinity saw immediately that the location of the boxing match was in a lower-class section of London. Perhaps, she’d been wholly wrong in her assumption of who attended these events, because there was a vast quantity of common folk milling about outside the large brick facade of the warehouse. As she stepped down from the hackney, carefully holding the cloak together, she thought that this gathering held the appearance and atmosphere of a rowdy county fair, and her naked flesh shivered beneath her cloak in proportion to her rising alarm.

Too late she turned back to see her hackney already pulling away, then quite suddenly she had to sidestep a group of rambunctious men whose quarrel broke out into fisticuffs before her. Perhaps, this had not been such a winning plan after all, Affinity thought, biting her bottom lip. She could acutely feel her nakedness, and she defensively raised the closed parasol that she’d thought to bring along at the last moment. Now she knew why, because somewhere in the back of her love besotted mind her commonsense was still valiantly struggling with the idea that if she would do this idiotic thing she should carry some type of defense!

It did not take her long to confirm that she’d made a very bad mistake coming here. All the men milling around her thought that she was a prostitute! Of course, ninny. Then what saved her was fear-inspired anger and her ability to use the point of her parasol to advantage. Her anger was a result of the realization that a lady could not walk unmolested in such a public forum. She really had wanted to see a boxing match. Nonetheless, Affinity was not sure her anger was going to help her now as she began backing up, nearly tripping at the awkward backward motion in her higher than normal high-heeled slippers. Nor was the point of her parasol going to hold out long against the concentrated group of slipshod men trying to surround her.

“Come on with me, fancy, I got a two pence for ye!”

“Hey ya, fancy-slut!”

“Look here, birdie, I’s got three pence.”

“You just blow me now for half a quid, girlie!”

“Give us a look! Lift them skirts!”

“Show us yer snatch!”

Affinity was assaulted by the lurid men’s rabid jeers and catcalls. She refused to assess their meaning as she raised the hem of her red cloak readying to run. She jabbed the point of her frilly parasol into the ribs of the boldest villain trying to grab her. The pot-bellied ruffian screeched in surprise and Affinity did not hesitate, but quickly ran past him with a shriek of her own. She ran as fast as her high-heels would allow, while she could hear the men at her back shouting the most vile and embarrassing jibes. Panic overcame her, surely some decent soul would help her, and she drew a breath to scream, but suddenly she tripped!

Law froze in mid-step. He could not believe what his gaze was telling him was true. Yet with no time for second thoughts and with the instinct born through many battles, he pulled one of the two pistols he always carried from his cloak pocket and immediately shot it into the air.

“Unhand, the lady!” Law’s command carried the sharp directive of a military officer. He stood with his legs braced apart, ready for action as he sneered at the felons groping Affinity, who was sprawled on the ground. “Now!” he snarled

Affinity, at her first sight of him, cried out his name as she struggled fiercely to free herself from the man who still held her by her arms. The blackguard deftly tugged Affinity to her feet as though she were a mere doll and he pulled her body in front of him, to use as a shield as the rest of the mob fell back, edging away from the threat of a pistol. Law took sight of Affinity’s disheveled state. Her bonnet was trampled into the ground at their feet and her hair flew around her like a shawl, while the blood-red cloak that she wore was wrenched off one of her pale shoulders, baring it to the top mound of her breast.

Swearing harshly beneath his breath, Law aimed his remaining loaded pistol at the man’s temple as the ruffian dragged Affinity backwards. “I repeat! Unhand, the lady!”

“Easy now, Gov’nr! You just take yer lady and I’ll be going! No harm done!” Having shouted that, the bully pushed Affinity forward roughly and with enough force that Law had no choice but to lower his pistol to catch her before she fell. Law grasped Affinity, steadying her as he watched the last blackguard stumble through the crowd. Then, quite without thought, but with great emotion, he pulled Affinity’s trembling body into his embrace.

“Are you totally insane?” he exclaimed roughly. He could feel his body vibrating in total collapse of his usual staid demeanor. “Are you hurt, Affinity?” he asked, and he noticed that his voice was shaking as he glared over the top of her head to assess any further dastardly attempts.

Affinity shook her head as she frantically burrowed her face into his chest, rubbing her cheek against his fine linen shirt. His hands moved up and down her spine, seeking assurance as he tightened his embrace and her disheveled silky brown hair tickled his throat. He turned them in a circle to surmise if there were any other louts about, and it was quickly apparent that none of the other passersby them had any inclination to tempt his pistol or his devilish scowl, for they all made a wide berth around them. Damnation, he thought his heart would collapse when he’d seen Affinity, and here of all places, being molested by what he could only dub as a mob of ruffians.

Law could feel the fullness of Affinity’s breasts pressed into his chest, and hotly on top of his alarm, a surge of sexual energy flooded his body. For moments he allowed his body free reins, opening his stance and drawing Affinity closer between his legs, while his hands stopped their roaming over her spine and settled on her delicious bottom, which he cupped warmly. The motion pressed his erect cock into her belly like a waiting pillow.

“I say, is that, Lady Affinity Redgrift?”

“Oh no!” Affinity gasped, instantly clutching him harder as her body shook more.

Swiftly, Law tugged Affinity forward, but she stumbled against his stride. Then, quickly he reached down, sweeping her up into his arms to carry her as his gaze scanned the crowd for the owner of that voice. He could not tell which man had spoken, nor did he recognize the voice, but he did know this entire episode was a recipe for social disaster.

He did not stop his purposeful stride until he reached his carriage, calling out before him to his driver to turn the carriage about and get them out of the crush of carriages before and aft. Without waiting for an answer, Law threw open the carriage door and stepped up inside with Affinity still in his arms. He sat abruptly in the seat as the carriage jerked with the beginnings of maneuvering out of the tight space. His long arm reached outward and he grabbed the carriage door, slamming it shut. He took one quick look around to see if he could see any familiar face about, but all he saw were the drivers and footmen of different conveyances. Then, he tugged the green velvet curtain closed as he cussed lowly and crassly, while reaching over and closing the other curtain.

He’d known before this time that Affinity’s antics and his own were ghastly beyond society’s norm. He assumed it was one of the reasons he’d been so quickly enthralled. Yet, that ominous voice had recognized Affinity for one, and possibly him. It had been like a slap in the face. His anger for Affinity’s protection and safety, and his sexual arousal, which was riding him hard, was all out of proportion. So much so that he was riding strangely high on his emotions and he found himself forcefully jostling Affinity around and turning her face down over his knee.

“If you ever dare do this again,” he hissed through his gritted teeth. “You could have been raped by that mob!”

“Law!” Affinity cried, as he clamped his forearm over the small of her back, while his other hand tossed the hem of her cloak upward.

The last thing he expected to see was a naked ass! Yet, there it was. There was no gown with skirts beneath, but a plump and wriggling bare ass with stockings below and a black corset above. Why this infuriated him further, he had no clue, but his hand came down on those fat alabaster globes with a hearty smack!

“Ow!” Affinity squealed, thrashing her legs and bobbing her head.

“What in the hell are you wearing?” he demanded, as his hand lifted upward, then lowered, smacking her buttocks again. The woman was naked beneath her cloak . . . well nearly!

“Ow! Ow!” Affinity cried, as she tried to wiggle her small hands around to cover the bare and unprotected exposure of her buttocks. “I was coming to seducce you!”

Well hell, his hand was already descending and the flat of his palm spanked sharply against Affinity’s plump ass cheeks. “You will not sit for a week, thinking of your foolhardiness!” Law claimed.

It sounded perfectly rational to him, beside the fact that laying his hand smartly to Affinity’s naked and squirming buttocks was ridiculously arousing him further. Perhaps, it was her seesawing motion across his lap and therefore his rigid cock? It could be his position of dominance over her struggling near nakedness. The view itself was heatedly erotic. Then a lusty whim entered his mind. He wanted to see Affinity’s chubby wiggling ass cheeks stained a rosy pink color.

Smack! Smack! Smack!

“Oh, Law! Ouch! Ow, that hurts!” Affinity cried wrestling over Law’s hard thighs, trying to get away from his stinging palm. This was the most humiliating position and feeling, but then shockingly it was arousing her completely. “Ow! Ow!”

Law’s hand was so large and he had gotten very enthusiastic, until she could hear the spanks ringing in her ears. Oh, it burned, but she could not escape. She had no choice but to sprawl over Law’s thighs and take her punishment. Perhaps, that was the root of her thriving arousal. Law was so manly and this was so forceful. Somehow, some of the stinging on her bare buttocks became pleasure in her pussy. “Oh mmm,” she moaned suddenly in arousal.

“What?” Law asked sharply with his hand stopping its energetic spanking to lay still on her bottom, warmly cupping the cheeks of her bottom.

Then another uncontrolled moan of arousal escaped her throat in tandem with her hips undulating sensually over Law’s lap and his turgidly presented penis beneath. She was passionately seeking more stimulation and pleasures dedicated to her pussy, and she gained leverage with one elbow on the seat allowing her to roll her mound over his penis as she opened her thighs like any eager woman in heat. The cool night air flashed across her juices clinging there, and suddenly she leaped the barrier of longing into overpowering hunger combined with urgent need.

Chapter Twelve

Law squinted his eyes as his hand groped Affinity’s naked ass and she rotated her pubic mound over his rock-hard dick. Somehow passion had sideswiped him by just the mere and thrilling sound of Affinity’s arousal, that woman’s sound of need and desire, rousing his senses tenfold, flaming his lust higher.

Then somehow Affinity found purchase, rising upward urgently to meet him with her searing lips covering his, while his hands found the tie to her cloak, pulling it open and tossing it aside, just as her tongue slid frantically against his tongue. She was forceful in her urgency, pushing him back against the seat as her hands tugged open his jacket, pulling it halfway down his arms. Then she jerked his shirt open, popping the buttons as she bared his chest wildly kissing him.

He could only raise his hands to amorously fondle and grope her nude buttocks and hips as she slathered his jaw with torrid kisses, moving down the side of his throat. When she passed his collarbone and reached the muscular left mound of his chest, she began to nibble, then kiss, then nibble. A groan was tossed from his throat as his fingertips caressed through the crack of her ass.

Affinity moaned against his chest, wriggling her ass higher as though begging for more, so he did it again, intimately thrilled, feeling the sultry heat around the pearl of her anus, and then he dipped his fingers a bit lower to the puffy bottom lips of her cunt. The wetness drooling there incited his ardor and he relished the knowledge that those juices readying her cunt was all for him.

Affinity swayed her ass for him as she latched onto one of his nipples with her lips and she sucked on the nub enthusiastically. His body tensed with the carnal sensation as he gritted his teeth in bliss. Then he realized that he was holding back his response from her knowledge and he groaned showing his appreciation. No, Lord, more. “God, yes, Affinity, bite it.”

Affinity hummed in excitement against his nipple as he circled his finger over the yielding pearl of her ass, and then she bit the very tip of his nipple.

“Yes,” he hissed with unique pleasure thrashing through his gut, then lower spiking his cock. Yet she was already there nibbling and licking his taut belly, wetting his flesh, as her fingers tugged on the buttons to the pocketed front of his breeches.

Yes, oh God, yes. His mind already knew where she was going and every fiber of his body strained for it, as his sexually enthusiastic nymph adjusted her body, coming down between his legs with her knees on the rocking carriage floor. He looked downward seeing the long strands of her hair trailing over his chest, belly, and thighs as she reached upward with one hand grasping the thickness of her hair into one handful.

“Hold it, Law, hold onto my hair,” she commanded hastily, while her other hand peeled back the pocketed front of his breeches and his turgid red-fleshed cock sprang free. It was tilted upward like a thick pole right before her nose as he held her hair out of the way.

Her gaze of dark hazel desire turned up to him as she wet her curvy lips with her tongue, and said, “I want you, Law. I want your cock. I have only dreamed of this since reading your words. Oh, Law, they inflame me so.”

Lord! His free hand cupped the side of her cheek as she used both her small hands to grasp the base of his cock, bending it toward her mouth like a long stick of sugar candy. He could stop her. He should stop her. He could not! God, he wanted this so badly, his body shook with the temptation, and then it was too late as he cried out with the feel of Affinity’s tongue wetting the head of his cock.

“Oh, mm,” Affinity gasped in her throat, as her naked tongue lapped over the bare head of Law’s hefty penis. It was hot and delicious and so smooth, it tempted her tongue to feel more of the shape, and the eroticism of having her mouth on Law’s sex quivered through her body. She could feel the hot blood pounding in the base, thickening and stiffening the shaft more. Just then the cock head slid up her tongue and a pool of hot seed leaked out of the slit. This excited her so much that moans slid from her throat, and she lapped the seed back in her mouth to taste it.

“Oh,” she mewled in heavenly delight . . . it was so creamy and hot, and so intimate.

She tightly pumped her hands on the root of Law’s heavy male organ and she grinned in happiness at Law pressuring her head and ultimately her mouth back down to his cock head. A sure sign of his carnal enjoyment!

She slid her lips over the head and it was so wide that her mouth stretched into a tight, “O” around the width. It was like crowding something too large into her mouth and for unknown reasons it spiked her ardor higher, making her pussy flush hotly and her naked bottom wiggle with abandon. The torrid heat of Law’s thickset penis pressed against her tongue as the head pushed against the roof of her mouth. Then suddenly, his hand stopped pressing and turned to tugging her hair and dragging her mouth back wetly up the shaft.

Some of her mind returned from the completely erotic sensations overwhelming her, and she remembered to suck and move her hands tightly up and down the base. Oh God, it was the most exciting thing she’d ever done, and her pussy ached so badly with stimulation that it throbbed between her inner thighs.

“Mm, mm, mm,” she moaned around Law’s rigid penis pumping in and out of her mouth, filling it, leaving and filling it again, as he guided the motions faster by tugging on her hair.

“Ah, Lord, yes, sweetheart,” Law groaned.

Sweetheart? Oh! “Mm, mm!” Affinity moaned excitedly with her body rocking and bounding to and fro as she sucked Law’s big penis faster into her mouth.

“Ah, Ah, Affinity. Lord. Oh, sweet, you are driving me wild,” Law groaned, tossing his head as his hips humped up and down. “Oh yes.” He pressed on Affinity’s head, “Suck it, darling, Ah!”

Law’s legs clamped against Affinity’s sides, as his testicles flexed. Lord, the pleasure was gutting him. He could feel the wetness dripping down his cock and he could hear the slurping sounds of Affinity’s mouth sucking rapidly on the largeness of his cock. Suddenly, he had to see her eyes. He had to know. He tugged her hair and rasped with a voice he could barely speak with.

“Look at me,” he choked. He could feel the seed rising up his shaft. “Oh God, sweetheart, look at me!”

Affinity’s passion-dark eyes riveted to him as he saw his cock plunging in and out of her red lips. Ah Lord! He strained his belly to the breaking point holding his seed back, as he panted . . . “I’m going to come!” He needed her to take it, only if she willed it.

His turgid cock popped out of her mouth for one split second, as she cried excitedly, “In my mouth, darling. Fill my mouth!”

Ah Lord! Law’s hips bucked upward as his fingers curled into fists in Affinity’s hair and he cried out, nearly like a wounded animal. But it was rapture. It was pleasure so intense, it blinded his sight of Affinity’s eyes as his seed ejaculated.

Law’s seed hit the back of Affinity’s throat and pooled so largely that she had to swallow around his big plunging organ. His penis flexed in her mouth and more seed splashed, but this time the creamy hot substance was not as much and it coated her mouth and his penis, as she sucked her mouth up and down the shaft. The moment was so stunning that she was completely lost in all the heady and carnal sensations. But then, a feeling of pride and intense closeness to Law began to seep through her body, as she slowed her mouth’s movements over his still throbbing organ, little by little.

She was aroused as never before, but overshadowing that was a feeling of sweet pleasure for giving Law such pleasure, and then the clinging intimacy of it all seemed to rise like a vaporish aura between them as she laid her cheek to Law’s penis and she sighed.

His fingers lightly stroked her hair and she finally became conscious of the carriage’s rocking movements. She was a woman that had just satisfied her man and the feeling was wonderful. She could overlook her own arousal and she strove to do so. Madam DeJonge had explained that men, after their release, lost their interest in sexual activity for a while. However, she did say that after a proper amount of time, different with each man, they could be enticed again.

Affinity wondered what Law’s proper amount of time was, but no, she chided herself silently, she’d not come here for that. She had come here explicitly to please him and to give him something else that she’d prepared. Both things were meant to hopefully bind him closer to her and entice him into seeing her again, and the glowing quality that she felt at the moment made her feel that they would see each other for a long time to come.

Law’s hands moved slowly from her hair to her shoulders. “Sweetheart, come here.”

Law was urging her upward with his endearment singing through her mind. He seemed purposely intent as he pulled her sideways into his lap, and then he began kissing her. “Let me taste myself on your mouth,” he whispered with the blackness of his eyes gazing deeply into hers.

She smiled at him heatedly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, and then his lips were kissing hers again. Perhaps, Madam DeJonge had been wrong, she thought, as Law swept his tongue through her mouth slowly and thoroughly.

Law lifted his lips from hers as she sighed deeply, and he said in a husky low voice, “Tit for tat, darling.”

“Law,” she purred, undulating on his lap, instantly thrilled.

“You look like a woman aroused, sweetheart.” he murmured, as his hand stroked sensual warmth over her thigh just above her stocking tops. “What is this you are wearing or not wearing I should say?”

Affinity giggled with a husky teasing sound, and then she drew back to arch over his lap in a sweeping pose. “Do you like it?” she asked. “I am all yours,” she flourished playfully dramatic.

Law’s hand brushed over every place he named, “Bared breasts, rosy nipples, a lacy black corset, a bare pussy covered only in silky curls, naked thighs, sheer black stockings, and let’s see here . . .” Law lifted one ankle. “High-heeled scarlet slippers. I would say, my lady, was set out to seduce someone.”

Law’s hand stroked back up her stocking clad leg toward her inner thigh, as she watched his face intently. “Is it working?” she whispered.

He chuckled, just as his fingers cupped her pussy and he pulled her strongly back up to him. She squealed lightly at the swiftness. “You have the proof upon your lips.”

His mouth covered hers with a soulful kiss of passion, while his hand kneaded her mound and pussy lips beneath in several slow-bodied squeezes and releases. She moaned into his mouth as he slowly began to suck on her tongue, and she felt his other hand at her breast lifting the weight upward and massaging the fullness.

“Law,” she gasped against his mouth when his fingertips tweaked her nipples lightly.

“You like that?” he asked in a hush.

“Oh, yes,” she moaned restlessly, undulating her hips.

“Lay back. Let me see you, sweetheart.” Then, he laid her back so that her spine arced over his lap and her head and feet came to rest on the seat. His hand stayed heatedly cupped over her mound and aching pussy beneath, while his other fingers traced her mouth and she licked the tip of one. “A feast,” he murmured. “You are beautiful and flushed with arousal, my sweet.”

The thrill of hearing Law calling her beautiful, stretched the contours of her body sensually over his thighs, as she purred, “For you, Law, only for you, for your big cock caressing my mouth and filling it with your hot seed.”

His fingers twitched over her pussy with one burrowing deeper between the creases where she was wet and needy. “Where do you learn such things, you lovely vixen? You are so sexual.” His other fingertips began to feather over her breasts.

“It is a secret, Law, that you must convince me to tell you.” Then, she moaned on the last word as he plucked one of her nipples.

“Ah, a challenge?” he murmured. “You are all things that challenge me and are erotic. Tell me, have you ever had a man’s cock in your sweet mouth before, Affinity?”

Affinity shook her head with her eyelids crimping in pleasure. She was unable to speak because Law’s fingers stroked through her pussy lips and up over her clitoris, while his other fingers plucked her nipple again.

The expression on his face was lean and dark, like a bird of prey intently watching its captive, and his firm lips were reddened from their kisses with the top curve damp. His thick brownish-blond hair was tousled, hanging nearly down in his eyes. Eyes that were inky black and had a clear amorous purpose in mind. He looked, with his bare chest and shadowed jawline, like everything a man should be, and he was solely intent on her. “I want to play with you. I want to make you writhe for me and cry my name, Affinity. I want to give you as much pleasure as you have given me.”

“Law,” she gasped, as the pressure of his finger suddenly rotated with purpose over her clitoris. The pleasure seemed to snap in her sex over and over constantly rising higher. Her shaking knees bent upward as her quivering thighs fell open and her back arched over his thighs.

“Lord, you are so hot and wet. I smell your desire.”

“Oh,” she moaned, uncontrollably humping her hips to the rhythm of Law’s finger rapidly circling her clitoris. His other hand fondled her breasts, tweaking both nipples, first one, then the other. Her head fell from side to side as the pleasure curled inside her and her mind became singularly riveted to the sensation of Law’s hands and fingers, rubbing, fondling, and plucking. Then, his finger at her clitoris slid down to her sheath, circling the entrance with juicy sounds, before he plunged it inside. “Oh my God, Law!” she cried.

Her knees lifted wantonly upward toward her chest. The fullness of his finger inside her and the stiff rasp against her tender flesh threw chaotic pleasure bursting inside her sex. The absolutely stunning sensation of it humped her hips, pleading for more.

“Yes, love,” Law uttered roughly. “You are so passionate. You like my finger fucking you?”

She could barely speak as the intense sensations flashed through her body. “Yes,” she panted.

“Two.” He promised gruffly.

“Oh God!” Affinity cried with her knees splitting impossibly wide as Law thrust two fingers repeatedly in and out of her torridly clutching sheath. There was a place inside her that she’d never felt before, and each heated friction of Law’s fingers plunging inside her burst pleasure into her core, until she was mewling senselessly.

“Three,” Law uttered, at the same moment he raised his thumb to stroke Affinity’s clit, while thrusting three fingers inside her tight sheath. His entire being was tuned into Affinity’s imminent climax as he watched her breasts heave and her pussy undulate. What thrilled him most though, were her legs thrown widely open to him. The supplication that showed to the ardor he was able to reap over her, filled him deeply. His woman was passionately abandoned with him, holding none of herself back, and giving him everything she had to give. He took her erotic gift and unraveled it as he followed her increasing mewls, bringing her higher and higher.

“Law! Law! Ah, Law!” Affinity cried out with her entire body quaking.

Then he felt it, her climax on his fingers, but this time he saw it too, on her beautiful face twisted in pleasure. He kept his thumb rotating over her torrid love button and his fingers plunging into her grasping sheath, as he shifted his upper body, swiftly bending down to shroud his mouth over her gasping mouth. He swallowed the triumph of her climax into his mouth and it buried itself deep inside him. He had never held anything so precious.

Chapter Thirteen

Law was so intensely centered onto Affinity that he’d not realized the carriage had stopped moving, when loud rapping sounds, banged through his hearing.

“Your grace, we have arrived.”

Ah, Lord, it was his footman. “Go away!” Law exclaimed, much more harshly than he intended because by then Affinity had become aware and she squealed in distress. Her hands shoved on his shoulders as her thighs clamped together strangling his hand. Panic was just on the edges of flashing across her face, and he was going to yell at her to calm down, when his footman added outside the closed carriage door.

“There is a lady here to see you, your grace. Asking for help. She’s with a child, hovering by the stables.”

The momentum of Affinity’s shove pushed him upright and she rolled off his lap. Then she scrambled to the other side of the carriage, to cowered in the corner with her legs curled beneath her and one hand clutched between her thighs, while her other arm shielded her breasts. Her eyes were wide as she looked rather frantically at him, then at the door.

He could only imagine the state of her mind being so close off the edges of a climax. Still, he wanted to exclaim, “What did you expect, we were dallying in a carriage!” Instead, he called out to his footman saying, “Tell the lady that I will be right there.” Then, he looked at Affinity. “Calm yourself, sweetheart, they cannot see you nor will they. My footman would never just open the door. But I must see to this and I need you to remain calmly here,” he explained as he reached for Affinity’s cloak on the floor and he handed it toward her.

She grasped the cloak quickly, looking confused as she mumbled, “Yes, Law.”

“You stay right there. I will only be a moment,” he said once again firmly.

Affinity only nodded as he reached for the door handle blocking the view inside the carriage as he quickly got out and closed the door.

“Leave the carriage there,” Law said to his driver and footman as he turned toward the woman huddled against the side of the stables. He approached her slowly, but it was too dark under the stable eves to tell much more than that she carried a small bundle against her chest.

“S-Sebastian sent me,” she managed through chattering teeth.

“He is a good man, a good friend, he was right to do so,” Law replied softly.

“Me bellswagger pimp wants to take my babe!” the woman cried, then she nearly collapsed.

“That will never happen,” Law vowed as he reached forward to hold her upright.

In the carriage, Affinity hastily put her cloak back on, wrapping it around her tightly. She did not care at all for nearly being caught in the midst of torrid sexual activity. Her entire body shivered with the thought, and she realized she was only so brave in these new sexual adventures.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a paper she had there, then she unfolded it carefully and laid it on the seat opposite her. It was better for her seduction if she left now, she told herself, even though she did not want to. Really, she never wanted to leave Law again. But she had to act like a mature woman, not a besotted little girl and a mature woman would depart now, leaving the tantalization on the high road. She needed to withdraw to see if Law came to her next. If he came to her next for nothing more than to see her and not to retrieve anything like his journal as he had last time, then he came to her freely, just because he desired to.

“Yes, yes,” she mumbled, that was the way of it, so reluctantly, she opened the carriage door on the opposite side away from the view of the house and stables and she quietly got out of the carriage. Then she silently slipped away into the night.

Affinity snuck past the steaming carriage horses and out the open gate at the back of Law’s townhouse property. She clutched her cloak tight to her body, suddenly wishing for clothes beneath its folds. However, she walked briskly down the shadowy sides of the alleyways and that helped warm her. She continued quickly, until she reached the back of her uncle’s property where her footsteps faltered.

“Oh no,” Affinity muttered. The entire townhouse was lighted. This had never happened before, her uncle went out most evenings, but he always returned quietly to his study, then to bed. Affinity tried to tell herself there could be many occurrences for this display and that she need not be in any of them.

In the four years she’d resided with her uncle, he’d asked to see her only a handful of times during the daylight hours and never once at night. They could hardly be called close to each other. He barely tolerated her presence as a begrudging part of his duty. Affinity had finally understood that her father, before his death, and his brother, were bitter enemies and her uncle’s feelings carried onto his brother’s child.

Affinity bit her bottom lip looking up at the brightly lit townhouse, wondering how she could sneak in now without being caught. “Calm down,” she muttered, admonishing her alarm. “Think it through.”

Really, her uncle employed very few servants in the house and if she could sneak through the back door to the kitchen, then she could hurry up the back stairway to her room. She had to take the chance that the house being blazoned with light had nothing to do with her. Truly, her uncle would not show her that much notice if he found her missing. Still, some unsettling intuition made her stomach queasy as she stepped forward to sneak into the house. All she could think of minutes later was that she might have made it, but that was before she realized it would not have mattered.

Bless Aunt Fuchsia, and so late at night, she’d been as startled as Affinity was when Affinity entered her bedchamber and found Aunt Fuchsia there. Of course, Affinity realized later that Aunt Fuchsia had been ordered to sit there for just that purpose. Then, just as Aunt Fuchsia exclaimed in a high-pitched voice at her entrance, Affinity heard.

“Is that slut there, Fuchsia? Get that whore down here immediately!”

Affinity gasped at her uncle’s bellowing voice and the words as Aunt Fuchsia began weeping loudly. “Terrible, t-terrible,” Aunt Fuchsia tittered.

Affinity immediately heard the clomping of what she assumed was her uncle rushing up the stairs. All she could think of was that she was not wearing anything beneath her cloak, nothing else made sense, besides the rising panic of being in danger. Then, her uncle was there barging into her room, as she back away from him. His normally florid face was mottled even more bright red and he carried a long belt in his hand, while his gaze was livid.

“Selling yourself on the streets!” Uncle Redgrift shouted. “Like a common slut! I knew no better offspring would come from my bastard brother!”

Aunt Fuchsia wailed and scurried to the corner, as Affinity raised her hands to Uncle Redgrift as though to hold the force of his rage at bay. “What is it, uncle? What has happened?” Affinity cried, as her uncle marched forward snatching a wad of her cloak as he raised his hand holding the belt.

“No whore! No slut will live in this house! Do you understand me?” he bellowed, and when the belt came down across Affinity’s side, she did not yell out, she was too stunned. Her uncle swung her around, tugging harshly on her cloak, until the tie gave and it pulled free. She did cry out then, wailing in horror, as her uncle again bellowed.

“Slut!” He brought the belt down on her back making her scream in pain as she tried to cover her naked parts with her hands. “Out of my house! You are disowned!” Redgrift shouted.

Redgrift used the belt striking wickedly against her body to move her out of the room, down the hall, and down the stairs. Each lash of the belt made her scream and her near nakedness in front of him, the servants, and her Aunt Fuchsia made her die inside with shame, as he struck her back, buttocks, and legs, until she stumbled into the entryway falling onto her knees. It was then through her pain and tears that she heard the damning answer to all of this.

“Lord Hartley saw you with half a dozen men set to fornicate at the boxing match!”

Oh God. The voice outside the boxing match, Affinity thought, as her uncle whipped her body curled into a ball on the floor. Sometime later, her uncle must have stopped beating her and she must have lost some consciousness, because the next thing she knew she was being jerked upright by her hair. Her uncle dragged her through the open front doorway, and then he shoved her, releasing her hair as she fell down the front steps. She landed in a heap at the bottom, and then her red cloak plunked on top of her.

Her uncle was spewing so many horrible things that she blanked out most of them, but one thing she remembered clearly was his snarl, “Never come back here, you slut, or I will have you arrested as a whore!”

Chapter Fourteen

. . . I, Affinity Redgrift, do swear before the Lord Almighty that I freely entered into sexual congress with Lawrence Fabier. I swear that I am no longer a virgin having taken my maidenhead on my own to prove my free choice. I do not want, nor do I accept, any monetary or marriage conditions on our affair and this signed missive can stand as clear evidence to that, and said missive shall reside as proof in Lawrence Fabier’s hands . . .

“By god, and she signed a legal paper attesting to it.” Law chuckled fondly, yet what amazed him the most was Affinity’s choice to apparently freely breach her own maidenhead. He remembered seeing the godemiché on her bed that night. By God, she was astounding.

“Your grace, excuse me please.”

Law looked up as he folded Affinity’s note and he saw Nell. She appeared extremely upset and the hour was quite late. “Yes, Nell,” he answered, sitting forward in his study chair.

“Mrs. Todd, just came to the back door very upset, Sir. You remember her, she says you helped her years ago?”

“Yes, of course,” Law answered expectantly. He knew Mrs. Todd was the cook for Lord Redgrift. He’d received much of his information about Affinity from Mrs. Todd. And suddenly an uneasy feeling settled in his gut.

“I just knew you’d want to know that Lord Redgrift beat Lady Affinity terrible tonight with a belt! Then, he threw her from the house, never to come back.”

“Oh my God,” Law exclaimed, coming to his feet.

“You see, I saw her tonight, Lady Affinity, sneaking out of the carriage and, Mrs. Todd, knew you’d asked after her.”

Law could barely think, he was that upset, but his servants and all the women and male prostitutes that he’d helped in the past kept a close network of information alive. It helped him immensely in his work and also in finding proper and safe placements for the ones that he helped.

“Beat her?” he asked tightly, he could barely breathe.

“Aye. Terrible like and she was near naked.”

Law nearly bellowed then, but somehow he managed to hold it inside himself.

“But, Mrs. Todd, cannot find Lady Affinity now. She snuck out front to gather the poor girl up and take her to her friends, but Lady Affinity was gone. Then, Mrs. Todd, tried each of her friends, but she’s not there. She’s so worried about her being hurt and out on the streets,” Nell said.

“We will find her,” Law uttered. “Pass the word to all we know to look out for her, but especially send Bart to Sebastian. Sebastian can spread the word quickly.” Law strode forward as he issued his orders, then he entered the hallway and snagged his coat and hat hastily. “I go now to search, but have someone ask Lady Affinity’s friends if they have any clues to where she might be.”

“Aye, Sir,” Nell replied.

Law grasped Nell’s hand. “Nell, you are so much more help to me here. Now you see how well.”

“I do feel it, yer grace, like I’m needed,” Nell said.

“And you are never to forget that. Oh and, Nell, please check on the new lady and her child. We don’t want to lose her.”

Law nearly ran out of the townhouse then, as though the devil chased him. He was devastated, his heart was breaking and his past was trying to rise up and swallow him. This was too close to Magdalena, if he’d just not dallied with a good woman, if only he’d been stronger. He knew the consequences. Why is it that one always thought it would not happen to them? All his recriminations could not begin to overshadow the desperate concerns that tugged at his heart like fire. They had to find Affinity. They had to!

***

Affinity stumbled. She could barely stay upright her body hurt so badly and one of her heels was torn off. She had to hold onto the clammy stonewall of the building that she lurched beside. She could smell the sewage of London’s lower end around her. She could hear the rats scurrying. But it meant nothing. Her mind was twisted with pain, both mental and physical. Was she really a whore? She certainly had been acting like one, blindly covering it with far-fetched fantasy, when the truth was, all she was being was sexually promiscuous. Her uncle snarling, “Slut,” kept ringing in her mind, until she sobbed and fell against the wall, barely able to hold herself upright.

“Lady Affinity,” Sebastian called gently, but the woman did not appear to hear him as she leaned crumpled and sobbing against the warehouse wall. Sebastian stepped closer, lifting his hand to lightly touch the woman’s shoulder. Either way, he thought, it was a woman in need.

The woman gasped through her frantic weeping as she tried to turn away from him, but suddenly she just collapsed. Sebastian barely caught her before she slumped to the ground and when he lifted her up into his arms, he saw that it was indeed Lady Affinity. It did not bode well that he’d found her in the lower end. It spoke of her spirit being broken more than her body. He knew his intentions immediately and where he had to take her. Law was his friend, but Lady Affinity needed her friends more now.

“Senorita, we will go to, the beautiful Brevity. You must hold on to me,” he murmured. It was interesting that his friend Lawrence Fabier knew Lady Affinity. It seemed the world moved in mysterious ways.

When Sebastian reached the steps of Lady Brevity’s stylish townhouse carrying Lady Affinity, it was as though the lovely Brevity waited for him by some intuition, because Brevity threw open the door and rushed to meet him, before his foot reached the first step.

“Oh, Sebastian you have found her!” Brevity cried, with her endearing lisp. “Bring her inside quickly.”

***

“I received your message,” Law said to Sebastian as Sebastian opened the door to Lady Brevity’s townhouse. Law stepped inside, not waiting for Sebastian to move or invite him in.

Sebastian stepped back with really no choice, saying, “She is with the doctor now.”

Law started immediately for the stairs leading up to the top floor of the townhouse, but Sebastian grasped his arm. “You will not keep me away from her,” Law said tersely. “But I am indebted to you for finding her.”

Sebastian gripped his arm harder. “Do you know your intentions, before you go up there?” Sebastian asked.

Law stopped trying to pressure his arm away from Sebastian’s grasp. “No . . . yes,” Law uttered, fighting the urge to see Affinity. Sebastian was right.

“I found her near the docks on the lower end,” Sebastian said. “She fell unconscious into my arms. I hear that her uncle called her whore, and a slut, and worse, he beat her.”

“Bastard,” Law snarled, slapping his hat against his thigh.

“A lady like she is . . . ,” Sebastian murmured, leaving the sentence hanging.

“Has been ruined,” Law said, adding one of the many sureties in Affinity’s life just for being attracted to him and loving him. Law lifted his head, staring intently at Sebastian. “Not if this man, this Duke can help it,” he said fiercely.

Sebastian nodded, patting Law’s arm. “Then, go see your woman. But I am not sure, my lovely Brevity, will let you.”

“Your lovely Brevity?” Law questioned him. “How did you know to bring, Affinity, here in the first place?”

“That, my friend, is a long story,” Sebastian replied with a humorous glint in his deep brown eyes. “And I will only tell if the ladies allow me.”

Chapter Fifteen

Two weeks later, Affinity knew that she was being courted and she was not sure how she felt about it. Her body had healed and Brevity had insisted that she could live with her for as long as she liked. Affinity had protested that it would taint Brevity’s reputation, however, Brevity would hear none of it. Not one of her friends would. They visited her each day and they all said that the motto of the Lady Rogues was through thick and thin. However, Affinity considered that not one of them realized how thick it could get. And then there was Law . . . In the first days she’d asked not to see him. But . . .

“Another love sonnet from the Duke and another bouquet of fresh flowers,” Brevity announced brightly, entering the sunroom where Affinity was sitting. Brevity carried a beautiful bouquet of flowers and set them on the table next to Affinity, then she handed Affinity the poem, hand written on lambskin paper. “Every single day for two weeks now, Affinity,” Brevity sighed.

“Do you think he is doing it out of guilt, Brevity?” Affinity asked suddenly.

Brevity sat down carefully in a chair close to Affinity and took Affinity’s hand. “That first night, Affinity, you regained consciousness, but the doctor gave you laudanum to sleep and the Duke sat beside you all that night, even though I told him you would not wake, he insisted.”

“He did?” Affinity asked in surprise.

“Yes, I was saving it to tell you at the right time.” Brevity patted Affinity’s hand. “And now, I also wanted to tell you that I must go out this evening. The trust lawyer of my parents’ estate always demands to see me regularly and I cannot put it off.”

“Of course, Brevity,” Affinity responded. “You need not worry about me, you are so kind to me already. I just pray it will not bring you ill.”

“All things have a way of working out,” Brevity lisped, sagely.

Later that night, Affinity tossed and turned in her bed, then she finally realized what the problem was. Music. She could hear music. How strange, and it sounded quite close. Why in fact, she thought, it sounded as if it were playing inside the house. Affinity rose slowly from her bed and tiptoed to her bedroom door, listening as the music became louder, and then she opened the door. It was softly floating music. A waltz?

“What?” Affinity murmured, but before she could take two steps she encountered a very happy dog at her feet. “Beauty!” she exclaimed, reaching down to pet the eager setter.

“You call my dog, Beauty?” Law’s voice floated up from downstairs. “My fierce, brave dog named, Warrior, and you call him, Beauty?”

Affinity could not catch her laugh. She was startled at Law’s presence, even though she could not see him. But what he said was funny. She inched toward the bannister and looked down. Her breath caught at Law’s handsome face looking up at her. He was dressed as though he were going to a ball, in superfine black pants and tailored jacket and he looked like everything that was masculine and pleasurable.

Affinity said tentatively, “I cannot believe you call him Warrior . . . this sweetheart, and he is beautiful.”

Law smiled, and her heart tripped a beat. “Well then, your Beauty has a message for you, if you will look on his collar,” he said.

Affinity started slightly, moving back from the bannister to look down at Beauty. She saw right on his collar there was a card tied by a ribbon, and when she reached to untie the bow, she saw that it was a card depicting her dance card with Law’s name on it. Not only was Law’s name written on it once, but on every line of the card. Tears sprang instantly to her eyes.

“Have you read it then?” Law called up to her. Affinity tried to speak, but her throat clutched, then Beauty barked once. “Ah ha,” Law exclaimed. “Thank you, Warrior, I will take that as a yes, therefore, Lady Affinity Redgrift, may I have this dance?”

“Oh,” Affinity gasped softly. Those words were as thrilling to hear as she had always thought they would be, and tenfold hearing them from Law. Beside herself, she rushed to the banister looking down. “Yes!” she exclaimed breathless with a sprinkling of tears dotting her cheeks.

Law’s smile widened to joy before her eyes. “Then I would come up to you, if you allow me.”

“Oh yes, Law.”

Law did not wait or deport himself with decorum, he bound up the stairs eagerly as she watched, filling her gaze with his handsome strength. All her fears about her nature and her morality fell away, while she looked into Law’s face as he approached her. Love had no boundaries and what a man and woman did privately together could never be dirty or crass, and Law wanted her . . . in fact, she saw . . .

Law gripped her by the waist twirling her into a waltz, while the music below, as if by magic, played louder. “My lady fair, your beauty takes my breath away and your dancing lightens my soul,” Law whispered against her ear as he pulled her closer to him, circling them in the flowing motions of a waltz. “What a dream coming true this is, Affinity, dancing at midnight with you in a sheer nightgown.”

Law’s hand caressed and warmed the small of her back as she pressed her body intimately to his heat and strength. “I so wanted to dance, Law. This is a dream come true for me to be dancing with you.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I read the last pages of your diary.”

“Not all of it?” she asked, looking up into his eyes as he gazed deeply down at her.

“I want to learn the rest from you,” he murmured as they floated to the strains of the waltz, melding their bodies in harmony together.

“Oh, Law, do you really mean it? Are you trying to woo me?” Affinity asked softly.

“I am. Is it working?” he asked with a slow seductive smile on his firm lips.

“Yes!”

The answer left Affinity breathless as their lips touched, then melted together warmly. Her arms wrapped around Law’s broad shoulders as his hands cupped her buttocks, lifting her upward into the heated kissing of their lips, while the dance between them slowed to a halt.

Law broke the kiss as their sultry breaths mingled between them. “Then, my love . . . and you are my love, Affinity. There is one question that I desire to ask you.”

Affinity held her breath, fully expecting Law to ask her to be his mistress. A question that she would shout, “yes,” to! “Lady Affinity Redgrift, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

“Oh my God,” Affinity exclaimed, nearly swooning. She never expected this! Her reputation was ruined. They could not! She’d accepted her fate as a fallen woman in society and she would bear it for her love for Law, but . . . “Law, my reputation is ruined by my own hand. You cannot marry me,” she said with tears filling her eyes. “But I would be your mistress, gladly.”

“My god, Affinity, how much I love you,” he muttered, pulling her closer again and holding her tightly. “Do you trust me, sweet Affinity?”

“Yes of course, always and forever,” she said against his chest.

“Then, you will trust me when I tell you what I know. I visited your uncle the morning after his deplorable behavior. It seems he and Lord Hartley have completely changed their positions and although I would not allow you to go back to his home, you would be welcome and no one will ever hear about the incident or accusations again from those two gentlemen.”

“But, Law, how?” Affinity asked in amazement, stretching back in Law’s arms to gaze up at him with wide eyes.

“Did you ever wonder what your uncle is doing all those evenings that he leaves the townhouse?” he asked.

“Well, I assumed he was, umm, well-,” Affinity paused, finally she said, “Socializing?”

Law chuckled. “Yes, socializing could be a good word. He happens to enjoy women spanking him in a sexual way, and-,”

“Law!” she exclaimed.

“And,” he emphasized, “Lord Hartley likes men.”

“Oh my,” she gasped. “You-you!” She paused. “You blackmailed them?”

“Exactly!” he replied, looking quite pleased.

“For me?” Affinity exclaimed, finishing after him.

“For us.” Law answered firmly. “And you will not hear from any of the servants either. They are all loyal to you. It seems you were the only one that treated them with kindness. Except, John Hanson, Anne’s nemesis. He has already left Redgrift’s employ and London completely.”

Affinity nearly applauded at the news of John Hanson. It seemed there would be many things to learn about Law, and now a lifetime to do it in. Then, Law continued. “And, my love, one more thing to sweeten the pot in my favor and to ply those ripe lips of yours with the answer that I desire.” Affinity’s throat bubbled with a laugh containing the sound and feeling of pure joy. “I insist that, dear Aunt Fuchsia, resides with us.”

“Oh, Law!” Affinity exclaimed, practically leaping back into his arms, strangling him with a lush enthusiastic hug.

“Is that a yes?” he asked with a pleased chuckle.

“On one condition,” she challenged him.

“And that is?” he asked.

“That we consummate the marriage before we say the vows!” Affinity exclaimed.

Law swiftly bent down, lifting her up into his arms as he swung her around. “Then say yes, Affinity my love. Say you will marry me.”

“I will!” Affinity squealed in delight as he twirled them in a circle and Beauty began to bark.

Law wasted no time after he received his answer. He carried Affinity straight for her bedchamber, where he turned and quite energetically kicked the door shut, because his hands where full of his luscious woman. Warrior barked once on the opposite side of the closed door as though announcing his encouragement.

Law strode to Affinity’s bed, as he said, “Tell me all your wishes for your first time, all your dreams and desires, my love, and I will woo you now as you have wooed me.”

“Did I truly seduce you then?” Affinity asked.

“You seduced my body . . . and my mind, then soul, completely. And I want to know your deepest desires, Affinity, and we will write the verse together in our journal.”

“Oh, Law . . . then I will tell you that I want all of you. Every inch of you to caress, love, taste, and fondle. I want to smell you, I want to feed on your seed, and have it be the only food sustaining my lust for you. I want the sweat of our bodies’ slick and sliding against each other, and I hunger for you to thrust your cock into my sheath, Law, then fill my begging mouth, then love my bottom.”

“Lord, woman!”

Affinity laughed, smiling at him proudly. He had his hands full, didn’t he? Someday he needed to find out the source of her virgin body’s worldly knowledge. “Consume you?” he asked deeply, laying her on the bed, then straddling her hips with his upper body raised as he looked down upon her. His hands reached for the collar of her nightgown and he stripped it off her shoulders leaving them bare, as her hands massaged his thighs deeply.

“And let me consume you,” she purred in a husky whisper. “Will you strip for me, Law? Will you entice me and seduce me with your body?”

Ping. Law felt his cock heave inside his breeches as he smiled slowly and heatedly, down on her seductive gaze. “If you will also let me strip you for my pleasure.”

“Oh mm,” she sighed, ardently. “You are making me wet for you, darling.”

Law growled deep in his throat, feeling the challenge of their lustful parrying, as he energetically pulled off his evening coat and tossed it aside, then he tugged at his shirt pulling it up over his head as he backed off the bed. When he stood by the end of the bed, he stopped with his shirt pulled up to his head, leaving his bare chest, arms, and shoulders flexed upward. Then, he swayed his hips slowly once.

“Oh yes, Law,” Affinity sighed with deep sounding appreciation.

The thrill of Affinity’s admiration, of simply looking at him, swept through him, urging him onto this most unique adventure. He palpated his belly muscles as he swayed his hips again and he tossed his shirt off. He found the sight of Affinity kneeling on the bed with her rich hair flowing around her and her cheeks flushed with excitement and avid interest. The desire in her gold-flecked hazel eyes was bold.

He smiled his most seductive and predatory smile at her as he began to rub his hairy chest slowly, while swaying his hips a bit more. Then, suddenly one of his deepest desires attacked him, and he knew love in that moment as he’d never known it before, because he had no embarrassment but only desire to do it for his woman. So he let his fingertips circle his nipples slowly.

“Oh mm, yes, Law,” Affinity moaned, licking her petal lips, as her eyelids grew heavy with arousal. Then, he plucked the tips of his nipples, groaning with pleasure as his hips humped nearly involuntarily. “Oh yes, darling,” Affinity gasped in encouragement. Law threw his head back swaying his hips, then he plucked his nipples again. “Oh, darling,” Affinity squealed softly.

Affinity clutched a hand between her thighs, she’d never seen anything more powerful than Law’s masculine body undulating with seduction just for her. His muscles rippled and they flexed over his strong male physique, while his lean hips swung with a primal seduction, and her fingers petted her pussy irresistibly.

Then, he turned slowly rotating his hips with a come-hither motion until his broad back, patched with lean ropes of sinew, was facing her. She watched the compact shape of his ass avidly as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his pants. He looked over his shoulder at her with a burning gaze, suspending the moment and her anticipation to the breaking point. Then, his eyes slitted in seduction as he looked at her fingers fondling her pussy through her nightgown, while he slowly pulled his pants down, baring his buttocks, but he did not just bare the two twin muscular hams, he undulated his ass at her.

“Baby,” she gasped, thrilled and aroused at the enticement before her.

Law smiled at her squealed endearment and he wiggled his tight ass at her some more. Then, zealously in her inflaming passion, she leaped to the edge of the bed reaching her hands toward his tantalizing buttocks. But he moved just out of her reach as he arched his back, tilting his head back and running his hands slowly over his muscular behind as he swayed his hips.

Ohmygod. “Oh!” Affinity squealed in appreciation. She’d created a sex god!

Then suddenly, Law flexed the rumps of his ass first one, then the other, as he began turning to face her again, while her gaze transfixed to the sight she was more enthralled to see than any other! Law’s turgid cock, lancing outward from between his lightly hairy thighs. The stiff bouncing of it with his balls hanging low was carnal opulence. It reverberated intensely into her aching pussy, as her gaze caught sight of the glistening slit on the swollen head of his penis. The jutting tool of Law’s harden manhood, seemed to arrow toward her with a visual throb of demand that was in its length and weight, in the rigid stiffness, and in the ruddy-capped head, flushed with desire. OhmyGod.

She panted. And then, Law flexed something in his thighs and his stiff and hefty dong bucked upward, then down again. “Oh, Oh,” she mewled in surprise with her gaze leaping from Law’s face to his saluting penis, and then back to his face.

“Now you,” he uttered, in a low commanding voice that made her feel as though he was going to plunder her. The depths to Law were unnumbered and she quivered in excitement at this newest one of an aroused male creature in the act of taking his female thoroughly.

Law moved toward her slowly in all his male beauty and her gaze and all her senses glazed over his masculine headiness. “You are mine,” he said deeply, with his very words marking her mind, body, and soul as his. Then, he was in front of her grasping her waist and lifting her to stand before him. “And I would drink of your lips, Affinity, suckle your tongue as if to make it a part of me, worship your breasts and wetly suck your nipples, feed on your pussy and the juices drizzling from your sheath, then make love to your ass with my mouth, tongue, and fingers.”

“Law,” Affinity gasped, clutching her fingers into his hair, as his hands caressed the silkiness of her nightgown over her hips, and his gaze filled with arousal burned into her gaze. “I want you so,” she whimpered, pulling his lips upward to her mouth.

The kiss was torrid and passionate, wet and hot, with their tongues fervently groping. The baking heat they forged between their mouths was like the building of flames, and the passionate wetness spread over their plucking and searching lips, discovering the rhythms of pleasure.

Law used the enticing soft material of her gown to rub sensuously over her body. First her bottom as he nibbled the tip of her tongue, then her spine as he lapped the roof of her mouth. Next, he rubbed the material over her breasts and nipple tips as he sucked her tongue deep into the hot cavern of his mouth, then finally her belly, pussy, and inner thighs as he moved her tongue in and out of her mouth as though he were mating it. The moans undulating from her throat were low and excited as Law slowly began lifting the gown up her thighs, over her belly, then over her breasts, where he broke the kiss, and then he lifted the gown up over her head.

She expected him to come back to her lips or breasts or anywhere on her body, yet instead he stood back with his penis rigid and pointing at her as he tossed her nightgown aside. “You are so beautiful. Show me,” he murmured, and she felt wholly beautiful and desirable beneath his ravenous gaze as she stretched her arms over her head showing him her female curves with slow undulations. “Yes,” he encouraged her strongly and she swayed her hips as he’d done, turning her flushed body before him, to flaunt her bare bottom to his heated gaze.

It seemed this was his undoing, because suddenly his hands were grasping her buttocks warmly, then startlingly, his mouth was kissing the cheeks. “Oh,” she squeaked, even as her bottom rotated with enticements for him to do more. He must have felt her encouragement, because he pinched her ass.

“Law!” she squealed, reaching back to swat his hand playfully beneath his heated grin.

“I like that,” he teased, moving his fingers forward in a pinching motion again. She laughed, trying to wriggle away, but he held her with his arm around her hip and his hand clasped over her mound. The pinch came and she jerked lightly at the sensation, with an unconvincing, “Ow,” following.

“Hmm.” He seemed to thoroughly contemplate her pale buttocks as his head lowered, then she felt his teeth nibbling her flesh as she came up onto her toes. But his hand cupping her pussy held her body to his licks and nibbles, alternately wetting and stinging her flesh, which sent hot flashes straight into her core. Arousal saturated her, swaying her bottom ardently against his mouth as she bent more at the waist.

Then, Law’s finger in front pressed between the lips of her pussy and rubbed her clitoris. A high-pitched moan leaped from her throat at the same moment he used his free hand to lift one side of her buttocks open. Her hands found leverage on her knees or she might have toppled forward, yet a shock of pure bliss nearly did sprawl her forward at the feel of Law’s tongue circling the entrance to her vagina.

“Oh, Oh, Oh,” she moaned with a sound near to dying in pleasure . . . because she was. She could feel the bristle on Law’s chin grazing her inner thighs, as his hot breath shot over her lower pussy lips. And, then . . .

“Oh!”

Affinity’s squeal of pleasure rushed through Law as he thrust his tongue into her vagina. She could not hold her footing as she went down onto her knees and he went with her to his knees on the floor beside the bed. He grasped her thighs, spreading her knees wide before him and splitting the lips of her sopping and ripe pussy to his gaze, just before he pressed his tongue into her vagina again.

Lord! Affinity squirmed on his tongue humping back against it and he growled in deep pleasure, beginning a regiment of stretching his tongue forward to lap her clit, then dragging his tongue back until it hit her vagina, where he plunged inside her again, to her thrilling squeals of abandon. Next, he withdrew his tongue, then he lapped back to her clit, to repeat the circle, while moving faster each time, until he had Affinity rocking to and fro against him, involved in a hearty and basely passionate tongue fucking.

Lord, he was in heaven, and Affinity was with him ardently bucking backward onto his tongue with cries of pleasure saying that her climax was nearly at its crest. That victorious knowledge spirited him forward, as he grasped her hips tighter and he repeatedly plunged his stiff tongue into her searing vagina.

“Oh, Law!” Affinity screamed as a climax burst inside her sex, convulsing her pussy in rapturous waves. She panted and moaned, then panted again, as the bliss endured, lengthened, snapped, then convulsed again, until she fell down upon her elbows shuddering and barely able to breathe. But Law was there gathering her into his arms and pulling her on the bed beside him, wrapping his larger naked body around her with one of his hands cradling her pussy warmly as though it were his treasure.

The dream that Law was all hers, and that this was all theirs, wrapped around her and the reality of it sang in her heart as he nibbled her ear, and he murmured, “My pleasure will always be that, Affinity, to have you come apart beneath my hands, my mouth, beneath my body. That, my love, could sustain me forever and I want to do it again and again.”

Affinity stroked his buttocks and wriggled her mound against his turgid penis. “I want to give you as much pleasure, Law.”

He chuckled. “A war of pleasure,” he teased, as he tilted his head back to allow the nibbling and kissing of her lips upon his throat.

“Mmm,” she hummed against the warm muscular tendons. “A battle of pleasure, where we both win.”

“Yes!” Law exclaimed, then he turned her beneath him with his bare penis pressing lengthwise along the wet and still throbbing lips of her pussy. The feeling of their sexes pressed nakedly together, quickened her arousal anew with a flash of heat through her body, as he said, “But tonight it is all for you, my love, for your first time”

“Our first time,” she challenged him. “I want you to come with me, Law.”

“To feel my cock pressed deeply inside you, Affinity?” he asked in a mesmerizing whisper.

“Yes,” she moaned, undulating her pussy lips over his penis.

“To feel us joined?” he murmured, raising his hips and stroking her with the length of his penis.

“Yes, yes,” she gasped, grinding against him.

“With my cock thrust inside you, Affinity, my cock thrust to your womb?”

“Oh, yes, please!”

Then, Affinity felt it, the impossibly wide the head of Law’s penis pushing against her opening and the creaminess of his seed oozing there, wetting the edges. “Oh,” she gasped, and her legs rose upward wrapping her heels around Law’s tight thighs. The feeling of him pressing into her made her pant and toss her head back.

Lord, the way was so hot and Affinity’s cunt hole burned the head of Law’s cock as he grunted beneath the pleasure. She was too tight and she was going to strangle the head of his dick in bliss, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to go slow. That lasted until the head of his cock was inside her and the outer entrance of her vagina snapped tightly around the rim.

“Ah,” he groaned, with his body leaching sweat and tension. The feeling was incredible, and he dared himself to withdraw his cock, and then push it in again.

“Oh, yes,” Affinity mewled.

“Ah,” he groaned. Lord, he was never going to last, he thought, shaking his head and lifting his hips to do it again.

She will climax again before he took her, she would; he defied himself, as he tugged Affinity’s legs up over his shoulders. The new position lifted her cunt upward to him like a prize to be taken by him . . . and he was, but just two inches of his cock and no more as he pressed her knees forward lifting her ass upward against his thighs.

Affinity’s scrunched eyelids popped open and her gaze snapped onto his. Oh yes, she liked that, and he gritted his teeth watching the contours of her passion exhilarated face as fucked her in and out two inches only at a time.

“Ooh. Ooh. Ooh, God!” Affinity cried clutching his upper arms, then he felt it again, the tightening and quaking of her scorching cunt around the head of his cock. Her head arched back as her lips opened in a scream of pleasure and just as she began to explode in a climax over the head of his cock, he plunged his dick deep inside her shuddering vagina.

“Law!” Affinity cried.

“Ah, damn!” he bellowed, as his senses erupted and his cock heaved deep inside her womb, then he lifted his cock out, and he plunged in deep again, picking up a repeated and fast rhythm.

“Oh!” Affinity cried in long drawn out squeals of pleasure as he rode her in leaps and bounds feeling his cock bulge, then tighten, and then bulge again, and then . . .

“Ah, God!” he bellowed and half grunted, as his seed ejaculated deep inside his woman, while her continuing climax clutched bliss around his throbbing cock.

A long time later, as he lay in Affinity’s soft embrace, she whispered in his ear. “Darling, this is just the beginning of our abandon, my love.”

The End.

Owning Arabella

By Shirl Anders

Chapter One

Arabella tried desperately not to fall asleep. She convinced herself continually that her anxiety was too powerful to allow the occurrence of sinking eyelids. Yet in the end, her worries drained her into a fitful slumber, so she was surprised by the harsh hands shaking her shoulders, accompanied by the overpowering smell of sour wine.

“Get up.” These stern words were slurred hotly into Arabella’s ears. The sound so close, she jerked fully awake in alarm. Anxious, she forced her eyes closed, but the hands on her shoulders tightened with cruelty and she was yanked from beneath the warm bed covers.

“No, leave me be,” she cried with an accompanying shudder that was not born from the chill of standing barefoot in only her threadbare nightgown.

“You will do as I say!” Victor Crom ordered in a harsh voice.

It was then Arabella saw the treacherous knife Victor held in his bony left hand. She watched in horror as he stumbled back to the trundle bed, where Nicholas lay so innocent in his sleep. She felt the sheer terror of Victor’s intent seize her heart and she moaned, unable to will her limbs to move from their frozen state. He could not harm Nicholas ... he could not! Her heart skipped beats as she watched Victor sliding the knife’s blade just above the contours of Nicholas’ exposed throat. Nicholas was too young, only ten-years of age, not knowing or understanding the danger that they had been thrown into since their mother’s untimely death.

Arabella shuddered, watching in horror as their very own stepfather muttered, “So easy it would be, Arabella. Do you see how easily I could end your sweet brother’s innocence?” Victor gazed at her with eyes hard as glass, belaying his drunken condition, and Arabella knew he could ... No, she knew he would do it without hesitation.

“Answer me, bond’s maid,” he hissed, as he lifted his cropped chin higher, spitting out the words, “Tell me that you understand that you could do nothing to stop me!”

“I could do nothing!” Arabella cried helplessly. Fear for her brother’s life kept her rigid, but inborn defiance lifted her diminutive chin. She already recognized that her stepfather wanted some grievous deed from her and he was using Nicholas as the threat. He had used this method before. Images flashed in her mind of other times aboard the ship. The same ship they had sailed from Jamaica to these shores of England. She knew more than anyone what vileness Victor was capable of.

If she had known of anyone, or even had the smallest hope of somewhere to flee to, she would have grabbed Nicholas up and run screaming from the room. But there was no one, no place, only this deplorably evil man who held her and her brother’s life in the balance. Gulping back her fear with sheer determination, Arabella looked squarely at her stepfather.

“What is it you want? Why do you call me bond’s maid, step papa?” Arabella used the endearment hoping despairingly to remind Victor of some semblance of decency.

Victor moved so quickly then that Arabella stumbled backward, before he caught her roughly. She yelped in surprise that he could move so fast in his inebriated condition. He spun her around jerking her smaller body, to land facing backward against his chest, then he placed the long thin knife to her breast.

“Because that is what you are! I have the papers in my pocket to prove it. They mention quite clearly that Arabella Ormonde is my bonded slave!”

Arabella hardly heard any of Victor’s words. She was terror stricken by the position that he held her in, and her scattering thoughts only caught, “my bonded,” and then horribly, “slave.” Sweet Mary, what was he going to do?

“This is the way of it, my sweet little stepdaughter. I have finally found a value for you and now you are going to do exactly as I say.” Victor’s grip tightened around Arabella’s waist as the tip of his treacherous knife pricked the material at her breast. “I will tell you, Arabella, what will happen if you do not follow my instructions completely. I will cut your brother’s throat and toss his little boy’s body into the sea!”

Arabella moaned as if physically wounded and Victor hitched her upward more tightly against him. “No one knows him!” Victor hissed. “No one will ever take the time to question why a sudden and tragic death would befall a nameless boy of unknown origins.” Victor’s voice cracked with harshness as he wove his wicked tale. “And, there will be no one to come forward to claim that they ever knew the dark-haired twit. Do you understand me completely?”

Arabella knew better than anyone that there was no one who cared for her or Nicholas’ fate. Not here in this strange cold-hearted England. They were in fact, and had been, completely at their stepfather’s mercy since their mother’s death. A man who now held a knife to her throat.

“Yes,” she choked, for she had little choice. But still she fought her tears of hopelessness. She would not let him see her cry. “What do you want?” she asked with her voice sounding shrill, even to her ears.

“I demand that you keep quiet and keep your wits about you, girl. Do as I tell you and Nicholas will remain unharmed.”

Victor loosened his hold on her as he spoke, but Arabella did not move. “You promise not to hurt Nicholas? Do y-you swear?” she asked with a pleading voice, knowing that she would do anything to keep her brother safe, and Victor Crom knew this as well.

“Tis a vow between us.” Victor sneered. “A vow on your sweet mamma’s head. I will treat him as good as silver and gold, if you follow my orders without shirking.”

“What must I do?” Arabella tried to gather strength around her with the knowledge that the only person in the world she cared about would be safe with her actions.

“I have at this moment, in a private room down the hall of this fine inn, a very large amount of money wagered on a game of cards.” Victor lowered the knife, speaking with relish. “The amount to be won will buy us a castle! And I do hold the winning hand. I am sure of it.” Then the knife disappeared into the folds of Victor’s worn brocade vest as he stepped around to face her. “But that crafty Lord Peregrine has raised the ante. Higher than my means! That, my little bond’s maid, is where you come in.” Victor clasped his lanky hand to Arabella’s shoulder making her cringe. “You will be my ante! Surely worth the increased price?”

Arabella gasped in horror as the implication stole over her. “You will wager me as a slave?”

“Yes! I have always admired that quick wit of yours and as I’ve said, I have the papers right here in my pocket to prove my claim.”

Arabella knew that Victor did have the papers he claimed to have. Victor Crom had proven to be a villainous slave trader in Jamaica and not the proper English gentlemen that he had deceive her mother into believing he was. Arabella struggled beneath the reality of the situation, recognizing with a manner of numbness that she had no choice.

Victor rubbed a skeleton hand to his clipped chin, looking keenly at her face. “With your dark hair and those unusual eyes of yours, no one will doubt that your origin is not at least half native.” Then he snickered to himself, obviously well pleased with his sordid plan as Arabella sought desperately to dissuade him. “But slavery is nearly illegal here in England, step papa, not like our home in Jamaica.” Arabella watched Victor closely, praying he would see some kind of reason.

“Come now!” Victor ordered, and then he abruptly grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the door. “Bond’s maid or slave, it makes no difference. One look at you and the gent’s will lose their wits either way, just for the possibility of having you.”

“My clothes!” Arabella cried with Victor’s hand already finding the knob.

Victor turned looking down at her sheer night gown. “No, this will do. They will lose their senses.”

“Oh please, step papa, no! Not like this. I will do what you say, but please let me dress. I will be quick,” Arabella pleaded. The distress over her scanty clothing driving all further worries of impending slavery from her thoughts.

“No, girl, do I need to slice a piece of little Nicholas first for good measure?” Victor asked threatening, as he began searching for the knife inside his vest.

“No! Oh no!” Arabella cried.

“Now cease looking so terrified, girl.” Victor gave her a severe shake. “Gather your wits and just pretend that you are one of those heathen island friends of yours. They were always cheeky and would have looked at his lordship like a proper lusty slave. You will act as if going to his lordship is a pleasant matter. And I warn you now, girl, Lord Peregrine is not an easy man to look at. His visage is blighted. So prepare yourself.” Victor shook her again. “I will have no squeals of fright from you!”

Victor’s hands pressed painfully into her arms, until she yelped, “Yes!”

“Good now. You know, Arabella, I will be winning this hand and everything will be for naught. In no time at all, you will be back snug in your bed thinking this was all just a dream.”

Victor stopped before a heavy maple door, in the upstairs hallway of the Inn at Griswold, and Arabella never had time or a thought to ask what would happen if her miserable step papa lost.

Chapter Two

“If you ever get me into this position again, I will ring your damnable neck,” Lord Darth Peregrine declared, glaring through irritated gray eyes at his best friend and business partner Robert Drake Esq.

“Do not venture that menacing look of yours on me, Darth. You relish it and you know it. The challenge sets your heart to pounding, doesn’t it?” Robert replied with a knowing chuckle.

Darth’s dark expression remained unaltered at his friend’s observation. Of course if he had smiled, he would have appeared the same. His damaged face was scarred in a dark and brutal manner, forever leaving him to appear brutish and evil. It was one of the reasons he despised having to venture out to a place like the Inn at Griswold.

Judas Priest, even on the walk to this private room earlier one of the nimble-bodied chamber maid’s had nearly swooned from just glancing at him. He did not particularly fault the girl — he knew how perverse he appeared. He had lived with the injury to his face for ten years now. Still, he tried to avoid those unpleasant incidences.

“I would regard it much better if I were not at this moment trying to save our entire investment, Robert.” Darth’s mouth turned down into a meaningful frown, emphasizing the slashing scar severing the right side of his lips. “I still do not fathom how you managed to lose our entire investment?”

“This foreign chap is good and you know it,” Robert reproached, then he added, “How he does it after all the wine he imbibes, I will never understand? However, I am just grateful that he gave us a chance to win the money back that I lost to him last evening.”

Darth reclined in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, as he took another languid puff of the expensive cigar he held. His gaze over black brows was riveted to the round table with the cards spread on top. He would win this hand and the entire ordeal would be soon over. Perhaps then, he could even expect to exit this inn without encountering another stricken maiden. The locals around this small haven of Griswold tended to overlook his gruesome countenance. They had viewed him too often in the last ten years. His own estate at Lee, which he was the third Earl of, being less than an hour away. Most of the people in Griswold were partial tenants or had relatives who were tenants of the earldom of Lee. However, the chamber maid obviously did not, he had never seen the girl before. He disliked it immensely when women reacted that way to him, and they all did, essentially crumpling in fear. One would conclude that he would be immune to it by now.

“I do not appreciate this delay, Robert. It bodes ill. Nevertheless, we have no hope to forfeit the play now. It all stands on this one hand. What the devil could that weasel be up to?”

At that moment, both men sitting in the private salon glanced upward as the polished maple-wood door swung open and Victor Crom reappeared. However, he was not alone to each man’s resulting amazement. One gentleman letting his surprise show openly, while the other gentleman’s features remained etched into a permanent dark scowl.

“Now just a moment!” Robert started to say with indignation, until he felt the iron grip on his arm, holding him down in his chair.

“Quiet,” Darth hissed. The sound making Robert stare at him, and then further obey the intended command.

Darth’s gray eyes narrowed as he observed the cause of his friend’s concern. She was a breathtakingly beautiful young woman, petite of height, with a wave of luxurious hair the color of mahogany flowing unfettered down to her rounded hips. She was wearing only a sheer linen nightgown with tiny pearl buttons, buttoned up the collar to her throat and along the cuffs at her wrists. It was indecent attire, as if she had been pulled directly out of bed. The full richness of her bust line could be seen prominently outlined through the threadbare cloth, as could the darker tracings of her nipples. Darth observed at once, that she was not a common whore as suggested by her attire into the room. He did not know if his opinion came from her graceful baring or the look of vulnerable innocence on her alluring face.

Nevertheless, what caused him to pause, and then take a deep breath, was the young woman’s unique eye coloring. Her eyes were like a lioness’. Both of her irises were golden with sparkled flecks in their centers. Luminous, and those two catlike amber globes were riveted on him, and they had been ever since Crom had wrested her into the room. That alone would not have been unusual to him, given his own disfigured looks. However, this young woman was not in the least bit taken back by his appearance. In fact, there was a solemn electrified battle waging between them. His gray-eyes clashing with her golden ones, and the effects were causing an indulgent heat to thicken his cock.
That infuriated him.

Darth watched the blush texture of the woman’s bottom lip trembling as Crom pulled her fully into the room, to display her in front of them across the rounded card table.

“This is my wager,” Crom declared, slamming down a piece of paper onto the table. “Surely it is beyond the worth of your raised ante, and here are her papers showing ownership already signed over to you, Lord Peregrine, if I should lose, which I shan’t.”

Darth’s fingers clenched into tight fists as Crom’s words registered fully in his mind, and a startling wave of absurd longing rushed through his tall frame. It was unbidden, and it was shocking.

“You intend to wager her?” Robert gasped. “That is just not done! I do not know where you hail from, sir, but this is England!”

Victor Crom’s dark eyes grew adamant. “Damnation man, we bond people into servitude all the time. What do you call that? But it is Lord Peregrine’s decision. What say you, my lord?”

Darth did not have a choice — the entire investment was too weighty to be lost. Yet, he did instruct himself adamantly that when he did win, he would simply refuse ownership of the woman. That settled in his mind, he realized that he was curious. The lushly-figured young woman still produced no cringing or disgust at the sight of him. Was she simply brave or perhaps dull-witted? God, he did not think so there was light and intelligence in her golden eyes.

Arabella stared at Lord Peregrine, finding that she could not look elsewhere. She decided instantly that he was truly fearsome looking. But more than that, he was overpoweringly masculine. His hair was a thick mane of the deepest blue-black coloring, which also shadowed his square chin and hard jawline. His nose was harsh with masculine flared nostrils and the portion of his lips that was not sliced by the scarring ran an arched line. His gray eyes were hooded and the scar on his raw masculine face branded the length of his features.

The top and widest part of the scar started hidden beneath his hairline, to slash an angle across his right eyebrow. Then it continued downward across his eye socket and lower along his honed cheek bone at the side of his nose. Here the scar thinly severed his upper and lower lip, to lacerate a deeper cleft into his chin than would have been there without its presence. The word “savage” ran through Arabella’s thoughts, and then the word “powerful” because Lord Peregrine was the most powerfully built man she had ever seen.

He had broad two-foot wide shoulders and thickly muscled legs. The look in his heavy-lidded gaze was meant to devour her. Her body, suddenly a unique stranger to her flushed with warmth spreading over every inch of her skin, firming her breasts and excreting dewiness between her thighs. She was shocked and fearful at her own body’s reaction to this man’s mere presence, his mere threatening and predatory gaze.

Suddenly, Lord Peregrine stood, revealing his tall muscular figure as he stalked with an uncommon grace to the coat rack, where he unhooked a heavy black cape.

“Now just a moment. You’ll not leave!” Victor challenged.

Darth did not offer the villainous slave trader an answer as he turned back with his cape in hand. He walked over behind the young woman, where he deftly swung the cape around her slender shoulders, wrapping her thinly-clad and shivering body within its heavy folds. He realized then that she did not even sport any shoes as he placed his hand to the top of her shoulder. He expected her to at least shudder in distaste at his touch. However she did not, to his amazement, as he pulled out a chair and ordered curtly, “Sit.”

Arabella instantly obeyed Lord Peregrine’s bass-toned command, grateful for the support to her wobbling knees. Nonetheless, she did not look up again at the dark and powerful earl. His entire presence was too formidable to her as he returned to his seat and retrieved his cigar.

“What is your name?” Darth noticed now that the nubile innocent was so close to him, she kept her eyes averted from his face and he felt a twinge of regret.

“Surely that does not matter,” Crom started.

Darth cut him off harshly. “Hold your tongue.” His splintered brow swooped downward unpleasantly. “We will do this after my fashion or not at all!”

Darth watched Crom grow red about the face, however the man sat, placing his hand firmly to the young woman’s left arm. Crom must have squeezed that same arm, for she winced and cast a repellent look at him. Some unknown battle waged between them, until she lifted her chin, and then she turned her gaze to look squarely into his gray irises. Surprising, him once again.

“My name is Arabella and I would gladly be your bond’s maid, your lordship, as is my duty.” Darth experienced a sharp pang of dark and unreasonable excitement. How could she utter such a statement, while gazing at him fully in the face? He raised his split black eyebrow to her pronouncement, considering that Arabella did not sound like a lower class name, and then he observed another pinch, which made Arabella offer a highly strained smile.

“Truly, your lordship, I would do anything you asked of me.”

It was as if she did not see his tragic deformity and he was no man’s fool, something was undeniably amiss. “Where are you from, Arabella?” he asked with a sharp voice.

Arabella continued her steady gaze of his face, as she answered, “Jamaica.”

“And you fully agree that Mister Crom has the right to do this?” Darth felt his heart thudding in absurd anticipation.

Arabella nodded her head mutely with her lush bottom lip beginning to tremble once again. The sight of its trembling damp plushness did him under and he had a wicked image of owning the wild-haired beauty. Those indulgent thoughts of dark and forbidden yearnings produced deep rumblings in his throat. He had been too many years without a woman and now at this moment he was becoming a lecherous fool over just one well-caught look. And he recognized abruptly ... that was the entire point. Wasn’t it?

His eyes narrowed to a dangerous slant, as he decided that Crom was shrewd, and he had nearly fallen into Crom’s trap. Victor Crom wanted him addled brained over Arabella. She must have been forewarned about his appearance. Of course she had. No wonder she did not cringe, but looked at him with boldness. It was all a ruse, however try as he may, he could not fathom the exact trick. The cards where already dealt and there could be no switches made, he had no choice but to accept the ante. So what was their game?

“I accept the wager, Mister Crom,” Darth finally stated, hearing Robert’s sharp intake of breath. However, he did not spare his associate a glance — he was too busy judging the other two’s reactions. Nor, he decided, would he take his eyes off either one of them, until this was finished.

Arabella felt faint. Somehow before Lord Peregrine’s acceptance of the terms, she thought there could be a chance. Of what she did not know, nevertheless, it is forever human to be hopeful. Lord Peregrine’s kind gesture of the cape and his questions to her had given her the impression of the remotest of compassion on his part. Surely it was a sign of charity? Nonetheless moments ago his maddened growl and the deepening of his already fearsome countenance had warned her. Then, Lord Peregrine’s words washed over her and she realized once and for all that he saw her as no more than a possession to be bartered ... A true and helpless slave!

“Show your hand,” Darth ordered with a clip and arrogant voice as he swung his powerfully-built body away from Arabella, to glower across the table at Victor Crom. Darth watched through hooded eyelids as Crom began to slowly reveal each card. Then it was his turn as he picked up his first card and unhurriedly turned it over. He made the unsavory Crom agonize over each card as he took his time showing each one of them. Darth knew the man’s fate would not be sealed until the last card showed and he made certain to catch Crom’s gaze with a snide grin. It had the intended effect, making Crom pale, and then curse profusely when he saw the suit.

However, it was Arabella who startled everyone by leaping to her feet with a wail as her chair clattered backward and she fled from the room. So much for how it would please her to be mine, Darth thought acidly, as a wave of shame skewered his gut with the fact that he could be so fooled into thinking any woman could want the mangled man that he’d become.

Then, Darth watched Crom run after Arabella.

Chapter Three

“Pick up our winnings,” Darth hissed toward Robert, then he stood to follow Crom, who had not been quick enough to catch Arabella at the door. Darth was unsure why he moved to follow, yet it seemed that he could not help himself. Just as he reached the doorway, Darth heard two solid bumps vibrate through the wall, then he heard a woman’s shrill screams, ending abruptly into silence. His motions were rapid and fluent taking him quickly into the hallway, where he witnessed Crom bending over a black shadowed heap upon the floor. And, Victor Crom had a knife.

“Damn you!” Darth shouted. The shout and audience appeared to be enough to send the blackguard Crom fleeing to the end of the hallway, and then out the back door at the rear of the inn.

Darth halted over Arabella’s supine body, then he knelt beside her to check for a pulse, afraid Crom had killed her. He experienced an overwhelming rush of relief, when he felt the steady beat of her heart.

“What happened?” Robert exclaimed as he arrived at Darth’s side.

“That damn slave trader had a knife,” Darth explained, in the process of tugging the cape aside to check for signs of blood.

“Is she dead?” Robert asked with concern.

“No, she has a strong pulse, however she does have a nasty bump on her temple. There is no other blood that I can see.” Darth wrapped Arabella back into his warm cloak. “Judas, Robert, there is no hope for it now, we simply cannot leave her here. That blackguard Crom could come back to finish this foul deed.” Darth realized that he was provoked beyond reason and suddenly consumed with an absurd protectiveness for the young woman. Sweet Arabella who had run from him, he tried to remind himself.

“Bloody hell, Darth, you own her now or did you forget that?” Robert admonished, with notable distaste coloring his voice.

Darth wiggled his hands underneath Arabella’s inert form, then he lifted her easily into his arms to stand. “I never intended to keep her; nonetheless, I had to win back the money that you lost last evening.” Darth moved then, striding down the hall.

“What will you do with her?” Robert asked following Darth’s longer strides.

“Take her to Lee, what other choices do I have. She needs to be looked after,” Darth answered over his retreating shoulder. Then he said, “Now, Robert, go and retain one of the inn’s carriages. I will have to tie my stallion off behind. I cannot possibly attempt to carry the girl by horseback in this weather. And make certain the carriage has blankets or she will freeze.”

Darth wondered, as he stood in the back stairway of the inn waiting for Robert, why he was arranging this? It was not like him to offer aid in just this fashion, especially to the female gender. Better to explain the entire preposterous circumstances to the inn keeper and leave Arabella in his care. However, he found himself strangely concerned about Arabella and he could not seem to convince himself to let her go. The vision of Victor Crom’s knife held over her was enough of an urge to keep him moving forward with his plan of action.

The carriage arrived with his stallion Raven tied unhappily behind it, and Darth stepped out into the chilly weather of drizzling rain, as Robert dismounted his own steed.

“Has she wakened?” Robert asked with concern edging his voice, and Darth shook his head grimly, while they proceeded to the carriage door with Robert explaining. “I have given the livery ten pence to drive you to Lee. As much as I would like to see this through, Darth, you and I both know that I need to get these funds to Bristol.”

Robert opened the carriage door, as Darth stepped up into the carriage asking, “I do not have to remind you of the importance of the full amount reaching the shipping company, do I?”

Robert took a step backward shutting the carriage door, then holding his hands aloft in a gesture of appeal. “I have learned my lesson, dear friend … For life. If ever there is any more wagering to be done, you are the man for it. This is the new Robert Drake you see standing before you. You have my solemn oath on it.”

Darth’s black eyebrows rose with speculation as he adjusted the light burden more firmly on his lap. “Then I will hold my further sermons upon proof of it,” he muttered.

“I only pray the woman is all right, Darth. Did you see the color of her eyes? My God, they are exquisite. Keep her warm, Darth, it’s the bastard’s own chill out tonight.” Robert delivered a solid slap on the door, letting the livery on top know he could proceed.

Darth tried his best to keep Arabella warm with two blankets and his own fur-lined cape. But it wasn’t long before she was shivering in his arms. He cursed beneath his breath as he rearranged the coverings, opening his finely tailored jacket, so he could bring Arabella more into the warmth of his body. He felt her sigh and nestle closer to him, resting her face in the crook of his neck. He was glad for that small sigh, believing it showed some consciousness on her part, as he pondered how long it had been since he had held a woman in his arms. Too long to even consider, he judged, however he had dreamed about it. What man would not, who lived under the imposed celibacy that he did?

Darth spread his fingers through the strands of Arabella’s hair. God did not instantly strike him dead for his audacity, so he delved deeper to feel the full weight of the luxurious mass lifted up and across his palm. He was alone now, he reminded himself. No one would see his weakness as he lifted the thick rich tresses, pressing them to his nostrils to inhale deeply. The scent of jasmine, light and exotic, wafted his senses. So unexpected was the fragrance that he nearly growled his pleasure. He could feel the sound buried deep in his chest as he let a few strands of Arabella’s mahogany shaded hair slide over his lips, tasting them with his tongue. How many tormented nights had he dreamed of such a simple action?

He could feel the sweet buxomness of Arabella’s breasts compressed onto his chest and he experienced the beguiling roll of feminine flesh each time the carriage jostled. The silk of his shirt and the linen night shift she wore were no barrier when she shivered against him and the tips of her nipples hardened into fat circular buds, prodding his chest like fiery brands.

He was instantly staggered, sinking his face into the scent of jasmine with soft tendrils of hair skimming along the texture of his jaw. One of his arms supported Arabella’s back as his other hand searched for her small bare feet to make certain they were covered as well. With that same hand he began to rub their creamy texture, exploring little toes, soft arches, and how they fit into the palm of his hand. It was another area on a woman that men would not generally consider giving much attention too.

Only a man such as him, who was left with only his dreams, and therein laid his insanity.

Less than halfway to the estate, Arabella began to moan, muttering the name Nicholas several times and bringing Darth out of his revere. The man’s name from her lips seemed to burn him, causing a black cloud to descend in his mind. Who was this Nicholas she called out for in her helplessness, he wondered, as envy stoked his passions and he found himself growling, “She is mine.”

In that moment, Darth considered the papers stating Arabella’s ownership to him, which were still in his pocket where Robert had shoved them. He had not seriously considered any notion of slavery or an utterance like the one he had just made. It had simply come to him as he was blinded by the unreasonable jealousy he felt over another man’s name on Arabella’s lips, while he was the one who held her so closely in his arms. What was happening to him, over just holding a woman in his lap?

He knew the answer with an anguished feeling that turned into disgust at how lowly he had fallen into the pit of his own making.

Chapter Four

Within a mile of his estate Darth felt Arabella’s chill turn into a radiant heat and he realized with alarm that a fever had set in. He wondered once again how he found himself in this most unusual situation as he recognized that he was worried. The carriage finally pulled up to his Tudor styled manor house and he sighed in audible relief. He wasted no time getting down out of the carriage — his long strides took him quickly to the immense sewn oak door, which opened heavily upon his arrival.

“Quickly now, Chicery, I have an injured party here,” Darth stated firmly upon entering the manor with his black covered bundle.

“Your lordship, what is this?” Chicery, Lord Peregrine’s valet, exclaimed shutting the door and looking up to see his master taking the staircase steps two at a time.

“I hope the fire in my bedchamber is full-blown, Chicery. She has acquired a nasty fever,” Lord Peregrine called over his shoulder, as Chicery sniffled at the belittling of his skills. Then he realized what his lordship had said, and further what his lordship intended to do. He hastened up the steps exclaiming, “Sir, surely not your own bedchamber! I will ready another one, quick as a whip. She, sir, did you say she?”

Chicery reached his lordship, who was glaring down at him in his own frightful way. “There is no time for other rooms, Chicery. Open this door! Did you not hear me say fever? We must keep her warm.”

Chicery opened the door quickly and followed the earl inside, mumbling as he went. “But we have no proper lady’s maid, sir. And you know Mrs. Wellborn, the housekeeper, lives off the estate.”

“Get over your proper societies bashfulness, Chicery. After all these years together you should know that I of all people hold no store in it. Now pull down those bed covers,” Darth order none too kindly in his rising concern, because Arabella had begun mumbling fiercely and was thrashing her head about in his arms.

“Your own bed, sir! What would your dear departed mother say and with no proper lady’s maid?” Chicery asked, but still did as he was told.

“She would smile her kindly smile at my extreme chivalry. Now go and brew some of that concoction you gave my little niece Victoria last spring for her fever. It worked wonders.” Darth put one knee to the bed as he leaned over and laid Arabella in its center. Without hesitation he began to unwind his black cloak from around her slender form. This sent Chicery into another string of worried muttering as he turned to leave the room.

“Come, little dove, you must fight this,” Darth murmured as he realized Arabella’s night dress was soaked through with her climbing fever. Her delicate cheek bones and smooth temple had acquired a ripe peach-tinted appearance and she kept tossing her dark head from side to side in the early stages of her delirium. Darth knew there was no other choice, the nightgown had to be removed, and he went to fill a china basin with water. Then he grabbed a linen cloth along with the basin and brought it back to set it on the cherry wood night stand by his bed. Gazing down at Arabella, he realized that she was as good as naked already with her sodden gown clinging to her flushed skin. He found that he could not help himself now. Not sure if he wished to. It had been too long since he had experienced a woman’s naked flesh.

He knelt by the bed, with near reverence, and slowly undid the tiny buttons at the collar of Arabella’s night dress. If his hands trembled, he would not admit it and if he was showing himself to be a weaker fool, he would not admit that either. He could tell himself that he owned Arabella now and could do with her as he pleased. However, that would not have mattered either, for he felt as if nothing on this earth could have stopped this journey for him now ... He was driven.

With his fingers help, the collar spread open to the valley between Arabella’s breasts. Darth’s gaze lingered for a time, on the vision of material lying open at a wide V, clinging to the healthy young mounds of Arabella’s breasts. It was tantalizing, this half-dressed and undressed state. The edge of linen fabric running over the curve of her bust had been pulled so low by his own hand that it revealed the circlet tops of her peach colored nipples. Nipples that were puckered into twin swollen kernels, pushing upward beseechingly against the transparency of the clinging material.

He did not, however, go so far as to touch them. Finding he was completely satisfied to only gaze at them, and then reveal more. Carefully, Darth peeled the gown from Arabella’s dainty shoulders. He pulled it beneath her until he had it lowered to her slender waist, and then pulled further past the flare of her curving hips. The experience of undressing her was a sensual emotion in its own right. The night dress came off, out from under her diminutive feet, and he did naught, but let it fall to the floor at his side. He had closed his eyes, anticipating the moment he would open them and experience Arabella’s nudity in total.

Opening his eyes, Darth’s breath caught as a tremor ran the length of his frame.

Arabella was exquisite as he had known she would be. Her apricot flavored skin was flushed to resplendence with the fever and the sable tuft of richly curling brown hair adorning her pussy was positioned perfectly between her sleek thighs. Her belly was so tender and feminine that he found he could do naught else, but lay his cheek in reverence to its satin.

And it was satin, he could feel it against the hard line of his cheekbone as he inhaled deeply and caught the scent of jasmine, but also Arabella’s own special feminine fragrance so close to his nostrils. Darth blew a warm puff of air through the downy brunette curls covering Arabella’s delicate pussy, watching the curls ruffle sweetly with his hot breath. He understood that he was depraved, taking from Arabella’s weakness of the moment and showing his own weakness in return. He might have stayed in that position for eternity and been completely happy with nothing else, had not Arabella began to whimper in her delirium, bringing him back from his personal homage.

Darth shook his head as if to clear it of its glory and he returned his thoughts to the proper amount of worry over Arabella’s condition. Grabbing the wet linen from the basin, he wrung it out and began to wipe the perspiration from Arabella’s shapely young body. She was shivering again, so he finished her front quickly and turned her onto her stomach to do her back. Then, he knew his mind was truly addled as the possibility of owning her swirled through his thoughts. He could still hear her rich voice saying, “I would do anything, your lordship,” as he moved the damp cloth over the heart-shaped globes of her buttocks.

“Christ,” he cursed, and then he cursed one more time for good measure as he turned Arabella onto her back and hastily covered her. It was a good thing, because Chicery chose that moment to reappear and Darth realized that he had nearly been caught. That did more to clear his senses than anything as he began to undergo fury at himself for the disability he experienced. My God, was he a man or a sniveling bilk that he could not be master over his own needs? Agitated, Darth began to stalk the room in his disquiet as Chicery, who was still mumbling, went over to Arabella. Chicery lifted her head and began to feed her sips of the herbal tea.

“Who is she, your lordship, if I might ask?” Chicery sniffed.

“Arabella,” Darth answered as he continued to walk off his self-anger.

“That is all, sir, just Arabella?” Chicery quipped.

Chicery was like a short terrier dog gnawing on a bone, Darth thought and he resembled one too, with his thin nose and puckered lips as if he had just eaten something distasteful. But the little man was bald and therein stopped his resemblance to a terrier.

“Yes, that is all she told me,” Darth snapped, finally coming to a stop in front of the fireplace mantel, where he proceeded to bend and add more logs to the fire.

“And her family, sir, surely they should be notified or a doctor perhaps?” Chicery offered.

“I am well aware of all that, Chicery,” Darth replied as he straightened and walked toward the massive four-post cherry-wood bed. “I am not certain she has any family. As for a doctor, you know their like will only try and bleed her, and I do not have to tell you how I feel about that. Do I?”

“No family, sir? How in the world did you come across her? A lady such as this could not be traveling alone.” Chicery sniffed again as he emptied the last dredges of tea into the lady’s none too willing mouth.

“I own her, Chicery. I even have the papers to prove that.”

Chicery stood up, shock clearly written on his features. “Own her, sir?”

Darth shook his head wearily. “Disregard I said that, Chicery. I do not know where my head is this evening. It has been a long night.”

“Yes, sir, of course, sir. If you like, I will sit up with the little Miss?”

“No, but thank you. That will be all for now. She has become my responsibility and I must see this through. Good night, Chicery.” Darth turned back to the big four-post bed after watching his ever faithful valet close the door. Then, Darth sat beside Arabella and wiped a damp cloth across her fevered brow. She seemed much quieter now after drinking the tea. He set the cloth down on the night stand, and then he moved his hand to run a straight lean finger down her delicate cheek.

“Little dove, you and I must make a vow,” he murmured. “I promise to stay with you, but you must promise to fight this fever,” he finished with a sigh. Then he stood and went to remove his black boots and evening jacket, which he carelessly tossed over the wing chair facing the fireplace. Later, Chicery would find his scattered clothes and pick them up to be properly taken care of. The two of them had what Chicery always considered an improper relationship, and one Darth had insisted upon from the beginning.

There would be no dressing and undressing of his lordship, not even the boots. The most Chicery could hope for in this avenue, of striving to be a proper valet, was the setting out and picking up of his lordship’s clothes. Baths were strictly off limits, and no shaving, only the water could be attended to. It had been upsetting to Chicery at first, when he had passed in the duty of valet, from father to son. Only to find the son so heedless of societies structures. But now Darth only heard the occasional muttering about the improprieties.

Which was splendid with him, because he did not fit well within the constraints of English society, and he easily shrugged off those strictures he could. He thought, perhaps this was a small part of his unexplained fascination with Arabella. She was completely unfettered. No cosmetics or supposedly stylish kinky curls, the woman of this age wore, with the accompanied mountains of petticoats, jewels, and overpowering perfumes. He told himself that his gutlessness in attempting to have a relationship with a woman, since his injury, was in fact his dislike of all the unneeded feminine trappings English women enlisted. And even in moments of complete self-truth, he knew it was partially true. If he had still been of moderately good looks he would have found the English high ladies, with all their style, unappealing.

Arabella began to thrash again, muttering incoherently and causing Darth to return to her side, where he sat beside her and placed a palm to her cheek, which calmed her immediately. He stayed beside her the entire night keeping cool compresses to her forehead. One time going so far as to restrain her during a particular dementia, where she cried out. “Please don’t hurt me!” Then she struggled mightily, for one so small, as if she were being attacked in some horrendous way. It ended with her terror driven screaming. Then she collapsed with heart wrenching whimpers as he told her repeatedly that she was safe. Finally, her fever seemed to break, and she slipped off into a more normal slumber about dawn.

Wearily Darth bathed Arabella one last time, and then he pulled the sheets and coverlet up to her chin. Afterward seeking the fire, which he stoked with more wood. There would be no sleep for him that morning, he considered tiredly as he sat on the Queen Anne settee facing the fireplace. He propped one of his long legs up on the opposite cushion from where he sat with his dark thoughts and even darker intentions.

He was not entirely certain when it had happened. When he had stopped thinking of the idea of owning Arabella as an absurd notion and started entertaining it as his intentions.

Chapter Five

Arabella came awake with a start. She was groggy and confused with a dull pain in her temple. Her first coherent thought was anguish over Nicholas, which drove her from the bed in disorientation. “Nicholas,” she cried.

“You are forbidden to speak another man’s name!”

Arabella nearly screamed at the sound of a man’s voice so deep and filled with anger. She’d not seen him, she had not even seen where she might be. She nearly fell, but reached her hands outward instinctively and caught hold of the back of a settee in front of her. A settee that she had not known was there. It was then her muddled gaze focused on the large profile of a man sitting below her, on the same settee she held onto. For dear life.

It was him, Arabella realized in shock as he turned his head to face her. It was the fearsome spellbinding Lord Peregrine, and then she remembered why it was she knew him at all. He owned her!

“My name is Darth and that is the only man’s name that will come from your lips. Tell me that you understand me properly.” Lord Peregrine snarled these words with his marred face twisted into a frightening mask of anger, illuminating the predatory gleam in his gray eyes.

Arabella gulped fearfully and began to turn. She would run from the mad man with his barbarous veneer and his wicked intentions. But suddenly Lord Peregrine groaned, with a harsh anguished sound, and Arabella saw from the corner of her gaze that it really was pain she could see on his scarred face, and perhaps not complete anger. He seized his face into his hands bending forward, and still she thought to run, especially while there was a chance to escape him.

Pain, the word sliced through Arabella’s mind, stopping her forward motion. She could not leave him in pain, she could never leave another human being in pain. She forced herself around the settee, realizing then that she was naked. Only at that same moment Lord Peregrine moaned again, a horrible sound, and she forgot her unclothed state as soon as she had thought of it. Moving swiftly to his side Arabella placed her hands to Lord Peregrine’s hands and she pried them away from his face.

“Lay back, my lord, I am a healer and I would help you.”

“There is no help when it comes on me.” Darth hissed through gritted teeth.

“Then it cannot hurt for me to try,” Arabella insisted, pushing him backward, until his head lay on the arm of the settee. It was an easy accomplishment in his suffering. His eyes were clenched against obvious agony as she began to massage his temples with some firm circular motions. She massaged along his scar, up into his scalp, and then down his cheek, especially around his eye. It looked as if he had been sliced with a sword. However, by the look of the scarring, she could tell it had been years ago.

“It grips you most when you are tired,” Arabella stated firmly, knowing that tension would serve to draw up the scarred flesh tightly, inflaming it. She had seen injuries of its measure before, although not in the face, when working with her mentor Lady Serena on the island of Jamaica. Lady Serena was an elderly black woman, a native of the island, and considered a black magic shaman. What she really was, was a native doctor of herbs, but she said that she never minded the superstitions surrounding her, if it let her help more people.

“Have you tried heat?” Arabella asked, noting that Darth had relaxed slightly.

“It does not work,” he replied through gritted teeth.

“Then we will try cold. I will be right back, do not move.” Arabella looked around the large room and spotted the water basin. She went to it and found there was a cloth, which she got damp. On her return, she stopped long enough to pull a flat linen from the bed to wrap around her naked body, before she returned to Lord Peregrine’s side. He lay on his back with his hands in fists at his sides and his eyes still clenched tight against the pain. Quickly, Arabella placed the cold cloth over Darth’s face and stepped behind him to place her hands on his neck, which was coiled stiffly with tensed muscles. She began to massage his neck and shoulders as she talked, trying to relax him.

“A healer must use whatever they have available, Darth.” It would make him feel better to hear his given name, she decided. “So I tell you this will work, but I have something in my herb satchel that will help you much more, and I will give it to you and show you how to take it for the next time this happens.” She understood that she was rambling in her concern, nevertheless, Darth’s muscles were loosening beneath her fingertips. “You must always strive to obtain your rest, which will help also.” Arabella moved her hands up the sturdy column of Darth’s neck, and then under his chin massaging deeply. “Oh, I have just thought of a cream that I will give you. It will help to keep your skin pliable.” Her fingers deftly found the pressure points behind Darth’s ears, then she moved her fingertips back up to his temple. She heard him sigh in relief, applying the pressure points seemed to have worked. “My cream smells of jasmine, however, I will mix yours with a more masculine scent, sandalwood perhaps.”

“No, jasmine,” Darth murmured, catching her wrist and bringing it up to his nose to inhale. “Like you.”

Startled by the gesture, Arabella was brought fully around to her circumstances. She twisted her wrist from Darth’s strong grasp and stepped backward. The seizure was gone now, she could see that.

“Do not stop,” Darth said, however he sat up, swinging his long legs to the floor as he turned his head to look at her. A short distance because he was so tall.

“But I think you are better,” Arabella replied taking another step backward with her hand jerking upward to clutch the edge of the linen wrapped above her breasts.

“I am, and I thank you. I would never have believed it, Arabella. It seems it is another reason I find that I am certain now I have made a wise investment.” Darth actually smiled and it made his brutal face turn appealing with a heady sensual quality to it.

“Investment,” Arabella gulped. Truly frightened now. Taking another step backward, she wondered now how wise it had been not to take her chance to run. Only she could not ignore her nature and her nature did not allow her to leave a person, any person, in pain if she could help it.

“Do not take another step away,” Darth suddenly ordered and clearly Arabella understood that he meant her faltering retreat. “My investment of now owning you,” he finished.

Arabella’s heart froze as Darth’s words hung heavily in the room, although, his lordship did not seem to feel that way. He looked satisfied. “There has been a mistake, your lordship,” she whispered.

“Darth.”

“Darth, then. There has been a terrible mistake.”

“I see none, but the paper right here, which states quite clearly that one Arabella Ormonde belongs to me. Tis even dated.”

Arabella wanted to scream at him, to tell him that she was from a good and decent family. She was no slave that he seemed more than willing to accept her as. But suddenly, she remembered Victor’s last words to her as she fought with him in the hallway of the inn. “Keep your mouth shut or Nicholas dies!” Arabella felt tears forming as she fought them back. Sweet Mary, what was she to do, standing with only a linen to cover her beneath Lord Peregrine’s indomitable presence, and he believed he owned her and she could not tell him differently. She would not risk Nicholas’ life.

“I am a healer and I can cook or work at any labor. I would work very hard for my release,” Arabella stated, lifting her chin.

At her statement, the indomitable earl merely stood and looked down at her. Evil incarnate. The entire motion making Arabella want to turn and flee, but even she with her less than worldly ways realized there was nowhere she could hope to escape a powerful lord such as Darth was.

“That is accommodating, Arabella, but not helpful to me. I have more intimate duties in mind for you and incidentally there is no clause stated in these papers for release. Tis lifetime enslavement.”

Enslavement! Arabella stumbled backward at the word ... At the intentions.

Chapter Six

Darth’s hand snaked forward, grabbing the edge of the linen between Arabella’s breasts. “I told you not to step backward again,” he uttered, pulling Arabella and the linen closer. Darth realized that he had to prove his dominance early on if he hoped to mold Arabella. And, he did. With each moment he was close to her, he found himself more determined ... if not crazed

“You are afraid of me?” he asked flatly looking down at her.

Arabella jerked her gaze away from Darth’s impaling gray eyes. “Of you, not your scar.” Arabella wondered with feverish thoughts why she had thought to clarify. Perhaps it was some inner self-preservation which read Darth’s diabolical intentions and she sought to soften the blow upon herself.

Darth was staggered at Arabella’s response. It was true that she was afraid, he could see it. He expected it. However, she did not seem in anyway appalled by his visage. And that excited him. “That is proper, Arabella. It is just the way I would have it in fact.” Darth pulled Arabella closer still, taking her chin firmly in his wide hand, pressing upward, until she had no choice but to look at him. “Are you a virgin, Arabella?”

Arabella’s eyes widened at the implication as trembling fear coursed through her belly and both of Darth’s hands tighten around what they were holding, as if anticipating her flight. She would not tell him! If he intended rape, well then, he would have to live with the consequences. Because it would be rape. She would fight him with all her power, so he knew it for what it was. Sweet Mary, she had no hope of winning against his strength, if that were his intentions, and why else would he ask her?

“I cannot abide stubbornness from my property, Arabella. Tell me at once or I will be forced to punish you!”

Arabella was petrified, yet she would not let Darth see her fear as she stared up at him with defiance. “Rape me if you will, you beast.”

Oh my God, why had she said that? Darth flinched. Arabella knew her last word had hit its mark and she was surprised that she did not feel more satisfaction at hurting him as he was intent on ravishing her.

Darth pulled once forcefully with the hand that held the edge of the bed linen between her breasts, ripping it away without warning. Arabella was so stunned, she did not even scream as he grabbed up both of her wrists and placed them together in one of his broad hands. Clamping his fingers around them tightly he began to pull her along behind him. “Rape, Arabella? There will never be rape between us. You will be willing, I can assure you!”

Darth pulled her to a dresser, where he opened a drawer and rifled through its contents with his free hand. Arabella finally found her wits and thought to escape him, twisting her wrists and panting with the effort, until he squeezed his hand even more. He was strong as seen in his powerful body stretched tautly beneath the silk of his white shirt.

She yanked again, screeching, “Let me go!” But he did not budge. He was like a sturdy oak tree, immovable to her smaller frame and she saw, with alarm, the two belts he pulled from his drawer. One was a two-inch leather strap and the other was a much thinner trouser tie.

Punishment! Darth had said punishment! Arabella squealed again, but it did her no good as Darth hauled her to one of the bedposts at the end of the huge four-post bed. There he lifted her wrists high over her head as she wiggled and fought his hold. But he took the thinnest belt and wrapped both of her wrists, pulling them higher to bind the belt around the bedpost securely. Bringing even her heels off the ground. She was hung helpless and naked, heaving from the exertion of trying to escape him.

“God, you are beautiful,” he uttered, swiping a broad hand across his scarred mouth as if he had not meant to say it.

Darth was standing to the side of her with one of his hands hung down at his side and the wide leather strap dangling to the floor. Arabella clenched her eyes and tensed in terrified anticipation of the lash she knew was coming. Flinching, when Darth moved. But no sudden pain came across her back. Instead, she heard the soft whoosh of the feather mattress. Then she dared to open her eyes to see Darth stretched out like a great feline cat laying crossway’s on the corner of the bed. His penetrating gray eyes were gazing up at her. She’d never felt more exposed in her life, stripped naked and bound immobile before a man.

“I hate you!” she cried, not knowing what else to say or to do as Darth lay there, and then he smiled slowly. Arabella’s heart caught unreasonably, for she would never think the brute, the bully, who was so utterly male, could be attractive in his own way. But she did! And that frightened her more than being at his mercy. She could not help it with him looking at her so. Darth’s eyes were leisurely sweeping down the length of her nude body, and there was obvious appreciation in their gray depths.

Suddenly, she felt unexpected heat flushing her body, drawing her nipples upward into tight swollen marbles. Oh heavens! Did this man not abuse her, take her clothes, tie her up, and promise to-to whip her? She was so confused, as she wiggled beneath Darth’s gaze, feeling suddenly breathless.

“What are you going to do to me?” She could stand it no longer.

“Are you a virgin?”

Arabella clamped her mouth shut defiantly.

“You are stubborn, little dove.”

Darth brought the strap upward and flicked it around behind Arabella, catching the other end with his hand as he lay on his side. Both of his hands now held an end of the strap, as the strap itself settled across the under curve of Arabella’s plushly ripe bare buttocks. Arabella gasped twisting against the soft leather corralling her sumptuous ass and Darth sawed the leather back and forth. She tried to arc away from the insidious leather, and the movement thrust the firm globes of her breasts upward, exploiting the fevered peach colored thrust of her nipple buds. They were swollen tiny cherries that were fat and quivering.

“How does it feel, Arabella?” Darth sawed the strap across Arabella’s ass again, watching her breath catch in a hard pant as her nude body trembled. “It is hard to believe that a strap like this, which can dispense such a nasty sting, could be so soft.” Darth’s eyelids grew heavy-lidded, holding her gaze as if it too was bound to the bedpost. She shivered in fright, before him. “Do you want me to strike this against your sweet little ass?” he murmured. “It will hurt, little dove.”

Darth allowed her no answer as he loosened the belt, and then he snapped it forward again between his hands. The strap snapped across Arabella’s tender buttocks making her yelp in surprise. Her young body struggled then, but he had her captured.

“I will never tell you!” she cried.

The thought of it provoked Darth beyond temporary reason and he came up on his knees before Arabella, while still holding the belt around her wiggling ass. Then, he lifted her up to him with the belt as a cradle beneath her bare buttocks. She had no choice but to separate her thighs, until he had her hot cunt riding the outline of his hard cock, like an ardent tease. The impossible position, with her arms above her head, pushed her firm breasts into the wall of his chest.

Savagely, Darth bit back his groan of pleasure as Arabella’s head fell back. She was helpless and exposed as he rode her sweet cunt up and down over the impression of his stiff cock. He was merciless on himself and on her. It had been too long for him — there was no way in heaven or hell he could stop. Ten years without a woman and even then he had never done anything so lecherous.

Arabella would never stand a chance against his lust. Her long hair swung around her naked ass as he humped her mercilessly. Suddenly she moaned, a woman’s aroused sound, and he nearly roared with elation. He was affecting her, in spite of herself.

“Tell me,” he uttered hoarsely as she whimpered with pleading and aroused sounds. “Tell me if you have ever felt this before, Arabella?” he continued relentlessly. “Have you been this near to a man’s hard cock before, little dove?”

“Please,” she cried, and Darth felt the liquid heat of her wetting him.

Chapter Seven

Christ, Darth wanted to growl and shake his muscle against Arabella ... and then he smelled her heat. Humid and musky. Hot. “Yes,” he uttered fiercely and he grabbed Arabella’s naked ass in one hand holding her up to him as he dropped the belt. His other hand found her cunt. Juicy. Scorching. Wet. She squealed shrilly, but he cut the sound off with his mouth over hers. Her lips twisted trying to avoid his mouth, but he would have none of it as he arched her neck further back and he took her mouth. He was rough, perhaps crazed, with his hand between her thighs.

Only the whores he had fucked occasionally in his youth had ever let him touch them like this. Touch the hidden and mysterious cunt beneath their skirts. Yet now he had full access from an unwilling and beautiful woman. The mixture of Arabella’s captivity, his years of celibacy, and simply the feel of her pussy on his fingers drove him beyond any propriety.

As he raped Arabella’s mouth with his thrusting tongue, he raped her pretty cunt with his fingers. He found a lip of flesh deep in the wet folds that made Arabella squeal and rub her body against him. The motion drug his fingers deeper into the cleft of her buttocks, until the tip of his longest finger was touching the entrance to her vagina from behind, as he held her up against him. He wondered with a passion ripped mind, whether a man could rape a woman’s mouth, ass, and cunt hole at the same time.

Arabella screamed into Darth’s mouth, around his thick tongue as pleasure wracked her body in accumulating waves so overpowering she was witless against the domination. Darth’s strong rough fingers tweaked the pleasure, torturing her body to rapturous new heights. And then, she screamed again, writhing against his powerful unyielding frame. Feeling the alien sensation of a man’s finger embedded deeply in the core of her sex, then another thickness entering her constricting anus, while a demanding tongue ravaged her mouth. There was no escape. Only amazing need, ecstasy, craving, and surrender, forcing her to whimper and scream in pleasure.

Jesus! Darth tore his mouth away from Arabella’s trying to catch a panted breath as he played his fingers inside of her sweet asshole and another in her dripping hot vagina. It was so wicked, so depraved, so wonderful. A man taking his woman through aggression, forcing her to respond to him. He was being lustfully depraved as only his dreams had ever allowed him to be.

“Aaaa!” Arabella screamed and Darth knew it was in pleasure as he bit down on her arched throat, while his fingers played deeply inside of her. In. Out. In. Out. Arabella jerked her plump breasts against his chest, crying again passionately. He nibbled her supplicated throat. Nibbling. Licking. Biting. While his fingers fucked her relentlessly and the hard cock he held in his pants dribbled his seed.

Arabella was a virgin — Darth could feel it and it thrilled him beyond his comprehension as he tested the barrier with each thrusting of his finger buried inside her. Her thighs quivered uncontrollably over his wrist and her inner muscles clutched his fingers in spasms. Her cunt was tight and quivering. Clutching. It grabbed at his thrusting fingers.

“Aaaaa!” she screamed again, jerking in a fever as sharp throbs beat wildly deep inside her and his finger became drenched with hot creamy liquid. Climax. The contraction and release of her vagina around his fingers made him gasp. The hot cavern of her ass made him groan as he suckled deeply on her throat. Holding her to him as the surges of pleasure rippled through her young lovely body.

If there were tears in his eyes, he would deny it. If he trembled, he would never admit it as he withdrew his fingers from Arabella’s sweet, ripe body, and he bit back his own tormented arousal with a new and firmer resolve shaking him. Arabella was his. He owned her.

Arabella was weak. So limp in the aftermath of what Darth had done to her. Her mind was hazy. Her body fluid and her throat sore from her screams. Still, she could feel Darth holding her. His strength and masculinity warmed her now, where before it had frightened her ... even while it had excited her and governed her. She tried to make herself think to any purpose. Her wrists were still tied above her head. She was still nude. Owned by Darth. It should frighten her. She knew that it should. Then, Darth moved against her and she remembered that this was only the beginning.

“Now tell me if you are a virgin.” Darth’s voice sounded hoarse and deep as Arabella tossed her head, making small whimpering sounds. “So foolishly brave, little dove,” he uttered.

The endearment Darth used wracked Arabella’s senses, in stark contrast with the way he had just ravished her body with his fingers and his mouth. The things he had done to her — the pleasure she had felt, left her confused and afraid. She had never been touched by a man’s intimate hands before this, she was a virgin, yet she had lived in Jamaica for most of her young life. She’d heard things and seen things ... men and women together. Before this she had touched herself between her thighs. Over the past year of her eighteenth birthday, she had been anxious over how often she felt the need to touch herself.

There had been a torment growing inside her that was never satisfied, until this moment. The yearning and the wanting were still there, but the torment now knew relief. Relief, that came from the powerful hands of a darkly scarred earl. A man who should terrify her with every piece of common sense that she possessed, yet she was afraid instead, that he might thrill her.

“Yes,” she finally cried, vulnerable and shaking, more afraid of herself than of him.

“Yes, you are a virgin?” Darth asked relentless, he knew the answer, yet this was a part of the command. His command over Arabella.

“Yes, I s-said, yes!” she choked, strangling on the words. “And, you are a beast and I should never have helped you!” The tears came then, born of her capture and enslavement.

Judas Priest, she was full-fledged crying now and it was not just a few tears, but beginning to be sobs. Darth cursed under his breath. The guilt, which was riding him hard, blossomed into tangles of humiliation. It had been there teasing the back of his emotions. Real men cajoled, teased, flirted, and seduced. Normal men had no need to conquer and dominate. He believed with every piece of his being that Arabella would never willingly embrace him. Nor would she in the future without his omniscient command.

The conflict was a wicked and depraved one, and the outcome was a forgone conclusion. His lust would rein victorious over his humiliation, brushing it aside as a mere afterthought of emotion, making way for the new, headier sense of lustful male domination. He would never allow Arabella a choice about what she thought about his attractiveness. He had yet to believe it, but his brave Arabella had even touched his damn scarring. Caressed it ... And taken the pain away. How much gold would he have given any person to take the recurring pain away? All of it! His entire fortune. Yet still, he questioned if Arabella’s healing had been fortuity. Conceivably, it had just been a light spell to begin with, he had those as well. Darth gathered his resolve; he had too many needs not to see this through. Wicked, depraved, or even a beast, he was all of that and his face proved it.

He rolled up off the bed, ignoring Arabella’s weeping as he went in search of a brandy. Which he downed in one gulp with its fiery liquid searing his belly, making him realize it was morning and he was hungry. However, he ignored this also. He wondered briefly where Chicery was. Normally Chicery would have been here by now. Going about his self-imposed duties of opening the heavy drapes that darkened the room and setting out his lordship’s clothes for the day, with a bath being brought up. Darth knew that he’d locked the door earlier, but that would not keep Chicery from at least knocking. The thought of a bath propelled him into imagining other ways he could use to subjugate Arabella to his will.

It was then that Darth noticed that Arabella had fallen silent and his gaze returned heatedly to her nimble shape, displayed in such a heady and decadent manner. Immediately, Darth saw that Arabella’s heels were up off the ground. Damn ... He returned quickly to Arabella’s side, untying her slim wrists. A moan escaped her as her arms fell to her side and he caught her slender waist in his big hands before she fell, turning her to sit on the bed. The physical touching again, of her pliant flesh in his hands, shook him with fierce needs that took him moments to control.

Arabella clutched her breasts and between her thighs with her long auburn hair falling forward as her head hung down. “I beg you for clothes, my lord,” she whispered in a small voice.

“Darth,” he corrected. “And no, no clothes.” Arabella’s head came up at this, sending her long tresses falling backward over her bare shoulders “You will not cover yourself to me unless I wish it,” he stated firmly under her horrified golden eyes.

“You cannot keep me unclothed!” Her small chin rose upward, becoming firm.

“I can, Arabella, and I will. You are mine now and you will do everything I say.”

Knock-Knock-Knock. “Lord Peregrine, I have the hot water here for your bathing and I have brought the sick young lady some gruel.”

“Damnation.” Darth cursed at Chicery’s timing, just as Arabella leaped to her bare feet with a horrified squeal and began to run toward the only other door in the room. It was his dressing closet.

Chapter Eight

Darth frowned, feeling haunted and edgy. His hooded gaze never leaving Arabella, while she fidgeted on the other side of his bedchamber, pretending great interest in the things on top of his armoire.

Chicery had come and gone, bringing food and a bath, while Arabella closeted herself in his adjoining dressing closet. When she had exited at his command to come partake of the food she had been wearing one of his white silk shirts. He had not yet commanded her to remove it. Instead he sat in the brass tub of hot water, with one of his hairy calves propped over the edge as he brooded. Fighting his lust was a more accurate description, as he watched Arabella trying valiantly to pretend that he was not present. Perhaps she thought if she bided her time quietly enough he would vanish from the chamber on some important morning duty. Alas, that would not be the case.

Instead, he sat in his bath contemplating his lust ... or rather, his rigid and fully aroused cock with its obese head poking out of the water. Finally, unable to live with the torment one second longer, he grasped the ample root of his manhood into his hand.

An embracing stroke, up the shaft, brought his head back to lean against the rim of the brass tub, but his gaze never left Arabella. The outline of her rounded ass beneath the silk of his white shirt became a focal point for his gaze.

Darth stroked his cock slowly with a tight grip, lifting the angry red head out of the water with each pull. His gaze contemplated the rich, reddish-brown hue of Arabella’s long mane of tangled hair and the way the very ends of it curled over her rounded buttocks. The water splashed as he tormented himself with his hand, feeling his balls on the downward stroke. The pleasures making his thighs stretch open wider. He was an expert at this manipulation ... A fool, who’s only lovers had been his hand for the past ten years.

His mood was lifting in a sublime way and the irritating concerns about a man named Nicholas — where Arabella came from — her family and Crom with a knife over her, melted away. They ceased to exist. “Arabella, come here now and help me with my bath.” His voice was deep with command and there was no question in its tenor.

Arabella turned slowly to the command of Darth’s voice. The decision she had been dreading was at hand. Whether she should struggle or surrender. Should she fight with all the will that she possessed over the inevitable or should she simply submit? Both options frightened her. The fact that she had no choice did not escape her as she walked hesitantly toward Darth sitting in his large brass tub.

She’d never even been kissed before, she thought. She’d never had her heart strings tugged by a handsome suitor as was every young girl’s dream. It was not as if she had not dreamed of such things, only too many things had happened to get in the way of pursuing it. By the time she had been old enough to consider such feelings, her father had died an accidental death. Throwing herself, and her mother, and brother’s’ lives into turmoil.

Her father had owned a modestly sized sugar cane plantation in Jamaica. Upon his death though, which he had not adequately prepared for, there had been the immediate threat of losing the plantation. All because the law stated that a woman alone could not be the rightful heir, and instead of losing the plantation, Arabella’s mother had quickly looked for a new husband. She’d had some small amount of time, so it had not been a completely desperate act of just picking any rapscallion who came along.

Unfortunately, all the thought in the world had not prepared her for a con man like Victor Crom. He had presented himself to Jamaican society as a respectable English gentleman, with numerous properties of his own back in England. None of which was true, and then a week before the terrible fire, her mother had contracted an island fever and nothing she or Lady Serena had done had served to save her. It had been excruciating to stand by so helpless, watching her mother dying.

A week later the cane fields had caught fire and no amount of effort had been able to stop it from taking the house. Victor had been beside himself, ranting that the natives had started the fire and nothing Arabella could say would make him think otherwise. That was when Victor said they were leaving, going to England, and although she had protested vehemently, she’d had no choice but to follow his rule. At least until she turned of age, and then perhaps she could break his hold but that would not help Nicholas.

Arabella cast a veiled glance at Darth from beneath her thick eyelashes. She had not been in the room when he had entered the tub. Since then she had tried to keep her gaze everywhere, but on the coppery colored tub, which was set before the marbled fireplace. Darth was literally sprawled into the tub with his long legs hanging out the sides. She had never seen the front of a naked man before. Arabella peeked beneath her eyelashes at Darth’s broad chest, carved in muscle, and then along the ropes of sinew that flexed over his powerful shoulders and arms when he moved. Her gaze glanced over the black hair curling over Darth’s chest and covering his powerful legs. She had heard the word masculine before, but never truly understood it until now.

“Arabella, come wash my hair.”

“Yes, master,” she quipped through her trembling lips. To her surprise, it appeared it would be a combination of both fighting and submitting. “Oh!” she yelped suddenly as Darth grabbed her wrist and tugged her sharply to the side of the brass tub. She had moved too close to him, and he was quicker than his large body betrayed.

“You will call me Darth,” he uttered with fierceness.

Arabella cowered, tugging on the wrist Darth held captured, as she cried. “You are hurting me.” It was a desperate lie, yet Darth’s hand let go so fast that she had to clutch the rim of the brass tub to keep from falling.

“And, you will remove that shirt that you have stolen from me!”

“No,” Arabella cried, as she turned to flee.

Behind her, Darth leaped out of the tub, with so powerful of a motion that the water came with him, drenching them both as he caught her from behind. One of his muscled forearms, clamped over her waist, dragging her backward, then lifting her upward against his chest.

“You are a beast!” she cried senselessly.

She struggled within his grasp with long strands of her wet hair slapping his bare chest as her head twisted with her struggles. Darth merely laughed at her, and the sound of it outraged her further as she screeched and tried to scratch his forearm. She was outraged and frightened, but more, she could feel the bare-skinned impression of Darth’s considerable male organ pressing into the crease of her bottom. He held her feet dangling off the floor, while he laughed at her again. Arabella could feel the uselessness of her struggles beneath the power of his strong masculine body, yet his laugh infuriated her beyond common sense.

Then suddenly she was free, and her feet touched the ground as Darth’s forearm lifted from its imprisoning hold around her waist. Her panicked instincts were to flee as she bolted forward away from him, but he was holding onto the collar of the shirt that she wore. She had not realized his hold was there, until she heard the ripping sound and the fragile silk shirt was torn from her body. She squealed in shock, fear, and surprise at being left completely nude again so quickly. In desperation she kept going forward, running to the door as she grabbed for the doorknob. Of course it was locked, as she knew it would be, even as she tugged uselessly on the brass knob.

It felt as if she could not get enough air into her lungs, when she finally stopped her futile efforts, and she leaned limply against the door. Tingling goose bumps rose anxiously on her buttocks and up her spine, and it was not entirely from her wet and nude flesh. It was from the silence behind her and the certain knowledge that Darth’s dark gray eyes must be gazing at her nudity with singular intensity.

The silence was deafening, as she clutched her bare breasts and between her thighs turning slightly to look back into the room behind her. She was shocked at the charcoal gray darkness of Darth’s eyes as he regarded her intently, while he sat sprawled in a brocade wing chair by the fireplace. His absolute nudity was overpowering, but more keenly disturbing was the way he held his own male organ in his hand, stroking it. A male organ that dwarfed even his large hand with its size.

Darth’s long legs were bent at the knees and fallen open. Arabella could see his hips rising and lowering subtly with each stroke that he took. His powerful thighs with black hair covering them had stretched tendons of sinew, and his chest was broad, hairy, and muscular. His darkly shadowed face was flushed and the scarring stood out against his exotic dusky features. The contrast of his darkly shadowed powerful body, against the fleshy red coloring of his male organ was vivid. Her breath caught as the rosy bulbous head bounced in a salute to her with a seemingly vigorous stroke that Darth took. There was wetness in a small tender crease in the helmeted head.

A small moan of unknown origins escaped her throat, and Darth’s deep gray eyes rose from looking at her buttocks to her face. “Turn around,” he rasped. The intense torment in his dark eyes drew her around, until her back was pressed up against the door. She could see the haunted craving in his gray irises. “Watch me with my lover, Arabella. The only companion I have had in ten long years,” Darth hissed.

Then she watched in awe as he used his free hand to fondle the ruddy colored sacks hanging below his male organ. His thighs stretched open wider as his tall body slouched more into the chair, and the hand he used to pump his rigid organ began a faster stroke. A sound like hushed slapping filled the room as his cheeks drew leaner and his lips grew fuller, while his eyelids drooped to half open. Without realizing it, she dropped her arm trying to cover her breasts, until both her hands were between her thighs, clutching her sex.

He groaned then, with a harsh expelling sound as her nipples goose-pimpled and the tips puckered into small fat buds. She had trouble breathing and the strain of it lifted and lowered her naked breasts, as humid dampness seeped from her sex and wet her fingers.

Darth’s nostrils flared as his hand moved more swiftly along the rigid column of his organ, making louder and more rapid slapping sounds. “Let me see your pussy,” he hissed and the sound of his voice was a tenor plea.

Instinctively, she knew what he wanted to see, even though the word was foreign to her. But nothing could move her shaken limbs as she stood watching Darth, wholly transfixed on the overwhelming sexual energy expanding from him. Then a moment later, it seemed not to matter as his head fell back and the strong tendons in his neck stretched. His eyes closed and watching him, her breathing became erratic, nearly panting. His hips began to raise and lower with the swift pumping of his hand, and she could see the bottom curves of his buttocks over the edge of the chair.

“Oh, Jesus,” Darth groaned sharply.

Arabella gasped with the sound, and finally she started to breathe again after long moments of suspension. There was a creamy white substance spurting from the head of Darth’s organ. It was seed, a man’s seed, she thought dizzily, as her knees began to shake and she realized vaguely that her legs would no longer support her. Slowly, she sank to the floor, while still clutching her aching sex as she watched Darth with his head still reclined and his broad chest expanding and contracting with labored breathing.

She could not stop trembling as her body continued to sink, until she lay on her side on the floor. It was as though a great force of energy had rushed through her body and it left her helplessly exhausted. Her eyelids blinked, then lowered, and she knew her failing weakness was complete.

Darth slouched in the chair with his limp cock held in his hand for thirty minutes or more. At first he was aware of nothing, but a haunted and deflated feeling, caused by the temporary release of his edgy lust. It had been like this for the past several years, he never gained satisfaction anymore by his own hand. He felt a second or two of agony that he could not call pleasure, then the release of tension in his body, followed by deflated and debase feelings. It was disgust with himself and his sexuality that did not allow him to attain the overpowering and lingering pleasure he knew could be gained. This time was no different, more humiliating perhaps, because he had done it in front of a beautiful young woman. He had allowed Arabella to see his depravity, by fondling himself shamefully. Never able, until the last second, to take his gaze off her.

An annoyed sound erupted from his throat at his weakness as he denounced himself severely. What did it matter what Arabella thought or saw? He owned her. His intention was to master her completely, sating his lust and haunted conscience on her body. He would have to continue to force her — he was no fool believing otherwise. Yet eventually, she would submit with compliancy, and perhaps find some measure of enjoyment ... if she kept her eyes closed.

Chapter Nine

Stirring from his lethargy, Darth unwound his large frame from the chair and stood with his gaze immediately searching for Arabella. He was surprised to see her lying naked on the floor in front of the door. He had expected to find her hidden once again in his clothing closet or shivering beneath the bed linens. When he crouched next to her, and then lifted her into his arms, she merely mumbled in her sleep and cuddled closer to the warmth coming from his bare chest. It was a hidden moment in time, when Arabella was completely unaware of her reaction to his nearness.

He savored it like a rich sumptuous meal, burying his face into her jasmine scented hair as a tightness of intense longing constricted his chest. For all his morose and depraved thoughts, he had been a simple man, before the attack marring his face. A man who had dreamed of love, a wife, and children someday. Yet that had been so long ago, he had not thought of it in years, until this moment holding Arabella in his arms. She was soft and shapely, so small compared to his girth. She curled around his larger frame like a downy blanket, and where he was hard and unyielding, she was soft and pliable.

When he laid her on the bed, he kept his hands on her, around her small waist, shaping her curving hips. Her flesh was resplendent with creamy delicate textures, and his thumb pads learned the exact outline of her small hip bones, while his fingers pursued the rounded curves of her buttocks. His hands explored her waist, encircling it with his long fingers, which were dark against her apricot tinted flesh. Then he stroked back down her hips, holding them as she murmured soft sounds, unconsciously rolling her hips within his hands.

She was still asleep, yet subtly aware of his slow petting of her smooth downy flesh, and he lifted her hips and shaped them again with his large hands. The hair above her pussy was perfect. It was an interweaving of lush auburn curls, darker than the coloring of her lengthy mane of hair. It lay on the dainty mound of her pubis in a perfect cup shape, just below the delicate kiss of her belly button. He rolled her hips again, stroking down to the front and back of her thighs, then returning up over her rounded hips to circle her waist.

Unconsciously, she was enjoying his caresses as she moved with his hands and the tips of her nipples drew outward into swollen buds. The sight of her fully aroused nipples lifted his already aroused cock further. He had not seen nipple points like Arabella’s before. They became circular and tightly fat when aroused, not spiked and thin. They were amazing, like miniature cherries topping the impressive mounding of her breasts and the areolas in their centers had tiny raised goose bumps in the peachy colored flesh.

Both of her breasts shivered with tiny goose bumps as he traced his thumb over her slender rib cage, and his fingers, holding her from behind followed the shapely curve of her spine. She murmured soft feminine sounds as his thumbs explored the crease of flesh where her breasts blossomed from her chest. He held her spine with his fingers, while his thumbs stroked the bottom curves of her breasts with a side to side motion. The pliancy of her breasts was creamy and soft, very fragile against his thumb pads and his stroking raised a warm flowery scent.

At his intimate caressing, she lifted her chest, raising her young breasts toward his chin as he crouched over her. He caressed her again, tracing his thumbs in a half circle from side to side, and she lifted her breasts upward, further supplicating her nipples before his mouth. If she had been aware, her body would be rigid and anxious, not flowing and supple like it was. He was enthralled, perhaps overcome by his unbidden fondling as he lowered his lips to one tightly swollen cherry-shaped nipple tip.

Arabella’s sudden waking sound of sharp denial startled him with the tender cherry-top of her nipple between his lips, and her fingers digging and pushing at his shoulders. “No,” she gasped, and he imagined that she was shocked to wake in this fashion. He quickly caught her squirming hips into his hands, holding them still, as he left the prize in his mouth behind to raise his head.

“You will be still,” he ordered sharply, glaring into her wide golden eyes.

He was irritated at the loss of such a lovely uninhibited moment. The stark contrast between freely given or forcefully taken, glared at him. Arabella clutched the front of his unyielding shoulders with her slender fingers shaking over the tight muscle. Her gaze registered the feel of his fingers holding her naked hips, and the fact that both their gazes could not escape the sight of her aroused nipples between them. The look on her face was helplessly embarrassed as she turned her face to the side, yet she remained still and anxiously waiting beneath him.

“Close your eyes,” he commanded, and she darted a glance at him, then away again, as her eyes remained open. He unlatched a hand from her curving hip and brought it up to cover her eyes, making her puff a startled breath. “You will keep your eyes closed, until I give you permission to open them again. Is that understood?”

“But I cannot,” she cried, turning her head in restless denial beneath his hand covering her eyes. “If you are going to rape me, then you will have to look at me!” she blurted, in a higher pitched voice.

Darth hissed with fury, jerking his hand away from Arabella’s eyes as he lifted his body to stand beside the bed. He used his finger to point at her as he emphasized his next words. “You will stay there and not move.”

“You own me! I am your slave,” she cried. “It will be rape!”

Arabella wondered at the sanity of her mind for defying Darth, even as her body ached so uncontrollably to have him touch her again. Her sex was wet with desire for his invading fingers, her breasts and nipples were taut with yearning. She did not understand it and it frightened her. The torment inside her was free now. It was thriving and burning out of her control, forcing her to gaze at Darth’s rigid male organ. An organ that she craved so fantastically to have inside her. Her body hungered for its unbending power and thickness. Darth’s long male organ enthralled her, tormenting her thighs to separate and expose her sex before its command. Her body shook with the effort that she used not to obey its enslavement as Darth glared down at her with sharp gray eyes.

Darth finally spoke and his words were growled from the base of his throat. “If rape is all that I am allowed, then I will take it,” he hissed. Then he turned his face away and uttered. “But you will not have to see the beast that ravishes you.”

Then suddenly his powerful body coiled and he leaped toward her. She screamed as he landed in a crouch on his hands and knees over her, like a great predatory black panther. His knees imprisoned her legs, and his hands braced on the bed, caged her shoulders as she screamed again and rolled her body within the confines that he held her in, to cower on her belly. Uselessly, her hands clutched her face as though without sight she could make Darth disappear from above her.

Blinded by her hands covering her face as she shook, Arabella heard a ripping sound above her head that jerked her head upward away from her hands. Instantly there was a cloth dropped over her eyes making her gasp and lift her hands to try and remove it. But Darth was stronger and faster as he tied the blindfold in a secure knot at the back of her head. Just as she was reaching to tug it upward, he grabbed her wrist together in one hand stretching her arms straight above her head.

“No!” she cried. “Let me go!” Her thighs struggled between the tight pressure of Darth’s knees and when she raised her hips upward, trying to struggle free, she felt Darth’s sizable male organ along the crease of her bottom. “No,” she cried again, dropping her hips quickly away from its searing presence.

But then, without warning, Darth rolled her onto her back, repositioning his hand around her wrists as he kept her arms stretched over her head. His other hand groped between her thighs, cupping her sex as she screamed again. But this time she screamed not in denial, but in desire, as she raised the mound of her sex upward into the heat of his palm as his middle finger separated the swollen slit of her sex.

“Now, I will rape you with my finger,” Darth’s voice rasped above her.

Arabella whimpered without control at the threat ... or at the dark promise. Darth’s finger pressed and the puffy slit of her sex yielded wetly. She gasped. He touched her deeper. She moaned, tossing her head and twisting her wrists beneath the grasp of his hand. He hissed deep in his chest an answer to the uncontrollable sounds of need she made, then his finger flicked up and down and her knees lifted outward.

“Yes,” he rasped, as she whimpered needy sounds.

Darth’s finger rubbing between the lips of her sex was relentless, tormenting, and exciting. Then he shifted his body and she felt one of his knees pressing between her knees. They separated and he pushed one knee, then the other, until her inner thighs were forced apart. His finger still flicked in the tender quivering flesh of her sex with deeper access now. She moaned, arching her back, struggling, but not struggling at the same moment.

“God, your pussy is beautiful. So smooth and soft. So wet.”

Arabella cried out at the touch of Darth’s fingers spreading the lips of her sex open wider, until cool air rushed over the inner flesh. “And this tender bud is mine, Arabella,” he rasped.

When the roughened tip of Darth’s finger touched her sex bud, Arabella screamed, bending her knees and clamping them along his hips. She never realized that he’d released her wrists as newer sensations caused her to arch her back and cry out at the sharp plucking of her left nipple, while Darth’s finger thrust into the opening of her sex. Still, he used the flat of his thumb to rub her sex bud as his finger withdrew, and then thrust forward again. She panted and moaned senselessly, riding his finger with each thrust that grew harder and came more swiftly. Her body rocked as he used his finger with force on her at the same time he pinched her nipples.

“Is it rape, Arabella?” Darth’s mouth came down over hers, and he thrust his tongue between her panting lips. Deeper and deeper, he pushed his tongue, until it filled her mouth, choking off her scream as she climaxed.

Moments later as Arabella tried to find her even breathing, Darth licked her lips slowly, thoroughly, and she let him. Denying him nothing. The taste of him was warm and strong. His finger was still embedded deep inside her, and his thumb still pressed to the beat of her sex bud. She lay with her arms above her head and her knees still gripping his muscular hips. The sensations without her sight were twofold, surprising because she never knew when or where Darth’s touch would come.

He licked the shell of her ear, wetting it as though he would devour it, then he murmured. “Men and women spend hours or whole days and nights together in bed, little dove.” Then, he barely whispered. “Did you know?”

“No,” she breathed, and the tip of his tongue touched hers, startling her as it left as quickly as it came. His words, their meaning tightened her belly, bringing excitement. Then his tongue licked her jawline down the side of her throat to circle a hollow there.

A moment later he murmured, “I want to rape you again, Arabella.” His finger moved deep inside her and her inner muscles clutched it tight. Her inner sex already so wet, dribbled more and she could feel the heat of it. “I want to rape your soft sweet pussy with my mouth, Arabella. I want to lick the lips, suck on your tender bud, and taste this nectar that wets my fingers.”

“Darth,” she gasped, and in her uncertainty, her hands instinctively reached for the blindfold.

“No,” Darth hissed on a sharp note, and the bed shifted beneath them as his hands grasped her wrists and pressured them above her head again. “The blindfold stays,” he said. “I would allow you nearly anything but this,” he finished.

Arabella sucked in a tight breath at the meaning of Darth’s words, and she heard him curse. She knew that he had not meant to say it. He could not have meant for those words to spill from his lips, but he had ... and now was her chance. She would not let him take them back. Let him wonder at her choice.

“Clothes,” she gasped. “I beg you for some clothes.”

Darth answer was a harsh unintelligible sound of denial, but the sound of his voice was sneering when he said, “Clothes then, Arabella. I am a fool and fools must always pay the price.”

The bed shifted and Arabella knew that Darth had left her side. She should be relieved, but her only thought was that if she had clothes, it would be her first step to getting Nicolas back. She’d had no hope before without clothes, but now...

Chapter Ten

Darth grimaced as he struggled to put on his boots. He was forced to lean against the wall in the hallway outside his bedchamber to accomplish the task. The tussle between foot and boot aggravated his bad humor. Why would Arabella ask for clothes, when she could have easily asked for her virginity ... or freedom? She was as intelligent, as she was beautiful, he concluded. She had not gambled too highly on the strength of his words, or his conviction to them. She asked for something small and reasonable, gambling she would receive it.

He was a fool for saying what he had, and further for allowing her the boon. It showed him clearly how much Arabella already affected him, his mind and his body. He’d never expected her to be as responsive as she was, and he could nearly fall onto his knees weeping over having a woman beneath his hands once again. The intense feelings frightened him. He wondered what lengths a man might be propelled to under his circumstances.

That was why he left Arabella with the presumption that he was going to obtain her clothes. Which he would do, after a fashion, but really he’d left to gain sometime and perspective. Then he realized, with a slight lifting of his spirits that he did have the time with this woman of his, he had been so hungry that he’d nearly forgotten to savor. He was going to enjoy teaching Arabella more, slowly and thoroughly. The possibilities carried him down the staircase, veering right across the tiled entranceway to his office.

Just as Darth was sitting at his desk chair, Chicery entered the office and stood at the entrance performing a half bow. “Your, lordship,” Chicery stated on the rise. “Is there anything I can see to?”

Darth continued to settle at his desk and offered up an absently said, “Yes, send me a messenger from the stables I will have some missives to post shortly.”

“As you wish, sir.” Chicery cleared his throat once, then again before Darth looked up at him.

“What is it, Chicery?”

“Your lordship, might I bring to your attention that I have just recently discovered our own Mrs. Wellborn has a cousin in dire need of a position. And the Miss in question just happens to be a skilled lady’s maid, sir.”

“Really, Chicery, and you thought this piece of gossip might interest me, I take it?”

Chicery ducked his chin downward, thinking he would not go so far as to advise his lordship on any particulars, just lend him a direction, ever hopeful. “I always keep you apprised, sir”

Darth grimaced, making himself appear more severe than was ever his intention. He would not state the obvious, but had he been so inclined to hire a lady’s maid, the task would surely prove impossible. One look at him would have had the poor girl fainting. But not, his Arabella.

“Thank-you, Chicery, for the information, I will certainly keep it in mind.” And then toss it out, Darth thought. “I will be leaving for several hours, shortly. See that no one enters my bedchamber while I am away. Our guest is resting. That will be all for now.”

“As you wish, my lord,” Chicery replied somewhat stiffly, as was his manner, before turning to leave the room.

Darth remained thoughtful, staring at the place where Chicery had stood. Chicery would be an inconvenience to have around at this time, perhaps he would be wise to send the little man on holiday. Arabella was securely locked upstairs in his bedchamber, yet Chicery was sure to notice and harangue him on the impropriety of it, forever more. He was the master here, yet Chicery seemed to have this baffling way of making him adjust his morals. He would have to consider it carefully, he decided as he turned his mind to his correspondence. He intended to find out what he could about the man, Victor Crom, and to that end he was posting his solicitor to the task. He was not a man for leaving loose ends, and he could not ignore the unspecific threat to Arabella. Victor Crom had, had a knife at the end, and he intended to find out why.

Thirty minutes later, Darth let his stallion, Raven, take the lead as they raced together across the grassy slopes east of Lee. His direction was to the small haven of Griswold, where he intended to fulfill his promise. Eventually the hills leveled outward into haloed fields. In the center of these stood Griswold, where he slowed Raven’s pace to a trot as he neared the town, veering off to take a back alleyway that led him to the rear entrance to Grainier’s Milliner Shop. He hoped the shop was without patrons at the moment as he moved to ring the back bell.

“Why, Lord Peregrine. It is so good to see you,” Mrs. Grainier said as she stood at the opened back entryway. Darth had known Mrs. Grainier since he was a child and she had never passed a sideways glance at his disfigurement in all those years.

Darth offered Mrs. Grainier the appropriate bow as she informed him the shop was empty at that moment, she knew his preferences well. With a little niece, who he adored, he’d used Mrs. Grainier’s services on a number of occasions. “I will set out the sign that I have gone for the hour. Do you think that will be an appropriate amount of time, Lord Peregrine?”

“Yes, madame. Quite adequate, thank you.”

Darth stopped in the back of the shop as Mrs. Grainier went forward saying, “It is my pleasure to see you again, sir. No need to thank me of course. You will notice the newest shipment of velvets there on the back wall.”

Darth skipped the velvets Mrs. Grainier indicated. He knew that she’d assumed it might be something for Victoria, his niece, and he realized in that moment, how much he was going to enjoy dressing Arabella to his tastes. He decided on three dresses. The first one was blue linen with a high collar in the back and an open v-shaped neckline in the front. He had Mrs. Grainier remove the flounce of bows holding up one layer to show a deeper color underneath and he also had her take the ornate lace from around the top collar and cuffs.

“A woman should be the decoration,” he stated to Mrs. Grainier’s raised brow.

“Of course, my lord, you are right,” she said with a smile.

Darth had the other two garments similarly treated. One was a rich, brown silk that would complement Arabella’s unique golden eyes and the other a sturdier, dove gray wool with a short jacket. He picked out undergarments, stockings, and two pair of shoes. He spent a little more time in the undergarments nearly despairing of finding what he needed, until he asked Mrs. Grainier if she carried any night frills for mistresses. This did the trick, and he had this particular piece of frippery package separately. Finding it difficult to hold back his smile of anticipation over what Arabella would make of the single article of clothing that he intended to present to her.

“Are you certain that a corset will not be necessary?” Mrs. Grainier inquired for the second or third time.

“The lady in question has a sufficiently slim waist already. I would not tie even the lowliest animal into one of those trappings,” Darth declared, thereby effectively closing the subject.

Darth paid for his purchases and left through the rear door, tying the parcels off his saddle horn. Mounting Raven, he turned his mount back toward Lee and then gave a second thought to another idea. Bringing Raven about, he headed to the Inn of Griswold. Once there he entered the inn by the front door seeking out the proprietor, and ignoring the stares that he received from the common room patrons.

Twenty minutes later found him back on the road to Lee as he kept Raven to a trot, mirroring his own thoughts. What he’d learned at the inn had been very interesting. It seemed that Mr. Crom had left the inn without paying his tab and the inn keeper was very interested in finding him. When Darth had inquired how many had been in Mr. Crom’s party, he was told that it was but the one man and a small boy. Darth had even gone so far as to describe Arabella by name and by looks, but this had produced no recollection on the inn keeper’s part.

The inn keeper told Darth that a satchel and a trunk had been left behind, which Darth promptly paid the outstanding fees on to acquire. The trunk would be delivered to Lee tomorrow by coach and the leather bound satchel now hung from his saddle horn. Darth was certain this must be the same satchel that Arabella had spoken of once, but he did not venture within its confines to see what was inside. The smell alone told him the satchel most likely held the herbs that she had remarked on.

He wondered why Crom would keep Arabella’s presence a secret and who the devil was the small boy? The situation was very delicate and he knew the only place to discover the answers were from Arabella herself. He also realized that he did not want to know the answers now, especially if it could sway him in any direction of letting Arabella go. Actions that would not, and could not, happen.

“You are a scarred beast,” he declared. “Act as you look, man. There is no room for decency in this gamble.”

So with determination, Darth put aside his thoughts and guilt about the how and why’s of Arabella, and he just lingered on the woman herself. A pastime entertaining his thoughts all the way back to Lee.

Chapter Eleven

Arabella stirred on the bed, she knew Darth was gone, yet still her breathing came erratic as she reached for the blindfold. She lifted it slowly, first seeing her naked breasts rising and falling, then seeing her nude body. Quickly she grasped an edge of the bed linen and pulled it over her body. She could see the place on the linen where Darth had torn a strip for the blindfold. She contemplated the blindfold as she lay still, nearly afraid to move.

Darth’s need to blindfold her was the key to his soul, she thought. She realized suddenly that Darth used the blindfold for her, so she would not have to see his scarred face. She’d been so entangled with riotous emotions before this to think clearly and truthfully Darth’s scarring had faded in its importance to her. It was simply a part of him. Where the man he was, his strength, his power, and his masculinity overwhelmed her concentration. Yet he must believe that most women would find his appearance distasteful. In all honesty, many women would shudder, and the weaker ones might cower.

Yes, they would, she conceded. She could not imagine what it must be like to live as Darth was surely forced to do. He had to be terribly isolated, conceivably haunted, and perhaps even afraid. Of course he would never admit it, or allow others to see it. Yet they had been intimate together, and words had come from him that would not have otherwise.

It was clear that Darth’s intentions were to keep her as his slave, and it was also painfully clear that he intended to take her virginity. Arabella wondered why he waited. Did he not have her at his mercy? But it seemed to her that he wanted more from her. Another man in this position might just forcefully rape her. If she were honest, she would have said that she thought all men would. Yet her dark lord portrayed himself as tormented as she felt.

Arabella wondered then, if she could use her understanding of Darth to somehow compel him to help her to rescue Nicholas? She had to get Nicholas away from Victor, she was so worried about him, and already an entire day had passed. Yet she did not believe that Victor would harm Nicholas, unless it would benefit him somehow. She wished desperately that she could tell Darth of her circumstances. Would he care or would he ignore it? She could not take the chance.

It was then she finally got up, slowly from the bed. She did not know where Darth had gone or how long he would be gone, but she could not rest naked on the bed just waiting for his return. When she found another shirt and put it on, she decided to check all the entrances to the room for possible means of escape. The windows were too high to climb out of and all the doors appeared to be locked. But when she returned to the clothing closet to check one more time, she found a small door at the very back, behind a rack of clothing. The door was a forgotten feature, it was dusty, but it opened easily, and she saw that it led into the adjoining chamber. This room was another bed chamber and when she checked the door, she found that it was unlocked.

Her heart fluttered in excitement as she stood there for long moments with her hand on a door knob that would open to her freedom. Did she dare? Or more importantly would it be wise? A man such as Darth, would not allow her escape easily, he would hunt her down if he had to. He believed that she was his property now, and she knew with inner certainty that he was fiercely possessive. It showed in the way that he moved and stroked her body with such power and command. He would hunt her to the ends of the earth, she had no doubt, and she did not have the power to match his. She realized in that moment that Darth was her only hope. He was the only one she knew in England, the only one who might help her, if she dared to tell him. Her hand shook as she released the knob, and then she returned to Darth’s bedchamber.

Her only hope was to tame the scarred beast, if only she did not become consumed in his flames, before it was too late.

***

Arabella was not aware that Darth had returned, until she heard him grumbling. “It is freezing in here and you do not even have a cover.” Then, she was completely hidden beneath the weight of a coverlet. When she sleepily pulled it down off her head, she saw Darth crouched in front of the fireplace stirring at the embers with a long poker.

“Do not get out from under that cover until this room warms up,” he ordered without turning around.

The dark lord had returned, Arabella thought, as she spied a package sitting on the wing chair across from where she lay on the settee. It was her clothing. She wondered how Darth could fit anything other than one dress, and a small one at that, in as small a package. She chided herself not to be greedy, this was charity on Darth’s part, and she needed his charity desperately.

Darth worked at the coals and soon had a comfortable blaze, satisfied it would warm the room quickly. He had been irritated to find his bedchamber so chilly, he had plans that he wanted to entertain immediately. He’d considered them on his ride back from Griswold. However, he would not have Arabella catching a chill, so now he must wait, but not for long.

He stood, walking back to where Arabella reclined on the settee. He was pleased that she’d not moved as he’d requested. He also saw her curiosity over the package and as soon as the room was warm, he would reveal it to her. Bending, he searched for and found Arabella’s feet beneath the coverlet, he lifted them so he could sit, and then he placed them in his lap. Arabella was uniquely docile.

“I am sorry about the fire, Darth. I must have fallen asleep.” She looked innocent with only her head peaking above the covers.

“I was merely worried that you would catch chill anew, Arabella. It is fine now and the room will be warm soon.” He picked up one of her feet underneath the coverlet and began to rub at its dainty arch. She did not startle from ticklishness, but her flaxen eyes grew large.

“Did you have a pleasant ride?” Arabella ventured tentatively, wanting to turn Darth’s attention to the package, but unsure how to broach the subject without angering him.

“Um, tis a beautiful day and Raven was eager for the run. Of course he always is.”

Darth’s eyes were closed as he continued to massage her foot, sending pleasurable murmurs up to her knees. “Raven? Is that your horse?”

“Stallion, Arabella, and yes, he is mine. Do you ride?”

Darth took her other foot up into his warm hand and Arabella realized his hands were nicely calloused. “No, Darth, I do not know how.”

Darth eyes opened, gazing at her, and his hands never stopped their motion as he fondled her toes. To Arabella it was as if there were two separate conversations going on. One of voices and another with strong warm hands.

“Then, I shall teach you some day. It is a useful accomplishment. And now, I think that the room is warm enough. Would you like to see what I brought you?”

Arabella kept herself from jumping up, thinking it was wise not to make an abundant commotion over the clothing. Especially since Darth was so against it. “Yes,” she answered as demure as she could. Taking her time as Darth swung her feet to the floor.

“Go and stand by the fire for me, Arabella.”

It was dark and the only light in the room was the fire, so Arabella reasoned that Darth wanted her there so she could see more clearly what he had gotten her. Darth picked up the package and came to stand beside her in front of the fireplace. He set the package on the mantel.

“Close your eyes, Arabella, and do not open them until I tell you. If you do not obey me, I will not give you the clothes.”

She wanted those clothes. It was nearly becoming a judicious right in her mind, not unlike fighting for one’s country. Arabella closed her eyes tight, counseling herself not to open them no matter what occurred. She would not lose the clothes by default. Darth’s hands were at the buttons of the shirt she wore and she could feel his warm breath on her cheek.

“I want to put it on you, little dove, so keep still.”

A rush of goose bumps feathered lightly over Arabella’s skin. That meant Darth intended to bare her again and she had to keep her eyes closed. Oh, but she wanted those clothes. Darth began to peel back the shirt before she could think what to do. Clenching her eyes, Arabella told herself that Darth had seen her this way before. He did not just pull the shirt off her shoulders and down her arms. It was more akin to peeling. Very slowly.

Her breathing quickened as she felt the heat of Darth’s body radiating against her skin, from where he stood so close in front of her. She cautioned herself to keep her eyes shut as she felt the shirt brush the back of her calves, and then pool at her feet.

“You are beautiful, Arabella.” Darth’s mouth brushed the hair over her ear as he spoke and his words gave her more goose bumps. She wanted to ask him if he really meant it. She’d never thought of herself as beautiful, although her mother had always said that she was. “Do not move now. I need to undo the package.”

Darth looked down at Arabella in the firelight. She was a fire nymph with glowing skin and ripening curves. If his plan worked, he would have more command over her, and be rid of the damned clothing question for now. He imagined by the time he was ready to clothe Arabella regularly, he would think that state enticing for its novelty. Never! This was the only way he wished to see her, and he had ten years’ worth of yearning inside of him for the sight of a woman’s flesh.

He wanted to be comfortable, so he walked to the chair and took off his shirt, boots and loosened the ties to his breeches. Then he returned to the mantel beside his golden and full-bodied nymph, who happened to have tautly budded nipples. Christ, he did not want to cover her up, even with the little piece of transparent fluff that he’d bought.

“Raise your arms, Arabella ... that’s right, high over your head.” Darth commanded himself to his task, tearing his eyes away from Arabella’s elevated bosom and the curly sable thatch between her thighs. Quickly, he slipped the piece of confection that he was calling clothing over her head. “Do not peek,” he warned, and then he let it slide down over Arabella’s exquisite body. The sheer silk garment only came to the middle of her thighs and on the high side at that. Perfect, he thought as he stepped back and realized the flimsy veil of clothing was very enticing, even though it really covered nothing at all. It must feel like...

“Darth?” Arabella, questioned. Interrupting his thoughts. Her face showed her confusion as he stepped backward, and said, “Open your eyes, little dove, and see the piece of clothing that I have brought you.” Darth ran a hand through his thick hair, and then he retreated to the chair.

Chapter Twelve

Arabella felt something light and caressing flutter over her skin. Everywhere it touched was like the soft brush of feathers. She was so caught in the sensation of how it felt against her skin that she nearly forgot anything else. Then she realized that it barely covered her bottom and the material, if one could call it that was as light as air. No gown could ever be this short or light. That was when she’d questioned Darth in confusion. Still, she remembered to keep her eyes closed. Her next thought was that surely this was only an undergarment, of a sort, that her less than worldly ways knew anything about. That was until Darth said that she should look at the piece of clothing that he had gotten her.

One! Suspicion raised Arabella’s alarms, and she opened her eyes to look down at her body. A body she had not thought to see, with a decent piece of clothing on. But she could see, and she could see all of her body. It was as though she only wore a light transparent film. What it was she could not say. It had arm holes, sleeves, and a tiny collar of lace, and there was an edging of lace all around its flared hem.

“Darth, this is indecent!” she cried in dismay. “Surely this cannot be the clothing you have brought me. This can’t be the only piece!” She looked in disbelief to Darth, and saw that he was sprawled in the wing chair, bare-chested with his long legs crossed at the ankle in front of him. The firelight played devilishly across his face, with his manner bordering on insolent.

“It is the clothing, Arabella. The only you will receive for now.” He would not tell Arabella of the other clothes, unless necessity demanded it, and the only necessity he could envision for quite some time was that he wanted to take her riding. He’d known from his first intention that Arabella would be angry, yet he was totally unprepared for what happened next.

Arabella’s anger exploded. “You lied to me!” she cried.

Arabella was so swiftly consumed with fury that she could barely see clearly. She only knew in which direction the culprit lay, and she rushed at Darth like an avenging angel with her hair flying and her fingers curled.

“You lying, vile, cheating. Cheating-!” And then, Arabella thought of it. “Bastard!”

It was a word that she’d heard the sailors aboard the ship use and it sounded like a fine word to describe, Darth. Although she was not entirely certain what it meant, it sounded superb in her fury. So she shouted it again, just as she balled her fist on her headlong journey to reach Darth. Whereby, she punched him squarely in his stomach. Immediately, she heard the air leave his lungs and she felt victorious satisfaction as the pain of her punch exploded into her hand.

My god, Arabella had hit him, Darth thought, and it was not a puny punch that hit his hard stomach! He felt its effects as woofing air left his lungs. He was stunned, and therefore less prepared for what happened next. Screaming that he was a liar, Arabella fell on him by tooth and nail. She pummeled his chest, tried to bite his ear, did pull his hair, and even loosened some of it he feared. Worse, she did all of this before he had the wits to stop her. Yet that clump of hair, ripped from his scalp, brought him around, as he bellowed and grabbed Arabella’s wrists, pushing her backward off him. She tried to kick his shins, but it did not hurt him with only her bare feet, as she struggled, tugged, and twisted her wrists. “Let me go, you beast! You, liar, you-you ... Bastard!” she cried.

Bastard! My god, she would not call him that. How dare she? Darth sat forward in the chair and shoved Arabella’s flaying body face down over his lap. He grabbed her wrists, pulling them around to the small of her back, holding them while the flat of his free palm smacked against her wriggling bare ass, before he even realized what he was doing. Smack! The sound, and then the sting on his palm, brought him such a feeling of grand satisfaction over his anger that he did it again ... and then once again.

“It is what you deserve, you screaming hellion!” he bellowed.

He released Arabella’s wrists in his agitation and continued to spank her soundly. Hitting her hands at times as she tried unsuccessfully to cover her bare and squirming buttocks, while he just shoved her hands out of his way and smacked her naked ass cheeks again. Woofs of air expelled from her with each smack of his palm and he noticed finally that her supple buttocks were marked red. He stopped abruptly, realizing he was breathing heavily.

“Are you finished, you lying brute?” Arabella’s voice was choked with tears and filled with aversion.

“You will not speak to me that way, Arabella,” he threatened, then he raised his hand and she flinched.

“No, Darth, please!” Her hands turned, palms upward, trying to cover her naked buttocks. He stopped his hand’s motion and she squirmed over his thighs. He leaned back in the chair, holding her over his lap.

“You will understand, Arabella, I am now your master in all things,” he finally said, then he stood, effectively dumping her onto the floor at his feet, as he merely stepped over her to stalk away.

Arabella tore at the hated garment Darth had given her, pulling it off her body as she tried to stop her tears. She cast a wary glance at Darth, who had his back to her, facing the fire. She could see the angry tension bunched in the muscles of his bare back. He stood with his legs splayed straight and his fists curled at his hips. Even as she felt the lingering burn on her buttocks she knew that Darth had a right to be angry.

A powerful man, such as he was, would never tolerate such an attack, and she was even appalled that she’d physically tried to harm him. It did matter that he had lied to her! Only not so much that she should have hit him or pulled out his hair. Darth’s entire structure exuded raw masculine power, tightly held at bay, and she found herself grateful that a spanking was all she’d gotten for her crime. She prayed it was all.

Her hand shook as she dared to reach for the shirt she’d worn earlier, which was tossed on the chair she now hugged against. Her fingers shook badly as they touched the silk material, she did not want to be spanked again. Her buttocks burned fiercely as she fought back her tears. To be spanked like an errant child, pulled over a man’s lap and spanked. It was horrible, embarrassing, and humbling.

She hugged the shirt in front of her, unable to find the nerve to put it on. She should not have gotten so angry. She never realized that she could be so fierce and she began to shake again just thinking about it. It seemed that she was no longer in control of her emotions. They were raging out of control from one extreme to the other. And now she did not have any clothes. How was she ever going to help Nicholas?

Darth stood rigid in front of the fire. Bastard, Arabella had called him. He wondered if she even knew what the word meant. He was certain that she did not know what it meant to him. The sound still echoed in his mind from ten years before. A man’s voice shouting bastard was the last thing he’d heard before the pain had sliced his face in half. To this day, he was still not certain what had happened. The authorities had closed the case quickly as an attempted robbery and he’d never found another reason. Except for that curse shouted to him in the black of night. Why would the assailant shout out the warning and such a personal conviction at that?

Darth shook his head trying to bring himself back to the present. He’d lived in that mire too long and he had no wish to start all the unanswered questions again. It was just that Arabella had screamed the word at him and that had reminded him. Fueled his anger, until he had...

Christ, he’d hit her. It did not matter that she had attacked him, he was twice her size and strength. He’d never hit a woman in his life, much less spanked one. His palm stilled stung. What must it have done to her? Darth turned to look at Arabella kneeling before the chair with his shirt clutched in front of her. He could see from where he stood that her buttocks were marked red. He had hoped to subjugate Arabella to his will and his body and it looked as if he certainly had.

“Arabella, come here.”

“No, Darth, please.”

Chapter Thirteen

Arabella tensed feeling Darth lift her off the floor from where she huddled. He lifted her as if she weighed no more than a child, carrying her in his arms to the bed. There was nothing she could do or say, if she could, so she remained silent as he laid her on the feather mattress. Yet he did not lay her on her back, instead he turned her onto her stomach. Alarm pierced her despair. Would he rape her now? She buried her head in the feather mattress, terribly afraid that she had pushed Darth over the edge and now he intended to rape her.

“Let me see your hand, little dove.”

Before Arabella could comply, and she was not sure she would have, Darth took hold of the hand that she’d used to punch him, as she kept her face hidden on the mattress. He was very gentle and she tried not to wince.

“You have hurt yourself with this foolishness,” he proclaimed, and then he began to kiss her knuckles.

“It was not foolishness,” she mumbled into the mattress. “You lied to me.”

“I will admit that I stretched the assumption, Arabella, but I did not lie, and I will have you as I want you. You need to understand this. However, little dove, I do not enjoy having to spank you and I hope that I will not have to do it again.”

Suddenly, Arabella’s body jerked on the bed, feeling Darth’s warm lips pressed to the flesh of her buttocks. “Darth, no,” she gasped.

“Nay, Arabella, you will lay still. You are mine now and you must understand this,” he rasped.

Then Darth’s wet tongue followed where his lips had been, while his wide hand pressed into the small of her back, holding her down on the bed. Darth’s tongue was warm and insistent over her shivering buttocks. To her intense mortification a slow pleasurable flush spread through her entire body as Darth licked over every curve of her naked bottom intimately. It made her undulate and roll her buttocks embarrassingly, and then she gasped as his tongue dipped into the crease.

Her bottom rose of its own volition as though her body was willing and pleading with Darth for more. Was it? The sensation was overwhelming and her sex grew wet and hot as Darth lapped his tongue through the crease, licking along its length. She moaned and then incomprehensibly she was up on her knees by her own momentum. His tongue followed, licking the splayed crease of her bottom deeper. The sounds coming from her throat were foreign to her as Darth wielded his complete power over her and she spread her knees across the mattress, imploring him with that action to enslave her more. His tongue circled her anus, so primitive, then he dipped his tongue lower prodding her core and she cried out in excitement at the pleasure. She could feel his fingers touching the lips of her pussy, spreading them open as she whimpered. He smeared his tongue liberally over the inner lips, then he plunged his tongue deeply inside her again.

“Darth,” she cried, knowing in that moment that she would do anything he desired ... anything!

Christ, Darth had never had a woman in such a carnal and lustful position before. He could not have imagined it. The society that had shaped him was staid and rigid. Hell, even the whores stayed on their backs and never offered their mouths. But Arabella ... sweet, sweet, Arabella was a lovely heathen of his dreams. She moved eagerly with the persuasion of his hands, mouth, and tongue. She fulfilled every haunted, dark, and lonely fantasy that he’d ever created in the midnight recesses of his mind. She aroused him, hot, surging, and powerful. Beyond his wildest imaginings. And he licked her like a feral male beast branding his female, leaving his scent, tasting his woman, and readying her for his cock.

She was a willing consort now, an equal partner with passionate thrilling whimpers, quivering thighs, and her knees spreading wider upon the mattress. He ravished that willingness with greed, devouring her sweet tender pussy with masculine possessiveness. Each time he licked his tongue into her cunt, she gasped excitedly and raised her ass to him as he knelt crouched behind her. Her anus was smooth and rosy-colored and he made her cry out with passion, with each lap of his tongue over it, to return then to her vagina with stiff thrusts.

“Darth,” she squealed. “Darth!”

Then he fucked her with his tongue, grabbing her cushy hips to pump them back and forth, piercing his tongue inside her with each pull.

“Darth!” she screamed, and he knew she would climax for him as he rocked her harder. Then he felt it on his tongue, the tight clutching of her vagina. Hot liquid dripped, covering the surface of his tongue. Christ, there were tears in his eyes as his woman climaxed with his mouth on her, screaming his name ... and he knew that he owned her soul now.

Slowly, he let her hips lower to the mattress with her legs sprawled on either side of him as he knelt between her knees. He wiped his mouth with an arrogant twist of mind. He felt cocky and roguish as he picked up the blindfold and bent over Arabella’s buttocks. She was startled when he slipped the blindfold over her eyes, as he whispered, “All day and all night, little dove, remember?”

She was complacent and languid as he urged her onto her back. Then while he still knelt between her thighs, he reached down and undid the ties on his breeches, until his stiffened cock fell free, thrusting outward in a straight line. At the same time he reached for Arabella’s hand, lifting it to his cock. He guided her fingers to the shaft, her palm to the base. She gasped at the touch. He closed her hand around the thickness, holding her touch there. With the pressure of his hand over her hand squeezing his cock, he could feel the rapid beating of his pulse in the base.

“Stroke me,” he rasped, willing Arabella in this one moment to be a voluntary participant of his lust. Insanely afraid that she would not. How he could expect it of her, was his insanity, and how he could need it so desperately from her was his doom.

“You are so strong,” she whispered. Stunning him with a small caress of her own volition beneath his hand, even as he groaned involuntarily within the tumultuous feel of it. To have a woman holding his cock was a greedy male prize and Darth lifted his hand from Arabella’s as prayers of longing whispered in his mind. Yet, she stunned him again, and then humbled him, by taking a firmer grip with her slender fingers around his throbbing bulky width.

“Let me see you,” she whispered, reaching for the blindfold. “I want to see you,” she murmured, holding him enslaved against his will with her hand around his aroused cock. How could he think clearly? How could she want to see him? How could he stop her? But her hand was already there, and he did not stop her. Wanting so fiercely to believe.

Arabella’s normally golden eyes glowed amber with her languid passion as she lifted the blindfold and looked up at him. She did not look at his cock held so warmly in her hand, but at his marred face. And Darth found within her golden-amber irises not one hint of distaste for the face that she gazed at so closely. It was then and only then that she stroked his cock, turning her gaze down to it.

Instantly, he saw the hunger and desire lighting her eyes and the thrill of that insight lifted his chest sharply. She desired him ... she wanted his cock, even though he had forced his sexuality onto her so thoroughly. Beneath his gaze her nipples beaded tight and her hips shifted restlessly as her palm and fingers tested his length with a solid sure stroke that brought a groan from his lips. She’d learned her lessons well from watching his depravity earlier and now wonderfully she used it against him.

The ardent groan that spilled from Darth’s lips thrilled Arabella’s femininity thoroughly. She finally had powerful control over her dark earl, and she feasted on it. She had long since admitted to herself that she wanted Darth completely. She wanted anything and everything that he could do to her and that they could do together. Never in her life had she felt as alive as when she was with him. He bullied her and he coerced her, yet it was always ultimately for her pleasure. What man could do the things to a woman as Darth had done to her and not care?

Yet at that precise moment, she hadn’t thoughts for any of it, but the tempting male organ in her hand. Its fleshy red coloring belayed its strength and power. This was not a piece of pliable flesh. It was sturdy and vigorous. So long. So thick. Her sex ached deeply as the circle of her hand pulled and pressed around its stoutness. Each draw she stroked along the wide shaft brought the head upward and the crease in its center mesmerized her. Darth groaned harshly as his angular hips moved with her pumping hand. Then small bits of creamy substance oozed from the tender slit, making her gasp as her sex began to ache unbearably. That yearning sensation deep inside her was the torment building between her thighs. Clutching torment that had a master and salvation now. She held part of that master in her hand, worshiping it and loving it.

Darth’s lean belly drew inward, outlining powerful ridges of sinew, as his muscular chest expanded and his hands curled into fists at his sides. The sight of his beautiful masculine strength undulating with the stroking of her hand delighted her senses beyond compare. Then she knew where the torment was drawing her. She knew where her free hand and tongue craved to be. The crease drew her tongue and Darth’s male sacks drew her hand.

“Arabella,” Darth gasped as Arabella’s delicate pink tongue licked the crease in the head of his cock. “Christ,” he further panted as her hand cupped his balls, lifting and squeezing them.

When he finally unclenched his eyelids, his gaze was arrested by the sight and feel of Arabella lavishly licking her tongue around the head of his cock. This had to be every man’s sweeping erotic fantasy and the fact that Arabella laved her tongue on his cock, he with his scarred and hapless visage, staggered him. In addition to the wonderfully powerful pleasure she reaped over him, making him groan outrageously, as her pretty blush lips tested the shape of the bulbous head.

He was confident that he’d never felt anything as resplendent as he tested Arabella’s eager mouth in response with a return nudge. Her wet gossamer lips parted further as the head of his cock intruded into her mouth and her tongue slid down the long ridge along the underside of his cock. His groan was absurd and robust, as his fingers clenched into the thick strands of her hair.

“That’s it lick,” he hissed. “Suck it.” He could not control the hot words spilling from his mouth. “More,” he pleaded. His hands gripped the sides of Arabella’s face as he guided her. It was an overwhelming urge that he could not deny as he swung his hips slowly, watching his cock fill, then leave, then fill Arabella’s mouth again, while incredibly she danced his balls in her palm and took his cock again and again. Faster now, as he begged her to suck him faster.

“Just the head.” He guided her head faster ... faster. “Christ!”

He wanted Arabella to take it — he demanded that she take it. It was cruel, it was untrustworthy, yet he could not stop even for Arabella’s innocence. Then it was too late. His hot seed filled her mouth, and he would forever wonder what might have transpired next, because of that moment.

Chapter Fourteen

“Fire! Lord Peregrine! The Retainer’s Hall is on fire and Mr. Thurmane sent word that the stables might be...” Chicery’s words were cut short by the earl’s bedchamber door bursting open.

“The stables!” Lord Peregrine bellowed, and he looked for all the world like a raging barbarian, himself coming to battle down the estate walls. Lord Peregrine was bare-chested with his black hair in wild disarray. Chicery could only step backward, mutely nodding his head.

“Are there people inside?” Darth asked even as he began turning around hastily to gather his discarded shirt and boots.

Chicery finished his lordship’s fearful answer. “There was a meeting in progress, my lord!”

“Damnation!” Darth cursed as he sprinted toward the door. “Send someone for the doctor, Chicery. Now!”

That was the last hurried exchange that Arabella heard as the two men disappeared out of her sight. She quickly grabbed the bed sheet around her as she ran to shut the door, still able to hear Darth’s deep voice barking orders as he made his way out of the manor.

“They will need my help,” she whispered. She knew a healer could be lifesaving at this moment, until a doctor arrived, and just the thought of people suffering put any notion she had of attempting to escape out of her mind. An escape she hardly wished for any longer, if not for her small brother’s peril. She realized a moment’s hesitation when she thought about what Darth might do when he realized she’d left his intended confines. Yet she had to be braver than her hesitations, people were suffering. She would deal with Darth and his reaction when the time came. With the decision made, her only problem was how to help without any clothes? There were people in desperate need and she certainly was not going to let one little predicament hinder her aid. Determined, she went to Darth’s dressing chamber.

“There has to be something here I can manage with.”

All of Darth’s clothes were huge compared to her smaller frame. Still, she did not let this deter her. She found a pair of gray woolen trousers and pulled them on, having to roll up the pant legs half a dozen times, until the length finally came to her ankles. The rolled ends would not stay, so she found a pair of stockings and put these on, stuffing the roll ends of the trousers into the top of the short stocking. Gathering the billowing ends of the waistband, she went after a breech’s tie. Then she retrieved one of Darth’s blue linen shirts that did not appear new or expensive and put this on. There was no hope for shoes.

Arabella moved to leave the bedchamber while braiding her hair into one long rope hanging down her back. In the process of doing this, she passed Darth’s desk and saw her leather satchel there. She did not take the time to wonder why or how it had appeared. She was just glad that destiny intervened, because now she could be truly effective in her attempt to help the injured.

Darth was manic, until he was certain there were no more people in the burning Retainer’s Hall. He had carried the last person out himself — a man who was his head grounds keeper. The grounds keeper had succumbed to the smoke after entering the building to rescue people one too many times. He was left coughing, but doing fine.

Darth had known as soon as he’d laid eyes on the blaze that there was no hope to save the hall. He’d immediately order people away because he wanted no further injuries in the attempt to save a lost cause. Now he turned his attention to the stables, issuing orders as he went. They had set up a temporary area for the injured by the well-house. How many were injured he did not know, but one look in that direction told him it was too many. Christ, one would be too many, he thought, scraping a hand through his sooty hair.

Chicery approached, as he asked, “The doctor?”

“No, my lord, he has not arrived yet, but we have gotten a bit of heaven sent luck, sir.”

Darth’s gaze swept the dozen or so bodies laid out, people in various degrees of injury. That was when he saw a small indistinct figure moving among the injured. Whoever the man was he seemed to have command of the situation, issuing instructions to two women by his side.

“Heaven sent,” Darth mumbled absently, not really taking Chicery’s meaning.

“It is the lady, my lord. Miss Arabella, you said. She is a gift, and that is certain. Right to mending she has gone without a moment’s thought. I hardly recognized her at first, but what does it matter what an Angel of Mercy is wearing, when faced with such a tragedy.”

“Arabella?” Darth muttered, still not combining Chicery’s words with the figure working among the wounded as he moved forward. Why had she not run? Why had Arabella not tried to escape his slavery?

“If we could keep Billy’s arm submerged in cold water,” Arabella explained to one of the women she had found trying to treat the wounded. “It would be better than this butter. A bucket would do. But it must be done quickly.”

“I will bring it for you.” Darth’s deep voice came out of the darkness.

A voice Arabella would recognize anywhere now, as she fought her startled shiver, saying as firmly as she could. “Hurry, Darth.” Then her attention returned to the boy with the severely burned left arm. His name, she’d been told, was Billy McFarden and he could be no more than Nicholas’ age. Arabella lifted the boy’s head to give him a drink of periwinkle tea mixed with ground willow bark, which would help alleviate the pain the boy had to be in. Even though he was putting up a brave front, she thought little Billy was in shock.

“All the way in,” Arabella instructed Darth moments later, when he returned to her side with the bucket of cold water. She lifted Billy’s arm carefully as Darth supported Billy’s back with one hand and used his other hand to position the bucket.

“Miss? Miss? Peter the oxen keeper, over here, believes his arm is broken. Can you help? He’s in an awful lot of pain, Miss?” Arabella swiped a hand across her brow and called out. “Yes, I will be right there.”

Then she dared to look at Darth for the first time — who look as if he were Satan himself, with black soot covering his face and emphasizing his scarring. It was impossible to tell his temperament. “This water should be kept as cold as possible, Darth. Changing it every five minutes would not be out of order. Billy might get sleepy on you because I have given him something for the pain.”

“I will see to it,” Darth murmured, and with this reassurance Arabella rose fearlessly and went to see about the man named Peter with the broken arm. “Thank you, little dove.” Darth’s voice sounded out of the darkness behind her, and Arabella sighed in relief as she hurried forward. It appeared her dark master was not furious with her. She wondered fleetingly whether this could be a change in their unusual relationship. Perhaps soon she might be able to tell Darth about Nicholas?

When she arrived by Peter’s side, he proved to be a man of considerable weight and breath with a disagreeable nature and an aversion to letting women help him. “No, wee little split-tail, whit men’s breeches on is going to touch me er do any good!” he declared right away as Arabella pursed her lips looking up at the brawny brute.

Indeed, Arabella thought, he was probably right, by the looks of it his shoulder was dislocated, and while she could have set it, he was simply too big. Still, she allowed him the gruffness because he was in obvious pain.

“I could give you something for the pain,” she suggested. “That would not be touching you.”

“Well, I don’t know, little split-tail, whiskey would do me fine ... Ah!” Peter suddenly wailed, because Darth had appeared at Peter’s side, laying a hard grip to his injured arm.

“What did you call her?” Darth hissed as Peter turned white beneath Darth’s glare and tightening grip.

“I-I!” Peter yelped.

“Apologize, to the lady,” Darth hissed angrily. “Then thank her for even offering to help the likes of you.”

“Darth, it is all right...” Arabella began, only to be silenced by his glare. He truly did look like a black ghoulish avenger with all that soot, she thought.

“Please, me lady. Please be excusing me manners, er me words. It is the pain I’m thinking,” Peter whined.

Darth dropped Peter’s arm and stepped toward Arabella saying, “This man can suffer, until the doctor arrives.”

Arabella considered that it was fine with her. She had not liked being called a split-tail, it sounded crude, however she was not really certain what the words meant. Yet the gleam in burly Peter’s eyes on his last quote of it was enough to warn her it was likely very inappropriate.

“Yer, lordship, I truly regret...” Peter stammered behind them, as Darth guided Arabella away ordering over his shoulder.

“Shut up!”

“Was it truly that bad, Darth, what he called me?” Arabella questioned, in all innocence.

“It was,” Darth growled.

His anger had not gone away, but merely been constrained by his willpower. However with Arabella’s query, her pure innocence struck him again and visions of how vulnerable that innocence made her blazed the way inside him, forging fierce protectiveness. He would do well to remember that Arabella was not from the more jaded English culture. Being bought and sold as a bond’s maid lent one to believe of more worldly knowledge on Arabella’s part. But such was not the case. He had been privy to it enough now, in their short time together, to know Arabella’s inexperience was true and a fact.

“I-I, should check the injured again, Darth,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. “I hope the doctor comes soon. I am only a simple healer and some of these people need so much more.”

“You have saved lives,” Darth assured her as she turned and he followed discreetly behind her, ready to help her if need be.

Chapter Fifteen

Several hours later, found Arabella still standing vigil beside the young Billy McFarden with the severely burned arm. It had proven to be the most serious injury of all the people injured that night and Darth stepped inside the cottage having just spoken to the boy’s father outside. But for a moment he moved no further into the room, instead standing silent as he watched Arabella.

She sat speaking softly to the boy’s mother, reassuring her, promising to come by tomorrow. The doctor had told Darth that Arabella’s quick actions concerning the boy saved his arm. It would be scarred, but the blessing was the boy would live. Darth hated that sequence of words. “Would be scarred, but the blessing is to live.” It was as if one should be grateful for the life. A natural assumption that anyone should be grateful to live no matter what the circumstances.

Not that he’d ever wished for his own death, except perhaps for seconds during the darkest ravings of pain. Nay, he was thankful to be alive. Life continually offered some type of hope. He simply questioned the quality of life such a statement threatened. It was, he’d decided many years ago, a rather pompous statement to come from anyone who was not actually the afflicted.

But within his morose thoughts, Darth recognized how tired he was. So he shook his thoughts away and brought his attention back to Arabella, who was looking at him while he had been unaware of the fact. He wondered how long she had been poised so. Not many people would engage in such a perusal of him. He could not think it was pleasant. Yet, Arabella did it, and she did it as if it were normal.

He noticed with pleasure her smile, more endearing for the smudges of soot across her pretty nose. Then without any outward show of hesitation, he held his hand out to her. His heartbeat lifted as she came forward to take hold of his hand. She did it as naturally as if they had been doing it for years. Then together they took their leave holding hands. It took him only a few moments to notice that she was walking strangely. Glancing down it became apparent why and without further thought to the matter, he swept her up into his arms to carry her to the manor. She squealed his name in surprise, grasping his shoulders, as he said simply. “You have no shoes on and what in the world is it that you are wearing?”

Arabella appeared flustered with sudden wariness in her flaxen eyes. “Darth, I …” she began haltingly, and then she hid her gaze over his shoulder.

“It is very inventive, Arabella,” he said quickly as he tightened his arms around her. “I am impressed.”

She peeked at him, trying to judge his words and his actions, so he smiled, in truth because it felt good and he knew that Arabella needed it. Then she sighed and buried her face into his neck. “I am so glad you are not mad at me,” she whispered.

Darth entered the hall and instead of going upstairs as Arabella had expected, he turned toward the kitchen. She thought fleetingly that he could have set her down now, but she was glad that he did not. Being carried in a man’s arms was a memorable experience. She was not sure if she ever wanted to be anywhere else but hugged up against Darth’s broad chest.

Darth entered the kitchen, taking Arabella over to the counter by the basin sink and pump. He was reluctant to let her go, but he had a purpose. So he set her on top of the counter, facing him. The height put them nearly at eye level as he stood in front of her. The honeyed colored warmth in Arabella’s eyes stopped his words for a moment as her hands stayed on his shoulders and his hands pressed into the slimness of her waist. It did not escape him, the subtle changing in their relationship.

“You have hurt your feet,” he stated, brushing aside his thoughts for more important concerns. Then he began to pull the sock gently off Arabella’s foot, to examine the bottom. His concern grew into irritation at himself as he looked at the cuts and scrapes marring the soft flesh on the sole of her foot. If he would have allowed her decent clothing this would not have happened.

“It does not hurt very much. It cannot be that bad,” she offered to his look of concern as he guided her foot over the edge of the basin. He took the other sock off as gently as the first, and then he worked the pump, until a steady stream of water came out of the spout.

“It will be cold, little dove,” Darth warned as he stuck Arabella’s feet under the water and he began to carefully wash them. “Do you have any salve for cuts and scrapes in that treasure satchel of yours?”

Arabella smiled brightly, looking enchanting, despite the black soot smudging her oval face. “Oh, I have thyme and yarrow, which would do nicely. But then I think I have run out of the salve for cuts.” She lifted the strap of the satchel off her shoulder and set it in front of her to look inside. “I could make some though, but I am nearly out of nightshade. I wonder if I can find the plant here to replace it. England is so much colder than Jamaica. Have you ever heard of nightshade growing around here, Darth?” Darth barely shook his head as she continued. “Cowslip will do in a pinch and I have some of that. Oh, and here is some of the salve for cuts, there is still a little in the jar.”

Darth chuckled — his little dove was animated about these herbs and remedies she carried. She came into full blossom as he listened attentively to her enlivened discourse. Her feet were washed and the salve rubbed into the scrapes, with the socks returned, the whole while he learned of herbs whose names he would never begin to remember. But he kept nodding his head as if he understood everything Arabella said, completely enjoying the sound of her rich voice.

Finally, he caught her taking a breath, and he quickly interjected. “Are you hungry, Arabella?”

She seemed to suddenly realize that she’d been rambling, caught up in her verse and a blush lightly tinted her cheeks as her mouth clamped shut. Then she murmured rather demurely, “Yes, Darth, I am very hungry.”

Darth snorted trying to hold back his laugh. “You are a treasure, my little dove,” he pronounced.

Arabella ducked her head, seeming unsure, as if he might be laughing at her and he grasped her calves, swinging her around to face him as his hand caught her chin, lifting the daintiness of it upward. “I am very interested in your herbs and would listen at any time that you care to go on about them.”

“Darth!” She shoved at his chest with a laugh of her own.

“Now truly, Arabella, besides my teasing I am interested in anything that interests you.” The arch of Arabella’s auburn eyebrow told him that she was unconvinced, as he stepped backward to pull his soot-stained buckskin shirt off. “We will have to wash up down here because we are not likely to get a bath out of Chicery till morning. Can you pump the water for me?”

Arabella’s answer was to go directly to the task, and while she pumped the water, Darth bent over the basin dunking his entire head.

“Do you want some soap, Darth?” she questioned.

“I suppose that I had better, this soot is not coming off very easily.” Darth’s hand reached out and a cake of soap was placed into it. “I only have the jasmine here, Darth.” Darth plied it to his hair vigorously. “I will enjoy smelling of jasmine, little dove, it reminds me of one of my favorite things.”

Arabella was immersed in the pleasure of watching Darth washing his hair and never really heard his words. It seemed that all she could concentrate on were his broad shoulders, which were bunching and stretching in a sinewy way as his upper arm muscles ballooned outward with the motions he used to wash his hair. She felt an intense urge to run her hands over the muscular bulge of his upper arms, to feel them flex beneath her palms. He exuded power and strength throughout his tall frame and once again she found herself feeling thrilled at looking so intimately at his hard masculine body.

“Is the soap all out?”

Arabella had to bring herself around from her preoccupation, feeling highly flustered. “Y-Yes ... Darth.” Oh, her voice wavered.

Darth threw his head back and water sprayed her as he shook it once again like a great powerful animal. His gray eyes locked onto hers as a slow smile spread across his severed lips. She knew that smile and she bit her bottom lip, feeling captured beneath the heat of his gaze. Then his gaze traveled unerringly to her breasts, with heated scrutiny, and she could feel the buds of her beaded nipples rubbing against the coarse material of Darth’s shirt. Could he see them, she wondered, afraid to look down or even away from him?

“Now it is your turn to wash.”

Darth’s voice was low and smooth and all the memories of earlier came flooding back as a slow burn centered in between Arabella’s thighs. The pulse at the base of her throat was throbbing as Darth took a wet cloth to her face, before she knew what he was about. She welcomed the cool wetness to her fevered cheeks.

His task was worked at carefully as he pressed his body forward, until she had no choice but to open her legs, which left his lean bare stomach planted firmly between her thighs. Then the wet cloth was beneath the open collar of her shirt, sliding wetly over the tops of her breasts as her hands finally did find the tight muscular brawn of Darth’s upper arms. She held on for dear life as Darth moved the cloth lower, to scrub over her sensitive nipples beneath the shirt.

“Darth,” she gasped, feeling burning heat flame between her thighs. It was so much more powerful, now that she knew what could come, what he could do to her.

“His lordship is still in the kitchen I believe, Master William.” Chicery’s voice, coming from out in the hall, warned Darth of imminent discovery and he pulled away from Arabella turning around quickly. But he did not move forward, instead staying close in front of her as she moved her legs to the side of him. He heard her low moan as her soft cheek found his back and his hand reached around to grab one of her hands with a squeezing motion.

Chapter Sixteen

“Ah, there you are, Darth,” William Thurmane began saying upon entering the kitchen. “I’m glad to find you still awake.” William was more than just Lee’s estate manager; he was also Darth’s friend. They had grown up as boys together on the estate, with William being two years older. The four boys of William, Robert Drake, Darth, and Darth’s younger brother Beau had formed a mischievous group in their younger years. Upon becoming the earl at the young age of fifteen, Darth had always insisted that his friend William continue to call him by his given name, unless they were in officious company.

Darth stalled to give Arabella a few moments to collect herself, even as he saw William noticing the legs sticking out by his side. “I never ate this evening and thought I would wash up and get some bread and cheese. Do you want some, William?” Darth asked calmly.

William’s thin black eyebrow was arched in a question as Chicery who followed behind him said, “Please allow me, sir, and some hot tea. The water is already hot, so if you do not mind sitting here at the kitchen table, I will have something for you to eat, quick as a whip.”

“Ah, yes,” William muttered, coming to stand behind one of the oak kitchen chairs.

Darth felt Arabella lifting her cheek from his bare back and he hoped that he had given her enough time. But it was a moot point because Chicery had discovered her, having come over to the counter to retrieve some plates.

“Oh, Miss Arabella, I did not see you there! Master William, this is the angel I told you about earlier. An angel of mercy she is! Helping all those people and the doctor even said we would have lost little Billy McFarden if not for her quick help.”

Darth caught a glimpse of William’s highly amused expression, turning to amazement, then to admiration, as Darth helped Arabella down from the counter to set her in front of him, facing William. “Miss Arabella Ormonde, please meet, William Thurmane, Lee’s estate manager,” Darth said.

Darth cautioned William with his gaze to asked no questions of Arabella and he saw that his friend took the meaning well, as he only bowed slightly saying, “Miss Ormonde, it is my pleasure.”

Arabella for her part, pressed her spine further into his chest appearing disconcerted, but she managed a small smile as she acknowledged William. “Mr. Thurmane, it is my pleasure also.”

William grinned broadly, glancing at Darth, with a look of approval in his gray eyes. Darth shrugged off William’s obvious amusement with a wide hand through his still wet hair. William had been after him forever, through the years, to find a woman, although how he could assume Arabella was just that, he did not know. Darth was certain they had not been seen together in their intimate play. But it became apparent to him shortly thereafter, just where William’s conclusion had come from, when he went to pull out a chair for Arabella. He saw the front of the shirt she wore was plainly wet over her breasts and he held the only wet towel. He was extremely glad that Arabella neglected to notice this, as he sought immediately to distract her. “Would you like some bread and cheese also, Arabella?”

Before she could answer, Chicery piped in. “And some nice hot tea,” he said, while setting a steaming cup in front of her. “You drink this now, Miss Arabella, and it will cure all your ills. It is my own special blend and you will like a wee bit of milk and sugar in it.” Chicery hovered around Arabella as if she were his own special prize, making Darth smile. He’d never seen Chicery take to anyone this way, and his coddling gestures were relaxing Arabella’s earlier fluster. It allowed him to turn back to William.

“Did you find anything? Did anyone see anything?” Darth tilted back in his chair with his booted foot placed on the rung of the chair next to his.

“Three of us sought out each one of your people individually, Darth, and no one saw anything out of the ordinary. Of course nearly all of them were in the Grange for the gathering of James Duffy’s, new baby boy’s christening,” William said.

“Oh, no,” Arabella murmured.

Darth’s hand found Arabella’s with a comforting squeeze. “It is a wonder more people were not hurt. Did anyone notice where it started?” Darth asked.

“Duffy said the first anyone noticed it, it was coming out of the back of the Grange. He said it went up so quickly there was hardly anytime, and of course people panicked,” William replied.

Darth leaned further backward, crossing his arms over his chest with a deep frown indenting the cleft in his chin. “The back of the Grange?”

“Yes, Darth, mischief to be sure. Tis why I sought you out. We looked over the wreckage and it appears fairly certain the fire started outside at the back of the building.” William shook his dark head and scooted his chair back. “I’ve set up watches on the embers through the night and best get back.” William looked to Chicery and added. “But I will just grab a bit of this bread and cheese to take with me.”

“William, I will visit the magistrate as early in the morning as possible. This needs to be investigated, even if it might be some children’s mischief. We cannot tolerate that, people were hurt,” Darth said sitting forward.

“Aye, Darth, my thoughts exactly. Well then, I will see you in the morning.” William stood and looked down to Arabella. “We will never be able to thank you, Miss Arabella, for all your help. It has been a pleasure.”

William turned to go and Arabella noticed that he was a tall man and from the back he looked very much like Darth, with his dark hair and broad shoulders. Darth seemed lost in thought as she sat quietly nibbling at her bread and cheese, wondering if youngster’s had really started the fire. It made sense, children’s fascination with fire was renowned, and unfortunately they did not have the true sense to realize how dangerous it could be.

“Would you like some more tea, Miss Arabella?” Chicery asked.

“No thank you,” Arabella answered with a smile. “You have been very kind.”

“Yes, Chicery,” Darth said. “Why don’t you go and find your bed now? Mrs. Wellborn can clean up our small mess in the morning,”

Arabella noticed that Darth was rubbing the scar on his temple. “Does your head hurt, Darth?” she asked, watching his attention return fully to her. He seemed to catch himself in the act of rubbing the scar without knowing it and his hand dropped away. She noticed with concern that the gray coloring of his irises was brighter and the corners of his eyes were pinched looking.

“A little,” he muttered, appearing to try and brush it off.

“It is more than a little,” she admonished. “You need to rest and you need to sleep. Let me try massage, before it takes hold and grows worse. I should give you some poppy syrup for the pain,” she stood saying, “Here, let me get you some.”

He grasped her wrist stalling her. “No, little dove, no medicine. I would drink myself into oblivion if I wanted that kind of relief.”

Arabella thought that was a very curious thing to say and she nearly argued that her herbs could hardly be considered addictive, but Darth was obviously not feeling well and she did not want to upset him with any disagreement. Instead, she wished to help him and to that end, she needed to get him to go to bed and relax. “As you wish, my lord, but bed is a must.”

Darth tried to laugh at Arabella’s cosseting, however the starting of the action caused sharp pain to sear his face, bringing with it a clipped involuntary grunt from his throat.

“Now, Darth!”

Arabella grasped him about the waist as his arm found her shoulder and she guided him out of the kitchen. He was leaning on her more than he would have like to acknowledge and by then, he had to admit a seizure of pain was imminent as his body tightened in anticipation of the worst. So by the time he reached the side of the bed, he was worried that he might hurt Arabella with his weight. There was little he could do about it though as the agonizing pain intensified and he doubled over with it. His hands clutched his face as if he could rip the pain away. Lord, he hated the debilitating weakness that left him so helpless beneath its onslaught.

Arabella girded herself to hold up Darth’s weight, praying she could get him into the bed. He was practically withering in agony by the time she did manage to get him there and he just fell onto the mattress on his back. She recognized the first time she’d seen him this way was a mere spell compared to the contortions wracking him now. She tried to quell her raising panic — it was torture to see Darth in so much pain. Should she run and get the poppy syrup to give him? He would not be able to stop her from giving it to him at the moment.

“No,” she exclaimed to herself as she lifted Darth’s legs onto the bed. She would try everything else first, she must respect his wishes. So she ran to get several cold wet cloths, because she thought that the cold applied to his face had helped last time. When she came back to the bed, he was curled onto his side moaning with his hands clenched in fists over his face. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest as she crawled up onto the bed, taking his shoulders in her hands.

“Please, Darth, lay on your back for me,” she entreated. “I know it is hard.” She pulled and he moved, until he lay flat on his back and she pulled his hands away from his face, then she quickly applied the cold wet cloth. He was so racked with pain, that one look at his face terrified her. His entire body shook with it, while his hands clenched into the mattress, obviously trying to keep flat on his back.

“Darth ... Darth, it will be all right,” she cooed, moving to begin rubbing Darth’s temple. The low groans coming out of his throat tore at her as she tried to keep her hands from shaking. Sweet Mary, she had to get hold of herself. She forced herself to calm down even as tears began pricking her eyelids. She remembered the pressure points behind Darth’s ears and she sought them out, wishing that she had two more hands. Even under duress though, she kept her hands massaging steadily. Then she began talking, more to keep her own anxiety away than anything else.

“Have you ever been to Jamaica, Darth, or one of the Caribbean islands?” It was a silly question and one he could not answer, Arabella chided herself. “You should see the place where I was brought up. It is warm all year round and the water is the most beautiful shade of blue and green. The ocean there is warm all the time just like taking a warm soothing bath. You can swim out to the reefs and dive beneath the water, seeing wonderful exotic fish swimming along the brightly colored coral reefs. They come in all shades of pinks and reds. The sky is so blue you think it never ends when you look up at it.”

Arabella rested her temple to Darth’s temple, silently asking that he be relieved from his pain as her hands kneaded his shoulders and neck. “Before my stepfather, my father owned a sugar cane plantation,” she whispered. “And when the cane is fully grown it is like a sea of green, gently flowing in the breeze. People have to be careful, because it is so tall, it is easy to become lost in the fields and walk for days they stretch so far.”

Arabella’s soft spoken words washed over Darth like a soothing balm. Her rich voice carried him away as her hands worked their magic and his body followed her command, relaxing its tension. A heavy sigh of relief escaped him and he drifted into the welcome oblivion of sleep.

Arabella felt Darth easing into slumber and she gently pulled her hands away from him, swiping at her tears. Very carefully she got up from the bed and removed the wet cloth from his face, then she pulled the coverlet up over him. Darth looked much younger, more relaxed in sleep and she fought the urge to brush back his hair as she would do to Nicholas.

The fact that Darth’s suffering affected her so deeply made her realize how much she cared for him. She’d felt Darth’s pain as if it were her own and she’d wished that she could take it on herself, to end his suffering. Even now she was not sure that she could cope the next time it happened, but she counseled herself that she had better be prepared, for she was certain it would happen again.

Arabella rubbed at her eyes realizing how tired she was and she tried to tell herself that was why she had gotten so upset. But she knew that was not true, as she looked around the bedchamber, wondering what she should do now.

Chapter Seventeen

Darth woke slowly, his senses telling him that a warm and soft body curled along his back. It was not something a man who had endured the years of celibacy that he had would miss. Then he recalled the terrible spell of cramping pain that had come on him last evening. He also recalled how quickly that pain had been relieved ... and by whom. Normally with such a sudden devastating spell, he could expect to lie in agony for hours, yet Arabella had relieved him in a short amount of time.

Darth lifted his hand to his scar, touching the raised welt with his fingertips. Then, he followed the line from his forehead to his chin. When he touched his scar this way, it did not feel as bad as it appeared viewing it. It was a wide line, but straight and not jagged. Such a small thing that could change a man’s life entirely, just as easily and as quickly as a little dove was changing his life. Not at this precise moment. But with many of them wrapped together in the past several days and those days of darkened bed chambers and imprisoning beautiful naked women were swiftly ending.

Reality was forcing its way inside and society was rearing its intrusive head. It was becoming increasingly impossible to ignore his intended selfish depravity. Chicery could not be sent away to forget, for he would not, and William could not be fired so as to not notice what the Earl of Lee was up to. Robert would return soon, and Darth wondered, if he could look any one of them in the eyes and admit he intended, and did keep Arabella as his slave. Could he continue to admit it to sweet Arabella herself?

Nay, his time was running short, nearly gone, and he felt it lay heavy upon him as he turned to Arabella. Perhaps these would be their last moments of intimacy, he thought, looking down on her. He was selfish enough to make it last as long as possible. Today, tonight, tomorrow, time was short ... and he realized that he was desperate. He could not lose her; he would do anything for that not to happen. Yet how could he keep her against her will and ever expect them to be happy together.

But there were other ways, devious, conniving ways that might not appear as the enslavement they were. If he took her virginity that could be one way to hold her to him. The fact that he had not done it yet was not some grand chivalry on his part. It was more embarrassing than that. When he had first enslaved Arabella to his sexual will, he’d been too afraid to see a look of loathing upon her face. The act of coupling her, face to face, had literally terrified him. So much so that he’d been unable to bring himself to do it.

“But not now,” he murmured, now he knew that Arabella would never look at him that way. Now he knew that she could look at him with desire. Incredible, wonderful desire. The type of thrilling desire a woman had for her man. He could use that ... and heaven help him, he would. If he must acknowledge Arabella’s freedom soon, then he was not going to make it easy for her to leave him. Taking her virginity would be his first step, then finding the stepfather he heard her whisper about last night would be his second step. He would have Arabella in the end, if God gave him a little more time, and he thought righteously, that God did owe him.

When he looked down at Arabella, he saw the hem of the shirt she wore was twisted, revealing one bare rounded hip, which his hand settled over, kneading the soft flesh. His other hand found the braid in her hair, loosening its mahogany colored length as he stroked it out across the pillow. Then the buttons of Arabella’s shirt were worked open and the edges pulled back to reveal her naked breasts, tender belly, and soft inviting pussy beneath. He would never tire of seeing her this way, he thought, as his cock thickened at the sight of her nudity.

Arabella was having the most unusual dream. It seemed very real as her body sleepily twisted and stretched beneath sensations that were warm and tantalizing. Low sighs escaped her lips as pleasure expanded in her mind and through her body, making her want to squirm and breathe heavier. She realized, coming more fully awake, that penetrating jolts of pleasure were nipping around her breasts making her want to thrust her nipples upward. Which she did, to find searing heat nibbling at the sensitive budded tips. Her neck arched backward as she moaned and her head moved from side to side beneath the exquisite pleasure. Broad hands moved in long slow strokes up and down her body, warmly bending her shape to their will.

Darth, it was Darth, her honey-drenched mind told her as her body undulated and molded to every place his palms fondled over. His slightly roughened fingertips petted down the insides of her tender thighs spreading them open as his mouth sucked with tiny bites at her nipples, making her gasp. Then she felt his thumb touching the slit of her sex, folding her open, and she jerked.

“Relax, little dove,” He whispered huskily raising up to capture her mouth with his strong lips.

Arabella became lost in Darth’s kiss as his tongue lapped over her tongue and his fingers played between the lips of her sex with enticing circular motions that made her hips strain upward. She could not stop her hips motion from humping against Darth’s hand. She began whimpering into his mouth as her knees raised, so she could push upward, and then suddenly his finger plunged inside of her, making her cried out.

“Your tender bud is throbbing beneath my finger, little dove.” Darth’s breath was hot against her ear as his finger stroked inside her wetness “That’s it, little love, move with me,” he whispered, persuading her with his deep hushed voice. And she did, crying out his name as the pressure built to a blinding summit. “Come to me, little dove ... come to me.”

The explosion of feelings, centering beneath Darth’s fingers, rocked Arabella in dizzying convulsions that spread rapture through her entire body. Making her shake under the enormity of pleasure it wrought, until she knew that she had died again and she was glad for it.

Christ, she was so sweet, Darth thought, so passionate. His cock grew unbearably heavy as he watched Arabella’s soft lovely body shuddering with its release. Her head was thrown back with her hair spread wildly around her. Her knees were lifted and spread wide to his touch, revealing her sable mound with the dewy slit below that he played with. And he continued to play with, not leaving her any respite, until he once again brought her into another convulsion.

Arabella felt Darth moving above her as he pressed her legs open wider and she reached up to grasp his shoulders.

“Open to me, sweet little dove.”

His voice was a husky rasp and Arabella felt the tip of his manhood push slowly into the place inside her that ached so hotly to be filled. “Oh yes,” she breathed, trying instinctively to spread herself open and raise herself upward to meet his probing brand.

Darth steadied himself with a shudder — the way was tight and hot, dragging him deeper into its excruciating pleasure. Still he tensed and held back with superhuman effort, he could feel the barrier inside the moist haven of molten honey that enclosed him. He drew back as Arabella clutched him, trying to keep him from doing so.

“I would take this pain myself if I could, little dove,” Darth admitted hoarsely, and then he plunged, ripping forth fully into a searing liquid bliss that swallowed him to the hilt.

Arabella cried out, the pain was such a surprise. There was nowhere to go, she was filled and impaled upon the bed with her face buried in Darth’s bare shoulder. Her legs were spread impossibly wide around Darth’s thick muscled thighs and for moments pure panic assaulted her, it was the most vulnerable and exposed position she’d ever been in.

“I will not move unless you guide me.” Darth’s deep voice was strained and heavy. “Sweet Arabella, I will withdraw if you wish it.”

Arabella’s heart swelled as her trepidations fell beneath Darth’s trust. His powerful body shook and sweat dripped down his neck onto her cheek, but he did not move. “Kiss me,” she begged, and he did, until her hips began to rise and fall of their own accord and she realized that the pain was gone, leaving behind new yearnings that clenched inside her. She was not certain what she wanted, however she moaned. “Move, Darth, please.” And he did move, stroking his stiff manhood inside her, making her gasp, “Oh sweet mercy.” She grabbed his tight buttocks and begged him to do it again. Soon the rhythm was slapping against her inner thighs in a power so great she could do nothing but ride it.

Darth grasped Arabella’s satin knee and lifted it higher under his arm on one side. He shifted his angle and thrust as fast as the pounding hooves of a stallion. The moment was fire branded upon his soul, twisted and straining, the pleasure was so exquisite. Spiraling upward to meet his goal, and then in the moment of ultimate discovery he heard. No, he felt. No he lived, Arabella’s cry of ecstasy around him, and then he spilled his seed, hot and deep, until there was no more left of him, he was buried so deep, caught on a guttural cry of agonizing fulfillment.

Moments, hours, days later, Darth thought, as his mind returned from the heaven it had been expelled too. His breathing was harsh rasps of air, gulped down into his chest with one tiny coherent thought, not to crush his precious Arabella. So he withdrew and flung himself onto his back, blindly seeking her softness as he pulled her to his side, where she slept the contented sleep of a well-loved woman.

When he woke again sometime later, he kissed Arabella gently on the temple with a smile, wondering where his little dove’s thoughts would wander that day. Feeling a measure of certain satisfaction, he got up and covered her snugly, and then he went in search of a bath and clothes. When he entered his dressing chamber, in search of clothes, he began to consider the logistics of his situation. He wanted a bath, but it was too early for Chicery to be up and he did not wish to disturb Arabella’s sleep. Yet when she woke, she would want a bath and food. That meant he had no choice but to return to Lee in a few hours. It was still very early, so he decided to forgo his bath until later and settle for another quick wash in the kitchen basin sink.

With that decided, he gathered some clean clothes, then thought to leave Arabella a note, telling her of his intentions. Upon leaving his bed chamber, he shut the door quietly behind him and stood for long moments considering the lock. He finally decided that upon returning in a few hours, he would give Arabella the clothes and this would be the last time he would lock her in. From henceforth, if he wanted her to stay in his bedchamber, he would simply request it. That brought a smile to his lips as he headed down the hallway. He would have enough time to go to the magistrate, to speak to him about the fire before he had to be back.

The people in Lee Hall woke earlier than Darth would have expected. Chicery was already awake and waiting and Arabella had woken upon hearing the door click shut. She found the note brushing her hands over the words with a deep sigh. Darth had written the salutation, “Love, Darth,” at the bottom and once she’d seen the words she’d felt tightness in her chest. Could he mean it or was it only a slip, she wondered, laying her head back on the pillow?

She thought that being loved by a man like Darth would have to be the most wonderful thing in the world. But it was all so fragile and new, she did not want anything to harm the feelings growing inside of her. She did trust Darth, and now she was certain of it, and with that certainty, she realized that she needed to tell him about Nicholas. She needed his help and it had already been too long, she could wait no longer. She did not think it would be necessary, but she would beg Darth for his help if she had to. “The very next time I see him, I will tell him everything,” she declared to herself.

Chapter Eighteen

“The earl is gone,” Chicery said to the woman behind him, and then he turned to her and continued. “Now, Mary, remember that I require discretion and if you do a good job ... well, we will see.”

Mary was a slight girl, young, but she looked capable enough with her brown hair and hazel eyes. Mrs. Wellborn had given her high marks for being a lady’s maid and had assured Chicery that she had spoken to Mary about the earl’s looks. Chicery could only hope Mary had heart, because if she reacted badly to the earl, well then, it would be all over and dear Miss Arabella did deserve a lady’s maid. It was only proper for a lady such as herself … and her clothes, he could hardly think on what poor Miss Arabella had been forced to wear last night. She reminded him of a daughter that he’d never had, with her sweet innocence, and if everyone else around here had forgotten how to treat a lady, well, he had not. Especially one he hoped would stay. He had never seen the earl like this before, he was nearly happy and sometimes Lord Peregrine needed a nudge in the right direction.

“I still don’t understand why we must hide from his lordship,” Mary said.

“Never you mind about that, girl. You’ve been hired as a lady’s maid and that is all. I will take care of the rest,” Chicery said, giving her his sternest look.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Chicery,” Mary said, following with an appropriate curtsy.

“Good,” Chicery replied with a slight shake of his balding head. “Now take this robe and bring Miss Arabella back to this chamber to bathe and dress. Then tell her breakfast will be served at her pleasure in the lower dining room.” Chicery walked forward as he was speaking, taking out a set of household keys that were in his pocket. One of these he fitted into the lock on the earl’s bedchamber door and if Mary thought anything of it, she said nothing.

Arabella was dozing with Darth’s note clutched in her hand, but she woke to hear a woman’s voice calling her name. “Miss Arabella.” Her eyes opened to see a smiling face. Her name was Mary and she said that she was to be Miss Arabella’s lady’s maid for as long as she was at Lee. Arabella could not have been more surprised. A maid? For her? It became instantly clear to Arabella that Mary was a talker. Mary never stopped talking once from that moment on, and she never really waited for an answer either, even answering some of the questions she posed to Arabella on her own.

Mary could not have been but two years older to Arabella’s eighteen years and she was slender with brown hair pulled back into a neat bun. She wore a dark shift with a starched white apron, that being a proper lady’s maid attire, she told Arabella. Arabella would not know, because she’d never had a lady’s maid in her life and if Mary seemed surprised at the circumstances she found Arabella in, she never let it show. Arabella decided after only a few minutes that she liked Mary, even if she did talk so much. Soon Arabella, found herself wrapped in a robe and taken down the hall into another bedchamber of obvious feminine origins.

“There is a hot bath and a warm fire, Miss Arabella. Then breakfast will be served in the lower dining room,” Mary said as she took Arabella’s robe and helped her into the bath. Arabella felt happiness that Darth would do this for her, a lady’s maid, clothes, and now breakfast with him in the dining room.

“Mr. Chicery said to choose any outfit you like, Miss Arabella, but I can see they are surely for a smaller figure. We can make do though, we will just have to tighten the corset up a bit,” Mary said holding up two dresses from the armoire she had just opened. A corset? Arabella had never worn one. Even her Mother had said that Jamaica’s climate was too hot, but papa had teased her saying it was just her excuse to get out of the accursed thing. Nevertheless, Arabella thought that she would do as Darth wanted of course, especially since it involved gaining clothes.

“Whose room do you think this is, Mary? It is quite lovely?” Arabella asked as she began to wash her long red-tinted auburn hair.

“Mr. Chicery never said, Ma’am, but I do know that Lord Peregrine has a married sister.”

The room was as vibrant in color as were the clothes and Arabella realized the room must belong to one of the women that she’d seen portraits of in Darth’s bed chamber. She finished washing her hair hoping that whomever the room belonged to would not mind her use of it.

The clothing proved difficult, Arabella was anxious about wearing someone else’s clothes without directly asking them. Yet, Mary kept reassuring her that it was all right, even going so far as to say the earl himself had ordered it. Still, the clothing was all very vibrant and bold in coloring and nothing really suited her tawny looks. Mary finally settled on an energetic yellow colored gown and that was when the real trouble began. The gown was too small in the bosom and Arabella was horrified when her body was shoved painfully into a corset.

“They are horrid!” she exclaimed to Mary, who was behind her tugging without mercy on the strings.

“Now, Miss, it only takes getting used to. And, oh, what they do for your chest. The earl will be unable to take his eyes off you,” Mary said, truly believing that she was helping matters.

Arabella gave in, though she really had no choice if she wanted to be dressed, so finally she was fitted into the frilly yellow gown and Mary turned her to face a mirror.

“Sweet Mary, I cannot wear this!” Arabella exclaimed. It was indecently low cut to begin with, but with the added fullness of her breasts, it was embarrassing.

“It is what all the ladies wear now, Miss,” Mary assured again, as she worked fixing Arabella’s hair.

Arabella would not know, she had never owned a dress like this in her life. In Jamaica they wore much simpler clothing, more light and loose fitting, but with high collars all the same. Either way there was no hope for it, so she brought her shoulders back, holding herself with as much dignity as she could manage, and then she proceeded to go to the dining room, expecting to meet with Darth.

Chapter Nineteen

Darth arrived back from the magistrate to many surprises. The first of which was the arrival of his younger brother Christian Beaumont Peregrine, affectionately called Beau. Darth was told at the stables that his brother, along with a friend, had stopped for breakfast on their journey from Cambridge to the seaside resort of Bath. Darth smiled to himself as he handed Raven’s reins to the livery boy. He had missed his brother, gone away to school, and he would enjoy the brief visit. On his way to the manor, Darth resolved to say nothing of Arabella, safely ensconced in his bedchamber. She would be unable to leave its proximity without proper clothes, so Beau would be none the wiser.

When Darth entered the manor, he turned abruptly toward the unexpected sounds of laughter coming from the dining room to his right. It was not the laughter that set his jaw in a hard line and furrowed his brow harshly. He would have expected the sound, especially with his brother’s arrival. Beau was a lighthearted and joking young man. Nay, what set his teeth on edge, and stretched the muscles tight across his back was the sound of a woman’s sonorous laugh filtering through the deeper bass chuckles. And that could only signify one thing.

Even through the red haze of fury gnawing at him, Darth recognized that Arabella presented a provocative picture. The blazing yellow gown she wore fell to an indecent low curve of her high mounded breasts, clearly at odds with the conservative French twist her long auburn hair had been fashioned into. All of it leaving a wealthy view of her slender neck and bared shoulders. Christ, the gown was as well as pasted over her ripe curves, he thought, as his fists rolled into tight balls. And Arabella was not without gentlemanly admirers. A very handsome dark-haired man, whom Darth had never seen before, fairly drooled over her left shoulder. The man’s gaze from behind her shoulder, before he bent over her, was fixed directly down the front of her gown. Darth had to give his brother credit though, because Beau at least stood away from the tempting display, leaning on the wall near the window.

The dark-haired stranger actually brushed Arabella’s ear, when he bent down to speak to her, causing her to jump, then pull away. Had Darth been in a clearer frame of mind, he might have registered her reaction as significant, but he was beyond that into tempest fury. Fury that he would never consciously admit was jealousy of mammoth proportions.

His hand rubbed the scarring on the side of his face, in an unconsciously significant manner, as he stalked into the room. “Arabella! Why are you not in my bed, where I commanded you to be upon my return?” Darth shouted. “I believe that I will have to sell you back to that slaver. I will not tolerate this disobedience!” Darth heard Arabella cry out, unnerved, as she stood stumbling backward from his advance, while the dark-haired man moved in front of her as if to protect her.

Arabella was staggered, as the shame of Darth’s harsh words washed over her, and then she saw his charged advance. She cringed backward against the wall, sure that if the support had not been there, she would have slumped to the ground.

“Now just a minute!” Lamont exclaimed, putting out his hand as if to stop Darth.

“Would you dare to lay a hand on me or what is mine in my own home?” Darth thundered.

“Lamont!” Beau’s voice rang out. “Stand back or you will have to deal with me!”

Lamont hesitated for only a moment, and then stood aside, stiffly. Arabella took that moment to run, just as Beau was calling Darth’s name for attention. Tears blurred her vision so bad that it was hard to see her direction, but her terror drove her forward. She ran headlong into Beau, just as Darth bellowed, “Hold her!”

Which Beau did not, instead shoving her along. “Miss Ormonde, hurry now and I will try to hold him.” Arabella was never so grateful, as she ran out of the dining room, hearing Beau calling after her. “Find a locked door, Madame, quickly!”

“Damn you, Beaumont. Let me go!” Darth’s voice thundered behind Arabella.

Arabella was petrified and any reasonable mind that she had, fled beneath her panic. Escape was the only thing she could think of, and that headed her out the front door, instead of back up the staircase. She picked up the heavy skirts of her gown and her only thoughts were to escape. She heard Darth before she saw him. The sound of his boots sending terror to her voice, and she screamed. It was as if she were being hunted down, stalked for a ravaged killing, as she strove to find her breath from running, but the panic would not allow it. Her mind begged for air, and then suddenly she was seized from behind and dragged backward against the tempest fury that chased her.

Darth was brought up shortly, staggering to a halt, when he felt Arabella falling limp. Instinct alone allowed him to lift her up into his arms as he tried to retain his balance. He finally came to a stumbling halt with Arabella held unconscious and slack in his arms. Her long hair having torn loose with her flight was falling wildly about his thighs. Reason returned impetuously, driving the fury right out of him and with it his conscience returned.

“Christ, what have I done ... Arabella ... Arabella.” But there was no answer as Darth cradled her against his chest, shifting her so that her lax head rested against his shoulder. Quickly, he turned back to the manor, intercepted by Beau.

Beau could see the horror and regret in his brother’s eyes and he was grateful for his brother’s return to sanity. “She has only fainted, Darth, and it is no wonder.” Darth brushed passed Beau without a word and walked back into the manor, then taking the stairs two at a time.

Beau decided it was better to wait for his brother’s return downstairs. He knew Darth well enough to know that Darth would not appreciate anyone’s interference. Beau felt confident enough in Darth’s look of regret, that his brother’s sanity had return enough to keep the lady from harm. Turning back to his friend Lamont, Beau wondered whether it might not be a good idea to get the man away from there. This left him to ponder the ominous events with his mind still caught on the word, “slaver.” My God, had Darth actually purchased the woman?

Darth laid Arabella carefully on the bed. God, she looked so small and fragile. His hand moved gently over her brow, and then down her delicate cheek. She moved slightly with her eyelids fluttering and he felt relief flooding through him.

“Begging your pardon, your lordship.” It was Chicery, standing at the open door as Darth swung his head around to look.

“Not now, Chicery.”

“I am sorry, sir, but it cannot wait. It is my fault, sir. You cannot blame, Miss Arabella.”

Darth stood in bewilderment, and then he walked toward the open doorway. He had never seen Chicery quite so distressed. Of course someone would have had to help Arabella. The gown, he now realized was one of his sister’s and the door, Darth was sure he had locked the door.

“Sir, Miss Arabella truly did question the lady’s maid, Mary, as to whether it was right to take the clothes and Mary without knowing, because I had not told her, assured Miss Arabella that you had given the order. And then, your brother’s arrival was so unexpected, Lord Beaumont caught Miss Arabella at breakfast, which I had set out for her in the lower dining room.”

“You did not tell them to give me the use of these clothes, Darth?” Darth turned to see Arabella sitting upright on the bed. Her lips were trembling and her eyes were wide with fear.

“No, I did not.” Darth turned back to Chicery with his hand unconsciously rubbing his scar. “Go now, and tell this lady’s maid that I have supposedly hired, to come up here and bring the packages from my office.”

“Yes, your lordship,” Chicery replied with a worried glance at Arabella before he left the room.

When Darth turned back around, he saw Arabella cringe on the bed and he was never more regretful for anything in his life, than he was at that moment.

Arabella watched Darth stop his motion of returning to her side, and then he just stood there looking at her. Gone were the terrible anger and the rage that had contorted his features earlier, and she felt some of her fear ebbing away. Yet her eyes were locked onto his as if by chains, and she could read the emotions flickering in their turbulent depths. Pain, she saw the sharpness of it, before he turned and strode to the mantel, to look down into the fire, silently.

She had not realized that she had been so tightly caught in Darth’s gaze and steeped in the apprehension of what he might do, that she was shaking. As soon as he turned away, she felt the release, and her body went limp as she sank back against the head of the bed. Still she could not tear her gaze away from Darth, standing so powerful and lithe, yet in some type of dark isolation that seemed to shroud him even in the bright light of day. Moreover what caused a fluttering of pain to seep across her chest and constrict her throat was the way Darth rubbed his fingers over the scarring along his face. Over and over, as if he could somehow rub it away. She had never seen him use this heartbreaking gesture before and her fear dissolved into compassion.

“Miss Arabella? Oh my!” Mary stood in the doorway — her hands had been full of packages, which now lay strewn on the floor as her hands clamped over her mouth.

Oh, good heavens, it was only a scar, Arabella exclaimed inside of her mind, but to Mary she said, “Come here, Mary, do not run away.” Then Arabella turned to Darth and said, “Quit scowling so fiercely at her, my lord. Any woman would take fright for their life with such a man’s fearsome scowl.”

Arabella did not wait for Darth’s answer or reaction as she stood and started toward Mary. “His lordship truly is only mad at me, Mary, for I have done something wrong, even still, he will not punish me too severely, for actually he is very kind.” Arabella stopped in front of Mary and she saw gratefully that Mary had composed herself, somewhat.

“Oh, Miss Arabella. I am so sorry.”

“Hush, hush, now. Lord Peregrine’s scar affects everyone that way at first. It simply takes a good first look, and then the newness wears off. Is that not right, my lord?”

Arabella’s heart skipped a beat, before she turned to look at Darth, hearing his deep voice steady and firm. “Tis the surest piece of wisdom I have heard in years, Arabella.”

Arabella continued to turn around, offering Darth a tentative look, as she saw his face relax with a slight grin pulling at his firm, if severed lips. It made all the difference in his countenance as far as she was concerned. “My Lord Peregrine, this is Mary, apparently the new lady’s maid,” Arabella said.

Darth stepped forward slowly as Mary did her best to look at him. “Look closely for a while, Mary, but take care if you linger, for I will wonder why such a pretty lass pursues me.”

That did it, Arabella thought with an inward smile.

“Oh, your lordship.” Mary blushed in pleasure and even managed a tilting curtsy. Then Darth did a wonderful thing and he stooped down to begin picking up the packages.

“I will get these, Mary. It is my fault that they are here to begin with. And could you go and fix Miss Ormonde a cup of tea?”

“Oh yes, your lordship,” Mary answered with a better curtsy. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Another curtsy and Mary was gone, leaving Darth chuckling as he gathered the packages.

Arabella felt her heart warm at the sound, however she clutched it away. Just as she retreated into the room to achieve some distance from Darth, before she turned to face him. There was still warm amusement in Darth’s gray eyes and she hesitated for a moment. Then she remembered her feelings of shame and panic and she strove forward to do what she had to do. “I demand that you take me back to the slaver, as you called him. I will no longer stay here willingly, Darth. I will fight you at every turn. I will not obey you! I would rather be dead!”

“So would I, Arabella.”

“So would you, what, Darth?”

“Rather be dead, little dove.”

“Do not say that, Darth!”

“Then you should not either!”

“Oh, all right, Darth. I take your point, but still, you will have to beat me, and I...”

“Stop it, woman! Do not say that. I will not beat you ... ever again!”

“Well then, I do not know how you expect to ...”

“I don’t! How can I control you if I cannot even beat you just a little, and I know I could never do that again? It makes me skeptical about who is the master of this situation. And, Arabella, I apologize!”

Arabella’s rose-colored lips pursed in exasperation as Darth stepped closer and she backed up. But he only went over to the bed and set the packages down, not turning back around as he spoke. “An apology on my behalf is not good enough for my crime, Arabella. I want you to know that I realize that. I shamed you. I frightened you. I deserve your scorn. You have every right. Still, I can live with your scorn, but what I cannot live with is to take you back to Crom. Damnation, woman, he might sell you into even worse conditions!”

“Oh, Darth.” The sound of despair was tangible, making him turn. Darth told himself, after his earlier spectacle, he would not go to Arabella because it would not be right after how he had terrorized her. Yet the look in her golden irises drove him. She needed him, he could see that clearly and this was not a flowering sexual need. She was anguished and helpless against it. His arms were around her as he kept himself attuned to the fact of whether he was doing something she did not wish. No, it was all right. In fact her small body was clinging to him.

“Lord Peregrine, I apologize for having to disturb you, but there is a man creating a disturbance in the entrance foyer. Demanding to see, you and Miss Arabella.” Chicery huffed as though he had run a great distance.

The door had been open and Darth could not blame the intrusion, if a man was creating a fuss in his hall that was something he needed to know. “Miss Ormonde? Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, he said, sir …” Chicery stuttered to a halt looking highly uncomfortable.

“Go on, Chicery.” Darth held Arabella in the crook of his arm and he could feel her body starting to tremble.

“It might be better in private, sir.”

“I know no one here, except my step-!” Arabella gasped, with her words coming to a halt, then she buried her face in his shoulder.

“Arabella ... Arabella! Get yourself down here now, girl!” The man’s voice was shouted from the downstairs hall.

Chapter Twenty

“Oh, no!” Arabella nearly swooned, but Darth held her up in his arms.

“Stepfather? That is what you were going to say, wasn’t it, Arabella?”

“Oh, Darth, yes. Please ... please, you have to help me ... and Nicholas. He said that he would kill Nicholas!”

Another man’s name. Darth’s gut tightened. It must be a man that Arabella held great affection for, to call out his name in her delirium, and then upon her first moment of waking. Darth’s jaw clenched tight, he did not like the direction of his thoughts at all.

“Stay here.” He started to disengage himself from embracing Arabella.

“No, if it is Nicholas, I must go. He could be here ... I cannot hide.”

Arabella appeared to try and collect herself, then she started toward the door. Darth tried to fight the black fury settling over him. A stepfather who had obviously abused Arabella, selling her to that villainous slave trader Victor Crom, might now be in his foyer. He and Nicholas. There was no other explanation. Darth had heard the caring in Arabella’s voice, she clearly loved this Nicholas. His control was cracking.

Once Arabella made up her mind to swallow back her fear, she moved forward with haste. If Nicholas was here, she had to go to him now. He would be so frightened. And if he wasn’t? Oh, God she could not think of that.

Darth’s arm came around Arabella’s slender waist, slowing her headlong journey. “You will stay next to me.” There was no time for her to answer him, because they had reached the top of the stairs and there was a man at the bottom, whose back was turned to them, while Beau gripped him by the lapels.

The man shouted as Darth looked on. “She’s my daughter, man, and he will answer to me for her disgrace, by damn!”

Beau looked up at Darth, appearing not to be having a difficult time holding the man in place. The look they exchanged held great significance. They were allied in the same cause and Darth was glad for Beau’s presence, especially since his arm around Arabella was the only thing holding her upright. It left him no room to maneuver with the intruding stepfather if things got ugly, which it appeared was imminent. Darth could only assume by the gray hair that he could see at the back of the struggling man’s head that this must be the stepfather, and not the mysterious Nicholas. Yet, he thought even from behind that the man looked vaguely familiar. Still no sign of the illusive Nicholas, though.

He and Arabella had nearly reached the bottom of the stairs when the gray-haired man broke partially free of Beau’s hold to his lapels. The man swung around, causing Darth to halt in utter amazement. Damnation, it was Victor Crom!

“Nicholas!” Arabella’s voice shrieked beside him, then she broke away from him, and he turned with an angry bellow caught in his throat. His gaze was searching for Arabella and he was not able to understand exactly why he was not seeing her right there in front of him. Then he realized that she was down on her knees and a small dark haired blur was suddenly caught up into her arms. It was a boy! Nicholas was only a small boy.

“I told you to stay outside!” Crom hissed at the boy. “Unhand me, you cur!” Crom yelled at Beau. “These are my children, and I will be let go!”

“Bella! Bella, I did not know what happened to you and I was so afraid,” Nicholas cried. The young boy was clutching Arabella as Beau hauled Crom further away and pushed him up against the wall, while Darth crouched beside Arabella.

“Oh, Darth.” Arabella could barely speak as her golden eyes ravished him with so much emotion, but the plainest one was fear.

Darth’s arm came around Arabella’s back in comfort, as Victor Crom hissed. “You have defiled her, you blackguard lord, and now you will answer to me!”

“Quiet!” Beau pressed his hand around Crom’s throat, until no more words came forth.

“He did not ... Lord Peregrine, did not!” Arabella wailed.

“Take the miscreant into my study and hold him there,” Darth hissed, looking up at Beau, who was following his orders even as the words were barely out of his mouth. Crom expelled a string of curses that finally became muffled behind the door Beau slammed.

Darth recognized immediately that both Arabella and little Nicholas were shaking in an unhealthy way, as he said, “Nicholas is it? I am Darth, Nicholas, and I need your help to get your sister to a chair. Could you help me?”

Children, they were the only people he had ever met that only looked curiously at his scarring. Never afraid, and usually full of questions about it. Nicholas appeared no different, however he was too upset to be curious at the moment. His little chin lifted bravely, reminding Darth of Arabella. “Yes, sir, we should help her to sit.” Then Nicholas unlatched his small arms from around Arabella’s neck and took her hand. “Come on, Bella.” He looked up. “And maybe we should get her a glass of water too.”

“I will see to it.” Chicery’s voice sounded behind them.

Darth lifted Arabella up by her waist and elbow, tears were streaming down her lovely cheeks and he thought for a moment that he might have to carry her. But she looked down at Nicholas and squared her shoulders a bit. However, when they reached the chair in the dining room, she slumped into it, burying her face in her hands as Nicholas hugged her skirts.

“Little dove, you have to trust me now,” Darth began slowly. “I swear to you that I am not going to let Crom harm either you or Nicholas.”

Darth knelt before Arabella as Nicholas popped in. “I won’t either, Bella, we will protect you.”

Darth could have smiled, but for the seriousness of the situation, yet he did ruffled Nicholas’ dark hair in comradeship. Then he took Arabella’s hands, gently but firmly, pulling them away from her face. The look on her face made him want to gather her up into his arms and whisk her away from all the hurt he saw there.

“Arabella, you need to answer a few questions for me, before I see to your stepfather.” Arabella nodded her head slowly, as Darth thought with a grimace, that these were questions he should have asked her much earlier than this. “You are not a bond’s maiden are you?”

It was a statement, but Arabella responded, “I do not know, Darth. Can he do that to me? I am only eighteen and he has control ...”

“No, Arabella. He cannot,” Darth interrupted her. “You are not a bond’s maiden. But he has threatened Nicholas’ life, to force you to say that you were, didn’t he?”

Darth’s heart wrenched at Arabella’s nod. Christ, he was as much to blame for this as Crom was. “Darth, what he said a-about the disgrace,” Arabella whispered. “I will swear to anyone, no matter what the circumstances that you never ...”

“Hush now, little dove,” Darth interrupted her with a heavy feeling deep inside him. That Arabella would do this, after how he had despoiled her, held her prisoner to his darkest desires. “I will take care of that.” It was a silent and unbreakable vow to himself. No matter what it took, he would hold Arabella’s best interests to his heart. As he should have done long ago. “I do not want you to worry, Arabella,” he murmured. “In fact, I am going to have Chicery take you and Nicholas upstairs. Chicery will make up the room beside mine, for both of you.”

“Darth, what if he demands that we go with him?” she asked fearfully. “He has all the rights.”

“He will not,” Darth expelled, then he calmed his voice as he said, “Arabella, not tonight, I will not allow him to take you anywhere tonight, and then you and I can talk later.”

Darth helped Arabella to stand and he took her face into his hands, whispering. “I will make this right, Arabella, you are not alone anymore and your stepfather has yet to deal with an earl as angry as I am.”

“Darth, we are so grateful,” she exclaimed.

Darth could not help the light kiss he placed on Arabella’s lips sealing his vow, before he turned to Chicery. “Now, Chicery …” he began to say.

“I heard, sir, and the little Miss and young man are well in my care.” Then Chicery took Arabella’s elbow firmly to support her as he started to lead her away.

“I will stand by your side, sir, if you need me,” Nicholas proclaimed looking up at Darth. “She is my sister,” he added as if that made all the difference in the world.

Darth stooped, and said, “That is why I need you to stay with her. Arabella needs you right now, and I need you to take care of her for me.” Nicholas’ dark eyes looked relieved and Darth was impressed with his bravery, for there was no doubt that Nicholas would have faced Crom again, no matter that he was clearly frightened of him.

“You can count on me, sir,” Nicholas proclaimed with determination that belayed his tender years, then he was beside Arabella taking her hand and helping Chicery to lead her away.

Darth turned back toward the study taking a few moments to think. He had not lied to Arabella about tonight; Crom would not be leaving here with them. What worried him though was tomorrow, for by then Crom could get the magistrate and force him to give them up. No stretching of the law was going to change the fact that Arabella and Nicholas were Crom’s stepchildren and that gave him rights.

Furthermore, the man’s charges about disgrace made it all too clear that Crom had another agenda set. Darth wished that he could speak to Beau, but he could not see a way to accomplish it at the moment. It did not take much imagination to assume that Crom was after money. There was no hope for it though, he had to go into the study and play it by ear. He just prayed that he could keep his anger in check. He could not think straightforwardly and he did unreasonable things in his anger. But Arabella needed his help and he had no intentions of letting her down now, no matter what it took.

Chapter Twenty One

Darth entered the study finding Beau standing over Victor Crom, who was perched in a chair before his desk. Beau’s look was grim as he gave Darth a nod. Victor was silent and he had not seen him entering the room as he strode around the side of the desk to stand facing him. Victor immediately stood upon seeing him. “You will pay for this manhandling! I will bring charges. You ...!”

“You will do nothing,” Darth uttered with his voice low and deadly and his features commanding a dark glare to back it up. He saw Victor falter, as he ordered sharply, “Sit!”

Victor might not have complied, but Beau took the opportunity to push Victor down into the chair, then Beau continued to stand over Crom as though he might pounce on him at any moment. Victor appeared to wilt a little under both men’s scrutiny with his mouth wavering open, yet no sound coming forth.

Darth sat, leaning back, his features tightly held, confirming the restraint that he had achieved. “You, sir, are not dealing with a simpering fool, and I will have respect in my own home.”

Victor appeared to nearly choke, then he rallied sitting straighter, as he exclaimed, “A father loses sight, when something like this happens to his daughter ...!”

Darth cut off Crom’s words sharply, as he hissed, “A stepfather who sells his stepdaughter into slavery! And least you forget, Crom, I have the papers to prove your assault.”

“No papers from me, sir! I don’t know who you got to forge your papers but ...”

“Christ, man.” Darth’s fist hit the desktop with a rumbling smack. “I have creditable witnesses, if you think this hogwash will hold up in court, you are sadly mistaken.”

“Against my daughter’s reputation!” Crom exclaimed snidely. “A fine upstanding young lady, from a good English family in Jamaica. And who, I have proof that you abducted for your own lecherous use! The Griswold livery man clearly heard you say that you were taking the sweet innocence girl you held bound up in your cape to your own bedchamber. And now, I demand satisfaction for her defilement and ruination!”

Darth could only glare, it was taking an incredible amount of effort not to wrap his fingers around Victor Crom’s gangly neck. Then he realized in that moment, he would do anything to get Arabella away from this monster. But he could not let Crom know that.

“What is it you want, Crom? I might as well tell you right now that I care nothing for my own reputation and have not for a long time. Your ploy is a useless ploy against me,” Darth stated flatly. It was the truth as far as he was concerned, but there were others to consider. He would not blacken his family by scandal, otherwise he could give a damn.

Victor looked red about his thin face and it was obvious that he’d been drinking. Victor leaned forward, not being set back by the words, and Darth reminded himself that the man was a skilled gambler. “Then I won’t have any problem putting it to the test, your lordship. Just call my Arabella and Nicholas to me so that we can leave. I will be taking Arabella straight to the magistrate. Rape is a crime in England, as it is in Jamaica!”

Bloody Christ, rape now, and Darth knew just how Victor planned to accomplish this feat. He would threaten Arabella with Nicholas and she would have no choice but to say whatever the fiend demanded of her. Darth’s gaze strayed to Beau, who was clenching and unclenching his fist erratically. It took a lot to incite Beau but once it was accomplished he was as fierce as his brother.

Darth’s fist slammed onto the table again. “It would take very little effort to have you thrown off this estate! Then you would have to waste the time to see the magistrate. Convince him to even come against me, and by that time I can assure you, Arabella and Nicholas will have disappeared.”

Victor’s expression did not change. He was a gambler through and through, Darth thought as he continued, “I say this, to lay all our cards on the table, so that we understand each other. A man in my position is not unaccustomed to having to deal with problems concerning women of all natures trying to relieve me of my wealth.” It was a blatant lie, but Darth continued, “It has been done before and I am certain it will be tried again.” After this, Darth fervently hope not. “My solicitor in the past has handled all such unpleasantries, to an equitable satisfaction of both parties.” The gleam in Victor’s eyes grew as Darth continued to speak. “As I see it, you have no choice in the matter, but to accept my terms. I would be willing to negotiate a settlement for the full guardianship of both Nicholas and Arabella, if this can be done posthaste. Otherwise, you are gone from here this minute!”

“You must be mad,” Victor expelled. “Full guardianship!”

“It would not have been my choice, but I can see no other way to insure that you will not continue to blackmail me,” Darth responded.

Victor stood up so suddenly, Beau was taken by surprise and unable to stop him. “Blackmail is a strong word!” Victor exclaimed. “As I see it my Arabella deserves nothing less than marriage for this defilement!”

Darth did not for one moment believe the man. He knew that Victor was just trying to raise the ante. “An accomplishment that I could easily do without you and still not have to part with any of my hard earned money. Why yes, Victor, I had not thought of this avenue, yet now that I think on it ...”

“Now, just a minute,” Victor stammered, clearly backtracking. “There is Nicholas, marriage would not gain him.”

Darth leaned back into his chair, pressing a long finger against his lips thoughtfully. He had just gained the advantage and both Victor and he knew it. “I would simply have to let the courts decide whether Nicholas would be better off with a penniless stepfather or a loving sister, who by then, would just happen to be a countess. What do you think, Crom, shall we take our chances?”

“Now, just a minute,” Victor stammered again. “I never said your first offer was not acceptable. If proper compensation could be met, I might ...”

“Good,” Darth stated cutting off the man’s words. “Just tell me where to reach you and my solicitor will be in contact.”

“No-no!” Victor exclaimed. “I could never in good conscience leave my dear children, until this matter is resolved, sir. Never!”

“Then we have another problem, Crom, because I will never ...”

“Here, sir!” Victor interrupted. “I will stay here, and we can soon have this done with.”

Bloody Christ, the man was a sharp stick in his side, which was probably going to end up costing him a fortune. It did not matter that he deemed Arabella worth more than any fortune he had amassed. He had worked hard for his money and he would not dip into Lee’s coffers for his own foolhardiness. Still, it would be better to gain the time, perhaps another solution could be found and it would be better to have Victor Crom where he knew what he was up too.

“I concede the point, however there are conditions.” Darth leaned forward with his palms flat on the desk. “The manor is large and you will be put in the west wing, far away from the rest of us. And you will stay away from Arabella!”

Victor looked about to object, then thought better of it. “I would only request to see her one time at the conclusion of our business, just to be allowed to say goodbye.”

The man was noxious and Darth felt the overwhelming need to be done with him. Maybe even retire to wash his hands of the stench he had been mired in. He only nodded his agreement as he stood. “Go wait in the foyer and I will have Chicery take you to your room.”

“Thank you, sir …”

“Get out of here before you try my patience beyond its limit!”

Beau turned back around slowly, having let Victor Crom out into the foyer, where he’d informed Chicery to find the man a room. Chicery of course, grumbling the entire time, had nonetheless set off to the task. Now, Beau saw that Darth was standing by the sideboard pouring a drink. It was early, but he felt the need for one also, so at Darth’s gesture he nodded his dark head affirmatively. So much had happened, but one thing was clear, his brother cared for this woman, Arabella. And that was a thing that Beau had lost hope of ever occurring in Darth’s life.

“I know it is early, Beau,” Darth said as he drank the entire two fingers of brandy he had poured in one swallow. But then Beau noticed that he did not pour himself another. “I really apologize for getting you caught up in this mess.”

“Darth,” Beau said, acquiring his most sincere look as he clamped him around the back and took the glass of brandy from him. “If we start that, well then, I will have to take all my troubles elsewhere and ...”

“No, little brother, I did not mean that, it’s just that this is rather sordid and truth be known I am very glad you are here.” Darth’s broad hand gripped Beau’s shoulder. Beau was only about two inches shorter than Darth’s six foot, but at twenty-one years, Darth thought Beau might just have a little more growing in him. They had the same black hair, only Beau’s had a browner slant to it, complimenting his lively brown eyes.

“Arabella, what a beautiful name,” Beau began with a smile tugging his lips as they both went to sit before the fireplace. Two blue brocade wing chairs facing each other brought both brothers legs stretched out in front of them as they regarded each other. Beau noticing with nothing less than a little amazement, the tender smile gracing his brother’s severed lips. Darth rarely smiled and never in ten years over a woman.

“Well, you have seen her, Beau. Arabella is beautiful to say the least and I could fall back on that excuse to explain my leap into perversion. The thing is that I cannot believe that she ... well, she seems to totally disregard my disfigurement, and now I know for certain it is not just a mere contrivance on her part.”

Beau watched Darth rub two fingers up and down along the scarred side of his face, it was a gesture he had seen before and he knew that it depicted Darth’s uncertainty over how Arabella could look at him without abhorrence. He also knew that when he had seen Darth use the gesture earlier today, it was because Darth had felt unsure in the presence of a handsome man like Lamont. Unsure how Arabella would react, when comparing the two. What Darth did not know was that Arabella had been extremely uncomfortable, and to his thoughts, wholly out of her element under Lamont’s attentions. He had just come to the conclusion at the time, and had been thinking of how to come to her aid, when Darth had stormed in. But something Darth said caught Beau’s attention first.

“Perversion, Darth?”

Darth leaned further into his chair, his arms coming across the width of his chest as he shook his head. “I am loath to admit it, Beau. I am still trying to find excuses for my behavior. I took Arabella as a slave, treated her as such, and had every intention of keeping her that way. Tis one of the reasons I knew so little of her true circumstances. It would have involved having a conscience to find out, and I could not allow myself to continue, if I had let my conscience loose.”

Beau let out a deep breath, rubbing his square chin. He, better than anyone, understood Darth. He knew Darth would find it beyond tempting to have a woman who did not persecute him for his injury, and he also knew how long Darth had been on his own. Bloody hell, it had been years, and a man could only take so much.

“It seems to me that you have ended up saving her from a worse fate. I mean if Crom could actually sell his own stepdaughter, Darth. Christ, it makes me ill to think of it. You know that I will stand behind you whatever you decide. I know little of the lady, but approve of what I have seen so far, and you know how I feel about the presence of a woman in your life.” Beau left the rest unsaid, they had been over it all before.

“I am glad to hear it, because I find no matter what the circumstances I am unwilling to give Arabella up.”

“Just one more thing, Darth, Miss Ormonde was highly uncomfortable with Lamont’s attentions. It seemed to me that she did not know quite what to do. It was rather an endearing display of innocence, once I figured it out, and I was just coming to the lady’s rescue when you stormed in.”

“I should have known,” Darth replied thoughtfully. “It appears Arabella has led a very sheltered life in Jamaica. I can just imagine that life on a small island would be very different from anything you or I have known. By the way, where is our Mr. Lamont?”

“When Crom arrived in such an uproar, I thought it best to send him down to the stables. It is one of the reasons I invited him here, the horses. I had hoped to do some hunting on our return trip through next week.” Beau sat forward and set his empty glass on the side table, gathering a serious look about him, as he asked, “What will you do, Darth?”

Darth’s eyes became dark gray as he turned his head to stare out the window and his dark countenance deepened, drawing in the scarring on the left side of his face. “I would not know what to do if not for Crom, but he has given me the answer. The only answer. I just wonder if Arabella will have me after everything I have done. Yet, I cannot let that dissuade me, it is the only way.” Darth turned to look at Beau squarely. “I will marry Arabella this very night.”

Beau sucked in a startled breath, yet he could see Darth was determined. It made sense if they did not want to lose a fortune. Of course he understood that was not the reason Darth was suggesting it. Nay, Darth wanted to marry Arabella, even now, Darth was rubbing that damned scar of his as his gaze turned out the window. “Well then, if that is your decision,” Beau began. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

“Crom must not know what we are planning, until the deed is done,” Darth said. “Afterward, we will have to find a safe place for Nicholas, until the courts can hear our case for his custody.” Darth stood suddenly. “And now I must go and convince Arabella to marry me. I do not envision that it will be an easy task, and you Beau, can go to Griswold and prepare for a small discreet wedding to take place in two hours’ time.”

***

Arabella lifted her gaze, when Darth entered the bedchamber, and Nicholas turned from looking out the window to stare at him also. He was so handsome, Arabella thought, she would never think anything else. The love in her heart would never allow it, yet she understood how impossible that was. She was only a young woman from Jamaica, while Darth was an earl. The scandal involving her, having been sold by her stepfather could never be lived down. Yet, Arabella knew that she would gladly live with Darth as his mistress, if he would only have her. Anything, she thought, she would do anything to be with Darth and to keep Nicholas away from Victor Crom. All of her hope and trust lay with Darth that he would find a way to rescue them, and she realized that she was no longer alone in this great country of England.

Arabella noticed that Darth appeared hesitant; it was an unusual appearance on his masculine features. Also, he walked toward Nicholas and not her, while she heard him quite distinctly clearing his throat. “Master Nicholas,” he began solemnly, gaining Nicholas’ full attention. Arabella thought that Nicholas, even though he had only been in Darth’s company for a few short minutes, admired him. “I have a serious question to ask of you,” Darth continued looking down at Nicholas. “As Arabella’s brother, and the male head of your family, I have come to ask you for your sister’s hand in marriage?”

Arabella choked on her surprise, making a strangled sound behind them, as Darth continued. “I give you my vow, Nicholas, that I will take care of Arabella and keep both of you safe for the rest of my life. I will make it my job, sir, to make your sister happy, if only I can have your blessing.”

Arabella saw the hope in Nicholas’ eyes as he turned his gaze to look to her, asking her with his eyes expression what he should do. She nodded her head vigorously. She was stunned, elated, hopeful, and her nod was overly vigorous, as she smiled with the beginning of tears in her eyes. Nicholas turned his gaze back upward to Darth, as he whispered, “Bella, says it is all right, and I think so too.”

Chapter Twenty Two

That evening after they had been married and Victor Crom had been unceremoniously thrown off Lee Estate, Darth guided Arabella upstairs. Beau and Chicery had taken Nicholas into hiding, until he and Arabella could gain guardianship of him. A legality, which he and Arabella would begin in the morning, and one he did not foresee taking lengthy amounts of time. Everything was in its proper place, he was married now, Arabella was safe, and Nicholas was safe and would be safe. Yet now, after all the struggles of the day, he was worried.

Had Arabella really wanted to marry him, he wondered for the hundredth time that day? He had used artifice when he’d approached Nicholas to ask for his sister’s hand in marriage. At the time he had plotted that Arabella would be less likely to say no, if he approached her in that fashion. It had been underhanded and Arabella herself had not revealed her true feelings at the time. Everything had been so hurried, and they had both gone along with the events quickly.

At the time they were married, Arabella had looked at him with hope and gratefulness in her eyes. He was saving her that was undeniable, but now it left him to wonder, would she have married the scarred earl, if it had not been to save her brother and herself? But he also wondered, should anything else matter to him but that Arabella was his? His hand lifted unerringly to his scar as he rubbed it absently, while he guided Arabella past his bedchamber, two doors beyond.

She was married, Arabella still could not believe it and her mind was drifting in the wonderful swirl of dreams every young woman must have. She thought mistily of love, a husband, and children. Her children with Darth. She glanced at Darth, and all her fanciful thoughts came to an abrupt halt. She saw clearly that he was rubbing his scar in a haunting gesture that tugged at her heart immediately. Had she forgotten? Of course she had, she had forgotten all of her insights into her husband’s troubled soul. She knew what she had to do, what she had to do this very moment.

“Darth.” She tugged his hand, stopping him beside her as he turned and looked down at her, dropping his other hand from rubbing his scar. “I love you,” she exclaimed abrupt and very bold, looking up at him with all the love in her eyes that she could muster. He flinched visibly with his gray eyes widening, but otherwise his expression remained unreadable as he peered down at her. She would hold her heart out on a limb forever for him, he must never wonder at her devotion. Never.

“Arabella …” Darth began slowly.

“I love you,” she said again. “I love you with all my heart. I ... Oh!” she yelped as Darth swung her up into his arms with his mouth instantly descending over her surprised lips. His lips were hot, insistent, and powerful as he took her mouth hungrily.

Suddenly, he lifted his head, breaking their urgent lips apart. “Say it again,” he demanded in a rush.

“I love you!” she exclaimed.

“Oh God, Arabella, I love you,” he murmured just as his head descended again and her lips were beneath his in an instant. Their lips meshed and twisted, with her lips against the firm power of his lips and his against the soft delicacy of hers.

Darth reached for the door knob behind Arabella as he kept her lips beneath his with deep searching kisses. He had a goal for his love, the room behind them. And now he was completely and wonderfully certain, Arabella loved him. He nudged Arabella backward as he continued to kiss her thoroughly, while he moved them until they were inside the room. A room that he had filled with yards of cloth, every type of cloth that Grainier’s carried. This was his surprise wedding gift to his bride.

Darth forced himself to lift his lips from Arabella’s and saw that he had completely entranced and aroused his wife with his kisses. “My wedding gift to you, little dove,” he murmured. “You will never want for clothes again, my love.”

Arabella’s passion-kissed mind tried to clear to the significance of the mound, no, a great towering heap of cloth before her. She understood there was something of vast importance to understand, which should attend her concentration. Unfortunately, her husband it seemed had other thoughts on his mind now that he had made his announcement.

“I lose all thought, Darth,” she grumbled at him, while he was in the process of gathering her up into his arms for another kiss.

“I know, little dove,” Darth murmured huskily, just before he slanted his lips over Arabella’s and she flowed into him with a honeyed whimper of longing and surrender. The sound of it stirred his blood hotly as he continued to plunder and pluck her mouth, but at the same time, he moved them both toward a mounded pile of cloth. Darth maneuvered his back to the pillowed mound, while his fingers pulled the laces of Arabella’s bodice free, never giving her lips a moments mercy. Soon the material slipped free over her apricot-tinted shoulders, to become fetchingly caught on her full high breasts. Breasts filled with creamy promise. The sight of the material clinging around Arabella’s pernicious cleavage and lofty mounds sent another curling heat, spreading through his blood.

Then abruptly, he fell backward onto a stack of cloth, taking her with him. A surprised giggle erupted above him as he held carefully onto her slender waist. His eyes growing heavy-lidded with hunger as he watched her bodice slip irrevocably downward with their motion. The excited buds of her nipples jiggled, so close to his mouth that his tongue demanded, and then reached forward to lick one.

“Darth, please,” she moaned.

His mouth suckled on the aroused kernel of her nipple, while throaty “Pleases,” filled his ears, as he settled her thighs over his stomach, spreading her legs along either side of his hips. His hands found her ankles and the bottom hem of her gown, lifting upward over her bent knees and softly laid thighs. He lifted the gown as he went, until he had bared his prize, around her warm supple buttocks.

Then he peeled Arabella completely free of her gown, while liberally sucking on her aroused nipples, rendering her thoughtless on any proprieties or modesty. As he loved her breasts thoroughly, he lifted her hips with resolve, closer and closer to his chin, until by his hands command alone, she straddled his welcoming face.

“My tender bud,” Darth charged hoarsely, then he found Arabella’s pussy with his tongue, lifting her completely over his opened mouth.

“Oh!” Arabella cried as her fingers found leverage on a high wooden chest, luckily before her, and her mind became fully aware of what was happening. She had been unfurled and afloat, completely caught in the passion that Darth wielded over her like the finest sword. Her body molded by his every touch and action, until she came awake out of her heady dreaming to realize that he had settled her sex astride his face. Mouth! Any thought of shy incredulousness she might have had, scampered hot on her breath, with each stroke of his tongue inducing fiery passion between the wet lips of her sex. And Darth licked her pussy possessively, thoroughly, like a great cat indulged in leaving his scent on her ... his mark.

Her gaze turned downward, to see his raven black hair, stark with color and feathered strokes against her belly and inner thighs. The blackness of it interweaved with her own intimate curls as she cried out passionately. “Darth!” While he flicked his tongue with vigor over the bud of her sex, rocking her hips with his large hands squeezing her buttocks. She begged him to stop or she begged him to continue ... or she simply begged him, until she panted and found herself pressing her sex downward, adjusting her pussy for the desire of more of his tongue.

Darth wanted to shout to heaven and stay seated in the molten lips of shimmering desire for the rest of his days. His hands lifted, swaddling Arabella’s heaving breasts. His palms frisked over them as his fingers shaped the slopes and valleys. The kneading motions he used over Arabella’s breasts, played guide to her cunt draped over his tongue’s wet nuzzling.

“Oh! Darth!”

Her thighs quivered and heaved, straining against him as he increased his assault, to her spiraling and delirious cries. He had Arabella singing a wild sumptuous ballad that curled the groping hands of passion through his tendons, muscles, and deep into his blood. It danced along his hot receptive flesh and strained his cock to thickening new heights in the binding of his pants.

Darth sought the buttons of his pants with one hand, releasing the rigid pound of flesh as he pushed his body upward. He slid his chest up over Arabella’s voluptuous curved body, which was ripe and damp with love. His head, chest, and belly moved upward, until he caught Arabella’s mouth on a scream of pleasure as he seated her on the thick demanding mast of his cock.

A hoarse groan of hot arousing bliss expelled from deep in his chest as he lifted his knees behind Arabella to sit and lock his hands onto her hips. Her head fell back swirling mahogany rivers of her hair over the tops of his boots as she laid her naked spine to his knees. Darth boosted his hips off the mound of cloth beneath him holding firmly to Arabella’s hips. The impelling thrust tried to lift her body upward but he denied it, holding her down to his rapid repeating thrusts.

She cried his name, digging her fingers deep into the ridges of sinew across his chest. Through eyes, half closed with his driving hunger, he watched emotions that were his own dance across his wife’s body and echo his feeling across her love ravished face. She was freed in her love making, completely unbidden beneath his hands as he lost himself in her journey.

Darth was everywhere. He was around her, he was through her, and he was inside her. Darth commanded her every sensation, as she spiraled free of physical boundaries beneath his pounding and giving rhythm. Arabella caught her legs high on Darth’s chest, begging him for the impossibility of going faster, deeper. She panted and whimpered as he gave her more ... everything his powerful body could command. He was magnificent and she screamed her love and appreciation as she tumbled over the peak and shattered into a thousand riveting convulsions, all wrapped into one agonizing throe of pleasure.

Still, Darth thrust upward into Arabella’s sex, bracing his back against the wooden chest as his head fell back and his breathing rushed. His buttocks slapped back and forth across the cloth beneath him as a sound like pain erupted from his throat. He clenched and tightened, straining forward and held. Shaking his head like a lion as he growled through the eruption, pumping hot and fluid deep inside the truest creation of his pleasure.

Long moments later, Darth’s lips found the highest slope of Arabella’s delicate cheekbone in a kiss that found quivering little teardrops.

“Little dove, my love, did I hurt you?”

Arabella was draped over his chest with her legs still straddling his thighs and what was left of his stiff cock, still embedded inside her. His demons chased him at his roughness and his compelling fierce need.

“No, Darth, I never …” Arabella’s voice cracked as she hugged him tightly. “I never knew it could be this wonderful.”

His sigh of relief was a long sound in the quietness of the room as he felt the beginning of a grin, which agreed with Arabella. Then he lifted her up and laid her down on the cloth, following to stretch out beside her. He rummaged around behind him and came up with a heavy roll of fabric, which he snapped outward to full length and pulled it over Arabella, then himself. He could tell the brush of the velveteen fabric along Arabella’s skin pleased her immensely as she stretched and nuzzled the nap like a contented kitten.

“Darth, this is so ... Oh, I think it must be wicked!”

Darth pulled Arabella up into his arms, using one hand at her back to rub the velvet over her spine, then down around her sweet ass, until she purred deeply into the column of his throat.

“Wicked it is, little dove,” he murmured, playing the rich velveteen over skin of the same texture.

“Positively ... wicked,” Arabella purred, wiggling enticingly over the length of his body.

“Then you and I shall be positively wicked together, wife,” Darth murmured, smiling up into the deep gold of Arabella’s eyes as he contrived to think of more ways that he and his wife could be wicked together. “All day and all night, little dove,” he whispered. “Remember?”

The End.

Read an excerpt from the serial Wicked Lord Part One FREE on

from bestseller author Shirl Anders. A vampire regency romance novel.

(Grab it Here!)

Trinity caught the flashes of alabaster skin off to the left and in front of where he ran through the brambles. The woman’s screaming had stopped many minutes ago, and he had to guess the foul beast hunting her had nearly run her to ground.

He veered his headlong sprint towards the glimpses of pale flesh he kept catching sight of through thickly-grouped trees surrounded by scattered bushes. His timing to reach the young woman before the vile monster leapt to kill her was too close to think he’d make it. The threatening roar he released was of a maddened vampire reverberating through the night air. The abhorrence would recognize his thundering challenge.

He heard the woman cry out … in pain this time. Instantly he smelled blood, as he bellowed, “No!” Then his large body crashed through a small opening in the foliage.

He realized too late he was moving much too fast to halt his forward motion, when suddenly the woman was there … as if pushed forward toward his unchecked momentum. He only had seconds to react and he grasped her against his body. Her long black hair whipped around them as he turned to take the brunt of an inevitable fall. He landed on his back with the woman piled on top of him. Then he heard the triumphant howl of escape from the foul beast fading into the distance.

Trinity held tight to the voluptuous young woman as he arched his back and shouted his anger at losing his chance to kill the abhorrence. “I will find you!” he bellowed.

He became aware of the woman screaming as she thrashed on top of him. More powerful than her ineffectual attempts at breaking his hold, while she screamed shrilly into his ear, were the scents of her fresh blood, choking him. It was a quality of blood scent he’d never inhaled before.

His savage and barely-controlled inner hunter snarled to life. Fangs punched past his lips as twin weapons, gluttonous for the smell of pure virgin’s blood pumping from cuts on the woman’s struggling body. Ravenous hunger clogged his throat as he’d not felt since he was a young and uncontrolled vampire. Then, before he had any hope of exerting his willpower over the sudden monstrous cravings, his body turned, flipping the woman onto her back. He landed, pouncing over her. His fangs ready to strike, while the veins in his body throbbed for the blood he could smell.

Why was her blood so fucking potent?

The animalistic snarl that lunged from his throat clashed with the woman’s frightened sobs, and her wide eyes gazed up at him with horror polished in their depths. Her small hands pounded against his upper chest as her bare hips and legs thrashed, trying to push his body off. His hard erection beneath his britches pounded for her submission, ordering his hips forward to press the rigid length down into her soft center, crushing her lower body’s struggle to a halt.

The woman whimpered in fear. Then she cried, “Oh no! No!”

The strangled animalistic sound he made choked the woman’s cried words into panting silence, as if she believed halting any motion would make the vicious animal set to strike her miss.

Beth couldn’t stand the predator’s gaze of yellow eyes with red glints slashed in the centers. She whimpered with sheer terror, jerking her gaze to the side, clenching her eyelids. She’d seen the long white fangs and she’d heard the animalistic snarls that came from the beast surely set to kill her. First, a monster hunted her and now another apparition held her captive. Yet the powerful menace against her felt like a man with hands, arms, legs, and a heavy chest. She felt men’s trousers along her bare legs, and she felt a jacket fallen open over her breasts. Was it a man?

Why didn’t it strike? her mind wailed, as her breath heaved. Was this the beast that chased her? She thought not. But her questions and abject terror paled in comparison when she felt a hardened length pressing into her core … and what that foretold, nearly caused her to fall into hysteria.

“Don’t move!” The commanding voice was a tense baritone with the aftereffects of a growl.

The appearance of human words so surprised her panicked state, she jerked her gaze toward the sound as her body quaked in reaction. Had someone come to save her?

“Don’t,” the beast above her commanded, “Move.”

To hear the semblance of a human’s voice in the world gone so mad made her hopes flare unrealistically. Yet they did all the same. She wanted to live.

“Trinity!” a man’s voice shouted from the forest surrounding them.

The beast’s head jerked upward to look over her head and away from stalking her with its blazing and vulturous, yellow eyes.

“Stop, brother! Don’t bite her, Trinity!” the voice rang out from the distance.

Beth felt the air she held suspended leave her lungs as her hands flattened on the chest above her. Bite her? She cringed.

“Virgin’s blood,” the beast-man above her snarled viciously. “So potent you can smell it. Never felt this hunger before!” His voice growled, making her whimper and squirm against him with the intense need to run.

“Trinity! Brother!”

“I will fight it, Church,” her beast-man vowed, half snarled, half shouted as his chest heaved into her chest. “Move away!” he yelled.

“For our mother!” the voice, called Church, returned.

Beth didn’t understand anything that had happened that night. How could she end up nearly naked beneath a primal man-beast? So many things were beyond the comprehension of her innocent life. However, she did understand — or perhaps she wanted it so badly to be true — that the man called Trinity, imprisoning her, was trying to fight the urge to strike her. He couldn’t be the one that had chased her through the night forest because that presence held a livid and evil malevolence toward her.

“I will rise upward and give you my jacket,” the creature called Trinity said. His voice held strange inflections through the large fangs extending from his mouth. It also seemed he promised the action as though to convince himself.

Beth tensed more, trying to slow her panting breath, halfway certain he wouldn’t win the battle as he began to rise upward. Then, with his arms locked on either side of her, he stopped moving, but his other worldly eyes didn’t stop traveling. He looked over her face, and then he looked downward toward her bare chest. She gasped a squeal of embarrassment chasing her fear, as caution be damned, she jerked her arms between them to cover her breasts.

“You are very beautiful,” his tense voice emitted lowly. His hand rose and she would have flinched away, but his gaze held her immobile. His fingers touched her cheek and they felt cold as he curled them and he stroked over the curve of her cheek with the back of his knuckles.

“Please,” she begged for her life, and the red glints in his eyes seemed to dull within the yellow. His hand lifted to her temple and he did the most extraordinary thing. He wrote a cross upon her temple with his fingers.

“For my mother,” he growled lowly. (Read it Now!)

As always if you liked anything you read in these 328,000 words and 424 pages, this author will always appreciate a review posted to help other readers who might be looking for the same thing.

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