Wild, Wicked and Wanton: A Hot Historical Romance Bundle

by Natasha Blackthorne

  He returned to her and took her hands and stretched over her, the fine blond hair on his body tickling hers, his powerful, hard-muscled strength pressing her down.

  Her nipples beaded tighter and the wetness between her legs began to positively drip. It made her feel utterly, deliciously vulnerable to feel him upon her like this.

  She wanted something different today. Something more stimulating. But how to ask for it?

  He touched her nose with a fingertip. “What?”

  “What?” She repeated his question in a voice breathless with a giggle. Was he able to read her mind?

  “What’s that little wistful look for?”

  Evidently, yes.

  “Wistful?”

  “You needn’t be bashful with me. You can tell me anything.”

  It was easy to ask for all manner of wicked things from him, when she was full of several glasses of wine. But it wasn’t so easy stone sober in the midst of the afternoon.

  “I want something stimulating.”

  “Stimulating, eh?” His cock throbbed against her belly.

  She licked her lips. “Thrilling.”

  He chuckled. “I think I can accommodate you.”

  Excitement pulsed between her legs. She couldn’t help writhing against him.

  She let her body go limp and let him pull her over his lap. He settled her weight evenly. They’d done this before and she knew to put her hands on the floor. He caressed her buttocks. Shocks of apprehensive anticipation fluttered in her belly. He was her lover and he had shown her this and so many other things.

  She had longed and burned in secret, feeling as though it were something a young woman should not feel. But Alex had made it all seem so natural, so right. He had certainly fulfilled all her longings and then some.

  He brought his large hand down her bare buttock. The sound seemed so loud and she jumped. He did it again to the other side. A delightful sting blossomed over her flesh. He struck her on one side and then the other, the strikes becoming gradually harder. Her arse burned in the most enjoyable way and her sex tingled. Wetness flowed from her core and her inner lips swelled.

  He stopped spanking her and touched the wetness between her legs. He slipped a finger and then two inside. She tightened her internal muscles and squeezed his digits.

  He gave her bottom one last smack.

  “On your knees,” he said, his voice terse with arousal.

  She crawled away, aiming for the center of the bed.

  He put his hands on her hips and dragged her back to the edge of the bed. He put a thigh between hers, urging her to widen her legs.

  She complied.

  He touched her entrance with his cock.

  Tingling anticipation swept over her and she had to catch her breath. He stroked her buttocks with his hand. A slight sting burned her flesh. Waves and waves of further anticipatory tingles shuddered through her body.

  He thrust into her. Hard. Swift. Slamming against the door to her womb. Pleasure shot deep, deep inside her belly.

  She cried out.

  He held her hips firmly and fucked her at a wild, furious pace.

  Ecstasy overwhelmed her. Unbearable bliss. She screamed over and over and over. Tension built inside, increasing until the tightness was unbearable. She was breathing so fast, her heart was thundering. He was in complete control of her body, rocking her with each fierce thrust.

  The first burst of bliss washed over her. Then a whole series of powerful explosions consumed her. Darkness and warmth overtook her even before the last of the convulsions had ebbed.

  She came back to herself, finding that he had rolled her on her side and had stayed embedded within her flesh. “Did you?” She panted the question. She could never bear the suspense when she missed witnessing his climax.

  "Did I?” He gulped loudly for breath then his lips touched her nape, a brief salute. “Christ.”

  The emotion in the last word said everything. A satisfaction deeper than mere physicality settled over her, giddy bliss. A fuzzy blanket of sleepiness.

  She woke with a start. “Oh goodness!”

  “What, my love?”

  She sat up. “We’ve been gone too long!”

  “Shh.” He caressed her arm with the backs of his fingers. “We’ll just say we went to visit the Cogwells.”

  “We’d get caught in a web of lies.”

  “Aunt Rachel never speaks with them.”

  “But Nancy—”

  “She won’t betray us.” He ran his fingers back down her arm. “We’ll say we enjoyed some of my cousin’s wife’s juicy pork roast.”

  A wave of revulsion shuddered through her at the memory of eating spoiled pork roast at his cousin’s house. “Oh, please do not mention that.”

  “I am not done with you.” An edgy promise rang in his voice.

  She turned and watched him set his whiskey glass on the side table and then he turned back to her.

  “Lie back, sweetheart.”

  She arched a brow. “We’re going to get caught at this business, sooner or later.“

  “Trust me to know how far to push matters.”

  She chewed her lip.

  “I have to attend a late supper party tonight. I won’t be home until very late.”

  “Oh Alex, no.” It wasn’t just their sexual play that she missed on the nights he stayed out late. He usually slept with her until near dawn. She missed his large, warm body in her bed.

  “I can’t help it. James needs me there.”

  She sighed and laid back. Then she sat up again.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “I-I need to clean up.”

  He frowned. “Sorry, love, I am indelicate.”

  She arose and flounced across the chamber then went behind the screen. “It’s not like you to be indelicate.”

  “I forget what it is like.”

  “What what is like?”

  “Coming inside a woman.”

  She paused in the act of wiping herself with the washcloth. “Oh?”

  “I haven’t done it for years. Not until you.”

  Warmth and relief suffused her, which was unfavorable to him and uncharitable of her. If he had fathered any children, he would have told her. He wouldn’t ever keep something so important a secret from her. Yet it was very nice to have the possibility negated.

  She dried herself with the towel then returned to him, crawling across the bed and laying herself out for his pleasure.

  Alex raised his head then kissed a trail over her throat and collarbone down to her breasts.

  “You have the prettiest little breasts.” He kissed her small, pebbled pink nipples one after the other.

  He lingered for a time, touching them. His expert skill reminded her of the vastness of his experience compared to hers. Reminded her of all his beautiful women. “I did not have pretty curves that first night.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  At his matter-of-fact tone, she made a squeaking noise. “Well, you might have been a gentleman and denied it.”

  “I don’t think I need to lie to you, do I?”

  “I suppose not.”

  He grinned at her. “And you had your bodice stuffing all lopsided.”

  “Oh, you are cruel to laugh at me over it. You know I was desperate. I had no choice, I needed to entice some man.”

  “I am not laughing, sweetheart, believe me. I can’t bear thinking on the what ifs… what if I had not come there that night?”

  “I was so thin. I looked like death.”

  He ran caressing fingertips over her collarbone. “I’ll tell you true, by the time we were at City Tavern, I only noticed your bright, sherry-colored eyes. And your lovely mouth.”

  “That’s kind of you to say now.”

  “It’s the absolute truth. And the thought that you were so rebellious that you had run away from a bad situation, that you had taken the reins of your life into your own hands, I found that incredibly arousing in a most invigorating way
.”

  “But I had not run away; I was forced into entering harlotry. There’s no bravery there.”

  “On the contrary, I still think it was a way of taking the reins of your life into your hands. You could have gone to the almshouse but you are so damned stubborn, so intent to remain independent, you never would. I still find that incredibly arousing. I admire that about you.”

  “You said that my stubbornness vexed you.”

  “Oh it did—and it does—but I also find it unbearably admirable. That’s the hell of loving you.” He took her hand.

  His words confused her and she wrinkled her forehead. “Admirable?”

  “Yes, admirable. And comforting, I suppose.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He stared at her a moment then lifted her hand and kissed it, briefly. “My parents’ marriage always disturbed me.”

  “But why? Mrs. Webbs always speaks so highly of their love.”

  “My mother was in love with another man, someone who wasn’t quite as respectable as my father. But my father became ill, he had a fever that caused him to become deaf. It provoked my mother’s sympathy. She made a foolish choice. And she was miserable inside every day that followed.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “He wasn’t the type of man she could love, not truly. And, unable to admit this to herself, she escaped into her own dreams, a fantasy world in her own mind that she crafted from the books she read, fairy tales and stories from the Bible. Tales of all the heroes of the ages. Noble, brave men who had higher goals in their lives than ledger books, manifests and counting houses.”

  “You really think she was disappointed with your father?”

  “I know it.” He paused. “She transferred all her hopes to her sons. She read to James and me from all those grand stories. She made clear she expected us to be of a higher, more refined nature than our sire.”

  “That’s a huge weight to put on a child.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best to have high expectations for a child. A way of showing them love. But her unhappiness… that I could feel in my bones. As a very young man, if I allowed myself to think about it, I felt so filled with sadness, at times I thought my heart would collapse with it.”

  The emotion in his voice seemed to tremble in her own throat. A long pause passed with just the sound of their breathing. Then he reached out and touched a fingertip to her nose. “You look so soft, so delicate. But your iron will, your stubbornness is etched into your adorable nose.”

  “What has all that about your mother to do with my stubbornness that vexes you so much?”

  “Because I know that you would never sacrifice yourself like that on my behalf. You would never give yourself to me for any other reason except that it pleases you.”

  “You make me sound so selfish.”

  “No, not selfish, self-protective. And I’d have you no other way. I love you so much, I couldn’t bear ever making you unhappy. I’d sooner cut off my right arm.”

  His declaration gave her pause and she grew quiet. The moment had grown so serious. To lighten things, she laughed softly “But come now, Alex, that first night, once I was bared to your view, you must have noticed how pitifully thin I was.”

  “All I noticed then were your lovely little nipples.“ He bent and took one into his mouth. “Lovely, bright pink nipples. And you know very well…” He trailed a hand down her belly. As he moved lower and lower, all her muscles tensed with anticipation. He reached her apex and stroked his fingertips over the triangle of hair that was so much more vivid red than the hair on her head. “You know how gorgeous I find your—”

  “Alex!” She laughed.

  “The most gorgeous quim I have ever seen.”

  She rolled her eyes to the headboard and felt her face flame. Yes, she was gaining experience with him every day now. Doing things with him was one thing. But she wasn’t quite used to speaking so openly of her most private part.

  “Emily, none of these things are why I wanted you so badly.”

  His tone was so sincere, it made her pause. “Then why did you want me?”

  “It was your intensity of spirit that shone in your eyes. You were all fire and I was so cold, so very cold. For years and years. I had never felt so warmed by any person, so quickly, so deeply.” His brow wrinkled. Goodness, he looked quite fierce in his seriousness. “I became convinced that you knew some secret of living that I had forgotten. Or perhaps never learned. I wanted—I needed to know you, experience you, though I don’t know if I could have put it into those words then.”

  She should tell him how she’d been vexed by his glib charm and the proprietary way he’d just taken control of matters that night. She should tell him how she wanted nothing more than to rebuff him yet had been too fascinated by his masculine beauty to look away. Most of all, she should tell him how, when he’d allowed glimpses of the flawed man inside to show, she had been overcome with compassion.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to be quite that open.

  Not yet.

  It made her sad, for she knew that part of loving someone was sharing the hows and whys of that love.

  “As soon as I became cognizant of matters between men and women, I always swore I wouldn’t have sexual congress with any woman but my own wife.”

  Her mouth fell open. She’d had no idea he had once held such lofty ideals. “How old were you when you vowed that?”

  “Ten, eleven, thereabouts. But I held to it, all those years at sea.”

  “Goodness,” she said breathily.

  “I told you, my mother read to us from all those stories of noble, gallant heroes. A knight is above all dutiful and devout. I was devout in my religion. I believed with all my heart that God had created one woman for me. The only woman I could love and who would truly love me. I wanted to keep myself pure for her. To be worthy of her.”

  Her heart ached for him. “But then something happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you won’t tell me?”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Frustration burned through her.

  “Since I…” He paused.

  Oh dear God! Tension crackled all along her skin. She could feel how opened he was to her. How close he was to speaking plainly. Close to spilling the truth at last. She could barely stand it and had to ball her fists and curl her toes to keep from venting her feelings in colorful phrases.

  “Since I returned home,” he continued. “I’ve kept myself neck deep in petticoats for years now.”

  “Yes, I know.” She couldn’t keep the dispiritedness out of her voice.

  “You have nothing to feel desolate over regarding my past. Then versus now… These are two very different situations.”

  “Are they?” Her tone wavered for she wasn’t quite sure where this conversation was going. They had been making love. She didn’t wish to focus on his carnal past. His scores of women, each one more beautiful, more perfect than the last.

  “I used to fuck other women in order to lose myself. To feel mindless pleasure until I was exhausted and numb.”

  It sounded so revolting. She shuddered.

  “When I am with you, I do not seek to numb myself. No, indeed, I feel everything within so much more intensely. It can be painful, but it is the sweetest pain I have ever known. I do not seek to lose myself with you; on the contrary, I feel I come the closest to truly finding myself when I am one with you.”

  She had no idea what to say in the face of such declarations. No, she couldn’t possibly be the inspiration for such lofty thoughts.

  But he was done talking. He kissed his way down to place his tongue in her navel. His fingers trailed along the edges of her quim. She caught her breath. He parted her to expose the tender folds within then lowered his head and traced them with his lips, working his way slowly up to her nub. He flicked it with warm, wet strokes of his tongue.

  He stopped and looked up, his eyes meeting hers.

  “You taste
of peaches and warm summer rain,” he said in reverent, husky tones.

  He bent again and took her erect pearl into his mouth and drew on it lightly at first. She whimpered with pleasure and arched her pelvis, seeking greater stimulation. He gave it, suckling on her more firmly. She moaned, her tension rising and rising, her hips bouncing on the bed. Oh, God, he could make her come quickly. It would only take a few more strokes of his clever tongue. The first tugging pull of her orgasm began and she closed her eyes and moaned, waiting for it to wash over her.

  He stopped and the urgent, impending sensation faded away.

  She whimpered and tossed her head. It was so unfair when he did that. She opened her eyes.

  He was staring at her. Not at her face but at her body. Taking his time and letting his gaze move over her slowly. “God, you’re beautiful like this.”

  Didn’t he realize she was afire and likely to die from the sheer torment?

  He touched her entrance and slid one finger in. She contracted around it. He withdrew then immediately plunged two fingers in, their way made easy by how very wet she was. The fullness was pure relief. She moaned and rocked her hips. He hooked his fingers and explored along her inner, upper wall until he touched that one special spot that sent hot, honeyed pleasure thrumming through her deepest core. She drew her knees up and pressed her feet to the bed.

  “You like that, my beautiful darling?”

  “Yes, yes, yes, God, yes!”

  He worked his fingers back and forth. She bit her lip and closed her eyes. There was more than one way to come. He’d shown her that. This way was deeper, sweeter. Her body trembled with the impending storm.

  He stopped again.

  She lay gasping. “Alex?”

  He blew warm air over her aching heat. Blood surged into her nub, making it more erect than ever. “Please, Alex, please.”

  “When you’re truly ready—not a moment before.”

  “Why must you”—she gasped for breath—“torture me like this?”

  He touched her idly, too lightly to do anything but drive her desire higher. “I have told you before.” He grinned. “Because it pleases my vanity to hear you beg.”

  “One would think your vanity had been satisfied long ere now.”

  “The male vanity knows no limits. You should know this. You were kept far too sheltered.”