“Then you should take pity on me. I am not equipped to deal with men.”
“Oh, you’re equipped, believe me. You keep me constantly hungering to be buried in your hot, tight depths.” He sank his fingers back in.
She moaned and closed her eyes. This time the motion of his fingers was too shallow, not strong enough. She wasn’t even close to coming now yet she ached worse than before. A soft wail sounded in her ears.
He withdrew his fingers. The bed rocked and his thighs brushed hers, urged them apart. Warm silken hardness touched her nub, caressing her oversensitive flesh in slow circles.
“Alex!” The word was both a plea and a protest.
He slid to her entrance. “Is this what you want?”
“Yes, yes, God. Please, Alex, please.”
He pressed down; the head of his cock stretched her. Longing consumed her and she bit her lip. He entered a slight way. The powerful muscles in his torso were rigid against her, telling her how much he was holding himself back.
“Shall I fuck you now?”
“Yes, please, yes!”
He sank in swiftly. She cried out. He pulled all the way out then plunged inside her again and she cried out even louder. Her inner walls contracted around him and he groaned.
“You are hot, tight perfection.”
She wrapped her legs snugly about his waist, squeezing him. “Fuck me. Oh, please, fuck me.”
He growled low in his throat and then began fucking her almost savagely. Her hips danced frantically to meet his downwards thrusts, their joined bodies making wet noises. His lower pelvis grazed her nub with each movement. Her tension drew tighter and tighter. Then, with her legs, she gripped him harder and her inner walls spasmed over and over and over, releasing torrents of hot wetness. She came so hard, so long, she thought she might die of pleasure. She didn’t care. White lights seemed to explode in her mind. She screamed his name.
****
Her body still pulsed and ticked at its core as again she sponged herself at the washstand behind the screen. The steam coming off the basin of water smelt of gillyflowers and heightened her sense of well-being. She couldn’t wait to fling herself back into Alex’s arms. As she came from behind the screen, he caught her about the waist, his strong arms locking about her like iron. She squealed, the sound high-pitched and echoing in the chamber.
He kissed her neck, his lips fastening on her sensitive flesh and sucking. Tingles radiated all along her body; gooseflesh rose in all directions. Her nipples pulled tight and she laughed with the sensation.
“God, you taste sugar-sweet.” He refastened his lips and drew harder.
“Don’t make a mark!” she said, her laughter making it hard to push the words out.
“You’re just getting a rest now, my lusty nymph. A brief one.” He let her go but gave her bottom a smack before she could get away from him.
“Zachariah better bring a large bag of art supplies,” she said, only half jokingly.
He began to retrieve his scattered clothing. As he lifted his jacket off the floor, a letter dropped out of the pocket.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing.
He looked down at the letter lying on the red and blue patterned rug then picked it up and stared at it. “Oh yes, it came right before Nicolo arrived.”
She considered the heavy, expensive-looking ivory vellum and the grand wax seal. “It looks important.”
He examined the seal. “It’s from Sexton. It’s business and can wait.”
“Well, I would hate to be the cause of your losing thousands.”
He glanced up at her. “Aye, especially since you are to be my wife.”
She laughed then pranced naked to the bed and sprang herself across it face down with her arse poised for his pleasure. She glanced back and smiled at him. He wasn’t looking. His gaze was fixed on the letter, his brows drawn tightly together.
She grasped the pillow, pulled it under her upper body and hugged it. “Oh, go on, open it. I shall wait. It will give me practice at being a good and patient wife.”
****
Alex tore open the seal and unfolded out the letter. He skimmed over the salutation but his attention was drawn back to the paleness of Emily’s arse against the dark green coverlet. She writhed and wiggled, playing the shameless tease. His loins tingled with the beginnings of desire. Christ, no one could rouse him like she could. He was going to put the letter down, and then he was going to crawl on top of her whilst she lay just like that and hold her body still to the bed—and plunge his cock into her tight, wet heat. This time he was going to make her come until she begged him to stop—
His gaze caught one word.
Elise.
His heart stopped.
Aimee’s ship.
He scanned lower, his gaze jumping around the page as words leapt out from the text.
English privateers—Jamaica—No further details at this time.
His mouth went dry and his heart began to pound with dizzying speed.
“What’s wrong? Has someone died?” Emily’s voice cut into his thoughts, confusing him.
He forced his eyes and thoughts back to the letter.
She was at his side, laying a hand on his arm. “What is it?”
He touched her cheek. “Please, my love, I am trying to read.”
“But you’ve gone so pale. What is it?”
He could never tell her about Aimee, not without telling all of it—all of the horrors he’d known and the anguished choices he’d been forced to make—and he would never, ever do that. He would not spoil her sweetness, her fresh innocence, with his tarnished past.
He smiled. “I lost badly on an investment in a voyage. It’s nothing to worry yourself over.”
So now he was starting to lie to her. Something he’d sworn he wouldn’t do.
Her lush lashes swept over her eyes and a small smile curved her mouth. “I’ll wait for you, then.”
Her ready trust put a sick feeling into his stomach.
“No,” he said, trying to keep his voice light. “Please dress yourself. I need to see to this business as soon as possible.”
****
In the carriage, Alex was silent and tense. He was hiding something. This was no loss on a voyage. She’d known it the moment he’d given her the smile. Not the open, tender smile that was hers alone but the glib, charming smile he used to ease his way with others. He’d lied to her. Freely. And now his secret pulsed on the air between them as if it were a living thing.
This secret had made Green hate Alex with insane passion. He’d threatened to spread rumors about Emily’s sea captain father having traded slaves from Africa. These rumors were baseless. She knew her father could never, ever have traded in slaves. But Green’s desire for revenge had gone even further than that. He had abducted her to lure Alex to his offices, perhaps intending to murder him. But Green had killed himself instead. Right before their eyes.
She shuddered at the memory.
Something about the shame of the secret he shared with Alex had caused Green to decide he had no choice but to see either Alex or himself dead.
Likewise, something also owned Alex’s soul. Something dark and dangerous. He had told her as much when he’d asked her to marry him. Yet Emily didn’t know what it was and he had made it clear to her that she never would. She didn’t know how to fight something unknown. But she was going to have to learn. She wanted him. All of him. She loved him more than her own life.
She would win.
Chapter Three
“Alexander,” Catarina whispered, for here he was not Alexander and she was not Catarina. Using their forbidden names was a way to maintain their solidarity. “Is she not beautiful?”
He glanced up from the red-faced scrap of humanity to Catarina’s exhausted face. “She is.”
“And yet it would have been better had she died.”
His jaw tightened. “Don’t say that.”
“He means to sell her off—just as he d
oes the others, when she is old enough.”
The pit of his stomach burned. “I told you, before that happens I will find a way and get us out of here—all of us.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “We will never be able to escape with an infant.”
Exhaustion swept through his body. It had been a long night. They wouldn’t let him see her nor would they tell him anything about her progress. He was only here with Catarina now because he had bribed her handmaiden. Well, fucked her would have been a more apt term. Up against a wall with his hand fastened firmly over her mouth to silence her cries of pleasure. Every single female servant in this household was desperate for a hard shagging. However, he could be killed for spending his precious, expensively purchased seed in such a lowly vessel. It was a very strange world for a young American to find himself in.
“It just can’t be done. Better that she had died.” Catarina’s soft voice broke on the last word.
Anger rose inside him like hot bile in his throat. Anger at the situation, anger at the madman who had created the situation. But most of all, anger at himself for not finding a way out before this. “I will not let a child of mine grow up a slave. I will find a way. You must trust in me.”
Alex’s eyes came open and he stared dumbly at the familiar sight of his study. It didn’t seem real. Only Catarina seemed real. So real he could smell her musk-rose perfume, could reach out and touch her pale gold hair. Catarina with her emerald eyes and rosebud mouth, her perfect beauty.
He had failed her. It could never be made right.
Now Aimee was in the hands of privateers. Strangers empowered by their king to act against their enemies in any way necessary. Ice had replaced the blood in his veins and a weight like pure iron rested in his guts.
Protect our child. You promised to always protect our child.
In the impotent distress and frustrated waiting, he felt Catarina close to him. Closer than she’d been in years.
Her fear, her pain, her desperate hopelessness all resonated in his own heart, a painful, wrenching accentuation of his own.
The dreams came each night, close to dawn. Recollections of his captivity in Turkey. Of torture and pain. Of sensual pleasure and seduction. Of shameful surrender to sin. Nightmarish images of Catarina on that final day, the way he’d found her, alone in her private bath—Vivid memories that left him shaking with cold, sweating with nausea and vomiting.
He could not be close to Emily. How would he ever explain such weakness to her?
And there was nothing he could do now but wait for more news.
****
Emily sat in the parlor holding her book in her hands, inhaling the scent of smooth, cool new leather. It had come from the printer’s shop early that morning but she was still in awe over it. She couldn’t stop running her fingertips over the gilt letters that spelled her name. Couldn’t stop inhaling the scent of fresh paper and printer’s ink. The smell of a new book.
“So, Rachel actually left you all alone here with Alex?”
She looked up. A smile brightened Peter Van Moerdijk’s almost angelically beautiful face. His silver-gilt hair sparkled in the candlelight. But it was his startlingly sky-blue eyes that defined him, always unfailingly warm and kind. He was one of the few people who shared the secret of her engagement to Alex. He was Cornelia Hazelwood’s much younger half-brother.
They had been sitting in silence. She’d found his visit rather awkward. Rachel and Nancy had gone to Virginia for a wedding. It was Friday night and Alex had given Mrs. Webbs, the housekeeper, and her husband Cato leave to go visit with one of their daughters, who lived in another town. Their granddaughters, the housemaids, had gone with them. The house was quiet.
“Your book has caused quite a stir in Congress.”
“So Alex tells me,” she said with a surge of mixed emotions.
A complete but pamphlet version of her book had been distributed to key members of Congress already. Alex had paid for the woodcuts and the etchings and the printing—everything. He had wanted it for his own purposes to gather support for a National Navy. It was a collection of personal stories of some of the men from a ship out of Philadelphia that had been taken by the Barbary pirates.
She still wasn’t quite certain how she felt about her work being used to promote the move for a National Navy and not just purely for the cause of the men held in Barbary. But she knew Alex believed deeply that a standing navy was the only way for the United States to have free passage over the oceans and for its mariners to be safe from the Barbary pirates.
“It certainly puts a more human face on the men from the Dauphin,“ Peter said. “And you did it all through correspondence, under your grandmother’s nose?”
“Yes.” She laughed softly at his wry tone. “I did.“
Peter grinned. He had a sideways grin, so captivating it disarmed. “Well, well, well.“
“Well, what?“ she asked, feeling warmth prickle around her ears and the edges of her scalp.
“You look so innocent, but aren’t you a clever, devious little thing?”
Heat flared over her face and she threw her hands up to her cheeks. “Oh, that’s not fair. You don’t understand.”
“Don’t I?” he asked, grinning wider now. He was flirting with her. He always did. It set her palms sweating, for she wasn’t yet used to gentlemen other than Alex giving her such attention. Even if Peter was Alex’s second cousin, on his father’s side.
Flustered, she looked down at her lap. She fidgeted, caressing the nap of her velvet skirt a moment and then, irritated with herself, she reached for her wineglass from the side table. She put the glass to her lips and took a deep swallow of wine. She was being silly. He was simply being kind and playful because Alex had left her here all alone.
“Why don’t you explain it to me then?” Peter said.
“I was called to do this work. I believe that with all my heart, but my grandmother would never have approved of me meddling in this kind of thing. Too political for her taste. She felt ladies should leave politics to men. She said most women were silly-minded chits too fond of a handsome face to think clearly enough to not be swayed.”
“A wise lady, your grandmother.” His tone sounded so serious.
Emily’s mouth fell open and a score of heated words rushed to the tip of her tongue; but then she saw the twinkle in Peter’s eyes. “Yes, a wise lady,” she said coolly. “She warned me about gentlemen.”
“What did she say about gentlemen?”
“That they were arrogant fools and a woman would be better off in a nunnery than tied to one of them.”
Now it was Peter’s jaw that dropped. Then he chuckled softly. “Had a kind word for everyone, did she?”
Bittersweet emotion tightened her throat. She had loved her grandmother, but the old woman’s emotionally manipulative nature and smothering protectiveness had not been easy to live with. She loved her new freedom, yet she often thought she would give it all up to have her beloved grandmother back, spitting her vinegar. As such thoughts were too confusing for her, she had to push her feelings aside.
She nodded slowly. “Yes, she sure did. I suppose it had something to do with her papa. He was a wealthy plantation owner and she ran away with my grandfather, a schoolmaster. She said he was the most intelligent man alive and she would settle for none other.”
What a pity for everyone involved that her grandmother hadn’t been able to reconcile herself to a mere schoolmaster’s earnings. After Emily’s grandfather had died and they’d lost his wages, her grandmother’s taste for luxury had quickly run through their savings and landed them in a lower sort of boarding house.
How far she’d come, sitting here now with a gentleman from one of New York City’s better families.
He turned his attention to her book again, appearing to be paying particular consideration to the illustrations. “You draw very well—excellently, in fact.”
Did he mean that or was it more kind flirtation?
“How did you manage the sketches if you only corresponded with the relatives?”
Always eager for the chance to discuss her work, she couldn’t resist chattering on, even though she feared she was really boring him. She turned her body and leaned closer to him. “They described the men to me in the letters and I used my imagination to fill in the rest. Who knows how accurate the results are? But it does put faces to the issue.”
He turned his attention back to her book and flipped through the pages again. “Indeed it does. There’s so much emotion in these faces—they are so life-like, only the hardest heart could fail to be moved.”
“So my deception was worth it, correct? Not such a huge sin, do you think?”
He laughed softly and closed the book. “What I think is that my cousin will have his hands full with you.” He handed the book back to her with a wry look.
Uncertainty fluttered in her stomach. She laughed nervously. “Is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know yet but I am sure it is no less than he deserves.”
At the sound of boots on the floorboards, she glanced up. Alex entered the parlor. He looked quite splendid in well-tailored evening clothes, a dark blue jacket and buff-colored breeches that clung to and accentuated his masculine frame.
His gaze met hers, blue-gray and piercing. Her heart flipped over and energy swept through her. She wanted to jump to her feet and run to him but inhaled deeply and suppressed the urge. She tore her gaze from his and glanced down at her hands, all the while keeping an eye on Alex by looking up covertly through her lashes. At his slight frown, satisfaction stabbed her.
At least she still had the ability to affect him.
She wasn’t exactly on close terms with him lately. For the past two weeks since that night at his rented rooms, when he’d read that mysterious letter, ’he had been distant and pensive and had somehow managed to be gone all the time.
Wild, Wicked and Wanton: A Hot Historical Romance Bundle Page 91