She cried out, then writhed and wriggled herself upon him.
He slapped her buttock. The sound cracked and a red handprint rose on her pristine pale ivory flesh. “Be still, you hoyden.”
A renewed flood of honey gushed from her core, slicking their connection.
He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, sucking in his breath as he did. Her panting echoed in his ears. But he moved at his own pace, until that moment he was fully engaged within her, filling her, stretching her.
He had burned for her. Yet he had abstained. Always with other women he had made love to them in order to escape himself. To forget. But with her he could escape nothing. She forced him to feel every emotion, to face himself.
Facing himself wasn’t always a pleasant thing. He would run from her now, if only he could. But he was bound to her with every beat of his heart.
Damn him for being vulnerable. For allowing himself to open to her and become addicted to her love.
And double damn her for it.
He withdrew suddenly, swiftly. Completely.
She cried out.
He laughed softly.
“Oh, damn you, damn you,” she gasped.
He gave her a few more quick, sharp slaps to her arse. “Watch how you speak to me, you naughty girl.”
She let out a long and lingering wail.
He put his cock to her cunny again. “This what you want?”
“Yes, yes, oh yes.”
“And did you miss it?”
“God, yes.”
“And did you touch yourself in the night? Did you try to assuage the need with your own fingers?”
“Why must you even ask? You know I did.”
“My vanity demands it, sweetheart.” He entered her, on one long, slow slide.
She gasped, a sound of both relief and pleasure.
He slapped her bottom several times, firmly. “That’s my girl—take all of me.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she moaned, pressing herself back against him, grinding her buttocks into the hardness of his lower belly.
His balls slapped the soft cushion of her mons.
He leant forward and retrieved a bottle from her washstand. It was the oil they used when too many climaxes made her usually dripping core dry up.
She attempted to rise but he applied steady pressure on her head, keeping it down.
The scent of gillyflowers permeated the air, girlish, wholesome. He oiled his fingers then replaced the bottle. He touched the base of her spine and then traced down slowly, right along until he reached her anus. She gasped.
“Every part of you belongs to me now.”
“Yes…” Her voice hitched a little.
He circled the puckered ring. “There are many ways we can give each other pleasure. I’ve told you this before.”
He pressed into the center—the tight ring resisted him, but he knew she would deny him nothing. She loved him. She wanted to please him. At times, she seemed to live to pleasure him. Her natural sensuality, her curiosity, would also work in his favor. Was it unfair of him to take advantage of those factors? Yes, probably. But, then again, there was nothing fair about the way she made him feel, either.
“I won’t hurt you.” He continued to circle and then to press, each time working a little deeper.
Her internal muscles clenched. She moaned and arched backwards.
He worked his finger back and forth in a slow, gentle fashion. She moaned and writhed wildly. Fire raced through his blood, in equal parts a reaction to the sensuality of her response and to the sense of power and mastery her submission gave him.
He leaned close to her ear. “Be still, very still.”
She seemed to try but with limited success.
Two of his fingers were within her anus now. Moving. And then he rocked his hips and the head of his cock rammed against the mouth of her womb. He released his hold on her neck and reached beneath her to brush her sensitive nub. And then he was fucking her, both her cunt and her arse and he was touching her most pleasurable spot. Her cunt and her arse contracted on him again and again and again, demanding his response. His seed roiled up his cock and jetted into her in fierce bursts of white hot pleasure.
****
Pleasure warmed Alex as he let his eyes trace the soft, sleek lines of Emily’s slender form as she sponged herself with scented water. She turned and her mouth dropped open. With her large sherry-brown eyes, bobbing shoulder-length ringlets and apple-sized breasts with their small, light pink nipples, she looked very young in the firelight. Like a bride.
Her full, red mouth fell open. “Have you been watching me the whole time?”
Alex laughed softly. “Yes, and enjoying it most shamelessly.”
He got up and came to take her hands and pull her close. He hated himself for the distance he’d put between them.
However, now, knowing Aimee was safe, he could breathe again.
With the anxiety past, he hated most of all having lied to Emily, yet what other choice had he had? He could never tell her. Never. He scanned her gaze for any trace that she suspected his deception.
In return, those wide-open eyes seemed to probe too deeply. His neck and shoulder muscles went rigid and he had to look away.
She was dearer to him than anything.
Yet there was a chasm between them.
She was a perceptive as well as a highly imaginative girl and had guessed at some of his past. However, she thought he’d spent time in Algeria, as other unfortunate American mariners had. He had never exactly confirmed or denied the location or the exact circumstances of his experiences in the East.
If she were somehow to be enlightened about the whole truth of his past, how would she ever understand? She could never know what it had been like at eighteen to be faced with the twin evils of torture combined with seduction. And, if she did understand, pity would replace her love.
She could never feel true empathy for his situation because she was too inexperienced with life.
But it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t help being so fresh and whole and fully alive. And she was so ready to share it. That was a large part of why he had fallen in love with her.
He couldn’t deny that he was glad he’d been the first to slide his cock into her hot, tight depths. Damned glad. But, now that infatuation was giving way to deeper love, he could bear her being a little less pure.
Maybe a lot less.
With the devil surely on his shoulder, he made a suggestion. “Wear the green velvet gown.”
****
At supper, Peter insisted, as he always seemed to do of late, on flirting shamelessly with Emily. But Alex was in high spirits and inclined to be tolerant.
“You better take care with that port.” Peter said as Emily poured a second glass of the rich port that Asahel Sexton had gifted Alex with just that afternoon.
“But it is so delicious,” Emily said.
“It’s too rich for ladies,” Peter replied.
Emily glanced at Alex with disappointed eyes.
He reached across the table and grasped the bottle and yanked it out of Peter’s hand. He uncorked the bottle and poured Emily a glassful.
“Alex,” Peter said meaningfully, “she’ll become intoxicated.”
“If she wants to become drunk no one’s here to see but us.”
Emily turned to Peter. “I’ll have you know I hold my wine very well now.”
Alex laughed softly. “She holds her wine very well indeed, when she hasn’t eaten spoiled pork.”
Emily grimaced. “Goodness, Alex, please don’t mention that again.”
She took a deep, thirsty gulp of the port. She could be so artlessly greedy when it came to all sensual pleasures. Alex chuckled with indulgent humor.
“I would think a husband would want a wife to live by his terms,” Peter said, echoing Alex’s words from earlier.
Alex shot him a wry look. “Why are you so sure you know my ways?” He glanced at Emily. “I see no reason to deny her ple
asure in private.”
She tossed her head, making her ringlets wobble and dance. The candlelight painted flashes of bright scarlet flame on her dark tresses and the topazes in her tiara flashed gold. She looked like a princess.
Every penny he’d paid for that tiara had been money well spent.
She fluttered her lashes at him. “Alex adores me drunk.”
Images of her, tipsy and so sensually uninhibited, doing and saying the most sensually pleasing things clashed with those of her dancing drunkenly on the widow’s walk during a storm.
“A little drunk,” Alex stressed to her.
Her laugh was soft, clear and musical as bells. The kind of laugh that sent delicious shivers through a man and made his cock hard.
Peter couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off of her. Alex couldn’t blame him, she was radiant tonight.
“Alex likes me a little drunk.”
Peter chuckled. “Does he really, sweeting?”
She nodded avidly and then took another deep drink.
“Ladies should not become drunk under any circumstances. Don’t you know that, Miss Eliot?” Peter replied.
That statement immediately brought to mind an image of Peter’s late wife.
“If Emily were too good, she’d be a dreadful bore.” The words slipped off Alex’s tongue before he thought. That was much too intimate a truth to reveal to others, even Peter. Alex glanced at his own empty glass.
Emily had spoken the truth. The port was simply too delicious.
“Well, Alex, my dear cousin, I wonder how you’d feel if you were both at a country house party and you were indisposed. And she went to dinner and became very, very drunk.”
She sat her empty glass down with a loud ‘thunk’. “Goodness! Why would I leave my husband alone if he were indisposed?”
“You’ve never nursed Alex through one of his sick headaches, eh?”
Alex scoffed. “I had them when I was a child. I have long since outgrown them.“ He grinned. “The sea air healed me.”
“Or was it all that water pipe you smoked in Algeria?”
He gaped at her several moments, unable to believe she’d said such a thing. She returned his look with an expression of definite challenge. “Nothing to say in reply?”
“No, nothing.” He couldn’t keep the resentment out of his voice. She wanted him to tell her things that could only disturb her. That could only change their interaction and her view of him forever. Such revelations would spell disaster.
“Well, I would never abandon my husband if he were unwell, even at a house party.”
“What if he’d vexed you?”
“Even if he’d vexed me,” she said with an edge to her voice. She cut Alex a glare that he felt all the way down to his bones.
Peter chuckled. “What about if there were a young dragoon captain, with a commanding nature and rugged face. So different from your dear Alex?”
Alex shot Peter a quelling look. “That’s enough.”
Unabashed, Peter stared back at him evenly, his eyes glowing with amusement. “Yes, that’s the question, isn’t it? Would it be enough?”
“I wouldn’t abandon him.” Now Emily turned her scathing scorn upon Peter.
Peter grinned and winked at her. “While you appear exceedingly lovely when your eyes spark like that, sweetheart, you should take care at whom you flash that bewitching glare.”
Irritation burned through Alex. He tapped his fingers on the table. “You should take care, cousin.”
Peter chuckled again.
Emily frowned, a vertical line showing between her eyes. “I don’t know why you two have to be so unpleasant tonight.”
“Ah, Emily, my dear, you mean to tell me you could resist the young dragoon captain? He’s not like Alex at all. He doesn’t cater to your little whims the way Alex does. He’s not charming or polite and he gives fools no quarter.”
“Frankly, he sounds rather a dreadful bore, and why should I give a damn about him, especially if my husband were ill?”
“Because he fascinates you.”
It was Alex’s turn to chuckle. “You think you understand so much about women.”
“And you think I don’t?”
“If you want to tempt Emily, you had better change the young dragoon captain to a French émigré who has a poetic bent and is haunted by his experiences in the terrors unfolding in his homeland.”
Emily slunk back in her chair and folded her hands across her chest. “That was most unkind.”
Perhaps it had been. Perhaps she deserved it for the comment about the water pipe and Algeria.
“What was unkind about it?” Alex asked, pretending innocence.
“I don’t know, but it was too…too…” Her frown deepened and she looked a bit confused.
“Smug?” Peter offered.
“Aye, smug!” Emily agreed. She glared at him, the gold flecks in her eyes like bright sparks.
Yes, he had been a little unkind. But he felt stung that she would take the small confidence he’d once given her in admitting that, yes, he’d had some unpleasant experiences in the East, and throw it in his face out of petty anger. He had also once hinted to her that in his youth, he’d experienced troubles with the temptations of that world.
She had no idea the depth of those troubles or the nature of those temptations.
And yet, she’d taken the little knowledge she’d gleaned and used it to strike at him.
She did so because you were a jackass. You neglected her shamefully and then you came back to her and slaked your lust on her.
They had both hurt each other.
Already, Nicolo’s prediction was coming true. Alex’s secrets were coming between himself and Emily. Destroying their closeness.
He blinked at her then decided to hide his new perception, as well as his hurt, behind a paternalistic approach. He nodded at her glass. “You’d best take it easy with that wine.”
She flushed then compressed her lips then she flashed a glance at Peter. “In any case, I know better now. I would not become very, very drunk.”
Peter’s chuckle sounded rich and deep. “You’re halfway there now, sweetheart.”
At the sound of the endearment, his own favorite endearment for her, Alex found himself feeling suddenly vexed, his earlier high spirits falling like a rock.
However, as their meal continued, that didn’t disturb Alex half as much as the way Emily returned Peter’s attentions with apparent giddy pleasure but then glanced down at her plate and blushed.
She didn’t realize what she was doing. But Alex did. He knew in his gut that she was more than a little attracted to Peter. His neck and shoulders tensed and he turned his attention to his glass of port, downing it in three swallows. God, if they were in public, what she was doing would be termed making a spectacle of herself. Or worse.
Peter was correct. She really had no idea how much she could be swayed by her own innate desires—or how wolfish a man like Peter was capable of being to make a conquest of her.
Her soft giggle made him look up. She caught his gaze and offered him a sugary smile.
All the while, lusting in her heart for his cousin.
His unsullied girl, so unknowing of herself and still poised on the brink of womanhood. He knew how easily a young person’s natural carnality could be turned against them. Make them do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. His mind slipped away, to years before—
The scent of a dripping water pipe hung heavy in the air. A soft cough stirred Alex’s fuzzy brain. He tried to move but he couldn’t—not easily. Three nubile yet lush female bodies were wrapped about his. Entangled with his limbs. Pinning him to the divan, the three of them had pinned him there earlier, each mounting him in turn and sheathing him within her tight, wet heat.
Not just any women—or at least not like any women he’d ever seen before arriving here in the Dutch devil’s house. Each was a model of perfection in every way possible.
His balls felt like lead weights
, aching. Sore. He was completely exhausted, drained to the point that he felt lightheaded and wished only to be alone in his own pallet. In the chamber he shared with Nicolo.
He looked up, across the room to the other large divan. Steely gray eyes met his, half-mast and glassy. The old satyr’s voyeuristic desires had been finally met.
The blond-haired, Dutch devil spoke, “And you said you would not oblige me. You said you would only share yourself with a bride, someone you wed in your own Puritanical faith?”
The last words were spoken snidely. Derisively.
Alex dared to speak back to the devil. “You were raised in the same religion and what you do now goes against the religion you have converted to as an adult.“
The blond devil laughed, deep and cynical. “You’re so idealistic. I can only wonder for how much longer.“
If Alex had the energy to do so, he would have been angry. Sexual congress was a sacred gift from God to form a deep and loving bond between one man and one woman. No one had the right to take that away from anyone and certainly not like this.
He felt sick down to the pit of his soul.
He would never do this again.
Even if it meant a bastinado beating. Or worse.
He would never do this again.
Never…
God. The illusions and self-deceptions of youth!
Of course he had succumbed again. And again and again and again.
Shame scalded him through.
He could not recall all the faces, just a general vague impression of blonde and vivid redheads, smiling lips, downcast eyes and bouncing, lush breasts. The devil loved to purchase those girls in the markets, bring them to his house and watch Alex fuck them. After that, they’d be sent on to the Dutch devil’s bordellos. And beautiful, flawless women like that were eventually sold into private harems. But to be personal, intimate with them and never know their eventual well-being had been crushing.
Yet in the end, no matter how valiantly he’d tried to resist, no matter how many times he’d sworn that he would stop, he couldn’t resist the temptations presented to him. What healthy eighteen-year-old man could? Especially when the alternative was so excruciatingly painful.
Wild, Wicked and Wanton: A Hot Historical Romance Bundle Page 93