A Measured Risk

by Natasha Blackthorne

  Heart pounding and shaking with desire, Anne went to bed and settled in the middle, on her back, waiting for what he would expect. He climbed onto the bed next to her. He straddled her, his powerful thighs gripping hers. He held the satin sash to her wrapper in his hands.

  Her throat went dry. He had meant what he’d said last night—he actually meant to bind her.

  He took her hands and caressed her joints. “Your bones are fine, very delicate. I shall have to take careful care with you.”

  She never heard anyone say ‘careful care’ before, and part of her wanted to laugh. However, the deliberate way he’d said it sent delicious heat slamming her low in the pelvis, her sex was swollen, pulsing. Wetness slid down her thighs.

  Her heart leapt, pounding so fast that it made her dizzy. She shifted against the pillows. He slipped the soft velvet of the belt to her wrapper about one wrist, then the other. She swallowed hard. He lifted her arms higher. She glanced above her head and watched as he lashed her wrists to the glossy mahogany headboard spikes. It didn’t seem real. Nothing tonight had. It all seemed like a dream.

  He looked down, expression sharp and stern, his eyes like blue fire. “Doing all right?”

  Throat tight, she could only nod.

  “Pull, hard,” he ordered.

  She pulled. She couldn’t move her hands. The skin tightened over his cheekbones and he fixed his gaze on her. There was no mistaking the emotion flaring in his eyes. He was enjoying this.

  “You are mine now, there’s no turning back. You know it too, don’t you?” he said.

  Delicious helplessness sent wave after wave of dark pleasure through her.

  Almost lazily, he hooked a finger into his cravat and jerked until it came undone. He folded it over several times.

  “What are you going to do with that?”

  “I am going to blindfold you.” He lifted her head.

  She should be panicked. She should be trying to resist. But the way he handled her, gently but with determination, made her feel weak. Lulled. And, oddly enough, safe.

  “Close your eyes, lovely girl.”

  She closed them.

  He slid the folded cravat over her lids and the chamber went dark. She felt him tying it at the back. And then he lay down her head.

  To be blindfolded, to allow him to do it, that was a daunting thing. Yet to have him do it with such a personal object, part of his clothing, still warm from his body, gave the experience an almost painful intimacy.

  It was too intense. Definitely too intense.

  Then his weight lifted from her, leaving her feeling too light. As if she might float away. In the ensuing quiet, there was nothing but his breathing and her own pounding heartbeat.

  Without him handling her, she grew restive and couldn’t help struggling against the bonds. The linen sheets seemed to rasp against her skin. Wetness gushed from between her thighs. Apprehension tingled through her. What did he intend to do?

  Finally, she could bear it no longer. “What are you doing?”

  “I am admiring you, love.” He caressed her arms, lingering at her wrists, adjusting them in the bonds. “Something is troubling you—tell me.”

  “I thought we would just…uh, that you would just bed me.”

  “You’re not ready for that.”

  Not ready? Wasn’t she lying here, wetter than she’d ever been in her life, ready to accept him? She drew her brows together. “But I am ready.”

  “It’s not your decision. For now, I want to explore what’s mine.” He caressed her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

  Sudden anxiety quivered through her. Fear that he wouldn’t be satisfied with her. “But I can please you. If you’ll just let me.”

  “Stop thinking so much. Accept my will.”

  He touched her here and there. His fingertips traced over her throat, followed by his lips, his tongue, moving over her breasts, her belly. She writhed beneath his touch, pulling against her bonds.

  But when he kissed the arch of her foot, she gasped. Someone kissing her feet was simply too odd.

  He responded by kissing the other. “Shh. Every inch of your body belongs to me now and I shall do with it as I please.”

  He licked the hollow in her ankle, then, slowly kissing and tonguing his way along, he moved up the inside of her left leg.

  When he put his head between her legs, she had a stunned inkling of what he intended. “No, Jon, no.”

  He kissed her outer lips, circumnavigating them at his leisure.

  It was shocking. It was unthinkable. It was—

  His tongue touched the entrance to her channel. The barest touch. Barely a flicker. But her nub came alive, tingling like fire, erecting, straining and yearning for attention. He drew her tender inner lips into his mouth, laving them with his tongue.

  “Your cunt is so absolutely lovely.”

  Cunt.

  The crude word echoed in her head with raw carnality. On his lips, in his voice, speaking of her, it sounded like the most divine compliment or endearment or both. He cupped her buttocks, lifting her up as his tongue plunged inside her channel, thrusting in and out until her nub was swollen and desperate. He withdrew his tongue from her depths and encircled his mouth on her straining bud, sucking lightly then releasing it completely. Then repeating. The alternating sensations of warm, wet suction and cool air made her cry out with pained pleasure.

  She longed to be able to clutch at his head, to twine her fingers in his fair hair. However, her struggles against the ties on her wrists proved futile. “Please, please,” she begged.

  He took her nub into his mouth and drew on it for long, satisfying moments, alternately flicking his tongue around it with deft, determined motions. She’d never even dreamed of anything like this. It was like being consumed by him. Totally.

  The world drew up tight, centred in that small, sensitive bud, and came spiralling back on her in wave after wave of pleasure and release.

  She returned to herself and lay catching her breath as her body still ticked and pulsed at its core. She had never before realised how alone she had been. It was as if he now filled some empty, hollow place within her with his powerful presence. Everything was Ruel. Everything.

  He thrust two fingers into her slippery channel, pressing along her forward wall repeatedly and, from nowhere it seemed, all the sensations came back on her, stronger this time, sweeping her away. She heard herself crying his name over and over like a mindless litany. Then darkness swallowed her up.

  She awoke to the warmth of his lips on hers. “It’s getting rather early. I should return to my chamber,” he said.

  He hadn’t made love to her yet. Not fully. Why? With her mind still fogged by sleep and satiation, she couldn’t help asking, “What did I do wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He uttered a shushing sound against her hair. “You are a good girl, Nan.”

  His words sent a lump into her throat, a warming beneath her left breast.

  He put his lips to her temple. “A very good girl.”

  “But I displeased you.”

  “No, you didn’t. You’re wonderfully responsive, you lose yourself so beautifully.”

  “But you’re leaving.” She clamped her mouth shut before she could add the “me” to the end. Sudden depression crashed upon her, leaving her cold. Gooseflesh rose over her body.

  He caressed her arms. “Are you cold?”

  She nodded.

  He pulled the heavier blanket up from the storage bench at the foot of her bed and covered her. In the firelight, she thought she saw tenderness in his eyes as he bent and kissed her. But she felt numb beneath the gesture.

  He was leaving her.

  After the door closed behind him, she lay there feeling more alone than she had since her girlhood. Cold dread filled her belly. This was just what she had feared. He would get under her walls of protection and leave her vulnerable. She might never be the same. Fear tasted metallic on her lips as she lay awake for a long time.


  * * * *

  “Lord Ruel left early this morning.” The short, thin, neatly dressed man regarded Anne with kind eyes. Behind him, inside the bedchamber, she could see two trunks open and full of folded clothing. This must be Toby, Ruel’s valet.

  She breathed an internal sigh of relief. It was actually fortunate that Ruel hadn’t been here. She had proved herself a ninny, coming here to see him like some pathetic, infatuated schoolroom chit.

  Yet Toby would surely tell. Ruel would know. A prickle of discomfort settled in the pit of her stomach.

  “My lady, he said to give you this.” Toby walked over to the sideboard and came back with a folded note. He handed it to her. She took it and thanked him, feeling as she did the same uncertainty she always had with people, servant or not. What level of friendliness was needed to make others feel respected? She was never sure. Outside the freeing influence of spirits, she remained a prisoner behind the wall of her reserve.

  She hurried away to her chamber and, once behind the closed door, she tore the note open.

  He’d gone back to London to settle his affairs. He would arrange everything and send word when the time came for their rendezvous.

  Living with Ruel, totally alone… Her heart beat faster at the thought. Last night, she’d been so anxious about the bedchamber part. But now, in the light of day, away from his intoxicating presence, she realised it was a mere game. A heady, pleasurable game. One could shed the masks worn during lovemaking as easily as one tossed aside a domino after a masquerade.

  What a liberating realisation.

  Of course, a little voice niggled at her; he would find it just as easy to shed the effects of one night with her. Easier. He was older, jaded by experience, a man. He would be in London, with all its seductions for a man of wealth and power. Surely he kept a mistress. A pang of hurt throbbed in her chest. Would he visit her? Irritation at her wayward heart made her ball her fists at her sides.

  Of course he would visit his mistress. And it wouldn’t matter to her. She would not feel hurt over this. Theirs was a practical arrangement. His help in return for her…her submission, as he put it. It was sexual. It was breathtaking. But it was just an amusement.

  That was all she could allow it to be.

  * * * *

  Anne had pictured something more substantial than the small stone cottage, with its crumbling walls and untamed covering of ivy and moss and its overgrown garden. The inside must be primitive and damp at nights. Perhaps even filled with vermin and pestilence. She suppressed a shudder of revulsion.

  “Ought to be up by now, I think.”

  “Ruel?” Anne asked, hoping her face wouldn’t flame under Mr Kean’s regard. It was still rather unsettling to have him know that she had come here to be alone with Jon. They had conspicuously avoided the subject until now.

  Kean had accompanied her instead of Ruel on the off-chance that someone might come upon them and recognise Anne. It would be easy to say she was accompanying him to help someone on his estate. What would she have said if she had been caught in Ruel’s company?

  Kean had come for her this morning, waiting for her at the servant’s entrance at around three. She’d been dressed in a morning dress and a plain cape and he had escorted her on foot all the way here. They’d taken several rests, but she was used to walking to the village with Nellie at least once a week.

  Kean had already left her side and was knocking on the door. As she approached the entrance, he turned. “He must be out riding. Come inside, you are probably tired, are you not?”

  She nodded.

  He opened the door and they entered. To her relief, the inside was properly whitewashed with polished wooden floors covered with several luxurious carpets.

  “Welcome to Applecroft House,” Kean said with smile and a flourish of his hand, then he went to sit on a blue settee by the large, unlit stone hearth surrounded by several copper pans.

  Restless, Anne couldn’t sit. Goodness, it was so small. And it would be her home for the next month. She spotted the sideboard. Yes, she was dying for a long, soothing drink on her parched throat. She hurried over and opened the doors to find it well stocked with claret. Well, at least they had the essentials. She poured herself and Kean a glass. While she was taking a drink, a grey stripy cat came running down from the loft. He looked quite fat. Thank God. Hopefully there would be no mice.

  “I suppose Nellie left without a hitch,” Kean said, as someone speaks just to fill the silence.

  Nellie had left in the carriage with her older sister, dressed in Anne’s clothes, before dawn. They would travel to Norfolk to visit their mother for the month. All the subterfuge had Anne’s nerves stretched tight the night before. Now she shrugged. “She would have already sent a message if not.”

  “Good, good—” Kean’s voice broke off as the door opened.

  The door opened. She whirled.

  Ruel stood in the doorway, his azure eyes focused on her so intently that she sucked in her breath and held it.

  Chapter Ten

  Anne drank in the sight of Jon. He was dressed in nankeen breeches paired with a shallow cutaway, charcoal wool jacket and a pale grey waistcoat that had broad lapels. Both were quite out of fashion and slightly shabby. He could easily have been a common country squire.

  She’d heard the gentlemen exchanging greetings, yet comprehended nothing they’d said. Then he turned back to her, smiled with a wink and held out his arms to her.

  She wanted nothing more than to run to him and throw herself into his embrace. To press herself against his tall, hard body. However, she resisted. And not just because Kean sat there watching.

  In Ruel’s absence, it had been easy to rationalise that her intense emotional reaction to him in her chamber had simply been a game. Now, with every particle of herself attuned to him, it seemed something deeper.

  Grinning, Ruel came to her and took her by the waist. One quick jerk forward and she found herself crushed to his firm midsection. Her breasts brushed his broad chest. For a moment, he looked down at her, the skin taut over his cheekbones, his eyes glittering with desire. Then he pressed her head to his shoulder. His wool coat scratched her cheek. He smelt of cigars and horses and leather.

  He bent his face into her neck.

  “I missed you, wench,” he whispered in her ear, a faint chiding note to his voice, as if it were somehow her fault that his feelings had inconvenienced him. Then he nipped at her earlobe, none too gently. The sudden sting made her gasp. His tongue, hot and wet, flicked the lobe. The easing of the pain sent a shudder through her and, forgetting herself, she giggled. Heavens, she never giggled.

  “Well, sounds like that’s my cue to leave,” Kean said.

  “Close the door on your way out,” Ruel said. He had just closed his lips over hers when she heard the door shut.

  It seemed terribly rude, letting Kean leave like that with no words of farewell. But she couldn’t find the will to care for long. The two weeks apart had passed slowly—far more slowly than she’d like to admit.

  A love affaire. What a heady business.

  He lifted his head. “You must be tired and hungry.”

  After her avid agreement, they shared a simple meal. Cold chicken, cheese and bread, washed down with Madeira. They spoke of mundane things. Afterwards, she was yawning and having trouble holding her eyes open.

  “You’d probably like a bath,” he said, his voice all consideration.

  “Yes, that would be lovely.”

  He stood and walked towards the door. At the sight of her trunks, he paused and turned back to her. “I was surprised when Kean brought these yesterday. I told you that you need only bring yourself.”

  The slight chiding note in his voice made her catch her breath. “Those are my books.”

  His face lit with amusement and he laughed. He looked a decade younger. “You brought your books here, to a rendezvous in the wood?”

  Heat washed over her face. She glanced down, a smile tugging on her lips f
or no reason she could fathom. “It’s just a few books.”

  “A whole trunk full, my lady? Do you think I shall leave you that many idle hours?”

  She felt foolish and twisted her napkin in her hands. “I need my books.”

  “All your dead philosophers. Your friends.”

  The smile pulled harder on her face. She couldn’t resist it. He was laughing at her, yet she couldn’t help joining him. “They comfort me. They help me understand.”

  His boots sounded on the hardwood floors. He crouched beside her. Her heart began to flutter. He reached up and touched the coiled braid of her hair. “And you must always understand, eh?”

  Expecting to see him still laughing at her, she whirled to face him. His expression was tender, his eyes full of sympathy. “Why are you so afraid of that which you cannot understand?”

  Her heart fluttered all the harder. She wanted to turn, to hide her fear from him. Yet he cupped the side of her face, preventing her movement.

  “Tell me. Share your fear with me.”

  The gentleness of his tone compelled her. “When I cannot understand something, I feel helpless. I do not like feeling helpless.”

  “Not everything can be understood. Some things can only be experienced, felt.”

  “That’s a very defeatist and bleak outlook.”

  His brows lifted. “Defeatist? How?”

  “You are suggesting we ought to just submit to being helpless.”

  “You don’t understand. Sometimes the way to take control of a situation is to feel your way through it.”

  “The endeavour to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.” She quoted Spinoza. “Only through proper understanding can we find ourselves free.”

  “We feel and know that we are eternal.” He intoned the words as if they were a quotation.

  “Whoever said that?”

  He looked at her blandly for a moment. “Spinoza.”

  “I don’t remember that quote.” She couldn’t help the sharpness in her voice.