Cavern of Pleasures Boxset: Georgian Regency Romance

by EM BROWN

  He moaned, feeling his climax approaching. His muscles tensed. She reached for his scrotum and tugged at his balls as she sucked him hard, pulling the seed from him. His hand tightened in her hair, and his hips bucked against her. Head back, he roared his release. She sputtered a little but drank of his seed until he had pumped the last of it down her throat.

  “Glorious,” he acknowledged as he pulled his softened cock from her mouth.

  He kissed her and tasted the tangy flavor of his own seed. He pushed her down into the bed and lay atop her, planting kisses upon her neck. She undid the buttons of his shirt and caressed the planes of his chest, his ribs, his back. When she cupped his buttocks, he felt himself hardening again. He pushed a breast up to his mouth and sucked at her nipple. She arched under him. He fondled the nipple with his tongue until she bucked against him, desiring him to touch her quim. Taking his cock in hand, he rubbed her folds and felt the moisture of her heat.

  “Ah,” she breathed when he slipped inside of her.

  “Surely Tremayne cannot pleasure you as well,” he growled low into her ear.

  He sank himself further into her.

  “Never,” she admitted.

  He rolled his hips. “Then why do you trifle with a boy such as he? Does the Lardy Debarlow not deserve a man?”

  She responded with a growl of her own. “Are you jealous, Sir?”

  He was. He wanted the Baroness for himself.

  “Your attention to him is baffling,” he replied. “A woman like you cannot be satisfied by the likes of Tremayne.”

  “He satisfies another desire of mine.”

  “What manner of desire?”

  She did not answer but moved her hips in time to him.

  “You have taken pity upon him?” he pursued.

  “Hah. Hardly.”

  He pulled back to look her in the eyes. “You are contemptuous of him. Why bind yourself to him in matrimony if you disapprove of him?”

  When at first she did not answer, he slid his hand between them to molest her clit.

  “I abhor him,” she revealed.

  Her reply only confused him more.

  “You enjoy suffering,” he suggested, hoping to coax more revelations through his caresses. “No other reasoning can explain your situation if you detest him.”

  She shook her head.

  “Then why marry the Viscount?”

  Saying nothing, she ground her hips against him. He thrust into her, making her groan and cling tightly to him.

  “Why marry Tremyane?” he repeated.

  She grasped at his cock with her cunnie and bucked against him when he slowed.

  “Why?” he questioned again.

  She thrust her pelvis at his, but he remained motionless. He withdrew his cock.

  She sighed in exasperation. “Because I abhor his father more.”

  He pushed his cock into her, and began a steady pounding of her cunnie. She wanted revenge, he realized. He knew well that nothing would distress the Earl more. Without knowing more, he found himself sympathetic to her purpose. As she wrapped her legs about him, his thoughts took lesser priority to the sensations engulfing his loins. He turned his attention to making her spend. He shoved himself deep into her, eliciting a cry. Their bodies undulated against each other, rocking the bed beneath them. She had not a frail body, and he shoved himself hard against her. They bucked in unison and when her release began to shake through her body, he could no longer hold back his own climax. He spent inside of her, roaring and grinding the last of his seed into her cunnie before collapsing on top of her.

  Never had a climax felt so gratifying, and Montague idly wondered if her confidence had aught to do with his sense of fulfillment. He kissed her lightly upon the neck. As much as he enjoyed feeling her beneath him, her pointed nipples digging into his chest, he wanted to hold her. Rolling to her side, he pulled her into his arms. The scent of their desire still clung to the air, and he took a contented breath. He felt tired and invigorated all at once.

  She nestled into his embrace and, of a sudden, he felt exceptional and wanted the sensation to last forever. He dreaded the truth of the matter: that the feelings were the beginnings of love.

  ABBEY OPENED HER EYES to see Montague sitting at the edge of the bed, dressed and shaved, staring upon her. She wondered that he could be up this early in the morning when they had spent the better part of the night making love not once or twice, but thrice. The fire of their lust seemed to burn even in their sleep such that she felt no rest. But she had relished every second. He had caressed her with surprising tenderness and bucked against her with such passion that she felt quite exceptional. She could see – jealously – how the women of Bath fell to his charms in the bed chamber.

  He smiled at her, turning the jealousy into hope that perhaps he did consider her special. He held up a basket.

  “I had Jonathan prepare a picnic that we might have breakfast overlooking the hills,” he said with almost boyish excitement.

  Relieved that she was not being sent home yet, she returned his smile. With his assistance, she dressed in her chemise and stays. After he had laced her back, he wrapped his arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck.

  “Hmmm, I’ve a mind to undo what I have just done,” he grumbled.

  She turned around in his arms and circled her arms around his neck. “Why undo? I’ve no chastity belt about me.”

  He grabbed her thighs and lifted her up. She wrapped her legs about his hips. He backed her against the bedpost. She felt wet between the legs already. They kissed as he ground his pelvis into her. She gathered the skirt of her chemise about her loins. Holding her up with one arm, he undid his breeches with his other hand. She settled onto his cock and playfully bit at his ear. Once more the chamber was filled with the sound of their rutting and the fulfillment of a need as old as Eve.

  “Do you entertain such ardor with all the women you seduce?” she asked when he had set her back on her feet.

  “Not half,” he replied.

  She hoped it to be true. They finished her toilette and ventured out into the morning. He led her behind the dwelling and up a knoll overlooking hills covered in heather. She gasped at the plethora of purple blooms extending before her like an endless sea.

  Montague had spread a blanket and began unpacking their picnic.

  “The coffee would have been cold, but I have a bottle of Moët et Chandon,” he said as he poured her a glass of the sparkling wine.

  “A most breathtaking view,” she said as she accepted the glass from him.

  “As a boy, I would climb that tree behind us, perch myself upon a branch, and eat my caramels to this vista.”

  “I should have loved to spend a childhood growing up upon such lands.”

  He nodded. “I have always felt at peace here in Chelton.”

  She remembered his response to her earlier question about the property but decided not to bring up a topic that might prove awkward.

  “You must have been a naughty boy,” she implicated instead.

  “My lady,” he responded in shocked dismay. “What have I done to have given you such an impression?”

  She laughed.

  “And were you not a naughty little girl?”

  She raised her chin, but her eyes twinkled. “I was a perfectly behaved little girl with much joy in my heart.”

  Her final words faltered a little upon her tongue.

  “And now?” he questioned as he sliced an apple.

  “It were much more fun to misbehave.”

  “And the joy?” he persisted.

  She plucked a grape from its stem. “Joy is reserved for the young and innocent.”

  “When did my lady lose her innocence?”

  She thought about the confidence she had already revealed to him. “When I was four and ten. At the hand of the Earl of Frotham.”

  He choked on his apple. “Did he ravish you?”

  “Nay.”

  He looked relieved. The redness in h
is face receded. “Then how?”

  “As he is a friend of yours—“

  “He is no friend of mine,” he assured her. “I suspect he disdains me.”

  “But you are a friend of Richard Henry. They are as tight as peas in a pod.”

  “Circumstances force me not to scorn their company, but an you are successful in your vengeance upon him, Frotham will receive no sympathy from me.”

  Convinced of his sincerity, she elaborated. “He was my mother’s lover. My father had passed away when I was young. My mother was a beauty and attracted the attentions of the Earl, though she could have selected from a number of eager suitors. She fell in love with Frotham.”

  She looked over the hills, but this time she did not see the blooms. She saw only her mother’s frail body, the sores upon her from laying days in a bed.

  “He had promised to wed her,” she continued, “but was convinced by his father to pursue the riches of the New World. When he had returned to England, he wrote that he would come see her soon. My mother made herself ill waiting for him. I had attempted to see him, to let him know that my mother was not well. l was still a child then and had not the proper appreciation of our differences. As you know, my family was considered far too bourgeois for the likes of a Frotham.

  “And then we had word of his engagement to the daughter of a nobleman. He ceased writing to my mother. She died of a broken heart. Only...”

  Tears that had been dry for years suddenly formed in her eyes. “Only Fate was Unkind. I would she had thrown herself into the sea that Death might have taken her sooner. Instead, Death took her little by little. For a sixmonth, I watched her waste away. I changed her linens. I fed her. I sang to her though it was as if I no longer existed for her. Though I was her only child.

  “I sent letters to Frotham begging him to see her, begging him to send money for a doctor. Until at last, I prayed for Death. I begged for Death to take her. She had ceased to take any food, but I could – I could hear her stomach growling with hunger.”

  Her words turned into a sob. When Montague wrapped his arms about her, he unleashed a dam. The tears poured from her eyes. Turning into his shoulder, she succumbed to the cries that had welled inside of her for years. She thought she had turned her pain into a drive for revenge upon the man who had wronged her, but her aim had only masked the pain. And yet, despite the anguish and the agony, she found relief in speaking her memories and comfort in his embrace. In contrast to the long and solitary days and the long and solitary nights spent at her mother’s bedside, she was not now alone.

  Montague said nothing but put a hand to her head as if to shield her from the menace in the world. When the fiercest of her sobs had subsided, she lay with her head against his chest. She heard the beating of his heart, a strong and comforting rhythm. And in that moment, she surrendered herself wholly to him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  AS SHE TOLD HER STORY, Montague could hear the breaking of her heart and would have killed the Earl if he had thought it would do any good. He now admired Abigail Debarlow even more. She had planned the perfect and poetic revenge. He did not believe that the success of her vengeance would bring her peace, but it could do no damage.

  Except to him. If he did not fulfill his end of the bargain, Chelton would be lost to him.

  He held her closer. “Your fury with Frotham – with the male sex – is most justified.”

  “I am not cross at all men,” she objected as she looked up at him.

  He looked down at her and brushed away a tendril of her hair that threatened to fall in front of her eyes. “Are you not?”

  She glanced away. “Perhaps a little.”

  “Little wonder you are also disillusioned with love.”

  “I had thought that love, at least between a mother and child, would always be pure. But for my mother, the will to live for her child was eclipsed by the loss of a man.”

  He wondered if the true source of her bitterness might not be her own mother and not Frotham, though the living provided an easier target for vengeance than the dead. Something in the way the Earl had spoken gave Montague the suspicion that, odious as Frotham was, he might have loved Abigail’s mother in return.

  “Did your desire for vengeance inspire you to aspire to polite society then?” he asked.

  “Though I had not the full beauty of my mother, I knew I possessed enough to attract men of any class. I became the mistress to one when I was seven and ten years of age. I found it an easy matter to move progressively from one to another.”

  “Until you finally landed upon the Baron Debarlow.”

  “You would not believe that I did not have him in my sights. I was a patron of Madame Botreaux and a submissive to a man who enjoyed the pleasures of a man as well as a woman. Debarlow was his other submissive. As I was intimate with him in The Cavern, I knew him to possess a scar upon his right forearm, the result of a rapier duel.

  “We happened to be at a garden party. A lady dropped her fan into the fountain. He rolled up his sleeve to retrieve it for her, and I saw the scar. I know your thoughts: you perceive that I had blackmailed him. I did confront him in private, but he could have just as easily have blackmailed me. We became friends. Marriage was his idea. It was quite convenient for him, you see. He would not have to hide his visits to Madame Botreaux’s with me as his wife. I would attain the status I had sought. Marriage was mutually beneficial.”

  Part of him did not wish to know too much about her relationship with the Baron, but he had to ask, “You were not in love with him then?”

  “I bore him much affection, but he loved our master at the time. I admired him for his courage in marrying me. It was from him that I learned to live mine own life and polite society be damned.”

  He tilted her chin up with his knuckle. “You are a marvelous woman, Lady Debarlow.”

  He kissed her mouth, her nose, her forehead. He tasted the salt on her cheeks left by her tears and once more claimed the softness of her lips. But kissing her was no easy matter for he instantly felt a stronger desire to take her. She responded by unbuttoning her caraco. He kissed the top of her bosom, grasped a breast in his hand, sinking his fingers into the pliable flesh. He leaned her into the ground and covered her with his weight.

  She seemed to recall something. “Tell me, how did you know I was a patron of Madame Botreaux?”

  “I recognized your snuffbox.”

  He did not reveal that he was first informed by Jonathan.

  “Ah.”

  “I shall forever be grateful to that little snuffbox.”

  Her eyes shone brightly, glimmering with the last of her tears. “And I.”

  After he had thrown her skirts above her waist and licked her cunnie until she squealed with delight and her cries had sent the birds from the trees, he rolled her on top of him. She rode his rigid cock as skillfully as she rode her horse. After they had both spent, they finished their picnic. He took her on a walk of the grounds at Chelton. Having her upon his arm, laughing and teasing him as he described moments from his childhood, was as delightful as fucking her over the back of a chair. He wished that they could remain forever at Chelton.

  But Chelton would not be his to have if he did achieve his objective. He had seduced the Baroness, had taken her to his bed, but would this prove sufficient for Frotham? His success, moreover, would be her failure. He would have denied her the vengeance she had sought.

  “Were you truly en route to Gretna Green with Tremayne?” he asked as they passed beneath a large willow tree.

  “I was.”

  “You would have married him?”

  “Aye.”

  “You deserve better, Abbey.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “He would be a husband in name only. Once he was bound to me, I would be free to entertain any man I wished.”

  “Would that not upset Charles?”

  She shrugged. “He could accuse me of crim con and seek a divorce, but the dye of scandal would be cast.”
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  “And you think, after you have avenged the death of your mother, that you would be contented?”

  “I think it would.”

  He decided not to dispute her supposition. Playfully, he kissed her hand. “Do you intend to take many lovers when you are a married woman?”

  She grinned at him. “Would you dare to be my paramour?”

  “And make a cuckold of poor Charles?”

  “There is no ‘poor Charles.’ The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

  He raised his brows but did not doubt her assertion. Making a cuckold of Charles was not a true concern of his. He had cuckolded enough husbands in his lifetime. But for once, he thought he might prefer to be the husband instead of the paramour.

  “And if you should be unable to marry Charles?” he asked.

  Her face darkened a little. “Yes, you have set back my plans.

  “Would you be much saddened?”

  She became silent in thought. “Would I have you to console me?”

  He allowed her to artfully dodge his question. He had hoped that she might reconsider her plans to marry Charles, but he would not push the subject overly much with her.

  “But of course,” he replied as he turned up her wrist and touched his lips there.

  The light kiss sent butterflies through her, and she knew it would not be long before time would find them tumbling against each other upon the ground.

  “Have you many other women to console back in Bath?” she asked as she played with the buttons upon his coat, hoping his answer would not rattle her too much.

  He watched as she undid his buttons. “None.”

  “Because you are the perpetrator?”

  “To be honest, in some instances.”

  “Is that why you have come to London? To escape the hearts you had broken?”

  “I would be presumptuous to assert I was of such significance in a woman’s life as to have had such an impact upon her heart. I have slighted many a vanity, to be sure. As for London, I had not been to the City in some time. And an unexpected business proposition compelled me to stay.”