His captive moaned in his arms. It wasn’t a happy sound, but a distressed, strangled sigh which made him deposit the dark haired siren in the middle of his four poster bed. With one strike of the tinderbox, he lit the oil lamp, adjusted the wick, better to see, and pulled in a sharp breath. Her hairpins had come out and the mass of her dark locks framed a face he was certain he had never seen before. The freckles dotted across her nose, testament to a life spent not shading herself from the sun, as any lady would, and that, as well as the inferior silk used in her dress confirmed his suspicion. This was no debutante, or widow of the ton.
Most likely this minx was one of the newer servants he hadn’t come across yet. Perhaps a lady’s maid, who had liberated one of her mistress’s cast-offs to enable her to attend this ball. It would also explain why she seemed unable to breathe. The gown had clearly been designed for someone less voluptuous than his find, and in an effort to fit into it, the silly chit had laced herself too tight.
Only one thing for it, put his skills to good use and liberate the lady. With practiced moves Daniel turned her on her side, undid the tiny buttons down the back of the dress, slipped it off her shoulders, and then slid the material down her body. His cock stirred at the sight of her curves held in by the corset. The ribbons of her rough cotton chemise were caught in the ties of her stays, so he simply ripped the fabric, and sliced through the ties with the hunting knife he’d found next to the oil lamp.
It was a curious place to leave it, and Daniel couldn’t recall having done so, but it certainly came in handy now. His intended sport for the night pulled in a shuddering breath when he yanked the stays off, and the now tattered chemise followed suit. Daniel grinned as her luscious breasts fell free. Delightfully large and heavy, the globes sported wide areolae and big nipples which stiffened under his gaze. Sadly not due to his presence, but the cold in the room, and Daniel swore again and shrugged out of his dinner coat to cover the girl up until he could get the fire started. Half in, half out of his tight fitting jacket, which was a devil of a job to get off without Jenkins, he paused and gaped.
What on earth was she wearing on her cunt? Some contraption with images of what looked like a dressed up bathing sponge with a face. Whatever it was, it was an abomination to his eyes, and far more importantly spoiled his view of what he would find between her legs.
Adjusting his prick with a rueful grin at that organ’s single minded intent—it had been way too long since he last indulged—he placed his coat over the seemingly still unconscious lady. Something like a gasp escaped her lips when he did so, and Daniel frowned down on her. Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks, and moving her arms out above her head the girl stretched like a cat waking up from sleep. She blew out a breath. It ruffled Daniel’s hair and brought with it the scent of warm, fragrant woman, a hint of whatever she used to wash her dark locks, and the fruity flavour of whatever punch they gave to the servants.
“Vicky, ‘s zat you?”
The sleepy words came out slurred, and Daniel shook his head. Halfway to being foxed, no doubt, which would go some way to explaining why she had been wandering around the private wing. No servant would set out to snare a duke, after all, but a servant girl, overwhelmed by the ball, the drink, and perhaps urged on by a sweetheart or a friend … yes, she could well have lost her way. Fortunate for him.
With one last searching look at sleeping beauty on his bed, Daniel turned to light the fire. At least it had been well prepared and all he had to do was strike the tinderbox. Once he got a good blaze going, he turned to find his prey awake. Eyes wide, his evening coat clutched to cover her nakedness in a white knuckled grip that would have Jenkins curse at the creases on the morrow, she appeared to vacillate between looking him up and down, flinching at the flashes of thunder and lightning, and looking for an escape. Her teeth sank into her lush bottom lip, and she looked ready to bolt, when he approached.
“Wh-who are you?”
****
The man slowly walking in her direction frowned at her and Clara wanted the ground to swallow her up. This could not be happening to her. Clara Ellington did not wake up in a strange man’s bed. A man whose astonishing blue eyes lit up with definite male appreciation as he let his gaze slowly run over her body.
When he bowed and grinned, that smile lit up his rough features, revealing laughter lines around his eyes. Her traitorous hormones sighed in bliss at the way the roaring fire lit up his silhouette through the fine linen of his dress shirt and accentuated the muscled body underneath. Lean hips, powerful thighs, and polished knee high tasseled boots she was sure she could see herself in if she bent down—this stranger was the very image of Regency aristocracy, which must mean she had either lost her mind … or she was ... dreaming.
Clara blew out a breath of relief. Yes, that had to be it. It had been one hectic week after all, getting everything ready for the ball. She got all hot and bothered, she remembered that, and Vicky had taken her…
“Where’s Vicky?” she asked.
The stranger crossed his arms over his chest, cocked an eyebrow, and shrugged his shoulders.
“My dear chit, I do not know of any Vicky. What sort of a name is that anyhow?”
Clara bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Dream or not, this fellow didn’t look as though he would appreciate such a gesture. Instead, she sat up a bit straighter. Her scant cover slipped and she realized with a start that she was naked, apart from her favorite boy pants underwear. Guess that explained why she could breathe again.
“Vicky, my friend. She was right there with me in the gallery, when….”
His amused laugh stopped her.
“The wine you indulged in addled your brains, girl. There was no one there but you, me, and Aulban.”
“Who the hell is Aulban?” she asked, and swallowed nervously when his amusement fled as quickly as it had appeared. Should that be who or what? Have I put my foot in it?
“Look, girl, as appealing as you are, this subterfuge stops now. You know fine well who Kit—Aulban—is. What I want to know is who you are, and what the deuce you’re doing in my house.”
Clara’s head started to hurt again. Had he said his house? With a sudden clarity of vision she recalled the events leading up to her losing consciousness, and her heart beat faster.
“Your house? Hardly. I’m the curator, and I should be asking you what you’re doing…” The words dried in her mouth when this far too handsome stranger took the diamond pin out of his intricately tied neck cloth and started to unravel the material from around his neck.
“What are you…?”
“It’s getting nice and warm in here now, girl, and as I will clearly be working up a sweat, trying to get the truth out of you, I’m going to make myself comfortable.” His smile was sin itself when he reached behind him and pulled his shirt over and off his head in one fluent move. Before she even had a chance to appreciate the display of fine male muscle in front of her, the bed dipped, and the world tilted. Robbed of the cover of his coat, she found herself dumped over his knee, arms and legs flailing, before the first swat to her ass made her screech.
“Scream all you want, girl, but no one will hear you. The truth now.”
Another much harder swat to her ass took her breath away for a second, and she tried to push herself off his lap. His arm across her shoulders stopped her, however.
“I can do this all night, girl. Tell me the truth. Curator indeed. This is Haverham House, not a museum.”
Clara shook her head in a vain attempt to clear away the lingering moth balls. Not helped one bit by the infuriating man now stroking the tender skin on her behind. That felt way too … nice. Oh, god, if he keeps that up, he’ll soon discover how wet that is making me.
Even in her thoughts that seemed wrong. Clara might enjoy her naughty stories, the naughtier the better, but things like this did not happen in real life. Which left only one logical conclusion. She was dreaming, because the only other al
ternative was that she was losing her mind. Just to test the theory, she screamed.
“I’m not lying. I’m ouch. Vicky. Vicky, where the hell are you?”
****
“Clo…Clara… What….” Vicky felt herself ruthlessly shaken as her friend’s scream echoed through her brain. God almighty her head hurt and her mouth was as dry as a desert. What the hell had happened?
“My heart, wake up, come back to me.” Someone patted her cheek none too gently and she tried to swat the hand away. Her head hurt enough without a sore cheek added.
Her hand wouldn’t move. She tugged but whatever held it, held it fast.
“Victoria.” The voice was enough to make her pussy tingle, her muscles tighten, and her nerves quiver. “Stop that at once.”
What the fuck? Vicky opened her eyes slowly and squinted at the dark, saturnine, shadow in front of her, silhouetted by the light of a seven-armed candelabra. Nothing stood out except two grey eyes with golden glints that danced in the candlelight and beckoned to her. Deep, dangerous, hot as hell… Hell?
She tried to scream, she really did, but her vocal cords seemed to have frozen, and nothing emerged except a tiny croak. Not the thing to stop Satan in his tracks.
She bucked her ass in the air. As she’d wondered, only her ass moved. Her legs were held as tightly as her arms.
“What the fuck?” That came out okay. Vicky shook her head and blinked. The shadow moved again and got closer. She wished she could shrink into herself or at least hide under the covers. “Don’t you come any nearer, buster. You’ve got a helluvalot to answer for. Get talking fast. What the hell am I doing trussed up like a BDSM offering?” She glared as best she could with a brass band playing inside her skull. She might like a bit of consensual pain when she was in the right frame of mind, but this wasn’t consensual and she sure wasn’t in the proper mindset. She wasn’t even sure what set her mind was playing at.
“Silly woman, what are you talking about? BD whatever? I have no idea what you mean. Stop struggling or you’ll hurt yourself.” His voice was as smooth as liquid chocolate, as dark as the night, and as enticing as anything she’d ever heard. Her pussy juices began to make their presence known to her.
God, stop right there. I am not gonna gush in front of a devil—or Mr. A. N. Other dressed up as one. If only she could clench her thighs together, but of course spread eagled as she was there was no chance. Vicky bit her lip in an effort to control her body. She wasn’t sure she managed.
“Please, who are you?” Hell, now she was begging. She might sub as the mood took her but meek and begging didn’t come into her remit. Ever.
He moved the candelabra to one side and the light shone fully on his face. It was enough to set her pussy throbbing like a damn pile driver. He was everything she ever wanted in a man. Tall, with short blond hair, dark eyelashes and eyebrows and grey eyes that shone and sparkled like the sea on a sunny winter’s day. Her libido jumped to attention, and the throbbing in her head decided to give it a break and become more of a hint of a headache than a full on pain. He smiled.
“Victoria, enough is enough.”
Victoria? No one called her that if they valued their body the way it was. It might be a family name but Vicky hated it. Ever since the school bully had teased her with ‘Victor-eah, has gonnor-eah, don’t go nee-ah.’ He didn’t carry on with his death wish words after she’d kneed him in the balls and added, ‘Bobby Mollock’s got no bollocks’.
“Victoria?” The man’s voice hardened. “Look at me and answer me. What’s all this nonsense?”
She recognized him. Sort of.
“You’re the guy in the portrait I was looking at when…” She faltered, swallowed and cleared her throat. Things began to fall into place. Horrible, scary, that what the fuck is going on place.
“God I hate storms. Where’s Clo? And who was that guy who abducted her?” Her words tumbled out in a rush. “Why have you tied me up, what’s going on and Aghhhhhhhhh.” A flash of lightning and a loud clap of thunder made her freeze and to her utmost shame and horror she began to sob.
Shit I hate me like this, but godalmighty I think it’s inevitable. Not in a scene in a scene. At a sodding fancy dress ball in a bloody storm and no duvet to hide under or cat to cuddle. I hate storms.
“ I hate storms.”
He moved swiftly. “Oh my heart I know you do. If you promise not to thrash around anymore I’ll unfasten you. I was so scared you’d hurt yourself.”
He, dammit she needed to know his name, she couldn’t call him him all the time, moved to her side. “Yes?”
“What? Oh right.” She remembered his statement. “No thrashing, though I might hide under the duvet and shake. I...”
“Hate storms.” He bent to the ties at her feet and unfastened them with a speed any Dom in the club she visited would envy. “So you say every time. Before you grab Corso—the kitten,” he added evidently in response to her blank look of query—“and head for the silverware cupboard and usurp the butler.” He repeated his actions on her wrists and lifted her into his arms. “This time you have me. We’ll shut the curtains and cuddle.”
Vicky decided she liked the sound of that except for a few important points she’d just discovered.
“I’m naked.”
“I like you naked,” he said, unconcerned as her voice rose to ear splitting screech-level once more.
God knew she’d probably have lost her voice before long if she didn’t calm down.
“You might, but I don’t go naked with someone I don’t know.” There, that sounded reasonable, didn’t it?
“You don’t go naked with anyone except me or I’ll tan your sweet arse until it’s the color of those curtains over there.” He pointed to the long, deep red curtains that dressed the floor to ceiling windows, which showed the rain lashing on their panes and every so often allowed the room to brighten up with lightning, and dim the glow of the candles. “You’re mine, ma petite. Only mine. And with me, only me, you are naked.”
“Hmm. So you say. Then if I’m yours, who am I and who the hell are you?” She glared at him, and waited to hear what he would say. Something else niggled at the corner of her mind. “Why did you call me that?”
He raised one sculpted eyebrow in a most imperious manner. Something that she rather thought would normally reduce her to acquiescence.
Normally? What on earth is normal? “Why did you call me ma petite?”
Chapter Three
Kit bit back the oath he wanted to utter and counted to ten. Why on earth was his usually biddable, well biddable as long as it was within the dynamic they had agreed on, or in the sphere of their everyday life, wife acting like a spoiled young deb? She knew fine well what his uttering of ma petite meant.
Didn’t she? Her strange behavior worried him, and that query worried him most of all.
When he’d met his Victoria and told her of his likes and needs she’d listened wide eyed and thought for several minutes. Then she’d tilted her head to one side and smiled. “A dynamique? Something we wish to have and adhere to?”
He grinned and tapped her backside none too gently. “Exactly. So we have a dynamic of our own for us and us alone, and a life on show to others. But if I say to you ma petite, you know it is our special time. Yes?” She’d nodded.
Now he wondered if she really had suffered a stronger injury than he originally thought.
“Victoria I’m beginning to fret more than a little.” He settled her deep into his lap so his cock was squashed between her arse cheeks. “Why are you denying all we have? All we are?”
She gave him the sort of look guaranteed to shrivel bollocks. All of a sudden he was glad his were hidden under her body and his evening breeches.
“Maybe you could get it into your pea brain that I haven’t a scooby what you’re on about?” she suggested.
Kit understood sarcasm when it was delivered in that tone of voice. It was a pity he had no idea what she said. “It’s now established that a
brain isn’t the size of a pea.” Well he was sure he’d read that somewhere.
“In a male, considerably smaller?” Victoria suggested sweetly. “And in a man’s case located in his gonads?”
His lips twitched involuntarily. “Gonads?”
“Bollocks.”
“Ah. Well let me just say some of your phraseology is incomprehensible to me.”
“Eh? Oh good grief. Let’s converse in words of two syllables eh?” She shivered. “And pretty please with sprinkles on, can I have a robe or something? Why don’t you have the heating on?”
He gestured to the fire. “It’s as good a blaze as ever.”
“No, the…”
He watched as she looked slowly around the room.
“Is the electric off cos of the storm? Clara said it does happen sometime. But I thought you’d have lamps and things, not just candles.”
He latched on to the one sentence he understood. “We decided only to use candles in the bedchamber. And that you would be naked. We both agreed on that.”
“Even when it’s freezing?”
He shook his head stood up and dropped her onto the mattress, which dipped as she bounced gently. “It’s nowhere near freezing. But if you’re cold you may slip under the covers. I’ll join you in a moment.”
“Not until you tell me who you are, you won’t. I don’t sleep with anyone I don’t know.” She crossed her arms and stared defiantly at him. “Spill the beans. You, me, where, how, why?”
There she went with incomprehensible utterances again.
“Victoria. Your name is Victoria.”
She tutted. “Duh, I know that, though everyone but everyone calls me Vicky or Vic. If as I said they like their face the way it is. Who are you? Gah, I’m sounding like a stuck record.”
“Christopher, known as Kit, Lord Capel, the Duke of Aulban.” He paused to see if there was a glimmer of comprehension on her face.
The Dukes' Christmas Abductions Page 2