My Lady's Choosing

by Kitty Curran

  One fine afternoon, when Nigel, his mother, and the rest of the family have gone to town on various errands, you find yourself entirely alone in the house. You are dizzy at the prospect of things going well in a way you never anticipated.

  “You look happy, my lady,” says a calm voice. You start and then turn to see Nigel leaning against the doorway, smiling in that plain, happy way of his.

  You return his smile. “I thought you were in town this day.”

  He laughs, reddens, and looks down at the floor. “Yes, I…I said I was going to town so I could have some time to myself so I could…to…um, I…”

  “What, Nigel?” you ask. Your interest is piqued.

  Nigel searches the ceiling for his words. “Well, I thought if I said I was going to town, you might go out walking for hours on end, as you like to do, and I could have time to myself in the house alone to…practice.”

  “Practice what?” You cock your head to the side and lock eyes with his. A flush burns across the bridge of his nose. He now searches the floor for his words.

  Finally, he lifts his eyes to yours and speaks. “Our wedding night.”

  An inexplicable fire burns through you. Nigel takes a tentative step toward you, and you are shocked at the little race your heart runs as he does so. You take your own tentative step toward him. He emits the gentlest hush of a gasp. The sound makes the hair on the back of your neck, as well as your nipples, stand at attention. Nigel notices, and a pleased smile plays at his lips. How had you not noticed until now how fine they are? They are barely parted, but the little space between them makes you want to explore what is inside.

  “Do you wish,” you find yourself asking, breathlessly, as you take his hand and run it slowly, loosely, barely over your face and side, “to practice with me?”

  Nigel tilts his head back as you stroke his neck and emits an unselfconscious moan of pleasure. “Yes, my lady.” He takes your hands and kisses the tip of each finger, one by one. Then he flicks his tongue against each tip in such a delicate fashion that your body riots with the tease of it. Gently, he guides your hands down his throat, to the buttons clasping his shirt. You understand his meaning and begin to unbutton them.

  “Please, my lady,” he says, his voice straining with desire. “I always practice this part slowly, to make it last.”

  You nod, feeling heady, and slowly reveal his chest. When you have reached his navel, he takes your hands again. “My turn?” he asks.

  You stare into each other’s eyes, taking in this new side of your personalities. He seems so different, yet is still the same Nigel. Just one who is now, very tenderly, just barely, licking your ears, brushing his lips against the line of your neck, warming your very care with every moan he emits, just because he has the privilege of slowly lowering your neckline to reveal your—

  “Glorious body,” he says, drinking you up in wonder. “Oh, my lady, you are beautiful.” Now it is your turn to moan as he flicks his tongue over your nipples, kissing each one with a fierce, rhythmic tenderness he must have studied from the moon and the ocean tides. Within moments, he has your body burning up and your sex shimmering with desire.

  “Do you want your ecstasy now, my lady?” he asks, his breath catching as you pull him in for a deep kiss. He lets his lips, wet with yours, slide gently over your mouth as he pulls away slightly to speak. “Or do you want to wait, and see what else I practice?” He slides his hands around your waist, down the small of you back, and ever so gently draws you closer.

  “Show me,” you respond, and he brings two of his fingers to your mouth.

  “Take these into your mouth, as if they were…my manhood,” he instructs, and you do as he asks. He watches your face, and his eyebrows arch in such pleasure that you find yourself ready for anything he proposes. “Now, my lady, will you lift your skirt? Slowly, so I can watch your beauty unfurl?”

  Heavens, are you happy to oblige. He delicately leans you back on the settee and watches with reverent desire as you reveal yourself to him. Once you do, he slides his fingers inside you, slow, teasing, deep. He watches your face, notes the arch of your back, the tension in your knees, the grip of your fingers. He charts your response, as well as his course, accordingly, until you see nothing but pale fire before your eyes.

  “There is more, my lady,” he says, his voice ragged and all the more beautiful for it. Somehow, despite the waves of complete pleasure overcoming you, you want more. “Do you want more?”

  “Oh, I want more, Nigel.” You arch your back again, and this time he gently slides his lush, long manhood over your wet sex.

  “I love hearing you say my name,” he gasps, sliding over you again, and then gently, teasingly, he gives you a taste of him. The pressure, the surprise, the desire makes you want to grip him and drive him into you, again and again. He keeps sliding over you, making you long more and more. “I love the way you smile. I love thinking about you undressing for bed. I love thinking about easing those clothes off your beautiful body and kissing every inch of you. Of making love to you, and watching your face change as I bring you pleasure.”

  “Make love to me.” As you speak the words, he fills you with himself. And oh, does he bring you pleasure. Again, all you see are sparks and stars.

  “There is more, lady,” he gasps between moans of pleasure. More? Oh, this Nigel has such stamina. “If you want it—”

  “I want it.” You shift yourself on top of him, sliding up and down to play a sensual symphony on his magic flute for your rapt audience.

  “I want you.” He kisses you, deep, as deep as he is inside you. “And sometimes I practice…I imagine…you this way.” He gently tips you onto your knees and slowly begins thrusting his goodness into your valley, making your flowers bloom, over and over.

  “There is more, my lady,” he says.

  “YES.”

  He pauses. “Do you wish me to take you roughly now, my lady?”

  “Yes,” you say and grip his forearms. He releases a ragged scream of delight, and then releases his full force into you. He is so hungry for you, so lusty, and you are so closely entwined that you feel every flexing muscle, every breath, every shudder. Your bodies are silk ribbons, woven together, smooth as water undulating in a deep well of desire. Together you bend like young trees in a storm, limber and strong. He flips you and dips you and together you are acrobatic air, water, earth. You climax screaming his name, becoming stardust.

  After you recover some sense of yourself, you turn to face him. He is half draped on the settee, half on the floor. His eyes are full of you.

  “Where,” you finally manage, “did you learn all that?”

  Nigel Frickley smiles. “I…I had a professor at Cambridge whose, um, wife, took quite a shine to me. She and her husband had an, um, arrangement where they were free to do as they wished as long as it was…discreet. She was a very demanding and thorough educator. With inventive techniques.”

  Your eyes widen in shocked delight.

  “Are you angry, my lady?” he asks, worry coloring his strangely beautiful face.

  “Not at all, Nigel,” you say. He breaks into a wide smile.

  “Wonderful!” he cries. “Now I will have to come up with something new for our wedding night. Let us sneak some wine before Mama returns and we must be respectable!”

  He bounces out of bed to fetch the carafe. You lie back in satisfaction and sigh with happiness. You resolve to send a ham to the professor’s wife every Christmas from now until your end of days.

  Life is good. It is very, very good.

  The End

  “Oh, Garraway!” you swoon, calling Lord Craven by his first name. A time for desire is no time for formality.

  “I want you,” he keens, his eyes as wild as your desire for him. “I have wanted you since you first arrived.”

  “But—” You attempt a false protest to at least appear to save your modesty. “But I am a gov
erness, and you a lord. Society dictates—”

  “Society!” he spits. “What do our bodies dictate?”

  He wraps you in an embrace so close you feel all the firmness of his body’s dictations. You rack your mind for adequate verbiage, but ascertain that the truest depth of your emotions can only be expressed by pressing the fullness of your moonlit orbs into Lord Craven’s handsome, hungry mouth.

  “The only society I care about,” he moans through mouthfuls of orb, “is yours.”

  You make love with a violent passion there in the eldritch garden, amid the ruins of your purity and the angel statue bearing the face of his dead wife.

  As you lie panting in each other’s arms, your reverie is broken by the haunting wails of a woman crying.

  “HE SAID IT WOULD BE ONLY ME! ONLY ME FOR ALL TIME!!”

  Lord Craven’s face turns as pale as a corpse. “Damnable woman!” he cries and leaves you alone among the eerie statues.

  Do you decide to get the hell out of here? Turn to this page.

  Do you investigate the sound? In for a penny, in for a pound. Turn to this page.

  In the morning neither of you speaks of the previous night. You have many orphans to tend to, so the day is full of hard work and tension, but nothing more.

  You spend the remainder of the journey in uncomfortable silence. Fortunately, the children are too excited seeing sheep and grass for the first time to pay much attention. Jane and Gertie, on the other hand, offer you sympathetic looks.

  “All men is heathens,” says Jane. “Even the good ones.”

  “Worse than heathens,” adds Gertie darkly.

  Mac scrupulously keeps his distance from you, and you from him, and the rest of the stops in a variety of coaching inns along the way are extremely uneventful. Well, except at Doncaster, when you have to physically restrain Sallie from maiming Bert after he suggests that milk comes from cows and not bottles. And except when, you swear, you see that shadowy figure again. But of course this is impossible—to see someone from London this far north. Unless you have been followed…

  Lamentably, the uneasy silence currently hanging between you and Mac has given you much time to dwell on things, and dwell you do. You cannot stop thinking about Constantina and what she could have meant to Mac to cause him such pain. About the fire and how it could have started. And about the shadowy figure and whether it is a product of your fevered mind…or something much darker. What can it all mean?

  The universe smiles on your gloomy soul, for you hear the orphans cry out with excitement. You look up to see that you have arrived at Abercrombie’s crumbling ruin of an ancestral home, Glenblair Castle.

  Och, you’re in Scotland now, lassie! Hoots, mon. Turn to this page.

  To your surprise, the rest of the henchmen take off in the opposite direction from the route you and Fabien are taking.

  “What is going on?” you demand.

  “Madame St. Croix reveals her whereabouts to only a select few. These men have done their part, they have no need to go any farther or see where we are going.”

  “And what about me?” you spit back. “Am I one of these select few?”

  “No, chérie. You are one of the blindfolded.” He quickly ties a heavy black cloth around your eyes, then whispers into your ear. “It is safer for you this way.”

  The motion of the camel’s gallop causes your body to rub against Fabien’s manly form in a way that makes you uncomfortably aware of the dangerous yet alluring brute…and all that he may offer. With one sense deprived, all others awaken.

  “Why did you bring two camels if you were going to carry me with you?” you ask in an effort to distract yourself from the masculine length at his groin that is pushing against you.

  “You were meant for the other camel, but I don’t trust you not to try to escape,” says Fabien’s voice. “And I will need two to carry the gold she will pay me for fetching you.”

  “Am I worth so much to her? Me, a simple nobody?”

  “The one who will come for you is worth it to Madame St. Croix. Though if you ask me, you are the true jewel to be claimed.”

  “I am no one’s to be claimed!” you bite back. He responds only with a throaty laugh. In return you settle into a brooding but extremely charged silence.

  It seems an age later when finally you stop. The animal heat of the virile body pressed close to you departs, leaving in its place only cool desert air. But there is no time to ponder your chilly situation. From a little way off come strange sounds that you can’t quite place, and then a blazing light that manages to pierce even your blindfold.

  A firm, meaty pair of hands pulls you down from the camel with surprising gentleness and removes the blindfold. You gasp in astonishment despite yourself.

  Before you stands a beautiful white tent, a dove’s wing against the void of the desert’s nighttime sky. Deep within, a latticed lantern throws exotic patterns against the pale fabric, illuminating a simple dinner laid for two. In front crackles a fire, offering respite from the chill in the air. You are loath to admit it, but you are impressed.

  Fabien shrugs his enormous shoulders. “You see I have done this before.”

  “I can see that.” You take measure of this powerful specimen of a man. He moves with the sleek confidence of a jungle cat, and yet there is something in his eyes that looks strangely haunted.

  “How do you think I have survived this long?” he says, leading you into the tent where you seat yourself.

  “You have had a hard life?” you ask as casually as possible, wondering how such a man came to be in work such as his.

  “No harder than most,” he says as he eases himself down next to you with an inherent grace. He continues in that strange accent of his, almost French, almost Egyptian. “I was born the illegitimate child of the Chevalier de Mangepoussey, who came with Napoleon on his campaign to Egypt, and an Egyptian princess.”

  “So you were brought up with wealth, then?” This would explain his surprisingly courtly manners.

  “I was brought up in disgrace!” He glowers back at you, his pale jade orbs lit with strange fire. “My very existence was a scandal and a shame. My family provided a scant education, but nowhere to go in life. It would have been better for them had I not existed at all.”

  “I see,” you say primly. “And then you met Delphine St. Croix?”

  The Nile-green eyes rise to meet yours.

  “Ah, Madame St. Croix…she rescued me in a way,” he says. “Gave me work. Gave me purpose. Gave me her body, if only for a while.”

  You shudder and wonder at the thought. He glances at you with a nonchalance that you wish you felt.

  “Ah, but chérie, it does not mean anything to her, desire. She sates her appetite only for an evening. You may feed her body, but her heart…her heart is hungry for only one.”

  “Evangeline!” you gasp, as understanding dawns. He nods.

  “You and I are but pawns in their game. But it matters not to me. I have lived all my life on the outskirts of society, with nothing to do except be a hired thug for those who can pay. I do not expect much out of life.”

  At this he stands and walks to the entrance of the tent. The desert wind tosses his dark locks around his face like waves in an ebony sea. His mostly unbuttoned shirt clings barely to the muscular body it struggles to contain.

  “I have a contempt for society and all of its rules. In a strange way, it is freedom. You understand?” he says, still not looking at you.

  Because he is distracted, you realize that now is the perfect time to escape from whatever Delphine has planned for you. You look around wildly to see what you have to work with. Wine, a dish of flatbread and fuul, a few promising-looking rocks…and a man so beautiful, it takes your breath away.

  Time to make your plan.

  Are you a lover, not a fighter? Does seducing your way out of this scrape, and getting your jollies
while doing so, sound appealing? If so, turn to this page, you hussy, you.

  Are you a fighter, not a lover? Does seducing your captor sound a bit too dicey, and would you rather solve this issue using a sharp rock and violence? If so, turn to this page.

  You find yourself wondering what it would be like to be entertained by such tempting wickedness and such pleasing physicality.

  “I don’t know what to say, Cad,” you whisper.

  “You know exactly what to say!” He grips your shoulders. “If you use your body to do the talking, instead of your blasted mind. Your body knows we are meant to be. Once I knew I wanted you for a moment…but now I know I need you for all time!”

  “Well, I don’t know if I need you for all time, for one forbidden evening, or absolutely not at all!”

  “I am not my brother. Your wit works less wonders on me than the wonders on display here.” He presses you into a kiss, and to punctuate his desire, he literally rips your bodice.

  “Get your filthy hands off her, you odious piece of bodice-ripping trash.” Benedict’s sharp, superior voice cuts through the night.

  “Oh, Benny. What a spoilsport.” Cad winks at you, then turns to Benedict, who is glowering at him from the shrubbery. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you, brother, that it’s polite to share your toys?”

  An exquisite moment passes in which the men regard each other with unspeakable disgust and you with immeasurable desire. You shake your head breathlessly and watch as the two brothers—one light, one dark, yet perfectly matched—tear at each other with handsome hands, hungry for vengeance. Cad lands several slugs to Benedict’s stomach, which Benedict returns with a deft punch to Cad’s jaw.