by Louisa Trent
His breathing quickened, but he stoically bore up under her curiosity as she licked the bubbling top, much as she had licked his lips. But when she lowered her mouth over the bulbous crown, he shouted.
“Enough!”
“Enough? But I have done nothing yet.” The bubbling top of his penis transfixed her.
He yanked her onto his lap again. “How far do you intend to take this? And answering my question with another question will not throw me off track.”
“What will throw you off track?” she asked and wiggled her bottom some more.
He shifted in his chair. “Imp! Sit still. Burn a bridge tonight, and you will find no way back on the morrow.”
The plight of miners was no secret. As long as cheap coal resulted from their toil, society looked the other way. Sean Griffith was certainly a neglectful mine owner, but he was not the only one.
Just the only one she could coerce into doing the right thing.
What matter if there was a way back over a bridge if she had no home to return to upon arriving at the other side?
He held her away from him, his steady gaze fixed on her. “How old are you?”
When oh when would he stop quizzing her and resume the ravishment?
Hoping to speed him on, she said, “Eighteen.”
He shook his head. “A babe in the cradle, and too young for me. I could be your father.”
Her feathers ruffled, she stoutly declared, “No comparison there. What is more, I am plenty old enough to know my own mind. I know women who are mothers twice over at my age.”
“Are you saying you have experience?”
Of course, she had experience. A wealth of experience. All derived from books, many of which were the great classics. There was no finer education to be had than the one a reader received from the printed page. Why, she had scaled mountain peaks, fought in wars, sailed the seven seas, fallen in love countless times, with kings and pirates and cowboys. Her experience was not limited to her narrow circumstance in a Pittsburgh mining town. In terms of the breadth of her knowledge, she could more than match his.
But why debate the merits of her argument when he could be ravishing her?
“Without experience,” he said sternly, “this is wrong.”
What! An amoral robber baron lecturing her on right and wrong?
Yes, she wanted him to acquire a conscience. But not now, for goodness sake. Not now!
“How can this be anything but right?” she replied and hushed any further objection he might have with another kiss, an urgent one to silence any lingering reservations.
When he unlocked his mouth from hers, she squirmed. How cruel to leave her empty like this, bereft like this. A harsh urgency wrenched up within her hidden core and clawed for release. “Please?”
Everything, including her plan to extort him, left her thoughts. Only want, only need, remained.
She bunched her hands into his frock coat. “Please? Oh, please, please, please. I hurt so.”
Chapter Seven
“Where?” Sean Griffith asked her. “Where do you hurt?”
Did he expect a laundry list?
Tegan started with one place, the easiest one to say. “M-my bosom.”
He squeezed an achy breast.
A thousand pinpoints of awareness prickled inside her. Her head fallen back, her jaw hiked high, she swallowed repeatedly as her body took charge of her mind. An unknown destiny yawned before her, and she arched her back, purely instinctively, greedily sending the pointed tip of her other breast into his waiting palm. When he stroked both thumbs across her tight nipples, she writhed, primitive forces inside her breaking free of a lifetime of captivity.
Good heavens! If she reacted this wantonly now, with layers of clothing between them, what would happen if nothing separated his flesh from hers?
Drat! If this kept up, she would never get the chance to find out. His hands dropped from her body.
“Your uninhibited nature delights me,” he muttered. “But we must stop. This is wrong.”
There he went again. “No! Nothing that feels this good can be wrong.”
Oh God, he could not abandon her now, not when she hung on the precipice.
Of what?
She knew the facts of life. Most of them. The rudiments, anyway. Where babies came from at least. The same kindly physician who explained her monthlies were not symptomatic of a fatal disease had also been kind enough to explain that, like a farmer plants a seed in the soil to grow a turnip, so too does a husband plant a seed inside his wife’s belly to grow a baby.
Fine and dandy. But while agricultural journals that explained sowing techniques could be had everywhere, no marriage journals existed anywhere to explain coupling techniques. Heaven only knew, she had searched for them.
Beneath the spread of her skirts, hard, masculine flesh jutted at the necessary slit in her drawers, nudging the soft hollow of her feminine body as if for admittance.
Clunk. A missing piece of the doctor’s lecture fell into place.
A small push tested her theory.
Aha. At first blush, the premise did appear plausible.
She pushed again, eager to prove her hypothesis.
He moaned. “Are you sure?”
She nodded her answer.
Breathing raggedly, he wrapped his arms around her hips. His hands clenched—good heavens—her bottom.
Finally, her ravishment had begun.
“More!” she ordered in his ear.
“Come up.”
Apparently, he knew how to proceed. That made exactly one of them. But, as practice trumps hypothesis, why argue?
She raised her hips.
He found the necessary slit in her drawers and slipped a hand inside. “You appear to be ready.” He grinned widely. “More than ready.”
She had done that to him. His earsplitting smile. His boastfulness. His cock-strutting air.
Pride filled her.
His finger did too. First one, then two, then three. His thumb moved back and forth.
Goodness, but she was sensitive there. And sooooo slick. Who knew a man who rubbed her the wrong way about everything else could absolutely rub her the right way where and when it counted?
Bucking and squealing, she grabbed his shoulders and held on tight, faint ripples of pleasure cresting to rapture of tidal-wave proportions. “Oh-oh-oh,” she cried, then sobbed, then screamed.
Wet anticipation had readied her. Numbing pleasure had tantalized her. But when he withdrew his hand from her body’s clasp and replaced it with his masculine presence, she gasped at the introduction.
He said, voice wary, “You said you understood.”
“I do. Now.” To lessen the growing pressure, she changed positions.
“You said you possessed experience.”
“I do. Now.” Nothing she tried to do lessened the pressure inside her. Since there was not a blessed thing wrong with her, the problem had to lie with him.
“Do not move.” He gritted his teeth. “We can still undo this. We can still talk.” He rasped, as if in pain. “The bridge is not burned yet.”
Oh, to Hades and back with half measures! And with his bridge analogies too!
With an upward rise and a downward plunge, she set the damn bridge afire.
Tears welled in her eyes. She sniffed them back. Why cry? She was getting exactly what she wished—extortion to remedy the plight of miners. There was absolutely no reason to cry.
But when he kissed her lips and whispered, “Sorry, so sorry, darling,” she very nearly did cry then.
“Do what you will with me,” he said thickly, holding perfectly still. “Take as much or as little as you desire. For as long as you desire.”
Desire. Is that what she felt?
No. No. Desire was sweet. Desire kindled with love. She detested the robber baron. He had caused her and others nothing but heartache. What she felt was vindication. Jubilation that results from righting a wrong.
He thumbed
the teardrop on her face. “To avoid conception, I promise to withdraw at the end.”
“No need.” The hurt receded, and she moved experimentally. “Only husbands can plant turnips.”
“Turnips?”
Perhaps that came out wrong, but long past caring, she came up, went down. Fits and starts, with some rough bumps along the way from her, and the sweetest of kisses, then the hottest of caresses, from the man she rode. Impulse guiding the motions, nothing guiding her emotions, she gave herself over to him.
She tightened around him, holding him as close as she could, as his shaft swelled.
Please let this wonder last forever.
But nothing lasts forever, neither this night, nor the way he held her, as though she were precious to him. And perhaps that lack of permanence might be construed as a positive too, for the same something that overcame her when she touched herself between the legs began to happen inside her again.
Alas, when he gave a hoarse shout, the sensation faded before it took hold. Already, he was yanking free of her.
He convulsed, as if taken with a seizure, and then exploded into a handkerchief taken from his pocket.
Afterward, he picked her up in his arms. “To bed, my darling. Regrettably, your pleasure will need to wait for next time.”
In avoidance of his open expression, she closed her eyes.
There would be no next time, she thought drowsily, sleep overtaking her. She had her ammunition for extortion, and when dawn broke, she would be gone.
Chapter Eight
Not yet dawn, and wind-driven rain lashed Sean Griffith from all sides. Whipped his face. Cut great wet stripes across his bent body. Threatened to thrash him to the ground. Like the dirty street scrapper he had once been, like the trained prizefighter he had grown into, he kept his chin down and tucked under, nature’s sharp force meeting his blunt determination, battling for every step he took against the howling storm.
He picked up a foot, forced his boot back down. Advanced a yard. Slogged a few more. Muddy puddles inched up his ankles. The dam on the upper end of his property must have broken under the pressure of the rising water table, the released reservoir threatening to submerge his front yard under feet of river silt and debris. Just like the dam, he would break too if he failed to find her.
In prizefighting, as in business, as in every avenue of his life, he never let opponents get close enough to clip his iron jaw.
Until her.
Last night, Tegan Ellis had gotten to him, had sneaked under his guards and sent him bouncing to the mat. This morning, upon finding her side of the bed empty, he had descended into madness. And there he would remain, a crazed man, until he found her.
She had been his responsibility. He had been the magnet that brought her to Griffith House. And rather than talking with her, finding out what was on her mind, what she wanted from him, he had taken what he wanted from her.
He had fucked an innocent virgin. And now the duty to find her and right the situation fell to him.
Where was she?
She could not have gotten far, not in the storm. And she had not been gone overly long. Her side of the bed was still warm when he awakened and found her missing.
Rain streamed down his face. His visibility was damned near nil. When another raging spate of wind slashed him, he hunched his shoulders under his greatcoat. The attached cape blew up, the drenched wool slapping the back of his skull as he forged ahead.
He had to get to her.
A wrought-iron front gate closed off his fifty-acre property from the rest of the immediate world. And that was the way he wanted it. The untamed estate, part country retreat, part gentleman’s farm, answered his requirement for absolute privacy.
As of last night, his priorities had realigned. The seclusion he had once insisted upon now thwarted his efforts to get to her.
In ordinary circumstances, the trip from granite front steps to carriage house took no time at all. His plodding journey had lasted too long, the distance he covered no distance at all.
Where was she? How far could she have gone?
He pushed on, his sights on the tallest evergreens flanking the drive. The line of spruce served as his guidepost against straying off course. Wandering off the winding route into the abutting grazing fields would eat up precious time.
And then he saw them. Footprints in the soupy mud, shallow imprints barely holding their form, indentations fighting against obliteration.
Rain pelting him, he followed them to her.
No more than a slender shape, hardly recognizable as a woman, she lay facedown in the muck like a bundle of dirty scraps of cloth waiting for the ragman.
Then he saw the fallen tree branch on the opposite side of her body.
The old wood, devoid of summer leaves, had broken off a nearby oak, the very end pinning her in place. Thank God, the angle of the branch’s fall combined with the cushioning of the heavy coat she wore had more than likely protected her against breaking any bones.
He threw the negligible weight off her upper left leg and dropped down to the ground next to her.
He turned her over.
Christ, her face. Deathly pale. The rosy lips he had kissed the night before tinged with blue now.
But she was alive. Her chest rose and fell. She breathed. Not a fragile gasping for air either, but a sure and measured normal breathing. He was no physician, to be sure, but from his prizefighting days, he had learned a thing or two about injuries. For her to make a full recovery, he only had to get her warm and dry. And back home. Before she sickened.
“Can you hear me?” A shout into her ear.
No answer.
“I have you,” he said inanely. “I promise, you will live.”
Despite her probable wish to die.
Why else leave a dry bed during a storm other than a wish to end it all?
She had arrived at his front door a young and innocent miss, and within a scant hour of that arrival, she had lost her virginity. Shame had driven her out into hurricane-force winds. Girls her age were so damnably melodramatic.
He stripped off his wool coat, rolled her up into its dry warmth. With her slight figure bundled against his chest, he began the return walk up the muddy drive to the house.
En route, the winds quieted, then stopped altogether. The rains slowed, then ceased entirely. An eerie silence took hold as he crossed the threshold into his front hall. “Is there a maid about?” he asked a soot-covered lad, obviously the servant in charge of the fireplaces and stove.
The youthful footman jerked a bow, his gaze on the woman in his arms. “There is the housekeeper, sir. On account of putting breakfast on the table, she is first to rise. The rest of the live-ins wait for cockcrow.”
Sean frowned. Which one again was the housekeeper?
He never could remember. A smoothly run household required a large domestic staff. The servants, some day help, some not, did what servants normally do and, for the most part, left him the hell alone. An enormous salary guaranteed their discretion. Loose tongues earned immediate dismissal. He rewarded loyalty well and punished anyone who crossed him better. Those were the terms of their employ.
Sean stared the footman down. “Is this housekeeper clean of person?”
“Fair enough clean so no chimney sweep would notice otherwise.”
“Responsible in the position she holds?”
“As far as I know, her cooking has yet to kill anyone, sir.”
A questionable recommendation. He would not trust his darling with just anyone.
Exasperated, Sean tried once again to learn something, anything, about the character of his employee. “Is she a mother?”
“Five times over and has yet to settle on a husband. Picky that way, I reckon. The ‘missus’ is an honorary title owing to her position in this household.”
Sean grimaced in exasperation. Unless he broke with all sorts of ridiculous rules about propriety and tended to Tegan himself, the housekeeper would have to do.
“Send her to the guest accommodations next to my suite.” He paused before turning. “By the way—what is the housekeeper’s name?”
“Mrs. Birch, sir.”
He nodded. “And yours, lad?”
“Tim, sir.”
“Thank you, Tim.” That said, Sean rushed away.
Inside the guest room, he placed an unmoving Tegan on the bed. After removing both their coats, he probed her from head to toe. Just as he had suspected, he could find no broken bones. Thank God, the branch had landed across her upper leg, and not higher, where a head injury might have resulted.
“Damnation!” he exploded. Where was Mrs. Birch?
Tegan seemed well enough now, but a delay in getting her dry and warm could invite illness.
Refusing to wait on propriety, Sean began undressing her himself. It was not as though he had never seen a naked female before, or that he had not already decided to do the right thing by the miss. This was all his fault, and he would own up to his culpability as soon as she awakened.
Without feeling anything but a tremendous sense of relief, he stripped off her sodden outer clothes and then tackled her remaining underthings.
The crimson flecks on her drawers gave him pause.
His fault. All of this was his own blasted fault. He should never have fucked her. She was a luscious morsel, but he’d had plenty of those in his past, all to a one just as willing, just as pert and pretty.
Not one as ballsy. And he numbered prostitutes there. Where did an innocent country girl like her come by her fierce courage? To travel all the way from Pittsburgh to New York, all by herself, thinking to confront him in his own residence—the chit had a hell of a nerve, he would give her that.
Shaking his head at her spiritedness, he covered her—except for her feet, which he chafed. He moved his hands up her legs. Shapely legs with a nicely turned ankle. That done, he began rubbing her hands, palms made sore and red with chilblain.
She never roused from her deep sleep.
Outside, footsteps trudged along the hall.
Mrs. Birch had arrived.
He went to the door, blocking the room’s interior from her view. “Bring towels, soap, and pitchers of warm water. Place them on the floor outside.”