"Radford!" she cried. Yet, in the end she could not be sure that she'd seen Radford alive at all. Then, in the next second Jake pushed her belly down over his thighs with the racing horse loping beneath him. The motion of Jake's horse trying to gallop through the uneven brush-filled forest, stole any struggles that she could mount. She was left with just desperately trying to breathe, as jolts of pain attacked her from every direction, because of the unnatural riding position she was in.
Sometime later, Nia could do nothing but whimper as Jake finally halted his horses careening run. She felt Jake grasping the back of her shirt, lifting her upward by it alone. But the worn out man's shirt that she had on was not strong enough to hold her body's weight. The shirt tore open down the front, even as Jake was shoving her off the side of his horse. The fall buckled her nearly numb legs as she collided with the ground, landing on her knees with her upper body tumbling partially forward. Her hat was long gone and the coppery-red tresses of her wind-tangled hair fell wildly around her.
"They will hang me! Damn you. You red-headed bitch! I was set to just wing him without your bloody interference. And now Nat's gone too!"
Nia could hear the overheated horse snorting with great gulps of air from its long ride as the stallion's large hooves shifted in front of her. She could tell by the hide of the saddle creaking and the shift of the stallion's hooves that Jake was dismounting. She tried to gather her thoughts or even her voice, yet all she could do was to gasp, bowled over toward the ground.
The crunch of Jake's boots in the brush neared, and she managed to pant, "Not dead." But the effort was merely a whimper of sound.
"What's that, Red?" Jake asked with an angry shout. "Damn you'll pay for this! Yer to stand by yer thiefin' chums! Not shoot them in the fucking arm!"
Nia managed to peer upward through the skeins of hair fallen over her face and she saw Jake tying a bandanna around the wound on his arm, using one hand and his teeth. There was little blood and she knew the wound had to be only a glancing scratch. The turn of events was alarming and they were just now occurring to her rattled mind. However, her mind was barely grasping and her body was feeble, when Jake reached down and grabbed her by the arms, wrenching her onto her feet in front of him.
"When I go to Newgate, you'll be going with me!"
Jake shook her angrily, as she gasped, "I saw him alive."
"I saw him dead!" Jake shouted, shaking her so hard that her teeth clicked together sharply as she clawed at his chest trying to push him away. But the effort was useless, and she could not. "And now, Red, yer goin' to show me how sorry ye are ye shot yer thievin' chum!"
"He is not dead and you will never get paid!" Nia cried as Jake grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head with one hand and he began tearing her shirt off with the other. His first grab tore the shirt off her left shoulder and her arm, then his second digging grab got the right side of her shirt and the chemise beneath. Nia screamed in fearful protest as her breasts were bared to Jake's lecherous gaze, while she tried to stop him with her nails scraping his wrists.
"Ow, damn you!" He bellowed as he hauled her bodily around by her hair, making her yelp at the sharp pain on her scalp. Then, suddenly her bare back hit the side of Jake's horse. The force Jake used, bowed her spine backward over the stallion's sweaty side. "Whoa, boy!" Jake exclaimed to the skittering horse as he snatched both of her wrists into his hands and jerked them upward, forcing them over her head. Nia cried out as her spine bent further over the rounded side of the anxiously shifting stallion. Horsehair abraded her tender flesh as she tried the only defense left to her and she kicked one booted foot outward, but she was only able to hit Jake's shin.
He merely grunted, as she cried, "Let me go, you pig!"
It was then Nia felt Jake lashing her wrists to the saddle with part of the reins, effectively imprisoning her up on her toes against the side of the stallion. She was stunned and panting at events happening so quickly out of her control. He meant to rape her, suddenly flashed through her mind as tears filled her eyes and she tried frantically to think of some way to stop him.
"Now," Jake said, with great huffs of exertion, as he stepped backward a pace to view her hung helplessly from the saddle of his horse. His gaze was bright and lustful and his eyes were centered on her naked breasts, lifted high in an unnatural position.
She moaned with feelings of defenseless vulnerability shuddering through her body, as she lied desperately, "He is my father! The man that paid you is my father and he will pay you a fortune if you let me go now and take me to him!"
"Bull!" Jake spat. "T'was a butler what paid me and promised me more, and it weren't no gentleman that sent him. Now shut up or I'll start smacking you each time if you don't!" Then Jake's hands were at the waistband of her britches tugging harshly downward and ripping the material with his force.
"No! Please, no!" Nia cried out.
She thrashed her legs trying to deter Jake, but the tips of her toes barely touched the ground and she could not get purchase against Jake renting the britches off her hips and legs, until she was entirely nude except for her riding boots. She cried then, terrified and humiliated as Jake even pulled off her riding boots and short stockings. Then, he stood back once more and she moaned again as he leered at her complete nudity. Even Jake's gaze made her skin crawl. How could she ever survive him touching her? Then the thought that she was a novice whore rose in her mind suddenly, making her laugh hysterically as she twisted her wrists against the leather reins binding them. She was not that much of a whore! She did not want him to touch her, ever! Oh God.
"You like it," Jake declared.
He must mean her shrill laughter, Nia thought crazily, as he stepped forward and put one of his rough hands between her thighs. She screamed, crying openly now, even thrashing against the stallion, hoping to get the horse to gallop away, because as bodily dangerous as that was, it was preferable to Jake touching her. Raping her.
"Whoa!" Jake exclaimed to the horse as he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head to the side, shouting, "Quit that bloody screaming!" He jerked her head again, but still she screamed and his horrible hand that was stuffed between her thighs and groping her bare pussy, suddenly became a clamp squeezing tight. Her screaming stopped, as she cried out in pain.
"You want more?" he demanded, shaking her by his hand squeezed over her mound.
"No!" she squealed with pain, and defeat. His hand loosened and returned to its crude invasive groping with his fingers prodding near the entrance to her dry cringing sheath. "Please, no! Please no!" she begged him, left with nothing but to plead as she tried to squirm her body away.
"Aw, come along, Red, you'll like my big cod poked inside ya! I'll give ya a hard ride!"
"A short ride I'm afraid. Bastard!" The cultured male voice came out of nowhere.
Nia barely heard the voice as Jake exclaimed and she heard a crack and thumping sound. Something around the stallion jerked and it started to prance forward dragging her with it. She clenched her eyes with tears splashing out against the harsh tugging on her wrists and the scraping of her toes. She could not stop crying.
"Whoa up there, boy! Whoa."
It was Radford! When Nia realized that it was Radford's voice, she started truly bawling. Great gulps of it that she could not stop.
Chapter Nine
"Damnation!" Radford cussed, trying to still the horse that Nia hung so naked and powerless from. He cursed himself for not finding her sooner and he damned all bad men terrorizing and harming any woman. He could not say that there was a time in his life that he'd felt more helpless. Frightened and bawling women, was certainly not his forte. The vulnerability of Nia's stark nudity stirred his compassion deeply, and seeing the ruffian, now lying unconscious at his feet, grope her, and so abusively, made him furious.
He was not certain that Nia understood that he was with her now or that she was saved as he steadied the horse and reached upward to unwind the reins binding her wrists. "Hush, ch
erie," he soothed, unable to conjure up anything more brilliantly comforting. The welts left from the reins around Nia's wrists drew his lips back in further anger.
"R-Radford," she sobbed with a frightened and questioning sound that tore at his feeling.
"You are safe with me, cherie," he muttered through his constricted throat. Then, she was free and he reached to catch her, before she fell to the ground on weakened legs.
"Oh," she sobbed. Then, she gasped as he lifted her up into his arms with one arm under her thighs and one at her back. Her eyes were still clenched with great watery tears dampening the thief's mask she wore. The softness of her naked body shuddered in his arms.
"Put your arms around me, cherie," he compelled gruffly, however she appeared incapable of anything more than a stiff-bodied posture as her weeping with hiccups now combined, continued on. "Sweetheart." His chest constricted on his own impotent plea of compassion and he strengthened his embrace around her. He was overturned emotionally and he stumbled to the base of a large oak tree, where he ungracefully lowered to the ground to sit with his back to the tree and Nia cradled in his lap.
He used gentle but firm hands to tug Nia's stiff body into his encompassing embrace. First the side of her waist and hip, hitched to his belly, then the pressure of his hand carefully forcing her upper body to unbend and lean against his chest. With the same hand he caught the side of her head and pressed slowly, until she yielded it with a tense tremor to rest on his shoulder. He took the open edges of his jacket and pulled them as far as he could, to wrap around her tightly as his cheek came to rest on her feverish temple.
"Tell me what to do," he murmured tightly, swaying his body slightly and hugging her with small embraces over and over as she wept against the side of his neck.
In the end, he began to realize that time was the beginning of the cure. She needed the time to sob her fear out and wash away the terrorized abuse. He could only hold her and with his solid presence alone to assure her of her safety. The question as to whether she could be a spy of some sort or not was still unresolved, yet certainly one step closer to the, "nay," category. However, in the issue about possible nefarious intentions of waylaying his coach, that had been solved clearly in his mind.
So clearly, that if it was not for Nia's ravished state of being, he would himself, take the too brazen, too eccentric, and too foolish a lady over his knee for a lesson bearing spanking about her outrageous antics. She was completely and likely a madcap original, but the events had proven that she was not an assassin or a kidnapper.
He still might spank her, he thought somewhat angrily, so she could not sit down properly for a week. Of course, after she was recovered. Who would ever think of such an extravagant way to entice a man? Someone's outrageously creative, he thought immediately, yet someone naive in the risks. She had nearly gotten him shot more seriously than just the graze to his temple, and she too had nearly gotten herself ravished.
He discovered that when holding a hysterically sobbing woman in his arms, it helped his continued manly bearing from collapsing, if he contemplated deeply the spanking of his lady's lovely bottom. Distraction was the key. Until . . . well. Until she melted into you, throwing her arms around you finally, and hiccupping your name in gratitude for saving her. Yes . . . then he forgot all about spanking. For the moment.
Feelings of safety and the comfort of warm strength were all that Nia could command in the way of semi-coherent thoughts as her tear-stained lips nuzzled the side of Radford's neck. She was limp and flexible after the torrential venting of her emotions. To be so afraid one moment, and then to wake from the nightmare into the embrace of rescue and safety, was deliverance. Gratitude and relief beyond measure for her rescue filled the crying aftereffects of her numbness. She hiccupped against Radford's throat and he buried his fingers deeper into her hair with his fingers beginning to gently stroke her scalp on the back of her head. She wanted to crawl inside him. She wanted to be him, to be a man with the inherent strength that came with that.
She murmured his name then, with her lips brushing and catching gently on his warm flesh. She was so silly. How could she ever want to be anything but a woman in Radford's arms, and then she realized that her coherent thoughts were returning. They were idle and drifting thoughts, yet comprehensible.
She barely knew Radford, and she wondered how she could feel so close to him, so much a part of him, or perhaps it was so much in tuned with him. Yet, somehow, in some way, an inner part of her sensed the pieces fitting together exactly as they were meant to be. She completely believed in fate. The abundance of bursting creativity inside her desperately needed its faithful existence. And if ever it was just an extraordinary coincidence of events that transpired around her, she would never admit it, yet she would compel those occurrences into the region that had to be fate.
Like now. Exactly like how she and Radford had been fatefully thrown together. And that is why it felt so natural. Because it was meant to be for this moment. One fateful moment might lead to two or three, but what mattered was this fateful moment. A moment that was completely outside her manipulations and planning. It was wholly unrehearsed or coerced, and she realized that she had the deep assurance inside her that Radford was acting out of natural occurrence now and not her manipulations.
She was surprised how much that affected her and how much that she craved it. She also was so grateful that he was intelligent enough to realize that her silly ploy had gone so wrong and she was endangered because of it. Or perhaps, he had simply been furiously following her to extract his angry reprisal from her? Yet, his honor had leaped forth, no matter which impetus, and when he'd seen her in danger, he had saved her. No one had ever stood stronger for her before
"Better, sweetheart?" Radford's voice was low and concerned, and the heat of his breath lightly lifted tangles of her hair falling about them.
Nia sniffed loudly, nodding against the crook of his neck. She felt his lean muscular body shifting slightly, then his hand lifted up with a white linen handkerchief. She uncurled one arm from its fetal position in front of her and grasped the handkerchief.
"T-Thank you," she mumbled with her voice cracking. She felt rather than saw his small smile as she brought the handkerchief to her nose. It was then she realized that she still had her mask on. It was askew, but still covered her upper face, except for her eyes. However, its crooked position hindered her from blowing her nose, so she reached to adjust it.
Radford's hand brushed her hand with the same movement. "Let's remove this, Nia. It will be easier for you."
"No, I..." she exclaimed softly, pressing his hand to stop him from removing it. But of course she could not have stopped him, if he had not halted. He looked intensely at her, deeply into her eyes, but without visible emotion. "I cannot," she exclaimed with heartfelt dismay.
Radford's depth-filled gaze continued for a long moment, before he sighed, relaxing some of the tension she could feel in his body, as he murmured, "As you wish, cherie." He lifted his hand and then he cupped her cheek gently with his thumb rising to brush her bottom lip slowly. He gazed at her thoughtfully now. "I do not want you to be afraid. Not of me, cherie."
If she had any tears left, they would have welled into her eyes again as her features formed a stricken appearance. "I am not afraid of you, Radford." Her words insisted this on the texture of his thumb stroking her so intimately. He was so handsome with his eye patch, shadowed jaw, and one clear crystal blue eye, whose gaze entranced her. A handsome rogue.
Her arms were around his strong square shoulders. They were so close to each other she could feel his lean muscular body everywhere. His forearm was bare that lifted his thumb to soothe her lips and chin lightly. The cuff of his shirt had been ripped somehow in the scuffles. The movement of his arms shifted as he reached to brush his thumb over her cheek and suddenly his forearm rubbed over the tip of her nipple. She gasped softly at the surprise twinge of pleasure, as they naturally both looked downward.
Nia
saw her nipple peak immediately like a small lengthening post with a tightening rosy bead on the very tip. That taunt little bead pressed boldly into the flesh of Radford's forearm. Immediately, she felt Radford's cock slowly beginning to stiffen against her bottom. His hand was moving from her cheek to her shoulder, where it caressed her, then stiffened, then it stilled. "I need to get you out of here," he said suddenly.
The import of his words instantly seized her, even as she was responding with an emotionally charged impulse. If she had been further away from Radford, it would have been a leap, yet as close as they were, it was frantic snatching. Her arms reached further around him as the front of her upper body turned more closely into his chest. She cried his name with soft urgency. If they were to leave now, everything would change and her delicate balance could not sustain that. To her it felt as though she might lose him, if she were to let him lift her and carry her away. The need inside her was not logical, but pure. It was born out of her gratefulness that he had saved her, out of her deep attraction for him, and out of her urgent feminine desires that held no rationality. The desperate sound of Radford's name leaving her lips reverberated in the small heated space between them, just before her lips touched his lips seeking a frantic kiss.
Chapter Ten
"Nia."
Radford tangled his fingers into Nia's hair, reacting with an unthinking male instinct as he pressed the back of her head to pressure her wild kisses beneath his lips. She tasted of woman, hot and sexual, ripened with fertile needs. She was wicked honey, naughty and full-bodied. His lips caught her impetuous need and together they formed abandon. Kissing fast and uninhibited. He fed on her mouth and she fed on his, while their bodies responded without restraint. Nia's so exuberantly that she undulated against him with a clear chorus of desire.
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