Captain Jack’s Woman / A Gentleman's Honor

by Stephanie Laurens

  Luckily for her peace of mind, recollection of Lord Hendon, that unattained object of her daringly scandalous escapade, rekindled her ire. Her brilliantly conceived and faultlessly executed plan to gain firsthand knowledge of his elusive lordship was ending in ignominious retreat, before her quarry had even been sighted. The thought lowered Kit’s spirits dramatically. For a full mile, she sat engulfed in a mood perilously close to a petulant sulk.

  Jack was taking her home. Gratitude was not the predominant emotion coursing through her veins. What right had he to interfere?

  Abruptly, Kit sat bolt upright. No matter what rationale he gave, Jack had no right to meddle in her affairs. Yet here she was, being taken home like a wayward child who’d been caught watching the adults at play. And she’d let him! What was the matter with her? She’d never let anyone, even Spencer, treat her with such high-handedness.

  “You really are an arrogant swine!” she exclaimed.

  Jerked from salacious dreams, Jack didn’t trust his ears. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You heard me. If you had any real concern for my welfare, you’d turn Delia around this instant and take me back to the ball. Only now it’s too late,” Kit ended lamely. “There won’t be enough time before the unmasking.”

  “Time for what?” Jack was puzzled. If she hadn’t gone to the ball for a lark, what possible reason could she have?

  “I wanted to meet someone-to see what he’s like-but you kidnapped me before I got the chance!”

  The aggrieved note in Kit’s voice was genuine enough to touch a chord of sympathy. And awaken Jack’s curiosity.

  “You were waiting for a man? Who?”

  Beneath her breath, Kit swore. Damn! How had that slipped out?

  Despite her surge of temper-assisted courage, Kit hadn’t lost her wits. “Never mind-no one you’d know.”

  “Try me.”

  Kit’s senses pricked. Jack’s deep voice was rapidly developing that tone of command she found particularly difficult to resist. “I assure you he’s someone with whom you’re definitely not on a first-name basis.”

  Jack’s attention had focused dramatically. What man had Kit been waiting for and, more importantly, why? What reason could a woman of her ilk have for looking over a man incognito? The answer was so glaringly obvious that Jack wondered why he hadn’t thought of it the instant he’d laid eyes on her in the ballroom. Kit, more than twenty if experience was any guide, had recently returned from London, where doubtless her life had been rather fuller. Particularly with respect to male company. She had no lover at present-a fact he’d bet his entire estate on-and was on the lookout for a local candidate. Obviously, she had someone in mind. Someone other than himself.

  Then her preoccupation in the shrubbery flooded his mind with a radiant light. “You were waiting for Lord Hendon.”

  At the bald statement, Kit pulled a horrendous face. “What if I was? It’s no concern of yours.”

  Hysterical laughter bubbled behind Jack’s lips; manfully, he swallowed it. Christ-this mission was descending into farce! Should he tell her? What if she didn’t believe him? A strong possibility, he had to admit, and one he couldn’t readily overcome.Convincing her might jeopardize his mission. Telling her might jeopardize his mission. Hell! He was going to have to convince her he was a better lover than his reputation made him out to be.

  A sudden vision of what his fate might have been, if he hadn’t been previously acquainted with Kit and had remained at the ball, threatened his composure. Reappearing in North Norfolk as himself looked set to be even more dangerous than assuming the guise of a smugglers’ leader. The local ladies were stalking him with a venegance-on both sides of the blanket. He could have ended with Kit as his mistress and Lady Marchmont’s drab protégé as a wife!

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. There was every possibility that scenario would still come to pass, but it would be on his terms, not theirs.

  A disgusted snort brought his attention back to the slight figure before him. He felt the warmth radiating from her body, separated from his by a handbreadth. Only by exercising the most severe discipline had he resisted the temptation to pull her back against him, curving her body into his.

  “Thanks to you, I’ll probably never get another chance!” Disgruntled, Kit shifted and immediately remembered what was pressing against her back. Her temper overcame her maidenly reticence. “Damn it! Can’t you stop that? Make it go away or something?”

  She twisted about to try and get a look at the offending article. Jack’s hands clamped about her shoulders and forcibly restrained her.

  There was a distinct edge to his words. “There is a way to make it go away. If you don’t sit still, you’ll be providing it.”

  The raw desire in his voice petrified Kit into abject obedience. Inwardly, she railed. What was it about Jack that gave him this strange power over her? Not even the most ardent of London’s rakes had made her feel like mesmerized prey about to be devoured, inch by slow inch. Her skin was alive, nerve endings flickering in fevered anticipation. He was her predator; every time he threatened, she froze. As if immobility could protect her from his strike! Her instinctive response was so illogical, she’d have laughed if she could have eased the knots in her stomach long enough to do so.

  Jack stared at the back of Kit’s wig, his frown only partly due to physical discomfort. He could hardly miss the effect his words had had-Kit sat as rigid as a poker, all her alluring warmth gone, an icily disapproving aura cloaking her slender frame. Inwardly, he swore. He wished she’d stop vacillating-first hot, then cold; steamy one minute, frigid the next. Every time he alluded to their inevitable intimacy, she pokered up. Maidenly virtue was certainly not the cause. Which left the irritating conclusion that her strange behavior was her idea of playing vixenish games.

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “A word of advice-if you wish to secure Lord Hendon as your protector”-what a joke-she was going to have him as her protector regardless-“you’d be better served by curbing your hoity ways, dropping your manipulative playacting and relying on your beaux yeux to take the trick.”

  Kit’s jaw dropped.

  It wasn’t the shock of why he thought she was interested in Lord Hendon that held her in raging silence-after her initial surprise that struck her as exquisitely funny. But that he had the nerve to suggest the effect he had on her was assumed, presumably to attract him, to suggest that she was manipulative, sent her temper into orbit. Her larynx seized; her ringers curled into claws. She’d seen manipulative females aplenty in London-tizzy, dim-witted women with more hair than wit. And she’d laughed over their theatrical and frequently transparent antics with her cousins. To be classed with their kind was the lowest form of insult.

  “My manipulative propensities?” she inquired silkily, as soon as she’d regained control of her voice. Her tone would have sent Spencer for the brandy, but Jack had yet to experience her temper unleashed. “That, my good man, is certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”

  My good man? Jack’s scowl was as black as the night sky. “What the devil do you mean by that?” Had he said hoity? The damned woman ought to be on the stage. Now she was pulling rank on him like a bloody duchess!

  To Kit’s ears, Jack’s growl was pure music. She was spoiling for an argument with him, infuriatingly arrogant oaf that he was. “I mean,” she said, enunciating carefully, “it hasn’t escaped my notice that anytime I’m in danger of winning a point, you wield that…that thing between your legs like a bloody sword of Damocles!”

  Jack choked. “Winning points? Is that what you call your little exhibition on the yacht the other night?”

  Kit shrugged. “That was just curiosity.”

  “Curiosity!” Jack hauled on the reins and brought Delia to a halt. “When you’d been waggling your tail at me for weeks?”

  “Oh!” Kit shifted about to half face him, “I only did that because you were acting like a solid lump of cold stone. And you call me manipulative? Huh!”

/>   Jack had had enough. How could he argue when all she had to do to demolish his arguments was wiggle her hips? He swung his leg over Delia’s neck, taking Kit’s along with it. Together, they slid to the ground.

  Kit shook off his restraining hand and rounded on him. “When it comes to being manipulative, I’m a babe in the woods compared to you! You pretended to be totally indifferent to me, just so I’d feel piqued enough to try to capture your interest. I’m not manipulative-you are!”

  Her accusation passed Jack by. One of her phrases had lodged in his brain, overwhelming it, obscuring all rational thought.

  “Indifferent?” Jack stared at her. How the hell did she think he could possibly pretend to be indifferent to her? He hurt like hell, and she accused him of…He reached for her hands, still bound together with his neckerchief. “Does that feel indifferent?”

  Kit’s gasp at her first overt contact with an aroused male member never made it past her lips. Fascination smothered it. Between her hands, Jack’s manhood pulsed, radiating heat through the corded stuff of his breeches. It felt hard, ridged, and curiously alive. Involuntarily, her slender fingers curled around it.

  It was Jack who gasped. Unprepared for the outcome of his wild and undisciplined action, let alone her totally unexpected response, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back, hands fisting at his sides while he fought for control. In dawning wonder, Kit glanced up and saw the effect of her touch. Maidenly modesty did not rear its head as, her eyes straining to catch any change in his expression, she slowly slid her fingers up the long shaft until her questing fingertips found the smooth, rounded head.

  She heard Jack’s breath catch, saw the tension that already held him tighten its grip. His breathing faltered. Instinctively, she reversed direction, following the rigid rod down to its source amid flesh much softer. Her fingers discovered the round fruit within the soft pouches; she felt them tighten.

  The groan Jack gave delighted her, thrilled her. Then he moved.

  Jack gripped her shoulders between his hands. His mouth found hers unerringly, all manner of wildness unleashed by her bold touch. One arm slid around her back to gather her to him. The other hand slid into her curls, dislodging her wig. It fell to the ground, a pool of shadow in the moonlight, ignored by them both.

  For the life of him, Jack couldn’t regain control. Years of rakish plunder had hardened his heart; he was always in control of his senses, not the other way around. But her blatant yet oddly innocent touch had reached deep, to find something buried beneath layers of sophistication and stroke it to life, something buried so long ago he’d forgotten how it felt to be totally consumed by passion.

  Urgency coursed through his veins. Experience told him the woman in his arms was far from the same state. He bent his considerable talents to rectifying the situation.

  Kit was stunned. She couldn’t move; her arms were trapped between their bodies, her hands still pressed intimately against him. But she’d forgotten all that. Her lips were on fire. And the heat came from him. She tried to appease the demand in the hard, hot lips pressed to hers; her lips softened but that wasn’t enough. Then his tongue flicked along the swollen contours, and she shuddered and yielded the prize he sought.

  She expected to be revolted, as she had been before. Instead, as his tongue stroked hers, flames flickered to life, warming her from within. His slow, sensuous plundering of her mouth shook her, draining the strength from her limbs. She wanted desperately to hang on to him but couldn’t.

  Totally engrossed in her responses, Jack sensed her need. He raised his head and thanked heaven for instinct. Distracted by their argument, he hadn’t paid any attention to their direction, yet he’d stopped Delia beneath the spreading branches of a tree, shielded from any chance observer. Disengaging from Kit, he stepped back, lifting her tied hands around his neck. He straightened and pulled her hard against him.

  Kit had no time for thought. No sooner had she been released than she was trapped again, this time breast to chest, pressed firmly against Jack from shoulder to thigh. His lips recaptured hers, and his tongue took up where it had left off, frazzling her defenses.

  Defenses? What a joke! Her head was swimming, but her body seemed alive. Alive as it had never been before. Kit felt Jack’s arms ease from about her and wondered at the warping of her senses. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t have strung two coherent words together. But she could certainly feel. His large hands came to rest just behind her shoulders. For one unnerving moment, she thought he intended to end the kiss. A shudder of relief ran through her as his palms swept her back, down over her waist, tracing her curves with authority. When his hands cradled her bottom, her fevered flesh burned.

  With a low growl of satisfaction, Jack shifted his hold and lifted her, taking two steps to set her back against the trunk of the tree, bringing her head level with his. He let her slide slowly down until her feet just touched the ground, one of his thighs wedged firmly between hers.

  Fire raged through Kit, leaving her scorched, parched, thirsty. Her lips clung to his, as if the passion in his kiss was her only salvation. Little rivers of flame ran through her veins, pooling in liquid fire between her thighs. She pressed her thighs hard against the muscular column between them but could find no relief. The flames flared briefly, then faded to a glow.

  Then Jack’s lips left hers. Too weak to complain, she let her head fall back, surprised at the soft moan that escaped her.

  “Breathe out.”

  Without thought, Kit complied.

  “More.”

  With a deft wiggle, Jack freed Kit’s breasts from their bands. Her startled gasp was cut off as his lips returned to hers. Her mouth opened to his penetration, a honey-sweet cavern yielded like an offering. He might be in the grip of a raging lust unlike any other he’d ever experienced, but he still took time to savor her while his hands freed her shirt from the waistband, pushing the sides of her coat and waistcoat wide apart, baring her breasts for his ministrations. When his hand closed about one delectable globe, he felt a shudder of pure pleasure pass through her and knew she was his.

  Kit was entirely beyond thought, her mind overwhelmed with feeling. Jack’s confident possession of her breast brought a murmur of denial to her lips, but he ignored it. She ignored it, too, as his fingers sought her tightening nipple and caressed it to aching hardness. He seemed to know just what her flesh required, far more certainly than she did. When he turned his attention to her other breast, she pressed the soft mound into his palm, seeking relief from the driving need for satisfaction.

  Jack drew back slightly, the better to view his conquests. The ivory skin of her breasts sheened like silk beneath his hands; it felt like satin. The rosy peaks were tight little nubs, dusky against the ivory. She had beautiful breasts, not overly large but firm and perfectly rounded. One strawberry-tipped peak beckoned; he dipped his head to taste it, drawing the succulent fruit into his mouth, swirling his tongue about the sensitive tip.

  Kit lost the fight to stifle her gasps. Her fingers tangled in Jack’s hair, pulling long strands free of the riband at his neck. He suckled, and her fingers tightened on his skull. God! She hadn’t known she could feel so intensely. Her breathing was ragged, desperate yet disregarded. Feeling was all.

  Desire drumming heavy in his veins, Jack released her breast. His lips returned to hers while his fingers sought her waistband.

  Relief flooded Kit. Jack seemed content to nibble tantalizingly at her lips, allowing her mind to struggle free of the drugging effect of his kisses. She tried to ignore the peculiar hot ache deep within her, called to life by his passion, quietly building even though his own ardor seemed to have abated. Thank goodness he’d stopped! Her sense of right and wrong was hopelessly compromised.

  What had Amy said? The kiss had come first-Jack had certainly cleared that hurdle. She’d willingly prop up the tree for the rest of the night if he’d only continue kissing her as before, deep, hot, and searing. What happened nex
t? Her breasts-Amy had been right about that, too. Jack’s hands on her breasts had been a purely sensual experience; she now understood that hitherto inexplicable female tendency to allow men to fondle their breasts. Kit shuddered at the memory of Jack’s mouth on her nipple. Desperate to remember the next stage in Amy’s scheme of loving, she pushed aside the recollection. What came next?

  Whatever it was, Kit doubted she should wait to see if Jack would attempt it. Even her wilder self agreed it was time to take her newfound knowledge and run. In between savoring the heady taste of her teacher, warm, male, and aroused, she fought to regain some degree of control, some power to act. Jack had already gone too far, but at least he’d ceased his scandalously bold caresses. He’d drawn her into deep waters; it was time to retreat to safer shores.

  With an effort, Kit gathered her wits and drew her lips from Jack’s light, lingering kiss. He let her go without complaint, his head immediately dipping to her breast, tracing a path of fire to one burgeoning nipple.

  Kit shook her head; words of firm denial formed on her lips.

  They exploded in a long-drawn, half-sighed “Ja-ack!” of protest as she felt his palm flatten possessively over her naked stomach.

  Kit’s eyes flew wide. While she’d been gathering her wits, he’d been opening her breeches! Jack suckled on one nipple, and her fingers clenched in his hair, holding his head to her breast as her hips tilted into his shockingly intimate touch.

  And then things got worse.

  His long fingers slipped into the silky curls between her thighs.

  Kit moaned and struggled to find the strength to break free of the conflagration of her senses. He was igniting it, and she couldn’t stop the flames. She didn’t even want to anymore.

  But she had to make him stop.

  His fingers parted her soft flesh and pressed gently.

  Kit forgot about stopping. Pleasure streaked through her, sharp and tangible. His fingers set up a deliberate circular motion, first one way, then the other. His lips pulled hard on her nipple and a bolt of white-hot desire shot from her breast to the point where his fingers pulsed flame through her flesh.