Night Storm

by Catherine Coulter

  Alec was angry now and when he kissed her again, he was rough, demanding, and he forced her lips apart. He said into her mouth, “You try to bite me, and it’ll go badly for you.”

  Actually, the feel of his tongue had such a startling effect on every part of Genny’s body that biting him would never have occurred to her. Now that he’d reminded her that she should very likely bite him to preserve her honor, she did. Hard.

  Alec jerked back, his face flushed with lust and anger. It was a combination he’d never felt before. “Ah, Genny, I’m going to make you very sorry you did that.”

  “I want to go home now, Alec.”

  “I suggest you hold still, or you’ll end up at home with your men’s clothing quite shredded.” He calmly began unbuttoning her shirt.

  “No.”

  “I’ll tie you down if I have to, Genny. Then I’ll force more brandy down your throat.”

  “No, you won’t, I won’t let you, I’ll rip your face—”

  Alec pulled off his cravat, grabbed her wrists, and tied them together, then jerked her arms over her head. “No.”

  He tied the end of the cravat to the headboard of the bunk. “Now, enough is enough. Punishment and education. You both win and lose, Genny. Think of it like that. Also, think of it as the man overcoming the woman, as is his right. Think about me making you submit, making you want to feel passion at my hands. Think about it while I finish making you quite as naked as the day you came into Baltimore.”

  “I wasn’t born in Baltimore.”

  He laughed. Genny squirmed as his fingers found the buttons on her breeches, trying to turn her body away from him, but it did no good.

  “Where were you born? In hell? Did Satan take one look at you and turn pale?”

  He pulled her breeches down to her knees.

  Nine

  “No,” he said slowly, staring down at her, “Satan wouldn’t have kicked you out. You’re something of a surprise, Eugenia Paxton.”

  He was holding down her legs with his right arm, and staring at her very white belly and the light chestnut hair covering her woman’s mound. He raised his left hand and let it hover. Slowly he lowered his arm, very slowly. He knew Genny was watching his hand, watching his fingers. She hadn’t uttered a sound since he’d gotten her breeches around her knees.

  He didn’t look at her face but kept his eyes on her beautiful woman’s flesh. His fingers lightly touched her, then eased away, and he finally splayed them over her flat belly.

  “Very nice, Genny. Very nice indeed.” A vast understatement, he thought. Without another word, he jerked her pants and underthings down her legs and off her feet. He tossed the clothes to the floor.

  “Now the rest. Hmm. I’ll just have to let you borrow one of my shirts.”

  He neatly ripped off her shirt and snipped the straps of her linen chemise. When he peeled it off her, he sat back so he could see the expanse of her from head to toe.

  Alec felt very odd. He couldn’t remember ever having responded this way before in his adult sexual life. She was just a woman, not even a particularly beautiful woman, but her white body, those full breasts of hers, those very long, sleekly muscled legs—He felt himself shudder. He wanted to touch her, taste every inch of her; he wanted to strip off his own clothes and thrust deep inside her and tell her that he—that he what, for pity’s sake?

  It was in that instant that Genny took action. She raised her hips, dug in her heels, and pulled with all her strength against the knots at her wrists. She yanked and jerked and pulled.

  It did no good at all.

  She cursed, quite fluently, then jerked and yanked again.

  “I’m a sailor, Genny. I tie knots well.”

  “Let me go, Alec Carrick. I won’t lie here like this with you staring at me and laughing at me and—”

  “Do you hear me laughing?”

  “You will because I look like a man and I’m skinny and quite ugly and—”

  “You look like what>? Genny, if you look like a man, I’ll turn pederast right this instant.” He lifted his hand from her belly and cupped her breast. “You call yourself skinny? Your breasts—well, I’m a man with large hands and—no, Genny, you’re not skinny.”

  Her flesh was soft and her nipples, a very pale pink, were downy as velvet and—He felt a moment of guilt and something else. That was it: he didn’t like himself terribly much, and oddly enough, it wasn’t because he’d tied a lady to his bunk, stripped off her clothes, and planned to teach her pleasure; it was because he’d wanted Laura and he’d touched her breasts and he’d wanted her fiercely until he’d seen Genny at the window and his desire for Laura had died abruptly, like doused embers on a summer grate. He didn’t understand it and he didn’t like it one bit.

  “Nor are you ugly. How could you think that? Don’t you have a mirror? Even men use mirrors, you know, so it’s quite all right to do so for your charade.”

  She tugged again at the knots around her wrists. “You know very well that I am a homely little beggar compared with the ladies you’re used to.”

  “Homely little beggar,” he repeated, grinning. “All that? Take it from an old campaigner, Genny—you’re about the un-ugliest female I’ve ever mounted an assault upon.”

  She chewed his military metaphor over for just a moment, then blurted out, “I saw you kissing Laura’s breasts and you touched her there and fondled her.”

  “True.” What else could he say? She wouldn’t believe him if he said that it simply wasn’t the same thing as touching her. She wouldn’t believe him; Lord, he didn’t believe himself, even though it was true.

  Genny didn’t know what to do. The brandy made her feel a trifle hazy in the brain, but not so much that she wasn’t aware of every look on Alec’s face, every touch of those wonderful fingers of his, and—She had to stop this. She couldn’t very calmly accept being tied down and looked at and touched by a man. “Alec, please, let me go home now. I’m sorry about spying on you and Laura. Truly, I’ll never do it again, I promise.”

  “It’s too late, Genny,” he said, and his voice was deeper and rougher than she’d ever heard it. “It’s far too late for that now. I told you I wouldn’t take your virginity. That’s a gift a woman gives a man, not one a man takes. But I fully intend to give you a woman’s pleasure.”

  “No, I don’t want you to. It’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing.”

  “Stupid girl. It will make you very wild, Genny, and you’ll be completely mine, completely at my will.”

  “I don’t want to be under your bloody thumb.”

  “Too bad.” He grinned then, and suddenly jerked off her wool cap and sent it flying toward the pile of her clothes on the floor. He pulled the pins out, then sifted his fingers through her hair and smoothed it over the pillow. “Much nicer. Now no one could confuse you with a man.”

  “Please untie me, Alec.”

  “Not on your life, Mr. Eugene. You’d try your best to bring me low. No, I want to keep you like this so I can give you all my attention and not have to worry about you destroying my manhood.” As he spoke, he ran his hands over her breasts, then stroked down across her ribs to come to a halt with his hands clasping her waist.

  “You’re not at all skinny,” he said. “Now, just let me shift my position a bit. I want to see all of you, my dear Genny, and the best view is from between your thighs.”

  She started to struggle at his outrageous words, but it didn’t slow him down. He pulled her thighs apart and came between them. “Wider, I think,” he said, and pushed out with his legs until her thighs were very wide indeed, her knees bent over his legs.

  She closed her eyes. This was awful. No one had ever done anything like this to her. She couldn’t help herself. She looked up briefly to see him staring down at her, and she was fully exposed to him, every single inch of her.

  “You’re lovely,” he said, and she felt his fingers, his warm strong fingers, stroking gently over her, then slowly parting her, and she knew he was l
ooking at her. “Very lovely.”

  “Stop doing that—stop looking at me.”

  He raised his head. “Why? I wanted your legs wide apart so I could examine you. A man enjoys seeing what he will be getting himself into. Eventually, not this evening. I want that to be perfectly clear.”

  She yowled, there was no other word for it, Alec thought, grinning at the sound. She was furious—excited, if he didn’t miss his experienced guess—and she felt ambivalent about being at his mercy, a circumstance which he was enjoying vastly. Very gently, he slid his finger inside her. He heard her suck in her breath, felt her muscles tighten and clamp around his finger. “You’re very small, Genny. Wonderfully small and hot.” His voice trailed off. His finger went deeper, but very slowly. It didn’t hurt. It was so incredibly exciting that Genny couldn’t think of anything to compare it to. She waited, tense, furious, excited, her hips still, her body wanting—wanting.

  Alec closed his eyes as his finger finally abutted her maidenhead. He pressed lightly, but the thin membrane held. “Genny,” he said. He pulled his finger out very slowly; then he thrust it into her again and she cried out, her hips lifting. He smiled, looking at her face. He could see that she was stunned, and this gave him more pleasure than he could have imagined. Stunned, and now disappointed because he had stopped.

  “Your education,” he said. Then he lowered his head, allowed his fingers to find her, and she felt his mouth touching her and she nearly died of the shock of it.

  “No!”

  “Shush,” he said, and his warm breath made her shudder and quake with those same unbelievable feelings that his finger had given her. But this was something she never in her life considered part of what men and women did together. It was personal, no, more than personal; he was kissing and caressing a part of her that she’d really been unaware of. But not anymore.

  Oh, goodness, it was incredible.

  She felt her hips lifting to his mouth, felt his hands slide beneath her hips to hold her. “Very nice, Genny,” he said, and his warm breath once again sent her into pleasurable oblivion. “You taste so sweet, like yourself, and like a woman should.”

  Genny didn’t know what to do. She felt herself giving in. If she were being completely honest with herself, she had already given in, minutes upon minutes before, days before; in fact, the day she’d first laid eyes on him. She felt a throbbing pleasure, ebbing then washing over her with greater and greater strength, right where his mouth was learning her, caressing her, suckling her. She knew she was hot and damp, she could feel herself, and if she weren’t so filled with the anticipation of something she couldn’t quite yet imagine, but something she knew she’d kill to have, she would have ordered him to stop that moment. Instead, she moaned. Moaned again and arched her back. Her legs trembled, then stiffened.

  “That’s it, Genny,” he murmured, his fingers stroking her. “Relax, let go. Just press yourself up against my mouth. Yes, that’s it. You taste wonderful. I can feel your legs tightening, tensing. Just a moment…ah, there, do you like that?”

  He’d slipped his finger inside her again, pushing until he could go no further.

  It was more than enough.

  Genny’s head fell back against the pillow. She cried out, unable to help herself; tearing, harsh cries. Her thighs tightened and she felt a spasm of such unexpected force that she wondered if she would survive it. The thing was, though, she didn’t care. She just wanted those incredible feelings to keep pounding through her, and she cried out again and again.

  Alec tried to remain detached. He had her now, she was his, she was doing his bidding, she was bent to his will. He knew that until she died she would remember this night, remember that it was he who gave her this beautiful pleasure. There was no doubt in his mind that he also would remember it until he cocked up his toes. But that wasn’t important. She was his, and he wanted more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life to come inside her, now, this very instant, and plunge into her and feel her draw him deep and deeper still until he had filled her with himself and touched her womb. He wanted to spill his seed deep inside her.

  His breathing was harsh, rough, growing more so as the spasms of her pleasure gradually lessened. He eased his finger out of her, slowed the caressing of his mouth. Finally, when he felt her calm again, he raised his head and looked at her face.

  She was staring at him. Saying not a word, just staring. She looked dazed. He grinned, although it hurt him to grin when he wanted to be a complete and utter ravisher and bury himself inside the woman he’d just pleasured.

  Mr. Eugene, I think I’ve got myself a new sex slave. He would have liked to be that flippant, that arrogantly detached, but the words were only in his mind. “Are you all right, sweetheart?” he said instead.

  Still she just stared at him, until finally, in a near whisper, she said, “I don’t know. Nothing’s as it should be right now or as it was. I don’t know.”

  “Just breathe slowly, very slowly. That’s it. Your breasts aren’t heaving quite so much now. Yes, your heart’s slowing, I can feel it.” He raised his hand from her breast. “Better?”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, and her eyes were large and filled with confusion.

  “A woman’s pleasure, Genny. You experienced your first climax. Sex, that’s all. You had quite a lesson tonight.”

  “I don’t understand about you. You didn’t—I saw Laura’s hand go down your belly and touch you and you were big and—”

  Ah, the pain her words brought to his sex. He shook his head, hoping to shake away the pain with it. “You’re still a virgin. Don’t worry. That mythical man you will probably marry someday won’t be disappointed in you. He’ll rip through your maidenhead with tearful gratitude, I doubt not.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No man will ever do that.”

  He sighed. “You have this habit of saying no so positively to things, thus making me want to do them more than anything. I do recommend, Miss Eugene, that you don’t take quite so definite a stand on your maidenhead.”

  “You’ve done as you pleased. Now untie me.”

  Instead, Alec leaned down and kissed her. She tasted herself on his mouth. “Part your lips,” he said and she did, just a bit. It didn’t occur to her to bite him again. He tasted wonderful. He made her feel wonderful, and she felt the growing ache deep in her belly and said, “Oh.”

  “Hmm?”

  “It’s beginning again.”

  He raised his head, grinned down at her, and lightly ran his fingertips over her jaw. “A randy woman. Do you want me to pleasure you again?”

  That earned him a quick denial. “Of course not. I want you to untie me.”

  “You know, we could spend the rest of the night just experimenting. We could see just how many times your body exploded with your woman’s pleasure. There are so many different ways of arriving at the same destination, so to speak. Would you like to be a scientist with me, Genny? Would you like to be my own personal experiment?”

  “I’m not some sort of depraved female.”

  “But you’ve got lots of passion, Miss Paxton, and I think I’d like to see more of it. The look on your face at your climax—a beautiful blend of virginal innocence and deep lust. It warmed my cynical, world-weary blood, I’ll tell you.”

  “Let me go, Alec.”

  He sighed. “Perhaps I should. Next time, though, I’d like to see your pleasure again and again.”

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  He looked suddenly very hard and utterly implacable. Yet his voice when he spoke was easy, almost amused. “You think not? Again you’re so absolutely certain. You need to know me, Genny, really get to know me. The next time I take you like this, I probably won’t even have to tie you down. Now, how is your ankle? Less swollen, I think.” He lightly touched his fingers to it and she sucked in her breath. “Still tender. Well, not surprising, considering you tumbled a good twenty feet. If there were divine justi
ce in this world, you would have broken it in three places. Count yourself lucky, my girl. Count yourself more lucky that I didn’t mention your outrageous act to Laura. Can you begin to imagine the tale she would—even at this moment—be spreading around Baltimore? Good Lord, it boggles the mind.”

  That was a kicker, and Genny knew he was more than right. “Will you say anything?”

  He gave her that slow, incredibly sexy smile of his, one that guaranteed to serve him any female he wished in the world on his plate. “I’ll make you a deal, Miss Paxton. I’ll keep my mouth shut—not a word, even to Laura—if you agree to become my mistress. Immediately. What do you think?”

  If her wrists had been free, he would have gotten an excellent demonstration of her thoughts on the subject. As it was, she tugged once, as hard as she could, then said between her teeth at him, “You said I wasn’t skilled enough to be your mistress.”

  “So I did. I must admit to reevaluating my initial conclusion. You have so much passion, so much enthusiasm. It’s very delightful, you know. It adds a touch of something that is quite beyond excellent skills.”

  “Someday I will do this to you.”

  His eyes widened a bit and there was surprise in his voice as he said, “Do you promise?”

  That made her swallow, for at that moment she saw him lying on his back, his hands tied above his head with her over him, saw herself taking off all his clothes, then looking at him as he had looked at her, studying him, touching him. It would be something extraordinary. She’d like to do it right now. Still, he was a man, and men didn’t like to be under someone else’s control, especially if that someone else was a female. “You wouldn’t mind? You’d like to be helpless on your back? Knowing I could do whatever I wished to you? Don’t say yes, because I wouldn’t believe you.”

  “If I trusted you, if I knew that you approached me with the same enthusiasm and, ah, reverence and respect that I approached you, then I wouldn’t mind at all. I would enjoy it. You know, of course, that the best way to become skilled at something is to practice it over and over again.”