“You want to what?” Good God, was she serious? He couldn’t let her do that.
“I want to please you. You will tell me what you need and let me do that, won’t you, Bran? I simply couldn’t endure the thought of you treating me like a doll and seeking your pleasures elsewhere because you were afraid of breaking me.”
Bran nudged up her chin with his fingertips so he could look into her eyes. She was serious. He had no doubt of it. This only confirmed that she was absolutely the right choice. Most of the women he’d encountered cared only to know that a gentleman had a haberdasher’s account and a surplus of coins in the bank. Cora—his love—wanted to ensure she satisfied his physical needs.
“We ought to wait,” he said. “Until we’re married.”
She drew her teeth over her lower lip. “How should anybody know that we’ve done otherwise? I shan’t tell them, and Lord Swansbrooke is engaged at the card table. Besides, how is it different to what you did earlier?”
That one had him stumped. “Cora,” he pleaded. Did she have any concept of how much this conversation was killing him? He wanted very much to let her do exactly as she asked, and to let his rigid cock fill up her sweet mouth.
“I want to touch you.” She swept aside his hands and grasped immediately at his nightshirt, her hot little hands folding tightly around his waist. “I only felt the shape of you earlier.”
His cock immediately bucked in welcome. “Bolt the door.”
Cora did so at once.
Bran removed his shift while her back was turned and readied himself for her shock. He knew she’d never seen a naked man before.
To his relief, she didn’t scream or giggle, nor make any motion that suggested she might faint. Instead her gaze focussed sharply upon him and ran down from his head to his shoulders and chest and then stopped at his loins. Her lips parted slightly, and the very tip of her tongue swept over her lower lip.
“Do you still wish to kiss me there?” he breathed.
She drew closer with her hand outstretched. Bran’s eyes closed for a second as her hand made contact with his cock. The fan of lace bordering her sleeve scraped across his skin, providing a fraction more stimulation than he really liked. Bran’s ballocks pulled up tight against the shield of his body.
She didn’t move at first, simply held him cocooned in the palm of her hand.
“Like this.” He wrapped his hand over the top of hers and showed her how to stroke him. She bit her lip all the while, concentrating hard upon the act until her breath released in a great gush.
Bran slid his hands up her back and pulled her fast against his chest. He sought her lips and a dance made of kisses. Cora opened up to him, but her hand never left his shaft. “Does it please you to touch me like this?” he asked.
“I like the way it makes your words catch. If I keep up the caress will you reach a peak similar to the one I had earlier?”
Cora snuck a glance down at him. He stood proudly upright, the tip of his cock drumming against the skin just shy of his navel. His foreskin was drawn back so that the sensitive flare of the head lay exposed, and blood pumped through it like licks of fire.
“Yes,” he whispered into her ear, “but it’ll be a lot stickier, and it will take me a while to recover. Do you still wish to kiss me there?”
He felt her tremble against his arm.
“You don’t have to, Cora. I won’t demand anything you’re not ready to give.”
“But it would please you if I did?” Her eyes shone a little too bright.
“You please me,” he said, backing up a little. He sat on the edge of the bed holding her hands.
“Maybe a little taste.”
Bran’s stomach muscles tensed. His cock swelled at the very thought of her kiss. He watched her sink slowly onto her knees so that her voluminous dress fanned around her. Slowly, cautiously, she bent her head towards his lap. Bran placed a hand upon her shoulder. “Cora.” Her name emerged from his throat as a croak.
“I want to do this, Bran.”
Damn, she near intoxicated him. Her mouth opened slightly, so he could see the rose shadow of her tongue. Then her lips met with his shaft, causing him to claw at the bedspread with both hands. She really was magnificent and soon to be truly his.
She explored him with her lips to begin with, and then with the very tip of her tongue. That was devilment enough as she directed her attention to the sensitive crown of his cock, where she soon learned to lap up the pearls of seed he wept.
He stopped her short of taking him fully into her mouth. “Cora, don’t.” He couldn’t take it. Already, she’d worn his restraint down to a thread. The heat of her mouth, combined with delicate tugging sucks would send him over the edge, and he didn’t want that. Not yet. First he wanted her. “I need to be hard if we’re to tup,” he blurted, not really intending to say it aloud, even though it was the primary thought in his brain.
* * *
“If we’re to tup.”
Just the sound of his husky voice as he spoke the words made her insides flutter. Cora stared up at him. She knew it was rude to stare, but she’d never really caught so much as a glimpse of a cock before tonight and it was… well, it was magnificent. All straight and proud and stout, and yet so warm and supple beneath her touch and pulsing with vitality. The taste of him sat thick upon her tongue.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“I wish you’d lit more candles. I can barely see you in this light,” she replied, avoiding the issue. Lord help her, though she trembled, she knew the moment he said it that she wanted him—them—to do just that. She wanted him to tup her.
“Two is illumination enough.” He forced a chuckle, which caused his shaft to quiver and jerk. Then his stomach muscles rippled as he dragged down another breath. “I know you heard me, Cora. If you don’t want us to do that, then you ought to leave now, because if you stay I’ll interpret that as a yes.”
“I know that I shouldn’t.”
“You shouldn’t be here at all.”
She knew that too. However, they both knew she wasn’t going to leave. The silence between them stretched. Finally, Bran bent and pressed his lips to her breast. He undid the temporary repair to her dress and worked the top of her stays loose so that he could once again free her breasts.
The memory of his earlier touch flooded back to her as he sucked upon her nipples.
“Bran, would you kiss me as you did before?”
“Kiss you?” He raised his head. “Is that not what I’m doing?”
“As before.” She dipped her head so that he would understand that she wanted him to kiss between her legs again.
“Ah,” he laughed. “Then we best swap positions.” Without preamble, he settled her upon the edge of the mattress. Whereupon, he removed her shoes and kissed the arch of her foot. “Lie back.” Bran loomed over her, naked, his muscles taut and pleasingly shadowed in the firelight. His body continued to amaze her. He was not soft or rounded in any place save for his rump. No, rather he was pleasingly different, and so very very male.
He braced one hand by the side of her head, and used the other to explore the contours of her leg to high above her stocking top. The action made her limbs jelly-like, making her glad of the mattress at her back. It was the work of a moment for him to tuck up her skirt between them, so that she was spread like a banquet for him, with her cork rump pushing her hips up and out. Bran spread her thighs, and brought his mouth to her cunt.
Her breasts trembled along with the rest of her as his tongue tickled the edge of her folds. When he flicked lightly over the pip that was the focus of her tingling pleasure, she nearly sat upright on the bed, the sensation was so intense. Instead, she bunched the bedspread in her fists and tried to stifle the keening wail that rose from her throat. “Don’t stop,” she pleaded when he lifted his head a moment.
Bran smiled up at her from beneath the wild tangle of his fringe. She couldn’t see much of his eyes, o
nly enough to realise they were dark with intent. His mouth pulled tight into a devilish smile. “I’ve no intention of ever stopping, but you know this is really just a little preparation for the main act.” He gave her another sly lick then made a pillow of her thigh. A moment later, his fingers replaced the flick of his tongue, brushing through her wiry golden curls and up and over her nub.
“Oh,” she gasped. He began circling with his thumb, so that it felt as though a thread were drawn tight and her very being was being bunched into that one tight spot. Just when she thought her crisis was surely about to drown her in its swell, Bran eased his fingers into the picture. One then two slipped inside her. He didn’t press too deeply, a fact that after a few strokes made her writhe all the wilder. Her body craved more, her sheath clutched at his fingers, trying to drag him in.
Surely this was it, the moment when he’d enter her. She didn’t think she’d ever be more ready than this, though the thought of such intimacy still made her tremble and her chest lock tight.
“Cora,” he sighed her name then slid upwards and covered her body. He fit himself neatly against her puss. Lord, the blessed heat of him. His cock felt satin smooth and enormous.
How could this possibly work?
“Say it, Cora. Tell me how much you want me.”
He was all tension, tendons straining like corded steel, and yet so silky against her flesh.
“Say it,” he urged, more than a little panic peppering his voice.
Damn if she wasn’t half-terrified, but this was what she’d wanted. Still wanted. She closed her eyes, and gripped the sweat-slicked muscles of his shoulders. “I want you to do this.” She spoke the words directly between his lips. “Please, come inside.”
It sounded so tart and silly, but if Bran thought her words odd, he didn’t have the breath to comment. The air whistled through his lips, while he fit their bodies neatly together in one smooth push.
Oh, my! A shocked gasp forced its way out of her mouth. He was... Dear lord, could she tolerate it? He was inside of her, and she couldn’t keep still.
Cora knew every part of him in that moment, the shape of him, the contours, the way he was forcing her to make room for his cock. And jolting inside her as the walls of her sheath clung to him.
It felt strange… and oh, her body began to relax, and the push wasn’t so fierce, but rather more of a glide, and she wanted more of him and deeper. As deep as he could go, even though there was an edge of pain to the process. “More,” she whimpered, when he held back after one of her more voluble gasps.
“Are you sure? I’m not hurting you, am I?” He lifted his weight from her, so that his hands lay braced either side of her shoulders.
“Only a very tiny amount.”
His face clouded immediately.
“But I like it. I want you to continue,” she immediately added. No, she most definitely wasn’t going to let him stop.
“All right, Cora. But I’d like you to know how much this is killing me.” A trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his temples, and for the first time she noticed the front of his hair was wet. “You’re so tight. You’re gripping me. It’s so hard not to just push. Don’t move, now, not an inch.”
She held herself impossibly still, while peering down through the gap between their bodies so that she could see where his flesh locked with hers. How intimate. What a glorious sight. But she wanted him to move.
“Gad,” he whistled. “I said not an inch.”
“But Bran, I want you deeper.”
He made a sort of croaking sound and then sank down onto her, crushing her in his grip, before rolling them over so that he lay on his back with her astride his hips. “Right, now you can control it.” He gave her a little push, so that she sat above him rather than being cuddled up close. “But slowly. Slow and steady, all right.”
Slow and steady, she repeated in her head. As if she were about to rush such a thing. There was still a borderline twinge of pain if she pushed too far in a certain direction, but then after a few strokes a sort of numbness dulled the edge of that, and things became altogether far more slick and pleasurable.
Bran reached out to her and started making circles around her nub, which brought a double layer of heat to her cheeks. His touch was so intimate, and he surely could feel the very point where they were joined. Her insides began to flutter at the notion of reaching down and touching that point herself.
Instead, she stroked the coarse patch of hair upon his chest. Every part of his body was so new and unfamiliar. His irises were all smoke-coloured now, and far brighter than they’d been earlier in the night.
“Damn,” he said when she tweaked hard upon one of his tiny yet robust nipples. The word was a soft explosion unto its self. “You don’t know how damn sweet…” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose before looking up at her again. “How desperately I really want to fuck.”
She might not understand precisely, but she did recognise the tension eating up his body, so that every muscle seemed locked tight, apart from the one connecting them, which bowed and flexed. And she could only assume, since they were already bound, that he meant to take things up a pace.
“I’ve got to,” he said, thrusting up so that he raised his hips and then slapped them back down. “Just got to.”
The shock of the furious motion sent Cora reeling. She fell head first into a blissful squall. Her limbs twitched. She had no control over the motion, none at all. Each part of her seemed independent of the rest, though all dancing to the same impossible, pounding, thumping beat.
Bran’s beat.
Bran’s fingers, his hips, were the controlling forces as he ushered her along to a blinding climax. Already the spring coiled within her abdomen was wound overly tight. When Bran thrust harder, it seemed to unwind all at once.
Cora collapsed into a long shuddering madness from which there was no escape. She’d never felt anything like it, not even during her earlier peak. Having him deep inside her, still sliding back and forth with a momentum that made their bodies slap together so loudly it was surely audible in the corridor, made the moment all the more intense.
Her muscles fluttered and flexed. The bedstead groaned beneath them. Cora hid her face against Bran’s neck, all the while aware of the rapidity of his pulse. He held himself tight and still as his cock made what turned out to be its final pulse.
In the quiet that followed, she lay very still, hardly daring to breathe. Bran continued to hold her snug against his body. The sound of his heartbeat thundered in her ears. She’d never really thought beyond this point to what came next. Would he truly expect her to trip back across the hall? What did they do when Swansbrooke knocked upon the door?
Bran tilted his head towards hers, until their brows lay pressed together. “Cora Reeve, I know I’ve asked and you say that you’ve answered before, but I’m going to ask you again regardless. Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
Who the hell cared what happened next? “Yes, oh yes please. I will, you wicked and delicious man, but we can’t say so yet.” She smacked a kiss down hard upon his lips to silence his questions. “I don’t want to win the bet, you see. If I do, Charlotte will never speak to either of us again.”
“Can’t have that.”
“And I do so want Harriet to win.”
Bran frowned, and then he tucked her more firmly against his shoulder. “Let’s see how long it takes for us to be caught. Until then, you have my silence, and my heart. Though, I swear I also intend to tup you at every opportunity.”
Cora nudged her elbow into his ribs. “Then we’d both best set to work on finding Harriet a husband.”
“How about Hugh?”
“Lord Swansbrooke?”
“He’s a very big heart.”
“And an even larger nose. I don’t know, Bran. Harriet is so petite, and she hasn’t really anything to offer him. Her dowry isn’t all it could be.”
Bran merely closed his eyes and smiled. �
�They sound like a perfect match. We’ll arrange it. When we’re not tupping, that is.” And he rolled over on top of her so that he pressed her into the mattress. “Right now, I think we need more practice. I do know how you like to be the very best at everything.”
Cora welcomed his kiss. She didn’t doubt that under Bran’s tuition, she’d excel at bedsports in no time.
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Capturing Cora. I hope you enjoyed this introductory story to the goings on at the Rievaulx House summer house party. If you’re eager to learn about the other guests then be sure to check out the next two titles in the Romps & Rakehells series, Ménage After Midnight and Taming Taylor ~ available now. Turn the page to learn more.
For updates on future Romps & Rakehells books and my other new releases please sign up to my mailing list. For behind the scenes chat, previews and other exclusives, join Madelynne’s Readers Retreat on Facebook. You can also get updates on new releases by visiting my website, or liking my author page on Facebook.
Thank you so much for reading CAPTURING CORA. Please consider leaving an honest review where you bought it so that others can discover Bran and Cora’s story.
Other Historical Erotic Romance by Madelynne Ellis
Ménage After Midnight (Romps & Rakehells #2)
Affection for a price...
Paris Ashcroft supports himself by offering discreet sexual liaisons to women whose husbands neglect their duties. Romance is merely the means by which he makes a living. However, when Sophia Lovich, the one woman he's lost his heart to, asks for his attention, he intends to surrender himself to passion.
Little does he suspect that Sophia will ask him to endure her husband's dark desires too!
* * *
Capturing Cora Page 5