The Reckless Bride

  She’d set fire to his tinder. Now they had to survive the blaze.

  He surrendered, and took charge.

  If her innocence inspired his chivalry, her unfettered brazenness provoked a more primal response. A blatantly sexual reaction.

  He wanted her beneath him, wanted her cries of surrender filling his ears as he sank into her sheath and possessed her, as he took, demanded, and claimed every iota of passion she had in her, yet even now, even here, the commander that was an intrinsic part of him was willing to cede a battle in order to win the war.

  She wanted to learn, was demanding he teach her, so he would. He would teach her of passion, of desire so sharp it scored the soul, of need that beat like a pulse beneath skin and demanded satiation.

  He would teach her of fascination that transmuted to obsession, of sensation so bright it burned. Of wants so elemental that once evoked they would never die, but instead would bind her to him, would keep her his, from tonight until forever.

  That was his battle plan, his campaign for the night, his goal. He set out to secure it.

  Pressing her into the bed, using his weight to keep her pinned, he reached for the belt of her robe. One sharp tug and it unraveled. He pushed the halves of the robe wide, paused as his mind swiftly gauged the terrain, its possibilities.

  His lips and tongue still engaged with hers, he shifted, turned so his hip rested alongside hers, stretched his long legs down the mattress, then brought one up to hold hers trapped. Angling his shoulders over hers, he settled on his elbows, his chest a breath away from the peaks of her breasts.

  She wanted to learn, but he had no intention of losing any clothes himself. There was only so much temptation he could take.

  His weight on one elbow, he raised his other hand to frame her jaw, held her steady as he deepened the kiss even further, as he settled to plunder her mouth in a fundamentally possessive fashion.

  Loretta met him, matched him, invited and incited. This was what she wanted, to know all he could show her.

  His hands found her breasts. Her senses leapt.

  They closed, and she stopped thinking.

  All but stopped breathing as, his touch screened by the fine material of her nightgown, he traced and weighed, then closed his hands and possessed.

  His lips still holding hers, he kneaded, and her awareness skittered, scattered, her nerves awash with sensation. With sparking expectation.

  His fingers tightened about one nipple and bright feeling arced and streaked through her.

  Heat bloomed beneath her skin.

  Turned to a fiery demanding ache when he released her and set his fingers to the buttons of her nightgown, and she waited.

  Kissing him. Savoring the heady male taste of him, yet impatient and yearning for the heat of his touch.

  It returned moments later, a gift of delight when he brushed the halves of her bodice wide and set one hard palm to her flushed and heated skin.

  He cupped her firm swollen flesh and her senses exulted. Drawing back almost languidly from the conflagration their kiss had become, he trailed fire and flames over her jaw, down her throat, over the taut swell of the breast he held plumped in one hand. Then he closed his mouth over the tightly furled peak and suckled.

  Her body arched. She barely managed to mute her shriek.

  As he feasted—what other word was there to describe such heated, deliberate attentions?—strangled shrieks built in her throat. Unlocking the fingers still sunk in his cravat, she pressed her knuckles to her lips to hold the telltale cries back.

  He took her precaution as an invitation. Lids heavy, lashes low, she felt more than saw the glance, one of heated summer blue burning with desire, he cast her, but then he focused his attention fully on her breasts—on teaching her of all he could make her feel, all he could wring from her just by caressing her artfully, too knowledgeably, there.

  Wielding sensation like a whip, using heat like a brand, with his hands and his fingers, his lips, tongue, and teeth, with the scalding wetness of his mouth he stamped his touch on her, on her body and her mind.

  Hands gripping his skull, she was writhing, gasping, one step away from moaning, a heartbeat away from begging when he raised his head, surveyed her gown, then set his fingers to undo the buttons that led steadily down.

  Panting, she watched his face, let her eyes drink in the sculpted planes, the hard edge desire set to the angle of his cheekbones. Let her senses reach for and absorb the intentness in his expression, the strength of his drive, his passion, the control that, despite her victory in precipitating the exchange, still ruled him.

  Could she break that control? Would she need to?

  The questions had barely surfaced through the lust-filled clouds in her brain when with a flick of one hand, he bared her.

  All of her.

  She lay naked under his gaze. She told herself she should feel … at the very least uncertain. Instead, something inside her purred.

  Her Michelmarsh self was well and truly free.

  Drawing up one knee, the one further from him, she started to turn to him.

  His hand firmed on her hip and he held her back. “No. Let me see.”

  What he meant was let him explore.

  With his eyes, with a gaze that burned. Then with his hands, with a touch that seared and branded.

  That made her writhe anew, that made her gasp, more intensely aware of her body, of her as a woman and him as a man, than she’d thought she could possibly be.

  And her body … rose to him. Shamelessly responded to every heated, increasingly explicit caress, and blatantly begged for more.

  This was what she’d wanted to know—the passionate heat, the compelling yearning. The furnace that burgeoned and grew within her, that ultimately reached some flashpoint and melted, and left her molten and needy, aching to be filled.

  This, and more. She wanted it all.

  Was determined to have it all.

  She reached for him, surprised to discover he’d shifted lower in the bed. Irritated to realize he’d yet to shed his clothes, inwardly frowning, she plucked at his shoulders.

  Rafe caught her hands, pressed them back to the bed. He had the reins firmly in his hands and had no intention of sharing them. He knew his direction, his purpose, knew his goal.

  He wasn’t about to let her distract him.

  Even though beneath his clothes he burned.

  Lust was a familiar flame, yet never had it been this hot, this scorching. This demanding. Ignoring it was impossible. Holding the greedy conflagration in check was just barely within his scope.

  The silk of her skin was a potent temptation, drawing his lips across it a sensual delight. Exploring the taut slopes of her midriff, the evocative indentation of her waist, he supped, licked, drew in the subtle pleasure, a sweet fruit to feed his desire, to temporarily appease his passion.

  He wanted, ached to take, much more. The primitive side of him, the innate self she called forth, wanted to devour her. To have her all. To possess her completely. He had to rein that self in, curb its more primitive passions, distract it with the promise of more, of a deeper, more complete surrender, later.

  When the time finally came.

  That time would not come tonight. Not if he could help it.

  He set himself to woo her senses, to feed them, fire them, ultimately to overwhelm her with sensation.

  That was his plan. He applied himself diligently.

  He traced her legs, the sweet curves of her calves, the delicate arch of her small feet, the long firm lines of herthighs, muscles quivering with awareness, with reaction to his touch, to the languid trail of his fingers, the possessive sculpting of his palms.

  The sweet globes of her derriere filled his hands, made his mouth water. Cradling them, holding her, he set his lips to her navel, kissed, with the tip of his tongue traced, then probed.

  Heard her breathing fracture, and inwardly smiled.

  Shifting lower, he bent his head and set his lips to
cruise the taut swell of her belly, then with undisguised intent sent them skating lower.

  Eyes closed, head tipped back into the pillows, Loretta felt sure her lungs would implode. She wasn’t breathing. Her head was swimming. Her senses were reeling far beyond her control.

  Too many muscles were tense and trembling, not locked yet aching for release. Too many nerves were focused on the sensation of his lips burning her skin, on the branding grip of his hands, the fiery tracing of his fingers.

  She burned, and yet she felt each touch so keenly. She’d had no idea her body could be so sensitive, so attuned, so enraptured.

  His lips brushed the curls at the apex of her thighs and she shivered. The tension holding her racked tighter.

  Before she caught her next breath he drew back a fraction, then he shifted. Lifting one of her legs, he draped her knee over his shoulder, then shifted further, and did the same with her other leg.

  The intimate pose made something inside her shake. Quake. What was he up to?

  Lifting her head, she battled to raise her heavy lids. “What—”

  She broke off as his fingertips touched her.

  Lost what breath she’d managed to drag in as he stroked.

  He caressed and probed. Still tense and tight, she eased back onto the bed. Her body knew this, recognized his touch.

  She’d already been this way before. Closing her eyes, she followed the remembered sensations.

  The silken brush of his hair against her inner thigh gave her an instant’s warning, then his lips closed, hot and burning, over her slick, swollen flesh and she shrieked.

  Soundlessly. She had no breath left.

  Couldn’t find any as he supped, licked, laved. Then he thrust his tongue into her.

  She bucked, but he held her down. One heavy arm over her waist, he held her immobile as he tasted her. Thoroughly. As he possessed her there in a flagrantly intimate way, an intimate possession that reached far deeper than skin and bone, that burned through her flesh and traveled her nerves to her mind.

  All of her writhed, caught in a net of indescribable pleasure. One that with every knowing lick, with every artfully gauged thrust of his wicked tongue, drew tighter. Until it pressed on nerves already stretched tight, until it built to a weight that threatened to fracture her senses.

  Then it did.

  With one last slow thrust of his tongue, he brought her soaring senses crashing down on her. Cataclysmic pleasure exploded within her, splintering all sensation into shards of bright glory that lanced down every nerve to bloom like a million pinpricks of heat beneath her sensitized skin.

  Heat and pleasure rolled over her in a wave, submerging her in glory.

  When her awareness rose to the surface again, she felt languid yet empty, as if a fever had raged through her, then broken, and left her hungry.

  Her senses slowly returned, and she felt her lips curve. She could guess what she needed to make her feel complete. Full. Properly replete. It was an effort to lift her lids. While she struggled to open her eyes, she shifted her hands … her fingers touched his sleeve.

  He was still wearing his coat.

  Her returning senses reported that instead of rapidly divestinghimself of his clothes, he was busily doing up the buttons of her nightgown.

  She snapped her eyes open, glanced down to see her nightgown closed to her hips. She looked at him. “What are you doing?”

  His expression was unrelievedly grim. “Getting you in presentable order so I can take you back to your room.”

  “My room?” She blinked. “You want to finish this in my bed?”

  He briefly closed his eyes, then opened them and reached for the gaping sides of her robe. “No. We’re not finishing this—not tonight. Some other night.”

  “When?”

  “Later.”

  She really wanted to object to that answer, and even more to his dictatorial tone, but no matter how hard she tried to summon her determination, what he’d done, what she’d experienced, had sapped her will. Her spine felt as solid as seaweed.

  When, her robe cinched, he swung her legs off the bed, then grasped her hands and hauled her to her feet, her knees wobbled.

  Despite her earnest wishes, she wasn’t up to arguing, not with him in one of his I’m-in-charge moods.

  But she could manage a protest. She fixed him with a glare. “This is not what I was expecting.”

  His glare was harder, stonier. “You didn’t experience something you hadn’t before?”

  “Well, yes, of course. But—”

  “No buts.” He grabbed her hand and towed her to the door. Reaching it, he glanced back at her. “This is how it has to be. Now be quiet and let me get you back where you should be.”

  She had certainly never before experienced the mix of latent pleasure and awakened temper that coursed her veins as he opened the door, looked out into the corridor, then drew her out into the dark passage.

  Unfortunately the deadening pleasure was still dominant. He reached her door, opened it, and steered her inside.

  He remained at the door.

  She took two steps, then turned back.

  He pointed, stern and immovable, to her bed. “Sleep.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. He met them; she saw his lips firm, then he stepped back and closed the door.

  She turned to eye her bed. It took effort to make her feet move, but she reached it, then sat, then flopped down. Reaching blindly, she found the covers she’d left pushed back, and dragged them up.

  Despite a vague intention of lying awake and dreaming up ways to torment him, sleep came in like a tide and she drowned.

  Rafe stood outside Loretta’s bedroom door until he was sure she’d reached her bed, and was staying in it. The last thing he needed was her deciding to return to his room to argue his decree.

  Letting out a long breath—equal parts frustration and relief—he ran a hand through his hair, then turned and slowly walked back to his room.

  All in all, he was proud of himself. A trifle shocked as well.

  Reaching his door, he glanced back along the silent corridor, then opened the door and went in. Closing the door, he shrugged off his coat, reached for his cravat. Glanced at the rumpled bed.

  Even now he couldn’t quite believe he’d managed to restrain himself, managed to refuse her. Exercising willpower of that magnitude in that particular arena had never been his forte. Yet with her….

  She was different. Significantly different from all others who had gone before. In a different league, on a different plane.

  He knew what that meant, but didn’t want to think aboutit. Dwelling on it … would only make him more acutely aware of the vulnerability that caring for her and wanting her so desperately had already opened somewhere in his chest.

  He could comfortably live the rest of his life without acknowledging that gaping hole in his personal armor, in his emotional shield.

  One thing was clear. If he wanted to suppress the sense of emotional exposure that being with her sexually evoked, a feeling that would increase exponentially the instant he made her irrevocably his, he would do well to ensure they avoided any repetition of the past hours.

  Not until they’d reached England and his mission was complete.

  Grimly clinging to that as his goal going forward, he stripped, flung himself onto his bed, and willed himself to sleep.

  The subtle scent of her clung to his pillow. Wreathed his brain. Lingered on his mouth and on his tongue.

  The inevitable effect of his noble abstinence bit, sank its teeth deep.

  He didn’t get any sleep.

  Rafe rose and dressed well before dawn, and, cocooned in fog, was waiting with Hassan outside the inn when the Loreley Regina materialized wraithlike out of the murk to glide alongside the quay.

  Crew moved with silent efficiency, tying up the boat. A gangplank rolled smoothly out and a youthful sailor came striding down.

  He proved to be the captain, a few years younger than Raf
e. Most of his crew were of that age, but Julius, the captain, assured him all were experienced on the river, and were eager to pick up some extra money from the unexpected run.

  Rafe spent half an hour on board. After inspecting the cabins and chatting with the cook, he took Julius aside andin general terms explained his mission and the potential for attack.

  Julius looked even more enthused. “A little excitement on the journey never goes amiss. We will be happy to help you and your man repel these heathens.”

  Rafe suggested that further largesse would be forthcoming if the crew would take on the duty of keeping watch through the night. Julius assured him that he and his crew would be happy to oblige.

  He was openly delighted when Rafe added a potential bonus for getting them to Rotterdam on time. “By the nineteenth of the month? I would suggest we go at our best clip on the earlier reaches, then we can adjust on the latter stages.”

  With all arranged to their mutual satisfaction, they settled on a departure within the hour.

  Rafe returned to the inn. The pacing tiger within was somewhat placated to find all four women not only awake and dressed for the journey, but seated in the dining parlor breaking their fast. Their bags were stacked ready in the foyer.

  He joined them, taking his customary seat on Esme’s left, across the table from Loretta. He’d avoided catching her eye, but after thanking the innwife for the piled plate she set before him, as he turned back to the table, he couldn’t resist glancing Loretta’s way.

  She caught his gaze, her own very blue and … serene?

  He inwardly blinked, but before he could look again and confirm, her lips curving, she turned to speak to Esme.

  Focusing on his plate, he tried to imagine what might be going through her mind to engender such a calm and assured air.

  An in-control air. The observation filled him with a certain foreboding.

  By the end of the meal, when they rose and as a company bade their hosts farewell, then turned to the door and the Loreley Regina waiting beyond, he’d started to wonder what she knew that he didn’t.

  He’d expected some degree of suppressed irritation, if not outright disgruntlement, over his rescripting of her previous night’s plans.