The Reckless Bride

by Stephanie Laurens

  The nightgown had been designed by some sorceress to pander to a man’s lusts, to heighten male anticipation; he wasn’t proof against the magic. Hands spreading, fingers splaying, he seized—

  Loretta pushed his coat over his shoulders, restricting his reach.

  Holding to the kiss, an incendiary duel of heat and rising passion, he shrugged off the coat—discovered his waistcoat hanging open and shrugged it off, too. Her fingers were busy with his cravat. Leaving her to it, he closed his hands about her hips, sank his fingers into the firm flesh beneath the sliding satin, then eased his hold and sent his hands skating around and upward to close about her breasts.

  The feathers and lace distracted him, confused him.

  Her lips still locked with his, she drew his cravat off, tossed it aside. Leaning into him, into the kiss, flagrantly pressing her breasts into his hands, she seized his shirt above his waistband and tugged.

  Then she rocked back on her heels, broke the kiss. Eyes dark with passion, lips swollen and sheening, demanded, “Off.” She tugged at the shirt.

  Determination was stamped in her expression, echoed in her tone. Muttering a curse, he grabbed the shirt and hauled it up over his head.

  Felt her hands grip his waistband as he did.

  Felt the buttons give as he whipped the shirt off his head, then wrestled to free his arms.

  Even as he dropped the shirt, she closed her hands about him. Locked her fingers about his erection and stroked.

  His eyes closed. He clenched his fists, fought for the strength to endure her touch, her eager, exploring caresses, curious, innocent, yet lascivious all at once. He had, he reminded himself, experienced far worse, more expert and demanding torture, yet for some reason with her … her simplest touch felt infinitely more intimate. More meaningful. More passionate, laden with her own brand of sultry heat.

  At least she was only touching.…

  The thought had him forcing his eyes open. His gaze fell on her face; he took in the wonderment in her expression, an open delight as she stroked and fondled.…

  His arousal racheted up another excruciating notch; he was already as hard as he could get. Fully engorged, under her hand he felt like hot marble, impossibly straining.

  If he didn’t get her hands off him …

  He caught them, one in each of his, drew them from his throbbing erection as he placed one knee between hers on the bed, drew her hands up level with his head—as she looked up, lips parted, he swooped and locked his lips over hers.

  Kissed her voraciously.

  The instant she was caught, he released her hands, set his own to her sinfully clad body, intending to sweep them beneath her bottom and lift her to him …

  She wrapped her arms about his neck, kissed him with such fiery demand she stole his breath—momentarily seized his wits. Before he could reclaim them, she tipped back, tumbled back across the bed, taking him with her.

  With neither purchase nor balance to resist, he landed atop her in a welter of limbs and feathered satin. Gritting his teeth, he pushed up. Ignoring the lust spearing through him at the sensation of having her satin-encased form undulating beneath him, he rolled to the side so he wasn’t squashing her.

  But she followed.

  Used her weight to push him further, tipping him onto his back. Rising on her knees, tugging the skirts of her gown free, she slid one sleek thigh across his hips, and straddled him.

  Bracing her hands on his chest, she looked down at him.

  Her slow, sultry smile was that of a cat eyeing an entire bowlful of cream.

  He stared up at her, a touch dumbfounded, increasingly wary.

  Beyond aroused.

  Concealed beneath the fall of her gown, cradled against one delicate inner thigh, the most aroused part of him twitched.

  She felt it. Smile deepening, she looked down, then gathered and lifted the folds of satin to reveal his errant, still engorged, still throbbing, member.

  “Ah, yes.” Lustful anticipation laced the words. She glanced up at him, met his eyes. “My turn, I believe.”

  She might as well have licked her lips.

  He wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t as she wriggled back down his legs, then gripped his trousers and tugged them down.

  There was, clearly, no point in resisting. Thanking heaven he’d worn trousers and shoes, he toed the later off, heard them fall to the floor, then lifted his hips, helped her free his legs.

  Managing to anchor his legs the whole time, she stripped the trousers from his feet, and triumphant, flung the garment aside.

  Then she turned back to him. To a slow, thorough perusal of all she’d uncovered.

  He lay back and looked at her, encased in the gossamerfine, provocative, evocative confection of satin and feathered lace, perched across his hips like a lustful angel. Swallowed. His mouth was dry; his chest felt tight. Her words echoed in his head. Her turn?

  Bad idea. Very bad idea.

  Just how bad he looked set to learn as, leaning forward, she set her hands on his chest just below his shoulders, used her weight to hold him steady as she bent her head and pressed her lips to his.

  Kissed him, all sweetness and slow, intoxicating pleasure.

  Why she imagined he’d move he didn’t know.

  He lay there and drank in the promise of her kiss. Let her show him her flavors, gift him with her textures.

  Mesmerize him with her passion, blind him with her desire.

  When she moved on, sliding her lips to his jaw, then down the line of his throat, he sighed, and let her. Hands at her sides, he didn’t try to guide, but simply held her, and thrilled to the sensations she sent sliding over his skin as she shifted over him. As with her lips, her hands, her tongue, her teeth, she kissed, caressed, licked, laved, and nipped her way down his body.

  Inevitably she found scars; with loving care, she tended them with lips and tongue, with the soft waft of her breath, the brush of her fingertips.

  Eyes falling closed, he drew in a shuddering breath as she edged lower, her lips skating across the tensed muscles of his abdomen.

  Tension heightened, inexorably tightened as she slid lower still. Delicate fingers again wrapped around his erection. He felt the press of her breasts through the feathered lace as she held the rigid rod against her, then she tilted the head aside so she could place a hot open-mouthed kiss on his navel.

  Lust closed viselike around his spine, fierce talons sinking deep.

  Even as she shuffled lower yet, his mind was awash with thoughts, images, hopes, and contradictory fears.

  Would she? Surely not. But what if …

  He felt the warm wash of her breath across the sensitive head and stopped breathing. Fists clenching tight, he told himself he wasn’t going to look, wouldn’t …

  His lids cracked open, he glanced down his body, and saw.…

  A sight that rocked him to his soul.

  She was lightly tracing the veins, the bulbous head, but the look on her face … she was studying his erection, examining it, delighting in it as if it were some precious prize.

  He must have groaned; her eyes flicked up to meet his.

  She looked into his eyes, then smiled.

  Put out her tongue and licked.

  He jerked, closed his eyes, groaned again—deeper this time.

  Felt the soft exhalation of her delighted laugh—an unbelievably erotic sensation—then she licked again, slower, more deliberately, and he stopped thinking.

  Could only feel as she tasted him. As she explored and learned.

  His hands had risen to cup her head. By an inhuman feat of will he managed not to sink his fingers into the dark silk of her hair, grip, and guide her … but his reins were fraying, his control thinning to a wisp, more hope than reality.

  When she slowly licked across the broad head, then circled the rim with the tip of her hot tongue, he’d had enough. Could stand no more. Not without …

  Incipient panic gave him the strength to open his eyes, lift his s
houlders and, as gently as he could, tighten his grip on her head and draw her away.

  She caught one of his hands in hers. Twined her fingers in his, drew his hand from her head and pushed it down to the bed.

  “No.” The word fell from her lips, clear, firm, decisive. She met his eyes, her own radiating certainty. “You have to let me.” Her lips curved. She leaned forward on her knees and stretched up to brush her lips over his. Whispered across them, “You have to let me have my way with you tonight.”

  From close quarters, she held his gaze. “This, tonight, is my turn to explore and learn what pleases you.” A bewitching, beguiling smile on her lips, she eased back, softly said, “My turn to show you how much I love you.”

  His chest swelled. He lay there, searched her eyes—saw that the words had been deliberate, no accident, no light, airy, half-conscious statement.

  She’d meant every word.

  He lay on his back on her bed, and his world, his universe, rocked. Quaked.

  As if she understood, she drew back to her previous position astride his thighs, closed one hand about his straining erection, then bent her head and took him into her mouth.

  His eyes closed; his body bowed. A groan was ripped from his chest as she took him deeper.

  As she confirmed all she’d said in sensation and pleasure.

  Lorettta devoted herself to the task, and discovered just how much pleasuring him rebounded on her. Having him at her sensual mercy was one delight. The sense of control—of leading in this dance at least as far as he would let her—was a different sort of joy.

  Holding him in her mouth, suckling, curling her tongue around his solid length, she let her hands roam, stretched them up over his ridged abdomen, over the wide muscles of his chest.

  Possessed by touch as she did by suction.

  Gloried in her power, in his all but helpless response.

  He was magnificient, and he was hers. All hers. She’d spent the day thinking about the previous night, about what it had revealed, and how. About what he’d shown her of the ways to communicate in this arena. About how to return the favor—the pleasure and the wordless commitment, the promise, the unspoken vow.

  Tonight, as she’d stated, was her turn. Her turn to communicate that wordless commitment, that unspoken vow. To worship, to pleasure, to give.

  Eventually the pressure of their passions grew too great. She felt the urgency pounding through him, through her, felt the throb of aching need between her thighs reach fever-pitch.

  Releasing him, she rose up on her knees, gripped the skirts of Esme’s scandalous gift and with a silent thank you to her great-aunt, drew the slithering folds up and off over her head.

  He reached for her, gripping her waist. She sensed his intention to roll her beneath him and stopped him, gripped his wrists in both hands. “No—like this.” Shuffling forward on her knees, she positioned herself over his straining member. “I know it can be done—show me how.”

  His grip tightened. One glance showed his jaw locked, his features like hewn granite, his eyes a burning blue. But then his fingers eased enough to slide to her hips.

  And he showed her.

  How to take him in, how to envelop his hardness in her slick softness, how to use her body to flagrantly caress him.

  How to ride him.

  He held her, showed her, taught her, guided her—showed her how to love him this way.

  Showed her how to ride him until their hearts beat as one, until their breaths were ragged gasps and their senses spun.

  He surged up, locked his lips over one turgid nipple and suckled powerfully. Head tipping back, she cried out, and rode him even harder.

  Until he burned at her core, hot and hard, and she tightened and tightened, then he thrust up, deep, one last time, and on a rush of pure pleasure she melted.

  Releasing her breast, he locked his lips on hers, claimed her mouth in a searing kiss. Locked her hips to him and rolled her to the side, rolled her beneath him.

  With one powerful thrust resheathed himself fully within her.

  Then he rode her.

  Into shattering bliss, into exquisite oblivion.

  Into the heaven that waited for them, in each other’s arms.

  In the depths of the chilly night, Rafe’s mind swam back to consciousness. His body remained sunk in a sated, bliss-filled warmth he never wanted to leave.

  Thank God he wouldn’t have to. He tightened his arms around Loretta, breathed in her scent, felt it wreathe through his mind and sink to his bones, then relaxed, eased his grip. There was no need to physically lock her to him. She wasn’t leaving either.

  She’d claimed her turn, her right, and claimed him.

  My turn to show you how much I love you.

  She’d said the words and meant them. In uttering them she was braver than he. That one little, four-letter word still held the power to make him quake.

  But … my turn she’d said. Which implied she knew, had correctly interpreted and understood, all he’d unintentionally, helplessly, revealed the night before.

  He lay still, her body, warm and sated, curled against his, and wondered how he felt about that.

  If even though he hadn’t said the words, hadn’t uttered them out loud … if she knew, and he knew she knew … where did that leave them?

  She seemed to know.

  Sadly, he didn’t.

  He wasn’t sure how to deal with that emotion—that massive, powerful, all-encompassing emotion that some ancient scholar had in some fit of idiocy described in a word of only four letters.

  That emotion was so overwhelmingly powerful it qualified for seventeen letters, at least.

  Yet no matter what label was put on it, the result remained the same. When it came to acknowledging it, working with it, managing it, he had no clue. He wasn’t sure what it meant, how it would affect him.

  He didn’t know what he ought to do about it, for it, with it.

  Most pertinently, he wasn’t sure he, being him, could do very much with it at all.

  The morning brought distraction, but not in a way any of them would have wished.

  As Rafe had told Julius, he, Loretta, Hassan, and Rose remained below deck as, soon after an early breakfast, the Loreley Regina tied up at the dock in Bonn.

  A thin fog hung over the docks. The winter sun was struggling to thrust even a ghostly grayish light through the heavy clouds.

  Soon after Julius and some of the crew had departed for the warehouses, another crewman came down to tell them that the crew left on watch had spotted Indian-looking men wearing turbans with black scarves wound around them.

  Rafe thanked him, and he left.

  The minutes crawled by; the tension grew.

  To break it, Rafe suggested a game of whist.

  They gathered in the salon, in their usual spot in the prow where the windows on either side of the vessel let in enough light to see.

  The dock lay alongside. After peering out, Loretta drew the lace curtain across the dockside window, relieving Rafe of that concern. Even if cultists strolled past on the dock, they wouldn’t be able to spot them through the lace.

  They settled to their game.

  Nearly an hour later, they heard the men returning.

  Julius looked in, saluted. “We have all we need.” He nodded at Loretta. “I gave your letter into the post, m’amzelle.” To Rafe he said, “We will be putting out shortly—there is another vessel ahead of us that must go first.”

  “Excellent.” Rafe relaxed, leaning back in the armchair. Julius left, and Rafe looked at Hassan. “If we escape detection here—”

  A heavy thud sounded on the narrow walkway on the starboard side, the side facing the dock. Simultaneously the boat tipped, then righted; there seemed little doubt what had happened.

  Both Rafe and Hassan leapt to their feet, heading for the door to the walkway.

  “No!” Loretta swung to face them. “Go down. Go and stand in the corridor where they can’t see you.”

>   Rafe and Hassan hesitated, caught by the instinct to defend and protect.

  “Aar—“ Rose clapped a hand over her mouth. Eyes round, with her other hand she pointed at the mahogany brown face pressed to the port prow window, the uncurtained one facing the river.

  Black eyes stared at them. The apparition wore a turban wound about with black silk.

  Rafe swore and raced for the walkway door, Hassan at his heels.

  The cultist’s gaze tracked them, then he whirled and disappeared toward the dock.

  Loretta yanked aside the curtain over the dockside window, knelt on the window seat and tried to track the man.

  All she saw was a boot as he leapt up onto the dock and vanished.

  Five minutes passed before Rafe and Hassan returned to the salon. As they did, the prow of the Loreley Regina swung out into the river.

  Both men came to join Loretta and Rose as they stood at the front of the salon and watched the docks fall behind, and the river open up before them once more.

  Once they were underway, Loretta glanced at Rafe.

  He met her gaze, his own heavy with concern. “The dock was crowded. They—there were two of them—disappeared before any of us got more than a glimpse.”

  She nodded, then, sensing there was more behind the men’s hugely increased tension, raised her brows.

  Rafe exhaled, ran a hand through his hair. “They not only know we’re on the river. They know we’re on this particular boat.”

  The cult also now knew that he and Hassan had two women with them. Rafe hadn’t stated that, yet of all the aspects now in play, that weighed on him the most.

  They kept watch, a tense watch, throughout the rest of the day. They saw no likely cultists as they slipped past Cologne, but at Dusseldorf they spotted a lone cult member sitting on a pile of rope on the dock.

  He was watching the river, but idly.

  Given the speed the Loreley Regina was making downriver, with the wind holding steady from the stern, they concluded that the news of their sighting at Bonn hadn’t yet reached that far north.

  Later, after dinner, Rafe paced the stateroom’s sitting room. Rose had gathered her things and decamped to Hassan’s cabin at the end of the corridor, leaving the stateroom to him and Loretta. Given how he felt, he was grateful.