A Hellion in Her Bed

by Sabrina Jeffries

  When he tugged loose the ties of her shift she stared at him, her eyes as dark as the unholy lust raging in his loins. Lowering her shift, he gazed on her naked bosom, and his heart shuddered to a halt.

  Damn, she was lovely. Her breasts were as full as he’d guessed, with large, rosy nipples begging to be sucked and teased. He bent his head to lick one, then the other, before caressing the damp flesh with his fingers. Her soft cry was half gasp, half moan.

  It was the most erotic thing he’d ever heard. His cock stiffened to stone against her thigh. “My God, Annabel …” he groaned against her breast.

  The voices downstairs halted, and for one panicked moment, he thought he’d been heard. Then the door opened and closed below them. The men had left the barn.

  She pushed him back with an uncertain glance.

  “Perhaps you should … let me up now …” she whispered, though she didn’t reach to straighten her clothes.

  “Not a chance,” he rasped.

  Her eyes widened. “Why?”

  He gave a strangled laugh. “Why do you think?” Ignoring her hands against his chest, he lowered his head to draw hard on her nipple, making her arch up against him.

  “We shouldn’t … be doing this …” she murmured, but her hands slipped up to clutch his shoulders.

  “I want to touch you.” Shifting his body off her, he inched up her skirts. “Let me touch you.”

  A shudder wracked her, then her eyes slid closed. “Yes … please …”

  Annabel knew it was dangerous to encourage him. It could too easily get out of hand, and she could find herself in the same situation she’d been in thirteen years ago. Except this time the man who got her with child would break her heart, for Jarret was the sort to bed her and forget her.

  Thus far, she’d mostly resisted his charms. But if she were intimate with him, that would be impossible. She couldn’t just share a man’s bed and forget about him.

  Still, it had been so long since a man had touched her this way, and he was inciting her to riot. It was hard not to respond. Especially after the sweet things he’d said, about how he thought about her, how he desired her. Even Rupert had never courted her with such words, and she hadn’t realized how badly she craved that.

  Nobody knew they were here, after all. Nobody knew he was doing these things. It gave her license to be naughty.

  His lips whispered over her cheek. “I promise not to ruin you.”

  The words startled her. How could he ruin her?

  Oh, yes. He thought she was a virgin. And the truth was, she felt like a virgin with him. Or at least a woman who’d half forgotten how it felt to be with a man so intimately.

  “All right,” she murmured.

  “I just want to see you reach your rapture,” he said huskily, and slipped his hand inside her drawers to cup her between the legs.

  Her eyes shot open. “What?”

  His blindingly handsome face held a raw hunger that called to her own. “For three nights now, I’ve lain awake in bed imagining how you would look if I took you. I want to see if it matches my imagination.” When she stiffened, he added, “I know I can’t take you … but I can bring you pleasure.”

  He rubbed her most private place, and she let out a moan of pure enjoyment. With a knowing smile, he nuzzled her ear. “Let me watch you come apart in my hands, dearling.”

  The endearment made a dangerous thrill rise in her throat. “I suppose that would be … all right,” she said, finishing the word on a squeak when he fingered her flesh with a particularly deft stroke.

  “All right?” he said, laughter showing on his face. “I promise you, my pretty pixie, it will be far better than all right.” With eyes agleam, he slid down her body.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, perplexed.

  “I want to taste you.”

  “Where?”

  In answer, he bent his head to lick the part his hand had just been caressing.

  “Ohhhh …” she breathed. How astonishing! Who knew that a man could do such an outrageous thing?

  Who knew that it would feel so good?

  Holding her thighs open, he strafed her private parts with his tongue. A cry of pleasure and surprise escaped her. It was so … intense. She’d not felt anything that intense with Rupert.

  But then, Jarret wasn’t some fumbling country boy. He knew just how to inflame a woman’s senses. And how could it hurt to let him? When would she get another chance like this, to be free and wild, to desire again?

  His tongue dipped and swirled, making her ache and want. She remembered the wanting but didn’t remember it being this powerful. Only half aware of what she did, she swiveled her hips up to gain more, feel more.

  He chuckled. “You like that, do you?”

  She blushed, but somehow managed a nod.

  “And this?” He sucked on a particularly tender part of her flesh, and she nearly went insane. “Do you like this?”

  “You … know … I do,” she choked out as sensation flooded her, fierce and hot, making her writhe beneath his mouth.

  “Just making sure,” he murmured, then plundered her with his lips and tongue and teeth in more earnest.

  Lord save her, what was he doing to her? Her memories from Rupert were of vaguely pleasurable sensations, a sense of closeness, a muted sort of enjoyment.

  This was blatantly, nakedly, boldly carnal. He made her want to leap, to soar, to explode from her clothes, from her very skin.

  “Jarret, please …” she moaned, burying her fingers in his damp hair, anchoring his head between her legs.

  “Take what you will, Annabel. It’s yours. You just have to grasp it.”

  Somehow, she understood exactly what he meant. She could feel the growth of a pleasure that lay glittering just beyond her reach. Every lash of his tongue brought it nearer … if she could just … stretch … farther … higher …

  There!

  A symphony of sensation wracked her body, dragging a keening cry from her lips. Good Lord in Heaven! Such glorious … amazing … It was beyond anything she’d ever felt. As her body shook with the force of her release, she tightened her fingers in his gorgeous tangle of silky black hair.

  It took her a while to regain her breath—and her sanity. When she trusted herself to look at him, she found him watching her. Heat rose in her cheeks.

  He flashed that rogue’s smile that showed both his dimples. “You’re so lovely when you reach the peak of your pleasure. All pink and flushed.” He brushed a kiss to her inner thigh. “Here.” He slid up next to her to kiss her exposed breast. “And here.” He kissed her throat. “Even here.”

  “And you?” she whispered, embarrassed by the attention he was giving her shameless response. “What do you look like when you reach the peak of your pleasure?”

  When he jerked back to stare at her, she cursed her quick tongue. A virgin wouldn’t say that. Virgins were too anxious to worry if the man had enjoyment. They weren’t even aware that a man could have pleasure without ruining them.

  He mustn’t realize she was unchaste, or he’d take full advantage. The only thing standing between her and another illegitimate child was Jarret’s belief that she was a virgin.

  “I-I—”

  “Tell you what,” he said, his eyes turning a brilliant green as he took her hand and placed it on his trousers. “Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jarret held his breath, sure that she would recoil. It was one thing to be curious about a man’s pleasure, but quite another to offer to bring it about.

  Then again, he hadn’t expected her to let him pleasure her in the first place. And he certainly hadn’t expected her response to stir something dark and sweet inside him, a kind of longing he’d never felt: to possess a woman fully—not just in body, but in mind and heart and soul.

  It scared him, so he beat down the feeling and concentrated on coaxing her into an illicit act.

  “I’d dearly love to have your
hands on me, bringing me to the peak of pleasure.”

  Her gaze grew shuttered. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

  Remembering the alligator incident, he shrugged. “Well, if you aren’t certain you can manage it …”

  “Of course I can manage it,” she said stoutly. “How hard can it be?”

  He laughed. “Trust me, dearling, hard enough.”

  When he pressed her hand to the bulge in his trousers, she went beet red. “Oh my.”

  The words shot straight to his cock, stiffening it even more. “Do you mean to leave me in this condition?” he asked, pushing against her hand.

  “I suppose that would be … rude.” She rubbed the length of him, and he thought he’d explode.

  “Rude,” he choked out. “Right.” When her fingers brushed the head of his cock, he released a strangled breath. “You can take it out, you know.”

  A minxish smile touched her lips. She swept her hand delicately over the straining cloth. “Can I?”

  “Oh, God, touch me,” he rasped, unable to endure much more of her teasing. He began to wonder exactly how inexperienced she was. He’d lay odds that she and Rupert had done a bit more than kiss.

  Poor sod, to go off to war with the memory of something like this in his head, and no hope of relief.

  “Please, Annabel …” he rasped.

  “All right.”

  His blood thundered in his ears. Every time she said “all right” in that understated way, it drove him mad.

  She unbuttoned his trousers, then released the buttons of his drawers. As his cock sprang free, he let out a shudder of relief. With another teasing smile, she closed her fingers around him.

  And then he began a slow descent into insanity as she stroked him. Somehow she made it all seem perfectly acceptable. Having this fresh-faced country lass doing what no respectable virgin would ever do was arousing as hell. If he didn’t watch it, he would come too quickly. He hadn’t done that since he was a lad, but she was making it damned hard to resist.

  He tried not to wonder how she’d learned exactly how to please a man, but it had to be that damned fiancé of hers. And ludicrous as it was, the idea of her doing this to another man made him scowl.

  She released his cock instantly. “I’m hurting you.”

  “God, no.” She couldn’t be too experienced, or she wouldn’t look so concerned.

  What was wrong with him, to care what she might have done with some stupid soldier? This was merely a dalliance.

  Guiding her hand back around his flesh, he murmured, “Men are sturdier than you’d think.” Their bodies were, anyway. He began to wonder about the sturdiness of their minds.

  “Even there?” she asked skeptically.

  “Even there.” He gripped her fingers, forcing her to stroke him harder. “Yes, dearling. Like that.”

  It felt like heaven. He wouldn’t last much longer.

  She bent her head, as if concentrating on her caresses, and he brushed the mahogany waves of her hair with his lips. Her honey and orange smell filled his senses, blotting out the other scents of the barn. It was luscious, as luscious as her breast, which he couldn’t help fondling, and her temple, which he couldn’t stop kissing.

  Had any woman ever consumed him like this?

  His body galloped toward release, stampeding over anything but the urgent need for fulfillment. As the blood surged in him and he felt the little death overcoming him, he pushed her hand free so he could spend himself into the straw.

  His body shook with the sheer power of it. Good God, he’d never come that fiercely in his life. He already wanted to do it again … inside her. That was not acceptable.

  Lying back onto the straw, he tugged her against his chest. As he came back to earth, reality set in. He shouldn’t have gone so far with her, no matter how much they’d enjoyed it. A woman like her only allowed such privileges to serious suitors, and he certainly wasn’t that. He couldn’t have her thinking that he was.

  Never mind that he liked her. He admired her loyalty to her family, her refusal to back down … the utterly reckless way she came. And she was a bloody good card player, besides.

  But he wasn’t going to marry her, for God’s sake. He’d already escaped Gran’s plans for him. Marrying a brewster with an ailing brewery would be like sticking his head right back into Gran’s noose. Gran would own him body and soul.

  Annabel would own him body and soul … until the day something took her from him. And that would be far worse if he came to care for her. So he had to figure out how to explain why he couldn’t marry her without hurting her feelings.

  After a moment, she said, “Well, at least I got my answer.”

  “About what?”

  “How you look when you reach the peak of your pleasure.”

  At the teasing note in her voice, he turned his head to stare at her. “Oh? How do I look?”

  She grinned. “Like every man looks when he gets what he wants. As smug and self-satisfied as a sultan.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at her. “A sultan?”

  “All men look like sultans in bed,” she said.

  Something in the way she said it arrested him. “So you’ve seen that many men in bed, have you?”

  She glanced away, clearly embarrassed. “Certainly not. I … just read that somewhere.”

  It figured. “You have rather risqué tastes in literature.”

  A blush touched her cheeks. “Even a spinster can be curious, you know.”

  He shifted to his side so he could circle her nipple with his finger. Their discussion could wait a few more moments. “Feel free to indulge your curiosity as much as you please.”

  But when he bent his head toward her breast, she pushed him away. “I think I’ve indulged it quite enough, don’t you?”

  “You could never indulge it too much for me.” He watched as she sat up and began to straighten her clothing. Above them the rain on the roof beat a steady counterpoint to his still pounding heart.

  “You have to stop saying things like that,” she warned. “And you have to stop … kissing me.”

  He plucked a piece of straw from her hair, then tickled her neck with it. “And if I don’t want to stop?” Good God, what he had to stop was this deplorable habit of letting his cock speak for him.

  “You must,” she said firmly. “I shan’t risk Geordie’s catching us again. He already thinks you want to marry me, and I can’t have that. And when I tell him that there’s nothing between us he has to believe me. Assuming that he hasn’t yet told Sissy about seeing us kiss, I can probably convince him to stay quiet. But if he finds us together again, he’ll tattle for sure. And if Sissy tells my brother, he might—”

  “Try to force a marriage on me.”

  “On us. And I won’t be forced. Nor will I have any of them getting their hopes up about us marrying, when there’s no chance of that happening under any circumstances.”

  The conviction in her voice irritated him. “You sound awfully sure of that.”

  She eyed him askance. “Come now, you know perfectly well you don’t want to marry me.”

  Never mind that he’d had that exact thought only two minutes before; to have her state it so casually was rather off-putting. “I suppose that’s true, but—”

  “And I certainly have no intention of marrying you.”

  He sat up to glare at her. “Why the hell not?”

  “No offense, but you aren’t what a sensible woman looks for in a husband.”

  “That’s putting it a bit strongly.” Now peeved, he rose to his knees to button his drawers and trousers. “And what exactly does a ‘sensible woman’ look for?” he asked sarcastically.

  She looked bewildered. “Well, for one thing, a man who has some sense of duty. Not an irresponsible scapegrace who gambles his way through London to avoid doing anything constructive with his time. And your friends did say you’re only helping your grandmother with Plumtree Brewery to avoid having to meet her requirement that you marry
—”

  “I know what they said,” he snapped. He didn’t know why he found her observations so annoying; everything she was telling him was true.

  But she wasn’t supposed to be saying it. He was. She was supposed to be wheedling him into marrying her, now that he’d taken liberties with her. He was a marquess’s son, after all.

  Granted, he was only a second son and there was a great deal of scandal attached to the family name, but why would she care? She was a brewer’s daughter, for God’s sake, from provincial little Burton-upon-Trent. And a spinster, too! Didn’t they all want to catch a man?

  “Are you saying that your friends were lying?” she asked, clearly perplexed.

  “No. Just omitting a few very important details.” He stuffed his shirttails into his trousers. “Like the fact that I’ll inherit Plumtree Brewery one day. Gran is leaving it to me.” God, now he sounded like a pompous idiot. “That should be enough to please any ‘sensible woman.’”

  She blinked. “But you said that running it is temporary—”

  “It is, for now. I agreed to run it for a year. Then she’ll go back to running it until she dies, while I …”

  “Go back to gambling and drinking and wenching,” she said dryly. “That sounds like quite the appealing life for any prospective wife.”

  He bristled. How the hell had this conversation turned into an indictment of his perfectly acceptable way of living? “I’ll have you know that hundreds of women would kill to have that life.”

  Amusement glinted in her eyes. “I’m sure that’s true. You should definitely go find one of them to marry. Once you decide that you’re ready for a wife, that is.”

  With a pat on his arm that was almost sisterly, she started to rise, but he pulled her down again. Anger riding him, he kissed her fiercely, deeply. Only when he had her melting in his arms did he draw back to murmur, “I daresay any ‘sensible woman’ would find advantages to being married to such an ‘irresponsible scapegrace.’”

  She brushed her thumb over his lips. “I daresay she would. But such advantages would hardly compensate for worrying about when the debt collectors would come to cart away her furniture because her husband had lost it in a card game.”