by Henke, Shirl
She was so enraptured by the flood of new sensations sweeping over her that she could feel no trace of modesty. His body was so different from hers, so dark and hard, furred with ebony hair across his chest, forearms, and legs. She let her hands caress while her eyes drank in the beauty of his maleness, nowhere more evident than in the straining, pulsing phallus that probed against her belly. But her courage failed, and her hands did not trespass where her eyes had.
“You've been exceeding bold, Mistress Blackthorne, until now,” he said in a low growl as he rolled atop her, supporting his weight on his elbows as he let their hot, naked flesh meld together. His mouth took hers again, this time not gently at all, yet she opened for him, returning the passionate kiss with a fire of her own. “I can wait no longer.”
His knee moved between her thighs as he commanded hoarsely, “Spread your legs—yes, like that, now wrap them around my hips—higher, higher.” He groaned as she complied with his instructions. Then he reached between them and guided his staff to the core of her.
Madelyne felt that hard male part of him touching her where all the aching need seemed to center. A jolt of raw pleasure shot through her when he guided his phallus to rub against her nether lips, stroking and teasing as he rasped unintelligible words against her throat. She felt her body arching to meet him.
He slowly sank into her, then felt her stiffen when he pressed against the barrier of her maidenhead. Raising himself over her with a look of predatorial satisfaction on his face, he gritted his teeth and flung his head back, struggling to hold himself in check.
“Don't move, don't even breathe,” he rasped out.
After a moment, he took a deep ragged breath, then lowered himself to kiss her once more, cradling her face in his hand and coaxing her to respond as she had earlier. As soon as he felt her begin to lose herself to the pleasure, he thrust once, penetrating her, filling her.
His mouth muffled her cry as he continued the seductive kiss, all the while holding himself still within the tight, wet sheath of her body.
A feeling of incredible fullness quickly erased the sharp twinge of pain from her memory. So this is the joining that offers surcease for the ache in me. Her hands ran up and down the ridged muscles of his back, then tangled in his hair, pulling him to her as he deepened the kiss. The burning sensation had quickly passed, and now all she could feel was an irresistible urge to move. Earlier he had commanded her to remain still, but now it seemed so natural to forget that, just as she forgot the pain.
Quint felt her move, wriggling her hips experimentally. With a muttered oath, he showed her the motion, sliding out, plunging back in, slowly at first, struggling to make it last. Breaking off the kiss, he raised his upper body once more and observed her as he increased the tempo of his thrusts. Her eyes flew open, then closed in ecstasy as she tossed her head from side to side, arching hungrily to meet him. Dark, lustrous hair pooled in shiny masses all about her head and shoulders, spilling like ruby ink across the snowy bed linens. She writhed, holding tightly to him.
He studied the flush stealing across her breasts...and was lost. Every nerve in his body vibrated as he thrust one last shuddering time and collapsed onto her beautiful little breasts. The aftershocks of his release still gripped him as he lay panting for breath, utterly satiated after waiting weeks for this moment. The thought was disquieting, but he forced it from his mind as he rolled off her.
Madelyne felt the surge of raw male power that culminated in a sudden swelling of his member deep inside her. When his body was racked with convulsive shaking and he collapsed, the delicious stroking done, she knew it was over. She clung to him, fighting a restless hunger that still burned inside her, although she intuited that his had been quenched. When he pulled out of her body and rolled to his side, she felt bereft and chilled in spite of the sweat that sheened their bodies in the warm night air.
A reckless desire for fulfillment led her to sit up and study his naked body in the moonlight filtering in from the large window across the room. Quintin lay with one arm flung across his eyes, totally replete, separate from her. Frustration and anger welled up inside her as she watched the slow, even rise and fall of his chest. The wretch, he was fast asleep!
Her eyes traveled down his long dark figure, noting small scars, ridges of muscles, cunning patterns of body hair. She tentatively reached out her hand, aching to touch, to feel his heat again; then she let it fall to her side. What use increasing her misery? Perhaps only men were supposed to enjoy the act, although that hadn't been what Mr. Cleland had written in his book, but then, he was a man too. She flopped back down, seizing the sheet and pulling it over them both. After restlessly tossing for a while, she fell into a fitful slumber.
Quint awoke several hours later. The moon was high in the night sky now, its silvery light filtering through the gauze netting around the bed. At once he felt Madelyne's presence. The room smelled of the heady musk of sex, combined with a faint essence of honeysuckle. He turned and watched her small body toss fitfully beneath the sheet. He could feel his body growing hard. Damn, I only have to look at her! That was his last coherent thought before he reached for the sheet and yanked it to the foot of the bed.
Feeling the sudden slide of the cover from her body, Madelyne awoke from her restless slumber to find her husband staring down at her with dark, brooding eyes. His mouth swooped down and found hers, forcing her to open to his fierce, persuasive kiss. Then he trailed wet licks and bites down her throat until his lips brushed her breasts, eliciting a moan from her. She arched up as he suckled and teased the rosy peaks, her whole body aching. Foolishly, she was again letting him fuel the fires inside her until she was driven mad!
Quint felt her feeble protest as she tried to twist free of his imprisoning grasp, but he only held her more securely, whispering, ”I can help you, Madelyne...only let me...” He parted her legs and thrust into her. She was wet and hungry, so sweetly, wantonly hungry. He began slowly, moving inside her satiny heat. She clung to him, her nails digging into his shoulders, her hips meeting his, thrust for thrust. He kept to a slow, steady rhythm, careful to retain iron control over his body, watching her as the tension in her built and built.
For Madelyne, the ecstasy was delirious, just as it had been the first time. If it ended again she could not bear it. She scored his back with her nails, glorying in the wickedly intense pleasure that kept growing, radiating from the very center of her being. Then she felt the first contractions, and she raised her hips from the bed. Her eyes riveted on his as she cried and writhed, her whole body throbbing in release. This time when he, too, cried out and shuddered with completion, she understood.
Tears slid from beneath her russet lashes. Quint traced the silvery trails down her cheeks with the pads of his fingers. He didn't know what to say, so he just kissed them, lightly, sweetly.
Her eyes opened slowly, dreamy and unfocused now as one small hand stroked the beard beginning to grow bristly on his jaw. “That was the most wonderful thing I've ever experienced,” she whispered, snuggling into his arms as he rolled off of her.
Quint held her, watching with a perplexed look on his face as she fell almost instantly into a deep sleep. “So apt a pupil, my wife,” he whispered on the still night air.
Dawn came hot and golden. Quint slid free from Madelyne's sleeping embrace and entered his dressing room to ring for a bath. Later, as he sat in the tub, he brooded over the preceding night. His wife was not only a beauty, she was a passionate little creature in the bargain, not at all the qualities he had wanted in the mother of his children. She had been as eager as the most experienced women he'd bedded, in spite of the virgin blood staining the sheets on which they slept. Innocent yesterday, but for how long satisfied with one man?
Quint was not vain; he knew he was a fine-looking man and an accomplished lover. But a woman could turn her pretty head as soon as a new man swaggered by and caught her fancy. God knew, he and Devon had traded enough women back and forth—doxies and fineborn lad
ies both. He could stand no such faithlessness in the woman carrying his name. There was nothing for it; Madelyne was his wife, for better or for worse. He vowed to guard her closely.
Madelyne awakened to the sounds of splashing coming from Quintin's dressing room. She sat up in the center of the big, rumpled bed and hugged her knees to her chest, remembering last night. How glorious it had been, beyond her wildest imaginings! In spite of the hostile and mistrustful way things had started between them, there was great promise in their marriage.
If she understood nothing else about Quintin Blackthorne's mysterious past, she did know he desired her—and she him. An excellent basis on which to build a marriage, she thought, recalling the words from the Prayer Book, “Therefore a man shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh.” She smiled and hugged herself once more, then slid from the bed and slipped on her hastily discarded nightclothes.
Quint returned dressed in a white ruffled shirt, brown waistcoat, and buckskin pants. He stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, regarding his wife, who was standing before his big dressing mirror, attempting to untangle her hair. At the sound of his polished boots clicking against the oak floorboards, she turned, her face wreathed in a shy smile and tinted by a blush.
“If you ring for Nell, shell help you with your hair,” he said, striving to sound detached when every instinct told him to stride across the room and take her in his arms.
She took a hesitant step forward, clutching the brush nervously in her hands. ”I...I didn't wish to summon Nell until we had an opportunity to speak.” He stood still, leaning with seeming indolence against the door frame.
“And what is it you wish to speak of, Madelyne?”
She felt the heat scorch her cheeks. He was doing nothing to make this easier for her! “Last night was...that is, after all our earlier—er, mishaps—well, now I feel we can have a good marriage, Quintin.” She looked into those fathomless green eyes. Something in his guarded stance made her realize that he was holding himself back, trying to rebuild the wall that had broken down last night.
She crossed the distance between them and placed one hand on his chest. His heart accelerated. She smiled and said softly, “Last night was wonderful, Quintin. To say I enjoyed what we did seems far too weak a way to express it, but I did.” She forced her eyes to meet his.
He answered her silent plea for a kiss, wanting only to give her a chaste salute, but once he tasted her and smelled her heady scent, he lost control and wrapped his arms about her, deepening the caress into a hungry ravagement of her mouth. She responded ardently, molding her slim curves against him and clinging to him. He finally broke free of the kiss but still held her in a bone-crushing grip.
His expression was harsh, his breathing labored as he said, “So you enjoyed my husbandly attention, did you? All too well, it seems.” He shoved her away and turned on his heel, placing his arm on the door frame and leaning his head against his arm.
”I don't understand, Quintin. You pleased me, and I pleased you—I know I did,” she added boldly, watching his shoulders stiffen. “What is wrong?”
He raised his head and turned to her. “Ladies aren't usually so forward about such matters, only harlots. A good wife's duty is to bear her husband's children, not wallow in carnal pleasures.”
Madelyne felt as if he had just struck her squarely in her midsection. She struggled for breath, letting rage build up, shoving aside the terrible cutting pain and humiliation.
“You dare to call me a harlot for confessing that I enjoyed making love with my lawful husband? Yet you, you hypocrite, you've lain with every cheap serving wench from Savannah to Charles Town—and the likes of immoral women like Serena Fallowfield! Yes, I've heard of her reputation! She's worse than the lowliest prostitute on the Charles Town waterfront.” She forced down the hateful surge of tears, quivering with fury and pain.
“I’ve found my own kind with Serena, it would seem. You lay my sins quite correctly before me. It takes a real bastard to seek his own level, Madelyne. And make no mistake about me—you named me rightly back in the library in Savannah. I am a bastard—a legal bastard. My fine lady mother, an English noblewoman, shared the morals of those Charles Town whores. She slept with her husband's own brother—and God knows how many others! I am not Robert Blackthorne's son, but I am his only heir, God help us both. I’ll not be betrayed as he was and raise a son to know the shame I've locked inside me for over twenty years!”
Madelyne listened to his anguished outburst in numb silence. Only when he brushed past her and slammed the bedroom door did she come out of her shocked trance. Shivering, she crumpled onto the carpet. She clutched her knees and huddled in a ball, but this time it was not with joyous anticipation.
As he strode down the hall, Quintin Blackthorne, for the first time since he was a child, felt alive—and afraid.
Chapter Nine
“You have that smirking look about you, Andrew. What have you been doing?” Serena Fallowfield sat in the elegant front parlor of Andrew's city house, daintily sipping tea while she watched him with narrowed eyes. He pulled off his coat and tossed it to a servant, who handed him a glass of rum and hastily quit the room.
“Why, my dear, I've just returned from a visit with dear Cousin Madelyne. Poor child. Quintin is such a brute,” he said theatrically. “When he isn't off with his racehorses, he's at the Savannah docks. Then when he does come home, he's wretchedly jealous of his neglected wife.” He eyed her appraisingly. “Perhaps it's best you didn't succeed in luring him into marriage. If he mistrusts an innocent like Madelyne, imagine how he'd react to your escapades.”
Serena set the delicate Staffordshire cup and saucer down on the tea table with a clatter. ”I pursued Quintin to save our family fortunes—or have you forgotten the plight doting old Alastair left us in?”
“You pursued Quintin right where you wanted him—to bed. Once you let him sample your tarnished charms, he would never marry you. Tactical error, m'dear. I'm afraid his standards for a wife are rather unrealistically high.” He sipped his rum and stretched out indolently on a maroon brocade sofa.
Serena stood up, smoothing the bodice of her low-cut, blue silk gown and preening before a round wall mirror. “The error wasn't mine but yours—for underestimating your uncle. Robert would've seen me dragged off by the savages before he'd have allowed me to marry his son. He arranged the match with that pitiful Huguenot child.”
“And Quintin agreed to it, much as he appears to be repenting his bargain these past weeks.” He waved his glass dismissively when she started to argue further. “We've failed to join our side of the family, deplorably cash poor, with Quintin's side, wherein all the wealth resides.”
“If your father hadn't married that—that Indian,” she ground out the word with loathing, “none of this would have happened. He went off with her and lived like one of them until he caught a fever and died instead of tending to business here in Savannah.”
“My father was a fool to marry Charity. Bloody hell, do you think I haven't cursed his memory for saddling me with a half-caste brother? For giving money to his damned Indians? This house, not to mention my plantation, are mortgaged to the hilt.”
“Do not forget that your mother’s brother mortgaged our plantation as well, Cousin Andrew,” she sneered. “I was forced to wed Henry Fallowfield or starve! God, as if marrying him weren't punishment enough, the old fool’s money was gone within a year!”
“At least Henry had the good grace to die quickly enough after that,” Andrew said, his light brown eyes looking condescendingly amused now. “Do sit down, Serena. Have a drink. Twill steady your, nerves far better than tea.”
“Henry may have died to suit our plans, but somehow I don't think Quintin is quite so careless—or so stupid. And now that he's married that rustic, he'll soon get a child on her, mark me. An heir for all old Robert's wealth. What will become of us then, Andrew?” She continued pacing.
“If something were to happen t
o Quintin before he breeds his little Huguenot, I'd be Robert's only remaining heir.”
She scoffed. “Quintin is far too clever to fall into your traps, Andrew. He survived the siege in spite of your best efforts to have him shot from behind our lines. Without French and rebels storming the city, how will you plan another accident? Or will you kill him yourself?”
He appeared to consider, his eyes hard. “He may be my brother, you know. If the whispered story about Alastair and Anne is true...but then, who knows?” He shrugged. “No, I won't be so rash as to simply shoot him. I've hit on a better idea. Madelyne is lonely, isolated on that big plantation with only a bitter old man and a jealous young husband for company. I've been—er, cultivating her.”
Serena laughed, a high pealing sound that she'd practiced since her nursery days. “You, charm a woman away from Quintin Blackthorne? Don't be absurd.”
His pock-marked skin flushed darkly and he stood up, all his earlier indolent patience at an end. “Don't be insulting, Serena,” he whispered, wrapping his big hand around the slender bones of her wrist with crushing force. “You've existed on my charity for some time now, dear cousin. At least pretend to like me a little. Anyway, I don't have to bed the chit—I only have to make poor jealous Quintin think I have. Then there'll be no grandsons for old Robert—only me!”
* * * *
July, 1780, Off the South Georgia Coast
Lady Barbara Caruthers felt every wave of the storm as it lashed the ship, hurling her bruised body across the small, cramped cabin until she wedged herself against the support posts of the bed and clung to them for dear life. “God, I hate you, Mother! You've sent me to die in this hellish wilderness. First poor Katie perished, leaving me to the mercy of this ruffian crew; and now I must endure this horrible storm!”
