She frowned at him pensively. “I believe I understand your role in this affair now. You are a soldier for hire. The princess secured your services to liberate me from Gateshead. You have done that and far more effectively than I could’ve managed on my own. As your wife, there is no law that can compel me back to that place. I’m grateful to you, Mr. Caine. But your role here is finished. I have only one concern and that is to get to London and locate Lieutenant Walter Sterling”
“What has he to do with this business?”
“He was Prince Leopold’s tutor. What I am about to tell you must remain between the two of us. Walter Sterling was Louise’s lover and he is the father of her child.”
“Good God! You must stop talking this way,” Tanner said roughly. “You are doing yourself and Princess Louise no favours by spreading this slander.”
Laura was too exhausted to argue. Her head lolled back against the lounge and she closed her eyes. “It is not slander, but for your sake I won’t mention it again. The less you know the better. I got carried away having a confidante at last. I shall get you into trouble with the Queen. Forget all of it, forget everything I’ve said. Put it out of your mind.”
“You are bleeding.”
He knelt beside her and cupped her face in his large hands. Laura opened her eyes as he slid his strong fingers behind her neck. Her breath caught. His handsome face bent over hers and Tanner ran his tongue over her cheek where the blood flowed.
She broke free, alarm flooding every nerve of her body. “What means this?”
“Does it hurt?”
His voice was husky, straining against an emotion Laura could not identify.
“No, it is better now. Thank you.” Her hand shook as she lifted it to her cheek, wondering at this strange man. “A kiss...? Ah, I see—a Judas kiss! When do you mean to betray me to Queen Victoria? Surely, you’ll not wait to get to London.”
“What makes you think I’ll betray you? I have my fee from Princess Louise.”
“To earn a larger fee of course. I am valuable cargo.”
“That is a sorry opinion you have of your husband.”
Laura lifted her chin and sought to penetrate the dark mysteries of his eyes. “Is there someone in your heart and I am an impediment to your happiness?”
Tanner’s hand lifted to her hair that hung in knotted curls around her face. He wrapped a strand around his index finger and absently stroked it with his thumb like a satin scarf.
“There is no one else in my heart or otherwise. You ought not to have married me, Laura Mayhew. You don’t know anything about me.”
She propped herself up on one elbow. “Do you know the story of Snow White? The wicked Queen orders the huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and kill her but he cannot do it. They become too friendly with one another on the journey and his goodness prevents him from taking her life. I have decided you are the huntsman in this story. You will not betray me.”
“I do not have his goodness. What I am feeling at this moment—what I would like—do not rely on what you think I am.” His voice held a warning. “Do not put your trust in a romantic fairy tale, Laura Mayhew.”
“What are you feeling right now?”
She found she was barely breathing. The connection between them was so strong it was almost supernatural. Laura leaned over and placed her hand his chest.
He caught her wrist and with gentle force pushed her back to the lounge. Tanner Caine pressed her down and then his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her as a man kisses his lover, his wife—his woman.
Laura had never been kissed before, not even the chaste kiss from a beau in her younger years. The experience had eluded her, perhaps because her days and nights were spent in attending to the emotional needs of a princess that left her little time for her own.
She twisted her face to be free of his lips and his tongue penetrated her mouth and thrust between her teeth alarmingly.
And then it stopped being unpleasant and frightening and became something different altogether. A sensation that was beyond the scope of her experience.
She had made a terrible miscalculation in allowing him to bring her to Hawthorne where she was isolated and he knew the terrain and she did not. How did she lose her head so completely? Because Tanner Caine was marred and an outcast, she imagined he was in sympathy with her. His expression in the distorted light from Elizabethan glass disfigured him even more.
“Mr. Caine, I’m not accustomed to flirtation or innuendo,” Laura gasped when she could break free. “I am not a woman of the world of the sort you are familiar with, but I am not completely ignorant of our mutual attraction.”
“Mutual.” He said the word as though he doubted her meaning.
“Yes! It was clear from the first that I could like you quite well. But you must not take liberties.”
“It is too late to turn back, Laura,” he said thickly. “It is too late. I must have you.”
And then his hands were under her gown, travelling up her leg and over her belly.
“Tanner! Mr. Caine, no!” She pushed at his hands, slapping them away and tried to dislodge him but he was too big and strong. He managed to restrain her quite easily and Laura grew frantic, wondering what he meant to do next. “What do you mean it is too late?”
His breath came in suppressed gasps as though he had run a great distance. And travelled one too—the man who had met her in the solarium at Gateshead had been overtaken by this creature bent on evil.
Surely not, Laura’s reason insisted. He would come to his right mind!
“I am not good,” he said in a low, warning tone. “And I’m not accustomed to denying myself when I want something. I’ve been cursed with a curse. And now you’ve been cursed with a curse. It won’t hurt. I promise I’ll not hurt you.”
He made a sound again, a groan that was wrenched from the depths of hell. His lips moved to her neck, and the stubble of his beard chafed her tender skin.
She pushed against his shoulders, this time with real effort. “You shall have me—you shall! But not like this. Only give me time, husband. Allow me to keep pace with your passion.”
She tried to squirm out from under him but Tanner caught her waist and pulled her back.
This was the moment, the one he would come to reflect upon later in the night, the moment when he should’ve turned back and left her alone in the parlour.
But he did not.
Tanner had heard of such things coming over men of his acquaintance, hard men who would collapse of the sight of a songstress or an ingénue of the theatre. He’d seen battle-scarred soldiers fall to pieces over a woman. Lose their minds.
Tanner had seen it, but he didn’t understand it. He had no connection to that loss of self—whatever it was called. He had no feeling other than loyalty to Victoria and his own survival. He did not lust after money as other soldiers did, nor did he lust after women. He used whores to gratify himself. Women admired him—or at least they pretended to. Tanner did not believe it was possible to achieve much more than sex and lies with a woman.
It was not love he was after with Laura Mayhew. It was not love that drew him to her like a moth to the flame. It was not love that compelled him to open his breeches and reach between his legs for his cock.
He unfastened the hooks and eyes of the grey bodice. Her skirts were pushed up to her hips and her feet were still shod in the institutional black boots and black stockings that were rolled up to her thigh.
Above this was the sweet pale triangle of her womanhood and her firm round buttocks.
Tanner controlled himself when he looked at her. His hands were shaking, his breathing roared in his ears like the ocean tide coming in.
She stopped fighting him and lay unearthly still, allowing him to unfasten her bodice and remove it from her long thin arms. He tugged on the white satin ribbon of her chemise and the thin fabric parted. Laura was not yet out of her teens; her breasts were young, perfect orbs.
She did not utt
er a word of protest when he kissed the budded nipple of one, and then the other. Tanner gathered her in his arms. She was slight in form, a sensuous creature of the forest, one of those pixies she had talked about, or a nymph or a fairy. But lush where a man wanted a woman to have curves. He nibbled on her breasts over and over again.
The glow of her skin was like moonlight and the iridescent phosphorus he’d seen in the ocean. The sea was Tanner’s natural home. He decided then and there that Laura was not a creature of the forest but a creature of the sea. That was the source of her power over him.
Her thighs began to tremble.
He closed his eyes and took her tit in his mouth. He teased, suckled and bit her tender flesh, and then he heard a small moan release from her lips. When he glanced at her face, Tanner saw that her eyes were closed and her arms were overhead in languid submission. Her head was turned from him.
“I have always wondered,” she said softly, “what sex was like and Loosey would never tell me. She said it was too dangerous to know. Why is it too dangerous?”
“I’ll show you.”
Chapter Seven
HER FIRST thought when he touched the slit between her thighs was that she must have confused the sex act was something else altogether. Louise had been her best source of information in this area, but her friend had skimmed over the particulars and Laura had not liked to pry, especially in the dreadful days that followed.
Tanner Caine was doing something between her legs with his fingers that was wonderfully pleasing. At the same time she wondered if it was at all healthy. He kissed her again and again on her lips and though she had not liked it at first, she began to respond. This set Tanner aflame and she resolved not to respond to his kisses in future.
He lurched to his feet and wrenched his clothing from his body as though the white shirt and fine coat were strangling him.
She had never seen a naked man before and Tanner’s nakedness was almost more than she could bear. He was like a marble statue in the Victoria and Albert Museum, perfectly carved, perfectly shaped, lithe and yet muscular like whipcord, strong and young. He was a beautiful man or what she imagined a beautiful man must look like.
But seeing him thus—and the size of the organ between his legs—decided the matter for her. “I have changed my mind. I don’t want to know about sex.”
Tanner lifted her from the lounge and carried her to the window seat where sunlight shone through diamond-paned windows. The deep alcove was furnished with an embroidered cushion and was deep enough to sit comfortably.
“You will not take my virginity. I know you will not. It is not a question of rights—our marriage is not real. I am not willing, sir.”
She was only half-certain of this. The truth was, Laura was terrified but not unwilling exactly. Losing her virginity did not worry her, but the method—this Tanner Caine. His manhood thrust out from a nest of hair between his legs.
“Stop talking,” he said gruffly. “Close your eyes. I make no promises. There will be pain and there will be blood and I make no promises. I am already damned in the hereafter; that will have to serve for justice in the here and now.”
“I will not close my eyes. You will not do this! Tanner!”
He knelt between her legs, gripped her knees and pushed them up. Laura was forced back against the cool window as his dark head lowered between her sun-splashed legs. She could not believe what he was doing. Tanner pressed his mouth to her moist, quivering sex and suckled her in a place she did not know existed.
“Oh, oh my God, Tanner, no, no, no....”
Her pleas fell on deaf ears. Tanner’s mouth, his lips, tongue and even his teeth manipulated that most private place on her body. His hands held her legs firmly apart though she tried to close them, and the noises he made as he plundered her were alarming and exciting. Laura was filled with shame for she found she was responding to Tanner’s oral stimulation. Her body could not help it. When he began to lap at the engorged bud, flicking, licking and slurping—she felt a pressure—an exquisite pressure building in her lower belly.
And then he did not have to hold her legs apart any more—they fell open, wanton and greedy, of their own accord. Tanner devoured her sex, plunging his tongue inside her vagina and back out again to lap that oh so pleasurable bud!
Laura’s hips moved and mashed against his face, grinding wildly as the pleasure crested. Her breath rising, her blood pounding and then she lost herself in time and space until ... until....
At its climax, she gripped the frame of the window, opened her mouth and let out a keening cry of pure ecstasy.
TANNER POSITIONED himself between her legs, holding his cock in his hand. Her fluids dripped from his chin and had soaked the cushion. Her chemise was open, exposing her young tits to his hot stare. Her eyes were on his, those ocean eyes of green. She was ripe and ready. A virgin but ready to take him.
He gazed at her taut beautiful flesh, her flawless skin. Her breasts fitted his hand; her little belly was round and fertile, directing a man’s eye to the carpet of glossy gold and red hair between her thighs. But her face—she had the face of an angel—conceived in heaven. He was shaking looking at her. He was shaking in his soul wondering what she thought of him.
And then he deliberately turned his marred face to hers. Tanner pressed his cock against her tight virginal entrance, filled his mind with every despicable thing he’d seen and heard in his twenty-nine-years—
And thrust.
Tanner closed his ears to her shout of pain, gripped her narrow hips and pounded deeper inside her, breaking her hymen. The release, the flood of moisture as well as her tears, signalled the irrevocable loss of her virginity.
One thought—a memory—flashed through his mind. Something she had said.
“But that your trespass now becomes a fee; mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.”
§
THERE WERE few things Her Majesty hated worse than being kept in the dark. Mr. Caine had not yet sent word that he had been successful in his mission and a new difficulty had arisen that made it imperative to silence Laura Mayhew as soon as could be.
One of her agents had informed her that Prince Leopold was asking after his tutor, Lieutenant Walter Sterling. The boy wanted to know when he was going to return to service. Her youngest son had formed an attachment to the officer in a very short time. It seemed that all of her children had become enamoured of the dashing lieutenant. But Leopold was a heartbreaking case. A haemophiliac, he had not enjoyed the rough and tumble of boyhood and was frequently set apart from other boys and men. Walter Sterling had been a godsend, one of the few gentlemen who understood the young prince and could talk to him, man to boy.
Why did he have to spoil it by encouraging Louise in her adolescent crush? The twenty-six- year-old regimental officer must’ve known this would happen! He had experience with the opposite sex before this. He took advantage is what he did. He took advantage of a silly, sheltered young girl, and now there was Louise’s friend, Miss Mayhew, making things worse! Stories of an illegitimate child that had been spirited away—the scandal sheets would have a field day with such a story if they got hold of it.
Where was he? Why did he not send word? Laura Mayhew must not reach London, God forbid. Queen Victoria paced her bedchamber. Perhaps she should write the director of Gateshead Insane Asylum enquiring after her charge. His response could be illuminating. It was better than not knowing anything at all.
She sat down at her desk and took up pen and paper to compose her message. It crossed her mind then that there was something else to worry about. She remembered Laura Mayhew as being an exceedingly pretty girl. Far too pretty for a lady-in-waiting. Victoria had warned Louise against the friendship. And yet, until this, Laura had proven a true and loyal friend.
She had a moment’s uneasiness, recalling the delicate, arresting beauty of the girl. Thus far, Mr. Caine had shown himself to be resistant to a pretty woman with a well-turned ankle—unlike other men in her househ
old—men such as Lieutenant Sterling.
Nevertheless, Tanner Caine was not a monk and he would be alone with his mark all night. Longer perhaps; there was still the journey to Dorset and Laura Mayhew was a cunning little minx....
Victoria shook off her misgivings. No, what she was thinking was inconceivable. She had absolute confidence in her man. Tanner Caine had a heart as black as coal and he was as mean as a snake. He would not fall for a pair of pretty eyes and a beguiling smile any more than Queen Victoria herself would.
§
“I DO NOT appreciate being taken for a fool.”
She dragged her bodice over her bare shoulders. She had lost her hair ribbon somewhere and then remembered it got stuck in the bramble bush. Her fingers trembled as she refastened the hooks.
Laura could not look Tanner Caine in the eye without giving herself away. Her gift of second sight had failed her utterly with this man. She was at his mercy, dependent on his whims and caprices, unable to adapt her conversation or her personality to suit his expectations. Meeting expectations was the method of survival she had employed all her life. But with Tanner Caine it was as if a dark cloak had come down. The one man it meant life and death to know was a mystery to her.
He stood at the hearth, his shirt hanging open over his breeches. He’d dressed without haste or shame after he’d moved off her. Tanner did not seem to feel he had done anything wrong. Legally he had not, Laura reminded herself. Taking a wife’s virtue is not a crime.
His hair hung in his scowling eyes. Leaning against the hearthstone, his visage appeared diabolical, “I thought it would go easier for you if you didn’t know what to expect. I am not sorry.”
Laura glanced at him sharply. “We come to the truth at last.” She was not frightened, only bitterly angry. “When did you first conceive the idea of violating my person?”
Mark of Caine Trilogy: Book One: Hidden in the Shadows (Victorian Villains) Page 6
