With This Ring

by Celeste Bradley

  He felt her soft lips on his ear warm against his chill flesh. Her warm breath gusted in sensitive places. Dear God, she was without mercy!

  “Stop!” He’d intended an authoritative bark. Instead, he practically whimpered it. “Please … Stop!” And now he was begging. His day just got better and better.

  He felt her weight shift, and the heat of her upper body left his cold and alone. Once he was convinced she had truly pulled back, he dared open his eyes and turn his head to face her once more. She sat sidesaddle on his lap, seeming to find him quite comfortable. Her arms were crossed in front of her delicious bosom, and her perfect brow held a wrinkle of perplexity.

  “Well, you started it.”

  The expression of mild irritation on her face left him breathless with disbelief. She looked as though she’d snagged a nail, while he felt as though he’d been struck by a runaway ale cart.

  She showed no sign of revelatory epiphanies. No remnant of silvery perfect completion shone in her eyes.

  I must have imagined it. Of course, I imagined it.

  He shouldn’t have felt so disappointed. This young woman was his worst nightmare on wheels, certain death to his hopes and ambitions. His soul wanted nothing to do with hers.

  Too bloody right, it doesn’t!

  Wildly, he cast about for some change of topic—and some way to get her sweet bottom off his pinned but very eager lap. With a groan he pulled his aching arms between their bodies and rubbed at his raw wrists. “Damn!”

  “Let me see.” Cool fingers removed his numb ones from the abraded skin. “Oh, look what you’ve done, you foolish man!”

  He gaped up at her. “What I’ve done?”

  She left him—thank you, God!—to stride across the room to a small bucket of water that he recognized as coming from his carriage. After moistening her handkerchief, which had been hidden in her bodice, she came back to bend over him while dabbing the cool cloth to his skin.

  He hissed at the sting, and at the returning sensation in his fingers.

  “Oh, don’t be such an infant. You wouldn’t have hurt yourself if you hadn’t struggled so! I didn’t bind you tightly enough to do you damage.”

  “Know that for a fact, do ye? You tie men up often, then?”

  “Weekly,” she assured him absently as she tended him with practiced care. “I have five brothers, which is about four too many on most days.” She stood and returned to the bucket, rinsing her handkerchief and wringing it out again over the open windowsill. He wondered why she didn’t just spill the water on the ruined floor.

  She returned to him and deftly rolled up his sleeves to examine the burns across his biceps he’d given himself in his struggles.

  “Brothers.” Now that some of his blood supply was returning to his brain, he recalled a dark fellow lunging into the carriage. The struggle had been fierce but brief, for Aaron had been distracted by the sight of the back of his not-quite-hired coward of a driver disappearing from the circle of light cast by the carriage lanterns, fleeing into the dusky blue evening. “Was that one of them, what knocked me out on t’road? Feels like I got meself kicked in the ’ead by an ’orse!”

  She drew back to gaze at him warily. “You mustn’t blame him for that. I ought not to have involved him at all. He isn’t—he isn’t completely well, since the war. It was very selfish of me to put him in that situation. I ought to have realized—” She pressed her lips together. “All blame falls on my head, you understand? Swear to me that you’ll not pursue charges against him, or—or I won’t finish untying you until you do!”

  Since Aaron had no intention of ever telling a single soul that he’d been assaulted, kidnapped, and held at pistol point by a girl—even if she’d been assisted by a madman!—well, it wasn’t a problem for him to keep quiet about it. He would take this mortifying incident to his grave, although it would probably take him the rest of his life to forget the humiliation. However, something she’d said distracted his attention for the moment. He tilted his head as he watched her. “What ’bout you, then?”

  “What about me?”

  “Don’t ye mean to make me promise not to call the magistrate on ye?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you did,” she said absently. “But I’d really rather you didn’t. My family needs me far more than I need punishment. After all, I’m hardly likely to repeat this particular offense.” She sighed. “I do believe I am an utter failure as a kidnapper.”

  She’d begun cleaning the graze on his forehead, leaning close to see better in the dimness. He could feel the heat from her skin on his face and neck, but it was the sweet, wild scent of oil of jasmine, grown in the tropics, shipped across the seas, and warmed by living girl that made his throat close tight. She must have stroked it over her wrists and behind her ears after her last bath.

  He closed his eyes and pictured the moment, allowing himself to imagine the damp, steamy chamber and hear the slosh of soapy water as she stepped out of the copper tub, her perfect ivory skin gone pink and glowing from the heat of it. The candlelight would shimmer over the swell of her wet hips, highlighting the roundness of her dripping breasts, catching the glint of water droplets as they hung, quivering, from her pink, erect n—

  “Ow!”

  Chapter Five

  Aaron flinched from her ministrations. “What’re you cleanin’ that with, sand?” He scowled, but he was grateful for the twinge. Concentrate on the pain. Focus on the fury. Remember what she has done, not what she smells like!

  “Goodness! Men are such babies!”

  Aaron felt his annoyance rise higher at her exasperation. Good. “If ye don’t mind, miss, I’d like to get me legs back under me as well.” Hastings had a way of depicting haughty disdain for the gentry that came in handy indeed. “Since ye don’t want me takin’ your brother before the magistrate?”

  She bit her lip again. “Yes. Of course. It’s just a simple matter of…”

  There was nothing simple about it. In her efforts to conserve rope, she had wound and knotted, wound and knotted, until he was trussed like a pig on a spit.

  For the next quarter of an hour, Aaron had nothing better to do than to watch a beautiful girl bend, stretch, tug and wiggle, all while kneeling at his feet. God, she was a beauty. Mad, possibly. Evil, definitely. Yet all the resentment in the world did nothing to deny the fact that she was absolutely delicious.

  Ordinarily, he would have been ashamed at his own prurience, but he’d been waylaid, knocked out, and tied up for hours. Any scrap of gentlemanly decency he had left was more than this insane creature deserved.

  He particularly enjoyed the bit where she had to lie down with her head beneath his chair and stretch her arms to reach the knots. Her beleaguered shirt-and-weskit combination almost failed to restrain the creamy swell of her breasts as they bounced about in response to her frustrated tugging. Aaron thought he might spy a bit of nipple at any given moment. He never did, more’s the pity, but he did greatly enjoy the anticipation.

  All in all, it was a very tolerable way to pass the time.

  It was when she knelt at his feet and bent over his lap, trying to get at the knots behind his knees, that he had to stop her. Seeing her tousled blond head bent over his groin, bobbing there as she tugged at the ropes, was making him think thoughts a good man shouldn’t think—even if those thoughts were about a crazed, kidnapping wench with more beauty than morals!

  The fact that he’d hesitated as long as he did, while inhaling the warm scent of jasmine and feeling the weight of her fallen hair draping over his thighs and the warmth of her breath penetrating the fabric of his trousers just over his awakening cock—

  Well, no man is perfect, his groin commented. Let the woman work.

  However, his better instincts won out. He placed both his hands on her shoulders and pulled her upward. She resisted, obviously absorbed in her task.

  “Wait—I’ve almost done it.” She made to reach back down but he held her fast, mercifully high and away
from his much-saddened groin, although lifting her had straightened her body to come between his parted knees. If he squeezed his knees together, he would press his thighs perfectly into the dip of her waist.

  He manfully resisted the urge. Instead, he scowled at his no-longer-precisely kidnapper. “Who taught you to tie knots, then?”

  She shrugged. “My brothers, I suppose.”

  “Well, they made a muck of it.” Aaron would never say “muck” to a lady, but Hastings would. “These knots’ll never give.”

  She smirked slightly. “That is the general idea.”

  Oh, she was a saucy one. He did not smile. It wasn’t easy. Then again, he was still most thoroughly tied up. Instead, he let out a long-suffering sigh. He figured he was entitled to one, since he’d been suffering for a good bit of time. Then he tilted his head toward the gaping window. “Is there any broken glass remaining in that window frame?”

  She frowned slightly; then her eye lighted. “No! But there is a bit left in the dining room window!”

  She scrambled to her feet, pulling from his grasp with ease. His hands closed on empty air as she strode from the room. She bent to sweep the lantern from the floor as she passed it and left the room, leaving him in utter and sudden darkness.

  His stomach lurched slightly at the instant blindness. He wasn’t afraid of the dark—but he didn’t like being tied up and helpless and blind as well!

  His eyes widened, trying to adjust, but this was no moonlit beach in the tropics, where even the slightest star shine reflected in the water and sand. This was a darker, colder, damper world altogether. The night sky above gave nothing away, for there was not a star to be seen through the heavy clouds.

  The girl tripped lightly back into the room, swinging the lantern with gusto.

  “Agh!” Aaron threw his hands up before his face, but it was too late. The glow of the lantern had seared his night-expanded vision until all he could see was a harsh greenish smear against his closed lids.

  “You ought not to look directly at the light,” she informed him quite seriously. “It’s bad for your eyes.”

  “Do tell,” he muttered. Well, at least he hadn’t whimpered. He’d had a very difficult evening at the hands of this—

  “What is your name?”

  He could feel her hesitation.

  “Are you going to call the magistrate on me after all?”

  “Probably.” Probably not, but he wasn’t about to let her off that easy.

  He heard her sigh and tried not to imagine the rise and fall of her sweetly curved bosom.

  “Even if I cut you loose and get you back to your carriage? After all, you haven’t been injured.”

  “Tell that to my skull. Your brother packs a wallop.”

  He could practically hear her squirm. He wished he could see it as well, although his active imagination filled in the blanks quite admirably. It wasn’t fair, really, for her to be so very pretty. He would have a much easier time despising her if she were large, hairy, and male.

  He told her so.

  She laughed. “My brother Orion would say it was a failing of the species or something.”

  “If you are any example of the current state of British womanhood, the continuation of humankind depends upon it.”

  Her voice came closer and he realized that she had knelt before his feet again and was now sawing at the ropes, presumably with her scavenged shard of glass. His vision was clearing gradually. His sense of smell had taken no such holiday.

  Pretty girls who smelled like this one could likely get away with murder. In fact, their victims probably thanked them for it!

  * * *

  In that moment, the looming clouds above them came to a decision and began a downpour. Not just rain, but a deluge! Ice-cold and so heavy that it felt as if they stood under a waterfall.

  Elektra gasped as the cold water instantly began to soak through her clothing. She almost scrambled for the lone bit of shelter near the south wall of the ruin, where a bit of scorched roof remained, until she realized that her prisoner could not flee the downpour. So instead of running away, she found herself rushing back to where he sat, his booted ankles still securely bound to the chair, trying to shield his head from the battering rain with his raised arms.

  Elektra bent to pry at the ropes with her fingertips, but the thick hemp had already become soaked and was now swollen into impenetrable knots. The rain beat down so hard she could scarcely breathe, but she had no choice but to stand and lean over him from the front, taking the worst of the rain on her back and shoulders. If she bowed her head over his, the rain ran down over her hair, forming a curtain behind which they both could draw breath.

  Then the hail began.

  Aaron had been perfectly content to allow the girl to protect his head from the cold rain—until, that is, he saw the walnut-sized hailstones bouncing on the rotted carpet. He looked up at once to find her bent over him with her arms stretched to the back of the chair, sheltering him like a human tent.

  Her face was hidden behind her streaming hair, but Aaron heard a single cry of pain when her body shook from a particularly hard impact.

  “Get off, you fool! Get to shelter!”

  She ignored him, even as her body cringed from more and more blows. Beside him he could see that the hailstones had grown to the size of peaches, some of them harmless and slushy, but some quite hard ones that bounced and rolled away. The impact had to be considerable.

  And yet not one had struck him yet.

  “Go!”

  But she stubbornly remained where she was. Aaron had no choice but to grab her about the waist and force her down to his lap so that he could bow his shoulders over both their bodies. It wasn’t a complete shelter for her, but it was better than before. She struggled, but he bent his head to growl in her ear. “Stay!”

  Relenting, she curled up in his protection, only disobeying him enough to cup one hand over each of their skulls in meager protection.

  The hail passed in moments, as hail does, though it seemed as if they were battered for an hour. Each mushy ice wad that struck them made them gasp. Each frozen lump made them yelp. Their heads stayed tucked together, his arms wrapped about her, hers curled above them. Their breath mingled, and he heard every gasp and whimper she made.

  Then, with a few last rolling icy cannonballs the size of hearty pinecones, the hail ceased completely.

  They waited for a long moment, unwilling to risk unwinding from their mutually protective posture. Elektra lifted her head first.

  “It’s done,” Aaron whispered. “It’s over.”

  She only nodded. Much of the spirit seemed leached from her by the cold and wet. Slowly, she slid off his lap and knelt beside him. She found the shard of window glass and wrapped it in her sodden handkerchief to protect her hand. Silence grew around them as she sawed at the rope.

  Aaron found himself missing the exasperatingly animated girl who’d held him at the point of a pistol and ruined his life. This creature was just an exhausted young woman who needed dry clothes and a warm bed. He actually felt a little guilty that she’d stayed and protected him—as if he’d somehow caused the ropes to wind so inconveniently about himself!

  The hemp ropes gave quickly before the wickedly sharp glass. Aaron was soon free. Taking the lantern in one hand and supporting his captor’s elbow with the other, he led her from the ruin back to the front drive where she’d left the carriage and team.

  Together they gazed blankly at the vast, long empty drive that connected the main road to the looping curve that passed before the house.

  “Horses,” Aaron mused wearily, “must dislike hail as much as we do. I don’t think we can find them in the dark.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t cry, not really. She simply sort of … crumpled. That haughty arch to her neck that he’d first noted disappeared. She slumped forlornly with her arms about her drenched body and trembled in silence.

  Taking the only route open to them, they slowly walked back int
o the ruin. The fire that Elektra had built while Aaron was unconscious was now a pile of damp, steaming char. He might have managed to get the last few coals going, if there had been anything dry to burn.

  Instead, they searched the place until they had gathered several lengths of draperies, rotted dustcovers, and even a moth-eaten pillow, and made a slightly squishy nest in the most sheltered corner of the ruin.

  “You’d best lay close t’me,” he told her. “For warmth. You’ll catch your death in them wet clothes.”

  He thought she would make some ladylike protest, but she simply curled against him, tucked into his side, and pulled a musty velvet drapery over them both.

  It was a testament to their exhaustion and chill that they soon relaxed into the relative warmth of each other’s bodies.

  “Y’know, this is all your fault,” he said softly.

  “It usually is,” she replied regretfully.

  Aaron blinked against the weariness flooding his body. Shivering was exhausting. Although he’d done nothing for a decade but wish he could return to England, he now felt most nostalgic for the endless sun and balmy summer days of the islands. Half an hour on a sunny Nassau beach would set him up right, he was sure.

  Elektra felt herself nodding. She couldn’t help but allow her head to rest on the broad wet shoulder next to her cheek. The clammy shirt made her flinch, but soon the heat of his body seeped through the damp fabric and she snuggled deeper.

  “Still … you ought not to ride in your master’s carriage,” she informed him sleepily. “People ought not to be blamed for getting the wrong idea.”

  She felt his shoulder move under her cheek and realized that he was laughing at her. Well, laughing was usually better than shouting.… or at least, it would be if her pride were not involved. This time, however, she had no pride. She’d mucked it but good and there was no getting around that. Mr. Hastings had every right to laugh at her.