by Sharon Page
Between her fingers, she asked, “Good heavens, is that man with two women? Are both on their knees in front of him?”
At Grace’s soft, astonished question, Devlin had to grip the rail of the balcony as a shot of desire drained the strength from his legs.
“Devlin, I cannot believe that people actually do these things!” She turned to him. “You do these things?”
Was she jealous? She didn’t look angry. She didn’t look as though she’d behave like Lucy and shout and spit fire. She looked uncertain. As though this would hurt her.
He shrugged. “Once upon a time. My world is a different world to the cold one that dictates to you, love. My world is just about pleasure and fun. I want to share that fun exclusively with you right now, Grace.”
“Really?” Her face tipped and one brow arched. “If it is about pleasure and fun why are the women pushing each other out of the way to be the one to pleasure the man?”
“It’s part of play.” But he looked, only to see Sally rake her nails along Bess’s bare shoulder. Dark-haired Bess wore only a corset of scarlet and pink, laced tight, and Sally’s pale white shift was pulled up over her ample arse. The play had turned mean—but this was more to do with power than desire. “I agree. There’s nothing playful there. Sally—the blonde—was in love with one of my men. Bess’s man, the one standing there, made a mistake that cost Sally’s lover his life—”
“So it isn’t just blind pleasure, then. Just as with me, those women engage their hearts.”
He had been coasting his hand along the rail to touch Grace’s. He stopped. Did she mean that she always engaged her heart? Had she done so with him?
A disaster if she had because he couldn’t bear to hurt her.
But he wanted her to love him. Hell, he wanted it and the realization stunned him.
“I always thought they shared my men too freely to be in love,” he admitted. He’d always dismissed the emotional scenes, the scraps, as the typical behavior of women. He’d never thought that the women might fall in love—not with the wild men of his gang, who enjoyed their orgies, their pleasures, and knew they might die on any given night.
“I think you will find,” Grace said, “that each of your women is in love with a particular man, no matter whose bed they go to.”
He sighed. He’d hoped to keep his Grace away from his wild world, but he’d also intended to educate her and show her that she didn’t need to lock herself away in a cage of guilt. He’d wanted to show her she deserved pleasure.
He’d wanted to open her world.
Instead, she was forcing him to think more deeply about his.
“Men, of course, do not have to engage their hearts.”
Her statement was fraught with danger. He’d guided his ship through treacherous channels lined with shoals and vicious rocks, but he’d never felt the nerves he felt now. He couldn’t respond. He suspected his heart was engaged and that made him a bloody idiot. But something needed to be thrown out into their private silence. Below them, the cries and moans of carnal fun floated up.
“Not always,” he said.
“How can you—if you live your life in the here and now?”
That he would not answer. Instead he watched her gaze flit around the room, her teeth nibbling at her lower lip. He saw the orgy scene dispassionately—Lucy was stroking the hair of two men, Simon and Will, as they lovingly suckled her nipples. His lieutenant, Rogan St. Clair, was the man who had two ladies fighting to take his cock in their mouths. Three men—Horatio, Nick, and John—tussled with three ladies on the rug and in the tangle of limbs he could not tell who was fucking whom.
Grace tilted her head. His blue silk robe turned her hair to shimmering pale gold and highlighted the peach flush in her cheeks. “Do you have orgies here every day?”
“Tonight we aren’t hunting. The men are at home, none are at risk. Here that is cause for a celebration.” He grinned. “Any excuse for an orgy.” Would she push further? “You left me, Grace. I understood that there could be no future.”
“But now I am here.”
She was not looking at the scene anymore, but she shimmered with arousal, with tension.
“Sometimes a man can’t resist doing something he has no right to do.”
Below, there were six women moaning their pleasure and, like any man, he knew that particular sound stole his ability to think. “You can watch. Have a glimpse of my world. It’s not a bad world, sweetheart. No one is condemned for it.”
Hand at her throat, she did watch.
He stared at her face. What scene was she looking at? Lucy with the two men gallantly sucking her nipples and taking turns flicking her clit within her nest of auburn hair? Or the wild tangle, with three cocks greedily surging in and out of every wet, tight, female opening they could find?
Trying to guess was a game that had his blood on fire and his cock rigid and aching.
“What do you like best of all,” she breathed, “in your bed?”
Hades, he’d been anticipating her hurt, her anger. Instead she was intrigued. It was as though a ship deck had slid out from beneath his feet. He took a few moments to get his footing again.
“I’m much more interested in learning what you fantasize about,” he murmured. He moved to stand behind her so his lips brushed her silky hair and he could bracket her by placing his hands on the rail. “Which down there interests you the most? Two men? Another woman? An uninhibited orgy, where you might kiss one woman’s nipples, fondle another’s quim, while many men pleasure you with tongues and cocks…can you imagine making love to five men at once—”
From his vantage he could see her sharp breaths—how they lifted his robe and fluttered tendrils of her hair. “I have seen pictures,” she said abruptly.
“I imagine you have.”
She shook her head. “No, you have no idea. My father is Charles Rodesson.”
“The artist?”
“Yes, the artist of erotica.”
Of all the things Grace could have told him, that was the one to almost knock him off his feet. “So you will be very knowledgeable about pictures. But let’s talk about your fantasies.”
Her soft laugh floated to him. “You don’t care at all, do you?”
“No, I’d rather talk about what intrigues you.”
“All of it. Not that I would ever, ever do such things.” Her fingers brushed beside his and she tentatively hooked her little finger around his thumb. “Sinful to admit, isn’t it? It’s only because of who I am—an erotic artist’s daughter, that I would think that way.”
He’d met defenseless women—women who swooned in the face of danger. But he’d never met one as vulnerable as Grace.
Now he put his finger on why. She was honest, direct—she expressed her thoughts and feelings and he found them irresistibly intriguing. But in her world that was the aspect of her personality that could ruin her.
She must have spent her entire life trying to be someone else.
She amazed him. She wanted to know about him. What he liked in his bed. What his erotic fantasies were. Even if it hurt her, she was curious and brave enough to ask.
“It’s not sinful to admit it, Grace. And it has nothing to do with your birthright.” He couldn’t stop hearing the voice in his head, haughty, cultured, arrogant—He’s nothing of course, but he is so wild and naughty in bed. I do think bastards make the best lovers, for they have something to prove.
He shoved the Countess of Dorchester’s voice back into the recesses of his mind. “You think that way because you are human. Some of the most highborn men and women are the most perverse of us all.”
Grace said nothing for a while and just took in sharp breaths. Then she pointed down to the orgy. “The women down there, they seem to enjoy touching each other in intimate ways. I’ve never thought of another woman that way. Only men.”
“Which men have you thought of?” He’d meant the question to sound erotic; instead it sounded like the growl of an angry wolf
.
“Gentlemen whose names I did not even know. Sometimes one catches a glimpse—of a shoulder, a rough-hewn jaw, a tight derriere—and, well…”
He was hard, wound up, and ready to burst at her innocent explanation. “You created a fantasy.”
“Yes. I know men do that, as I have seen my father’s pictures. Men paid him to draw fantasies for them. I didn’t know if women had fantasies. At least I didn’t until my sisters married, and then they engaged in some more forthright conversations.”
“You thought it was abnormal to fantasize?”
“Yes. Exactly—” She drew in a harsh breath. “Those men—they are kissing!”
He glanced to where she pointed. Nick and John had touched lips. Slowly, they let their tongues come together. Nick’s hand slid down John’s abdomen and wrapped around the shaft of his long cock.
“This is for the enjoyment of the ladies,” he explained. Several clapped, licked their lips, and made lewd suggestions. “Women, my men have discovered, like to watch sexual play between men—as long as they are certain the men will play with them.”
“Who are they—the men of your gang?”
Why had she asked that after talking of her erotic thoughts about anonymous gentlemen and while watching his men have unfettered sex?
“Most followed me from piracy into highway robbery,” he said lightly, stressing how unsuitable the men were. “The men kissing are Nick and John—brutal fighters. Nick, the blond, was captured by Barbary pirates and served in the East in a harem of men. The young lad is Will, a good-natured boy. The bespectacled one is Simon; he loves to study nature. Then there is Horatio—the auburn-haired one. It’s reputed he is also a gentleman’s bastard as I am, but he denies it. And lastly, that one with the black hair is Rogan St. Clair, my lieutenant.”
“You trust them all.”
“With you? Yes. None would ever cross me. Rogan is a man I would trust with my life. He’s saved my arse more times on the sea than I could count. None of them will know your name, love, even if they do get a glimpse of your face.”
She gave him a frank gaze. “Devlin, I want to know what you meant about making up for two wasted years. Do you mean us? I don’t understand.”
“I want to do the things I wish we’d done two years ago.”
“But I can’t stay, Devlin. I have to go. My grandmother wants to see me, and I must go and meet her.”
“You want to run away from me to go and see your grandmother.”
“I have to. I don’t have much time, and if she thinks I am not coming, she might not write to me again. She might never open another letter from me.”
“A martinet, is she? I’d be apt not to go if she threatened me like that.”
“It’s not a threat, Devlin. It’s the truth. She is the Countess of Warren, my mother was her daughter, and my mother was cast out of the home when she ran off with Rodesson.”
Grace, the granddaughter of a countess. No wonder she possessed the manners, refinement, and elegance of a lady. “How did your mother end up eloping with an artist?”
Grace sighed. “Rodesson had been engaged to paint my mother’s picture, and they fell in love. They eloped to Gretna Green, but along the way, they both realized that marriage would not work—he was wild, bohemian, and would never be faithful. By then, my mother was enceinte with my eldest sister.”
Familiar anger heated the back of his neck. “And her parents would not take her back.”
Biting her lip, Grace shook her head. “My mother was never allowed back into their house. We have never been acknowledged by them.”
“Yet your mother had the courage to build her own life.”
“Yes, with the help of loyal friends, my mother set herself up in a house in a small village and invented a new name and a whole new life. As far as the world knows, I am Grace Hamilton, daughter of a sea captain who traveled to India to seek his fortune. But now, after all this time, my grandmother wants to see me. My grandfather will not bend, but she asked for me to come to her.”
“It means a lot to you.”
“Of course,” she said softly.
“It shouldn’t.” Abruptly, he drew her back from the railing so she could no longer see the unfettered orgy below them. “The bath should be ready. Come with me.”
To his surprise, she took his hand and let him take her.
8
His most intimate room surrounded her.
Grace pivoted slowly, the hem of his robe swishing around her ankles as she took in the furnishings and the paintings on the wall of Devlin’s bedchamber. A sturdy bed of dark oak with four columns and a burgundy velvet canopy filled most of the room. Curtains were tied to the posts with velvet ropes. The bedside table, the secretary, a leather chair—all were simple and plain. She thought of the food they’d eaten, of the dishes it was served on. Silver and china but not elaborate. He must have stolen a fortune on the seas and on the king’s highways, but he did not surround himself with lavish treasures.
He surrounded himself with women.
A handsome man with a reputation for theft and plundering—she had to remember that was what he was.
An open book rested on its pages on the bedside table.
What did he read? It filled her with intense curiosity.
She glanced around to find Devlin. He pushed open a door and steam billowed out.
The bathing room.
He dropped his robe, caught it, and tossed it over the back of the one chair as he stepped out through the door. Heavens, the man treated her to the most beautiful view from the rear. His shoulders and narrow waist formed a pronounced vee, his arse was tight and firm, his legs powerful and lean. She wanted to race across the room and grasp that rump, but she let him go.
Then she glanced at the title of his book. Clarisse. The author’s name startled her. Madame de la Plaisure—a name she knew from sister Maryanne’s scandalous time publishing erotic books.
Devlin lived in the midst of a continual orgy and he found the need to read erotic literature? Casting a quick glance to the bathing room, she did the unforgivable. She flipped over Devlin’s private book and began to read.
The blonde child had always proved the most willful, the most insolent, but undeniably the most desirable. His lordship had waited very patiently for this opportunity. He had known that Clarisse—Miss Plimpton—would be brought to him, that she would be left alone within the walls of his home, that eventually she would be placed within his power.
It had been this knowledge that had given him the strength to endure.
Through the peephole he watched Clarisse undress. It was important to watch her unobserved. From studying her every motion, he would learn about her. For he had chosen to educate her, to teach her the beauty of the relationship of Master and Slave, and to do this he must devote all his time and energies to her. He must understand Clarisse, he must anticipate her every thought.
For the first time in many years, this excited his lordship.
Within the room, Clarisse allowed the maid to undress her and he saw her large naked breasts for the first time. He was aroused at once, but it was her derriere that pleased him most. A plump, ripe, round bottom perfectly formed to receive the slap of his palm, the flat thwack of a paddle, the sharp stroke of a crop—
The soft creak of a footstep on a board startled her. Grace hurriedly replaced the book. Blast, she’d turned the page—he would know what she’d done when he picked it up.
Her breaths came furiously; her heart hammered.
Goodness, she’d asked him what he wanted in his bed. Was this it?
The horrible man in that book was planning to spank a woman, to dominate her.
Well, Devlin was a pirate. Perhaps he read the book to whet his appetite before he ravished innocent victims.
He hardly seemed like that kind of man.
But what did she know of men?
The only man she felt she knew at all was Devlin, but she knew that the way he behaved with
her was not the entire extent of the man he was. He might be kind with her but cruel when he took a ship or a woman’s jewels. He must intimidate people—he must make good on violent threats—else why would they hand over their money?
“Grace? Would you like to join me in the bath?”
She jerked around.
Devlin wore not a stitch. He was naked, his hair slick with humidity. A stroke of his hands plastered it to his head, making it the color of dark honey. Droplets of moisture dusted his powerful arms, his chest, and his cheeks. Candlelight turned the spots to a sprinkle of gold, like fairy dust. He held out his hand invitingly. “Join me, Grace.”
“In your bath?” She did long to wash the dampness of perspiration from her skin and the dustiness that accompanied a country summer. But climbing into a bath with Devlin—?
She felt inexplicably nervous. They had made love. Why should she be so afraid of simply bathing?
Was it because it was such an ordinary thing, yet a sensual act she enjoyed—and if she climbed into his bath, she would never again bathe without thinking of him?
It was a risk she must take.
Nodding, she crossed the room, the length of his robe trailing behind her. She expected him to wait, to lead her to the tub, but he grinned and darted in ahead of her and she heard the slosh of water as he got in.
As she reached the doorway, she guessed why he’d done it. He lounged in an enormous porcelain tub, his legs spread open to leave space for her to climb in. Water lapped at his chest and tendrils of steam swirled over his arms and around his face. He swept his arms back, his forearms dangling over the sides.
He was irresistible.
He smiled enticingly and she tugged at the belt. Studying the knot, she undid it, then slid off the robe. She felt shy again and instinctively placed her hands over breasts and pubic curls as she approached the tub.
She swung her leg over, gripping the porcelain. What kind of view had she given him with her derriere in the air and her pudgy thigh flying over the rim? Unsteadily she brought her other leg in, and he caught her hips to hold her, to lower her into the blissfully hot water.
