by Debra Glass
She stopped and stared out the window, not seeing the verdant hills of her husband’s estate. It was hopeless. There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t exactly mount a horse and take off in search of Jack Badcock’s hunting lodge. First of all, she had no idea where it was. Second, while extra-marital philandering was accepted for men if carried out discreetly, it was taboo for women.
Elinor struck her own palm with a clenched fist. This situation was intolerable.
Surely to God he’d realized he was with the wrong woman. But if so, why hadn’t he returned her? Elinor seethed. Although she’d only met him the one time, she’d gathered from his letters that he was a rake but he certainly wasn’t the type to leave a woman at the mercy of the road.
Briefly, Elinor closed her eyes but images of her lover in the throes of passion with a strange woman swam in her head. He had indeed been fooled if that twit, Lord Wisbech, was to be believed.
It had been all Elinor could stomach to listen to his version of how the highwayman had dared to kiss his fiancée right there on the road.
And worse! How readily she’d climbed up on his horse. Elinor sighed. An ingénue. A virgin! No wonder Jack hadn’t returned Sophia.
But then, Elinor got an idea. A wicked idea. She smiled and lifted her chin in triumph. If Jack Badcock did indeed realize he’d bedded the wrong woman, then Elinor could certainly make him pay.
She could see to it that all of society knew Jack had ruined the girl. And she, Elinor, would see to it that Jack’s engagement to his German countess was broken.
She giggled without mirth, considering the possibilities at her fingertips.
* * * * *
Ralph sat in his study and stared at the ring in his hand. His face burned with shame when he recalled how that wretched highwayman had debased him—as surely as the scoundrel was debasing Sophia at this very moment.
Ralph dropped his head on the back of his chair and stared at the fresco on the ceiling. How would he be able to show his face after this?
Their wedding was less than a month away. How could he still go through with the ceremony knowing she’d been had by another man?
She hadn’t even protested when the highwayman had pulled off her ring and thrown it in the dirt—further disgrace!
He sucked in a breath that whistled through his teeth. Sophia had not been the most advantageous match he could have made. His connections to the Duke of Gloucester could have procured him a wife with a higher rank but Ralph had been foolishly smitten by Sophia’s hefty dowry.
Her unladylike advances toward him during their courtship hinted that she would not make a fitting wife and his suspicions had been confirmed when she mounted that horse and rode away with that base highwayman.
It was too bad Lord and Lady Huntingdon had come along so soon afterward. If he hadn’t told anyone what happened, he could have waited until Sophia surfaced and then made a pact with her never to speak of the incident again. As it was, gossip would abound.
Ralph rolled his eyes. And worse, if he got an heir on her right off, then speculation would swarm society.
He breathed a heavy sigh. “What to do?”
He’d sent word to her parents but other than that there was nothing else he could do but wait. Hopefully, her parents would realize that involving the authorities would only cause rumors to fly. The best thing Ralph could hope for was that the highwayman would use Sophia and then kill her, leaving her body in the woods for the elements to ravage—and set him free to seek a suitable wife elsewhere.
* * * * *
It was dark when Sophia opened her eyes. Her body ached with delicious soreness, reminding her of every thing she’d done with the highwayman.
He lay on his side next to her, his eyes closed, his shoulder exposed. A tingle fluttered in her stomach. Even sleeping, he was astonishingly handsome. How could she ever be satisfied with Ralph after this?
Getting on that horse had led to the greatest adventure of her life. It had also led to her greatest disappointment. Before encountering the highwayman, she’d been content with her life, with her engagement to Ralph and all that their future together entailed. Now, how could she marry him, knowing he could never satisfy her and knowing she would never be content with a boring life as the wife of a callous ass like Ralph? He’d traded her virtue for a ring.
A ring!
The thought made her seethe with rage.
And yet, the contracts had been signed. He’d all but claimed her dowry. Over four hundred invitations had been sent out. The archbishop was granting them a special license.
Sophia closed her eyes. Maybe Ralph would use this incident as an excuse to break their contract. That would suit her just fine. But even doomed to the fate she desired—spinsterhood—her life still seemed as if it were spiraling away from her. She felt as if she were a spectator with no control over her own destiny. Oddly, in the bed of a stranger—a man who’d abducted her—she felt completely in control for the first time in her life.
But this was an illusion. A dream.
He’d told her that at dusk, he would take her home. She sighed. Home. Were her parents worried? Had they told the authorities? Were they scouring the woods around the Hounslow Road, looking for her even at this late hour?
Was Ralph even now consulting with his lawyers to see how he could get out of marrying her?
What would she tell everyone when she finally returned home?
They would want to know the details. She brushed her palms over her own nipples, feeling them harden at her touch. Both were sore. Exquisitely sore.
One hand ventured lower and she opened her thighs. Her middle finger skimmed her pearl. She was sore there, too, but that soreness only made her ache for more. A shard of desire swelled at the memory of his securing a heavy diamond to her right there. And his tongue! Oh, his tongue.
She’d never imagined two people would do something like that.
She tightened at the memory. Cream gathered in her channel, readying her.
She twisted to look at his face. What would he do if she reached for him? Would he reject her or would he climb on top of her and take her to heaven again?
Her pulse skittered. Tentatively, she worked her hand out from under the cover lightly brushed his bare shoulder. He moaned softly and the sound of it only fueled her desire even more.
What was it about this man who made her throw every last vestige of decorum she possessed heedlessly to the winds? Was it him or was she so desperate to stall her marriage that she’d done the most reckless thing possible?
Somewhere in her heart, Sophia admitted both were true.
She placed her palm over his warm skin and caressed his shoulder. He breathed in. The sound of air filling his lungs was seductive. And when his lashes blinked open, Sophia’s heart skipped a beat.
A sleepy smile stretched his lips. He moved slowly, taking her hand and pushing it underneath the covers, down—until…
Sophia gasped when her fingers curled around his hard cock. Gazing into his eyes, she explored him, squeezing, moving her hand up and down, reaching with her fingers to probe his heavy scrotum.
“You touch me as if you’ve never touched a man before,” he said in that rough velvet voice that drove her wild.
“Am I doing it wrong?”
“No, love, no,” he said. “Your touch is very, very right. I meant that you seem a little shy.”
He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “There is no need for shyness with me,” he said as he rolled onto his back, dragging her on top of him so that she straddled his body.
“Find your pleasure,” he whispered. His eyes sparkled as his gaze drifted down her body.
Sophia did not hesitate. Reaching between their bodies, she gripped his cock and guided it to her eager opening. He breached her and she moaned as she sank, letting him fill her to completeness.
He brushed her thighs and then caressed upward until he cupped her breasts. She arched toward him, groaning when he rolled
her tender nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. He tugged them, drawing her down.
Rolling her hips, Sophia anchored his head and kissed him as he had kissed her that first time on the road.
* * * * *
She’d been quiet all afternoon. Seated behind her in the saddle, Jack breathed in the scent of her hair. She smelled like sweet perfume, like the outdoors—like sex.
When he told her to don her clothes, she’d grown pensive. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t want her to leave any more than she did. In fact, he could have spent another day—another week—a lifetime—with her in the hunting lodge.
She leaned heavily against him as the horse crept at a slow pace. Jack braced one arm around her waist. Damn, why did he feel as if he had a stone in his gut?
She’d not had this effect on him before. After the masquerade ball, he’d considered her a dalliance. When she’d boldly written to him, he’d been amused. A window of opportunity had presented itself and he’d dressed up like a highwayman. That was it. That was all it had ever been intended to be. Another dalliance.
But something had changed. For the last two days, he’d tried to figure out just where that change had taken place but he couldn’t seem to grasp…
Oh yes. Realization washed over him like the warm spring breeze. He’d known the moment he’d kissed her. The first time he’d kissed her on the road. She’d been so different, hesitant at first and then pliant in his arms. For a moment, he thought he’d made a mistake but when she so readily mounted his horse, he knew better.
Now she would return to her life and her husband and he would return to Amberley and to managing his estate and preparing for his marriage to Hilda von something or other.
Wistful, he smiled as he wondered if Hilda would like to be spanked and tweaked and pinched. He doubted his bride to be was as adventurous as a seasoned woman like the one seated in front of him.
She shifted in the saddle and her bottom brushed his half-swollen cock. He couldn’t help but growl. This morning, he’d fucked her from behind. After breakfast, he’d sat her on the table amidst the dishes, spread her legs and devoured her luscious cunny. By noon, he’d thrown a rope over the rafters and tied her hands high above her head so he could truss her up in the jeweled clamps and flail her ass with a strap of leather.
His cock jumped at the memory of it. She’d writhed and thrashed and squeezed her legs together, rocking against the clamp on her clitoris until he’d had mercy on her and lifted her right onto his cock.
That had been their last time before they both dressed.
Jack scanned the wooded landscape. This little-traveled road was desolate and would probably remain so for the remainder of the afternoon.
“Whoa!” Jack called to the horse as he tugged the reins.
“Why are we stopping?”
He leapt down and reached up. “One more time. Right here. I can’t let you go just yet.”
Without hesitation, Sophia fell into the highwayman’s arms. He tied the horse off to a nearby branch and then began unfastening his breeches. “Pull up your skirts and bend over.”
She moved to the edge of the woods and dragged up the hem of her gown. Bracing her riding boot on a fallen log, she bent and grabbed hold of a tree just as the highwayman positioned himself behind her.
“Your arse is still red from where I spanked you,” he said, raking his cock head through her folds.
Sophia shut her eyes, reliving every sweet lash he’d inflicted on her. He pushed up hard inside her and she struggled to hold her footing. His hands dug into the soft flesh of her hips and he held tight as he pummeled her.
His groin slap, slap, slapped hers. He grunted with every forceful thrust. Sophia wished she had the clamp on her clitoris. She wished she could get her hand under her multitude of skirts so she could rub herself while he fucked her.
“Have you had enough of my prick yet?” he asked.
No. Never.
When she didn’t immediately reply, he smacked her ass. Hard. She mewled and clenched around him as the smarting sting spread through her bottom.
“Have you?” he repeated.
“No,” she said breathlessly. Take me back to the lodge. Please don’t make me leave you.
“I never did get inside that lovely little asshole,” he said, slowing his pace so he could tantalize that virgin orifice with the tip of a finger.
Sophia tensed. After everything else, she wasn’t ready for that.
“However, this is neither the time nor the place for that,” he said and Sophia let out the breath she’d been holding.
She gasped when he withdrew, spun her around, lifted her half off her feet and pushed her spine against the tree. Her hair tangled in the branches. Bark scraped her palms. Breathless, she waited as he hastily ruched up her skirt and plunged his hand between her legs, searching, finding. Oh, yes.
She melted as he began to stroke the sensitive hillock so eager to be stimulated. “Jack,” she heard herself say.
Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the tree trunk and rocked into his expert touch. One finger slipped inside her channel only to pull out and circle her clitoris again. He repeated the motion until she was a blithering, mindless fool in his hands.
He stepped closer, wedging his knees between hers. His mouth grazed her ear. “Come undone on my fingers, sweetheart. Yes, that’s it. Just let go. Just let—”
“Oh! Oh, Jack!” she cried and even as bliss bubbled up inside her, he thrust his cock into her core again.
Sophia clung to him, to the tree. Frissons of pleasure reduced her to tears as he pounded her, driving her back hard against the solid oak at her back.
He moaned, pumping into her hard once, twice, a third time. And then he stopped. In the back of her mind, she realized he’d not withdrawn. He’d released his seed in her womb. Mixed emotions roiled. What they’d just done was dangerous, irrevocable. Some part of her didn’t care. Instead, she held his head and kissed his mouth, his face. He kissed her back the same way and Sophia’s heart lurched.
This was it. This was the last time he would ever kiss her. This was the last time he would ever be inside her.
She’d known it would end.
But she had not been prepared for it.
He dragged his lips from hers and gazed into her eyes. Everything urged her to look away but she forced herself to hold his stare. The ice in his blue eyes had melted into the color of the warm spring sky. She cupped his jaw. “Do you do this with all the women you abduct?” she asked, playfully, but in reality she desperately wanted to know.
“Only you,” he said. One side of his mouth twisted into a somber smile. His fingers absent-mindedly caressed the side her of her hip.
Sophia stared for a moment. A plea hung on her lips to beg him to take her away with him. She knew that was impossible. He was a robber. A scoundrel. He would doubtless die at the end of a hangman’s noose.
A highway robber’s career never lasted very long.
He inhaled before he slipped out of her and stepped back so that her skirts fell. “We should go. Your carriage awaits.”
Carriage? When had he had time to arrange transportation for her? None of this made any sense whatsoever, but Sophia would worry about that later. Right now, she wanted to memorize his every handsome feature. The curl that escaped his queue. The tiny mole on the side of his jaw. The devilish arch of his eyebrows.
The prudent thing for her to do was to go home and marry Ralph. So why did her heart beg her to do something so utterly rash?
Jack reached for her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. The touch was so intimate—even more so than everything else they’d done together—that it caused a crazy lump to well in Sophia’s throat.
When he tugged her hand, she hesitated.
Don’t do this! Don’t cry. Her reaction was foolish. Stupid and foolish. It was time to let this fantasy go and leave, to return to her well-ordered life. She swallowed thickly and allowed Jack to lead her and t
he horse back to the road.
He gave her a boost and lifted her into the saddle. Sophia winced as she sat on her sore bottom.
Jack climbed up behind her and kissed to the horse. With a snap of the reins, the horse moved along—much faster than Sophia would have liked.
* * * * *
Sophia’s pulse began to race as the coach neared her parents’ estate north of London. The driver hadn’t asked her where she wanted to go until Bad Jack had galloped out of her sight and out of her life.
When the manor loomed into view, her hand flew to her chest as if she could prevent her heart from drumming its way out of her rib cage. Seeing the familiar grounds and ivy-clad stones brought reality crashing down around her with startling force.
She was ruined. Ralph would more than likely have his barrister break their contract. Her parents would be furious. No respectable man would ever ask for her hand.
“God’s boots,” she said aloud as the ramifications of what she’d done settled in with sickening depth.
Worse than any of that, she’d allowed the highwayman, a common robber, to plant his seed in her. What if he’d got a child on her? She closed her eyes and let her head fall hard against the back wall of the coach.
Her hand went involuntarily to her stomach. Ruined. Utterly and thoroughly ruined.
When the carriage halted in front of the house, a bevy of servants dashed out the door followed by her parents, Peter and Elizabeth Astley, the Viscount and Viscountess Bainbridge.
“Sophia!” Elizabeth cried.
A servant could scarcely pull down the coach steps and open the door for Sophia’s mother trying to get to her.
Once the door was open, Sophia flew out and into her mother’s open arms.
“My darling, did he hurt you?” she asked but then her eyes widened when her gaze moved from Sophia’s face to her neck. “Oh no. No. No,” she said, backing away as if she were afraid the plague were on her.
Sophia’s gaze flitted from her mother’s horror-stricken face to her father’s.
“Come in the house,” her father said tersely, snatching her roughly by the arm.
