Of all Rodesson’s daughters, she had inherited the most from their mother Olivia:—her blond hair, fine and pale but strong enough to curl and wave, and her mother’s famed features. Her eyes were green—like those of her infamous father. Gentlemen admired her figure, which she felt was too plump and generous. But the elderly matrons of Maidenswode, the ones who no longer bothered to watch their tongues, insisted that men were attracted to a generous bosom. Her breasts were apparently worth their weight in gold.
Certainly Lord Wesley had admired her breasts. Apparently it was the only thing he wanted about her.
“No.” Grace said it aloud, to make it more resolute, as she rinsed the cloth. “I have to move forward. I need to decide what I can do. There is still marriage after all. I could marry an older gentleman. There’s any number of older wealthy peers who would like my breasts, I’m sure—”
“Sweetheart, you do not have to sell yourself that way.”
Startled by the familiar male growl, she turned to the door, suddenly tense, aware, uncertain—yet liking the thrilling mix of sensations. “I locked that.”
Mr. Sharpe shrugged. “Indeed, you did.”
“Do you make a habit of breaking into women’s—” She paused, aware of the heat in her cheeks, aware she wore only her corset and shift. Of course he broke into women’s bedchambers. He was both a pirate and highwayman—two male pursuits that involved stealing women’s virtues.
Mr. Sharpe looked annoyingly smug. “It might surprise you to know that I do not. I usually await the inevitable invitation.”
He leaned elegantly in the doorway, propped on his arm, legs crossed at his booted ankles, obviously awaiting hers. The blue of his eyes kept her mesmerized—sapphire blue, dark and glinting in the light of her one candle and her low fire. As spectacular a color as she’d imagined and entirely unlike Lord Wesley’s, thank heaven.
Why had he come? What did he want? If she had sense she would send him away, but she needed him—if only to undo the knot in her corset ties. “You may come in, because otherwise someone will peek out their door and see you standing there.”
She couldn’t help but give a triumphant smile as he hastened off her threshold into her room and shut the door behind him.
His masculine scent, different from his brother’s—more earthy, more spicy, entirely seductive—filled her senses, filled her room.
He filled her room.
And in that instant, as she drank in his astonishing height and his wide shoulders, she remembered Lady Prudence’s stark fear and accusations. She turned away, struck by nerves, wondering at her own sanity, and she crossed her arms over her breasts. He had openly admitted to dueling and she had brought him into her bedroom.
But he’d rescued her. He had made her smile when any sensible, well-bred woman would be crying so hard she would have to wring out her bedspread.
“I spoke to Wesley.”
That caught her attention and she spun around. “What—good heavens, your neck is bleeding!”
His lips parted; his teeth flashed in the audacious grin of a man accustomed to taking what he wished. “Not anymore. I used my overpriced and overstarched cravat to soak it up.”
“Lord Wesley attacked you? What did you do in return?”
“I took that stupid knife off him, took him over my knee, and spanked him.”
“You didn’t! You couldn’t have possibly done so!”
He calmly peeled off his glove and winked. “I thought my hand might still be red. My palm is still stinging. I felt childish, bullying behavior deserved a child’s punishment. I would have used a belt on him, but the coward fled out into the gardens.”
She snorted. Then clapped her hands to her mouth in horror. She’d meant to laugh in the demure and melodic way that women should do, but her natural laugh came out. The horrid snort that always sent her sisters into gales of laughter. Inappropriate laughter, theirs might be, but it was feminine at least.
The highwayman in her bedroom grinned broadly. “Good Lord, did that sound come from you?”
“Yes,” she declared with defiance, aware that they now stood on either side of her bed, which was neatly turned down for the night.
He raked back his long blond hair. “You are lovely, aren’t you?”
Embarrassment struck. “Before you raised your hand—or your belt—to Lord Wesley, did you discuss my…my reputation?”
“Why do you think I was flogging his backside, Miss Hamilton? It wasn’t for exercise. It was an indication of how seriously I would humiliate him, hurt him, destroy him if he dared to breathe a word of what happened.”
She was half-undressed, and had no idea what to think. How could a highwayman be her knight protector? “But he is your brother, and he must know you wouldn’t seriously hurt—”
Clenched in a fist, Mr. Sharpe’s hand rested against the fluted column of her bed. His dimple deepened. “He knows I would. How do you think I got him to stop lording his legitimacy and his title over me? I kicked his little bottom at school with my booted foot.”
Grace realized that for all she was barely dressed Mr. Sharpe’s eyes never left her face. It gave her an odd sense of courage and focused all her thoughts on him. “You went to school?”
“Do I appear uneducated? My master of literature was certain I’d never be more than a hulking, semiliterate beast.”
“But you do not use your education!” she protested. “You—”
He leaned closer and the spicy hint of sandalwood, the delectable warm smell of his skin, intoxicated her. It spoke of the most intimate things he did—bathe, shave, even sweat.
“Do not doubt that I use every one of my lessons, Miss Hamilton. I’ve been known to quote Shakespeare while blowing the mast off an English warship.”
“You never have!”
He was laughing now, quietly, the sound throaty and deep. “What—the Shakespeare or the warship?”
“The warship,” Grace answered, her tone sharpened by his teasing. “Wouldn’t you have been hunted down and strung up by now? You are not exactly secretive, are you?”
“Suffice it to say that I performed some duties for his majesty that made amends.”
“For destroying ships? What did you do? Capture a continent and stick the flag in the middle of it?”
“Essentially, yes.” He laughed. It intrigued Devlin that Miss Grace Hamilton was speaking entirely about him. It was something he was not accustomed to—generally he let women prattle on about their worlds, content to listen to the lilt in their voices as they spread gossip.
He should go. It was his intention to protect her reputation, not destroy it by taking up residence in her bedroom. But as he was about to bow and bid her farewell, he saw the glint of a tear in the corner of her eye and knew her courage was about to fail her.
“And what can I do?” she asked. “Become a governess? Oh, wait—my schooling is almost nonexistent and most ladies want young women of impeccable reputation for their children. Perhaps I’m qualified to scrub the floors—”
“Gently bred women rarely are. I’d never employ one to tend my home.”
“Mr. Sharpe, this is serious. I—” Her lashes swept over her eyes and one sparkling diamond of a tear rolled past her slim nose.
“Don’t.” He was on his feet in an instant and in front of her, his gloves off. With his index finger, he brushed away the tear, his rough fingertip gliding over her soft, glowing skin. His finger shook. Slightly, but he felt it.
Unable to resist, he brushed his wet fingertip across the curve of her cheek to her slightly parted lips.
She arched up on tiptoe and her palm cupped his jaw. Damn, he hadn’t bothered to shave today, enjoying appearing at the ballroom with a day’s growth of beard, though it itched. He hadn’t worn facial hair since he’d sported a neat beard as Captain Devlin Sharpe.
He had been a pirate, but there were treasures that he refused to plunder. A wide-eyed eighteen-year-old was one. “This is not wise, Miss Hamilton.” He caught her hand, squeezed gently, and drew her fingers away from his face.
Her moist, full lips parted, leaving him breathless.
“I want this,” she whispered. “I want to erase the bad with…with—”
“Grace—”
She put her fingers to his lips and he, who had captained a ship, who commanded a gang of unruly thieves, shut his mouth. He wanted too much to hear this and his heart was in his throat as she whispered, “With you.”
M
r. Sharpe’s hands deftly undid the knot in her corset ties, then slid up to loosen the lacing, and Grace made a simple decision. She would not think. She wanted this. Her body was molten, her arousal slick between her thighs.
Earlier she had given her innocence to the wrong man, to an arrogant and vicious man.
Mr. Sharpe was not a vicious man.
She believed it—
No. She’d promised she would not think. She would simply do.
Wriggling out of her loosened corset, she let it fall to the floor. Undressing before a stranger was not something she should feel so comfortable with—
No.
No thinking.
Grace lifted the hem of her shift but stopped at her upper thighs. Her drawers were gone. Lord Wesley still had her drawers. She had not collected them before she snatched up the key and ran from his mocking laugh.
I wouldn’t marry
you,
love—good Lord, you are an impoverished nobody. But I do like the idea of acquiring a new mistress
. The remembered words hurt. She hoped the fiend had burned her drawers but feared he would hang them at his club, a souvenir of his beastly behavior.
“Don’t think.”
Mr. Sharpe’s deep whisper, the ripple of his warm breath across her neck, sent a shiver of desire down her back. Had she tensed beneath his touch? How had he guessed at her thoughts?
“I won’t,” she answered, breathless, and she moved from him to whisk off her shift and let it flutter to the carpet. There, she was nude. He could see every inch of her back—the slope of her shoulders, the curves of her very plump bottom,
He made a low sound in his throat, like a growl. “God, you are perfect.”
Instead of turning back to him, she walked to the bed. Only three feet, but it felt like eternity. She was aware of the sway of her hips, the jiggle of her derriere, the foolish way she stubbed her toe into the floor due to lack of attention.
She was so aware: of the harshness of his breathing, the warmth of the fire, which allowed her to prance naked with nary a goose bump, even of the sensual textures of her room. Soft velvet hung around the bed, and the counterpane was embroidered silk. A fur throw was flung across a chair’s arms and the soft carpet gave way to the smooth, cool floor.
And as she reached the edge of the bed, she also felt an awareness of her own body she’d never known before. It was as though she could feel her skin breathe. Her nipples stood proud, flushed a dark pink. Her quim throbbed, hot and creaming and yearning to be filled. At the bedpost, she turned, and saw him stripping off his clothes with graceful, deliberate motions. His coat and waistcoat were gone, and, as she watched, startled, he lifted his shirt.
White linen skimmed up over bronzed skin.
Grace clutched the bedpost. His rippled abdomen came into view. Soft golden hair curled over the flat plane of muscle. He shifted, revealing a glimpse of his navel.
Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to drop to her knees and kiss his indented navel, rim it with her tongue and taste his skin. She wanted to stroke those hard, cobbled muscles and explore—
She had to fist her shaking hands.
He lifted the hem of his shirt to his shoulders, his motions casual and unconcerned, as though he did not know she ogled his every move and now had her left fist pinned between her teeth.
She was certain he did know—he flexed his hard, sculpted pectoral muscles before her eyes—but his shirt hid his face and the grin she knew would be there. His nipples, she saw, were dark bronze and as hard as hers.
Then he threw the shirt aside, revealing his entire naked torso and the wicked glint in his vivid blue eyes.
Huge and powerful, his was a body that should intimidate. His shoulders were broad and straight, strong enough to carry a cannon, she suspected. She could imagine him climbing the rigging of a ship, risking his life and laughing all the while.
His well-hewn body did not frighten her, but it made her moan with honest need.
What living, breathing woman did not appreciate a handsome chest? But she had never yearned so much to touch a man’s body before.
She let go of the bedpost and walked toward him, pleased to see his hands pause on his trouser buttons and his Adam’s apple bounce with a swallow. Her breasts swayed as she moved. He looked at them, and his blatant appreciation made her feel bold. “Do you like them?”
He let go of his trousers and bent to the hollow of her throat. His tongue flicked and she squealed at the shock of sensation. Gently his tongue swirled, trailing down, inch by precious inch, toward her breasts. She shivered at the amazing sensitivity of her skin. Her nipples shocked her by standing harder, growing long and pink.
She could not believe she was letting a man she did not know do—
No thinking!
He rose. Met her gaze. “They’re beautiful, love.”
His golden hair fell about his face and floated over her bare skin. Casually he blew strands away from his lips and even that simple, unconscious, sensual motion ignited her desire.
She could not believe her naked breasts were only an inch away from his hot, bare chest.
“You are beautiful here—” He brushed a kiss to her chin. “And here.” Giggling, she shut her eyes as his soft lips neared. His lips touched her lashes, and she marveled at how erotic it was to feel that caress.
Wet heat surrounded her right nipple and she arched, opening her eyes. The tip of his tongue circled around her areola, making it pucker. His lips parted and her blushing nipple disappeared into his mouth. His cheeks hollowed and she cried out as the pleasure seared her.
He stopped suckling and she whimpered.
Hoarse, raw, his voice washed over her. “But it is the sound of your sighs and moans of pleasure that are the most beautiful to me, Grace.”
The look in Devlin’s narrowed eyes stunned her. It wasn’t lust. It was more than that. He looked awed, as though she was truly beautiful. As though she was lovelier than he expected, or he was more struck by it than he’d planned. And, strangely, she liked that.
After all, he was more beautiful than she had expected, and she was far more struck by it than she’d planned.
His mouth claimed her nipple once more, but with such maddening gentleness she thrust her breasts forward and clutched his silken hair. Chuckling against her skin, he obliged her by sucking harder while stripping down his pants.
Nothing came between his hot skin and his trousers.
Daringly, she touched the ridge of his naked hip. Marveling. Of course, the lean line of his hip was hard, the indent above velvety soft, and his stomach…it was an entrancing lacing of pure muscle.
He scooped her up. Not as a gentleman would lift a lady to carry her if she had sprained her ankle. No, he grasped her bottom and drew her up, forcing her to hook her legs around his waist.
“Mr. Sharpe!” Her soaked and sticky quim pressed against the broad head of his hard cock trapped between them.
“Devlin. I would like to hear you call me Devlin, sweetheart.” Surprisingly agile with his trousers around his knees, he made his way to the edge of the bed, then fell. She shut her eyes, certain she’d be squashed, but he caught his weight on his powerful arms, laughing.
Pushing up, he straightened and yanked off his boots, but his hot gaze never left her. She lay with one arm over her nipples, one hand covering her blond nether curls, clinging to modesty. Immodestly, she stared at his cock. Now that he wasn’t pressed against her, she could see it—curiosity made her look, carnal appreciation kept her staring.
Her father’s paintings had mocked male members—exaggerated them. Some were long and thin and scarlet tipped. Others short and thick and oddly purple.
Mr.—Devlin’s—cock captured her with its audacious size and pure beauty. Jutting out, his thick cock curved upward toward his navel. She doubted she could encircle it with her hand. Dark gold hair surrounded it and a pair of large ballocks dangled below.
What would it feel like inside her? Would it be too large? Would it hurt? Just staring was making her honey flow and her hand was no longer merely covering her privates. To her shock, she realized she was stroking her creamy lips. In front of him.
His knee pressed into the bed. Glinting honey-gold in the firelight, his hair fell around his face. “I want you on top, Grace. You can—”
“No!”
Frowning at her desperate shout, he paused. She hurried on. “I want you on top. That is the way I want it…please?” She spread her legs in welcome and held out her hands, revealing herself to him in the most intimate and vulnerable way.
A bewitching smile curved his lips and he lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her fingertips. “Anything to please my lady.”
He left her and took something from a pocket of his trousers. Grace stared as he rolled a covering over his cock, mesmerized by the casual way he touched himself. She knew of such things from her father’s pictures—a sheath, to prevent a pregnancy.
Don’t think.
Then the gentleman vanished with a blink of her eye and a rogue took his place. The broad shoulders moved over her, his lean hips nudged between her thighs, and his strong legs spread hers wider. Bravely, she touched him, skimming her hands over his smooth shoulders, letting her fingertips graze down to the crinkly hair on his chest.
She wanted to relish every inch of him. This was to be the memory she would treasure and she would make it perfect.
Sharing a smile with Devlin, astonished by how natural it felt to touch him, to delight in it, Grace reached down. Eager to touch his cock, to explore him, to pleasure him…
“Oh God, Grace,” Devlin groaned as Grace’s long, slim fingers curled around his aching shaft. Her fingers gripped tight, then slid up and down. They traced the veins that pushed against the skin and made a mind-melting journey up to the straining head.
Miss Grace Hamilton was exploring, and he could barely hold on to his control. He ground his back teeth, fighting the urge to ease her hand away and slide inside her. Deliberately, her hand closed around him and began to jerk him with rhythmic motions.
He stopped her, clasping his hand around her small wrist. “I want to make love to you. To be inside you. Do you want that?”
Before she answered, he guided his cock to her wet, steamy lips, stirring her bubbling honey. He slicked his cock along her clit and she gasped, “Oh yes!” Then she gave a desperate moan that made his cock jerk and his balls contract.
He lifted her leg, touching satin-soft skin, aware she wore her stockings and garters. The gossamer white silk against her ivory skin was erotic, but need hit him so hard he wanted to rip the pretty fabric with his teeth.
He’d never tumbled with a woman who wasn’t experienced, boisterous, and willing to give as good as she got. He still bore scars from fierce fingernails and tearing teeth and he liked a woman hammering her heels into his arse.
Tensing, he tightened his grip on his cock.
Control, man. She’s precious and you have to make this good.
Miss Grace Hamilton moaned as he slowly thrust into her, his buttocks tight, his legs and arms stiff with the force of restraint. Beneath him, she wrapped her free leg around his hips, snaked her arms around his neck, and rose to him with a fevered cry of pleasure.
God.
Her hips worked, rising and falling to slick her snug cunny along his shaft. Artless, eager, exquisitely beautiful—she was a treasure a man like him did not deserve. Bracketing his arm around her head, he captured her lips as he slowly thrust in and drew out. A soft whimper spilled into his mouth as he sank into her to the hilt. She surprised him by kissing him hungrily, dueling her tongue with his.
“Harder,” she whispered against his mouth. “I like this, but I want you deeper. Harder.”
His control shattered. Arching forward, he plunged into her, plundering her mouth and pinching her nipple, rolling it to give her pleasure. He surged in and out, riding high. The slap of his chest against her breasts drove him mad. The slick heat of her pussy milking his cock had him on the brink of explosion.
Her fingernails sank into his shoulders.
Make her come. Make her. Do it for her.
Shifting his angle, he worked until she cried out in shock against his mouth. He slipped his hand beneath her, and found her snug anus with his fingertips. Stroking her sensitive place inside her pussy, teasing her nipple, tickling her rump, he hung on until he took Grace to the brink.
“What—?” Her eyes opened wide, searching his, both alight and confused.
Captured by their sparkling green depths, he murmured, “You’re going to come. I’m going to make you come.”
“It feels like heaven. Like whipped cream and sugar and better than any sin I’ve ever indulged in.” She moaned and her moan was both sweet and fierce.
He’d never felt so connected with a woman while making love. Staring at her beautiful flushed face, he kept pumping, teasing, stroking—
“Oh! Oh God!” Her head lolled back; then her body arched beneath him. Her cunny clutched his cock, hugged it, pulsed around it.
Like a battering wave, his orgasm rose, flooding his brain, and he almost cried out, caught himself on the brink, and sank his teeth into the silky pillow beside her head. Groaning into it, he joined her in ecstasy, pumping his burning semen into her fluttering quim.
God.
“It was glorious,” Grace whispered. “Perfect. Amazing. Magnificent.”
Devlin, her highwayman, gave a gravelly laugh and snuggled into her side. This was an intimacy she’d never imagined—being cuddled by a powerful naked man while her heart still hammered and her body felt as though she floated on velvet clouds.
Beneath her sweat-slicked body, her sheets were a jumble, reminding her of how wild she’d been. Regret speared her suddenly—she had made a private vow to put aside her impetuous behavior and act like a lady for the sake of her family.
And now she lay, sighing with pleasure, beside a naked highwayman.
Muscular and strong, his arm cradled her protectively, just below her breasts. “What is wrong, love?”