Authors: Claudy Conn
FELICIA WAS WELL aware what her heart was experiencing and just what was happening to her. She had fallen hopelessly, endlessly in love with Glen Ashton. She knew so very little about him, about his life, his family, but she didn’t need to know details. She loved not only the look and cut of the man, but she loved the way his mind worked.
She had had ample opportunity to observe him in several complicated and exhilarating situations in which another man would not have so excelled. He had shown his mettle in each and every encounter they had experienced together, and she was more than impressed. She was thoroughly enamored. The only problem was, she wasn’t sure he felt anything close to what she felt.
She could see, for she was a woman with very good instincts, that he was more than a little attracted to her. She could see that he was holding himself back, for there had been several times she thought he was about to kiss her but then he did not. No doubt he thought her the innocent she was and did not wish to hurt her? Well, she was going to have to do something about that, wasn’t she? He was a man of the world. There was no doubt in her mind that his mistresses were widows, or even married, but never maids. His honor would make him resist her, and she didn’t want him to.
What then? Ah, she would have to be bolder than an innocent maid and perhaps find a way to break down that resistance of his? Yes, she would break down that sense of honor that kept him from taking her into his very desirable arms—that was the ticket, as her Scott would say.
“So, then, you rode over hill and dale all your life without a saddle, did you?” He smiled.
“Oh, not often, but, yes, very horsey, my family. It was natural for us, living in the country, and as a young girl it was acceptable to play the hoyden and have more fun than a prim miss might in London at her stitching.”
“I can just see you running amok, with that glorious hair of yours all around your beautiful face,” he said almost wistfully. He sighed. “But I see you know well how to play the lady, which you shall have to do in London, you know.”
“Play the lady?” She took no offense. “Indeed,
I am a lady
, but I have no wish to put on airs simply because I mean to have a season.”
She saw it then, she saw it in his smoldering eyes, in the way that his breath caught in his throat. He was leaning in towards her as though he was about to take her hand …
But she didn’t want him to take her hand. She wanted him to take her waist and bend to kiss her. She slowed her horse with just that intent and eyed him as flirtatiously as she knew how. Scott would have laughed right out loud, but Ashton didn’t laugh, not at all.
“You are many things, my beauty, a hoyden of a wild child for one, a lady who knows just how to carry herself, and an emerging woman.” He did, in fact, take up her gloved fingers, move the cuff from her wrist, and place a warm and lingering kiss there.
Shivers swept through her body, and she trembled at his touch. If his kiss to her wrist could do so much—what then when he kissed her lips? “So, you think that,” she stuck in breathlessly if only to try and ease herself, “I shall manage with the very
pink of the ton
?”
“I am,”—he inclined his head with a chuckle—“considered to be amongst the ‘pink of the ton’ and can tell you that for those of us who enjoy seeing past the veneer of the new debutantes hopeful of entering our world,
you
shall manage very well. In fact, you have the carriage of a duchess.”
He said that with such feeling that she glanced at him for a very long moment and answered, “Do you think I would care for the opinions of people who put value on all the wrong things—like that? It isn’t the fashion I choose to wear but the heart I carry.” She shrugged. “I don’t give a fig for who is ton and who is not, but I might enjoy attending their
routs and balls
.” She laughed at herself over this.
“Bravo!” He smiled warmly at her. “Now
that is
the duchess in you.”
They bantered in this style, about manners, hers and society’s. She ventured questions about some of the famous fashionables she had read about and listened raptly to his descriptions, until all at once she noticed they had reached the cottage in the woods.
“Oh, did you mean to ride here—to this cottage for a reason?”
“Yes, I wanted to give the place a thorough going over. Perhaps a clue might be found as to where the other two men took off to. I haven’t forgotten about them, you know. The magistrate sent off a note that their prisoners aren’t yet speaking honestly about anything and probably don’t know where the other two have gone.”
She pulled her horse to a halt and jumped neatly to the ground. He frowned at her and said, “And that is another thing you must learn to do.”
Oh, she thought, she loved his silver eyes. “What other thing must I learn?”
“To allow a gentleman to assist you, even if you can do it yourself.”
“Always? Must I always allow every gentleman that comes along to assist me?” she said coyly, drawing him closer with the curve of her lips and the sway of her body.
He was towering over her then. “No,” he answered firmly, and his arm slipped around her waist and drew her in close, so close the delicious scent of him wafted through her brain and made her lean into his hold.
His embrace was gentle at first, but suddenly, as though a dam had broken, he crushed her to him and his mouth covered hers. His tongue teased her lips apart and found her receptive tongue and taught her the steps to a new and exotic dance she had never done before.
He took his time, as his velvet tongue gave her a first lesson, and he responded to the way she molded herself into him. His kiss blossomed into another and then another.
She couldn’t breathe and didn’t care.
She wanted this
. She wanted his kisses, and his hands on her body just like this was thrilling. She wasn’t a fool. She knew this didn’t necessarily mean love … perhaps, at the moment, it was lust. Perhaps?
Could she make it blossom—could she make him love her?
She couldn’t think straight. She only felt, she only desired. She wanted to be a woman—his woman!
Indeed, she rather thought she could go on kissing him forever. She simply had to make him love her as she loved him.
When he let her up for air, she surprised herself by being collected enough to smile and softly ask, “Is that another thing I must learn?”
“No, no, again, sweetheart. You need no lesson there.” He then set her aside with obvious resolution and moved towards the cottage, saying only, “Stay with the horses.”
She did, but her eyes followed him in total adoration.
Here now was a man.
Here now was her knight in shining armor. Her stepmama had said for every woman one would come, albeit the armor would be different for each.
Here was the man of her dreams.
FELICIA WASN’T SURE when the thought came into her head. Was it during dinner that it had hit her what needed to be done? It could have been. She could still feel the sensation that rocked her when their gazes had met and held. She felt as though she was burning from the inside out.
At the moment she was overwhelmed. Her body was flushed and needing something that made her clench her thighs. She had at one point closed her eyes when his hand had lingered on her bare arm. Her belly had tightened, and she had been flooded with desire. She knew, absolutely knew, she was a fallen woman, or would be very soon. Men had awful rules. She would be a fallen woman if she broke those rules—the rules of men, even of most of the women of her time. There were other women who wrote about breaking free from such constraints, and her beliefs matched, in part, with theirs.
She knew he would not come to her room.
There was no point in hoping and waiting for that to happen.
Thus, she had made up her mind and, with that mind-set, had taken extra care with herself, dabbing a bit of the scent he had purchased for her to her ears and between her naked breasts.
She stood before the mirror and regarded herself in the flimsy, creamy-colored and lacy nightdress. She could see her nipples pressing up against the transparent material, and they were hard and made her yearn just as the cleft tingling between her legs made her yearn.
She was like a mare in heat.
What an awful thought, but it was true. It was nature … natural.
If she waited till everyone was no longer about, she could make her way to his room unseen. Would his door be locked? She would have to try, and if it was locked … then it was not meant to be.
She had to try
. Soon he would accompany them to London and leave her there at Scott’s aunt, and she might never see him again. She couldn’t bear it. She had to make a push to make him feel more for her, want her even more … need her.
If she gave herself to him. If she pleased him and herself by so doing … would he want her forever? What would he think of her? She was going against all the social rules of the day—would that make her less in his eyes? Men took what they wanted. He wanted her … if she offered herself, would he take her?
It was a chance she simply had to take. She bucked up her spirit and went to her door, cracked it open, looked about the dark hallway, and hurriedly tiptoed over the creaky wood to Ashton’s door, a long distance from her own.
She stood there, rattled with herself, with fear, with expectations, with hope, and then reached for the latch. It opened with scarcely a sound, and she went inside, closed it quietly at her back, and stood, uncertain what she should do next.
The room was clothed in black shades of night. Only small embers burned in the fireplace grate, giving off shadowy silhouettes.
She could make out the shape of the bed, four posters against the back wall to her right side. She stood, unable to go any further. This was a bad idea. What was she—mad?
She turned back to the door, and suddenly a hand was over her face, her nose, her mouth, and as a scream lit in her throat.
“
Hush now
…” he said, holding her against his solid, unmovable body.
She calmed down and then became flustered as he removed his hand and turned her shoulders so she was facing him.
He was naked. All rebukes for scaring her were stuck in her throat. Even in the dark, even with the embers sparking into submission in the fireplace at his back, she could see that he was completely naked and that, like a stallion ready to mount a mare, he was certainly hung.
She sucked in air, quickly. She had to breathe, or she was going to pass out. She had been insane to think this was something she could do. What was she doing here?
“Is there something, beauty, I can help you with?” His voice was low and husky and traveled through her veins right up to her brain and blasted all coherent thought and speech into oblivion.
She shook her head because she couldn’t speak.
“
No?
And yet, here you are,” he answered, his voice a primal sound, the sound of a predator who had latched onto its prey and didn’t mean to let go. He was savoring the moment. That single moment before the kill, she thought.
Did she want to be that prey? Was she that prey already?
No
. She was the one who had come for him. She was the hunter … or at least had been.
“I … I …” she whispered.
“I know,” he answered and had his arms around her as he bent and covered her mouth with his own.
His kiss exploded inside her, and she morphed into someone wild with abandon. She molded herself to him. She kissed him back with a fever that clearly said she knew what she was doing. She wanted this. No doubts—they had been expelled as his velvet tongue joined with hers.
He had her pressed up against the door as his kiss turned into many, as his kisses traveled over her neck, as he dove into the neckline of her nightdress and exposed her breast and groaned to lick at her nipple.
She was a tart, she told herself, indeed … and loving every moment of her lapse in morals. Morals? What was wrong with being like this with the man you loved? Nothing. This was just where she wanted to be.
“Aye … I have been wanting you from the moment I clapped eyes on you.” He moaned the words into her ear as his teeth nipped her lobe gently. “You were made for me, just for me. I need you, Felicia, need you more than I can say.” He picked her up then and carried her to the bed to place her down none too gently.
Her nightdress was flung off, and he was on his knees on the bed, looking down at her, his manhood thick and swollen with his desire.
She swallowed. It was one thing to hear vague details of lovemaking from your friends and quite another to execute it in the flesh. He must have had so many experienced women. She would bore him with her innocence, she thought, as she bit her bottom lip and doubts swirled around her brain.
“You pierce my mind and my heart with your exquisite eyes—your innocent eyes,” he said on a low breath. “I am a cad to take you, but unless you pull away, Felicia, I can’t seem to help myself now … now that you are here with me.”
“I am here because it is what I want—have been wanting.” Was that her voice? Were those her words? How had she dared? Her hoyden had gone berserk and was running amok. Her independence was going to cost her, but then, all worthwhile goals were costly. There were consequences, always consequences for one’s actions, and when those actions went against the world’s beliefs, well, then, would she be prepared to pay? Ah, it was more than the heat of the moment that wrenched her answer ‘Yes’; it was her heart.
His mouth closed on hers, and his hands fondled her into a mass of need. She needed, she wanted, and she wasn’t in control any longer as she arched high over the bed in desperate response to his ministrations. His fingers traveled over her nipples, and he groaned, “Your beautiful, full breasts drive me mad, my beautiful girl, my sweetness.” He bent his head and began suckling there, and she felt a build-up of tension throughout her body creating an arrow of desire that shot straight between her thighs and made her wriggle and press herself into his free hand, which had cupped her there.
He moved her cleft with that cupped hand in a way that made mewling sounds escape her lips. She was no longer thinking. All thoughts were gone as his touch turned her into a red-hot mass of need, need of him, of his touch, his licking at her nipples, his finger … slipping into her in a way she had never imagined possible.
His kisses were on the move, down her belly, where he nipped here and there and made her body convulse towards him. He sounded feral when he told her, “You are hot, wet, and ready for me, love, and your body—so responsive. I want you, sweetheart …
want you
.”
She couldn’t speak even if she knew what to say. She wanted him, yes, more than anything, she wanted this.
He had her knees bent up, moving her like a doll in his hands, and then, all at once, she felt a moment of fear as he bent his head between her thighs and she felt his teeth nip at her there.
Oh—oh my.
She couldn’t make more than animal sounds as his finger joined his teeth and his tongue and turned her into a moaning, wiggling, aching, and crave-filled, flesh and blood woman.
He pulled away after a few moments and straddled her so that his huge, throbbing rod rested on her belly, and he took her hand and said, “This … is for you, love.” Then he moved her hand gently over it.
Oh, but she loved the magic feel of him in her hand. She had grown up with horses and had seen stallions mate with mares. There were things she knew about because a child always learns a great deal by watching. Still, she had never expected this all-consuming need to touch … to stroke, to hold.
It was what she did; she followed his lead, allowed him to take control of her fingers, and then he took his hand away as hers closed around his pulsating shaft. She wanted more stroking, more touching … more!
And then he gave it to her as he placed the tip of his huge shaft at her cleft and rubbed there. He made a hard sound in his throat as he positioned himself and whispered to her, “Now, Felicia, now.”
He shoved himself hard and fast into her opening, and she thought he would never fit as he tore through her virginity and made her his own.
The pain was sharp, and she winced, but it was over very soon as he moved inside her, filling her up, pressing against the walls of her warm sheath.
He had her rump in his hands and raised her up. She moved with him, taking her cue from his ministrations, and he said her name and encouraged her. “Yes, Felicia … oh, yes, like that, oh, damn, but you are perfect. Perfect little beauty, you …”
He moved in her hard and fast, and that build-up she had felt when his fingers had pulled at her nipples and his mouth had found her opening and worked her there was stronger than ever, and she arched as something new took over her body.
She climaxed in a thunderous explosion. She shuddered with the aftermath over and over again. Her body convulsed all around him with tremors blasting her with sensations as the walls of her opening clenched still at his hardness inside her.
He made a wild sound as he shot his seed inside her and then whispered praise into her ear. He held her tightly and kissed her neck and ears and lips and said quietly after they had both regained some air, “Are you hurt, little madcap? Did I hurt you …?”
“Hurt? No, that was wonderful. Can we do it again?” she brazenly asked. She had, she knew, already gone over that ‘
no-no
line’. So why not go over it again?
He laughed, and it was a wonderful, joyous sound as he gave her rump a little spank and said, “
Mine
… this is mine, little innocent.”
“Oh, yes, and perhaps … I may say the same one day soon,” she teased.
He stopped then and frowned but then nipped at her lip and said, “Fair enough.”
And then all such talk was gone as he took her hand to his wet and throbbing manhood and showed her yet another thing or two.