Capturing Cora (6 page)

Hadn’t Aunt Tessa said at the start of the season that she ought to make absolutely sure her prospective life mate could satisfy her before she made a commitment, for there was no undoing it after the marriage act? She didn’t suppose Tessa had intended quite such an interpretation as this, but then knowing Tessa, mayhap she had.

She was going to find Bran and make sure he knew exactly how much she wanted him. He’d stopped her earlier, but she wouldn’t be thwarted now. She’d return the pleasure he’d given her. That’s how she wanted their marriage to be, based on at least some notion of equality.

Sex. Tupping. Fornication. The words ran through her head with accompanying pictures as she walked along the corridor. She’d do this so that he knew just how ardently she wished him to take her to wife.

Only the odd murmur seeped beneath of the doors of the chambers nearest the grand stairs. Further into the east wing, not even candlelight glowed beneath the doorframes. Cora put her hand on her dressing room door, but rather than enter and pass-through into the bedchamber beyond she hastily looked about. The door to the Walnut Suite lay only a few yards away, just down the step that led into the oldest part of the house. Quietly she crept along the edge of the carpet runner. Lord, this was probably a hopelessly bad idea, but she had to express to Bran how she felt.

No reply came in response to her tap. “Mr. Locke, Bran?” she hissed through the latch. Pray God he wasn’t asleep yet. She raised her hand again and knocked a little louder. “Bran, are you there? It’s Cora.” Oh, darn fiddlesticks with this, she raised the latch. The room lay in shadows broken only by the soft glowing embers in the grate. “Bran?” she hissed, not daring to raise her voice. She tiptoed right up to the bed, which owing to the curtains lay in total darkness. She reached out, seeking the wild tangle of his overlong forelock upon the pillow, but to her immense disappointment found only empty space. Perhaps, Lord Egremont had been wrong, and Bran wasn’t bedded here at all.

* * * * *

Bran emerged from the privy to a sight that had him so stumped he very nearly back stepped into the potty. “Cora?” She didn’t seem to hear him. Her slender apparition stood poised beside the bed, blond ringlets wreathed by the golden glow from the embers of the fire. Her body inclined over the bed, where she had one hand pressed to the pillow as if were stroking an imaginary head.

She was every inch lovely, and he wanted every bit of her in his bed. Dear Lord how he wanted her in his bed. His body responded at once. Heat rushed to his groin and his cock rose like mast drawn aloft.

She’d come to seek him out, he realised, which surely meant she felt the same way. Joy followed the flood of arousal, making him feel impossibly light, although the wild flutter of his pulse kept his tongue in check a moment longer. “Cora.”

She heard him that second time, for she turned so abruptly she had to put out a hand to steady herself. Bran met her where she stood, her hand clamped tight around the bed post. A myriad of questions flooded his thoughts. Why was she here? For what purpose? To seek him? For something else?

In the end, he asked only the most pertinent of the lot. “Are you looking for Lord Swansbrooke?” It would be typical of his god-awful luck if she turned out to be the one woman in all of old England that actually turned doe-eyed at the thought of caressing Hugh’s domineering snout.

“I was looking for you,” she said, clearly petted at his insinuation. “Why would I seek Lord Swansbrooke?”

“I thought only… This is his room.” He tried to keep the accusation from his voice.

“I know that.”

“But you’re here.”

She smiled, and the plumpness it added to her cheeks made the glow in his heart warm. “I overheard that you’d been forced to swap.” Yes, he’d been about ready to murder Hulme for that about forty minutes ago, but now he thought he might actually shake his hand. There’d have been no Cora visiting his bedside if he’d been bedded down with that lecherous fox.

“Yes…um… I was.” Bran fanned his arms out, suddenly conscious that he stood before her only in his nightshirt, with nothing beneath and a full half of his legs on display down to the skin. His toes curled into the soft pile of the carpet. Egremont had definitely given Hugh his best room. He wasn’t accustomed to carpet underfoot, just the normal creaking, cold wooden boards.

The same observation regarding his near nakedness seemed to strike Cora at that moment too, for her gaze lingered over his body. “Why did you not wait for me, but chose instead to retire?”

He thought he detected a flush colouring her cheeks, but it was deuced impossible to be certain in this light. Bran found a spill and lit the candle by the bedstead, then another that he set upon the chest at the foot-end. “You were in such a rush to depart after we were found that it seemed best not to pursue you. Also, Lord Swansbrooke advised me against making another scene. Apparently more than one in a night smacks of desperation, which is not appealing I’m told.”

“Are you desperate for me?” The little romp grinned as if she already knew the answer was yes.

“I’m…” He was what exactly? What was he going to admit? That beneath this flimsy slip he was purse-proud at the prospect of having her lie in his arms? That he couldn’t get the thoughts of their earlier tête à tête out of his head? That he wanted her above all else, right now, here in this enormous beast of a bed? He’d been so sorely used this evening that he’d been contemplating an assignment with Miss Rosie and her four sisters tonight. “Cora, I’m besotted. I’ve asked you twice. Must I make that thrice before you’ll accept me?” He came to her and took her hands in his, raising them to press kisses to her knuckles.

“I’ve already said yes. Did you not hear me?”

“But you didn’t scream it out as I asked.”

“I’m afraid I was finding it a little difficult to stand, let alone to express any sort of coherent verbal response. I came looking for you because I want to return that favour.”

“You want to what?” Good God, was she serious? He couldn’t let her do that.

“I want to please you. You will tell me what you need and let me do that, won’t you, Bran? I simply couldn’t endure the thought of you treating me like a doll and seeking your pleasures elsewhere because you were afraid of breaking me.”

Bran nudged up her chin with his fingertips so he could look into her eyes. She was serious. He had no doubt of it. This only confirmed that she was absolutely the right choice. Most of the women he’d encountered cared only to know that a gentleman had a haberdasher’s account and a surplus of coins in the bank. Cora—his love—wanted to ensure she satisfied his physical needs.

“We ought to wait,” he said. “Until we’re married.”

She drew her teeth over her lower lip. “How should anybody know that we’ve done otherwise? I shan’t tell them, and Lord Swansbrooke is engaged at the card table. Besides, how is it different to what you did earlier?”

That one had him stumped. “Cora,” he pleaded. Did she have any concept of how much this conversation was killing him? He wanted very much to let her do exactly as she asked, and to let his rigid cock fill up her sweet mouth.

“I want to touch you.” She swept aside his hands and grasped immediately at his nightshirt, her hot little hands folding tightly around his waist. “I only felt the shape of you earlier.”

His cock immediately bucked in welcome. “Bolt the door.”

Cora did so at once.

Bran removed his shift while her back was turned and readied himself for her shock. He knew she’d never seen a naked man before.

To his relief, she didn’t scream or giggle, nor make any motion that suggested she might faint. Instead her gaze focussed sharply upon him and ran down from his head to his shoulders and chest and then stopped at his loins. Her lips parted slightly, and the very tip of her tongue swept over her lower lip.

“Do you still wish to kiss me there?” he breathed.

She drew closer with her hand outstretched. Bran’s eyes closed for a second as her hand made contact with his cock. The fan of lace bordering her sleeve scraped across his skin, providing a fraction more stimulation than he really liked. Bran’s ballocks pulled up tight against the shield of his body.

She didn’t move at first, simply held him cocooned in the palm of her hand.

“Like this.” He wrapped his hand over the top of hers and showed her how to stroke him. She bit her lip all the while, concentrating hard upon the act until her breath released in a great gush.

Bran slid his hands up her back and pulled her fast against his chest. He sought her lips and a dance made of kisses. Cora opened up to him, but her hand never left his shaft. “Does it please you to touch me like this?” he asked.

“I like the way it makes your words catch. If I keep up the caress will you reach a peak similar to the one I had earlier?”

Cora snuck a glance down at him. He stood proudly upright, the tip of his cock drumming against the skin just shy of his navel. His foreskin was drawn back so that the sensitive flare of the head lay exposed, and blood pumped through it like licks of fire.

“Yes,” he whispered into her ear, “but it’ll be a lot stickier, and it will take me a while to recover. Do you still wish to kiss me there?”

He felt her tremble against his arm.

“You don’t have to, Cora. I won’t demand anything you’re not ready to give.”

“But it would please you if I did?” Her eyes shone a little too bright.

“You please me,” he said, backing up a little. He sat on the edge of the bed holding her hands.

“Maybe a little taste.”

Bran’s stomach muscles tensed. His cock swelled at the very thought of her kiss. He watched her sink slowly onto her knees so that her voluminous dress fanned around her. Slowly, cautiously, she bent her head towards his lap. Bran placed a hand upon her shoulder. “Cora.” Her name emerged from his throat as a croak.

“I want to do this, Bran.”

Damn, she near intoxicated him. Her mouth opened slightly, so he could see the rose shadow of her tongue. Then her lips met with his shaft, causing him to claw at the bedspread with both hands. She really was magnificent and soon to be truly his.

She explored him with her lips to begin with, and then with the very tip of her tongue. That was devilment enough as she directed her attention to the sensitive crown of his cock, where she soon learned to lap up the pearls of seed he wept.

He stopped her short of taking him fully into her mouth. “Cora, don’t.” He couldn’t take it. Already, she’d worn his restraint down to a thread. The heat of her mouth, combined with delicate tugging sucks would send him over the edge, and he didn’t want that. Not yet. First he wanted her. “I need to be hard if we’re to tup,” he blurted, not really intending to say it aloud, even though it was the primary thought in his brain.

* * *

“If we’re to tup.”

Just the sound of his husky voice as he spoke the words made her insides flutter. Cora stared up at him. She knew it was rude to stare, but she’d never really caught so much as a glimpse of a cock before tonight and it was… well, it was magnificent. All straight and proud and stout, and yet so warm and supple beneath her touch and pulsing with vitality. The taste of him sat thick upon her tongue.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“I wish you’d lit more candles. I can barely see you in this light,” she replied, avoiding the issue. Lord help her, though she trembled, she knew the moment he said it that she wanted him—them—to do just that. She wanted him to tup her.

“Two is illumination enough.” He forced a chuckle, which caused his shaft to quiver and jerk. Then his stomach muscles rippled as he dragged down another breath. “I know you heard me, Cora. If you don’t want us to do that, then you ought to leave now, because if you stay I’ll interpret that as a yes.”

“I know that I shouldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t be here at all.”

She knew that too. However, they both knew she wasn’t going to leave. The silence between them stretched. Finally, Bran bent and pressed his lips to her breast. He undid the temporary repair to her dress and worked the top of her stays loose so that he could once again free her breasts.

The memory of his earlier touch flooded back to her as he sucked upon her nipples.

“Bran, would you kiss me as you did before?”

“Kiss you?” He raised his head. “Is that not what I’m doing?”

“As before.” She dipped her head so that he would understand that she wanted him to kiss between her legs again.

“Ah,” he laughed. “Then we best swap positions.” Without preamble, he settled her upon the edge of the mattress. Whereupon, he removed her shoes and kissed the arch of her foot. “Lie back.” Bran loomed over her, naked, his muscles taut and pleasingly shadowed in the firelight. His body continued to amaze her. He was not soft or rounded in any place save for his rump. No, rather he was pleasingly different, and so very very male.

He braced one hand by the side of her head, and used the other to explore the contours of her leg to high above her stocking top. The action made her limbs jelly-like, making her glad of the mattress at her back. It was the work of a moment for him to tuck up her skirt between them, so that she was spread like a banquet for him, with her cork rump pushing her hips up and out. Bran spread her thighs, and brought his mouth to her cunt.