The Black Sheep's Return (9 page)

‘I hope you’re not thinking of dragging my lord into some rackety misadventure?’ Jack’s cousin Persephone remarked as she kissed him and eyed him distrustfully.

‘You know very well by now that Alex Forthin
never goes anywhere he doesn’t want to, Coz,’ Jack countered lightly.

‘Now
I’m
suspicious,’ his own wife asserted and he met Jess’s clever dark eyes as innocently as he could, while cursing the instincts of women and more especially wives.

‘Me too,’ Antigone Seaborne informed them as she crossed the famous marble hall to greet Alex and Persephone, now the host and hostess had been hugged and it was her turn.

‘Outvoted and outmanoeuvred by a trio of mere women.’ Marcus met his wife’s angry glare with provocation and pride in her brightness in his green Seaborne eyes.

‘I’ll give you
mere
women, Telemachus Seaborne,’ Antigone threatened.

‘Yes, please,’ he replied irrepressibly and she laughed as she did so often nowadays, reluctantly perhaps, but she still laughed and he still loved her with all the passionate delight of a Seaborne male who has found his true mate and never intends letting her go.

‘Before you two set the curtains on fire with one of your lover’s tiffs, perhaps we should adjourn to the drawing room and find out what our husbands are conspiring about?’ Jessica suggested and three Seaborne ladies looked expectantly at their husbands, who did their
best to pretend a six-way council of war would suit them very well.

The three ladies exchanged glances that said,
Who would have thought these three could enjoy marriage definitely not à la mode
,
yet still be their fierce barbarian lovers in breeches and topboots underneath it all?
Marriage was a wondrous adventure for each of them and perhaps only they could know how glorious It felt to have the love of your life concentrating his sensuous experience on pleasing one woman. It was a bond that would unite them if they weren’t also the best of friends and they badly wanted to meet Annabelle DeMorbaraye and compare notes on her lion, if Rich would only allow her out of his lair along with their cubs long enough to do so.

It had been a very long day. And utterly useless for the task Rich had set himself. Today had been supposed to help him get Perdita out of his head once and for all. He’d done his best to exhaust himself by striding about the forest like an escaped wolf all day, and half the night, then finally decided he might as well go home, since she was at Keziah’s with the children. Now instead of a refuge and a brief respite from wanting her mercilessly, this was
another disaster. Perdita was here and what folly to feel betrayed by that fact. Nevertheless she was here and should be at least a mile away from the beast she’d made of him. The dratted female had made him dangerous and that felt almost unforgivable.

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ Rich growled when the stoutly barred door was open at last, since he’d thundered on it furiously when his key wouldn’t let him in and he realised why, instead of standing there glaring at it like a slow-top.

‘And a good evening to you too, Mr Craven,’ Perdita said stiffly as Rich tried to clamp manners over raw fury and failed.

‘Good evening,’ he said shortly, ‘what the deuce are you doing here?’

‘Wishing I had somewhere else to go,’ she said with wounded dignity that cut like a knife and made him feel guilty and angry and a finely masculine mess all rolled into one.

‘It’s not that I don’t want you here,’ he muttered gruffly, although he desperately wanted her gone and all this endless temptation and soul-searching along with her.

‘Really? You have the oddest ways of making a guest welcome in your house, then,’ Perdita replied coolly as she stepped back to let
him in. When she stayed as far away from him as she could without standing in the scullery, he told himself that was what he wanted.

‘Where are the children?’ he asked, giving up on politeness since rudeness made her wary and by heaven she needed to be.

‘I sold them to the rag man,’ she ventured recklessly and one of the chains he’d clamped on wanting her outrageously snapped.

Rich felt the world skew as his inner beast roared for the contrary female and she didn’t have sense to realise it. ‘Tell me!’ he gritted and she flinched.

‘Keziah has them,’ she said, as if he shouldn’t have to ask and he had no real doubt she would make sure they were safe before she worried about herself, but somehow even that made it all worse.

He tried to remind himself she didn’t know the terror he always lived with: that Hal could be seized by his enemies and disposed of like an unwanted kitten. He trusted Keziah as he would his own mother, but Cleo was as tricky as a badly primed firework. He’d done his best to ignore her languorous looks in his direction, but he knew it was wise to be wary of a woman scorned, particularly when that woman seemed to have very few scruples and a devious
mind behind all the surface charm. For tonight Atlas was with them and Reuben would be there to keep a check on Cleo’s wilder impulses, so she was quite right and Hal and Sally were safe—would he could say as much for Perdita.

‘Then why are
you
here?’ he asked grumpily and locked the door behind him from habit more than good sense.

‘Cleopatra insisted there was no room with the children, Atlas and three adults crammed into a tiny cottage.’

‘And the real reason?’

‘Apparently I’m after her man,’ Perdita admitted with such a look of contempt Rich almost laughed.

‘And are you?’ he growled instead.

‘Mr Summer is a married man,’ she snapped and sought the only sanctuary this room allowed her by reaching for the curtains about the box-bed, so she could shut herself away and make it very clear what she thought of his monstrous allegation.

Contrarily, he refused to let her put that fragile barrier between them and swung her back to face him again. ‘He’s still a handsome devil though, isn’t he?’ he muttered as if some other idiot had control of his tongue and immediately
shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, that insults both of you,’ he admitted curtly.

Rich looked down at his calloused workman’s hands on her slender yet rounded arm and told himself to break the contact. The start of awareness she gave when he held her, her refusal to shrink away and the sweetness of their contact, after so many days wanting her, was too heady to resist.

‘Cleo made you walk back alone?’ he asked and another thread of control broke at the very idea of her wandering about the forest alone and unprotected once more.

‘Reuben went to check his traps and Keziah was upstairs with the children, so she had the chance to make it clear as day I wasn’t welcome under the same roof. Your Mrs Summer wants me so frightened I’ll meekly scuttle back to whichever stone she thinks I emerged from under so she won’t have to guard her territory any more.’

‘She’s not
my
Mrs Summer and Cleopatra has a husband. I can assure you that I’m not her territory and never will be after this.’

‘Then you might have been otherwise?’

‘No, I never wanted her—that’s all in her head. She’s just Keziah’s wayward daughter
and Reuben’s restless wife to me and nothing more.’

‘I don’t think she realises that,’ Perdita replied with a cold snap in her voice.

Somehow the sight of her composed as a pale society lady, who ought to be dressed in finest silk and lace fashioned by an exclusive
modiste
, instead of faded cotton and a lightly tanned countrywoman’s skin, undid the last slender thread that tethered him to sanity. His inward beast roared so loudly for the contrary female he couldn’t beat it back into its cage.

‘The only woman I want is you,’ he admitted bitterly.

‘And
I
only want
you,’
she replied as if he was a fool for dreaming otherwise.

‘It can’t work.’

‘No, but why should that stop us?’ she whispered with such painful honesty his heart lurched uncomfortably, even as the beast roared with possession and triumph inside him.

‘I can’t kiss you and step away. I won’t be able to stop myself once I start loving you, Perdita Rowan. You’ll be spoilt goods as far as the marriage mart goes if you encourage me
not
to walk over to Keziah’s house and fetch
my children and dog back here to chaperon us right now,’ he warned.

‘How do you know I’m not already fully a woman?’

‘Don’t be more of a fool than nature made you,’ he snapped, knowing it from the bold bravery with which she met his eyes.

Even his certainty reminded him he’d once been a rake and knew far too much about women for a simple countryman. She was far too good for him in every way he could think of, even if he had his old self back and could offer her so much more than a cottage in the woods and a life of toil and obscurity. And now he couldn’t even offer her that for much longer, he reminded himself bitterly.

‘I’m a realist, not a fool, Orlando,’ she said softly and how could he
not
want her?

His Perdita, with no illusions about a future of loving endlessly—this woman he had no right to want. her breath stuttered as if
not
being his would hurt her in some drastic fashion and he finally kissed her with a curse that shuddered through him and into her as something broke.

She was tangled round every sense and scruple Rich had. He raised his head to look at her at last, a desperate question in his eyes
and hers shone deep gold with expectation and an answer he shouldn’t ask for and she shouldn’t give. For an arrested moment he wanted to know every thought and desire in her amber gaze, delve every hope and wonder in her deepest heart and make himself part of her life for ever. As their gazes heated and promised so much to one another he told himself that now would have to do, but, oh, how he yearned for the freedom to love her endlessly and enduringly.

F
rom the moment she had met Orlando Craven in the darkness that first time, her wayward inner Freya had longed for the touch of his mouth on hers and now she wasn’t even ashamed of herself for wanting him. She’d tried so hard to pretend such nonsense didn’t happen to Lady Freya Buckle back then, but knew deep down that all the bluster and pride in the world couldn’t stop this force of nature flaming into an unstoppable thing between them.

Dismissing all the possible futures that might haunt her and spoil the moment, she savoured every second instead, imprinted every racing heartbeat on her memory, so that she could recall it in vivid detail afterwards. When
she left, she would be able to remember that she’d once been wanted so badly her powerful lover’s hands shook with need. Then she could relive this in vivid colour, not a monochrome sketch drawn by an impatient hand that grew fainter year by year as light and life faded from the quick line of a mere impression Orlando might leave behind. If she didn’t love him.

Perdita knew what she wanted and could live with consequences, because Lady Freya had lived without hopes and dreams for so long. A few days with Orlando would outshine a lifetime with the noble husband she’d once wanted and she thanked her stars he had never come to pass. Even now Orlando seemed to need a little sly encouragement to make her his and forget the future they couldn’t have, so she wriggled delightedly under his exploring hands.

She gave vent to a breathy little moan and slid her hands up to caress his impressively muscled neck and winnow her fingers through his shaggy locks, then tug his head lower with frank impatience. Now she’d find out what it felt like to get closer than she’d ever been to a man in her adult life. It felt wonderful. He groaned and fed on her mouth as if he was starving and she learnt avidly from every
hungry invasion into her willing mouth, then echoed it to drive him beyond the noble scruples she sensed hovering at the back of his conscience.

Cleopatra’s flowing skirt and loose blouse lent her some of the swagger and sauce the older woman possessed and how she’d hate to know that. Freya was certain Keziah’s daughter would be horrified if she knew her old clothes were helping her enemy seduce a man she wanted herself.

‘Go warm your own man’s bed and stay away from mine,’ the sulky beauty ordered as soon as Keziah mentioned she was to stay the night.

Freya wondered if Cleo knew she had the gift of prophecy, for she fully intended to spend a whole night warming her man’s bed rather than holding out for another Duke.
To the devil with Cleo and with Dukes and all the lesser aristocrats who didn’t want to marry me either
, she told herself and excitement rushed through her like a lightning flash when he finally moaned as if he couldn’t help himself, then pulled her even closer into his hard body and took over their kiss.

She moaned in her turn and he took ruthless advantage to explore her mouth with his
wickedly probing tongue. If his mouth on hers could give such pleasure, her very toes tingled in anticipation of what more and deeper might feel like. She leaned up on her tiptoes and imitated him with a greed that made him gasp and want even more.

My, but he was mighty, she concluded gleefully; his shoulders were heavy with work-honed muscles and the ones over his ribs and belly were corded and toned so intriguingly she wanted the leisure to explore them intimately. The thought of being here to watch him fell and fashion timber come winter made her knees wobble with hotly sharp desire. Who would have thought the very idea of witnessing hard physical labour in her man would leave Lady Freya almost sweating with need to see him just so, then make love on the forest floor before the glow of all that manly effort expired?

‘Stop!’ he ordered frantically, as she let her hand drift lower and he pulled away to trap it, then bring it back to his face and neck despite her mewl of frustration. ‘I can’t endure your touch down there and not be unmanned by it, Perdita,’ he whispered into her eager ear and she shivered with the delightful tension of longing for him so badly it almost hurt.

‘I want you so much,’ she said on a whispered sigh and hardly recognised her own voice, so husky with it maybe words were unnecessary. ‘I need you,’ she added, just in case she was wrong.

‘And you have no idea what you’re doing to me,’ he protested almost incoherently as he abandoned words and decided to show her.

Deliciously, he showed her how it felt to have her lover kiss the length of her throat while she let her head fall back as if there wasn’t strength left in her bones to hold it upright. He untied the cord that held the low neck of her simple blouse and cupped her eager breasts so he could display them for his sensual inspection and heat leapt higher in his green gaze until she knew what emerald fire looked like. At last he seized one of her aching breasts in his mouth to suckle and caress the stingingly hot and tight nipple at the centre of so much wanting and she moaned with hot satisfaction, wanting more of whatever came next as urgently as he did, despite not knowing what it actually was she needed so badly.

Heated shocks of longing seemed to arc from those brazenly stimulated nipples of hers to her deep feminine core and she let out a stuttering sigh at the unknown want it set off
inside her. She shared this with him; knew he longed as deeply and had a hunger to match hers, even if he did know what came next. He didn’t love her now, but he wanted her, oh, how ardently he wanted. She fought back the thought it wasn’t enough, because if this was all there was between them, it was better than not knowing this glory as urgency and hot need flared between them like the strongest magic.

She wriggled enough to make the blouse fall off her shoulders and gape open shamelessly, so he could take the hint and bare her all the way to the waist of her full skirt and the underskirt beneath that she had found so unfamiliar at first and now gloried in. Orlando must have observed a great deal about Cleopatra’s mode of dress, although he claimed not to want her, as he found the button and tie that held the skirts in place with a sure ease that sent both whispering to the floor and left her standing in her incongruous lady’s day shoes. Kicking them off, she stepped out of the circle of downed plumage and stood proudly before him as nature intended only her lover and her maid ever to see her. Working in the garden had firmed her own muscles and tanned her skin so there were darker lines where the scooped neckline
of her blouse stopped, but she felt no shame in the unladylike gilding on her skin.

Since he gasped at the sight of her, then began working his mouth fanatically along the sun-kissed line where tanned Freya met a paler creamy-skinned version of herself, she enjoyed every kiss and touch with him. How changed she was, she mused, as his mouth sent shivers of delight through her needy body. Distracted by wanting more, she let her fingers explore his wild dark-gold curls and noble head as his mouth feasted lower and he wove a potent spell round the upper slopes of her eager breasts and she wanted more and yet more until she was all hunger. The feel of his hair under her fingers was soft, yet springy, and she crooned nonsense in his ears as he settled his mouth on a begging nipple and she keened an inarticulate protest that nothing seemed to salve the hot desperation at her centre where she roared for more, luxurious and fiery as this was.

‘Do you know—?’ he began to ask, but she stopped his mouth with a kiss so desperate he gave up on words.

Smoothing his hands over her slender ribcage and down to her narrow waist so he could hold her far enough away to shrug off his outer garments in a hasty, practised hurry told her
he had plenty of experience of urgent lovings with his wife. No, she would stall in her tracks if she let the reality that he still loved his wife back in. Then he let his hot green gaze skim the long and lovely sweep of her hip and thigh and admire the lithe length of her legs and this was for them alone once again. He wanted her, so urgently even she knew his sex was many times mightier than it would be unstirred by newly wanton Perdita Rowan.

Sheltered as she had been from an early age, Freya knew the differences between man and woman, but had never been so starkly certain they would be wonderful somehow put together. She felt her breath come short and let her eyes explore the difference of him to her, then licked her lips and nodded in what she hoped was intelligible as acceptance of all they could be together. With a great marriage in her head and her mother’s, she had never thought to have this precious moment of urgent consent to be ravished by someone special like this.

Orlando was awaiting some sign she would take him as her lover, if she could blast through his over-gallant hesitation at the thought of her virginity being broken by a man who wouldn’t marry her. Resolute, she ran a wondering hand
up his muscular thigh and intriguingly narrow manly hips and let an impudent finger whirl into the springy curls at the root of his starkly aroused manhood. She actually felt him quiver like a greyhound at the sight of a hare and watched fascinated as his member grew even larger. It felt powerful and wonderful as well as a bit terrifying and she raised her eyes to meet the molten emerald glow in his by the last fading tatters of daylight and let all she wanted show.

He saw and seized and plundered, a golden-skinned barbarian lit by the last warm shard of a June sunset coming through unshuttered windows. Swept backwards as he lifted her, then strode to the waiting box-bed, she rode her lover’s mighty body and wound her legs about his narrow waist, feeling the butt of his sex against her nether cheeks with a sensuous sway of her hips that won her a half-playful, half-serious tap of reproach on her buttocks.

‘Behave yourself, unless you want to be left wondering how a woman could ever enjoy bedding her man, Perdita mine,’ he growled as he tumbled her on to the bed.

‘And I’ve quite liked it so far,’ she claimed with a pert smile.

‘You’ll more than “like” it if you keep still
and let someone who knows how to drive us in tandem gallop to our destination.’

‘You talks so pretty, Mr Orlando,’ she said in such a perfect mockery of Cleo Summer in full-siren mode that he gruffed a surprised bark of laughter she felt in every inch of her roused body and decided amusing him in bed would be enjoyable indeed, if only she was lying here already pleasured instead of wound tight with wanting him.

‘We’re not here to talk,’ he declared in perfect tune with her thoughts and set about racking her body to such a state of fraught tension she felt she might break into small pieces of need if he didn’t do something urgent about it very soon.

‘Sorry, Perdita,’ he muttered at last, as his own control seemed about to shatter and he bucked under her unwary hand when she smoothed it over his shaft and found it silky smooth and yet fascinatingly rigid under her fine touch. ‘Can’t wait any longer,’ he gasped as he gave up exploring the fascinating curlicues of her inner sex and the hot wetness the fire inside her that wanted him with a leaping blaze of need had unleashed.

By instinct and the incendiary touch of his hands on her while he tried to prepare her for
him with such heart-stopping care, she fully knew now that his sex belonged somewhere inside hers and parted her legs for him in complete faith this was what they both wanted. Still he held himself back and she felt his entire body quiver with the effort to be gentle while the blunt head of his erection met the frantic heat of her unplumbed depths at long last.

‘It will hurt a little at first,’ he warned, deep voice gravelly and eyes wild and desperate for her to trust him that it would only be a fleeting hurt.

‘I want everything,’ she explained and let herself fully open to him in a way that seemed to allow him into her very soul, let alone her body.

So he surged into her and at first she felt alien to herself as she felt the intrusion of this rigidly desperate man into her most private inner self. Reminding herself he was going to be her one and only lover, so she might as well enjoy every minute of mutual seduction, she let herself feel the power and rightness of that broad and lengthy sex of his as it stretched and stimulated hers, until she gave a quiver of delight at the fact of him inside her and gasped out loud. She felt and saw him driven
to another level of needing she hadn’t dared suspect he could feel for her. It constantly surprised her, this endless need—whenever her dearest hopes seemed about to be satisfied, another layer would engulf her and every one surpassed the last. Now she wanted him all the way inside her and, if taking her maidenhead hurt, it would be worth it to have all of him in her so they could be fully joined in the ultimate intimacy between man and woman.

‘Everything,’ she reminded him, her eyes open and steady on his, even as her breath stuttered in her lungs and every inch of her concentrated on where they joined together and all the pleasure of his body so hard and driven and the new and heady feel of it inside hers.

‘Everything,’ he replied as if it truly might be. She wouldn’t think about the forbidden possibility of it now, when paradise might be beckoning round the corner and at least they could have that much of it, for now.

Then he plundered on through that fragile last link to her innocence and she felt a momentary pang of hurt, as much mental as physical as Freya the girl became Freya the woman. He had made her ready for him; the welcome of slick need he’d woven for both of
them made it only a hair’s breadth of hesitation for her before the pain was almost forgotten in the new satisfaction of having him fully seated within her, every stretching and novel inch of his manhood exactly where he should be, in her. She kept her eyes open on his while he rocked in the cradle of her feminine hips and the very suggestion of a rhythm triggered an instinctive response that made her wonder if she was born to be an Orlando-fascinated sensualist.

Her amateurish attempts to set the pace of lovers seemed to release another tether of restraint and he took it up instead, riding her until she began to feel the rock of it in her very bones and eagerly rode back, until he settled them into an exquisite trot to extreme pleasure that soon became an urgent gallop. Glad they were alone, she keened under the sheer exquisite sensation of his body and hers in perfect accord and heard her own gasps for air harmonise with his harsher ones as speed gathered and everything but him within and without her blurred and faded away. His pace seemed to change of a sudden and his thrusts went harder and deeper. She felt an even harder flush of colour scorch across her cheeks, then wash over her whole body as something wonderful
dashed headlong into view and she still didn’t know what it was or whether she would ever get there. Head thrashing from side to side, she whimpered with the promises a whisper away, a frustrating shadow away from reality.