The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (40 page)

She arched as his shaft slid inside her, stretched her, consumed her and had her call out in joy that this is what she had imagined from him.

He cursed, deep roiling sounds as he drove into her and broke through the membrane that had kept her from him. He arched, paused, and with a shaking hand pushed her hair from her cheek. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no,” she told him as she strained toward him. “Have me more, please do. I need all you have to give.”

He shuddered at her words, gripped her hips and delved into her with a tempered drive. “I want you to thrill to this.”

She undulated with him, his rhythm strong and smooth, a caress of his love inside her beyond her imagining. “How could I not?”

He growled then, sinking his fingers into the flesh of her hips and filling her even more. To the top of her womb, the core of her heart, he plunged over and over, smiling at her. “You like this.”

She drifted in a haze of pleasure. Her hands traced his chest, his hips. How much more joy could she get from loving this man? Each new moment brought a boundless delight.

He bent close to her, seized her lips with his own and sucked her tongue into his own mouth. His hips pistoned into her, building the flames of her desire into a tumult that had her pleading to be sated. With a hoarse cry, he caught up her hips, pulled her atop his own thighs and rammed her into an oblivion where her cunt pounded and pulsed. The stunning climax set her adrift, floating to the earth. He withdrew his cock from her, then groaned as he grabbed up a towel and sent his semen into it. With a moan, he shuddered and finally sank over her.

She hugged him close, drew patterns on his splendid back, and kissed his shoulder. “Darling. You still try to save me.”

He lifted his head, and with eyes filled with satisfaction, he admired her face and whispered, “I promised not to ruin you, my darling. I can and will make love to you all you wish, but you will not conceive out of wedlock. I wish that on no unmarried woman. I care for you and I will do it to your benefit.”

Tears of gratitude clogged her throat. She had met many men, most dandies or rakes with little care for any woman. Never had she known any man to show such thoughtfulness for her body or her reputation. She rolled to her side and gathered him to her. “You are more noble than even I imagined.”

“You will never suffer for what we do together, Sirena.” He smiled, one corner of his mouth tipping up in a boyish smile. “Sleep now, you need your rest.”

Her brows danced. “Because you will show me more ways to make love?”

He shoved a hand beneath her nape and kissed her like a possessed madman. “Aye, you wench. I’ll show you so much more, you won’t be out of bed for three weeks across the ocean.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed as she wiggled in the sheets like a pampered girl in her victory to have Mark Stanhope as her lover. She snapped her eyes shut. “I am asleep already if it means you make love to me sooner.”

And what if I love you now?

Mark leaned close to his sleeping beauty and inhaled the fragrances of lemons, Sirena and torrid sex. He glanced down at his cock, dark with the stains of her maidenhead. Once inside her, he could not stop himself from enjoying her and losing a piece of himself.

You knew it would be like that with her. Irresistible. Unforgiveable.

Thank God, he had pulled out and spilled his seed to the towel. He would not allow anyone to malign her for his transgression. Never give anyone a reason to. Yes, he would marry her. Not simply because he had enjoyed her beautiful body. No, he would make her his wife for the infinitely better reason that he did love her. Her bravery. Her charm. In Baltimore, the day they docked, he would take her to a minister and make her his. Then, he would have all rights to lose himself in her day and night. Her juicy lips. Her fiery cunt. He’d teach her all the delights he knew. He’d let her try them on him.

At the idea, his cock grew longer. He pushed her gently to her back. In her sleep, she moaned. He smiled, wicked thoughts racing through his brain. Ones he had to obey. To taste her creamy flesh again was a hunger he had dreamed of for hours now. And he had to renew his memory of her.

He settled between her legs and combed her soft, dark nether hair. Mine, all mine.

He rolled open her wet lips. Her bud still glistened with her juices. He rose from the bed, doused a clean towel in a bowl of fresh water, then silently returned to her.

She had shifted to her back. He grinned, climbing on to the bunk and adoring her abandoned pose. Hair spread beneath her like a contrasting silken black curtain, her skin glowed rosy with exhaustion and exertion from satisfying sex. He bathed her nipples, large areolas that drew his careful tending. His mouth watered to devour her silken flesh. But he restrained himself, focusing on giving her breasts the rub of the nubby towel. Pebbling from the attention, they deepened their color from a subtle pink to darker rose, even as they puckered. Resisting once more the lightning urge to take her in his mouth, he moved to wash her ribs, her tiny navel and swirl around her mons. With a nudge, she spread her thighs. His cock swelled with pride. Even in her sleep, she did as he commanded. He pressed the cloth to her seam. She opened wider. Now he viewed her labia. Dusted with her midnight hair, her lips were ivory portals, plush and inviting. He drew patterns on his lower lip with his tongue. He was going to eat her until she begged him to take her again. With fingers of one hand, he spread her labia. Her seam exposed more delicate inner folds, peaking out, inviting him in to taste and delight her. Of a sudden, she stretched wider.

His gaze flew to hers. “You tease me.”

Her eyelids quivered, her mouth pursed and tempted him. “I wish to satisfy you. As you have me.” She nestled her hips into the bedding.

“I cannot deny either of us,” he declared, swirling the cloth over the curves of her mons, delighting them both with her little cries as he stroked her soft folds and made her ball the bedding in her fist. Nigh unto bursting, his cock twitched with need. Eager to make her delirious, he carefully washed each tiny crevice of her sex. Unable to bear the wait any longer, he threw his cloth to the floor. Grunting, savage, he parted her once more and drove his tongue deep inside her. She undulated, muttering lavish words of praise. He found her nub and sucked her into his mouth. He growled as the aromas of their mating filled his nostrils. The heavy musk fired his blood, and his cock swelled painfully against her thigh.

She put her feet to the mattress, his mouth buried in her succulent beauty. “Have more of me, darling. I adore the way you dine.”

He choked on laughter, but spread her thick labia wide to lick deeply once more into the hot core of her sex. Christ, she was sopping wet, creamy and sweet.

Shouting her rapture, she bucked up off the bed. “God! Mark! How can this be better each time you touch me?”

“Because,” he told her on a whisper as he levered up and his cock slid like molten lead into her luscious melting core, “your body knows we belong together.”

She tipped up her hips, the better to take more of him. Her arms reached for him, her fingers plucking at his upper arms.

His mind went blank. All feeling coursed to his shaft. The first time he had fucked her had been precious, but this warmth, this welcome caressed his need for her. Fired his long dead hope to have a woman to love. Family.

What would it matter to anyone if she were with child as they said their vows?

Their marriage would be soon. No one would cast aspersions on her. If there were a child from this, he would love the babe, treasure him or her, and claim him as a Stanhope from his first breath.

He growled now, feeling the pressure build in his groin, knowing his balls grew tight with his cum. This time, he would fuck her, truly make her his.

“Captain!”

Mark scowled. And paused, his loins aflame to finish this and take her to him completely once and for all.

“Captain!”

This was not Simpson. But his navigator. “Morris?”

“Aye, Captain. We must speak!”

Mark put a finger to his lips to urge Sirena to silence. He straightened, put a foot to the floor. “Yes, Morris, what is it?”

“Captain, I need you to come on deck.”

Mark reached for his breeches, shoved one leg in and then the other. Striding to the door, he held it open a crack. “What’s wrong?”

“Four ships. South ten degrees. Came up on us in a fog this morning.”

Who in hell? The French? The British? If the French tried to board, he would declare his impartiality as an American merchant ship. If these vessels were British and tried to fire their cannons and come abroad again to impress them all, Mark would show them his letters of freedom from the Admiralty. Sirena, foremost, he would save from any man’s rough hands. “What types?”

“Galleons. Sixty, maybe eighty cannon, each.”

Warships. “What colors do they fly, Morris?”

“Red with white hammers, blue stars.”

“The Salle Corsairs,” Mark declared with hatred for the notorious marauders who had sacked so many towns along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts and herded thousands onto their galleons and into slavery. Was his arch enemy of years ago among them? “What of their flagship?”

“One golden star in the red field, Captain. Al Hassan of Bou Regreg.”

Four ships. To my one. Eighty cannon to my two. Sixty or more men on each galleon.

How can I counter that?

“Dress. Now,” he told Sirena and had a passing fear for her future in the greedy grasp of Al Hassan. “Do not, under any circumstances come up to the deck.”

She clutched the sheet to her breasts, her face stark as she nodded.

He shut the door behind him and ran up to the main deck. His men hurried about, each man to his station. “Break out the rifles,” he ordered a young sailor. To Simpson, he yelled, “See that the cannon are manned, and where the hell is Morris?”

His navigator came round the leeward side. “Here, sir.”

Hands on his hips, Mark surveyed the distance between the four pirates’ galleons and the Water Witch. “Your thoughts on the wind?”

“Too calm to carry us far, sir.”

“Yes, dammit.” And they will lash their slaves to death to row like hell, catch us and take us prisoner. “To fight them is to invite slaughter.”

“Our decks’ll run red,” Morris said like a dirge.

Mark heard his crew below barking out instructions to each other, piling up cannon balls, sliding up the hinges on the gunports. “They do not know what cargo we carry.”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“Meaning what, sir?”

“We could gamble that they search for richer booty than the spices and fabrics we carry back to Baltimore.” I could gamble that they wish for gold or horses or cannon headed for the Peninsula and the war against the French. “I could hope they do not need slaves as much as they crave goods we do not have.”

“How could you convince them that it is not in their best interest to risk their own deaths by fighting us?”

“Yes, Morris. How can I convince them that it is not in their best interest to kill us?”

Morris snorted. “Do these blaggards believe in talking to their quarry?”

“I hope today they do.”

“You mean to let them board?” Morris shot back, incredulous.

“Only their captain. Spread the word.”

“That’s madness!”

Mark whirled to face his navigator. “I know it would be the manly thing to do to have us draw our swords and—“

“And die like men!”

“I’d rather see us live.”

“As slaves?” Morris’s craggy face grew livid. “I’ll not go!”

“If we fight them, outnumbered as we are, we are sure to die here or at the very least to be wounded and die in agony of neglect.” Sirena will be taken with no one to speak for her or champion her cause. “If I haul up a white flag, I show my willingness to talk.”

“These scoundrels talk?” he scoffed.

“They do, Morris.” I remember it well. And how it was done. If I can have the chance…

“What can you say that will persuade them?” his navigator taunted him.

“I’ll use the same words our emissary used years ago.” Neutrality. Trade. Or invasion. War.

Morris removed his dagger from his boot and ran a finger down the silver blade. “This is my word.”

“I see it, Morris. It says only one thing.”

“Honor.”

“Death. Certain death.” Mark watched the four galleons ride the waves toward them with the speed of hundreds of men at the oars. “I’ll opt for the chance of survival.”

“You know their language?”

“I do. You’ll get me a guard of ten men, daggers in their belts, rapiers to hand. Do it now!” Mark heard the bellowing of the Barbers’ captain to his men as their flagship came alongside the Water Witch. He watched the corsairs hauling planks on deck, scurrying to come aboard. His eyes scanned the forward deck where their captain should be, but he saw no one who resembled Al Hassan. Was he here? He prayed he was. The sooner he saw the pirate leader, the sooner he’d have them free. And safe.

His men surrounded him, muttering their distaste for this approach to the action.

“Quiet! Listen to me,” he told them in subdued tones as he surveyed the pirates’ approach. “You will appear protective. But no one is to wield his sword or dagger unless you see them strike first. Hear me on this and obey. They will want our cargo. I happily give them that if in return they let us free.”

“Hell, what chance of that, Captain?” growled a man behind him, and a few others voiced their agreement.

“One chance. One. And I am willing to take it. Now, here they come. Steady. Meet them as their betters. That, they understand.”

His men quieted, standing like huge sentries as the flagship pulled to one side and a half dozen pirates balanced along the planks to jump to the Witch’s deck. Al Hassan had sent an advance party of his burliest men, olive-skinned and muscular, filthy and surly. They strode around Mark and his ten men with a snarl of superiority on their faces.

“Al Hassan,” Mark said to the man who strode right up to him and stopped. “I wished to speak with him,” he continued in the mottled Arabic he remembered from his captivity years ago.