Aurora's Promise (20 page)

A glint of light from an object he held caught her
attention enough to remove her gaze from where it had locked on his chest. It
looked like a small flask. She frowned, wondering if he was drunk. Frowned
deeper as she wondered if he planned on getting
her
drunk.

He ignored her questioning stare and instead asked, “So
are you still of the mind to pay me more than what I’ve already taken from you
to guarantee the promise I made regarding your safe return home?”

She swallowed, or tried to over the large lump suddenly
lodged in her throat. The angry gleam in his eyes belied the calm, civil manner
in which the question was asked. But she had already made the proposition. At
this point there was no pretending she hadn’t. “It’s a good deal,” she said. “You’d
be a fool not to take it.”

Immediately, she wished the words back as he pushed off
the door with an indolent roll of his shoulders and closed in on her. A harsh
darkness flashed in his gaze. She instinctively backed up. “Perhaps fool was
too harsh a word,” she amended. “I was not implying—”

Her uneasy blathering was brought to an abrupt halt when
his hand bracketed her jaw and he held her face to look up into his.

“As a matter of fact, I have made up my mind.” As he
spoke, he walked her backward until her bottom hit the berth. “Though I don’t
want your money. This trip has already reaped a lucrative compensation for my
time and effort.” His eyes narrowed as they focused on her mouth, his fingers
gentling slightly around her jaw. “However, I find that I still want you.”

The rough edge to his voice was ragged with the color of
lust she’d come to recognize, but there was something else cloaked in his
words. A sharpness of emotion that fled his face the instant after it appeared.
Then his eyes were hard again. Flint and fire as he stepped back and tucked the
small flask he still held into his wide belt.

“Turn around,” he ordered.

She blinked once, set her mouth and lifted her chin
before she complied. When she realized she was showing her fear by worrying the
sides of her dress between her fingers, she forced her hands to relax and
release the material.

“Bend over on the bed and pull your garments up around
your waist.”

She’d heard this tone only once before. It was not one to
be argued with or denied. Not if one valued life and limb. Taking a deep
breath, she followed his command, leaving herself bared to his gaze. Her pulse
kicked when he took her skirts and tossed them further up so that they covered
her head.

“Leave them,” he said when she started to push them away.
The layers of dark material were as effective as a blindfold and she dug her
fingers into the bedcovering, both in anticipation of the novelty and in alarm
of it. Before, when he had entered her from behind, a wanton wickedness had
blazed through her, encouraging shocking fantasies that intensified the carnal
pleasure. But at that time he’d not been angry and had dealt softly with her.

As his hands moved over her body today they were firm and
felt coldly assessing, as if she were property being inspected and judged.
Still, as one hand ran up the back of her thigh, heat flared almost
instantaneously between her legs. When he splayed both hands over her bottom
and squeezed, she closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. The fear was quickly
overshadowed by the sexual tension as his hands roamed from her lower back to
her thighs. His touch was not cruel but truly knowledgeable. She found herself
widening her stance and tilting her opening up quite brazenly as her body
warmed and yearned.

He kneaded her bottom harder. His thumbs pressed parallel
lines into her giving flesh as he followed her curves from the junction of her
thighs up to her hips. She shivered when he kissed her hip, grazed his teeth
over the swell of her bottom. When he pulled her buttocks apart and licked the
top of her crease, she gasped and automatically attempted to jerk away, her
arms tangling in her gown as she tried to free herself.

“No!” His open hand landed with a loud crack across her
backside in a startling spanking. The message was clear and she quit
struggling. Immediately his hand smoothed over where she was sure to have a
bright red mark. “Good,” he whispered.

And then his mouth was on her again, kissing, biting,
licking, sucking, moving over the globes of her bottom. Occasionally his tongue
dipped into the crease of her bottom and she had to force herself to remain
still, the dull sting from where he had spanked her a clear reminder of his
intolerance of her disobedience.

His nimble fingers played wherever his mouth wasn’t,
caressing her inner thighs, stroking her nether lips, brushing the back of her
knees. Every time his fingers came close to the swollen bud at her center, her
breath caught as her need spiked. And every time her desperation was driven
higher as he denied her the touch that would spiral her body into release.

When her own juices dripped over the heated core he was
purposefully evading a hard shiver shook her bones. And then another as he slid
a long finger deep inside her without warning.

“So wet, my Lady Ballantine,” he whispered. His taunting
arrogance was as much in his tone as in the way he stroked her inner walls. A
second finger joined the first and he pressed firmly against the front of her
womb. A staggering bolt of energy shot through her and she felt a rush of
liquid release over his fingers. If not for the lashing need still snapping at
her every nerve, she’d have thought he’d just brought her to an astounding
orgasm.

Her desperate moan of protest as he withdrew his fingers
was suspended in disbelief as she felt the pressure of his finger at her anus.
Stunned and scandalized, she remained arrested and mute as his finger pushed
in. Her mind simply could not process his action. Had no way to assimilate what
he
was
doing with what should and could be done.

“Breathe.” His abrasive dictate was curt and jolted the
breath from her lungs. As the air whooshed out, his finger pushed in deeper,
twisted and slid in deeper yet.

When he removed his finger, she was surprised by how
empty she suddenly felt. She heard the cap to the flask being unscrewed and
drew in a shaky breath. Phoebe jumped a little when a cool liquid trickled
between her buttocks, warming as it dripped down between her legs. Oil, she
decided when his finger slid, slippery but sure, back into her anus as far as
it could go.

Her small, breathy exclamation huffed out when he pushed
a second finger in to join the first and the tightened ring of muscle stretched
to house the doubled thickness. He worked his two fingers there with the oil
for several minutes, putting pressure on the opening and forcing it to give.
The repetitive turning and flexing of his fingers inside her urged her through
new and deeply erotic waves of sensation.

A sharp gasp caught at the back of her throat when he
added a third finger. His murmured assurances drifted faintly through the
layers of material and could barely be discerned over the pounding of her
heart. Pressing her cheek into the mattress, she held tightly to the bedclothes
and twisted them in her hands as her hips began to buck in rhythm to his
thrusts. The sensations were too raw, too indecent to be considered pleasurable
by the normal capacity one might employ to judge such matters. But the hunger,
the absolutely primitive and compulsory craving his attentions whipped to life
within her could not be denied.

Even though her body began to relax as it grew accustomed
to the alternate invasion, fiery threads wove through those muscles still taut
with the new labor of accommodation. More oil dribbled over where his fingers
continued to stretch the tight opening, trickled down between her legs where he
caught it with his other hand and used it to wet his fingers so they slid
provocatively over and around the tiny bundle of nerves there. Panting, she dug
her fingers into the bed coverings. She arched her back and went up on her toes
as all the muscles in her back and legs tightened for the expected release.

“Not yet my lady,” he said, withdrawing his fingers from
her anus. He stilled the other hand between her legs but continued to cup her
gently there, keeping just enough pressure to hold her to the edge of her
climax without allowing her to go over. It was a moment before she realized
that the soft, incoherent plea that drifted around her ears was her own. Her
entire body ached for the ecstasy she’d grown used to under his hands.
Writhing, she stretched her arms in front of her and pushed back, clamping her
thighs around his hand.

He flattened his fingers against her pussy, spurring a
new wave of desire. Rocking back into him, she felt her buttocks part and a new
pressure at her anus. She jerked forward, forgetting the hand between her legs.
But she was virtually lying across the bed and didn’t have anywhere to go. A
hot thick rod pushed slowly into her. Her muscle resisted for a moment and then
gave way to the oiled head of his cock. The feel of him there, penetrating her
body in such an untried manner loosed a bevy of dark erotic impulses and
sensations. It engulfed her at such a primitive level, she knew without being
told that a lady of her standing should never encounter, not to mention court
or sanction, this type of carnal exercise.

Holding her breath, she didn’t move. Instinctively
clenched her muscles and closed her eyes, gathering the will to resist the
desires lashing her from the inside out.

Kilth cursed, a soft exclamation that sounded more like a
surprised entreaty for mercy than a conscious blasphemy. “By all that is holy,
you’re so damn tight a man could lose every shred of control he possessed
entering you.”

“I’ve never been entered quite this way,” she managed,
grasping for sanity, some thread of normalcy she could seize hold of to steady
her through this erotic storm raging through her body.

Captain Kilth’s laugh was strained. “Undoubtedly.”
Gently, he massaged her bottom. “Relax now. It will go easier if you breathe.”

Feeling the need to protest rising from the depths of her
incredibly proper upbringing, she lifted her head though she could not see him
through the layers of material that still covered her. “I don’t believe
breathing is the issue here. This particular activity seems rather un—”

One large hand wrapped around her hip and squeezed. “Phoebe.”

The command with which he laced her name stopped her
contention. “Yes?”

“Stop talking.” A strained amusement underscored his
order, but before she could respond, he pushed in further, large and solid,
filling her and stretching her. With his manhood fully lodged inside her, she
tried to breathe and found the best she could manage was a shallow puffing.

On one hand she was truly amazed at what her body could
accommodate and the sensations this type of intercourse released. On the other
hand, she couldn’t quite get past the shocking way he was using her body to
bring about those sensations. This last kept her from totally losing herself to
his carnal domination, her mind too busy justifying and weighing—

“Stay with me,” he said, pressing her clitoris between
two of his fingers and pulling back. Her sharp gasp was cut off when he pushed
fully into her again. Even with the applied oil, it was a rougher, more savage
taking than her imagination had ever wandered to. It left her feeling adrift in
vulnerability, once again a fresh initiate to the world of corporeal lusts
where she was forced to play a game without knowing the rules. A place she had
thought she’d finally passed thanks to the considerable instruction of her
captor.

The worries and concerns spinning through her mind
scattered when he pushed into her once more. This time the action was more
determined, harsher. Harder. Her anus stretched and burned even as she received
him. The fiery sensation licked down her thighs, the back of her knees and
straight to her toes. Again and again he thrust inside her, his powerful legs
smacking against her as each time he drove deep. There was no softness, no
charitable lessening of lust-driven actions to spare more refined emotions. His
complete tyranny over her body was frightening and terribly arousing.

His fingers found her center again. They teased and
stroked as he continued to plunge into her. Feeling the size and heat of him,
every long inch as he sank inside her from behind, she pulsed against his hand
as he rubbed where she was so wet and swollen. Flames circled furiously under
her skin, swirling in an ancient and fierce pattern that swept so thoroughly
through every fiber of her being it annihilated all prospects of decorum and
restraint. She was left with a single, simple need, a solitary desire. To
submit. To the lust. To the ecstasy. To the inferno of a man who refused to
bargain and refused to back down. Who took what he wanted and left her wishing
in her most secret heart he’d want more.

With a final cry she threw herself into the eclipsing
explosion and let it roll unhindered through her soul.

Letting the climax fade by slow degrees and her heartbeat
return to a normal rate, Aurora stared up at the sheer, filmy fabric that hung
suspended above the bed in such a way that it appeared to float on the air. As
the cooling breeze soothed her heated body, she lay still for long moments and
thought back through her fantasy. She’d been so caught up in it that she’d
given herself over to it. Perhaps too much.

Hooking her finger around a damp strand of hair that had
fallen across her neck, she twisted it tightly around until she could feel the
sharp tug at the roots. She shouldn’t worry about the fantasy. She wasn’t some
young innocent girl being ravished for the first time and Connyn was no pirate.
He was heir to a throne in a war-torn world and she was a woman on a mission
for what was left of her family. And she would do what she had to do to
complete it.