Captured by a Gentleman (Regency Unlaced 6) (10 page)

“Then slide to the floor, kneel between my parted legs, and remove your night rail. Remove it,” Ranulf repeated firmly as Darcy looked up at him uncertainly once she had moved down onto her knees. “I want to be able to look at your reddened ass when I play with your plump nipples.”

Her cheeks burned as she pulled the cotton garment over her head and tossed it to one side, very self-conscious of her complete nakedness. Her courage was bolstered somewhat by how heatedly Ranulf’s gaze devoured her nudity.

“Turn around,” he encouraged gruffly.

Darcy had no idea how she was supposed to pleasure him in that position, but the sternness of his tone did not allow for any disobedience on her part.

“Beautiful.” His fingers ran lightly across the red and stinging cheeks of her bottom. “It pleases me you like a little pain with your pleasure,” he added with satisfaction.

Do I?

Presumably so, if I found completion after Ranulf delivered a sound and painful spanking to my bare bottom before touching and caressing my forbidden place.

How strange lovemaking is. Neither furtive nor gentle. Not mild nor pleasantly enjoyable either. No, instead it was raw and primitive. Almost savage. An intense and driving need for pleasure at any price.

“Remain on your knees and turn back to face me.”

Darcy turned, her eyes widening as she saw Ranulf had used these past few seconds to unfasten his pantaloons and release his cock.

It was long and thick, with an engorged vein of pulsing blood running fully along its length. The bulbous top was exposed and colored a deep red, glistening with the juices that bubbled from the slit at its tip.

“Still as certain this is what you want?” Ranulf fisted his cock.

Darcy could not stop staring at it. “Yes.”

“Then tell me. Say ‘I want to take your cock into my mouth, Ranulf.’”

She swallowed. She had never used such crude language. But she had never heard it spoken before either, so perhaps it excited Ranulf as much as it did her. “I want your cock in my mouth. Ranulf,” she repeated obediently.

He held out that turgid length to her. “Lick it. Taste it,” he encouraged after she had bent forward and tentatively swiped her tongue across that bulbous top and lapped up some of its slickness. “Do you like it?” he prompted once she had savored his taste in her mouth.

God, yes.

Ranulf’s juices tasted both salty and sweet at the same time, with an underlying musky spice she wanted more of.

He pulled back, his cock now tantalizingly just out of reach. “You must answer me, Darcy.”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I like it very much.”

“Will you still like it when I release all of my seed into your mouth?”

Was that what he was about to do? Darcy’s mouth flooded with saliva at the thought of all that salty-sweet nectar filling her mouth and throat. “Yes, Ranulf.”

Ranulf’s hand cupped the side of her face. “Have you ever sucked a man’s cock before?”

She swallowed. “No.”

“But you want to suck mine?”

“Very much.”

“Why?”

Was he being serious? She was completely naked after Ranulf had spanked and then pleasured her, and his exposed cock was now only inches away from her.

“Why, Darcy?”

Her cheeks burned. “Why does there have to be a reason?”

“Everything has a reason.” He looked at her searchingly. “Is yours because you fear you are now ruined in the eyes of Society? And being ruined, you might as well take the pleasure as well as the disgrace?”

She would not be returning to Society, true, but that was because she would never willingly return to Lord Sugdon’s home. But Ranulf was right. If it became public knowledge that she had traveled alone with him through England, night as well as day, it would seal completely her ruination in the eyes of Society.

She tossed her head back as a show of her defiance against Society’s rules and regulations. There was no reason why Ranulf need know that it was
him
alone that she desired. Who held her heart in the palm of his hand as surely as he had controlled her pleasure a short time ago. “And what if it is?”

“It is as good a reason as any.” Ranulf shrugged as he leaned back against the chair. God knows he had no time for Society either. “Start by wrapping your fingers around the girth of my cock and then part your lips and take it in your mouth. All the way in, Darcy. Yes, just like that,” he groaned as his length was fully engulfed by the wet velvet heat of her mouth. “Right to the back of your throat. Tighten your fingers as you move back up. And then down again. Keep doing that exactly as you are. Good girl,” he murmured as his hands moved to capture and then pull and squeeze her nipples in rhythm with her head now bobbing up and down on his cock.

Ranulf could feel the vibration of her low groans of pleasure all the way to the root of his cock. The visual imprint of his hand on the redness of her bottom caused his balls to tighten painfully in their sac.

His earlier denial of release combined with Darcy’s groans as he pulled and elongated her nipples, the visual show of his ownership on her bare ass, all coalesced within minutes into a grinding, desperate need for him to come.

“I am going to release now, Darcy,” he warned urgently. “Take it all,” he groaned as he placed one hand over hers to increase the pressure and speed of her strokes, the other curving about her nape to hold her in place as his seed rose hotly along the length of his cock. “God! Oh God…” His eyes remained open as his seed pumped out. He watched as he spilled hotly into Darcy’s mouth and she swallowed it down greedily.

“Is your bottom sore?” Ranulf mused, having heard the sharp intake of Darcy’s breath as he ran his hand over that burning flesh, the two of them now lying naked on the cot together.

“Is your shoulder?” she came back pertly.

It amused him to hear that rebellion return to Darcy’s tone, when minutes ago she had surrendered totally in her submission to him.

His disastrous marriage meant he would continue to demand, and expect, that complete physical surrender from any woman he bedded. Not her abasement; he would never ask that of any woman, but nor would he ever again allow himself to trust any woman’s physical or emotional allure.

“Remember what happened the last time you irritated me,” he warned.

“How could I forget?”

Ranulf turned his head on the makeshift pillow so that he could look at her. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

“You liked what we did together?”

Her lashes lowered to conceal the expression in her eyes. “Yes.”

“You will look at me when you speak to me.”

She instantly responded to his stern tone. “Yes, I liked what we did together very much.”

“Enough to do it again?”

“Yes.”

“To do more than we did a few minutes ago?”

Uncertainty flickered across her expression. “I… How much more?”

“Your virginity will remain safe from me,” he assured her dryly. “Otherwise, complete surrender to whatever I ask of you.”

She blinked. “Is there reciprocity? What if I sometimes wish for you to surrender to me?”

“You may ask for it.”

“But will you give it?”

“That will depend on the time and the place.”

“But you expect my complete surrender at all times?”

“Yes.”

Darcy’s eyes widened as she took in Ranulf’s uncompromising expression. It had been thrilling earlier, exciting even, when Ranulf spanked her, pleasured her, and to afterward do as he instructed. Satisfying in a way Darcy could never have imagined.

But could she allow herself to completely surrender to his will?

Could she accept that from any man, even Ranulf, with whom she knew herself to be in love?

Chapter 8

“Did you leave off your undergarments as I asked when you dressed?” Ranulf spoke softly in her ear as they watched Graves and Wilkins securing the luggage on the outside of the town carriage rather than inside it. Darcy and Ranulf would be traveling inside the vehicle today.

The two coachmen had turned up this morning. As Ranulf had predicted, Graves had spotted the landau and come in search of them. Luckily the two of them were already up and dressed when he came knocking on the door of the hut.

Ranulf had stepped outside, he and Graves talking quietly together for some time. No doubt discussing the fact that the accident had not been an accident at all, and what they should do next.

Once assured of Ranulf’s and Darcy’s good health, the coachman had turned his concern to the horses. Satisfied they had come to no harm, he had now tied them to the back of the town carriage. It would slow them down, but such fine horseflesh as that could not just be abandoned along the road.

“I did,” Darcy answered Ranulf. Her cheeks burned as she kept facing straight ahead, a slight smile curving her lips so that Graves and Wilkins should not be aware of the intimacy of their conversation. Ranulf had dismissed her enquiries earlier in regard to his shoulder, and had instead issued instructions regarding her clothing. “My gown is already chafing uncomfortably against my sore breasts and bottom.”

“That was the intention,” Ranulf mused. “By the time we stop for the night, you will be very aroused and more than ready to remove your gown. I shall enjoy petting and soothing your nipples.”

She had accepted Ranulf’s demand for her physical surrender. She was in love with him. Had there ever been any doubt that she would accept? Not that he had taken advantage of that again last night. Her surrender given, he had rolled over on the cot and fallen into a deep and untroubled sleep beside her. Darcy was the one who had lain awake for hours, her body once again aroused by their conversation, with no offer of relief from the man gently snoring beside her.

“Perhaps I might relent and give you a little ease in the carriage.” He compromised at what she knew was her disappointed expression.

“How will you do that?” she queried breathlessly. Her unconfined nipples were engorging at the thought of it, causing them to chafe even more abrasively against the heavy material of her gown.

“Anticipation is good for the soul, Darcy.” He tapped her lightly on the tip of her nose.

“But frustration is not!” she came back sharply.

Much to Ranulf’s surprise, he was enjoying this shift in his relationship with Darcy. Not that he expected her full surrender, despite what she had agreed to. She was far too willful to surrender completely to any man’s will. That was half the challenge. Besides, those flashes of rebellion, like the one just now, gave him the excuse to chastise her, which in turn appeared to excite her as much as it did him.

Darcy aroused him.

Her beauty. Her grace. Her ladylike manner.

All to be surrendered if he should ask it.

He took her arm and led her away to the privacy of the trees before deliberately placing his hand on her sore bottom. He could feel the heat radiating off the abused flesh. He bared his teeth in a smile as he heard her sharp intake of breath. “Once we are in the carriage, I am going to play with you for hours but refuse to give you release from the torment, no matter how much you beg or plead. You should not have challenged me,” he chided at her frown.

“I gave you my surrender willingly last night, Ranulf,” she spoke softly. “It is unfair, even cruel of you, to now wish to take advantage of that surrender.”

Darcy
had
surrendered to him. The discomfort he felt at her rebuke now caused Ranulf to stop and consider their arrangement. Her surrender to him demanded his own to her, if in a different way, he realized as he now pondered how his sexual demands, and Darcy’s acquiescence to them, might affect her.

Had she known that all along?

He removed his hand from the heat of her spanked bottom. “Graves and I discussed the possibility of turning the carriage around and returning to London rather than continuing on to Scotland,” he added grimly.

Darcy breathed in sharply. “You would return me to my uncle because I dared to question the fairness of the terms of our arrangement?”

Ranulf shot her an irritated glance. “I said nothing of returning you to your uncle. Nor does my suggestion have anything to do with whether or not, or in what manner, you surrender yourself to me.” His gaze was icy cold. “How typical of a woman to believe a gentleman’s actions must always be because of her.”

Darcy stared at him wordlessly for several seconds before answering. “I do not care to be lumped in with your other ‘women,’ nor am I in the least like Millicent.”

“So you have said,” he dismissed.

“Because it is the truth,” she snapped. “My cousin was a very stupid woman if she could not appreciate the gentleman she married. I am not so stupid as not to appreciate all that my…that you are.”

Ranulf quirked a mocking brow. “And what am I?”

Darcy’s gaze remained unwaveringly on his. “At the moment, you are deeply wounded, changed by the actions of the shallow and ungrateful woman to whom you were married. A year ago, you were an honorable gentleman and, I believe, a warm and loving one.”

Ranulf was taken aback for several seconds. Until common sense returned and he could dismiss Darcy’s original opinion of him. He was no longer that Ranulf Montgomery. Would never be that naïve fool ever again.

His mouth twisted derisively. “Unfortunately for you, the former is the man you chose to accept as your lover.”

Was Ranulf her lover? She had baulked a few seconds ago at calling him such.

Last night, Ranulf would accept nothing less than her complete surrender to his will. Their lovemaking had been…incredibly sensual and arousing. It was only this morning, when she woke up in the clear light of day, that she had nervously begun to question the rightness of their new arrangement. A disquiet not assuaged by Ranulf’s instruction to leave off her undergarments, as if she were no better than a woman whose company he had bought.

She was in love with Ranulf.

He was not in love with her.

He had made it clear he would never allow himself to love another woman.

She had reasoned, when she accepted his terms last night, that if this was all she could have of Ranulf, then something was better than nothing. This morning, Darcy questioned the validity of that argument. Something was not better than nothing if she lost all pride in the accepting.