Claimed by the Rogue (34 page)

He pulled away. Holding her at arm’s length, he swept her with his gaze. “Look at you,” he said again and again. “How is it you’re so beautiful and I so lucky?”

Bit by bit and piece by piece, he freed her from her clothing, his fleet fingers making short work of her tapes and pins and buttons. Finally he slipped the shift from her shoulders. It shimmied off, landing with her other clothes in a pool at her feet. Aristide’s ruby betrothal ring still hung about her neck. Quickly, she pulled the chain over her head and set it aside.
 

Catching sight of herself in the peer glass across the room, she scarcely credited the reflection as herself. Wide-eyed and berry-lipped, the wanton woman peering back at her was in no way akin to the prim and proper lady she’d once taken such pride in presenting to the world.

“You can’t know how many times I’ve imagined you like this. Even so, you’re a hundred times lovelier than you ever were in my fantasies.” The breadth of his smile sent her heart somersaulting.
 

“Fair is fair. If I’m to stand about courting lung fever then so must you.” As deliciously wicked as it felt to stand naked whilst he still wore his shirt and trousers, she too had waited long enough. Pulling back from his embrace, she reached for the buttons fronting his shirt.

Robert’s smile dissolved. He reached out to take hold of her wrists. “Trust me, Phoebe, you’ll enjoy this a great deal more if I keep my shirt on. I’m not fit for a lady’s eyes.”

Her heart stilled. Whatever it was he wished to keep her from seeing must be bad indeed and yet she couldn’t imagine him other than healthy and whole.
 

She glanced from her manacled wrists back up at him. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
 

His hands fell away. “All right, but remember that I warned you.”
 

Phoebe answered with a mute nod. Willing her clumsy fingers to cooperate, she worked at the queue of cloth-covered buttons fronting first his waistcoat and then his shirt. The open shirt revealed a glimpse of sun-bronzed flesh dusted with dark hair that narrowed into a queue down his ridged belly to disappear into his pants waist. She sucked down a relieved breath. He wasn’t only pleasing. He was perfect, a classical statue brought to life.

She guided the last button through the loophole and slid her hands beneath the cambric, sliding it off his shoulders. It was then she felt it, the webbing of mottled flesh spreading like a net across his shoulders.
 

His mouth firmed. “I have…a lot of scars.”

Skimming her fingers along his back, fingering one especially deep gully, she steeled herself to be brave for them both. If she wanted to make a life with Robert, and she did, she must accept all of him, body and soul, not only the light but also the shadows. “The pirates?”

Rather than answer, he turned away and reached for his shirt. “I’ll keep it on. I don’t mind.” He shoved one sinewy arm through the sleeve.

She shot out a staying hand, landing it hard upon his arm. “Bollocks you will!
I
mind.”

He dropped the shirt. His chest rose and fell with each rushed, rapid breath. Thick white scars slashed across his shoulders. A particularly deep one curled over his left shoulder like a serpent’s tail. Stepping behind him, she held back a gasp. He’d been not only whipped but burned. Tamping down her shock, she skimmed her hands over the terrain of ruined flesh. Judging from the deep gutters, the area between his shoulder blades had borne the brunt of the lashings.

The image of Robert,
her
Robert, flayed bloody and raw caused her to sway but only for a moment. Knowing she had to be strong, that their future might well rest on how she reacted now, she drew a steadying breath.

“I tried to warn you.”

“I don’t need warning.” Anchoring a hand to his hip, she pressed her lips to the worst of the scars and trailed moist kisses over it.
 

“Phoebe—”

“Hush,” she said, deliberately brushing her breasts against his scarred back. “If anything, these marks but make me love you all the more, for they prove all you endured to find your way back to me.”

He turned his head to look back at her. “You’re not horrified?”

She crossed around to the front of him and reached for his hand. Taking it, she guided it to the triangle between her legs. She didn’t need to look down to know that her nether curls were damp with dew. “Do I seem horrified to you?”

His hand curved about her, his palm warming her in the most deliciously of ways. “No.”

“Good, because what I feel when I look upon you is very warm and very wet and very lucky to have you back with me.”

Scarred or not, he was beyond beautiful. Roped with muscle, his biceps were even bigger than she’d supposed from seeing him in his rolled-up shirtsleeves, his stomach washboard flat and rippling with sinew. Behind the buckskin trousers what promised to be a truly magnificent erection strained to be set free.
 

A slow fire smoldered in his eyes, burning away the wary look he’d worn earlier. Emboldened, Phoebe reached out to unbutton his trouser flap. She slid both hands inside to the taut buttocks beneath. He wasn’t wearing smallclothes. Knowing him as she now did, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Surprised or not, she felt glad—eager—nor was she alone. Robert took a swift step to the side and quickly shucked the garment off.
 

He turned back to her with a tentative smile, but then he knew what she was seeing. More scars hacked across his hips and buttocks; the outside of his right thigh bore a mark where he’d been branded, whether by pirates or slavers she couldn’t yet know. Sometime in the future near or far he would tell her, she supposed, but for now it scarcely mattered. The time for talking was past, that for loving upon them.
 

His cock was thick and full, the engorged head damp and luscious. Scarcely knowing what she did, she reached for him. Her fingers cinched around him. He groaned and pushed himself hard into her hand. Encouraged when he neither flinched nor moved away, she stroked him, learning his shape and texture and strength. He was sheathed in satin and forged of steel, and thinking of how soon she would cover him with more than her hand raised a beautiful budding ache.

A bead of moisture blessed her palm, and she had the sudden mad notion to go down upon her knees and taste him there, to love him with her mouth and tongue as he had her. Before she could, he moved out of her grasp.
 

“I need to be inside you,” he said and lifted her into his arms. “I can’t wait any longer. I don’t want to wait.”

Phoebe laid her hand along the plane of his jaw. “I don’t want to wait either.”

Planks creaked as he crossed the cabin to the bed, a huge canopied affair covered in fringed pillows and draped in scarlet velvet. Reaching it, he laid her upon the center and came down atop her, his powerful arms and thighs banding her body.

Staring up into his taut face and feral eyes, she reached for her courage. “Before we…do this, I have a confession to make too. The other night, I allowed you to believe I’d lain with Aristide. I didn’t.”
 

Stroking the hair back from her temple, he said, “You waited for me?”

Phoebe swallowed hard. The subterfuge seemed silly now, a last resort to salve wounded pride. “I did. Even believing you were dead, I couldn’t bring myself to be with him or anyone else. I knew it was mad, I told myself
I
must be mad, and yet I waited.”

He broke into that smile she so loved, the smile that she now knew was for her alone, the broad-faced grin that brought out the little crinkles at the corners of his eye. “It’s bloody selfish of me, I know, but I’m glad, Phoebe, so glad.”

“So am I,” she admitted, those six lonely years suddenly seeming worthwhile, for they had led her to this. “Are you quite certain you won’t mind having a virgin on your hands?” Not that she imagined she would remain that way for much longer. The penis pressing against her seemed to say that her time as a virgin was down to mere minutes.
 

Robert’s smile wavered. “I am honored to be your first and, God be willing, your only. I only hope you won’t mind your first time being with a virgin as well.”

Scarcely able to credit her ears, she said, “Robert?”

He nodded. “I waited as well.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

He shrugged. “It’s scarcely the sort of thing a man brags about.”

“But the other night in my bedchamber, you seemed so—”

“Eastern societies are more open about sexual congress than ours is. Being a slave means living in close quarters. I’ve witnessed others engage in lovemaking acts I was mad to try but only,
only
ever with you.”

Awed and aroused, Phoebe looked at him, unable to believe her great good fortune. His rippling muscles, the coarse hair blanketing his breastbone and thighs, even the scars webbing his shoulders and back, everything about him was unbelievably erotic and sublimely beautiful—and he belonged entirely to her. Beyond modesty, she spread her thighs and tented her knees. He moved to kneel between them. He braced his hands beneath her buttocks. She hooked hers upon his scarred shoulders and lifted herself against him.

His swollen member pressed against her inner thigh. With his fingers he spread her wide, teasing apart the folds of flesh and dipping into her channel as if testing her readiness. Phoebe had never felt more ready in her life. Liquid pooled in her belly. A humming ache emanated from the place his fingers probed. A callus-thickened thumb swiped over her pearl, drawing a delicious staccato ache.

Reaching between them, he fitted himself to her, his engorged shaft pulsing against her. Glancing down, Phoebe didn’t see how they could begin to fit, but she trusted he would find a way. “I may be a virgin, but I shan’t be an oaf, I swear it. I’ll hold back and show the restraint that a woman’s first time merits.”

“Don’t hold back. I don’t want you to hold back.”
 

It was the truth. She didn’t want him to withhold any part of himself, not even if it meant hurting her. Heart pounding, she could scarcely wait for him to breach her, to be joined together in the most intimate of ways.

He entered her in one clean thrust, burying himself to the base. Pain knifed through her. Phoebe sucked in a breath, feeling as though she’d been torn in twain.
 

Robert stilled. “Are you all right?”

Looking up into his concerned face, Phoebe mustered a smile. “I am.” Even in the midst of it, the hurting was a small price to pay for such profound connection.
 

Robert began to move slowly back and forth inside her. A warm and quite pleasant tingling replaced the pain. Phoebe closed her eyes, relaxing into the rhythm. His strokes came faster. The inner barrier she’d first felt seemed to have broken away. Instead she savored the sense of being replete, filled
.
 

The blunt pressure built,
deepened.
Lifting herself, Phoebe met him stroke for stroke. Soon they were moving in unison so sublime that it was impossible to tell where he ended and she began. She lashed her hands to his scarred shoulders and cinched her legs about his torso.
 

Suddenly Robert withdrew. Reaching between them, he slipped his thumb into the center of her slickness. Swift circles brought her buzzing. Digging her nails into his ruined flesh, she felt herself spurting. He slid his cockhead along her slickness and stroked into her once more. Her body trembled. Her heart trilled. Her mind shut off to anything and anyone beyond the magnificent man making her his. Clutching him hard, she came, her body and world splintering.
 

A final thrust carried him over the cliff edge with her. “Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe…”

He pumped into her, his hoarse shouts filling her with feminine triumph. Limbs still wrapped about him, she squeezed her eyes closed and surrendered to the pleasure and peace of being well and truly claimed.

“Regrets?” Robert asked a while later, slipping back into bed with a flagon of wine and Phoebe’s discarded betrothal ring and chain in his fist. He’d found the latter lying on the floor near her clothes.

Phoebe lifted herself on one elbow. “I wish I’d let you ruin me six years ago. I rather fancy being a fallen woman.”

Laughing, he pulled her back down beside him. “Enjoy it while you can. A special license will allow us to marry in two or three days anywhere we wish. For now I think it’s time you returned this, don’t you?” He unfurled his fingers, revealing Aristide’s chain and ring.
 

Lifting her head from his shoulder, Phoebe looked down at it with obvious distaste. “I shall do so with pleasure. If I had my druthers, I’d toss it into the Thames, but I suppose I really ought to see it returned. The ruby really is quite fine, but I never could bring myself to have it sized.”
 

She raised it to show him, the distinctive foiled-gold shank freezing his stare. From their first encounter at the betrothal ball, something about Bouchart had raised his hackles, and not only because of their rivalry for Phoebe. There’d been something both familiar and unsavory about the Frenchman that had made Robert’s belly clench and the hairs at the back of his neck rise almost as if…almost as if he had some prior cause for fearing him.