Regency Rogues Omnibus (25 page)

“Oh, Chloe darling, we have a wealth of evidence that Harrison cares for you and cares deeply,” Gabriella said.

Chloe was completely startled to hear Gabriella’s voice, and with her heart thudding she looked up at Gabriella. What had she said to her? How long had Gabriella been there?

“No,” Gabriella continued to say, still patting her hand. “Harrison cares for you. It must have been something that happened that evening, after the party perhaps. Or perhaps he feels badly about mistaking you for Lia. Of course he did not, yet he was too stubborn to admit it. The way he called you Rosebud clearly showed that he was torn.”

After the party
. . . after the party. Those words kept circling in Chloe’s mind even after she left Gabriella’s company. And those words did not leave her. She did not forget them like so many others lately. She remembered the carriage ride. She remembered how angry Raven had been, and she remembered the feeling of him inside of her, branding her his forever . . . loving her.

At midnight that night she snuck out of the Kittridge’s fashionable London home leaving a note for Gabriella to take care of Sebastian for her. She knew that her son could not be in better hands and she knew that she had to find Raven. Not once did it enter her mind that the best master spy in all of England, Lord Kittridge, had been unable to find Raven, and what hope could she have of doing so. Instead she went home, where she felt the safest. She went to Raven’s home. That was where she would start.

The staff did not seem to find anything unusual about her sudden appearance. They treated her like royalty or the lady of the manor even hinting to find out if she knew when Lord Ravenscar would return. She retired to Raven’s bedchambers at peace there for the first time in weeks, surrounded by his lingering presence in the room. She went to his armoire and took out one of his evening jackets to wear. With nothing else against her skin but his jacket it felt as if Raven were holding her. Then she began to search the room until she found the small oval portrait, and it was then she knew that she had found her clue. The woman in the portrait was beautiful and she had Raven’s eyes.

Chapter Sixteen

Harrison stood in the garden with his boot propped on the stone bench beside where Catherine was sitting in the morning sunshine. He had not had a drink in three weeks, not since the night he had savagely and drunkenly taken Chloe in the back of his carriage. Not since he had learned what depravity he had fostered on an innocent woman, and not since he admitted that she
was
Chloe, and that he loved her, but had lost her because of his own need for vengeance. He wondered if he thought he could atone by not drinking again, when he knew he would never be able to atone for what he had done.

As it was, it had just been by the grace of a God that he barely believed in, and his own skills that he’d made it out of the warehouse alive. He’d had to kill four men, including Kant, to convince the others that fleeing was more profitable than mobbing together to kill him. It had also helped that day that most of the gentlemen in the warehouse were merely business associates and patrons out for the promise by Kant of an unusual event. Only three of Kant’s personal men had anything more invested than the promise of hedonistic depravity. The hedonistic depravity of gang raping Chloe. At least he had done one thing right by finding her and saving her from that vicious peril. Catherine suddenly spoke beside him, drawing him from his brooding thoughts.

“So you will go,” Catherine asked carefully. She could not believe that she was attempting what she was attempting. But it was years past time that she repay her brother for all that he had done for her. “You will go to the island on the east lake and see that old Martha is well?”

“I have said that I will,” Harrison answered distractedly. “She was my nurse also, and she kept him from beating me many times by hiding me.”

He never called him father,
Catherine thought, not that she blamed him. “Yes well, with Bethany so small and my husband Robert away, I could not go myself. Yet Martha always comes for mass and when she did not come to the church yesterday. Well, I cannot help but worry.” Thank god Robert was away, Catherine thought, he would never understand what she was doing. And she prayed that God would forgive her for the small lies.

“I will leave right now so that we can both put our minds to rest,” Harrison said.

Within the hour Harrison reached the small pier on the east lake where he tied off his stallion, noticing the small rowboat tied off to the pier. He squinted his eyes in the direction of the island trying to see if another boat was tied off on its pier. It was too far to tell, yet he assumed there would be a boat kept on each side so he climbed down to the row boat and settled in grasping the oars.

It was healthy exercise, a beautiful day, and the excursion stretched his muscles. He mused broodingly, that it was too bad he could enjoy none of it because his mind kept drifting unerringly to thoughts of Chloe. He was slightly reassured to find another row boat tied off on the island’s pier when he reached it. That meant at least old Martha was here, he just hoped that it did not mean she was too ill to have left her small island.

The trail leading inland was well kept and not too steep and in a few minutes he was within sight of Martha’s two story cottage. In days gone by, this had been a hunting and fishing refuge for Catherine’s husband’s family. But years ago it had been given over to old Martha, to live out her days in happier circumstances than when she’d been a nurse employed by the old man Ravenscar.

Harrison was again relieved to see smoke coming from the chimney of the cottage as he walked closer, and upon entrance into the small well-kept kitchen he found quick evidence of old Martha’s presence. It appeared as if she were expecting visitors for tea and that she had just stepped out for a moment. There was a pot of freshly steeping tea and a plate of newly made scones on the kitchen’s tabletop. After checking all the other rooms in the cottage and around the immediate perimeter, Harrison concluded that old Martha must have gone out for a short walk and he settled down in the kitchen to wait for her return. He decided that if she did not return in a reasonable length of time he would search farther afield. But for now he poured himself a cup of tea and settled down to eat one of the blueberry scones. A true favorite of his that was impossible to overlook.

In the time since he had quit consuming vast quantities of Scottish whiskey every day, his sweet tooth had become mightily engaged. And the blueberries seemed to be fresh, he mused, as he bit into his second one, feeling unusually relaxed as he settled more comfortably into his chair. After two cups of tea and two scones, he was nearly falling asleep in his chair, and he knew that he should get up and try to find old Martha. Yet, he could not seem to find the energy as his eyelids dipped and his chin dropped onto his chest . . .

Chapter Seventeen

Harrison was afraid for a moment. Afraid that he had taken a drink again when he had sworn that he never would. His mind felt that way . . . fuzzy, and his mouth was dry as it was after a long bout with the whiskey bottle. However, it was when he tried to move his hands to wipe his mouth that his groggy mind knew something was very wrong. What had he been doing? Drinking tea waiting for old Martha, he thought?

He opened his eyes slowly, they felt gritty and he tried to twist his wrists in the bonds that held them over his head. Bonds! His eyes popped open as he fought the ropes tying his wrists and ankles to a bedpost. Bedpost? He was naked and gagged! Tied to a bedpost!

“A- A-,”
he snarled against the gag in his mouth as he turned his head with his gaze sweeping the room until . . . Chloe!

“It will not do you any good to fight the ropes, Raven,” Chloe said softly, from where she sat in a high-backed chair, five paces from him. “I tied them too tight for you to escape. Thank goodness, the laudanum I put into the tea made you act like a drunken sailor or I would never have been able to manage you on my own. As it was, you were very pliable to my wants. Do you remember?”

Harrison glared at her. He glared at her beauty. She was wearing a pink-colored silk dress with a dangerously low décolletage and the pistol he always carried was in her hand. He jerked his head, “no,” angrily to her question. What was she doing here?

He thought for one brief moment that they both could have been captured somehow by any of his many enemies. However, Chloe’s words dispelled that notion. It was damned hard not to be able to speak his mind. That and his exposed dick had grown hard at just the sight of her. So now he stood gagged and tied against the bedpost with a hard jutting cock.

Chloe’s deep brown eyes lowered to his turgid dick as she idly played with the hammer on his pistol. Was this revenge? Her revenge? Weak with a sudden rush of intense emotions he sagged then unexpectedly against the ropes around his wrists. His knees weak with emotion as he tilted his head back against the post and closed his eyes. Yes!
God yes, revenge
. He needed to be revenged upon. His soul needed it.

“My name is Chloe and you will only call me Chloe unless I give you permission otherwise. You, I will call slave, my pet, or my cock!” Then she was there beside him with the barrel of the pistol circling his navel . . . slowly. “Do you understand?” she whispered, even as she licked his nipple with the flat of her tongue and it shivered becoming hard and beaded. He trembled. “Nod your head please,” she murmured, moving her soft wet mouth over to the peak of his other already hard nipple. He nodded, yet kept his eyes closed and his head tilted back, fighting his groans of pleasure as she licked and played with his nipples.

She stopped to blow cool air on them before she licked them again with the tip of her tongue. He did groan then, an eruption behind the gag. His cock was swollen and pounding, his sacs were taut and heavy with need. The silk of Chloe’s dress feathered across the crease in the head of his dick. He shuddered, feeling a drop of his seed seeping from the slit and grow cold against the air. He twisted against the ropes at his ankles and wrists, expanding his tense muscles to hardness with his emotion. If he had been free, he would be fucking Chloe like a raging stallion in rut. His iron control was gone . . . tied helplessly before his lover’s revenge.

“A man like you are, Raven, can only be truly held by one thing,” Chloe murmured, stroking his flinching buttocks with both hands now, she must have set the pistol aside. “I do not wish you to speak,” she continued to murmur. “Unless I request it. If I remove the gag will you honor my request?” Her fingernails scraped from the bottom curve of his buttocks, up over the muscular sinew, to the hollow of his back. He groaned nodding his head to her request.

“Good,” she whispered as she pulled the gag free from his mouth. He kept his head tilted back and licked his dry lips. He felt Chloe’s fingernails scratching over his chest, across his nipples, down his belly, and over his thighs as he clenched his jaw to keep from saying anything . . . even a groan. But that was impossible because one escaped his throat against his will.

“How does it feel to be tied, my pet?” she murmured.

Harrison dropped his head, seizing Chloe’s gaze with his. He knew that she could see his intense emotion. His need. He could not hide behind his usual cold facade. It had been ripped to shreds. “Like you own me,” he rasped . . . and then she was kissing him.

She grabbed his mouth with her mouth as she held his head between her hands. The pressure of her hands worked his head in the direction she wished to go, as she slanted her lips over his and hungrily ate at his mouth. She moaned, little sounds of need and passion, in the back of her throat as her sensuous body pressed upward against his so she could take his mouth with her tongue. And he let her. He did not try to pull away from her greedy mouth or conquer her with his own tongue and lips. He simply allowed her to conquer him.

When she broke away, they were both gasping for air as she slowly slid down his body until she was kneeling before him. “I will
make
you beg,” she cried, digging her fingers into the tight flesh of his pelvis as she gazed up at him over the thrust of his thickly engorged cock.

He wanted to say something desperately, yet he did not. He had given his word, his honor, his love. But there was such anguish in Chloe’s brown eyes . . . and such need, and then her mouth was on the flanged head of his dick with her pink lips sliding deep over the thickly swollen shaft.

“Ah-,”
he tried. “God!” he choked with his hips bucking forward, following Chloe’s mouth as she retreated, and then she sucked him in slowly again.
“Aa.”
The sounds he made were of tortuous pleasure as he tried not to speak the carnal exclamations clogging his throat. He was mindless, twisting his ankles and wrists against the ropes, arching his hips forward, following Chloe’s mouth. His lover, his revenge, his life. And he knew if she stopped he would die!

But she did not. She suckled him with increasing urgency, digging her fingernails into his buttocks from behind, as she pumped her mouth over him faster and he hissed harshly as he ejaculated. “Chloe!”

His cock felt like a pump, it pitched his seed so many times into Chloe’s mouth as he jerked in ecstasy. If not for the ropes holding his wrists, he would have fallen, like a wrung out rag, to his knees. So it was sometime before he became aware that Chloe was beating her fists on his hipbones as she still knelt at his feet crying, “I could not stop! I could not make you beg! I wanted you! I want you.”