Captured by a Gentleman (Regency Unlaced 6) (9 page)

He turned away from that tempting sight to bend down and pick up the old iron poker lying beside the fire. “If anyone but me comes through the door, you should hit them over the head with this.” He held the poker out to Darcy.

She reluctantly took the makeshift weapon. “I am not sure I can…”

“You can,” Ranulf said knowingly. Young and untried soldiers in his regiment during the war against Napoleon had often wondered the same thing until they were confronted with a French bayonet pointed at them. The kill-or-be-killed instinct was strong in all animals, including the human one. And Darcy had already shown herself to be a survivor rather than a victim. “You will,” he assured her with confidence.

Darcy was not so sure, although her fingers did tighten about the handle of the poker. “And you will take care?”

“It is not my intention to die tonight, if that is your concern— I was merely attempting to make light of the subject,” he excused when Darcy drew her breath in sharply.

“Then I wish you would not.” She scowled her displeasure. “I would especially like it if no one died tonight.” Most of all Ranulf, when she had only recently realized the love she felt for him. Not that she had any misconceptions of that love ever being returned.  She was aware that Ranulf’s cynicism toward the emotion went right to the bone.

He nodded. “I will do my very best to ensure that does not happen.”

It took all of Darcy’s willpower to resist the urge she felt to throw herself into his arms once again, knowing this was not the time nor the place.

That there would never be a time nor a place for her and Ranulf.

She repeated her concern instead. “Please do take care.” 

Darcy felt very much alone after Ranulf quietly opened the door before slipping outside and closing it softly behind him. Each noise from outside sounded magnified as she anxiously pressed her ear to the wooden door.

It seemed even more eerily quiet once the horses went silent. No more of their neighing. Or their shuffling restlessly in the lean-to attached to the hut.

Just that eerie silence.

Darcy’s tensed nerves stretched to breaking point as she waited.

And waited.

At last she heard the stealthy sound of footsteps outside, and seconds later saw the latch on the door begin to slowly rise.

She stepped back, the poker held high above her head, ready to bring it down on the head of the intruder the moment they attempted to enter.

Chapter 7

“I am so sorry, Ranulf. So very sorry. I did not realize it was you until it was too late.” All the time Darcy made her emotional apologies, she attempted to help him off with his jacket. She was anxious to see what damage she had inflicted upon his shoulder from the blow she had given him with the poker. “I did not mean to hurt you. I am so very—”

“If you apologize again, I am going to put you over my knee and spank you,” Ranulf managed to hiss between gritted teeth.

“You would not!” She looked scandalized.

“Oh, but I would.” The pain was so severe, Ranulf felt as if Darcy had broken every bone in his right shoulder. It would have been his head she broke if he had not turned at the last moment, causing the blow to glance off his shoulder instead.

“You are the one who told me to protect myself!”

“It is usual to wait until you are sure it is an intruder before striking.”

“Did you find whoever was outside?”

He nodded. “I did. Do not look so concerned, Darcy. No one is dead. It was merely a roebuck weighing up the possibility of a rival intruding on his territory. He seemed satisfied we posed no such threat and has departed.” He finally managed to ease the fitted jacket down his arm, and then off altogether, followed by his waistcoat. Each movement caused him great discomfort. “What are you doing?” he demanded as Darcy untied and took off his neckcloth and began to unfasten the buttons at his shirtfront.

Her fingers stilled as she blinked up at him. “We need to see whether I have broken any bones.”

Ranulf eyed her impatiently. “And if I have? What do you intend doing about it?”

“I know something about caring for such injuries. My father was always falling off his horse and breaking one bone or another,” she dismissed. “The local doctor became quite impatient with him, so Mama and I became quite adept at setting and strapping his injuries ourselves.”

He scowled. “Your father sounds like a fool.”

“How dare you?” she gasped. “My papa was the best man in the world. A little prone to accidents, admittedly…”

“And a terrible horseman.”

Darcy’s eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to make me hate you?”

“Why not?” Ranulf scowled as he finished unfastening the shirt one-handed, the other being slightly incapacitated. “It seems only fair when you are not my favorite person at the moment either. Do not cry,” he instructed hastily as Darcy blinked back the sudden tears which had appeared in her eyes. “I apologize. I do not hate you, and your father was the best of men. And a skilled horseman.”

“You are overdoing it now, Ranulf.” She snorted. “Papa was a mediocre horseman at best. But he did so love to go riding,” she added wistfully.

And Ranulf could see how much Darcy had loved and admired her papa. Could hear in her voice, as she spoke of her parents, how much she had loved and admired the couple she had so recently lost. “I should have said something to alert you it was me before I entered the hut,” he acknowledged as he pulled his shirt over his head and turned to look at his bruised right shoulder for the first time.

There was a red welt directly across his right collarbone, but it was much easier to move his arm without his clothing, leading him to suspect there were no bones broken after all. “I do not…” Ranulf’s words trailed off as he saw the look of awe on Darcy’s face as her dark gaze roamed greedily over his bare torso. “Darcy…?”

Was it only a few hours ago Darcy had seen Ranulf’s magnificent chest bared? Well, to be truthful, she had seen every inch of him bared at the inn this morning.

Perhaps it was because she now knew she was in love with him… Possibly their primitive surroundings, or their earlier intimacy? Whatever the reason, it was as if she were looking at Ranulf’s naked chest for the very first time.

His skin appeared a light golden brown in the firelight, evidence that he spent some of his time outside and bared to the waist. He had very wide and muscular shoulders and an equally broad chest. The muscles in his arms were well-defined, and his abdomen flat, with a vee of dark hair running across his chest and narrowing down over his navel to disappear beneath the waistband of his pantaloons.

Her gaze moved back up to Ranulf’s face. His dark hair was more tousled than ever from where he had removed his shirt. There was that dark shadow on his unshaven jaw. His aristocratic features were dominated by those glittering green eyes beneath lowered brows.

His male beauty took Darcy’s breath away.

“Sit down in the chair, and I will inspect the damage,” she encouraged huskily.

Ranulf’s movements were slow and cautious as he lowered his weight onto the rickety chair. Not because of pain from his shoulder; indeed, removing his tight clothing seemed to have eased that discomfort considerably. No, he was warier of the way in which Darcy was looking at him with a slightly feverish gaze.

His willpower was considerable, and Lord knows their surroundings were far from ideal. But he had already denied himself the pleasure of release once today. He could not be answerable for the consequences if Darcy continued to stare at him as if he were something edible.

He drew his breath in sharply as her fingers lightly inspected the damage to his shoulder. Again, not because she was hurting him, but because her fingers felt extremely warm on his much cooler flesh. As did the heat of her body standing close beside him. Her perfume, that combination of flowers and the underlying musk between her thighs, invaded and claimed his senses.

Even the air in the hut seemed to have stilled with expectation. Only the crackling of the fire broke the silence.

“Can you lift your arm?”

Ranulf’s shoulder hurt less and less the longer he breathed in Darcy’s heady perfume. Indeed, he could barely feel any pain at all now, only the throbbing demand of his rock-hard cock.

“I do not think anything is broken if you can move it like that,” she murmured as she watched Ranulf flex and then lift his arm. “I really am so sorry, Ranulf— What are you doing?” she shrieked as Ranulf’s uninjured arm snaked about her waist, and he pulled her facedown over his thighs.

“I did warn you,” he reminded pleasantly as he threw up the back of her night rail and bared her bottom.

God, it is such a deliciously rounded bottom too.

It will look even more delicious when it has been reddened several times by the imprint of my hand.

“Luckily, I am left-handed,” he murmured with satisfaction as he landed the first smack to one of those delectable globes.

“Ranulf!” Darcy screamed as his hand landed painfully against the left cheek of her bared bottom.

Quickly followed by another to the right cheek.

Then the left again.

And then the right.

Darcy had stopped shouting her protest by the time the third smack landed on her increasingly sensitive flesh. Not because it no longer hurt, because it did.

But something else was happening to her as more of those blows landed on her naked bottom. Something that made her bite painfully into her bottom lip as she held back a groan of pleasure. Something that caused a heat, an ache between her thighs, and caused the juices to flow and the lips there to plump. Ranulf had no need to even attempt to hold her down, as she offered herself to him totally.

Dear God, I like it.

I
like
having my bottom spanked.

She was no longer able to hold back those low and throaty groans. Or stop herself from lifting her bottom higher to meet each of those arousing spanks.

“Are you wet, Darcy?”

“W-what?”

“Is your pussy wet?”

Color blazed in her cheeks. She felt unable—too embarrassed—to answer him verbally.

“Part your legs for me, pet.”

She was too embarrassed, too aroused, to do anything other than what Ranulf asked.

His fingers slipped between her thighs, dipping into her juices before circling the entrance to her dripping channel and then moving higher, to the hard and pulsing nubbin above.

“Please…” Her back arched to push against those teasing fingers, the pleasure too much, at the same time as she wanted more. She
needed
more. “Oh please, Ranulf.”

Instead, he landed another smack on her already stinging flesh. “Patience is a virtue.”

She breathed hard. “I am not feeling very virtuous at the moment!”

“Are you still a virgin?”

She gasped. “What sort of question is that to ask an unmarried woman?”

“One I need an answer to before I proceed.”

If she said she was a virgin still, would he stop? Would Ranulf leave her like this, hungry and wanting?

“Answer me.” Ranulf spanked her bottom again. The hardest yet.

“Yes.” Her groan was almost a sob. “I am a virgin still. Are you going to stop now?” God, she wished she sounded less needy, but the thought of Ranulf denying her pleasure now was unthinkable.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No!”

“Do you want me to fuck you?”

She drew her breath in sharply at his crudity. Quickly followed by a fresh rush of those hot juices from her already dripping channel.

“I will use my fingers, not my cock.”

Darcy had no idea what that meant, only that she did not want him to stop until he had given her the pleasure she craved.

Craved.

Craven.

That was exactly how Ranulf made her feel. Craven and wanting. Willing to do anything to have her needs satisfied.

“It will take your virginity but ensure you do not risk an unwanted child.”

Would a child of Ranulf’s be unwanted? It would be shocking, scandalous, for her to have a child out of wedlock. But as she never intended returning to Society anyway, what would it matter? And she would have a small piece of Ranulf, always.

“That was not a question, Darcy,” he assured her harshly. “I will pleasure your pussy with my fingers or nothing at all.”

Darcy closed her eyes as she realized how nearly she had thoroughly humiliated herself. “Anything. Please… Just ease my ache.”

“Shall I put my fingers here?” Fingertips danced along and then dipped into her hungry channel. “Or here?” Those wet fingers moved back along the crease of her bottom, circling, lubricating that forbidden place, and igniting nerve endings Darcy had never realized were there. “Darcy?”

“Anywhere! Just— Oh God…” She broke off with an incoherent moan as her wetness easily allowed him to dip a fingertip inside that forbidden place. “Ranulf, I am going to—” She cried out, her whole body consumed in the pleasure.

Wave after wave of bone-melting ecstasy that took several minutes to abate left her gasping as she lay limply across Ranulf’s thighs.

It took her several minutes to regain her senses enough to realize Ranulf’s cock was hard once again.

Darcy would not be gainsaid this time. She did not intend to be a selfish lover. Ranulf had given her unimaginable pleasure twice today. It was time she reciprocated.

If only she knew how to go about it…

“Do you want this, Darcy? Do you want
me
?”

“God, yes. Only…”

“You are a virgin,” he acknowledged. “There are many ways we can explore together, to pleasure each other, without my cock needing to penetrate your pussy.”

She was growing less shocked at the frankness of his language when they were together like this. In truth, it added to her excitement. As for how and where he had touched her… She had so much to learn of how a man and woman could pleasure and please each other.

“Tell me what
you
like, Ranulf.” She looked at him pleadingly. “Show me.”

“Are you sure?”

Darcy was growing impatient with his constant questioning as to her eagerness to be a willing participant in their lovemaking. “I am very sure.”