Badcock (4 page)

She’d met
Jack
once before at a masquerade ball. Both clad in masks and costumes, they’d stolen a few moments pleasure in the host’s library. Since then, they’d written clandestinely and had both shared their naughtiest secrets, which they’d planned to enact this very day.

Elinor’s
fantasy was to be ravaged by a highwayman and when Jack had come up with the idea of holding up their carriage and snatching her away right from under her husband’s nose, she had squealed with delight.

She’d thought he’d probably given up by now but when the coach rumbled to a stop on the Hounslow Road, hope surged.

Anticipation thrummed in her veins as she peeped out the window but dismay soon set in.

There was no highwayman at all.

Instead, they came upon Lord
Wisbech
, who’d generously lent his men to help repair their wheel. Wild-eyed, he stood in the road, his fine clothes in disarray.

“Your Grace! What happened?” she asked, but already she had a sinking suspicion she knew what happened.

Lord
Wisbech
darted to the window. “We were robbed by a highwayman!”

“A highwayman?” Thomas Warwick grumbled. “Which one?”

“How should I know?” Lord
Wisbech
fumed. “He didn’t exactly introduce himself.”

“How much did he take?” Thomas asked.

“He didn’t take anything,”
Wisbech
said. “Except my fiancée!”

Elinor
gasped. Jack had made off with the wrong woman. “Pardon me,” she said, interlacing her fingers to stop her hands from trembling.
Oh, no. No…

No!

She wanted to scream in frustration but she knew she could not.

At this very instant, Jack Badcock was most likely in the throes of ecstasy in another woman’s arms.

Elinor
shook with rage. She wanted to divulge his actions, to make him pay. Surely he knew he’d abducted the wrong woman. But then again, it had been awfully dark in that library and they’d had much too much to drink.

The letters she’d written him had been very specific in sexual details. She had wanted to be tied, spanked, titillated—tortured.

She clenched her fists. All those things were happening right now—to that coltish little Jezebel she’d seen accompanying Lord
Wisbech
!

She reached for the door handle. “Please, step inside our coach. You must be worried sick about—what was her name, again?”

* * * * *

Sophia gripped the headboard. Ecstasy, so intense she could hardly tolerate it, rippled from the inside out. The muscles in her legs drew taut as she wrapped them around the highwayman’s shoulders and held him close. His tongue swirled and speared. His lips feasted. His fingers prodded and probed.

The first orgasm had rolled over her in sudden ferocity. But this one burned and built in a slow and steady climb until she reached a precipice and toppled headlong over the edge.

Her hands found and anchored his head. Her legs fell open and she tilted up and toward him. She’d never dreamed she would find such pleasure with another.

Mewling, she lay helplessly until the last shivers of paradise subsided and melted away.

With a gentleness she didn’t expect him to possess, he kissed the inside of her thigh.

Sophia blinked sleepily and watched him as he kissed his way up her hip, across the slight swell of her tummy, higher. She buried her fingers in his thick hair. “This is heaven,” she whispered.

“Indeed it is,” Jack replied and circled her areola with his tongue.

He could lose himself in those beautiful breasts alone. Moving to the other one, he held and squeezed her tight body. She seemed younger than he remembered. Smaller.

But there were other differences about her.

Hesitant and curious at the same time, she returned his kisses with a reckless lack of restraint. The
Elinor
he’d known had been a wine-swilling, sexually experienced woman. Suddenly, she seemed more interested in exploring than in satisfying the lust for a new lover.

He raised his head and looked into her hazel eyes. The tiniest smile pulled at her ruby lips.
What if…

No.

He shook his head. Her coach had arrived at precisely the time they’d arranged to meet. Besides, he thought as he wrapped a lock of her black hair around his index finger, he would remember her thick tresses anywhere—having only the seen the back of her head the last time he’d fucked her.

He decided to toss out a little test. Just in case. “This time is better, isn’t it?”

“Every time with you is better than the last,” she said.

He relaxed. It was
Elinor
. Why else would she have come along with him so willingly? Why would she have engaged in such taboo sexual acts without protest if she hadn’t arranged all this through her letters?

“What did you think of your jewels?” he asked.

She smiled. “I never imagined anything could make me feel so…so impassioned.”

He toyed with the chain still skirting her hips. “Excellent. Then we shall surely play with them again later.”

Her eyes darkened, the pupils almost filling the irises to turn them black. “And now?”

“Insatiable,” he muttered as he shifted and prodded her with his cock until it slid inside.

She arched and gasped as he filled her.

“Black velvet,” he said in her ear as he began to move.

“Black velvet?”

“That’s what your
cunny
feels like. Warm, wet, black velvet.” He pushed slowly all the way in and then dragged back until the head of his cock slipped just out of the opening.

Her hands clawed at his back, his buttocks. She writhed restlessly.

Restraining himself, he raked the head through her folds. “What do you want?”

She groaned. “You.”

He chuckled low. “Tell me what you want. Tell me how you want it.”

“All the way,” she said, tugging.

Her motions were futile. If there was one thing Jack Badcock understood, it was a woman’s desire.

He sucked at her neck, heedless of the marks his mouth left in his wake. “How. Tell me how.”

“Hard. Fast,” she whimpered.

“Don’t be so impatient, love,” he said. “Before you leave here, I will have rutted you so raw you won’t be able to walk.”

“Yes, oh yes.” She rocked.

“But now, I want to feel your tight sheath gripping and holding me, milking me,” he said and then traced the shell of her ear with the tip of his tongue. He drove deliberately inside her and then ground his groin into hers.

Her body hummed beneath his. Her channel squeezed in rebellion as he withdrew. Again, he pushed inside, his eyes fluttering shut as he lost himself in the wonder that was a woman. How long had it been since sex was something more to him than physical release? Perhaps it was the fantasy. Maybe it was the eroticism of the toys, of spanking her, but this—with her—ripped him from the reality of managing his estate, of living up to his deceased father’s too-high standards—and from his pending marriage to a German aristocrat on whom he’d never laid eyes.

Instinct took over and he braced himself on his elbows to rhythmically thrust into her. He pushed all coherent thought from his mind and instead focused only on the physical, on the thrill of infatuation and secret romance.

Up until now, this woman beneath him had been a flirtation. Suddenly, he found himself entertaining thoughts of meeting her on a regular and frequent basis.

Her nails raked down his back sending shivers up his spine. “Pull my hair,” he ground out.

At once, fingers entwined in the hair at his crown and tugged. Hard. “Fuck, yes,” he said along with a string of other unintelligible expletives. His groin slapped hers over and over, faster and faster.

On the edge of explosion, he somehow managed to withdraw his cock. Winding one hand under her body, he held tight while his seed erupted between their bodies.

Temporarily sated, he rested heavily on top of her. She rained kisses against his neck and his shoulder. This was supposed to be a fuck. Nothing more than a fuck. So what was this insane urge he had to cradle her in his arms and hold her?

Without words, he did just that, somehow dragging the covers over their naked bodies as he pulled her into an embrace.

Chapter Three

Elinor
paced in her room. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in Jack
Badcock’s
bed. The bastard! The least he could have done was send word that he’d made a mistake.

“
Miss
Sophia
Astley
,”
Elinor
sneered the name as if she were uttering the vilest words imaginable.

She stopped and stared out the window, not seeing the verdant hills of her husband’s estate. It was hopeless. There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t exactly mount a horse and take off in search of Jack
Badcock’s
hunting lodge. First of all, she had no idea where it was. Second, while extra-marital philandering was accepted for men if carried out discreetly, it was taboo for women.

Elinor
struck her own palm with a clenched fist. This situation was intolerable.

Surely to God he’d realized he was with the wrong woman. But if so, why hadn’t he returned her?
Elinor
seethed. Although she’d only met him the one time, she’d gathered from his letters that he was a rake but he certainly wasn’t the type to leave a woman at the mercy of the road.

Briefly,
Elinor
closed her eyes but images of her lover in the throes of passion with a strange woman swam in her head. He had indeed been fooled if that twit, Lord
Wisbech
, was to be believed.

It had been all
Elinor
could stomach to listen to his version of how the highwayman had dared to kiss his fiancée right there on the road.

And worse! How readily she’d climbed up on his horse.
Elinor
sighed. An ingénue. A virgin! No wonder Jack hadn’t returned Sophia.

But then,
Elinor
got an idea. A wicked idea. She smiled and lifted her chin in triumph. If Jack Badcock did indeed realize he’d bedded the wrong woman, then
Elinor
could certainly make him pay.

She could see to it that all of society knew Jack had ruined the girl. And she,
Elinor
, would see to it that Jack’s engagement to his German countess was broken.

She giggled without mirth, considering the possibilities at her fingertips.

* * * * *

Ralph sat in his study and stared at the ring in his hand. His face burned with shame when he recalled how that wretched highwayman had debased him—as surely as the scoundrel was debasing Sophia at this very moment.

Ralph dropped his head on the back of his chair and stared at the fresco on the ceiling. How would he be able to show his face after this?

Their wedding was less than a month away. How could he still go through with the ceremony knowing she’d been had by another man?

She hadn’t even protested when the highwayman had pulled off her ring and thrown it in the dirt—further disgrace!

He sucked in a breath that whistled through his teeth. Sophia had not been the most advantageous match he could have made. His connections to the Duke of Gloucester could have procured him a wife with a higher rank but Ralph had been foolishly smitten by Sophia’s hefty dowry.

Her unladylike advances toward him during their courtship hinted that she would not make a fitting wife and his suspicions had been confirmed when she mounted that horse and rode away with that base highwayman.

It was too bad Lord and Lady Huntingdon had come along so soon afterward. If he hadn’t told anyone what happened, he could have waited until Sophia surfaced and then made a pact with her never to speak of the incident again. As it was, gossip would abound.

Ralph rolled his eyes. And worse, if he got an heir on her right off, then speculation would swarm society.

He breathed a heavy sigh. “What to do?”

He’d sent word to her parents but other than that there was nothing else he could do but wait. Hopefully, her parents would realize that involving the authorities would only cause rumors to fly. The best thing Ralph could hope for was that the highwayman would use Sophia and then kill her, leaving her body in the woods for the elements to ravage—and set him free to seek a
suitable
wife elsewhere.

* * * * *

It was dark when Sophia opened her eyes. Her body ached with delicious soreness, reminding her of every thing she’d done with the highwayman.

He lay on his side next to her, his eyes closed, his shoulder exposed. A tingle fluttered in her stomach. Even sleeping, he was astonishingly handsome. How could she ever be satisfied with Ralph after this?

Getting on that horse had led to the greatest adventure of her life. It had also led to her greatest disappointment. Before encountering the highwayman, she’d been content with her life, with her engagement to Ralph and all that their future together entailed. Now, how could she marry him, knowing he could never satisfy her and knowing she would never be content with a boring life as the wife of a callous ass like Ralph? He’d traded her virtue for a ring.

A ring!

The thought made her seethe with rage.

And yet, the contracts had been signed. He’d all but claimed her dowry. Over four hundred invitations had been sent out. The archbishop was granting them a special license.

Sophia closed her eyes. Maybe Ralph would use this incident as an excuse to break their contract. That would suit her just fine. But even doomed to the fate she desired—spinsterhood—her life still seemed as if it were spiraling away from her. She felt as if she were a spectator with no control over her own destiny. Oddly, in the bed of a stranger—a man who’d abducted her—she felt completely in control for the first time in her life.

But this was an illusion. A dream.

He’d told her that at dusk, he would take her home. She sighed. Home. Were her parents worried? Had they told the authorities? Were they scouring the woods around the Hounslow Road, looking for her even at this late hour?