My Lady Gambled Book One & Book Two
By Shirl Anders
Smashwords Edition, My Lady Gambled Book One & Book Two
published by Shirl Anders/ Allure Books at Smashwords
Copyrighted©2004 by Shirl Anders.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues in this book are of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Blurb: erotic romance regency, all m/f, all HEA. My Lady Gambled Book One & Two. Kit Montoya, an American heiress, knows Lord Incubus and the hedonistic and lethal Order of the Satyr is the cause of her brother’s disappearance. She will stop at nothing to find her brother, and when she discovers the Archangels interests in The Order, she offers herself as bait. Brynmore, the Baron of Duneagan disagrees with using her and putting her into that sacrifice. Yet, Kit will try to infiltrate The Order of the Satyr with or without the Archangels help. This story pits the entire Archangel clan against evil, trying to find and destroy a serial murder, with Kit and Brynmore in the lead as they challenge each other and offer up their sexuality for justice.
There are two novellas for the entire story of My Lady Gambled, Book One and Book Two. These are the final two book conclusion for the Archangel series. For those of you that have not read the first five books about the exciting Archangels, this book should stand alone. However, you might wonder about some of the characters and below is a short look at their titles and stories.
Enjoy, Shirl Anders
My Lady Compelled: Meet Gabriella who is bought from a scandalous, "wife sale," by her first admirer and now former ex-spy, Drummond.
My Lady Enslaved: This story follows ex-spy Lord Harrison Ravenscar's revenge in a mistaken identity, when he captures the wrong woman for his vengeance and he forces the innocent Chloe into being his sexual slave to passion.
My Lady Captive: Join Lord Wyndham Hawkenge when he dares to save the young widow, Orelan, from the hedonistic grasp of Alexei Tropov.
My Lady Taken: Radford is betting some of the ladies will shed their staid English morals and come in sensual pursuit of him. What he does not expect is the feminine artifice of Lady Nia O'Shea when she sets her witty, thoroughly seductive, and scheming sights on him
My Lady Enthralled: The cult forces Saxon and Joelle to mate in a wild sexual ceremony. Yet, Saxon and Joelle will fight anyway they can, until they win their freedom.
My Lady Gambled: Book One
By Shirl Anders
Chapter One
“I know it is belated, everything about our relationship is turned around. Yet, I want to woo, Joelle.” Saxonhurst sighed, with one hand stuffed deep into his trouser pocket as he paced. “To court her, as it were. Foolish, I know after what we have been through, but I’m determined.”
Brynmore, Baron and Laird of Duneagan, watched his friend Saxonhurst, Marquess of Hartley, pacing the length of the lion-head carved pool table in front of him. Drummond, Duke of Kittridge, had gathered them all in his London mansion’s gaming salon. All six men of the former Archangels spy group sat or leaned in varying postures around the room.
Brynmore tried to unclench his fists. The labored tightening of his fingers was in reaction to previously hearing Saxon’s horrifying tale, a tale of kidnapping, cults, sexual depravity, and murder. Brynmore attempted to stretch the kink in his neck he'd gotten from the strain of listening to, and then realizing that Saxon and his new lady-love Joelle had barely escaped alive from the Order of the Satyr. And they had not escaped unscathed, either mentally or physically.
The tensions of the six men in the room were sharp, furious, and lethal. Brynmore fought the urge to leap forward, grab his claymore and barge from the room to find and destroy the foul and ill-serving bastards of the bloody cult.
But, it would not be that easy.
“You want Joelle out of it?” Drummond asked succinctly, from where he sat, in a red high-backed chair with the glow of a gas lamp to his left etching his austere features.
“Hell, yes.” Saxon halted his pacing and the small silver hook that replaced his left-hand rose with a sweeping gesture. “I want her nowhere near those bastards again. However, she will not see it that way at all. She has as much courage as all of us, and she’ll be set to find justice, and to find an end to the cult, Incubus, and surely Hellion. An end to any more foul deeds or murders.”
Brynmore watched Saxon’s silver hook fall to his side, and he thought with slow burning contempt about the parody of names the bloody villains used. It was like a bad play one should laugh at, however it was not a stage show, but real and very deadly. It was clear from Saxon’s rendering that The Order of the Satyr’s figurehead, Hellion, was a mass murderer.
“This could present a problem for all of us.” Drummond raised a glass of amber whiskey in his lean fingers. “We have, gentlemen,” Drummond nodded around, “Not chosen docile wallflowers for our wives and lovers.”
Brynmore nodded in agreement to this as he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his broad chest. Aye, he could attest to that. He was the only one, among the six men, without a permanent lass or wife, and he knew each man’s feisty lass quite well. Brynmore smirked for the first time that evening. He bloody well wished them all luck at keeping their women out of this!
“At the bride-to-be gathering for Nia this evening at our townhouse, where there should be simple tittering over our wedding plans, all of our women are to be present with the exception of Joelle, one wonders that they could be hatching different opinions, other than should the bride be wearing white, or the scarlet red that I hopefully requested,” Radford, Duke of Sutherlin, said ruefully.
Wyndham, Baron of Hawkenge, with his injured leg propped upon a small cushioned stool from where he sat adjacent to Drummond, snorted, “None of our women titters!”
Saxon left his statured position in the center of their gathering to lean his hip against the end of the pool table, near Radford in a similar position. Then, Saxon inserted, “Joelle, went to the bride-to-be gathering also, at the last minute. Gabriella was quite persuasive.”
“One might wonder why, my dear wife Gabriella, would be so coaxing to, Joelle. It appears congenial and inclusive on the surface.”
“Don’t wager on it,” Harrison, Earl of Ravenscar, said with a low rasp.
Brynmore watched Harrison’s black eyes scan them all once, before Harrison turned his gaze down to the fire once again and leaned his elbow against the fireplace mantel. Harrison’s gaze was brooding after the last year or more of opened and unshadowed gazes. It had Brynmore wondering. While Saxon had revealed the tale of horrendous events that he and Joelle had recently experienced, Harrison had remained extremely quiet, drinking only a new style seltzer water and staring down into the fire with a stillness that was impossible in normal men.
“So, what is the consensus, about allowing our women to be involved in this?” Drummond asked, swirling whiskey in the balloon snifter before him. He raised his gaze from the amber liquid coating the glass, not taking a drink as his slate gray eyes drew sharply around the room. “I, for one, will forbid it, no matter what machinations, my delightful wife, will be about.”
Brynmore listened to the mutters of agreement, though none stated eloquently and therefore all with an aura of trial about them. Harrison never made a sound and Brynmore wagered that the only one coming close to succeeding would be Lord Harrison Ravenscar.
Yet, Brynmore was ready to leave the other men to their trials in intimacy. He had no one to answer to, and he had a craving inside him to feel the thrill of the chase once again. The demand inside him to eradicate the pestilence that was The Order of the Satyr had not come at a better time to feed the common and insatiable yearning to satisfy that craving for the rush of aliveness that being in a dangerous situation could produce. He was not sure why this need was so overpowering and why he had been fighting it for so long. It was actually against his nature, that of being more mature reacting than his thirty-three years. Always more solid, but with a wry sense of Scottish humor nonetheless. And always with the mantle of responsibility to be the Laird one day on his shoulders.
However, that day had come more quickly than he'd anticipated with the deaths of so many of his clan’s elders in the war. Bloody hell, he should be more responsible and not lose the battle to unreasonable and erratic demands inside him. Instead, he was satisfied that he had no choice in the matter. They had to take care of this. He had to be involved. More so because he was the only single man left among the Archangels. He was glad, and that should worry him. Instead, he ignored it and waited, which was odd for him, for the instructions he knew would be coming.
“Then to the goals, gentlemen,” Drummond stated, appearing to agree to the consensus of sidestepping the issue of their women.
“It might be easier to assassinate Hellion and Incubus once we find them, however that would take the chance of leaving the murders unsolved, and the identity of the victims, unknown. We also need to know the structure of this cult, so we are certain that once we illuminate the key figures that The Order will collapse, never to rise again.”
“And the authorities?” Harrison asked, not taking his gaze from the fire.
Drummond’s eyebrow raised, and Brynmore knew that he, as well as the other men, were a bit surprised that this query should come from their lethal assassin, Harrison.
“Hmm,” Drummond slowly etched, then he said, “We would be doing the authorities a disservice allowing them to remain ignorant about this occurrence of an individual or a partnered mass murderer.”
“Aye, if there is one out there, then another one will come along in time,” Brynmore muttered, shifting his brown Hessian boots as he cocked his hip the other way and leaned back against the wall.
“We will have to appraise them, but before or after?” Radford asked, leaving the sentence hanging.
Drummond picked it up. “We shall keep it in mind and decide later, when we are further into it. For now our first step is to find them, and I predict that is not going to be easy.”
“Then, I will have to go back to Paris at once . . . ,” Saxon began saying.
“No,” Drummond interrupted. “Two good reasons, Saxon. They know you, and you as with most of us here have a great deal of family matters to settle before we begin. Gentlemen, the demise of The Order and its leaders will take time. I will start with a rough estimate of at least six months or more.”
“Balls,” Wyndham uttered.
“Yes.” Drummond nodded. Brynmore guessed that their thoughts were about the issues of added trouble with their women, as he heard Drummond continue. “Brynmore, will leave as soon as possible.”
Brynmore straightened his tall frame away from the wall. “Aye.”
“I’ve held two of my shipping vessels just on the odd chance we would need them quickly. They are set to sail upon your needs,” Radford said.
“Your intuitions are honed as usual, Radford,” Drummond said, then he shifted in his chair and stood. “We will use beacon-lighted messages across the channel. Brynmore, you can see Radford to set up a workable schedule. The rest of you, gentlemen, settle your affairs. We will meet here every evening to further our plans. However, it should take Brynmore a fortnight to lay the ground work and find the scent, as it were.”
“If any good can come from this,” Saxon said. Then he paused, looking at each one of them before continuing, “I am glad The Order of the Satyr selected me, because gentlemen, with your help we could be the only group with the resources and ability to destroy this evil. Those bastards made a huge mistake!”
Chapter Two
Kit stood at the weathered railing of the ship. The day was clean and sunny with the sea as calm as she'd seen it on the crossing from America. They were one day away from laying an anchor on the French coast, and then another day’s carriages ride into Paris. Her destination. Where she would finally begin to find out what had happened to her brother. Where had Clay gone?
Clayton, he preferred to be called now, she reminded herself. In his last letter six months before, he'd written to her about how the name change suited him better and suited the social climate in Paris. He went by Clayton and had angrily purged their family’s last name of Montoya, as a direct and intended insult to their father.
“You have to be more sociable. That plump gal with those pretty daughters is a Countess!”
Kit started from her thoughts to look sideways at her husband Nick standing beside her. His approach had been undetected until he'd spoken. Immediately, her gut cringed inward upon hearing his disparaging voice or feeling him anywhere near her. Lord, she hated him.
“I told, the Countess, we had been married much longer than the three month newlyweds we really are. How could I do anything less with you dressed as you are and acting as you do? I swear, Filly, the countess thought you were a man.” Nick sneered sideways at her, in his pretense of superior bearing. It was a difficult thing to accomplish for a former river-rat gambler that she’d finally discovered he’d been. “What the hell was wrong with the dress I borrowed for you? Can’t you do one thing right?”
Kit’s gloved fingers curled tightly over the splintered wood of the railing. One of the wood’s slivers poked through the leather of her glove along her inner palm. She did not care. She hoped it had drawn blood, so she squeezed harder. Nick Ralston was the biggest mistake she'd made in her life. What continued to amaze her was how she could allow his insults and verbal jabs to affect her anymore. As much as she tried to pretend to him, to everyone else, even to herself that they did not hurt, they still did. That in itself humiliated her. That she should even care!
It did not matter that she was still reeling from the consummate con Nick Ralston had perpetrated on her. He'd changed overnight from a charming suitor comforting her over her father’s death to a man who was overbearing and critical of her every opinion ay every turn. He was simply a snotty and snobbish gold digger.
And, I am dressed fine, Kit thought. Little did Nick know that she'd half planned to leave him behind when the ship docked and take off riding into Paris her own. So, she was wearing legging skirts to ride astride. What did she care what some Countess with her pretty daughters thought? Darling daughters that Nick paid too much attention to for a married man. Kit was not going to Paris to become a socialite, but to find her brother.
“You should not have come along,” Kit stated tightly.
“If you had more sense, neither of us would be here. What type of idiot goes searching for a brother that can steal our entire rightful inheritance.”
“That is all you care about! That is all you've ever cared about,” Kit accused hotly turning away from Nick.
She started to rush away but Nick caught her upper arm, painfully stopping her. “I expect you to act properly. As my wife.”
“Properly! How?” Kit asked, staring at his hand digging into her arm. “As the wife of nothing more than a river boat gambler?”
Nick squeezed his fingers so hard tears sprang to her eyes. “I will teach you!”
Kit’s anger flowed over, and she spat, “I swear to God, Nick Ralston, I will give away every penny, every parcel of land in my father’s estate, that you covet so greatly, if you try to get in my way now!”
Nick drew in a hissing breath and through clenched jaw and gritted teeth, he said, “That faggot brother of yours will never get my money or my land!”
Kit jerked her upper arm free with more strength than she realized she possessed, and she stalked to the entryway to go below. She did not stop her head long rush until she reached her cabin where she threw open the door, rushed inside, then she slammed it closed, bolting it behind her.
She ended with her spine pressed to the closed door and her lungs gasping for air. Where had she gotten the courage to speak to Nick that way? He frightened her, and he would make her pay, no matter how long it took. He was capable of patiently waiting to spring on her. She had to get away from Nick, before he was able to find a chance to take her to bed and land her pregnant. That was what he waited for and stalked her for, a way to force himself upon her. However, she'd slept with the door bolted and a knife clutched in her hand ever since Nick changed so drastically.
It happened when she said she was going to find her brother, and Nick thought that ownership of the Montoya Empire could be in jeopardy. Before that, he'd been an enjoyable lover and a charming husband, even though she still had not felt toward him as she thought she should, and at the time she had berated herself silently. Those had been quiet and terse arguments in her head about how Nick was a decent man, and she should be grateful. However, it had all been an act on Nick's part, put on for her father before he’d died, then later continuing to play act upon her. There were times in the past when her gut told her that things were off or strange about Nick. Yet, she'd brushed them aside, ignoring them. Instead in her grief, she’d followed her father’s deathbed wishes that she marry.
“But that is over now!” she exclaimed, unclenching her hands, which she braced on her belly as though warding off a blow. Then, she walked to the bureau, which was built into the wall of her cabin with a small cloudy-surfaced mirror attached above it. Salty sea air and time had tarnished the mirror’s surface, but Kit could still generally make out her slender features. She was boyish with short wavy light blond hair and tan skin spotted with light freckles. She'd always worked on the land with her father and brother, before Clay left. Her mother had died giving birth to her, so there had not been a lot of female influences in her life. Nevertheless, she'd gone back east for two years, attending a school for ladies, and she'd learned all the proper manners and clothing styles a lady should present.
More than that though, she was practical, and long hair did not go well with roping and branding cattle, nor did fancy skirts go with riding a horse into Paris to escape Nick. Little did Nick know that she'd a trunk loaded with womanly gear stowed in the hold that she would have delivered to Paris.
Nick was in for a lot of surprises because this long journey aboard the ship had given her time to think about more than just the plans to find her brother. She also realized this was the best time to lose Nick’s presence beside her in the sprawl of Paris. It was time to find a lawyer to annul or divorce her farce of a marriage.
Nick would be furious, and she was afraid of him. Only his words so far, but those venomous words and opinions held the real chance of physical violence behind them. She did not intend to get caught in the eventuality that he would become violent. She would find her brother to bring him home. She would divorce Nick, and then Clay would help keep Nick from causing her further trouble.
Kit hated to bring problems like this to Clay. She really just cared more about finding him and bringing him back home where he belonged. They would deal with the difficult conditions of her father’s will after that. If nothing else, she still had land and a home left to her from her grandmother. She would not let the demands of their father’s will tear her and Clay apart. She cared for Clay more than any Montoya land empire.
Damn her father! He'd been a difficult and hard man, but normally a just one. If only he could have accepted Clay for who Clay was, a man who loved other men. However, her father’s deeply controlling personality had caused him to run roughshod over Clay until Clay finally broke. But her father had never realized Clay’s strengths, and he'd thought Clay would break down and realize that he was wrong. Instead, their father drove Clay away.
Clay broke, and then he ran.
But now, she vowed that she would find Clay, and she would convince him to come home with her. She had his last letters and she knew where he'd been residing, so she willed herself to be certain that there was a simple explanation for his six months of silence. Maybe, their father had written Clay about his illness, or perhaps Clay had found a new love and gone off with him without thinking, in the way new love could be. Kit certainly prayed so, because she was going to do anything it took to find her brother. He was the only family she had left.
Chapter Three
“I won the wager, Drummond, you must not complain,” Gabriella said. “Really, Drummond, you threw our fencing match just so that I would win, and now you have to be my love slave for the evening.”
“That is not correct, Madame,” Drummond replied with his charcoal eyes calculating the see-through lavender pinafore Gabriella wore, and the bottle of amber oil she held in one hand, with a straight razor held in the other. “I have taught you fencing well enough for you to beat me now.”
“Do not pout, amour,” Gabriella said smiling with a sultry shadow in her purple irises as she gazed at his muscular frame, still dressed in fashionable riding attire. “But undress slowly, please.”
“I do not pout, Madame,” Drummond said with his strong jaw planing. “However, didn’t I shave your luscious pussy just this morning, I believe?” he asked with his gaze lowering to her now denuded sex. Just the touch of his gaze brought heat to Gabriella’s bare pussy lips.
She stifled the urge to squirm. “Yes, of course you did. I remember it well. And, afterward . . .” she paused.
Keenly, Drummond picked up the narrative. “You rode my face like a champion rider in a high stake horse race.”
“Really, Drummond!” Gabriella’s rouged lips formed a moue with a blush heating her cheeks. “You are a very contrary slave.”
Drummond’s broad shoulders shrugged, and then broadened as he lifted his fingers to the ties on his loose dark brown riding shirt. “Never let it be said that I do not honor my wagers, Orchid.” Gabriella smiled again, Drummond had called her Orchid now after their first night of love making, when the next morning she'd woke with his orchids scattered over her body. “I am just not certain, Gabriella, how well I will do not being the master.”
“You did quite well on our wedding night, amour,” she reminded him as she watched the flexing of sinew over his chest, belly, then upper arms as he pulled his shirt upward over his head.
“I was tied to our bed then, for your carnal ministrations,” he muttered, tossing his shirt onto one of the chairs, at the foot of their large four-poster bed.
Gabriella walked to the side of the bed and placed the straight razor next to the bottle of oil on the bedside table. “No ties this time,” she purred, looking at him through the curls of her auburn hair. “Now your pants please, my handsome love slave. And tell me, how did it feel without your small cloth beneath your riding britches during your ride, after your meeting with the Archangels this evening?”
Gabriella watched Drummond’s handsome lips firm as she sat on the side of the bed next to her mink cloak, which she'd spread out on top of the bed covers earlier. Drummond had just been downstairs for his meeting, but she'd requested as the first command of her new love slave that he take a ride through the park after his meeting. She'd also asked intimately that he wear no underpinnings beneath his britches. The ride had given her time, after visiting with Nia, Chloe, and Orélan, and after hearing the disturbing tale that Joelle had revealed to them, to walk home from Nia’s, and then to set the stage for her newly acquired love slave.
Gabriella wondered at the fate of timing, for she and Drummond to be playing this particular love game now. After hearing Joelle’s tale, she realized she would have to use every trick she could envision to convince Drummond that she and the other ladies needed to be involved in whatever retribution the Archangels undertook.
She'd stayed in the shadows of her first marriage, docile, and now she knew that her first husband had pushed her aside to the country, out of his way. She had no intentions of allowing that to happen again. Besides, she and Drummond had lost too much time together in their earlier lives, to ever be parted again. The gentlemen of the Archangels needed their women on this campaign. They just did not realize it yet.
“It was arousing, Orchid. My cock could feel more, the pounding of my stallion.”
Yum. Gabriella eyed the manly attachment that Drummond spoke of as it leaped out of the material he tugged away from it. Pounding indeed, she thought, as an answering throb beat in her pussy. Just the hard jut of Drummond’s bared cock had her seeping, but she needed control, and she had thought of that, even going so far as to help herself to a fingering climax in her bath just a short time before. Only it was not working!
She nearly got irritable at the power of Drummond’s cock over her. Then, she thought, perhaps if she just could not see it. “Lay down here, my handsome slave, on your stomach.”
Gabriella patted the mink cloak beside her, watching Drummond eyeing it, as he strode with rippling grace toward their bed. He was well fit for a man in his mid-fifties, with his short distinguished silver hair. Drummond was a sensual master, and he knew her appreciation for his physique. So, he used it to his every advantage as he crawled up onto their bed by flexing his male muscles just a bit more than necessary. With a heated breath, she nearly used a command to stop him in that position.
But his eyes told her that he knew what she was feeling, and he was slightly arrogant about nearly snatching the power back between them. That challenged her, and she changed her mind about his position because of it.
“Stay,” she commanded softly and Drummond stilled on his hands and knees, not lowering onto his belly. His gray eyes turned more peppery with sexual tension, and she realized that her command for him to kneel had just turned her back into the master. “Kiss me, amour, tongue me deep,” she ordered with a husky purr in her voice.
The sinew on Drummond’s upper arms rippled as he leaned forward with his gaze fixed on her lips. “Yes, Madame.”
Without warning Drummond’s large masculine tongue aggressively thrust into her mouth. Gabriella nearly backed away from that the driving force, thinking Drummond was a true sexual devil. She moaned around his tongue as he took her mouth deeply. The well in her pussy twirled tight with heavy and insistent aches.
She nearly forgot to stop, caught in the sexual thrust and parry of Drummond’s tongue. However, then he chuckled deeply, and with inherent arrogance, as he was wont to do when his senses were alerted to her near surrender. That chuckle was enough to break the spell, and she lifted her hands to his muscle-packed shoulders, pushing as she drew her mouth away.
“Enough, slave!” Her voice encompassed a light pant as she looked deep into Drummond’s heavy-lidded and sexually sparking gaze. Having her love slave sexually excite her was not going to work, because he would have her bedded before she knew what had happened.
No, she needed to seduce Drummond, too play with him! That was what she deeply desired. She wanted him to groan and pant. There were too few times when she'd wrestled control from him and made him carnally mindless, as he was such an expert to do to her. However, it was a fine edge that she walked, because she understood, deep inside herself, that Drummond did not find sexual gratification in his surrender, but in her surrender. She could tease him and play on the edges of his control, but not go too far.
“Your body is so arousing, Drummond.” She stood and began stroking down his firm back. “I am not sure if you like this position, but it is highly arousing from my view,” she purred, as her gaze fixed on his arching male shaft.
She stroked her hand over his tight buttocks. “Not really, Orchid.”
“Mmm.” Gabriella stroked the other cheek of Drummond’s ass. Then, she gave it a light pat. “Lay down then, amour, and feel the softness of the mink on your hard cock.”
Surprise! Drummond nearly lost a groan of bliss as the mink enveloped the heat of his rigid dick. He eased gingerly down against the stiffness not wanting to bend. His instant desire was to hump the mink as he felt Gabriella climbing over his back to straddle his hips. Christ. He'd taught Gabriella too many sensual tricks and now with her creative and fertile mind unfettered to do anything she could imagine sexually . . . he was in for it!
And he loved it. He might not survive, but what a way to go. Drummond felt Gabriella’s bare pussy on his buttocks as she settled in with a lust-filled undulation. Then, his lust filled. Frothing over. Tightly reined. Then, he felt her drizzling oil on his back with her massaging hands following. He laid his head to the side and fought his tension to relax. He knew this carnal teasing well. Raise sexual tension to the breaking point, then relax it. Then, . . . raise it again higher. Oh yes! He had taught his wife too well, and he was definitely in for it.
“Feel good, my sexy slave? It feels good to me.”
“Madame, I am yours.”
Drummond played along with the game, and while Gabriella’s hands kneading his back felt excellent, the movements of her denuded pussy riding his ass was most assuredly reeking havoc. She enjoyed it also because he could feel her helping the undulations along and not all propelled by her massaging. The softness of her bare pussy was incredible. He could feel the plump, heated outline, and the dampness she exuded.
Without intent, his hips humped, riding his cock through the mink’s plushness and Gabriella with up and down movements on his ass. His fingers curled beneath his cheek where his chin rested. When he realized what he had done, he strained not to do it again.
Gabriella purred above him with her fingers digging deep into his muscular back. “Do not rein it in, my amour, let it free.”
Oh, he wanted to, but more than that, he wanted soft pussy around his cock. Gabriella leaned forward with the tips of her nipples scoring his oily back, while her lips kissed the side of his mouth. Her hands dug deep, massaging lower on his back, and then she rose and scooted lower over the hump of his ass. He could feel sweet hot pussy rubbing all the way, making his mouth water. Then, he felt more oil poured onto the small of his back.
“Joelle, told us all of course,” Gabriella murmured above him as her fingers began kneading his lower back, the motion moving his hips in barely perceptible thrusts, which connected to his cock.
Now? Now, she brings this up, Drummond thought, trying to change mental gears. Failing, he decided his wife was too clever by far.
“It is a horrible, shocking story, Drummond. Thank God, they are alive. I think Joelle fits Saxon to my view, like a glove.”
Her hands moved to the top of his buttocks, spreading more warm oil and allowing it to slowly run down the crease between the cheeks of his ass. It was then, he discovered a new, “erotic zone” on his body. Who knew? Then, his hips humped, lightly stroking his throbbing cock into the mink. By god, the experience was sensual, he had to give his wife that! And he knew she was not through yet.
Drummond tried to find his voice, but it rasped, “You are not going with the Archangels or be involved.”
Gabriella’s fingers found the crease of his ass, tracing it. Et oh! Another, “zone.”
“I know, darling,” she answered, much too acquiescent, he thought, when he could think, with Gabriella’s fingers now spread out over the rumps of his buttocks as she kneaded them. He had always known he was an ass man. He delighted in playing with his wife’s, but he'd never considered his own much, until . . .
A groan rumbled uncontrolled from his throat as one of Gabriella’s oily fingers slid and burrowed through the crevice of his ass. His cock seemed to be connected to the sensation and it pounded strongly. Incredibly, his ass itched to rise upward, and he fought the urge to crawl up on his knees, while his mind vicariously wondered just how far his lovely wife might go in this direction. Whether it was balking on his part or actually hidden aroused thoughts over the matter, he could not digest at the moment.
“We were cheated of twenty-five years, Drummond. Years we missed the pleasure of each other, and now it nearly makes me weep or crumble to even think of being away from you for any length of time.”
Damnation, the woman was merciless, ruthless! “Ah hh,” he groaned as his ass lifted and Gabriella’s small finger circled his anus. Another, “zone” of incomparable proportions. She leaned forward over his back again with her breasts rolling, as her heated breath touched his ear.
“I want to, Drummond. A little prod, but I will not if you do not find it arousing.”
Good Christ! Drummond jerked his head more to the side, getting part of Gabriella’s mouth in a heated kiss. She must have taken this as a yes, because he could feel somewhere inside him the feeling that he knew meant that she had . . .
“Ah hh,” His cock nearly ejaculated.
“Oh, darling!” Gabriella mewled as she scooted back more, freeing his legs and ass. Then, while his thighs spread open wider, her finger stroked shallowly, while her other oily hand began to frolic with his balls.
Heaven help him, he came up onto his knees with his engorged cock burning it was so hard, as he literally begged like a fool. “Oh Christ, Orchid, stroke my cock.”
“Oh yes!” she exclaimed passionately. “This is just as I envisioned it!”
His wife envisioned wicked and naughty things that pushed him to an edge he'd never been on before. While her finger began rhythmically stroking in his ass, her tongue suddenly lapped against his balls from behind, and her other hand squeezed around his cock . . . pumping it.
“Fuck!” he charged, losing his control, as his wife milked a thrashing ejaculation from him, while finger fucking his ass.
Fertile imagination, his ass, Drummond thought. His wife was kinky in the best and most lavish sense of the word, and his cock spewed seed, four times, until his knees nearly collapsed, and his chest heaved in great billows. He twisted his neck, shook his head, tried to catch his breath as Gabriella lifted her finger from his ass, but lovingly kept licking his ball sacs. He was on his hands and knees, with his legs spread, and he considered tentatively that it was not such a bad position, if all done properly.
“What was the razor for?” His breath still heaved.
“Mm mm,” Gabriella’s warm tongue lifted from his balls. “I was going to shave your balls, but I have decided that I really love them hairy instead.”
Drummond’s flaccid cock twitched. Impossible! “You are not going to go along with the Archangels!” he growled.
“I know,” she answered sweetly, too sweetly by far and he knew his wife’s campaign had just begun!
He was in for it . . .
Chapter Four
As she walked, Kit squinted again at the address on the letter in her hand. Paris addresses were hard for her American mind to make out, and Clay’s scribbled writing did not help. Thank the Lord, she had been able to lose her husband at the dock. She'd made her way into Paris, arriving last night and had managed to find a hotel that was respectable enough for her to stay in. Not that she'd gotten much sleep. She found she was much too keyed up at being so close to discovering where her brother was. She'd even thought to use a false surname at the hotel, just in case Nick was more industrious than she thought he was.
But he was behind her now and she was determined to leave the embarrassment of her monumentally bad choice in marriage behind her. She had much more important matters to attend to. It had taken a lot of willpower not to go out searching for Clay last night, feeling that all her worries could easily be set aside if he was still at his Paris apartment, just being stubborn in the end, and refusing to write to her these last six months. Hearing about their father’s illness might have made Clay retreat into himself, or he could be sitting in his flat drinking French wine, brooding, and playing his piano. His one true love in life was music.
Nevertheless, while she may have been confident enough to gallop a horse on the road to Paris on her own, she had enough commonsense to not try to wander alone in Paris at night. Paris was the largest city she'd ever been in besides New York City. The sprawl of Paris awed her, when her normal bases of reference were vast and wide-open spaces.
Kit stopped at what looked to be the address, a well-laid brick building, in what appeared to be a nice section of Paris. Clay was not without his resources. While his passion might be music, he had taken his knowledge of raising cattle and turned it into profit. From his letters, Kit understood that Clay had used his personal relationship with many cattle-ranchers in America to ship beef cattle to France, and the price was high here for the American bred delicacy.
Kit knew there would be several larger apartments in the building. It did not surprise her when she walked through the gate and stepped into a well-kept patio garden. On the far side was the front door with a large iron pull-bell placed out front. Just as her gloved hand reached upward to pull the bell, the front door pushed open toward her, and she quickly stepped back, hearing the burr of a baritone voice saying, “Aye, Mademoiselle lass, ye keep my card and think on it. I just want to look, and I’d take nothing. Maybe help, when it’s all said and done.”
Mademoiselle lass, Kit thought, what queer turn of phrasing, while her mind registered and placed the Scottish accent. The accent seemed so out of place to her mind set of Paris. Then suddenly, a large man passed her on the front steps. Kit barely saw the man as he tipped his head in a polite gesture, then he was past her. Had she turned around to watch him leave, she might have seen him pause to look back at her. Instead, she was left looking at a middle-aged woman standing in the entryway.
What passed next, to Kit, was a dance in French pantomime and American as she tried to converse with the lady and make known her wishes to see her brother. In the end, her savior was the arrival of the lady’s English speaking, twelve-year-old son. The son informed her that his name was Pier and his mother’s name was Mademoiselle Lillian. They lived on the bottom floor of the building and oversaw the tenants for the owners.
The next piece of information Pier imparted was quite disturbing. He said Monsieur Clayton lived there no more. Luckily, Kit rallied, and asked more probing questions. At first, Pier and Mademoiselle Lillian were hesitant to say anything until she showed Pier a letter from her brother. Fortunately, he could read English as well as speak it, and quickly understood that she was Clayton’s sister. This changed the dynamic considerably. Mademoiselle Lillian now saw her as a way to recover unpaid rents she adamantly felt were due to her.
Upon hearing all of this, Kit nearly had the hope that Clay had run out on them. Her mind quickly skipped to hopeful possibilities such as he'd fallen on hard times. However, that hope was dashed when Mademoiselle Lillian informed her, through Pier, that she was almost ready to sell Clay’s personal belongings to recover part of the money owed.
Kit hastily assured them that she would pay the rent owed and that she wanted all of Clay’s personal property. Once this was clear, Mademoiselle Lillian became more relaxed and conversational again. Soon, Pier, with key in hand, was taking Kit to Clay’s apartment.
“When was the last time you saw, Clayton, Pier?” Kit asked as they climbed the narrow stairs. They passed two flights and two other doors that Kit assumed were other apartments.
“It was on zee day before Bastille Day. I remember well. Monsieur Clayton would wave on his way to zee café in the morning, or he would stop and throw the ball to me. I like those days. Then, he was no more, and I think he would say adieu.”
Yes, he would, Kit thought, with a twinge. Clay was always good to children. Dread silently built inside her at the thought of how long Clay had been gone, that and the fact all his personal property was still there.
Hours later, Kit emerged from a hired carriage outside the Commissionaire de Police building in Paris. All her fears were confirmed and running rampant, really. Clay was actually missing, and for no outward or discernible reason. Foul play, screamed inside Kit’s head as she straightened the folds of her mocha-colored walking dress. She'd taken the time to return to her hotel to change her clothes after searching Clay’s apartment for clues. She'd dressed in an elegant outfit with accessories. They were clothes that by their very quality and presence spoke of money. Deep pockets, her father would say. Show them you mean business by your appearance and demeanor alone.
She did mean business, Kit thought firmly, as she adjusted her deep chocolate-colored hat with a mink-edge, set off with a black veil scripted with flowers. She meant to file a report with the Paris police that her brother was missing and she meant for them to listen to her and to take her seriously. Or at least think that she had money enough to cause a monumental fuss, Kit thought, which was halfway true. She came from money, but whether she had any money any more was up in the air. Nonetheless, she knew somewhat how to carry off the ruse of a moneyed person. After years of watching her father, she would use it like he would and bite back any hesitations she felt at trying to do so. The world was very much a man’s world and not easy for a female to get her voice heard.
But she'd been brave enough to leave Nick behind, hadn’t she? Oh yes! Only she wished she could not hear the echo of Nick’s voice in the back of her mind telling her over and over how incompetent she was. The true mystery was, why did she care what he thought?
Kit started to climb the fifty or so steps to the entrance of the Commissionaire de Police building. Perhaps, it was because she had started to care for Nick, in the beginning, but now she would not let Nick’s falseness win. She'd been a shadow in her father’s life, because she was a girl. Yet even then, she'd tried to out do and to show her worth. She would now too, she thought. Nothing had ever felt more important to her or urgent in her life. Clay had always treated her as significant, nearly an equal. Maybe it was the adversity that Clay had to endure by being what people thought was different. A lover of men, what their father thought was perverted.
Kit nodded her head to the uniformed man who opened the doors to people entering. Then, she swept inside, hoping that she looked like she was an important presence. She'd searched Clay’s entire apartment and the more that she'd looked through his things, the more urgent the knowledge came to her that this was not a man gone off on some unexplained wandering, but a man suddenly ripped out of an active and thriving life.
While she found little to explain to her what could have happened to him, she did find things that told how abruptly he'd disappeared, leaving important matters undone in his business. There were written missives from any number of sources asking where their shipments were, what the time schedules were, and demanding Clay contact them immediately. Many of these had been unopened, collected in a pile of waiting mail that Mademoiselle Lillian had taken delivery of when she could not reach Clay. Kit had opened each one, feeling more desperate with each one that she read. Clay would not do this. He would never do this!
In Clay’s apartment, Kit had found only one good avenue to pursue, and that was the name of a man that had written Clay a love letter. She'd found it tucked in the bedside table and it looked as if it had been read many times. By Clay, she assumed. It surprised her to find that it sounded like any other love letter one might read between a man and a woman. But this was man to man with deep heartfelt feelings, and while Kit had felt like a voyeur, she'd also felt the tug of her heart. This man, Marco Remior, cared for her brother.
So, she would rouse the police to the best of her ability, and after that she would find Marco Remior and begin her own search. No matter what it took! Or what she had to do. She would find Clay, because she loved him deeply.
Thus fortified and inwardly emboldened, Kit fairly marched with authority to the reception counter inside the Commissionaire de Police of Paris.
Chapter Five
Lady Chloe Ravenscar stood in perfect stillness with her naked body freshly oiled from her neck to her toes by her husband’s roughly scarred hands. “Raven,” she passionately called him, but his real name was Lord Harrison Ravenscar.
Her oil-slick flesh gleamed, illuminated by the numerous candles lit about the bedchamber. It cast her skin to ivory with the lightest yellow tint, while touching shadows here and there over her feminine curves. Glistening darker shadows beneath her heavy full breasts, barely traced shadows over the slightly rounded protrusion of her soft belly. Never to be flat again, after bearing two children, nor her breasts as uplifted or compact.
She had given Raven a daughter, and she realized in the depths of her soul, by Buddha’s great wisdom, that with the gift of a child, she had soothed some of the wounds in Raven’s heart. Her first child, Sebastian, was not Raven’s. Yet, Raven treated him as his own. But there was a special bond between Niella, their one-year-old daughter and Raven, not because Niella was his blood, but because she was his daughter. The peace inside Raven had started after they had committed their love to each other as man and woman. Then, it had grown these several years and enlarged greatly with the arrival of their daughter.
Raven had brooded less and smiled more, even laughing with his children. He had become more open with his family and friends. The peace inside him had flourished with warmth, to be strong and true.
Until tonight.
This week a demon lurked. It thrashed its ugly head, and Chloe thought she knew why the demon had returned. It was because Raven thought they would expect him to kill again, to return to being an assassin. The moment last week when Chloe had heard Joelle telling the tale of her, Saxon, and The Order of the Satyr, Chloe had felt it too. The demon’s talons had scraped her soul and frightened her. Raven would not survive again. He could not go back to what he was, just as she could not go back to what she was. She was Raven’s woman now, which between them meant much more than simply being his wife.
Raven looked at the gleaming sculptured shapes and curves of his woman standing nude before him, while he slowly circled her. The animal within him was rising again. It was dark and lewd, filled with unnatural cravings. It aroused him to try to hold it at bay, even as he assuaged its unreasonable cravings. Chloe knew it lusted for her. He could see her reaction in the circle of her nipples, puckered a dusky rose, with her nipple tips jutting outward in deeper red. Below, the lips of her cunt took on a light rouge color. The slit clearly seen and vulnerable, glistening wet. Her ass, his personal treasure, was round with the feminine globes shivering lightly.
She feared the animal. She desired the animal. She loved his barely edged control of it. She sensed the heightened danger this time, even as she submitted to him. She would forever be the only thing that could save him.
His wife exuded the warm aroma of cinnamon and husky arousal as he stopped, fully clothed in an open edged shirt and dark britches before her. He held a roughly braided rope coiled in his left hand, one end hanging freely. Chloe’s almond eyes traveled along its length to the frayed end. He lifted the frayed end of the rope up to her lips, brushing their full bowed-shape lightly as her brandy eyes deepened to dark whiskey.
“Kiss it,” he whispered, with his rasping voice barely sounding in low insidious drawn out vibrations.
The allure of Chloe’s lips plumped as they kissed the roughened hemp. The movement swayed the lustrous and straight length of her black hair around her bare waist, as she suddenly exclaimed, “I beg to go with you! Don’t leave me!”
Harrison felt shock stiffen through his lean muscular frame, even as he rasped, “No!”
Harrison knew Chloe did not plead for him to take her into the submission and ecstasy of the moment. Their bond was not just of the body, but of the mind and soul. She would not tempt the fates to beg anything from him that he did not already give her, unless the demand inside her was forcefully out of control. But his devious and lecherous mind twisted this with the perverted logic that what he was about to do to her had just been proven, was needed.
He was completely confident that in a short amount of time he would have Chloe mindlessly aroused beneath his command of her. It was clear that she needed his direction. He would provide it, and she craved their unique kind of passion as much as he did. It was what bound them and made them one together.
Harrison moved then, walking to Chloe’s side, then behind her. He let out more length of the frayed end of the rope, while lowering his hand, until the end dangled against Chloe’s oily buttocks. He snaked the end along the plush crease of her ass, watching her ivory flesh shiver alive with the sensation.
“Please,” she whispered.
Damn it, his mind cursed. “Put your wrists behind your back, Rosebud.” Just saying his pet name for Chloe stroked his cock. Her hesitation showed her reluctance.
But her wrists still moved behind her back. “Raven, I need to talk to you,” she tried.
“No,” he uttered with his hoarse voice, and he meant more than saying no to talking. His woman knew that. He roped her wrists once, but he held the hemp closed by his grip alone, without a knot. He pulled the rope, lifting her wrists behind her, arching her back and thrusting her naked breasts outward. She gasped a sound of excitement as he stepped to her side, lifting his free hand with the rope held coiled up to her throat. He grasped the slender column knowing the rope would be rough against her silky flesh, while the looped ends would sway and abrade the bare flesh of her breasts. He arched her neck back, bending her until his lips hovered with harsh breathing over her open and slightly panting mouth.
“No!” he expelled, right before he took her mouth.
Chloe moaned as the demand of Raven’s tongue submerged into her mouth. He was not gentle, but jarring, using his hand clamped over her throat to arch her back further as her wrists twisted to be free of the rope. It was an instinctual need to brace herself or defend herself against the consuming carnal invasion of her mouth. Raven’s tongue lashed against her tongue as his lips twisted and sucked, bruising her tenderness. The roughness, the slight pain, and the torrid heat excited her with fear. Her mind tried to fall away into the intense moment of harsh ecstasy, but she fought its usual course. Nothing had withstood it before. Raven’s command of her had always made her mindless in complete surrender.
But this time her love for him was stronger! When Raven pulled his lips away from the ravishment of her mouth, she would have fallen into a panting puddle on the floor, but for his hand clasping her throat. Still, she had the strength of love to say, “Please, Raven! I beg you. Do not leave me! Take me with you. I will die without you!”
“Die?” Raven asked, with a harsh rasp. “I will make you die and come back to life.”
Chloe felt the effort Raven used not to shake her as he used the pressure of his hands to pull her toward their bed. She was angering the demon and not certain if Raven could keep his demons from harming her in more than pleasure-pain.
“Does your cunt throb, Rosebud?”
“Yes,” she panted. “Just as your cock throbs for it, Raven.”
Chloe shocked herself with her own blurted words, being more defiant than she'd ever been before. She expected Raven’s swift, sure punishment, yet his hand did not squeeze tighter over her throat, while he pressed the back of her knees to the side of their bed. When she dared to peek upward, she was surprised to find a hint of amusement mixed with lust in his ebony eyes. Then, she felt the rope loosen around her wrists freeing them as Raven propelled her backwards onto the bed, rasping, “Let’s see who wins, my love.”
Chloe gasped as her spine fell against the soft mattress. However, before she could gasp again, Raven’s hand had clasped one of her ankles, lifting it until her knee yielded and bent. Then, in the blinking of her fluttering lashes, he had her ankle bound to her wrist. She tugged, darting her gaze to him. The only way her body could accommodate this was with her bent leg fallen outward, stretching her inner thigh muscles, while her other leg dangled down over the side of the bed.
Raven straightened, standing between the V of her thighs, at the end of the bed. “Raise your other leg, Chloe.”
Chloe? Raven never called her Chloe during their intense sexual play, and now he waited for her to submit willingly to him, to show him that she desired this as much as he did. She would be completely vulnerable to him, and the promise on his shadowed and arrogant face showed that he intended to feed on her without remorse. Yet, she could only think that if she sated the demons, then she could perhaps get through to him, even as her pussy welled in arousal.
Raven’s body shifted with a deep and harsh chuckle. His nostrils flared, and she knew he smelled the heady vapor of need drizzling in her pussy. Then, he began to take his shirt off, arrogant again, in confidence . . . as her knee bent upward.
Harrison had used ropes on Chloe once before, yet never to the extent he seemed compelled to now. Before, he'd tied her to the bed. This time he tied her to herself, wrist to ankle on both sides. Just the sight of the ropes around her delicate and glistening ivory flesh was nearly more arousing than the splayed V of her thighs exposing her cunt. It was more than exposed though, it was split wide open, sopping wet and red. Her sheath was a dark circle, unprotected and inciting his cock to engorge more and stretch the flesh so tightly that it was painful. Chloe’s protruding clit, stripped away from the folds around it was fat and sassy with need. Yet as always, it was the rosebud of her anus that jerked his cock in his britches. The perfect pink pucker spread open, exhibited and flaunting his senses.