MC BIKER ROMANCE: Bad Boy Romance: BETRAYED: (New Adult Motorcycle Club Navy SEAL Romance) (Contemporary Military Romance Thriller) (46 page)

Chapter 5

Isobel was glad of the chance to bathe, even in the cold stream. Davenport--no, Will--was proving to be all too charming a companion, and she was more and more aware of being alone in the woods with a strange man. The way his eyes followed her as she moved, the way his heat lingered in her skin when he touched her….

Some space from the Englishman was clearly necessary.

She was careful to make sure Will could not see her from their camp before she slowly stripped off her dress and the shift beneath it, laying both carefully on the shore before wading naked into the stream.

The chill of the water seeped into her, sending goosebumps across her body, making her nipples tighten.

It didn’t seem to reach the heat between her legs that had been building since she woke this morning with her leg pressed against Will’s cock. She had too often allowed herself to ponder what might have happened if their circumstances were different. Would she have allowed him to hold her, touch her? Would she have lifted her skirts for him, giving him access to the throbbing center of her desire?

Even now as she thought of his hands on her, she let her own hands wander over her skin, teasing at her hardened nipples, letting a hand slide further, the rush of cold water against her clit drawing a deep groan from her.

Her fingers delved between her legs, through her wet curls, finding the throbbing clit and rubbing hard against it. Will would finish their supper at any moment. She didn’t have time to linger over the pleasure of her body.

Thrusting fingers deep, she flicked her thumb again and again over her clit, her head thrown back in silent ecstasy. It took hardly more than a moment before she was crying out softly, pleasure flooding through her.

At the sound of a rustling from the shore, her eyes flew open, and she was shocked to see Will there, peeling off his clothes, a dark look in his eyes that frightened and excited her in equal measure.

She couldn’t tear her eyes from his lean, powerful body as he slid out of his clothes, dropping them to the ground and striding into the stream. His cock stood out, thick and proud, from a nest of curls at its base.

“What...what are you doing, Will?” she gasped, taking a step back.

“I need a bath,” he said, though the low rumble of his voice suggested something else entirely.

“The water’s cold,” she offered, watching his skin break into goosebumps, sucking in a breath at the way his nipples drew tight.

“So it is,” he said, and then he reached her, and his arm slid around her waist, pulling her close against his naked form. The chill of the water seemed to have dampened his erection some, but it still burned hot against the cold skin of her belly. “I wouldn’t want you to catch cold,” he added, drawing her back to the shore.

She didn’t know what had possessed him to touch her like this, but she was powerless to pull away. She pressed herself close to his body, and he led her naked from the water and back toward the fire of the camp, where she saw he’d already laid out a blanket.

“You’ll need to warm up,” he mumbled, but he could not keep the pretense any longer, and Isobel watched with wide eyes as he bent low to kiss her, crushing his lips to hers as she crushed their bodies together. His hands slid all over her dripping form, and the heat in her belly reignited, making her throb with desire once more.

Will held her close as he dropped to the blanket, laying her out below him. His hands found her pert breasts as she instinctively parted her thighs, allowing him to settle between them. Sparks shot through her when he pulled his lips from hers to wrap one around her aching nipple, and she arched toward the heat of his mouth.

“Will!” she gasped, and he growled against her skin, teeth catching on her nipple, drawing another shivering groan from Isobel.

Though she’d been thinking of this all day, she could hardly believe it was truly happening, that she was allowing it. When his mouth slid further down her body, leaving a warm, wet trail down her belly, she knew she wasn’t going to stop him. Not any time soon, at least.

His head lifted slightly, and for a long moment, he held her gaze, and then he was dropping his head again, and licking between her legs, teasing through her curls at first before delving beneath them.

Despite her recent climax--or perhaps because of it--her body was poised on the edge again already. The goosebumps over her body were no longer from the chill. She felt, if anything, overheated, and she thought she should be embarrassed for him to see her so wanton, but when his lips closed over her clit and his fingers slid into her, she could do nothing but arch her hips up and breathe, “More...please,” fingers twisting in Will’s hair.

He made a deep, growling noise that was almost possessive, and his fingers stroked her from within, sliding over something that send a shudder through her. His tongue continued its work over her pulsing clit, and in another moment, she was gasping and crying out her second climax.

While she was still squirming from her release, Will surged up her body, catching her lips in a kiss that tasted of her own arousal. He tugged her thighs up around his hips, and she felt the hot, blunt tip of his erection at her entrance a moment before he pushed hard into her, stretching her virgin opening, making him clench around her.

“Fuck,” he whispered, and she laughed, not even knowing why.

“Yes,” she managed after a moment. “Yes, please….”

“My god, yes,” he groaned, and he began to move inside her, pulling back, leaving her strangely empty, and then rolling back in, pushing deep, filling her more than she’d have thought possible.

It wasn’t long before his thrusts came faster, pushing again and again over the same spot he’d stroked earlier, making her whole body tremble as her muscles tensed, preparing for another climax.

As she reached her release, a groan of pleasure torn from her throat, she felt him pulse within her, and he gasped her name as his release filled her yet more.

They shuddered in unison, both trembling as their senses returned. Isobel kept her arms looped around his shoulders, not letting herself worry about what they’d just done, too worn out from her intense release to think of anything but the weight of Will above her, the hot rush of his breath against her skin.

When he finally moved off her, he kept his arms around her, drawing her close against his chest. Isobel curled against him, and his body seemed to frame her petite self.

“Forgive me,” he murmured into her hair. “I...I have wanted that….”

“There is nothing to forgive,” she assured him. “You...I...wanted it as well.”

“You were so perfect,” he said with a breathy laugh. “So beautiful in the water, I...I’m afraid I lost myself.”

“I think we both did,” Isobel agreed, lifting her head to look at him, see what was in his face.

It seemed like awe.

Isobel couldn’t keep that in her gaze, so she tucked her head against his neck and tried to relax back into his warmth. It wasn’t as easy as it had been before he’d looked at her like that.

“Is the fish ready?” she finally asked, unable to speak about the weight in her heart.

“Yes, of course,” Will said, pushing himself up with a laugh. “I daresay we both need a good supper.”

Isobel nodded, trying for an easy smile as she pulled herself to her feet. She felt his gaze on her even stronger now, and it made her whole body flush. “I’ll get our clothes; you get the fish.”

It took all her stubborn control not to run for the stream.

Chapter 6

Isobel was quiet the rest of the evening, through the night and into the morning. She would answer Will when he spoke, but she didn’t offer conversation of her own.

Will worried he’d pushed too far. He knew what the loss of virtue could cost a woman, and he didn’t know how to tell Isobel that he wanted to sanctify their love in the church, not when he knew it wouldn’t be allowed. She would never abandon Scotland for him.

He would have thought she regretted his touch, except that when they mounted the horse again, she leaned back into his embrace and allowed him to press a kiss to her beautifully pale throat.

They made good time, and before Will would have liked, they were back on the road, Carlilse just visible in the distance.

Isobel’s eyes stayed fixed on the city, and when they’d been almost a mile on the road, she finally spoke.

“If your word means so much to you,” she said, her voice gentle, thoughtful, “why do you let them use you as a spy?”

Will’s arms tightened around her, and he kissed her shoulder. It was not an easy question to answer. It was his duty, but as she’d said the night before, duty meant less than honor.

His duty bound him to finish his mission, even after such a delay.

His honor bade him return to the Scottish army with Isobel, to ask her father for her hand.

It was not such an easy choice to make.

About half a mile from the city, Isobel reined in the horse.

“You should go,” she said. “I can’t bring an Englishman along with me.”

“I’ll wait for you here,” Will offered.

“But your mission,” she said, shaking her head.

“Perhaps I won’t finish it.” He didn’t know if he would. Holding her now, the warmth of her body against his, the softness in her voice, it was not so easy to simply leave.  He raised his hand to her chin, turning her face back to his, and kissed her slowly before sliding from the horse.

“And perhaps you will,” she finished for him. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. If you’re here….” She trailed off, and Will wished he had a concrete plan to fill in for her.

She shook her head. “Goodbye, Will.”

“Farewell, Isobel,” he said, watching her go with a heavy, bewildered heart.

Chapter 7

Isobel put off leaving the next day as long as she could.

It was mid-morning before she rode her horse back out of Carlisle, onto the northern road. Finley had been easy enough to find, and she’d spent the night on the floor of his kitchen, though he’d offered his bed none too subtly when she said she needed to rest before going back.

She was in no rush to leave, truly. She had no illusions about what would be waiting for her down the road: a long ride back to the camp and no company to sweeten it.

The memory of Will’s hands on her skin, his lips tasting her, the hot stretch of his cock inside her…. None of it was tainted by the way things had ended. She would hold the sweet pain of that memory her whole life, she was certain.

But Will was an Englishman, and he had the loyalties of his countrymen. She knew he would not be waiting for her.

She set her horse to a gallup, wanting to shorten the road as much as possible, so she almost missed the figure sitting on the rock about half a mile from the city, elbows on his knees, chin in hands.

The horse saw him, though, and pulled himself up short, nearly tossing Isobel from the saddle.

“That eager to leave me behind?” Will asked sliding off the rock with a too-pleased grin.

“I...I didn’t expect you’d be here,” she admitted.

Will approached the horse, laying a hand on its flank and stroking gently. “I thought about what you said. About turning spy. I hadn’t ever thought of it as breaking my word. I’ve given no Scot my word.” He looked up, and she met his eyes, almost frightened of what she would see in them.

“Except you. I gave you my word not to run.”

“You needn’t keep it now,” she said softly, surprised by his determination on the matter.

“Then I’ll give it again,” he said, reaching up to pull her from the saddle, setting her on the ground in front of him, his hands on her hips. “Isobel Darrow, I give you my word not to run from you. For all my life.”

She was smiling. She didn’t remember starting to smile, but she was. Her hands slid up his arms to his shoulders, and she raised herself up on her toes to kiss him.

“Well,” she murmured against his lips. “We shall see what the word of an Englishman is worth.”

Tempted by the Rogue

Chapter 1

Henry

The ceiling was wrong.

The thought echoed through my mind, bouncing off the painful walls. It took attention away from my sore throat and my aching head.

Something was wrong with the ceiling.

I’d seen it when I tried to open my eyes the first time, winced, and closed them. It wasn’t the ceiling above my bed. Not the one I’d seen most nights these last seven years.

“Henry?”

The voice was high, and a little bit musical, but also a little bit scratchy. It hurt my head a little more, but then, most anything would at this point. But it began to bring the memories of the night before back to me. What had I been doing? I tried to adjust in the bed and open my eyes, and the soreness of my muscles immediately answered my question. I’d been dancing. Definitely.

I fought through the pain and sat up, prying my eyes open. I needed some water. Or a drink. Or both, really. I needed both. Maybe breakfast. No, I definitely didn’t want breakfast. But I’d need breakfast.

The woman in front of me wasn’t beautiful. Not in this light. She was unkempt and smiling. I tried to smile back at her but found in difficult.

“Henry, how are you feeling?”

And there was a new problem. She knew my name. But I didn’t know hers. If I focused, I could remember bits and pieces of the night before. It was an event, some kind of ball. There was always some kind of ball. We’d been dancing. Some had seen, and that had bothered me. Why had that bothered me?

What was her first name? What was her last name? I couldn’t very well not know, not after what we’d done afterward.

That was a little clearer when I thought back on it. The hands on skin. The delightful game of unwrapping all her layers to find the soft, pale flesh beneath. The ribbons and the lace that women always left hidden away, so that we men only got to see it when we’d earned out prize.

I figured it would be best not to speak. It would only trigger the pain in my head further if I did, anyway. Instead I sat up and grabbed her suddenly, flashing her what I supposed must be my most charming smile, based on the reaction I often got for it. And she gave me what I was after: her giggle and writhing. I thought perhaps this was a bad idea. I needed a drink. I needed some water. I needed some breakfast. I knew this.

But I
wanted
her.

A little voice in the back of my head reminded me that I was uncomfortable that others had seen me dancing with her. It tried to get my attention and tell me that whatever I did, I should do it quickly. But it was easy to shrug it aside. After all, this morning we could skip the unwrapping. She was already unwrapped. This morning I only had to enjoy my present.

I kissed her neck and her chest and ran my hands all over her. She was moving a bit too much, and a bit distractingly, but I didn’t let it put me off.

Not until she pulled away, and sat up in bed, rigid. She wrapped the blankets around her and was listening intently to something. I did my best to listen as well, but the general hustle and hubbub of London below meant nothing to me. My house was a bit more isolated, so city streets had always just sounded like city streets to me.

“Mr. Headwidge,” she said, with a sudden air of formality, “I think you had better be leaving.”

The abrupt change in her manner was perplexing, but the little voice in the back of my head was coming into its own.
See?
it was yelling at me.

“My dear,” I said, closing the gap between us and putting my hands back around her waist where they belonged. I was still unsure what else I could possible call her, but I continued anyway.

“Whatever could disturb us on such a fine, fine morning as this?”

She shook her head slowly at first, and then more quickly. And then the flutter of movement began. The present needed to re-wrap itself. It might be a fine present indeed, but I was not who it belonged to.

“My husband!” she whispered harshly, suddenly wholly concerned with secrecy.

The ache in my head and the ringing in my ears put up no contest in the light of my desire for self-preservation. The last time I’d been caught with a married woman had almost been the death of me. I’d ended up with pistols at dawn, nearly. Only the threat of the whole matter becoming public had persuaded the husband not to challenge me.

And I’d paid dearly in the end even so. I had no way of proving it, but I’d always believed the man had paid a group of thugs to apprehend me on my way home from the club one night only a week or so after. They’d beaten me to within an inch of my life, and it was a solid three months before I would even consider unwrapping another man’s present again. It had been the longest three months of my life.

No, I couldn’t be caught again. Usually you could trust the woman only to take you back to her home if her husband was well and truly out of the way for the time being. If he was on a trip to the continent, or to the Americas for his health. These were usually the situations in which a lady (or rather, a “lady”) would bring me back to hers. Usually they weren’t so careless as this one.

“Am I mistaken in the recollection that you insisted your husband would not disturb us?” I asked her, pointedly. I had no such recollection, but she must have insisted as much, to convince me to return with her.

“You are not mistaken,
sir,
” she said, rather harshly, I thought, “But I was mistaken, it seems.”

This was a waste of time. I was wasting time. I needed to find a way out. The master of the house wouldn’t take too long to get back to his bedroom. The ritual of greeting servants and learning of the state of his town affairs in his absence would only take precious little time.

The window opened onto the street. I barely stopped myself in time. Three stories up! In retrospect, I was a little bit impressed with myself that I’d managed the climb in the state I must have been in last night. But there was no time for congratulating myself. The window was not a viable option. What then? I couldn’t leave by the hall. There was simply no way I wouldn’t meet the cuckold coming up the stairs, and no explanation, under the circumstances, and with the fragrance of his wife still on me, that would do.

Under the bed? I’d used that one before. It was the workhorse of bedroom hiding places. But a moment’s examination convinced me that it wouldn’t do. The bed was too short, and would leave no space for me.

That left the next, most desperate option: the wardrobe. The cramped space was preferable to a husband’s potentially fatal reaction… but only just. These small spaced had always bothered me.

But alas! This woman must have been such a vain one! Her wardrobe was full beyond belief. No man, however motivated, would be able to fit in there.

“Quick, Henry!”

The woman, whose name I still couldn’t recall, was motioning to something. I didn’t want to believe it. It was a travel trunk that sat in the corner of the room.

“It’s quite tiny,” I said, wracking my brain for some other solution. Surely, there had to be another solution. Surely I couldn’t be instructed to climb into that thing.

“Hurry! It is the only thing in this room that is empty and will fit you!”

I didn’t doubt that it was the only place in the room that was empty. I only doubted that it would fit me. But I had no choice. The husband’s footsteps were audible now, and they drew closer and closer to the room. I folded myself into an absurd, contorted shape and got into the trunk, which the woman closed and, quite unfortunately, latched.

I kept my breathing as shallow and quiet as possible. It would have been a waste in the extreme if I suffered through this circumstance only to be found in the end anyway. Even so it sounded so loud to me in the tiny space. But to judge by their conversation, the husband and wife making their happy reunion mere feet from me could not hear it.

Their conversation was absurd. It just about sickened me. I thought at least I would learn the woman’s name, but I did not even have that sliver of silver lining. He called her “poppet,” laughably, and she called him “dearest.”

They discussed far too much. The minutia of his journey, the reason for his early return – all information I could have done entirely without. I barely listened, honestly. Not out of concern for the sanctity or privacy of the marital bond (this clearly did not concern me) but simply because it was so unendingly uninteresting. If she were
my
wife, of course, and I had been away for weeks verging on months as this man had been, there would be no mere words exchanged on the occasion of my return, that much was certain.

The thought should have been pleasant, to imagine myself as a man returning home after a successful journey to an adoring wife. But instead it made me uncomfortable and melancholy. I did not like to think why, but I knew.

“And of course Brest was as it ever is,” the man was saying, and a noise escaped, entirely involuntarily, from my throat. It filled the little cavity allowed for my breathing so completely that I was sure I was done for. Had they heard it? They must have heard it. Mustn’t they?

There was a pause in the conversation. Surely, this was confirmation. My last day was today, most unexpectedly. It seemed an anticlimactic end.

We’d never gone to Brest, in the end. But we were going to. It was going to be our honeymoon, where I would have her. Where I would claim her forever and I would know she was mine and she would know I was hers. I would have been hers.

Some melancholy recollections didn’t suit me. They didn’t suit anyone. But in the moment, I thought I was dying. They sprang to my mind unbidden.

“I say, poppet, did you hear a sound?”

The woman protested that she did not, and I held my breath entirely, feeling as though my lungs were about to burst. After a long, tense moment, he believed her.

Their conversation went on only a short while after that, and they left the room. They were to breakfast together in town, and I considered again, though only briefly, how different such behavior was from what my own would be. But then, my own wife, if I had a wife, would never be so abandoned as to make her an easy night’s conquest for a passing scoundrel. Perhaps “scoundrel” seems an uncharitable term to call oneself, but to me it had always appeared as a badge of honor, and I took it in the spirit I meant it: as a compliment.