My Lady Series Bundle (26 page)

“Ambassador Sang,” Raven said.

“Yes, that was my stepfather,” Chloe replied picking up a small bar of soap from the stool beside the tub. “I know you want to ask, Raven, please do,” she finished on a murmur.

“And, Lia?” he asked in a harsh rasp.

Chloe sighed. Lia had hurt her in so many ways but perhaps just this once she had given her a greater gift than all the pain put together. “We were separated when we were but two years old. Lia stayed with our father and I was left with our mother. Lia has always resented that.”

Raven stood abruptly and turned toward the fire. His scarred hands were clenched at his sides. “You really are Ambassador Sang’s daughter,” he uttered.

“Stepdaughter,” Chloe murmured as she watched Raven stalk from the room.

C
hloe was pregnant and did not realize it! Harrison slammed his fist into the bark of the tree he stood next to outside the cottage. He bit back his sharp cry of pain as he did it again. He knew every inch of Chloe’s body . . . every nuance. From her slightly bulged stomach to her heavier breasts. She was pregnant.
And the child was his.

He wanted to rage. He wanted to cry . . . damn him, he wanted to hope. He looked down at his bruised knuckles then upward through the trees surrounding the cottage. Why would she flirt with him? Why would she blatantly display herself to his lecherous gaze? Did she not remember what he had done to her in the carriage? He had been so angry. So jealous. He had nearly raped her, and then he had let down his control and lost her when he should have kept her safe.
Christ
, she had nightmares because of it.

“Raven, I have cooked us lunch,” Chloe called suddenly from the cottage doorway behind him. “I can cook you know. I love to cook. Come see.”

Harrison slowly turned to look at Chloe dressed in a simple yellow gown. No bare shoulders or plunging necklines, and she had never looked lovelier. What was she doing? As a matter of course he started toward her. He was hungry, and he could not have gone in any other direction had he tried.

It was incredible. Chloe must have cooked some of the food beforehand. The souffle and the crispy white bread, surely. When she reached to pour him some wine, he covered the top of the glass with his hand. “Not wine, Chloe.” He looked at her glass across the table. “What are you having?”

“Lemonade.”

“That will do,” he murmured. She looked at him in wonder yet stepped back into the kitchen to bring him a cold glass of lemonade. He owed her . . . he knew. “I have quit drinking,” he muttered.

Chloe set the glass down and went to sit. “Liquor, Raven? You have quit drinking liquor?”

“Yes,” he muttered uneasily, glancing at her before he turned to the meal.

“I see,” she murmured, and then she began to attack her meal with gusto.

It appeared her nausea from earlier was gone. Morning sickness! He could not help but be amused as he covertly watched her eat, she particularly liked the chocolate souffle she served with the roast beef. Only Chloe appeared to like the chocolate with small dill pickles. She did not touch the roast beef and he could not imagine the combination with lemonade. Yet she did, consume all three . . . heartily and nothing else.

“He died you know,” Chloe said popping a chunk of dill pickle into her mouth. “Robert that is. I did not say earlier.”

“I gathered. You said, was.”

“Oh I did, didn’t I,” she reached for more chocolate souffle, before she said, “We only had three nights. I am not sure we even liked each other. We simply did not know each other really. It was impulse. He was a soldier and I-”

“You do not have to tell me,” Harrison interrupted glancing at her.

“I know, Raven. It is just that . . .” Chloe paused, looking at him intently with her incredibly beautiful brown eyes. “I wanted to tell you. And I know that you want to know.”

“How could you think you know me?” he asked roughly.

“Because I love you!” she suddenly exclaimed, and then at that same moment she stood abruptly to walk into the kitchen.

Harrison was stunned. Shocked. He swallowed hard on a piece of roast beef, grabbing his glass of lemonade. She loved him? But? Harrison came to his feet at once and strode to the kitchen . . . however, Chloe was gone.

He found her a short time later at a small stream fifty paces behind the cottage. He found her in the stream actually with bare toes and the skirts of her yellow gown pulled up above her knees. She was a golden nymph with dappled sunlight dancing off her beauty as it filtered through the leafy trees. He had never wanted anything more. Nor had he been more afraid in his life. He hesitated on the mossy bank of the stream with the sudden overwhelming surety that he did not belong in Chloe’s sunlight dream. Inevitably he would darken any dream that she . . .

“
And
you love me too, Raven,” Chloe called out turning to him. It was a challenge yet in the depths of her melting brown eyes he saw her certainty, and impossibly her joy.

“Yes,” he expelled in a harsh rasp, feeling as though that singular word were torn from his soul. “Yet I would destroy you. I...”

“Would you, Raven? Destroy me how?”

“My cravings,” he spewed harshly. “I need...
Christ
, I need...”

“My love. My submission. My embrace. My obedience? Never once, Raven, have you harmed me,” she paused. “Yet you have given me the most extraordinary pleasures. And I ask you now after I have declared my love for you. What of my cravings, Raven, for I am truly lost without you and I would beg . . .
no
, I would crawl for...”

“Damnation,” Raven cursed fiercely, abruptly cutting off her words before she could finish voicing the damning prediction that he had made so long ago to her.
“Never
, Chloe,” he hissed. “I would crawl first.
Never
you.”

“Then this means that you will not send me away, or leave me again,” she replied with an instant smile of feminine triumphant.

Harrison grasped it immediately, and with shocking relief that he was neatly trapped, tied up in a simple yet elegant package. Chloe had maneuvered him unerringly right into the position that she wanted him to be in.
Christ
, he loved her, and it appeared that she loved him as well. He did smile then, a dangerous smile filled with intent, love, and the immediate heightening of his sexual desire. Chloe gazed at him hesitantly, instantly demure. “Raven?” she questioned with the tip of her small pink tongue wetting her lips.

He began taking off his jacket “
Bare
your breasts to me, Chloe. I want to see you naked in that stream.” He watched Chloe blushing, looking timid to his command as he reached for the laces on his shirt tugging them open. “Now, baby girl, or I will come into that stream after you.”

The thrill of his words and intentions coursed through his veins. The fact that Chloe was his, and she wanted to be his, humbled him, yet excited him, because she had proclaimed her love, and then bravely proclaimed her cravings that matched his. She wanted to submit to him, it aroused her as it did him and it filled him with completion, and beyond that an unwavering trust in her. He would be the master, her master . . . her love.

Chloe’s slightly slanted almond-shaped eyes peeked at him as she let the yellow skirts of her gown fall into the stream swirling around her ankles and she reached for the bodice of her gown. He stopped at his pants leaving them for the moment as he brazenly gazed at her, still hesitating, then he marched into the stream after her. She squealed of course and stumbled backward before he caught her. “I believe you need to be reminded, my love, that I will have my way,” he uttered, wrestling her into turning until her spine was caught against his bare chest. "With you,” he finished.

Chloe squirmed against him enchantingly with her sleek black hair mingling with the curling hairs on his chest. Her buttocks through her skirts did erotic things to his stiffening dick as he held her captured with his forearm, and then with his free hand he began hauling up her skirts. Chloe’s struggle against him was not of escape or defiance but of sexual arousal. Her femininity commanded that he take her, force her to surrender her arousal to him. This is what excited her. This is what freed her.

She was naked beneath her skirts and the discovery provoked him hotly, yet he clamped down on his own spiraling desires. He intended to take his woman mercilessly there in the sunlight, in the stream, to start with. His hand found her hungry cunt, already slick with eagerness.

“Raven, I
need
you so,” she gasped with the back of her head twisting restlessly against his collarbone while she clutched his wrist between her thighs not in forbearance but with urgency. He unveiled the shameless thrust of her clit with his two outside fingers and brought his middle finger down to bare over the hungry begging protrusion.

“Please,
please,
” she moaned even as he lifted his knee between her legs from behind to splay her thighs wider and open her more to his fingering. Her unbridled response to him was thrilling.

“Show me your breasts, baby girl,” he uttered gruffly. “I want to see your hard little nipples”

“Yes, Raven,” she cried. “Oh yes, anything!” Her hands frantically tugged at her bodice until her breasts were bared into the sunlight. The thrusting pink spikes of her nipples were bold with arousal, so tight they poked outward like small rosy-pink spears.

“Play with your breasts, Chloe,” he commanded. “Pluck those shameless little nipples. Let me see you.”

“My one,
” she gasped with her hands cupping her breasts raising them upward as her head twisted from side to side on his chest and the backs of her thighs quivered uncontrollably over his leg. He flicked his finger faster over her jutting clit. “Oh!” she cried as she played with her breasts, lifting and fondling them, then wildly plucking the aroused spikes.

Christ,
his woman was passionate beyond belief. Just for him, he thought heatedly, only for him. “Raven, I need you. I need you!” she cried and even though he knew she was senseless in the throes of passion, the desperation in her voice alarmed him.

So much so he rasped harshly, “Chloe, I am here. I will
always
be here for you, baby girl.”

“Oh-oh! Oh!” she cried sharply, convulsing against him like the rushing water of the stream at their feet. He felt the pulse beat wildly in her clit as she held her breasts in both hands with her graceful neck arched backward. He knew this moment as sure as his own breathing, and he caught her as she gave one last gasp of pleasure, and then she fell limp into his arms.

That he could do this to her, that she gave herself so freely, and that he could arouse her so strongly as to faint with pleasure was arrogantly fulfilling. Yet even as he carried Chloe out of the stream to lay her down upon his discarded clothing, he set that arrogance aside. Shoved it aside as the many niggling worries that something was not right with his love came around full circle in his mind.

Chloe woke slowly to the wondrous feeling of warm male hands gently stroking her breasts. It was not sexual at the moment but more soothing and she languished in the feeling of being petted so tenderly. However, her murmurs of pleasure gave away her awakening and she lazily opened her eyes to see the sharp angles of Raven’s face above hers. She could not help the blush that heated her cheeks when she saw the sure knowledge of her complete abandon in his eyes. He was arrogant in the knowledge of what he could do to her with his touch, and he was proud of it. She would not have it any other way, yet that still did not mean she could not help but be a little embarrassed.

“Your blushes only encourage me,” Raven murmured, cupping and lifting one of her breasts warmly in his scarred palm as he continued to say, “On the day we marry, when I say the vow, I will be thinking of all the years you will spend in my bed and of all the ways I might make you blush for me.”

“Raven!” she exclaimed with instant tears gathering beneath her eyelashes. He had said they would marry! She could not speak as she gazed up at him.

“When you look at me like that, Chloe, the world around me ceases to exist,” he murmured with his head lowering until his lips covered hers. The kiss was hot and male, completely possessive and she drowned in the heat of it, raising her arms upward around his neck. “I love you,” he murmured through his kissing. “I do not deserve you, but I do intend to keep you forever mine.”

“And I love you too,” she murmured within the heat of their lips touching. “And I will be forever yours.”

“Mm,” Raven murmured, breaking their kiss to lean above her. “And now, baby girl, you will tell me what is wrong and you will let me be your strength.”

Chloe’s eyes misted over again with love and uncertainty. “I might not be w-well, Raven,” she stuttered through her uncertainty. “The opium . . . or-or, I do not know,” she finished wretchedly.

“Hush,” he murmured stroking her hair, then his scarred fingertips brushed over her cheek. “Is it because you were sick earlier, Chloe? Is that what you are afraid of?” he asked.

“Yes . . .
no
,” she responded trying to hold back her tears. But then she blurted, “I cannot remember, Raven! I keep losing what people say to me as though . . . as though, I never heard them and-and I do not know why!” She sobbed then no longer able to hold back her weeping as she reached for him and he lifted her upright into his embrace. “What has happened to me?” she cried into his shoulder.

“Chloe, Chloe,” Raven rasped gruffly as he held her tight in his embrace. “No matter what is wrong, baby girl, I am here. Do you understand, Chloe? You do not have to be afraid.”

“It w-was j-just so h-hard to t-tell someone,” she gasped, ending with a teary hiccup.

“But you are not afraid now, are you? Here with me?” he asked as he rocked her in his embrace.

“N-no,” she answered with a watery gurgling sound as her tears abated further and she snuggled closer into his embrace.

“You need to be brave for me now, Chloe,” Raven murmured. “I want to ask you something.”