The Captain's Wicked Wager Read online

  Ewan strained at the ribbons. Forced himself to relax.

  Belle laughed for the pleasure of it. She climbed onto the bed between his legs. Leaning over him, she allowed her nipples to graze the skin of his abdomen. She shivered at the contact and stooped down to lick him, tracing the line of his rib cage with her tongue. Stopped to watch him.

  His eyes darkened with desire. She felt him strain at the ribbons again. “Kiss me, Belle,” he whispered huskily.

  She shook her head. Leaning over him again, she traced a path with her tongue down his stomach, cradling his length between her breasts, teasing him with her nipples, relishing the feel of their hardness against his silken skin. Down she licked; the inside of his thigh then the other, revelling in the heat and maleness of him, feeling herself tight and wet, aware of his breathing becoming harsh and quicker as she lingered on the crease at the top of his leg.

  “Do you like being my prisoner, Ewan?” she asked, her mouth against his skin.

  Silence.

  Her finger fluttering along the length of him. Circling the tip. Her tongue now, repeating the action, licking her way up, lingering, circling. Ewan groaned.

  “Tell me you surrender, Ewan,” she whispered.

  “No,” he managed through gritted teeth, straining at the ribbons.

  Belle licked again. More than anything she wanted his hands on her, his lips on her, but that way lay capitulation and she was not ready for that. Not yet. Daringly, she put her lips around him and sucked gently. Silence of a different sort. She sucked again. Breathing so rapid she thought he was in pain. Looked up. Saw his eyes fly open.

  “Don’t stop.”

  “Say it,” she insisted.

  Her lips on him again. He thought he would die with the pleasure. Now butterfly kisses and fingers stroking, her lips again. Now looking at him, demanding. Ewan closed his eyes and looked away, praying she would have pity.

  She remembered last night. She could do the same to him. She could have him without allowing him to have her. It was a powerfully erotic image. Ewan was looking at her. She could see the plea in his eyes, though he would not say it. She touched him with her fingers, stroking until she could feel the blood pulse, stopping as it did, glorying in the exquisite pain she could see etched on his face.

  She put her lips around him again, drew him in as much as she could hold. Sucking purposefully now, feeling him engorged in her mouth, aware of him straining, breathing, saying her name, but caught up in her own powerful need to control him, feel him, and then he came, and finally she heard him, over and over again, saying the words, I surrender, but she didn’t care anymore and it didn’t feel like a victory; it simply felt right.

  She lay on his stomach. She could feel his heart beating hard. She was conscious of her own arousal, and wondered what to do about it. She could make him tend to her as he had last night, but that was not what she wanted. She wanted him inside her. Cautiously, she touched him. Wondering.

  A throaty chuckle. “Give me a moment.”

  She looked up. “Fighting back, Ewan?”

  He shook his head. “Simply trying to do your bidding, but I need time to recover. If you untied me, it would help.”

  But she would not. And it did not take so very long after all.;

  Lowering herself onto him, shivering as she felt him enter her, satin smooth and hard in contrast to her soft and wet core. Slowly, she sheathed him until he filled her, and she held him without moving.

  “Belle,” Ewan said urgently…“Belle, untie me.”

  She shook her head. Even that tiny movement reverberated inside her.

  Ewan strained at the ribbons holding him but to no avail. Belle moved again, up, down, slow, too slow, tilting herself forward on top of him, nipples grazing his chest. She was doing something else now, so that he was caught in a vicelike grip inside her. He felt the blood rushing. “Let me go, Belle.”

  Still she denied him, squirming on top of him, enjoying the friction, enjoying the power she had over him, enjoying the power she had over herself. She lifted herself up again, then down, then writhed.

  She could feel herself unravelling. She leaned forward using her elbows for purchase and thrust again. Ewan pushed up to meet her. His eyes on hers, dark amber, watching her, waiting for her, she realised. Finally, she kissed him. Deeply. Passionately. Her tongue hot in his mouth. She thrust, could hold it no longer, came around him, gripping his shoulders, like a complicated knot untying, and felt him climax almost at the same time, so that she was lost, unable to tell which was her and which was he as they fell, glided, and soared.

  Little kisses nuzzling her back to consciousness… Abruptly, Belle sat up. Reluctantly, she pulled herself away. She untied him.

  Ewan smiled at her lazily. “How does it feel to win?”

  “How does it feel to lose?”

  “Surprisingly good.” He sat up, massaging his wrists.

  To her embarrassment, there were red wheals where the ribbons had been pulled too tight when he had strained against them. “I’m sorry,” she said contritely. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  He shrugged and pulled her down on top of him. “It’s of no consequence.”

  His hands stroked her back, pulled her close, so close she could hear the thump of his heart. Her head fitted snugly onto his shoulder. How could three days have passed so quickly? Why could not the night last longer? She was dreading daybreak.

  “Belle, about tomorrow,” Ewan said.

  “There is no need to say anything,” she mumbled into his chest, unwilling to hear any reminder of their terms or, God forbid, his thanks or his excuses. She would leave without betraying herself if it killed her.

  Assuming they were in perfect accord, Ewan smiled contentedly. She was right. There was no need for words to frame something so fundamental. But he would say them all the same in the morning. Unconventional this courtship may have been, but it must be formally sealed. He slept deeply and dreamt of their future together. When he awoke she was gone.

  Chapter 6

  “Why did you leave without so much as a word?”

  Ewan pushed passed the maidservant and slammed the door of the small parlour firmly behind them. He was clearly angry. It showed in the hard glitter of his eyes, in the rigid way he held himself, leaning against the door, muscles tensed as if waiting to pounce, holding her in a gimlet glare she dared not break.

  Isabella shook her head helplessly.

  “I thought things were understood between us,” Ewan said harshly, pushing himself from the door and closing the distance to her with three long strides. “Last night, you said we need not say anything, I thought you realised—” He stopped abruptly, ran a hand over his unshaven jaw, up to his hair, copper and gold in wild disarray, in tune with his mood. “Isabella, have you any idea how I felt? I did not even know where you live.”

  She smiled nervously. “We did not get around to such common place information.”

  “No. What we shared was rather more fundamental,” he said, taking her hand. “Luckily, the footman who summoned the hackney for you this morning has an excellent memory.”

  Hope flickered in her breast, but she could not yet turn it into belief. “We certainly reached a—a frankness in a very short acquaintance which few people achieve in a lifetime.”

  Navy blue eyes met amber. Each searching desperately for reassurance. It was Ewan who spoke first.

  “Two days and three nights that is all, yet I feel I know you. I feel you know me, too.”

  He was frowning, his mouth a tight line. It was a look which could have been frightening, so fierce it was, but she was not frightened. Uncertainty, need, too, were reflected there. She had never seen him look so anxious. Never heard that note in his voice, not even at the height of their passion. She recognised it all. A reflection of herself.

  But still she sought reassurance. “You said last night we had no need for words.”

  “You thought I meant no regrets,” he said, understand
ing slowly dawning.

  She gave a ragged laugh. “I thought you were reminding me of our terms. That you had had enough of me. I could not bear to say goodbye.”

  A smile lurked at the corner of Ewan’s mouth. “Goodbye! One word we will never say. No, it was not that. It was just—something so elemental as we share, it seemed to me sacrilege to speak it.”

  “Elemental,” Isabella whispered. “That is how it felt.”

  “An irresistible force. We called it a battle, but it was more like an explosion, so powerful it was, that thing which brought us together.” He pressed her hand between his,.then.knelt at her feet. “We fought for control, when we should have simply surrendered. We are two halves of one being, Isabella. One creation far more powerful than its components. Do you not realise that?”

  She knew only too well. “My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,” she quoted softly. “I know that I love you, Ewan, if that is what you mean.”

  “I look at you and see me. That, my lovely Isabella, is exactly what I mean,” he said. “And though our wooing has been rather unconventional, that is what it was after all, a wooing. So I would beg you in the most conventional way to be my wife, for the most conventional of reasons, that I cannot live without you and my life would be empty without you.”

  She fell to the floor beside him, wrapping her arms around him. “And I must reply in the most conventional of ways that I will, I will, indeed I will.”

  “I love you, Isabella,” he whispered into her ear. “A mere three days we have spent together, but we have been meant for each other since the beginning of time.”

  Finally, his lips met hers. Tongues tangling. Breath mingling. Hot, hard kisses. Arms entwined. Bodies pressed so tight together nothing could ever come between them.

  A mere two hours they had been wed. They left on the morrow for the New World.

  “You’re shivering,” Ewan said, running his hands down his wife’s arms.

  “I’m nervous,” Isabella replied. “I know it’s foolish, but I feel as if this is the first time.”

  “It is. Before, we indulged in love-making. Tonight we will be making love. I am as nervous as you are.”

  Shyly, she untied the fastening of her chemise and let it fall to the ground. She came towards him, white skin, black hair, blue eyes, pink mouth.

  “Beautiful,” Ewan whispered. “Beautiful Isabella.” He ran his hands down the line of her spine to cup the curves of her bottom, pulling her close against him. “My wife. I love you.”

  “My husband,” she whispered, rubbing herself sensuously against him. “I love you.”

  He kissed her, and his touch sent a jolt of fire through her. Ewan’s hair clenched in her hand. Herself pushing, arching her hips into his, relishing the hardness of him against her. He lifted her onto the bed. Touching. Stroking. Licking. Sucking. Her mouth. Her breasts. Down to the heat between her legs. She moaned his name. Began to fall. Then he was on top of her, kissing her, thrusting deep inside her as she climaxed, arching against him, feeling him spill into her at the same moment, kissing, clutching. Calling her name. Calling his name. Drifting weightless, dispersed like a thousand stars into a new sky.

  One. They were one. That is how it ended. And that is how it began. In a new world.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4089-1754-1

  The Captain’s Wicked Wager

  © 2009 by Marguerite Kaye

  First Published in Great Britain in 2008

  Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, including without limitation xerography, photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

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  All characters in this work have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l.

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  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  About The Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Preview

  Copyright