Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds

‘Not you. A man. Any man would have done. Being promiscuous means you’re not choosy about your sex partners.’

‘But you didn’t get any man,’ he said roughly. ‘Lucky for you, you reckless little fool, you got me…’

She put her hands on her hips, her torso tilted aggressively forward as she snarled, ‘Lucky? I’d call it ironic that I chose to have my sexual fling with a man who was as dishonourable as my late, unlamented husband!’

The insult visibly struck him to the core. ‘What in the hell do you mean by that?’ he snarled back, closing the gap between them until the heat generated by their two bodies met and mingled.

She had him on the back foot; now it was her turn to shove, and shove until he tripped over his own lies. ‘You seduced your brother’s fiancée! Don’t bother to deny it. Ryan told me that Carolyn and Chris were an item long before you came on the scene.’

He cursed rawly. ‘Ryan might be a genius but that doesn’t make him infallible.’

‘You mean it isn’t true? That Carolyn wasn’t engaged to Chris when you slept with her and got her pregnant—?’

‘Ryan couldn’t have told you that!’ he interrupted savagely.

‘No, but it’s so obvious when you look at the timing. This wedding should have been Chris and Carolyn’s, shouldn’t it?’ She had noticed that some of the early quotes Hazel had stuffed in her desk dated back further than a couple of months, but had dismissed them as examples of her hopeful anticipation. ‘You must have been the reason they had their row and broke the engagement.’

‘Must I? You don’t think that, considering what you know of my character, you might have drawn another, less obvious conclusion—one more favourable to my honour?’

She felt the pain of his deep offence like a quiet shudder in her soul. He was truly outraged that she was calling his personal integrity into question. ‘What do you mean? What other conclusion is there?’

The muscle flickered in his clenched jaw. ‘Nothing. None. It doesn’t matter.’

She didn’t believe him. It had mattered enough to him to cause his tight-lipped control to falter. And if it mattered to him, of course it mattered to her, more than anything…

Joshua wasn’t like Michael. Michael would never have rushed into a burning building to save other people’s lives at a serious risk to his own. Michael had never faced up to his responsibilities—even in death he had evaded making any provision for his son’s future. But Joshua behaved honourably even when it was dangerous to do so, even when it was difficult, or interfered with his own pleasures.

As the boat creamed over the glittering open sea, a clear shaft of light seemed to shine down from the blue vault of heaven and illuminate the answer in her heart.

But how to break down that wall of steely self-control and make him admit it?

‘So…if you weren’t sleeping with Carolyn before the big fight, then it must have happened after. After her horrible row with Chris she came running to his big brother for comfort, and instead you took ruthless advantage of her vulnerability—is that the scenario you expect me to believe?’

He picked up his glass again and took a long swallow. ‘I don’t expect anything of you.’

Now he was lying!

‘Is it your baby—or Chris’s? Or are the dates that you both slept with her so entwined that neither of you know which one of you is the father?’

His head jerked back at her slicing scorn. ‘It’s a Wade. That’s all that’s important.’

‘And you don’t mind marrying your brother’s discards?’

He finished the drink, his knuckles white around the glass. ‘Leave it, Regan.’

She was beginning to get an even stronger inkling of the way his mind worked. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it when the tables are turned and I’m the one asking all the intrusive questions?’ she said recklessly. ‘Maybe you three had a slightly incestuous ménage à trois going…does it turn you on to share a woman in bed with your brother?’

‘Be very—very, careful what you say next,’ he said thickly. ‘In fact, it would be an extremely good idea if you shut up altogether!’

Adrenaline raced through her veins. ‘Or what? You’ll throw me to the sharks? What price your honour then? Oh, I forgot…you don’t have any! So maybe Carolyn wasn’t a willing party in this fascinating scenario of yours at all. Maybe it wasn’t seduction on your part, but rape—’

‘I’ve never even touched her—!’ he roared, and broke off, his eyes blazing with silver wrath.

‘But you’re going to marry her all the same.’ She was breathless in horrified awe. ‘You’re going to marry a woman you don’t love, and who doesn’t love you, in order to give your brother’s baby the family name, because for some reason he’s baulking at marriage and unplanned fatherhood. What you can’t force him to do you’re going to do yourself. My God, that’s positively Gothic! Don’t you think that’s carrying your sense of honour to a ridiculous extreme—?’

She squeaked as she was snatched off her feet, dangling by her upper arms between two iron fists.

‘I told you to shut up!’

‘But you didn’t tell me what would happen if I didn’t,’ she said breathlessly, pushing her hands against his chest and pointing her sandalled toes in a vain attempt to touch the deck.

He began to slowly lower her towards him, the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulging with the effort. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. You wanted me to lose control. I would have taken apart a man for saying those things—’

‘But I’m a woman.’ The smouldering acknowledgement flared in his eyes and her voice went abruptly and embarrassingly husky. ‘B-besides, violence never really solves anything—’

‘The hell it doesn’t,’ he growled, and kissed her—a hot, savage clash of mouths that made her go up in flames as he hooked his arm under her knees and swung her up into his arms, carrying her from the bright sunlight through the cool luxury of the lounge and down the narrow companionway into the dim depths of his cabin.

‘You said we weren’t going to do this,’ she gasped, kicking off her shoes as he set her lightly on her feet and peeled his still buttoned shirt over his head.

He cupped her face, and drew her mouth under his.

‘God forgive me, I lied…’

Chapter Nine

REGAN smoothed her trembling hands over his bare chest, skimming her palms over his rippling shoulders and down across the silky pelt of hair to the ridged muscles of his abdomen, thrilling to her rediscovery of his masculine beauty.

Joshua broke his mouth from hers and threw his head back, closing his eyes as he licensed her hands to rove caressingly against his skin, offering himself up like a sacrificial victim to the spearing pleasure of her touch.

‘You remembered how much I liked that…’ he groaned as her fingertips slid through the tangle of curls and nudged against the flat discs of his nipples. ‘Yes…do that again…’ His muscles contracted and his chest rose, pushing against her exploring fingers as she obeyed. He shuddered, his nostrils flaring at the scent of his own arousal. ‘God, what you do to me…’

She could see it in the taut planes of his face, hear it in the harsh sound of his indrawn breath and feel it in the electric tension of his body, and it excited her unbearably to know that he was so violently responsive to her touch that even the lightest stroke could make his desire strain savagely on the leash. It had been the same that night in the apartment…his hunger for her so wonderfully intense that she had felt like the most beautiful and alluring woman in the world…the only woman who existed for him, the focus of all his dreams and the answer to all his desires.

He opened his eyes and smiled slowly at the sight of her flushed face, parted lips and smugly sensuous eyes.

‘Little tyrant, you like having me at your mercy, don’t you?’ he accused, but his deep tone was one of smoky approval. His hands stroked up her arms and spread around her back, massaging the soft cotton fabric of her top against her slender form. ‘You like knowing that you have the power to drive me beyond the bounds of common sense, of decency…’

In a twisted way she did. It satisfied a deep-seated need in her to be the primal source of his actions.

‘I’m the one who should be begging for mercy,’ she said, drawing her nails delicately across his chest. ‘I’m the one who was kidnapped by a pirate. Swept off my feet and carried down to the bowels of his ship—’

‘—to be ravished from head to toe…’ He cupped the side of her face with a scarred hand, his eyes darkening. ‘But not entirely against your will…’

The taunting accusation of rape had wounded him, even if he had swiftly realised that it had merely been intended to goad him into revealing the truth. She turned her head, pressing her lips to the crease of his strong life line. ‘Not at all against my will…’

Her husky confession made him shudder.

‘I don’t want to hurt you—’ The tormented admission was dragged from him reluctantly, a concession to the impossible situation that existed outside the universe of the closed cabin. ‘I’ve made a promise that I won’t—can’t— go back on…too much is at stake…’

She couldn’t tell him that it was too late, that the hurt was already stored up in her heart against the day that she would no longer have any place in his life. She couldn’t lay that burden on him, on top of the ones that he already bore on his broad shoulders. They both knew that what they were doing was wrong, but not as wrong as it would be tomorrow—or in a month’s time, if and when he married Carolyn. Despicable as it might be, Regan wanted to snatch one more precious memory for herself before her conscienceforever denied her the expression of her forbidden love.

It had taken months for her to be wooed around to the idea that she was in love with Michael, but with Joshua there had been no gradual awakening; the knowledge had come like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky—a violent, concussive shock exploding in her consciousness and accompanied by a strong whiff of sulphur. She hadn’t been looking for love—quite the reverse—but it had stormed into her wary heart with a vengeance, and she found she could no more control the unruly emotion than she could the stars in their courses.

But, unlike her first, naive foray into love, this time the portents for a relationship were quite clearly disastrous, and she was prepared for the worst.

‘I know…’ she whispered reassuringly, loving him for his warning. ‘I know you won’t hurt me,’ she added, her hands moving to his belt to unthread the buckle, ‘because I already know what kind of lover you are…strong and virile, and incredibly generous.’

Her fingers went to his zip and he caught her wrists, using them to pull her up against him. His mouth came down on hers and he ravaged it with a forceful passion that triggered a gush of moist heat between her thighs. He angled his head, licking and nibbling at the soft, inner tissue of her mouth, drawing her tongue into his mouth and tugging on it with a rhythmic, erotic suction that made her yearn for an even more intimate intrusion into her moist interior.

His hands fisted in the thin, white cotton of her top, drawing the stretchy fabric tight across her breasts as he lifted his head to study the effect.

‘I like knowing that you don’t wear a bra,’ he said thickly. ‘The other night at the party I imagined I could see the shadow of your nipples against the white silk. I knew they’d be as dark as ripe cherries because they were so pointed and hard.’

‘That was because of you,’ she whispered, arching her back and tilting her head to give him a better view. ‘Because your eyes on me made me want you, even though I pretended not to notice…’

He smoothed a hand across the small mounds, cupping and shaping them. ‘They’re hard now, too.’ He found one stiff nub and fondled it gently, then more roughly as he watched her face register the sharp thrill, her eyelids sinking, her cheeks flushing, her damp mouth quivering in inarticulate pleasure.

One hand wrapped around her arched back and she clutched at his shoulders as he pushed the hem of the top up over her collarbone, framing her breasts for his admiration.

‘Look, they’re blushing…’ he said, drawing a finger up one hot, swollen rise, tracing the blue veins that showed through the tight, translucent skin.

‘I’m not surprised,’ whispered Regan shakily. ‘If you knew what I was thinking you’d be blushing, too…’

‘What are you thinking about…this?’ He replaced his finger with his hot, wet mouth, painting the entire surface of her breasts with slow, rasping strokes of his tongue, gradually narrowing his concentration to the glistening nipples. ‘I remember how much you loved me doing this,’ he said, his voice a whisper of sound against her creamy flesh, ‘how you demanded I do it over and over again…I remember how I gave you an orgasm just by pushing my thigh tight between your legs while I sucked on your dainty nipples.’

And she remembered how he had used words as cleverly as he had used his mouth and his hands. Her knees melted, and on the way down he pulled the top over her head and threw it on top of his shirt, supporting her from hand to hand as he efficiently dealt with her trim skirt.

She was embarrassed at the plainness of her unadorned white panties, but he smiled as he hooked his fingers into the elastic.

‘Prim little cottontail,’ he teased as he stripped them down her thighs. ‘Don’t you know how erotic the contrast is between these and your own natural G-string of sexy black lace?’ And he ruffled his fingers teasingly in the soft triangle of dark fur that the panties had concealed.

The throb of the boat’s engine beneath her feet seemed to echo the thrumming of her heart as Joshua threw off the rest of his clothes with an enchanting, almost boyish eagerness. But there was nothing boyish about him when he pulled her back into his arms.

The wide double bunk was built into one corner of the cabin on a pedestal of drawers, its smooth, satiny, dark blue cover glowing under the strip of lights concealed in the bottom row of bookshelves on the wall above the bed, but when Joshua sat down on the edge and tried to draw her down on top of him, Regan resisted.

She sank to her knees between his legs, onto the thick, soft carpet, running her hands up the strong column of his thighs, gliding her thumbs into the sensitive patches of hairless skin on either side of his groin.

When she bent her head, he stilled, his hands cupping her shoulders. ‘Regan—’

Her eyes lifted to his. ‘I want to make love to you.’ And, as his gaze moved hungrily down over her nude, submissive pose she reminded him huskily, ‘The way you did to me…’

His nostrils flared as she closed her mouth over him and proceeded to pleasure him to the brink of madness with her soft tongue and throaty little sounds of seductive enjoyment. His back stiffened, the tendons in his neck cording as he arched his throat and gritted his teeth, fighting the approaching explosion in order to increase the deliciously excruciating torment of unsatisfied desire. He plunged his hands into her hair, guiding her beautifully eager mouth, and when he could bear it no more his iron muscles knotted and convulsed, and a harsh, guttural cry of groaning completion was torn from his heaving chest.

Only then did she allow him to pull her beside him on the rumpled cover and cuddle her up to his naked length.

‘You’re the incredibly generous lover…’ he murmured, propping himself up on one elbow so that he might gauge her reaction to his languorous caresses. ‘For all you know you might have just ruined your chances of being thoroughly bedded…’

She gave a small gurgle of sultry delight. ‘I doubt it, if your previous performances are anything to go by…’ Her breath ended on a little hiccup as his touch feathered dangerously low on her concave belly.

‘Your husband didn’t satisfy you in bed, did he?’ He traced his way back up to her aroused breasts and bent over to softly moisten a rosy nipple.

She shivered. ‘I thought he did…’ she said huskily, ‘…until you…Then I knew. With him it never felt—I didn’t—I never…’

His eyes were moon-silver as he combed her hair across the pillow. ‘You never had an orgasm…’ She blushed at his tone of gloating satisfaction and his soft laugh was tinged with triumphant pride. ‘You were so delightfully frantic that first time—as if you didn’t quite realise what was happening to you—but afterwards you were wildly uninhibited, and so eager to experiment I could hardly fail to oblige…’

He nuzzled at her mouth, deliberately abrading her cheeks with his soft whiskers, kissing her, stroking her until she was moving ceaselessly, restlessly, rubbing herself against him, becoming increasingly excited as she felt him hardening against her belly, and then he was reaching for her, rolling her under him.

‘Miracle-worker…’ he growled sexily as he pushed her thighs apart, settling himself firmly against the juncture of her body.

She felt the blunt force of him testing her readiness and suddenly stiffened. ‘Are you—? Joshua, you’re not wearing any protection—’

He froze and looked down at himself, stunned, then into the yearning violet eyes that were suddenly drenched with unexpressed sorrow.

‘It isn’t safe,’ she told him shakily. ‘I haven’t used the pill since Michael died. He—he never wanted me to have his baby,’ she whispered. She couldn’t stop the words spilling out: how Cindy had confessed that Michael had thought her too brash, too poorly educated, too overtly sexy with her bleached hair and big breasts, to be groomed into a proper corporate wife, whereas Regan had been tailor-made for his ambitions. How, to please Michael, Regan had continued with her law studies, even when she’d realised she wasn’t cut out to be a lawyer; how she’d increased the hours of her part-time job in order to help them afford the big, up-market house in a swanky suburb that he had insisted was essential to his image; how she had acted as his hostess whenever he’d wanted to show off his stable home life, and nobly respected his long hours of work and frequent absences from home.

‘But whatever I did to please him, it never seemed to be enough. And I couldn’t even make him want our child,’ she said bleakly. ‘He let her get pregnant, but he stood over me every morning until I’d taken my pill, to make sure I couldn’t conceive…’

‘Ah, Regan…’ He drank from her trembling lips and rolled his forehead against hers. ‘He was a worthless cheat. Controlling your fertility was just another way for him to exert his domination over a wife whom he knew was his moral and intellectual superior. Don’t be sad—be glad that your babies won’t carry his genes.’ He shaped her breast and stroked the tender peak. ‘One day you’ll suckle a baby at your breast, and I know you’ll make a wonderful mother…’

But not with him…

He rolled off the bed and was back again before she could recover from his shattering words, donning the protection with deft movements that ensured she had little time to think before he was gathering her up again and moving smoothly between her thighs.

Sensing that only passion could banish her lingering tristess, he braced himself over her on locked arms and plunged inside her, each powerful, explosive thrust of his thighs and buttocks forcing her further up the bed. His pace didn’t falter, the added tension in her tautly straining torso and her spreadeagled limbs exciting him to even more reckless heights. In the air-conditioned coolness the sweat glinted on his chest, forming droplets that pearled in the thick mat of hair and trickled down his rippling belly to add to the steamy moisture that slicked their thighs where their bodies met.

His face was hard and glazed, his eyes locked with hers, all his attention focused on her approaching climax as she jerked and shuddered under his rampant assault, uttering heated little whimpers and moans of encouragement that fed his lust to see her come totally apart before his own orgasm destroyed the last of his control.

Regan’s vision began to fade around the edges, her mind disengaging as her senses drastically overloaded, unable to process the escalating bombardment of pleasure. Her eyes purpled as she rushed towards the abyss of ecstasy, exulting in Joshua’s fiercely unrelenting possession, thrilling to the intrusion of his hard body, the hugeness of him filling her, loving her to the hilt, and the incredible feeling of swelling tightness that grew and grew until it exploded and she screamed with the agony of blissful release.

Then Joshua was wrenching and groaning and pouring himself into her, and their bodies eased into the sweet aftermath of mutual fulfilment that to Regan felt like the settling of her soul, like coming home…

She rolled over onto her side at the edge of the bed, facing away from him, trying to control the unruly emotions that threatened to spill out of her mouth. She stared, dry-eyed, across the cabin, trying to close herself off from the press of feelings, reaching inwards for the courage to accept what she couldn’t change. Joshua wouldn’t want tears and tantrums—he probably got enough of those from Carolyn. He would want her to be cool and sophisticated. He might even, God forbid, want them to remain friends…

‘I’m sorry…’ She heard the bittersweet remorse in his voice as she felt a finger slowly trace the bony centre line of her back from her nape to the hollow at the base of her spine.

‘I’m not!’ She widened her eyes fiercely, refusing to regret a moment of her glorious physical outpouring of love.

‘No, not for what we’ve just done…’ His finger stroked up again. ‘But for the fact that I can’t offer you any more than this…’ She felt his lips against the wing of her shoulderblade. ‘If I were a different sort of man and you were a different sort of woman we could remain lovers, but we both have too much pride and self-respect to sacrifice honour to a self-serving lie…’

She remembered that he had quoted her Shakespeare about her being a pearl, and now another quotation floated into her mind that summed up her understanding of Joshua Wade…‘Mine honour is my life; both grow in one; Take honour from me, and my life is done.’ She could not love him half so much if he were not a man of such unflinching principle.

‘I know…’

She felt his hand spread out across her back as the breath came sighing from her lungs. ‘Chris wanted a long engagement…he didn’t want to lose Carolyn, but she refused to move in with him and he didn’t feel quite ready for marriage. When she broke the news that she was pregnant they had a fight in which he accused her of trying to trap him and she accused him of wanting her to have an abortion. They both said some ugly things that neither seem willing to overlook—’

‘You don’t have to tell me this—’ she began painfully, but he firmly overrode her.

‘That morning after you left the apartment, Carolyn phoned me from here in hysterics, begging me to come up and help. She and Chris had been rowing for a week, and she was at the end of her tether. She isn’t cut out to be a single mother; she’s tough in some ways but emotionally fragile in others. She had given herself to my brother in good faith and he had turned his back on her when she most needed his support. I promised her that she wouldn’t have to go through this on her own and I have to stand by that promise. I owe that to her—and to Frank and Hazel, for the way that they’d welcomed Chris into their home.

‘Whatever her feelings for Chris, we agreed that if we married, then for the baby’s sake it has to be a real marriage…not simply a temporary sham for the sake of convention. I’ll be a faithful, protective husband and do my utmost to ensure that she’s a contented wife. And the baby will grow up as Ryan’s brother or sister.’

How noble of him. The acid words burned on the tip of her tongue as envy challenged her good intentions at the thought of another woman as the sole object of his cherishing. And yet it was balm to her heart to believe that the reason he had never tried to contact her again after their original tumble between the sheets might not have been because he hadn’t been interested, but because his orderly world had suddenly exploded in emotional chaos and his strong sense of honour had relegated all women but Carolyn firmly into the past.