Page 13 of At His Lady’s Command

Randall could hardly form a coherent thought let alone speak. Instead, he reached up to tease her clitoris with his thumb, and she cried out. Her movements became jerkier, and she suddenly leaned hard to one side, tugging him so they rolled and their positions were reversed.

“Fuck me,” she ordered, as she twined her legs around his waist and held him close. “Hard.”

Disobediently, he started slow, smiling inwardly when Lady Portia smacked his shoulder in disapproval of his lazy thrust and withdrawal. In truth, he needed to regroup. Anything faster and he would come like a geyser, and he wasn’t nearly ready to leave the hot, wet haven of her cunt. “Something wrong, my lady?”

Her nails scraped his back. “You are…oooh…being very bloody naughty…”

“Do forgive me,” Randall replied, angling his hips so his groin rubbed directly against her clitoris at the end of each thrust.

She gave a frustrated, desperate wail. “Faster, damn you.”

“Does my lady need to come again?”

“I do. At once,” she said. Then she cupped his cheek. “Make me come all over your cock, Randall.”

Stunned at the tender touch, and hearing his given name from her lips, he could only stare. Thankfully his cock was governed by a far more primitive force, and withdrew before plunging brutally back inside. Lady Portia arched like a bow as he fucked her rough and hard like some sort of wild beast, and he barely had time to cover her mouth before she screamed his name, her whole body shuddering, her inner walls pulsing and rippling around him in the erotic rhythm of climax. He managed to thrust twice more, before yanking free from her cunt and spurting ropes of his seed across her lower belly with such force that a few pearly drops reached her breasts.

Utterly boneless, he collapsed on top of her as he tried to catch his breath. Yet she didn’t push him away, or tell him he was too heavy. Instead, her slender fingers curved around the back of his neck and stroked his hair. A soothing and affectionate touch, the kind he’d yearned to receive from the woman he loved. Like this, he could pretend he wasn’t an illegitimate and penniless nobody, but a man deserving of warmth and laughter and light.

All too soon, dawn would come and this magical time would be over. He had to cherish every moment before Lady Portia was snatched from him by her bloody brother.

Just for a few hours he could revel in this heaven.

Hell would come soon enough.

* * *

“My lady. It’s time to wake up.”

Portia shook her head, and batted away the hand gently shaking her shoulder. No, it most certainly was not time to wake up. She’d been asleep five minutes at most. Besides, wild horses couldn’t drag her away from her current position: comfortably sprawled atop her huge and quite naked bodyguard in a cozy cocoon of linen sheets and embroidered quilt, after a simply marvelous night of erotic excess that had left her sticky and sore and sated beyond words.

Well, all except a wild horse called Morning. But it couldn’t be dawn yet. Surely they had at least a few more hours before cold reality intruded.

Her eyelids inched open, her heart sinking at the grim expression on Randall’s face. No. She mustn’t even think of him as Randall. If she accidentally behaved in a familiar way toward him in London, Halstead would probably lose his faculties and make terrible trouble. Destroy Denham’s reputation by accusing him of something vile. “What time is it?”

“It’s just chimed seven.”

“Botheration. I do need to return to my chamber. If Marie finds an empty bed when she brings my tea and toast, there’ll be hell to pay…and I need to choose my wardrobe for London…argh. I’m so angry at all of this I could cheerfully toss my brother from an upper window.”

Denham’s arms closed around her, his lips brushing her forehead. Portia’s eyes burned at both the sweetness of the action, and the injustice of a world where a mature and modern-thinking spinster lady couldn’t simply live alone with a man, happily unmarried and childless with great friends and charitable causes and Society meetings. Equally unjust: a world where younger brothers held power by virtue of their sex alone. Halstead had the brains of a turnip, and yet solely because of his no doubt acorn-sized appendage, he had inherited everything. Controlled everything. The freedom of this townhouse had been an illusion. She’d been naïve to accept a lease instead of a purchase deed, but at the time had been too pleased to leave Butler House behind, thinking her brother had enough honor to respect Papa’s last wishes.

Ha. And now Halstead sought to rip away the only man she had ever fully trusted: Denham, her steadfast rock who supported and protected, and also just happened to be a lover beyond compare. It had taken time to appreciate his layers, the dry wit and reliability and willingness to take orders. She suspected there were some things she would never know, like his very worst days in battle or who his people were. Papa had gone to a Whitehall crony in search of a recently retired soldier to be her bodyguard, Captain Randall Denham’s name had been top of the list for his impeccable record and unflappable nature, and had hired him based on that.

To lose her captain now…

No. Absolutely not. She would make Halstead’s life a misery in London, fight him morning, noon, and night, the wretched bloody cretin…

“Here, now. No rage watering the bloom in your cheeks.”

Portia sniffled. “Only you understand that. Others will think I’m crying and I shall be forced to…to…”

“Pepper their dessert.”

“Precisely,” she replied, allowing herself one final weak moment where she clung to his chest like a barnacle on a rock. Then, more reluctantly than anything in her life, she slid off him and reached for her chemise and nightgown.

“Shall I fetch you a cloth?”

“No,” Portia replied, turning her head and attempting a smile. “I’ll order a hot bath after I return to my room. That will delay our departure at least an hour, and I can think about last night. It will sustain me until I can devise a way to foil Halstead’s schemes.”