A Red Hot Valentine's Day Read online

  She quickly dashed to the bathhouse wall and tucked herself around the side of the marble structure. Her back to the smooth surface, she held herself so very still. Her heart beat through her and controlled her breath. She closed her eyes. Please don’t let them see her.

  The women’s footfalls approached, and Sophia held her breath, not wanting to make a single sound.

  “Lord Quinton certainly is handsome.”

  “Indeed. I hope Miss Cathcort can arrange something for one of us with him. This estate is beautiful and his son is so delightful. My daughter will simply adore him.”

  They had met Jake. Sophia’s heart pinched. She had longed to meet him for the past year. Quinton always had some excuse for her not to.

  The door to the bathhouse opened. “Mary. Olivia.” Anne’s cheery voice floated through the air. “Alistair is inside. Behave if either of you have any interest in Lord Quinton. Do not give into Alistair’s persuasions.”

  “Anne. Why would I go for one of your girls when I could have had one or both of them already…and for all you know, I have.” Alistair’s tone held a note of humor. He truly was a confident and scandalous dog.

  Anne scoffed and the other women giggled.

  “Anne, did Lord Quinton express interest in either one of us?”

  “He said you were both stunning and your bloodlines and stations were exactly what he searched for in his wife.”

  “His…his wife?” Sophia’s face froze and a chill raced down her spine.

  The door to the bathhouse closed. Footsteps fell on the trail and faded off into the distance.

  Quinton had not told her about his visitors because he…He…

  Tears welled in her eyes and her heart pinched. She worked her throat but couldn’t even say the words again.

  Maybe they all jested. Or maybe Sophia was simply Quinton’s dove. She shivered straight down to her soul. How could she have been so naive?

  Sophia strained to hear what went on inside, hoping more information would come to her. She closed her eyes and leaned up against the cool wall.

  Concentrating on the sounds inside of the structure, she bit her lip. Please let this all be a jest. Low murmurs was all she could discern within the stone structure.

  “My, aren’t you the curious thing?” Warm coffee-filled breath fanned her face.

  Sophia’s eyes popped open as Alistair’s arms braced the wall on either side of her.

  She swallowed hard. His heat seeped through her clothing and warmed her skin. She shivered as the chill from the shock dissipated.

  She stared into soft brown eyes, as damp hair curled in dark brown waves about his face. My God, he was handsome. She swallowed hard once again. Duck beneath his arm, Sophia…walk away.

  His lip quirked up. “What exactly are you curious about, dear miss?”

  “Sir.” She pulled her face from the intense desire in his eyes and stared at the dirt and fallen leaves on the ground around them.

  “Very well, then. Shall we walk or would you prefer this?” His hand rose and traced the line of her cheekbone down to her lips.

  Her mouth fell open to protest. Not a sound came out. Her head fell back against the stone wall and she closed her eyes.

  His smooth finger traced the top contour of her mouth. Her lips trembled, and the heat of his touch on her skin captivated her. Tingles raced down her spine and her stomach flipped. She could not move; all she could do was feel him.

  Quinton’s touch, let alone kiss, never immobilized her. She swallowed hard, and bursts of light flashed behind her eyelids.

  His fingertip glided along her bottom pout and pulled the lip down. Her eyelids fluttered open. His face was less than a finger’s width away. He was about to kiss her!

  His lips came down soft and gentle…nothing like Quinton’s. They fluttered and nibbled. No harsh intensity…no pulling back for air. Time ceased to matter.

  Alistair’s kiss lingered. Slowly his lips pressed and grabbed her upper one.

  She moaned, and the essence of coffee and soap filled her taste-buds. Her nipples peaked. His tongue traced the plump surface he had captured.

  Sophia’s heart raced. This was wrong; Quinton was everything she had ever craved and wanted. Or was he?

  His companionship had never quite felt genuine and then this…He had women here for…God, she still couldn’t say the blast word! Her relationship with Quinton was not well. His respect of her was amiss.

  Alistair’s tongue fluttered into her mouth and circled hers, then retreated. Heat flooded her belly and trickled lower, wetting her cunt lips.

  She could not deny she wanted to experience this act; Alastair’s kisses.

  He was a tempting rogue. His confidence was nonesuch, and that alone was an enticement to her.

  His tongue teased her lower lip. She wanted him to go deeper. To kiss her harder, to pull her to him and crush her mouth with his until she couldn’t breathe and she gasped for air. Would he?

  Please, please let his desire possess her and wipe away all of this brumblebroth of emotions she swam in.

  His tongue continued a slow light flutter along her lips. She moaned in frustration, wanting more. Pressing up against him, her breast touched his chest. Her lips pressed firmly to his. She kissed him back with a longing she had not realized she had deep in her gut.

  Alastair called to a deep dark desire lingering in her. She wanted to experience him. He was different.

  She was lost, head-deep, swimming in unforeseen and unknown territory. The right and the wrong of kissing him tore her in two.

  She wanted to find out exactly what Alistair could offer her. What made him so different? What made Alistair, Alistair?

  Alistair pulled back a breath, as she tried to deepen the kiss once more. His body pressed to hers. One knee slid between her legs and his foot tapped her feet farther apart.

  Her body shook and she opened her hips, her long skirts caught between his probing leg and the wall behind her.

  His lips slid, kissing her cheek in feather line to her ear. Breath as warm as the steam from the bath warmed her to her soul. She was safe here in this moment with this man. He would never let anything happen to her. She mentally shook herself. How did she know such a thing simply from a kiss?

  Molten heat spread up her belly and she relaxed into him. Her body trembled. The sensation overwhelmed her. Wet tongue traced the curve of her ear and dipped into the cup. A moan pressed from her lungs.

  “Dear sweet miss. Your inexperience is as sticky as honey. I am a bear that simply cannot resist.” His words raised the fine hairs on her neck. His tongue traveled down the soft flesh of her throat to the curve, and he bit.

  Warm, wet pressure tingled through her sex bud as if his mouth and teeth pressed to her cunny and not the exposed skin above her cloak. How did that happen? Oh, she wanted to know more.

  Her hips arched into his thigh, and she reached for the ache in her womb to be soothed. The core of her womb burned hotter and hotter. Desire pulsed through her veins, and she was ready to erupt.

  Beneath the fabric of his breeches, the hard ridge of his peg teased her inner thigh. She pressed her mound insistently against his prick and moaned. His cock swelled further as the desire to join pulsed through them. She wanted to gaze upon his phallus and touch the smooth skin.

  The shape beneath his breeches was narrower than Quinton’s but equal in length. She couldn’t remember what George’s peg felt like, and she so wanted to know how men were different. Specifically, how Alistair liked to futter.

  His fingers dove beneath the folds of her pelisses and gripped her breast. She wanted his hand on her bare skin, not all the layers of clothing that lay between them. She wiggled and tried to get his fingers to move farther up to touch the bare skin of her chest. His fingers moved lower.

  Oh God! Indeed, lower.

  Fingers trailed to her waist…then dipped to her thigh. He inched up the fabric of her garments, adjusting the cloth so that her skirts disentangled
from their legs.

  The cool air seeped through the thin cotton of her stockings and washed her skin in ice. Her heart sped. She wanted to cuddle into him, to feel his naked heat as his peg parted the folds of her sex and entered her.

  His fingers glided up the small bit of bare skin at the top of her thighs. Her pussy quivered, and delicious tendrils of want crawled through her.

  He was about to touch her cunny. To finger-futter her in the open of the woods…where anyone could see.

  She swallowed hard as exhilaration rushed through her veins. She squirmed wantonly against him.

  His icy-cold fingers parted the folds of her and his hand pressed fully against her humid flesh. She jumped at the unexpected contrast. His lips and tongue trailed back to her mouth. Soft and gentle, his tongue fluttered.

  She wanted more, more of his kiss, more of him. She closed her lips firmly on his and sucked his tongue into her mouth.

  He moaned, and one large finger glided effortlessly down her slit. She rocked her hips against his intrusion. My God, she had not realized how wet her cunny grew. She moaned in her throat.

  The tip of his finger dipped into her opening, and she bucked and spread her thighs wide. She wanted him to ease her ache no matter how wrong it was. His fingers…oh….

  He slid his middle finger deep within her pussy and pulled from her kiss.

  “My aren’t we an eager little miss?” his tongue traced her lower lip, and he gently bit as he slid his finger back out then in more harshly. The palm of his hand pressed to her mound and he rubbed her hairs side to side.

  Exquisite warmth flooded her sex and her cunt gaped open.

  “Indeed. You do desire me.” He released her lip. His tongue traveled down over her chin and to her neck. He leaned in and his shoulder pressed to hers holding her still.

  Yes, indeed, she wanted him.

  He angled himself against her and slid his fingers in and out of her flesh with quick and fast motions. Each press of his fingers mixed pleasure and insanity. A deep needing pressure blossomed into a blissful pain.

  She opened her hips and pressed down against his fingers next withdrawal. His hand continued to move quickly in and out, in and out of her. Her cunt opened wide and her flesh tingled. The urge to push down against his invasion over took her. Her lower abdomen clenched, and the pressure released in a gush of warm trickles of fluid from her body.

  “Oh, you are a wanton wench. Spending in my hand like that.” The words hissed against her ear.

  Fire raced down her spine and straight to her wet cunny.

  “Reach down and unbutton my flap.”

  Her hand trembled…and she hesitated. She wanted to feel him, to see what his peg was like. Quinton had lied to her and searched for a wife other than her. She was a fool to have believed in him. This act was real and now and promised nothing more.

  Her hand rose and went to the buttons of his flap with quick jerky motions. Her fingers undid the top button and then the next lower on the left side, then undid the top button and the next lower on the right.

  The tips of her fingers glided along the smooth skin of his lower abdomen and through the springy curls of his sex. His cock lay along his right thigh. She wrapped his peg with her hand and pulled his length from the confines of his breeches.

  “Ummm…” He grasped her skirts and pulled them up higher.

  Her legs trembled in the cool morning breeze. His tongue swooped into the cup of her ear and his hands grasped her bottom. He lifted her.

  Should she do this? Panic tightened her chest and she grasped his shoulders. Her legs gripped the outside of his hips, opening her cunt to him. He pressed his body to hers and the head of his cock parted her weeping flesh and thrust into her as if a knife cutting through butter.

  She cried out at the quickness of the joining of their bodies.

  He leaned in and bit her earlobe. “Noisy little miss, are you not? The fun I could have teaching you to let go of your restraint and scream louder…” He rubbed his pelvis against her open mound. “And louder.” He pulled his length out of her and then slid back in.

  “Oh! Ah!”

  “Indeed you are a noisy wench. Shall we see if we can get the girls inside to hear you?”

  Sophia bit her lip and squirmed as she tried to hold in another deep moan. He bit her neck and pulled out to the ridge on the tip of his hard head. The flange of his cock caught the weeping flesh of her pussy opening. Tingles of heat tightened her muscles. He rocked his hips with small motions in the opening of her.

  A deep pressure pooled in her sex. He slid back in all the way. Her mouth fell open and she tilted her head back against the wall. An animallike growl pressed from the depths of her soul.

  No matter how confused she was, this moment she flew on pleasure, on exhilaration of doing this act here with his man. The pressure in her womb released, and wetness drizzled from her sex and down the crack of her bum. He pushed in again. Her entire body shook against him.

  “You are so wet.” He stared down at her with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Don’t most women get wet between their thighs?” Heat raced through her and she tightened her cunny muscles about his cock.

  He laughed outright. “Indeed. Each one is different, and each one to a different degree.”

  He pushed into her again, stilled, and held himself buried within her.

  Alistair glanced up as the door to the bathhouse slammed shut. The low murmur of voices floated out on the breeze. Someone joined the ladies within. He held Sophia’s legs tight to him and glanced down into her beautiful green eyes.

  “What is it?”

  What was it, indeed? She was a gorgeous woman, who thought she belonged to Lord Quinton. Lord Quinton was a rogue and a disrespectable man and she’d just learned of his faults.

  Lord Quinton was about to futter two widows to see if they met his carnal act requirements. Sophia couldn’t hear that test or by twisted fate become witness to the act. He needed to remove them from this location and quickly.

  “I have the urge to take you in a bed. Though I believe you are on your daily ritual. So instead, may I join you?” He lowered her legs back to the earth. His pleasure be damned…no woman deserved to have her undoing flaunted right before her nose. Lord Quinton’s behavior simply was not proper. Alistair cringed to himself. Proper? When had that word ever gained consideration in his thoughts? His lip quirked up. He normally would wish to join the scoundrel Lord Quinton. Where had this spark of morals come from?

  She leaned back against the wall behind her. “You stop in the middle of futter because you want to walk with me?”

  It was ridiculous…beyond. “Indeed. I am not always rational. Or practical…but my pleasure is important, and I feel we should stroll along the path with Bo.”

  Her eyes grew wide “Oh, Bo!” She glanced around the woods. “Where is Bo?” She straightened her skirts, covering the curve of her ivory thighs, and glanced seductively up at him through her lashes.

  That look alone made him want to scoop her up in his arms and protect her from the world. He shook himself. He did not even know her, yet was compelled to protect her like one of his girls. She was not one of his girls. The mutt…concentrate on the mutt, not the wench with the tight, watering pussy.

  “Please, no vapors over a wandering mutt. I will find your pup.” He offered her his arm, and she wrapped her fingers about his coat sleeve. They turned in the direction of the pond.

  “He loves to chase the ducks.”

  “As any self-respecting mutt does.” He winked at her. He had gone daft in the attic. She was much more than futter to him, but how he got here to this strange unfamiliar place in less than one meaningful conversation he had not one blasted clue. He scowled. This trip to the fresh air certainly was filled with one foul-smelling hazard after another.

  Chapter 4

  Show and tell

  Anne had instructed Quinton that Olivia and Mary would be waiting for him in the bathhouse. They waited, ea
ger to show him their physical sides and demonstrate to him their expertise in the art of passion.

  He hesitated by the door to the bathhouse. Never in his life had he thought of searching for a wife this way. Eleanor he had simply fallen for as he saw her across the dance floor. She required so very little searching; and then there was Sophia.

  Naive, innocent, Sophia. He closed his eyes and sighed.

  Sophia grasped his soul with the ever-changing passion in her eyes. Her very existence seemed to change everything about him. They had met when out on a walk. He saw her twirling on top of Crest Hill. The sun glinted off her unruly mane and her smile…. Her smile and spirit lifted him from the dreariness of mourning and added joy to his everyday existence.

  She had enlivened him and made him realize he wanted a second wife, but her lack of children and her lack of proper behavior where society was concerned were the very things he knew would not serve him in his position. She would never be presentable. The image of Sophia with mud under her nails as she sat at one of the marquis of Lanktor’s balls made his stomach sink. She was the perfect mistress for him.

  His close friends and peers would frown upon him for choosing such a woman, even if she was of blood, and so he had turned to Miss Cathcort.

  He hoped Miss Cathcort’s renowned skills for finding suitable second and third wives for those who did not have the time to search lived up to the claims. He would soon find out. This was the one aspect beyond children he would not compromise on. Sophia had fulfilled his every desire in this realm. Whoever became the Lady of Elm Place needed to do the same with equal vigor.

  Quinton turned the handle and stepped into the bathhouse. Steam washed over him. He coughed at the contrast from the cold outside air.

  “Lord Quinton. How are you this morning?” Olivia pushed her coopery gold hair back behind her ears and smiled.

  “Very well, Olivia, and may I ask after your health?” He stepped farther into the room. Both women remained in their chemise. The steam dampened their skin, causing the fabric to stick to the peaks. Their nipples shone delightfully through the thin cotton fabric.