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  His eyes swept her face, then came to rest on her lips, and then his own followed suit, nibbling at first, remembering through a fog of whiskey that was really too expensive to abuse as he had that she was probably very inexperienced and not wanting to frighten her with his ardor.

  At first, he sipped a kiss or two from her—short and sweet ones that fueled his own desires and awakened hers, teasing, testing, then finally tasting, as he gave her her first real kiss from a man, intending to keep it very light and gentle, but losing that battle when her arms crept around his neck and she drew his head down to her more, deepening it at her behest and being well and truly lost from that point on.

  He hadn't felt this craving—almost at all—since Laura had been gone, but now it was back with a vengeance, and a fire that raged almost uncontrollably through him. He was having all he could do to keep her innocence in mind, especially since she seemed so completely receptive to him, her mouth opening at the slightest pressure, allowing him unrestricted access as his tongue sought and found its mate in hers.

  Doyle adjusted himself—for the thousandth time, cursing his tight pants—and sitting more upright in the chair. Rissa didn't want to stop kissing and followed him with her body, trying to extend herself out over him in the chair, which didn't really work.

  He knew the solution, but surprisingly mindful of her in his inebriated condition, he reached down very slowly, keeping her eyes on his as he did so, giving her every opportunity to object, and she didn't take any one of them as his rough hands found the hem of her dress and delved boldly beneath it to her legs, easily gliding up their outer lengths, encased, as they were in silky stockings, and taking the heavy fabric of her skirts and petticoats with him as he slid up and up and up, until he found her hips, and the entire exquisite length of her legs were exposed to his hungry gaze.

  Then he had a stroke of genius. "Remember how you sat astride on Sheba?" he panted.

  "Yes." Rissa wondered why he chose this moment to bring that to her mind.

  "Good. Move your legs so that they're astride mine."

  She looked puzzled until he reached down to help her, his hands immediately more interested in caressing her soft skin than accomplishing their task, but somehow, she seemed to intuit what to do, and suddenly, there was nothing between them but his button fly and the open crotch of her bloomers.

  And he wouldn't put any money on those buttons holding. Considering how he was feeling at the moment, they were likely to pop at such velocity that they'd dent the plaster across the room.

  In a rare moment of lucidity, he ducked away from her eager kisses and whispered, "Rissa, honey, I'm going to touch you." And as he said it, he did it, watching her face when he slipped his hand beneath her skirts and found first one slit, and then the other, which welcomed him with feminine warmth and a pleasantly surprising but delightful amount of wetness.

  Rissa couldn't keep still. Alarm bells were going off all over her head but she was ignoring them in favor of the wonder of it all—and the pleasure! How come no one ever talked about the pleasure? She wondered as his all too knowing fingers swirled and brushed and rubbed something—some place—on her body that made her want to kiss him and slap him at the same time. It made her want to give into the unbearably acute feelings he was bringing her, but shy away from them, too, because of the deep, dark secret of its shameful source on her body, as well as its shameful creator. Him. A man who was definitely not her husband—hell, who was a man she might have wanted but she didn't even like—who was touching her there as if he knew exactly what he was doing to her.

  She was writhing and moaning and much too unsteady—perched as she was, atop him—to keep moving like that, so he reached out and clamped an arm low around her waist, holding her still so that he could find and claim what he wanted from her, watching her transform before his eyes as the pleasure he was stirring within her steam rolled through her. But not the ultimate one. Not quite yet.

  Her innocence was a bit of a hindrance, but not much of one. He withdrew his hand—to a chorus of pretty pleas for him not to, but he was resolute, and he knew that, as he began to unbutton himself, his knuckles would brush her sweet spot, anyway, enough to keep her interested until he could unwrap himself.

  When his cock finally found freedom, it very nearly popped right into her, but instead ended up nestling itself very happily—for the moment—within the wet warmth of her groove, and to his amazement, she began to slide herself along its length, dragging that hard velvet rod against her swollen clit.

  If he allowed that to continue, she'd finish before him, so he lifted her hips and held her just above him, unable now to find the friction she needed to get what she wanted—even though she didn't even really know what that was yet.

  "Doyle, please!" she hissed, not recognizing her own voice as her hips continued to rock against nothing.

  He let his slide into a mild scolding tone. "Clarissa, you must wait. Or do I need to spank you to get you to behave?"

  Her head, which had been bent down towards their privates—not that she could see anything through the layers of her own clothing—her chin on her chest, snapped up so that their eyes met. "No, please," she requested primly, looking worried.

  Doyle wanted to smile, but didn't. "Then be a good girl and be quiet and still."

  She pouted beautifully, in a way that made his heart swell as painfully in his chest as his cock had in his pants, but did as she was told, although he could feel her muscles pulsing against his hold, and he figured that was unconscious on her part. He doubted she even knew what she was doing, but her body knew exactly what he wanted.

  With grave concern that even his own touch might set him off, he nonetheless grabbed ahold of himself and arranged them both so that his broad head was pressed snug against her opening, still holding her above it with more of an iron will than he had been expected to have in a long time.

  When the time was right, he commanded, "Look at me, Clarissa." And she did so without a second's hesitation, which caused another painful tweak of his long fallow—he would have said dead—heart.

  "I'm going to be honest with you right now. What we're going to do in a second is going to hurt you for a short moment."

  Rissa looked confused, especially when he handed her his drink and said, "Take a big swallow of this."

  "Hurt?" she echoed.

  Doyle reached up and took the pins out of her hair—he knew just which ones were likely to be strategic to the structure and which were just there for support—and the luxurious rose gold mass tumbled down her back and onto his thighs.

  "Just for a short moment, I promise, and then…bliss. The bliss you were seeking while you were rubbing yourself against me a few seconds ago. But I won't lie—it will hurt at first, and I want you to know that."

  "But then bliss?" she parroted back, and he could feel her relax within his hold.

  "Yes. I promise."

  Her eyes abnormally wide and vulnerable, just as the rest of her was to him, Rissa nodded slowly, biting her lip. "All right," she whispered.

  "Do you want to do it, or do you want me to?" he asked.

  "Do what?"

  He smiled at her innocence, but not unkindly, reaching his hand between them again. "Do you remember how this feels?" He brushed the pad of his index finger over the very tip of her clit and she shuddered before him. "Well, that's the bliss. This…" he explained as he wiggled his dick between her lips "…is what will hurt for a second, because you've not done this before, have you?"

  Rissa slowly shook her head.

  "I didn't think so. Why don't you let me do it, lovely, I'll be quick about it and that'll get it over with so I can help you find your paradise."

  As soon as he said that, Rissa put her arms around his neck endearingly, almost childish in her trust of him, her eyes still on his, and he knew he'd never be the same again.

  Because he realized that she might be startled by just how much it hurt, he tightened his grip around her hips,
and, just before he was going to do it, he stopped, struck by a thought. "You know that I'm not hurting you on purpose, don't you? If there was a way we could do this the first time and it wouldn't hurt you, I'd do that."

  "I understand," she said, sounding surprisingly lucid for a second, although her eyes betrayed how drunk she truly was.

  He did it then, suddenly, surprisingly, pulling her sharply down while he raised his hips and her with them at the same time, ramming himself into her in a manner he might not have chosen given a different situation, but this was the best he could do for her at the moment.

  And as he was engulfed by her tightness, his eyes drifted closed for a long moment and he fought to keep himself from simply plunging mindlessly into her. But she deserved better than that from him, and he was going to make sure that she got it.

  When he looked up at her, her lips were trembling and there were tears streaming down her cheeks, from beneath tightly closed eyelids with spiky black lashes.

  "I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry it hurt you, truly I am. But I'll make it feel better."

  The pain had served as a wake-up call for Rissa, who was crying not only because it hurt like the dickens, but because she had allowed herself—quite blithely, when she looked back at it—to be ruined. No man would want her after this. She was a fallen woman. In one sure stroke that she had been eager for him to make, he had rendered her—with her full consent—celibate, probably for the rest of her life. And all for what—to end up in pain.

  But then, he began to move, and at first, she couldn't keep herself from trying to stop him—her arms no longer around his neck but pushing feebly, futilely against his chest—because it made the stinging pain worse, and she began interfering with what he was trying to do, ending up with him holding her wrists together behind her back, unable to control what was being done to her any longer.

  The pain faded away quite quickly though, even more so once the fingers of his other hand found and proceeded to not only revive her pleasure, but to send it soaring past anything she'd felt before. Within minutes, the breath was heaving out of her as best it could, considering she was still tightly laced into her corset, such that the top of her body was still quite prim and properly dressed, but her lower half was split wide open by and over him, hands still quite useless in his grip, being vigorously fucked as he watched everything she was feeling being portrayed on her face.

  When he felt that she was so caught up in her own pleasure that she wasn't likely to try to protest what was happening any longer, he loosened her hands in favor of holding her hips, forcing her down onto him to meet each thrust as his other hand continued to stroke her clit, leaving no bit of it untouched, using her moans and gasps and groans as a guide to what felt the best to her, concentrating much more on her pleasure than his own. He felt he owed her that. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was as boatload of guilt that would be waiting to hit him tomorrow, and he wanted to make sure that she enjoyed it at least as much as he knew he was going to.

  As she drew closer to her climax, she looked a bit frightened, but he wasn't surprised at that.

  "I know—it's very powerful and overwhelming, but that's a part of it. I promise there's no more pain involved—just pure pleasure. I'm right here, and I'll keep you safe."

  As the mysterious end drew closer and closer, her eyes got even rounder, and, as her mouth opened on what he had anticipated might be a scream, he closed his palm over it, wishing fiercely that he didn't have to, that he could just let her scream, and also wanting to have someone do that for him when his time came. The combination of those wonderfully strong contractions around him, knowing they were from the pleasure that he had brought her to, as well as the feeling of her surrounding him, had him following her not long after, while she was still clenching him strongly, unknowingly milking every bit of his own climax from him as he shook and shuddered beneath her.

  Long moments later, when he had recovered a bit—although not entirely—he wondered if he would ever be able to claim that—and she was still slumped against his chest, still breathing heavily, Doyle's fingers returned to the scene of her pleasure. He was soft between her legs, but when his fingers found her again, she sat bolt upright and grabbed his wrist.

  He didn't bother to tell her to remove her hands, because he could do what he wanted whether or not they were there.

  "Doyle," she panted, barely able to open her eyes to look down at him, "No."

  "Clarissa, my dear," he smiled mischievously. "Yes."

  And it was, yes. At least three more times, he made it yes, marveling at every second of her wholly unguarded responses to him.

  By the time he finally left off, she was huddled against him in sleepy exhaustion. He lifted her off of him, holding her still while he rose—feeling the alcohol again, but somehow managing to remain steady. If he hadn't been as drunk as he was, he would have carried her up to her room, but he didn't trust himself to do so without incident, and he wouldn't risk hurting her any more than he already had.

  But he did insist that she lean on him—once he'd retrieved the bottle from his drawer with one hand—while the both of them bobbed and weaved their way up the stairs, making sure she had found her way to her own bed before stumbling into his own, downing the remains of the whiskey and falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, Clarissa begged off appearing at breakfast, with Winnie hovering over her as if she had the plague, when she well knew that she was just hung over. Not that she wanted her sister to realize that.

  "Really, Winnie, go down and have breakfast," she encouraged impatiently. "Doyle won't miss you, but I'm sure Isaac will."

  "Oh, Doyle's gone."

  Rissa's eyes opened wider at that than they had at anything yet this morning, making her head hurt just that much worse, until she had to shield her eyes with her hand as she strained to look at her sister. "Gone?"

  Winnie was nodding. "Rode in the direction of town at the crack, Lucille said. She saw him riding down the road, which means he was up before she was!"

  "Do you know where he went? How long he'll be gone? Do you know when he'll be back?"

  Her sister looked at her as if she was crazy, peppering her with questions like that, and Rissa had to admit they must've sounded strange, coming from her.

  "No. Isaac didn't find any note, so he'll probably be back sometime today."

  When she had finally convinced Winnie that she wasn't dying, and she was alone in her room, Rissa mulled over what her sister had said. She couldn't pretend she wasn't happy for this little reprieve, that she wouldn't have to confront him for a while—until she'd hopefully gathered what little strength was left to her in this condition—but she also knew that this was really just delaying the inevitable, unless she packed up her things and hightailed it out of here within the next few hours, but then Winnie would be wanting explanations that she wasn't going to be willing to give, so that otherwise somewhat viable option was out, too.

  The only answer was a variation on that theme, though—she had to get out of here as quickly as she possibly could. Her letter accepting the position was probably already at the post office, having gone in with the mail this morning, and there was no reason to think they wouldn't accept her, so she would just move forward, at an accelerated pace, with what she'd been planning to do before—

  Before she'd done the only thing in her life she'd ever regretted to the depth of her bones, but that she was ashamed to acknowledge she was in grave danger of wanting to repeat if she remained here for any further length of time.

  What had he done to her last night? What had she become, to want do something that was so utterly disgraceful like that—again and again and again?

  And she couldn't—wouldn't—allow herself to do that. If she was lucky, it would be about a week to get a response from the Brooksville, and she would use her time wisely to gather what she needed to make a new life for herself. The moment that letter arrived, she would step out his door and never lo
ok back.

  Determined not to backslide in any way, she got up and got dressed—tying her corset extra tight, as if that was going to help her remain on the straight and narrow—looking at herself in the mirror one last time before she left the relative safety of her room and steeling herself for when she inevitably met him again, hoping she didn't blush so hard she fainted dead away, praying that he might have gone away on some business trip no one knew about and would stay away for oh, say, ten or so days—just long enough for her to make her escape without ever having to see him again.

  Chapter 5

  But she couldn't have been so lucky, of course.

  It didn't happen until late afternoon, though, and by that time she was so jumpy and nervous about seeing him that it was monumentally worse than it would have been if she'd seen him first thing this morning in the hall outside their rooms.

  She was just passing through the foyer and caught Winnie hurrying up the stairs.

  "What's going on?" Rissa asked.

  Winnie came down a few steps, obviously very excited. "Isaac's going to take me into town for dinner! We're going to use the carriage and everything! I've just told Lucille that we're dining out, and I've got to go change."

  "That sounds like fun."

  Her sister looked worried. "You don't mind terribly if I don't invite you? It's supposed to be a romantic dinner for two, and he mentioned that we might stay at the hotel in town, perhaps, but I don't want you to feel left out."

  "No, you two go ahead and enjoy yourselves," she said with a smile, although inwardly she was screaming at the younger woman not to leave her here alone, at night, with Doyle, who came through the front door at that exact moment, looking somehow bigger and even more imposing than she'd remembered him being. But she also remembered glimpses of chest hair and the way he felt inside her, which had her cheeks flushing madly.

  "Hi, Doyle," Winnie sang out. "Isaac is taking me to town for dinner and maybe even an overnight stay at the hotel—isn't that exciting?"