Reaching up her hands, she pulled his face down to deepen the kiss. His dark, tousled hair, his full, poetic mouth, and the sardonic gleam in his treacle eyes made him the consummate lover of her imagination. A lover she could never have.
But she could have a taste.
Again his mouth returned to hers, this time bruising it with an urgency his previously unhurried pace belied. Blood coursed furiously to her extremities as he breached the seam of her lips with his tongue, gently and expertly whipping up her excitement. Murmuring against her lips, his hands skimmed her body, touching, stroking, feeling her into wild sensation through the light gauze of her costume.
It was madness, she knew, and she was powerless against the need unleashed within her. Alverley’s betrayal of her hopes was insignificant compared with this sensual gratification. She felt the tension in her whole being stretch, feared she would burn to a cinder or explode in a shower of ashes if he continued—yet her world threatened to return to its barren wilderness if he stopped.
“Is this what you meant by a kiss?” he murmured during a brief interlude before redoubling his efforts.
“Oh…yes…”
But wasn’t there more? What were these unsatisfied cravings?
It seemed that the more thoroughly he kissed her, the
more her body wanted to feel his…what? Possession of her…?
Self-preservation, like a single dust mote, lodged in her brain, and she gasped her resistance. Miss Fanny Brightwell, who’d spent her life trying to prove that her beauty and virtue put her on a par with all those with handsome dowries, was about to throw it all away like a common doxy for five minutes of self-gratification.
What a little fool…
Her hands were against his chest, palms turned inwards as a prelude to forcible resistance, when another totally unexpected, all-consuming sensation cast aside every objection she’d been about to make.
Obviously mistaking her gasp for permission to move to the next level, he’d transferred his explorations to beneath the hem of her dress and his hands were now skimming the length of her leg, moving lightly above the tops of her stockings, the gentle, rhythmic touch of soft fingertips against the heated, sensitive flesh of her inner thigh making her want to shriek aloud her pleasure.
Instead she jerked out of his arms, upright, her breasts straining against her bodice as she remembered who and where she was: respectable debutante, Miss Fanny Brightwell in a boat alone with a stranger.
“So nearly there and yet not quite,” murmured her pirate, as the nose of the barge hit the riverbank with a muted jolt. Not even looking chastened, he made a gallant show of helping to straighten Fanny’s clothing before he took her hand and drew her to her feet.
“Aye, we’re at t’other side, now,” announced the riverman with a sly look as he jumped out to steady the craft.
Fanny rose shakily, as if the foundations of her life had shifted.
And they had, for just now she’d experienced what no unmarried young woman ought to have experienced. Certainly not a respectable one.
As they reached level ground, her pirate lover bent to kiss her lightly on the lips before signalling to a jarvey waiting nearby with his hackney carriage.
A curious blackness had invaded Fanny’s mind, where both opportunity and terror seemed to lurk hand in hand. She’d felt excitement like she’d never known— albeit cruelly truncated—but now an even greater horror intruded at the thought of allowing Lord Slyther access to her body like she’d allowed this handsome…stranger, whom she stumbled against while he held open the door for her.
She had no one to rely upon for support—never had—so it was ridiculous to lean against handsome strangers as if she were some helpless, lovelorn creature. Fanny had always prided herself on her strength. Feminine frailty was the preserve of her younger sister, Antoinette.
“Good night, fair damsel.” The pirate made a sweeping bow. “It has been a delightful finale to what had been a lacklustre evening.”
There was a painful lump in Fanny’s throat that made her eyes sting when she swallowed. Somehow she felt he deserved her gratitude. “Thank you, sir. Tonight you showed me the only excitement I will ever know for very soon I shall be forced to marry a man I do not love.”
He helped her into the carriage, his smile disbelieving. “My commiserations, mystery lover,” he whispered as he leaned through the window to brush her lips once more with his. Yes, she decided, he was a gentleman and, like her, pretending to be someone very different tonight. And she would never see him again. She wanted to weep as she contemplated the horror that her mother was about to inflict upon her: the husband about whom her rescuer was so sceptical. “What a sad tale. Nevertheless, I wish you every happiness.”
Fanny turned her head. Of course he didn’t believe her and she’d been naive to have imagined he felt anything other than satisfaction at his latest conquest.
She rapped on the roof to signal the jarvey’s departure. She would not give her address in earshot of her pirate prince. The house her mother had leased for the season was lowly and the danger to her reputation unknown.
Of course she would never see this man again. But what he’d done for her was immeasurable. He’d shown her that she did indeed possess a heart that could flutter with desire when the right man came within her orbit.
The tragedy was that Lord Slyther, for whom she was now definitely destined, was not that man and after tonight her life would never be the same.
Chapter 2
Fanny tiptoed across the threshold, her heart pounding as much from fear of being discovered by her mother as from the tumultuous events of tonight.