Ravished by Redcoats (Highland Heat Book 1) Read online

  CONTENTS

  About This Story

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  Ravished by the Redcoats

  EXCERPT

  DEAR READERS

  OTHER BOOKS

  Ravished by the Redcoats

  When a spirited Scottish lass is caught spying, an English officer exacts a delicious price that will have her pleasuring—and pleasured by—all his men…

  Sorcha hails from a family of Jacobites who are readying to rise up against the English. She’s desperate for information that will help the fierce Highland warriors of her clan, but when she’s caught spying by Major James Anderson, her loyalty and limits are both put to the test.

  The Major is suave, charming, and seductive. So much so, that she finds herself eagerly agreeing to a rough and raw encounter with him and a group of his hot, lusty soldiers. But the English officer isn't satisfied by just one night with the daring vixen; having turned a maiden into a wanton woman, he now wants her for his very own. And though he is the enemy, Sorcha finds that both her heart and her body are tempted.

  Reader Advisory: This is the first 10k installment of a serial erotic romance story. It contains sizzling scenes of rough, unprotected group sex, double penetration, dark kink and taboo acts that lead to an unconventional but abiding love. For adults only.

  RAVISHED BY THE REDCOATS

  A Highland Heat Story

  Chera Zade

  Ravished by the Redcoats

  © 2015 Chera Zade

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

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  Ravished by the Redcoats

  Be good, Sorcha.

  These were probably the first words ever spoken to me and the words most frequently said to me when I was growing up. Maybe it was my head of fiery red hair. Maybe it was the worse-than-ordinary Scots temper of lasses in my family. Whatever it was, my father assumed from the start I was destined for trouble. And I suppose I proved him right when I fell in love with Ewan McPherson, a rugged young Highland warrior who was, I knew, planning with my brothers to rise up against the English.

  Though Ewan’s rippling muscles sent me all aquiver, I never surrendered my virtue. Not even when he covered my neck in kisses, promising to love me if I surrendered my maidenhead. I won’t say my heart didn’t thunder in my ears at the thought of peeking beneath his plaid. And I can’t deny his touch made me slick with desire. I wanted to spread my legs for Ewan MacPherson—wanted to be trapped beneath the sweaty, strong muscles of his chest and legs. He was a big lad, and I was just a wee lass. I wanted to feel overwhelmed, overcome, without any choice but to give up my virtue without so much as a hand fasting.

  But…be good, Sorcha.

  The echo of my Da’s warning in my ears was even louder than my desire. So I insisted that I must have a wedding. Thereby making the biggest mistake of my life…because my father forbade it.

  “The son of a laird to marry the daughter of a tavern keeper?” he shouted in Ewan’s face. “Not bloody likely! It’s not enough you’ve got my sons ready to follow you into this folly of rebellion on behalf of Bonny Prince Charlie? No. Now you want my daughter as well? Well, you can’t have her. I’ll need at least one of my children to care for me in my dotage. So don’t darken my doorstep again, or you’ll bring with you the wrath of the English.”

  That was the last time I saw Ewan McPherson.

  He gave me up. He went off like a kicked dog and left me working in my father’s kitchen at the Groggy Bottom Tavern & Inn, which served as a veritable barracks for English officers. I was heartbroken, but meek as a lamb, convinced that I must do as I was bid, and be a respectable, virtuous girl.

  At least until I heard the English soldiers discussing a list of names—suspected traitors, all.

  While filling their cups, I caught snippets of conversation and watched as Major Anderson scribbled notes into a little leather bound book at the table. A little book that I needed to examine more closely, to see if my brothers names were upon it. And I worried for Ewan, too.

  Though he’d given me up, my heart still beat for Ewan. And that’s what finally cracked open the good girl inside me—it was love, not lust, that unleashed my wickedness.

  But of course, how a thing begins, is seldom how it ends, is it?

  I became obsessed with that little book and seeing its contents.

  Which is how, the next night, I came to be in Major Anderson’s bedroom.

  Having left the men below stairs to their dice games and bawdy songs, I slipped into the empty chamber and began my search. I hastily ran my hands under the pillow, reached beneath the mattress, then rifled through the chest at the foot of the Major’s bed. All to no avail.

  Where was that book?

  Then the memory struck me. A few days before, I’d laundered some of the men’s small clothes, and was set to put them into the Major’s drawer when he wryly informed me that he was capable of tending to his own wardrobe. Had he hoped to keep me from finding the book hidden away there?

  Inspired by the thought, I stepped quietly upon the floorboards, glad of the noise downstairs to hide every creak, then pulled open the drawer and began to rifle through it.

  The truth is, I never heard the door open behind me. I didn’t hear him come in. I don’t even know how long it was that he watched me search his belongings. I only know that I gave a start at the sound of his precise English accent, when he said, “My dear lady, I fear you have a most unhealthy fascination with my undergarments…”

  ~~~

  Wearing his officer’s uniform, complete with crimson coat, Major Anderson was tall and lean, in the way of the English, with a well-bred look about him and immaculately well-kept hands that looked to be dextrous instruments of pleasure or torture, depending upon his whim. But the most astounding thing about James Anderson was the expressiveness of his face.

  With twinkling blue eyes, and an enticing mouth that quirked up at the corner in dry amusement, he scared me quite out of my wits. “I—I’m so sorry, Major. It’s only that I thought I might’ve returned the wrong batch of laundry to you the other day.” This was the lie I’d rehearsed in case something went wrong. And of course, something had gone most disastrously wrong. I’d been caught! “I thought to remedy the situation without troubling you.”

  “Oh?” asked the Major, leaning in the doorway so as to block off my avenue of escape, should I choose to run. “You meant to make a switch, did you?”

  “Yes,” I breathed, trying to fight down the welling panic inside me. “I think I may have given you a linen shirt belonging to Captain Howard, and vice versa.”

  “Where is it, then?” he asked.

  “Where is what?”

  “The shirt you meant to switch.”

  “Oh, I meant to take yours first, of course,” I said, my mind in a mad scramble for answers. “You do outrank him, after all…”

  He laughed.

  Most Englishmen were too bloody stuffy and serious to laugh, but the Major had a confidence about him and a lightness to his bearing. It gave me hope that I’d escape without consequence. At least until he said, “Very
good. Quick on your feet, aren’t you, Miss? An adroit spy, too. If I hadn’t come up to fetch my snuffbox, I wouldn’t have noticed you.”

  “I’m not a spy. And it’s Mistress to you,” I said, because every Scots lass knew enough to pretend she was married when alone in the presence of Englishmen. It was the only thing that kept them respectful. “And I’ll thank you to remember whose roof you’re under when you make accusations, Major.”

  The Englishman startled. Not because he was ashamed of himself, no. But because, “I thought you were the proprietor’s daughter!”

  “I am!” I protested, slightly nauseated at the idea he’d think I was married to my Da. “I’m married to someone else.”

  His brow raised. “Are you now? Then where is your wedding ring?”

  “Somewhere safe. I wouldn’t want it to get lost when I’m doing chores.”

  Then he surprised me by asking, “What about your kertch?”

  The English scarcely bothered to notice the customs of the Scots and it surprised me a bit that he knew about the cloth married women wore on their heads to signify marriage. But I suppose if he’d been stationed in Scotland long enough…

  “I don’t wear one, on account that I’m a widow,” I said, raising my chin a bit. “Now, if you’re done dredging up the pain of my circumstances—”

  “Love match that ended in tragedy, was it?” he asked, with a bit of a snort. “Not at your age, it wouldn’t be. So what’s the story there? Hasty marriage to disguise your lost virtue? Or were you bartered away by an unfeeling father?”

  I gasped with offense, nearly overcome by the sudden urge to slap him across his smug face. “I’ll thank you to remember I’m a virgin, and don’t you dare give insult to my Da!”

  A slow smile spread across his face. “Ah, the temper of a Scotswoman. Very good. But you mean were.”

  “What?”

  “You were a virgin, before you married, of course.”

  I felt my face flame at what I’d let slip. “Of course, I was a virgin when I married,” I murmured, trying to fight the blush from my cheeks to be speaking so frankly of such matters with a relative stranger.

  There was a small moment of silence as the Englishman studied me. Then his blue eyes twinkled a bit. “And here I thought, when I was sent to Scotland, that I’d find nothing but barefoot, mule-headed peasant women of no fascination whatsoever. What a delight to see you struggling to keep your story straight. You’re doing a decent job of it, too. Admirable, really.” Reaching into his coat pocket, he withdrew a small leather bound book. The book. I tried to disguise my immediate interest, but he must’ve seen it. “This is what you were looking for, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, crossing my arms over myself.

  “I never let it out of my sight.” He tossed the book casually onto his writing table, then closed the door behind him, latching it, locking us both inside. “But I suppose there are any number of other things in this room that a Jacobite spy might be interested in…”

  “I told you that I’m no spy,” I insisted, fists clenched at my sides.

  “Where is it that your family hails from, Mistress…?”

  I declined to fill in my surname. “Right here, near Cluny Castle.”

  Loyal to Clan MacPherson, I wanted to say, but did not. The chief of Clan MacPherson was in the employ of the British, his men part of a regiment. He was thought not only loyal to the English, but fiercely so. And yet I knew his son, my beloved Ewan, was raising funds and an army to restore Charles Stuart to the throne. And that my brothers were helping him do it.

  The question was, did the Major know it?

  “Major, I must now insist that you unlatch the door and leave me to my business about the tavern. It isn’t proper for us to be locked together alone in a bedroom and I should hate to see such a mark to your honor or mine.”

  The English were always very prickly about their honor. Not in the proud way of a Scotsman, but in a stilted, panicky way, as if they walked about wearing pristine white and were afraid to smudge it.

  But not Major Anderson.

  He merely chuckled. “Well, if you’d like the door open while I strip and search you I’m happy to oblige, but I thought you might prefer privacy.”

  With that, he crossed the room in two long strides and tugged a bit on the ribbon adorning my stomacher.

  “Get your hands off me or I’ll scream!” I cried.

  “You won’t scream,” Major Anderson said, bringing his mouth so close to my ear that his breath warmed my neck. His breath smelled faintly but pleasantly of cloves and claret—not grog, like every other man in the tavern. He’d clearly brought with him his own stores. “If you scream, then I’ll be forced to arrest you and your father under suspicion of treason.”

  ~~~

  I didn’t scream.

  I didn’t move to stop him, either. Not when the Major’s dextrous fingers slipped beneath my clothes under the pretext of searching for whatever it is that I might have stolen from his room. I might say I stayed silent and still because I was terrified. I might even lie to myself and say it was because I hoped it would be over swiftly and being manhandled by a British officer would be a small price to pay for my freedom. But the truth is that I didn’t move to stop him because his twinkling blue eyes held me transfixed. And at the feel of his cool, proficient fingers upon my fevered skin, I became instantly aroused.

  Perhaps it was because I was an innocent and the Major was not; he knew how to rouse a girl’s passion by patting her hips, squeezing her bottom, staring her in the eye all the while.

  Or perhaps it was because I was a wanton.

  Having come so close to carnal bliss with my love, then being denied all touch since, my body’s cravings simply overwhelmed me. To my great embarrassment, my nipples hardened the moment they were revealed. And a flush of heat spread down my neck, to my belly, between my legs, forcing from me a groan. “I’m going to undress you now,” said the Major.

  “It’s—it’s not necessary.”

  “Oh, but it is.”

  “No,” I said, gasping over my own sudden lusts. “You can’t. I’ve never…I’ve never been undressed by a man before.”

  Major Anderson looped his finger through a curl of my hair, seeming to delight in its fiery highlights. But his gaze held amusement, still. “I must teach you to come up with better lies, my dear. You cannot both insist that you’re a widow, and then say you’ve never been undressed before. It creates a dissonance that invites interrogation.”

  “But it’s true,” I said, grasping his fingers where they teased lightly over the tops of my breasts. “We were wed…but he died before we could…”

  He broke into a bright smile. “Well, then you weren’t really wed, are you? It takes more than a churching to make a marriage.”

  Damn him!

  “Shameful, really,” he continued. “To think that a man might have the good luck to marry a brave and beautiful lass like you, and then leave her maidenhead intact.”

  I swallowed, because I’d never felt brave, and I hadn’t felt beautiful in quite some time. When Ewan gave me up without a fight, it had left me feeling small, undesirable, and unwanted. I turned my head away so that Major Anderson wouldn’t see those emotions flit behind my eyes, but it didn’t stop him from exclaiming, “Why your father deserves a good thrashing for allowing you to marry such a man and then rot away in his kitchen, a lonely widow…”

  “Don’t,” I said, the full reality of my situation coming home to me. He could have my father jailed or hanged because of my folly. And I would never forgive myself. “Please, I beg of you. Whatever you suspect me of, my father has no part in it.”

  “Are you quite sure that he didn’t send you up here to seduce me? After all, I’m very tempted by a girl so ripe and wanting…”

  I was that. I must have been. How else could I explain the outrageous desire building in me to be touched by a man who was neither my love, nor my husband, and a
n Englishman at that!

  “Would you like to become my mistress?” he asked, ever so casually.

  The shock forced the word from me. “What?”

  “My mistress,” he repeated, very calmly. “I’m in need of one. I’m far from home and I haven’t touched a woman in longer than I’d prefer to admit. And though I adore the total lack of moral scruple in whores who abandon themselves to every possible depraved act, I find brothels somewhat disenchanting. There’s really no challenge to seducing a girl in a brothel. So that leaves me in need of a mistress and you’re quite fetching—intoxicatingly so, if I’m to be perfectly honest. Your nipples are as hard as cherries, and look to be just as sweet. It is only a dubious sense of honor that is preventing me from ravishing you at this moment, with or without your consent.”

  When I gasped with a trill of fear, he added, “I’d prefer your consent. Much prefer it. It makes things so much more interesting…if you are a spy, imagine the fun of the cat and mouse game that shall ensue.”

  “What?” I said, again, because I couldn’t believe the brazenness of the man.

  “I see I will have to be more frank with you, in order to secure your understanding of the situation,” he said, bringing my fingertips to his lips with a scamp’s grin. “I would very much like to teach you about pleasure. About erotic abandon. I’d like to part your legs and lick at the little pearl hidden between your folds until your thighs tremble, your slit is dripping wet, and you’re smothering your own screams of ecstasy for fear someone will hear you.”

  My breath caught, and this time, not only because I was shocked, but because I was fascinated. The promise of that was a siren’s call, and the way he said it so surely…