Ravished by Redcoats (Highland Heat Book 1) Read online

“If you will allow me,” Major Anderson began, with a squeeze of my hand. “I will now introduce you to the instrument of pleasure that will deliver you into womanhood.”

  I should’ve stopped him. I should’ve yanked my hand away. I should’ve slapped him. I should’ve done anything but stand there, dumb as an ox, while he gently drew my hand to his breeches, where I felt him, fully engorged.

  “Oh,” I groaned, my eyes fluttering shut.

  “Do you feel what you’ve done to me?”

  I did indeed. I felt the pulse of his hard erection beneath my palm. An aching, straining, manhood that throbbed…for me. For me. And a terrible war broke out inside me between the girl I always thought I was, and the one I really was.

  Fumbling in a field of heather with Ewan MacPherson had awakened my lusts, that’s true. And feeling his manhood beneath his plaid, pressed as it was against my thigh…that had been enticing evidence of his desire for me. But he hadn’t wanted me so badly that he’d been willing to risk my father’s wrath.

  But Major Anderson was willing to risk quite a bit. “I will be happy to forget the possibility of your family being in league with traitors, of course. And I will make certain that you are serviced so well that you walk a bit bandy-legged some days. I cannot promise you more than one blinding climax every time I touch you, but I think you’ll find I generally keep at things long after other men would give up…” I stared, which prompted him to give a snap of his fingers. “Oh, I almost forgot! There will be compensation for you, too. Naturally. You’ll be well-kept with an allowance and some jewels, not to mention given liberal leave to visit your family.”

  Why he was bartering with me. Bartering with me for my virtue!

  And I was even more thrilled than I was offended.

  My hand squeezed lightly at his breeches as if of its own volition. He smiled, clasping me about the waist, pressing himself more firmly into my hand. “And now that the terms are clear on my end, I suppose you must know what will be expected of you.”

  I shook my head, as if I was not entertaining his offer.

  But of course, I was, and he knew it.

  “You are asking me to be your whore,” I hissed.

  “Not remotely,” he said, as if mortally offended. But then that insufferably smug grin touched his features. “Well, yes, actually, I am. But I’m not looking for a woman to bed quickly, and leave behind on a mattress upon a puddle of my cooling seed. I will want you more than once. And not merely because you’re a virgin, which, by the way, will make the first time a bit of a nuisance. You see, I am a man of certain appetite. I will want you again, and again, in a variety of ways, and I will likely ask of you to perform acts that you will find depraved if not distasteful. I assure you, I will teach you to love them. But I don’t want to give the impression that ours would be any sort of ordinary transaction. Or that you’d be free to dispense with your favors to others without my permission.”

  I gawked at him, in part because I simply lacked the imagination to understand what he could mean. Though I tried to will myself to silence, two words managed to escape past the cage of my teeth. “What acts?”

  Another grin, this one accompanied by another throb of his cock in my hand as he backed me slowly up to the wall. Stroking my cheek while I mindlessly stroked his cock beneath his very white breeches, he said, “Well, I’m very glad you asked. Understand that I’ll take you in your mouth, your arse, and your cunt.” At the widening of my eyes, he chuckled. “Didn’t you know there were ways of taking a woman in every hole?”

  Scandalized, I gave my head a vigorous shake.

  “And they say the Scots do nothing but fuck all day in the fields with their sheep looking on…” He snickered a bit at his own joke, which I found more offensive than his proposition. “Oh, yes. I will want use of your whole body. And I will want your obedience. I might like to give you a little whipping, from time to time, though nothing that might ever mar this beautiful freckled skin of yours…”

  He bent his head to kiss my shoulder then, and the nearness of him, the softness of his mouth as it pressed against my skin, nearly made my knees buckle. Jesus, but he was as tempting as sin itself. Though his face was admittedly handsome, I didn’t understand my attraction at all. He was insulting, vulgar-tongued, smug and … English!

  But there was no hiding it; my treacherous body gave me away at once with a burning prickle across my skin and a hitch in my breath that sounded like surrender. As if sensing my unsteadiness, he pressed my shoulder blades to the wall and kissed me again.

  My neck. My chin. But when he got to my mouth, he hesitated…just a breath away. “Now then, my dear,” he whispered. “Why don’t I give you some time to think about my offer. When I come next to you, I will ask you a simple question. You can answer yes or no. If you say no to me, I will not offer again. But understand that if you consent to be my mistress, I will take you on the spot, and I shall make it as wicked an experience as possible.”

  And with that, he let me go.

  ~~~

  I should’ve told my father, of course. I should’ve gone to my Da and confessed at once, telling him of the overtures made to me by a guest under his roof. I should’ve insisted that he eject the man and send complaint to Major Anderson’s superior.

  Of course, that would have revealed that I’d been searching the Major’s room. And that, in turn, might have led to the discovery that I was trying to protect Ewan MacPherson. Or at least, that’s what I told myself excused my silence on the matter.

  The truth is, I should’ve given my maidenhead to the Highland warrior I loved. But since I hadn’t, I was now going to give it to a man who was in a position to be of use to us both.

  …if you are a spy, imagine the fun of the cat and mouse game that shall ensue.

  That’s what Major Anderson had said. And though I was nothing whatsoever as fanciful as a spy, my sympathies were with the Jacobites. As the Major’s mistress, would I not be in a position to learn matters that might be of help?

  These and a thousand other other justifications swirled in my mind, even as my fingers crept below the blankets and cupped between my legs, where I burned for relief. I was so hot. Fevered there. So needy. What would it feel like to have a man between my thighs. Not just any man, but the silver-tongued officer who wished to make a whore of me?

  Three nights I burned for him.

  Serving him grog in the main dining room with a shaky hand, I wondered if anyone saw the lustful way his eyes burned into mine, and the way my skin flushed hot in return. Brushing past him in the hall with a basket of laundry as he tipped his hat, I felt his gaze traveling appreciatively down the length of my body. Fetching for him his red coat and feeling our fingers brush in the handoff, I watched him stride impressively from the tavern in his tall black riding boots to mount his horse for some bit of business for the crown.

  He was, in every other respect, polite and cordial and controlled.

  And it was that very control that began to frustrate and enrage me.

  How could Major Anderson put to me such an offer, such a wicked proposition, and then leave me to go about my business in the tavern as if my whole world were not changed by it? He had groped me, and kissed my neck, and let me touch the hard ridge beneath his breeches…and yet again, I was left frustrated and consumed with carnal thoughts.

  I used to dream of brawny Ewan Macpherson crawling atop me and lifting his plaid to expose his own personal sword. But now, at night, I began to imagine the shrewd Major crawling between my thighs, kissing a trail up from my knees, his lips trailing softly to the place that ached for him. My own fingers pushed tentatively inside the tight space that I couldn’t imagine would sheathe something as large as his hardened shaft. And yet, I wanted it. I panted for it.

  And I came undone from just the thought of it, biting hard upon my pillow to smother the cry as my sex convulsed upon my own fingers.

  It was in this state of sexual madness that he found me in the kitchen that day
. My father had gone off to market, taking our servant with him to help drive the cart, so I was left to scrub at the pots while the redcoats took their breakfast in the room beyond. The door was open, so that I could hear if one of them asked for another scoopful of porridge or taste of fresh buttercream from the jug. But I was happy to immerse myself in the work of a scullery maid so as to crowd out the madness of my own lusts.

  “Your stays must be very loose,” said the Major from the doorway.

  Could he never knock or announce himself? He moved with the stealth of a ghost! “What?”

  He must’ve thought me quite a daft woman, given how often I asked him that. “Your stays,” he said, eying the part of my clothes my apron covered, then drifting up to the neckline. “If they were tighter, your breasts wouldn’t be jiggling quite as much while you scrub. Or is it just the tops of them that are jiggling? I’d like to know how ample they are…”

  Feeling myself redden from neck to ear, I stopped scrubbing. “You said you’d ask me a question…in time. Is that the question you want to ask? You want to know if it is just the tops of my breasts that jiggle?”

  I hadn’t meant to snap. To be so sarcastic. I also didn’t anticipate that it would delight him so. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “In a high Scots temper today, are we? I wonder what could be the cause of that…”

  “You know perfectly well,” I said, abandoning my pot, and drying my hands upon my apron. Given the state of me, I couldn’t imagine that he still found me attractive. Perhaps it had been a momentary lapse and he’d changed his mind about wanting me for a mistress. I was a hearty country girl with freckled skin and copper hair, and back home he likely had some pale, willowy, English rose…

  “Yes, I suppose I can guess what has you in a state,” he admitted. “But I admit to being curious as to whether or not you’re short of temper because of what I might be here to ask you or because I’ve taken so long to ask it.”

  Unaccountably, my eyes filled with sudden tears.

  I didn’t know why.

  I wasn’t sad, not precisely. I suppose it was because I was shamed and frustrated and filled with desires that had been denied me so long that I couldn’t hold them back any longer. Because I scarcely knew myself or what I was about anymore. Because I’d never thought to be any man’s mistress, but I somehow now wanted to be. Everything was in turmoil inside me, and came out in a tiny sob that I stifled with the back of my hand.

  “Oh, dear,” Major Anderson said, his grin disappearing. “Oh, no. There, there, Mrs. Darrow, please don’t cry.” With that, he found a handkerchief within his coat and extended it to me. And to his credit, he looked genuinely distressed.

  I dabbed at my eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know the cause of it.”

  A pained expression touched his features. “My dear lady, this is not the kind of cry I want to elicit from you. Do not feel forced to something you don’t want.”

  “I do feel forced.” I sniffled into the kerchief. “But not by you. By whatever sin I was born with in my blood. Because I…I want…”

  I couldn’t say it, but he didn’t make me. Instead, he grasped hold of my wrist and pinned it to the butcher block table, as if he feared I might take flight. And he wasn’t wrong to fear it. “You want to be wanted. You want to know how much pleasure you can give a man. You want to feel your body as an object of worship and satisfaction. You’re a blossom in a field waiting to be plucked, and these idiotic Scotsmen have somehow trampled right past you. You want to be a woman now, don’t you?”

  I nodded, quite incapable of speech. Feeling as if he had somehow reached into my heart and plucked upon every raw nerve.

  “Well, then,” he said, tracing my lower lip with his thumb. “I think I can remedy this for you. But first, I must know the truth. Is it me that you want, or just any man?”

  My eyes widened at that question, because I had no idea how to answer it. I knew what I should say—what he wanted to hear. But all I could do was sob out a little, “I don’t know.”

  And to my surprise he said, “How refreshingly honest…I can see that we’ll get on together very well, you and I. It’s quite alright that you don’t know.” With a slight glance over his shoulder at the open door, where we could see some of his men enjoying a meal, he added, “I’m certain we will get to the bottom of it, one way or another. But in the meantime, I’d like to know if you will consent to become my—”

  “Yes,” I whispered, before he could even finish the question.

  ~~~

  It must’ve been the eagerness of my agreement that drove his passion. My reckless surrender. I know now that it was like the scent of blood to a predator. Whereas he’d been quite the gentleman a moment before, extending to me a cloth to dry my eyes, all traces of civility quickly fell away.

  He’d said that if I consented to be his mistress, he’d take me on the spot, and he obviously meant to be good to his word. I’d thought he might take me to his bedroom. That he might even carry me there. Instead, he swept the clean pot and a parcel of herbs from the butcher block table, then pressed me down onto it, his mouth crushing mine in a kiss.

  It happened so swiftly, the air whooshed from my lungs and left me gasping.

  Knowing his soldiers were just a room away, I pressed my palms to the flat of his chest, but he was already working at the laces of his breeches with one hand, and tugging up my skirt with the other.

  “Oh, God,” I cried, wondering what I’d done. What I’d unleashed. Did he really intend to take my maidenhead, here, in my kitchen, in such a mad rush?

  I had never thought for my first time to be this way!

  And yet, truth be told, my body was every bit as frenzied for him as he was for me. Sexual need is a prisoner we keep caged, and the moment it sees an opening to escape, it does. It runs, because otherwise it might never get free.

  So even though I was straining to push him off me, my thighs also parted for him and my teeth eagerly nibbled upon his hot lips—experimenting and delighting in the differences.

  We broke apart from the kiss only long enough for him to maul my breasts, and draw my hands down to feel him bare. Oh! The weight of his erect shaft in my hand was a thing of delirious mystery. I wanted to touch it, and stroke it, and study it, but there seemed to be no time. What Major Anderson needed was too urgent.

  “Put my cock at your entrance,” he said, staring hard into my eyes, his own cheeks flushed, his pulse thumping on the underside of his sex organ.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Take me upstairs. I want to feel you inside me.”

  “You will. Right here. Put my cock where it belongs.”

  Every time he said the vulgar word, I throbbed anew with lust for him. But some part of me still protested, “But your men will see!”

  “Yes. That is my intention. Now don’t make me tell you a third time or there will be an unpleasant consequence.”

  His intention? My eyes widened. What kind of devil was I giving myself to?

  I didn’t know. And clearly I’d lost my wits, because I didn’t care.

  With another little sob, I squirmed a bit from my perch at the edge of the butcher block table and drew him between my legs. The velvet heat of him touched the wetness of my slit and I hissed from the pleasure of it. I should be ashamed of myself! Truly, I think I was ashamed. But it somehow didn’t matter.

  I just wanted him.

  And I got him.

  All of him. In one hard, rough, intent thrust.

  I screamed. And not with pleasure. The invading force and swell of his hard tool as it opened my virgin passage was a hot, searing pain. A tearing. I screamed again, this time to stop him in earnest, but he kissed me hard, smothering my protests.

  He didn’t move inside me. He held still, just pressed himself inside my tightness as if to make me feel very ridge and pulsing vein. His groin pressed to mine, our wiry hairs tangled together beneath my bunched up skirts and his opened breeches. We were joined and he wanted me to know it. This
English officer had taken me. He’d made me his. He’d claimed me. And in spite of all the pain, I felt taken. I felt claimed.

  He’d done it as if he knew how to do it. As if he’d taken virgins before.

  And while I sensed that it gave him pleasure—he never closed his eyes or looked away. Instead, he stared down at me with a feverish intensity. With one hand, he brushed away the tears of pain that coursed down my cheek, then whispered, “I mentioned that it would be a bit of a nuisance, my dear. You’re sore, and likely bleeding, which means the only way this can be pleasant for you is if you give in to the utter baseness of it.”

  He put my arms around his shoulders, and I clung to him as he began to thrust inside me. I was wet for him, which made him slide easily. But I was very tight and it seemed possible that he’d split me apart with his cock.

  That’s why, trembling with agony, I forced my mind to concentrate on the baseness of it, just as he advised. I was a Scotswoman being swived in her father’s kitchen by an English officer…whose men looked on.

  I don’t know when they noticed what was happening in the kitchen. Perhaps it was when I first screamed. But as Major Anderson pumped himself between my splayed thighs, forcing the table to slide slightly with each stroke, a cheer of encouragement went up from the room beyond.

  Dear God, it wasn’t enough that I was now this man’s whore—but they all knew it. And it was so much more shameful than I thought it might be! The hoots of the soldiers, the vulgar things they shouted, made my cheeks flame.

  But it also eased the pain between my legs, and…caused a sensation that made me moan. My grip tightened on the Major’s shoulders, and my knees gripped harder around his waist. “Very good,” he said, encouragingly, a bead of sweat on his upper lip as he worked over me. “You must let the arousal outpace the pain.”

  He began to press against me in a grinding way. A way that pressed his pubic bone to mine, mashing the little spot I would have liked to stroke. But this was different, and better, in every way.

  Oh, oh, oh, it wasn’t possible that I could reach climax this way, was it? Just from…