Regency Rogues Omnibus (117 page)

Arabella clutched her breasts and between her thighs with her long auburn hair falling forward as her head hung down. “I beg you for clothes, my lord,” she whispered in a small voice.

“Darth,” he corrected. “And no, no clothes.” Arabella’s head came up at this, sending her long tresses falling backward over her bare shoulders “You will not cover yourself to me unless I wish it,” he stated firmly under her horrified golden eyes.

“You cannot keep me unclothed!” Her small chin rose upward, becoming firm.

“I can, Arabella, and I will. You are mine now and you will do everything I say.”

Knock-Knock-Knock
. “Lord Peregrine, I have the hot water here for your bathing and I have brought the sick young lady some gruel.”

“Damnation.” Darth cursed at Chicery’s timing, just as Arabella leaped to her bare feet with a horrified squeal and began to run toward the only other door in the room. It was his dressing closet.

Chapter Eight

Darth frowned, feeling haunted and edgy. His hooded gaze never leaving Arabella, while she fidgeted on the other side of his bedchamber, pretending great interest in the things on top of his armoire.

Chicery had come and gone, bringing food and a bath, while Arabella closeted herself in his adjoining dressing closet. When she had exited at his command to come partake of the food she had been wearing one of his white silk shirts. He had not yet commanded her to remove it. Instead he sat in the brass tub of hot water, with one of his hairy calves propped over the edge as he brooded. Fighting his lust was a more accurate description, as he watched Arabella trying valiantly to pretend that he was not present. Perhaps she thought if she bided her time quietly enough he would vanish from the chamber on some important morning duty. Alas, that would not be the case.

Instead, he sat in his bath contemplating his lust ... or rather, his rigid and fully aroused cock with its obese head poking out of the water. Finally, unable to live with the torment one second longer, he grasped the ample root of his manhood into his hand.

An embracing stroke, up the shaft, brought his head back to lean against the rim of the brass tub, but his gaze never left Arabella. The outline of her rounded ass beneath the silk of his white shirt became a focal point for his gaze.

Darth stroked his cock slowly with a tight grip, lifting the angry red head out of the water with each pull. His gaze contemplated the rich, reddish-brown hue of Arabella’s long mane of tangled hair and the way the very ends of it curled over her rounded buttocks. The water splashed as he tormented himself with his hand, feeling his balls on the downward stroke. The pleasures making his thighs stretch open wider. He was an expert at this manipulation ... A fool, who’s only lovers had been his hand for the past ten years.

His mood was lifting in a sublime way and the irritating concerns about a man named Nicholas — where Arabella came from — her family and Crom with a knife over her, melted away. They ceased to exist. “Arabella, come here now and help me with my bath.” His voice was deep with command and there was no question in its tenor.

Arabella turned slowly to the command of Darth’s voice. The decision she had been dreading was at hand. Whether she should struggle or surrender. Should she fight with all the will that she possessed over the inevitable or should she simply submit? Both options frightened her. The fact that she had no choice did not escape her as she walked hesitantly toward Darth sitting in his large brass tub.

She’d never even been kissed before
, she thought. She’d never had her heart strings tugged by a handsome suitor as was every young girl’s dream. It was not as if she had not dreamed of such things, only too many things had happened to get in the way of pursuing it. By the time she had been old enough to consider such feelings, her father had died an accidental death. Throwing herself, and her mother, and brother’s’ lives into turmoil.

Her father had owned a modestly sized sugar cane plantation in Jamaica. Upon his death though, which he had not adequately prepared for, there had been the immediate threat of losing the plantation. All because the law stated that a woman alone could not be the rightful heir, and instead of losing the plantation, Arabella’s mother had quickly looked for a new husband. She’d had some small amount of time, so it had not been a completely desperate act of just picking any rapscallion who came along.

Unfortunately, all the thought in the world had not prepared her for a con man like Victor Crom. He had presented himself to Jamaican society as a respectable English gentleman, with numerous properties of his own back in England. None of which was true, and then a week before the terrible fire, her mother had contracted an island fever and nothing she or Lady Serena had done had served to save her. It had been excruciating to stand by so helpless, watching her mother dying.

A week later the cane fields had caught fire and no amount of effort had been able to stop it from taking the house. Victor had been beside himself, ranting that the natives had started the fire and nothing Arabella could say would make him think otherwise. That was when Victor said they were leaving, going to England, and although she had protested vehemently, she’d had no choice but to follow his rule. At least until she turned of age, and then perhaps she could break his hold but that would not help Nicholas.

Arabella cast a veiled glance at Darth from beneath her thick eyelashes. She had not been in the room when he had entered the tub. Since then she had tried to keep her gaze everywhere, but on the coppery colored tub, which was set before the marbled fireplace. Darth was literally sprawled into the tub with his long legs hanging out the sides. She had never seen the front of a naked man before. Arabella peeked beneath her eyelashes at Darth’s broad chest, carved in muscle, and then along the ropes of sinew that flexed over his powerful shoulders and arms when he moved. Her gaze glanced over the black hair curling over Darth’s chest and covering his powerful legs. She had heard the word masculine before, but never truly understood it until now.

“Arabella, come wash my hair.”

“Yes, master,” she quipped through her trembling lips. To her surprise, it appeared it would be a combination of both fighting and submitting. “Oh!” she yelped suddenly as Darth grabbed her wrist and tugged her sharply to the side of the brass tub. She had moved too close to him, and he was quicker than his large body betrayed.

“You will call me Darth,” he uttered with fierceness.

Arabella cowered, tugging on the wrist Darth held captured, as she cried. “You are hurting me.” It was a desperate lie, yet Darth’s hand let go so fast that she had to clutch the rim of the brass tub to keep from falling.

“And, you will remove that shirt that you have stolen from me!”

“
No
,” Arabella cried, as she turned to flee.

Behind her, Darth leaped out of the tub, with so powerful of a motion that the water came with him, drenching them both as he caught her from behind. One of his muscled forearms, clamped over her waist, dragging her backward, then lifting her upward against his chest.

“You are a beast!” she cried senselessly.

She struggled within his grasp with long strands of her wet hair slapping his bare chest as her head twisted with her struggles. Darth merely laughed at her, and the sound of it outraged her further as she screeched and tried to scratch his forearm. She was outraged and frightened, but more, she could feel the bare-skinned impression of Darth’s considerable male organ pressing into the crease of her bottom. He held her feet dangling off the floor, while he laughed at her again. Arabella could feel the uselessness of her struggles beneath the power of his strong masculine body, yet his laugh infuriated her beyond common sense.

Then suddenly she was free, and her feet touched the ground as Darth’s forearm lifted from its imprisoning hold around her waist. Her panicked instincts were to flee as she bolted forward away from him, but he was holding onto the collar of the shirt that she wore. She had not realized his hold was there, until she heard the ripping sound and the fragile silk shirt was torn from her body. She squealed in shock, fear, and surprise at being left completely nude again so quickly. In desperation she kept going forward, running to the door as she grabbed for the doorknob. Of course it was locked, as she knew it would be, even as she tugged uselessly on the brass knob.

It felt as if she could not get enough air into her lungs, when she finally stopped her futile efforts, and she leaned limply against the door. Tingling goose bumps rose anxiously on her buttocks and up her spine, and it was not entirely from her wet and nude flesh. It was from the silence behind her and the certain knowledge that Darth’s dark gray eyes must be gazing at her nudity with singular intensity.

The silence was deafening, as she clutched her bare breasts and between her thighs turning slightly to look back into the room behind her. She was shocked at the charcoal gray darkness of Darth’s eyes as he regarded her intently, while he sat sprawled in a brocade wing chair by the fireplace. His absolute nudity was overpowering, but more keenly disturbing was the way he held his own male organ in his hand, stroking it. A male organ that dwarfed even his large hand with its size.

Darth’s long legs were bent at the knees and fallen open. Arabella could see his hips rising and lowering subtly with each stroke that he took. His powerful thighs with black hair covering them had stretched tendons of sinew, and his chest was broad, hairy, and muscular. His darkly shadowed face was flushed and the scarring stood out against his exotic dusky features. The contrast of his darkly shadowed powerful body, against the fleshy red coloring of his male organ was vivid. Her breath caught as the rosy bulbous head bounced in a salute to her with a seemingly vigorous stroke that Darth took. There was wetness in a small tender crease in the helmeted head.

A small moan of unknown origins escaped her throat, and Darth’s deep gray eyes rose from looking at her buttocks to her face. “Turn around,” he rasped. The intense torment in his dark eyes drew her around, until her back was pressed up against the door. She could see the haunted craving in his gray irises. “Watch me with my lover, Arabella. The only companion I have had in ten long years,” Darth hissed.

Then she watched in awe as he used his free hand to fondle the ruddy colored sacks hanging below his male organ. His thighs stretched open wider as his tall body slouched more into the chair, and the hand he used to pump his rigid organ began a faster stroke. A sound like hushed slapping filled the room as his cheeks drew leaner and his lips grew fuller, while his eyelids drooped to half open. Without realizing it, she dropped her arm trying to cover her breasts, until both her hands were between her thighs, clutching her sex.

He groaned then, with a harsh expelling sound as her nipples goose-pimpled and the tips puckered into small fat buds. She had trouble breathing and the strain of it lifted and lowered her naked breasts, as humid dampness seeped from her sex and wet her fingers.

Darth’s nostrils flared as his hand moved more swiftly along the rigid column of his organ, making louder and more rapid slapping sounds. “Let me see your pussy,” he hissed and the sound of his voice was a tenor plea.

Instinctively, she knew what he wanted to see, even though the word was foreign to her. But nothing could move her shaken limbs as she stood watching Darth, wholly transfixed on the overwhelming sexual energy expanding from him. Then a moment later, it seemed not to matter as his head fell back and the strong tendons in his neck stretched. His eyes closed and watching him, her breathing became erratic, nearly panting. His hips began to raise and lower with the swift pumping of his hand, and she could see the bottom curves of his buttocks over the edge of the chair.

“Oh,
Jesus
,” Darth groaned sharply.

Arabella gasped with the sound, and finally she started to breathe again after long moments of suspension. There was a creamy white substance spurting from the head of Darth’s organ.
It was seed, a man’s seed,
she thought dizzily, as her knees began to shake and she realized vaguely that her legs would no longer support her. Slowly, she sank to the floor, while still clutching her aching sex as she watched Darth with his head still reclined and his broad chest expanding and contracting with labored breathing.

She could not stop trembling as her body continued to sink, until she lay on her side on the floor. It was as though a great force of energy had rushed through her body and it left her helplessly exhausted. Her eyelids blinked, then lowered, and she knew her failing weakness was complete.

Darth slouched in the chair with his limp cock held in his hand for thirty minutes or more. At first he was aware of nothing, but a haunted and deflated feeling, caused by the temporary release of his edgy lust. It had been like this for the past several years, he never gained satisfaction anymore by his own hand. He felt a second or two of agony that he could not call pleasure, then the release of tension in his body, followed by deflated and debase feelings. It was disgust with himself and his sexuality that did not allow him to attain the overpowering and lingering pleasure he knew could be gained. This time was no different, more humiliating perhaps, because he had done it in front of a beautiful young woman. He had allowed Arabella to see his depravity, by fondling himself shamefully. Never able, until the last second, to take his gaze off her.