Underground Captive (49 page)

    
             
"I-I came to bring you a bill of sale I found in the book I was reading," she replied nervously, averting her eyes from his body.  "I-I didn't hear you walking down the hall.  I didn't know you were here."

    
             
Jared walked over to her, towering above her.  "Thank ye, sweet Nicki."

    
             
Bloody damn.  Should he curse or kiss the fates that brought Nicki to his bedchamber.

             
Nicollette looked up at Jared, a growing fire filling her body.  "I-I'd better

leave."

    
             
"Nicki, ye were right.  That
was
Ricard's voice ye heard yes
terday.  He's alive!"

    
             
Nicollette blinked her eyes.  "You...you saw him?"

  
             
"Nay, Nicki, yer father did.  He said Ricard is, at this very moment, blazing a trail all the way to Parc Les Deux and all points north, south, east and west, in search of his sister," Jared told her, searching her face for acknowledgment.

    
             
Even as he spoke, Nicollette saw the glint of mischief somewhere deep in the gold-green of his eyes.  She didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the news.  Maybe, it struck Jared as being funny that Ricard was going all over creation looking for her when she stood right in the middle of Jared's bedchamber.  Funny or not, she didn't care.  Ricard was alive!

    
             
Overcome with emotion, she threw herself into Jared's embrace, wrapping her arms around his neck, a cry of relief breaking from her lips.  "Oh, thank you, Jared.  Thank you for telling me," she gushed, stopping at the seriousness of his look.

             
Their gazes met and melded.

    
             
She sank back on her heels, trying to calm the uneven rhythm that started in her chest and settled somewhere in her throat.

             
Jared eased her back into the comfort of his arms.

             
Nicki looked into his eyes and her heart lurched wildly.

    
             
"Nicki, sweet Nicki," he murmured, his mouth seeking hers, his tongue coaxing her lips apart, kissing her deeply and ravenously, demanding response.

    
             
Her breath all but stopping, her emotions spiraled, tin
gling in her middle.  But respond she did.  Weak kneed, she melted in his arms.  Her tongue dueling with his, she returned his kiss with the passion of one long denied her lover's touch.  His mouth moved over hers.  Teasing.  Tantalizing.  Driving her senseless.  She gasped as she was crushed against his bare chest.

             
Nicki's unrestrained replication was Jared's undoing.  Tonight, there would be no turning back.

    
             
"J-Jared," Nicki whispered, her voice trembling, her body trembling as she pulled away from him.

    
             
She tried to fight the rising tide of desire, the dic
tates of her heart--the man himself.  She attempted to conjure up a vision of him stealing slaves and betraying all that she held dear.  But she could not.  She had come to know him, of his kindness, of his ideals and of his honor.

             
Nicki wanted him and she sensed his need for her.  There was no other man like Jared--her captor, her tormentor, her love.

    
             
Jared lavished kisses over her mouth and cheeks, tracing a path along the slender column of her neck.  His need for her was overpowering, blocking all thoughts of reasoning, all thoughts of Ricard, and all thoughts of freedom seekers.  His mind and heart focused on the trembling beauty in his arms and the pleasure they would experience together; and on the overpowering feeling of love he felt for her.

             
"Jared?" Nicki whispered again.

             
"Aye, sweet Nicki?" he asked, sweeping her up in his arms and going to

the door to close and secure it.

    
             
His arms felt warm and strong around her waist.  He brought her to the bed and sat her down.  She looked into his eyes with absolute awe as he sat down beside her.  His eyes were dark with smoldering desire.

    
             
"Why did ye come to my bedchamber, Nicki?" Jared asked once again, unleashing a rain of seductive kisses over her face, her eyelids, her cheeks.  He blazed a trail from her earlobes to her throat.  Pushing her gently down on the bed, he continued his assault as he buried his head in the enchantment of her breasts.
             
They surged at the intimacy of his caress.

    
             
He cautioned himself to go slowly.  He mustn’t let the furor of his longing and need provoke him into a frenzied union with her.  He had to be gentle.  Besides this being Nicki's first time, she was the woman he loved.  A small, weak voice in the back of Jared's mind told him that his long-denied passion overruled his common sense.  Inattentive to anything else save the woman beneath him, raging desire emerged.  Behaving like an inexperienced lad, his hands began fidgeting with the fasteners on her nightrail.

    
             
As Nicki's blood raced wildly through her veins, her breasts spilled free of their confinement.
             
"Jared," she whispered, trying to answer his question.  "I-I only came...."  She sucked in a breath as Jared's tongue teased her roseate nipples.

    
             
Surprisingly, all reasoning had not left her.  Her heart and her body told her that this was right.  She loved him.  She wanted him.  Her mind screamed at her for not fighting him.  She should be pummeling him with her fists instead of surrendering to his in
toxicating kisses.

             
He was her captor.  She did not want to forget that.

             
He didn't love her.  He would break her heart.  She could not endure that.

    
             
He was a traitor to the planters and to her father.  Her father would never forgive her.  Charles would force her to choose be
tween himself and Jared.  She would never be able to abide that.

    
             
The sweet delirium that enveloped her, as she felt him apply feather light kisses to her flat belly, was almost unbearable, threatening her fragile control.  As his tender kisses moved once again to her breasts, where he nipped and suckled at her hardened nipples, she wasn't sure she would live through it.  Nicki covered her breasts with her hands and pulled away, not certain anymore why she'd come into Jared's bedchamber.

    
             
Jared looked up and saw the uncertainty in her eyes.  He raised her tiny hands to his lips and kissed each one of her fingertips.  "Don't fight me, sweet bairn.  Trust me, my sweet Nicki," he said, his voice an intoxicating caress.

    
             
He covered her mouth once again with a deep, probing kiss.  Igniting her body anew with surging flashes of lightning fires, it was a kiss that insisted surrender.  Her lashes lowered.  Nicki's control shattered.  Her body and heart won.  She ceded to the hunger that his kisses wrought.

    
             
Feeling her acquiescence, Jared unfastened his breechcloth and set it aside.  His engorged shaft, hot and hard as a steel rod, throbbed against her thigh.

    
             
Nicki opened her eyes at the feel of his hard manhood and gasped.

    
             
"'Tis all right, Nicki," Jared soothed.  "I promise I'll try not to hurt ye very much.  Trust me, my sweet Nicki.  'Tis made to meld with yer body.  Ye do trust me, don't ye?"

             
"Y-yes.  Yes, Jared I do."

    
             
"Let me take off yer gown, my precious love, and let me teach ye about the pleasures of life." 
And love.

    
             
They stood.  Her amethyst gaze remained fixed on him as he slid her gown off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.  Jared gently pushed her back down on the bed, laying next to her.  His eyes worshipped her glorious body.  Teasing her smooth, soft shoulders with cloud-like kisses, he blazed a path to her breasts again.  He cupped them in his hands, gently suckling one aroused tip as he massaged the tip of the other one.  Slowly, provocatively, he slid down, kissing her velvet skin on a burning path to her honeyed core.

    
             
Jared's bold foray scandalized Nicki.  She tried to pull away, but he brought his hands to her hips, holding her pos
sessively in place, pulling her forward to his mouth.  His tongue plundered her delicate folds.  She trembled at the heat of his mouth.  Even as she yielded, the simmering maelstrom threatening to consume her, frightened her.  His touch was expert and accomplished.  The sensation was so shocking, so achingly sweet, Nicki cried out in awe.  Any moment, she thought she’d go up in flames from the fiery sensations coursing through her body.  Pure bliss filled her.

    
             
Jared pulled his mouth away from her.  Laying next to her, he drew her into his embrace and guided her hand to his phallus.  As she shyly touched it, he took in a sharp breath.  “Feel it, my sweet Nicki, it's going to give ye great pleasure," he said, his voice filled with desire.

    
             
At his words, Nicki’s touch became bolder.   Watching the expression on his face, her hand explored the satiny smooth length of his rigid maleness up to its tip, where she circled her index finger in gentle caresses.

    
             
He moaned with a sharp intake of breath.  Her fingertip caress caused fiery thrills to shoot through his body.  His senses were intoxicated; his mind, a swirling vortex.

    
             
Realizing her power and seizing upon the moment, she fondled and stroked him shamelessly.

    
             
The delicate control that he'd fought so hard to keep un
raveled.  Taking hold of the hand that was wreaking such pleasurable havoc on his body, he positioned himself over her, resting his weight on one elbow.  He was only able to regain some remnants of control when he looked into her trusting gaze.  "Trust that 'twill only hurt for a moment."  He let go of her hand.  Still resting on his elbow, with the other hand he stroked her center again as Nicki writhed beneath him.  Wantonly kissing her, he spread her legs apart with his knees.  He rubbed the tip of his shaft against the hardened bud at the entrance of her sheath.

             
She purred with rapture and called out his name.

    
             
He exerted a little pressure and pushed to gain entry.  "Hold me, Nicki.  Hold me tightly if the pain becomes too great."

    
             
Nicollette clung to him as he pushed firmly but gently into the molten liquid of her center.  He kissed her passionately, ab
sorbing her cries as he pushed one final time, breaking her maidenhead.  The pain astounded her, searing and wrenching.  She cried out and sucked in a breath.  Suddenly, all she felt was pain, the feeling bringing her back from a distant Mecca.  She pushed against his chest.

    
             
Jared held her close to him, whispering to her, reassuring her, his shaft encased in her hot, tight center.  "The worst is over, bairn," he said, his body shivering.  "Once the pain subsides, ye will feel only pleasure."  He laved her nipples with his tongue then began sucking her breast.  Bracing himself above her on his arms, Jared started his easy, cautious strokes.

    
             
The wondrous sensations spiraled down to her loins once again as they kissed mouth to mouth.  Nicki became aware of a raging inferno in her body as Jared filled her with his manhood, making her forget the pain.

    
             
She ran her slim fingers through his hair, kissing him wildly, wantonly.  The last grip on his control slipped away.  Her response incited him to a torrid frenzy.  He touched and probed secret places in her center as he moved faster and faster, consumed by the sweet heat and cling of her.

    
             
Bringing her to heights of shattering rapture, feelings of aching hunger and tender yearning raced through the core of him and he released his love nectar inside her belly.

    
             
Nicki cried out in ecstasy, in unconcealed joy, as she rose to meet him in blissful perfection.