Thea Devine - Captivated

A pearl, she had called it.

FromThe Pearl, no doubt.

Below her swollen bud was a taut ring of wet, pulsing flesh her surrounding him.

Robert had never realized before how thin feminine skin stretched to hold a penis… or how fragile was the bonding of a man and a woman.

She quivered as he rimmed her clitoris with the pad of his thumb. Her inner muscles told him all that he needed to know. They told him how hard to press, how fast, until suddenly the taut band of flesh surrounding him relaxed utterly. In the next instant it clutched him so tightly it was almost painful.

Abigail cried out.

Robert cried out.

But he didn't move. He had promised her he would not bring her any more pain, only pleasure, and he meant to keep that promise.

Before she had time to catch her breath, he rubbed her swollen bud again. Until her inner muscles again gripped and milked him in climax.

He used her pleasure to bring about his own peak. It took six orgasms in all. When he arched up into her, she collapsed over him in a blanket of soft hair and damp flesh.

Mustering up energy he had never known he possessed, he jerked the bedcovers out from underneath his body and pulled them up around her.

Holding her tightly in his arms, his flesh snugly encased in hers, he prayed that the storm would last another night.

Rain was a steady drum of sensation; it pounded against the walls and the ceiling, impaling Abigail's body on a shaft of raw heat. She shifted to find a more comfortable positionher pillow was fuzzy and the bed bone-hard.

The feeling of being impaled grew. As did the raw heat inside her lower body.

Her eyes flew open.

A mat of wiry black hair greeted her gaze. It covered a very broad, naked chest.

Stifling a cry of alarm, Abigail lifted her head.

She stared into pewter-gray eyes framed by ridiculously thick, long black lashes.

Every muscle in her body clenched in recognition at what filled her to capacity.

She had taken a stranger into her bed. She had taken him into her mouth. And she had taken him into her body.

Where he was still lodged.

Pale-gray light illuminated the dark stubble lining the oddly tensed face of the man underneath her. "Good morning."

In the dark heat of night Abigail had been a woman; in the cold light of day she was once again an aging spinster.

An aging spinster who had propositioned a strangerand then had begged and cried for him not to stop.

Abigail stiffened her spine. "Good morning."

He folded down the covers from around her shoulders and eased her upright so that she sat across his hips. "Do you mind?"

Doyou mind ricocheted inside her headthe words she had asked before using his manhood to rub against her engorged flesh.

Flesh she had named.

Iwant you to touch myto touch mymy pearl!

Her muscles tightened in protest; she felt as if she sat on a fence post. His shoulders were brown against the white of the sheet and pillowtight little brown nipples peeped through black chest curls.

Which meant that her breasts were equally visible.

Breasts he had suckled like a starving infant.

She slapped her arms across her chest.

His hips surged upward with unmistakable intent.

Abigail gasped. At the sensation of him prodding the very depths of her body. At the realization that the intolerable pressure had nothing to do with what was inside her vagina and everything to do with what was inside her bladder.

Freeing her right arm, she braced her hand on the mat of wiry chest hairchest hair thatshe had rooted around in like a starving infant. "Actually, yes, I do mind. You see, I need toto"

Words failed her.

She closed her eyes at the loss of whatever dignity she still possessed.

There simply did not exist a polite formula for informing a man buried deep inside a woman that the dictates of nature preceded the urges of the flesh.

A boisterous laugh penetrated her mortification. The motion of his body combined with that of the bed caused her to jiggle up and down on the extremely solid flesh planted between her legs.

Opening her eyes in pained outrage, she anchored herself to his chest with both hands; her freed breasts swayed unimpeded. Hard, calloused fingers dug into her hips while pewter-gray glinted up at her.

"A lesson for the both of us. Men wake up with a hard-on. Whereas women, I take it, wake up merely needing to relieve themselves."

Gritting her teeth, Abigail attempted to scramble off him, only to find that her legs refused to movethey were numb from lack of circulation. "I beg your pardon, but I seem to require assistance in gettingdownup"

The tanned skin around his eyes crinkled. "My pleasure, but you reversed the order. First we lift you up" Strong hands circled her waist. "Then we help you down."

Robert jackknifed up in bed and onto his knees in one fluid motion. Abigail hardly had time to gasp before he was out of her body and she lay sprawled on the bed. He loomed over her with his manhood jutting in front of her face.

It was every bit as impressive in the pale light of day as it had been in the murky dark of night.

Grabbing the gray blanket at the foot of the bed, she pulled it around her naked body. "Thank you."

His grin widened. "It's still storming outside."

She was all too aware of the weather. "Yes."

"I take it you have a chamber pot."

She did. Under the bed.

Supremely unself-conscious in his nakedness, Robert climbed off the bed and leaned down. The monotonous patter of rain was interrupted by the drag of smooth porcelain over hard wood.

Robert straightened. "Shall I help you?"

The heat blazing in Abigail's face felt like it would burst into flame. "I think not."

"Abigail, there is no place for modesty inside a one-room cottage. Men and women share the same bodily functions. I have to make use of it, too. What is the difference, for God's sake?"

She refused to look away from him. "The difference, Colonel Coally, is that women squat and men do not."

His gray eyes widened momentarily; then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

He had very white teeth.

The laughter stopped when Abigail scooted out of bed slowly, carefully; the flesh between her thighs stung as though she had been impaled on a shaft of nettles. Her legs were like two slabs of wood, with no feeling in them whatsoever. Standing, bracing herself so she would not fall flat on her face, she reached for the faded green dress that lay heaped on the floor.

"Don't be ridiculous, Abigail." It was the colonel's voice of last night, sharp and autocratic. "It's pouring down rain outside."

Firmly clasping the blanket across her breasts, she threw the dress over her headand got totally lost inside it. Her stilted reply was muffled. "You may dictate to your men, Colonel Coally. I, however, am not ruled by military law."

Long, hard fingers reached inside the dress, grabbed her left hand, thrust it into a sleeve. "You did not object last night, Miss Abigail."

They both knew they were not discussing military dictatorship.

"Last night, Colonel Coally, was an anomaly."

"It is not necessary to go outside." The muted voice was suddenly flat. Her right hand was forced into a sleeve. "I give you my word as an officer that I will not intrude on your privacy."

"Thank you, but no." Her head cleared the dress. "I am in need of fresh air."

"Very well." He whirled her around.

Abigail stared past his dark headhis hair was hardly mussed, while hers felt full of live rats. "I can button up my own dress, Colonel Coally."

"Can you, Miss Abigail?" he asked enigmatically. Reaching inside the open placket of her dress, he grabbed hold of the blanket and yanked it up and out. Before she could voice her objection, he pulled her dress together and commenced fastening the tiny buttons.

Abigail silently endured his ministrations. The colonel just as silently retrieved her drawers.

She grabbed the silk from his hands and turned her back to wriggle inside the flimsy underwear.

"Where are your shoes? Or do you make a habit of running about barefoot?"

Blushing, back ramrod straightwherehad she put her shoes?ah, yes she marched to the door and crammed her feet inside the half-boots there. She contemplated putting her hair up, but knew there was no time to waste.

The wind almost knocked her back inside the door. It was accompanied by a blast of memories.

I want a woman to make me forget that I have spent the last twenty-two years of my life killing.

He had thought she was reading devotional literature when he had peeped through the window. Matrons and spinsters read devotional literature, not a woman who a man would choose to help make him forget.

What a shock he must have experienced, seeingThe Pearl clutched to her chest.

What a whore he must have thought her when she had propositioned him.

How pitifully desperate she had been, an old maid unable to accept her virgin status.

Idid not take you because I thought you were wanton, Abigail. I took you because I needed you.

The rain was icy.

For a second Abigail's intent wavered.

He knew everything else about her body, what was so shameful about this aspect of it? But then reason prevailed.

The colonel knew the wanton she had been in the night; not the spinster she was in the day.

Bowing her head, she fought the wind to close the door, then fought the wind and the rain and the mud all the way to the backyard privy. Only to fight it all the way back again on the return trip.

The colonel met her at the door; a towel was wrapped around his lean hips. After one look at Abigail's sodden clothes and dripping hair, he unbuttoned her dress and peeled it and the silk drawers off her. Wrapping the blanket around her, then, he picked her up as if she weighed no more than a child and sat her down on the wooden chair at the table where the air was unaccountably warm.

Abigail should have been outraged at such cavalier treatment. Instead, she felt chastised… and oddly comforted.

Hunkering down in front of her, he matter-of-factly removed her shoes. "I fired the stove and put a bucket of water on to heat. All I could find in the cupboard was a tin of tea, half a loaf of bread, and a jar of strawberry jam. Would you like some toast now or would you rather wait for the water to heat up and have it with your tea?"

Abigail turned her head to look at the wood box behind the stove. It was missing a hefty portion of wood. The other chair was pulled up to the far side of the stove; it was draped with his clothes that she had dropped last night. Turning her head in the opposite direction, she surveyed the floor in front of the cupboard. There was no broken glass littered abouta broom leaned against the wall.

ThePearl, where she had dropped it by the bed last night, was gone, too. As were the hairpins he had taken from her hair.

She faced the man who waited at her feet. "I will wait for tea, thank you."

"You're a stubborn woman, Miss Abigail."

Abigail stared into the stark gray eyes that were on a level with her own and felt her heart skip a beat.

He lookedvulnerable. And intensely masculine.

Last nighthad been an anomaly.

It must have been.

He had gone out into the stormand had come upon her cottage. Once past the initial heat of lust, a man like him would not want a woman like her.

But you are not just any woman, Abigail. For the duration of the storm you are mywoman.

It still stormed.

Abigail braced herself against the rejection that was certain to come. "You lied, Colonel Coally."

The dark face grew shuttered. "In what, Miss Abigail?"

"You said you wanted everything."

"You said last night was an anomaly."

"ThenI lied."

For one endless second the steady rhythm of the rain ceased. Then tiny lines radiated out from the corners of Robert's gray eyes, and they were no longer stark but warm pewter.

"How does the sponge feel?"

Blushing, Abigail tilted her chin. "It feelsthere."

"I'll take it out for you."

The blush grew hotter.

"After I soak you in hot water to relieve the soreness."

She refused to look away from the pewter gaze. "And what then, Colonel Coally?"

"Then I'm going to put it back in."

Suddenly the damp, dreary rain was more pleasant than a sunny day.