The Clever Strumpet Read online

  “Wait,” he said a moment later, panting, taking a half step back. “Wait.”

  “Why?” Caro asked, tugging his shirt out of his breeches then slipping her hand below his waist to stroke his cock.

  Rufus gasped and groaned and jerked his hips against her. “If we continue like this, I won’t be able to stop if you change your mind. I wish I could, but I’m not that strong and I need you too desperately.”

  “And where does the problem lie in that?” Caro asked reaching down to close her hands around his testicles.

  He made another wild, pleasured sound before gasping out, “If you decide you want your virginity to remain intact—”

  “It hasn’t been intact for years.”

  He froze, his mouth dropping open. Caro swore she could feel his cock tighten in her hand at her confession.

  “You’re not—” he started to ask.

  Caro shook her head and began to stroke him slowly. “Three years ago. In the country. At a house party. I was foolish and allowed myself to be compromised by a young buck on the prowl. He had no intention of marrying me. He already had his sights set on a widowed duchess and her fortune. But he was handsome, he was skilled, and I was eager and willing.”

  A jealous frown creased Rufus’s brow, but he remained silent.

  “I learned quickly how much I enjoy being bedded. And yes, I was flirting with unspeakable danger, but we were never caught and he did not get me with child. When the house party was over, we went our separate ways and haven’t spoken since. And yes, I’ll confess that I seriously considered taking another lover so that I could continue with an activity I enjoyed. But it wasn’t possible. It was difficult enough to spend those weeks with him. A single, young woman has almost no time of her own, let alone time for assignations. Until now.”

  She increased the pressure of her hand stroking him and he reacted with an intake of breath and a shudder.

  “So I run no risk of startling or offending you by hooking your ankles over my shoulders and fucking you hard and fast?” he asked, his eyes on fire as he met her gaze.

  “Not a chance,” Caro said, her heart speeding. “But do not be offended in return if I moan like a whore while you do it.”

  “My darling,” he sighed, full of passion, and yanked her back into his arms.

  His mouth ravaged hers, his tongue thrusting against hers to take what he wanted. But it was the work of his hands that left her breathless in no time. He tore at the laces of her stays as if impatient to have them gone. When they did finally drop to the floor as Caro shrugged out of them, he took hold of her thin, cotton chemise and tore it in two to expose her breasts. It was an unnecessary waste of a garment on the one hand, but the signal it sent was as essential as the blood pumping through her. He wanted her, and he would take her without holding back.

  It was Caro’s turn to whimper helplessly as he scooped her into his arms and lifted her, pressing her back into the wardrobe so that he could hold her at the right height to suckle her breasts. She rolled her head back against the wardrobe’s hard surface, crying out softly as he stroked circles around one nipple, then sucked hard to bunch it into a sensitive pebble. She felt the pleasure of it all the way to her core. His breeches were loose enough that his enormous, hard cock stood straight up out of them, rubbing against her sex as he explored her breasts.

  She reached up and gripped the top of the wardrobe while angling her hips deeper into his movements, then let out a long, pleasured sigh when the motion of his cock stroked her in just the right way. Combined with the way his tongue flickered over her nipple and his free hand squeezed her other breast, she was dangling on the precipice of orgasm in no time. He seemed to sense it as well and, with a surprise movement, he grabbed her thighs and shifted to slam deep into her.

  Caro’s eyes popped wide, and just as she’d promised, she moaned like a whore as his impossibly thick girth stroked deep within her. It was utter madness. She was naked and spread in the most ridiculous position, clinging to the wardrobe for dear life, and he was still dressed in his shirt, breeches, and boots as he fucked her. And there was nothing dainty or coy about his thrusts. He took her like a man who knew exactly what he wanted and had wanted it for a long time.

  She shattered into orgasm, her body shuddering around him. He filled her so completely that there was hardly any room for her muscles to contract and milk him. The joy of it drove her senseless as pleasure throbbed through every inch of her body, leaving her panting and helpless. It was so good that even before the waves of pleasure slowed, she longed for it all to happen again.

  It was only when Rufus pulled out of her and took a step back, lowering her to her shaky legs, that she realized he hadn’t come yet. His jaw was clenched as if in complete focus and forced control, and his cock stood stiff and tall and now slick with her juices. Wordlessly, he stepped away from her, his breathing slow and deliberate, and peeled off his shirt. Caro had the vague sense that he’d come within a hair’s breadth of spilling himself within her, but that he’d known when to stop and when to take a cooling step back so that he could keep going.

  So that he could keep going. The idea reverberated through Caro’s already sated body, igniting her all over again. She was awed by his control. She would have thrown herself on him, dropped to her knees and taken him deep into her mouth to finish him off, except that in doing so she felt she would cheat both of them out of what was a supreme effort on his part. So instead, she scrambled to her bed and threw back the covers before rolling onto her back and spreading her legs in a position of wanton submission.

  “You’re going to be the death of me,” Rufus growled as he bent uncomfortably to pull off his boots.

  “Over and over,” Caro panted, resting one arm behind her head and playing with her breast with her free hand to tease him. “Now that I know what you’re capable of, I’m never letting you go.”

  He discarded his boots and shoved his breeches down over his hips, kicking them aside, and stood before her in all his aroused glory. “From your mouth to God’s ears,” he said in a rumbling voice. He stalked toward the bed with a look of such lust that Caro started shivering, then crawled on top of her, holding himself above her so that their flesh barely brushed. “Now that I know you’re a thorough strumpet, I want you more powerfully than ever.”

  “Do you?” she asked, one saucy eyebrow arched.

  “You have no idea,” he said with a mix of need and seriousness. “I’ve had plenty of women, but I’ve never wanted one to swallow me whole as badly as I want you.”

  “That can be arranged,” Caro said with a wicked grin.

  She slithered down his body underneath him while he held himself on all fours until her mouth was at the level of his cock. With one hand cupped under his tightened balls, she drew his hard, hot staff to her mouth and closed her lips gently around the tip. He let out a half-hysterical groan as she teased his flared tip with her tongue, licking away the drop of moisture that had formed over its slit. Then, just to show him she could, she lifted her head and drew him in deep.

  It was a shock to feel just how much bigger than her former lover he was. Drawing him all the way to the back of her throat wasn’t easy. She had to let him go before she choked, but her point had been made. Rufus swore like a pirate as his entire groin tensed. He pulled his hips away from her, hinting that he was at the very edge of his remarkable control.

  “Another day, perhaps?” she asked as she wriggled her way back to a more reasonable position under him.

  He responded by rocking back and grabbing her knees only to lift them high and to the sides, laying her sex open fully for him. He wasn’t sweet or gentle with her as he positioned himself perfectly to bring his mouth down between her legs. There was almost something vulgar in the way he raked his tongue across her weeping sex, as if her pussy were his to feast on. She gasped and gripped the mattress as he drove her hard and fast right back to the height of pleasure where he’d had her up against the wardrobe. It was as
though he were demanding that she come again for him without shyness or giggles or any of the things that inexperienced lovers might play at while coaxing each other into orgasm. He wanted her at his mercy, and so she would be.

  Her second orgasm tore through her like a wildfire, leaving her crying out with pleasure so intensely that not a soul in the house, or the entire square, could be in any doubt what was happening. Without him filling her, the throbbing was acute, leaving her sweating and gasping. And then he furthered his claim on her by thrusting deep inside of her before her shuddering climax was through.

  It was raw, primal, and beautiful. He made desperate sounds of pleasure as he plundered her. She clasped her arms and legs around him, undulating with him and willing him to come as hard as she did. They were no longer a lord and a lady in proper British style, they were two virile creatures who had to mate with each other or die. She dug her nails into his back and buttocks, then burst into another wave of loud orgasm as he bit her shoulder. He finally came undone with a cry of triumph as her sex milked him. His body tensed and his thrusts grew pitched for a moment before slowing.

  They collapsed, utterly spent, onto the damp and tangled sheets, barely able to catch their breath or extricate themselves from each other. Caro didn’t ever want to unwrap her body from his. She would have been content to live in a constant state of semi-arousal, Rufus lodged within her, growing hard and soft in turn, over and over. All she wanted was to feel the heightened sense of pleasure and adoration that she felt in that moment. She loved him so dearly that it brought tears to her eyes, and she would fight for him until her last breath.

  “We should—” she began to say through ragged breaths but was cut short, her blood suddenly running cold.

  On the other side of the wall, slightly to the side of the wardrobe, came the sound of a male voice groaning in completion. Rufus tensed with a frown, but Caro knew in a heartbeat what had happened.

  “Someone was watching us,” she hissed. “From the secret passageway.”

  Rufus could only make an exhausted puzzled sound at first, but within a few seconds, the reality of the situation hit him and he snapped to full attention—or as much as was possible in a post-orgasmic haze.

  “Secret passageway?” he managed to say as he wrenched himself to his knees above Caro. He scanned the room, growing ever more alert.

  “You know about the secret passageway,” she reminded him in a whisper, wriggling out from under him and standing. The warm stickiness that spilled down her thigh as she crossed to the wardrobe gave her a giddy thrill, but she was forced to push it aside as she reached for the wardrobe and tried to move it away from the wall.

  Rufus was on his feet, moving the wardrobe for her, within seconds. “You didn’t tell me there were peepholes into your room,” he said.

  “There aren’t,” she insisted. “Whoever that was must have just been listening.”

  The truth of the situation began to come into focus as the passion cleared from her brain. As soon as Rufus moved the wardrobe aside, she grabbed a candle from the bedside table and clicked the latch that opened the door to the passageway. Rufus took the candle from her and marched ahead. She had to grin over the fact that neither one of them seemed to be at all fussed by the fact that they were both naked and sweaty from making love. Time was of the essence, though.

  A small, damp spot on the wall served as proof that whoever had been spying on them had climaxed, courtesy of Caro and Rufus’s intimacy. What was less clear was which way he had gone. As usual, the secret passageway was dust free and tidy, so there were no footprints to indicate where the voyeur—if someone who only listened could be called that—had run to. Caro and Rufus moved along the passageway, searching for any hints as to their spy, all the same.

  The closest they came to discovering who had overheard them was a rumble of movement in one of the rooms on the same floor. Caro silently showed Rufus how the peepholes slid open and peeked into the room.

  She nearly gasped aloud at the sight of Saif Khan fiddling with his breeches as though he was in the process of dressing or changing clothes. She jerked back from the peephole and beckoned Rufus to look as well. In the light of the candle, she saw him scowl, then lean away and shut the peephole. He then motioned for her to go back the way they’d come.

  “It was Saif,” he growled once they were back in Caro’s room and the wardrobe had been moved to its proper place. “He must have been listening the whole time.”

  “We can’t be certain of that,” Caro said, though the knots in her stomach told her he had been. She chewed on her lip before glancing up to Rufus and asking, “Do you think he heard us talking about Miss Dobson and Lord Hazelton? And by the way, you still haven’t explained your theory about Lord Hazelton to my satisfaction.”

  “I did other things to your satisfaction,” he said with a rake’s grin.

  Caro felt herself begin to melt inside all over again. “If only there were time,” she sighed.

  Rufus seemed to grasp the seriousness. He rubbed a hand over his face and nodded. “We have to go to Kent to visit Miss Dobson at her father’s estate,” he said. “She’s the lynchpin to all of this. Saif is involved as well. He might have just stumbled across information that will either help him abscond with the diamond or separate himself from the situation entirely.”

  “It could have been someone else listening in,” Caro said because she felt she had to. “The East India Company house is crawling with male visitors in search of titillation these days.”

  “But do they know about the passageways?” Rufus asked.

  Caro shook her head. “Most likely not. Rebecca, Jo, and I never encountered anyone else in all our explorations, most of which occurred before Saif Khan returned home.”

  “Then it had to be him,” Rufus said, bending reluctantly to scoop up his clothing. When he straightened and donned his shirt he said, “I’ll arrange transportation to Lord Somerset’s estate as soon as possible. Will you be able to get away for an entire day?”

  Caro grinned. “The school is more or less mine now. I can give myself a holiday if I choose.”

  “Good,” Rufus said. “Then be ready, and soon.”

  Chapter 5

  It took a monumental amount of courage for Rufus to walk back into Caro’s school two days after the evening of scandal he’d spent in her room. As it turned out, Saif Khan hadn’t been the only one listening in on his amorous activities with Caro, as evidenced by the flurry of whispers that came from the hallway on the other side of the bedroom door just as the two of them had rolled back into bed instead of saying their goodbyes. Caro had donned her robe and stepped into the hall to have a word with her wayward pupils and friends, and when she returned, she’d advised Rufus to leave through the secret passageway instead of running the gauntlet of immoral heathens who had their ears pressed to the door and walls.

  Two days was not enough to dampen the enthusiasm of the young ladies who were supposed to be reforming their characters instead of slipping further. The moment he stepped into the large dining room with its rows of tables, he was granted a standing ovation, led by Miss Felicity Murdoch and Lady Eliza Towers.

  “Bravo,” the two of them cried, encouraging the others to applaud as well.

  Rufus had never felt the slightest bit of sheepishness over bedding a woman in his life, but as he glanced across the room to Caro, pleading with his eyes for her to hurry up so they could leave on their vital errand, his face glowed as red as his hair. He attempted to shush the cheering young ladies with a gesture, but they were determined to laud him to the high heavens.

  “Are you a zookeeper, madam?” he asked Caro once they were safely in the carriage he’d commandeered from his father’s fleet for their errand. “Those ladies—if they can be called that—are a pack of wildcats.”

  “They are,” Caro said with a proud smile.

  Rufus loved her and was baffled by her in equal measure. “You know that none of them will be given even a scrap
at the table of polite society if so much as a hint of their behavior is made public, don’t you?”

  Caro grew more serious. “None of them stood a chance of being accepted by the ton to begin with. And I fear that most of them will meet a scandalous end, one way or another.”

  “Then why let them carry on so?”

  She turned to him with an incredulous look. “Because there are more ways to live than those approved of by the ton. There are more futures to be had than those as wife to a respectable, stodgy man and mother of his children. The sun rises and sets each day for the unconventional as well as for those who follow the rules.”

  “But any path other than the expected is a hard one to walk,” he said.

  “Which is precisely why I work so hard to give my friends the skills they will need to fight as they travel that path. We do not all wish to be proper showpieces in careful, controlled studies of the perfect English family, you know.” She tilted her chin up in challenge.

  A smile spread across Rufus’s face that seeped all the way into his soul. He brushed his fingertips across the softness of her cheek. “That is why I love you, you know.” Her blush deepened and her eyes glittered with surprise and affection. “With you, I can be as mad and bad as I want to be and you won’t deride me for it.”

  “You wish to be mad and bad, then?” she asked, arching one brow.

  “So very much,” he said in a low growl, leaning into her and slanting his mouth over hers.

  The drive to Kent was sufficiently long enough for him to prove just how mad and bad he could be. It was long enough for Caro to prove how nubile she was as well. The jostling of the carriage as it traveled roads of questionable condition was enough for the two of them to expend surprisingly little energy as she straddled him, his cock buried deep in her slippery sheath.