The Countess Misbehaves
Madeleine trembled and a sob of fear escaped her lips.
“Come,” Armand shouted, “let’s get in out of the wind.”
His arm firmly around her, Armand guided the frightened Madeleine back across the slick deck and up the tilting bridge to the captain’s cabin, just off the wheelhouse. Sheltering her against his tall body, Armand tried the door. It was jammed. He pressed a muscular shoulder against it, pushed with all his strength and it flew open.
Quickly he handed Madeleine inside and followed, closing the door behind him. The cabin was deserted. The captain was gone. The crew was gone. They had either been swept overboard or had fled cowardly in one of the lifeboats.
Madeleine stood in the center of the small, tidy cabin, hugging herself. Chilled with fear, she thanked Armand with her eyes when he took a large white towel from a sea chest and handed it to her.
She blotted her wet shiny face, then began rubbing her thick, soaked hair. She watched as Armand took another towel, peeled off his drenched white shirt and dried his dark chest and wide shoulders.
“I’m sorry there are no dry clothes here for you to…” he began.
Swearing, he tore a clean gray blanket from a narrow bunk that hung from the far bulkhead by strong link chains. He wrapped the blanket around her trembling shoulders and suggested she sit down. She looked around, realizing the bed was the only place to sit. Madeleine shook her head and said she’d rather stand. The words had hardly passed her lips before a giant wave crashed against the cabin, sending her sprawling on the sharply canted deck.
Armand reached her in an instant, drawing her to her feet. “Are you all right?” he shouted, clasping her upper arms.
“Yes,” she shouted back, “but maybe I had better sit down.”
He guided her to the bunk and she sank down onto the mattress’s edge. Armand drew down the bunk’s canvas restraining straps and cinched them around her waist. “That should hold you,” he said. Then he exhaled heavily and sat down on the bed beside her, realizing there was nothing more to be done.
The ship continued to pitch and roll and plunge and rise as the hurricane-force winds slammed mercilessly into the crippled vessel. Strapped down in the captain’s bunk beside a virtual stranger, Lady Madeleine Cavendish tried very hard to be brave. She had been reared to keep a stiff upper lip in moments of crisis and to never let others know she was upset.
But she had never faced anything like this. It was impossible to hide the fact that she was terrified.
“We are going to die, aren’t we, Mr. de Chevalier?” the shivering Madeleine asked, her eyes round with fear.
Armand was quick to offer hope to the frightened woman. “No. Certainly not. This vessel has a wooden hull, which means it can stay afloat for hours,” he said and slid a comforting arm around her shaking shoulders. “There’s every chance that we will be picked up.” He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, then dropped his hand away, bracing a stiffened arm behind her on the mattress.
“You don’t believe that,” she accused, studying his dark face for signs of sincerity. His unchanged countenance revealed nothing. “Do you?” She pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders.
“Yes, I do.” Armand insisted, keeping up the pretense for her sake. “With any luck another ship will pass by here within the hour and take us on-board.”
She nodded, but she was not fooled.
Her shoulders slumped with despair and try as she might, she could no longer hold back the tears that were stinging her eyes. Madeleine began to quietly cry. Armand didn’t hesitate. He took her in his arms and pressed her wet cheek to his bare chest. He stroked the crown of her damp hair, gently patted her slender back and comforted her with soft spoken words of solace.
In her rising fear, Madeleine put her arms around his trim waist, clasping her hands together behind his back. The blanket fell away from her shoulders. She clung to Armand as if he were her lifeline to survival. Tears spilling down her cheeks, she buried her face in the warm solidness of his naked chest and closed her eyes. Above her bent head, his deep, calm voice soothed and reassured.
Madeleine’s tears soon ceased, but Armand continued to hold her in his arms. On a soft inhalation of breath, she raised her head and looked up at him apologetically.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?” He replied, then smiled at her in that devil-may-care way of his as if nothing were amiss. She knew that he was being brave and strong for her sake. And it touched her. She smiled back at him and realized, as she did so, that it was the first time she had ever really smiled at him. His dark, beautiful eyes lighted in response.
And as she smiled at him the thought struck her that his handsomely chiseled features would be the last face she saw this side of heaven. The two of them were going to die together in this tiny cabin. It might be an hour. It might be less. But soon the sinking ship would plunge with decisive finality into the dark, fathomless depths of ocean and she and de Chevalier would drown.
They were going to die together, two strangers who knew nothing about each other. Neither of them would ever see their homes or loved ones again. They would never again eat a sumptuous meal. Or drink chilled champagne. Or warm themselves before a roaring fire. Or laugh in the rain. Or dance beneath the stars.
Or make love.
Madeleine stirred against the handsome man who held her. The sea pounded against the ship. Waves slapped against the cabin. She clung to Armand, her arms wrapped around him, her head on his shoulder.
It was crazy, she knew, totally insane, but she wondered—as she had that first night when they had danced—what it would be like to kiss him. To be kissed by him. Through the cover of her half-lowered lashes, she gazed with interest at his sensual mouth.
And was amazed when Armand said, as if he could read her thoughts, “Kiss me, Countess.” He gently drew her closer, pushing the blanket completely away. Her head fell back against his supporting arm. He slowly bent his dark head to her upturned face. “Kiss me, once.”
Not waiting for permission, Armand kissed Madeleine. It was not a soft, feathery kiss of two people slowly becoming better acquainted. It was not a tender, closed-mouth caress of a lover who had forever and a day to win and woo his reluctant lady fair. It was not a brief, introductory meeting of two tentative pairs of lips.
It was a kiss of such flaring fire and primordial passion that Madeleine was instantly overwhelmed. Dazed and clutching at his smooth, deeply clefted back, she felt herself go limp in his strong arms as he swiftly deepened the blazing kiss. He thrust his tongue inside her mouth, boldly exploring all the highly sensitive regions, stroking her tongue with his own, sending her wits scattering and her pulses pounding.
Madeleine realized, as her lips were combined with his, that she wanted this handsome, hard-faced rogue. Before she died she wanted to know—one last time—the kind of passion she barely remembered from her first nights as a newlywed.
If any man could give her even the slightest taste of that kind of rapture, it was surely this dark, seductive Creole who was kissing her with such unrestrained passion. She sighed into Armand’s mouth and her nails raked down his warm smooth back. The more she considered the two of them making love, the more she wanted it.
The more she wanted him.
When at long last his conquering lips released hers, her head fell back against his rock-hard biceps. She looked into his eyes and trembled with rising desire.
“Mr. de Chevalier,” she said finally, almost shouting to be heard above the wind’s constant roar, “will you…that is, I…could we…?”
“What? I can’t hear you.” He leaned down, placed his ear close to her lips.
“Make love to me, Mr. de Chevalier,” she blurted out. Armand raised his head, looked at her, one dark eyebrow lifting slightly. She rushed her words, “We are going to go down with this ship. You know we are, I know we are. So what difference would it make if we…we…” Her words trailed away and she lowered her eyes, sorry that she had made such a preposterous proposal.
Until he put his thumb and forefinger to her chin, raised her face to his, and looking straight into her eyes, said, “I’ll make love to you on one condition.” He brushed a kiss to her temple. Madeleine’s brows knitted in puzzlement. He smiled and said, “If you’ll stop calling me Mr. de Chevalier. Say ‘Armand, make love to me.”’
Aroused by his stirring kiss and the granite hardness and awesome heat of his lean body, Lady Madeleine eagerly said, “Armand, make love to me.”
“With pleasure, Countess.”
Five
For a long, tense moment, Armand de Chevalier did nothing, didn’t move a muscle. He simply held Madeleine in his arms and looked into her eyes. Unable to look away or even to breathe properly, Madeleine felt as if she were being pulled into the fathomless depths of his unforgettable black eyes.
The winds howled and the cabin plunged sharply into the sea, then rose again. Madeleine hardly noticed. She was totally mesmerized by this dark stranger with whom she wanted desperately to be intimate.
She drew a sharp intake of air as Armand slowly lowered his face to hers. Expecting another of those instantly ardent, breath-stealing kisses, she was surprised when he brushed his smooth, warm lips ever so lightly against hers. For several sweet, unhurried moments, he kissed her softly, undemandingly, as if she were actually his treasured love.
Madeleine found it incredibly moving. Stirring. Exciting. Each gentle, unhurried kiss became more thrilling than the last. His mouth seemed to fit so perfectly with hers. As if their lips were made solely for each other’s kisses.
Pressing one last feathery kiss to her slightly parted lips, Armand flipped open the buckle to the restraints holding her in place. He lifted her and sat her on his right knee and both were almost dumped to the floor when a great gust of wind hit the ship. Armand gripped the bunk’s frame with one hand and held Madeleine with the other. Then quickly drew the restraints around both of them, buckling them loosely behind her back.
Clutching his neck, Madeleine was both astonished and thrilled when he took her hand, placed it directly over his heart and said in a low, husky voice, “Touch me. Feel me, sweetheart.”
She immediately complied. Her fingers spread, palm flush against him, she eagerly explored the perfect symmetry of his naked bronzed torso. She stroked and rubbed and examined him thoroughly, letting her fingertips circle the flat brown nipples almost hidden in the dense black chest hair. She felt a small tremor surge through him at her touch and was excited by the knowledge that she had so titillated him. Her eyes focused on the broad expanse of bare flesh before her, she popped her finger into her mouth and sucked it briefly. She then circled his left nipple with her wet fingertip before looking up to get his reaction.
Incredible heat radiated from his dark eyes and he wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, drew her to him and kissed her hungrily. As he kissed her, Madeleine continued to toy with him, raking her nails down his chest, fanning her hand over his hot skin, tangling her fingertips in the crisp, springy hair.
When their heated lips finally separated, Madeleine was surprised to find that Armand had managed—during the prolonged kiss—to completely unbutton the jacket of her peach traveling suit. When he pushed it apart, she suffered a mild twinge of doubt. But when he bent his head and placed the gentlest of kisses in the valley between her breasts, all misgivings fled. She felt her nipples tighten and her stomach contract. And she made no move to stop him when he pushed the open jacket down her arms and tossed it aside.
“God, you are so sweet, so beautiful,” he said, placing the tip of his little finger under the lacy strap of her camisole.
Madeleine felt the strap being slipped off her shoulder and sliding down her upper arm. She took a quick excited breath through her mouth and heard him say, “Look at me, chérie.”
Her eyes met his and again she experienced the feeling of being pulled into him.
“Trust me. I won’t hurt you,” he promised and as her gaze stayed locked with his, he raised her damp skirts and ran a hand up her stockinged left leg. When his fingers encountered the ruffled border of her knee-length pantalets, he gave the lacy trim a playful tug, then urged her knees apart.
Madeleine inhaled anxiously as his warm fingers moved steadily upward along the inside of her thigh.
“Kiss me,” he coaxed and she eagerly obeyed.
Wildly she kissed him, cupping his lean cheeks in her hands, anxiously moving her questing lips against his and thrusting her tongue deep into his mouth. During the fervent kiss she felt his lean fingers move all the way up between her legs to touch her in that most intimate spot.
Through the soft cotton of her pantalets he slowly, expertly caressed her until the fabric, which was the only barrier between his moving fingers and her tingling flesh, was damp from her body’s response.
Sucking anxiously at his lips, she sighed and squirmed and became more aroused with each passing second.
“Feel good, sweetheart?” Armand murmured against her lips.
“Mmm,” was all she could manage in reply.
“I want you to feel even better,” Armand told her, and with the speed and wizardry of a trained magician, he deftly relieved her of her pantelets.
Naked now beneath the skirts of her damp dress, Madeleine held her breath, waiting expectantly for him to touch her again. Armand made her wait. But only long enough to unhook her lace-trimmed camisole and remove it.
“I knew it,” he said, when she was bare to the waist.
“W-what?” she asked, trembling.
“That you don’t wear those horrible corsets. You have no need for them. Your waist is naturally small and your breasts—” his eyes lowered to the twin mounds of pale flesh topped with satiny pink nipples “—are full and need no stays to enhance or lift them.” As if to punctuate the sentence, he bent his head and kissed the rising swell of Madeleine’s left breast.
After that, everything became an electrifying blur of sheer ecstasy to the highly aroused Madeleine. While the storm raged on with winds so forceful that the couple was at constant risk of being dumped onto the rolling, pitching floor, Armand de Chevalier made passionate, prolonged love to Lady Madeleine Cavendish as if they had forever.
Madeleine wiggled and sighed with pleasure as Armand’s warm hand again stole up under her skirts to touch and tease and toy. His fingers slid easily in the silky wetness flowing freely from her, as he leaned to her and brushed a kiss to her right nipple. Instinctively Madeleine arched her back, thrusting her breasts more fully against his hot, handsome face. Armand kissed her, then opened his mouth and gently nibbled on her rapidly stiffening nipples.
Dizzy with desire, Madeleine hugged Armand’s dark head to her while he sucked on her responsive nipples and his fingers gently circled that ultrasensitive button of pure sensation between her parted legs.
Armand felt her climax beginning even before Madeleine realized it was happening. He gave her nipple one last plucking kiss, raised his head, and watched the changing expressions march across her beautiful face as she ascended steadily toward total release.
And all the while she was pleading, “Don’t stop, don’t stop, please, please.”
“Never, my love,” he assured her, not rushing her, patiently taking her all the way, carefully guiding her to an all-encompassing climax.
“Armand! Armand! Armand!” she cried out at last and dug her nails into his muscular biceps as she reached the shattering zenith.
“Yes, baby, yes,” he soothed, continuing to caress her until he was certain her powerful orgasm was totally completed.
Frantically she grabbed his arm to stay his hand, then went limp against him, shaking and trembling with emotion. He pressed her head onto his shoulder and kissed her parted lips, her closed eyes, her flushed cheeks.
Gale-force winds continued to buffet the sinking ship and the bunk upon which the two were strapped rose and fell with the high, tossing waves. It had little effect on the pair. Hot for each other, determined to fill their last minutes on earth with abandoned carnal joy, they ignored the roar of the wind, the rolling of the ship.
When Madeleine had calmed a little and had caught her breath, Armand finished undressing her. He managed the pleasant task as she continued to sit on his right knee. And as he disrobed her, he lovingly caressed each portion of bare skin he exposed. She was like malleable clay in his artistic hands, stirring to the slightest touch of his fiery fingertips.
When she was as naked as the day she was born, save for her silk stockings and leather slippers, Armand placed a hand behind her right knee and raised it, lifting her foot up onto his own left knee. He took the slipper from her foot and dropped it to the floor. Then he smiled at her, slipped a hand under her lace-trimmed, blue satin garter and peeled it down her leg.
Madeleine watched, puzzled and amused, as he slid the garter up his bare right arm, and released it when it tightly encircled his biceps.
“A keepsake from you,” he explained and she nodded.
He stripped the silken stocking down her bent leg and tossed it aside. She suddenly felt very foolish and awkward. Here she was, naked, sitting on his knee with one of her legs bent and raised, her bare foot propped on his knee. She shuddered when he cupped her foot in his palm, raised it slightly and bent to kiss her instep. Then she giggled uncontrollably when she felt his tongue go between her ticklish toes.
He laughed, raised his head and lowered her bare foot to the floor. She waited for him to remove the other stocking. But he didn’t do it and she didn’t complain although she was sure she looked quite silly wearing nothing but one stocking and one garter.
He didn’t think so. “God, you’re desirable,” he murmured, his hand sweeping down her silk-encased leg. “I want you to leave this one stocking on for me.”
“Whatever you want,” she said, unhampered by conscience or inhibitions or thoughts of tomorrow, “I want.”
“I want you,” he said. “I want you to give me every kind of love you can possibly express. I want you to tell me everything you’ve ever wanted to do and never did. I want you to reveal to me every secret yearning you’ve ever had and never told. I want you share with me every craving you’ve ever experienced. I want you to give yourself to me completely and let me love you as no one ever has. I want you. I want you, over and over again.”
Already aroused, his bold words further awakened Madeleine’s innate sensuality. The things he said excited her, made her want to give him all she had to give, to lose herself in him and his love-making, to actually do all the forbidden things she had never done with anyone.
Armand kissed her, took her hand, and placed it on the waistband of his dark trousers. Her lips fused with his, her fingers found the buttons of his trousers and she hastily undid them. Then, without his urging, she laid her hand against the ridge of hard flesh restrained by his white linen underwear. As the probing kiss continued, Armand made a half-strangled sound that Madeleine easily interpreted.
She pulled the white underwear out and away from his flat belly, freeing his straining masculinity. Her hand was back on him then, stroking, caressing, arousing.
Until Armand could stand it no more.
He clasped her fragile wrist, stayed her hand and said, “I can’t wait any longer, sweetheart.”
In seconds he was naked and Madeleine was stretched out on her back on the bunk with Armand lying atop her. The restraining straps were buckled loosely behind his back. His weight supported on stiffened arms, Armand lay between Madeleine’s parted legs, kissing her, murmuring shockingly forbidden words of passion, arousing her to a fever pitch by carefully positioning himself so that his heavy, pulsing erection was warmly cradled by her open female flesh.
Madeleine lay squirming beneath him, gazing into his eyes and clutching his upper arms. His handsome face, broad chest and muscular shoulders filled the entire scope of her vision. She could see nothing else. Nothing but him. He was her whole world, this giver of such exquisite erotic pleasure.
When Armand bent his head to press a kiss to her breasts, she sighed with prickling pleasure as his silky hair ruffled against her chin and his lips tugged at her nipple. She turned her head on the pillow and smiled dreamily at the sight of her blue satin garter encircling his muscular upper arm.
But when he raised his head and put his hand between their pressing bodies, Madeleine automatically tensed for what was to come.
“Don’t, chérie,” he said. “Relax. I’ll be gentle. Let me love you.”
She did.
And he did.
She released a shallow breath as she felt his throbbing tumescence slide slowly, cautiously into her. She knew that he was watching her face for signs of pain so she was very careful not to exhibit any traces of the discomfort she briefly experienced. It did hurt. It had been a long, long time. And he was so…so big. She felt as if her body were being filled and stretched far beyond its capacity.
But not for long. Amazingly enough, she found that her yielding flesh was indeed able to accommodate his impressive erection. And when he began to move inside her, Madeleine gave silent thanks that this stranger to whom she was willingly surrendering her body was so very well endowed.
In this dark lover’s arms, Madeleine became oblivious to the raging storm. Swept away in a tempest of white-hot passion, deeply impaled upon his thrusting flesh, she rocked and bucked against him, finding the rhythm of the rocking, bucking bunk beneath them.
It was a wild, erotic ride as neither Madeleine nor Armand held anything back. Mating in an almost animalistic manner, they moaned and gasped as they made hot, totally uninhibited love as the ship rose and fell violently, the fierce movements only adding to the savage joy of their vigorous coupling.
Glorying in the intimacy and the ecstasy, Madeleine was certain that this handsome Creole was indisputably the world’s most thrilling lover. She was totally enchanted, loving the look in his flashing black eyes, the taste of his burning lips and the splendid feel of his lean body on hers—and in hers.
She was amazed that he had the power and the stamina and the skill to make her climax again and again until she was practically weeping his name in near sexual hysteria. And she was shocked that he could attain his own hot, spurting orgasm and then be able and ready to pleasure her again within just a few short minutes.
And so it went.
While the hurricane howled and punished and threatened to capsize the already sinking ship, the lovers continued to thrill and please and pleasure each other as if there were no tomorrow.
And there wasn’t. But it didn’t matter.
As Madeleine again felt her lover’s hard flesh seek the soft warmth of hers, she sighed and gazed at him, enthralled.
He was everything. He was the only thing. There was no future and no past. Only now with him moving inside her as he looked into her eyes and murmured her name in low, soft tones that she magically managed to hear above the deafening din.
Only him.
Only now.
And now was forever.
Six
Forever came to the end seconds later.
The world intruded.
Loud shouts from out on deck brought the lovers abruptly back to reality. Heads snapped around, listening intently, Armand and Madeleine learned that the sudden flurry of excitement was over a coastal steamer that had been spotted making its way toward the crippled ship.