The Trident was where Wyndham would come to
upon his escape. He just wished that he knew what was happening.
The unexpected arrival of Orèlan, showing up in such a manner did
not bode well. Yet, Brynmore and Saxonhurst were stationed outside
the gates of Valcourt, as close as they could be, to help in any
way they could. Still, it would take Wyndham’s ingenuity to get
outside the gate. What worried him immensely though was what
Wyndham might have given up, such as his freedom, for Orèlan’s
release.
Yet, Radford knew that Drummond and Harrison
were working behind the diplomatic scenes, such as it was. And the
Archangels, in a group, all for one, was a formidable group. If
Wyndham was a prisoner in Valcourt now, they would find a way to
affect his escape . . . there was no doubt on that matter. Radford
heard the clatter of the carriage he'd ordered, just before he had
come downstairs to find Orèlan. He turned to watch the conveyance
turn up the alleyway he stood in. He'd not known Orèlan would be
waiting in the alleyway. He'd just wanted stealth when leaving the
Royal Hotel with his precious cargo. A small amount of providence
was on his side tonight though.
Chapter Fifteen
Wyndham gripped the polished side-rails on
the bow of Radford’s sleek shipping vessel, Trident. His gaze was
unseeing of the gentle blue-black sea illuminated by a full moon at
midnight. Even though his face turned outward to the gradual
midnight swells of the sea, his thoughts and sight were inward. The
Trident sailed cleanly through the water, leaving behind a sordid
time, and Wyndham had an intense urge to just dive into the cold
clean sea. Perhaps, cleanse his soul with the sharp bite of the
salt water.
Orèlan was ensconced in the captain’s cabin
below where he stood. She was safe and she had been told that he
was safely aboard the ship. That had been several hours ago and now
the ship was well out to sea. Yet still, he stood on the bow
dressed in a borrowed shirt and pair of pants with nothing but the
sea to cleanse him. At first, he'd not gone to see Orèlan because
of the amenities. A maid for her comfort had been neatly employed
for the journey, in Radford’s ever-ready fashion, and women's
machinations took time. To be bathed, pampered, clothed, and to
have her injuries attended to. Rough scraped palms and knees,
Radford had said.
Wyndham’s grip tightened to nearly painful
proportions around the railing.
Anything else
, he wondered?
What had been done was enough, yet he feared the unknown. After
Orèlan had left him in the sole company of the guards. He was not a
coward. That was not why he stood at bay for so long. No, it was
too delicate Too important. He had to approach Orèlan properly. He
had to begin now as he intended to go on. In his callous youth, he
would have rushed in, unthinking. He would have frightened a young
woman with his brashness. Stolen a kiss from an innocent with his
harsher more demanding lust.
“This is for a lifetime,” he murmured,
looking out to the black wave swept sea. Orèlan was everything, and
all he could ever dream of wanting. Yet, they had been through so
much. Their emotions, her emotions, must remain so delicate. He did
not want to muddle it, so he made himself stop and think. They
would survive. They would come through as one . . . no matter what
had happened.
Perhaps, he should . . . “Court her,” he
murmured. It was silly and improbable after everything they had
been through. “It could work,” he uttered, turning his gaze up to
the moon. It was after all, and had been for years, his deepest
wish.
“Do you intend to stand there barefooted,
like the love-besotted fool that you obviously are? Or go to her,
old man.”
Wyndham turned toward Radford’s snide
aristocratic tone with a slight smile lifting his firm lips. “You
were voted the emissary then?” Wyndham asked dryly.
“Of course,” Radford replied, hitching his
lean hip against the railing, as he continued, “Brynmore and
Saxonhurst could never attempt my finesse.”
Wyndham nearly laughed and he realized how
good it was to finally be once again with Radford’s noble
cockiness, Brynmore’s roguish cheekiness, and Saxon’s abiding
loyalty. His gaze caught Saxon and Brynmore rounding the mast as
they each speculatively eyed him. He merely nodded and they both
came forward.
“What happened?” Wyndham asked, once they
were all gathered at the railing. He knew Alexei’s arrest was
certainly not mere providence. He also thought he had an inkling of
who to thank for his, in the nick of the time, rescue. Radford
smugly gazed at him with his dark head tilted to one side. Brynmore
winked imprudently and Saxon actually blushed. “Not you three
then,” Wyndham muttered in amazement. “Surely, Drummond or
Ravenscar?”
All three of them shook their heads gazing at
him, until he had to believe none of the Archangels crafted
Alexei's opportune arrest. Then Radford quipped. “Oh by the aside,
Wyndham, the Captain of this ship marries . . . ”
Wyndham dropped his head and suddenly his
three friends and companions were there beside him, all in motion
for a combined male hugging and back patting. “Thank you,” Wyndham
whispered. He knew well that the three of them understood his
feelings. Never again would he reject any help offered, nor would
he allow any of them to refuse his help. Together they were the
Archangels and apart they were obscurity.
Chapter Sixteen
Without turning around, Orèlan dismissed the
maid with a grateful murmur. She could nearly pretend to be normal
again, she thought, smoothing down the white gossamer fiber of the
vaporous nightgown she wore. She was standing at the portal looking
out to the midnight sea, such a deep purply black color that it
reminded her of Wyndham’s eyes. She knew Wyndham was safe, she'd
been told. What she did not know, was what price he might have paid
in those last fateful hours with Alexei. Perhaps, that was why he
did not come to her, she thought with remorse? Maybe they were both
branded now beyond repair?
“When I gaze upon you, Orèlan, all that I see
are the golden lights of love. All that I feel is passion and
longing so deeply coiled into my soul that it brings me to my knees
in reverence.” Orèlan gasped at Wyndham’s deep tenor voice behind
her, while his words took hopeful flight in her heart. “From this
moment forward all that I will ever ask, of God or of man, is that
I may love you.”
Orèlan turned with a soft urgent cry upon her
lips. “Wyndham.” She saw him kneeling on the polished wooden
flooring, gazing up at her, and her bare feet took flight with her
night gown billowing around her like a white cloud. She met him on
her knees as her fingers found the chiseled lines of his face. “I
love you,” she gasped.
Wyndham’s fingers clasped the sides of her
face as his thumb traced her parted lips and his irises shone like
sapphire embers. They gazed at each other with impassioned
questions and love, as though they were seeing each other fully for
the first time in their lives.
“Baby love,” Wyndham whispered with his voice
husky and filled with tremendous emotion as his forehead dropped
and their temples kissed once, then laying still against each
other. Their breathlessness mingled together warm and sweet.
Orèlan sighed, a deep longing sound of love
and joy, while her fingers touched Wyndham’s silky hair, the sides
of his face, down his strong neck and his very powerful shoulders.
She quested with an exploration of touch, feeling through her
fingertips the sureness of his strength and wholeness.
“Did they . . . ?” Wyndham’s voice caught on
a deep bass tone.
“No, Wyndham,” she whispered urgently. “I was
not touched, my golden puma.”
The sound that erupted from Wyndham’s chest
was a fierce growling of sharp relief as he grasped her into his
strong and forceful embrace, cradling her yielding body against his
steely frame. His masculinity surrounded her, enveloping her in
warmth, safety, passion, and love, and she cried out at the power
and surety of it. She quivered against him as he soothed her with
slow caressing hands and the sheer force of his presence.
“Did, Alexei . . . ?” she panted, trembling.
“My golden puma,
did
you?” she gasped.
“No,” Wyndham expelled as fiercely, coming on
the tips of her cry of relief as she buried her face into his
chest. Her tears dampened his shirt as he rocked her in his embrace
and she clutched him back. The relief was an acute pain in her
chest, making her tears turn into sobs.
“I would have, gladly, to save you,” Wyndham
uttered, tilting her face up to his, to then peck kisses on her
trembling lips. “As you would have for me, my love, my life,” he
finished, as he tasted her small sobs and tears again with his
lips.
“Yes,” she gasped on a retreating sob against
his lips. “My love, my life.” The impassioned sound Wyndham made at
her love-filled endearment inflamed her senses, and crumbled her
sobs into heated whimpers.
“
Christ
, Orèlan,” he growled hoarsely
as he seized the sides of her face, lifting her lips to his. Their
mouths crashed together with their lips moving madly over each
others. She pressed her body to his, ardently soaking up his
strength and passion. She could feel the evidence of his love and
need. She could feel the thick ridge of his power and masculinity,
pressing firmly into her belly. She squirmed against it,
acknowledging the male potency with her own needy and yielding
softness. The knobbed head, the thickly heated shaft, burned its
outline into her flesh as their lips torridly groped each
other.
Wyndham’s hand, with his fingers splayed,
clasped the back of her head, anchoring it as his tongue thrust
deep into her mouth, while his other hand with fingers spread,
clasped her bottom, lifting her body up to his body.
“
Mm, mm,”
she cried around his tongue,
sucking on it strongly and deeply, as her arms wound around his
neck. His fingers squeezed over the wiggling plumpness of her
buttocks, making her gasp, as his tongue coupled her mouth with
thick heated thrusts. The thinness of her night gown was no barrier
to his fingers spread over her buttocks, with one finger pressing
intimately into the crease. Its arousing presence was fingering her
with passionate promise that wet her sex, which was riding over the
impression of his timbered cock.
“God,” Wyndham exclaimed sharply, then
lifting her and himself in one impossibly strong motion of his tall
body. Her legs instantly wrapped around his lean hips for support
as he stood upright. She straddled him as he held her aloft with
his strength and their lips greedily clung together, begging each
other for more.
“
Oh
, Wyndham,
oh,”
she
whimpered, feeling the lips of her splayed loins rubbing against
the wide base of Wyndham’s pene. It felt so good that she slid the
drenched recesses of her swollen sex up and down over the stiff
root, using Wyndham’s wide shoulders as balance.
He groaned, a heated erotic sound. Then he
used his hands, gripping the globes of her buttocks to help the
motion. Lifting and lowering her, rubbing her aroused inner lips
over the broad rigid mass. Tearing his lips away from her lips, he
uttered a male growling. “Your pussy is so hot and wet, Spitfire.
Rub it on my cock, baby love, get me wet.”
“Wyndham,” she gasped as they ground their
loins together. One stout, one splayed, mingling and becoming
slippery against the cloth that separated them. The words Wyndham
used, inflamed her more, as she cried, “My pussy aches, my puma! My
pussy aches for your big pene.”
“
Christ,
Orèlan,” Wyndham rasped
hoarsely. “Say it again, baby love. Say it again,” he demanded.
Orèlan feverishly rubbed her sex against
Wyndham, as she whimpered. “My Wyndham, my pussy aches so for your
big pene,
mi amor.
”
“Yes,” Wyndham hissed, and then his body was
in motion, walking toward the bed as he sought out Orèlan's lips
for another wet and hot kiss. He was so engrossed in his fiery and
sexy woman, the only way he knew that he'd reached his goal was by
his knees bumping into the bed’s frame. She was fire and love . . .
and she was
his
.
He took her quickly down to the bed, laying
her on her back, while her legs around his waist propelled him down
with her. His injured knee, rebelled with a spasm, as he tried to
kneel on it. His hot lusty mind ignored it and he knelt just on his
one good knee as he rose upward and reached forward to grip the
collar of Orèlan's gauzy nightgown. A portion of his mind cautioned
slowness. But his lust was master as he rent the flimsy material
down the front.
Orèlan gasped. Her legs falling away from his
hips as her hands hastily lowered to clutch one edge of the torn
nightgown over her mon’s. Her golden eyes were molten with passion,
yet surprised and anxious as her perfect breasts heaved with turgid
pink nipples pointing at him. He growled with an, “I am going to
fuck you sound,” then he reached forward with the intention of
brushing her hands away from his prize.
“No, Wyndham, please no,” she whimpered, just
as his hand reached her hands covering his goal. He had her legs
splayed between his knees, she was stripped nude with only a scant
piece of cloth clutched between her thighs, as he knelt, while
towering over her. Dripping wet thighs. Hot cunt lips, swollen and
wet just for him. Nothing on this earth could have stopped him,
except for Orèlan's impassioned plea.
“I beg you,” she whimpered with golden tears
forming in her wide eyes. “Please,” she gasped.
A tenor groan hissed from his throat, as his
body shook, becoming so tense, he thought it possible he might
break. His head dropped in supplication between Orèlan's plump
breasts, for one agonizing moment. Then, he pushed away strongly
with his arms, and fell onto his back on the bed with his chest
heaving.
Christ,
he had fucked it up again. Even with all
his good intentions, he thought. He tried to think. So difficult,
knifing through his rampant lust. His chest rose and fell. Sweat
glistened there, beneath his shirt and pants. Jesus, at least he
was still dressed.