Chapter 6
What’d promised to be a dull night at Lord and Lady Rutland’s had taken an interesting turn.
Tremaine stared into the furiously dancing orange and crimson flames of a well-fed fire and considered his unexpected rendezvous.
His desirous, alluring, almost bed partner had been none other than a cherished McQuoid—little Linnie Smith.
Only, little Linnie, the precocious, chubby-cheeked girl who’d always had a honey lollipop in her mud-stained fingers and launched a thousand and one questions for him, had grown up . . . in a most delightful and unexpected way.
His still-stiff prick grew harder at the remembered feel of her under him. The sweet taste of her mouth told him the beautiful woman she’d morphed into still enjoyed sucking on those honey and sugar confectionary treats.
Tremaine’s eyes grew heavy and his breath ragged. In a testament to how badly he’d wanted to fuck Linnie McQuoid Smith, not even being in the same room as his blood enemy had managed to kill his lust.
Nay, if anything, the feud that made the chit forbidden only threw cannon powder upon the flames of his hungering.
Tremaine ran his spare hand over his tented placard. He gave his steel-hard cock a squeeze to alleviate some of the ache.
It didn’t help.
He tossed back a drink of his brandy.
Find some wild, experienced beauty to bed. Not Ladies Featherstone and Catriona; they’d proven entirely too eager. Rather, a pale, blond-haired, fiery-hot minx who moved like a virgin. Nay, who moved like a certain virgin.
However, he didn’t delude himself into believing just any actress or Cyprian could take the place of the innocent beauty he’d almost fucked this night. No, only Linnie McQuoid Smith would do.
And have her he would.
Before McQuoid’s betrayal at sea, the idea of bedding the man’s beloved cousin would have been anathema to all Tremaine was. He’d conducted himself with honor and respect.
But neither had Tremaine ever been a saint—not even close. He’d rightfully earned his reputation as a rakish privateer with a beauty in every port.
Maybe that was why he didn’t feel a single shred of compunction at imagining having Linnie Smith under him, over him, and every other way in between.
Nor did he flagellate himself for lusting after a McQuoid. As he’d bluntly informed Linnie, men and women were base animals.
His body didn’t know a distinction between what it wanted and Tremaine’s detestation for his betrayer.
The memory of her big, swollen nipples under the pads of his thumbs and the way she’d rocked her hips at empty air to find some surcease sent another staggering wave of lust shooting through him.
Tremaine undid his placard and released his painfully swollen cock from its constraints.
He hissed through his teeth and welcomed the easing of that excruciating pressure.
That reprieve proved all too brief.
Closing his eyes, Tremaine let himself surrender fully to the thoughts of Linnie.
Ah, you kiss like an innocent . . .
I am . . .
The artless way in which she’d kissed with her untried mouth had lit a fire in his blood, greater than even the exhilaration of the wild and unpredictable seas.
Tremaine took his enormous length in hand and pumped it slowly.
Bloody hell, he was as pathetic as a greenhead new to whoring. That realization wasn’t enough to stop him from remembering Linnie Smith, nor from easing his all-consuming lust for the minx.
“I am your first, then?”
His breathing grew shallow.
Her extraordinarily long, silken eyelashes fluttered like a butterfly’s wings. “The first and o-only, Captain Jeremy.”
He might have not known the identity of his mystery lover, but Linnie? She’d known the entire time whose arms she’d been in.
“You love a good ride, do you?” he praised between kisses.
“You know I do, Jeremy.”
And there was something so bloody libidinous in her shy admissions that were now revelations.
Groaning, Tremaine dropped his head along the back of his chair.
“You want my kiss . . . Tell me . . . I’ll have you say it.”
Panting, Tremaine gripped himself harder and pumped faster.
“I want your kiss, please . . .”
His ballocks drew up tight. He gritted his teeth as he sped himself toward a desperately needed conclusion.
A pair of distinct, heavy footfalls reached through his wickedly debauched reminiscences.
Fuck.
Cursing roundly, he forced himself to abandon the explosive and satisfying climax he sought.
No, needed.
Scowling, he managed to stuff his tumescence back inside his trousers and fasten his placard just as the door opened and his second-in-command announced his esteemed visitor.
“Duke of Hartwell to see you, Tremaine.”
“Christ,” Tremaine snapped as his brother showed himself in and joined him at the hearth. “You’re making a regular pain in the arse of yourself,” he said, his voice still raspy and guttural from his near release.
“My, you are in a fine mood,” his brother said drolly.
Tremaine grunted. “Alas, last night I had the bad luck of having my latest attempted tryst with Lady Featherstone interrupted.”
Liar. Since he’d returned from sea, that interruption, nay, the lady behind it, had been the first to truly stir him.
His brother arched an eyebrow. “Why do I suspect there’s far more to your current scowl?”
“Linnie McQuoid Smith.”
As Tremaine expected—and, in no small part, hoped—his brother immediately let up on his fraternal banter. “What?”
“I was waiting for Lady Featherstone to join me when none other than Miss Smith stumbled upon me.”
Hart’s frown contained all his brotherly displeasure. “Never tell me McQuoid’s long-in-the-tooth cousin is the one you’re flogging the bishop over?”
As a man who sailed with a crew of coarse, ruthless street toughs turned sailors, there wasn’t a thing that could make him blush, but damned if his neck didn’t heat.
Tremaine slanted a disbelieving look his brother’s way. “When was the last time you saw Linnie Smith?”
“I couldn’t say,” Hart said, lifting his broad shoulders in a shrug.
No, his brother hadn’t seen the saucy imp. For if he had, he’d know precisely why Tremaine sat here frigging himself.
Grabbing his brandy, Tremaine tossed the contents back in a long, slow swallow until he’d drained the glass.
When he’d finished, he found Hart studying him curiously.
“What?” Tremaine asked, setting aside his snifter. Before his brother could respond, a hopeful thought chased off his annoyance. “Did you hear already from West—”
“I have not,” Hart said, ending that powerful swell of hope. “Not yet. I have, however, come by useful information about a certain hated family.”
Tremaine’s ears pricked up. “Indeed?”
His brother nodded. “And given your current preoccupation with Miss Linnie Smith . . .”
“I’m not preoccupied with her,” he clipped out. “Wanting to bed the chit is something entirely diff—”
“Given that is the case, it might make the information I’m coming to you with even more agreeable.”
That caught Tremaine’s attention. “I’m listening.”
“Regardless of whether Miss Smith is or is not long in the tooth or highly beddable . . .”
Definitely highly beddable. Tremaine didn’t, however, belabor the point.
“The fact remains the lady is unmarried and without any prospects.”
A fate attributed to the lack of brains in the heads of London’s respectable toffs. They’d care she didn’t come from a titled family and wouldn’t appreciate her feisty spirit.
None of this was new information.
“Given all that, she should be easy to seduce,” Hart noted.
“Seduce?” Tremaine snorted. “Tsk. Tsk. I never believed I’d see the day my noble brother is encouraging me to deflower a virgin.”
“I’m not suggesting you leave the lady ruined.”
“Ah, now that is the chivalry I’d expected,” Tremaine remarked without rancor.
Then he realized what exactly it was his brother had just said. “Surely you’re not suggesting . . . You’re not actually saying I would marry that one?”
Tremaine couldn’t help himself; seized by his first real amusement since McQuoid had left him for dead at sea, he burst out laughing. He laughed so hard tears seeped from the corners of his eyes and his body shook.
Oh, it wasn’t that he wouldn’t relish being the one to initiate Linnie to lovemaking. It was an undertaking he’d be all too happy to see to whenever he dropped anchor in London. However, lust for the chit aside, he’d sooner cut off a hand than marry a bloody fucking McQuoid.
Between their pair, Hart had long been the honorable one. But this was too much, even for him.
Tremaine’s mirth abruptly died. “You would actually come here and suggest I marry a bloody McQuoid because she’s on the shelf, big brother?”
“Hardly.” Hart scoffed. “For all I care, the chit could rot to death on a shelf.”
For some reason, his brother’s ducal assertion failed to assure as much as leaving a harsh, unpleasant taste in Tremaine’s mouth.
“Regarding the lady’s marital state—or any state, for that matter—there’s one detail I do care about, little brother.”
“And what is that?”
Laying his palms on his knees, the duke leaned over. “After Miss Smith’s dismal, failed Seasons, her family has taken it upon themselves to find a husband for her.”
My family settled on a husband for me . . .
Tremaine knew all this. He arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”
Hart locked his gaze with Tremaine’s. “Captain McQuoid is seeking to build an alliance between seafaring families,” he explained. “He’s already secured the one with Roxburghe, and now—”
“Culross,” Tremaine seethed. Though Linnie had told him the other man’s identity already, Captain Arran Fucking McQuoid’s betrayal struck him anew in this moment.
Hart’s brow lifted. “You knew?”
Tremaine nodded.
That cocksure, inferior captain who’d gone and stolen his goddamned lumber would now also—if her family got their way—get the pleasure of seating himself in the deliciously spirited chit’s tight channel.
Tremaine’s shaft stirred all over again as he entertained all manner of thoughts of what he himself would do with Linnie Smith and to Linnie Smith.
The hell Culross would be the first and only to possess her sweet, innocent cunny. He glowered into nothing. Nay, the hell Culross would ever possess her in any way.
“If you wed the chit, Tremaine, you will not only thwart that powerful alliance but also drive a stake through the hearts of every last member of their close-knit family. Having her in your bed will be a slight bonus.”
A slight bonus? It’d be the most delicious bonus.
Tremaine’s blood fired hot.
“Yes.” His older brother waved his hand. “You’ll be stuck with her for life, but between your travels, the only time you need to spend with her is on those nights you’re in London when you decide to visit her bed.”
Hart’s proposed plan bore a ruthlessness Tremaine could only admire and appreciate. And this evening, like some gift from the gods, Miss Linnie Smith had all but fallen into his lap.
“You’ve spied on me before, love . . . Did you like what you saw?”
“I’ve always liked everything about you, Jeremy . . .”
“By your cynical smile, I take it you’ve already made up your mind, little brother.”
“Oh, I most certainly have. Nor will my attentions be met with any resistance.”
Hart chuckled. “Interesting. Given the dearth of ton events during the holiday season, there remains the tricky part of finding time alone with the lady.”
For another man, no doubt.
“I don’t require dull, respectable affairs hosted by high society.” In Tremaine’s case, after a lifetime of knowing the lady in question, he knew not only how to find her but also where. “It isn’t a matter of if she’ll be mine, it is when I decide I want her to be.”
I was not giving myself to a stranger, you lout! I was giving myself to you!
“My, if someone isn’t overly optimistic.”
Previously off-kilter, Tremaine found himself steady once more. “I’m not optimistic,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m realistic.”
The naive, trusting minx had given him plenty of reasons to be assured in the outcome of his plans for her—for them together.
Leisurely, he rescued his snifter and bottle of French spirits and poured himself another glass.
“Has she given you some indication she’d be amenable to your pursuit?”
I’ve always wanted to sail away with you, you know . . . My f-family would be s-scandalized.
His pursuit. That apt descriptor conjured a primitive hunt that stirred the banked embers of Tremaine’s desire for Miss Smith.
“You could say something like that,” Tremaine drawled. How good it’d feel, having her wrap those athletic legs about his waist as he drove himself inside her over and over.
That cocky drawl drew a snorting guffaw from his brother. “Why would I say it when you’ve done so yourself?”
Alas, the chit didn’t stand a chance.
A cold smile formed on Tremaine’s lips, one that, had Linnie seen it, she’d have known meant to steer clear of him at all costs.