Lost Lady Read online

  “You’ll like America,” he said gently, stroking her hair. “The people are good and honest, and they’ll like you. I’ll introduce you to half of Virginia, and before you know it you’ll have more friends than you know what to do with.”

  “Friends?” she whispered, clinging to him, only now beginning to realize how the experience on the waterfront had upset her. There still seemed to be clutching, greedy hands on her body.

  “You can’t imagine all the wonderful people in America. I have a little brother, Wesley, who will love you, and of course there’s Clay and Nicole. Nicole is from France and can talk French as fast as lightning.”

  “Is she pretty?” Regan sniffed.

  “Almost as pretty as you,” he smiled, caressing her hair. “And when I left she was just about to have a baby. It’s probably months old by now. Of course, she’s already got the twins.”

  “Twins?”

  Travis laughed and held her away from him, wiping away her tears with his fingertips. “Don’t you understand yet that I’m taking you to America, not to punish you or because I like kidnapping little girls, but because I have no choice? There’s nothing else I can do with you.”

  His words, meant to calm her and said in Travis’s own special blunt way of calling a problem by its true name, had the opposite effect on Regan. Her uncle and Farrell had said similar things about having to put up with her. She was tired of being a burden to everyone. “Let me up!” she demanded, pushing against him.

  “Now what the hell’s the matter?”

  Twisting her head, she tried to bite his hand on her shoulder.

  Travis pushed her back into the mattress and rubbed his hand. “I don’t understand you at all. I save your life not more than an hour ago, and now I tell you, as kindly as you please, how I have your own best interests at heart, and you get madder’n hell at me. I don’t understand you at all.”

  “Understand me!” she gasped, eyes spitting fire. “I wouldn’t have had to run away if you hadn’t been holding me prisoner, and I wouldn’t have needed rescuing if it hadn’t been for you in the first place. In a sense, you saved me from yourself for yourself.”

  Bewildered, his mouth falling open, Travis could only gape at her. “Does your mind always work that way? Do you always go down ten different twisted paths before you get to where you want to go?”

  “I assume that is an American colloquialism, meant to cover your lack of logic. The fact is that you are holding me prisoner, and I demand to be released,” she said smugly, arms folded, chin tilted away from him.

  Travis’s anger faded quickly to laughter, which he tried very hard to suppress. Whatever her understanding of logic was, it was far away from the true meaning of the word. He considered explaining again what would happen if he released her, but since she’d been assaulted twice and it seemed to have made no impression on her, he had no desire to try to explain again. Nor would he try painting a glorious picture of America for her. All he could do was to let her see for herself. He also considered throwing open the door and giving her another chance to try to make it out of the docks, or he could pay for a cab to take her wherever she wanted to go.

  At this last thought, something inside him tightened. If he sent her away, he might never see her again, this starry-eyed little vixen who seemed to look at the world through her own special pink haze. The thought of the long sea voyage without her to entertain and delight him made him feel very sad.

  “You’re going to America with me,” he said firmly as he ran his hand along her bare shoulder. He’d felt so guilty about seducing her when she was so innocent that he’d forced himself to stay away from her for two nights, but now the near panic he’d felt all day when he couldn’t find her, combined with the seductive image she presented now with her bare shoulder and partially exposed breast, made him forget about logic.

  “Do not touch me,” she said haughtily.

  “We may disagree about…logic”—he smiled at the word—“but there’s one area where we seem to be in complete agreement.”

  Regan really tried to keep herself aloof from Travis’s touch, but the feel of his hand—that wide, warm, sensual palm running along her neck—was impossible to ignore. She wanted to appear unaffected by what had happened to her, wanted him to think she was courageous and brave, but truthfully she wanted to climb into his lap and hide, perhaps crawl into his pocket. When he had stood over her this evening, pistols drawn, she’d never in her life been so glad to see anyone.

  Turning her head to one side, his fingers stroked her neck, and she closed her eyes as his other hand went to the opposite side of her neck.

  “You’re tired, aren’t you, love?” Travis whispered, the pressure of his hands increasing. “Muscles stiff?”

  Her nod was barely perceptible as she felt her body relaxing. She had no idea what he was doing, only that by some magic he seemed to be making her body melt. She closed her eyes, giving herself over to Travis, hardly aware when he slipped off her dress and laid her naked body face down on the bed. The gentle, deep sound of his voice added to this new pleasure she was experiencing.

  “When I was a boy,” he said, “I shipped out on a whaler for three years. Terrible experience, but at least there were some interesting stops, such as China, where I learned to do this.”

  Wherever he’d learned it, she was grateful. His hands dug into her and sometimes even hurt her, but she soon found that when she relaxed the pain stopped. Fingers massaged along her spine, kneading out the soreness from crouching in the alleyway for hours. Cramps in her legs and calves relaxed, and when he started on her feet new areas of her body sank deeper into the soft mattress. It amazed her that even her arms could be tense, but Travis’s hands loosened knots of tight muscle and made them limp.

  Since Regan was too relaxed to move, he turned her over as if she were a heap of rags and began on her front. From the feet up, he rubbed, pummeled, stroked, gouged, caressed every pore of her body. When he reached her face, his thumbs gently touching the muscles in her cheeks, and around her nose, she was near senseless.

  Feeling so relaxed, she wasn’t aware of the sensuality of the massage, that the feel of Travis’s strong hands, his eyes on her nude body, had awakened her passion. She felt like a big cat stretching in the sun, every muscle quiet, awaiting the adventures that lay ahead.

  When Travis’s hands returned to her thighs, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. A sweet, knowing smile curved her lips as she kept her eyes closed, preferring only to feel, to give her mind over to her senses. The change of pressure in Travis’s hands, perhaps his own lust coming through his fingertips, was subtle, but she understood it.

  “Yes, love,” he growled throatily, his breath extraordinarily deep.

  He didn’t use his lips or any other part of his body except his hands—those marvelous, big, hard hands that she’d seen used to toss grown men about as if they were weightless. Wide, callused fingers were artfully agile, deliciously provocative as they reexplored the skin they’d just touched.

  Regan felt a deep hum inside her, some primitive piece of machinery beginning to work. Arching slightly, rhythmically, she gave herself over to him. “Please,” she whispered, her hands rising up his arms, fingers tracing the muscles. “Please.”

  Travis lost no time in obeying her, as he was close to the breaking point. The sheer sensuality of their lovemaking and the beauty of her slim young body had fascinated him, and when he entered her it was slowly, very slowly, never once relinquishing the gentle, ethereal quality of their pleasure.

  Regan had learned enough about lovemaking to know to prolong their movement, and she followed his lead as if they were two heavenly bodies joined in a union that would last through eternity. Yet she could not hold off long, and soon she began to breathe quicker and to dig her hands into Travis’s flesh. Within seconds their gentleness turned into ferocity, their hunger equal, greedy, starving.

  When at last their passion peaked, Regan cried out and felt tea