Bound to Be a Groom Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 6652

  Hillsborough, NJ 08844

  http://www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Bound to Be a Groom

  Copyright © 2014 by Megan Mulry

  Cover Art by L.C. Chase, http://lcchase.com/design.htm

  Editor: Sarah Frantz

  Layout: L.C. Chase, http://lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-112-0

  First edition

  April, 2014

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-113-7

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  Sometimes our wildest dreams come true.

  In the tumultuous summer of 1808, Spain and England are close to war and four young lovers are close to ecstasy.

  To carve out an independent life with the woman she loves, Anna knows she must leave her quiet Spanish convent to become a courtesan. To gain experience, she sets her sights on . . .

  Sebastian, whose powerful, aristocratic confidence suits Anna’s mercenary goals. But his arrogance masks a craving for submission that Anna instinctively satisfies. Sebastian soon begs for her hand in marriage, even if it means sharing her with . . .

  Pia, who trusts Anna completely—with her body and her future—until she learns of Anna’s hasty marriage. Pia questions their commitment to each other as they leave for London to meet . . .

  Farleigh, the seemingly feckless duke who thinks he’s over Sebastian, the potent Spanish soldier he bedded two years ago.

  What begins as a series of erotic escapades soon evolves into a deep, unbreakable bond. Two men and two women who yearn to explore are about to make their wildest dreams come true.

  About Bound to Be a Groom

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Dear Reader

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Megan Mulry

  About the Author

  Enjoy this Book?

  Badajoz, Spain – June 1808

  Anna Redondo was unaccustomed to feeling at a disadvantage. It was not in her nature. She knew she’d been born on the wrong side of the blanket, but that had never prevented her from knowing her own mind. Having spent her first eighteen years within the walls of a convent might have limited her experience, but it had not curtailed her imagination.

  And she could imagine all sorts of things with this man.

  Regrettably, imagining would only take her so far; she needed to act. Taking a fortifying breath, she turned to face him.

  “It’s going to be quite a long afternoon for those two, don’t you think?” she ventured, gesturing toward the bride and groom. Isabella and Javier were walking at the front of the wedding party with the bright morning sun, so particular to this part of southern Spain, glinting off the beautiful silks and polished leather of the aristocratic guests all around them.

  “Pardon me?” Sebastian de Montizon asked, clearly surprised at the audacity of a polite young miss speaking to him so directly.

  “They look miserable, don’t you think?” Anna mused. She had left the convent in Burgos two weeks ago and traveled to Badajoz in a carriage, chaperoned by one of the older nuns. Apparently, the short time away had already emboldened her.

  Sebastian stared down at her as they walked, assessing her through hooded eyes while the clank and clop of horses and regal hardware around them seemed to fade. “I think they look blissfully happy. Whatever do you mean?”

  But she suspected he knew what she meant and was only pretending to be confused by the demure front. “Of course they’re happy to be married,” she said brightly, then, in a lower voice, “but now they have to wait and wait until they can be alone . . . on their wedding night . . .”

  Over the past week, dignitaries and aristocrats from all parts of Spain and Portugal, and even a few from France and England, had filed into Badajoz. Sebastian had swept into the main hall shortly before supper three days ago, looking like he had spent the past month splitting his time between a bar and a brothel. His dark hair had been too long even by today’s liberal standards, and the scruff of his beard had looked untended. For the wedding, he had reacquainted himself with his valet, and he now looked like many of the other perfectly turned-out aristocrats. But there was still a look of something wild about him.

  Anna’s first thought upon seeing him had been that he needed to be taken in hand . . . and that she’d be the one to do it.

  “What do you know of wedding nights, little convent girl?” He smiled and stood straighter as he kept walking alongside her through the winding cobbled streets. He clasped his strong hands confidently behind his back, as if he’d assessed her and seen all he needed to see of the little flower.

  Perfect. Think of me like that.

  “Nothing firsthand, of course. Only what I’ve imagined.”

  That got his attention.

  “Imagined?” His voice cracked.

  She smiled at the small victory. Anna needed experience, and here was a man who obviously had it. She assumed he would be discreet—he was a devoted and loyal friend of Javier de la Mina, her friend’s new husband—so he wouldn’t betray Anna’s secrets. In short, he would suit.

  Sebastian continued to look at her, and she felt her cheeks flush. The slightest narrowing of his eyes told her the rising color pleased him.

  “I have a very vivid imagination,” she whispered
with throaty promise. She licked her lower lip, tipping her face away from his, hoping it was just enough to make him want to dip his head to look longer. “And I know how it feels to postpone my own desire.” Finding her pace, she sallied forth into his stunned silence. “I think once you feel something, it’s easier to discern in others.” She paused for effect. “Do you agree?”

  When he nearly stumbled on a cobblestone she feared she’d gone too far. Neither she nor Pia had any experience with men, of course, but they’d convinced themselves that if they could make each other shudder and beg, surely a brutish man would succumb to far less.

  It appeared they had been quite right. Sebastian looked as if he were about to make love to her reticule as it bounced back and forth against the apex of her thighs with each of her steps.

  She held it slightly away from her body. “Do you fancy my reticule?”

  His eyes flew up to hers.

  Spectacular eyes, she had to confess. They were just like Pia’s—that familiar greenish blue that made her think of the Caribbean Sea and the places the two of them had dreamt of spending their future. Places like Cartagena or Hispaniola, where she and Pia would live a quiet life of spinsterhood, disguising their passion for one another behind practical worsted dresses and massive studded doors that hid all manner of things.

  “Such eyes . . .” She hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but the color reminded her so much of Pia. Regardless, Sebastian seemed to enjoy the attention. Useful information, she thought. He likes to be noticed.

  His smile encouraged her to go on admiring him. It should have been irritating that he wanted his ego stroked—that such a gorgeous man seemed to crave endless praise—but Anna found it endearing. She was surprised to realize how much she liked the idea of Sebastian softening under her care, bending to her will. She wanted to stroke him.

  “The blue of your eyes reminds me of—” She hesitated, then continued more carefully. “—places in the New World, places I’ve heard of but never seen.”

  He looked interested then, and not merely in the flush of her cheeks or the moisture of her plump lower lip. “I was on my way there . . . before this transpired.” He said the last with an impatient toss of his gloved hand in the general direction of the bride and groom. She admired the way the kidskin molded to his strong fingers.

  “Your hand is quite something, as well,” she said in a slightly rougher voice.

  He smiled again, turning his hand this way and that, as if he’d never before taken a moment to look at it. “Really? I have two in fact.” He presented his left hand as evidence, then lifted his right forearm for her to rest her hand upon. “May I escort you into the alcázar, Lady Anna?”

  “I’m no lady, I’m afraid. A lowly miss.”

  He kept his arm extended. “The offer still stands . . . my dear Anna.”

  And there it was. My. For a few minutes or hours or days, she would be his. He had knowledge and experience.

  She needed both.

  She placed her gloved hand on the fine fabric of his dark-green jacket, lightly at first, then with a grip borne of excitement as his muscles flexed and shifted beneath her fingertips. She was loath to admit that the low, throbbing heat between her legs was not entirely the result of conjuring her passion for Pia.

  His eyes came to rest on her lower lip, wet from her constant back-and-forth nervous licking with the tip of her tongue. “Do stop that, please,” he begged.

  But she didn’t stop. She only paused for a moment, and instead of withdrawing that flicking little pink tip, she challenged him with her eyes. The flare of her audacity sent fire into his blood. She opened her lips wider and let her tongue drag a leisurely circle around the entire red, wet opening.

  He did stumble that time.

  Sebastian was no longer deceived by all that virginal frailty—that impossibly elegant neck with the birthmark at the base near the lacy edge of her gown, the arms and legs that moved like delicate damselfly wings. “I see you use a convent education and a pale dress to disguise yourself, much as I use a family name and a sword.”

  Her eyes widened at his brash speech, but she didn’t reply.

  “I know what it is to live behind a mask, Anna.”

  He also knew what rested behind her careful shell: something hot and honest and demanding.

  The man he presented to the world was the strong, strapping soldier; the agile, competent horseman; the eldest son of a powerful landowner; the heir being groomed to follow in his father’s illustrious footsteps; even the rebellious rogue. Not one of them was the real man, the lover who craved nothing more than to be completely subdued by a powerful, knowing partner. Or two. To be taken in hand and made to fulfill every outrageous need, to experience the freedom he only found in submission.

  He must have sighed at the thought as he looked ahead to the castle in the near distance.

  Anna squeezed his arm to get his attention. “Perhaps the two of us shall find one another behind the mask, then?” she offered.

  He took his time meeting her gaze, letting his eyes slowly caress the turn of her bodice. Her breasts were small, but he saw them respond to his consideration, two firm, puckering tips forming beneath the pale silk as he rudely stared. If he could please her with a look, he could only begin to imagine how he might please her with his fingers or lips.

  When their eyes met, he was certain she knew the nature and extent of his thoughts. “I should like that very much,” he replied softly.

  Their intimate conversation had slowed their pace somewhat, but they were nigh on the castle walls when one of his friends jabbed his ribs as he passed. “Step lively, Seb. Don’t want to hinder the lady.”

  This was no lady, he wanted to call after his mate. This was a hidden world of sensual delight, his for the plucking.

  “Where did you learn to do that with your tongue?” His voice was rough around the edges, hard from repressing the urge to drop to his knees and burrow under her gown right there in the shadow of the castle’s portcullis.

  She smiled, tightening her lips around her teeth, then spoke with that soft convent voice he was coming to recognize as another subtle layer of her nuanced disguise. “I’m sorry. My lips . . . they tingle sometimes, and it helps to . . . soothe them.” She tested the theory, letting her tongue pass slowly across her upper lip. “Yes. It makes them feel better somehow.”

  Enough. Enough about tongues and desire and soothing the tingling feelings or some such rot. He hustled her into the castle along with the sea of other guests.

  He knew the layout of the alcázar from several visits in his childhood. Guiding Anna gently away from the masses of people, down a separate hallway, as if he were innocently leading her to a view of the mountains from a particularly scenic balcony, he turned the black wrought iron handle on a heavy wooden door and pulled her inside.

  Victory.

  He shut the door behind him and peeled off his gloves. The two of them were in a vast library with thousands of volumes and nary a human in sight.

  “Do it again, please,” he asked. “With your tongue.” Slowly untying the silk ribbon of her bonnet, Sebastian let his knuckles trail along her milky skin as he spoke. She was distracted by the grandeur of the room, marveling at the countless books.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she whispered.

  “Neither have I,” he agreed, touching the sensitive edge of her lower lip with two fingers.

  She gasped briefly and looked so genuinely surprised by his touch that he faltered. “You can’t possibly play the blushing virgin now . . . after you . . .” But he didn’t move his fingers, and she didn’t pull away. Her dark-amber eyes were now fixed on his.

  Then she did the most miraculous thing imaginable. She opened her mouth wider and drew his bare fingers into that wet, succulent warmth. Her eyes were still wide for a moment, but then they fluttered closed in sensual delight. She worked his fingers with her mouth, letting her tongue swirl and lick as she sucked and moaned.

&n
bsp; He could have come from that—from looking at the way her cheeks drew in and from her guttural moans vibrating from the tips of his fingers to the throbbing tip of his cock.

  “Good God, woman!”

  She emerged from her temporary reverie—eyes glassy, lips wet—and slowly withdrew his fingers from her mouth. She still held on to his wrist with both her small hands. She’d grabbed him in that way at some point in her ecstasy, controlling his pace in and out of her mouth.

  “Did it feel as nice for you?” she asked, almost innocent.

  He shook his head in stunned disbelief. She was an angel from heaven. From some carnal heaven, he amended, that produced an angel born wanting to suck a man’s cock for the sheer pleasure it brought her.

  “Yes,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “It felt very nice.”

  “For me too,” she said, but she released him and wandered away toward the endless shelves of hand-tooled leather, as if her enjoyment of the act had been somewhat unexpected, something to be examined rather than indulged.

  Sebastian followed her. That in itself was remarkable. He could not recall willingly following a woman. In bed, of course—more than willingly—but not like this. Anna was a lady, no matter how lowly a miss she claimed to be, and it was as if his two distinct worlds were colliding. Social obligation and base desire were finally making one another’s acquaintance, like two people who turn a corner and hurtle into each other.

  She was trailing her fingertips lightly across the bindings of a complete set of Shakespeare.

  “So you can read, I take it?” He came up behind her and circled her waist with his arms. She leaned back into him, but again, it was almost absently, as if he offered a convenient perch for her to use while she perused the library. Nothing more. The idea pleased him, the idea of making it his purpose in life to be of use to this woman.

  “I can. I love to read.” Her finger came to rest on The Tempest. “But I’ve had very little access to . . . so many things.”

  She turned in his arms, staring into those blue-green eyes of his, wondering how honest she could afford to be. Some version of the truth would free her to ask all sorts of relevant questions, to make him an accomplice of sorts. He seemed like he’d be game.