His Harlot by Natasha Blackthorne

His Harlot: A Midsummer's Sin
Now available for .99 on Kindle

Historical Erotica Romance



A Puritan Widower & a Former Harlot. Their union is strictly forbidden. Yet they both secretly love each other. Late one night, in the midst of a summer’s hot spell, Thomas spies Rosalind in the woods, clad only in her shift, dancing in the moonlight. It’s really more than a man celibate for three years can stand.


“Eloquently written, steamy, sexy love scenes with the right amount of romance.” An Amazon Review


"Hot, sexy...full of passion, secrets, longing, forbidden love..." My Reading Addiction & More.


*** Erotic Romance, Historical Set in Colonial America ~~ SHORT NOVELLA ~~ For Adults 18+ Only ***

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Excerpt from His Harlot

  By reading any further, you are stating that you are 18 years of age, or over. If you are under the age of 18, it is necessary to exit this site.

©Copyright 2013 Natasha Blackthorne

Chapter One

New Balcombe, Massachusetts Bay Colony

Summer, 1690

She wore only a shift.

Moonlight illuminated the thin cloth into a shimmering veil. The glowing ivory of her gentle, generous curves, hints of rose-pink nipples, a shadowy triangle between her long, lithesome legs—all teased Thomas’ imagination.

Blood rushed from his head to fill his cock.

Heart thundering, he leaned against the tree. He barely dared to take a steadying breath lest the vision of that girl dancing in the clearing disappear and prove itself a mere figment of his long-starved lust.

Dear sweet Christ.

Not since his days at Oxford had he seen a woman’s body displayed so wantonly, and then only in dimly-lit rented chambers. Never in brilliant moonlight.

The wind calmed. The rustling leaves of the tall trees grew silent. Her laughter carried to him. The sound—so free, so girlish—sent pleasurable shivers through him, sensual and immediate, as if a woman had raked her nails softly down his back. His erection throbbed, getting bigger, stiffer, straining his breeches. Sweating, he grasped himself and gave his aching shaft a firm squeeze.

God. The need was more than a man, a widower of over a year, could bear.

More so for Thomas. Physical passion had repulsed his wife. For his beloved Patience’s sake, after the conception of his son, he’d left her in peace. Now he’d been three years without the ease of a woman’s soft, warm body…

That girl—Rosalind Abramson—was everything he craved.

She was within reach.

They were alone.

He wanted to go her. To seize her. To crush that beguiling body against his own.

No! He released his cock and took a deep steadying breath. He’d mastered his passions. He was a Puritan now, no longer a libertine.

He would not yield.

He closed his eyes, but all he saw was hair burning like flames in the noon sun. He was taken back to a year ago when he had been riding in a carriage on a squalid London street.

He had been with his family, on his way to board the Abigail for Boston. His son had taken ill from the stench of the docks and had forced them to halt. Thomas stood outside the vehicle, talking with the driver as they allowed the interior to air.

Then he saw her. Rosalind. She wore no head covering—her curls bounced wildly as she ran towards him. She held her skirts—the most garish hue of green he’d ever beheld—high enough to display trim ankles and well-turned calves clad in pale pink silk stockings that gave her legs the appearance of being completely bare. She lifted her knees and ran like a boy. A fine sheen of sweat sparkled on her flushed face and on the exposed tops of her generous breasts.

Thomas inhaled deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the memory away. But the image only intensified.

She had increased her pace.

She came upon him so fast, he thought she would crash into him. His man’s body, so starved for the touch of feminine flesh, tensed in anticipation of her body colliding with his.

At the last moment, she turned, her large eyes caught his—full of terror—he could feel it reverberate in his own bones… His heart contracted with sympathy. As she hauled herself into the open carriage door, a whoosh of air, scented with roses and musk, blew over him.

The carriage where his wife waited.

The crack of a branch yanked him back to the present.

She was still in the clearing.

Dancing in the moonlight.

Half naked.

As his neighbour’s bondswoman, Rosalind was always so close, so desirable. Yet so utterly uninterested in him. She was warm and friendly to others. Yet she remained aloof, superior, as if he’d never done her any kindness.

But now she shared all with him, however unwittingly.

They were alone.

Alone.

A single chance to have her without risk of discovery. There would be no consequences. He need only reach out and take. He inhaled deeply. Dear God, give him the strength to resist.

Lost to her enjoyment, she laughed again. His cock went so rigid that his arousal bordered on pain.

He could take her. But it wouldn’t be enough. His feelings for her went beyond simple lust.

He loved Rosalind. He adored the nut-brown freckles that speckled across her cheeks as the summer days grew long and hot. The way tendrils of her fiery-red hair constantly escaped her cap to flutter about her face and the way they grew frazzled on rainy days. The curve of her smile and the timbre of her voice and the lazy sway of her walk. He knew all about her, what she’d been—an actress, a woman of easy virtue. It didn’t matter. She captivated him. He couldn’t imagine marrying anyone else.

Nevertheless, Rosalind was not a fit wife.

He loved her, aye, he loved her more with every passing day but in all the wrong ways. To even think of wedding her—after the pure, pious love he’d shared with Patience—was a sacrilege.

How could he contemplate making a former actress his beloved daughter Hannah’s stepmother?

God save him. His past was full of sensual, sinful decadence. He’d filled his time with nothing but transgressions before Patience had saved him with the example of her steadfast faith and love. He had been so inspired by her. By the peace her religion gave her. He’d been blessed with his conversion experience. Through his strength of will, he had purified his behaviour and thoughts.

He had changed forever.

Or so he thought.

Dear God, he was lost without his Patience.

And never more lost than here in the moonlight, alone with Rosalind. Just a fortnight away from leaving to teach at Harvard College in Cambridge village—he’d almost escaped unscathed.

His feelings for Rosalind were based on the same savage carnality that had almost undone him in his youth. If he slipped, even once, he would surely be overcome by sin. He would drown in wicked excess.

Home. That was where he belonged. But he couldn’t stop himself from taking a step towards Rosalind. Then another. Then several more.

She turned. Her eyes, glittering in the moonlight, caught his. She stopped her hips in mid-sway. She backed away, watching him, eyes growing wide. Dark-brown velvet eyes framed by delicately arched brows. Tonight, those orbs were deep and smoky, almost black. He couldn’t tear his gaze from hers. A dry-mouthed, pulse-pounding apprehensive excitement possessed him. A sense of inevitability.

Dear God, he was falling. Falling into sin with her.

Her thick lashes swept down over her eyes, the dark auburn crescents looking purplish in the moonlight, and a slight smile curved her lips. His focus dropped to where her breasts rose and fell quickly, their tight, pink peaks straining against the gossamer shift.

She didn’t attempt to cover herself but kept her hands to her sides. That surprised him. However, he’d not been out of this sport so long that he misunderstood. It was clearly an invitation.

Temptation pounded through his blood and, with every beat of his heart, increased the pulsation in his cock. She was lust incarnate.

His body trembling with hunger, he fisted his hands.

He would not succumb.

* * * *

Breathless, Rosalind panted as the tall, broad-shouldered apparition before her swayed in her dizzy vision. She beheld the glossy, dark chestnut hair, the high forehead, well-shaped yet heavy brows, long straight nose and full yet firm mouth.

He wore no doublet. In the moonlight his white shirt glowed and rippled in the slight breeze against a body that displayed the hard-muscled strength and power that came from strenuous daily labour.

Each time she saw him, her whole focus narrowed on him, her body tingling yet weak. Oh, he was very familiar to her. But she had never been alone with him.

However, she wasn’t afraid.

He’d always been kind. He’d assisted her that day over a year ago when she’d needed to leave London. Attained her passage to New England and found her modest clothes in sad colours. Told everyone on the Abigail that she was his cousin’s widow and helped her falsify her last name—even though she could tell he hated being dishonest.

But Thomas had saved her from the censure of the other Puritans on the ship knowing she was an actress. She had begun to love him then. Even though he was married.

Even though coveting him was a sin.

Now he was a widower. The town schoolmaster. A stern-faced, hardworking, pious man. He’d never been able to completely hide his disdain for her because of what she had been. Despite his kindness, he had remained aloof. Especially after the mid-point of the voyage, when he’d lost his young son and, shortly thereafter, his wife to a fever that had raged through the passengers.

She sensed that he suspected the truth of her past. For years, she had been a whore. Would his disdain change if he knew that day in London she’d been running away from that life? Her mother had been a member of an acting troupe. She had also shared herself with many wealthy gentlemen. When her mother fell ill they became completely dependent on the troupe manager Mr Boger. And relied on him to pay for doctors and medicine. He had owned Rosalind’s very soul. He’d forced her, trained her how to please men, then sold her by the hour to the highest bidders.

Then her mother died and Rosalind vowed to escape.

That day in London, Mr Boger had been escorting her to yet another wealthy gentleman, a merchant prince who had paid for a few hours of gratification. She jumped from the carriage when it stopped.

However, Mr Boger wasn’t opposed to using physical violence. She’d often felt the back of his hand—or his fist. He had warned her that, if she ever ran from him, she’d better run well and hard for, if he caught up to her, he would kill her.

That day, he’d come after her in a rage.

She’d been desperate. Running for her dear life. Knowing she couldn’t fail. She’d recognised the sympathy on Thomas’ face that day. And the desire.

Well, she’d been dressed as the veriest of doxies. Who could blame him for any mistaken assumptions?

She couldn’t bear to tell him the truth of her past outright. She couldn’t take the chance of increasing the disdain he must feel for her. What did the circumstances matter? She was unclean, no matter if the choice had truly been hers or not.

She’d been a whore. A dirty whore.

Goodman Thomas Marlowe. Goodman. As if the damned Puritans held some special innate goodness others could never attain. Well, of course they saw it that way. Their religion centred on that sanctimonious notion.

That religion, his devotion to its principles and practice, made him completely unavailable to a woman like her. He always held a wistful, removed quality in his eyes, as if he were consumed by some long remembered and perhaps deliciously savoured pain.

But tonight was very different.

His heavy-lidded green eyes glimmered with something earthy and very intimate and they were focused lower than her neck.

She glanced down.

Her nipples were pointed peaks against the thin material. Her shift! No wonder he stared! Dizziness swept over her, her head growing light, as if it might float away. Dear God. She was dressed only in her shift. No matter how fascinating she found the contours of his powerful body, how could she have forgotten herself so, even for a moment?

 She ought to feel shame. She ought to cover herself and run away and pretend this was all a dream.

He kept looking at her with those gorgeous green eyes. Looking at her as if he would never stop. Could never stop.

Triumph at her power took her breath. Energy surged through her body like fire blazing up a piece of kindling. Vitality that couldn’t be suppressed. She resumed swaying, allowing her feminine instincts to take complete possession of her.

He fixed his gaze on her lower body. His eyes widened. Darkened.

She knew the look of a man’s lust.

God, he was hers. Totally hers.

And this was likely her last chance ever to know him like this. Maybe fate itself had created this moment of magical moonlit opportunity.

For hours, she’d tossed in sweat-soaked sheets. She’d told herself it was owing to the excessive heat, the worst summer’s heat she had known in her life. As the clock had chimed midnight, wind had rustled the curtains. The first cooling breeze New Balcombe had seen in days had compelled her to come outdoors.

No, that wasn’t true. She couldn’t lie to herself. One thing and one thing only had dominated her thoughts and kept her from sleeping.

In two weeks, Thomas would leave for Harvard College. He was leaving…

The only man she had ever wanted—yes, it must be admitted, the only man she had ever loved—was about to walk out of her life. Maybe forever.

She would never know his kiss, his touch.

You could have him, here tonight, if you wanted him. No one shall ever know…

A little seduction. That was all it would take. She swayed her hips and shoulders in a motion as if she were a helpless willow caught in a breeze. Submissive to the forces of nature.

Always before, in the theatre, she had danced before a large audience. She’d never liked acting or dancing on stage. She’d been so young when she started, terrified of making a misstep in front of so many people. People who might pelt her with rotten fruit and worse. She taken herself to a place deep inside and pretended that she danced alone.

But now she was not alone. She was exceedingly aware of Thomas Marlowe. Aware of her effect on him. Her nipples drew tight, straining against the fabric of her bodice as she moved. Wetness flowed from her sex.

She’d known many men and it hadn’t been her choice. But Thomas was her choice. She had wanted him for so very long.

And tonight he wanted her too—this cold, impossibly remote man wanted her.

She stole a glance over her shoulder. He stood there, watching her as if he were transfixed.

She laughed, the low, throaty sound alien to her ears. Dear heaven, what was he waiting on? It had taken far less for the gentlemen in London to jump at her mother backstage.

Well, as a former actress, she certainly knew how to play the seductress.

“Goodman Marlowe.” She let her tongue caress the name and paused, while holding his gaze steadily. “Always devout, always good. Too good to take what he wants.”

She cupped her breasts, lifting and pushing them together, making them appear fuller. His focus of attention fell. She laughed again.

His jaw tightened. “Mistress Abramson, don’t.”

She drew her brows together in an expression of exaggerated sympathy and shook her head slowly. “Too good to take what he wants…even if his quarry wants to be taken?”

He jerked his stare back to her eyes, his brows drawn tightly together. “You want that? To be taken here in the wood, like a harlot?”

She flinched. The word stung. Yes, however unwilling, she’d been a whore. Yet to hear that ugly word on his lips, directed at her—

Leave. Just leave and pretend none of this ever happened.

His gaze trailed down over her body.

Wait.

His lips parted slightly and his features sharpened into an expression of pure hunger.

No. He hadn’t meant it. It was bluster. He was defensive, deflecting blame. He was close to giving in. Power surged through her once more. She purposely relaxed her face and curved her lips into a smile. “Oh no, never a harlot. I am a creature of the wood. A nymph.”

She laughed, turning away to resume her dance.

He locked an iron arm around her waist and he pulled her backwards. Roughly. Anticipation tingled through her like a thousand stinging bees. She opened her mouth to cry out but her back made contact with his body. A body as rock hard as she’d ever imagined.

She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think.

He pressed his pelvis into her buttocks, and, even through the fabric of his breeches, his erection felt hot and huge.

It felt divine.

Unable to stop herself, she wriggled against him, revelling in the evidence of his arousal.

He growled low, the sound vibrating over her neck. Gooseflesh prickled down her spine. His large hand splayed over her belly. “So the quarry wants to be taken?”

Through the thin fabric, he brushed his fingertips over her stomach in a circular pattern. Not clumsy or rough, but gentle, sensitive teasing. A beguilement.

She moaned, still helplessly writhing against his straining heat. She had dreamt of this countless times, yet it was nothing like she’d dreamt. He was nothing like she had dreamt. She trembled and closed her eyes, surrendering.

He stopped and put her from him. Firmly. Decisively.

She swayed on her feet. What had happened? Shaking with the shock of loss, she spun to see him walking towards the path in the wood that led back to his property.

God, he was leaving.

Leaving.

 

“Thomas—”

Rosalind’s voice carried to Thomas. He’d never heard his given name spoken by her. It made him stop. It made him long to turn.

He resisted.

He must not yield. Just a fortnight and he would be removed from this sin. Movement caught his eye. Her shadow, lengthened and distorted, wavered on the ground. She was pulling her shift up, inch by inch, swaying her hips as she did so.

God. No power on earth could have stopped him from turning. Not even his will. Maybe a lightning bolt would save him.

None came.

He turned. Her ivory thighs were bare. She pulled the shift higher. He sucked in his breath and held it as she revealed the red triangle of hair between her legs. A renewed surge of heat boiled through his blood.

Moonlight shone on the soft swell of her stomach and her broad hips, throwing a shadow that accentuated the sharp, nipped-in tuck of her long waist. She lifted the shift all the way to her chin, revealing breasts that were large, full yet youthfully high and firm.

He should not keep looking at her. He should leave now. He should—

She pulled the shift over her head and cast it aside. 

He couldn’t have torn his eyes away to save his soul.

She tossed her head of lush red curls then smiled and held out her arms. “Thomas, come, come.”

She backed away, disappearing into the thick shade of the maple. He followed her. The warm darkness swallowed them.

“Thomas…” She reached up to touch his face as he approached. Her fingertips seemed to singe him. He grasped her by the waist and yanked her body to his.


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