The Raider by Jude Deveraux

bosom to his chest. “I am your slave, your captive. Do with me what you will.”
    Alex raised his eyebrows, but never a man to question extreme good luck, the next minute he was kissing her. She returned his kiss with such passion that before he knew what he was doing, he was halfway to the ground with her.
    She was eager, warm, willing—and the daughter of one of his father’s oldest friends.
    â€œAbby,” he said, trying to disentangle himself from her arms. Her hair had come loose and it was soft against his cheek. “Abby.” Her name came out like a groan.
    â€œI love to hear you say my name. My own Raider. My own true love.” She moved her hips against his, trying to kiss him again, but he pulled away.
    â€œGo home to your mother,” he said and found his voice a little shaky. Why did he have to be the Raider in his own hometown? Anywhere else and he’d take this eager young filly without a thought. “Go home, Abby. Please go home.”
    She flung herself against a tree, her face flushed, her breasts about to come out of the tight dress. “How noble you are,” she whispered.
    â€œOr how stupid,” Alex mumbled, looking at her. If he didn’t get out of here soon, he’d lose his resolve. With half of his mind calling him a fool, he jumped into the saddle of his horse. “Goodbye, Mistress Abigail,” he whispered as he urged his horse forward.
    â€œDamn all women!” he cursed. Jessica thought he wasn’t a man at all and Abigail thought he was more man than a herd of stallions. He shifted in the saddle, feeling like only half the man Abby thought him to be. Now all he had to do was make it to Ghost Island—and he prayed he would encounter no more women.
    *   *   *
    Jessica looked at the big basket full of blackberries and grimaced. She owned her own ship, had sailed, by herself, as far south as New Sussex, yet today she’d been relegated to picking blackberries like a naughty child.
    And it was all the Raider’s fault!
    When it had been announced that George Greene was to be whipped, everyone had said the Raider was going to save him. They had said the Raider had to save the boy, as if it were a matter of honor.
    As if they knew anything about the Raider’s sense of honor or anything else for that matter, she thought. Everyone in town seemed to have endowed this Raider with magical skills, talents that no human had ever possessed. They expected this masked man to right all wrongs, to single-handedly fight the British laws.
    But not everyone had believed the Raider to be perfectly good. Jess had delivered twenty pounds of haddock to the Montgomery house and had been told Sayer wanted to see her. She hadn’t seen him since the evening the Raider had thrown her in the washwater and she’d cried in his arms. She had been smiling when she entered Sayer’s room but not when she left.
    Sayer had demanded that she stay away from town the next day. It had been on the tip of her tongue to ask him what gave him the right to make such a demand, but she hadn’t said what she thought. The Montgomery family had been good to hers over the years and, besides, she couldn’t very well be disrespectful to an old and crippled man who was only concerned for her well-being. Reluctantly, she had agreed to stay in the forest for the entire day. Sayer hadn’t even wanted her on the wharf or near her own ship.
    So now, here she was, doing children’s work, all because of that man who called himself the Raider.
    Near the blackberry patch, under some trees, was a bed of moss that looked very inviting. It might do Eleanor some good to have her sister come back very late and give her a little something to worry about. Smiling somewhat smugly, she stretched out on the moss and was asleep in minutes. Unfortunately, she began to dream about the masked man who was upsetting her life so badly. She was reliving the