Chapter 16 #2
She took a step back, acknowledgment that he was a formidable man. Not only was he extraordinarily handsome, but he was filled with all sorts of emotions she wished she could understand.
He glanced at the drawstring bag in her hand.
“Should I be surprised that you’ve violated my privacy again?”
“How do you do that? How do you walk so quietly, or enter a room without my hearing you?”
“How do you manage to invade my privacy so often?” he asked, spearing both hands through his hair. “If I give you the damn mirror, will you give me privacy?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You don’t know? What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know what you mean by privacy. Am I to leave you alone all the time? Am I never to talk to you? Am I never to share a meal, a conversation?”
When he didn’t answer her, she looked down at the bag. Was the mirror worth an argument? She should give it back to him, walk away, and pretend they were in perfect accord with each other.
Years of pretense, however, grew tiring.
“Take it,” he said, finally. “It’s little enough payment.”
Stung, she watched as he walked toward her.
“Payment for what?”
“If I want to bed you, I will.”
He pulled the drawstring bag out of her hands and tossed it on her bed. Only then did he grab her hand and pull her back into his room, shutting all the doors and latching the one to the hallway.
“If I want to bed you, I will,” he said again.
“You needn’t pay me for it,” she said.
Beneath the surface of Montgomery’s calm, she could feel the carefully cloaked and civilized rage. She couldn’t reach either his grief or his anger. Something dark lived in Montgomery, something skittering away from the light, and she wasn’t certain she was courageous enough to face it.
What compelled her, then, to place her hands on his face and look up at him? What made her think she might heal him with passion?
His kiss was hard, startling, and hot. He pushed the robe from her shoulders, made an impatient sound against her lips when he encountered the belt.
Perhaps she should have said something, but heat crawled up her spine, warmed the icy ball of anxiety in her stomach until she felt as if she were boiling inside.
She gripped his shoulders, then lost that grip when he nearly threw her on the bed.
Quickly, she raised herself on her elbows, watching him, stunned by the speed at which everything was happening.
This was not the gentle lover, the man who’d brought her such bliss yesterday and the day before.
This was a man who scowled at her as he jerked off his clothes, who threw his boots to the other side of the room, barely missing the pier glass.
This was a man empowered by an emotion stronger than any she’d ever witnessed.
Her belly clenched as heat filled her.
An instant later, he threw himself on the bed, covering her, ripping the nightgown from her until their skins rubbed against each other.
“Damn it, I need you,” he said, in such a harsh and grating tone she wouldn’t have recognized his voice if she hadn’t been looking at his face. “I need to be in you.”
Her arms locked around his neck, and her mouth answered his assault with one of her own. She inhaled his breath, bit at his lip, heard him swear as he stroked her breast before replacing his hands with his mouth. Her palms pressed against his hollowed cheek as he suckled her.
His fingers, his hands, danced across her body in a furious ballet of passion, measuring the curve of her breasts, the slope of her hips, sliding between her legs to stroke her. He murmured praise as his fingers slid through slick folds, swallowed her soft exclamation, and urged her higher.
They fought with each other and soothed each other. She nibbled at his shoulder; he sucked her nipples. He palmed her wetness; she scraped her nails across his buttocks.
She moaned. He swore.
His fingers were inside her, measuring her response, her willingness, her need. She shivered, and he pressed harder. Not a gentle request but a demand. She willed her eyes to open and watched him watching her.
“I have to be in you,” he said, his voice rough. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Her hips lifted off the bed, and suddenly he was there, filling her. Pleasure wound through her, around her, laced her to this man, this act, this fierce joy.
Gripping his hips, she demanded a rhythm of him, set him into motion like a pendulum while he kissed her breathless. She bucked again, her whole body pressing up to take more of him. Greedy, she wanted more. She wanted everything.
Shuddering, she watched the shimmer of pleasure wash over his face as his eyes closed, and his throat arched. He tensed and held himself tight, pouring himself into her.
Her palm cradled his head, her thumb brushing his cheek as he rested his head on the pillow next to her.
In a moment, he would leave her. His face would close, his expression unreadable, but she would feel a hint of the pain leaking through his control.
When he would have spoken, she placed her fingers against his lips, turned her head to kiss him, willing him silent.
What the hell was that?
Montgomery moved, rolled on his back, away from her.
Pleasure wasn’t a strong enough word to describe what had happened, but he couldn’t think of another at the moment.
He wasn’t sure he could think at all. He wiggled his toes to make sure they were connected to his feet and the feet connected to his legs.
He knew his left arm was still intact because that was over his eyes.
Experimentally, he flexed his hand, surprised to find it was still working.
He thought his lips might be numb but knew his manhood was still firmly intact. Everything he was feeling radiated outward from that one spot.
He’d seen Veronica dressed in her blue wrapper, and beneath, a nightgown so diaphanous he could see the curves of her breasts and the darkness at the apex of her thighs.
Lust had taken him unawares. Instant, raging lust, as if he were some rutting beast. He had to have her, and reason or rationale or thoughts of an overdue apology hadn’t stopped him.
Thank God Veronica, his surprising wife, hadn’t allowed herself to be forced. Nor had she succumbed. She’d demanded. She’d been as wild as he. He had a bite mark on one shoulder to prove it. And possibly some scratches on his buttocks.
What the hell had come over him? Over her?
He slitted open one eye. Veronica had her eyes closed, her face upturned. He wished he knew what to say to her. Did a husband thank a wife? Did he especially thank her for being a virago in bed?
She’d urged him on, as he recalled, and he doubted he was going to forget that anytime soon. The memory of this night, every night with her, might well live on until his deathbed.
God, he felt good.
Veronica should get up and go back to her room. Tonight, he’d sleep. He might be hard-pressed to stay awake until she left. Except she wasn’t leaving. She was turning toward him, her hair spread over the pillow, marking it as hers.
He should speed her on her way, say something to her that he could apologize for in the morning. A statement to get her out of his room.
Instead, and counter to everything he thought wise, he rolled over, pressed a kiss to her temple. She opened her eyes and quickly closed them again, avoidance in a gesture.
“Stay,” he said softly. “Please.”
Without waiting to hear her answer, he drew the sheet over them.
What the hell was he doing?
When Veronica awoke, it was dawn.
Montgomery was dressing, and she watched him for a few moments from beneath half-closed lids.
He was so handsome it was a pleasure simply to look at him.
Each action, from drawing on his shirt to fastening his cuffs, was done with deliberation.
He didn’t look at himself as he dressed.
Instead, his gaze seemed focused inward, as if mentally ticking off a list of things he needed to do.
He sat, pulling on his boots, and remained there a moment, both hands on the arms of the chair, head bent, as if he’d been given a problem requiring a weighty decision.
Veronica closed her eyes and tried to sense what he was feeling, but all that came to her was a cloud of confusion, colored gray and black.
She heard him walk to the door, then pause.
She pretended to be asleep, not from shyness as much as reluctance.
They dealt so much better with each other in the act of passion than when they tried to talk.
She didn’t want her questions left unanswered, or see the flat expression in his eyes or the set look on his face.
Better to love the lover than try to talk to him.
When certain he was gone, she opened her eyes again and rolled to her back.
A moment later, she sat up on the edge of the mattress, found her wrapper lying neatly at the foot of the bed, and dragged it on.
Gathering the remnants of her nightgown in case one of the maids found it, she bunched the fabric in a ball in her hands and left Montgomery’s room.
Once in her bedroom, she tossed the ruined nightgown into the rubbish, hoping Elspeth wasn’t all that curious.
At least the seamstresses were preparing a few more nightgowns for her.
She walked to the bed, picked up the mirror where Montgomery had tossed it the night before, and pressed the drawstring bag against her chest. If she were truly courageous, she’d open the bag, examine the mirror again, and look at the image she’d seen there.
Instead, she went to the bureau, placed it in the bottom drawer, and slowly closed it.
The present was confusing enough.