Chapter 23 #2
It was no wonder, either. How was she meant to control her body when she was so busy feeling every emotion ever created? She was stunned, of course. And, to her irritation, she was aroused, which was rapidly becoming a familiar combination. She was confused, certainly.
And beneath it all, pleased. Maybe even a little hopeful.
And those last two made her feel quite afraid.
“I don’t understand,” she said after a moment. “I … thought you had abandoned that idea.”
Something dark flashed in his eyes as he shook his head at her.
“No, not abandoned,” he said, not quite meeting her eye.
She was so sick of this talking around one another. This was a business arrangement between them, wasn’t it? That was what it had been from the start, and that was what it would be now.
She folded her hands in her lap as primly as she’d ever done.
“Let me be frank,” she said, knowing she sounded terribly priggish but too busy with other concerns to truly care. “You do realize that we have not yet made any efforts to produce an heir, and that this refusal has been on your part?”
She thought of the house party, when she had reached for him, and he’d pushed her away. She thought of Helen and Xander’s house, when he’d been so firm that they would not consummate their marriage.
“I do,” he said, and Clio tried not to flinch at the echo of the marital vows.
“You are … capable?” she asked delicately as the idea occurred to her.
He looked downright shocked, and despite the complete awkwardness of their situation, it was rather funny.
“I—good God, Clio! Yes, I am capable.” He shook his head at her. “Of all the things to ask.”
She was not going to apologize.
“I did think so,” she said, which was as much as she could offer his wounded masculine pride. “But it does always help to be certain. Which leads me to my point: why not then? And why now?”
She thought this was a fair thing to ask. She was trying to be fair, trying rather desperately, actually. Because maybe that would be the thing to salvage … whatever this was, without her heart being crushed in the process. Maybe she just needed to be clear and level-headed.
Helen’s voice rang in the back of her mind. Fight for what you want.
Clio didn’t listen. She and her husband had fought aplenty. It hadn’t fixed things.
Hector, meanwhile, looked very uncomfortable.
He tapped his fingers anxiously on the handle of his walking stick.
She’d come to realize that he used the stick not only to aid his walking, but to offer symbolic support when he needed to think.
It was hard not to find this endearing, but she persevered because she was still very cross with him.
“Well.” He cleared his throat, and Clio started to feel very anxious about whatever he was going to say. This was not a man who normally got caught up in the niceties. “I didn’t … That is … It didn’t quite feel right. As things between us were …”
He trailed off, and Clio felt an expression of dawning horror cross her face.
Oh God. Oh God. He … He wasn’t attracted to her. He hadn’t lain with her because he didn’t want to. Which meant that the times she’d received pleasure from him had been—oh, good Lord, she barely managed to avoid dropping her head into her hands in misery. Had it been pity?
She reviewed the incidents in her mind with this new lens. Oh, but she had thrown herself at him. And now she’d come here, demanding that he … No. It was too humiliating.
She surged to her feet.
“I see,” she said. Her voice sounded extremely tight, but at least it didn’t crack in tears. That would be the final straw in her mortification. It might literally kill her if he told her that he didn’t desire her, and then she cried about it. “Well, then, I’ll just go—”
He reached out and grasped her wrist, his fingers warm and sure around her.
Clio hated herself for the shiver that went through her at the touch, given that her husband was probably barely repressing a shudder at once again being forced to touch a woman in whom he had no interest. Oh, goodness, had she taken advantage of him?
They warned young ladies about getting taken advantage of by randy gentlemen, but had she somehow …
coerced him with the force of her sexual desperation?
Clio really thought she might vomit. And, now that she thought about it, that would be the final humiliation.
“You don’t see,” he said, sounding rather wretched about it. As well he should, she supposed. Was there a comfortable way to tell someone that they had been a completely blind idiot? “The need for an heir has become, ah, rather more pressing.”
Ha! Something inside Clio was careening rapidly toward hysteria, which she could only assume was a protective measure from her mind so that she didn’t blush herself to death.
“Um,” she said. “Why?”
He was still holding her wrist. Perhaps he feared she would run away if he released her. Fair enough. She absolutely would run away, given the chance.
This was possibly the most uncomfortable Clio had ever been in her life, and she had once sat through a thirty-seven-verse poem that had been composed in her honor by a young clergyman, in which he’d compared her to several figures in the Bible, while the rest of Belgium Society listened on, not certain if they should laugh or perish from the horror.
That had been a bad evening. This was worse.
If only she’d agreed to marry Mr. Beecham, she thought now with regret, then she would have only been forced to listen to liturgy every day of her life, which would be preferable to this conversation.
“My brother,” Hector admitted. His fingers shifted on her wrist, and she hated that it sent sensation through her, even with—well, everything.
She vowed to wear gloves forevermore. “His solicitor has argued that the marriage clause in my father's will actually refers to the continuation of the line. So, without an heir, he intends to challenge me for the inheritance using that argument.”
Well, that was perfectly ghastly—and illustrated a strong ignorance of the mechanics of pregnancy, if Matthew thought they could simply will a baby, let alone a male one, into being within a few weeks of marriage.
Even if she’d conceived on her wedding night—a hysterical bubble of laughter threatened—they couldn’t know for certain for several weeks more.
And yet, the businesslike nature of the need made her feel a tiny bit calmer.
This was, after all, part of the agreement between them. They’d had a deal, and she would uphold it. She would not let her foolish emotions get in the way.
“I see,” she said, and this time he didn’t correct her. He was still holding her wrist, however. She wished that he would let go. “Well. What can we do to make that … manageable for you?”
Hector frowned at her. She wondered when she’d started feeling such fondness for that frown.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded.
Oh. Lovely. He was going to make her say it.
Maybe she would blush herself to death after all. That would serve him right.
“Ah, well,” she hedged. “I understood your point about …” She waved her free hand between them, and he tracked the movement, but it didn’t make him seem less confused. God above. “About things not. Ah. Feeling right.”
“Did you?” Hector’s words were as cautious and uncertain as hers.
Was this a divine punishment? Had she somehow offended … everything? She had missed some Sunday services in her life, true, but she couldn’t think of anything she’d done that would make her deserve this.
“Yes?” she ventured. She didn’t sound certain. She wasn’t certain of much of anything at this point. Her mind felt as though it had been buried in mud.
“Clio.” He sounded angry. “Tell me exactly what you think I meant.”
Oh, this was a punishment, albeit a mortal one. She still didn’t know why, though.
She let out a wretched sound.
“Don’t make me say it,” she said. “It’s humiliating enough to know that you don’t want me, that you let me drag you into a scandal—into a marriage—over something that didn’t appeal to you in the least. It’s fine.
I mean, it isn’t fine at all, it is completely awful, and I probably will never be able to show my face to anyone, anywhere ever again, because I shall never not be mortified, but that’s not your problem.
It’s my problem. And even with everything, I agreed to give you an heir, and I will.
I will, I just need to—to find a way that makes it not horrible for you, because I couldn’t bear it if you were just, oh, I don’t know, gritting your teeth to get through it and—"
Hector’s hand came over her mouth, cutting off her deluge of words. That was a mercy.
There was fire and fury in his face now; his brows were drawn low, his eyes burning like embers.
“Clio,” he said again. “Do you think that I don’t want you?”
His hand was still on her mouth, his other fingers still wrapped around her wrist. Without any other means of communication, she let out a helpless, whimpering sound.
Which, really, just about covered things.
With a snarl that Clio felt all the way down to her bones, damn her, Hector used the hold on her arm to pull her forward. She overbalanced, toppled, and caught herself against his chest.
Before she could pull away, he removed his hand from her mouth and planted it on her behind. Her eyes went wide as he used that grip to pull her hips flush against his.
“Do you feel what you do to me?” he asked, his voice low and furious, and yes, yes, she could. She could feel the hardness of him like a brand against her lower belly.
Except she couldn’t bear to believe what he was implying, because he’d told her otherwise, and anything resembling hope might truly be the end of her.
“A … a physical reaction,” she stammered. “It doesn’t mean that you … That I …”
Hector let out another growl, and this time he reversed his hold on her hand, pulling it down until her palm cupped him in that hard place. She gasped, and he sucked in a breath like he was the one dying, his hips bucking against her fingers like he couldn’t control himself.
He moved his hand on her rear up to her hair and tipped their foreheads together. He wasn’t holding her nearly as securely now, but Clio was practically hypnotized, dizzy with something that might have been hope, and she couldn’t have moved away if she tried.
“I don’t have as much practice with pretty words as you do, princess,” he told her, gently rocking his brow against hers as if he hoped to transmit the thoughts directly between their two minds. “But let me be as clear as possible, no fancy words to muddle me.”
“Please,” she said, the word a sigh.
He let out a grunt, and it was so unpolished, so raw that she shivered.
“I want ye like you cannot believe,” he told her, his accent growing thicker with emotion.
“Every time that I am with you, I want to rip you out of those pretty clothes and take you until you cannot remember anything but my name. I want to trap you in my bed until you are so wrung out with pleasure that your limbs don’t work.
I want to ravish you. I don’t want to be gentle or sweet.
I want you to walk away still feeling the imprint that I’ve left upon you. ”
Clio could barely breathe. But he wasn’t yet done.
“Seeing you fall apart aroused me so desperately that I nearly spilled in my trousers like some untried boy. But I want to do it again. I want to do it until you scream, until you sob for me to stop because you can’t take any more pleasure.
And then I want to take just a little bit more from ye, because I am a greedy, greedy man, and you are mine.
You are mine, and I want to make you mine. ”
Clio opened her eyes—when had she closed them?—and saw the intensity of his blue gaze boring into her.
“I only held back,” he told her, a tendril of reassurance beneath the harshness of his words, “because I didn’t want you to misunderstand, or be afraid, not while we were arguing.
But it seems that you misunderstood anyway, so now, let me tell you straight: if you agree, I am going to show you everything I just promised. And I am going to do it right now.”
Clio didn’t even hesitate.
“Yes, please, Hector,” she said.
And his mouth crashed down on hers.