Chapter 2 #2
Everett could say a great deal about her, none of which was particularly complimentary. But he did have to admit that she possessed an unnatural amount of tenacity.
She was waiting for him.
Instead of returning to the house party as he had hoped she would do upon realizing he had no intention of changing his mind about granting her a divorce. Like a damned dog guarding her bone. She was relentless.
But he remained unmoved.
If she wouldn’t go and leave him in peace, then he would simply join her in her game.
Finishing his final lap of swimming, Everett once again hauled himself onto the edge of the grotto pool. This time, however, he didn’t remain seated. He rose to a full standing position, more than aware he was naked and giving her an excellent view of his backside.
Let her look. Perhaps she could compare it to her lover’s, he thought acridly.
“My towel, if you please,” he called over his shoulder as if she were a servant awaiting his bidding.
“Fetch it yourself,” she snapped.
“I thought that your continued presence, where you are neither welcome nor wanted, meant that you wished to take up your wifely duties and towel me dry,” he said.
“How can I have wifely duties when I am not treated as a wife?”
This argument grew more wearying by the second.
Everett cast an exasperated glance over his shoulder at her as water dripped down his back, arse, and legs. “If you want to be treated as a wife, then perhaps you should act like one.”
“I don’t want to be treated like one. The time for that is decidedly past, Riverdale. You have lost your chance.”
He smirked. “And yet here you are, my wife, nonetheless.”
It wasn’t kind of him to rub her nose in the fact that she was inextricably bound to him. But he wasn’t feeling particularly kind where she was concerned. He hadn’t been since he had seen her in another man’s arms.
He didn’t miss the way her jaw tightened at his taunt. And he couldn’t lie; he enjoyed it.
“As I said, I am desirous of rectifying that particular problem,” she said coolly, perfectly composed, as if he weren’t standing before her bare-arsed naked.
He didn’t like that bloody sangfroid of hers, now that he thought about it.
Everett spun about to face her, more than aware that the cool water’s effect on his prick had diminished.
He walked toward her with slow deliberation and an utter disregard for his dishabille that was entirely feigned.
It wasn’t that he was ashamed of his body; rather, he was quite proud of it.
He knew he was in excellent form, thanks to his love of rowing, riding, and cricket.
Merely, he didn’t prefer to flaunt himself before lying jades who had tricked him into marriage.
“And I told you, madam, there is only one way for that problem to be rectified.” He stopped before her and reached for his towel, which was neatly folded across a gilded bar installed in the shell-bedecked walls of the grotto for just such a purpose.
“Give me what I need, and I’ll return the favor by divorcing you or by setting you up at the dower house.
Christ, I’ll even give you a town house if you wish it. ”
He toweled his hair off first, taking his time and deliberately making no effort to cover himself. He was gratified by the way her gaze traveled over him, devouring him with the ardent longing of any lover. She may have a beau, but she was not immune to Everett.
“Forgive me if I don’t trust you to uphold your end of the bargain,” she said, tipping up her chin.
Blast it. The action called attention to her creamy throat.
Everett admired a great many places on a woman’s body, but for some reason, a graceful neck could bring him to his knees.
And no denying it, Sybil possessed one of the loveliest throats he had ever beheld, flawless, save for a tiny mole shaped like half a heart just below her right ear.
It irked him to realize that the tiny beauty mark still called to him, that he wanted to lay his lips on her there despite everything she had done.
Anger spurred him on. His cock was growing hard for her. Why did Sybil, of all women, have this irritatingly potent effect upon him?
“Ah, but you are tempted, are you not, my dear?” he asked snidely as he continued to towel off his hair. “Don’t think I didn’t see your eyes traveling over me.”
“You are as tempting as stepping in a pile of horse dung,” she said, ice in her voice and gray eyes, which glimmered in the grotto’s lamplight.
But he didn’t miss the slight tremor in her voice, the flaring of her pupils.
She was attracted to him, like it or not, just the same way that his body physically desired her. Base lust had no compunction, and no one should know that better than Everett.
“We could begin now,” he pointed out, being deliberately crude. “Is that why you’re lingering?”
“Of course it isn’t.”
But her gaze dipped down his body, her eyes widening when she spied his prick, ever rising to do his duty.
Feeling particularly wicked, he moved closer, until he had crowded her against the rock wall of the grotto’s cavern.
Everett gave in to temptation and reached for her, cupping her nape, gently rubbing the pad of his thumb over that half heart.
God, her skin was soft. Softer than silk and warm and scented sweetly.
This was the Sybil he had thought he was marrying, lovely and pliable, staring up at him with liquid silver eyes that revealed none of her innermost secrets and thoughts.
He’d thought her unfailingly lovely, and he’d wanted her with a ferocity that should have been a warning to him. Instead, he’d ignored it.
Now she was a mystery he didn’t want to solve. Everett didn’t like complications. He preferred simplicity, a lack of emotion. But Sybil had swiftly proven the biggest complication of his life.
“You may as well surrender to the inevitable,” he told her, stroking that bewitching beauty mark.
He didn’t miss her quick inhalation, and neither did he mistake the rapid beat of her pulse.
“I want your promise,” she blurted.
Why did he desire her so much? He hadn’t bedded her after what he’d witnessed on their wedding day.
Just following their goddamned wedding breakfast, held at her father’s country seat.
The intervening months had done nothing to diminish his hunger.
He wanted nothing more than to grind his cock into her skirts.
To grasp handfuls of silk and jerk them higher, to sink inside the inviting, wet confines of her pussy.
Breeding her wouldn’t be as distasteful as he had supposed. He had his confirmation of that now. No one had made his prick this hard since her.
But he forced the raging need licking through him to abate for a moment, focusing on her words.
“What promise would you have me make, madam?” he asked. “I must warn you that you aren’t in any position to make demands of me.”
“Promise me that if I do what you wish, that if I give you an heir, you’ll give me a town house of my own, and you’ll allow me the freedom to do as I wish.”
There it was—what she truly wanted. Not him. But what he could give her. No doubt she wanted a town house so that she could live freely in it with her footman lover.
The thought made him long to slam his fist into the grotto wall.
Everett clenched his jaw instead. “I promise.”
He had no intention of keeping any promise that didn’t suit him, but never mind that. His faithless wife would discover that in her own time later. Why should he uphold a promise to her when she hadn’t even lasted four hours?
“And if I don’t bear a son, then after two children, you will release me from my obligations,” she pressed, sounding breathless.
He was dripping onto her silken skirts, but he didn’t give a damn.
If someone were to venture down the steps and into the grotto just now, they would find him naked and pressed against his duchess.
He could lift her skirts and take her, and the notion of doing so with an audience made him harder still.
He shouldn’t want her. The thought of being inside her shouldn’t make him almost breathless with need.
It didn’t matter.
“Three,” he pressed, just because he could.
“Two children,” she countered. “And then I am free to live on my own and do as I please.”
Her tongue darted out, wetting her lush, pink lips.
It occurred to him then that he hadn’t kissed her since she’d become his wife.
That mouth was inviting. Deceitful. He would claim it as he would claim her body.
He dropped his towel to the floor and clamped his other hand on her waist, his head dipping toward hers.
“Two, but only if we begin today,” he told her.
Her eyes widened.
“The sooner I breed you, the better,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately cutting and cold.
She inhaled sharply at his vulgar words, but her bravado returned in an instant. “If you wanted to do so, you had ample opportunity these last three months.”
His lips were maddeningly near to hers. “I suppose I have you to thank for showing me the error of my ways. So, do we have a bargain?”
“I…”
She faltered.
He had shaken her. He didn’t regret his actions for a moment. He wanted to punish her almost as much as he wanted to bed her. It didn’t make sense, the riot of emotions coursing through him. But he was naked and dripping wet and beginning to get cold, so he would worry about that later.
“Well?” he demanded, inhaling deeply of vanilla and tuberose.
She had no right to smell so bloody intoxicating. To make him want her so bloody much. What a perverse bastard he was, desiring her as he did.
“Very well,” she said curtly, defiance shining in her eyes. “We have a bargain.”
“Excellent,” he bit out. “We’ll begin this evening after dinner.”
He expected her to object. To grow alarmed. To invent an excuse.
But instead, Sybil merely nodded. “As you said, the sooner this distasteful business is at an end, the better. Until this evening, Your Grace.”
With a mocking curtsy, she took her leave of the grotto as Everett watched, naked, wet, and sporting a raging cockstand.
Damn her twice.