Chapter 11
Christian leaned against the closed door and tried to will away his violent erection.
Calm down, he told himself. You have about sixty seconds to calm the bloody hell down.
Oh Jesus. He did not even need to close his eyes to see her on the floor in the rose-scented room: the torn shift clinging to her curves, the lush swells and dips of her body visible.
Her lips had been parted, her legs spilling open like she wanted him there between her thighs, stroking inside the sweet tight channel of her body, desperate, needy—
He made himself focus on the memory of the two long scratches at her throat. He made himself move, gathering soap, a folded towel, a pitcher of water. He had salve in his traveling bag with his shaving implements. He got it out and laid it on the washstand.
He would clean and dress the marks that the blasted cat had put on her skin. He would make sure she was safe and dry before sending her back to bed.
Her bed—oh for God’s sake, her bed was soaked and dirty and half-destroyed by the cursed feline. He would put her in his bed, then. He would—
The door between them cracked open, and Matilda put her head in. “May I come in?”
No, he wanted to say. Run away. It’s not safe here.
But even as he thought it, he wasn’t sure what he meant.
It was not safe for her? Or for him? Which of them was in more danger, there in the candlelit room with one dry bed between them?
When he had heard her scream, he had lost time. He did not know what had happened between the sound of her shriek and when he found himself carefully peeling the cat off her pale freckled face. He had wondered briefly, crazily, if he had broken down the door in his panic.
He had not. She must not have locked it. He could not think about the fragile barrier of one unlocked door between them.
“Come in,” he said. “Let me have a look at the damage.”
She came into his chamber and shut the adjoining door behind her. Her hair was down about her shoulders—he had never seen her hair down before. It was drying already, curling up in red-gold tangles that fairly called out to be wrapped round his hands.
She was covered now, her dressing gown pulled around her neck, nearly up to her chin. He couldn’t see a single inch of her body, only layers of white pleats.
It did not matter. The sight of her breasts and hips and legs—God, the perfect shapely turn of her knees, her calves, her bare freckled feet—seemed to have been burned into his brain. He could see it before him like the afterimage of the sun.
Christian’s mouth felt dry. He seemed to have forgotten how to swallow.
Matilda nodded to the door she had closed. “So the cat stays out. I don’t know why she has such a powerful effect on your sinuses, but I imagine having her invade your chamber would not help matters.”
The cat. Her neck. Yes.
“Sit on the bed,” he told her. His voice was not quite how he’d meant it to come out. It sounded dark. A command, instead of a suggestion. Matilda’s auburn lashes flew up as she looked to his face, but then she nodded, wordlessly, and sat.
Christ, there was no hope for his sanity, was there? The way she looked at him—a faint challenge in her eyes, an inclination to resist—and then that trusting submission …
His erection was back in full force, and he had not even come close enough to touch her.
He turned away from her and went to the washstand, wetting the towel and lathering it with soap. He lifted the pitcher, towel, and salve and crossed back to her, laying the items down on the little rosewood table beside the bed. He started to sit beside her, then swore and stood up.
She peered up at him. “What’s wrong?”
“I need my spectacles.”
He did not look at her as he stalked over to his traveling bag, but he could hear the smile in her voice, damn it. “Take your time. I don’t think I’m in any immediate danger.”
He hooked his spectacles behind his ears, brought a candle over to the table for good measure, and then settled himself beside her.
Obediently, she tilted her chin up for his inspection, exposing the long, pale line of her throat.
It was difficult to think clearly when she did that. He wanted to put his hand there. He wanted his thumb at the notch of her collarbone. He wanted her skin under his hands, under his mouth. He wanted so much he couldn’t remember his own name.
But the two long red scratches anchored him to the present moment. He lifted the lathered towel and put it gently to her skin.
She let out a little hiss as he moved the cloth, and he stilled. “It hurts?”
“No.” Her throat moved beneath his hand as she spoke. “Well, yes, perhaps. A little bit.”
He turned the towel over, stroking it lightly over the scratches.
The deepest cut, near the base of her throat, had bled freely at first, but it had already clotted.
He wiped away the dried blood near the subtle ridge of her collarbone.
His thumb brushed her skin, and he felt her intake of breath, slow and a little uneven.
“I don’t mind,” she said softly. Her voice sounded like dusk, like the last dip of the sun below the horizon, like everything coming right at once. “Pain. A little pain. I like it.”
He dipped the towel in the pitcher. At least, he thought he did. He felt cool water on his fingers.
He couldn’t seem to see clearly. His senses weren’t all working together. Cool water. Roses. Matilda’s dusky voice in his mind, and oh, he was never going to stop hearing those words.
Pain. A little pain. I like it.
He put the wet cloth to her neck, rinsing away any traces of soap. When he was done, he lifted the silver-topped bottle of liniment and tipped some of the bittersweet liquid into his palm.
Matilda’s pert freckled nose wrinkled. “What on Earth is that?”
He rubbed his thumb through the liquid on his palm and then lifted his thumb to her throat. As he watched, she closed her eyes and lifted her chin again. The queen of the milkmaids.
“Liniment,” he said. He could scarcely trust himself to speak. She would hear it in his voice—how much he craved her. The dark things he wanted to do to her, here in this one dry bed.
She would hear it, and she might want it, and that was the worst thing he could imagine. Because then how in hell would he make himself stop?
“Liniment?” She sounded incredulous. “Is that not for horses?”
Even through the desire swamping his mind, she made him want to laugh. He could not recall the last time he had laughed so often and so freely. “Yes. I also use it if I cut myself shaving. Stop talking. It’s only a little oil and elderflower. Should take the sting away.”
She hummed out her assent. He felt the soft, wordless vibration against his thumb as he stroked carefully up her pale throat. First one scratch. Then, slowly, the second.
There was nothing now between his hand and her skin.
Her breasts rose and fell with her unsteady breaths, and his heart was beating so hard he could feel it throughout his body.
Her skin was soft. She would be soft all over—her generous breasts, her hair, her mouth.
She would be soft between her legs. Hot. Wet.
His hand kept moving, as if it was beyond his control. He stroked up her throat, then traced the edge of her jaw. His thumb went to the place beneath her ear where the two freckles taunted him. He brushed against them, a slow caress, the rest of his fingers tangling into her hair.
Her head tipped farther back. Her eyes were closed but her mouth—her mouth came open on a little gasp.
“I wanted to see,” he said, “if you’d any other scratches.”
“I don’t think so.” Her dusk voice. He was close enough to feel the whisper of her breath.
He leaned in closer, and then he gave in. He lost all control of his hands. He shifted his fingers into all that fiery red weight and wondered why it had not burned.
Maybe it had. Certainly he would not come out of this unscathed.
He shifted her hair away from the side of her neck and let his fingers trail up and down the skin beneath her ear. Part of him was sounding a distant alarm—surely he did not need to use his fingers to confirm that her skin was unmarred by feline claws?
But the rest of him relished every whisper of contact. He would rather have died than let her go.
He tangled her hair into one fist and leaned in closer, close enough to smell the scent of her, of Matilda, beneath the rose soap. The back of her neck was clear of marks, and he used the fistful of hair to turn her head so that he could run his fingers over the other side of her neck.
She let herself be positioned, and oh, yes, he liked the way she let him take control. And as much as it aroused him, her submission also satisfied something deep inside him. She trusted him. She would let him care for her.
And he liked it even more because he knew she liked it—from what she had told him and from the way her cheeks grew pink, the flush that stained her throat as he watched.
He needed to let her go. It was done.
She had no more cuts on her skin. He had cleaned her wounds and looked her over, and there was no more reason for him to have his fingers in her hair, his palm pressed to her neck, her pulse under his hand.
But evidently his mouth was not quite ready to listen to his brain. Nor his hand, which did not break contact with her. “Have you any other scratches?”
Beneath your dressing gown? suggested his prick, which had gone from desperate to frankly anarchic.
Matilda’s eyes blinked open.
God, he couldn’t think when she looked like that. A little blurred, her lips shining from where her tongue had moistened them. Her pupils wide, dark on blue.
“I can’t recall,” she said, a trifle breathless, a little amused. “I don’t believe so. No, I’m fine.”
He made himself drop his hand.
And then he made himself put some space between them. He stood up. He crossed the room toward the door, shoving his spectacles back into his travel bag as he passed it. “Good,” he said. “Take the bed. I’ll go—”