Chapter Eight #2
He smiled. He realized of a sudden that he appreciated her company.
“If you wish, we can sit for a time. I cannot think of a single reason that we should rush our fences.” He gave her hand a squeeze, laughter lurking at the back of his throat.
“Other than your earnest desire to—how did you describe it?—yes, to have done with it.”
“You are enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”
Borrowing her words, he said, “I am now. Thank you.”
Olivia closed her eyes. His thumb was making a pass across the back of her hand.
She tried to think about only that, but her head throbbed anyway.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose and the crease between her eyebrows with her forefinger.
“I hope you do not always mean to be so agreeable,” she said quietly.
“It will be better if you are not too kind.”
He wished he didn’t understand what she meant, but he did.
“All right.” Out of the corner of his eye he watched her massage her brow right up to her hairline.
He released her hand, and giving her no choice in the matter, brought her head against the curve of his shoulder and fit his arm around her.
Several long minutes passed before Griffin felt most of the tension seep out of her.
He nudged his chin in her hair. The stubble of his beard rasped pleasantly against her scalp.
It was Olivia who finally broke the silence, not because it was uncomfortable, but because it was not. “What would you be doing if I weren’t here?”
“Wishing you were.” He could tell she didn’t like that response. “Too amiable? Very well. I would be reading. One or two chapters more, I suspect, then I would have put the book down and slept.”
“Oh. That is good, then. I didn’t know. I thought you might come to my room. It is better this way.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She needed to know there was a place she could call her own, a place of refuge, of sanctuary. “It cannot be important to you.”
“I beg to differ, but I won’t press—unless you think that I am being too agreeable, in which event I will subject you to the tortures of the Inquisition.”
“Do you know such things?”
He nodded. “I am partial to the rack.”
“Really.”
“Mmm.” He kissed the top of her head and breathed in the lavender scent in her hair. She stirred a little in his arms, and he sensed tension pulling her taut once again. Kisses, then, were torture as well, it seemed. “The iron maiden. Shackles. Hammer and tongs.”
“Impressive.”
“Modesty prevents me from agreeing.” He imagined she must have smiled.
She nestled a bit, finding a more comfortable position for herself against his side.
When she turned in to him, her knee nudged his.
Her cheek pressed his shoulder just below the line of his collarbone.
If she lifted her face, her lips might brush his jaw or find the underside of his chin.
She didn’t move again, though, and after a few moments he realized she wouldn’t.
Olivia had fallen asleep.
Griffin waited until her breathing took on the steady rhythm of deep slumber before he eased her into a prone position.
Because she was rather limpet-like in her attachment to his side, he eased himself down as well, pausing only to reach across her and pinch off the candlewick.
He drew the covers over them and pulled a pillow closer to support his head.
Olivia seemed to prefer to be supported by him, and while Griffin did not mind in the least, he wondered at her reaction when she learned they were not yet done with it.
Curiously perverse creature that she was, he imagined her relief would be short-lived.
Olivia stretched and pressed herself against the heat at her back.
It seemed to her that she might have smiled, but it might have only been that she wanted to.
A delicious sort of lethargy had sapped her strength, made her liquid.
She drifted. There was no sound, no light.
The current slowly turned her, then she became the current.
Flowing. Rippling. Slipping effortlessly into the void.
She came up with a violent start. Fear wrenched a cry from the back of her throat.
Her fingertips scrabbled along the edge of the covers to throw them off, and she kicked out in the same frantic movement.
She was all elbows and knees, flailing between the sheets, digging her heels and head so deeply into the mattress that her back arced like an electrical current between two poles.
Griffin caught her just as she would have slipped over the edge of the bed and hauled her flush to his side.
She was breathing hard in short, arrhythmic gasps that did little to fill her lungs and nothing at all to calm her.
Her fingers curled in the linen of his nightshirt like talons, and when he tried to dislodge her she snarled at him.
“Olivia!” Her knee came up hard. Griffin tucked and took the considerable force of the blow on his hip.
“Bloody hell, woman!” He shackled her wrists and tore her fingers loose from his clothing.
She was panting, struggling. Firelight revealed her bared teeth and wildness in her eyes.
Griffin wrestled Olivia onto her back and pinned her wrists above her head, a feat requiring no little force.
He used one of his legs to trap both of hers but not without effort and almost being unmanned a second time.
He swore under his breath as she bucked and twisted and nearly succeeded in dislodging him.
It did not seem possible that any woman could be possessed of such strength, but to experience it at the hands of this particular woman, with her willow frame and grave, graceful air, was in every way astonishing.
Afraid of hurting her, Griffin held fast and waited until she wore herself out.
Come morning, she would bear the marks of his restraint.
He imagined a bracelet of blue bruises around her wrists and perhaps a pale, purple medallion near her throat where he’d first pushed her back with the heel of his hand.
“Olivia,” he said again, his tone more weary than gentle. “Olivia.”
He was not prepared for her sudden collapse.
It was not that she was merely still, but that she was boneless.
The tension that had pulled her taut and defined her fight simply vanished.
Suspicious, he eased his grip on one of her wrists, raised it, then let go.
Her hand dropped like a stone. The same thing happened when he lifted and released her other wrist.
She had been asleep?
Griffin rolled away from her and lighted a candle at the bedside.
He held the candlestick over her, letting the light wash over her face.
Her eyes were closed, the long lashes looking like shadows just below them.
Her lips were slightly parted, but her breathing was easy.
Her complexion was smooth; for once she looked much younger than her four and twenty years.
He saw peace here, the serenity she was denied when she was awake, and sometimes, it seemed now, even when she slept.
With infinite care, he drew her arms to her side again and rearranged the tangle of blankets over her when he witnessed her involuntary shiver.
He wondered what she might remember upon waking, if anything at all.
What demons drove her to such violence? She was hardly more than a slip of a female, yet she had demonstrated a fierceness that set him back on his heels and gave him no choice in his manner of dealing with her.
She had proven she was wholly capable of hurting him, even if she was hardly responsible for it.
Griffin set the candlestick aside but did not extinguish the flame. He lay on his side, his head propped on an elbow while he observed the gentle rise and fall of her breast. So easy was her sleep now that he could almost be convinced he was the one who’d had the nightmare.
He brushed away the tangle of hair that had been swept across her throat during the battle.
His gaze narrowed on the crescent mark peeking out above the neckline of her shift.
He gently turned back the fabric and saw the ruddy proof of his instinctive self-defense.
He laid his fingertips against the stamp made by the heel of his hand and felt the heat of her skin and the faint pulse of her heart.
Without quite knowing he meant to do it, Griffin bent his head and placed his lips against the bruise.
His fingertips slid over her shift, grazing her breast, then the slope of her ribcage.
His palm came to rest lightly on her abdomen.
He raised his head, but not before his mouth found the sweet curve of her neck.
That she was in his bed at all was something of a mystery to him.
She was wrong in believing he required her there as compensation for keeping her.
His failing was in not correcting her assumption.
The words had come to his lips several times, but he’d left them unspoken.
He wanted her here, had for weeks now, perhaps from the moment she’d accepted his first challenge, but he wouldn’t have forced himself on her, or even narrowed her choices so that she would accept him as the devil she knew.
What he’d done, though, upon reflection was perhaps no better. Allowing her to act on her assumption gave him what he wanted and placed the whole of the responsibility on her. There was no cause for pride there.
“What manner of things have you seen?” he whispered. He expected no response and received none. She did not stir except to draw another breath.
Griffin did not remove his hand from the flat of her belly as he dropped his elbow and lay his head against the pillow.
He moved closer, turning her gently on her side, and fit himself against the curve of her body.
His thighs supported the back of hers; his groin cradled her bottom. In this manner, he slept at last.