Chapter 8 #3
This one was different because she had been taken, not offered.
There was something so touchingly real about the girl’s resistance that it made him wonder if she was in love with Granville.
If that was true, it would be vengeance in gilt to send her back raped.
Even as he framed the thought his gaze fell on her, and as much as he hated the master, he wondered how much harm he would be willing to do through this poor frail vassal with the lily skin and hair richer than a sable pelt.
Incredibly it seemed as though his last words had confused her more than they angered her, almost as though she hadn’t understood his meaning.
But then, she was young, and her resources had nearly reached their limit.
Coming to her with a noiseless stride he was just in time to catch her in his arms as her knees buckled under a powerful wash of dizziness.
He caught her up, supporting her, and she leaned against him, her will suspended.
She wasn’t heavy for him, but she was solid, and as she leaned into him he was very much aware of her physicality; the feel of her shoulders and back, the heavy softness of her breasts against his chest, her thighs against his, the gently rounded belly against him, and the cloud of golden hair, which, as he held her, seemed to rise in his vision like a fragrant amber mist. He delicately took a handful of it and touched it to his lips.
Softly he said, “Scented of opium and roses and wintergreen.”
“Wintergreen?”
“From Morgan’s nightshirt, bless his foppish heart,” he said. “I’m sorry they hurt you.”
She forced herself to look into his eyes. “Please let me go. Please.”
“Love, I can’t.” He brought his hand to tilt her face, his broad palm at the base of her throat; his lips were warm and dry on hers, and a few strands of her hair were caught as stinging silk in the kiss.
His arm tightened her to his body, as, on her face, his thumb drifted lightly over her cheekbone, then moved to her lips and, with gentle pressure, urged them open.
The blood began to pound in her throat under the exploration of his lips and fingers.
“You kiss,” he said softly into her curls, “as though each time were your first.” He lifted his hands to her shoulders, feeling their soft graceful swell beneath his palms. She turned her face away, her lips throbbing, not wanting him to see as she slipped her tongue over them, trying to soothe the unfamiliar sensations she felt there.
“You’ve had your revenge,” she whispered. “Now let me go.”
“No, my dear, no. Let us see if we can make your body turn traitor. Kiss me again, and you can tell me afterward if it was worse than dying.”
She kept her face away and pressed her hands against his chest. He turned her head and forced his mouth onto hers; the pressure of his hand and the searching of his lips were too great for her to resist, and their lips clung together, contact breaking, meeting, breaking.
Her lips, burning and aching, needed to be soothed by a respite, and soothed again by the smooth touching of their like.
Her hands opened and closed on his shirt front; her blood moved thin and hot, a molten flow through her veins.
Intently he concentrated, feeling the warmth of her under his mouth, leaving her lips to touch on her warm forehead, and to taste the tears that shimmered on her long lashes, and then to return, plunging once more to dominate her lips.
“Let us see,” he had said, “if we can make your body turn traitor.”
But there are times when, even though sick and driven, the mind is stronger. Her will forced her hands into fists, and she pummeled his chest until with quiet laughter he caught both her wrists in the grip of one hand and brought her knuckles to his lips, biting them gently.
She gasped. “I wish the arrow had pierced your black heart instead of innocent timber. And I wish you’d leave me alone.”
“Oh, Lord—these challenges. It’s too late for games, sweet child.
Give me your mouth.” And he took it again under his own, one hand at the back of her head, holding her still; and let the other ride her slowly.
His sensitive fingers discovered the warmth of her below the rich linen fabric where the hidden skin lay, as fresh and finely textured as if it were made with the felting of a thousand cherry petals.
It was an exercise in good manners to control one’s breathing while one could, and though that small discipline had been always automatic and detached for him, he noted that the silent passage of air through his lungs was less than regular.
It was rare for that to happen so quickly.
The postponed reckoning from that absurdly trifling encounter in the wood wagon seemed to have heightened the desire that had, in honesty, been strong from its birth.
His palm tested the contour of her waist, as tight and narrow as a boy’s, and the climb of her delicately voluptuous hips. He spread his fingers, luxuriating in the feel of her where from blood and bone and muscle had been sculpted a softness so rich he could taste it through his finger pads.
Merry cried out when his palm slid to softly cup the underside of her breast. It was shocking and queerly embarrassing, and very low down, below the pit of her stomach, her organs began to tighten into a hard laced ball that seemed to want to writhe and grow until somehow he would know how to bring her to ease.
Never would she have suspected it would be so deliriously pleasant to have a man’s hand on that part of her body.
His knowledgeable fingers moved, discovering the things that made the blood work harder through her veins.
By the series of sharp little intakes of her breath, he knew when he found the right motion, but the combined pleasure and horror of it gave her the strength to beat again at his chest and protest.
“Dainty flower,” he murmured. “You see—we don’t have to hurt each other.” He gently showed her his intention, his palm traveling in a slowly hot circle, letting the balm of it penetrate deeply into her drugged tissues.
It was too powerful for her, much too powerful, and she ripped herself from his arms like a cloth torn in two.
She began to back away, shaking her head and choking on the nerve-storming frustration of having nothing articulate to say in self-defense.
How in heaven’s name did one talk a man out of these things?
Her brain, reeling with opium and too-new eroticism, seemed to be jumping up and down inside her skull like a March hare; her eyes felt like a pair of wet, enormous puddles that might at any minute choose to flow out of her head.
It had been bad enough to cry in front of Cat; she would rather die of a rat’s bite than shed a single tear for Devon, though God knew she was the world’s worst imbecile to have it matter.
Passion sharpens the features of most men; it was not so with Devon.
The vivacious bones in his face had relaxed into something tender and unhurried that had not a thing to do with the driving stab of his appetite.
Bright was his hair, and his eyes had a humanity that a saint would have envied, but Oh, Miss Wilding, she told herself, watch his hands.
With each unsteady pop of her heartbeat she could feel herself growing weaker.
“You’ve never been strong, Merry Patricia.
…” This time Merry Patricia would struggle to the end.
If there’s some way you can help me, Lord, then please do it. I’m nearly out of ideas.
There was a crumple in the muscles that held up her knees, and she had to have help standing.
Searching behind, her hands found a table edge, and she clung to it in the twining seconds before the ship lurched, or maybe the drug did in her damming blood, and she flew backward toward the table’s dark-grained plane.
His arms were around her then, under her shoulders, cradling her head as he gently laid her on the table, her hair cascading onto the surface like spilled gold dust. Now there was no turning away from him; the tabletop was hard below her—but there was the mitigating warmth of his hands, cushioning her.
Slowly he brought one hand up and, with the backs of his fingers, brushed aside the shirt, gently tearing the buttons free, letting one fair milky breast fall free and untrammeled.
There was a brush of moving air against her bare skin before his hand found her.
She took in a spare breath as his palm rotated lightly as a feather over the umber and coral tip of one breast, and then he nested its softness, his fingers sweeping her with their masseur’s caress.
Her betraying blood rushed to meet his fingers, and her body seemed to be manufacturing unknown serums that were heating and steaming into its every cell.
Her chest was becoming so full of them that she felt she could almost have smothered had he not pressed his lips down on hers in a hard exploring kiss, where they shared in a deep urgent communion each sweet liquid, each searing molecule of oxygen.
It was like drinking fire; it was like being brushed by a star; it was like hurtling through air as soft and thick and fluid as heated nectar.
His intoxicated lips, honeyed still from the moisture of her kiss, made a lazy journey to her breast, resting there to coax the exquisite peak with his tongue, his tender probing forcing her to gasp for air as though her lungs were starving, the rise of her breasts fitting them more snugly against the quest of his lips.