32. Chapter 32
Annabelle could barely breathe. The things her husband made her feel. The utter intoxicating pleasure could almost not be borne.
Shaking, she dragged at him, needing him closer, his weight atop her. His manhood inside her.
He propped himself on his knees and eyed her, ripping open his trousers and pushing them to his hips. The stark hunger in his dark eyes—for her—reached inside her like a fist squeezing her heart.
Then he fitted himself to her core, and she nearly sobbed.
He did not enter her. Instead, with infinite care, he lowered himself atop her.
“Please,” she murmured, reaching for him, lifting her head to seek his mouth. Needing his lips on hers. Needing…him.
“Wrap your legs around me, sweetheart,” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“Yes,” she breathed, obeying without question.
A look that was equal parts torment and pleasure covered his face as he thrust into her. Again, and again, and again. Faster, deeper.
She never wanted this to end. Never wanted to be apart from him. God help her. She loved him.
At the very second, the infinitesimal moment of realization, pleasure exploded through her, unexpected and exquisite in its depth and breadth.
And then, as if her release had triggered his, Sterling gave a husky shout. He reared up, hips bucking, body swiveling, as his own powerful climax took him.
Minutes later, they lay intertwined, Annabelle sated and boneless.
“I see,” he murmured sleepily, kissing her cheek.
“What do you see?” She heard the smile in her own voice and wondered if he did.
“This bed is large enough for the two of us, so long as we double up.”
It took her a moment to absorb his meaning, then she laughed.
And he laughed.
And all was more right in her world than she could ever have imagined.
***
“Annabelle, wake up!”
She came awake with a gasp. Heart racing, she took in her surroundings. The smooth, stone walls of the chamber, the frost-covered window, the night sky beyond.
A bedchamber. Not a boat.
She sagged back onto the pillows.
At some point following their lovemaking, they’d made their way under the covers. She still wore her simple gown, but her husband appeared to have removed his clothing, from what she could see.
Propped on one elbow, he loomed over her, brushing her hair back from her forehead with a gentle stroke of his hand, his features etched in worry in the dim light from the stuttering wall sconces. “Bad dream?”
She nodded.
“Do you have those often?”
“Why? Are you afraid I’ll disturb your beauty sleep?”
He arched a thick brow and one corner of his mouth crooked upward. “Of course.”
“You,” she admonished, swatting him.
He caught her hand and drew it to his lips, his expression turning serious. “What had you so frightened you were wrestling the sheets? I thought I heard you call a name.” By his tone, it was a name he recognized.
She shook her head, not wanting to dredge up more of the memory.
“Tell me,” he said, his tone brooking no denial.
“It’s a nightmare I had as a young girl. It’s resurrected itself recently, I think, because we’re surrounded by the sea. And that dreadful cruise we took on that horrid fishing boat.”
“I would’ve gone in after you,” he said, so softly she almost missed the words.
She hadn’t, though. But she wanted to hear them again. “What was that?”
“I will keep you safe, Annabelle. Nothing and no one will take you from me.” Crooking a finger under her chin, he tilted her head back until their eyes met. A sardonic grin curved his mouth. “Is that what you wanted to hear?” he drawled.
Yes. She sniffed. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Tracing his fingers over her jaw, he said, “Go on, tell me of this resurrected dream.”
He meant it. He wanted to know. She could read the sincerity in his dark gaze. Had anyone ever wanted to know her deepest, darkest secrets?
She swallowed and tucked her head under his shadow-dusted jaw. “I’m on a boat. I’m…like I was before.”
“Before. You’ve used that phrase repeatedly. Like I was before. What does that even mean?”
It was always going to come out, she realized. “I know this is going to be hard to fathom, but I was not always pretty.”
He snorted. “If you do say so yourself.”
She started to push him away, but he held her fast.
“You’re ravishing. The most beautiful, most tantalizing woman it’s ever been my good fortune to behold.”
Mollified by his playful tone as much as by his words, she snuggled into him.
He sifted his fingers through her hair. “Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you were not always as you are now. I fail to comprehend the significance. What difference does it make for a child to be less than perfect in appearance?”
“You do not comprehend, sir. I was quite small. Scrawny was one word used to describe me. And exceedingly fair. Both my hair and the cast of my complexion had an unappealing paleness about them. And then there were my eyes.”
“Your eyes?”
“They did not work well together. The doctor suggested a remedy for the situation which involved me wearing an eye patch over the dominant eye to strengthen the weaker one. Luckily, it worked and, over time, I could focus with two eyes as one, like the rest of the world.”
He snorted. “You must’ve been adorable. A little fae child with blue eyes and wispy hair, flitting about wearing a black patch like a badge of honor. Whoever said there was anything wrong with that? Local children? An ignorant maid?”
Slowly, she levered up onto her elbow to regard him. “Are you teasing me, sir?”
He shook his head, looking nonplussed. “Of course not.”
As she watched, his expression darkened. “Annabelle,” he began, his nostrils flaring. “Did your parents not tell you the very same thing I did?”
She could not speak. A lump had formed in her throat, all but choking her. She shook her head.
His jaw tightened, and he cupped her cheek with one hot palm. “What did they say?”
Schooling her emotions, she managed to get the words out. “I cannot recall, per se.”
“In general, then.”
“In general, the hope was I would eventually resemble the rest of my family, and then I could be…seen in public.”
He closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. Then, his eyelids slitted open. “Do you know how utterly stupid that is, Annabelle? I swear by all that’s holy, if we are ever blessed with children, we will not allow your family anywhere near them.”
She gasped. “Never say that.”
“Under supervision, then,” he growled, before slanting her a suspicious look. “What if we have a so-called ‘unattractive’ child? Will you…” His jaw tightened, and it was plain he was working to control his temper. “Will you think less of her? Will you banish her, as your parents banished you?”
She did not have to so much as consider. She’d asked herself this a million times. She shook her head.
His expression softened. “I thought not.” Urging her head to his shoulder, he said, “You were a faery, aboard a ship. Then what?”
She’d nearly forgotten she was recounting the nightmare. “I’m below deck, in the engine space. I’m locked in, and screaming for help, hanging onto the rungs of the metal ladder as the water surges in from a hole in the hull.
“Above deck, I can hear adults laughing, the sound of marbles clattering as children play, and somehow I’m able to see that on the horizon, Miss Jenkins—my governess--is in a skiff, rocked by the waves, and the tide takes her further and further away until she’s barely a spec.
“The water surges higher and higher. I’m so cold and certain no one is coming to save me.
Not like in the real world where she came.
I’m going to drown, and no one is coming.
” She sighed, finger doodling over his bare chest. “The nightmare ends there, mainly because I always awaken before the water covers me. It sounds ridiculous, I know. Not at all scary.” She huffed out a chagrined laugh.
“Dear God. That…something like that actually happened, didn’t it?” He sounded so coldly furious, she glanced up at him in alarm.
“Well, not exactly.”
“What, exactly, did? Let me guess. Your brother locked you in someplace. Where? One of the staterooms?”
She hesitated. “It was the engine room. And he did lead me there. But what happened after was purely an accident.”
“What happened?”
“He said we should play hide and seek. Then he counted and left me there. He…thought I’d climbed out, you see. So he went looking and shut the hatch behind him.”
His voice was like stone. “He knew. You’re extremely intelligent, Annabelle, so don’t try to say you haven’t worked that out by now. Your brother was a bastard. Admit it.”
She blinked. “He told Miss Jenkins he couldn’t find me,” she hedged.
He barked a mirthless laugh. “You don’t believe that any more than I do, and I’ll bet my last farthing Miss Jenkins didn’t either. And what happened to him as a result of what he did to you? Did he receive any punishment at all? Any comeuppance?”
She shook her head. “It was an accident.”
He said nothing.
“Miss Jenkins, once she realized I was gone, went looking for me and eventually found me. I…oh, how I loved her,” she choked.
“She was the most wonderful governess. Sweet and kind, though not at all pretty, but I didn’t care, and she was not fooled by Gaston’s antics.
Nor did she take orders from him, though he loved to issue them.
“I believe she spoke to him about what happened. And my parents.” A fat tear rolled down her cheek. Silly, after all this time. She swiped it away.
“But nothing happened as a result.”
Oh, something had happened, all right. “She was discharged soon after we returned to London. Mother said…Mother said she tried to…tempt Father.”
He said nothing.
She looked at him, half-accusing. “What? What are you thinking?” she demanded. “Say it.”
He gave her a pitying look, then, without warning, rolled onto her, pinning her beneath him. “I think you know what I think. Of your brother, of your parents—and it’s got nothing to do with the color of their blood. It never had.”
She stared up at him, insides tangled in knots.
“What else did your brother do to you, Annabelle? I know there’s got to be more.”
She didn’t want to recount the many cruelties. Didn’t want to speak the words. He was her brother, and now he was dead. And she was a terrible, ungrateful daughter.
“Did he put his hands on you? Did he—”
“No,” she blurted. “No, nothing like that. He just, he could be…he had a temper. Unpredictable and, when it was set off, he had a particular skill at wielding words that cut to the quick. Sometimes he’d break things. Sometimes, he…I’m not certain, but…”
“What? Tell me.”
“When he was older, in his teens, I think he might have taken some of his aggressions out on the maids. After a time, Mother saw to it only footmen ventured into his rooms.”
“Hm.” The sound came out as a low growl.
“When I learned of his betrothal to Caroline, I admit I worried, at first. I’d met her, and she seemed…
gentle and sweet, and he was always drawn to that sort, whether in a servant or a friend or a sweetheart.
But…in my experience, he inevitably seemed to delight in killing that softness off in them.
“I thought, with her, he seemed different. Only later, I started hearing that old edge creep into his voice. Like when I overheard them talking about you.”
“Were you looking out for her that day, Annabelle?” he asked.
She met his gaze, wanting to lie, wanting him to believe well of her. But she couldn’t do it. “I heard your name. That was all it took to make my ears perk up.”
He lowered his forehead to hers. “How did I get so lucky?”
Tears burned the backs of her eyelids at the unmerited tenderness in his voice, at the lack of censure. I love you.
She did. She loved him beyond measure. Beyond anything she could ever have conceived.
“I tell you, if your brother wasn’t dead, I’d kill him again. I can hardly stomach thinking of what you must’ve suffered growing up with that monster for a brother.”
“Again?”
Confusion clouded his eyes.
“You said again. Are you saying you killed him, Sterling?”
He surged up onto his elbows, annoyance flashing in his dark eyes. “Are you seriously asking me that? Again? I’ve answered that accusation ad nauseam. No,” he finished on a bellow. Then he lowered his voice. “For the last bloody time, I did not kill your brother.”
With that, he flopped off her and onto his back, slinging his forearm across his forehead.
After a brief hesitation, she scrambled atop him, cupping his cheeks. “Forgive me?”
He aimed a baleful glare at her.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, contrition in every word. “Of course, you were speaking in hyperbole. Even your so-called desire to kill him was hyperbolic.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She lowered her gaze to his chin, embarrassed, now.
“You’ve repeatedly stated you don’t countenance the notion of risking life and limb over mere insult.”
“That was before,” he muttered.
Her gaze snapped back to his. He stared at her, his eyes blazing with cold fire.
“Before?”
He shook his head and looked away. “All I can say is, no one will touch a single hair on your head and get away with it,” he vowed.
I love you so much, her insides screamed. No one had ever treated her as he did. Like she mattered. Like…she was valuable, just as she was. Even when she said things to annoy him, that vein of protectiveness never diminished.
The urge to tell him she loved him burned on her tongue—and with it the longing to hear him echo the sentiment. If he did, if he said he loved her back, she might expire on the spot from sheer happiness.
But what if he doesn’t?
And that was the more likely outcome. That he didn’t love her. It was his nature to be protective of his inner circle.
No matter. She loved him, and that was more than enough.
She tucked her head into his shoulder and fingered the hollow at the base of his throat. She’d never been in love. She felt breathless and weightless. As if she could float on the air. She hoped nothing ever made her put her feet on the ground again.