Chapter Ten #3
They had socialized several times since their betrothal and Gerrit had discovered—to his growing unease—that he could not look at anyone else when she was in the same room. The urge to stare was even more powerful now that they were married, and she belonged to him.
She is mine, utterly and completely.
Gerrit’s mind was appalled by the potent throb of ownership that gripped him at the primitive thought, but his body rejoiced and thrummed with anticipation.
Again and again, he tried to pry his gaze from her but could not.
Christina had loathed and derided his tendency to fixate on whatever fascinated him.
On one memorable occasion, she had hurled both invective and a half-eaten dish of raspberry fool at his head because she thought he had looked at her too long.
He was no longer an infatuated seventeen-year-old and had become adept at controlling his curiosity.
At least he’d believed he had. But his new wife mesmerized him almost beyond bearing and the wall of detachment he had built brick by painstaking brick between himself and the rest of the world had begun to crumble where she was concerned.
The dark smudges beneath her huge green eyes did nothing to dim her loveliness. In fact, he thought they made her look even more beautiful, not to mention fragile and helpless, two things she most emphatically was not.
Now that he was no longer hostile—or at least not much—about the asinine kissing game that had forced their marriage, he marveled at what sort of mind would conceive of such a thing.
He also burned with curiosity to know who else had been on that bloody list and how many of them she had kissed that night.
Christ, he was an idiot.
Gerrit pulled his uncharacteristically meandering thoughts back to her question about bringing her to London with him.
You have to bring her with you. She is too enticing to leave alone in the country. You’ll come back to find her with another man’s babe in her belly.
The thought ignited an unwanted possessive burning in his chest. It wasn’t jealousy, he assured himself.
It was simple practicality. He’d already had one wife who’d fucked everything in breeches.
He wasn’t going to let that happen again.
Until she was breeding, he needed to keep her close enough to keep an eye on her.
“You will come with me to London,” he abruptly announced. Where I shall keep you on a short bloody leash.
Her eyes glittered like the emeralds they so resembled, and the nostrils of her pert nose flared, making him worry for a moment that he’d spoken that second part aloud.
Her mulish, offended expression was not difficult to decipher.
Gerrit realized that he might have couched that more diplomatically.
Well, it was too late now. Besides, the sooner she knew who held the whip hand and accepted their respective positions in this marriage—Gerrit to give the orders and Kathryn to obey them—the better it would be for both of them.
“And what if I do not wish to go with you?” she asked coolly.
Irritation and an unexpected pang of distress stabbed at him. Gerrit grabbed hold of the irritation but suppressed the pain, viciously driving the pitiful emotion back into whatever crack in his consciousness it had crawled out of.
Echoing the chill in her tone he said, “If you are not breeding by the time I go to London then you will accompany me, regardless of what you wish.”
Her plump coral lips parted, and an angry red flush crept from the exposed swells of her breasts up her chest and throat.
Gerrit’s cock, which had gone soft at her rejection awoke with a vengeance. Why was she blushing? Was she imagining him putting a child inside her? He bloody well was and had been for two long weeks.
Or was she merely furious at his high-handed behavior?
He did not care. Frankly, it was rewarding to get a reaction from her that was not jaded ennui or supercilious mockery.
“If you are enceinte when I come to London,” he went on, savoring her sharp inhalation and what it did to her bodice, “then we shall revisit the matter.”
Still breathing fast, she opened her mouth but then closed it.
Gerrit felt a pang of disappointment at her submission. He had eagerly anticipated one of her tart retorts or cutting set downs. Well, it had been a long day, and likely she was tired. He was bloody exhausted.
Again, he reached for his fork. This time, she didn’t distract him with a question. Indeed, she didn’t say another word for the remainder of the meal.
She waved away the footman’s offer of dessert and abruptly stood. “I will leave you to your port, Your Grace.” She strode from the dining room before he could inform her that he did not engage in the after-dinner ritual unless he was in company.
Bemused, Gerrit stared at the door she had just stormed through.
While he was pleased that he was no longer furious as he’d been at the beginning of dinner nor as irritated as he’d been after she had insisted on playing ducks and drakes with the table arrangement, he could not help feeling as if something important had occurred during the meal that he had missed, entirely.