Chapter Twelve #3
“I remember seeing a rose you once stitched. On the outside it appeared the perfect English rose, clean lines, beautiful. Simple.” She glanced at him warily.
“But then you would hold it to the light, and the rose became so much more. Darker, more dangerous. More interesting. Like you. It is the secret symbol of your sanctuary, is it not?”
“It is a rose on a shield, with a sword behind it,” Petra murmured. She gave a small smile, delight unfurling like a petal in her chest that he had figured it out. “I can admit to being the shield behind the rose. But not yet the sword.”
He wore an odd expression as he regarded her once more, one she couldn’t quite place, though the intensity of it made her want to look anywhere but at him.
“I think you are all three, Lady Petra. In different ways.”
That locked door inside her rattled and she finally glanced away, turning to prepare the bandage.
She had seen far too much of the man to be proper, even if she was working as something of a healer.
However, she had no immediate plans to attempt to return to Polite Society, so she brushed the compulsory shame she was meant to feel aside and considered Lord Wolfridge’s injury, taking in the torn flesh of his muscled back. A rather fine back at that–
Blinking, she next attempted to push away her awareness of his nakedness. She was trying to help him, she had no business taking in the state of his form.
And yet from the way he glanced at her over his shoulder, she sensed he would welcome her gaze.
You cannot trust this man, Petra. While he may not be a monster like Papa, there is no guarantee he is a good man. Not after what he did.
Petra paused in her ministrations as another voice spoke inside of her. Lust did not require trust.
“Lady Petra?” There was a growl in Wolf’s voice which made the hairs on the back of Petra’s neck stand to attention and she acknowledged to herself for the first time since his betrayal that she was still deeply attracted to the man.
“Just woolgathering I’m afraid.” She hummed as she cleaned his wound and applied the bandage. The cut on his back was not so bad that it required her stitching. Stepping back to admire her work, she went on. “I will go retrieve the clothes that I can, my lord. I will be back shortly.”
Excavating the bowels of the theatre for suitable attire for a gentleman, Petra reasoned with herself.
She was far beyond society’s gaze and strictures, with no wish to return to that den of vipers over which her father ruled.
The secrecy of her sanctuary filled her with a never before known sense of freedom that her behavior was not being watched and judged.
She was far beyond the scolding eyes of the ton, and her actions did not need to consider Polite Society at all.
With this knowledge, she weighed her attraction to Wolf.
Could she…explore this lust? Yes, she did not completely trust him, but somehow his presence today endeared him to her in a way that rattled the profound distrust he had sown.
She was not going to hand over her heart to him on a platter, but her body… that was another story altogether.
But how to approach this proposition? How to explain that this was completely different from what they had done in the Stillwell library? Because this was in her domain and it would be on her terms.
Content at last with the assortment of garments she had gathered, Petra arranged them in a stack so voluminous that they rose to meet her chin, nearly blotting out the way before her.
This precarious bundle rendered her attempt to open the door a most difficult undertaking, whereupon she heard Wolf’s call of concern from within, offering his assistance.
“I have–”
Wolf struggled to maneuver the door, or at least she believed he did from the sound of his voice, yet at that precise instant, she stumbled over the threshold and, still unable to see, tumbled backward.
“Petra!” At Wolf’s concerned voice, his hand grasped her forearm as he sought to catch her.
The clothes tumbled from her arms, but thankfully Wolf was able to save Petra from the hard floor.
The linen he had wrapped around himself was not so lucky and in his chivalry, the cloth fell to the ground, leaving him bare again.
From the angle at which he caught her, Petra’s vision was full of the man’s torso, covered in a light trail of hair that led down to…
Petra exhaled and forced herself not to act missish by looking away.
The modesty demanded of her by Polite Society had no place here.
Inclining her head with a slow deliberation to search the landscape of his features, Petra became cognizant of the frantic thrumming at the hollow of Wolf’s throat, where his pulse leapt with a visible urgency.
“Wolf?” She choked out.
Something like disappointment flashed across his face but the next moment she glanced up at him, the expression was gone.
“Yes?”
“I could reach down and–”
“Yes?” He repeated, his voice much gruffer this time.
“Pick up the linen for you.” Petra finished, then summoning her courage, she went on. “Or…”
“Or…?” Wolf’s voice maintained that growling quality. For the first time in their acquaintance, she viewed the lupine creature within him. The animal magnetism that had kept the widows of the ton in alt these many years.
“I could leave it there. And you could join me…on the table.”
“You,” Drawing a ragged breath and suddenly the self-possessed gentleman she had known these last few years seemed to fracture before her, his practiced mask of aristocratic indifference failing him at last. “You would trust me to…” Wolf cleared his throat, his gaze dropping to the floor as a charming bashfulness she would have never ascribed to him crept across his features.
Once again, Petra felt that stubborn, locked door within her chest rattle, the hinges yielding to a renewed and undeniable softening toward the man.
She quickly forced that softness away. She needed to be the one in control this time.
“This is my terrain, you see,” she began, willing her hands to remain motionless even as the urge to intertwine her fingers in nervous anxiety threatened to betray her composure.
This sanctuary was, after all, her own creation, a testament to an agency that existed quite apart from the machinations of the men who had sought to mold her.
She stood now as a woman possessed of her own formidable power, fully prepared at last to articulate the nature of her own desires.
Summoning a previously unknown boldness, she lustily drank in his nude form, including the very male and very alert part of him just before her.
Riding that bravery, she stepped forward, forcing Wolf to retreat until he collided with the edge of the padded table with a muffled wince.
Observing his measured swallow, Petra perceived a gentleman caught between an innate carnality and a vulnerability she had not seen when they were together in the library.
“You would trust me to touch you? You want to be touched, even after everything that has happened to you?” he asked, and that softness she had attempted to push away blossomed into something more profound inside her.
Yes, she had been touched against her will before.
But when it was her choice? There was power in that choice.
“Yes. I-I want that. As long as your stitches will allow…”
Something warred behind Wolf’s eyes, then the carnality seemed to win over as the striation in his eye pulsed again.
At that, he picked her up and set her on the table, sinking into a crouch before her. There was something unbearably erotic about being clothed above him and him almost kneeling naked before her.
“As you are a master with a needle, I believe my stitches will hold. You are sure you trust me?”
Petra nodded. “In this, yes.”
Wolf paused in reaching for her petticoat, his jaw tightening. She had not meant to sound cold but in truth, she did not yet completely trust him. Not with her heart. But she believed, after all they had shared that day, she could indeed trust him with her body.
Wolf considered this and proceeded to reach for her skirts.
“Then I shall endeavor to earn that trust.” He rasped as he ever so slowly began to raise her petticoats, the path of his fingers sending erotic chills up her legs.
Soon the scrape of his night beard joined his fingers as he nuzzled her leg as if the touch of her consumed him. As if she were…precious.
Wolf’s hands stopped as her skirts were parted and only her drawers remained. Catching her eye, Wolf raised a tentative finger to the taper of her drawers. Not breaking eye contact, Petra stood and brought her hands to his, pulling the taper and letting the fabric fall to the ground.
Taking a hoarse breath, Wolf’s eyes turned feral. Petra did not have a moment to feel exposed before he lifted her onto the table once more and buried his face between her legs.
“My lord,” Petra gasped, as she absorbed the full force of his passion.
“Julian,” he corrected, his voice was low and guttural. “When I am worshipping at your altar, I want my Christian name upon your lips.”
Petra could not speak an affirmative for his worshipful ministrations robbed her of speech as he began to use his tongue to lave at the folds of her sex, letting this rough tenderness wash away the filth of all the lecherous hands that had touched her before.
Unlike those times, she was choosing this, this was her desire, which she had stated loud and clear.
Sensations she had only known that evening in the library were now magnified tenfold as her body pulsed and ached at each stroke of his tongue.
Then his thumb began to trace the cluster of nerves at the top of her sex and Petra began to see explosions behind her eyes once more.
“Look at me, Petra,” he commanded.
Petra blinked her eyes open as her body began to shake.