Chapter 13 #2
“I will also concur that my method is crude. And if you still feel this proves nothing, let me know, and I will gladly repeat the experiment and see if we can’t generate better results.”
She forced herself to open her eyes and sit up—she had to face him at some point.
He was on the far side of the picnic blanket, reclined with his weight on his elbows, studying her from beneath his eyelashes in just such a way as to make her heart thud.
Reminding her that even when he seemed somewhat humbled, he was still every inch the predator.
“Can I serve you something?” he murmured solicitously. “You’ve scarcely touched any food—and of course the grapes must have been terribly unsatisfying.”
She flushed again. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”
He drank from his wineglass. “I am. For you, that is.”
She swallowed. “Then you must exercise your husbandly prerogative.”
He held her gaze. “Do you want me to? And do not answer as an obliging wife—I already know I have an obliging wife. Do you wish it?”
Yes. No. “I don’t know.”
“Hmm,” he said. Then he beckoned her with one finger. “Come here.”
She should remain exactly where she was, at a safe distance. But she was pulled in by the same undeniable force that had had her revolving around him from the very beginning, a once freewheeling asteroid caught in the gravitational pull of a ruthless planet.
There was no such thing as a safe distance from him.
She lay down next to him. He shifted his weight so he was on his side, his head in his palm. His other hand took hold of her chin, keeping her face turned toward him—as if she could look away.
“You have such pretty eyes,” he murmured, “and such pretty skin.”
His words invoked a black pain not unlike the one she’d experienced whenever she’d thought of his eventual wife. She was his wife now, but the anguish remained the same, that of being replaced and forgotten.
“If you were trying to preserve your interest in me earlier, it must mean now you are trying to weary of me sooner,” she heard herself say.
He kissed her on the lips. “Do you believe I could ever weary of you, my dear Louisa?”
Of course she believed it—as much as she believed in the elliptical orbit of the Earth around the sun. It was the reason she could never trust him. The reason she would never tell him that she loved him.
“As long as we weary of each other at the same rate, I’ll have no complaints.”
His hand tightened on her jaw. A moment later he let go of her face altogether to trace a finger down the center of her bodice. “How you punish me, my dear.”
He lifted aside her skirts and, still fully clothed, entered her, his eyes never leaving hers—a man who wanted to see his power over her reflected in her features.
She let him see it. Because they were in the middle of lovemaking, and she could justify her hunger as that of the body, and not that of the soul. Her hunger, her need, even her fear.
“Spread your thighs wider, darling,” he told her, his voice only a little unsteady. “I want to be all the way inside you.”
The things he made her feel…even the sanctity of holy matrimony might not keep her out of the flames of hell.
In desperation, because she did not want to be the only one so tremblingly affected, teetering so close to the edge despite the deliberate, leisurely pace he set, despite the peaks she had already experienced only minutes ago, she whispered, “I have wanted to spread my thighs for you ever since I first saw you.”
He made an animal sound in the back of his throat, his gaze losing some of its focus.
“All my nights lying awake, all my naked dreams—that’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? Wanting you inside me.”
He grimaced, baring his teeth. His body slammed into hers, shoving her back a few inches, pushing her so close to the precipice she could already feel the involuntary contraction of her muscles.
But she did not want to lose control alone—that path led directly back to the pit of despair. “Come in deeper. Are you in me as deep as you want to be?”
Now they were tumbling off the edge together; now his control was as shattered as hers. And now she finally closed her eyes and let herself be swept away by the surge of pleasure.
And by his harshly uttered words in her ear, as he gripped her close: “I can never be in you deep enough. Never.”
* * *
When she had on her drawers again, and her skirts were decorously in place, she allowed Felix to sit her between his legs, his arms wrapped around her.
He was not sure what he had accomplished this day, or whether he had even truly resolved this lovers’ quarrel between them. But it didn’t seem to matter, not when he could bury his nose in her hair and inhale.
“It smells just like yours, my lord,” she said, her tone arch, forestalling a compliment on his part, “since I’m fairly certain we have the same soap.”
“Then my hair must smell divine. And you might as well call me Felix in private—we wouldn’t want Lady Tremaine to be the only one enjoying that privilege.”
“Huh,” was her dismissive response.
But then she followed that with an offer of the coffee cream she was eating, her person half turned, her spoon held out toward him. “Do you want some? It’s rather nice.”
He ate from her spoon. The coffee cream was more than nice; it was delectable.
“Just to let you know,” she continued, “I am still angry with you. I simply cannot express it very well when I am in direct physical contact with you.”
“Then I must make sure we remain in constant direct physical contact. I like it when you cannot express your anger very well.”
“Huh,” she said again.
He leaned back against the tree behind him, so content he could melt. “Tell me about your childhood intrigue with the night sky.”
“Must I?” She offered him another spoonful of the coffee cream.
“You mentioned it last night, when you knew it was me standing behind you. So yes, now you must.”
She gave the next spoonful of the coffee cream to herself, looking up at the day sky. “One night, when I was three, my father woke up all his daughters and took us outside, promising a special treat.”
Given that she was born in 1864, she must have seen the Leonid shower of 1867, which was not as grand as the meteor storm the year before, but still impressive.
“They tell me that for a week afterward, I would wake my father up every day after midnight and make him take me to see more shooting stars.”
“Did he?”
“My mother said he did. She said that he would read until I came to fetch him and then stay out with me for as long as I wanted.”
He kept his envy from his voice. “A doting father.”
“He was. According to my mother, he was an expensive man to have around. But we all adored him. Too bad he didn’t live long enough to see me carrying on the family legacy of fortune hunting so successfully. He would have been tickled about the bust improvers.”
“I am honored to be tickled on his behalf.”
Her head tilted forward. He moved his to the side, to see a slight smile on her lips. Impulsively he kissed her on her cheek.
“Don’t be so pleased with yourself,” she admonished. “I distrust you and will continue to do so.”
“Your distrust is the spice that gives my life flavor,” he said grandly. “Long may your suspicions simmer.”
Little did he know how much he would come to regret that sentiment.