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“Naturally, you are master of your own household,” she said. “I have never met a man more adept at managing everything and everybody. But even you can’t think of everything, or look for what you’ve never experienced. I daresay there are benefits you’ve never imagined to having a wife.”
“There’s only one,” he said, his eyes narrowing, “and I assure you, my lady, I’ve thought of it. Often. Because it’s the only damned thing—”
“I devised a remedy for your indisposition this morning,” she said, stifling a surge of irritation…and anxiety. “You thought there was no cure. You have just discovered Byron, thanks to me. And that put you into a better humor.”
He kicked the footstool away. “I see. So that’s what you’ve been about—humoring me. Softening me up—or trying to.”
Jessica closed the book and set it aside.
She had resolved to be patient, to do her duty by him, to look after him because he badly needed it, whether he realized it or not. Now she wondered why she bothered. After last night—after this morning—after exiling her to the foot of a mile-long dining table—the blockhead had the effrontery to reduce her superhuman efforts to manipulation. Her patience snapped.
“Trying…to…soften…you.” She dragged the words out, and they slammed inside her, making her heart pump with outrage. “You cocksure, clodpated ingrate.”
“I’m not blind,” he said. “I know what you’re about, and if you think—”
“If you think that I could not do it,” she said tightly, “that I could not make you eat out of my hand, if that’s what I wanted, I recommend you think again, Beelzebub.”
There was a short, thundering silence.
“Out of your hand,” he repeated very, very quietly.
She recognized the quiet tone and what it boded, and a part of her brain screamed, Run! But the rest of her mind was a red mass of anger. Slowly, deliberately, she laid her left hand, palm up, upon her knee. With her right index finger she traced a small circle in the center.
“There,” she said, her own voice just as quiet as his, her own mouth curved in a taunting smile. “Like that, Dain. In the palm of my hand. And then,” she went on, still stroking the center of her palm, “I would make you crawl. And beg.”
Another silence thundered through the room and made her wonder why the books didn’t topple from their shelves.
Then it came, velvet-soft, the one answer she hadn’t expected, and the one, she knew in an instant, she should have predicted.
“I should like to see you try,” he said.
His brain was trying to tell him something, but Dain couldn’t hear it past the clanging in his ears: crawl…and beg. He couldn’t think past the mockery he heard in her soft tones and the fury twisting his gut.
And so he locked himself in frigid rage, knowing he was safe there, impervious to hurt. He had not crawled and begged when his eight-year-old world shattered to pieces, when the only thing like love he’d ever known had fled from him and his father had thrust him away. The world had thrust him into privies, taunted and mocked and beat him. The world had recoiled from him and made him pay for every pretty deceit that passed for happiness. The world had tried to beat him down into submission, but he would not submit, and the world had had to learn to live with him on his terms.
As she must. And he would endure whatever he must, to teach her so.
He thought of the great rocks he’d pointed out to her hours ago, which centuries of drumming rain and beating wind and bitter cold could not wear down or break down. He made himself a mass of stone like them, and, as he felt her move beside him, he told himself she would never find a foothold; she could no more scale him than she could melt him or wear him down.
She came onto her knees beside him, and he waited through the long moment she remained motionless. She was hesitating, he knew, because she wasn’t blind. She knew stone when she saw it, and maybe, already, she saw her mistake…and very soon, she’d give it up.
She lifted her hand and touched his neck—and snatched her hand away almost in the same instant, as though she felt it, too, as he did: the crackling shock darting under the skin to shriek along his nerve endings.
Though he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, Dain saw her puzzled reaction in the periphery of his vision, caught her frown as she studied her hand, discerned her thoughtful glance moving to his neck.
Then, his heart sinking, he perceived the slow upturn of her mouth. She edged nearer, and her right knee slid behind him against his buttock, while her left pressed against his thigh. Then she slipped her right arm round his shoulders and draped her left over his upper chest, and leaned in closer. Her sweetly rounded bosom pressed against his arm while she touched her lips to the too sensitive skin at the corner of his eye.
He kept himself rigid, concentrated hard on breathing steadily, to keep himself from howling.
She was warm and so soft, and the faint apple scent of chamomile swirled like a net about him…as though the slenderly curved body enveloping his weren’t snare enough. She trailed her parted lips down, over his cheek, along his unyielding jaw to the corner of this mouth.
And Fool! he silently berated himself, for daring her, when he knew she could not back away from a challenge and he had never come away unscathed after issuing one.
He had walked into a trap, again, for the hundredth time, and this time it was worse. He could not turn to drink in her sweetness, because that would be yielding, and he would not. He must sit like a granite monolith, while her soft bosom rose and fell against his arm, and while her warm breath, her soft mouth, teased over his skin in brushstroke kisses.
Like a block of stone he remained, while she sighed softly against his ear, and the sigh hissed through his blood. And so he continued, immovable outwardly, wretched inwardly, while she slowly worked loose the knot of his neckcloth and drew it away.
He saw it drop from her fingers and tried to keep his attention on the tangled white fabric at his feet, but she was kissing the back of his neck, and sliding her hand under his shirt at the same time. He couldn’t focus his eyes or concentrate his mind because she was everywhere, a fever coiling over him and throbbing inside him.
“You’re so smooth,” her murmuring voice came from behind him, her breath warm on the nape of his neck while she stroked his shoulder. “Smooth as polished marble, but so warm.”
He was on fire, and her low, foggy tones were oil drizzled upon the flames.
“And strong,” she went on, while her serpent hands went on, too, sliding over taut muscles that tightened and quivered under her touch.
He was weak, a great, stupid ox, sinking into the mire of a virgin’s seduction.
“You can pick me up with one hand,” the throaty voice continued. “I love your big hands. I want them all over me, Dain. Everywhere.” She flicked her tongue over his ear, and he trembled. “On my skin. Like this.” Under his fine cambric shirt, her fingers stroked over his pounding heart. She brushed her thumb over the taut nipple, and his breath hissed out between clenched teeth.
“I want you to do that,” she said, “to me.”
He wanted to, sweet Mother of Jesus, how he wanted to. The knuckles of his tightly fisted hand were white, and his clenched jaw was aching, and those sensations were pure delight compared to the vicious throbbing in his loins.
“Do what?” he asked, willing the syllables past his thickened tongue. “Was I…supposed…to feel something?”
“You bastard.” She pulled her hand away, and he felt one coursing thrill of relief, but before he could draw the next breath, she was scrambling onto his lap, drawing up her skirts as she straddled him.
“You want me,” she said. “I can feel it, Dain.”
She could hardly fail to. There was nothing between hot, aroused male and warm female but a layer of wool and a scrap of silk. His trousers. Her drawers…soft thighs pressing against his. God help him.
He knew what was there, beneath the drawers: a few inches of stoc
king above her knee, the knot of a garter, the silken skin above. Even the fingers of his crippled left hand twitched.
As though she could read his mind, she lifted that useless hand and dragged it over the rumpled silk of her skirt.
Under, he wanted to cry. The stocking, the garter, the sweet, silken skin…please.
He clamped his mouth shut.
He wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t crawl.
She pushed him back against the sofa cushions and he went down easily. All his strength was focused on keeping the cry from escaping.
He saw her hand move to the ties of her bodice.
“Marriage requires adjustments,” she said. “If it’s a tart you want, I must act like one.”
He tried to close his eyes, but he hadn’t the strength even for that. He was riveted upon her slim, graceful fingers and their wicked work…the tapes and hooks giving way, the fabric slipping down…the swell of creamy flesh spilling from the lace and sagging silk.
“I know my…charms…aren’t as immense as what you’re used to,” she said, pushing the bodice down to her waist.
He saw twin moons, alabaster smooth and white.
His mouth was dry, his head thick, filled with cotton wool.
“But if I come very close, maybe you’ll notice.” She lifted herself up and bent over him…very near, too near.
One taut rosebud…inches from his parched lips…woman-scent, rich, coiling in his nostrils, swirling in his head.
“Jess.” His voice was cracked and harsh, parched.
His mind was a desert. No thought. No pride. He was mere sand, whirling in a windstorm.
