CHAPTER SIX
His wife had taken her dinner in her apartment; so Hanks informed him, when Liam dismissed him for the evening. Liam himself had no appetite, even though Beauregard had produced a half-passable approximation of cordon bleu. Nor did he feel particularly inclined to humor the countess’s evident plan for him: to play the aggressor, and seek her out in order to grant her the bedding that she herself had demanded.
Oh, he had thought of nothing but it, for hours now.
But he would not give her an opportunity to imagine herself a martyr. If she wanted him, she would come find him.
And so, eventually, she did. At half eleven, the door to the salon opened. He did not look up from his book, though he had read the same page a dozen times, and still had no clear notion of what it entailed.
She stood silently for a full two or three minutes, a stubborn standoff that she lost when she finally said, “I was in the mood for tea. Is that still warm?”
He tilted his head toward the teapot. “Fresh as of eleven.”
She poured herself a cup, then sat down on a settee opposite his wing chair. He turned the page of his book, glancing up only once, long enough to discover that she was immersed in the serious business of stirring and restirring the contents of the cup, and that she still wore the high-necked mauve gown from this afternoon. She was scowling.
He bit his cheek to stop his smile, and turned another page. She had absolutely expected him to come to her rooms, at which point that gown would have sent the clear message of her reluctant compliance.
Her spoon rattled now against the rim of her teacup. He heard the creak of springs in the settee as she shifted. “This tastes like bohea,” she said stiffly. “But Mrs. Dawson’s ledgers show the purchases come from Twining’s. Somebody is switching out the tea, I think.”
No doubt. Beauregard was an entrepreneur. “I will speak to Cook in the morning.”
“No, that is the housekeeper’s place. I will speak to Mrs. Dawson.”
“Smashing.” He turned another page.
More squeaking, another clatter of her spoon. “You seem curiously resigned to the dishonesty of your staff. I still think you should sack the lot of them.”
“Oh?” Liam looked up and caught her biting her lip. She instantly released it, and sat straighter. She was gripping the teacup very tightly: the veins in her hands stood out.
She was nervous. How novel. Some old, rusted instinct instructed Liam to make an idle remark, something that would amuse her or put her at ease.
The larger part of him took a twisted pleasure in watching her strangle her cup. That part was not old; it belonged to the man he now was.
He could resist these dark urges, or castigate himself for them—but why bother? Reform was not his aim. Reform suggested some goal beyond it, a purpose for one’s rehabilitated life. But he could see no purpose for himself save the crushing of his cousin, and perhaps—if he managed to keep patient—some unknown bastard who had played the go-between for Marlowe.
But after that?
Nothing. He had no ideas. He would continue to collect art, perhaps. And, if the woman before him had her way, he would also play the paterfamilias: an icy figure in the distance, occasionally dispensing praise or censure, as need be. God knew he would not take a direct hand in raising his offspring, lest he accidentally shape them into something resembling himself.
For look at him now: it was not fair, nor becoming, to sit across from his wife and be amused by how her hands shook as she sipped her tea. But his anger, alas, was a wild beast, barely leashed—or else a scattershot weapon that found targets everywhere, not least in those who had been spared . . . everything.
She claimed to have suffered. But she did not know the meaning of the word.
No, no, he knew that was wrong. What had happened to him had also disarranged her life. But . . . she had assumed the worst of him. She had not gone to the authorities. Instead she had gone back to that island, precious Rawsey, which had always been her first and only love.
And yet—yes, he had given her every reason to suspect he would abandon her. The terms of their marriage contract. His haste in discharging his debts, the very morning of their wedding. Their quarrel that night, fierce and terrible. And she had been young, and hotheaded, and God knew that what had actually happened to him on that quay would have been beyond her imagination, or anyone’s.
So, yes, of course she had gone back to Rawsey. Of course she had told no one of his disappearance. Of course she had imagined his departure voluntary. He could not blame her for it.
He could not blame her; this was at once a fact he accepted and also another cause for his anger. For at the least, at the bloody least, he should feel free with his blame.
But no, she deserved none of it. She was guilty of nothing.
Yet he watched her fidget and said nothing to put her at ease. For she was ordinarily so completely self-assured. Why should she be otherwise? Nothing in this life had ever given her cause for discomfort. So let her enjoy the novelty of it. Let her fret.
He was staring. He realized it even as her gaze broke from his, shied away toward the wall, climbed . . .
“Good God,” she gasped.
Ah. He reached for the dish of biscuits at his elbow. The first bite was overly sweet, cloying. “That is Miss Martin’s painting,” he said. “Or—pardon me, Miss Ashdown is the name she signs to them.”
She looked pale. “So it really is a woman who made those paintings.”
“Oh yes. Why do you ask?”
She shook her head, continuing to study the painting. It did make for a riveting view. The looming soldier filled the canvas entirely, his face a rictus of murderous lust. Such was the force and genius of the brushstrokes, of the perspective, of the vivid realism, that he seemed a moment away from reaching through the canvas to throttle the viewer.
“I don’t know why it surprised me,” she said softly. “Of course the artist is a woman. I’m sure this is a view that many of us have endured.”
Her glance at him now felt like an accusation. And to his amazement, he flinched.
Christ, it would not be like that between them. Was that what she thought? He opened his mouth to reassure her—then closed it on a fresh wave of amazement.
Why, perhaps he retained some humanity after all.
Perhaps she was the key to it.
No. That burden was so unfair that even he would not thrust it upon her.
Nor, however, would he remain silent on this matter. “It is not a sight any woman should endure,” he said flatly. “And if I encountered the man in that painting, I would see him hanged.”
Her mouth twisted. Was she pressing back a relieved smile, or words of censure for his bloodlust? He could not say, for she looked into her teacup, concealing her expression.
Her hair was no less riveting than the painting. He found himself studying a ribbon of strawberry blond that snaked through the waves of copper and auburn.
Even Miss Martin could not have painted her hair. It was a natural miracle, inimitable. A single strand of it had slipped loose from her chignon, and curled past the shell of her ear.
Curious that ears were so often neglected by poetry. Hers put him in mind of a seashell. He had sucked on it once, and the sweet taste of her skin came back to him now, filling his mouth.
He was going to devour her.
“I didn’t see that painting before,” she said. “In the gallery.”
“No.” His voice sounded hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Those others had been sold, and were awaiting transport. This one, I kept.”
For this admission, he received a glance of mingled horror and amazement. “But why?”
He considered his reply as he crumbled the rest of the wretched biscuit. One temptation, from the moment of her appearance in London, had been to tell her everything. But it felt much like the urge he’d had as a boy to place his hand in the flames in the fireplace—knowing it would hurt, knowing the burn would throb for days afterward, but drawn nevertheless.
Tell her and be done with it.
Tell her soberly, so she cannot doubt it; show her the proof, and watch her repent her anger—her flight to Rawsey—her care for her own pride, which kept her from raising the alarm that night.
It would be the quickest way to have the upper hand over her. Guilt, after all, was a crippling toxin.
And yet the urge never to tell her was far more powerful. Was that to his credit? He thought so. To move on, damn it: was that not the point, even if he could not see where to aim for? After all, why else had he survived, if not to repossess his rightful life and eventually, somehow, abandon the nightmare of his past?
That would not be achieved by an explanation. But the truth, if explained, certainly would transform how she looked at him. Her current looks, full of anger and contempt and bewilderment, were bearable, even amusing. They did nothing to blur the memories of how she had looked at him before—on Ben Nevis, on Rawsey, in Edinburgh. Those looks had been his nourishment in his early days of captivity. He had remembered them so often and so intensely that he had burned them into his soul.
But if he ever saw pity on her face . . .
It would efface all the rest. One offered pity to cowed animals and helpless children. Not to a man.
Her pity was the single thing he did not know if he could survive.
Thus, sitting across from her, having her so near, intending to draw her nearer yet, felt like living with a blade at his throat. And, like a man at knifepoint, he proceeded carefully.
“The painting shows a truth,” he told her. “That in itself is a very rare accomplishment, and makes it worth the keeping.”
She frowned. “It’s a work of great power, I won’t deny it. But I wouldn’t like to dwell on it, day in and day out.”
“We can have it moved, if you like. It needn’t be in your line of view every day.”
“But you would keep it in yours,” she said slowly. “Why?”
He smiled, and she abruptly paled, so that he was forced to wonder what his expression telegraphed to her. “You ask clever questions,” he said by way of explanation for whatever she saw that troubled her. “You always did know which would be the most interesting questions to ask.”
The remark did not seem to calm her; the rapid rise and fall of her chest suggested quite the opposite, in fact. “You used to answer my questions. Now you merely dance around them.”
He could not deny it. “I suppose, once upon a time, I thought you might have some use for my answers. But now, as you’ve said, you want nothing from me—pardon me: nothing, that is, that requires words.”
She caught his meaning, and flushed. “I . . . There is no need to be vulgar.”
“Was I vulgar?” He flicked a crumb from his fingers. “Fucking doesn’t require speech: that seems a simple statement of fact.”
She gawked as though he had sprouted another head. “Goodness. I don’t know that word. But I believe I can follow its meaning. How glad I am that I expected no seduction!”
He laughed softly. There was her warrior’s spirit. It had just taken a good shove to emerge. “Oh, I do mean to seduce you, Anna. But I had planned to begin that upstairs. The doors to this salon do not lock.”
Her freckles were all but lost in the fierceness of her blush. “Upstairs will serve,” she said faintly. “But you are proving my point. You are trying to scandalize me so you won’t have to explain the appeal of the painting.”
He laughed again, genuinely amused. She was so bloody clever, and self-possessed even when flustered—qualities that had not changed. “You’re right, of course.” He rose and held out his hand. “Shall we get to it? Unless you’re in the mood for more sparring, of course.”
She hesitated only a moment before squaring her shoulders and rising. She did not take his hand, instead using her own to smooth down her skirts—an unnecessary gesture that he found perversely touching, much in the vein of a condemned queen fixing her coiffure before mounting the block.
“My rooms or yours?” she asked stiffly.
He considered it. Her maid, he believed, slept in her dressing room. “Mine.”
This was not the answer she’d wanted. He saw her fight a frown before she nodded. “Fine. I will meet you there in half an hour.”
With these words, she marched out.
An optimist would assume she was hastening to bedeck and perfume herself. But Liam remembered her better. He would count himself lucky if she had not hurried off to tuck a weapon beneath his bed.
• • •
Anna was annoyed with herself. She was a sensible Scotswoman who spent half the year on a rocky spur off the southwestern coast whose survival depended on the copulation of sheep. She had played the bawd for old rams that had one more go to give. She was neither ignorant nor missish about what was required for conception. But all night—and most unforgivably, downstairs in Lockwood’s salon—she had blushed and fretted like a schoolgirl about the coming event, as though she had not been the one to demand it.
After a firm, silent scolding to herself, she knotted her wrapper at the waist, checked to make sure that Jeannie was sleeping soundly on a cot in the dressing room, and then walked without knocking through the door that connected her bedroom to Lockwood’s.
The bedchamber was warm, hushed, the bed curtains drawn back to reveal a mattress of gargantuan proportions. The tasseled maroon canopy matched the heavy quilts, and contrasted elegantly with the gold and navy patterning of the thick French rug that cushioned her footfall.
Lockwood was kneeling by the grate, poking at the fire, and did not seem to notice her entrance. His dressing robe—some luxuriously glossy swath of dark silk—molded over his body, revealing the breadth of his shoulders and well-developed back, the narrowing of his waist, the firm high mounds of his flexed buttocks.
She crossed her arms and made herself stare. Let herself stare, perhaps. Even kneeling, with his back turned, he made a magnificent sight. His travels had left him with the build of a laborer, heavily developed through his upper body, taut and chiseled through his legs. She knew this, because his kneeling position had caused the hem of his robe to fall away, showing the distinct bulk of his flexed calf. His foot, braced behind him as he balanced on one knee, was long and elegant.
His leg hair was as light as the tips of the hair on his head: she had not known that. She acknowledged and dismissed as irrelevant the blush that crawled over her face. These were things a wife should know. She was four years overdue, and the advice her aunts had given her before the wedding—that the marital duty was not always pleasant, but with luck, yielded rewards—came back to her, renewing her courage.
He laid down the fire iron and rose in one easy, fluid movement. He showed no surprise to discover her standing behind him. “Warm enough?” he said.
He’d built the fire to leaping, and it outlined his figure, lending a devilish looming aspect to his posture. His expression was somewhat obscured by the trick of the light, but she sensed some air about him of repressed, disciplined energy. It was late, and she had taken longer than promised to join him in his rooms—but he seemed neither tired nor irritated, only deeply alert, and focused entirely on her.
“Certainly.” She cleared her throat to eradicate the huskiness in it. “Several degrees warmer than it properly ought to be—but I suppose Englishmen are not accustomed to a healthy chill.”
He smiled as he came toward her. The robe slipped like dark liquid over his thighs, leaving no doubt that they, too, were magnificently bulked. She felt a grudging approval for that, for the industrious exertion it suggested. He had not spent her money while sitting on his arse, cream tea and bonbons in hand.
He stopped a pace away, looking her over with a thoroughness that put her in mind of a man at a horse auction. She lifted her chin. Her own robe, of soft but bulky flannel, did not seek to impress him. Impressing him was hardly necessary.
“Unbind your hair,” he murmured.
She stiffened. She had braided her hair into a single plait, which seemed the neatest way to proceed. “We will make this brief, I hope.”
His soft laughter raised gooseflesh on her arms. “Turn around, Anna.”
“It needn’t take longer than a few minutes.” That was generous, she thought; sheep required sixty seconds, no more. “What I mean is, I’ve no interest in—”
“Hush.”
Hush? “I beg your—”
His hand slipped around her nape, the warmth of his palm startling her. “Or keep talking,” he said casually as his thumb lightly stroked over her pulse, the sensation sending a curious tremor through her belly. “Either way, you agreed to my terms.”
Curious to realize that nobody had ever touched her there before—save him. The neck was not thought to be a particularly private area, yet as he studied her, his thumb slipped back and forth so lightly over her skin that she felt dizzied by it. In the firelight that filled the room, his amber eyes were dark pools, unreadable.
“Speaking of terms,” he said quietly. “I do invite you to speak your mind. Should something displease you, tell me so.”
An unsettling tremor quivered through her belly.
Tremors often presaged a collapse.
She crossed her arms. “Very well. Whatever you require to perform.”
Another soft laugh: the jab to his manhood didn’t bother him. He circled behind her, out of sight, and she hugged herself more tightly.
Light touches and tugs on her braid, then his hand slipped down it, toying with the ends. These sensations, so faint, had an outsized effect. The muscles in her neck and shoulders seemed to melt like butter.
“Your hair,” he murmured, “is the eighth wonder of the world.”
She scowled at the fire. Flattery was not wanted when it was false. “I suppose you would know. Is that where you went? To tour the other seven?”
Her pulse tripped as he stepped into her from behind, the sudden hard warmth of his body pressing against her from nape to knees. “Do you want to discuss that?” he whispered in her ear. “Or shall we get to it?”
Quite right. She closed her eyes. He smelled . . . familiar. How had the smell of his skin remained so vivid after so many years? Some distinctive and inimitable blend of soap and salt and musk and maleness, it cast her back to the time when she had hungered for him. When she had fallen asleep dreaming of this night, and expediency had not been what she hoped for.
“Yes, get to it,” she managed. The words slipped out of her unsteadily, borne on a wave of realization: there was no good reason, no advantage, in failing to enjoy this. She wanted to lie with him for what it might bring her. What difference if the process felt pleasurable?
The decision lifted a burden from her, causing her to sag a little as he unbraided her hair. His broad palms stroked over her shoulders, and she bit down on a smile. How good his hands felt as they traced her arms through the thick layer of flannel.
But he could have had her long ago. Why should she feel gleeful and grateful for what should have been hers four years before? He had abandoned her on their wedding night. This, his clever light touches along her body, meant so little to him that he had not bothered to enjoy them before he left.
No. She would think on that tomorrow. Tonight, it would do her no good.
She turned in his arms, her eyes closed so she would not have to see his expression when she cupped his face and pulled his mouth to hers. She remembered how to kiss him. She remembered all of it.
Only through her fingertips, which bracketed his face, did she sense his surprise at her aggression: a momentary stillness, no longer than a heartbeat. Then he stepped into her again, so his chest brushed her breasts, and kissed her back.
His lips were still clever, shaping lightly, persuasively, over hers. But this kiss quickly turned bolder than any he’d ever offered. He opened her mouth with his lips and tasted her. The touch of his tongue made her head swim. It was . . . declarative: he had the right to go inside her now. And where their hips pressed together, she felt the instrument by which he would do it. He was hard, and very large.
The ewes never seemed to enjoy the rams’ attention.
She pulled backward suddenly, out of his touch. He stared at her, his lips shining in the firelight, shining from the moisture of her mouth. But he did not speak. And the ferocious intensity of his look suddenly unnerved her.
She cleared her throat. “All right. Well—” She walked to the bed on legs that felt rusted at the joints, then lay down with mechanical stiffness. “On with it.”
He came and sat on the edge of the mattress, looking down at her for a moment, some opaque calculation working through his face.
Frustration welled in her. She wanted him—and resented him. She wanted this over—she wanted him to kiss her again.
With an angry jerk, she unknotted her robe and threw it open. But he did not look down at her. He remained studying her face, his gaze speculative.
“Take off your robe,” she said through her teeth, “and get on with it. Sheep, you know, only require a minute.”
“Very well.” He reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a white cloth. “First,” he said, “tie this around your eyes.”
• • •
She scrambled to a sitting position, her indignation as clear and loud as a yowl. “I beg your pardon?”
He had anticipated objections. Anna Winterslow Wallace Devaliant had not been fashioned in a mold of compliance. “We had an agreement.” His voice was marvelously, miraculously calm. It did not belong to the beast pulling at the chains inside him, inflamed by the feel and scent of her.
He had not kissed a woman since he’d last kissed this one. He’d not bedded a woman since she came into his life. He had wondered, once or twice since his return, if he should hire some demimondaine who could be paid to keep quiet, some compliant and willing woman to prove he was still a man.
But his interest never lasted long enough to act. What could his body prove, after all? It had been the instrument of his degradation. For the rest of his life, it would tell the story of how he’d been broken. Pleasure, bodily pleasure, no longer had a place.
Or so he’d thought. Only now did he realize the depth of his error. His appetite had not been killed. Rather, it had built in secret, in some subterranean chamber unknown to his conscious mind. The pent-up force of four years’ abstinence now roared through him. He was trembling with the effort to control it.
But, oh, how calm he looked to her. His voice, sweet honeyed deception, set her at ease, causing her to overlook how his muscles tensed, how his hands fisted on the urge to seize her. “You want a child,” he murmured. “I will give you one. But you will allow me to set the terms of how it is done.”
“I—” She looked between the cravat and his face. “I see no reason I must be blinded while you do it!”
Her robe was hanging open. She had forgotten to tie the sash. He would not remind her of it by staring. But his brain imprinted the sight in one flashing glance: the full, heavy sway of her breasts, the soft mound of her belly. His.
“There’s no harm in it.” Now his rough voice would not have convinced an ingenue, much less his thorny, self-possessed wife. “The choice is yours.”
“But—why?”
He cleared his throat. “I will also need to tie your hands to the headboard.”
Her eyes flew wide. In that moment, he felt deviant in truth. It would take a powerful evil to drive this woman to cower.
Then she scowled and lifted her chin. “You’re mad,” she said. “Do you know it? Utterly deranged.”
“Perhaps.” Better a madman than a spectacle. He knew what his body looked like now. The scars were extensive, and as distinct as braille.
Christ help him, if she did not put on this blindfold he was going to have to find some way to make himself stand and walk away. “You have full rein to stop the proceedings. Only say the word, and it will end.”
She snorted. “Tied up, blinded—why on earth should I believe you would stop?”
She was biting her lip now. It begged to be sucked. His entire body was a single pulse of need, and his brain was not functioning.
Her question—he forced himself to concentrate on it. He could hardly ask her to proceed on trust. In her view, he deserved none.
Schooling his breath, he turned to the small table by the bed. He kept a knife in the drawer there—also a pistol, and a set of cast-iron knuckle-dusters. But the knife would serve. She knew knives. “Keep this within reach.” He folded it into her hand, wrapping her slim fingers around the hilt. The pleasure of touching her felt drugging. He slowly let go. “If I fail to listen, cut yourself free. Stab me, if you like.”
She inspected the long, wicked blade. “Perhaps I should stab you right now,” she muttered. “A widow would be free to find another father for her children.”
His laugh startled him. It seemed astonishing that humor might break through this fierce grip of need.
But why not? From the moment she’d appeared in his salon last Sunday, he’d remembered instantly why he’d married her. What man could have resisted her? On the rare occasions she checked her thoughts before speaking them, it was a grave loss to the world, and a wasted opportunity to marvel at her.
“Have at it,” he said, and flopped down onto his back, tipping his head to bare his throat to her.
She came over him, her long red hair brushing his chest and tickling his chin, her expression contorted in disbelief. “You did run mad,” she muttered. “You know I’m not going to gut you.” Her hand went to the sash of his robe.
He caught it in a firm grip. He could feel the thrumming of her pulse. He lifted her wrist and licked it, tasting the salted cream of her skin. Christ God.
Her breath caught audibly. “Lockwood . . .”
“First the blindfold,” he whispered.
Her brows drew together. “Are you shy, Lockwood?” Taking his strained smile as affirmation, she sat back in clear amazement. “But this is absurd. You, bashful! Come now, open your robe.”
He sat up. A blue vein wound down her throat, disappearing beneath the ruffled collar of her robe. It was his guide. A lure. “Lie back,” he murmured. He would trace that vein. He would rip that robe off her to reveal it. One sharp tug was all it would take.
His fists clenched. Not yet. Not until she could not see, could not reach out for him. “Lie back,” he repeated roughly.
She shook her head slightly in bewilderment. “I can’t . . .”
He took a hard breath through his nose. Another man would pretend not to hear. He was her husband, damn it.
But without choice, touch was naught but defilement.
“Very well.” It was better this way, no doubt. This was no normal need. He could remember the fumblings of his youth. His desire had not felt like this—like a savage bottomless starving need that might well rip apart his body and hers before he managed to sate it.
Stand up. Walk away.
She was staring at him. “Why?” she whispered. “Why must it be like this?”
He could not move. Could not retreat. He stared back at her. “You said you wanted a child.” Anna. Let me. Anna. “The choice is yours.”
Her lips flattened. “I am not letting go of this knife,” she said, and lay back.
His breath, his heart, stopped. For a moment, the wonder of her consent was so total that it blotted out everything.
Then he swallowed hard, schooling his expression. This bland mask he donned for her, the slight amused smile of a gentleman on a lark—he must not let it break, or she would see the truth and go flying.
And he might not let her go. That was what frightened him most.
“You need only tell me to stop,” he said, and reached for the cravat. Hands shaking, he fitted it over her eyes, knotting it gently.
“You’re depraved,” she whispered. Her lips—he leaned down and licked them, and she made a startled noise.
“Yes,” he said into her mouth. Ah God, the taste of her—he was so hard that it was painful. But so much remained to be done. “But so are sheep,” he continued unsteadily, “if you think on it. Now clutch the headboard.”
“Sheep?” She sounded distracted as he bound her wrists with the other cravat. “Sheep are animals, Lockwood; they are sensible creatures who get this business accomplished in a minute flat, without any nonsense about—”
He kissed her lips again, the better to stop her objections. She submitted, then began to kiss him back—a hesitant but willing kiss. His wife, his wife’s lips, and he poised over her, holding himself away, barely daring to breathe as he kissed her: this was real, this was happening, this was now.
Ambrosia, the flavor of her. Intoxicant. The more he tasted, the more frantic he felt. Slow. Slow, now. You can have her. She cannot see, touch. You will have her soon enough.
He tracked down her chin and throat, then forced himself to linger there, to sip her pulse, to persuade her to relax.
“Oh,” she said softly, as he nuzzled her. “That’s . . .”
Lightly, he warned himself. He skimmed his hand over her collarbone, delicate fragile architecture, never battered, never broken. How had he resisted having her before their wedding? Fool. He parted the robe, exposing her—pale and curving, rounded full hips, a soft belly like a provocation, God help him. He watched his trembling hand brush over her breast. Her nipple was a blushing pink. Nothing else in nature matched the color.
A strange fear coursed through him. Such unblemished perfection. She had no idea who touched her. He did not deserve this.
She sighed. Her nipple, beneath his thumb, stiffened. “Go on,” she whispered.
Your wife.
He gritted his teeth hard against the urge to—
Bite her, crush her down into the mattress, hold her there, keep her there, do not let her move an inch.
He blew out his breath.
She doesn’t know, she cannot see, she is not leaving, this is yours.
No call to rush. He would not rush.
He took her nipple into his mouth, and she gasped.
Gentleness, yes: this was what she expected of her husband. Gentle touches. Gentle lips, soft flicks of the tongue. Here he was, working a deceit on her as he moved over her body, kissing her quivering belly now—he had forgotten to acknowledge her freckles. A gentleman would have done so.
With a great effort, he forced himself to move up her body, back to her face. He kissed her again, licking that sunspot between the peaks of her lip. She kissed him back, arching against him, soft and warm, so soft.
Who did she see, in the darkness behind her blindfold? The other Liam—young and callow and self-assured—would not have braced his hand against the headboard to stop its trembling. That Liam had been no virgin. He had known how to kiss a woman, to grasp her breast and palm her hip, without fearing that his own release would come on him without warning, before the deed had even been done. But the man he was now . . .
He kissed her savagely, plundering her mouth. She made a raw noise, and kissed him back with teeth and tongue, rolling her hips against his. Too much, too much. He went rigid against her, breathing hard into her mouth. Gentle. Here was his deceit, to be worked on her like a spell: he was harmless. He was the man she had known.
Her body was beginning to believe it. She lay relaxed and accommodating beneath him, and her arms, which he glanced at every few seconds to gauge their comfort, sagged into the mounded pillows.
As he settled back against her, he heard her long ragged breath. Her hips canted into his, and his breath hissed out before he could catch it. Not yet. He twisted his pelvis away, inwardly cursing. Even as a virgin, he had not felt so clumsy, so unsure of his own body. So close to the edge, so ready to spill.
She twisted restlessly, her small noises like demands. But he could not yet press against her again. Not until she had been readied to take him.
A fine deceit, then, a pretense at control, restraint; at patience, gentility, goodness. He sipped his way down her body once more, suckling her breasts until she groaned.
But the deceit was its own punishment: a thousand nights or more he had rehearsed this in his dreams, those dreams that had taken him from the nightmares of his waking hours. No terrors in his sleep at Elland—those had come later. In Elland, in crippling heat, in agonizing pain, he had dreamed only of her, and of that make-believe hour of their wedding night—an hour forever denied them. That other Liam had planned to seduce her—slowly, coaxingly, persuading her to realize the promise that had always leapt between them: the rapport of their bodies, the desire like electricity on Ben Nevis, on Rawsey, in Edinburgh. He had planned nothing else, for the charge upon him had felt grave and weighty. The raw current between their bodies was rare—the other Liam had known it. It could be ruined if he did not take care. On his wedding night, he’d vowed, he would be the most careful man alive. They would have years, decades, all the time in the world, to explore and sate and inflame each other, but on their wedding night, she would be educated into anticipating it as he did. He would show her the way. He would be the best husband alive.
Now, dreams collapsed into reality. The hair on her mound was exactly as he had imagined—wiry and red, glinting in the dim firelight, soft beneath his combing fingers. Her breath stuttered audibly in her throat—there was curiosity in the syllable she whispered, yes, and he gripped his cock to hold it away from the plump sweetness of her thigh, desperation singing along his nerves, torturous little pricks as she pushed her body against his, ah God, she was wet. He stroked between her lips and found the spot that would bring her joy. He was shaking now, violently. Gentleness was no longer his native skill. But all she would feel was the steady rhythm of his fingers, their gentle probing against her, the coaxing, insistent stroke.
This was not his wedding night. He was not that other man. His wife was blindfolded and tied so she could not touch or see him. There was some weird grief that wanted to fill him—desperation could tip so easily into despair—but when he bent his head to taste her, all else washed away. He licked into her and she groaned. She groaned and it was music. His ravaged body could do this. It did not betray him.
He licked and suckled her, increasingly confident as she bucked beneath him. Another way, then—different from what he’d rehearsed as a cocksure boy prepared for happiness. A woman did not only wish to be wooed. Sometimes, God be praised, she wanted to be taken.
He coaxed her with his tongue until her hips twisted violently—but no, she would not break free of him. He gripped her to hold her still, and her thighs clamped around his ears, her scent enfolding him.
“Oh—wait—” She struggled more fiercely. The flash of the knife pulled up his head.
He pressed the length of his palm against her quim to remind her what she was missing, and reached up with his other hand to grip her hand that held the knife.
Words were almost beyond him. He forced them out in a growl. “Do you want to stop?” He ground his palm against her wetness and she shuddered.
“I—want to see—”
“Pick one. Sight or”—he rolled his palm again—“this.”
Her whisper sounded like a defeat: “This.” Her grip opened. The blade fell from the bed.
He lowered his head again. No gentleness now. She tightened beneath him, and then cried out. He pushed his fingers inside her, and she moaned.
Now.
A red haze settled over him. As much blinded now as she, he groped up her body, feeling his way by instinct as he fitted his cock to her. Ah God, anything had been worth this, even the worst nights—it was true, all the fevered dreams had saved his life, but none had come close to how this felt. He pushed into her and felt her full-bodied flinch, and then heard her small noise, surprise and perhaps, perhaps wonder.
It did not take long. So many years alone. This was not love but an exorcism. One stroke—two—she was taking him, he was inside her, her body was hot and wet and soft and her legs wrapped around him to draw him closer and he was, for one moment outside time, no longer himself, twisted and scarred, but the man she had wanted, who had known he could please her—
The orgasm overtook him.
He collapsed atop her. Powerless, emptied. Oblivion: what no drug had ever given him. Breathing her, his hand planted in her hair, he felt . . . at rest. Not an exorcism, after all.
A homecoming.
After a long minute, she stirred beneath him. Fretted at the restraints.
He could not stay.
A strange grief leached through him, more violent and horrible than the numbness—full of feelings he could not name. Too much feeling. God save him, he had to move.
“Untie me,” she whispered.
On a hard, deep breath, he shoved himself off her body and threw on his robe. His body felt strange to him, heavy and clumsy, his reflexes blunted, his skin still hungering for hers. The air too sharp, her skin the only cure.
As he unknotted the restraints at her wrists, her blindfolded face tipped up toward his, silent, patient. Trusting. The gesture sank some sweet deadly arrow through his heart. Her trust was so much more than he deserved. Hadn’t she learned not to trust him?
Dizziness rocked him. He sat down heavily on the mattress. The blindfold emphasized the strong bones of her face, a sturdy square frame for her pretty mouth and bold nose. But her eyes were marvels. With a shaking hand, he pushed the blindfold over her head. She blinked at him, her glorious hair spilling in fiery disorder over her bare shoulders, her mouth bruised looking.
She blushed as she smiled at him. “Well,” she said. “That was . . . overdue.”
He was home. But she smiled at a stranger, and she did not even realize it.
He leaned back against the headboard for balance, breathing deeply. Her glance dropped down his body, and her smile dimmed. He was dressed, and she found it odd. She had questions. She had hopes he could not fulfill.
“You’re shaking,” she said.
“No.” The denial was automatic. A request for her to disbelieve her own eyes. What else was the blindfold but that request made into an order? Do not look at me. Or, more accurately: do not see me.
See him, the man I once was.
The thought nauseated him. He would not invite such a charade. But what else was it when he showed her the bland, smiling face that best comforted her?
“Are you all right?” she asked, frowning now.
Had he rued his own ability to feel? It was turning on him in spades. Tenderness, gratitude, bottomless grief—this violent tumult of feelings was causing the room to spin. “I’m perfectly well.” He could not quite breathe. The tightness in his throat would not be swallowed. “You’ll want to sleep in your own bed. Shall I escort you back to your rooms?”
She stared up at him for an interminable moment, her puzzlement plain. Then she slipped to her feet. “No,” she said, then knotted her robe before walking away.
She wanted an heir from him. That was her right, and his duty. The rest of it—ugliness, all ugliness—he would rather cut his own throat than reveal to her. He watched her walk away, tall and slim, her shoulders thrown back in a dignified posture. His hand wrapped around the bedpost, tightened, to keep himself steady. Ten seconds, nine . . . Once she was gone, then he could confront this.
At the door, she turned back. Just go, he willed her, but she studied him another moment before saying something.
He could barely hear her through the roar of his panic. But he nodded as though he’d understood. “Quite,” he said.
The door closed behind her, and he sank down onto the carpet, pulling his knees to his chest, his back jammed hard against the bedstead. Eyes closed, he waited for this to pass. It was an illusion. There was air enough to breathe. Hard earth was not packing down on him, crushing the life from his body. He had escaped the hole, made it back from Elland. This panic was an illusion. He was free.
His eyes opened, and he covered his mouth with his hand to choke a noise.
He had escaped. But he had not returned home—not until tonight.
Her words suddenly clarified in his brain, dim but distinct:
It was nothing like sheep, she had said to him.