Price of Desire

by Goodman, Jo

  He wished he didn’t understand what she meant, but he did. “All right.” Out of the corner of his eye he watched her massage her brow right up to her hairline. He released her hand, and giving her no choice in the matter, brought her head against the curve of his shoulder and fit his arm around her. Several long minutes passed before Griffin felt most of the tension seep out of her. He nudged his chin in her hair. The stubble of his beard rasped pleasantly against her scalp.

  It was Olivia who finally broke the silence, not because it was uncomfortable, but because it was not. “What would you be doing if I weren’t here?”

  “Wishing you were.” He could tell she didn’t like that response. “Too amiable? Very well. I would be reading. One or two chapters more, I suspect, then I would have put the book down and slept.”

  “Oh. That is good, then. I didn’t know. I thought you might come to my room. It is better this way.”

  “Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She needed to know there was a place she could call her own, a place of refuge, of sanctuary. “It cannot be important to you.”

  “I beg to differ, but I won’t press—unless you think that I am being too agreeable, in which event I will subject you to the tortures of the Inquisition.”

  “Do you know such things?”

  He nodded. “I am partial to the rack.”

  “Really.”

  “Mmm.” He kissed the top of her head and breathed in the lavender scent in her hair. She stirred a little in his arms, and he sensed tension pulling her taut once again. Kisses, then, were torture as well, it seemed. “The iron maiden. Shackles. Hammer and tongs.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Modesty prevents me from agreeing.” He imagined she must have smiled. She nestled a bit, finding a more comfortable position for herself against his side. When she turned in to him, her knee nudged his. Her cheek pressed his shoulder just below the line of his collarbone. If she lifted her face, her lips might brush his jaw or find the underside of his chin. She didn’t move again, though, and after a few moments he realized she wouldn’t.

  Olivia had fallen asleep.

  Griffin waited until her breathing took on the steady rhythm of deep slumber before he eased her into a prone position. Because she was rather limpet-like in her attachment to his side, he eased himself down as well, pausing only to reach across her and pinch off the candlewick. He drew the covers over them and pulled a pillow closer to support his head. Olivia seemed to prefer to be supported by him, and while Griffin did not mind in the least, he wondered at her reaction when she learned they were not yet done with it.

  Curiously perverse creature that she was, he imagined her relief would be short-lived.

  Olivia stretched and pressed herself against the heat at her back. It seemed to her that she might have smiled, but it might have only been that she wanted to. A delicious sort of lethargy had sapped her strength, made her liquid. She drifted. There was no sound, no light. The current slowly turned her, then she became the current. Flowing. Rippling. Slipping effortlessly into the void.

  She came up with a violent start. Fear wrenched a cry from the back of her throat. Her fingertips scrabbled along the edge of the covers to throw them off, and she kicked out in the same frantic movement. She was all elbows and knees, flailing between the sheets, digging her heels and head so deeply into the mattress that her back arced like an electrical current between two poles.

  Griffin caught her just as she would have slipped over the edge of the bed and hauled her flush to his side. She was breathing hard in short, arrhythmic gasps that did little to fill her lungs and nothing at all to calm her. Her fingers curled in the linen of his nightshirt like talons, and when he tried to dislodge her she snarled at him.

  “Olivia!” Her knee came up hard. Griffin tucked and took the considerable force of the blow on his hip. “Bloody hell, woman!” He shackled her wrists and tore her fingers loose from his clothing. She was panting, struggling. Firelight revealed her bared teeth and wildness in her eyes. Griffin wrestled Olivia onto her back and pinned her wrists above her head, a feat requiring no little force. He used one of his legs to trap both of hers but not without effort and almost being unmanned a second time.

  He swore under his breath as she bucked and twisted and nearly succeeded in dislodging him. It did not seem possible that any woman could be possessed of such strength, but to experience it at the hands of this particular woman, with her willow frame and grave, graceful air, was in every way astonishing.

  Afraid of hurting her, Griffin held fast and waited until she wore herself out. Come morning, she would bear the marks of his restraint. He imagined a bracelet of blue bruises around her wrists and perhaps a pale, purple medallion near her throat where he’d first pushed her back with the heel of his hand.

  “Olivia,” he said again, his tone more weary than gentle. “Olivia.”

  He was not prepared for her sudden collapse. It was not that she was merely still, but that she was boneless. The tension that had pulled her taut and defined her fight simply vanished. Suspicious, he eased his grip on one of her wrists, raised it, then let go. Her hand dropped like a stone. The same thing happened when he lifted and released her other wrist.

  She had been asleep?

  Griffin rolled away from her and lighted a candle at the bedside. He held the candlestick over her, letting the light wash over her face. Her eyes were closed, the long lashes looking like shadows just below them. Her lips were slightly parted, but her breathing was easy. Her complexion was smooth; for once she looked much younger than her four and twenty years. He saw peace here, the serenity she was denied when she was awake, and sometimes, it seemed now, even when she slept.

  With infinite care, he drew her arms to her side again and rearranged the tangle of blankets over her when he witnessed her involuntary shiver.

  He wondered what she might remember upon waking, if anything at all. What demons drove her to such violence? She was hardly more than a slip of a female, yet she had demonstrated a fierceness that set him back on his heels and gave him no choice in his manner of dealing with her. She had proven she was wholly capable of hurting him, even if she was hardly responsible for it.

  Griffin set the candlestick aside but did not extinguish the flame. He lay on his side, his head propped on an elbow while he observed the gentle rise and fall of her breast. So easy was her sleep now that he could almost be convinced he was the one who’d had the nightmare.

  He brushed away the tangle of hair that had been swept across her throat during the battle. His gaze narrowed on the crescent mark peeking out above the neckline of her shift. He gently turned back the fabric and saw the ruddy proof of his instinctive self-defense. He laid his fingertips against the stamp made by the heel of his hand and felt the heat of her skin and the faint pulse of her heart.

  Without quite knowing he meant to do it, Griffin bent his head and placed his lips against the bruise. His fingertips slid over her shift, grazing her breast, then the slope of her ribcage. His palm came to rest lightly on her abdomen. He raised his head, but not before his mouth found the sweet curve of her neck.

  That she was in his bed at all was something of a mystery to him. She was wrong in believing he required her there as compensation for keeping her. His failing was in not correcting her assumption. The words had come to his lips several times, but he’d left them unspoken. He wanted her here, had for weeks now, perhaps from the moment she’d accepted his first challenge, but he wouldn’t have forced himself on her, or even narrowed her choices so that she would accept him as the devil she knew.

  What he’d done, though, upon reflection was perhaps no better. Allowing her to act on her assumption gave him what he wanted and placed the whole of the responsibility on her. There was no cause for pride there.

  “What manner of things have you seen?” he whispered. He expected no response and received none. She did not stir except to draw another breath.

  Griffin did not
remove his hand from the flat of her belly as he dropped his elbow and lay his head against the pillow. He moved closer, turning her gently on her side, and fit himself against the curve of her body. His thighs supported the back of hers; his groin cradled her bottom. In this manner, he slept at last.

  A slender chink in the drapes allowed the first hint of dawn to enter the room. Olivia lay on her side and watched the beam of light stretch itself slowly across the floor. It didn’t matter that all across London people were beginning to rise and set about their work for the day. Here on Putnam Lane it was for all intents and purposes still the middle of the night.

  She felt the pleasant blossom of warmth from Griffin’s palm against her midriff. She didn’t mind that he held her in such a way, tucked against his body as though he were sheltering her. It was only a harmless fancy if she did not allow herself to make too much of it, and the hot and rigid press of his cock against her bottom kept her from doing so. If his lordship was thinking at all, sheltering her was not what he had in his mind.

  Olivia drew up her shift to bare her thighs and backside, then rubbed herself slowly against him. She heard his breathing hitch. His hips jerked, thrust toward her. She reached behind her and yanked on his nightshirt, pulling it up roughly so when she settled back a second time it was her flesh on his flesh. He moved against her, sliding, grinding. Olivia clamped her teeth together, her jaw as rigid as his cock, and grasped him in her hand. She was breathing through her nose now, nostrils slightly flared, the set of her features strained by determination, not lust.

  She raised her upper leg and slid it over his, widening the space between her thighs to ease his entry. She pressed back and guided him, then bit down hard on her bottom lip as his hips jerked again and he pushed those first few inches into her. Behind her, he made a sound somewhere between a groan and a curse.

  So he was awake now, if he hadn’t been before.

  Olivia forced herself to relax as she waited for him to move deeper. She’d expected he would begin to rut, especially now that he was conscious of being at least partially inside her. When he didn’t, she tried to find a better seat against him. He stopped her, palming her hips so tightly she couldn’t move.

  “Would you have me rape you?” he hissed against her ear. “Christ, but you do not want this. You’re not ready.”

  Not knowing what he meant, she squeezed her eyes shut, whimpered, and tasted blood on her lip.

  “Be still!” She had only hunched her shoulders and ducked her head as though to prepare for a blow, but even this small movement shifted her body against his in a way that was pure torment. “For God’s sake,” he whispered a bit less harshly, “don’t move.”

  She was tight, achingly so, but she was also as dry as a spent well. For all that she had provoked him to just this end, she was unprepared for it. She could barely accommodate his entry and not without pain, yet she would have him take her anyway.

  “If we are to have done with it,” he said quietly, “then it will be in a manner of my choosing. Do you understand?”

  She didn’t, but she nodded her head because he seemed to expect her agreement.

  He gritted his teeth. “Can you not be still? You might have simply said ‘yes.’”

  “Yes.”

  “Better.” His jaw relaxed, but only a fraction. “Sweet Jesus, I do not know if I can do this.” Grunting softly, he pushed at her hips and withdrew. He ignored her sharp intake of breath and brought her buttocks solid against him again, as close to her as he could be without being inside her, and held her like that until he felt he’d gained a modicum of control.

  He found the bunched hem of her shift and began raising it. She didn’t help him, but neither did she resist. Once he had it over her head, he tossed it to the floor, then slipped his hands under the blankets and laid them flat against her skin, splaying his fingers on either side of her waist. He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to the bare curve of her shoulder. His lips slid along her collarbone as he turned her, and when she came to rest on her back, he suckled at her throat.

  She seemed to have no difficulty keeping still now.

  Griffin raised himself up and looked down into her face. Her modest smile might not have seemed forced if any part of it had touched her eyes. Shaking his head slowly, he placed his fingertips on her cheek and traced the fine-boned arch all the way to her hairline.

  Curious, he asked, “What has been your experience here?”

  “Here?”

  “With a man.”

  “I’m not a virgin.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking.”

  “Then I don’t understand.”

  No, he thought, she probably didn’t. “What did he want from you?” he asked.

  “He?”

  Griffin did not like to think what that meant, but he persevered. “They, then. What did they want from you?”

  “They did not want to talk.”

  “I’m sure they did not,” he said, “but it is not quite an answer to my question, is it?”

  “They liked me to be quiet,” she told him. “That is mostly what they wanted. It was becoming, they said, that I should be quiet.”

  “Christ.”

  She simply stared at him, waiting for him to continue in whatever manner he chose. She remembered clearly that it was what he required from her.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “They liked me to undress before I came to bed.” She shrugged a bit uneasily. “Sometimes they helped me. Sometimes they watched.”

  That, at least, he could understand. “Was there nothing else?”

  “No.” She did not, would not, speak of the hot, labored breathing or the heavy hand that was sometimes clamped over her mouth when she was unable to be becomingly quiet. Of her own volition she did not tell him these things. What she could not speak of was the agony of waiting to be called forward, to be held for examination, the perfect dread of failure to please and its consequences. “No,” she repeated on a thread of sound. “There was nothing else.”

  Griffin remained silent for a long moment, weighing what she’d said against what he’d already learned at her hands. “Were you willing?” he asked.

  It was true that she’d gone easily that first time, led by her greed as blindly, even eagerly, as a beggar in want of a few coppers. That was what he was asking, she thought, and how she would answer him. He did not want to know that she’d never gone without a struggle after that, even if she was the only one to observe it. So often the struggle happened only inside her.

  “I was willing,” she said.

  “And now?”

  “I came to your bed, did I not? That speaks to willingness.”

  Griffin wasn’t at all certain that it did. “You will have to convince me.” He saw the edges of her mouth turn down and knew that she didn’t understand. “Never mind. I’ll know the truth of it soon enough.”

  Lowering his mouth to hers, he teased her lips open with the edge of his tongue. He nibbled, feasted, sucked. He angled his mouth differently, tasted her again. He drew a sound from the back of her throat and savored it as he did the kiss. He set his teeth against the cord in her neck and sipped on her flesh. Come full light, there would be a mark upon her skin here to match those at her wrist and breast. The difference, though, would be in the intent with which they were made. He’d held her wrists to restrain her, but he suckled at her neck to restrain himself.

  His mouth was hot across her skin, but it had nothing in common with the other mouths she had known, the other heat that had scalded her. What Griffin was doing to her was drawing her out, not forcing her inside. Olivia was not certain she wanted to be so exposed. She could have stripped away her shift earlier and stood before him and not have been as naked as she felt now.

  She’d thought if she came to his bed she might seize the moment and have ownership of what would happen between them. In a manner of my choosing. Those should have been the words she’d spoken. Instead, he had said them and
she had agreed.

  Olivia surrendered another sound, almost unrecognizable as something that could have come from her, and she was frightened by it. She bit into her lower lip as his mouth closed over her breast. The flick of his tongue across her nipple was unexpected. Her flesh beaded as if she were inviting him to roll it between his lips. It required only a hint of pressure before her skin flushed with heat.

  She thrust her fingers into his thick hair. She meant to tug on it, pull him away, yet what she did was lace her hands at the back of his head and cradle him so he would not move too quickly.

  She needn’t have worried. His tongue laved her aureole, licking, darting, treating himself and her to the hot suck of his mouth. She didn’t recognize pleasure for what it was at first. The intensity was so sweetly sharp that what she felt was akin to pain. Pain was familiar. She could have embraced pain and kept her silence. What Griffin was doing to her made unbecoming sounds whistle through her teeth and rasp noisily from the back of her throat.

  He never once urged her to be quiet.

  His mouth gave attention to her other breast, and she held him there for a time, arching once to present more of herself to him and wondering with that small part of her that still had presence of mind if she might be struck down for it.

  The covers shifted across his back as he slipped lower. Her hands unthreaded and fell to his shoulders. She plucked at the linen fabric of his nightshirt, wanting nothing so much as to feel his skin against her palms.

  He reared up, shook off the covers, and yanked his nightshirt over his head. It tangled in his arms and he swore, fighting with it, and that was when he heard the most surprising sound from Olivia.

  Her laughter.

  It was small. And strangled. It was also unmistakable.

  Griffin came out from under the nightshirt and stared at her. She smiled a bit unevenly, clearly embarrassed, then lifted her hands and helped him remove the shirt. She was the one who flung it away. It sailed over the side of the bed, and before it touched the floor, she’d flung her arms around his neck and held on.