“Oh, my.”
He tipped her chin up and spoke into her wide, wondering eyes. “You will feel pain at first. It is the virgin’s wall, a thin barrier of flesh. It will tear when I penetrate you the first time. For some women it hurts a great deal, for others it does not so much. I cannot know until I breach you, so I will be very gentle and slow. But I want you so badly, Callie, that I will be very large, perhaps the largest I have ever been.”
She shifted. He noted her squeezing her thighs together tightly. “You know what an orgasm is, my sweet, but I do not think you will feel one this time … unless I give you one first.”
She swallowed. “First? With your mouth? I should like that, I think.”
He smiled. “Yes, and it will help when I pierce you.”
She rested her head upon his shoulder and trailed questing fingertips over his chest. “Men are so different,” she mused. She stroked his flat nipple. “Does that feel good to you?”
He kissed her ear. “Every part of me delights in your touch, but it is not as sensitive as yours.” He reached into her bodice and plucked gently at hers. She gasped and wriggled a bit.
He fought back a groan. “I want to make love to you, Callie. I want to explore every inch of you and I want you to explore me.”
She sighed. “I don’t mind if I do.”
Her touch strayed down to his erection. Ren gasped as cool fingertips trailed a circle of fire about the head of him. He shuddered slightly. She wrapped her hand round him. “I liked sucking on your cock,” she murmured. “I liked it when you orgasmed into my mouth. I liked the taste of you.”
Ren’s head spun. Sweet heaven but she was frank! He fought for a clear thought. “I like the taste of you, as well.”
“I didn’t know of such a thing and I am rather well read for a lady of standing,” she mused. “Did you make it up?”
Ren gasped a laugh. “No, it is a known thing, but most ladies would refuse to do what you did so well.”
She seemed surprised. “Why? Would they refuse the other as well?”
Ren was losing his powers of concentration. “Not … in my experience.”
Before he could catch her, she slid off his lap and knelt between his knees.
Chapter 23
Ren tried to protest. “Callie, I—”
Her hot mouth came down around him. His fingers caught at the arms of the chair as he groaned, so lost in the pleasure he couldn’t think.
Callie sucked him deep into her mouth, then rolled her tongue around him as she withdrew him. She mustn’t forget the pearl next time.
She wanted him to take her, and she while she found his slow, informative approach adorable and a testament to his character, she wanted her husband. She wanted to be his wife. So she sucked him in long, hard torturous movements, until he bucked deep into her mouth, compelled to enter her somehow.
Yes.
She left him, gasping and shuddering in the chair, and sat back, leaning back on her hands on the carpet before the fire, gazing hotly at him through her falling hair, and let her thighs fall open.
“I want you inside me,” she whispered. His blue eyes blazed like afternoon sky but he did not let go his grip on the arms of the chair.
When he still hesitated, she called upon the powers of the magical gown and let one strap drop from her shoulder. The bodice slipped.
He was on her in a single movement, taking her mouth with his, pressing her back down onto the floor, reaching up between her thighs with one hand, pushing her skirts up, spreading her legs with his knees.
She dug her fingers into his hair and fisted them as she kissed him with every ounce of herself offered to him if he would only take it.
It had been always.
It had been never.
His thick cock pressed to her slit; the hard blunt thickness of him gave her pause, but she had driven him too far. He thrust in once, hard, deep.
She squealed in his ear, her fingers tight in his hair. He went still.
“Oh, no. Oh, Callie, I’m sorry. I’ll stop—” He began to withdraw from her.
It hurt. Callie captured him with her legs, wrapping them tight about him, keeping him trapped within her.
“No, darling, please, let me go.”
She kissed him again, wanting to lose herself in his mouth, wanting to distract herself from the pain of being split like a log!
He wrapped careful arms about her and kissed her, hot and sweet and wild, restoking her passion, reminding her of her need.
The agony became a burn and the burn became a sting. She felt herself becoming wet again, felt herself wrapping tightly around him, but now warm and unresisting.
When her body began to relax, when her fingers began to loosen in his hair, he drew away from her a little, his face tight with restraint. “You are not … a patient woman, are you?”
She laughed a small, broken laugh. “No. I am stubborn, which is not quite the same.”
He kissed her again, softly, tantalizingly, nipping at her lips, teasing his tongue into her mouth. She felt it, felt the hot, melting sensation deep inside her, felt the hunger, felt the heat …
He began to thrust slowly and purposefully. She released her thighs, simply riding his hips with her loosely held knees. He moved above her, within her—her dark lover, her husband, the man she alone had seen. His tongue entered her mouth, even as his cock entered her.
When he slowly penetrated the deepest part of her, she felt a twinge. When the thickest part of him stretched her opening, she felt the burn. But in between, oh yes, she felt the sweet flow of what he did to her, the way he stroked her within, the way he opened her, owned her, gave to her …
I love you.
She didn’t say it. Now was not the time. Yet she did love him … loved the taste of him, the feel of him, the sense of him … the mind and heart of him.
He didn’t know it. He thought he had her body. He thought he had her senses. He didn’t want her heart. Not when he’d just begun to find his own again.
Then the tide of him swept her away, rushing away thought, rocking her in warm salty waves of pleasure, just barely tinged with pain. He kissed her on and on, as if he could never get enough of her mouth.
Then she found it, that golden stair of pleasure, the one that spiraled up and up, leading her high …
She needed him to move faster, she wanted him more … now … He felt it, knew it, he gave her faster, carefully calculated thrusts. He left her mouth so she could gasp for air and moan and wail and then she convulsed around him. Ren managed another thrust, then one more.
Then his own lust overcame him and he groaned deep and low. “Callie.” Then he came inside his bride, his wife, his woman. He called her name and he came home.
* * *
She fell asleep on the carpet, her limbs wound around him and her head tucked beneath his chin. Ren held her there, the strands of her hair falling over his chest, the remains of her wicked gown draped over his groin.
She was extraordinary.
And someday she would go.
He’d given her half the necklace last night. She’d returned one pearl, to make him remove his hood.
When he’d tried to retract the bargain, she’d deflected him with a jest.
He wanted to keep her.
She wanted to go home. It was quite obvious. Hardly an hour passed that she did not mention her family, with a longing in her voice that she didn’t even seem to realize.
There was no one on earth he missed the way she missed them. Although he feared there soon would be.
She stirred against him, slipping her hand around his back. Then she opened her eyes and regarded him drowsily. “You cannot be comfortable on the floor.”
He wasn’t, but he would not have moved her for the world while she slept draped over him.
“I noticed earlier that there is a perfectly good bed on the other side of the room.”
“Hmm.” He stole a kiss. Then another. Kissing Callie … how could h
e ever give that up?
She tugged at a bit of shimmering silk that lay beneath him. “This is all your fault,” she pointed out grumpily.
He smiled. “Is that so?”
She fought the traitorous skirts for another moment, then lay back in defeat. “Yes. You decided to be all chivalrous and reasonable.”
“And you decided to take matters into your own … hands.”
She regarded him archly even as she wrapped her fingers about his cock. “Reason has no place in the bedchamber, sir.”
The blood left his brain, no longer allowing him the powers of speech. In reply, he reached for the bodice of her gown of sin and tore it in half, exposing her bosom for his delectation.
She gasped, then purred. “You are ever a quick study, sir.”
He did not enter her, for he knew she would only hide the soreness she must be feeling. Instead, they pleasured each other with their hands and mouths. She came, arching her back in his arms while he fingered her gently. He came in her mouth, her willing plaything.
When his heart once again assumed a normal beat, he picked her up from the nest of her torn and ruined gown and carried her naked to the bed. Exhausted, she allowed him to tuck her in, simply sinking bonelessly into his body when he joined her.
“That dress is … what do you call that dress?”
She smiled wearily and came up for one last sleepy kiss. “I believe those in the know call it ‘rags on the floor.’”
* * *
Ren awoke from the deepest, softest sleep he could remember to find Callie seated tailor-fashion on his bed, wearing her old blue gown and playing with perhaps a hundred pearls in her lap.
To Ren, the pearls represented his shameful bargain and the inevitable loss of her. As she ran her fingers sensuously through the pool of shimmering orbs he felt his heart contract painfully.
He reached out and stopped her fingers with his own. “Please. I cannot look at those without thinking of all the wicked things I meant to do to you.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “There’s more?”
God, he’d created a monster. “Callie, no. It isn’t right for me to use you so. I … was lost. I don’t wish to bring that darkness back between us.”
“Are they pleasurable, these wicked things?”
He shook his head. “Callie, it is a dark and twisted pleasure. I cannot use you thus.”
She gazed at him for a long moment. “Say that a man has an ax.”
“What?”
“It’s a opening argument.” She laid a hand upon his covered groin. “Say that a man has an ax.”
A man certainly had wood. Ren blinked. “A man has an ax.”
She nodded. “Now, say that this man uses his ax to break down his neighbor’s door. Would that act be evil or benign?”
Ren blinked. “Evil, certainly.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What if the neighbor’s house was afire and the man wished to save his neighbor’s wife and children?”
Ren frowned. “Then the act would be benign. But—”
“It is the very same act. So the difference is one of intent.” She tilted her head. “If you were to use your ax, er, acts to give me pleasure, would that not be a benign intent?”
He regarded her sourly. “You do this quite often, don’t you?”
She blinked innocently at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Hm.” He threw back the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I can just see it. All the many Worthingtons gathered about the supper table, practicing the art of Socratic debate. I’m right, aren’t I?”
She sat up primly. “I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it will compromise my vow to never mention a certain biological grouping whilst in this bed with you.”
He tilted his head and contemplated his fiendish bride. “I thought as much.” He saw a future of never winning a single argument. That is, if he were very, very lucky. He stood.
“Wait!”
He turned back to her. She gathered up a skirt full of pearls and knee-walked across the mattress to him. “I have something to tell you.”
She was leaving him. She had enough pearls and she meant to be on her way.
She took his hand and tugged him to sit back on the bed. Sitting back on her heels, she gazed at him seriously. “I thought about seducing you first, but it felt a little dishonest—”
He drew away from her. “A little dishonest?”
She waddled closer, putting her hand on his chest pleadingly. “Ren, please—I know you’ll be angry, but that’s all right, I deserve a scolding, I know it—”
Ren blinked. Scolding? “Callie, just say it. You’re leav—”
“I’m throwing a ball,” she blurted, her face squelched up tight. Then she opened one eye. “Leaving? I’m not leaving.”
The relief that swept Ren didn’t bear measuring, because then he would have to face the fact that he was deeply and irrevocably in the power of his saucy, unpredictable Worthington lass. “Wait … a ball?” He leaned away from her, frowning. “At Amberdell Manor?”
She nodded ruefully. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I was simply trying to make friends in the village and I sort of … went a bit mad.”
The hostility she faced in the village was largely his doing. Ren nodded slowly. “I can see the idea has merit. Perhaps in a few months—”
“Tonight.”
Perhaps when he agreed to wed a girl he’d found wandering his house in her underthings, he ought to have considered the fact that she may have some trouble containing her impulses.
“No.”
“But … the invitations went out days ago.”
“No.”
“But … Mr. Button has worked so hard on my gown.”
“No.”
“But … I’ve already hired staff for the night.”
Ren took a deep breath. “No.”
“But … they’re already here. The house is prepared. The musicians are unloading their instruments. Our guests will arrive in a few hours.”
Ren stood, casting a glance about his room. His clock was gone from the mantel—and draperies were drawn tight—
In two strides he was at the window, gazing at the early spring sunset in dismay. He turned to glare at his lovely bride. “You are Satan in blue muslin.”
She nodded sympathetically. “I know. I’m sorry about that.” She brightened. “But I’ve obtained the most wonderful suit for you tonight!”
Furious, Ren flicked the drapery aside once more to contemplate the wagons unloading before his house. “Callie, it is rather conveniently too late to cancel your ball. That does not mean I shall have anything to do with it.” Riding away in his hood seemed like an excellent idea. He could perhaps find a place to stay the night in one of the other villages.
He was still naked, so he strode to his wardrobe.
Then he closed his eyes on the empty hooks and shelves. “You’ve taken my clothing.”
“Not all of it. There is still the marvelous suit.”
Letting his forehead drop to the cool wood of the wardrobe door, he set his jaw. “No. I will stay in this room if I must, but I will not—”
“One pearl, one command. No negotiation.”
He went still. “What?”
“I have so many. It only seems fair that I should use some of them, since I am asking you to do something for me…”
He could earn his pearls back if he dressed for the ball, if he attended, if he paraded himself before the village, undoubtedly peacocked out in some mad creation of the evil genius Button.
Every pearl earned back meant one more night with Callie.
Priceless.
There was more. This ball would be filled with Amberdell people. People who, if brought round to the right frame of mind, could be made to forgive the madness with the ginger, could help him look out for Callie, could keep sharp suspicious country eyes out for strange giants, could be powerful and numerous a
llies against his enemies …
The last thing, the thing he pushed to the back of his mind, the dangerously seductive thing, was that he wanted so very much to make his sweet, mad Callie happy.
He let out a long breath. “A pearl for dressing in costume.”
“Of course.”
“A pearl for attending your ball.”
“Agreed.”
“I shall not dance.”
“Two pearls for dancing.”
“I thought you said no negotiation.”
“I,” she said airily, “am more flexible than some.”
He hid a smile. “A pearl for each waltz.” He could bear those minutes of display if it brought more nights in her warm and willing arms.
“Well, one might say that a gentleman should earn the lady’s favors—”
“Those are my terms, Calliope.”
She gusted a sigh. “Oh, very well. I accept your terms.”
He turned to face her at last. “And I shall wish a kiss to seal our bargain.”
She scrambled off the bed, clutching a wad of pearl-toting skirt, and ran into his open arms. The kiss she gave him dizzied his mind and gave rise to difficulties—especially since a hundred people were about to descend upon the manor.
At last she pushed him away and pressed a palm to her face. “My goodness … I think I’ve forgotten my own name!” She shook off the haze of lust and smiled at him brightly. “We should start getting ready.”
She ran to the bedchamber door. “I’ve attached a valet for you for the evening!”
Ren, who was still quite naked and now somewhat aroused, gazed about in panic. “What? Now?”
Chapter 24
There were times in a man’s life when he must make a choice. Ren’s choice in that moment was between hiding in his empty wardrobe or greeting a stranger in his altogether.
The bloody wardrobe was too bloody small.
Ren turned the scarred side of his face away as Callie opened his door. Into his bedchamber walked a dapper little man carrying a very large box. He smiled happily at Ren. “Oh, wonderful!”
When She Said I Do Page 22