by Amy Sandas
“I am afraid I do not have time for a dalliance tonight, Irish. There is much that requires my attention if I am to stay on schedule and have this place ready for winter. You understand.”
Her hand fell to her side. She didn’t bother to force a smile, she could not find the will to put on a pleasant face when she felt so hollow inside. Her throat had closed with clogging emotion, making it impossible to utter another word. Nodding her understanding, she turned away. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to be alone in the quiet sanctuary of her bedroom.
She heard his footsteps continuing down the hall before she even managed to reach her door. Part of her wanted to turn around if only to watch him walk away, but another stronger part knew it would only cause additional hurt and she had had enough of that.
After that night, their interactions were perfectly polite at best, indifferent and perfunctory when he was the most distracted by his work. And Abbigael’s dreams started to become overtaken by encounters with her husband that were anything but perfunctory and polite.
Glancing at the clock now, she saw that it was nearly two in the morning. Tired of making excuses for him and finished with trying to live off the vague experiences of dreams, Abbigael made a quick decision.
She swung her legs to the floor, rose from the bed and stalked from the room. She had bathed just before going to bed and had fallen asleep wearing only her robe. She re-knotted the belt at her waist as she continued down the hall as if it were the ties to a suit of armor and she was marching into battle. Her hair fell in riotous curls about her shoulders and down her back and she pushed wayward tendrils away from her face with an impatient brush of her hand. Reaching Leif’s bedroom door, she took a moment to lengthen her spine and lift her chin. She lifted her fist to knock, then changed her mind and reached for the handle instead.
The door was unlocked and opened easily.
It took only a moment to realize Leif wasn’t there and that his bed had not yet been disturbed. Pulling the door closed again, Abbigael turned and made her way downstairs.
Her determination remained strong as she saw the dim glow of light spreading into the hall from the study. He hadn’t bothered to close the door. She took long strides across the hall. Her robe whipped smartly against her legs and her bare feet made no sound as she crossed the threshold into the room.
And there she stopped.
Leif sat at the large desk, bent intently over his task, unaware that she had come to stand in the middle of the room barely seven paces away. The light of a single lamp illuminated several drawings that were unrolled and spread haphazardly across the desktop. With one finger, he traced the lines of a drawing resting on top of the stack while his other hand grasped a pencil that he applied with steady rhythm to the pages of a notebook.
Abbigael could see the calluses that had formed on his large hands over the last weeks and she wondered how such rough hands would feel grasping her hips and thighs. She watched in fascination as his lips moved silently over the words he wrote. Wicked heat pooled between her legs as she watched those lips and remembered how they had felt sliding wet and warm over her skin and pressing open-mouthed to her breast and elsewhere.
She didn’t think she had made any sound, but then she had become so distracted by the mere sight of him that she might not have noticed if she had done something to draw his attention. When he looked up his gaze fell upon her and his hand stilled in the notebook.
They stared at each other, neither of them speaking or moving.
Slowly, almost as if he were reluctant to do so, Leif allowed his gaze to slide gently down the length of her body.
Abbigael hoped she wasn’t fooling herself when she saw the heat of instant desire blaze to life in his eyes. She was infinitely aware that she wore nothing beneath her robe except the clean scent of soap and arousal. The peaks of her breasts tightened against the thin covering of her robe and her knees began to weaken beneath her, but she stood fast under his perusal. She wanted him to see her thus—nearly naked, exposed, vulnerable and wanting.
After his careful and thorough survey of her appearance down to her bare toes sinking into the thick new carpet that covered the floor, Leif laid his pencil down in the spine of the notebook with deliberate attention. He carefully stacked the papers in front of him and set them to the side and leaned back in his chair, resting his large hands, palm down on the muscled surface of his thighs.
Only then did he finally lift his eyes to meet hers.
“It is late. You should be abed by now.”
His voice was cool and controlled, but the desire she had sensed in him when he first noticed her presence kept his words from chilling her heated blood. He wanted her. She knew it no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
Still, she had to resist the urge to clasp her hands together in nervousness. “I’ve missed you.”
He didn’t respond to her confession and his expression remained passive.
Abbigael waited.
If he thought that by ignoring her she would go away, he had no idea just how stubborn she could be. She came to him with a purpose and she would see it through to one outcome or another. She wanted a real husband and a real marriage and she wasn’t going to walk away from him tonight until she knew whether or not that was still possible.
She held herself so stiffly that by the time he spoke again the muscles along her spine and in her thighs had begun to tremble.
“Come here.”
Two words of command, spoken softly. Yet they managed to unravel the tightly bound apprehension that held her in place. She approached him with feigned confidence, hoping he did not see how nervous she was and how badly she wanted him to accept her. To smile at her. To claim her fully as his wife as he had not done in far too long.
He watched her with an unchanged countenance and calm demeanor as she walked around his desk and came to stand next to him. Then he pushed his chair back, lifted a hand to her hip and drew her between his knees. Frissons of electric sparks shot through her center as the heat of his large hand permeated the material of her robe and spread over the curve of her hip.
She looked down at him, breathless with fear and anticipation of what he might do next, not yet completely certain he wouldn’t send her away. Her attention was captured by the careless waves of his tawny hair. Obeying an impulse, she lifted her hand and sifted her fingers through the cool locks, loving the way the ends curled gently over her fingers.
As if he hadn’t noticed her tender caress, Leif lifted his hand to the edges of her robe where they crossed over her chest. He pinched the material in his fingers and with slow, deliberate movements drew the edges apart until the robe slid past the soft slope of her shoulders.
Her breasts and pink nipples were bared to his view. They felt weighted and swollen in their want of attention. His warm breath teased the sensitive peaks and she closed her eyes in anticipation.
But he left her breasts untouched by lips and fingertips.
His hands fell instead to her hips and in a swift, unexpected motion he lifted her onto the edge of his desk. Her eyes flew open and she reached out to brace herself on his shoulders as her feet left the ground. Her breasts came within a hairsbreadth of his mouth. The tightening of his grip on her hips was the only indication he was not unaffected by the sensual nearness of their bodies.
But then he nudged her farther onto the desktop and released her to open a drawer on each side of the desk. Still without meeting her desirous and questioning gaze, he caught first one of her bare feet and lifted it to rest on top of the open drawer and then he did the same with the other, parting her legs before him.
But it wasn’t enough.
Careful not to touch her skin, he spread the lower edges of her robe, letting the length of the material fall to the outside of her thighs. The garment was kept on now only by the belt secured about her narrow waist and her body was completely splayed before him.
The position was awkward, open and extremely vulnerable.
Abbigael felt shameless and wonderfully depraved. She had never been so thoroughly wrought with sexual tension. She felt every touch of his gaze as if it were his hands. Heat flooded her limbs and made her muscles languid and heavy. Her sex felt swollen and hot. Her entire body tingled with the anticipation of what was to come next.
“Now lean back.”
She thought his voice sounded lower and rougher, but it could have been a distortion caused by the heavy thudding of her pulse in her ears.
She did as he asked, propping her hands behind her on the surface of the desk, lengthening her spine.
“Farther,” he commanded.
This time the raw weight of his voice was unmistakable.
Abbigael obliged and reached back with her hands until her fingers curled around the opposite edge of the desk. Her body felt nearly stretched to its physical limit and she could no longer see him where he sat between her spread knees without curving her neck an uncomfortable degree. Then she didn’t care as she felt the rough glide of his hands along the smooth surface of her thighs.
He ran his callused palms over her sensitive skin in a touch that was insistent and covetous. This was no gentle caress. Each stroke of his hands nudged her knees wider apart. His touch was magic, sending shivers of delicate sensation through her body.
For a second, she wondered if he had used this trick with his other women. The idea made her queasy and she shoved the thought aside, hating the wave of jealousy that welled in her heart. Her breath hitched in her throat and she closed her eyes, blocking out everything but the sensations he created.
The soft brush of his hair whispered against her knee a moment before he pressed his lips to her inner thigh. He slid his arms beneath her thighs to cup her hips solidly in his hands, holding her legs secure while he trailed a delicate path of light flirting kisses from her knee to the melting heat at her core.
Goose bumps rose on her skin. Her stomach fluttered in wild abandon and she curled her fingers around the edge of the desk in a grip that made her knuckles ache.
He did not prolong the anticipation and in the next instant his mouth covered her.
Even expecting it, she could not hold back her gasp of pleasure. The breathy sound hung in the air around them and was quickly joined by more of the same as he offered every bit of his skilled experience for her pleasure. With unrelenting attention, he tormented her sensitive flesh with his tongue. Light flicks, deep plunging strokes. An inescapable rhythm that forced the quivering need to expand throughout every cell in her body.
Her spine arched like a bow. The muscles of her arms and shoulders pulled tight and trembled with the effort to support her body in the storm of her approaching climax. She strained helplessly toward her release, her entire body seeming to dissolve into a shaking mass of sensation. She was at Leif’s mercy. Only going where he led, relying upon his will to take her higher.
The climax, when it hit her, was intense and swift. It crested over her in one crashing wave, leaving her weak and breathless in its wake. Her elbows shook under her weight and her thighs quivered. It took several minutes for her thoughts to reorganize into coherent alignment.
When she opened her eyes, she was shocked by the licentious image she presented with her robe parted to reveal her naked body stretched atop Leif’s desk. Lifting her gaze, she saw Leif leaning back again in his chair, his eyes unfocused as he seemed intent on looking anywhere other than at her face.
A cold chill raced across her skin and she pushed herself upright, sensing deep in her heart that something very wrong had just occurred.
She lowered her gaze, hating the impassive expression on Leif’s handsome countenance, and pulled the edges of her robe over her shoulders. She crossed the thin material over her breasts and brought her feet to the ground, willing her weak legs to hold her weight without faltering. The length of her robe fell softly around her legs and she took a moment to re-tie the belted sash, feeling the need to establish the light but effective barrier between the ravaged vulnerability of her body and her Leif’s distracted presence.
She wrapped her arms protectively around her middle. The pulse of pleasure was still receding from her sex and the evidence of the pleasure he had brought to her made her feel suddenly shamed and alone. Even as she wondered how that could be, she understood that although Leif had given her exactly what he thought she had wanted, he had done it without giving anything of himself.
She knew then the full difference between being made love to and what he had done with all those women who had come before her. The times he had held her and shared with her the magic of true passion unleashed were gone. He had gotten his fortune from her and had efficiently pushed her to the side as if she were a nuisance he must endure in order to accomplish his true goals. He had delegated her to being another one of the many who took the pleasure he offered in return for financial compensation.
Anger began to burn through the sad chill of her realization.
She was not one of those women. She was his wife. His partner and helpmate.
She looked down at the top of his head and noted the impatience that filled his deceptively lounging form. His large hands were stiff and rigid where they lay on his thighs. His breath was stilted and short and he continued to exert a significant effort to avoid looking at her directly.
Abbigael’s throat burned raw around the words she felt forced to utter.
“I will not be treated this way, Leif.”
“You came here looking for sex. I could smell it on you from across the room.” His voice was gruff and unforgiving. “I gave you exactly what you wanted.”
“You are wrong.”
He finally looked at her then.
She saw right away how hard he was trying to shield his thoughts from her. He was well-versed in the practice, but Abbigael had learned to see beyond it. And what she saw in his eyes struck delicately at her heart and gave her pause. He was not so confident and detached as he would like her to believe.
“Go to bed, Abbigael,” he said with curt command as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I have work to do.”
She stood between him and the desk, wavering between the pain of his cold dismissal and her desire to fight back. To force him to acknowledge the emotion she sensed beneath his indifferent demeanor.
There was too much at stake, her entire future happiness, to turn cowardly now at such a vital impasse. She lifted her chin and lowered her hands to her sides, meeting his gaze with defiant openness and transparent vulnerability.
“I love you.”
His eyes hardened and his jaw clenched in reaction to her brave confession and then he glanced away.
“What do you want?” he asked dryly.
Starting to feel the rise of panic at the unrelenting harshness of his responses, Abbigael lifted her hands in a gesture of supplication and stuttered. “Nothing. Everything.”
A rueful smile twisted his lips as he looked up at her.
“The first I can give you. The other, I haven’t got. I was honest with you about that from the start.”
Abbigael stared at him, stiff with shock. He was right. He had warned her many times of what she could expect from him. There was nothing more to say.
The suffocating pain of loss filled her chest. It was a feeling reminiscent of the grief she had felt at her mother’s death.
But not nearly as bad. Or maybe she had just grown stronger than she had realized.
She loved him. Desperately and completely. But she could survive this.
Breaking free from the paralyzing effect of her heartbreak, she made her way back across the room to the door that had been wide open the entire time. Once again she had been so lost in the maelstrom of desire and need for him that all sense of privacy and decorum had flown out the window. He forever had the ability to take her outside of herself. He liberated her and caged her at the same time.
But he held no concern for the care of her heart.
She couldn’t resist t
he need to glance back over her shoulder before leaving the room. He was bent over his desk in the same posture as when she had first interrupted him. His pencil scratched in the notebook. It was as if the moments when she had been spread naked and gasping before him had never existed.
Abbigael returned to her bedroom, but she didn’t sleep any more that night.
She lay in her bed for hours trying to understand.
There was sadness in Leif. He was being pulled down by some internal darkness he guarded too well. She knew it with a certainty that filled her from head to toe. But he would not share his troubles with her. He had made a deliberate decision to separate himself and he rejected her love with the cool detachment of a man with no heart.
Abbigael tossed beneath her oppressive bedcovers and finally threw them off. She stretched out on her side, her gaze focused on the window as hazy grey light began to filter through the night.
Leif may excel at showing the world only what he wanted them to see, but he was not so adept that he could fool Abbigael. She was convinced that beneath the harsh façade he had built up in the last weeks he was still the loveable scoundrel who warmed her heart with his teasing grin and freed her from the restraints of her past.
By the time the morning sun cast a golden glow through the haze of early mist and she gazed out over Leif’s ancestral lands she decided that what she needed was to get away for a while. Her current presence at Dunwood Park held no purpose. Leif had no intention of involving her in his life and being held at the periphery was too hurtful.
She needed to shore up her determination and find a way to get through to him. She was not prepared to give up on the future she had always dreamed of for herself. She was not ready to sit silently on the edge of her husband’s life, waiting patiently for the smallest morsel of attention to be thrown her way. And she certainly wasn’t about to accept the kind of treatment she had received from him tonight. She needed to convince him their marriage had to be more than a business arrangement and she couldn’t do that under the current circumstances. The emotions that crowded her awareness when he was near were too compelling, and at the moment only brought pain.