He conveniently sat down to hide his discomfort, assisting her as best he could by setting out the plates within his reach. “Would you like some wine, Grace?”
“Oh!” A flash of mischief sparkled in her eyes. “Sterling never allowed me wine.” She pressed nervous fingers to her heart and Michael had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at the fetching picture she made. “I would love to try it!”
My God! I’m…corrupting her….already….and I swear I don’t feel even the vaguest twinge of remorse. I’m a horrible person.
“Then you should have a glass,” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel as he stood to go over to the side table where he had all his spirits. He chose a very small glass meant for sherry or port and delivered a sample of French Bordeaux to his bride. “It’s not very sweet but the flavor is…very nice if you sip it slowly.”
She sniffed it first, unsure of the contents, but merrily took a small taste.
Michael watched in fascination as his wife truly contemplated the liquid in her mouth, her expression mercurial with her internal assessments. At last, she smiled at him like a child at Christmas. “It was—vibrant!”
“Vibrant is good,” he said.
The sun was setting and the spring night was cool with the apartment’s windows slightly open for fresh air, and they both began to relax in each other’s company. Before long, they were laughing and talking about nothing of Sterling or the shadows across the origins of their union. They ate until they were too full to even eye the scraps and Michael set the tray outside on the dining room table in the sitting room for Tally to collect later.
When he returned, she was sitting on the sofa with both of her feet tucked underneath her, like a Persian cat curled up atop the cushions of his sofa.
“What?” she asked self-consciously. “You are staring, Michael.”
“Tell me a story, Grace.”
“Really?” she asked.
He sat on the thick rug on the floor, resting an elbow on the cushions, to sit at her feet. “I can think of nothing I would like more.”
“The power of a good story,” she sighed remembering Mrs. Clay’s tale and smiling. “I am Scheherazade.”
“I wasn’t going to kill you in the morning if you don’t please me, Grace.”
“Yes, but it does make it sound more thrilling.”
“Then enchant me, wife. Enchant me and instead of saving a life, make mine worthwhile. I like that.”
“Very well,” she agreed, unconsciously relaxing her shoulders and taking on the timeless posture of a storyteller sitting by tribal fires. “Long ago, long before a time when life was measured by the heartless movement of clocks and the rush of machines and modern inventions, there was a young man who lived in a village on the edge of a vast wilderness…”
Michael leaned his head against a hand, giving in to the enchantment of Grace as she spun her tale. The story was wonderful but the glory of the woman telling it stole his breath away. Her hands gestured elegantly to emphasize the dramatic points as her words painted exotic landscapes transporting him to the world that existed only inside her mind.
Her voice rose and fell and characters wild and vivid took the stage as her eyes focused on a point far in the distance that only she could see. The room dimmed as time passed and Michael lit candles in the room and even started a fire without interrupting her, then took his seat to smile at the charming realization that when Grace was caught up in a story, he could probably set off a gun without notice.
“Down came the icy shards from the cave’s ceiling, a crystal avalanche of death and—“ Grace stopped suddenly, covering her face with the long blades of her fingers. “When did it get so late?”
“Is it?” he asked innocently, as if the changes to the room were not of his making. He shifted off the floor to sit next to her on the sofa. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“I can’t believe this! I can’t believe I’m rattling on about ice monsters and fire wizards and that my husband is allowing it!”
“Not allowing,” he corrected. “Enjoying!”
He leaned forward to kiss her impulsively and the playfulness of the evening fell away. She tasted of wine and cherries, the hot silk of her lips and tongue intoxicating and Michael pulled her into his arms to drink in her kisses until his head was swimming with a desire that made the room spin.
There was no hesitation in her response and this time there was nothing to stop them. Not even his previous naïve illusion that he was not going to bed his wife.
Grace pushed against him and he instantly lifted his head to look into her eyes.
“H-how does this work?” she asked.
“How does it work in your stories?”
She blushed. “Michael, I don’t think it’s the same.”
“Why not? I love your stories, Grace. Tell me. If we were in a story of your making, how would you want the tale of your wedding night to unfold?”
Grace’s mouth fell open slightly as she absorbed the implications. My story—he means to let me have all the power. All his words praising her independence and her clever mind were more than words but coalesced in a gift that she’d never anticipated. Mine. Mine to squander or mine to employ and discover what happiness might yet be possible.
There had been so much about Michael that she had admired and so many of his qualities that she loved. But now, her breath caught and she swallowed as hard as she could because something inside of her broke free with a ragged cry of silent relief.
She did not love his qualities.
She loved him.
She loved this man—this man who listened to her stories and smiled at her odd speeches, defended her against Sterling and rescued her from a hollow life of lies; this man who was so generous and caring it defied belief. She had married a man she loved and the miracle of it set off a fire inside of her that left her speechless from its raw power and irresistible force.
“I…” Grace started unsteadily, and then decided to seize the moment. Happiness was something she’d been denied for a lifetime and she refused to allow fear to cheat her out of a moment of it. “I would start by telling my husband a story.”
“Yes?”
“And then I would hope that he would see that I…am fearless.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be a shy and retiring thing, fragile and ignored, like a porcelain figurine that he will admire but never touch.”
He nodded, enrapt and she smiled, her frame infused with boldness as warm tendrils snaked out across her skin and awaking her senses.
“We would conspire together to create a little island of our own. A place where there would be no shame in finding pleasure or in…”
“Yes?” he asked, his voice low and level, his grey blue eyes alight with approval.
“In embracing as naked as natives?” she offered then covered her mouth with shocked fingers.
“I like this story, Grace.” He smiled and then kissed her again to help her dismiss her nerves.
Michael reached up to pull the sprig of lavender and Queen Anne’s lace from her hair, gently pulling out hair pins to free her hair at last, his hands fisting in the curls that fell down her back. Grace moaned, the simple act of loosing her braids transforming her into a pirate queen or a fiery sorceress or the wicked temptress seducing sailors in a storm. She was Grace no more.
She was his.
The ivory buttons of his shirt gave way beneath her fingers and she delighted at every discovery. Her burly husband wore a delicate silver chain and key underneath his clothes but before her imagination could catch at it, the impact of his bare skin beneath her fingertips diverted her mind. He had a few dark curls at the center of his chest but was very smooth, his flesh fever hot to her touch. His nipples were dark, almost brown, and every inch of him made her mouth water to taste and try.
Grace dropped her hands though when she spotted the last remnants of a pale purple and green bruise the size of a pie plate on his side. “The carriage…” s
he whispered.
“It’s nothing,” he bent over to kiss her behind her ear and Grace yielded to passion. Their clothes began to fall away and they were both smiling at the mutual puzzle of ties, hooks and buttons that thwarted their race to achieve access to the other.
Grace pushed his shirt from his shoulders and reached around to embrace him but was startled to feel the smoothness of his skin transform into a mottled and rough texture. Grace stepped back slightly, curiosity burning through the fog of her desires. “What is that?”
“Scars,” he said simply, his attention to the tiny buttons running down the front of her dress unwavering. His fingertips brushed against the rise of her breasts through the thin silk of her chemise and Grace shivered with pleasure.
“How mysterious!” she sighed and leaned against him, arching her back to invite more of his touch.
“You can look at them later but at this moment, I’m wondering why women’s clothes have so many buttons.”
She laughed and kissed his throat, her tongue flicking out to tease his Adam’s apple. “To torment our would-be seducers?”
He grunted. “It’s working.”
Grace’s hands dropped to help him and within seconds divested herself of all of it, shamelessly allowing layers of petticoats and clothes to fall onto the floor around her feet. She untied the silk ribbons of her chemise and added it to the pile and then stepped free. Candles flickered as the cool spring air caressed her bare skin but Grace was warmed by the look in Michael’s eyes.
She took a step forward and Michael simply stood in stunned silence, forgetting that the sofa was directly behind him. He was bare-chested but still in his trousers, though Grace knew that this last layer was soon to go. She began to tug at the button at his waist and he gently caught her wrist to stop her.
“I’m…big,” he said cautiously.
She looked up into his face, puzzled at such an obvious proclamation. Even so, he released her hands and she ran her fingers lightly over the ridges of his chest and stomach, testing the firmness of his muscles and marveling at how merely touching the heated wall of a man’s torso could send hundreds of fluttering butterflies loose in her chest. “You look like one of those statues in a museum,” she whispered in awe. “It’s like I have my very own…breathing sculpture to touch!”
Her hand slid down over the final barrier to touch him through the cloth of his trousers, orienting herself to the mysteries of male anatomy. Grace marveled at heat that almost burned her palm and something deep inside of her began to spasm at the promise of it; at the firm mass and power that moved underneath her touch.
His breath whistled through his teeth and she looked up to watch his face. “Am I…hurting you?”
“Not even close.”
Grace smiled and returned her attention to the discovery at hand to free him, gasping at the reality of his flesh in her hands. Heavy against her touch, this part of him was velvet soft and paradoxically as hard as stone and nothing she’d imagined. Her cheeks flamed with heated embarrassment as her next thought was to comment that he was missing a bit of foliage and that she liked him much better than the odd little marble configurations she’s only caught fleeting glimpses of in books. Her palms itched to touch all of him but she wasn’t sure if he would appreciate such a brazen twist in the plot.
“Not made of stone,” he said softly, gritting his teeth as he fought for control. “Careful, Grace. I’m—all too human and very much at your mercy.”
With a smile she pushed him with a single fingertip against the center of his chest until the back of his legs bumped up against the sofa. In my story, apparently the bed is too far away…
He lost his balance willingly and seized her waist to pull her down with him to kiss her so thoroughly that she swore that the world fell away. Grace landed astride one of his thighs and the gentle pace of his kisses gave way to a possessive claim that made her moan into his mouth with a voracious madness of her own. Her arms encircled his neck and her breasts were pressed flat to his chest, their heartbeats matched in a mounting amorous duel.
Her sex was pressed against his naked thigh, the firm hard ridge of his leg the first touch of another to her most private and tender flesh. Grace bucked against the erotic sensation of friction and heat, squeezing her legs together to try to contain or capture the bewitching arcs of electricity that shot from between her hips and upward into her frame until she was sure that she would either shatter into a thousand pieces or end her existence.
Michael sensed the direction of her journey and did all he could to make sure his beloved girl didn’t fall when her climax reached its zenith, closing his eyes to try to corral the lust coursing through his veins. Her sex was ripe satin and so wet on his thigh, he had to fight not to follow her down the path of carnal dreams.
She shuddered and fell against his chest, kissing him again, then pulling away breathlessly. “Oh, my!”
Not. Made. Of. Stone.
Michael gripped her hips and lifted her up easily, positioning her over him, holding her there for a second or two until she looked into his eyes, her own expression slightly dazed and she trembled with the after-effects of her first orgasm. “Grace.”
She nodded, suddenly present and eager. “Yes.”
Yes.
His cock jutted up and he fit himself inside of her, the large head pressing upward toward the glorious heat and saturated welcome of her body. She was so wet, so relaxed and open that he started to shake. This was the moment of truth and he did not want to hurt her.
But he no longer was sure he could stop if he did.
Slowly, ever so slowly, her inner channel stretched and shifted to accommodate him, and Grace threw her head back like an ancient priestess reveling in a voluptuous ritual of sacrifice. Without a single cry, her body accepted his and Michael almost wept in blessed relief. She was very tight but her channel was deep enough to take him inch by inch until he was buried to the hilt. “Mine,” he whispered. “Oh, God, Grace, you are mine.” He kissed her, and stroked the silken curtain of her hair that now shielded from the world. He studied her face to look for any sign of distress or regret but she was shameless and beautiful. The high color in her cheeks accented her exquisite face and she made a similar study of him.
“Am I bedded?”
He nodded slowly. They were locked together but he was anxious not to move, fearful that entry was one matter, and rampant jostling another game entirely. But his wife had other ideas.
“Grace, wait!”
“No. It’s my story. And I wish to be wanton and wild—and never forget how this feels.”
His hands had splayed across the soft rise of her belly, a sensual cage that held her hips in place. But now he freed her, to give her the freedom to move as she wished to accept the thrust of his hips or shy from him.
With her legs around his waist, she began to ride him from a slow cantor to a thundering gallop and Michael’s mind slipped away to a world where there was nothing beyond the primal connection between them, beyond this woman and his need to possess her. The pert crests of her breasts rubbed against his chest with every thrust of his body into hers and he caught them in his hands, teasing the tips to roll them between his thumb and fingers, stroking and fondling the sweet weight of each against his palms.
Grace cried out as pleasure and pain mingled until there was only pleasure. The coil of need inside of her grew and pulled taut and she welcomed it with a shudder of anticipation. She had already tasted release and now with the resplendently firm flesh of her husband’s body pressing up against her core, she could practically see the crest ahead. She was so close, it became less of a race and more of a supple fall into an erotic ocean. She drove herself up and onto him and the zenith broke over her, shuddering and bucking while Michael moaned his own release.
Something hot and wonderfully molten jetted inside of her and the muscles in her thighs tightened in response. This! This was raw and real and…oh, god….how did I think to live? But I never
knew what life was…
It was several minutes before either one of them spoke and then Michael lifted her up, gently disengaging their bodies, only to carry her to the bed and hold her close. “There. Bedded.”
“Pardon me,” Grace climbed over him, deliberately making an effort to get a better view of his back. “I feel like Psyche so if you’re hiding wings, I would like to know now, Michael.”
“Not wings,” he said with a sigh. “Scars.”
Grace gasped as the candlelight in the room revealed not just a few raised lines across his back but dozens upon dozens of scarred stripes and deep wounds so layered she couldn’t fathom their number or the agonies they represented.
“Are you disgusted, Grace?”
She shook her head. “No! They make you seem even more intriguing and very…virile. But are those—whip marks? Were you flogged?!”
He turned over to swiftly pull her back down onto the feather mattress and into his arms. “A story for another day, Mrs. Rutherford, but if it’s any comfort, you did not marry a criminal.”
“Well! There’s a relief!” she said archly then kissed him on the tip of his nose.
He looked down at her as if she were the one wearing wings. “You never cease to amaze me, Grace. And I never meant to…press you for…” Michael sighed. “I was going to win you with a show of restraint, Grace.”
“Oh,” she said then laughed, nestling up against him, her palm pressed against his chest. “No offense, but I think my proposed version of events turned out far better, don’t you?”
Once you lose your heart, it’s hard to get it back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“You found it, didn’t you?” Josiah Hastings asked quietly and the Jaded all looked at Michael in stunned anticipation of his answer. “The diamond in disguise?”
“Yes.” Michael kept his usual place by the window in Rowan’s study. “I did, indeed.”
“When?” Darius asked calmly.
Rowan sighed. “Thank God! Let’s put it somewhere safe until this business is over.“
Desire Wears Diamonds Page 22