by Gayle Wilson
His lips moved slightly, and again she found herself wondering what he was thinking.
“Well enough to finish our discussion?” he asked, and this time his smile tilled the corners of his mouth.
“If you’d like,” she said, knowing that she really wasn’t sure what she could say. She had thought she would have more time to plan for this encounter, but she should have known better. Raven would always come straight to the point.
“I’d like it very much.”
“You want to discuss—” she began, only to be interrupted.
“The provisions outlined in our original contract.”
She couldn’t prevent her own quick, almost resigned smile at that wording.Contract, she thought, shaking her head.
“Forgive me,” he said, accurately reading the cause of her amusement. “I know I speak in the language of the business world. I’m not by nature given to flights of poetry, but I know, Catherine, that what we discussed yesterday…” He paused, and for the first time since she’d known him, he seemed unsure. “I know that there was nothing businesslike about what happened between us yesterday.”
So apparently he, too, had felt some of the emotions generated by their intimacy. Or at least he had been aware of what she was feeling. “No,” she agreed.
“I promised to give you the opportunity to rethink what you suggested. When you weren’t feeling the effects of your fall.”
“The complications of my fall?” she said softly, smiling.
He didn’t answer her smile or even her comment, but what he did say made her breath falter and her heartbeat begin to race.”
“But I hope that you won’t want to reconsider. Even if the idea developed in a moment of weakness.”
“You hope? Are you saying that you want our marriage to become…” She paused, unsure why discussing the ideas she herself had introduced yesterday should be so difficult this morning. There was no shock of injury to hide behind. No drugs. No dim lighting to soften the reality of what she had asked him for.
“A real marriage. That was the term suggested last night.”
His eyes were resting with calm attention on her face.You may ask me anything, he’d promised long ago. And what she wanted to ask him now would certainly strain the boundaries of that.
“And your mistress?” she asked, schooling her features and forcing her eyes to meet his without any trace of discomfiture.
“My…mistress?” Raven repeated hesitantly, as if he’d never heard the word before.
“You told me when you made your proposal that you needed only a hostess. That you already had a mistress.”
He glanced down at his hands, still resting on the wooden foot rail. She watched, as he seemed to be doing, his fingers tighten and then relax against the unyielding wood. Straightening, he removed his hands and clasped them behind his back. When he looked at her again, she would have sworn there was amusement in the blue eyes. But his mouth was set in a line that was even straighter than his normal austere expression.
He’s going to tell me that he loves her too well to give her up. Or that I knew the rules when we began this. That I have no right to ask, Catherine thought. The painful possibilities ran through her mind and a sudden sickness began to coil in the pit of her empty stomach. She wished she hadn’t drunk the tea.
“When I told you that,” he said, “therewas someone.” He paused, but his eyes didn’t falter from hers. “Not perhaps what the wordmistress implies in your world, but someone who…”
The pause was painful for her, but finding her courage, she completed his confession. “Satisfied your physical needs.”
She expected nothing less than his agreement.
“It was not a relationship of long standing. But not, I would hope, as cold-blooded as you suggest.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling a touch of anger at that. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“However that relationship might have been defined,” he said, speaking as calmly as before, “it ended with our marriage. I was raised in a very traditional society, Catherine, and my values are different, perhaps, from those of your world.”
“Ended?” She wondered why he bothered to make that claim. It certainly didn’t fit with what he’d suggested before.
“’Forsaking all others.’ I told you Ialways honor the terms of my contracts.”
“But you told me…” She stopped, trying to remember exactly what hehad said that dark dawn in his office. “You said you’d kissed me because of too prolonged an abstinence.”
“Very prolonged,” he agreed.
“You suggested you’d taken steps to rectify that situation.”
“I had. I had married you. And I was hoping our marriage would, eventually,rectify a great many situations.” His lips were curving again in his slight smile.
“Are you trying to tell me that you intended all along—”
“To make you my wife? In every sense of the word? Of course. I thought you understood that. I simply wanted to give you time to grow accustomed to the idea. And to me. And then yesterday…” Raven paused again, taking a deep breath. This was the hardest part. “Yesterday,” he began again, “you led me to believe that’s also what you wanted. That you were ready to modify our contract. Or did I misunderstand you last night?”
“You don’t have a mistress?” she asked again, to be sure she’d not misunderstood him.
“No,” he acknowledged.
She thought of the hours she’d spent visualizing the kind of woman Raven would want. And she realized suddenly that the kind of woman Raven wanted was, apparently, herself.
“And you want our marriage to become…” She found her voice unaccountably trembling over the simple question.
“Very much,” he said, saving her the trouble of finishing. “I believe the question is if that’s really what you want.”
It seemed that every obstacle to whatshe wanted had miraculously disappeared. All she had to do was say yes—a far simpler decision than the one she’d made six months ago when she’d agreed to become his wife. Then he had offered her freedom. And what he was offering now was, she supposed, a kind of bondage—the creation of physical ties that she knew, even as inexperienced as she was, could never be broken lightly. The most intimate bondage on earth.
“Yes,” she said, and unbelievingly, felt the ready tears of yesterday well again in her eyes. “Oh, damnation,” she said in disgust, “I can’t do anything but cry.” She found the corner of the sheet and used it to wipe away the moisture. She found herself hoping that he’d take her in his arms. When she looked up, Raven was watching her with the same tenderness that had transformed his harsh features when he’d carried her from the park.
“Don’t tempt me, Catherine,” he warned softly. His hands were once again curved around the footboard, his fingertips white with the pressure he was exerting.
“Tempt you to what?” she asked, sniffing.
“To give you something to do besides weep,” he said, and as she had when he’d entered her room, she felt the sheer physical response to what was in his dark face sweep through her body, causing a very peculiar sensation in the depths of her belly. Or, she realized, not exactly in her belly. Lower. Fluttering inside. Moving. Aching. As if he were touching her there with those graceful, skillful fingers that had impersonally examined her body yesterday. She remembered the callused strength of them moving over her skin, and she shivered slightly.
“Exactly,” he said, watching her. “You have the most beautiful eyes,” he added unexpectedly. “Like the beech leaves we rode under yesterday. Russet and touched with mist.”
“Thank you,” she said, sniffing again. She watched his smile begin. She could imagine how ridiculous she looked. Eyes red from weeping, a scrape over her temple, a bruised shoulder, wearing yesterday’s chemise, which she’d slept in. And she couldn’t begin to imagine what her hair was like. No wonder he was amused. She pressed her lips together tightly, trying to gather her dignity, an
d then she was forced to sniff again or be further humiliated by having her nose run.
“Will you promise to miss me while I’m gone?” Raven asked, and the worry she’d had about her appearance flew from her mind.
“Gone?” she repeated blankly.
“I have a meeting. Here, exactly a week from tomorrow. With the men who have committed to become partners in the railway. And I have to completemy part of our contract. I’ve already invested substantially in the land across which the rails will be laid, but I have to hire the men who will forge and lay them. And the engineers who build locomotives. And none of that, I regret to say, can be done from London.”
“You’re leaving,” she said, finally understanding that he really intended to walk out after what they’d just decided.
“And by the time I return, you should be over most of the…complications of your fall. Not, I hope, all of them,” he said, smiling at her. “I think it would be wise to postpone the… renegotiation of our contract until then. Since I have to meet my responsibilities to the men I’ve convinced to risk joining me in the rail venture, it seems the best solution to go ahead with my journey immediately. However difficult that may be.”
“Why difficult?” He had said she might ask him anything.
“Because I’m finding it very hard to keep my hands off you.”
“And you think that’s necessary?”
“I think that would be best for you.”
“Because you still think I’m a child,” she said, hurt by his unexpected decision to leave just when everything between them had seemed to be moving in a very promising direction.
“If I’d thought you were a child, I’d never have married you.”
“But you did marry me. And you seem to be suggesting… I don’t know what you’re suggesting, except that you’re leaving.”
“I’m suggesting that when I make you my wife, I don’t want to worry about a bruised shoulder and a cut knee. Or a headache.” For some reason, his lips quirked gently at the last item. “I’d like to be able to concentrate on making the consummation of our marriage as pleasurable as possible for you.”
“And you’re afraid it won’t be…pleasurable?” she asked, wondering why he thought she wouldn’t like having him make love to her. She knew enough to have some idea of what was involved. It had never sounded pleasant to her before, that was true, but the thought of Raven touching her with those hands she’d always admired, hands that she knew to be as graceful as she’d imagined them to be, made the prospect appealing. Extremely exciting.
“Forgive me, Catherine, and believe me, it has nothing to do with your age—with the difference in our ages—but you are…”
“Inexperienced?” she supplied, at his hesitation.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she offered, the words falling on top of his.
“Delightfully inexperienced.”
“Delightfully?” she repeated. “Then you don’t mind.”
“I’d want to kill any man who touched you before you belonged to me. The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life was managenot to kill Amberton. I think he was aware of the struggle I was waging. That’s probably why he stabbed me. He read murder in my eyes.”
“Because he had… touched me?”
Raven hesitated a moment before he answered. There had, of course, been far more involved in his attack on Amberton, but Catherine didn’t need to know what the viscount had suggested. Finally he said simply, “And because I hadn’t.”
“But you’d wanted to?”
“Since I’d met you. Since I saw you defending that donkey.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
He smiled in self-mockery. “Because I was afraid you’d run like the hounds of hell were after you. I knew I was nothing like the men you admired.”
She tried to remember the men she’d admired before she’d met Raven. No one was memorable enough among her previous suitors to offer the smallest challenge to his dominance of her senses now.
“I thought my only hope was to negotiate a contract you couldn’t refuse, to give you what you seemed to desire most, to agree to whatever terms I thought you’d accept, and then gradually try to make you think about me in a different way.”
“And how long were you prepared to wait for that to happen?” she asked, fascinated by his revelations. They were far more courageous, she supposed, than hers had been yesterday.
“As long as it took. The only problem was that I’d promised not to interfere in your flirtations. And I couldn’t even bear to watch you waltz with someone else. I didn’t want anyone else’s arms around you but mine.”
“Is that why you played cards at Aunt Agatha’s?”
“Neither set of my ancestors was noted for tolerance where their women and other men were involved. Nor am I. I played cards as an alternative to playing the jealous husband.”
“May I congratulate you on your skill,” she said, smiling.
“At cards?”
“At deception.”
“You never suspected?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Quite the reverse.”
“You thought I was enamored of my mistress,” he teased.
“And that you enjoyed discussing business more than conducting even a business relationship with your wife.”
“And now you know that you were wrong. On both counts.”
“I know what you’ve told me.”
“Are you doubting my word, Catherine?”
“Which words? The words about undertaking a journey on the day that…” She paused uncertainly.
“We’ve finally admitted our feelings.”
“Must you go, Raven?” she asked, fighting the urge to cry.
“I should have left yesterday. It’s what I intended.”
“Until I was thrown.”
“And, of course, I couldn’t leave until I knew you were all right. And you are all right, Catherine. Bruised and battered, but beautifully all right. I need to leave today if I’m to complete the arrangements that must be presented as a fait accompli to the investors. Since you need time to recuperate, it seemed best to get this journey out of the way while you do so.”
“And I’m supposed to be the understanding wife and smilingly bid you goodbye.”
“I had hoped that you would.” His eyes were on her face, his small smile still touching that firm mouth.
“Goodbye, Raven. I hope you have a very pleasant journey,” she said, raising her chin slightly. And then she smiled at him, slowly and deliberately, a small upward tilt of her lips that she knew to be very becoming and very provocative. She’d practiced it often enough before her glass.
“That’s a good child,” he said, teasing her.
“I’m not—” she began.
“A child,” he acknowledged. “And I think I might have time to verify the truth of that before I go.”
“I thought you were going to wait until your return to…” She paused, and her eyes fell to where her fingers were twisting the ribbon that fastened the low neck of her chemise.
“A week seems, suddenly, a very long time.”
“I believe you told me husbands are allowed one kiss.”
“A rule that hardly seems to apply in our situation.”
She glanced up to find that he was no longer at the foot of the bed, but was standing beside her.
“Our situation?” she questioned. His eyes, looking down into hers, were again starred like the sapphire he’d given her.
“Lovers,” he reminded her softly, “are allowed as many as they can steal. Don’t you remember anything I’ve taught you, Catherine? Shall I be forced to begin all over again?”
She was once more mesmerized by him, by the powerful body, his voice, the piercing crystal eyes. And his beautiful hands.
Her fingers had played with the narrow satin ribbon until the bow had loosened. Now her hand stilled under the spell he was weaving. He placed his palm over her fin
gers. With his forefinger he stroked the hollow at the base of her throat. She swallowed suddenly, feeling the soft pressure of his touch against that movement. The long dark finger began to slide slowly down her chest and into the rift between her breasts. He carried her hand down with him, out of his way, so the opening at the top of her chemise, which the ribbon had once secured, was now unobstructed. With his thumb he pushed the material away from the swell of her breast. His eyes never left hers, compelling her to allow this. And she had no strength, in the face of his, with which to deny him. She lay against the propped pillows, acquiescent and more than willing for him to touch her.
He eased down to sit beside her on the bed, his thumb continuing the slow rhythm it had begun, smoothing over the soft, milk white skin of her breast. She knew he could feel her heartbeat, running too rapidly, like a frightened hart, just under the heel of his hand. And her breathing, uneven, coming in shuddering inhalations. And he was barely touching her.
His fingers slipped under her breast and lifted gently. Her eyes closed with the impact of the sensations moving through her. He held the heavy globe a moment, his thumb never stopping its now-familiar stroke, from the darker valley up onto the curving ivory swell and back. His fingers began to spread out under the weight of her breast, to glide upward until the callused edge of his forefinger was under her nipple. And then over it, sliding across with a sensuous abrasion that sent sensations shuddering through her stomach and between her legs, which moved involuntarily, loosening, waiting for what, she didn’t know. Wanting.
And then he allowed his fingers to catch her nipple between them. She gasped softly, her eyes flying open to find his. Reassuring. Steadying. Telling her without words that this was what she had waited for so long. So long when she hadn’t known what she’d wanted. Only Raven.
She waited still, and when his fingers moved again, pressing the small, sensitive nub between their strength, her eyes closed and her hips writhed uncontrollably. Pushing into the bed, seeking. Still innocent of what they sought.
His hand shifted, the hard palm again cupping under her breast and lifting it. His fingers pushed the soft cotton of her chemise away, the air suddenly shocking against the dark warmth his hand had given her skin. She felt his breath—hot and moist, tantalizing—a second before she realized what he intended. His lips touched where his fingers had been, enclosing the peak that had grown taut and aching under their relentless demand. That demand was now replaced by the caress of his mouth, soft and sweet. Wet and hot. Moving over her nipple. Pulling. A dark embrace. Lifting her skin into his mouth. Suckling gently.