The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “But they have not earned a place at my side and this is not your ship. If I’d lost my family in that fire, when some madman broke through your defences, what would I have done then? What would I have had left then? I won’t leave them again.”

  He wanted to tell her she’d have him but his words would have been hollow. He belonged to his ship and the sea. He’d told her as much the night before their wedding that he would leave her eventually. He may be a husband in a few words and one act to seal the deal, but he could never be the kind of husband to offer his love and his fidelity and his life. But then she already knew that. Was this her way of distancing herself before they became too attached to one another?

  Suddenly his desire to return to her, to have her fall into his arms and welcome him with her kisses seemed so ridiculous. He’d been about to fall for the oldest trick in the book. He’d been beginning to fall for her. Darius knew better than to do that.

  He bowed low and when he straightened, wariness had overtaken the fury in her gaze. “You’re right, of course,” he said, pushing the hurt way down, back into the previously impenetrable chest he’d built for it fifteen years before. How could he have ever thought to earn her trust or her respect anyway? A silly naïve dream that would land him right in trouble. “Your place is here with the children. Mine is below you, as it will always be.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply; her intake of breath was enough to know he’d hit something. A target? A soft spot? Her conscience? But that wasn’t his aim exactly. He didn’t need to remind her he was nothing, or that she didn’t really need anything from him other than his reputation. She quite clearly already had that information well in hand.

  The point that he couldn’t be their sole protector, that he wasn’t good enough for the task of keeping them all safe and happy, had been made clear more than enough times.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Distractions were deadly, Eliza kept telling herself the next day while she searched the attics for more gowns to remake for Grace and Gabriella, and now Sarah would also need clothing for the long journey ahead of them. She had been made absent-minded by Darius’s presence in their lives the day the windows had been shot to pieces around them. She had been oblivious when their father’s body had been rising from the dead through the melting snow because thoughts of Darius consumed her. She had been thoroughly preoccupied when thieves had forced their way into the house and nearly burned it to the ground.

  She had to stop letting Darius distract her both physically and mentally.

  When he wasn’t drawing her constant attention with his infuriatingly impersonal touches and how close he sat at every available opportunity with disinterest all over his face, then she was thinking about how wounded he’d appeared when she’d slapped him with her words the night before. He’d tried to hide how much it hurt but she had glimpsed it in the golden flecks of his eyes.

  Her stomach dipped and she wrapped her fingers around the edge of a travel trunk tight enough to feel the bite of the leather and buckles. Theirs wasn’t a real marriage and they had to accept it. Both of them.

  Friendship and a roof over her head, he’d offered. He’d said nothing of passion or love or intimacy. She sure as hell wasn’t going to let him warm her bed whenever he made port like a fisherman’s wife. The only ending down the path of growing to care for her husband was heartache. She might need his protection and his name but she did not need a man to do for her. The gentlemen appearing in her life had so far only let her down.

  Except for Darius, her subconscious screamed. She pushed the lid of the trunk open and cursed the voice in her head. True that he’d kept them safe in the fact that they all were still breathing and walking around but at any second even that reality could come to a crashing end. They’d had one magical night together and then he’d left. He had his reasons but she found she didn’t care for them. If he hadn’t left, then her common sense would have led her down a hole she would never have returned from in one piece.

  It was probably for the best that he’d gone back to showing little more care for her than he had to, precisely as he had in the days after their wedding but before they’d shared a bed. Before he’d given her a taste of what passion really meant. Life had been perfect in the moments when he’d showed her the stars, when they’d joined together, soul to soul. But she knew better than anyone that that kind of perfection couldn’t last.

  Bother it, she didn’t even know why she kept thinking that way when he’d made it so plain he wanted nothing more than her dowry and to save them all and become a hero.

  Placing her head down against the back of her hands on the trunk, Eliza willed her brain to slow down, willed the thoughts to stop crashing into one another. Willed the pictures to cease replaying. If she closed her eyes and saw Darius naked one more time, she would likely scream.

  “Eliza? Eliza, are you all right?”

  A crash came from behind her followed by thumping boot steps kicking up a cloud of fine dust to itch her nose.

  She barely had time to respond when Darius’s hands closed about her shoulders, and she was hauled to her feet.

  “What are you doing up here?” she asked as he looked her over.

  “You were taking so long. I thought you had fainted again. Don’t scare me like that.”

  His admonishment would have rankled but Eliza found herself smiling. “Pirates are supposed to be fearless, are they not?”

  He removed his hands and stepped back. “Pirates perhaps but mere men have the ability to admit when something causes their hearts to stop beating.”

  He revealed so much more than he should have by those words, but his attention was no longer on her face for it had dropped lower. His eyes glazed and he licked his lips, his fingers flexing at his sides.

  “What are you…? Oh!” Eliza realised at that exact moment that she wore only her linen shift and one petticoat. She had shed her gown so it wouldn’t be covered in dust and perspiration after hours spent digging around in the warm space at the top of the great house. “You could avert your eyes.”

  Slowly he shook his head and stepped closer. “I’m not sure I could.”

  The first fabric item to touch her fingertips was smooth and silky and as she raised it to cover herself, she realised her next trunk to rifle must have been a wedding trousseau. She held against her transparent shift, an equally transparent concoction of silk and lace made probably for a wedding night. Either that or Darius’s ancestors had appropriated the belongings of an exotic courtesan.

  “Oh!” she huffed and reached for another, perhaps more thickly woven item, but Darius stopped her with a gentle fingertip to her wrist. It wasn’t much but she paused there as though he were a puppet master and she the toy attached to strings to command her.

  “You needn’t hide yourself from me, Eliza. You are my wife.”

  In every sense. He didn’t need to say it—the intimation was there in the way his fingers travelled up the bare expanse of her arm. A shiver followed his touch and despite all her resolve to keep him at arm’s length, to be friends and nothing else, she swayed a little towards him.

  Why did her mouth not work to tell him to go away? Why did images of his naked chest burn the backs of her eyes? Why did she want more than anything for him to kiss her and touch her?

  “You can’t…” she finally managed to whisper.

  “Can’t what, my dear?” He raised his other hand and slipped it into her hair, pins only loosely applied hours earlier falling to the timber floor with little pinging sounds. His other arm wrapped around her and pulled her tight, his breath hot now on her face, his touch evoking memories that threatened to swamp her.

  She pressed her thighs together against the onslaught of feeling and conjured words meant to reproach, to repel. “You can’t want to…to…here? Now?”

  “Was it so awful you wouldn’t care for a repeat performance?” Between syllables, he pressed kisses to her throat and collarbone as he gently nudged the strap o
f her shift down over her shoulder, exposing the swell of her breasts to his tongue and mouth.

  “Awful?” she repeated on a moan of delight. Where had that come from? Her hands drooped to her sides like useless, crippled limbs until she remembered they were there. She raised her arms to push him away but then he worked her shift so low her nipple appeared only to be taken into his mouth with a swirl of his tongue and a nip of his teeth.

  Instead of another moan, Eliza cried out and her body arched of its own accord until they were pressed flush together, his hardness digging into her right where she yearned for his touch, her hands in his hair not pushing away but pulling, begging for more.

  “Not completely awful then?” He raised his head, a wolfish grin on his slickened lips. His hands moved to the hem of her one petticoat as he swooped in for a kiss to steal her reason once again along with her breath.

  Realisation that she was about to become exactly the fisherman’s wife, tumbled upon a sea trunk in the attics where anyone could come upon them, woke her up like a bucket of water had been tossed over her head, tepid though, not ice. Her hand found his chest even though her body had lost the will to put any force behind the action.

  “Darius, we can’t do this here.” They shouldn’t do it anywhere. Oh, why did her cheeks have to flame so?

  “We can do this anywhere, my love. The children have gone to enjoy the rare sunshine and the men are entertaining them.”

  “But what if something happens and they come to look for you?”

  He hadn’t met her eyes once since he’d started to draw the linen up her legs, past her knees, higher and higher. Once she was fully exposed and he stopped moving, talking, breathing, she worried he’d suffered an apoplexy and would fall to his knees and die.

  “I locked the door,” he said, almost as an afterthought, the distracted mind now completely his.

  When Eliza grew too embarrassed beneath his scrutiny, she attempted to push her petticoat back down so she could put some distance between them. No such luck. Darius reached down and lifted her behind her knees. With a squeak of shock, she grabbed him by the shoulders so as not to fall back against the trunk. She needn’t have bothered since that was where he apparently wanted her anyway. As soon as her derriere landed, one large hand pushed gently on her stomach to lay her back but his gaze never left the juncture between her thighs.

  “Darius?” Her stomach felt as though thousands of birds were trapped inside and tried to soar free from beneath his fingers but she didn’t make to rise again. He seemed lost in a trance, features that had been so serious for so long relaxed and made way for a younger, more carefree Darius to appear. He even smiled the most genuine smile as he dropped her petticoat over her abdomen, her bottom half still uncovered to his eyes, along with one breast where her shift had drooped.

  She should cover herself, she thought vaguely. When he pressed against the insides of her knees to open her even more, she squeezed her eyes shut for shame he would see exactly how she felt. There was only the exhalation of his breath in a whoosh as he finally, finally touched her. For one half-second, mortification threatened to consume her but then pleasure flared and all other sentiment fled.

  What was he doing to her? She was hot and cold and wet and…did he pull on her? Opening one eye just a fraction, Eliza could only see the top of Darius’s head as the pulling sensation flooded her again and again. She rose to her elbows just as he slid one long finger into her sheath and her cry became that of both pleasure and outrage. That was his mouth?

  Even that barely registered as he gripped her beneath one knee and raised her leg, licking, biting, pushing another finger into her until stars swam in her vision and she fell back with a thunk. A rustle of fabric met her ears but she no longer paid attention to the details, there was only the exquisite friction as he slid two fingers in and then out and then repeated it over and over, faster and faster. When she could take no more, about to beg him to stop the torture, his fingers were replaced by something far bigger and far harder.

  *

  The next time Darius loved Eliza, he had meant to remember to slow down and be gentle, to savour her and treat her like a princess. He had come to apologise for his parting shot from the night before and beg her forgiveness, perhaps move some furniture for her, not this. As he reared back, sliding almost all of the way from her wetness and heat, her sheath tight and trying to bring him back with muscles she hadn’t yet learned to control, the trunk beneath her back slid as well. When he once again buried himself to the hilt, the trunk bounced against the wall with a crash. He hadn’t come here to make love to his bride. He certainly hadn’t come to fuck his wife either but that is exactly what he found himself doing. This was no gentle reverence of her supple body. At the first taste of her, a wild beast had taken over his body and he’d had to have her every way he could.

  Possess her in a way no other ever would.

  She writhed beneath him, incoherent sounds forced from her with the power of his thrusts. When he placed his hands next to her ribs to secure the trunk, she grabbed his wrists and repositioned his grip over her breasts. She arched and responded like a temptress sent to take his mind from his body and lure him into insanity.

  All at once he couldn’t get enough of her touch, he wanted her to wrap her arms around him and press those breasts to his chest. He wanted her to open her lovely blue eyes and let him see the power of her climax when it came upon her. Scooping her up into his arms, he lifted her, still joined as one, and walked her around the trunk to a small ledge before a thick stained-glass window, where he sat her and fed on her lips so deeply, he could almost taste her soul. He could get addicted to the sweetness that was Eliza.

  In one swift movement he broke the kiss and removed her shift, throwing it over his head, uncaring of where it landed. His own shirt received the same punishment so that their chests would touch unhindered, the way God intended when he gave women breasts to tempt a man to evil. Eliza shivered when her back touched the glass, forcing her to rebound into him, her hips tilting. He needed no more invitation than that as he pounded into her, her nails scraping the scars down his back, adding a little sharp pain to the all-consuming pleasure. He gripped her hips with a savagery he’d never before experienced as she lifted her knees higher and clamped her inner muscles down around him. Her cries growing more urgent, her breaths came quicker and shallower.

  A climax with the force of a hurricane rocked him and through the haze and glory he only just remembered to pull out and spill his seed against her petticoat instead of in her womb but the action robbed him somehow. He wanted to feel the pull as she fell over the edge and into his arms, her chest heaving with the effort to draw in more oxygen than she could currently get. He wanted to stay inside of her as she relaxed around him and maybe fell asleep. But he couldn’t risk a child. They couldn’t risk a child. Somehow the moment was almost soured and incomplete.

  He played with fire but didn’t regret his actions as she smiled against his bare shoulder, his cock already stirring for another round.

  “Not awful then?” he said with a chuckle as he peered into corners to try to find somewhere soft to lay his suddenly boneless wife. The outline of a sofa beneath a Holland cover caught his eye.

  “Stay here for one moment, love.” She nodded and the cold bit as he left her. As quick as he could, and before she could come to her senses, he folded the cover back and then pulled it off a brightly upholstered sofa covered in ugly stripes. It was clean and looked comfortable. Eliza nestled into him when he picked her up in his arms. This is what he liked the most about playing the part of the knight he kept denying he would ever be. He could never get enough of how she felt in his arms, her weight keeping him anchored to something real and good. It was no bad thing either that her still-bared breasts pressed against him while her arms wrapped loosely around his neck.

  Dare he hope that she was beginning to trust him? Was it satiation that made her yield to his every whim right now? Or would she come
to any moment and abhor him and his caveman behaviour?

  *

  What was it Eliza had been thinking about distractions? She could no longer remember anything but the shameless way Darius had acted with his fingers and his mouth and… Her cheeks weren’t the only part of her aflame and the birds in her stomach took flight again. She wondered if he could hear them since his face rested against her middle. Could he feel the way her heart raced in her chest? She didn’t know how to slow it down.

  “Deep breaths, love, or you’ll faint,” he murmured as though reading her mind, or perhaps just her body.

  Embarrassment should have taken over her completely since a nearly naked man lay half on top of her while she only wore a petticoat and a silly smile. Perhaps this was what it felt like to truly fall? Maybe she should have tried it a long time ago? But with Harold? There was no way he could evoke the wantonness in her that Darius did. When Harold had kissed her that eons-ago day in her father’s home, she had nearly cast up her supper but when Darius did it, it was a different kind of roiling in her stomach that he caused. She wanted to float and fly all at the same time when he touched her like he just had. Although the thing with his mouth was something she hadn’t known about.

  She chuckled softly when she thought of how her father would roll over in his grave to know his eldest daughter didn’t just lie still and wait for it to be over. Or maybe it was Darius’s own wildness that called to her? Perhaps throwing off the shackles of society made one’s inhibitions float away on a metaphorical tide?

  “What makes you laugh?” Darius questioned, one big, warm hand on her hip as he lifted himself to look at her face over her breasts.

  She shook her head to tell him she wasn’t ready to share her mirth but then asked a question. “Do all couples do it like that? Even amongst the ton?”

  Darius grinned. “I highly doubt it.”

  “Does it make me any…” She couldn’t find the right word though it hovered on the edge of her tongue. “Does it make me less?”