The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “You shall have all the bullets your heart desires,” he told her before pressing a kiss to her lips and adding, “You can have anything your heart desires.”

  “Anything?”

  His voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Just name it and if it is within my power to give it to you, I will.”

  Could she name it though? Part of her was terrified that he would think her beyond shameless but the other part of her, the part who didn’t have the least bit of a problem with what he’d done with his mouth to her in the attic, that part of her wanted it all. Everything.

  “Don’t be shy, love, tell me what it is you desire.”

  Her gaze snapped up from her twisting hands to find his sparking with humour and hunger and a third emotion, unidentifiable to her. Did he already know what she wanted? He’d pre-empted her so many times already. As he hardened beneath her buttocks, it was as if he knew her better than she knew herself.

  “I didn’t come down here looking for you.” She felt as though she had to say the words out loud, to make the statement so he would know she didn’t need him or yearn for him when he wasn’t at her side. Which of course, she didn’t.

  His answering smile said he saw through all of her lies, but he didn’t call her out on it. “I wish you did,” came his murmur. He slid his hands around her, one on her derriere, the other edging higher up the outside of her thigh as he sought to encircle her in his arms.

  She stilled his movements by placing her hands over his forearms. She liked his arms, his wrists, his hands, and with feminine appreciation, enjoyed the way he shucked dress codes and rolled his sleeves to his elbows. Trailing her fingers up his arms now, over tanned skin and coarse hair, he shivered beneath her and she paused. “Do you not like it?” A momentary bout of hesitation, of despair that he would push her away filled her.

  “I like it too much,” he confessed with a growl as he ground his hardness beneath her.

  His admission fired her senses as his voice rumbled. She drew a deep breath. “I want to touch you the way you touch me.”

  Her blood heated when he raised a brow. “I am yours to do with what you will. Consider me a slave to your every wish.”

  Eliza felt giddy with the control he gave her. “A slave? Slaves aren’t allowed to say no to their master, are they?”

  His mouth opened to refute her words but then he must have decided to play along, that dangerously sinful glint reflecting from the gold in his eyes. “Not unless they are looking for punishment.”

  *

  She drew away, a frown on her mouth and Darius knew she didn’t follow his meaning. “There are all kinds of desires, Eliza. Some like it soft.” He barely touched his lips to her breast through the robe and nightshirt she wore but her entire body shuddered at the slight action.

  She’d started this game; he was more than willing to play along.

  “Some like it hard.” He took her mouth in a punishing kiss, harsh but gentle. At the same time he kneaded her backside, his touch rough as he pulled her hip against his erection again. “There are many, many different degrees of pleasure.”

  “How do you like it?” she asked, her face flushed, her breath shallow.

  “Any way you do.” He spread his arms and sat back against the corner of the oversized armchair. Complete submission he offered. Would she take it? Did she know what it cost him to hand it all over to her? He’d never given another control over anything he did. Not since the night he’d taken a beating that had changed his life forever. In every aspect of his existence, day and night, he’d always retained control, in command and in charge. It’s what had led him on a failed mutiny that almost saw him dead at the bottom of the ocean. Even that mistake hadn’t softened his resolve to never be at another’s mercy. In this though, she could take what she wanted, give what she wanted. He would walk over broken glass if she asked him with those kissable lips and luscious mouth.

  “What if I hurt you or do something you don’t like?”

  Her hesitation told him the control he relinquished was only a very small amount. She was overthinking and questioning everything. He needed her to stop doing it and touch him for God’s sake.

  Darius took his shirt off over his head and let it drop to the floor next to the sofa. “You can’t hurt me.” Not physically anyway. The thought came from somewhere so deep inside. He suspected he no longer recognised the cavernous depths of his own heart.

  Fighting to keep his breath inside rather than hissing it out when she placed her hands against his chest, Darius also fought to remain still. When her fingers trailed over his nipples and down to his belly button, he resisted the urge to tell her to firm her touch. He wanted Eliza to explore him properly, not tentatively like a frightened girl. Where was the impassioned woman from the day before?

  “Is there something wrong?” he asked when she made to withdraw and stand. His stomach dropped. Had he pushed her too far? He didn’t think so but she was suddenly skittish.

  In her eyes there was frustration. It surprised him until she spoke. “I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.”

  “Scared? Of me?” His passion cooled.

  She shook her head so hard, her hair fell over her face as she looked away from him.

  “Of what then?”

  “All these years, Darius, all these years I have been raised a lady. Ladies do not want to take a man’s…a man’s…” She gestured with a huff to where he strained against his breeches.

  “You want to touch my member?” His heart soared and his pulse danced a naughty jig.

  She shook her head again. “I don’t know,” she cried out.

  Her frustration made him want to laugh but he kept it in. “There’s no shame in wanting, Eliza. I won’t ever look at you any differently for the way your body urges you. It’s all perfectly natural.”

  “It isn’t natural at all.”

  Darius swore beneath his breath. “This is all bloody England’s fault! Eliza, women do take their husband’s member into their hands, into their bodies, into their mouths if they want! Ladies maybe not, they’re too stiff in the upper lip to know what’s good for them. They need a bloody good spanking to wake them up. No one knows what we do but us. I won’t tell anyone that my wife wants to put her hands on her husband. I don’t need to. Any married man knows it already.”

  If that was supposed to make her feel better, he wasn’t sure it would but it had to be said. She kept assuming what society wanted of her but he wanted her to do whatever she damn well pleased.

  “Sod this,” he muttered and unlaced the fall on his trousers. When he sprang free, proud and tall, he took his member in his own hand and gave it a pump. “It won’t break,” he told her. “The only way you can hurt me is if you don’t touch it. You’re killing me.”

  Her brows rose as did the colour on her cheeks but the clenching of her fists gave her away. She did want to explore him. When she licked her lips, his cock twitched; it drew her attention there. When she bit down on the plump cupid’s bow he swelled all the more, imagining what she might one day do with those teeth and that tongue and mouth.

  God help him, he was in trouble. With both hands she reached out, shuffled closer, considered her angle. He closed his hands around hers and placed them on him, showed her how he liked it. He groaned. He was going to die, such was the heaven he saw on his lids when he closed his eyes.

  “Am I doing it right?” she asked, testing, taunting, teasing. When she firmed her grip, he saw stars.

  “Perfect, you’re perfect,” he assured her. But he couldn’t take much more. He needed more but not like this. Not this still-hesitant, too unsure touch. He needed to bury himself in her and loose the beast within.

  “You said some wives take their husband into their mouths?”

  His heart stopped beating. When his eyes snapped open, he saw she actually considered giving it a go. Swearing a blue streak, he surged up. Eliza smothered a shriek and then laughed as he laid her back on the rug before the fire. The
minx had been teasing? Without a moment’s warning, he parted her robe and lifted the indecently short nightshirt she wore. Dragging her forward on the old carpet, her hips closer to his, Darius dropped to his elbows and pushed her thighs open to his gaze. He didn’t need to test her readiness, it showed in the glistening moisture on her pale skin. He rose up and in one strong, sure movement, he plunged into her warmth. She cried out her pleasure and Darius’s groan was triumphant.

  “You said you wanted me to touch you,” Eliza commented with tiny panting breaths, her face aglow in the light of the flames.

  “I did say that. I just never said where the touching would take you, dear wife. Now it’s time to take your just desserts. If you attempt to drive me mindless, then expect me to repay the favour in kind.”

  *

  One thought, no, one notion, pounded through Darius’s body along with his blood as he held himself over his wife, as he moved so slowly and torturously, they both groaned. She trusted him. It wasn’t just a need for self-preservation and that of her family that stuck her to his side. The way her eyes sought him out in the room, the way she probably didn’t even realise how she gravitated to his orbit again and again no matter if they were taking breakfast or walking the snowy grounds.

  Both misfits in an unfair world, it was almost as if their souls were destined to find each other that day in the forest. Like Fate had finally done something good for Darius instead of cruel.

  Time stood still as he stopped and stared at her. His wife. His Eliza. Colour rode high on her cheeks and her breath came short and out of control. When she looked up to meet his gaze, a question in her glazed blue eyes, she relaxed and smiled, lifted her thighs just a fraction higher while her hands drifted lower over the skin of his ruined back to stop and squeeze his buttocks. With a grasp he wouldn’t have credited her with two weeks ago, she pulled hard so he was once again buried deep within her.

  “Are you driving me mindless yet?” she asked, shifting beneath him so her inner muscles contracted.

  The stars returned to his vision and he pumped into her until she could no longer draw breath at all, until the mischief in her gaze was replaced by simple pleasure and then longer still after she cried out and her body tightened around him.

  The climax that washed over him as he penetrated deeper and deeper seemed to steal his very being along with the solid wall he’d built around his emotions at the tender age of fourteen. He’d promised to never let anyone in, never let anyone take another piece of his heart that they weren’t willing to replace with a piece of their own. As he poured his seed and his soul into her scalding heat, he fancied that Eliza hadn’t simply taken a small piece of his heart, he’d give it all to her if only she asked for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  This time was different. Not just different for Eliza but she could feel the subtleties in Darius also. They were still joined, his sweat-slicked body pressing her into the Aubusson at her back and as she stroked the hair at his neck, she smiled and then laughed.

  “If you’re not mindless, then that was only earth-shattering for me,” he mumbled against her shoulder.

  She laughed again. “Earth-shattering is a good way to put it.”

  Her body twinged everywhere, her hips stretched, her cheeks and chin tingled from Darius’s whiskers and her hands burned hot from the warmth of his body. She’d never known a happiness or contentment quite like it. “I wish we could stay like this.” Were they the same words she’d spoken the day before? The thought kept coming back again and again to offer her hope.

  It was Darius’s turned to chuckle as he raised himself to his elbows. “We’re lucky we didn’t attract an audience with your squeals.”

  She tensed, forgetting exactly where they were. In the library in a house where the men came and went into any room they pleased. Thank God the children were sleeping three floors above and were unlikely to hear… “I did not squeal. Ladies do not squeal, I’ll thank you to know.”

  “Oh, you squealed. You also squeaked.” He kissed her cheek. “You groaned and moaned.” He kissed her chin. “You loved every second of it, my lady.” He punctuated the last word with a long lick of her neck and an undulation of his pelvis.

  Her insides verily quivered and the weightiness in her middle that had evaporated into pure bliss re-awoke. “Will it always be like this?” she asked before recalling what Darius had said about not needing a wife, only offering his protection and friendship, a roof over her head.

  He didn’t seem to reflect upon his own previously spoken words as he nipped her shoulder with his teeth. “I forgot myself and didn’t withdraw this time. We cannot let that happen again.”

  Confusion caused a frown to replace her contentment. “Withdraw?” Now that she thought about it, usually his male wetness came upon her stomach and then he cleaned her and then he cuddled her. She knew very little about men and women and even less about the finer details of mating.

  “I have been taking care not to plant a baby in your womb. I got carried away this time.” There might have been something else he wanted to add but then he closed his eyes and lay back upon her.

  A baby? Eliza hadn’t been thinking of children. She had enough to deal with, with her brothers and sisters and now Sarah. They’d had this discussion and he’d said he’d not bring another bastard into the world. She’d told him she never wanted children of her own, only to ensure her siblings made it to adulthood, to happiness. They’d practically agreed, no children. Not ever. But for three very long moments, Eliza wondered what she would do after she finished taking care of everyone else’s children. What would she do when she was all alone, Darius gone on long trips around the world’s oceans, laughter and light absent from her life while she occupied the big house with only a handful of others?

  Ever since the scandal with Harold, she’d always imagined growing old alone, perhaps caring for her brother’s children when he had them. She was going to ask for a small room close to the nursery where she would live out her days knowing her sacrifices came to fruition and that everyone was settled. Everyone except for her.

  She would be forever alone. Forever taking her brother’s charity and his screaming children so he could share this with his own wife. So he could lie on the oversized armchair in front of a crackling fire, in the arms of the woman he loved.

  Love. It was the one part of life she would never lay claim to. She would be loved like a sister, like an aunt, like a friend and companion. But not like this. Not like she was beginning to want to be.

  Darius’s voice intruded upon her melancholy and she came to with a start when his hand cupped her cheek.

  “I’m sorry, I was wool-gathering.”

  “Mindless indeed,” he chuckled. “Are you terribly upset with me?”

  “Upset?” she repeated, flashes of her years-long misery beat her mercilessly to distraction.

  “It is not my intention to make you pregnant, Eliza. Though you would be irresistible, fat with child.”

  She could see it in her mind and she almost wished she did become pregnant. As much as she liked to think her husband was now all hers, he was not. He belonged to the sea, to his men, to his business interests. Her soul yearned for someone or something that was all hers. Someone she would never have to part with. Someone who could never be taken from her by another. She would only ever have one husband but could she wish for a baby? For her very own companion through the long years ahead?

  No, she couldn’t.

  Life was not fair to her like that. Putting on a brave face, she returned Darius’s chuckle and made a remark about getting fat but in the back of her mind, the truth sat stark and bare. If she wanted to share her life with someone, it would not be her husband. She would have to work harder to guard her heart against him. Against the possibilities she saw in him time and again as more than a protector and friend and roof-giver.

  Perhaps she was happier when she was just a shell of a woman, when her only goal had been to protect her sibl
ings. She could have lived her life without knowing the warmth of man’s touch, without the fullness of his body invading hers, without the knowledge that no matter what she did, he would never really be hers.

  She had to stop seeing Darius as the slayer of her dragons before he sailed off into the sunset with her heart and her soul in his pocket.

  *

  Eliza lay on her back the next morning beneath the mighty branches of the Christmas tree in the parlour and imagined herself in the pine forest, a blanket of fragrant needles under her as the summer sun peeked between the foliage to warm her face. Freedom beckoned but she pushed it away. There were barely a few hours left before they were to pile into a carriage and travel to London where they would board Darius’s ship in the dead of night and then sail to a new land. Sarah gurgled and played with her own fingers next to her on the carpets, carefree and blissfully naïve to the hurdles ahead.

  Would she ever see her mother’s Christmas tree decorations again? They were going to be aboard ship while happy families enjoyed festivities in country seats and city mansions. Eliza had pilfered what she could in the way of gifts for Gabriella, Grace, Nathanial and Ethan from Darius’s attics. She’d found a glass statue of a great stallion for Ethan. A jewellery box for Grace. A small and delicate music box for Gabriella that worked by turning a crank on one side. Nathanial’s gift was almost impossible. She’d about given up when Darius had offered her his late grandfather’s cufflinks. They didn’t bear the mark of Wickham, instead adorned by tiny rubies, worthless in value but drowning in sentiment.

  She’d nearly cried when he’d wrapped them in a handkerchief and placed them in her hand. When he’d kissed her forehead and strode from the room, a tear did roll down her cheek, and then several more until she’d lost count.