She grabbed his hands. They remained firm and unyielding, curled into fists as if he would rather do anything than take her hands in that moment. His hands were so much larger than hers. Too strong for her to force open.
“I can make things better. I promise. I swear I shall do as you wish. I’ll stay here with Mrs. Hazelwood and I won’t sign any more loans.” She let go of his hands and grasped his lapels, pulling at him. He proved as immovable as a marble pillar. She threw a glance over her shoulder at the bed, then back at him. The skin pulled tight over his cheekbones and his eyes cut into her like ice.
Oh, he looked fearsome. She couldn’t let him leave like this. “Come back to bed—tarry an hour or so more. What can it harm?”
“Beth, don’t do this.”
She had to get him back to her bed. She had to. Once there, everything would work out. She repositioned her grip, getting more of the fabric in her hands, and tugged harder but he held firm, staring down at her with that hard, cold look. She let go and pressed closer.
“Please, Grey—just come and lay with me for a while.” Looking up at him through her lashes, a move she knew no man on earth could resist, she reached out and stroked him intimately through his pantaloons. He caught his breath and his cock reared against her hand, leaping from half aroused to a full erection.
Flames ignited in his eyes. Flames like she’d never seen in a man’s eyes. Unconsciously, she took a step back. He followed, took hold of her upper arms and gave her a little push.
“You want me in your bed?” He began walking, determinedly, propelling her backwards. “It’s not a very exclusive place, is it?”
She stumbled along backwards. She had to explain. As she continued to walk backwards, she spoke. “Grey, you don’t understand. They meant nothing to me. They are nothing to me. It was j—just—just—just youthful impulse.” The backs of her legs pressed against the bed, halting their journey.
He stared down with those blazing eyes.
“I was lonely…life was dreary.” She gulped and cleared her throat. “I’ve had nothing my whole life—nothing of any value or interest to anyone but my beauty. You must understand. You must.” Tears pressed hot in her throat, choking her. “It made me feel special, wanted.”
He pushed her down and she fell onto the soft bed. Her mouth dropped open and she gaped up as he loomed over her, tall and powerful. Their eyes locked. Something heated, primal, pulsed on the air between them. His jaw tensed. She caught her breath; dizziness tingled over her whole body. Her mouth went dry even as wetness soaked from her core.
He came down on top of her, clasping her wrists. A mix of fear and excitement tingled through her. Instinctively, she thrashed against his hold. His thighs landed on either side of her and he pressed his knees together, pinioning her. The feel of his strength—of his power—sent that same tingling sensation through her, more intense this time. She grew wetter than she’d been in her life. God, she’d wanted his reaction, his emotion, a reaffirmation that he wanted her as desperately as she wanted him. She had it now, for certain.
But, damn it, he wasn’t going to dictate to her, he wasn’t going to control her. He certainly wasn’t going to physically detain her!
He brought his face close to hers. “You’re mine, Beth, mine. I’ll never, ever let you go.”
Her heart fluttered wildly and she began to tremble with excitement. She tried to free her hands so she could grasp his shoulders and pull him closer. He resisted her efforts and pulled her arms over her head, holding them there with one large hand. “Admit you are mine—admit you love me. Say the words.”
She gaped at him. “Like this? You can’t be serious.”
“I assure you, I have never been more serious.” His silver gaze pierced into her. “Before I leave here today, you’re going to admit it.”
Internally, she fought against the pull of his demand; externally, she struggled against his hold. “Go to hell, you arrogant jackanapes!”
Maintaining his hold with one hand, he reached down with the other and shoved her skirts up. She tried to hold her knees together but found his hard, muscled leg there quicker than she could move. He pressed between them, widening them. He pushed two fingers inside her, so swiftly she sucked her breath in.
She wanted to deny him. To fight him, to hit at him and demand he cease. God—even to cry out and bring the servants. But exhilaration swelled deep within her belly. It held her passive. It made her tremble. Wetness gushed from her core and became audible with each thrusting move of his fingers. Oh, God, God…she licked her lips and swallowed.
He removed his fingers from inside her. Her flesh ached for his return. He made wrenching movements as he unfastened his pantaloons with his one free hand.
She twisted against his hold.
His hand on her wrists and his body on hers, he held her firm. He poised himself for entry. She moaned and arched her hips up. He thrust into her with such force that it took her breath.
She couldn’t stop struggling against him. She hated to be controlled, hated to be bested. But her inner walls clenched around his throbbing hardness, hugging him tight, and the flow of her honey became a deluge.
He withdrew.
A scream of pure need pushed its way up into her throat and she bit her lip. Her belly trembled with the effort to hold it in.
“You’re mine now, Beth.”
She moaned.
“I want to hear you say it.”
She panted hard and tossed her head on the coverlet. No, no, no. She couldn’t say it. Not like this. His advantage was too unfair. To give in to his power over her scared her. The strong urge to give in to him scared her even more. She’d soon be his completely, under the law. All she had was her inner will and her independence.
With other men, she’d never allowed the balance of power to tip. But he wasn’t just any man—he was the man she loved.
“I won’t fuck you unless you tell me what”—he rubbed the head of his cock over her erect, throbbing nub—“I want to hear.”
Her internal walls contracted. She was empty, so empty. She twisted against him. “Damn you.”
He slid his cock down to her entrance, hovering there. “It’s so easy to say, Beth. Just tell me what I want to hear.” He pressed inside an inch.
Her hungry channel contracted around him. The coverlet beneath her buttocks was soaked. Oh God, she needed him. Needed him to propel himself into her with real force and fire. To drive himself as deeply into her as possible.
The succor of his lovemaking was as necessary to her continued survival as the air in her next breath.
Dear heaven. Her cunny clenched and her whole pelvis coiled so tightly with tension that it ached painfully. She shook with the strength of her hunger.
What would it hurt just to say the words? Nothing but her pride and her self-protection. “Oh, damn you, damn you.” Her voice broke with her stridence. She had to swallow, hard. “Of course I am yours. All yours. Always yours.”
His eyes glittered with satisfaction. Triumph.
He impaled her, filling her in one brutal plunge. The sound of her wetness echoed in the chamber.
White-hot sensation swept up from her womb to her belly and spread through her whole body. Pure pleasure.
He held still, his eyes seeming to devour her face. His cock, hard and huge, stretched her walls with each urgent throb. She arched her back and moaned, twisting in his hold. Relentlessly, he held her to the bed and began fucking her with savage abandon. Her hips rose to meet his again and again, their pelvic bones slamming fiercely together with bruising effect. Sensation radiated from her sex, through her pelvis and out to her very fingers, toes and the top of her scalp. It was intense, it was raw…it couldn’t last for long.
Her inner walls contracted. His mouth came roughly down on hers and she screamed his name repeatedly, the sound muffled by his kiss as hard, fierce spasms racked her whole body. A firestorm consumed her.
He lifted his mouth, moving his lips do
wn her cheek to her neck.
Euphoria flooded her. Pure emotion. She clung to his shoulders, trying to press her cheek to the top of his head. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
She couldn’t stop the flow of words.
His body shook against hers. His low, guttural groans reverberated from his open mouth on her neck. His seed flooded her in warm surges, sending new tremors through her. A melting sensation spread through her core. Pleasure welled within her, like golden light, all the way from head to toe.
She came back to herself, sweat-drenched, falling to earth with a startling crash. God, this was the way of it. She was now his to command as he wished. Not even Joshua had exerted such control over her. Though Joshua had played teacher, she could see now most of the control, sexually, had been hers. She’d been in control with every man since, too. Now that was over and she was powerless to prevent it. Powerless to prevent Grey’s sexual domination over her. She was Grey’s, now and forever. And if he put her aside, she’d be crushed. Destroyed.
Her mouth and throat went completely dry and a cold, sharp edge eroded the warmth of sensual satisfaction in her stomach.
He released her wrists, lifted his weight and lay on his side. The sound of his gasps filled the air in the chamber, which suddenly seemed too thin. Panting, she rolled away from him and onto her belly. Moments passed with only the sound of their breathing.
Then the bed rocked, his weight shifting as he sat.
“She left me, Beth.” His voice seemed to come from a distance. “She left me to return to her father’s house. By the time she went, I was damned glad to see her go.”
She tried to concentrate on his words, but she was completely drained, emotionally and physically. Warm darkness swallowed her up.
* * * *
Grey leaned back against the seat in his carriage and ate the bread and cheese his housekeeper had packed for him, chewing automatically, without tasting it. After leaving Beth, before he could leave the house, Mrs. Hazelwood had pounced on him. The memory still echoed in his mind.
Grey had descended the final two steps on the stairs and found himself face to face with Mrs. Hazelwood.
“Defied you, didn’t she?”
Damn. When did it ever end? He would never betray Beth by telling anyone else, much less this particular woman, the details of their heated and impetuous private battles. And it was incredibly invasive of the woman to ask. Still shaking with the after effects of his interaction with Beth, he took a deep breath and attempted to restore his calm. “I think we came to an understanding.”
Mrs. Hazelwood reached and grasped his arm.
He startled at the unexpected action.
“It is not too late.” Mrs. Hazelwood’s voice was fervent.
“Too late?”
She dug her fingers into the fabric of his sleeve, putting surprising, claw-like pressure on his arm. “You can still call this wedding off.”
“Even if I intended to do that, it is far too late.”
“No, it is not.” The elderly woman’s customary pleasant expression became contorted, wrinkled. “You know that girl will never sue you for breach of promise. I will talk to her, make her see that she should refuse that account you set up for her. I know how to make her see reason. I will suggest that it would give you some say over the way she spends her money and lives her life.”
Grey rubbed his face with his hand. He was drained. Weary. He didn’t need this, not now. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I know you will make that girl woefully unhappy—”
“Now just a moment—”
Mrs. Hazelwood released his arm and held up her hand. “I know you don’t intend it. But you do not know her as I do. She is so fiercely independent. Yes, yes, I know, she pretends to be demure, biddable, but she can be so quietly stubborn. She can also explode into rash, impulsive rages. Even as a little girl, she could throw the whole house into pandemonium.”
“I know her, in all her variations.”
Mrs. Hazelwood laughed softly. “No, you only fool yourself that you do. She’s smart, she hides herself well.”
“Is that why you were so eager for me to visit her in her chamber? Because you believed she would defy me? That she would slip and show me this inner virago?”
She compressed her lips and her eyes flashed at him. “I know about your way of living. You are accustomed to keeping women and being completely in control of those interactions. But Elizabeth is not biddable. She will not conform and it will spell disaster.”
That a woman of Mrs. Hazelwood’s standing would dare mention his former mistresses to his face shocked him into plain speaking. “There is a world of difference between what a man expects from a mistress and from a wife.”
“But with Miss McConnell it is almost the same thing, isn’t it? She would not surrender her virtue and so you must purchase her favors with a wedding ring.”
“Surely you give her more credit than that?”
“Everyone knows it is the truth. There can be no other reason you would marry so far beneath yourself. Oh, but it would be so much better if you had simply compromised her and been done with her!” Her words came in a strident whisper.
“I would still wish to marry her.”
She raised her pale brows and took a step back. “I see—So, you’re determined to make a fool of yourself and to break her heart?” She sighed. “I have done what I can. The consequences will rest on your own head now.”
Now in the carriage, Grey tried, once again, to push the memory aside. But he couldn’t push away the sense of indignation, for both himself and Beth. The little he’d eaten rested uneasily on his stomach and he wrapped the remainder into a napkin and tossed it to the other seat.
The longer Beth stayed under that woman’s poisonous influence, the more damage it would do her. And the sooner he removed her from her family’s parasitic clinging, the better. He ought to signal for Pete to return to Hazelwood’s house. He would simply marry Beth tomorrow in a quiet, private ceremony, and then take her with him to New York.
And New York was a long way away from Dr. Joshua Wade.
Yes, Grey did feel a great deal of urgency over that matter. More than he wanted to admit. Jealousy over Beth had the power to make him lose his head. His feelings for her were too overwhelming. Just take tonight as an example.
He’d never, ever done such a thing with a woman. Never been moved to do anything like that.
But since when had he not acted out of character with Beth? She drove him to emotional extremes he’d never known. The force of his climax, the sense of total dominion over her had lasted seconds. It had been followed by a crashing fatigue, a crushing of his spirits until he’d felt utterly despondent about the whole matter of their marriage. The prospects for their joint happiness seemed bleak.
Did he really want to bind himself to a lifetime of emotionally volatile scenes like the one enacted this evening in her bedchamber? God, no, of course not. He’d had his personal life carefully planned for so long, no unpleasantness, no violent, dramatic upheavals. Just routine and comfort. He longed to return to that regularity and calm.
Yet, once he’d tasted Beth’s fire, that life had seemed to gray and dreary. The thought of a future without her just seemed too cold to bear. The need for Beth was all too often like being tied to a form of hell.
And wasn’t that exactly what marriage was?
He exhaled slowly. The war. His ships. He had so much business to attend to once he arrived home. The launching of his privateer fleet was something he must be present for. He would have to spread himself between New York and Salem, somehow. Under the new threat, the rules might change from day to day. It promised to be a frantic time. He must be there to make the right decisions.
He needed focus.
He needed time away from the tempest of his interaction with Beth.
It would be best to continue on course and wait for the wedding ceremony as planned. The thought caused a sinking
sensation to center in the pit of his stomach.
But what else could he possibly do? He could not allow the concerns of his private life to supercede those of his business affairs. Too many people depended on Sexton Shipping for their very living.
Yet, tonight’s events might well have put a wedge between Beth and himself. The thought put an ache in his chest. He’d blamed Beth for her past with men, something he’d promised never to do. He’d wronged her in an unforgivable way. All because of his own weakness, his jealousy.
He should return to her immediately and do everything in his power to woo her out of any hurt he’d caused her.
But he couldn’t. He wasn’t just any man who could turn from his work and focus on repairing a lover’s quarrel.
First and foremost, he was Sexton Shipping.
Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than a drink.
He knocked on the carriage wall for Pete to stop. When the driver had stopped and come to open the door, Grey instructed him to go and purchase two bottles of brandy.
He wanted to get completely foxed. To become numbed.
Chapter Eight
“Good heavens, look at you.”
Mrs. Hazelwood’s voice startled Beth. She staggered into the parlor, dazed. Every muscle in her body burned and her heart hammered in her ears, an echo of the hooves that had pounded the street’s paving stones. But she had liked the punishing thunder of the horse beneath her. It took away from the aching emptiness she felt that morning upon waking alone. Knowing he was gone and wouldn’t return for weeks.
“Go on, take a look at yourself in the mirror.”
Beth glanced up at the mahogany framed mirror on the wall. A flushed young woman glanced back at her with wild blue eyes. Sweat coated her face and pasted curling strands of silver-gilt hair to her cheeks.
“Would that Mr. Sexton could see you like this and know what kind of hoyden he is wedding. I don’t think this is what he intended when he bought that horse for you.”
Beth’s heart began to drop, making the chamber spin. Her empty stomach lurched hard and she put her hand to her stomach.
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