She laughed. “Is it going to be that involved?”
He lifted a brow.
She eyed him. “What do you usually do with these women? Beat them with your cock?”
There was a smoldering invitation in the depth of his eyes. “If we are to be honest, I had one woman lose consciousness.”
Her grin faded as her fingers nervously tried to straighten his stack of books, but tipped them instead. They thudded back to the floor. She cringed, the sound almost amplifying their situation.
He searched her face. “We’re not even doing anything and you’re jittering.”
“Perhaps it is because you are tapping fear into my head, you grave-digging rake.” She gestured in exasperation toward the corridor. “I will go crawl away and wait by the horse.” She hurried past him.
Ridley jumped toward her, knocking over his cane to the floor, and bumped her into stopping with his chest, looming close. He held her gaze from above. “I don’t want you standing alone in the darkness. Wait until I’m finished putting away these books. I’ll let you watch.”
She gave him a withering look. “You, Ridley, are an onion in need of chopping. Only I refuse to be the one to do it. For my eyes have no need for the burn and there are plenty of other vegetables in the garden.”
Silence pulse between them.
He edged his chin down against his cravat. “Are you saying you want other vegetables?” he asked in a low, low tone. “As in celery? You haven’t seen the width of this onion to judge.”
Her mouth throbbed.
He leaned in. “You seem to think you can rattle this cage without letting anything out.” There was a lethal calmness in his eyes. “The trouble with what we share is that we are uniquely passionate people unable to relinquish the control we have over each other. That alone is going to complicate our sexual relationship and I haven’t even introduced you to this.” He thudded at his bicep.
She lingered, his cologne and his words making her hazy. “What is your fascination with rope?”
Ridley guided her hand to the bundled rope around his bicep. “Are you curious, mon dévot?”
She jerked her hand back. “Keep mon dévot out of it. There is nothing romantic about choking a woman with hemp.”
“You are villainizing what you do not understand.”
She glanced around, gesturing toward the library. “I cannot believe we are discussing this in Dr. Wallich’s library.”
“You brought it up, not I.” He turned away, putting away the remaining books.
She squinted, a part of her needing to know if... “Are you even capable of engaging a woman without the rope?”
He heaved out a breath. “Yes, Kumar. I am a perfectly capable functioning male and most certainly can and do enjoy sexual congress without rope. The rope, however, enables me to do more, be more, see more, feel more. I enjoy it more. Without the rope, it isn’t really me.”
This didn’t sound very promising. “Maybe your need for the rope will fade over time once we…become more involved.” She shrugged. “Maybe you will be cured of it.”
Silence stretched between them.
He swung back to her, a riled warning settling into his chiseled features. “I was not aware that I suffered from a mental illness.”
She cringed. “What I meant—”
“I know what you meant.” His tone darkened. “I would never attempt to change you, Jemdanee. I respect who you are and yet it is fairly obvious you do not respect who I am. Unfortunately, the rope is who I am. It’s who I have always been. And whilst I would never force you to embrace it, I will not have you speak to me as if I were mentally unsound. The rest of the world already thinks that and I hardly need it from you.”
He stared her down. “I’m making drastic changes that include giving up my career and settling into another country whose cultural logistics will take me years to master. How are you making changes? Or am I too worthless in your eyes for you to consider making any?”
She lingered, her heart squeezing. “No. I…”
It was awful.
In that moment she realized, he was right. He was kneeling to change in her name, whilst she? She was not even offering to understand his need for the rope.
He searched her face. “What is your real opinion of me?”
Her mouth throbbed. “I adore you.”
His jaw worked. “I don’t think you do. I think you still see what everyone else does: a cacodemon.”
She eyed him. “I do not even know what that word means.”
“A malevolent man.”
Oh. She cringed. “You most certainly can be intimidating. You are.”
He squinted. “How so?”
“That squint, for instance. Is it necessary? That combined with your inability to ever smile or laugh or…”
He half-nodded and released a breath through his nostrils.
She gestured. “You see? What man does that? Dragons do that.”
He gave her a withering look. “I take it you associate closely with dragons.”
“China is not too far,” she teased.
“Are you saying I frighten you?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. You do make me question my own safety on occasion, but I am anything but frightened.”
“Is that so?” He stared her down playfully. “I think it time we test your level of fear. You have two ragged breaths to adjust. Are you mentally prepared for what is about to happen next?”
She eyed him.
He lunged.
Half-shriek-laughing, she sprinted through the corridors of Dr. Wallich’s house and out through the already open doors of the house. Still laughing, she darted straight past Ridley’s horse and toward the banyan tree out in the dirt path road illuminated by moonlight. She giggled, shoving her way past hanging branches.
She glanced back at the door in exasperation as he appeared. “I was startled!” she argued. “It had nothing to do with you!”
Ridley appeared in the shadows of the dim lanterns that illuminated his frame. “Nothing to do with me?” he drawled. “Are you certain?” With the toss of a handle, Ridley snatched up a machete by the door on his way out. Quickening his long-legged limping step, he stared her down teasingly, and hacked and hacked his way through the hanging branches.
She snorted.
The roaring pulse of her out of control heart barreled her forward as she whipped her way through hanging branches that tagged her arms and face. “Any other woman would have fainted by now.”
He moved faster. “Fortunately, you aren’t any other woman, are you?” The downward thudding of the blade as it slashed through the branches against the rapid movements of his muscled arm, brought him steadily closer. “I thought you trusted me,” he called. “Don’t you trust me? It’s only a machete!”
She laughed so hysterically, she could barely make her way through the swaying of the branches at higher speeds as he thwacked after her, growing nearer.
Lunging, he shoved her hard against the trunk of the banyan.
She scream-laughed, stumbling against the tree.
Pressing into her with the weight of his body, he leaned down and set his nose to hers. “Hello.”
Her chest heaved against his, the heat of his large, muscled body pressing into her as they stood nose to nose, the machete still in his large hand.
She nudged the blade away. “Even for you, this is a bit much.”
His voice grew low. “Our hearts racing should always define us.”
She dug her back harder into the tree behind her. “If you overwork the heart, it will cease functioning.”
“There are ways to strengthen it.” He twirled the machete, then held out its handle. “I bought this for you. I may be retiring, but it’s important we start teaching you how to better protect yourself.”
It wasn’t exactly a bouquet of flowers. She took the handle from him and dangled it between them. “Protect myself from who? You?”
“From everyone but me.” He
flicked the blade between them and then took the handle and tossed it away from her hand into the grass beyond with a thud. “If we don’t trust each other, Jemdanee, we’ll fail each other.” Holding her gaze, he set his hands on both side of her. “Why do you never ask me questions about my life?”
“I…” She was a horrible, self-centered person. “I have been too preoccupied with surviving my own thoughts.”
He nodded. “Try not to leave me out of those thoughts. Unlike most men, I enjoy discourse as much as I do intercourse. Now what would you like to know about me?”
She eased out a breath knowing the doors to the underground crypt were opening. “I…”
He lowered his chin. “How about we start with the simple questions. Ones that will benefit you as a woman. Like…how long was your longest relationship, Ridley? Prior to that unhinged wife you should have never married? Followed by questions of: How do you usually treat women? Do you offer them respect and equality despite the rope?”
She eyed him. “Do you?”
He gripped the bark of the tree behind her. “Unequivocally. Have I not delivered on both? Given you ask, however, here is a little something you need to know about me and my history. I’ve always treated women the way they treat me. Which is why it never lasted. “
He squinted. “Women have a tendency to insult my level of intelligence by only seeing my face and finances. When I was younger, I reveled in taking what they so freely gave, but they never saw the real me and because of it, I got bored. It never lasted and the rope never came out because I knew it would scare their lily white tits off. Then I met Elizabeth.
“We were two extremists looking to be accepted for who we were, not what the world wanted us to be. Only she wanted more than the rope. She wanted to hang by it and I foolishly thought I could edge her away from the extreme pain she was drawn to. Prior to learning that she was brutally raped when she was younger, and how it affected her, I entertained a good number of her requests, which included backhanding and cropping her one night until she lost consciousness.”
His features grew troubled. “I actually thought I killed her.” He rolled his eyes, easing out a breath. “That was when I ceased engaging her requests, which only put a further wedge between us. Her excessive need for pain went beyond what I could swallow. I reserve that side of me for those I hate. Not those I love.”
Stunned, Jemdanee said, “You backhanded her and cropped her until she…lost consciousness?”
He nodded. “Not my finest hour.”
“Did you not love her?”
“Of course I did.”
She blinked rapidly. “Then why would you...?”
“Why does any man try to prove himself to a woman? To make her realize he would do anything to please her. Even if it means going against everything he is.”
A shaky breath escaped her.
His gaze fell to her lips.
Silence lengthened between them as a jackal cackled in the night beyond.
His large hand slipped down her arm with the rigid drag of fingers as he veered them further down to her thighs, shifting the silk of her sari.
She gave into that touch, her limbs quaking with a need to be touched.
The night breeze grazed the moistness that dewed what his finger circled.
He surveyed her for a long moment, the muscle in his jaw quivering. “It’s why I fought you back in London,” he rasped. “I knew no matter how much I would pour into you and this, I would never be the man you need me to be. I acknowledge what few men do: I am broken. What man glories in finding grime and beating it with a ledger? I do. What man chases his woman with a machete and thinks it amusing? I do. But you…” His throat worked. “You make me believe I can forcefully glue in a few of those missing pieces.”
She knew he was offering her more than he had ever offered to any woman.
She could see it in his eyes and it was humbling.
How had she earned it?
She could pretend that raw and passionate darkness in him didn’t exist and try to erase it by insisting he be like other men, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted him because he wasn’t like other men. And unlike other women, she refused to have this extraordinary and unusual man walk away from her merely because he defied convention. She defied convention, too, and therefore needed to embrace him in the way he was embracing her: completely.
Even if it meant…swallowing some of that darkness.
She had more than enough light to oblige. “I am in awe of the flaws you never hide.”
He lowered his chin. “I wasn’t poking for lofty compliments.”
“I am in awe that you embrace what others fear and yet remain what others hope to be.”
He said nothing.
It’s why she loved him.
She searched his rugged, bruised face. A face he had bruised in her name. He did almost too much in her name and she not enough. “Explain to me what other women never took the time to listen to. Tell me about your rope. What does it mean to you?”
Astonishment touched his face. “Your mind would never understand.”
Her lips thinned. “Then you have already decided and I never will.”
His expression grew tight with strain. He sighed. Averting his gaze, he removed an eight-inch piece of hemp rope from his trouser pocket, folding it. “This, as you already know, is my think rope. The rope that I…usually use on a woman is the one you swiped.”
She wavered. “That rope is over a hundred feet long.”
His mouth quirked. “It’s an art form.” He searched her face and gestured to the stone bench beside the tree. “Sit or stand, Kumar. You choose.”
She eyed him, the pulsing intensity from his presence making her realize the air between them had changed. She glanced toward the lanterns and the night. “You intend to do this now?”
“You needn’t worry. Your first time will be in a bed without any rope and me barely moving. I promise. It will not be here or now or like this. No one masters anything overnight. I merely want you to understand it.”
Lowering his gaze to hers, he used his entire muscled body to bump her in the direction of the bench, taking her hand and sliding it down toward the direction of his flap. “Sit or stand before your hand reaches the flap.”
She almost stumbled against the bench, her knees buckling. She sat, the weight of her gown almost making her sag.
“Stay seated.” His voice now simmered to a rough velvet. “Meet Evan Oswald.” He set his broad shoulders hard and widened his muscled stance to rigid before her, his rugged features taking on an implacable expression that was tight with stern strain. “I look the same, I talk the same but one thing is different.”
He pointed to his masculine full mouth as it softened and quirked. “Welcome to overlord academy. Please reserve questions for the very end of this session as interruptions will not be tolerated.”
Jemdanee blinked up at him her mouth widening against still close lips at realizing…he was…serious.
Ridley tapped at his chest. “I am an overlord,” he intoned. “By definition I enjoy retaining control over myself and my environment at all times. It means I have reached a level of maturity through consciousness and self-knowledge that allows me to embrace not only myself but what others fears most: inner fantasies. Fantasies are incredibly dangerous because it erases reality. Too many never cross that line out of fear of what they will see and do and feel when reality is erased. That fear does not exist in my world.”
He captured her gaze, his amber eyes pinning her into place with unspoken magnetism. “A real overlord’s true domination does not start or end in the bedchamber. It’s applied to all aspects of his life.”
He surveyed her for a moment. “Much like any man who seeks a wife, an overlord seeks a bondswoman to share his penchant. His methods of subtly testing her level of conscious cooperation for his lifestyle varies. If asked, would she set aside all doubt and sit on his knee and share his cigar merely because he asks he
r to? Would she set aside prudery and frig her clit in a copper tub for a man she just met because it unraveled a need in her and in him all of society would otherwise dismiss as loose-moraled and filthy as opposed to a visceral connection felt instantly between two souls?”
Jemdanee’s lips parted, her face heating at the memory of what she had allowed.
His jaw worked. “I will always give my bondswoman choices, but sometimes, she will have to choose between the wall and the wall. I call it real life. For we all have to make choices we don’t want to and c’est la vie. Though you are not a bondswoman, and most likely never will be to me given you are what the whipping society refers to as a milk-and-water female, unable to swallow milk by itself…let us embrace a thread. Might I demonstrate?” He lifted a brow, waiting for permission.
It was like peering into a circus master’s mind. “I…” She had always wanted an explanation of the woman she’d seen carved into the table. “Haan.”
“I thank you.” He towered over her, blocking the entire view of the garden. Setting each trouser-clad muscled thigh around her bent knees, he locked them hard against each other with the compression of her sari that was now bundled between his thighs.
He tapped at his flap. “Look at it.”
She stilled. Her face now hovered near the flap of his trousers. The linen fabric was form-fitted against a dormant but still very sizable indication that he was all male.
Her throat worked as her knees instinctively locked together, unable to look at much else.
Ridley smoothed the flap with the roll of the rope, outlining his dormant cock more. “Being able to control the urge is what makes me an overlord. The amount of restraint I have practiced over many years is what men lack when engaging women. As a result, you get more out of it.”
She swallowed.
He stared down at her from above. “Grab the back of the bench with both hands to balance yourself and look up at me.”
Jemdanee’s chest constricted. The manner in which he had locked her knees made her breaths quake. “Ridley?”
He dug his knees tighter into her. “Yes, bondwoman?”
The Devil is French: A Whipping Society Novel Page 15
