Kiss him?
Where had that thought come from?
Nay, she would not kiss him.
But she would look her fill until he awoke—ogle him as men ogled women. ‘Twould be sheer joy to strike a blow for all women and leer at a man rather than the other way around.
He was, after all, until the marriage was annulled, her husband. Guilt swirled inside her, but she ignored it: He had agreed to the wedding fair and square, and he was the one who had broken his promise.
Fascinated by the opportunity to explore a man, she ran her finger lightly over his stomach. In doing so, her wrist gently grazed the area just below where his hose and braies met.
That area twitched, seemed to lift of its own accord.
Unable to tear her gaze away, her eyes widened. It twitched again.
Had Irma been wrong?
Curious, she touched the cloth near his groin. A swelling formed beneath her fingertips.
She gasped; a sinful thrill spiraled through her.
Quickly she pulled her hand back and set it in her lap. After a short time, the swelling subsided.
Irma had told her he had no manly desires! He was unable to perform the sexual act.
She kept looking at the area, but it made no more movement. Mayhap she had imagined the whole thing. Surely she had.
A few moments passed, then tentatively she leaned forward to shyly observe the area. Nothing. Naught. No movement at all. But what would happen if she touched it again?
A streak of dark desire went through her.
She shouldn’t. ‘Twas wicked! Horrible!
She glanced at his face. He still slept. There was no one here but her. No one would ever know.
Slowly, she eased her fingers forward and pushed at the thing beneath his linen braies.
It wiggled.
Curious, she leaned away and waited.
The lump settled, but not before she got a better look at the shape.
Eyes wide, she poked at it. This time it became higher, thicker, harder. Covering her mouth with her palm, she giggled. Irma had been totally wrong.
Tamping down a wayward tendril of guilt, she reached forward again when it had once again sunk to oblivion. This time, she squeezed it—even beneath his linen garment she could tell it was cylindrical and fleshy. It hardened beneath her fingers and she laughed aloud.
What fun, wicked pleasure to toy with a man’s body! They were such stupid, half-witted creatures that even in sleep they had no control over their own parts.
His eyes opened, locking with hers.
Her delighted giggle died on her lips, and she drew her hand back as if she’d been slapped.
He had the most intense eyes she’d ever seen. Intermingled shades of dark and light green agate caught in candle glow. They looked almost inhuman, as if they belonged to a thing dredged up from hell itself.
Not the eyes of a half-witted cretin at all.
Chapter 10
Jared’s eyes drew into angry slits as he glared at the woman who circled over him like a buzzard. The screeching giggles that had escaped her maw pierced his head even more sharply than the Bible’s hinges had done. She’d been stroking him, playing with him, toying with him.
Heat, a consuming rage, flowed up his spine, and flushed across his face until her figure took on a red, hazy cast and her features were fuzzy. He struggled to get free.
“Peace, sir.”
His arms and legs ached from being fastened to the bed, his back felt stiff, and his temples pulsed with sharp pain. Worse, his cock throbbed.
“You will pay for this!” He fiercely worked the ropes that held his wrists against the frame to loosen the bonds. The bed bounced and clanked against the floor planks.
She jumped back. “Prithee, sir.” Her skin paled and she wrung her hands in her skirt. The nervous gestures did little to appease his fury. To be humiliated as he had been was unimaginable. And yet, here he was.
The ropes held. With effort, he contained his wrath. “Release me now and it will go easier for you.”
Silence.
An infuriating, long silence.
At last, she took a deep breath and shook her head slightly—as if to shake off her unease the same as a dog would quiver away water. She squared her shoulders, patted her hair, and looked him fully in the eye.
He blinked, trying to bring her features into focus, but the drug and the slam on the head made his vision blurry. Her image bounced.
“I have gold to pay you with,” she said. “You have only to cooperate—”
“Do you think that what you’ve done to me can be appeased with something as vulgar as mere gold?”
She blanched. “Of a truth, we meant you no harm.”
“I am not a toy to be played with.” He lifted his head, straining against the ropes. Perhaps he could flip the bed onto one side and somehow crawl free. “Untie me, wench.”
She swiveled her head toward the door. The motion made her hair glisten in the candle’s glow. It was loose and swung freely down her back, a river of silver and gold. Even with his bouncing vision, the mass skimmed her body’s curves in a way that framed her perfectly.
He glowered at her, wishing he could wipe his eyes, rub away the blurriness.
“Truly, sir, this has been a terrible mistake.”
He snarled, frustrated that he could not rise from the cot, grasp her by the shoulders, and shake her.
“Please, we must talk. I can give you gold—a lot of gold—and send you on your way,” she explained. “'Twill be a transaction that is good for both of us.”
His vision was bouncing less now and he blinked, wanting to get it under control. At that moment, the door swung open and Irma scrambled inside. Water dripped all over the floor planks. A puddle formed at her feet. She wore the same garish outfit she’d had on at the church, but it was muddied and rain-splattered.
Rouge reddened the whore’s cheeks—obviously reapplied. She’d probably serviced a client or two as well since bringing him here. Disgusting.
He twisted toward the woman he’d married and sized her up as best he could with blurry eyes: The whore’s garment she had worn in the brothel was gone and in its stead was a well-made gown, blue silk, with meticulously stitched embroidery around the dagged sleeves and square bodice. Her back was toward him and the long length of her luxurious hair snaked down her spine.
Dear God.
Betrayal hissed through him, sharp and cutting. Earlier he had suspected it was Gwyneth of Windrose. Yesterday, he would have been glad to be married to the woman he had dreamed about for so long.
A sickening wave went through him and for an instant he wished that his vision was still clouded and unstable.
Gwyneth.
Gwyneth of Windrose.
His Gwyneth.
No other woman could own that hair. It perfectly matched the lock he carried in his pouch as a token to all that was good and right in the world—that there was still hope no matter how dark life seemed.
Pride fled him and he yowled in outrage. He bucked against his bonds. Rage boiled inside him.
“Faith, sir!” Gwyneth said, jumping back.
Still straining against the ropes, he scrutinized the brazenly manipulative woman he’d married. She had washed her face and no longer wore the Jezebel enhancements of a whore. Of a truth, she looked as pure and fresh as any court virgin—twice as attractive as she had before. A queen. A goddess among mortals. The thought tweaked his abhorrence of her. Her beauty came from the devil himself.
There was such a marked difference between the two women—one regal, one common—that he wondered at their friendship.
Irma crossed the chamber with heavy, unladylike steps, a woman on a mission. “Boat leaves soon. The jailor said we can exchange ‘im for that girl Elizabeth and that kills two birds with one stone, it does.”
Gwyneth stared at her friend, her hand clenched to her heart.
“It’s either that or the nightshade.” Irma held up a cl
ay jar.
Nightshade! They intended to poison him?
Gwyneth did not move.
“'e can’t stay ‘ere. We shouldn’t even be ‘ere at all, you know. And the man said ‘e had to be cleaned up and ready to sell. They wouldn’t take ‘im if ‘e was all mangy like.”
Jared shook against the bedframe; his wrists strained against the ropes.
Irma thumbed the mole on her chin.
“Nay,” Gwyneth said, “there is a better way.”
“Ain’t no better way.” Irma sidled across the chamber and began digging through the cupboard. “We gots to be rid of ‘im. The boat or the poison. Where’s the wine to mix this nightshade with?”
The harridans! Jared lurched and fought against his bonds. The bed jumped up and down, clanging heavily against the planks. “Let me go!”
Gwyneth jumped back.
“Silence him!” Clay jars clanked together as Irma dug faster through the cabinets. “Damn it all to the bloody devil! No wine!” Turning abruptly, she scurried to the door like the mangy rat she was. “I’ll pop over to the brothel. Calm him afore someone ‘ears ‘im.”
“Wait!” Gwyneth called, but the door slammed closed after Irma.
Curse it to the seven hells. With a grunt, Jared bucked his body off the mattress, nearly toppling the bed onto its side. He had to get free! The bed came away from the wall and bounced into the midst of the chamber, upsetting the slat-backed chair Gwyneth had been sitting in earlier.
Smoke from the hearth swirled in the air, a dark, fretful mist. The ropes cut into his wrists, painful as wasp stings. The frame thunked and bumped on the floor. It humped across the planks this way and that.
Still the bonds held.
Dammit!
To be at the mercy of women was surely the worst sort of hell!
His new wife reached toward him. “Cease! You will harm yourself.”
“Untie me, wife!” His voice was scratchy.
Arms akimbo, she stared down at him as if he were a child to correct. “We did not mean to cause you any harm or distress. You are being unreasonable.”
“Unreasonable!” The skin around his wrists and ankles burned. His pride demanded revenge. And his groin, blast it all, still throbbed, overheated from her earlier touch as if that part of himself cared not a whit that he was bound for her pleasure.
She lifted her chin regally. “If you would just calm down, we could talk.”
Haughty, haughty wench.
He stopped flailing on the mattresss. His pride yowled, but there was no help for it. The hemp would not break, and so long as he was tied, she remained in power.
“That’s better,” she crooned.
Gritting his teeth at her condescending tone, he forced his voice to be calm and spoke to her as if she were a half-wit. “I would like to be released so we can converse in a reasonable manner. “ As if one could have a reasonable conversation with a woman who kidnapped him from a brothel, forced him to marry her, and now intended to poison him or send him away on some ship.
‘Twas one more reason a man should never, ever trust a woman—he’d been kind to Irma and this was how she repaid him. He’d thought of Gwyneth as some sort of paragon and she was as vile as the rest.
The temptress approached, ran her fingertip across his shoulder. His member sprang to life again as if eager for her touch. Curse it all!
“Do not touch me,” he gritted out. A deep sense of fury born of shame and hurt slid through him as he realized he could do naught to stop her if she wished to fondle his groin and laugh again as she did afore.
Undaunted, she gave a small smile and pressed her palm against his shoulder. She knew! Knew her effect on him. Heartless.
Rain pounded down outside on the door, and he concentrated on it. Anything to keep his mind off the beauty before him.
Discreetly, he felt around the parts of the bed frame that he could reach to find any sharp corners or nails that could aid him in cutting the ropes.
He grappled for a sense of control.
“Sir, prithee, hear me out.” She drew herself up in a haughty stance—one likely that she had oft used to get men to do her bidding. Her tone of voice was seductive. “I will make this worthwhile for you. I can give you gold and you can go free on your way.”
In that moment he realized what it was that she wanted. She wanted to swipe away her crime with no punishment, to use his name on a marriage document and send him away. She did not wish to poison him nor did she want to go along with Irma’s plans to set him on a ship. She merely wished him to go away, to leave her life and pretend she had not degraded him, harmed him. She wanted to do whatever she wished, treat him as less than a man and suffer no consequences for her actions.
Outrageous!
Resolve moved through him that she would get her comeuppance. She was the one who had insisted on this marriage and so married they would remain. There would be no ship, no poison, and there would be no annulment.
They had only to consummate the union to achieve permanence. Her best friend was a harlot, she had been comfortable in the whorehouse, and she’d been toying with his cock—laughing at it—when he had awoken: Of a truth, she was no virgin. And—his body was more than ready.
When he gained his freedom, she would simply belong to him, to do with as he pleased. To punish for the rest of her life. And that was that.
Taking a breath, he focused on getting free from his bonds. He could tell the rope was frayed, had began to come unraveled. Surely it was only one more stroke. One more rip.
He watched her walk across the chamber, back straight, shoulders rigid. Her hair, a curtain of shimmering satin, cascaded down her back and skimmed the tops of her thighs. Everything about her bespoke privilege and haughty imperiousness. She swiveled, looked over a shoulder at him. Of a truth, she was glorious. A seductress who was used to having her way with men, of laughing at them, trifling with them, bending them to her own devices.
The need to take, to conquer, pulsed through his mind as strong as the throbbing sensation in his groin.
She set the clay jar of poison in the cupboard.
Gathering his strength, he strained against the ropes, pulled, heaved. Agony ripped through his wrists; his biceps bulged; his stomach muscles quivered with exertion. More. More. He felt one strand snap. The moments dragged.
She walked back and forth several more times, her slippers quiet against the planks.
Another strand popped and still another.
Ripping himself free with a mighty heave, he let out a savage cry of triumph and sat up all at once. Success sang through his veins. He lurched off the bed, and hurtled toward his prize.
She shrieked and jumped back. Her hair flailed around her, the waves bouncing this way and that, but he was on her in two steps.
In a quick movement, he grabbed her by her shoulders, strong-armed her to the bed, and flipped her unceremoniously onto the mattress.
Breath whooshed from her lungs with a satisfying oomph. Her eyes went wide—two round moons—and conquest swam through his body like a raging river. She was his. All his. This time he would stay on guard. There would not be a repeat of what had happened in the church.
Her body sank onto the bed beneath him, warm and female.
A primal throbbing need to take and conquer coursed through his veins, scorching him, demanding restitution for his pride, to repay her for the indignity done to his body.
“You are mine,” he rasped, the words a battle cry from deep inside him. Slowly he began scrunching up her skirt.
Gwyneth gasped, unsure what to do or what to think as Jared’s big body crashed down atop hers, sinking her downward into the cot. He was huge, massive.
Stunned, she pushed against him, but it was like trying to move a catapult by oneself.
“What think you of this, wife?” His breath was warm and sweet, and his voice low and husky but the word “wife” was a sneer.
Her heart raced; she squirmed to get free. The bare ski
n of his torso was warm against her bodice and he felt so very male. “Cease!”
He forced her arms above her head and transferred both of her wrists to one hand.
Panic lurched into her throat. She wiggled, bucked, writhed, but still he held her. “Let me go! Stop!” she yelled, befuddled with the sudden change in situation—the overturning of power.
“Be still, wife. You are mine now, to take as I please. You had no issue exploring my body at will. And now I will do the same to yours.”
Her breath squeezed from her lungs. She turned her head to one side, anxiety climbing into her throat now that she no longer had control of the situation.
She wiggled beneath him, as caught as an insect in a web. “Get off me!”
“Nay.”
The word was spoken softly, calmly, but with so much resolve he could have been shouting.
A shiver went through her.
She could feel his huge hand rasping against the tender skin of her thighs. His fingertips grazed her, hot and commanding. Heat flooded her face. Is this how he had felt? Helpless? Vulnerable?
“Cease!”
“Nay.”
His palm slid up her thigh and cupped the area where her legs met together. His hand felt warm, firm, but not harsh. A bolt of sensation scattered through her body. A primal streak of alarm shot through her veins.
Holy Mary. Not like this! Not with her skirts flipped upward, tupped like a common doxy. But the creaminess between her legs seemed to laugh at her, to mock her. Only minutes before she had desired him, had wanted naught more than to couple with him.
But union should be on her terms, not his. Clearly, this man was unsuitable for such a goal and if the marriage was consummated, she’d never be rid of him.
“Please.” The word came out a little strangled.
“Was this not what you wanted?” he said, his voice still soft but with a core of strength about it. Power. Utter power. “To have a man inside you.”
Defiant Page 9
