by Anne Gracie
“I felt it, of course, but never with my hands. Would you mind—”
“No. Go ahead.” He didn’t want to hear about Rupert.
She touched him, tentatively at first, just stroking the length of him lightly with her fingertip. He felt the shock clear through to the soles of his feet. Then she wrapped her palm around him and squeezed gently. He almost exploded.
And that was as much as he could take of letting her take the initiative. He seized her around the waist and in two seconds he had that silk thing off her and her spread out, naked, beneath him.
“I…can’t…wait!” he managed to say, slipping his fingers between her cleft as he spoke. She was hot and slick and ready for him and he entered her blindly, surging into her without finesse.
Her sheath was tight, tighter than he’d expected. Dimly he was aware of her clinging to him, moving against him, but he was beyond all control, his body driven by the primitive beast deep within him as he thrust with blind, possessive compulsion: his woman, his wife. Once, twice, and then he shattered.
He wasn’t sure how long it was before he came to himself again, but with the return of consciousness came guilt and self-recrimination. The more he thought about it the more mortified he was.
The plan had been to seduce her, entice her; to drive her wild with desire.
And what had he said earlier about never pouncing? Of being more sophisticated than that? He groaned.
He’d done worse than pounce on her. He hadn’t even laid a finger on her until he’d parted her, and then he hadn’t waited for any sign from her other than that she was wet. He’d ridden her blindly, selfishly to his own climax, oblivious of anything except his own need.
The best he could hope for was that she’d be furious. The worst, that she’d hate him.
He opened his eyes to find her watching him. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She didn’t reply. He couldn’t read her expression because her eyes were in shadow. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I don’t know what to say. I haven’t—I’ve never—not since I was a young man—”
Callie was still too stunned by what had happened to speak. She’d put her nightgown back on after he’d finished. Now she pulled the covers up over her. It was getting a little chilly.
So, now she knew what it was like to lie with Gabriel Renfrew. She wasn’t quite sure what she thought about it, but she knew she’d never forget it. She still felt restless and hollow and a bit cross, but also, deep within her, she was amazed.
To be desired so powerfully that a man like Gabriel, who prided himself on his self-control, had lost all sense of himself. She’d barely touched him and he’d exploded. It was amazing.
It made her feel…powerful. Not particularly satisfied, but powerful.
She, Callie, had done that to him, had caused this strong, disciplined man to fall on her with ravenous desire. He was still staring intensely at her now.
“I will make it up to you,” he said, reaching for her.
She recoiled slightly. “But it’s done. The marriage has been consummated.”
“It hasn’t,” he insisted. “You didn’t—you weren’t consumed. I was too quick. I didn’t make it good for you.” He reached for her.
She fended him off. “You want to do it again? Now?”
“Yes. It will be better, I promise you.”
“No. It’s late. I’m tired.” She lay down with the bedclothes pulled tight around her. She wanted to believe him. She needed to protect herself. She didn’t want to relive that sensation of being taken partway up a mountain and then dumped, not twice in one night.
“Trust me. This time will be for you, I promise.” He pulled the covers back.
“No!” she said crossly, pulling them up. “I know we made vows today, but if you remember I didn’t promise to obey you, and this is why.”
There was a short silence, then he said, “But I still need to fulfill my vows to you.”
“We’ve consumm—”
“Not that. I vowed to cherish you. And now I need to cherish you.” His voice was deep and sincere and his eyes compelled her to believe him.
She eyed him mistrustfully. “You ask a great deal.”
“I know,” he said softly.
Right now, she could walk away from this business, heart intact—almost intact, she amended. But she hadn’t expected this, his willingness to stay, to make it good for her—even after he’d fulfilled his own needs—as if her feelings were as important as his.
He claimed he wanted to cherish her. If he truly did…how could she resist?
She said weakly, “It’s just a paper marriage, a—a chess maneuver.”
“Then let us play chess,” he said instantly, sensing her imminent capitulation. “Black knight to white queen.” And he kissed her.
He captured her mouth with his, molding it and pushing her lips apart to gain entry. His tongue moved in a slow rhythm that her whole body responded instinctively to. Hot shivers rippled through her, pooling in the aching inner core of her.
She ran her hands over him. His body was hard and hot and she loved the feel of it, the feel of him. She tasted his skin, salty and musky, loving the male taste of him.
He caressed her breasts through the fabric of her nightgown, a delicious silken abrasion that made her arch and shudder with pleasure. Her skin felt tight and tender and amazingly sensitive. She shivered and pressed herself against him.
There was an intensity to the way he was caressing her, she dimly realized, as if he were learning her, discovering what pleased her.
Everything he did pleased her.
He kissed a line down from her jaw and she flexed like a cat under him, reveling in the sensations of his mouth on her skin. His mouth closed hotly over first one nipple, then the other, playing with it, sucking and biting her gently through the silk, and she moaned and writhed restlessly as exquisite sensation burned through her in waves of pleasure.
Her hands raked his body, kneading, testing, demanding more, exploring the small nubs of his flat male nipples, the smooth bands of hard muscle across his belly, and the line of dark hair arrowing from his belly down to his groin. Last time she had touched him there he’d nearly exploded. She wondered if she could do it to him again.
He reached down and caressed the smooth skin of her thighs, and she forgot her intended destination as they fell apart, tautening and trembling with expectation and need. He drew the nightgown up and up, the fabric dragging against the rawness of her hot, fevered skin.
And then it was off and his hand was between her legs, stroking, circling, teasing, squeezing. She arched and shuddered and her legs splayed and jerked, out of her control, and she clawed at him, wanting something, anything, but not knowing what. His mouth closed over hers and his eyes locked with hers as his fingers stroked and stroked and stroked, and sent her spiraling over the edge.
She lay gasping, half on top of him, still feeling the small aftershocks of sensation deep within her. She looked down at him. He was still hard and wanting and unsatisfied.
She reached down and took him in her hand, stroking and exploring him the way he had explored her. He shuddered and stiffened, gritting his teeth and bracing his legs, as if resisting.
With an instinct as old as Eve, she ran her hand up and down the length of him, caressing the sensitive tip, running her fingers over the tiny bead of liquid, smoothing it over him. She marveled at the hot, satiny feel of him and her palm tightened around him. He groaned.
She paused, not sure what to do. She wanted him inside her now, she was hot and achy again but he wasn’t moving, just watching her, letting her play with him, even though his body was racked and trembling with barely controlled need. For a moment she didn’t understand why. He wanted her and she wanted him, so why didn’t he…?
And then she knew. He was making up for last time.
“You could ride me,” he told her, his voice harsh with need. “It gives you the control.”
“Ride you?” S
he was intrigued. She straddled his body and then, a little awkwardly, positioned herself over him and guided him into her. She felt the smooth, hot length of him pushing into her and stopped. He groaned and gritted his teeth, but didn’t move. She moved again, lowering herself until he was fully within her. It felt amazing. She leaned forward with her hands on the bed on either side of him, and moved experimentally. He moaned and thrust upward and sensation spiraled though her. She moved with him, flexing her inner muscles, feeling the whole length of him.
She moved again and he thrust and then, suddenly—there was no other word for it, she started to ride him—she, who’d never ridden any animal in her life—rode her husband, rode him as he thrust and bucked beneath her, moving within her. His palms caressed her breasts as she moved, faster and faster, with small, high cries of exhilaration.
And at the last minute he slipped his hand to where they were joined and caressed her and suddenly she was flying, flying and shattering into a thousand pieces around him. With a thin, high cry she collapsed onto his heaving chest, oblivious of anything.
Gabe held her against him, gasping for breath, unwilling to let her go, barely able to think past the thought that he’d just made her his wife in fact as well as in law. His arms tightened around her and he kissed the top of her head where she lay sprawled and sated on top of him. He pulled the covers over them so she wouldn’t get cold.
He’d claimed her: now all he had to do was keep her.
Gabe woke some hours later to the sound of water dripping, slow and relentless. The rain had stopped. But that wasn’t what had wakened him. He listened. It was some time in the still hours before dawn, when London was almost quiet. All he could hear was the last of the rainwater dripping steadily.
He reached out for her, but she wasn’t there. He sat up and saw her, curled in the window embrasure, wrapped in her red shawl, her knees tucked up under her chin, staring out into the gray, miserable night.
He knew that look, the look of someone on the outside, looking in. Or in this case looking out, wanting something she didn’t have, something out there. Yearning for it. Not wanting what she had: him.
Gabe felt suddenly cold. She had to love him, she had to. He would make her, force her to love him.
As if love could ever be forced, he thought desperately. But what else could he do? He had to try.
She’d liked what they’d done in bed, he was sure of that, he would bed her and bed her and love her until she cared.
She hadn’t wanted to marry him. He’d had to work hard to convince her. And now it was their first night together and she was already regretting it?
He thought—hoped—he’d recovered from the disaster of his loss of control. Obviously not.
Unless it was not the bedding at all. He was sure she’d felt at least some of what he had that second time. If he knew anything about women he knew when he’d satisfied them and when he hadn’t. He would have bet his life that this time he’d made it good for her. It had been more than good for him.
But she’d already left him, left his bed. She was sitting there, alone in the cold, hunched into a ball of misery, looking out into the chill of the night as if there was something out there she wanted, and wanted more than anything she had in here.
A cold stone lodged in his chest. All he brought to this marriage was the ability to protect her son: such a slender thread to catch her with. He’d hoped, he’d banked on his bedroom skills to hold her, as least for long enough to try and make her love him.
He wasn’t going to lose her. He had to make her love him.
As easily cage the moon as make someone love you.
But he could perhaps reach her another way. Maybe she was worrying about her son. She was a wonderful mother. If she was given a choice between her son and her husband, Gabe knew what she’d choose: her son, the opposite of what his own mother had chosen.
Gabriel, always the loser to love.
But he was also a fighter and he wasn’t going to give up. This small, beautiful, scrunched-up piece of misery at the window held his heart in her hands, whether she knew it or not, and he wasn’t going to let her give it back.
He slid out of bed and came up behind her. The look on her face wrung his heart. “What is it?” he asked.
She gave him a bleak look. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?” The words came out roughly.
The question hung in the air. Her mouth trembled, but she just shook her head.
“We can try again,” he said urgently. “If it wasn’t any good—”
“It was wonderful,” she said in such a small, sad voice it took him a moment to register what he’d said.
“Then—?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He stared at her, frustrated. If he didn’t know what it was, he couldn’t fix it. She was cold. He fetched an eider-down and tucked it around her, hesitated, and then gathered her against him. She made no objection, thank God, because he didn’t know if he could let her go.
He held her in his arms, tucked against his chest, warming her with his body, supporting her. She stared out of the window, and a tear rolled slowly down her cheek.
Gabe felt desperate. How could he make her trust him enough to talk to him? “Whatever it is, I will make it right. Just say…” There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
She shook her head. The tears came again, rolling silently down her cheeks.
“Was it something I did? Or didn’t do?”
Her face crumpled. “No,” she said brokenly and turned to him in distress. She hugged him convulsively. “It’s not your fault at all. What you did—what we did together was utterly…I’ve never…It was just…perfect.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she dashed them away. “I’m sorry; I don’t know what the matter is with me. I felt—I feel wonderful and cherished, I really do.”
She felt wonderful and cherished, Gabe thought bleakly. That’s why she looked so miserable.
What was a man supposed to do with that?
How could he teach her to want him the way he wanted her?
“Come back to bed and let me cherish you some more,” he said hoarsely. He had no idea what to do, other than to love her. All he could think of was that he needed to wipe that desolate look off her face. If he could make her body sing with passion, and keep it singing, then maybe…
He kissed her, and she kissed him back. It was a start, he told himself. She kissed as if she meant it.
He carried her back to bed and made love to her for the third time, very slowly and thoroughly, cherishing her with every fiber of his body and soul. She returned kiss for kiss, and caress for tender caress with a kind of desperate earnestness that almost broke his heart.
She was trying too hard. He knew what that meant.
Their eyes locked as he brought her to a slow, intense climax, the pressure building relentlessly until she thrashed and shuddered and collapsed bonelessly against him as he shattered also and drowned in her eyes.
She fell asleep with her cheek against the bare skin of his chest, cradled against his heart. He held her to him, unwilling to let her go, even for a moment.
He was going to lose her. He could see it in her eyes.
Oh God, what was he going to do?
Gabe awoke much later to find the day well advanced.
It was still wet and gray and chilly.
She slept curled like a cat against him, her lashes long and dark and silky against her satin-pale skin. He watched her sleeping, her mouth fallen a little open, her breathing deep and regular.
He leaned over and kissed her lightly, and though she stirred a little she didn’t wake. He nuzzled the hollow between her jaw and her shoulder and inhaled deeply. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget the scent of her.
He slipped out of bed and, naked, padded across the thick carpets to the fire, which was almost out. He fed it with chips of wood and then coal until it was blazing again.
He turned to return to bed and found her sitting up on one elbow, watching him. He crossed the room, feeling a little self-conscious with her eyes on him. She inspected him with frank interest, a small smile—he hoped of appreciation—playing about her lips.
He slipped back into bed with her and kissed her.
“Good morning,” she murmured and reached for him again. Her palm curled possessively around his hardened flesh, and the most adorable mouth in the world curved as she registered the evidence of his desire.
“Good morning indeed,” he murmured, feeling a surge of new hope. “And it’s about to get even better…”
Afterward he rang the bell and ordered hot water for himself and her, which she amended to a bath. He ordered breakfast to follow.
Then, with a self-consciousness that amused him, she excused herself to take her bath in her dressing room and sent him off to his, to dress and shave.
For a moment, Gabe considered the possibility of assisting her with her bath, but decided against it. Despite her years of marriage, she wasn’t used to sensual delights, and he didn’t want to throw his entire battery at her at once. It was going to be a long, slow siege. He could wait another day, he thought. Perhaps tomorrow.
Callie sat in the bath, soaping herself and thinking about the extraordinary few moments of utter despair she’d experienced in the middle of the night. Strange that it had occurred just hours after she’d experienced the most intense moment of bliss in her life.
Not really strange, she realized. The bliss had caused the despair. Last night in Gabriel’s arms, he’d shown her what she’d missed all her married life, and worse—showed her what she could have if this wretched marriage was real instead of merely legal.
She hadn’t been able to talk to him about it then—not when she was feeling so raw and vulnerable. All her defenses…he’d destroyed them making love to her as he had. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel like that.
She wanted her marriage to be real, wanted to have this man for herself and love him with everything she had in her.
He was everything she’d ever dreamed of: kind and strong and loving, a man to be cherished and loved, not used and discarded. She wanted him forever, not just for a day or a week or a month.
