by Olivia Ritch
Since they had been intimate on several occasions, Michael moved toward her with no inhibitions and as his robe fell open, he allowed it to fall from his shoulders. Kathryn’s eyes widened at the expanse of chest it revealed, the rampant erection he sported and the feral smile he directed at her.
He considered talking to her, asking her what she liked and how he might please her but as he could see her nipples already puckered and straining against the satin and her breathing labored, Michael decided that he could take and conquer without restraint. His intended stood her ground and he watched intently as she loosened the ties at the shoulder of her night gown. He reached for her hand and helped her with the second tie, the halves of the gown falling to her hips. He took the fabric in hand at her waist and pulled it gently past her hips, allowing it to pool at her feet. Unbidden, she stepped from it.
“I want you.” He spoke to her low and gravelly, dark as he felt.
Power surged through him and he pulled her body into the wall of his chest and hips.
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He saw her lids drift closed and felt her hands slip around his neck twining in his hair. He kissed her ravenously, claiming her mouth, tasting her resolve.
“I want you. I only…have one…request,” she said against his mouth
“Umm…what’s that?” he asked her absently as he thrust his tongue deeper into her warm welcome.
“I want you to pull out, so I...don’t...get…”
“With child?”
“Pregnant, right.”
As with all things, Kathryn got right to the point. He had wondered if she would ask him to do something to prevent conception and had secretly hoped she would not. “No baby…you’re right.”
“You’ll do it? You’ll pull out?”
“Umm...hmmm. Let me just taste…” His words trailed off as her hands joined their rhythm inciting his rod to action. She had slipped his pants past his thighs and he was virtually naked in her arms, forcing himself to hold back the welling tide she inspired with her small hands on his length. She had taken him that way once before and this time, he would be inside her before he allowed himself to release his control, while also remembering the promise to withdraw. It was becoming very difficult to contemplate that level of control.
The first time should be memorable. He lifted her still attached to him and eased her onto her bed. He wanted to watch her expression as he filled her, knowing that there would be no pain, only pleasure.
Possessing her, seating himself to the hilt in her sheath and claiming her forever as his was the only real thought his swirling senses could comprehend.
The most luscious naked, breathy, gorgeous, sweaty woman laid spread before him as a feast. To enjoy her bounty, he arranged her thighs wide, touched, stroked her core to release her aroma into the room, spread her wild hair over the satin pillows, and lifted her hips, placing another pillow under them. It was not his intention to tease her, but he wanted to watch her writhe, sweat, squirm, ache, throb. He wanted her to need with a deep and frightening desire to be filled by him. He blew a warm breath on her core and she shuddered. Then, he stroked once with strong fingers then again and she convulsed. Two fingers penetrated her and she screamed. “You are…torturing...me,” she ground through gritted teeth.”
“Yet, you are not sufficiently cowed. You still have a defiant set to your jaw. Give yourself to me Kathryn. Let me own you.”
“I am…equal. I will not…” He had taken up a slow but steady 150
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penetration with one finger, not enough to complete her but enough to inflame, incite, threaten, “let…you…control…this.” But it was too late for he had seized control and urged her agonizingly, slowly toward the peak. She felt alone and realized that she had already ceded herself to him, to his power, his unwavering possessiveness.
This was how it would be with her and Michael. He would possess and she would yield, but she would not bend, not break. She could be with him and he could rule their loving. She would rule their larger lives.
It was a compromise she could live with.
She shuddered around his hand. “Michael…I wanted you inside me.”
“I know darling but…” how to tell her he had needed to control her just for a few moments, to pleasure her in his own way and to watch her melt for him. “I am fair to bursting. I wanted you to feel pleasure because I might not be able…It has been a long time,” he admitted this sheepishly.
“I’ll tell you a little secret.” She lifted onto an elbow, kissed his firm lips, moving damp kisses across his jaw. She whispered softly into his ear. “I have never had an orgasm during sex.”
“While I am quite pleased that the bar is very low for me, I might have done without being reminded you have had previous lovers.”
“No one has ever loved me, Michael.”
He looked at her askance. “You aren’t a virgin, so you have had lovers?”
“I mean the feelings…no one has ever given me their heart and I have never given mine. Surely that means that you and I can…try.”
“Feelings are not my specialty.” He gazed toward the window.
“Michael, if you truly want me to marry you, you will have to keep opening up to me.”
“I want to marry you but right now I want to be inside you more than I want to breathe.” He pressed toward her opening and her legs wrapped around his as if they were fit together. He pressed in slowly watching pleasure once again cloud her eyes, melting her glorious face in a passion-blank haze. When he was fully seated in her wonderfully tight sheath, Michael began to move and she moaned, throwing her head back, licking her lips, and pressing her hips into his. His climax threatened long before he was ready to relinquish her body but her moaning and arching and tightening of her legs dragged him to the precipice so that he was forced to ease himself out of the haven of her passage and press into her taut belly long before he had wanted to. She wrapped her arms fiercely around him as he convulsed onto her fine skin.
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They had made love in her bed throughout the night. He thought she might indeed describe it as glorious, passionate, heart stopping totally in love, die for your next breath, love and he had reluctantly slipped away at dawn. He had whispered French love words and Spanish and even Portuguese.
Kathryn was grateful he had had enough control to withdraw each of the three times he had been inside her ready to come. She almost kept him there every time because she was sure she was going to marry him but somehow, she still believed the child should come after the ring. She wasn’t old fashioned enough to abstain altogether but she was determined not to be pregnant on her wedding day with just a verbal.
And really she didn’t even have the verbal any more. She had rejected that. With all her heart, she hoped she’d get another chance.
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Chapter Seventeen
“Where is…everyone?” Kathryn asked Hallthorpe as she bounded into the dining room to find it completely empty.
“The Master is working in his study, Lady Cassandra has not stirred…
I’ll bet she hasn’t… Kathryn’s mind conjured dirty thoughts immediately.
…and Lady Agatha is in the drawing room having already broken her fast.”
“The Captain? Is he…”
“He wished you to join him as soon as you have broken your fast.
He is going to ride to visit the tenants again.”
“And me?”
“To join him of course?”
Her heart leapt and she thought she saw a smug grin on Hallthorpe’s face. As hungry as she was from all of the night’s aerobic exercise, she didn’t want to make Michael wait any longer than necessary so she rushed from the room holding a piece of buttered toast, charging the stairs for her breeches. Someday she figured Ellie and her band
of seamstresses that she knew Michael had stashed away somewhere would get around to making a proper riding habit, but as long as she didn’t have one, she wore the breeches under her dresses. It took no time to don them and dash back to Michael’s study.
“My Lord?”
He turned and graced her with a sly, slightly smug smile. “My Lady.
You look radiant. I trust you slept well after your very long day.” She caught his gaze, one that challenged her to concoct an appropriate answer in front of the steward Smithers.
“My Lord, it was a long and arduous day. Hitting my sheets was a distinct pleasure.” The flash in the obsidian orbs was a sign of triumph.
She just loved their verbal skirmishes.
“If you will make yourself comfortable for a few minutes, Smithers and I will be through and you and I will be away.”
“As you wish, My Lord,” she answered with mock sincerity. He shot her a playful glance that said he knew she was showing off for his steward and not buying the demure miss routine for one minute. She loved doing that to him, too.
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* * * *
Jasmine was saddled and waiting for her alongside Fury and she noticed that the horses seemed to sense the new charged atmosphere. Michael effortlessly lifted Kathryn into the saddle and his hand swiped the side of her breast as he settled her. She smiled seductively at him conjuring images of their night’s activities. Thrice had not been enough.
“When we finish checking on the tenants, I thought we would go to the village and I would introduce you. Do you understand what that will mean?”
“A public declaration?”
“Exactly. Are you comfortable with that?”
It suited her purposes to confirm to the world that she was going to be his wife. When she had made the decision to accept him the next time he asked, it had given her such joy and being his wife was fast becoming the most important thing she could comprehend. “I’ll answer it this way.
If making a public show of squiring me around the village means you’ll have to ask me to marry you again, then I am comfortable with it, although I must remind you that there are conditions to my acceptance. It is you who needs to be comfortable with any declarations. ”
He gave her a snappy salute. “Touche’”
The path narrowed as they neared the small bridge. She had traveled this way once before with him. The stream fed the tenant’s farms, created a larger lake down a few hundred yards and was, she believed, Michael’s boyhood fishing spot. Remembering even now how he had once compared her eyes to the mossy rocks of this stream.
As Michael took the lead, carefully guiding Fury onto the planks, a rather loud crack startled Fury who jerked and jumped to the other bank without another step on the split plank. Michael dismounted and regarded the splintered wood. “Come across. Jasmine should avoid the fracture on her own.”
“Do horses know to avoid danger?” she asked him casually as she guided Jasmine onto the narrow bridge.”
“They are very sensitive.”
The next cracking of the boards was so loud it sent Jasmine into a terror. She jibbed, stepping harder on the plank and the board gave way.
Jasmine just avoided pushing her leg through the jagged maw but did not avoid jostling Kathryn when she surged forward. Kathryn was unprepared for her horses’ burst of speed. “Michael!” she screamed as she lost her seat and landed hard on her back on the railing. It then gave way under the pressure of the agitated horse, tumbling the entire section of the bridge into the rushing stream with Kathryn tangled in skirts and 154
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splintered boards.
He watched in horror as she was tossed like a rag doll onto the unforgiving planks and plunged into the water on her back and neck, her head immediately disappearing under the rushing current that swiftly dragged her downstream. “Kath-ryn!” Michael tore at his coat and waistcoat and boots plunging into the icy stream just seconds later, then plowing through the waist deep current catching his feet on rocks, knocking his knees on jutting boulders while fighting churning planks trying to grab at the waterlogged fabric. Her head was still under water when he finally had a firm grip on some part of her clothing.
Michael kept his hand on the fabric he had snagged and twined it in his fingers when his left foot lodged between rocks. The pain was instantaneous, his capture complete for more precious seconds, but still he continued twining the fabric, dragging her to him with the same determination that had seen him through carrying wounded much larger soldiers from the battlefield. Finding cold skin, he used his other hand to thrash for her head; his desperate thought was to get her head above water. “Kathryn, lift your head,” he commanded as if hearing him she could overcome the rushing water.
He found strands of her glorious hair and twined his left hand into it.
With her skirts anchored, he focused his considerable energy on getting her head above water. “Kathryn, Kathryn, hear me!” He pulled her into his now soaked body and fought to bring her shoulders to him. She was limp and heavy and lifeless, the chill of her skin terrifying him. Her face broke the surface, very blue and empty. There was nothing. No expression. No breath. Freeing his leg with a skin tearing tug that sent him stumbling forward, dipping her in the current once again, he made for the side as smooth mossy stones threatened to spill him into the water with every step.
“Kathryn love, wake up darling,” he crooned and cajoled as he fought every ache and every fear to reach the bank and drag her boneless body with him. “Kathryn love, I need you to wake up now,” he spoke as he tilted her on her side and slammed her back to dislodge the water from her lungs. His soothing words diametrically opposed to the brute force he exerted to revive her. The color of her skin began turning from blue to deathly white and there was still nothing. It was only when he was thrashing her once again from her back to her side that he saw the cut. It was deep and eerily blue and just below the pulse point on her neck. She had been ripped by something; probably a shard of the bridge and blood was oozing lazily from the deep wound.
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he had experienced but stanching blood, he could do that. Ripping her skirts, the fabric came away easily. He wadded his first swath and then tore the next strip with his free hand. All the time he kept talking to her as he worked. Tying off her wound required him to run his bandages under her arm but her limp form made moving her difficult. She had showed no signs of life in the few minutes since he had pulled her from the water. “Kathryn love, wake for me. Fight with me, yell at me, hate me, Kathryn, just don’t leave me!”
He worked with the now shredded dress to remove it so he could get her more comfortably seated in front of him on the horse but the soaked layers of fabric were heavy and awkward so he finally resorted to tearing the dress. He fought it fiercely pouring his energy into freeing her from the now-freezing mass of sodden rags. Once he had the last vestige of her dress vanquished, he realized anew that many more precious minutes had passed and she had still not stirred.
Heart constricting, he allowed the words from his mouth. “You will not die. You will not. You are my duchess, you are my life!” he bellowed into the woods.
* * * *
Harold Stafford hove just below the ridge and his blood tingled when the anguished roar reached his hiding spot. He might have actually managed to kill her. He had done it! The faux duchess was as good as dead and there would be no heir. Michael would crumble into himself into a pious prison of guilt and recriminations, faulting himself unmercifully for her death and then he would welcome the taking of his life. It would be a blessing for him to die. It had all been so easy. Cracking two boards was all it had taken. Soon, there would be no one to prevent him from taking Asterleigh.
The lovely maid had been more difficult to dispense with. Having to dig that deep
hole had taken hours. Splitting the wood that had sent the Duchess to her death had pleasured him much more than the others. It was becoming fun to be more hands-on.
Michael grabbed madly for his nerve. He was a battle-hardened warrior. Men with mortal wounds, grievous injuries had leaned on him and he had managed to soothe, calm them but Kathryn’s injuries were weighing him down with unholy fear. The cold had begun stiffening his muscles and where she had once seemed iced cold, she now began heating. Her face turned paler if that was possible. The freckles faded and her eyelids glued to her cheeks. If she never woke up, he would die 156
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inside. He had found love. Her life was everything.
And he had been too stubborn to tell her when he knew that was all she had ever wanted from him.
Fury responded to his call and he straightened with her in his arms.
She slumped lifeless as a sack across his saddle and he slung himself over the horse’s side. “Jasmine.” It was a plaintive cry, not meant to call a horse but to call a life.
Kathryn did not wake on the journey back to the house.
He carried his beloved up the steps, kicked at the door, and, without waiting for a response, flung it open with a free hand. Thorpe looked at him, nearly apoplectic.
“Thorpe, blankets, warm water. Think for me. What do I do?”
Hallthorpe’s Master was cold, soaked, and terrified and losing his ever so steely nerve.
