He gave her a half grin. “Not really. Only numb enough to make me reflect on how lonely life can be alone.”
She snorted, rolled her eyes. “If that actually makes sense to you, then you’re quite drunk.”
“I should think,” he remarked softly, “that you of all people would understand just how much loneliness can be felt without imbibing at all.”
Her shoulders slumped as that statement hit its target. Depending on how much liquor he’d consumed, this conversation could sting bitterly. But if he wanted a fight, she supposed she couldn’t stop him, and it would probably be better to stand up to him instead of cowering. Seconds later she pushed the covers to her ankles and stood to face him unafraid, hands on hips.
“So get to the point. Why are you here?” she asked again, her tone firm from her own growing irritation.
Immediately, his eyes flashed with a noticeable sexual hunger. His gaze slowly traveled down and then up the length of her body, making her suddenly wish she’d never left the cot.
“It really should be illegal,” he drawled, “for a lady who looks like you, dressed in barely nothing, to stand in front of a man who hasn’t been bedded by one in ages.”
She faltered, feeling her pulse begin to race. Crossing her arms over her breasts, she shifted from one foot to the other as the real reason for his unexpected return began to dawn on her and she realized at once just how exposed she truly was.
“So, that’s it,” she stated flatly, lifting her chin in feigned confidence. “You’ve come to bed me now, to take me at a time of your choosing, catching me off guard because I was sleeping, proving some sort of complete control by waking me for it.”
He smirked. “Why would you assume the only thing I want from you right now is to bed you?”
Treating her like an idiot irritated her even more. “Because there’s nothing else to do here?” she replied sarcastically. “Because of the way you’re looking at me?” She paused, then added, “It is what you want, isn’t it? Or did you come back for more tea?”
“I came back to be with you.”
That huskily whispered statement thoroughly rattled her. It was unlike him to be so evasive and say something in the intimate manner a lover might use. She could only blame it on the drink. “To be with me?”
He shook his head. “Viola, you’re making this very difficult—”
“I’m making what difficult?” she cut in, incredulous that he would accuse her of anything right now, especially when he was the one not making any sense at all. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe you came back to chat about the warm summer weather, or go fishing with you at sunup.” She shook her head slowly, finally understanding his late-night ploy. “No, your grace. You came back to annoy me, to gloat in your power over even my ability to rest by awakening me, to take pride in the fact that I am locked up at your command, and then to use my body to satisfy your carnal desire, the first of many times you might feel the need to seduce me at your whim until you tire of me and decide to send me home. Am I right?”
She apparently hit a nerve as she deliberately touched on every one of his motives. His eyes grew stormy and his jaw hardened as he pressed his lips together.
“Why do you make it sound so offensive?” he asked, his voice taut. “As if all I want from you is to lie there like a rag doll while I use you for some sort of passionless physical release?”
Back rigid, shoulders squared, she decided at that moment to lay her feelings bare; she had nothing left to lose.
“Because, Ian,” she disclosed in a near-whisper, her tone spilling over with raw emotion, “at the very heart of everything between us there is only pain and sorrow, regret and, for you, revenge. We’re not lovers, and I think you know I’m not the kind of woman who needs or wants to become any man’s mistress. You may desire me, but that’s just male lust. We both know the last thing you want to do is make slow, passionate, meaningful love to me. You didn’t bring me here for that purpose, and I’m not naive enough to ever expect it from you.”
For seconds he seemed stunned, perhaps even appalled by her candor as he once again looked her up and down. Then suddenly his features hardened as the air around them charged with a static she could positively feel.
“My, that’s . . . quite a deduction,” he enunciated in a thick, cold whisper. “Remarkable insight considering your apparent lack of understanding.”
Lack of understanding? She frowned slightly, her uncertainty growing with his sharp change in focus and shift in mood. Still, she refused to cower to him. “I’m not an idiot, Ian.”
He smirked. “But you are naive if you think the only reason you’re here is for passionless coupling.”
“Oh, I know it’s more than that,” she shot back in quick defense. “It’s also about control, humiliation.”
“You’re dead wrong if you think your captivity is about my satisfaction and need for revenge.” He shook his head slowly, his mouth turning down in bitter contempt. “This isn’t about me, it’s about you.”
“You’re talking in riddles,” she said, eyeing him carefully as her pulse began to race. “Go back to the house, to your drink, and leave me alone.”
With renewed purpose he began to walk toward her, all apparent drunkenness gone, replaced with determination.
“You really don’t know why I brought you here, do you?” he asked, his tone now icy, controlled.
A wave of uneasiness washed over her, and very subtly she began to retreat from his slowly approaching form. He was attempting to confuse her, catch her off her guard, but his ultimate intent remained unclear.
“Answer me, Viola,” he whispered.
Exasperated, bewildered, angry, she threw her arms wide. “I don’t know what you’re asking, what you expect me to say.”
He didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he continued closing the space between them until he stood directly in front of her, towering over her, his eyes narrowed to slits, jaw tense, shoulders bunched involuntarily, which tightened his linen shirt around the muscles of his chest and arms. She swallowed, held his gaze, hardly able to breathe as she realized he’d backed her up against the wall, cornering her next to the foot of the cot.
“You think you know what I experienced five years ago,” he murmured, his voice low and brimming with grief. “You think that because you still feel some sort of empathy, a bit of guilt for what your family caused, that you understand. But guilt isn’t anything like helplessness, Viola, like hopelessness. Guilt isn’t anything like terror.”
She cringed inside as it began to dawn on her that he had every intention of making her feel his pain, a heartache she would do anything to avoid. He didn’t know the depth of her feelings for him, how the memory of that time long ago had affected her entire life, how terror was experienced by everyone who loved the one tormented.
“You’ve never experienced the nightmares that still haunt me,” he continued, “the anxiety that cloaks me still when darkness falls and I’m alone in silence with memories that seem like yesterday. You don’t awaken in the middle of the night, awash with panic, filled with rage you can’t ignore or explain because every single day you’re reminded of the time you were violated by an unseen demon—”
“Stop it, Ian,” she pleaded in a whisper, pressing her palms against his chest as she attempted to push him away.
Instead, he moved closer, brushing his entire frame against hers. Totally at his mercy, she could smell the faint trace of whiskey and heady male musk, could feel the heat of his body emanate from every tight muscle as he overpowered her with his strength, as his chest grazed her breasts and the warmth of his breath caressed her cheek and jaw when she turned her head in some attempt to avoid him.
“I want you to feel my fear, Viola,” he maintained relentlessly. “I want you to feel my helplessness, to experience the raw terror of
having everything you are as a person of dignity taken away from you.”
“I’m sorry—”
“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” he seethed through clenched teeth. “I want you to know what I experienced, to know the depth of my anger.” In a sudden burst of anguish, he slammed his fist into the wall beside her. “I want you to feel what I felt!”
Tears filled her eyes. She started trembling, struggling against him in a vain attempt to break away from his clutches. He wouldn’t let her budge. Instead, he grabbed her jaw with his palm, forcing her to face him, to look at him.
“I’m a man, and until five years ago, I lived the life of one entitled, a respected lord and heir to a wealthy earldom. And then two common country girls managed to outwit me, drug me, chain me, and by doing so, steal my manhood—”
“That’s not true,” she whispered.
“Your sisters emasculated me, Viola. Whether physical or only deep in my mind, they violated me. And during that time of horror, you came along and took my seed without my consent or complete awareness—”
“Please, Ian, stop,” she begged, tears rolling down her cheeks as she squeezed her eyes shut. “It didn’t happen that way—”
“It happened that way to me!”
She shook her head fiercely, though he continued to hold her firmly in his control. And then, to her great astonishment, he pushed his hips into hers, forcing her to notice his rigid erection as he pressed it into her belly. She whimpered as a sudden heat suffused her, as her breathing quickened and her legs weakened beneath her.
“I sought you out to ruin you, to make you suffer as I did,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “But meeting you again has disoriented me, stirred my passions, made me crazy with need that I don’t understand.” Leaning in, he whispered in her ear, “Can you feel what you do to me, sweetheart? Can you now understand my confusion, my humiliation and outrage when you, one of the women who stole my manhood, continues to arouse it like this?”
Abruptly, before she could utter a response, he released her jaw and threaded the fingers of both hands tightly through her hair, pinning her head to the wall.
“It’s always part of me now,” he said as he rubbed the tip of his nose along her ear and temple, his voice a husky mixture of anger, frustration, and hot desire. “And what infuriates me most of all is that in five long years you’re the only woman who haunts me, awake and asleep. You’re the only woman I want to satisfy my lust. Can you imagine anything more absurd?” He chuckled with disgust. “You’re the demon of my nightmares, Viola, and yet my greatest personal fault is that I can’t bring myself to hate you. And when I touch you like this, have you close to me like this, nearly naked and all to myself . . .” He placed his face in the crook of her neck and inhaled deeply, then ran his tongue up the side of her throat. “When I can taste you and smell you and feel you like this, I fear I’ll never be able to rid myself of you, that you’ll go on haunting me night after night forever.”
Moaning softly, she pushed her hips into his. “Please—”
“Please, what?” he murmured in her ear. “Let you go? Or take you here, fast and hot like this, and satisfy us both?”
“Ian—” She gasped when he reached down with one hand and pinched her nipple, then ran his thumb across it.
“It’s only simple lust between us, anyway,” he remarked bitterly, his lips grazing her jawline. “You said you don’t want or expect passionate, meaningful lovemaking from me, but I can take you just like you did me five years ago, satisfy your desire, make sure you enjoy it.” He pressed his erection into her again, gently bit her earlobe. “Is that what you want, Viola? Do you want me to make you come?”
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could hardly move in his tight grasp, his body flattened into hers, one hand threaded through her hair, the other caressing her breast. He made her insane with need, desperate for him to just kiss her, to touch her everywhere and tease her to oblivion. But above all, she absolutely felt every measure of his frustration and hopelessness within her, his anger at being used and unable to forgive his captors of so long ago, and suddenly she realized that the only way she knew of to help him save his soul was to now, and like this, accept his feelings as he wanted her to experience them.
Squirming a little in his arms, she lifted one hand and cupped his chin with force. He pulled back just enough to look into her eyes.
In a voice of sheer terror mixed with a sultry desire she hoped to God he recognized, she murmured harshly, “I want to feel what you felt.”
For a slice of a second surprise flickered in his stark gaze. And then he groaned low in his chest and released her, flipping her around so fast and unexpectedly that she gasped. Before she could even begin to predict his intention, he flattened her arms on the wall, her palms to the sides of her shoulders, then lifted her nightgown with ease and bunched it at her ribs, exposing her below her waist. Quickly, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her body toward him an inch or two to give him access, shoving one of his hands up to clutch a breast while lifting her right leg at the knee and resting her foot on the edge of the cot for support with the other. When he had her in place, he pressed his lips to her neck and boldly reached down until the fingers of his free hand began to explore her from behind.
He inhaled sharply when he finally touched her intimately; she shivered from the contact, so heated and fast, so shocking and totally out of her control. He seemed lost with purpose, driven by the moment, relentless in his pursuit, caressing her breast with one hand while using whisper-soft movements to tease her apart and explore her more fully with the fingertips of the other.
He began to kiss her neck and shoulder in gentle pecks, suck her earlobe as he caressed her with ever-increasing intensity. He held her captive to his whim, unable to move, to face him, to look into his eyes and witness his feelings as he purposely pushed her closer to the edge of sanity. It took only seconds for her breathing to become fast and erratic, her body to succumb to his rhythm, to focus on each touch, each play of his fingers on each delicate, sensitive spot on her body, as he brought her nearer and nearer her crest—
Suddenly he released her. She moaned in blissful agony, though just as quickly, he brought his hand from her breast and wrapped it in her hair, coiling his fingers through her long tresses.
“You’re so wet, so aroused,” he whispered, his tone low and thick. “Do you feel what I felt, sweetheart? Stroked by someone unseen until you’re brought to the brink of pleasure?”
She wanted to hit him, run from him, plead with him to make love to her all night. Instead, he had her trapped, needing him, desperate for release, to feel him inside of her. And he knew it.
Drawing a shaky breath, she murmured over her shoulder, “Truthfully, I’ve never wanted a man more, Ian. But unlike you in that dungeon, I will never, ever beg for it.”
It took seconds, it seemed, for him to grasp what she said. And then very slowly, she felt his fingers tighten in her hair to the point of gentle pain. She squeezed her eyes shut, half expecting to be thrown across the room in a venting of his rage. Instead, he groaned deeply in his throat, wrapped his free arm around her hips, and yanked her into his nude body.
She nearly squealed at the contact, so warm and erotic and unexpected. She had no idea when he’d removed his clothes, though when he then nestled his hard and hot erection into her bottom such an irrelevant, banal consideration evaporated.
Suddenly his fingers were in her intimate curls, playing, stroking, moving lower to tease her apart and find the nub of her pleasure. He tugged her head back a little so that he could access her face, pressing his lips to her jaw, sucking her earlobe, her throat and shoulder. His hot breath grew erratic, mixing with hers as he very quickly brought her once more to the edge.
She began to move her hips in rhythm, whimpering softly, leaning back on his shou
lder to give him access to her neck and jaw. His lips teased her soft flesh, sucking, kissing, licking, until at last, as she began moaning, her body growing tense, her mind reeling as she neared the heights of ecstasy, he pulled on her hair again, just enough to turn her face so he could capture her mouth with his in a searing kiss.
He groaned again, inflaming her pleasure. And then suddenly she felt him move the tip of him between her legs.
Viola relaxed into him even more, adjusted her foot on the cot to give him better access, uncertain what to do in this position, but at the edge of orgasm and desperate for him to be inside of her. She’d never made love standing, been taken from behind, and all of it, with Ian, made for the most carnal, explosive experience of her life. She moaned softly as he kissed her, sucked her tongue, caressed her with an arm wrapped around her, his fingers between her legs, stroking, preparing—
And then he thrust once, twice, and continued pushing upward until he filled her. She gasped, pulled away from his mouth, the pain not as intense as her first time with him, but sharp enough from years of celibacy to cause her body to tense.
He remained still once deeply embedded, untangling his fingers from her hair and wrapping his arm around her, clutching her breast as he began to tease her nipple. Within seconds the pain subsided and he once more began stroking her between her legs, quickly taking her again to the edge.
Viola closed her eyes, losing herself to the feel of him behind her, touching her, inside of her as he held himself steady to bring her to climax first. And just as he began to run his tongue up her throat, moan in her ear with a warm breath of his own increasing desire for her, she reached her peak and the pleasure burst within.
She cried out; her arms flew back to clutch his head, her fingers squeezing together tightly in his hair. He stroked her, held her as she trembled against him, clung tightly to her breast and leg as he began thrusting steadily inside her.
“Jesus, Viola . . .” He sucked in a breath, teeth clenched. “Just feeling you—makes me—”
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