"Your brother really said that?"
"He tried, but he hasn't the facility to be as fluent as I am."
"Nor has he your modesty, I doubt."
"Good," Ryder said, tossing the book back into her lap, "a bit of vinegar. Now, Sophie, it's time for you to come with me over to that bed. I know you had a bath earlier so that excuse went out with the bathwater."
"I don't want to, Ryder."
She was twisting her hands. It was amazing, his strong Sophie, the woman who had directed a score of servants during the past week, humming while she worked, was wringing her hands like a helpless twit.
"Nor do you want to tell me why you were crying this afternoon?"
"No. It isn't important, truly. It was just that. . . I lost some silverware."
Ryder only shook his head at her. He stripped off his clothes then came back to stand in front of the drowsing fire, naked, to gaze down at the orange embers.
She stared at him, she couldn't help it. He stretched out his hand to her. "Come along now, sweetheart. I'm going to try my damnedest to give you some pleasure tonight. And if I fail you tonight, why then, there will be tomorrow night and the night after that."
She shook her head even as he was jerking her to her feet. He picked her up in his arms, carried her to the bed, and gently laid her on her back. He quickly unfastened the sash on her dressing gown.
He ignored the stiffness of her body, the pallor of her face, the damned wariness he saw in her eyes. He stripped off her nightgown, then straightened and stared down at her.
"No, don't cover yourself."
She turned her face away from him, and fisted her hands at her sides.
"You're beautiful, Sophie, not a dream princess like Melissande, certainly, but as she pointed out, you're pretty nonetheless. I'll keep you. Now I'm going to . . . no, let me just show you."
He came down beside her, lying on his side, and very gently he stroked his fingertips over her jaw, her lips, her nose, then smoothed her eyebrows. He simply looked at her and touched her face.
She looked up at him then.
"Ryder," she said, "I know that you want to take me. You don't have to play about with me as you're doing now. Please, just get it over with. I won't fight you. I know that it will do no good. I'm tired and want it over with."
He laughed.
"Ah, all those other damned men. 'Take you'. . . what a wonderful way to say 'making love.' Well, let me tell you something, Mrs. Sherbrooke, you're my wife. I want to play with you until you're yelling with pleasure. I want you to enjoy yourself. I want you to laugh and kiss me back and play with me. No, you can't begin to understand that, can you? But you will come to understand."
He leaned down and kissed her mouth, very gently, his own mouth light as moth's wings. He continued kissing her until he finally felt her ease beneath him. "Do you know how wonderful you taste to me? How much I enjoying kissing you?"
"It isn't bad," she admitted, sounding a bit worried. Even as she parted her lips to speak, he gently slipped his tongue inside her mouth and touched hers.
She started, becoming stiff as a bed slat.
Ryder was again in firm control of himself, just as he'd been before. Everything in him was focused on her, on her reactions, her shifts of expressions, the lightness or darkness of her gray eyes. All that he wanted was for her to become one with him, to replace all her memories with him—his laughter, his sheer joy in life, his pleasure in her.
He simply continued what he was doing. There was all the time in the world. The night was long. He figured she didn't have a chance.
He talked to her, distracting her from the memories he knew crept into her mind whilst he touched her. He told her how much he admired her breasts, that they were as white as fresh snow and as round as her belly would be when she was carrying his child. Ah, and her belly, he spanned his fingers to her pelvic bones and told her she should easily carry their children, as many as she wished to bear, and then he began to caress her, his fingers light and caressing her warm belly. When his fingers lightly touched her woman's soft flesh, she lurched up in bed and scrambled away from him.
He was so startled that she escaped him. He watched her blankly dash naked across the bare floor to the windows on the eastern side of the bedchamber. She stood there, her back to him, her head bowed.
He went to her, frowning, but said nothing, merely placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her gently back against him.
"Now, what is all this about?"
"I feel so dirty."
Good Lord, he thought, staring at the back of her head, the dam had finally burst. About time too. He said slowly, "Finally you tell me the truth. It's about time, Sophie. Now we will deal with it."
She was silent.
"Somehow I don't believe it was my fingers between your thighs that brought this on, but it helped, didn't it? It made you remember—did you see one of the men doing that to Dahlia? Did one of the men force himself on you in that way?" He waited, but she said nothing. "All right then. You're not built as I am, Sophie. For you to reach a woman's pleasure, you must know caresses there between your thighs. There is no reason for you to feel dirty or ashamed or anything else except excitement and anticipation."
"It's not that entirely."
"Ah," he said, and felt a wrenching in his gut. As for his sex, all desire was long gone. "So some of those men touched you there? Fondled you there? Is that what this is all about? You would still have me battle memories, bloody ghosts?"
Ghosts, ha! she thought, shaking unconsciously.
"Sophie, talk to me."
"I'm sorry, Ryder."
He shook her then. "Damn you, woman, stop bleating like a twit sheep! You were a hellion when I met you and now you become a pathetic scrap on me. Stop it, dammit!"
She screamed at him, "All right, damn you, all right!" She jerked away, looked frantically around the bedchamber for something to hit him with, didn't see anything, and dashed from the bedchamber.
'You're naked!"
"Go to the devil!"
He was grabbing for his dressing gown when she ran back into the bedchamber. She was carrying a broom. She rushed at him, like a horseless knight in a joust, and he couldn't help himself, he laughed. He hugged his belly he laughed so hard, at least until she hit him on the head. Then hit him again and again, cursing at him all the while.
The pain of the sharp bristles finally got through to him as well as the sharp throbbing over his left temple, and he grabbed the broom handle. But she was strong, bloody strong with determination and rage.
It took a good deal of strength on his part to get it away from her without hurting her.
He tossed it aside, and grabbed her, pulling her roughly up against him. He kissed her hard. His hands were on her buttocks, bringing her up to fit intimately against him. She arched her back and tried to bite him.
"The good Lord knows I'm glad you're back," he said, and kissed her hard again. He threw her over his shoulder and carried her to the bed.
"You feel dirty, do you? Well, my dear wife, let's just see how you will feel when I get done with you."
CHAPTER
19
SHE FOUGHT HIM, kicking, twisting, panting with effort. She shrieked at him, called him every name she'd ever heard hurled at another in Jamaica.
He only laughed and held her down.
When he was kissing her belly, she yanked viciously at his hair. It was then that Ryder just sighed, stripped off one of the pillowcases, and tied her hands above her head to one of the huge carved bedposts.
She could still hurt him with her legs but he could bear that. He went back to his pleasurable task. He kissed her white belly, slipping his tongue into her navel while his hands were stroking her inner thighs. He paused then, and looked at her. "You will like this, Sophie." He dipped down, suddenly, and lifted her hips. He covered her with his mouth and she screamed, a high wailing sound that moved him not one whit.
He gently eas
ed his middle finger inside her. Ah, he thought, she was damp. But still so very small. Well, it wouldn't matter once she'd come to pleasure.
And she was loosening and opening, feeling something near to pain deep inside her, low in her belly, and it held her, made her want, and despite herself, despite her screaming curses at him, she was raising her hips to bring herself closer to him. His finger was deep inside her, moving in and out, and his mouth found a rhythm that drove her wild.
She knew something was coming, she wanted it desperately, and she still wanted to curse him for what he was doing to her. Then she moaned, jerking so violently he nearly dropped her, and she froze, but just for an instant.
Ryder raised his head from her for just a moment. "Still feel dirty, Sophie?"
She yelled at him even as her hips jerked and heaved, "You damned bounder, you bastard, you—"
"Just another moment, sweetheart, and you'll understand. Keep cursing, it makes me want you to scream with pleasure all the more."
She was crying now, her breath short and gasping, and he knew she didn't understand that she was close, very close, and in the next instant, he pushed her, his finger deep, his mouth just as deep. He felt her legs stiffen, then felt the heaving contractions, the spasms that lifted her back off the bed.
He kept her there, locked into the climax, forcing the pleasure to continue, not to stop, but to go on and on until she was crying from the power of it, the finality of it, her acceptance of it. When finally she grew soft and yielding in his hands, he pulled her thighs wide apart and came into her, deep and hard.
He felt the sweet aftershocks of her climax and it was more than enough. He found his own release in the very next instant and he yelled his pleasure, not at his own climax, which was incredibly powerful, but at hers, at what he had finally given her.
She was slick with sweat, her breath deep and fast, and he lay on top of her, his sex still deep inside her, and he gently laid his palm on her heart.
He kissed her slack mouth. He simply looked down at her until she finally opened her eyes.
Shock, dazed shock.
He kissed her again, and she tasted herself and she simply couldn't believe what had happened, couldn't believe that she'd lost herself so completely, that even as she'd hated him and cursed him and wanted to kill him, her body had exploded into ferocious pleasure, and she'd wanted it, oh yes, she'd wanted it more than anything. And he'd watched her, and felt the wild spasms and known, known what he was doing to her, known how he was controlling her, known exactly what she was feeling. He kissed her again, then came up on his elbows.
"Your heart is finally slowing."
She looked at his chin but felt the warmth of his chest against her breast, against her heart. He would mock her now, she thought, he would blare his triumph over her, he would grind her under and proclaim his mastery. She stiffened, waiting, knowing what would come.
He gently pushed the hair off her forehead, hair damp with the wildness of her pleasure, and he said very slowly, his voice deep and rough, "I love you, Sophie Sherbrooke. I never thought such a thing existed, but evidently it does. I love you and I will love you until I cock up my toes and pass to the hereafter and I will still love you even as I float about in eternity. And I will continue to force you to pleasure until you accept my love and take me into your heart as well as into your body."
He suddenly looked startled. She felt him hard within her once again and, to her horror, she squirmed.
He didn't laugh, didn't mock her. He threw back his head, closed his eyes, and groaned. "Do you have any idea how you feel to me? Come with me again, Sophie, all right? Just let yourself go, forget all the past, those damned ghosts, just think of me and how I feel deep inside you. Just think about what my fingers are going to do to you, and my tongue—"
She didn't want to fall apart again, but there didn't seem to be much choice. In but an instant of time, she forgot about choice anyway. When he told her to wrap her legs around his flanks, she did so willingly and quickly, hugging him hard, lifting her hips to bring him deeper, and he groaned and she felt a burgeoning of those same feelings, those frantic barbaric feelings that stripped off everything except that wrenching pleasure that was so great it was nearly pain, but it wasn't, it was within her and within him and somehow it made them as one. His hand was between their bodies, stroking her, caressing her, and then his mouth was against hers, his tongue deep inside her mouth just as his sex was inside her body. And she was howling and bucking in her frenzy, and he encouraged her, telling her what to do, telling her what she made him feel. Then, just as he plunged so deep he touched her womb, she convulsed with pleasure and screamed.
Ryder was with her, holding her tightly against him, kissing her nose, her cheek, her eyebrows, her ears. He told her again and again that he loved her.
"Am I too heavy?"
He wasn't, not really, but her wrists were cramping, not because of how tightly he'd fastened the pillowcases, but because she'd jerked and twisted so violently, wanting more of him, more of herself.
"Can you untie my hands?"
He raised himself with effort, ducked his head down again and kissed her, grinning as he did so. "I can't get enough of you, Sophie."
"I don't mind kissing you," she said as he untied her wrists.
He pulled out of her and came down onto his side. He rubbed her wrists, frowning at the redness. "I didn't mean to tie them so tightly, I'm sorry."
"It wasn't that," she said, not looking at him. "It was the other."
"What other?"
She looked at him straight in his blue eyes. "How you made me feel. I was an animal."
"Ah, another condemnation perhaps? Based on your wonderful objective experience? I hate to tell you this, Sophia, but we are both animals, carnal as hell, and so wonderful that I pray you'll go wild and ferocious on me every night." He paused, frowning. "Perhaps every morning as well. Ah, and there's the hour just after luncheon, you know, when you're just a bit tired and—"
She laughed.
Ryder was so surprised that he simply stared down at her. He kissed her again and six more times.
She kissed him back, but her body felt so languid she doubted she could have roused herself even if Mrs. Chivers had shouted fire. She felt beyond herself; she didn't understand. She didn't know what to think. And she had laughed.
She said, "Do you really love me?"
"Yes."
"You didn't just say it because you were inside me and your lust. . . well, you know what I mean."
"Yes, I know what you mean. Now, I'm not inside you. You've exhausted me twice. I'm limp and nearly expired. My wits have gone begging. I have no sensation below my heart. And I love you."
"You never said that before."
"I didn't realize I loved you before. Things have changed and I don't mind telling you that I'm quite pleased about it. No, Sophie, don't feel that you have to fill in the silence."
"You're the master here."
He said easily, accepting her words, understanding them, "Yes, I am. You want to know something? It feels good, damned good. I never felt I was needed at Northcliffe Hall and of course I wasn't. It was and is Douglas's home and his responsibility as the Earl of Northcliffe. But Chadwyck House, it's mine, Sophie, it's ours, and our children will grow up here, and this will be their home and, why, I might even wear a smock and become a farmer on Wednesdays and Fridays. What do you think?"
"I think you would look beautiful in a smock and hobnail boots."
"Ah," he said, and kissed her mouth. "Dear God, but I love kissing you."
Tell him, she thought, tell him, but she was afraid to, afraid he would search out both Lord David and Charles Grammond and threaten them or kill them, she didn't know which. But she knew there would be an awful scandal and she couldn't do it to him, to the Sherbrooke family, to Jeremy, to herself.
She kissed him back, urgently, wanting only to bury her misery, to forget it for just another instant, just one m
ore moment, and she succeeded. He caressed her, and when he came into her again, she cried out in her climax, and Ryder thought he would die from the pleasure of it. When they slept, Ryder dreamed of his children and knew, even in his dream, that he would have to tell her about them very soon now and pray that she would understand.
Ryder didn't tell Sophie anything; he had no chance to. She was still sound asleep when he left the house the following morning, from exhaustion, from his exhausting her.
The following afternoon, when he was in the north field with three of his tenant farmers, a carriage pulled up in front of Chadwyck House. The Earl of Northcliffe, Alex, Jeremy, and Sinjun spilled out.
The earl simply stood there, his wife's hand in his, and stared at the house and grounds.
"You've done very well," he said to Sophie, who didn't look like a waif today but was actually wearing a gown that Mrs. Plack had made for her. Her hair was a bit mussed because she'd been polishing the crystals on a chandelier in what she now thought of as her own room, which was set at the back of the house, its doors giving onto the garden.
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