Bride of Thunder (33 page)

“I have no appetite,” she said.

“Have you not?” Their eyes locked. “You'd better find it, Mercy,
mia
. You'll need stamina tonight, I expect to make up for what I denied myself on the trail from esthetic considerations and sympathy for you.”

“Sympathy!”

He nodded. “I'm trying to exercise patience with you. Rape has its charms, but it grows repetitive. Love's sweeter variations and delights require a willing partner.”

She stared at him, wordless, gripped with disbelieving hatred. Could he think she'd ever do more than he forced her to, ever want to pleasure or be pleased by him? He sighed and laid his hand on her throat. It was like being claimed by a great tawny cat.

“‘Willing' may be too sanguine a description for the moment, but I shall at least have compliance, and that without dark looks and sulking. Eat now; it'll make you feel better.”

“I told you …”

“There's an alternative,” he cut in. “I wouldn't dream of exhausting a dinnerless lady with the diversions I have in mind, but I can derive considerable satisfaction from alternate amusements.”

“I'm delighted to hear it.”

“Are you?” he smiled. “But, of course, I expect you to share the rather special entertainment.” He considered. “When girls are whipped in the courtyard, sometimes the quetzals scream along with them. But sometimes I prefer to watch just one at rather close quarters. The writhing and play of muscle is more intimate that way. Have you a preference?”

“You … whip women for no reason?”

“My amusement is the best of reasons. Don't look so appalled, my dear.
I
don't whip the girls. It's done by an expert who won't break the skin.”

“I suppose one shouldn't be surprised if you slept with the women under your power,” said Mercy between clenched teeth. “But to use them this way! It's horrible! Disgusting!”

“Oh, I enjoy them when I feel like it All the house servants, male and female, are the handsomest to be found. They don't think me such a monster as you do. They're not overworked, they live well, and whether I whip a girl or rape her, she gets her pick of baubles at the store.” While Mercy tried to fit this into her understanding of this man who was presently all-powerful in her life, he went on thoughtfully. “I could call in one of those boys who fetched your bathwater. There're two of them, I think, whom I haven't sampled yet.”

“B-boys?”

“You don't know about one of the most ancient and celebrated kinds of love?” he asked mockingly. “I could have sworn that Philip had predilections that way.”

With the humiliated shame of new half-comprehension, Mercy remembered that night when Philip had been so drunk and the degradingly inexplicable and painful way he'd used her. Now Eric was saying that, of course, males could be used like that, too.

“So?” inquired Eric. “Fond memories recast in a different light, or perhaps they weren't so fond? Don't judge the departed too harshly, sweet. Perhaps like myself and any number of potent men, he found it an interesting side dish, but in the main preferred fairly basic delights.”

There was nothing to say. Like Zane, he controlled the daily lives and fates of humans on his estate, but where Zane had governed himself and used his conscience in the treatment of his workers, Eric had no law higher than his whim.

“So what shall we have?” he asked, as if consulting a menu. “A whipping here or in the courtyard? One of the boys? Sometimes they screech the first time, but, like women, they soon get used to it.”

“I think I'd rather die than live with you forever.”

He chuckled. “Enchanted with you as I am, Mercy, I doubt I'll want you that long, since Zane's already had you. In two or three years I might see just what he'd give for you, though I've a feeling he'll be sticky about my leavings. If he was serious about marriage, I fear that's one dream you'll have to give up.”

“I don't see how I could go to him or any other decent man after what you seem to have in mind. I hate to think what I'll be like after two years with you!”

“So little confidence in yourself,” he mused. “Well, love, don't let it fret you. There'll always be a pensioner's corner for you here, or I could surely find you an English husband in Belize City, one who wouldn't know your amazing background. But why talk of the future?” He got to his feet in the graceful, easy fashion that always surprised her because he was so large. “I'll ring the bell and by the time Celeste comes, you must decide about the evening.”

She caught his arm. “I'll do what you want.”

“Good girl.” He gave her cheek an approving caress, sat down, and began to eat with a voracity that was frightening.

Mercy concentrated on her own food and wished the meal would never end.

After one of the innumerable servants had removed the dishes and left more wine and fruit on the table, Eric untied the sash of Mercy's dressing gown and eased it off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. He watched her for a moment, his breath quickening and his eyes seeming to film, before he carried her to the bed.

He took her quickly, as if he couldn't wait, so swollen and hard that she bit her lips to keep from screaming till his fluid pumped into her and he rolled off and lay beside her with one arm flung across her body.

Tears stung at Mercy's eyes. To mind the physical pain seemed ignoble under the circumstances, but she wondered how long she could endure simply that part of her captivity.

“I still hurt?” he asked gently, his fingers rubbing away the few tears that had squeezed out in spite of her pride. “Never mind, love. You'll fit me better every time, and I can do some nice things for you that will feel wonderful.”

He began to stroke her. She went rigid. “I … you needn't bother!”

“But I want to.”

Rising, he came back with water and cloths, cleansed her aching, plundered parts, and then rubbed scented oil on her from neck to toe, working it in with firm, sure strokes that gradually eased away her resistance and made her relax to a surprising extent. He turned her over, then oiled her back and artfully kneaded her shoulders, buttocks, and thighs. It felt so good that the only way she could accept it was to remind herself that she was helpless against his fancies and had better get any help from them that she could.

Everything seemed to be melting into the warm, flowing caress of powerful hands that turned her over again and began to smooth her breasts, brushing the nipples, traversing with strong, solid motions her vulnerable-feeling stomach and loins till even that unprotected area stopped tensing.

Maybe that's all he's going to do,
she thought drowsily. Languor deepened with each soothing stroke. Then something damp and sensitive was following the hand as his tongue played around her navel, teased her nipples, and urgently but salvingly invaded the place he had breached so roughly.

Mostly his tongue flicked where she wasn't sore, playing over a small, exquisitely tender place that Zane had found, too, but which had been a fusing, indistinguishable part of the rapture to which he could bring her.

With Eric it was different—she had no wish for
him
—but the arousal demanded discharge, with the tension mounting unbearably till she flexed her thighs, trembling, as his tongue probed the wounded but now desirous entrance to her depths.

Flames of pink and gold exploded within her. Eric seemed to drink, suck from her some essence. She cried out irrepressibly as the tautness drained, leaving her soft, spent.

“Sleep now, my love,” he said, and he held her in his arms.

She awoke caressed in the dim light of early morning. Almost before she remembered where she was and with whom, Eric finished preparing her and slowly, carefully, penetrated, stopping when she tightened, thrusting a fraction deeper when she relaxed.

“I'm within you,” he said at last, “to the hilt, sweet Mercy. Shall we see if you can like this just a little?”

He kept up a soft rhythm for a while, but she was determined not to respond, horrified and angry at herself for his easy victory last night. As if he read her thoughts, he gripped her flanks, raised her to fit him as tightly as his size would allow, and hammered till that instant when substance spurted from him in pulsing jets that she felt like a muffled heartbeat in her loins.

“You're tougher than you think,” he told her, panting as he collapsed beside her. “You won't break from my usage, and in time you'll rise to meet me and thrust back, wanting to feel me as deep as you can.”

She didn't answer. How was she to fight him when the price was the torture of others? And if she had to be quiescent under his hands, how could she prevent her body from responding to his skillful, questing tongue?

There was no way, probably, though she doubted his prediction that she'd ever respond to his practice of the normal mode. With one careless arm; he lifted her on top of him and held the back of her head so that, resting on the pillows, he could see her face.

“Moral quandary?” He laughed, stroking her breasts and thighs. “How are you going to reconcile what your body does with your top-lofty ideals and love for your errant cavalier?”

Despairingly, she wondered what Elkanah, who understood human souls but ministered to bodies, would have said. He would never have told her to hate or despise the wonderfully made and vulnerable body for responding as it was intended and designed to in order to continue the race. If she'd been given a choice, it would be different, but she'd had none.

“Loving Zane has nothing to do with what you can make me feel,” she said. “I won't blame myself for that any more than I will for eating and drinking.”

“Fortunate Mercy!” he chided, frowning humorously. “To enjoy the pleasures of sin while wearing a martyr's crown! Possibly I shouldn't have used that leverage but instead held you with force till you opened in sheer, hungry wanting.”

“That wouldn't have happened as long as I could fight,” she said blightingly.

He shrugged. “There are potions. And sleep is perhaps the best drug of all, for then prohibitions of mind and conscience sink under the ocean of primeval needs. You couldn't stay awake all the time. I could have you well on the way to flowering ecstasy, my dear, before your brain could warn you it was no dream of Falconer, but me in the questing, joy-giving flesh.”

“You have what you went to so much trouble to get in disregard of what I felt or thought or wanted,” she said stiffly. “I don't see why you should consider it now.”

“But it's what you think and feel and want that make you my quetzal woman, my rare, precious one.” He spoke in a lightly bantering tone, but she believed him. “I'm not a fool, Mercy. There are a dozen women at this hacienda as beautiful as you. They bloom like flowers, fragrant, exotic, ready for my hand. In spite of my rather frightening reputation, any number of society mothers in London or New York, not to mention Mérida or Mexico City, would give their daughters to me because of my wealth, though the girls, I think, wouldn't come for that alone. But none of them has had for me that strange lure that Falconer must have sensed, too. There's a strength about you like the flashing of a blade, a core of being. At that core, you are kind. Truly, Mercy.”

She stared at him, frightened for the first time that she might be stripped of her loathing for him. “You're wrong,” she said. “If I ever have the chance, I won't be kind to you, and I will show you no mercy at all.”

“That's the flashing blade,” he mocked, though the pupils of his eyes contracted to a point. “But you could never wield it except to save someone else.”

“You'll see!”

It flashed into her mind for the first time that she might find a way to kill him. He was right. Sleep did disarm. Even a giant lay helpless. At this moment, there was a knife beside the fruit.

He picked it up and cut for her a section of pineapple. “In case you should determine not only to harden your heart against me in case of my misfortune, but to do away with one you can quite justifiably consider wicked, I have entrusted Thomas with an order. He will carry it out if he lives because he loves me.” Eric raised himself on the pillows and regarded her with tolerant good humor. “Are you curious?”

“I had thought of cutting your throat, so perhaps you'd better tell me.”

He laughed in delight. “You are indeed my rare one! What became of the quetzal I bribed one of the maids to leave in your room at Christmas?”

“I dropped it in a chest.”

“But the giver's not so easy to dispose of, eh?” He grinned. “I've instructed Thomas, in event of my death at your hands or in any suspicious way hinting at your involvement, to kill Falconer if possible, or his daughter.”

Mercy drew away from him. He only chuckled. “I reckon that I've thought of everything, Mercy,
mia
. There's no way to thwart me without bringing destruction to others. If you'd quit beating your wings against the cage, you could enjoy the mansion.”

With a stifled gasp, she turned away from him.

“Why don't you sleep as late as you can?” He shrugged mildly. “Come down for breakfast when you're ready. I've an accumulation of business, but I'll acquaint you with the house today and we might even go riding.”

She pretended to sleep while he dressed. She sensed him standing over her, and she fought to keep her breathing regular. His hand trailed over her from throat to flank, as if affirming possession before he covered her and left.

But Mercy couldn't sleep. Light spilled through the shutters now and she abhorred the comfort of the huge bed in which Eric had not only taken her, but had exacted blind tribute from her body. She almost wished he'd remained the brutal attacker of that first night, a man she could hate physically, detest as a complete ruffian.