Her Mad Baron (20 page)

“What are you doing?” He easily twisted away and glared at her. Surprised or annoyed was better than that hard veneer of polish.

“I am trying to get the real Nathaniel out of hiding.”

She stretched out her hands, ready to grab at him again, and instead, he seized her hands and hauled them up over her head.

She yanked down, but he held on easily. So she started kicking. She landed a kick against his shin, harder than she meant.

With a grunt, he let go of her hands. She started to back away, but quick as lightning and as shocking as a clap of thunder, he came after her and hauled her against him.

She gasped and wiggled in his arms. “What are you doing?”

“Protecting myself,” he said, and bent to kiss her again.

She twisted in his arms, and he let go. But a second later he grabbed at her wrists and hauled her against him.

His hands were tight and firm around her wrists, and when she struggled, he didn’t loosen his grip. “What if I want you to stop?” she asked, out of breath.

“Then you tell me to stop.” He kissed her more tenderly this time on the corner of the mouth and then full on the lips. He let go of one of her hands to cup her head and pull her closer.

She let herself fall into the kiss and enjoy the shape of his mouth on hers, the sweet satisfying taste of him.

After a few seconds, she tore her mouth away from his and gave him a huge shove. He let her go at once. Panting, he waited for a few seconds. Then he strode forward and grabbed her again.

This was a peculiar and rough dance they performed across the library floor. He grabbed and held her forearms again.

“Ow.” She tried to pull away but didn’t tell him to let go. She didn’t tell him to stop. For a moment, they froze, probably both waiting for her to say the words.

Breathing hard, he kissed her neck this time and her throat, small kisses along her jaw up to her mouth.

“You are a nuisance.” She groaned and kissed him back. “And you cheat at wrestling.”

“That’s not wrestling,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Wanting,” he said.

“You cheat,” she whispered, and allowed him to pull her toward the floor.

* * * *

“I am becoming familiar with this library carpet.” She heaved a deep sigh and wiped at a trickle of perspiration at her brow. “I think I like it.”

“Ah.”

She eyed him, all dreaminess gone from her face. “Don’t you dare say something polite.”

“No. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Everything inside him screamed for him to run away, but he didn’t want to see her hurt expression again. He didn’t want to hear her carefully worded threats that she’d cancel their engagement. So he’d stay and hold her and hide.

He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t feel her scrutiny of his face. Damn the woman for being too sharp-eyed.

“Do you know, I spent less than ten minutes with your uncle and he scared me? But I’m sure he doesn’t know much about me. He’d have said something veiled and threatening, I’m sure.”

“Yes. My uncle treats every interaction as a test of power,” he said.
Bessette.
The pit of his stomach grew even colder, and he needed to turn the conversation. “Yet, um, he’s not so horrible.” Perhaps that would be end the topic of Bessette.

He recalled hours toiling outside in the rain. Endless days of work. Retreating to the safety of thinking.

Nathaniel wracked his mind for another subject. He’d talk about the latest child labor reform bill. The weather. Or perhaps the stock exchange. Not about his family or anything to stir more of the muck inside him.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” she said. “You look grim as death when you say that. And at any rate, I can’t see him laughing or easy.”

“Perhaps not.”
Never on this earth.

“And really, ‘he’s not so horrible’ isn’t a ringing endorsement.”

Nathaniel pressed his mouth tight to keep from howling or snapping at her to stop. Florrie still watched so he tried. “He’s fond of my mother.”

He wondered what Florrie would do if he got up and walked away, took off for the stables. Vigorous activity might shake off the prickles of discomfort, which were as unpleasant as his physical dependence on the vile green liquid.

He’d seduced her, and that was fine. Better than fine. The sweat and joy of their play was more effective than any exercise for pulling him away from the cursed addiction. But she seemed to want more from him. He had nothing he could give her now that the storm had ended.

Nothing had changed, except he’d had a release, and for a time afterwards, that seemed to turn him into an animal rolled onto his back, waiting for his opponent to rip open his belly.

He tried to reassure himself that nothing could harm him. God, not true: she could.

She might laugh now, roll away and push him away, and he’d be alone.

She laughed, rolled away and pushed at him.

“I told you what would happen if you tried to become a great lump of ice. I warned you.”

He opened his eyes. She loomed over him, and her breasts distracted him from the strange, unpleasantly powerful thoughts. He reached to stroke her breasts, those lovely nipples, and she swatted his hand.

“Are you ticklish?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

And she collapsed on him, her fingers digging at his skin. She stopped for a second. When he relaxed, she squirmed, her fingers under his arms.

At school he’d once been tickled mercilessly, a grim form of torture. He’d hated it. But her laughter as she tried to get her fingers on him was infectious.

He laughed too with real pleasure because she touched him again and because he could stop her before he was helpless and out of control. After all, he could easily pick her up and fight her off. So he did. He flipped her onto her back. “Let’s see how you like it,” he said. But only a few seconds into running his fingers over her body looking for ticklish spots and his attention shifted. He forgot everything but the satin of her skin under his hands.

As he cupped her breast, she pushed away and eyed him. “I have been so distracted by, um…” She swallowed, and her cheeks reddened. “I forgot. I must ask. I wonder if perhaps what we do might cause you injury.” Her gaze slid away from him. “I mean it is a form of stimulation, and your friends and others have said that could be detrimental to a disordered nervous system.”

“I believe what we do together is a marvelous and effective cure for my condition,” he said solemnly.

She smiled then her mouth parted in a gasp as he put his lips on her throat.

Once again he didn’t stop to think, but let his fingers and mouth follow her curves to the spots that made her squirm and laugh and then squirm and gasp.

Lost in the moment and in her body again, he had no thoughts beyond the lovely, addictive Florrie.

After a few minutes of exploration, she gave a needy whimper and yanked him down to her, opening her legs wide and offering herself. As he pushed into her, he could concentrate on the warmth, the soft sighing groans under him.

She was there, with him, and he loved the way she trembled with the anticipation of each thrust, the way she wrapped around him as if trying to pull him even farther in. Nothing else mattered or existed. The whole of existence concentrated on their bodies and then on where their bodies touched, rubbed, and swelled with pleasure.

She gave a wordless cry again, and he slowed so he could feel the way she jerked and squeezed. And called out his name.

Her voice hit him in his core, and the excitement filled him, forced him over the edge. He groaned and buried himself deep inside her, as far inside her as he could. Deep and perfect.

He stayed cocooned in her warmth and in her arms.

Her breath exhaled in his ear. “Um.”

“I beg your pardon.” He shifted all of his weight onto his elbows and knees. “I’m flattening you.”

“No, no. Nathaniel, you seem to have, uh, spent inside me.”

“So I did.” It was the best sexual experience of his life, excepting, of course, the other times with her. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No. It’s just… We are engaged but, ah, I don’t want events to be rushed,” she said.

He pulled away and lay down near her. The hard floor flat under his back pulled away his breath—but so did she when she figured out his reason before he did.

If she does have my baby inside her, no one, not even she would stop our marriage.

A baby. Good God, he didn’t want one yet. Did he? He had taken leave of his senses, worse, stopped thinking. He needed to use his brain again. His mind buzzed with emotion, as strong and unwelcome as it had been since his imprisonment. Unbalanced mind.

“Nathaniel? Are you going to turn into stone again? I’m too tired to beat you back into flesh and blood.”

“No, no. I...” He had to push past the dread. “I’m sorry that I don’t remain...easy. I think you must be right. That I do. That. It’s nothing to do with you.”

“Oh.” The single syllable held a world of disbelief.

He turned onto his side and forced himself to gaze at her. Hair wild and skin flushed. Hell. Her eyes were filled with tears.  His stomach clenched at the sight.

“It is all to do with me, Florrie. You are nothing but giving and...” He took a deep breath. “And it’s not you. Do you understand? You think I judge you, don’t you? That I am appalled by what we do together.”

She nodded.

“No. Not you.”

“What are you judging then?”

Too much desire, he wanted to say. The false picture of intimacy. There was no true happiness beyond thought. He longed for cool emptiness again.

After his father’s death, his mother had sent him to his uncle. And at one of his uncle’s estate during one of the interminable “holidays,” he’d discovered a book of philosophy in German—his uncle had a passion for the Germanic—and Nathaniel had latched onto bits of Schopenhauer. The old pessimist had spoken to his hungry soul.

Pleasure is simply the absence of pain. The only possible escape is the renunciation of desire, a negation of the will.

That was what he pondered as he shoveled out stables or dug pits or faced any of the endless, mindless tasks designed to exhaust his body.

He could tell Florrie about the days and weeks of hard labor driving out what Lord Bessette called Nathaniel’s irresponsible deviltry. The physical work that ended up forcing him into his thoughts and away from his sore hands and aching back.

She’d understand if he could only make it clear that the emptiness of feeling was such a relief, a blessing after his father’s death and Lord Bessette’s “cures” for Nathaniel’s fits of rebellious anger.

But that bleak past didn’t belong here, on the carpet with her. The carpet, he thought,and his mind lurched off in that direction now. Next time, they would move to his bedroom. Next time. His body warmed with anticipation, along with something like fear. She’d live in his bed. She’d never leave. And whether he liked it or not, she’d never stop looking at him with those dark searching eyes.

“You were saying?” She hoisted herself up onto an elbow. “Don’t leave me all alone here with your shell.”

“I am not good with people,” he said at last.

“You have loyal friends.”

“We exchange ideas, thoughts. I am very like my mother and uncle in that I don’t allow my heart to become involved—”

“That’s bosh. I’ve been reading your journal, you know. And with the articles you choose to publish, you advocate plans to make people happier. Improve their condition. That’s a kind of love.”

He was silent, wondering if she could be right. Was that a form of love? At the moment his heart felt too large and aching, as if it was scratched on briars wrapped tight around it.

Nathaniel heaved a disgusted sigh. Such fanciful thoughts were useless, and at any rate, he was no good at them. Action, thought... The rest was a desert he didn’t care to explore.

Florrie stretched luxuriously. She clearly had no notion what her words were doing to him. That was good. A blessing that she couldn’t know the extent of her power and he’d be able to remove her hold on him, gently, and find a way she wouldn’t damage him—and he couldn’t harm her again.

She went on. “If you were like Lord Bessette, your journal would be filled with what’s his name. That Italian who believed that everyone is evil. Mac someone.”

“Machiavelli,” he said, relieved to be on familiar ground.
Love and fear can’t exist together... far safer to be feared.
He searched his memory for another quotation—one that didn’t make him flinch.

Eager to fill the silence, Nathaniel babbled, “He was actually a satirist, not many people know that.
He wrote that ‘whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature’...but he was writing about the political life not about more intimate rela—”

She interrupted again. “That’s right. He’s the one I meant, but I don’t care about him at the moment. Later, if you want, I’ll listen to you talk about Machiavelli. Now I wish to talk about you.”