Lord Beast (30 page)

Despite all her preparations and
thoughts about how the evening would progress, Dani had never imagined it would
be quite like this. This was amazing. He was amazing, sensual, and the things
he did to her… it was more than she could have ever hoped for and dreamed of.
The little sounds of surprise and passion were completely involuntary, caused
by an ardent shift of their bodies, the feel of his hand on her thigh, bunching
the silk of the peignoir up to her waist or his palm closing around her breast.
The heat, the need, was suffocating, and she found that she couldn’t get enough
of him.

He was magnificent, powerful, and
so very big. Her hands glided over the corrugated planes of his abdomen
lovingly, revelling in the velvety warm feel of him, his hardness. She pressed
her body into his, moulding herself to him and shivering in delight when her
belly surged against that incredibly hot and hard part of him.

His hands scoured her limbs as if
he couldn’t get enough of her, his mouth plundering hers and taking from her
all that she could give him. Then his fingers worked deftly with the pink
ribbon holding the peignoir together and he positioned her onto her back,
spreading the material open as his eyes appraised her naked, flushed body. She
forced herself not to hide from him, to let her shyness overwhelm her and cover
her exposure, hoping that he would appreciate that this was all of her,
everything she was, just for him.

Rhys moaned, his eyes squeezed
shut as he dropped his head to her neck, his hot breath skittering along her
fevered skin enticingly. “God,” he rasped, his lips brushing back and forth
along her collarbone, “you’re so beautiful.” And his mouth was suddenly on her
breast.

“Oh my God!”

His mouth, his teeth and his
wicked tongue- it was too much. She was going to die. She writhed beneath him,
her fingers flexing in the soft locks of his hair, uncontrollably holding him
to her while his hand trailed tantalizingly up along her inner thigh until his
fingers found a most secret of places between her legs.

“Rhys!”

A muffled, hungry growl was his
response.

He positioned himself on top of
her, supporting his weight on his forearms to either side of her head and
nestled his hips against hers, cradled by her warmth. Dani noted a pained
expression on his face, the dark locks of his hair falling forward to brush her
face gently. “I’m sorry,” he said gravelly, brushing his lips against her
mouth.

“For what?”

“I might hurt you.”

She smiled up at him, allowing
all the love she held for him to surface in that smile, her hand rising to the
side of his face where his scars marred his skin, tracing her fingers carefully
along the whitened skin there. “I love-” She wasn’t allowed to finish the
sentence. Rhys suddenly tensed, groaned, and dipped his head, cutting her words
off abruptly while his mouth played havoc on her senses and he began to enter
her, carefully at first and then with a sudden thrust-

She gasped. The pain was
exquisite but it faded quickly to be replaced by such an inexplicably dire need
she thought she would explode with it. He was moving, driving her towards
something she could feel churning within her, fuelled by the force of her love
for him and the sheer need for him, and when she reached it, her body trembled
and tightened around him with the power of it, her fingers flexing into the
muscles of his back as he stilled and buried his face against her neck, his body
tense and taut and hard.

Spent.

They remained like that for
several moments; the only sound in the chamber the mingling of their ragged
breaths.

Not in her wildest imaginings had
she believed something could be so wonderful, so beautiful.

Rhys rolled to his side, taking
her with him, and loosely draped his arm against her hips. His eyes were
squeezed shut, as if he was in a severe amount of pain, and Dani frowned.
Tentatively, she touched his cheek and those golden eyes snapped open. She
inwardly flinched at the guilt, the pain, she beheld in them.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he
whispered coarsely.

“What?” Uncaring that she was as
naked as the day she was born she sat up and glared down at him. “How can you
say something like that?”

“I’m sorry.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.
“For what exactly? I’ll not have you apologise for what we just did.”

He didn’t say anything, just
regarded her expressionlessly before swinging his legs over the edge of the
bed. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

He ran a hand through his tousled
hair and turned to face her. “I was a fool,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done
that.”

“I didn’t deceive you,” she
blurted, hurt that this could still be an issue between them after all they had
been through. “Please, believe me. I didn’t trick you. I didn’t mean for
Victoria to find us in the gallery that day. You must know that by now?”

A muscle in his jaw flexed.
“Dani, I’ve hurt you,” he explained brokenly. “I can’t live with myself as it
is. I don’t deserve you.”

“Well, you have me! I’m your
wife. I’m not going anywhere and I don’t want to. I want you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut before
turning his back to her, leaving the room and closing that damn adjoining door
after him. “You STUPID man!” Dani yelled at his back, furiously throwing a
pillow at the closed door.

Crossing her arms and forcing
herself
not
to cry, she wondered what she was to do now. An angry
husband she could deal with, but this? She couldn’t even pinpoint what
precisely
this
was. Guilt? Perhaps. Well, at least he certainly
wanted
her.

Rhys spent a sleepless night
barricaded in his study after he left Dani’s chambers.

The picture of those forlorn blue
eyes, bright with unshed tears, had been too much for him. So was the knowledge
that she was right next door and wanting him.

But he knew he couldn’t have her.
Already, he’d hurt her unbelievably and he’d been such a fool with those
accusations. Dani was
not
deceitful and she had would not have deceived
him into marriage. She may have wanted it, yes, but he was sure now that it had
never been her intention to fool him. Her poignantly sweet declarations of her
love were testament to that and he had been a fool to not have seen it for what
it was. Remorse swept through him, pricking his heart with guilt and shame. He
had been despicable, an utter cad.

He had watched as the sky
lightened with a new day, dimmed by the cover of low clouds that were full with
the promise of rain. A brisk wind carried a chill across the trees spread over
the lawn of Falmouth and Rhys studied this all dispassionately, his only
thought of the woman who could make him lose himself in her.

It was nearly mid-morning when
Rhys witnessed his only carriage brought to the front of the castle drive and
several footman laden it with trunks- Dani’s trunks.

She was leaving.

His heart ached.

Rhys couldn’t blame her. He knew
why she was leaving, why she had chosen to do so. He wasn’t making life easy
for her here at Falmouth, being married to a beast. It would be best for her to
find some place to reside where she could be happy, where she could forget
about him and continue with her life.

But, Rhys thought, after the
previous evening there was the possibility that she could be with child- his
child. Spasmodically, his hands clenched at the thought- his own son or
daughter. It had never been a possibility up until now. A family, people he
could love and who loved him in return.

He shook the thoughts from his
head, too painful to consider or even imagine. Dani was right to leave him. If
there was a child… well, he would have to make a decision about that later.
There was every possibility that she wasn’t carrying his child, too.

At the soft knock at his door,
Rhys unconsciously uttered the word, “Enter,” but his eyes were fastened on the
carriage from his window.

He sensed her cross the threshold
and felt the unease she brought into the study with her.

“I’ve come to inform you that I’m
leaving,” Dani told him anxiously and Rhys turned to her, noting that she was
twisting the ribbons of her bonnet between clinched fingers held in front of
her.

His heart gave an agonizing
lurch, yearning to hold her in his arms, to bury his face in the delicious
strands of hair that smelt like honey and all things pure. But he resisted the
urge and contented himself just with the sight of her looking demure and unsure
and beautiful in the middle of his study in one of those dresses that just
didn’t quite fit properly but looked endearing nonetheless.

When the silence drew itself out
uncomfortably, Dani gave him a stern look and tilted her stubborn little chin
up a notch. He longed to kiss it. “I see you’ve put the cloak back on,” she
noted, annoyed.

“Yes.”

The bottom of her dress made a
subtle and sudden movement and Rhys suspected that she had just stamped her
foot in frustration, the impact muffled by the thick rug she was standing on.
“Why are you being so ridiculous?” she hissed, throwing her hands in the air,
the bonnet dangling wildly from her fingertips.

“I don’t blame you for leaving,
Danielle,” he explained in a low voice.

“Why?” she demanded, giving him a
dark look. “You should. You should be fighting to make this marriage work. Lord
knows I have.”

“I’ll not hurt you again.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that’s
just ridiculous,” she muttered furiously and crossed her arms. “Fine, be like
that. I’ll be staying with Victoria until you come to your senses.”

“It’s going to rain,” he pointed
out, not sure why he did so but maybe just to keep her in his presence for a
moment longer.

She gave him one of those disbelieving
looks before turning on her heel and prancing out of the study. He didn’t deny
himself the torture of watching her go and did not divert his gaze from
studying her form as she climbed into the carriage aided by a footman, the
strong wind blowing the bonnet from her neatly coiffured head and tautening the
material of her gown across her thighs and midriff.

He sighed dismally and reached
for the brandy.

“Well,” Grayson’s voice drawled
from the threshold of the study, “you’ve certainly botched things up this time,
my lord.”

“Shut up.”

Within five minutes of having
departed Falmouth Castle, the heavens opened and fat, relentless droplets of
rain began to pummel Dani’s carriage. Moodily, she also detected a leak. Trust
the earl of Falmouth to own such a contraption. It hadn’t probably seen a
single day of repair since its day of purchase.

Dani sullenly studied the passing
landscape that was as bleak as she felt, desolate and comparatively gothic. A
brooding romantic would find plentiful inspiration from the melancholic scenery
shrouded in dark and the hovering clouds laden with threat. It had been a last
resort to leave Rhys, but she felt that she had very little option left to her.
By leaving him, she was letting him know that it was up to
him
to fix
this, to make this marriage work. She had done all she could, given him all
that she had. It was under his directive now and all Dani could do was wait it
out and pray that he did indeed come to his senses.

Her back ached with protest, the
hard uncomfortable seats of the Ashcroft carriage biting into her spine. She
would be immobile later because of this, another blame to lie at
his
door. Silly man.

Dani had been through a lot in
her young years. For goodness sake, she’d toppled from a horse and nearly broke
her back; she’d nursed an ailing mother fighting with depression, and she had
emerged from all those situations the better. With Rhys… well, the man was
quickly becoming the most vexing thing she had ever dealt with before.

Harrumphing in a very unladylike
manner, Dani pulled the book she had brought along to read and flipped it open
in her lap just as the carriage gave a vicious lurch, tumbling her to the floor
with a painful jolt.

 Her back convulsed with agony,
jarring awkwardly against the unrelenting wooden edge of the bench.

“I say,” she called, thumping on
the wall to get the driver’s attention, “is everything alright?”

The only answer that was
forthcoming was a series of violent jerks before the coach veered sharply to
the left and began to tilt. She was thrown against something hard, her back
colliding against it with piercing agony, before blackness surrounded her and
the pain abated.

It was late afternoon when Rhys
received word that George Smith had called on him at Falmouth. Of
foul-temperament and ill-disposition due to the increasing hours spent without
Dani’s presence at the castle, Rhys hardly felt compelled to converse with the
authoritative old man but he couldn’t very well refuse him an audience. After
all, he was his wife’s uncle and one of her only living relatives.