Perilous Risk (46 page)

She’d been fourteen, the last time she’d hidden in the cellar. Father had found her here, his eyes wide with shock. He had berated her.

I had a headache, and you were not there to massage my temples.

Even now, guilt sliced her through. She had tried to be a good daughter. She had tried to anticipate his every need.

You’re mine, completely mine. I have claimed you just as you are.

Stephen’s words came back to her. What a relief it was to know that someone loved her who did not expect her to be perfection.

If she could conquer a fear borne of something so heinous as what Gerard and the Earl of Barnet had done to her, surely she could overcome her fear and hurt in regard to the man who sired her.

Yes, but that was a more tangled ball of yarn, wasn’t it?

She had never loved Gerard or the Earl of Barnet. Nor had they loved her. She knew Father did love her, in his self-focused way. Of course he did. She leant against the cool stone wall and sighed.

Easy answers did not always come, did they?

Perhaps she would never completely heal from that unique hurt, she would simply begin to move past it even whilst feeling the gaping wound. Maybe that was the way most people lived?

But some were more wounded than others. Stephen carried a load of guilt—and something else, she couldn’t be certain what it might be—that was killing him, bit by bit.

She had to put her own difficulties aside and find a way to uncover his deeper, more serious wounds. To do so, she had to overcome her own fears, to face her own demons.

Stephen had helped her to be brave for herself.

Now she would be brave for him.

* * * *

Later that day, bundled against the chill, Rebecca walked the length of the shoreline with Stephen. Uncle Frederick had stressed the importance of Stephen’s getting sunlight and exercise. Unfortunately, heavy clouds blanketed the sky. But they certainly were getting some exercise.

Stephen held her hand, but he had been silent the whole way.

The salt-kissed sea wind had increased since they had started out and it blew her hair against her face. She stopped to pull it out of the way. He stopped as well, then he turned to her with a serious expression. He touched her face, studying her so intently that she felt flutters in her belly.

“What?” she said.

“Thank you for loving me.” He bent forward and kissed her, brief and hard. Then he studied her again.

She bit her lip, her heart bursting and yet her tongue failing her. Then she stood on tiptoes and placed a kiss on his lips. “How could I help but love you? You are good for me.”

They stood there, embracing and saying all the silly things that lovers say. His mood lightened by the moment, she felt the easing of his tension in her own muscles. Felt it in her very bones.

He lifted her off her feet and spun her about.

She gasped and giggled as though she were decades younger.

And he kept on swinging her, lifting her higher and higher and tipping her back.

She shrieked. “Don’t drop me, oh please be careful—
Stephen!
”

He had tipped her back further and he was laughing. Deep, rich, full-throated laughter. She had never heard him laugh like that, he sounded carefree and young. She looked up into his face and he stared down at her, his eyes as brilliant as sapphires.

She stopped in mid-shriek, catching her breath as his masculine beauty stunned her senseless.

He pulled her up and slung her over his shoulder. She couldn’t stop laughing as he walked a quick pace back to the cottage and she bounced along.

As soon as the door was shut, they began removing each other’s clothing. But then he stopped and was staring at her with such a grave and almost mournful expression, just as he had on the shoreline. A chill passed through her. Suddenly they had lost the teasing fun of the moment.

“What?” she asked, feeling stricken by the crash to earth.

“I fear I am a monster, Rebecca.”

His voice rang with such sorrow that she felt an answering pang in her heart. She took his hand. “Stephen?”

He collapsed into the nearby wingchair that stood before the fire, then held out his hands for her.

Rebecca sat in Stephen’s lap, wearing only her corset and an underskirt. Stephen was stripped down to his trousers and she touched his bare chest. He put his hand over hers.

“I fear that I am just like my uncle,” he said.

“No, never, you mustn’t think that way.”

“Look at all that I have done. Look at what I am capable of doing.”

“You said you feel no guilt, that you were justified.”

“I may have been justified, but there is some creature inside of me that allows me to do it. That part of me is like my uncle.”

“It is not the same, Stephen.”

“You don’t know how I really am. I have hidden it from you. I hide it from myself.”

“Tell me your secrets. Share yourself with me.”

He was quiet for a time.

“Tell me, you must tell me.” Yes, he must cast out all the poison that was killing his soul. She would help him to reframe his opinions of himself, his actions. But first he had to admit his feelings. To her yes, but most of all to himself.

But he seemed not to have heard her. She stroked his chest again.

He started and then began to speak, “When we started this time, that first night in the private chamber at the inn and in the carriage, I was acting in a manner that I knew would appeal to you. I wanted to seduce you, yes, very much. But I also wanted control over you. I wanted you to be obedient to me for the sake of keeping you safe.”

She didn’t know what to say. It was rather disconcerting to hear that he had been merely playing a role because he knew her carnal tastes.

“I had used methods of domination to seduce and enthral others before. I had done so and yet remained emotionally disconnected. It had been a duty, nothing more. A means to an end.”

She caught and held her breath, a dull pain spreading through her chest. Had he felt that way about her? She dropped her hands to her lap, feeling slightly sick.

“But you, I quickly found I enjoyed employing those methods. I enjoyed your every reaction and I enjoyed the sense of controlling you. It made me feel…I cannot put it into words. Omnipotent? God, I don’t know the right way to say it. But it was an elation like nothing I’d ever known.”

Relief burst within her and she couldn’t help the small smile that tugged the corners of her mouth upwards.

“By the sea today, when I was spinning you and you were scared I would drop you onto the shale, that excited me. Madly.”

She suppressed a small laugh. What would he say if he knew she had mostly let herself suspend disbelief and pretend to be frightened for the sheer pleasure of it? That they could do that for each other, he could provide situations for her to be afraid in and she could be afraid to her heart’s content whilst still trusting him completely. He could control her and allow her the freedom to be vulnerable.

She wasn’t sure he was ready to hear those things, so she held her tongue and let him speak.

“The night I first gave you some training, I did not take you afterwards.” He paused, as though having second thoughts about revealing himself. “I wanted to. Very much.”

“Then why didn’t you? You had earned my submission. I am yours to have as you please.”

“Your tears aroused me.”

He sounded as though he expected her to be shocked. Disgusted.

She touched his face. “Oh Stephen, you should not torture yourself over something like that. We cannot help our little caprices, it is just the way we are made.”

“It seems so monstrous to feel that way.”

“We don’t always like our own fancies. But we must accept them or we cannot accept all of ourselves. It only matters how we act on such things.”

“Sometimes I think I would like to do something to make you cry. Not in valid punishment or training, just for my own gratification. ” He went rigid. “I would never, ever harm you. It is such a disturbing juxtaposition.”

She realized that in just this moment, they had reached the reason for his internal conflicts that could be tearing him apart, keeping him ill. It was partly his denial of his guilt over being an assassin, his attempt to be something more or less than human in his view of his deeds. But now she could see that he was denying his true carnal self.

Excitement, desire and longing pressed on her. She couldn’t hold back any longer. “If you caned me, I would cry for you.”

“Rebecca…”

“I would.” She held her hand out, so she could pretend to study her nails.

“What pleasure would there be in that for you?” He slid his hand beneath hers.

“The pleasure of submission. The satisfaction of serving your needs.”

She watched their hands as he rubbed his palm against hers.

“I won’t harm—”

“You don’t have to.” She couldn’t help a small smile, remembering her own confusion, years ago. “You are taking your daydreams too seriously. Those are always more extreme than one would really act them out.”

“I am afraid of myself. I have tortured people.”

“Did you gain pleasure from that?”

“No, it was a duty, a job. Inside I was colder than December.”

“But with your other lovers, you said you’d been trained to dominate those who desired to be dominated. Did you use a crop on them? Did you ever use a cane?”

“Yes, I am quite skilled at that sort of thing. But it was a duty. Having carnal relations with those people, how can I explain? Well, if a man can attain an erection and enough stimulation is applied, he will spill his seed. But the sensations were nothing like I experience with you. It simply a release of manufactured tension.”

She wrinkled her forehead in sympathy. “Oh Stephen, how dreadful for you.”

He shook his head. “I am not deserving of sympathy for manufacturing sex for people I wished to become closer to in order to spy upon them.”

“But you had no true carnal life.”

“I sometimes visited harlots. And those encounters were more natural, more pleasurable. But they were also quite basic.”

“You needn’t fear yourself. You may play with me but you won’t lose control and torture me.”

“You sound certain.”

“I am. I trust you.”

He laced his fingers with hers. His hands were so much larger and longer than hers. “Explain to me what you would expect from me,” he said.

Heat flooded her face. “Stephen.”

Goodness. It wasn’t easy to speak of specifics. Especially when she was offering something she was a little afraid of even if she wanted it.

“Whisper it in my ear,” he said.

She took a deep breath then leant close to him and in halting, breathy words, told him. He listened and did not interrupt her or become impatient. By the time she had finished, she could feel the heat of his arousal against her buttocks and she was getting wet, so wet. She had forgotten how thrillingly vulnerable it felt to reveal herself wholly with a lover. To tell him her deepest fancies and trust that he would know how to use such knowledge to increase her pleasure and not to take advantage or to press her too far.

He pulled her corset down and caressed her breasts, rubbing his palms firmly over her already erect nipples. She shuddered with delight.

They sat in silence, with only the sound of their quickening breaths. She put her hand to his chest could feel the rapid cadence of his heart’s beat matched her own. There was no mistaking his excitement matched or met hers. Yet, he said still nothing, he just sat there caressing her breasts.

“We could try it, just once,” she said, as a lurch of hopeful anticipation leapt in her stomach.

“I want to understand more clearly how you could want this.”

Light-headedness swirled through her. It was one thing to fully reveal her desires but to admit the why, well, that was daunting. She lowered her head and pressed her nose to his shoulder.

He caressed her hair. “Tell me, help me understand your side.”

Her answer would affect not only her ability to get her more exotic needs met but would also impact how he accepted this side of himself. It would affect his very image of himself. Trepidation beat in her heart. She must phrase things carefully. Absently, she stroked her hand over his bare chest. “It is hard to put into words.”

“Please try.”

“I have a need for it. A need for the release of it. The fear, the anticipation, the build up of tension and then the feeling of being broken, of having all of my defences ripped away and being completely open to this other person, at their mercy.”

Oh, heavens, she had never admitted that to anyone before. Before, there had been an understanding, like an open secret; but she had never forced herself to collect her thoughts and feelings on the matter and share them with someone else.

She could never have shared this with anyone but Stephen.

Holding her breath, she waited for his response but he fell silent again.