The Bride of Larkspear (10 page)

Her lips press together in a line of displeasure. “Very arrogant of you.”

“Does not some part of you secretly agree with me? If this man takes up with your sister, would you be pleased for her?”

Her face is stormy. “And what if I tell you that I still miss him?”

I breathe past the pain in my chest. “Maybe you will miss
me
more, if you were to lose me now.”

“Maybe I will leave tomorrow to find out,” she says darkly.

I sigh and stretch out my hand. “Please come here.”

She regards me suspiciously.

“I just want to hold you, nothing else. You can leave and go back to your room anytime.”

Her skepticism does not abate.

“You are lonely,” I continue, “and I am lonely. Let me hold you.”

She looks one way, then another. When she does climb up onto my bed, it is not with the resolve of a made-up mind, but more the resignation of someone who is tired of arguing with herself.

She lies down beside me and carefully arranges her dressing robe so that no part of her actual skin touches me. But I still feel her warmth all along my right side. I take her hand in mine, turn my face toward the crook of her neck, and wallow in our glorious closeness.

A quarter hour passes before she breaks the silence. “I was almost entirely certain that by now you’d have found a way to fuck me.”

I smile at her ear. “I’d love to do both, to fuck you half the night and then hold you the other half. But if I cannot have both, then I’d rather just hold you.”

She sighs. I don’t know how to interpret the sound. Is she about to give up on something, or give in?

Her hand, which has been limp and motionless in mine, moves: Her thumb draws small circles on my palm. Then that same thumb slides up to the pulse point at my wrist and presses lightly.

“Your heart is beating fast.”

“My heart always beats fast when you are near.”

“Hmm,” she says.

Her hand moves up to the inside of my elbow. I settle deeper into the mattress, anticipating a slow exploration on her part. But the next moment she is on top of me, her legs flush with mine, her nipples, through the silk of the dressing robe, pressing into my chest.

“You move fast,” I murmur.

Her reply is a bite to my earlobe. I hiss with the sensations that skitter along my nerve endings. She follows with openmouthed kisses all over my neck and my jaw. I turn hard as a mast.

“Aren’t you worried that I am only teasing you?” she whispers in my ear, her breath warm and moist. “That I will whip you into a frenzy and then leave?”

I cup her head and kiss her on her lips. “That’s all right. I got to hold you for a quarter hour. It’s a fair enough exchange.”

She shakes her head in disapproval. “You are such a fool.”

I part her lips. “I’m
your
fool.”

Our tongues meet. She moans a little as I become invasive. I moan when she returns the favor. My hand reaches down and grabs her sweet bottom. She moans again. The woman will have me think that there is nothing I can do that doesn’t please her.

She breaks the kiss. “Do you want to see me naked?”

“Of course,” I rasp. “Always.”

She sits up with her knees straddling either side of me and pushes aside the front panels of her dressing robe. But she does not take it off completely; instead, she uses its cascade of black silk to frame her breasts, her belly, and her cunt.

“My God,” I whisper hoarsely. “That is almost worse than naked.”

“I am willing to do almost anything to arouse you,” she says, looking just slightly angry. “Do you know why? Because you keep me in such a state of constant arousal. I can’t eat. I can’t read. I can’t think. It is completely unwholesome.”

“It’s all right.” I pull her toward me and kiss her. “You can have me anytime.”

She whimpers. The next moment she is back up on her knees again. And the moment after that, she takes me inside her all the way.

“You see?” she says plaintively. “Constant state of arousal.”

“It’s the same for me.” I speak with difficulty. “I want you all the time.”

She leans forward, bracing her hands on either side of my shoulders. Her hair falls onto me and caresses me everywhere—my erotic fantasy coming true. She lowers her face to my ear. “Put your finger where it should not go. I hope you are happy that you’ve found something that makes me weak.”

“It doesn’t make you weak,” I tell her as my hand finds her rosebud and caresses it. “Quite to the contrary. When your pleasure is so overwhelming, it enslaves me completely.”

My finger enters her. Her entire person trembles.

I kiss her. “See? I would do anything to give you this pleasure, to witness it on your face, and to feel it with my hand and my cock.”

I withdraw my finger from her secret cavity and push it in again. She jerks and cries out. On the next upward thrust of my cock, her pleasure breaks. She thrashes about, her cunt clenching my cock, making me grunt with those same sensations that are coursing through her.

We come together, bound by pleasure.

I
LOVE YOU,” I WHISPER
to her. “And I have always loved you.”

She makes no response—and that is fine by me. I just want her to hear those words from my lips.

I am almost asleep when I feel her leaving the bed. “Stay,” I tell her. “Stay with me.”

“Maybe another time,” she answers. “Maybe.”

Chapter Six

M
Y BRIDE IS NOT AT
breakfast the next morning. When I inquire as to her whereabouts, I am told that she has gone for a walk. I don’t blame her for wanting one. The day is gorgeous, the temperature perfect, and I would have stayed out much longer on my ride if I weren’t so keen to see her again.

An hour later, in the midst of a conversation with my bailiff, I look up to see a carriage draw up to the front of the manor. A Larkspear carriage, which I have decidedly not ordered.

But I am no longer the only person in this manor with the authority to order such a carriage.

“You will have the funds for the ditches, Mr. Carroll,” I tell my bailiff. “We will save the discussion of new fences for another day.”

I do not, as a rule, truncate meetings with my agents, my solicitors, or my estate managers. Mr. Carroll tries his best to hide his astonishment. Then again, I am a man on my honeymoon and really ought not to be involved at all in discussions concerning fences or drainage ditches.

I go up to my bride’s rooms. She is not there, but her maid is, carefully packing her dresses into a large trunk. My blood runs cold. “Where is Lady Larkspear?”

“She is out with the dog, sir.”

I run.

I
FIND HER ON THE
bank of the trout stream, a pretty tartan blanket spread beneath her, her back against the trunk of a tree, a book in her hand, Grisham dozing by her side.

She watches my approach, her expression a strange mélange of rue and determination. “You look a little out of breath, Larkspear.”

I barely stop myself from bellowing,
Where do you think you are going?
Keeping a tight rein on both my temper and my panic, I reply, “I heard you were out here. I wanted to join you.”

She gestures with her book. “Do you enjoy
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
?”

“Who doesn’t?” My cheeks hurt with the effort of remaining polite. “‘A book of verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and thou.’”

Her smile is a stillborn one, as if she does not have enough joy left to see one through. “So you do read the books in your own library, at least.”

I can take it no more. “Why is your maid packing your bags?”

She flips through the pages of the book, not looking at me. “I am off to pay my sister and brother-in-law a visit. After that, my brother and his wife.”

I’d thought as much. But to hear her confirm it is a kick to the solar plexus. “When will you be back?”

The color seems to be draining from her face. “I have not decided.”

I feel cold everywhere. “
Are
you going to be back?”

“That too has not been decided.”

“Why? And why now?”

“Did I not tell you last night I might test your theory on which one of you I will miss more?”

Between me and
him
, she means.

“Don’t take me for a fool. There was nothing significant in that particular line. You are upset this morning because of something else.”

She rises to her feet. The sea-foam muslin of her walking dress ripples in the breeze.

“Really? Are you going to tell me that you know better than I what motivates my decisions?”

“Yes.” For suddenly I hear in my mind those precise words she’d uttered in the heat of passion that must seem to her, in the cold light of day, an unbearable confession to have made. “You admitted that I put you in a constant state of arousal.”

Her expression changes, a flash of outrage—that I would bring up the subject—followed by the shadow of fear.

“But you did not stop there, did you? You asked me to stimulate one specific region of your anatomy. And then, forgetting yourself, you even went so far as to tell me that I have found a weakness in you that you deplore.”

She flushes to the roots of her hair. “I will thank you to not—”

“It does not make you weak, my love, no more than my desire for you makes me weak.”

“That’s where you are wrong,” she retorts hotly. “It does make one weak. It makes one exploitable. And it makes one unable to defend oneself.”

Her answer would make no sense, unless…

“Are you afraid that you are falling in love with me, when you still can’t trust me completely?” I blurt out.

She flinches. The question hangs between us, making me feel naked. She does not understand—not entirely, in any case—how much power she wields over me. With a few sharp words, she can shatter my heart. Then with a few more, she can put it back together.

Frightful powers.

She speaks after a long silence. “I most certainly cannot trust you.”

“You will not come to trust me better from a distance.”

“And who says I want to trust you better?”

Oddly enough, it does not hurt as much as I thought it would. Perhaps because I see so much of myself in her fear- and pride-driven responses. “I think you do want to trust me better, but you are afraid of the vulnerability that comes with opening yourself to me.”

She laughs, rather harshly. “I would say I have already opened every part of myself to you.”

I close the distance between us and take her hand in mine. “But not your heart. Not yet.”

She does not answer. I lift our intertwined hands and place the back of hers upon her heart. “Will you let me in here too?”

She half grimaces. “I should go. Or I will miss my train. And you’d better stay with Grisham until he wakes up.”

My hand tightens on hers. For a moment she regards me with genuine apprehension, as if fearing for her freedom. She need not. I want to be chosen not because she has no other choice, but because she cannot see the path of her life running anywhere except alongside mine.

I let go of her hand and step back. “Go then.”

She picks up her straw hat from the picnic blanket, sets it on her head, and ties the ribbons beneath her chin. As she passes me, she slows a little, and her hand brushes ever so lightly over my jaw. I stare after her as she marches away from me on the path.