Black Silk (38 page)

She stared at him for a long moment. It was possible her lip trembled, but then she drew in a deep breath, before saying curtly, “I am content with the evenness of the course I have set for myself. Now if you’ll excuse me.” She indicated the door, turning briskly toward it.

He followed her.

At the door, he reached in front of her for the knob. He didn’t touch her or even intend to. Yet the second she saw his arm, she turned—an abrupt churn of skirts that matched a ragged breath she drew in—and said, “I will scream, I promise.” He saw her breasts heave once, twice.

It took him a few seconds to understand. He withdrew his arm, the same arm that had held her hostage against a staircase banister. “I was only opening the door for you.”

There was an odd moment where, he could have sworn, a flash of disappointment crossed her face. Then it was quickly washed over by relief; she relaxed. Her skin flushed pink as she stared at him. She wet her lips, then pressed them together and swallowed. Her eyes dropped. She and Graham stood there, so near that their clothes touched, that his hat lost its brim in her skirts. He felt a vein in his neck begin to beat, the blood in his arms come alive. His groin stirred.

He stood frowning, baffled for several long seconds before it dawned on him. “You like this, don’t you?” he murmured. “I’ll bet you haven’t had a good snapping fight in two months.” He narrowed his eyes. “And you know how I feel. That I—” Emotion, yearning roiled up in him so powerfully, he realized he was going to say something sexual, something dirty.

He took a measured breath, inhaling slowly; exhaling. He did this twice. And still the words, the thoughts buzzed.
He wanted to penetrate this woman everywhere, with his penis and fingers and tongue, lick her naked body, without considering reservations or restraints. He wanted to express with all that was proper and all that was profane that he loved her beyond limits, beyond rationality.

He watched her close her eyes.

“Will you please go?” she said. Her voice was almost inaudible. “You’re absolutely right. It’s pure sickness that I should want—revel in—your upheaval.” She turned her back on him, turning toward the wall like a child putting herself in the corner. “Go,” she whispered. “Please just go.”

Graham wondered what had become of all the pretty speeches he’d intended Submit—”

Vehemently, she said, “I am going with him. In one day’s time. Why did you have to come? Go away. Just go.”

He looked at her a moment longer, then, beaten, empty, frustrated, he turned and pushed his way through the door.

He might have finished there, kept up his brisk exit from room to room all the way out the front door—but for the sudden, reconstituting sight of Gerald Schild. He was sitting in the study behind Henry’s desk.

Fury rose up instantly in Graham, like black bats taking flight from his chest. He bellowed, “Are you still here!” He half lunged over the desk. Schild sprawled backward, out of the chair. “Haven’t you grasped that Rosalyn is waiting for you?” he shouted. “She is a thorough wreck. She is alone at Netham without the first idea what to do with herself. Waiting for something, for someone, for you!”

“Sh-she’s not—”

“She is, if you’ll make it so. You’re packed, with two tickets for America. Go get her, for God’s sake, and take her home.”

The man’s eyes lifted, helpless, full of apology and contrition. They spoke to a presence just beyond Graham’s shoulder. “If—if she’s really bad off—”

Graham heard Submit behind him utter the briefest of sighs. “Go on, Gerald. Check on her, at least. If it will make you feel better.”

“Y-yes, I—I’ll just see if she’s all right—”

It was an ancient house, where every sound echoed off its hard floors, its stone walls, through the cool air and into its high domes. Gerald Schild’s steps faded off audibly.
Click, click, click
, a turn into the next room,
click, click, click
, toward Netham and the beautiful, floundering—needy—Rosalyn Schild. The sound tapped a kind of certainty into Graham’s brain: Whether Submit liked it or not, he had probably just disposed of Schild, as surely as if he’d shoved the man into the Atlantic himself, to sail out only on the small raft of wishful hope.

What Graham didn’t know how to do now was dispose of his own emotion. He stood there, choking, his blood pumping, wanting this woman to understand something for which there seemed to be no words. That he loved her, loved her, loved her, loved her. That he would love her always, passionately, indecently beyond reason, and under any circumstance.

Submit stood by Henry’s desk in stunned, silent disbelief while the far-too-handsome earl of Netham tapped his hat against the leg of his trousers.

“You have just done a mean and horrible thing,” she told him. “Rosalyn doesn’t love him.”

Graham glanced at her, his dark eyes quick and intense. “So why do you have to save him?”

“I don’t. I love him.”

“No you don’t. You love me.”

Submit sniffed at that. “What an arrogant—”

“Arrogant but truthful. How many men have you screwed in a stairway?”

She blinked, once more having to leap to meanings. When he didn’t take time to think, the man before her had
an expansively coarse vocabulary. “None but you,” she said with an uncomfortable laugh. “You’re the only one who has ever wanted me to so badly.”

“I doubt it.”

Submit pulled her mouth into a tight line. It was a narrow look meant to halt this heart-pounding conversation where it was. She went to turn away.

“Damn it.” He took her arm. “Any number of men would screw you in a second—”

“What a lovely thought. So beautifully expressed—”

“Listen to me! So would Schild—the poor man
likes
women who don’t love him. But I’m the only one
you
want to touch you. You let me, damn it, because you are absolutely beside yourself with liking me—loving me—”

“Lusting after you—”

“Same thing.”

“It’s not!”

He laughed. “Yes it is. Trust me, I’m an expert on lusting. I love soft saddles and mean horses and bright, booming fireworks that end in a rain of sparkling ash. I would love to roll around on the floor with all of these, touching them with the most sensitive parts of my body. But the truth is, none of them are really as good for fucking as the woman I love. And you’re it. I want to screw you till neither of us can stand straight, and the funny thing is, just my saying this I’ll bet is making your knees weak and your head dizzy. And you’re going to call it something else. Damn, mean, stupid woman—you won’t let go of the fun of torturing me with this long enough to let it come.” His voice broke. “God, come—” He let go of her. At least literally. He turned around from her, shaking, struggling for air.

Submit was transfixed.

And so flabbergasted, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. She had never heard such an insane, impassioned declaration. It offended her. It pleased her horribly.
It made her chest warm; it left her in hot confusion, without breath.

Then, as if her silence itself were censure, he said, “Right. I’m going.” Graham pushed his way in front of her. She glimpsed the back of his coat, an arm, as he closed the study door behind himself, leaving her alone.

Submit heard his footfalls soften when they got to the carpet of the library, then fade down the gallery toward the entry room. A minute later, she heard the front door’s familiar creak, then its quiet closure. As soft as the lid of a coffin coming down.

Submit’s heart pounded for three, four, five long seconds. Then she picked up her skirts and threw open the study door.

“Graham!” she screamed.

She tore through the rooms, one after the other. Her shoes slid, her hands grabbed for balance at door frames. China in cabinets shimmied and clinked. Her legs wouldn’t move fast enough. Her feet beat on the floor, her urgency jolting up her legs. She turned the corner, ran halfway down the long carpet of the entryway—and stopped cold.

He was standing there, his back leaning against the front door, his arms folded, his expression pensive, waiting. There was only a modest hint of triumph in his face.

Submit’s face flushed. Anger. Outrage. Commotion rose up inside her. “Damn you!” she shrieked. “Damn you!” She clenched her fists, felt herself, let herself, shake with wrath. “You son of a bitch!”

He smiled that easy, creased, ridiculously handsome smile. “What a lovely thought,” he said. “So beautifully expressed.”

She could hardly believe it—chastised with her own words, on top of being duped by such an old, predictable trick. “You fraud!” she screamed. “You—you actor! You trickster!” None of these were really good enough. “You game-playing son of a bitch!”

Pure, blind fury swirled. In the midst of it, a funny feel
ing took hold. It started at her solar plexus, moved like a tickle. Her hands flushed suddenly warm, wet. It felt like something was releasing inside. And as it did, she found she couldn’t quite fight back the smile that threatened to break through.

While the idiot man, maddeningly calm, took out his watch—he was wearing about eight of them—from a bright floral vest. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll give you ten seconds’ head start.”

“What?” She narrowed her eyes. Her breath wouldn’t come right.

He said slowly, “Ten.” Then, “Nine.” He stopped a moment, tilted his head. “You know, Submit, you’re smart as a whip and—William is right—pretty damn smug about it. But what you are a true novice at is pure, unadulterated fun.” He glanced at his watch. “Eight.”

“What?” she said again. She could barely get the word out.

“Seven.”

Submit blinked, tried to slow her thudding heart with pressure, but it only beat like thunder against the heel of her hand.

“Six,” he said. “What do you want, Submit? If you really want to fight it out, you’ll stand a lot better chance if you take a running start. Five.”

“Graham, don’t be absurd.” She swallowed a slightly giddy laugh.

“If I were you, I’d head for privacy. Because where I catch you, lady, is where it happens.”

“Graham!”

“You’d better run.”

She did.

It helped that he had to cover the length of the entryway. It helped that the staircase was close at hand. But by the first landing, he had one of her feet. She shrieked, “Behave yourself! Be civilized—”

She lost her shoe as they both went down. Hoops billowed. She couldn’t even see but rather felt him grab her foot by the instep and arch. He ran his hand up her calf, to the back of her knee. His solid grasp made her dizzy, insanely furious. She kicked, fought, yet heard herself laughing. “This is”—she panted—“so stupid—”

It was. It was positively silly, though the fact didn’t keep her from bashing him across the shoulder, then pulling a small jardiniere over on him. He made a sound,
oof
, as she scrambled through dirt and dried-out dieffenbachia, free of him again. Around the turn on the next landing, she pulled out every chair in the window bay, putting obstacles between them. He came anyway, cursing, laughing, shoving, vaulting them, not a man to be slowed down by dignity.

Behind her, up the next flight of stairs, she heard his clamoring footfalls. She felt a pull of her skirt, a hand over her arm, and he collided into her. He grabbed, tried to keep them both from falling, while Submit wrenched away—too hard. They went down. She went flying, sliding three feet on taffeta along the polished wood floors of the main bedroom wing lobby. She was stunned for a moment, as she lay on the floor sprawled, then she felt his fingers snake round an ankle. He pulled. On a shush of accommodating fabric, she slipped helplessly along the floor till she lay on her back beside him. He threw his leg over her.

“Don’t.” Submit tried to draw air into her lungs. Panting, she complained, “You didn’t even give me ten seconds.”

“Such a stickler.”

He moved up to his knees, then lay his full weight on top of her, collapsing crinolines, gathers, ruffles, making a wobbly quiver of steel hoops as he made a valley for himself between silk-covered mountains.

Submit lay there, trying to catch her breath. She could feel their hearts, their bellies beating together. She could see Graham’s dark face coming. He licked her lower lip briefly,
wiping with his thumb the wet spot he’d left. She stared up, dumbfounded for a second as he massaged her lip. When he kissed her, he held her cheek, stroking her lip with his thumb even as he put his tongue deep in her mouth. She made a funny sound of befuddlement, resistance. She turned her face. “You—” Submit exhaled. “Not—not here—You can’t—” His head followed hers around.

“Give in,” he murmured. “You think too much, Submit. Stop thinking. Just feel.”

He kissed her again, while adjusting his hips, till the outline of a firm erection fit flush against the rise of her mons. The instant satisfaction was indisputable, as if their bodies were the final pieces to a puzzle linking up at last. His hips moved with a gentle, rotating pressure that matched the action of his tongue. Submit groaned. What remained of her struggles became subdued, then shifted. Her arms went up. She clutched his neck. His hand molded up her ribs to cup her breast, his thumb rubbing its tip till the nipple pulled together into a hard, shriveled bit. The game rolled over on itself. Her stomach lifted, as if taking a bump too fast in a carriage going full pelt. She closed her eyes, and he kissed her with deeper, greedier, wallowing kisses, as she raised her knees and opened her legs to him—

“Madam.” A voice rose from two floors below. “Is everything all right?”

They froze like guilty children, the heat between them trapped like a secret. Their breaths hissed.

“Madam?” It was the butler. His voice two flights below moved to the foot of the stairs.

“It’s all right,” Graham called. Which made him and Submit have to stifle laughter.

She chimed in, “Yes, I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

“Come on,” Graham whispered. He lifted her up and took her by the hand.

“My bedroom—” she began.

He threw her a strangely intimate look. “Yes. I know where your bedroom is in this house.”