Blackwater (9 page)

He pulls me into him and kisses the top of my head, "I'm sorry. I came to say sorry."

I'm confused. I try to scream but there is no air. I push him away. I'm panicking clawing at the bedding to escape. My eyes adjust and I see his beautiful face. He pins me to him and shakes his head, putting a finger to my lips. "I came to explain."

I gulp and look around, "You shouldn’t be in here."

He kisses my hand. "I'm sorry I grabbed your arms like that and shook you and got angry and actually the list is too long to say it all. Lorelei, I'm sorry. I can't even express how sorry I am for everything."

In the darkness of the moonlit room, his sad eyes dissipate my fear. My body is trembling with a perverse excitement. "How about sorry for sneaking into my bedroom? How did you even get in here?"

He points to the balcony. "Do you want me to be sorry for climbing in your window?"

I nod and lick my lips. My momma's bad habit is like a hereditary disease that always has my lips chapped.

He lowers his face and kisses me. He presses my body against his and slides us both back into the bedding. The hardness of his body against mine makes me feel like I have jelly insides.

His fingers trail down my side, brushing softly along my hip and thigh. I gasp as they reach the bottom of my nightgown. He slides his hand up the bottom and cups my ass. I jerk toward him, startled. He chuckles into my neck where his lips are leaving hot kisses.

His face is against mine and the cold whispers are nowhere to be found. The heat of him has overtaken the room and pushed away the cold. There is passion and it's larger than the icy whispers.

He whispers into my nape, "I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry at all. You're mine." His Scottish accent seems more noticeable.

I'm his. I have no denial inside of me. I'm his. Body and soul. Two weeks doesn’t feel long enough and yet it feels like an eternity. We have played chess and laughed and joked whenever he visited me in the hospital everyday. I feel like I know him better than the man I am to marry.

"You have to stop this. It's inappropriate. I'm not this kind of girl. I've only known you for a few weeks." I protest, knowing I'm justifying his touches in my mind too fiercely.

He kisses me again. "You feel it too don’t you?"

I shake my head. The automatic response for a proper girl, denial of emotions.

He laughs, "Then why is your body sliding against mine? Why are you melting in my hands and pressing your chest into mine?"

I shake my head and squeeze my lips together.

"Yes. Yes you feel it." He lifts me onto him, straddling him like I would a horse.

I whimper, "Please. I'm not like this." I am pleading and yet my hands are clenching to his skin through his shirt, kneading him like Emily's cat does. His fingers roam my bare thighs, making my skin shiver, until they reach my hips. He holds my hips and grinding me against him, I can feel his hardness through our clothes. I push back, rocking my own hips. He moans. We move like we are a boat floating in the waves of the sea. His eyes lock mine in an intensely sexual stare down. I bend forward, kissing him for the first time. I have let him kiss me, but now I want to kiss him. I want him.

My lips brush against his, delicately. The warm softness of his kisses could feed me. I inhale his breath, it's familiar and sweet. His hands slide up my legs, creeping up my stomach. I shiver from the heat of his palms traveling up my ribs and eventually cupping my breasts. His fingers roll my nipples, making me moan into his mouth and buck against his erection.

I sit up sharply and shake my head, "No. No. No."

He grins and I melt, licking my lips and thinking of the thousand reasons that I shouldn’t do this. They don’t stack up against the one reason why I should, because I damn well want to. I want him inside of me. I want my breast in his mouth, like in the dirty pictures Angie and me found in her dad's desk.

"I want you. All of you. Your virginity, your heart, your soul." He says it all too loudly.

I put a finger to his lips, "Shhhh. My daddy will shoot you if he finds you here."

His eyes sparkle with madness, "I'll kill him if he tries to separate us."

He ain't kidding. I see that now. He scares me, finally. Finally, my body and mind have a sane reaction to him. I jerk away. "You have to stop threatening to kill people. You're scaring me."

He shakes his head, "I love you, Lorelei. Tomorrow I am asking your father for your hand. I have more money than the entire Ryan family put together. I will buy you if I have to."

I laugh. "You're insane. You can't love me already; you hardly know me." I watch his face. He's struggling with something.

"I know you. I have watched you for so long. I know you better than any man may claim to know a woman." He's intense. I think he's telling the truth. I think he's been watching me. It's creepy - well it damn well should be creepy and not sexy and weird in a way that makes my tummy twirl like a twister is going through it.

I stammer, "W-w-what if I don’t want to marry you? I'm just getting used with the idea I may never marry. My whole life's been planned out for me and now I feel free to choose. Maybe I'll be a schoolteacher like my sister. Or a journalist like Angie." I swallow hard, "Besides you shouldn’t be here. I think I have to ask you to leave." Before I do something I can't even imagine regretting.”

He pulls me back down to him, "Are you afraid me?"

I shake my head again, "I'm afraid of me, alone in this dark room with you. Where my daddy could come in any minute and shoot you."

He laughs and kisses my throat, licking from my collarbone to my ear. "You should fear me."

I shiver and try not to moan, as his mouth plants soft kisses where his tongue has just licked.

"Please stop. It's indecent." I moan.

He pulls me back and looks at me, "I love you."

I frown, "How? How, when you barely know me?"

He looks lost when he speaks, "When you're as old I am, you just know. You appreciate love more once you've lost it. Finding it again is better than any feeling in the world." His words confuse me.

"You're not old enough to speak that way. Who have you loved before?" He loves too easily. It's obvious. I am no doubt the tenth girl on the list.

He kisses the tip of my nose, "A long time ago there was a girl. I loved her and she loved me. But it wasn’t enough. My love couldn’t save her. She died of a sickness a lot of people in my country had at the time." He kisses the tip of my nose, "You're a mood killer."

I feel my lips stick out in a pout, "What?"

He shakes his head and sighs, "Nothing." Licking his lips, he rolls me over onto the cool sheets again. He holds me to him, "I love you and that's what matters."

I look up at him, "Don't say that. I can't say it back to you."

He smiles softly, "You will."

I narrow my eyes, "You don’t know that." With the blood distributing throughout my body again, my common sense seems to be resurfacing.

Our lips meet softly, "I do." He whispers into my mouth, "But for now, sleep. Go to sleep and I will ask your dad to marry you tomorrow."

I feel my eyes closing. I can't sleep with him there, but I'm exhausted.

He kisses my eyelids, "Sleep and feel safe."

I try to fight the urge to sleep but it's useless. The blackness behind my eyes takes me before the struggle even begins.

When I wake the room is filled with sunlight and he is gone. His smell is on the pillow beside me, where the dent from his face is. He was here. He was real. He truly climbed into my window and slept beside me. I lift the covers and look at my nightgown relieved. I'm dressed. My room feels like it's new and fresh in a way. The burden of wedding Martin Ryan is gone. My daddy will no doubt agree to the marriage with Mr. Whitlock. All they care about is status and he is a lord and rich. I'm excited about not having to tell them what Martin did to me. My momma would find a way to spin it to make me look like a tramp.

My cheeks flush when I think about the way I acted last night. I was a tramp. The feeling of the hardness of him grinding against me was delicious and mysterious. I have seen the pictures; I know the general science of it. I just don't know how it feels. With Mr. Whitlock I can imagine it would be fun. It would feel good. I can't believe I fell asleep with him in the room. It was the weirdest feeling. It was like my sleep claimed me against my will, sort of like Mr. Whitlock has.

My Mr. Whitlock. I will have to start calling him Whit or something beyond his surname. Especially if he's gonna ask me to marry him.

I emotionally slap myself, "Wake up, Lorelei."

Of course. He was saying that to get me to give him my virginity. My stomach flutters and I can't believe he would want to marry me. Maybe it was all a dream. I smell the pillow once more to let the dream last longer.

I recall his brief tale of his love before and wonder if he does fall in love too easily? Has he too tasted the whole world, where as I have barely sipped from the chalice I only just discovered?

My fluttering and disjointed thoughts are disrupted when my door is burst open and Emily runs in.

She looks panicked, "You are gonna have a bird, Lorelei. A bird. Martin Ryan's downstairs talking with Daddy. Earlier a man came with a fancy car and asked to speak to Daddy. I listened at the door and it sounded like there might be a duel in the yard. Another man asked for your hand. The man from the hospital - Mr. What's-It - with the title." She laughs and jumps onto my bed.

My feet should be killing me but they're not. I'm just tired. I can't get out of my bed with Martin in the house. "Who is the man?" I play dumb.

She shrugs, "Some servant for that Mr. Whitlock, you know the guy who saved you and came to the hospital every bloody day. Momma looked like she was gonna start screaming and burn the house down when Daddy told her. She said she would be damned if you would be Lady Lorelei."

I frown, "She was upset?" I'm confused. As far as debutants succeeding, Mr. Whitlock was the cream of the crop.

She nods and lies back next to me, "I figured Martin would be so angry. I almost asked Daddy to tell him that you were gonna be courted by two men, just so I could watch his reaction."

"I want to marry Mr. Whitlock?" The name leaves my lips with curiosity.

She nudges against me, "It doesn’t matter. Daddy turned him away after he talked it over with Momma. Told the servant you were spoken for and a deal had been arranged. He said he had a gentleman's agreement with the Ryan's and gentlemen never go back on their word. It made Momma smile wickedly. I nearly lost my breakfast."

My heart sinks. He has promised me to Martin. It was true. All of it was true. He never even spoke to me about it. I truly am just a cow to sell. I wonder what the price was? "He never even asked me if I wanted to marry Martin."

She looks at me, "You can't marry that cad. You can't. He is a womanizing scoundrel. Someone said they saw him out in the yard making out with some girl last night. Imagine?"

I covered my eyes, "Oh no. No one saw did they? Saw who she was?"

Emily laughs, "Was it you?" I nod with my eyes still covered. She laughs harder. "Testing out the merchandise I see."

I shake my head, "Running for my life is more like it. He practically assaulted me on the grass under one of the huge trees. Mr. Whitlock actually saved me."

Emily stops laughing, "He did what?"

I lift my hand and look at her with one eye, "He nearly assaulted me last night. He held me to him and forced me to kiss him and said filthy things to me. Stuck his hand in the top of my dress. It was disgusting."

Her jaw drops, "Daddy needs to know." She tries to leave but I grab her hand, "No, leave it. I will just tell Daddy I don't wish to marry him."

Emily scowls, "He is a pig. I guarantee he forced himself on that poor Margery Banks."

"I thought the same thing."

"He's still downstairs."

I shake my head, "Have cook send my breakfast up." I can't face him. Not knowing he won. I am to be his.

Emily walks away shaking her head, "You need to tell Daddy." She leaves and I fall back to sleep. I can't bear the idea of marrying him. I need a plan.

When I wake the sun is setting. I've slept the day away tossing and turning.

"Are you sick again?" Her voice bothers me before I even see her face.

I look over at her picking clothing out of my closet.

"No. Just exhausted. I walked home last night."

She turns and smiles bitterly, "Yes, I did notice that. I insisted to your father you let Angela give you a ride. Where's your dress and shoes?"

I shake my head, "I don’t know. In the wash."

She seethes, "You let him bring you home and you have the indecency to lie to me? At least we can relax knowing you won't see him again. Your engagement party is in two weeks."

I ignore her and roll over. I feel weight on the bed, "Put this on. We are going to his uncle's house."

I turn to her, "I'm not marrying him so you can stop the act. He's a cad and frankly, a pervert."

She leans in and whispers, "You will marry him, Lorelei. You will enjoy your marriage, just as I have." Her face is cruel. Her words are spoken through a sick smile. My insides twist and I nearly gag from the vile things I'm thinking.