Lady Gallant (31 page)

Curiosity and horror warred within her as Christian put one knee on the bed. The moment he angled his body toward her, she scrambled away.

"You aren't like my animals," she said.

He paused, noting the direction of her gaze. "No, but God fashioned men and women to take pleasure of each other, and we're a man and a woman." He touched her hand. "Don't be afraid."

"I don't think I like this." She was telling the truth. He'd changed. There was a tension about him, and he stared at her body's most private parts.

"I've given you too much time to think."

Taking her by the shoulders, he lifted her to him. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her gently, then increased the pressure of his lips with each new kiss. The arm that supported her back flexed, the muscle bunching and then loosening. Its ceaseless movements told Nora of the force he held in check. The arm tensed again, and he leaned into her body until she was prone on the bed.

Her gown spread out on the bed, and Christian covered it and her with his nude body. At the feel of his weight, she instinctively pushed at his chest, but he whispered into her ear, his breath tickling her skin.

"The hunt is over."

The rest of his words made no sense to her, for his breath heated her flesh and made her fingers and toes tingle. That tingling caused her to dig her fingers into the bunched muscles on his upper arms, and she discovered how pleasing it was to caress them.

While she let him explore her mouth, she began to explore the vast lengths of his exposed flesh. She rubbed her palms over hot skin, learning the planes of his back, the feel of his ribs, the dip at his waist. Her arm stretched to its fullest length and her hand touched springy, taut flesh. She dug her fingers into the muscles of his buttock.

At her touch, Christian arched his back and cursed, driving his hips into hers with the nightgown still between them. She could feel the pressure of his sex, its heaviness, churning into her loins, rousing them. Without instruction from him, she clutched his buttocks in both hands and forced his groin to the place where she needed it to be.

Her actions elicited another curse from Christian. He lifted his body and tore her gown away, then settled himself between her thighs. Frightened by his sudden violence, Nora cringed, but when his warm body lay on hers and he nudged her with his engorged flesh, fear vanished.

She was growing moist, swelling and aching. As he rubbed his sex against her loins, directing his movements to a single point that throbbed with each stroke, her thighs spread wide. Digging her nails into his flesh, she pushed his hips down and her own up. Bucking, she almost lifted him off the bed, and when she did, he slammed her back down, hard, and bit her neck.

He slipped his hand between their bodies. She caught her breath, then nearly screamed when he touched the place he'd aroused with his sex. His fingers stroked and teased and pinched, and she lost all sense of herself, of him, of the room. Pleasure coiled tighter and tighter through her body as he stimulated her, driving her to madness. She pressed herself against his fingers and cried out at the spasms his touch released at last. He whispered to her, urgent, erotic words that sucked her into climax.

While Nora shuddered, Christian shifted, lifting his hips. She groaned, still in that delightful agony, as she felt his penis butt against her swollen flesh. Her eyes flew open. His were filled with a violet rage, but then he shut them and ground his teeth together. He slipped his phallus into her body, pushing gently. Still in the throes of her own pleasure, she writhed against him.

"No! Don't," he said. His arms quivered as he held himself above her. "No."

Ignoring him, Nora squirmed again, trying to draw the source of her arousal deeper, to massage the ache within her. Christian resisted for a moment longer, then cried out helplessly and rammed his flesh into her body. Stings of pain jolted Nora from her passion. Sinking her teeth into the flesh above his nipple, she gasped with each thrust of his body. Lost beneath him, she could hear his ragged, uncontrolled gasps. Then he shouted, jamming his phallus deep into her, and she felt the tip of it touch her womb. He kept it there, holding himself stiff while his flesh throbbed and burst.

Impaled, Nora felt her own pain recede. After a while, Christian seemed to regain the sanity he'd lost and released her, slowly lowering himself from his arched, strained position. He collapsed on her, arms and legs spread wide, and turned his face away. He said nothing, but kissed her shoulder. Nora lay quietly, her hands skimming over his back. She could feel his penis still throbbing inside her. The sensation made her smile and bury her face in his neck.

After a moment, she sensed a change in him. The muscles in his arms flexed again, over and over, but he remained silent. His weight was making it hard for her to breathe. She pushed up on his chest, and he rose to support himself on his forearms. His face was flushed. Beads of moisture dotted his forehead and upper lip. She brushed a lock of his hair from his cheek.

His gaze raked her face, then danced over her chest and down to the point where their bodies joined. Surprised at his continued silence and the sudden tension in his body, Nora lifted her brows.

"My lord, is something wrong?"

He put a hand to her cheek. His thumb traced over her lips, then he slipped the hand down to her neck. He looked into her eyes.

"Have I brought you pleasure?"

She ducked her head and nodded. Placing his hands on either side of her face, he drew her up to meet his gaze. Puzzled, she watched his eyes brighten.

He smiled at her. It was a sweet, yearning smile that reached to his voice as well. "Do you love me?"

Nora was sure God had granted her heaven when he smiled and asked so shyly of her love.

"Oh, yes. I—I've loved you for the longest time."

"Pleasure and love, I thought so."

Without warning he pulled free of her body. He was gone so quickly that Nora lay where she was for a moment. Then she sat up, gawking at him while he walked to a chest and withdrew a robe of red silk. Donning it, he came back to her, eyeing her as he tied the belt.

"I, too, am pleased, for it's not every day a man marries a spy who has tried to kill him."

"What-"

"I found your cipher, you little bitch." He folded his arms and stood over her, bare feet braced apart. "You've been spying on me all this time, and you betrayed me to someone. You betrayed me and almost caused my father's death."

She clutched the sheet to her breasts. "No."

"And if you don't tell me who the cipher was for, I'll make you wish I had the stomach to kill you."

Nora looked into his eyes and saw the detached gaze of the executioner. In that moment she realized he'd cut himself off from her and was picturing her death.

"You nearly killed my father," he said softly.

Feeling the strength drain from her body with each quiet word, she shook her head. "I didn't. I would never do that. It was meant for—" She bit her lip. How quickly he'd frightened her into almost blurting out the truth.

"For whom was it meant? Save yourself, Nora. Try again." When she refused to look at him, he leaned over her, catching her wrist and squeezing it. "God, I want to kill you. Why can't I kill you?"

She gasped at the pain, trying to free herself but to no avail. "I tell you the cipher was harmless."

"I'll have the truth from you. To whom did you send your messages?"

"I can't tell you." The fingers around her wrist tightened, bringing tears to her eyes.

"You can publish my doings like a purveyor of broadsheets, so you can damn well tell me who benefited from your sneaking and prying."

She cried out as he began to shake her, jerking her about until she feared her neck would snap in two. Then she felt her body leap as she was thrown across the bed. Landing on her back, she blinked to steady her vision. When she could see, Christian appeared above her.

"Tell me what I want to know, Nora."

She'd heard that tone before. He'd used it on de Ateca and Jack Midnight. Void of anger, flat and distant, it heralded the retreat of compassion, of pity, of honor, of conscience. Disbelieving, Nora could only shake her head. As she did, Christian drew away from her. Before her eyes, he changed, transforming into Kit. Loose-limbed, relaxed, a touch of mirth in his eyes, he burst into light chuckles.

"Very well, I'll find out for myself. It won't take long." The laughter stopped, and his eyes narrowed. "And now I'll give you the truth, though you've withheld yours from me."

Leaning against the bedpost, he caressed the velvet hangings while he watched her, his eyes mere slits. Nora drew her knees up to her chest, still unable to take in all that was happening.

"The truth, dear fool, is that I lied."

"About what?" she asked fearfully.

"About loving you, of course. Do you really think I could love a plain mouse of a thing whose prattle of kittens and puppies evokes the sleep of the dead?" His hand kept stroking the velvet. "Ah, no. It was a plot, you see. At first I only wanted to see what it was like to delve between the legs of a country virgin. Later I needed to keep you out of mischief and in thrall while I poked about to see what your evil had wrought."

Like a child's stick puppet, Nora kept shaking her head. Her body hunched as if she could protect her soul from his cruelty by curling into a ball.

"Y-you don't love me?"

A trill of laughter stabbed at her. Once she would have exulted in its beauty.

"Love you?" He shook his head as if marveling at her gullibility. "Mayhap I should make it clear to you for your own good that your father is quite right. No man would want you. Does a man love clumsiness, pasty-faced, cooking-pot plainness? Can you believe that I really hanker to bind myself to a small crow with the stomach of a worm, who snivels and whines all day and grubs about in the dirt after weeds?"

Some kinds of pain were too great to take in all at once. As she listened to the man she loved reveal his disgust and hatred of her, Nora died in small bits, her happiness pouring from her in streams of tears. It was true, what people said about hearts breaking. Spasms of agony ripped through her own, making her clutch her chest and moan. He was still talking, hurling gibes at her, but she was already drowning in pain and couldn't hear all of them.

"By God's holy foot, you should whimper," he said. "I want you to whimper and cower and whine. That way I don't feel so guilty for not killing you."

He stepped closer to her, studying her as a butcher studies a carcass he has dismembered. "You see, I wanted so badly to kill you. But even I, lost to decency as I am, can't kill a woman. So I'll comfort myself with your suffering. If I can't kill your body, I'll kill your happiness, your pleasure, your blessings of life, and any small enjoyments I detect that give you respite from my revenge."

"Please," Nora said between sobs that nearly choked her. She couldn't look at him and kept her face buried in the crook of her arm. "Please, I d-did n-nothing."

Christian grabbed her hair and snatched her to him. She gasped, trying to tear his hands away, but he stuck his face in front of hers.

"I hate you. Almost as much, no, more than I hate Jack Midnight. You're my wife now, in my control, and you'll stay that way for the rest of your life—unloved, unwelcome, surrounded by people who know what you are and hate you for it."

He cast her from him, then disappeared into the adjoining chamber, slamming the door behind him. Nora lay where he'd thrown her and gaped at the place where he'd last stood. His words, the ugliness of his true feelings for her, beat at her like spiked maces, drawing her soul's blood.

Plain, unloved, stupid. Plain. Stupid. Plain, stupid, plain, plain, plain. I hate you.

Shrill and piercing, Nora's cry shattered the silence of the deserted wing of Vasterne House. And close on her cry came the sound of Christian de Rivers's laughter.