Moonspun Magic (22 page)

“I hate you,” she said quite precisely.

He stared down at her averted face, but at that moment she bucked upward, hoping to dislodge him. Instead, it sent him deeper and he felt himself surging over the edge. He withdrew, then thrust deep, then again and once more. He felt himself shatter. He threw back his head, arched his back, moaning loudly, and poured himself into her.

She felt his seed, a man's seed, she thought dully. He had truly had his way. But it had been her fault. She had wanted to believe him, had been eager for him to make love to her. She'd wanted to know so desperately what the wild feelings were, and where they led. Well, she knew now. It was short, fleeting, and terrifying because it wiped out all control, all reason. She shuddered at the pain of his entry. She still hurt, deep inside now, and it erased the lingering spurts of pleasure. She felt cold and dead inside.

“You lied to me,” she said, not moving. “You lied to me and I will never forgive you.”

Rafael was slowly coming back to reality as he had known it. The power of his climax had rendered him insensible. He was still deep inside her, held by her, and slowly he lowered himself over her, balancing his weight on his elbows. “What did you say?” He thought she'd said something, but he was too involved in recovery to make out her words.

“You lied to me and I will never forgive you.”

He stiffened, and frowned down at her closed face. “What the devil are you talk—” He broke off. Oh, God, had those damnable words really come from him? Fool, a thousand times a bloody fool.

“Victoria,” he said very slowly, very carefully, “it isn't what you think.”

“I assume you are done with me. Would you please get away from me now?”

“No.” His voice was sharp, and she flinched. “No, you are mine now and I am your husband. Please, love, you must understand. I couldn't erase every doubt, but there was but a mere shadow of a doubt when I told you I believed you. I did believe you, truly.”

She said nothing. He felt sunk in guilt and anger at himself. He rolled onto his side, bringing her with him. He remained inside her. And he felt himself growing hard once again. He strove for control. “Victoria, I gave you pleasure.”

She said nothing.

He was becoming fast angry with her. “You stubborn little witch, you will listen to me. Do you discount the pleasure I gave you so quickly? Shall I make love to you again to remind you?”

“No. Don't touch me.”

That order was so funny that he was obliged to laugh, which he did, deeply. “My God, my rod is
inside you. Don't you consider that touching? Your breasts are pressed against me and now my hands are on your bottom. Well?”

“I hate you. Let me go now.”

“Where are you ugly?”

She stiffened and he could feel her withdrawal. Physical and emotional. He hated it. “Forget I asked,” he said, and locked his arms around her so she couldn't pull away from him. He kissed her cheekbone. “Victoria, kiss me.”

She ducked her face down into his shoulder. She made the mistake of taking a deep breath and the smell of him was enough to make her muscles clench around his sex. He moaned.

And began to move within her.

“No,” she screamed. She began to fight him in earnest, bucking her hips upward, smashing her fists against his chest.

“Damn you, hold still.” He rolled her onto her back again and pinned her arms above her head, his entire weight on her. “Don't try it, Victoria. You are so hot for me, it won't be a matter of forcing you, and you know it. Give me just one more minute and you'll be begging me to continue.”

She stared up at him, knowing what he said was true, and hating both herself and him. He was moving slowly inside her and the pain was now mixed with pleasure as he moved against her belly.

“Not even a minute,” he said. “A virgin isn't supposed to feel pleasure the first time, you know. But you did. Immense pleasure, and I gave it to you. You won't forget that, Victoria. Another man wouldn't have, but I did. I wanted to see your face when you climaxed. Every time we make love you will feel like that. And you won't forget it.”

“Please,” she whispered, fighting the building pleasure, “please don't shame me. Please leave me alone.”

“No, not a chance. Tell me you want me to continue what I'm doing. Tell me.”

He eased his hand between them and found her. She cried out when his fingers touched her.

Her muscles were convulsing around him and he knew she was making him as wild as he was her. “Tell me, Victoria. Tell me you want me to pleasure you again.”

She felt tears sting her eyes, tasted the salty drops in her mouth. His fingers quickened and she cried out, her back arching. He released her wrists and came up on his hands. He came into her, then withdrew, twisting and pressing, making her shudder deeply.

“Tell me, damn you.”

But Victoria couldn't say anything. She was beyond reason. She looked at him, a lost, wild look, then was lost in such incredible sensation that she felt she would die of it. She was writhing beneath him, moaning, her hair tangling about her face, her fingers digging into his back.

My God, he thought, she is incredible, and he let himself go. He was sweating and breathing hard. His full weight was on her, his head on the pillow beside hers.

He pulled himself up for a moment, kissed her slack mouth, then lay down again.

“You're mine, Victoria. You won't ever forget that.”

Within moments he was sleeping, a sated sleep.

Victoria listened to his even breathing. He had certainly won. His weight was great, but somehow she found it comforting, which, she thought, must surely make her a candidate for Bedlam. And he was still inside her, but less so now. She stared up at the dark ceiling. She had never imagined such feelings, such dizzying pleasure. She wondered if he would now
believe her a slut for responding to him so completely, so quickly. Not a lady. Surely ladies didn't yell and carry on with such abandon.

She shuddered a bit, filled with such loathing for herself that she couldn't keep still. He moved, muttering something in his sleep, words she didn't understand.

Victoria held her breath. She couldn't bear to speak to him now, to see his eyes, to wonder what he thought. Of course Rafael always told her what he thought, so she wouldn't have to wait long for that. She realized that he was leaving her. She felt soreness and some remnants of pain deep inside. A virgin's pain and a woman's incredible pleasure.

She drew a deep breath and shoved at him. He grunted in his sleep, but rolled off her, onto his stomach, his head turned away from her. Slowly she eased away and rose. Her muscles felt as weak as her leg when she had overexerted. That thought made her rub her hand over the scar on her thigh. Yes, that was what he would demand next. She could hear him now, his voice either stern and forbidding or charming with a hint of cajoling.
What is your confession? Is it about your so-called ugliness?

She walked to the basin and poured cold water from the pitcher. She soaped the cloth and washed herself. It was dark, but not too dark. The stickiness between her thighs came away but she saw her blood on the cloth. Quickly she lit a single candle. It was her blood, from her maidenhead. Well, at least he'd told her that much, so she wasn't afraid he had irreparably hurt her.

She dried herself and retrieved her nightgown from the floor. She stared toward the bed at the sound of his low snoring. Without making a conscious decision, she carried the candle toward the bed. She wanted to see him. She raised the candle.

He was still on his stomach, his legs spread, one arm bent upward, the other at his side. Her eyes followed the beautiful taut line of his back to his firm buttocks. His thighs were thick with muscle and black hair. Even his feet were beautiful, she thought, long and narrow and arched. She wished he would turn over. She wanted to see all of him without him knowing it. She could spend fifty years staring at him. He mumbled something in his sleep, came up abruptly on his elbows, and she froze.

She snuffed out the candle and stood perfectly still.

He said quite clearly, “Victoria.”

Then he fell back onto his stomach and began snoring again.

Victoria made her decision at that moment. If she slept with him, he would make love to her as soon as he woke. She knew it. She also knew that she would want him to. And it would probably be morning and the room would be light and he would see her leg.

She flinched away from that thought. He was so perfect himself, how could he tolerate such ugliness in his wife? Her hand went to the scar and kneaded it.

She covered him, then resolutely walked from her room into his bedchamber.

The sheets were so very cold, the bed so very large and empty. What was she going to do now?

It was taken out of her hands. She woke aware that she was very warm, and she snuggled into that warmth. It was many moments before she was conscious enough to realize what was happening. Rafael was spooned about her back, his hand kneading her stomach.

“Don't leave me again, Victoria,” he said, his voice rough in her ear. His fingers probed through the nest
of curls, found her, and he began a rhythm that quickly made her wild.

“I had to,” she gasped, pressing her bottom back against him. She felt him hard, throbbing, and quivered. Slowly, very gently, he lifted her leg and came inside her. She felt the pleasure build, become so intense that she was crying out, unable to keep quiet. She felt his fingers, felt him stroking deep inside her, and she gave over to him.

She was sobbing with the power of it. And when he nibbled on the nape of her neck, thrusting deeper still, she found herself moving naturally against him, wanting him, wanting more. And he gave it to her. When he felt her reach her climax, felt the incredible convulsive shudders of her body, he let himself go and shared the intense feelings with her.

“You're wonderful,” he said simply, kissed her ear, and pulled her tightly against him.

He was still deep inside her.

It was still dark.

She lay awake listening to his deep, steady breathing in her ear.

All this and heaven too.

—M
ATTHEW
H
ENRY

R
afael was smiling as he opened his eyes, a very male smile, one filled with bone-deep satisfaction.

He yawned deeply. “Victoria?” he said as he turned his head on the pillow.

She wasn't there. He sat up, fully awake now. He wasn't surprised to find her gone, not really, particularly after she'd left him during the previous night. No, he wasn't surprised, but he wasn't pleased about it either.

Where the devil was she ugly?
He disliked mysteries, and as he'd told his wife, he was adept at puzzle solving. If he wasn't able to figure out the puzzle using his wits, he would use guile and cunning until the information he needed was his.

He would force it out of his wife, damn her silly hide. Ugly? Silly wench, did she have a broken fingernail?

He looked sleepily over at the clock. Nearly ten o'clock in the morning. And there was a lot of sunlight streaming through the windows. At least Victoria hadn't closed and fastened all these draperies. He threw back the covers, rose, and stretched.

After he had shaved, grunting with displeasure at
the cold water in the basin, now wishing he hadn't dismissed Lizzie as he had Tom and Mrs. Ripple, he gritted his teeth and prepared to bathe himself with that same cold water. It was then that he saw the blood on his sex. Victoria's blood. Slowly he walked from his bedchamber into hers. It was still very dark despite the strong sunlight. He unfastened the heavy brocade drapes and flung them back. He then walked to the bed and pulled back the covers. Her blood and his seed were dried splotches on the white sheet. His virgin wife. She hadn't lied to him. She'd been a complete innocent.

And suddenly he remembered.

When he'd thrust through her maidenhead, he'd shouted aloud his relief—that he couldn't have borne it if Damien had had her first.

He'd also made love to her three times and given her pleasure each and every time. Immense pleasure. Of that he was quite certain. He knew that many women feigned pleasure, but Victoria wouldn't know how. She responded to him wildly for some remarkable but as-yet-unexplained reason, and he guessed it would be beyond her to feign anything.

She wouldn't be able to forget those sensations he gave her, that pleasure he drowned her in. Nor would he let her. No matter how enraged she was at him, he now knew that he could control her with sex.

It was odd, this reversal of the natural order. It was normally women's prerogative to use sex to get what they wanted from men. He grinned. Not so with his beautiful wife.

He was on the point of taking her water to add to his when he saw the washcloth in the basin. The cloth was stained with blood, as was the water in the basin. He hoped she hadn't been frightened. He closed his eyes a pained moment, remembering his story to her about the bride who had used chicken
blood on her wedding night to fool her husband. No, she probably hadn't been scared to see her virgin's blood. He felt a bounder, worse, like a barbarian who had hurt and raped a vestal virgin.

He hoped she wouldn't be too angry with him this morning. He had, he supposed, meant what he'd shouted out during their lovemaking, but he was willing to lie, to say anything to make her forget those ghastly words. He thought of Victoria lying on her back, her eyes wild and vivid on his face as he plunged into her. It made him instantly hard.

He walked back into his bedchamber. If she was still angry with him, he would simply love her until she was screaming, her beautiful breasts heaving, her long legs tightening around his flanks. He tried to stop those images, for his body wouldn't be reasonable about it.

“Randy goat,” he said to himself as he cleaned his teeth and dressed himself.

He ran Victoria to ground in the kitchen some thirty minutes later. She'd tied her hair back with a black velvet ribbon and wrapped one of Mrs. Ripple's enormous aprons about her waist.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he said with jovial optimism, immediately pulled her against him, and kissed her soundly beneath her left ear. “You're making bread? Without me, the chef?” He turned her to face him and ignored her rigid expression. “I like the daub of flour on your nose,” he continued in what he hoped was a loverlike tone. “Cute.” He kissed the tip of her nose.

Victoria slowly pulled away from him. She couldn't quite bring herself to look squarely at him. Every step she took reminded her of the previous long night. She was very sore. She lowered her head, unaware that she was turning quite red.

He grinned at her, and gently lifted her chin with
his finger. “What is this, love? You are regretting your wifely state?”

And his perfidy washed over her again, and she ground her teeth.

“We leave for Cornwall tomorrow?”

He accepted her shift of topic, and her cold voice, and nodded. “Yes, right after luncheon.” He gave her one of his lovely white-toothed grins. “I can't imagine that either of us will want to be up with the sun.” He didn't expect a reply, and turned to fetch himself an apron. He tied it about his waist, washed his hands, then joined her beside the array of ingredients on the kitchen table.

She was behaving with more restraint than he deserved, or hoped for, for that matter. Sleeping dogs deserved to be left alone, he thought as he kneaded the bread dough. They worked companionably, in reasonably easy silence, for another ten minutes.

“What is that, pray?”

She was staring at the bread loaf he had fashioned. He laughed. “You don't approve my artistic endeavors? Why, wife, I have shaped a very special loaf, just for you.”

“But it's . . . it's . . . “

“Too much for you, huh? Well, I call it my Statue of David, or if you prefer, the Statue of Your Husband.”

She stared at the dough man and the very large phallus Rafael had molded. Besides that ridiculous endowment, there was a wide smile on the dough mouth.

“Should you like more detail, Victoria? Ribs, for instance? Teeth? Perhaps something lower, maybe—”

“No! Goodness, are you completely lost to civilized manners? You are—”

“—desirous of making love with you again, Victoria. You have this effect on me. You daub flour on
the tip of your nose and I'm gone with admiration and lust. Will you give me a good-morning kiss or a thank-you kiss for my artistic bread man?”

He grabbed her about the waist and lifted her. He swung her around, grinning up at her. “You know that the yeast should make our bread man even more impressive while he's baking?”

Victoria felt overwhelmed. He was impervious, oblivious of her feelings to his own shocking dishonesty. Now he was holding her off the floor, jesting with her as if nothing at all had occurred, as if they were newlyweds and very much in love, which was utterly ridiculous, at least the love part. And that ludicrous, obscene dough man. She could just imagine how he would look after baking. And she was supposed to spread butter and honey on him and place him on her bread plate?

“Rafael,” she said in a very thin voice, “please put me down now.”

“All right,” he said, all agreeable, and slid her slowly down the front of his body. He saw her flush at the contact with him, and felt his own body respond instantly. “Ah,” he said, leaned down, and kissed her. She was as stiff as the baking paddle.

For about thirty seconds.

He was an excellent lover, he knew it, and she would come to accept it soon enough. He would take her here, in the kitchen, in the bright daylight, and he would find this ugliness of hers.

“Come, sweetheart, part your lips for me. A bit more. Ah, that's it.”

She felt his tongue gently touch hers, then retreat, stroking her lips. His hands were on her back, caressing her shoulders, then downward to mold her hips. Why him? She wondered vaguely, even as her own enthusiasm mounted alarmingly.

She felt his fingers untying her apron and he
yanked it off her, hurling it to the other side of the kitchen. Then, without pause, he released her, pulled her back against him, and his hand cupped her fully. His other hand closed over her breast. He felt the heat of her through her muslin gown and groaned softly as he kissed her throat.

“Rafael,” she managed, knowing that soon, very soon, she wouldn't care that the kitchen was filled with morning sunlight, that she was dreadfully sore from their mutual ardor of the night before. She wouldn't care about anything except having him. “Please, do not . . . ah . . . “

“Now, Victoria. Here. Right here.”

“No, please,” she said, nearly sobbing with desire and frustration at her own helplessness with him.

He felt the heat of her beneath his probing fingers and his hands went wild on her clothes even as he lowered her to the kitchen floor. He had no thought to finding this so-called ugliness—he wanted only to bury himself deep inside her, love her until she screamed, and melted into him. He yanked up her gown, tearing it, and ripped open her drawers, ignoring her petticoat, stockings, and slippers. He was breathing hard as he quickly unfastened the front of his breeches.

“Victoria,” he said, his voice harsh, and with one powerful thrust he came fully and deeply into her. Her cry was the most beautiful sound his ears had ever enjoyed. She was small, tight about him, and ready for him. He tried to keep his weight off her, but she wouldn't allow it. She was moving upward against him, bringing him deeper, and he obliged her. He lifted himself on his hands so he could press against her woman's mound, and when he did, a scream choked in her throat. She whispered his name, and in that instant he looked into her eyes, the color of the ocean just before a storm
struck—turbulent blue, shifting in hue and focus—and was lost, with her.

He held himself perfectly still, no thought of sleep entering his mind this time. After a few moments of recovery he came up on his elbows and smiled down at his dazed wife. Her eyes were closed, her thick brown lashes damp against her cheeks. She was beautiful, sated, and he was still deep inside her, and she was his. Only his.

“Very nice, wife,” he said, willing her to look at him. “I have the talent of a great politician. I am the master of understatement. Look at me, Victoria.”

She did. Her lashes fluttered open and she stared up at him with such a look of hopelessness in her eyes that he immediately felt fear sear through him. “What's the matter? Did I hurt you?”

She said nothing.

“Victoria?”

She still said nothing, merely turned her face away from him. He pulled himself out of her, and felt her flinch. He'd known she would be sore after the previous night but he'd granted himself instant forgetfulness in his desire to assuage his own lust. “I'm sorry, truly. Just hold still, don't move.”

He rose, fastened his breeches, then dampened a soft cloth with cool water. He came down on his knees beside her and gently pressed the cloth against her. She nearly jumped out of her skin. She lurched up, her face flaming. “Oh, no, please, Rafael. “She swatted at him ineffectually.

“Would you please just hold your tongue? Lie down. I'm sorry the bed is made of flagstone, but just a few more minutes, all right?” He bathed his seed from her, rinsed out the cloth, and pressed it against her once more. He stretched out beside her on the kitchen floor, still holding the damp cloth against her. “Look at me, Victoria.”

If possible, she turned her head even more away from him until he imagined that her nose was pressing against the flagstone. His eyes traveled down her body. Her drawers were neatly split down the center seam and his hand was inside, holding the cloth against her. Her stockings were held up with narrow black garters, her slippers a pale pink to match her now-ruined morning gown. Her petticoat was spread about her like ruffled icing on a cake.

“I didn't realize before that you were a coward. It's a disconcerting and disappointing discovery. I believe that before a man takes a wife, her courage should be proved. Not a deed of derring-do, mind you, just something that will show him that he can count on her. I can see it now—we will be attacked by a vicious highwayman and you will conveniently faint, leaving me to face the fellow alone. I won't be armed, of course, because you faint at the sight of weapons, thus I am helpless against him. I can only imagine your guilt when you come to consciousness and I am sprawled out at your feet, long gone from these earthly delights.” At his final words, she felt the cloth press more closely against her.