Passion (15 page)

He had been in an unpredictable mood—catching
her off guard after they returned from an outing. He had dragged
her in the chamber and forgone the usual ritual of wine or anything
else that might mellow him. She shuddered. She had discerned
something sly in his face that split second before he had spun and
backhanded her, but she had barely caught herself before he was on
her.

It took everything she could summon to talk
sharply to him, and go into the role. Still, while she dominated
him, he made her stimulate him to climax. Her mind had been racing,
heart too, from that blow. She had thought that would satisfy him.
However, as they got to their feet, he had slapped her several
times, over and over. The only part of the battle she had won—was
resisting the restraints. She knew if he got her in them, she would
be dead.

Thus, she by turns pleasured and took his
blows, and he had been silent except for that wheezed breathing.
She dare not beg. Dear God, it was difficult to play the part with
him like that.

Gabriella had tried to read his face, his
eyes, while her own smarted from the strikes. She had never seen
him so intense. Fearing he had already heard whispers on the
street, possibly he’d found out his warehouses had been emptied, or
if Raith had damaged his ships….whatever it was, he took it out on
her.

Thankful he was apparently gone, she got
herself up. She wanted to escape and flee to Raith, very much
afraid that Stratton would kill her before the rest played out.
That is what Raith told her to do. That is what she had promised
and assured him she would do. However, Gabriella had her own
reasons, she still had the rest of the papers to exchange in the
main house safe. She had learned a lesson. She would not be caught
off guard again.

In her rooms, she used the candlelight to see
and poured water in a pan, washing, hair first, then her body, she
could feel bruised skin. The shaking started though before she got
her chemise and warm robe on.

Curled on her side, in the bed, Gabriella
stared at the flame flickering amber waves on the walls. Her dirk
was under the pillow. She could not use it yet, would not. Raith
would be angry...enraged no doubt, if he knew she would let this
happen without defending herself.

Gabriella closed her eyes, gritty, swollen.
Her lip and inside mouth ached painfully. Tomorrow, hopefully,
after she met with Raith one last time, it would be over. Before
she fled the house for good though, she would leave her mark too.
She would get her blood vengeance and have him at her mercy for
real—no pleasure, no games. She would make sure Stratton felt that.
She would let him know exactly who she was.

* * * *

Raith entered the house just after the dawn
hour. Having spent all night watching Stratton’s hired ruffians
harass citizens on the wharves, trying to figure out who was
raiding the warehouses. He then went to visit a chemist who was in
and out of Newgate for various crimes, and spent hours swimming the
filthy Thames, setting the oilcloth protected charges around
Stratton’s ship. A group of urchins he gathered to draw the crew
away and cause a distraction, were paid half, with the other half
promised when the deed was done.

Wet, chilled, coughing, and rubbing his arms,
he ordered hot water, went to his rooms and stripped, then bathing
from the pail and then drawing on a fresh shirt and trousers. His
wet mane slicked back, he heard noise in the hall and opened his
chamber in time to see Gabriella, dressed in a long blue velvet
hooded cape, hurrying to her rooms.

Frowning, he still had whiskey in his hand
when he followed, pushing open the door, and feeling an altogether
different chill skitter down his spine when she did not turn at his
entry.

He had not expected her until later that
day.

She kept her back to him, looking out the
window. “I’ve the last of them, the papers, but there’s s—“

“Gabriella.” He took several steps.

She turned around, the lamp light striking
her battered face.

A growl issued from Raith’s throat. His lips
pulled back in rage. “It is over. I will kill him before this hour
is out!”

“No—wait!”

He had spun on his heel to leave, but she
grabbed his arm, saying, “We’re almost done. And there’s a packet
there, something you must look at…”

He scarcely heard her. Turning his head to
eye her marred face, the black eye, and swollen cheek, he rasped.
“Stay put. Do not bloody leave this spot.”

“Raith.”

He set the bottle down and left.

* * * *

Gabriella was afraid Raith had gone to kill
Stratton, so deadly was the intent in his black eyes, so lethal,
that she visibly breathed a sigh of relief when he entered
again.

“Raith I…”

“Take that off. All of it,” he ordered,
placing a tray by the bed.

“Raith listen to me…”

He moved with quick purpose, and came to her,
unhooking the cloak. The starkness tightened his eyes while he took
in the fingerprints on her neck and shoulders.

Gabriella did not expect him to pick her up,
but he did so, and carried her to the bed and laid her on it.
Facing her, Raith sat at her hip and pressed a container of coffee
and brandy into her hands. When he uncorked a bottle and began
treating her face, she tried to grab his wrist.

“There’s no time for this.”

Having been attending his task, those cold
eyes met her own. “You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me all
along.”

She swallowed. “I didn’t see this coming.
He’s… he knows someone is after him, onto him…I…”

“You can give me excuses later. Drink that.
All of it.”

She muttered and drank, closing her eyes a
moment because she had been shaking all over since escaping the
house this morning, afraid that Stratton would catch her. With a
bit of luck, he was too preoccupied with Raith’s doings to miss her
yet.

The feel of Raith’s fingers between her
breasts brought Gabriella’s lashes up. He had undone the buttons of
the bodice clear to the waist. Both inner swells of her breast were
exposed as he dabbed at marks.

“Damn him. Damn him.” She heard that rasp in
his throat before he stopped suddenly, and threw the bottle and pad
toward the tray.

Finished with the drink, she set it aside and
reached a tentative hand out to touch his damp hair. “It’s not that
bad.”

He did not raise his head but shook it
slightly, his eyes on the endless trail of yellow and blue marks.
Suddenly, he grasped the edges of the gap and ripped it—startling
Gabriella when he stood, tearing the gown open and wide—leaving her
in nothing but stockings.

“Raith—stop, what ar—“ Her stare glued to his
face as he stood at the side of the bed, arms lax, staring at her
body, Gabriella heard him growl, “You lied to me…why….why would
you…”

“It’s not that bad.”

Raith’s eyes shot to her own. Nostrils
flared, he snarled, “You are going to try and tell me how you got
these….” His hand swept down her body, “Was not through
violence?”

Leaning over her, he grasped a hand full of
her hair, his face more ravaged than ever. “You were never to
suffer this, never. You were supposed to leave…You were supposed to
bloody defend yourself and kill him!”

Her eyes watering at the rage in him, the
sheer force of his emotions, she wrapped her fingers around his
wrist and stared at him, tears already tumbling down toward her
full lips. “I can handle it. I wanted the plan to work. I want you
to avenge…”

“Christ!” He loosed her. “I did not bloody
demand this of you! Tell me you knew that!”

“It’s not so bad,” She wept now, unable to
handle the emotions in either of them. The past week had been utter
hell. This—was hell.

Raith sat on the edge of the bed again,
fingers shoving through his hair whilst he stared at her. His
emotions were so raw, so intense, he was shaking too.

Gabriella did not know what he would do, or
what he wanted when he abruptly lifted her by her shoulders. She
was too distraught to think straight. However, he shoved the
material off her, pulled it all away, and threw it beside the
bed.

She sobbed in earnest, angry with herself for
doing so, but traumatized, perhaps letting the aftershocks out or
perhaps because only Raith was safe enough to show such emotions
to.

She felt him climb onto the bed. Through her
blurred vision saw his face swim before her. He trembled, shook,
with what force did not seem to matter—because he kissed her. He
kissed her, and—-oh, God, what a kiss….

Her hands went to the shoulders of his shirt,
her lips opening, tongue seeking, needing, begging an assuage.

His lips warm, supple, but tongue forceful,
their breathing became choppy and frantic.

When he left her mouth, leaving a taste of
ash and fire behind, she gasped on sobs still gripping her,
“Raith…Raith...” Gabriella’s hands were everywhere, in his hair,
tearing at the shirt until it was half off his torso. her thoughts
nothing, nothing—but an intense half rage, half pain—merging with
desire, need—a voice inside crying yes, yes, touch me, heal me, let
me feel myself again. Make me know I am whole and not shattered
into pieces.

The atmosphere tight, tense, she did not want
to let go of Raith for a second, was afraid to—more afraid, to let
go of him, than she had ever been in her life. “Please…Please…” was
all she could rasp while tasting the salt of tears running onto her
tongue.

Moreover, Raith was there, raising his frame,
still in her blurred vision, but unlike she had ever seen him
before. Despite the frantic feel of electricity around them, she
saw, as if slow motion—through some misted veil, that long black
mane falling around his face, and his sooty lashed eyes half-mast.
She saw the beauty in his bones, and the curve of his lips, the
sinew of his throat and collarbone. She felt the heat from him,
like fire that burned out the cold and dark.

He became grace, essential male, to her
softness and the curves of her skin, easing down her body, his warm
chest sensitizing her flesh. His lips circled her nipple and it
felt like silken fire. Raith suckled, pulled, and slowly rolled his
tongue over them, baptizing them from the foulness of Stratton’s
touch. The core of her responded with a liquid melting, a
contracting in her sex, that had her nails scoring his back.

Suckling one then the other, he did so until
her sobs were not as before, but ragged breaths of pleasure and
intense need. He had the normally large discs rigid and hard,
sensitive to his every breath. He left them but his kisses traced
between those globes, and down her ribs like sheer balm.

This was right. This was passion. Only Raith
was there—the center of her need.

Lower still, his teeth and tongue gently
scored each thigh, which he’d had spread wide. Heat, moist heat,
and the drag of his tongue brought her fever to new heights.

Caught in a miasma of fire after so much
darkness and cold, Gabriella opened herself to it, her hand
reaching for his hair, holding him to her, feeling every move when
he pressed his lips to her entry before scoring his tongue upwards,
parting the lips, and reducing her breath to mere shallow
pants.

He pressed inward, licking, suckling, moving
his head around slowly, and creating sensations that drew her
nipples tight, and had her heart pounding loud while fire sparked
in her blood.

She cried his name, in her head or aloud she
would never know, but the moments he spent with his mouth and lips,
his tongue, laving, abrading, suckling, built up a blaze so high
that when it exploded, she cried out, trembled, feeling both
intense bliss—and a purging, that was beyond description.

Gabriella, still dizzy, felt him raise and
roll to the side. She followed his movement and clutched him,
wrapping her body around him with a need to hold on to that thread,
that connection, for just a moment more.

His firm back was dewed. She had her leg over
his own strong one. Leaning back, she brought her fingers to the
front of him, the backs of them skimming the muscles that jerked in
his abdomen. In some distant place, she could hear his deep rasp,
hear his resistance…She undid the latches and found his full and
hard sex. It was hot, velvet, throbbing against her palm. She
kissed his throat, laved it. Gabriella begged in her wordless way
to have him as close as nature could meld them.

Sliding her hand to the back of his spine,
she tugged and worked the snug trousers off his round, tight,
buttocks.

Their breathing picked up, tighter again, and
his hand suddenly came to her tangled hair at the nape. She had his
trousers worked down over his strong thighs, to the knee. Gabriella
pulled Raith over her, her knees bent, open, before her limbs
captured him when he covered her.

Raith’s hold now on either side of her head,
he rasped a deep, “No…” yet even as he said that, she felt him arch
his hips in and then sink the length of his sex deep, deep inside
of her.

There was a kind exquisite war in the next
few moments. Gabriella, eyes closed, holding him, welcoming any
pain or stings as she gloried in every thrust he gave her.

Half hearing his dark, almost sobbing,
breaths, feeling his intensity—every stroke of his sex from the
head to end, every hot and roughly deep surge—each inch of her felt
as if his cock was pouring as much life into her, as it was purging
emotions out of him.

He arched that raven head back, and then
titled it down, and dark ragged breaths sounded in her ear before
everything in him tightened and he shuddered.

What she heard him utter was, “Gabriella...
No….No...”

* * * *

The room was quiet enough for the sounds of
full morning to penetrate. Gabriella was washed, dressed again, and
with hair tied back, she drew on her cloak. Before leaving the
room, she finished the last bit of coffee, and then turned to
regard Raith.