The Unclaimed Duchess (7 page)

Now Rhys's ideas about the sanctity of rank matched his late father's. They were well-known, he had never hidden them. Still, she sensed he retained a bit more feeling for the village family than perhaps he was ready to admit even to himself. Once more her hopes were fed by this brief, unintentional glimpse into Rhys's soul. If he could still care for a family so beneath him, surely she could give him reason to care for her.

They began to eat. Anne couldn't help her silence. The last time she'd eaten was a not particularly pleasing luncheon along the road just before her arrival. Now darkness had overcome the countryside, and the smells of the hearty country fare made her stomach growl.

Still, the quiet wasn't uncomfortable. In fact, as she dabbed her mouth with a rough napkin, she realized
it might be the most intimate meal she and Rhys had ever shared.

“You know,” she said as she gathered the empty plates. “I don't think we've ever shared a meal without ten other people at the table or a newspaper or book between us.”

Rhys glanced at her with a shrug. “It's difficult to obtain a good paper in these parts.”

She frowned as she searched for a place to put the tableware. That wasn't exactly what she meant.

Rhys motioned to the door. “I put them in the basket outside. The village family…Parks is their name…they collect it when they bring the next basket. I've also arranged for them to tidy up the cottage when they come tomorrow. I don't mind its current state, but you deserve more comfort.”

She nodded and did as he had suggested. When she returned to the cottage, she found he had turned his chair to face the entryway and was staring at her.

“We'll need to discuss our sleeping arrangements, Anne,” he said as she shut the door.

Anne looked around them and then speared him with a look. “Because there are so many choices?”

She thought his lip twitched with suppressed humor, but then it stopped.

“I realize the accommodations aren't up to the standard I would normally provide—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “I love it, Rhys,” she interrupted. “I do.”

His eyes widened with surprise, but then he continued, “Well, I'm glad for that, but it doesn't resolve the problem. You see…well, there is only the one bed.”

Anne folded her arms and tried unsuccessfully to keep a tinge of bitterness from her voice. “Yes, I see that. What is the issue exactly? We're married. It isn't the arrangement we have back at your—
our
home in London, but we won't be here forever. We can share a bed for the time being.”

Actually she very much looked forward to sharing that bed. It wasn't overly wide and they would have to lie close together.

Rhys pushed to his feet. “I realize we're married, Anne…”

Anne blinked. Rhys was actually uncomfortable with this discussion. She had never seen him squirm and fidget so, like a boy who had done something wrong and knew he was about to be caught for it.

“But?”

He cleared his throat. “But you see, what I said earlier about not being married…I meant it. Legally, of course, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to end the union, unless you would be willing to lie and make a case for annulment.”

Anne stared at him, eyes wide and mouth open. There were only a few reasons the court would allow for such a thing and none of them was a circumstance she was willing to swear to, or even consider. When she was silent, he shook his head.

“I thought not,” he continued. “But even if a legal termination is out of the question, our marriage
can
be ended in every other way.”

Anne staggered back three steps. She would have gone farther but she hit the door behind her and was forced to a stop. She had thought his earlier words were mere fancy, a way to lash out at her in his frustration. When he said she could stay here, she had believed that to have passed. But now it was clear he had thought this through with a cool and logical head.

“You mean to permanently separate from me?” she whispered. Suddenly the food she had so enjoyed churned unpleasantly in her belly.

He nodded once, and Anne squeezed her eyes shut with a low groan. There were some in their circles who lived separate lives as he suggested, but those who did often suffered the social consequences. The rumor and censure Rhys abhorred would be visited upon them for years to come. And for what? She still had no inkling as to what would drive him to such extremes.

“I don't understand,” she whispered.

He dipped his chin. “Anne, I know this is difficult for you, but there are forces at work that may
demand
we end this union. And for your own protection, it would be best.”

“Best?” she repeated. Her voice sounded far away to her own ears, as if she was listening to this conversation from an echoing chamber.

He nodded. “And that is why I wanted you to go. If we're going to part, I want to be certain I won't be leaving you with—with child.”

Anne flinched. Although she wanted some time alone with her husband before they had children, time to make him see that they could share a love match, she did long to be a mother. Now Rhys was saying he would deny her that pleasure, as well as the beauty of knowing he cared for her.

Desperation clawed at her at that horrible thought.

“You've told me on numerous occasions that you must produce an heir,” she choked, hating herself for sounding so plaintive. “You owe your bloodline, do you not?”

Rhys turned away so she couldn't see his reaction to her charge, but his voice was thick when he replied, “I do indeed, which is why I cannot bring a child, any child, into this world. I'm sorry, Anne, but this is how it must be.”

Anne had heard that tone from her husband before. It was one that said he wouldn't bend. And she was too stunned, too heartbroken to argue. Instead she whispered, “We have only lain together a few times.”

“Once is enough,” Rhys said, and finally looked at her again. “We can only pray the damage hasn't already been done. But making love isn't something we can do again. Do you understand? That is why I have concerns over the sleeping arrangements.”

Anne let out a snort of angry laughter. “Because you can scarce control yourself with me?”

He moved toward her a step, and for a brief moment she saw something dark and dangerous in his eyes. Not anger, but something with more heat. More purpose.

Of course he took it away, hiding that reaction just as he hid every feeling and thought from her. And now that he was saying he would end their marriage in every way that mattered, it seemed he would
never
give her more.

All her hopes, all her dreams, everything that was of importance to her…he was holding those things up and then shredding them with so little feeling that she could almost feel her heart breaking in her chest.

But she didn't cry. That was the one thing she took
pride in. She didn't cry, she didn't rail. All she did was fold her arms across her chest and say, “Trust me, Rhys, I won't make any attempt to seduce you. Even if I knew how, I wouldn't humiliate myself any more than you have already humiliated me. You can safely sleep in this bed with me.”

He stared at her a long moment, then his hand lifted. “Anne—”

She wanted to allow him to touch her, to comfort her, but she didn't. She stepped out of his reach and turned toward the bed. “I'm very tired after the excitement of the past week. If you'll allow me privacy, I'll change and go to sleep.”

She felt him standing behind her for a long moment, but then he cleared his throat. She didn't look at him.

“Very well,” he said quietly. “Then I'll leave you.”

She heard him step into the other room and then a quiet click of the door closing behind him. Anne covered her eyes briefly.

“No, Rhys,” she murmured to herself as she took her night rail from the drawer and began the awkward business of undressing herself. “You've already left me. You were never with me to begin with.”

A
nne lay on her side, snuggled down into the surprisingly comfortable bed. A heavy weight was draped around her arm, pinning her in place, but she didn't mind it. In fact, that heaviness was more than pleasant, though she was still too lost in the area between sleep and waking to determine what caused it. All she knew was that she was relaxed and happy for the first time in a long while.

She let out a contented sigh and wiggled into a more comfortable position. Behind her she felt warm breath against her bare neck and then a groaning grumble just before a hot, hard body arched against hers.

Anne's eyes came open in a flash, wide as she stared around the room in sudden and fully awake awareness. The bedroom was bright because, although they were closed, sunlight peeked around the edges of the thin curtains. Outside, birds were twittering
and the distant sound of the sea echoed as it pounded against the rocks below the cliffs.

Nothing that had happened in the last week was a dream. And now Anne was really here with Rhys. She looked down. Through a fold in the coverlet, she could see that the weight she felt against her was Rhys's arm. He was wrapped around her from behind, his body curled about hers like they were two spoons in a drawer.

She shivered at the intimate, sensual feel of his touch. Slowly she peeked over her shoulder and saw that his eyes remained closed, his breathing heavy and even. He was asleep, his actions now uncontrolled by his rational mind, but by whatever instinct it was that made a man touch a woman.

He arched against her again with a guttural grunt, and Anne sucked in a breath through her teeth. The hard press of his erection stroked against her backside. And while they hadn't made love all that often since their marriage, Anne already knew what would happen if things continued down this path. He would fit himself inside her body, he would claim her.

She thought of the night before. She'd been hurt by his unfathomable desire to end their marriage, and was embarrassed by the situation created when he ran away from everything in his life. In the charged, emotional moment that she said she didn't intend
to seduce him, she had very much meant it.

But now, feeling him stroking against her from behind, his hard body hot even through her night shift and the clothing he still wore, everything was forgotten. Everything but a powerful desire to bring him inside her body. To
force
him to remember, by any means necessary, that she was his and he was hers.

Suddenly his hand, which had been resting against the bed beside her, moved, and Rhys cupped her breast. Anne arched at the unexpected touch, and then she moaned when he began to squeeze and tug her sensitive flesh. What was he doing? Before he had always been gentle, slow, but this, this thing he was doing to her body wasn't gentle. It was passionate and powerful.

And she liked it, even though the rough way he touched her bordered between pleasure and pain. He plucked at her nipple through the thin fabric of her night shift, he squeezed the globe of her breast. With every touch, she found herself more and more mesmerized, more and more alive, and she wanted more than ever for him to take her. To taste her. To fill her with himself in any way she could have him.

As if he read her thoughts, his hand slowly drifted lower, sliding over her stomach and finally to rest on her thigh. For a moment he didn't move. Had he fallen into a deeper sleep? She was about to look when he
began to fist her night shift into his hand, lifting the fabric until it was bunched awkwardly around her waist and she was bared from there down.

Anne could hardly think, hardly breathe as his fingers moved to touch her naked hip. His skin felt so hot against hers, so rough. Her eyes fluttered shut and she moaned softly. A moan that turned to a cry when his hand slipped away from her hip and he found the tender flesh between her thighs.

She trembled as his long fingers brushed gently at the swollen lips of her sex, coaxing, pleading for her to part her legs. In a trance, she did so, allowing him greater access to that one aching part of her that wanted him so badly.

He didn't disappoint. Gently he parted her flesh, opening her with a finger and thumb. She tensed, grinding back against him when he finally stroked along the wet entrance to her body.

Rhys stared at the cascade of his wife's hair along the pillow beside him. He had been awake for a few moments, probably since Anne moaned when he squeezed her breast. It had been shocking to come awake and find his wife writhing in the pleasure he had sworn to deny them both less than twelve hours before. But her soft cries, her unexpected reactions to his rough touch, had aroused him to a point that almost defied control.

And he had to continue. Even if he didn't take her, even if he denied himself pleasure, he wanted to see hers. He wanted to drown himself in hers, just for a while.

She was bucking back now, her hips arching in time as he slid his fingers over her heated sex again and again and again. The pearl of her clitoris seemed to swell every time he brushed it, and Anne's breath was coming faster and more erratically.

He pressed his mouth to the side of her throat, tasting her flesh at the very moment that he let one finger breach her body. Her inner walls pulsed around him, squeezing him in a hot, wet heaven that he longed to feel around his cock.

“Rhys,” she groaned, her voice muffled by her arm, by the pillow as she rolled her head from side to side in pure bliss.

Anne had said his name a hundred times before, but it had never moved him like this, when it was said in pleasure. When it was whispered as a plea for more.

He gave it to her without thinking, delving deep into her clenching sheath with that one finger, driving over and over again with gentle precision until her cries were wild and her hips bucked out of control against his hand.

His own breath was ragged now and he felt his
excitement and needs mounting as he added a second finger to her wet and ready body. Gently he moved her onto her back and hovered over her, holding her gaze so he could see her expression as he drove into her.

Her back arched, her cheeks flushing with pleasure and probably a little embarrassment at being observed so closely in such a state.

But it wasn't enough. Rhys wanted more. To be truthful, he
needed
more, and for once in his tight, controlled life he let himself take what he wanted. There would be consequences, but they would come later, and for now he reveled in her body, in forgetting all his pain.

Anne groaned as Rhys suddenly withdrew his magical fingers. She felt empty, bereft and, ultimately unsatisfied as he pulled back. Enough so that tears filled her eyes and she found herself clenching at his arm frantically.

He looked down at her, his dark brown eyes dilated, and smiled. “I just want to make this easier. I'm not leaving.”

Anne tilted her head, surprised by how gentle he sounded. How warm. But then she forgot all that as he pulled her to a seated position and tugged her wrinkled night shift over her head, baring her body to him before he eased her back against the pillows and pulled the covers away.

Although her husband had seen her naked before, Anne couldn't help but blush. As a lady, she had been taught by so many people that her body was a source of shame, something to be hidden and avoided. It was difficult to forget those words that had been whispered to her since her mother's death by elderly relatives and stern governesses. Especially when Rhys was staring at her.

His expression was unlike any she had ever seen before. Oh yes, he had seen her naked, but he had always looked over her with a fleeting gaze, then covered her body with his. A few times he had simply lifted her night rail and not revealed her at all.

But this…this was different. He was
staring
at her now, his gaze moving over her with a lazy, heated expression that even he, with all his experience at blocking emotion from his face, couldn't hide. He was drinking her in, memorizing her, and it shocked Anne to her core, as well as pleased her.

This was what she had always wanted: to capture Rhys's interest for more than a fleeting moment. She wanted him to want her, to need her, to love her in every way a man could.

“Rhys,” she whispered, reaching for him.

He shook his head as if waking from a dream, and his eyes caught hers the same moment he took her questing hand in his own. His fingers tangled with
hers seductively, slowly, and then he lifted her palm to his lips and pressed a searing, openmouthed kiss to her flesh.

Anne's eyes fluttered shut and she let out a low moan. It seemed that his touch had awakened her body in new ways, for every kiss, every brush of skin could now be felt all over her body, but especially in that place between her thighs where he had touched her so intimately earlier. That place that tingled and longed to be touched again and again.

Rhys's head descended just as Anne opened her eyes and then he was kissing her. It wasn't like any kiss they had shared before. Their first kisses as man and wife had been warm, but proper. The kiss in the cottage the day before had been angry and passionate. This was something different. There was possessiveness in his touch that hadn't existed before. There was desire and need and longing that mirrored the feelings that had long been in her own heart.

As Rhys parted his lips and gently tasted hers, Anne sighed and allowed him in. He delved into her, stroking her mouth as she longed for his body to stroke hers. It was as if he couldn't get enough of her now, that he had to taste her so deeply that he wouldn't forget.

Her arms came around him and she clung to his
shoulders, lifting herself to meet his kiss, praying he wouldn't pull away.

But of course he did. Except for once he didn't leave her. No, he did something quite unexpected. He let his mouth come to her throat and then he glided down her body, tasting her flesh all along the way.

Rhys had kissed her breasts before, to prepare her for their joining, but this time, when he drew one erect nipple between his lips, Anne let out a cry that echoed in the quiet room. She felt the wet tug of his tongue shoot like lightning down her body, the sensation alive between her legs as if he had touched her there in the same way.

Rhys let his mouth move lower, gliding with laziness down the apex of her body. He tasted the flat expanse of her stomach, even dipping his tongue into her belly button. He suckled and kissed his way to her hip, forcing her to feel just how sensitive that area was. And finally his tongue traced the flesh of her inner thigh.

Anne struggled to sit up and stared wide-eyed at the image of Rhys lying between her trembling legs. He lifted his head and met her gaze with an even one of his own.

“Rhys?” she asked, uncertain of even what she was trying to express.

“Lie back,” he said softly, the order undeniable, but also gentle. “Let me do this for you, Anne. Let me give you
something
.”

She froze. In his voice, she heard regret and pain, sorrow unlike any he had ever shown her before. And there was also need there. A need to do this strange thing to her body. And his mouth felt so good, who was she to deny him?

“Yes,” she murmured as she lay back against the pillows, only this time she bunched two together so she could look down her body and see what he was doing. She wanted to see.

He lowered his head again, and she felt the steam of his breath against her wet body. Without meaning to, she parted her legs a little farther and arched just a touch toward him. Her action elicited a deep chuckle from her husband, and then he touched her.

His palms flattened against her thighs and he pressed her open even farther so he could seat himself there. His fingers glided inward, gentle in their quest until he parted her nether lips a second time and revealed her gleaming sex. Anne squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, unaccustomed to having her most intimate areas examined so closely. But even so, she felt the intensity of his stare on her. She felt the heat of his breath and the pressure of his fingers.

And then, most unexpectedly, his wet tongue
stroked over her. Her eyes flew open and she stared down to find Rhys, his head angled, licking her wet body with long, languid strokes. As shocking as that image was, what was more shocking was how good it felt. Every nerve ending in that sensitive place fired at once, her hips lifted into his touch, and she thrashed with pleasure.

“Rhys, Rhys,” she moaned, unable to stop herself.

He lifted his head briefly and held her gaze. “Just hold on, angel, it will only get better.”

She bunched the coverlet in her fingers, her nails scraping over the fabric. Better? How could anything get better than this powerful, wonderful feeling of him tasting her?

He gave her the answer she sought in that moment when he sucked between his lips the hidden pearl of nerves at the top of her sheath. A flood of new sensations instantly bombarded her. She cried out as he rolled that little nub of flesh around with his tongue, sucking it, scraping it gently with his teeth until suddenly a dam of pleasure within her broke and she screamed out with a feeling so intense that her vision blurred.

She bucked her hips, her body no longer in her control, but he never stopped his torment. He continued the stroking of his tongue, drawing her through
the intensity of the pleasure, pulling more and more from her even when she thought she had no more to give.

And finally, when her tremors had ended and she flopped, boneless and weak, on the pillows, he rose up to his knees above her.

With effort, Anne opened her eyes. Rhys was blocking the sunlight with his body now, so all he was to her was shadow. But she could see when he moved his hands to his trouser waistband and began to jerk at the buttons there. Her heart rate increased and she opened her legs wider, ready for him, ready to take what he had recently claimed he would deny her.

He had three buttons open when he stopped. Through the shadows, she saw the tension in his face, the lines around his mouth that said he was gritting his teeth, fighting with his inner emotions and thoughts.