This Fierce Splendor (11 page)

Elspeth released her breath in a rush and sagged back in the chair. While Dominic had been in the room she had felt as if she were caged with a wild animal. What a foolish comparison, she thought wearily. She had no idea what it would be like to be caged with a beast. She knew nothing about dangerous animals or dangerous men. So what in heaven’s name was she doing
here
?

The answer came to her at once. Kantalan. She had to find Kantalan. She mustn’t fall apart now. She was actually doing quite well. Except for that hideously jarring ride, she had suffered no real pain or discomfort, and as yet Dominic had done nothing more than threaten her. Perhaps that was all he intended to do. She straightened in the chair and carefully composed her features. There was no shame in admitting to being afraid, no matter what her father had told her. The shame would lie in not facing down her fear.

The door opened and then slammed shut behind Dominic.

She instinctively braced herself, but he ignored her as he strode over to the horsehair mat in the corner and spread a clean tan woolen blanket on the mat’s dusty surface.

He turned to look at her, a crooked smile lifting the corner of his lips. “You see how considerate I am? I wouldn’t want that soft white skin to get dirty.”

“Thank you.”

His smile faded and anger tightened his lips. “God-dammit, fight me!” He reached her in two strides and jerked her out of the chair. His hands cupped her shoulders as his eyes blazed down at her. “I’m
not
going to discuss this. I’ve brought you here for one purpose and nothing is going to sway me from that purpose. Don’t you understand that, dammit?”

She nodded. “You want to punish me. You needn’t yell at me. You’re making yourself very clear.”

“I’m not yelling!”

“It seemed to me you were, but perhaps I’m so frightened I no longer know the difference.” Her eyes widened behind the thick lenses of her spectacles. “What are you doing?”

He had stepped back and was shrugging out of his suede coat. “I’m undressing. It’s not always customary in these instances, but I hate quick tumbles. I’d undress you first, but I’m not sure I’d be able to wait once I started.” He had removed his shirt and belt and now placed them both on the table beside him. His fingers went to the waistband of his black trousers,
his gaze fixed intently on her face. “Because I’ve been wondering ever since that morning at Rina’s if the skin beneath those black draperies is softer than the flesh I touched. Do you know what sort of fires are kindled in a man by that kind of wondering?” He undid the first button of the trousers. “Shall I show you?”

She shook her head. “You’re trying to frighten me. I know you have no intention or ravishing me. Why should you? I’m not the sort of woman men desire. You cannot want me.”

“I cannot?” He smilied faintly. “I must have very peculiar tastes, for I find I most certainly can and do, and you’re most definitely about to be ravished, Elspeth. Why the hell do you think I brought you here?”

Her eyes widened in astonishment. “You
want
me?” She shook her head dazedly. “I didn’t think you meant to ravish me. It seemed most unlikely. I thought perhaps you meant to shame me, perhaps beat me, but I—” She broke off. “I’ll have to think about this.”

“It’s a little late,” Dominic said dryly. “I suggest you think about it afterward. You’re going to be very busy in a few minutes.” His hands were at the front of her cloak, his fingers undoing the single button that fastened it. He pushed the cloak from her shoulers and it fell to the chair behind her. “I find I’m too impatient to finish undressing. I want to look at you.”

Elspeth couldn’t speak, she could scarcely breathe. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. He was only a few inches away and she could see the tight dark curls feathering his chest and his small nipples almost hidden in that springy thatch. Everything about his body seemed … familiar. She hadn’t realized how vividly every detail of his naked body had been imprinted in her memory, but she could recall every line of the sleek golden musculature of his chest and shoulders.

“Look at me.” His fingers were lifting her chin. “I want to watch your face while I undress you. I want to know what you’re feeling.”

She swallowed. “I could tell you.”

“No, that’s not good enough. I want you to realize how vulnerable you are to me now.”

She closed her eyes. “I think I’ve changed my mind. I believe you can be cruel.”

His fingers left her chin and she suddenly felt a light touch at her left ear. She kept her lids closed, she didn’t want to meet those mocking blue-gray eyes. She felt another touch at her right ear and she suddenly realized what he was doing. He was taking off her spectacles! Her lids flew open. “No! I—”

“Christ!”

She hurriedly lowered her long lashes to veil her eyes. “I’d like my spectacles, please. It’s very difficult for me to—”

“Look up. Do you hear me? Look
up
, dammit.”

She reluctantly raised her gaze to meet his own.

Dominic once more experienced the same shock he had received before. Her eyes were not brown as he had surmised, but a deep green and were flecked around the pupil with tawny gold. Enormous eyes, tilted up at the corners and framed with long black lashes that both shadowed and enhanced their exotic brilliance.

“May I have my spectacles back now?”

He shook his head. “I’ve always liked green eyes. I think we’ll dispense with these for the time being.” He tossed her spectacles on top of his shirt on the table. “And don’t keep sidling away from me.”

“They’re not green.” Her voice was muffled and she stared straight ahead at a point in the exact center of his chest. “They’re not any color. They’re witch’s eyes, cat’s eyes.”

“An interesting comparison, and judging by your behavior since I’ve made your acquaintance, I can vouch for the fact that you come by it rightly.”

“They’re ugly.” A slight flush was touching her pale cheeks. “Different.”

“Is that why you wear those spectacles?” His fingers were removing the pins that held her bun in place. “So no one can see how ugly they are?”

“Certainly not, I would never be so vain. I need them. I do a great deal of reading in scholarly studies
and my eyes become quite strained. Poor vision runs in the MacGregor family. My father purchased my first pair of spectacles when I was seven.”

“I haven’t seen you without them since you arrived in Hell’s Bluff,” Dominic observed as he threw the pins on the table. He watched the heavy coils of light brown hair tumble to the middle of her back. Another surprise. The candlelight revealed threads of pale gold in the shining brown mass. “You’ve clearly been doing a formidable amount of scholarly work of late.”

The flush on her cheeks deepened. “I’ve grown accustomed to wearing spectacles. I feel uncomfortable without … What are you doing now?”

“Just running my fingers through your hair.” He brought two long silky strands forward to nestle against her breasts. God, he realized his fingers were tingling as if they had been frozen and were now being painfully brought to life. The thick silky strands flowed through his fingers like warm honey. He wondered how that silkiness would feel against his naked chest as she bent over to …

“Why? Is it untidy?” She frowned. “It’s entirely your own fault. You shouldn’t have taken it down.”

“Perhaps.” The tingling was spreading from his fingers to his wrists and arms. His loins were aching, the muscles of his belly knotting. He shouldn’t have touched her but he’d had no idea she would ready him so quickly. He was usually in control of his responses, but he found he was trembling now like an inexperienced boy. “But I think we’ll leave it down anyway. Sit down.”

She stared at him in bewilderment, her strange eyes shining like two gold-flecked emeralds in her pale face. He suddenly wanted to touch her hair again, feel the silk wind around his fingers and cling to them. He impulsively reached out and came within an inch of contact before he stopped, and then let his hand drop to his side. There would be time for that later, when his first hunger for her was satisfied. He repeated, more sharply this time, “Sit down!”

She dropped onto the seat of the wooden chair
behind her and watched as he knelt before her. He picked up her left foot and pushed the skirt of her black gown, crinoline, and petticoats above her knees. She made a low protest and tried to jerk her skirt down again.

“No!” His hand immediately clamped onto her wrist and his gaze met her own. “Make one move, and I’ll rip this gown off you and then tear it into a hundred pieces. If you don’t want to ride back into Hell’s Bluff in your birthday suit, you’ll believe me, Elspeth.”

She nibbled worriedly at her lower lip. He meant it, she decided. Her hand moved reluctantly from her knee to grip the rough wooden table beside her with nervous tension.

He smiled faintly. “Very sensible.” His fingers went back to her polished black leather and silk ankle-high boot and began unfastening the buttons on the side. His hands were trembling, he noticed with annoyance, and he’d never get these damn buttons undone if he couldn’t manage to keep his eyes on what he was doing. Her legs were slender and shapely in the black cotton stockings, and he could see a plain black garter above her knee. Rina’s garters were usually blue satin, made in New Orleans, and always intriguingly feminine, yet he had never wanted to remove them with this degree of frantic impatience.

He pulled her left boot off and tossed it aside. He braced her right boot against his thigh and began to unbutton it. Lord, he was aching. His chest was so tight he had to open his mouth to force air into his lungs. He caught a glimpse of pale soft thighs above the black garters and a stab of desire twisted like a knife in his belly.

“Are you all right?” Elspeth was looking down at him, her gaze troubled. “You seem to be in pain. Is there something I can do?”

He froze, stunned. Merciful Christ, what kind of woman was she? “You’re about to do it,” he said harshly as he threw the right boot aside. “Hell yes, I’m in pain, and you’re going to stop it. Do you know
how?” He roughly pulled the black garter off and jerked the cotton stocking off her right leg in one motion. He did the same with the left stocking and lifted his head to look at her. His blue eyes were blazing as he took her naked left foot and brought it to his throbbing loins. “Like this.” He rubbed the sole of her slender white foot against him in a slow, yearning motion. “You’re going to touch me, and I’m going to touch you. Then I’m going to come into you and you’re going to take me, every inch of me. I’m going to use you to stop this ache and then I’m going to teach you how to make me ache again.”

The hard length of him was burning against the soft arch of her foot and Elspeth could feel the muscles in her calf knot beneath his palm. Intimacy. She had never experienced such shocking intimacy. Waves of heat were washing over her and she was sure even the roots of her hair were hot. Her breath was coming in gasps and she was trembling so badly she thought she would fall off the chair. “Let … let me go.”

He was still. His eyes were blazing into her own and his hand on her ankle kept her foot pressed firmly against him. “Do you understand now? This is
not
a pleasant outing. You’re going to belong to me tonight.”

“You do mean it.” She was looking at him in wonder. “I wasn’t sure—”

“Well, be sure,” he said. He dropped her foot to the rough floor and stood up. “I bluff only in poker, Elspeth.”

“You’re going to ravish me.” It was said with the same wonder he had seen in her experience. “Will it hurt?”

“Not if you don’t fight me.” Would it hurt her? He had never had a virgin, and the subject had never come up. He had heard that sometimes … He firmly blocked the thought. “If you don’t make it difficult, I’ll be careful to—”

“That means I’ll be a fallen woman, doesn’t it?” Her brow was wrinkled in a pensive frown. “Perhaps even a hetaera.”

“What the devil is a hetaera?” He pulled her to her feet and his fingers began working swiftly at the buttons at the front of her gown.

“They were ladies in ancient Greece who were trained to pleasure men and—” She inhaled sharply as he slipped the gown from her shoulders to her waist and then to the floor, leaving her in only her chemise, crinoline, and petticoats. She looked straight ahead. “They were very accomplished at—” Garments were falling from her like maple leaves after the first frost. She closed her eyes tightly. “The hetaeras became well known for—”

“My God!”

She was perfect. Small and infinitely delicate with the clean symmetry of a young Venus. High taut breasts crowned with pointed pink nipples flowed down to a flat stomach and an impossibly small waist, then widened to pertly rounded buttocks. His gaze moved down to exquisite thighs that invited the touch and then up again to center on the golden-brown curls that shadowed her womanhood. He felt the breath stop in his lungs and the blood pound painfully through his veins.

“Am I … completely unclothed?”

Her eyes were still tightly shut as if her nudity would cease to exist if she could not behold it. He could see the delicate color move beneath the fair skin of her throat and shoulders and, for a moment, he felt a wild surge of tenderness. She was so goddamn vulnerable. Why did the blasted witch have to look vulnerable? She was the epitome of a desirable woman and he was one yearning ache just looking at her; and at the same time her exquisite vulnerability caused him pangs of guilt at the mere thought of touching her. Hell and damnation, he would
not
let her sway him. She had humiliated and tormented him until he had been driven to this end and he was not going to let her go unscathed. Not that he had any choice, he thought grimly, there was no possible way he could stop himself from taking her now. “You’re as naked as the day you came into this wicked world.”

She moistened her lips with her tongue and he felt a jolt of pure lust strike his groin. “This isn’t too terrible so far. Does it get worse?”

Tenderness flooded him again and with it a desperation born of guilt and frustration. “No, it gets better. Much better.” He picked her up and carried her toward the mat across the room. “As I’m about to demonstrate.”