"I'm not done with you."
"And when you are?"
"When I am, I'll let you know."
His arrogance made her sputter. He didn't seem to care how angry she was, didn't even seem to know. He lowered his head and sucked the tender skin of her nape against his teeth. She should have kicked
him then, should have ducked under his arm and slipped away. She shouldn't have shivered, or wobbled on her knees, or turned to melted sugar between her legs.
"I don't want you to do this," she said, but he slid his hand down her belly to find the lie.
"Mary," he groaned, and somehow the sound of longing broke her will to hold him off. He knew it, too. His breathing quickened. She felt him at the small of her back, growing long again, growing thick.
"Spread your legs," he ordered, already nudging them with his own. "I want to take you from behind."
"Here?" she gasped. Was this a thing people did? Make love standing up, as if they were animals, as if
a bed were miles away?
"Here," he said, probing for entry. "Here."
He slid into her as he said it, blunt and swift. Caught unprepared, she braced her arms against the door. He grunted, moving already. This time he was not lazy. This time he took her with single-minded haste. His hands were iron on her hips, his voice a honeyed rasp that spoke of things a lady should not hear. If Merry had ever doubted it, she knew she was no lady now.
Caught in the strangeness of the act, she watched her feet, planted wide, and his between them, the
same long, naked feet that had unnerved her when they met. His tendons tightened as he thrust. His
toes curled. He was working hard to get inside her, making the floor creak underneath. The boards
where the carpet ended were dark and highly waxed. When she realized she could see their reflection
in the shine, a gush of warmth slid down her leg. Nic groaned in appreciation. Their bodies sounded
wet as they slapped together, not just outside, but in.
Wet, she thought, the word a tickling flutter in her sex. Wet with seed. Wet with cream. She pushed
out with her bottom and silently begged for more.
He gave her what she needed, locking their hands in conjoined fists against the rattling door, shoving
into her so hard he nearly lifted her off her feet.
"Yes," he crooned. "Oh, Mary, you're on fire."
Though she bowed her head and closed her eyes, she could not hide from this truth.
Nine
Nic was odd. That was the only explanation.
Merry had. Perhaps other men did trap their lovers against the wall. Perhaps they, too, delighted in watching their women's pleasure. But when Nic stood her in his claw-footed tub to instruct her in the
use of Dr. Allbutt's cleansing syringe, she knew a few of the bats in his belfry were unique.
Murmuring reassurances, he lifted her foot to the curving rim and helped her insert the perforated
nozzle. Gentle and sure, he might have been a physician but for the subtle quickening of his breath.
"Sorry," he said, when she jumped at an unavoidably personal touch. "Should have remembered to lay
in a supply of sheaths." He frowned. "Don't know what got into me. I always plan ahead."
The reminder that there was an "always" did not thrill her. Nor did the possibility this night might have consequences beyond abandoning her virtue.
"I want you to know," he said, his eyes on the careful motions of his hands, "if anything happens ...
well, I'll take care of you."
Bemused by his euphemistic language, she pondered what he meant by taking care of her. Not marriage, she didn't think. Not that she wanted marriage. No, indeed. If that were the case, she wouldn't have turned to Nic in the first place. Still, whatever he was offering—financial support most likely—it was more than many men would. His own brand of decency, she supposed.
Oddly touched, she stroked the shadowed hollow of his face. "I'm not completely alone in the world.
I have friends."
His laugh was wry. "Not friends who'll come pounding on my door, I hope."
If only he knew, she thought, doing her best to push the guilt away. Given his history, Nic must have faced irate relatives in the past. Surely hers would be no worse. It was even possible that, with her to calm them, they would be better. Aside from which, she saw no point in leaving the job half done.
Ruined though she was, the public portion of her undoing was incomplete.
"I haven't told them where I am," she said, the half confession uncomfortable on her tongue. "I'd only notify them if, as you said, something happened."
He sighed and kissed her brow. "Ah, Mary, I'm a beast to make you worry. I meant our first time to
be perfect."
"It was," she assured him. "I've never known anything like it."
She held his gaze, willing him to read her secret. For a moment, it seemed he did. His brows pulled together as if he were perplexed. Then, shaking his head against some thought, he smiled and cupped
her cheek, once again the pleasant, worldly rake.
"You won't mind my French letters," he promised. "I have them specially made by a firm in Kingsland. They're sheep's intestine, double-layered and superfine. When they're wet, you can hardly tell they're there."
In spite of herself, she began to laugh. What would her mother say if she could see her daughter now, standing naked in a tub discussing prophylactic sheaths with a man who'd just slipped an irrigator up her quim? Even her best friend, Isabel, would be horrified. One might employ such instruments, but one would never discuss them, much less involve a man so intimately in their use!
"Nothing embarrasses you, does it?" she said.
He bent to dry her with a towel. "Sensible people can't afford to be embarrassed. Protection is part of
the business of love."
Her neck tightened. How easy it was to forget he did this all the time, to believe what they shared was rare. She firmed her jaw. "You're right," she said. The business of love might be pleasant, but it didn't necessarily touch the heart.
* * *
Nic lay on his back, abruptly wide awake.
Something had disturbed him.
If a sound had roused him, he did not hear it now. Mary slept quietly by his side, curled away from
him with her head pillowed on his outflung arm. He knew some men wouldn't let a woman stay the
night, but he'd never minded—as long as they didn't want to stay all the time. In any case, her presence was not what had woken him.
Something I forgot to do, he thought. Or something I did do but shouldn't have.
The answer elusive, he eased his arm out from under Mary's neck. She made a tiny whimpering noise
as he caught a snarl of hair, then subsided with a fetching wriggle.
Nic smiled. Her little freckled arse stuck up higher than the rest of her, a curve as profound as the hills
of
Rome
. Helpless to resist, he ran his hand down the silken slope. The noise she made then was decidedly grumpy. He'd worked her hard this night, too hard no doubt, though she'd been with him sigh for sigh. Giving her shoulder a last caress, he let her be.
More than time you played the gentleman, he thought, but it was hard to regret a moment. She'd been
like a child on Christmas morning, virginally tight, whorishly wet, delighted by each and every pleasure they unwrapped.
Maybe too delighted.
His mouth turned down as he remembered how she'd clung to him at the end. Of course, he'd held her rather tightly himself. Couldn't help it. That first climax had been a spine-wringer. For Mary, who appeared not to have had a half-competent lover before himself, the effect must have been dramatic.
Chances were, that was why she'd become emotional. He needn't assume she was falling in love, no
more than he was.
He'd been stupid, though. Unforgivably so. He, of all people, knew better than to endanger a woman's health. He never forgot to use his sheaths, never forgot to have them on hand when he thought he'd
need them. And he had thought he'd need them. For weeks now.
He didn't really believe Mary was pregnant, but the forgetting, that troubled him.
An image slipped into his mind. A child. Fat and bowed of lip. Golden curled. Snub-nosed.
Freckled.
Shuddering, he thrust the covers off his body. No children. No, no, no. One Craven bastard was enough. His skin abruptly tight, he used the nearest post to swing up and out of bed. Time to work. He'd avoided that painting long enough.
This decided, he padded barefoot down the stairs, one fraction of his mind dedicated to the foolishness
of donning no more than a robe in the dead of winter. The lion's share of his awareness was in his
studio already. He sensed he was close to the answer, that the pressure of almost knowing was what
had shaken him from his rest.
The sconces flared bright as he lifted the glass and lit them. With light to see by, he stood the half-dozen canvasses that had survived his latest purge against the wall. Each showed Mary riding a large white
horse through a small medieval town.
The angles and the pose changed in the pictures. Some showed more of the buildings, some less. The horse didn't look half bad, despite Mary's warning against working without a model. The perspective
was fine, and the play of light and color. Overall, the compositions were unobjectionable. He did not doubt he could sell them.
And every one bored him to tears.
They had nothing beneath their technically perfect surface. No blood. No heart. No glimmer of the
lively woman they portrayed.
"Blah, blah, blah," he grumbled and fought an urge to toss them in the fire.
He wouldn't find the answer by hiding from his mistakes. He had to face them down, to stare his own stupidity in the eye.
Mary was the key: her spirit, her strange, unfashionable allure.
He plunged his fingers into his hair and pulled until the ends tugged at his scalp. He remembered how she'd responded the night he'd said he wanted to show her off at Anna's party.
I could wear a hundred velvet gowns and I still wouldn't
—
He hadn't let her finish because he'd known how the sentence ended in her mind.
I still wouldn't be pretty.
He could almost hear her say it, could almost read the half-challenging cry that lay beneath.
Who says I can't be pretty? Who says!
Mary was a fighter, God bless her. Whatever her insecurities, some part of her refused to accept the world's opinion of her looks. Some part rebelled like a child thumping its heels against the injustice of adults.
Adults who, in this case, were quite, quite wrong.
Beauty often hid where the common man could not see it.
Nic could see it, though. That was his gift: to see it and to show it.
His arms fell from his head, slapping his silk-robed sides. The pressure inside him grew. What had she said when he accused her of being too eager to give her heart?
You should be so lucky.
He nodded at the memory. He should be so lucky. That's how he wanted to make the people who saw her portrait feel. He wanted to rub their noses in her gorgeous, sunny self.