“You got what you wanted!” she cried. “You got St. Timothy and a wife. What more do you want, Valerian?
What more?”
“I want you, Aurora!” he said fiercely, and his hand caressed her face, his dark blue eyes scorching her with their intensity.
“Was not my sister enough for you?” she demanded angrily. “You mistreated her, Valerian! She told me so!”
“Calandra was a marble Venus, my dear Aurora,” he said in hard tones. “She hated my touch, and I had to force myself upon my own wife in order to get her with child. She lay like a dead woman, her head turned from me, her body as cold as stone each time I took her.”
“But you still managed to engage your lust, Valerian, didn't you? Did you enjoy your rape of my sister? How could you do it?” Aurora demanded, her eyes filled with tears as she remembered Cally.
“I thought of you,”
he said with devastating effect, almost pleased to see the shock in her aquamarine-blue eyes. “I aroused my baser instincts, as Calandra would have called them, by remembering the sight of your coming naked from the sea one day on St. Timothy.”
“Oh, my God!”
“I am not proud of it, Aurora,” he told her. “Do not ever think I was proud of what I had to do, but your sister hated the physical act of love, and I had to have an heir. Calandra was my wife, and that was her duty. I would have given her anything she wanted if she had only given me an heir. I quickly accepted the fact that she did not love me because I realized she would never love any man, nor would she cuckold me. She loved her position, and she loved my wealth and all it afforded her. It was all she sought, but she was too selfish to give me what I sought in return for what I gave her. I regret her death.”
“Yet you are glad she is no longer here to trouble you!” Aurora accused him. “Do not deny it, Valerian!”
“I wished your sister no harm, Aurora, but she is dead, and no, I will not deny my relief at being freed from her. You would despise me if I did, for you would then know me as a liar, and I am not that.”
“I despise you anyhow,” Aurora declared angrily. “You cannot stop me, Valerian. I am going home to be with my family, and to wait out my year of mourning for Cally. But when that year is over, I shall marry St. John, as we have planned. I hate you! I will always hate you for what you did to my poor little sister!”
It was as if the small thread of sanity and reason that had been holding him together for these past months was suddenly snapped. “You deceitful little bitch,” he snarled at her. “You are going nowhere, and as for my cousin, St. John will not have you, my dear, after I have finished with you!” Then he began ripping her bodice and her skirts.
With a shriek Aurora pulled away from him, turning and running for the stairs. Halfway up he caught her, his hands furiously shredding the fabric of her garments until she was virtually naked despite her valiant efforts to fend him off and escape once more. Finally Aurora attempted to scream, but he clapped his hand over her mouth even as he picked her up in his arms and continued on up the stairs and down the hallway to his bedroom. Kicking the door open and then shut behind him, he walked across the room, flinging her onto the bed as her hair came loose from its neat chignon, spilling about her shoulders.
She had to get up, she realized. She had to push past him and run for her very life. Yet she lay upon her back, watching with fascination as he yanked his own clothing off. Boots were kicked across the room, followed by breeches, drawers, stockings, and shirt. He stood over her, and she could not for the life of her stop staring. He was beautifully proportioned, but he looked hard as iron. I have to get up, Aurora thought desperately, yet her own limbs felt weakened and incapable of supporting her. She made a single futile attempt.
He pushed her back. Then, putting one knee upon the bed, he bent, cupping her face between his two big hands, and kissed her. It was a deep, slow kiss, his mouth warm and demanding upon hers, and betrayed by her own body, Aurora's lips softened beneath his. She sighed deeply, her mouth opening against the pressure of his. Their breaths mingled, and she could taste the whiskey on his. For a single moment in time, sanity returned, and she attempted to struggle away from him, but then his tongue slipped between her lips to touch hers. Emotions she had never really quite understood exploded within her. Their tongues entwined and caressed until Aurora was completely breathless and near to fainting.
He seemed to sense her state, and lifted his mouth from hers so she could catch her breath. Then slowly he began to kiss her face, his lips grazing softly and warmly over the skin. Delicately he touched the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, her chin, her eyelids, her forehead. Not just once, but several times over. Then, pushing her head back with the heel of his palm, he began to place warm kisses upon her straining throat, lingering momentarily in the beating hollow at the base of it. She almost screamed when his hot tongue began licking at the column of her neck, sweeping up the length of it and then back down again. Her silken flesh was utterly intoxicating.
“Oh, God,”
Aurora murmured. How could he do this to her? How could his passion have such an incredible effect upon her? She loved St. John, didn't she? Did she even know what love was? She was beginning to realize that she didn't. How could she feel this way about Valerian Hawkesworth when he was forcing her.
But he isn't,
the voice in her head said.
You want him. You have always wanted him.
Has it not been his face you saw in your dreams? “No!” she cried aloud.
“Yes!”
his voice grated back at her.
“Yes!”
Lying next to her now, he drew her into his arms. Gently he began to fondle her breasts. Aurora quivered with anticipation, desperate for the feel of his mouth upon her nipples, but instead he caressed the small rounds of warm flesh with delicate fingertips, brushing over the skin lightly, teasing at the little nubs until they darkened and grew taught with their rising excitement. Finally, when her breasts were swollen so hard that Aurora thought they would burst, he touched the very tips of her with his facile tongue, brushing against them quickly at first, and then each in its turn slowly. And at last he took a nipple in his mouth, sucking hard upon her until she gasped, feeling the wetness against her thighs.
Shyly, she touched the dark head upon her chest, not daring to stroke him, not even certain she should if she could get up the nerve. What was a woman supposed to do when a man made love to her? She remembered the bitterness in his voice as he spoke of her sister lying like a dead woman when he had exercised his husbandly rights. Still, she should not encourage him, for he had no right to make love to her. No right at all!
“Ohhhhhh!”
His tongue and his kisses were moving down her torso, and her belly was both aching and roiling with nervousness.
“You are so soft,” he murmured, looking up at her a moment, the anger now gone from his eyes.
“Let me go, Valerian,” she pleaded. “Why must you shame me?”
“You do not feel shamed, you little liar,” he said, his voice tinged with amusement. “You know damned well I intend marrying you. Besides, you are as warm and as willing as your sister was cold and unwilling. I will never let you go, Aurora!”
“Why?”
“Because you are mine,” he answered, and then his lips began to kiss her upon her belly, pushing his tongue into her navel to tease at her until, unable to help herself, she began to writhe beneath his attentions.
I will not be his, Aurora thought mutinously.
I will not!
Yet if she would not, then why did she lie in his embrace, enjoying his passionate attentions? Cally had once said she must be wanton. Was she a wanton? Yet Cally had also said Valerian Hawkesworth had abused her with his attentions, and Aurora did not feel abused at all by him. Still, she felt it her duty to make a further protest of his actions. “You will ruin me for St. John,” she said low.
“You mean St. John has not ruined you for me?” he mocked her.
Aurora attempted to smack him, but he caught her hand, and kissed the palm. “I am a virgin,” she snapped furiously.
“Then I shall certainly ruin you for St. John,” he agreed.
“But why?” she demanded.
“Because you are mine,” he repeated, piercing her with a hungry gaze. “You belong to me, Aurora. You feel the attraction between us every bit as much as I feel it, but you will not admit to it. St. John will not have you or St. Timothy,” he said fiercely.
“But you already have St. Timothy,” she said desperately.
“No, I do not. Not until its heiress is my wife, and you are its heiress. If my cousin learned of it, and you were his wife, he would take the island for himself.”
“I will admit to deceiving you, and sign my property over to you,” she said, half angry. This wasn't about her, or had it been about Cally. It was about land.
“No,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I want you,” he answered her.
“I want you!”
“You will never have me,” she cried. “Not really!”
He laughed at her mockingly. “Oh, yes, I will, Aurora. You cannot deny me, for the fires of passion run as hotly in your veins as they do in mine. You are not your sister, cold and unfeeling. You are warm, and loving, and I shall have you!
All of you!”
“No!” she protested, but she knew that she lied not only to him, but to herself as well. She could feel his member now pulsing insistently against her thigh. She whimpered, but whether from fear or eagerness she would never know. His big body slid over hers.
“Put your arms about me, Aurora,” he whispered to her. “Hold tight, my precious, and I will take you to paradise.”
She felt the tears prickling behind her eyelids, and she could not keep the words from her lips. “I am afraid, Valerian.”
“No, my precious, not you!” he reassured her. “Trust me, Aurora. Do you not know I love you, you little fool?”
“I don't believe you,” she said, sliding her arms about him.
“You will in time,” he reassured her.
She was so ready for him. He slipped just the head of his manhood into her passage, and feeling it, she stiffened, but he caressed her face and made soft, reassuring noises in her ear even as he moved himself a little deeper. She could feel the walls of her channel giving way reluctantly, opening before him, welcoming him. Then suddenly he ceased his forward movement. She felt him pressing against something within her that seemed to be impeding him. He drew back and pushed against it. Aurora cried out, but he would show her no mercy, and pulling himself back again, he thrust hard within her, causing her to scream softly, and the tears to slide down her cheeks.
It hurt! Dear God how it hurt! The pain swept up her body into her chest, almost suffocating her with its intensity. It swept down into her thighs, making them feel leaden and incapable of movement. She could feel him, hard and throbbing, now deep within her. She sobbed, and he kissed the tears from her face even as he began a rhythmic movement within her aching body.
And the pain was gone.
As cruelly as it had overtaken her, it was now totally gone, to be replaced with a wave of pleasure that swept over her, leaving her gasping with surprise. Her body began to find his rhythm, and imitate it with an instinct she hadn't even known she possessed until then.
“That's it, my precious,” he encouraged her tenderly.
Aurora's hands found the flat of his back. Her fingers began to knead at him first, and then, unable to help herself, she was clawing at him. He groaned as if pained, but he seemed to be waiting for something. Slowly, Aurora felt a change taking place within her. There was nothing but an incredible, wonderful feeling claiming her, and she was drowning in it, and didn't care. Then suddenly her body convulsed, and she cried aloud, the pleasure so intense, she thought she would die. Half sobbing, she clung to him even as his member released its burning love juices within her, and they both slipped into a half-conscious state.
He rolled off her after a few moments, his arms wrapped tightly about her, holding her close. Aurora listened to the beat of his heart beneath her ear. His chest was smooth and warm. She felt very shy of him now. The intimacy between them had been more than she had ever anticipated, and she wasn't certain what to say.
“Did I hurt you badly?” he asked her softly, his hand caressing her as he spoke. It was as if he were attempting to quiet a skittish animal.
“It hurt terribly, and then it was wonderful,” she answered. “Will it hurt the next time?”
“No,” he said.
“Will it be wonderful again?”
“If you want it to be,” he replied, smiling in the darkness at the ingenuousness of the question. Then, “I will see the magistrate tomorrow about obtaining a special license so we may be married right away.”
“I will not marry you, Valerian,” Aurora told him.