Yet still Sandre lived and ruled, and until Michael completed his vengeance, he couldn’t leave.
Time was running out. He knew that. He knew his family would hear about his resurrection soon, and send someone to verify his existence. In fact, they wouldn’t send someone—he’d be lucky if his father, his stepmother, and both brothers didn’t descend on Moricadia and make Sandre sorry he’d ever dared to imprison a Durant.
But more than that, because of Jean-Pierre’s good aim, Michael had now unwittingly involved Emma in his masquerade.
He paced around the cozy stable scented with leather and hay and the deep, rich smell of surrounding earth.
He opened the gate to Old Nelson’s stall. Rubio had already cleaned it out, so Michael set out the curry-comb, the body brush, the hoof pick.
He glanced in the stall next door, where he always changed, and there was a pile of clean straw, a saddle hung on the wall, a basin and pitcher set on a wooden box. Emma’s walking boots were placed neatly on the floor, directly under the hook where her clothes hung—a dark green gown, starched and ruffled petticoats, and a lawn chemise so fine he could almost see through it.
Rubio had prepared everything for her return.
Irresistibly drawn, he unhooked the chemise and crushed it in his hands as if it were a stalk of lavender and he was releasing its scent. Holding it close to his nose, he breathed. Just breathed. And as always, his libido stirred, responding to the faint, feminine perfume of Emma.
His imprisonment had created degenerate needs in him.
No, wait. When he was released, he hadn’t suffered from this constant torture of want and need.
It was Emma who had created the degenerate in him.
Yes. It was Emma.
Tenderly he hung her chemise up. He checked the pitcher to make sure it was full of water and placed the soap beside the basin. He paced back to the outer door.
The sun was peeking over the horizon.
Where was she? Flung over Old Nelson’s head and unconscious on the ground? Trapped by Jean- Pierre and his men? Shot and bleeding and dying . . .
At last, faintly, he heard the clop-clop of a horse’s hooves. He tensed, staring so hard his eyeballs hurt.
There she came, mask hanging on her arm, makeup smeared on her chin, blithely trotting along, patting Old Nelson’s back and crooning.
He walked out to the edge of the forest, put his hands on his hips, and frowned. “Where have you been, Emma?” He had the satisfaction of seeing her jump.
But his meek little companion didn’t cower from his displeasure. She frowned right back. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I’m fine.” And he was. Getting up to face Jean-Pierre had caused a temporary setback, but Michael was eating huge meals and moving without pain, and his wound had closed without any sign of infection. “What are you doing on that horse with that ridiculous outfit?”
“Are you saying I look like an ass?”
“Exactly!”
“Then that’s something for you to remember in the future when you don the costume.” She ducked as Old Nelson entered the stable.
The horse headed right for his stall.
Michael followed.
She slid off onto the mounting block, then picked up a rag.
Michael took it away from her. “I’ll wipe him down. Go wash your face and change.”
“Fine,” she snapped at him, and headed into the next stall.
He needed to be patient. She was tired from her ride. She had probably been frightened all night long, alone in the dark on roads she didn’t know, always worried that someone was going to shoot her. And he had to remember that this was the first time he’d had a chance to talk to her, calmly and rationally, since she’d discovered the Reaper’s real identity. When she’d seen him, she’d been angry, and he’d been transcribing the list of informers, and once that was done, he’d collapsed.
He did owe her an explanation, no doubt about that. But she was a reasonable woman. Once he explained why he’d done what he’d done—become the Reaper and kept secrets from her—she would understand.
So as he groomed Old Nelson, he said, “I know it’s been a rough night for you.”
“I had no problems whatsoever,” she said. “You’re not the only one who’s competent to ride a horse, and you’re not the only one who sees reasons to shake up the de Guignard rule.” Something smacked the wall, shaking the wood.
The top of the Reaper’s costume? “I didn’t mean that you would have problems or that you don’t have the same strong sense of justice. I meant that you . . .” He trailed off.
If she’d thrown the top of the costume, what was she wearing?
“That I what?”
Michael tore his mind away from the thought of her half-naked body, picked up the body brush, and went back to work on Old Nelson’s neck. “It might be a good idea if I told you why I became the Reaper.”
She didn’t answer.
He heard the sound of splashing.
Was she washing her face, her body? Was she naked from the waist up? Or naked all the way? Were tiny rivulets of water slipping down her neck, her chest, and clinging to her nipples before dropping to the ground?
Old Nelson turned a knowing eye on him, and he realized his hand was suspended in midair.
“I’m listening!” She sounded thoroughly annoyed.
With a grimace at the horse, Michael discarded his scarf, pulled off his cape, and tossed it over the top of the wall. “I just got too warm.” He went back to work. “It was for revenge.”
“On Rickie, for what he did to you?”
“On Rickie, for what he did to us all.” Michael hadn’t told anyone the details of his imprisonment. He never wanted to see the pity in their eyes. But Emma couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t see her, and she was so aggravated with him he doubted she would feel anything but exasperation.
Exasperation he could handle.
He continued. “Two years is a long time, especially spent alone in the dark. Nothing to do but think and sweat and fear . . .”
“Sounds awful.” The straw rustled as she moved about, undressing, dressing. . . .
“Yes. Do you know what it’s like to make a friend you never see, who is nothing more than a voice in the darkness, but you know him because he eats the same gruel you eat, suffers the same pain you suffer, cries the same tears you cry?” The rhythm of the grooming soothed Old Nelson, and soothed Michael, too, for the memories seemed more remote, and the words came more readily. “Then he no longer cries. No longer speaks. You know he’s still alive: You can hear him breathing; you can hear the guards taunting him; they drag him out for torture . . . but his spirit has died. Finally, one day, they drag the body out of the cell, put it in a bag, and carry it away. You’ve never seen him, but you’ve lost a friend.”
“Oh, Michael.” Pity. He heard pity.
He didn’t want that, but now that he was talking, he couldn’t stop. “It happens again and again, until one day they put someone new down there, and he calls out in panic and fear, wanting only to hear another human voice . . . and you don’t answer. Because you haven’t got a heart anymore. It’s been taken out of your chest, piece by piece, and carried away in those body bags.”
He heard a sob, muffled, as if she were pulling her petticoats over her head, then more clearly, her quavering voice repeating, “Oh, Michael.”
“During all the hopeless days and nights of my imprisonment, I listened while my fellow prisoners begged for pity, screamed in pain, sobbed in loneliness . . . and silently died.” He didn’t know why, but it felt good to tell her these things. She listened, she saw into the dark places of his soul, and she didn’t seem to think he was weak or heartless. She understood. “That’s why I plotted my revenge on Rickie—and Sandre. That’s why I ride as the Reaper.”
He definitely heard a sniffle.
She had softened toward him. Good. In this case, he could use her pity to manipulate her. “So you co
mprehend—you have no such reason to put yourself in danger, and I forbid you to do so again.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Emma stared at the damp, tearful handkerchief clutched in her hand, and she couldn’t believe her ears. “What?”
“I said—”
“Forbid me? You forbid me?” She had donned her petticoats and chemise before sitting down to cry over Michael’s ordeal, but now hot rage dried her tears and drove her around the partition. “Because I have no reason to wish for justice? You’re the one who took me to the lower city. You’re the one who showed me the misery the de Guignards have caused in this land.”
Old Nelson stomped his feet.
Michael put down the body brush and threw a blanket over the horse’s back. “You’re upsetting him. He doesn’t like having a virago behind him.”
“You dare.” Michael was not the lonely, pitiful prisoner she’d been imagining. He might have been once, but now he was tall and handsome, healed and sure.
She backed up to let him out of the stall, and helped him shut the door and lock it. “Should I not want Damacia to have vengeance for her husband’s death?” she demanded. “Should I not help Elixabete to have a better life?”
“There are other, safer ways to accomplish that than by riding as the Reaper while the prince’s guards scour the countryside.”
“Not while you’re sick unto death because you’ve taken a bullet, there aren’t.” She shook her finger at him. “Should I stand by and do nothing while Prince Sandre’s men come and drag you away because they’ve discovered you are the Reaper? Who are you to forbid me to do anything? Who are you to judge me to be meek, afraid, and incompetent? How can you have the temerity to condemn me to a life of regrets because I could have taken action and did nothing?”
Head down, he grasped the edge of the gate, his chest heaving as if each of her words lashed him.
And she hoped they did. She really hoped they did. “You may be the heir to the dukedom of Nevitt,” she said, throwing her bitterness in his face, “but you have no rights over me!”
His head came up. He looked at her, and he didn’t appear lashed. He appeared angry and . . . well, angry, but that wasn’t all.
He started toward her. She backed up, heading toward the door. He swerved, herding her into the stall where she’d dressed. Dragging his cloak off the wall, he threw it over the pile of straw—and his eyes glinted with intention.
“You have the gall. Do you really think you’re going to . . . to . . . couple with me?” She made a dash around him.
He caught her around the waist. “I have this right. I take this right!” He tossed her on top of his cloak and followed her down.
Straw crackled. Dust flew.
“Don’t you even think of it!” As hard as she could, she slapped the side of his head.
He captured her wrist and pressed it over her head, then caught her other wrist and imprisoned them together, controlling her with one hand while he used the other to . . . to grope her. The sensitive skin of her inner elbow and wrist. Her long throat. The swell of her breasts beneath her soft chemise.
With the exaltation of her ride still surging in her veins and her fury to back her up, she struggled against him, flinging herself against his strength, snapping her teeth toward his face . . . yet being careful not to hit his wound.
And why not?
Did he really imagine she would submit to him? To this? Now? After he had made his opinion of her so dreadfully, distressingly clear?
Apparently he did, for he sat up, caught her petticoat, and dragged it up, baring her to the cool air. With his hand on her thigh, he pushed it all the way up. He used his knee to separate her legs, and when she kicked at him, he employed his thumb with wicked intent, sliding it along the crease between her legs, fondling her clitoris, then thrusting his thumb inside her.
Looking into her face, he chuckled. “Why are you fighting? You’re damp. Yielding. Ready.”
“I hate you!” Stupid, petulant, childish thing to say—and the best she could do right now.
“I love the way you hate.”
When he withdrew his thumb, she clenched her teeth to contain her groan of protest.
Somehow he had opened his trousers, for now he wrapped his arm around her hips, lifted her, and positioned them groin to groin.
“Don’t you dare do . . . that!” She panted, trying to sound firm, trying to shut him out . . . trying not to want him.
“What? This?” He barely moved, using a small rocking motion that tested her readiness.
She was ready. Blast him. Her body was softening, preparing, wanting.
“Or this?” The head of his penis pressed into her a single, taunting inch, no more, and then slowly withdrew.
She tried to remember why she was so angry at him. “You are the most ungrateful, high- handed, proprietary man I have ever had the bad luck to—”
“Couple with?” He mocked her. “I am the only man, my dear. You were a virgin. That first time, you were a virgin, hot and sweet, young and tight, and I thought I was going to die from the pleasure of having you, and from the pleasure I gave you.” He took a long breath. “Furthermore, I’m going to be the only man you’re ever going to have.”
“You have no right—”
He thrust again.
The words choked in her throat.
In and out, that single inch that opened her to him . . . and to desperate craving.
Her legs stirred restlessly as she tried to contain her response.
She couldn’t. Oh, God. She was halfway to orgasm, carried there by his touch, his weight, by his relentless, guttural, visceral claim on her.
“You’re mine,” he whispered. “That’s why I worry about you. That’s why I dare tell you what to do. That’s why I’ll take you until you know with your every breath, your every heartbeat, that I own you.”
“And I own you!” She laid claim foolishly, without thinking of the consequences.
“Yes.” And he thrust all the way, filling her, heating her, finding, as he had before, that deepest place where her secrets resided. And her secret now was that she loved this.
She loved the powerful motion; she loved the raw violence; she loved that he stretched her until she was full of him and yet needing more. She loved the way he held her in place; she loved his lawless lack of control; she loved her own rebellious submission.
She loved that although she tried to hold off, he wouldn’t allow it. He lifted her feet and wrapped them around his back, so she could do nothing but what he forced her to do. Then as he thrust and thrust, he ground his hips in a circle.
She liked being part of the night, swooping along the roads, her costume fluttering, exultant in her freedom.
She liked this better.
She came hard and fast, helpless before the onslaught of love, of lust, of desperate need and glorious release. And as she did, her inner muscles held him captive and massaged him.
He groaned, holding himself rigidly still, letting her use him until she collapsed.
Then he pulled away and thrust again.
And they were moving together, riding wildly, a ferocious hunger driving them.
His cloak twined around them, frustrating them, holding them back.
She kicked it away.
He propelled himself into her blindly, savagely, a man intent on branding himself on his woman.
She came again and again, crying out in ecstasy, filled with him and with satisfaction, yet always wanting more, wanting him.
The rhythm grew faster, the sensation more intense.
She watched his face, saw his eyes glitter with heat, his muscles grow taut with desperation. She was going to die of this pleasure, so much like agony. She was going to kill him, if he didn’t kill her. She wanted it to end. She wanted it to go on forever. . . .
And then he convulsed, pouring himself into her, thrusting in a fury and groaning, “Emma. Emma.”
The wildness of him poured into her,
and she came, too, one final, glorious release that carried her from one peak to the other until she fell, broken and healed, into his arms.
He sank down atop her. They breathed together, heavily, recovering and returning, becoming two people again, Michael and Emma, complete and whole in themselves.
She remembered—he had insulted her. He had forbidden her. He had taken her.
And he would pay.
“Did you tear open your wound?” She pushed at him.
“What?” He lifted himself onto his elbows and looked down at her.
She was pleased—no, delighted—to see that he looked dazed. “Did you tear open your wound?” More forcefully, she shoved at him.
He let her, rolling onto his back and taking her with him. “I don’t think so.”
She slid his shirt off his shoulder and looked. No crimson stained the white bandage. “You’re sure you didn’t hurt anything?”
“I’m fine!”
Taking both sides of his shirt in her hands, she ripped it apart. “Stay absolutely still and I won’t hurt you now.” Putting her mouth to his, she kissed him hotly, deeply, and when he groaned, she knew she was going to win this time.
They were both going to win this time.
As they dressed, she couldn’t meet his gaze. She had been wild with him, taking charge, riding him hard, riding him fast, making him carry her where she wanted to go.
She needed to remember more than those moments. She needed to remember what had come before, in all the days of their acquaintance, and what he’d done to her—seduced her with a lie, laughed at her behind her back.
But this didn’t feel like a lie, like seduction, or like laughter. It felt like . . . union. It felt like a meeting of souls.
“Emma?”
His deep voice made her want to hide. “Yes?”
He put one hand on her shoulder, used the other to tilt her chin until she had to look at him. “Marry me.”
“What?” She looked at him now, all right. Looked to see if he was serious.
Her shock must have been all too apparent, for he laughed reluctantly, and repeated, “Marry me. Please.”