She was sobbing with the power of it. And when he nibbled on the nape of her neck, thrusting deeper still, she found herself moving naturally against him, wanting him, wanting more. And he gave it to her. When he felt her reach her climax, felt the incredible convulsive shudders of her body, he let himself go and shared the intense feelings with her.
“You’re wonderful,” he said simply, kissed her ear, and pulled her tightly against him.
He was still deep inside her.
It was still dark.
She lay awake listening to his deep, steady breathing in her ear.
14
All this and heaven too.
—MATTHEW HENRY
Rafael was smiling as he opened his eyes, a very male smile, one filled with bone-deep satisfaction.
He yawned deeply. “Victoria?” he said as he turned his head on the pillow.
She wasn’t there. He sat up, fully awake now. He wasn’t surprised to find her gone, not really, particularly after she’d left him during the previous night. No, he wasn’t surprised, but he wasn’t pleased about it either.
Where the devil was she ugly? He disliked mysteries, and as he’d told his wife, he was adept at puzzle solving. If he wasn’t able to figure out the puzzle using his wits, he would use guile and cunning until the information he needed was his.
He would force it out of his wife, damn her silly hide. Ugly? Silly wench, did she have a broken fingernail?
He looked sleepily over at the clock. Nearly ten o’clock in the morning. And there was a lot of sunlight streaming through the windows. At least Victoria hadn’t closed and fastened all these draperies. He threw back the covers, rose, and stretched.
After he had shaved, grunting with displeasure at the cold water in the basin, now wishing he hadn’t dismissed Lizzie as he had Tom and Mrs. Ripple, he gritted his teeth and prepared to bathe himself with that same cold water. It was then that he saw the blood on his sex. Victoria’s blood. Slowly he walked from his bedchamber into hers. It was still very dark despite the strong sunlight. He unfastened the heavy brocade drapes and flung them back. He then walked to the bed and pulled back the covers. Her blood and his seed were dried splotches on the white sheet. His virgin wife. She hadn’t lied to him. She’d been a complete innocent.
And suddenly he remembered.
When he’d thrust through her maidenhead, he’d shouted aloud his relief—that he couldn’t have borne it if Damien had had her first.
He’d also made love to her three times and given her pleasure each and every time. Immense pleasure. Of that he was quite certain. He knew that many women feigned pleasure, but Victoria wouldn’t know how. She responded to him wildly for some remarkable but as-yet-unexplained reason, and he guessed it would be beyond her to feign anything.
She wouldn’t be able to forget those sensations he gave her, that pleasure he drowned her in. Nor would he let her. No matter how enraged she was at him, he now knew that he could control her with sex.
It was odd, this reversal of the natural order. It was normally women’s prerogative to use sex to get what they wanted from men. He grinned. Not so with his beautiful wife.
He was on the point of taking her water to add to his when he saw the washcloth in the basin. The cloth was stained with blood, as was the water in the basin. He hoped she hadn’t been frightened. He closed his eyes a pained moment, remembering his story to her about the bride who had used chicken blood on her wedding night to fool her husband. No, she probably hadn’t been scared to see her virgin’s blood. He felt a bounder, worse, like a barbarian who had hurt and raped a vestal virgin.
He hoped she wouldn’t be too angry with him this morning. He had, he supposed, meant what he’d shouted out during their lovemaking, but he was willing to lie, to say anything to make her forget those ghastly words. He thought of Victoria lying on her back, her eyes wild and vivid on his face as he plunged into her. It made him instantly hard.
He walked back into his bedchamber. If she was still angry with him, he would simply love her until she was screaming, her beautiful breasts heaving, her long legs tightening around his flanks. He tried to stop those images, for his body wouldn’t be reasonable about it.
“Randy goat,” he said to himself as he cleaned his teeth and dressed himself.
He ran Victoria to ground in the kitchen some thirty minutes later. She’d tied her hair back with a black velvet ribbon and wrapped one of Mrs. Ripple’s enormous aprons about her waist.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” he said with jovial optimism, immediately pulled her against him, and kissed her soundly beneath her left ear. “You’re making bread? Without me, the chef?” He turned her to face him and ignored her rigid expression. “I like the daub of flour on your nose,” he continued in what he hoped was a loverlike tone. “Cute.” He kissed the tip of her nose.
Victoria slowly pulled away from him. She couldn’t quite bring herself to look squarely at him. Every step she took reminded her of the previous long night. She was very sore. She lowered her head, unaware that she was turning quite red.
He grinned at her, and gently lifted her chin with his finger. “What is this, love? You are regretting your wifely state?”
And his perfidy washed over her again, and she ground her teeth.
“We leave for Cornwall tomorrow?”
He accepted her shift of topic, and her cold voice, and nodded. “Yes, right after luncheon.” He gave her one of his lovely white-toothed grins. “I can’t imagine that either of us will want to be up with the sun.” He didn’t expect a reply, and turned to fetch himself an apron. He tied it about his waist, washed his hands, then joined her beside the array of ingredients on the kitchen table.
She was behaving with more restraint than he deserved, or hoped for, for that matter. Sleeping dogs deserved to be left alone, he thought as he kneaded the bread dough. They worked companionably, in reasonably easy silence, for another ten minutes.
“What is that, pray?”
She was staring at the bread loaf he had fashioned. He laughed. “You don’t approve my artistic endeavors? Why, wife, I have shaped a very special loaf, just for you.”
“But it’s . . . it’s . . . “
“Too much for you, huh? Well, I call it my Statue of David, or if you prefer, the Statue of Your Husband.”
She stared at the dough man and the very large phallus Rafael had molded. Besides that ridiculous endowment, there was a wide smile on the dough mouth.
“Should you like more detail, Victoria? Ribs, for instance? Teeth? Perhaps something lower, maybe—”
“No! Goodness, are you completely lost to civilized manners? You are—”
“—desirous of making love with you again, Victoria. You have this effect on me. You daub flour on the tip of your nose and I’m gone with admiration and lust. Will you give me a good-morning kiss or a thank-you kiss for my artistic bread man?”
He grabbed her about the waist and lifted her. He swung her around, grinning up at her. “You know that the yeast should make our bread man even more impressive while he’s baking?”
Victoria felt overwhelmed. He was impervious, oblivious of her feelings to his own shocking dishonesty. Now he was holding her off the floor, jesting with her as if nothing at all had occurred, as if they were newlyweds and very much in love, which was utterly ridiculous, at least the love part. And that ludicrous, obscene dough man. She could just imagine how he would look after baking. And she was supposed to spread butter and honey on him and place him on her bread plate?
“Rafael,” she said in a very thin voice, “please put me down now.”
“All right,” he said, all agreeable, and slid her slowly down the front of his body. He saw her flush at the contact with him, and felt his own body respond instantly. “Ah,” he said, leaned down, and kissed her. She was as stiff as the baking paddle.
For about thirty seconds.
He was an excellent lover, he knew it, and she would come to accept it soon enough. He w
ould take her here, in the kitchen, in the bright daylight, and he would find this ugliness of hers.
“Come, sweetheart, part your lips for me. A bit more. Ah, that’s it.”
She felt his tongue gently touch hers, then retreat, stroking her lips. His hands were on her back, caressing her shoulders, then downward to mold her hips. Why him? She wondered vaguely, even as her own enthusiasm mounted alarmingly.
She felt his fingers untying her apron and he yanked it off her, hurling it to the other side of the kitchen. Then, without pause, he released her, pulled her back against him, and his hand cupped her fully. His other hand closed over her breast. He felt the heat of her through her muslin gown and groaned softly as he kissed her throat.
“Rafael,” she managed, knowing that soon, very soon, she wouldn’t care that the kitchen was filled with morning sunlight, that she was dreadfully sore from their mutual ardor of the night before. She wouldn’t care about anything except having him. “Please, do not . . . ah . . . “
“Now, Victoria. Here. Right here.”
“No, please,” she said, nearly sobbing with desire and frustration at her own helplessness with him.
He felt the heat of her beneath his probing fingers and his hands went wild on her clothes even as he lowered her to the kitchen floor. He had no thought to finding this so-called ugliness—he wanted only to bury himself deep inside her, love her until she screamed, and melted into him. He yanked up her gown, tearing it, and ripped open her drawers, ignoring her petticoat, stockings, and slippers. He was breathing hard as he quickly unfastened the front of his breeches.
“Victoria,” he said, his voice harsh, and with one powerful thrust he came fully and deeply into her. Her cry was the most beautiful sound his ears had ever enjoyed. She was small, tight about him, and ready for him. He tried to keep his weight off her, but she wouldn’t allow it. She was moving upward against him, bringing him deeper, and he obliged her. He lifted himself on his hands so he could press against her woman’s mound, and when he did, a scream choked in her throat. She whispered his name, and in that instant he looked into her eyes, the color of the ocean just before a storm struck—turbulent blue, shifting in hue and focus—and was lost, with her.
He held himself perfectly still, no thought of sleep entering his mind this time. After a few moments of recovery he came up on his elbows and smiled down at his dazed wife. Her eyes were closed, her thick brown lashes damp against her cheeks. She was beautiful, sated, and he was still deep inside her, and she was his. Only his.
“Very nice, wife,” he said, willing her to look at him. “I have the talent of a great politician. I am the master of understatement. Look at me, Victoria.”
She did. Her lashes fluttered open and she stared up at him with such a look of hopelessness in her eyes that he immediately felt fear sear through him. “What’s the matter? Did I hurt you?”
She said nothing.
“Victoria?”
She still said nothing, merely turned her face away from him. He pulled himself out of her, and felt her flinch. He’d known she would be sore after the previous night but he’d granted himself instant forgetfulness in his desire to assuage his own lust. “I’m sorry, truly. Just hold still, don’t move.”
He rose, fastened his breeches, then dampened a soft cloth with cool water. He came down on his knees beside her and gently pressed the cloth against her. She nearly jumped out of her skin. She lurched up, her face flaming. “Oh, no, please, Rafael. “She swatted at him ineffectually.
“Would you please just hold your tongue? Lie down. I’m sorry the bed is made of flagstone, but just a few more minutes, all right?” He bathed his seed from her, rinsed out the cloth, and pressed it against her once more. He stretched out beside her on the kitchen floor, still holding the damp cloth against her. “Look at me, Victoria.”
If possible, she turned her head even more away from him until he imagined that her nose was pressing against the flagstone. His eyes traveled down her body. Her drawers were neatly split down the center seam and his hand was inside, holding the cloth against her. Her stockings were held up with narrow black garters, her slippers a pale pink to match her now-ruined morning gown. Her petticoat was spread about her like ruffled icing on a cake.
“I didn’t realize before that you were a coward. It’s a disconcerting and disappointing discovery. I believe that before a man takes a wife, her courage should be proved. Not a deed of derring-do, mind you, just something that will show him that he can count on her. I can see it now—we will be attacked by a vicious highwayman and you will conveniently faint, leaving me to face the fellow alone. I won’t be armed, of course, because you faint at the sight of weapons, thus I am helpless against him. I can only imagine your guilt when you come to consciousness and I am sprawled out at your feet, long gone from these earthly delights.” At his final words, she felt the cloth press more closely against her.
“Will you feel guilty, Victoria? Or will you faint again at the sight of my bloody body?”
She turned her head and looked up at his smiling eyes. She said very clearly, “You are ridiculous, utterly and completely and irrevocably ridiculous, and awfully spoiled. I am not a coward, I’m embarrassed and mortified, and I want to crawl away and hide myself in a rabbit hole. You persist in mocking me, taunting me, and doing . . . well doing what you are doing right now. It’s shocking to me. And you persist in making me forget things, like your awful perfidy.”
He gave a whistle of admiration. “Good heavens, sweetheart, I haven’t heard that many words strung all together from you since . . . well, I can’t remember when. You have put me in my miserable man’s place. But I won’t move my hand just yet, unless it is to caress you again.” He followed words with deed and watched her eyes widen.
“Stop.”
“All right,” he said agreeably, and did. He watched the glint of disappointment in her eyes and smiled to himself. She was soon back to normal, more’s the pity, he thought, and said, “I don’t like you. I wish you would move your damned hand and let me pull down my dress—my ripped dress.”
“Your drawers are ripped as well. Don’t worry, I’ll buy you a plentiful supply.”
She sucked in her breath. His flowing good humor seemed inexhaustible. She couldn’t compete with him.
“It’s a pity,” he continued thoughtfully, his hand again moving slightly over her, one finger easing beneath the damp cloth to touch her intimately, “that it is so very difficult to gain access to your womanly endowments. Unlike me, a perfect man, who needs only to be unfastened, which takes but a flash of an instant. I see in the future that I will have to set aside a special lovemaking fund for the replacement of your woman’s clothes.” He felt her squirm and eased his pressure and the motion of his finger. She was sore, after all. And he was making her wild, on purpose, he supposed, to prove that he could control her. It wasn’t well done of him. “Kiss me, Victoria, and I will let you get back to your housewifely responsibilities. Remember your marvelous bread man? I can’t wait to observe you place him artistically on your bread plate.” He patted her lightly, all the while chuckling, and rose.
Victoria slammed her skirts down, so furious with him she was beyond words. But her tongue was tied in knots, and it was true, her mind was in a mindless fog. She opened her mouth, observed his grin widen, and closed it. With quick, angry movements she shoveled her two loaves of bread onto the wooden baking paddle and eased them into the oven.
She looked down at the absurd dough man, shuddered, and threw down the baking paddle. “I won’t bake that thing. Do you hear?”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Carstairs. Why don’t you go upstairs and refresh yourself? Perhaps a vinaigrette to calm your nerves? Repose yourself on the chaise longue. I will complete your duties down here. No, don’t thank me. I know your gratitude is boundless.”
Victoria looked longingly at the baking paddle, hearing it thwack with satisfying loudness against his bottom, and her expressive eyes gave him a fa
irly accurate clue to her thoughts. Rafael quickly picked up the baking paddle and held it behind him. She was standing in front of him, her hands fisted at her sides, her hair and yellow muslin gown thoroughly mussed. She looked ready to spit. He said easily, “You want to use the paddle on me, do you? How about me using it on you? Is that what you want, Victoria? I’m not at all certain that I approve. Pain and pleasure. I suppose that many folk find it a delicious combination. Perhaps someday, if you prettily try to convince me, I’ll—”
“Shut up! Ah . . . just be quiet.”
He laughed aloud, watching her march out of the kitchen, head high, shoulders squared.
“Victoria,” he called after her, “where is that ugliness of yours? I have decided that you have a malformed toe. I don’t mind if you wish to keep your slippers on when we make love. It’s kind of you to spare my sensibilities.”
He heard her steps quicken, and knew she was now running up the stairs. He turned and scooped his outrageous dough man onto the paddle and slid it into the oven.
“Tied to my kitchen,” he said to himself. “A man’s responsibilities never end.”
The look on Victoria’s face exceeded Rafael’s expectations. Her mouth gaped open, her cheeks suffused with color, and she quickly closed her eyes, but of course not quickly enough.
“It doesn’t please you, sweetheart?”
She swallowed, her eyes tightly closed, her lips now pursed, and shook her head.
“Look at all familiar, Victoria?”
“Not at all.” Wretched man, she simply wouldn’t let him get the better of her this time. But she hadn’t realized that he would lay his loaf of bread out for her in all its swelled, baked splendor.
“I’m wounded. Perhaps next time you will look at your husband. For comparative purposes, of course. Do sit down and allow me to cut a piece of delicious warm bread off for you. I should prefer staying above the middle, of course, at least for the moment.”