She was perfectly certain he hadn’t forgotten it was their wedding night, either. Setting aside her book, she rose; shutting and laying aside his book, he did the same. When he stood before her, she met his eyes. “I have a request to make, my lord.”
He held her gaze; she could see him trying to decide what she might ask, but eventually he surrendered. “And that is?”
“Take me to your bed.”
Chapter Twelve
Ryder blinked, nearly swayed with the effort of hauling back his impulses enough to clarify, “My bed? Not yours?”
“No—yours.” Brazen and bold, she tipped up her chin. “I think my room is lovely and I want to thank you properly. In your bed.”
He raised his brows. “In that case . . .” He swept her up into his arms. Ignoring her gasp and her consequent laughter, he carried her to the door, juggled her enough to open it, then strode along the corridor to the front hall.
She looped her arms around his neck and, softly laughing, held tight as he carried her up the stairs two at a time. Her eagerness shone in her eyes, infused her expression, the teasing tension in her lithe frame—and effortlessly fed and incited his own.
Swinging into the gallery, intent edging his curving lips, he strode around the well of the stairs and on down the wide corridor into the north wing.
The door to the sitting room wasn’t quite shut; it swung open as his arm brushed it. He angled her through the doorway, then turned right and crossed to his door. A heartbeat later it swung inward, then they were through; kicking the panel shut, he made for the bed.
He didn’t even pause, just tossed her on the green and gold coverlet and followed her down.
Her breath left her on a gasp; she wriggled, squirmed, trying to gain the ascendancy, but he pinned her beneath him, grasped her wrists and anchored her hands to the bed, then swooped and covered her lips with his—and kissed her.
This was their wedding night, and she was his.
He wanted her—naked and writhing, his to pleasure until she screamed.
She, of course, had a different perspective. The instant he released her hands to attack the buttons closing the front of her gown, she speared her fingers into his hair, gripped, and then she was kissing him with a potent blend of incitement and demand sufficiently powerful to distract even him.
The kiss turned into a heated melding of mouths, of hot, slick tongues and wildly escalating hunger. Then her gown was open to her waist, but the instant he pulled back to haul the halves apart, she got her hands between them and seized his cravat.
What followed was a tussle the like of which he’d never previously participated in. Women didn’t strip him; he stripped them, but his new wife clearly wasn’t of a mind to play a passive role. And her hands, those grasping, gripping, eager little hands, were everywhere—streaking over him, seeking out skin, pulling and tugging, searching and finding . . .
She drove him to a state of sensual madness he hadn’t known existed.
And if her gasps and smothered moans were anything to go by, he did the same to her.
Their clothes literally flew from the bed, tossed here and there in a near frenzy of focused passion. In a fleeting moment of lucidity when he fell back, chest heaving, on the bed, he wondered whether it was the definition of madness itself to permit it—this driven merging of two powerful wills, neither willing to bend, to turn from their path, but both, it appeared, able to feed off the other, to seize the advance gained by the other and force the wild, tumultuous maelstrom of their passions further and on, each striving to take the other along their chosen path, and in the end following neither.
Following instead some path between. One he, for one, had never trod.
Straddling his hips, she visually and tactilely devoured his now naked chest, her palms searing, her fingers spread, then she swept her hands down and fell on the buttons of his trousers.
Hauling in a breath, he tipped her back, rolled—only to find her rolling him even further. He only just caught himself before his momentum tipped them both off the bed. Growling in warning, he fought to get his hands on her skin, pushing up her flimsy near-translucent chemise, all she currently still had on bar the sapphires and diamonds he’d given her.
He succeeded in getting his hands on her lush, naked curves. Her skin, soft, smooth, silken, acted like an aphrodisiac, one he most certainly did not need. Clenching his jaw against the resultant throbbing ache, he rolled to his back, wrestling her atop him long enough to rip the distracting chemise away.
As he flung it aside, she slipped from his arms, scooting down his thighs as she tugged his trousers to his knees. On a curse, he shifted his legs and finished the business for her, pushing his trousers to the end of the bed, but before he could roll again and put her beneath him, she slapped her palms to his chest, leaned her full weight on her braced arms, and gasped, “No!”
No? He stared up at her. The necklace and earrings fractured the light, glittering about her throat, dangling from her earlobes, marks of his ownership. He wanted to claim her, ravish her. “No” didn’t, to his mind, fit anywhere in their current situation.
She wanted him; he wanted her.
He could easily have tipped her and put her on her back. Reining in the raging urgency that insisted he do exactly that made him ache, but something in the searing blue of her eyes held him immobile. “What?” he managed to rasp.
“This is about me thanking you.”
“You can do that best by—”
“How do you know?” Her voice was a breathy thread, desire pulsing in every word. She licked her lips; the sight nearly made him groan. “How do you know what is best if you don’t know what I want to do? To you.”
He’d been aching before; now he was in agony. “Mary—”
“This is our wedding night, and the boon I ask of you is for you to lie back and let me give to you . . .” She held his gaze, then her lips faintly curved. “Exactly what you wish to give to me.”
He knew he should refuse, but . . . looking into her eyes, he was passingly sure that she’d already realized that he was constitutionally incapable of refusing her anything she’d set her heart on . . . and just that thought—that she had set her heart on this—made him haul in a huge breath, then nod. “All right—but only because it’s tonight.”
She smiled as if she saw straight through that lie, but then she slid her hands up over his shoulders, letting herself down fully atop him. Sliding sinuously up to bring her head above his, she paused to look into his eyes, then bent her head and kissed him.
Like a houri. Like a woman whose life held only one aim—to please and pleasure him.
He had no real notion of where she’d learned to do as she did, but he suspected that she’d learned from him, then extrapolated.
Each caress, every wet lash of her tongue, every subtle but deliberate pressure of her hands and drift of her fingers was laced with a potent mix of innocence and concupiscence.
He had no real idea how long the excruciatingly exquisite intimate torture lasted, for how many heart-pounding, senses-stealing minutes she practiced her magic, only knew that by the time he finally broke, when, biting back a curse, he released the powerful suction of her mouth, drew his iron-hard erection from that hot, wet haven and hauled her up to straddle him, he was long past thinking.
She was no better, but with the sudden gripping of her knees about his waist, an almost violent tossing of her tumbling curls, and the sharp bite of her nails sinking into his forearms, she made it perfectly clear she wasn’t yet ready to give up the reins.
Quite the opposite. Before he had time to do more than drag in a breath, to fight against the tension and fill his chest, she positioned herself and sank down, slowly, inch by inch impaling herself on his aching shaft, enclosing that oh-so-sensitive part of him in scalding glory—stealing his breath. Stealing his wits and every last ou
nce of his will.
By the time she pressed fully down, enveloping him to the hilt, he was lost.
Then she rode him and shattered him utterly.
Rising and falling, her lids low, the light from the lamps occasionally glinting in the intense blue of her eyes, with her hands spread on his chest, arms braced, she gave herself over to her driving ambition.
To the elemental driving rhythm.
To the primitive pleasure, lashing him with desire, his and hers, wracking him with passion, theirs, combined.
He and all he was answered her call, unable to hold back, to resist the surging frenzy. To resist the compulsion to merge with her, to join and fuse and lose all identity in the unrelenting drive to be one.
He surrendered, let go of all restraint and joined her in the wild ride, racing, hearts thundering, through the raging glory. Then she tightened, tightened, stiffened upon him.
Fingers pressing unforgivingly into her hips, he held her down, thrust up, and they flew.
Together they reached for the sensual sun; stretching, straining, together they touched, and ecstasy blinded them. Overwhelmed them and wracked them until their senses broke apart—then bliss rolled in, heady and heavy, and drew them down into a sea of golden satiation, of pleasure given, and taken, as one.
She was all he had ever wanted—and more.
So much more.
Slumped on his back, Mary curled at his side, the sheets tugged over their cooling limbs, Ryder finally found some measure of mental clarity—enough, at least, to wonder what the hell had happened . . . and to finally admit that his vision of how his marriage would work had been comprehensively revised.
At no time had he ever imagined . . . anything reaching this deep.
He’d never before met any woman who had the ability to do more than evoke his affection, the mild and rather patriarchal impulse to ensure she was safe and well fed. Fondness was as deep as he’d ever got with any female.
But when it came to Mary . . . what he felt for her, with her, was something else. Something he hadn’t foreseen, and wasn’t at all sure he welcomed.
Yes, he’d caught glimpses over the past week or so, ever since she had come to his bed, but he’d assumed that with the familiarity of repeated engagements, the feeling would grow less. Less intense, less gripping.
Instead, with each successive interlude that unexpected, unprecedented link had only grown more powerful.
He knew exactly why he’d chosen her, why he’d looked her way in the first place. He’d wanted a lady who would bring him all the things he’d missed in his life—a strong sense of family, of familial devotion and loyalty—who inherently understood the importance of those qualities, and who otherwise fitted his notion of what his wife should be like.
Mary had fitted his bill perfectly—perhaps so perfectly he should have been suspicious, but he’d always been in control of his life and Fate had always smiled on him, so he hadn’t seen any reason to be wary.
Not at first.
And even when wariness had raised its head, when his instincts for self-preservation had stirred, he’d been so cocksure, so arrogantly certain he—the greatest lover in the ton with a thousand and more nights of passion under his belt—would never fall victim to any affliction of the heart that he’d ignored them.
He should have remembered that Fate was a female, should have paid attention to the warnings of his fellows that she was prone to turning fickle.
But it was too late now. Far too late to change anything.
Fate had handed him all he’d ever wanted in a wife—and her price was now due and would have to be paid.
Exactly how he paid . . . that, perhaps, was the one aspect of the situation still within his control.
Mary, she to whom he was now inextricably linked in a way far more visceral than he’d planned, was manipulative. He knew, because he was, too.
If he allowed her to glimpse the hold she now had over him . . .
That wasn’t an attractive proposition, not to a nobleman accustomed to complete and absolute control.
Accustomed to being in control of himself most of all.
No—he would have to find ways to deal with all he felt without allowing his affliction to show.
Eyes closed, body relaxed, he was still vaguely puzzling over how to achieve that when Mary stirred, then wriggled onto her other side, curling deeper under the covers, facing away from him.
He considered, and decided that wisdom dictated that he strive to maintain at least the appearance of mere fondness and nothing more between them—he should therefore remain as he was, on his back, leaving an inch or so of air between them.
A full minute passed.
Then he mentally sighed, unclenched his jaw, shifted onto his side, and, placing one arm over her, curled his body around hers. Now able to relax, he did, and over the space of two heartbeats fell asleep.
Drifting in clouds of slumber, Mary registered Ryder’s warmth, felt the weight of his arm around her. She wasn’t so asleep she couldn’t smile at the thought that wafted through her mind.
Possessive protective, thy name is Ryder Cavanaugh.
“What do you mean, you’d rather I didn’t go outside?” Mary stared down the length of the breakfast table—and decided that tomorrow she would have Forsythe set her place on Ryder’s left; from this distance she couldn’t see well enough to read the expression in his eyes.
The expression on his face—a twist of his lips, the faint arch of one brow—told her little as, after one fleeting glance at her face, at her incredulous expression, he returned his attention to his plate. “Exactly that. This being your first day here, I’m sure you’ll have plenty to do getting acquainted with the house and how it runs—I know Mrs. Pritchard is holding herself ready to give you an extended tour—so remaining indoors isn’t likely to lead to boredom, and . . .” He paused, considered the slice of roast beef on his fork, then stated, still without looking at her, “I would prefer that you remain inside today.”
And I am your husband and you will obey. He hadn’t said the words, but Mary heard them loud and clear. Although her lips had set in a line, she mentally gaped. What had happened to the man—nobleman, admittedly—who had shared the reins so wonderfully last night? And this morning, too, if it came to that. Mere hours ago, he’d been well on the way to being the husband she intended him to be, and yet there he sat, giving an excellent imitation of the most dictatorial of tyrants.
Imitation? Or reality?
Eyes narrowed, she studied him and wasn’t entirely convinced either way. Regardless, she obviously had to take him in hand, had to react and refashion this, but, given he was what he was, and more, that he knew what she was, what was the best way to achieve her desired end? It took her a moment to find the right question. “Why?” When he glanced up at her, she again cursed the distance, but she thought she saw fleeting . . . was it panic? . . . in his eyes. Emboldened, she reached for her teacup. “I’m sure you have a reason for such a peculiar prohibition.” Taking a sip from her cup, she met his gaze over its rim. “So what has occasioned your . . . request?”
He blinked; his expression appeared studiously blank. Then he said, “Rats.”
“Rats?” She lowered her cup and stared. “In this house?”
He grimaced and looked down. “One was found inside this morning.” He glanced toward the windows. “We brought the cats in and the house has been completely searched and there are no more inside, and we have men checking the terraces and gardens.”
That explained the odd activity she’d sensed in the house and had glimpsed through the windows as she’d made her way downstairs. She’d wondered why so many men were beating the bushes, but really . . . she shrugged and sipped again, then admitted, “I’m not all that frightened of rats.”
“You aren’t?” He looked faintly nonplussed.
&nbs
p; She shook her head. “They’re small and they always run away. Not that I would like to think they were inside the house, however, so I am glad the staff reacted so quickly and decisively. But if your edict against me going outdoors was occasioned by imagining I might faint on encountering some poor little rat—”
“They’re not little.” He shook his head. “Big. Big as the cats. And they’re rabid—they won’t run away. They’ll fly at you and might bite you.” He drew in a short breath and looked away. Waved. “Well, you can see why I can’t have you exposing yourself to that.”
Dumbfounded, Mary stared. After a long moment, she confirmed, “Rabid rats—big as cats?”
Raising his coffee mug, avoiding her eyes, Ryder nodded and prayed she’d swallow the tale. “Exactly. We should be clear of them by tomorrow, or perhaps the day after.”
After what they’d discovered that morning, there was no chance he would permit her out of his sight, or out of the close care of his most trusted staff. The panic that was riding him simply wouldn’t allow it; it was all he could do not to lock her in his arms and snarl and snap at any who came close. He could barely think, let alone formulate any rational response; the idea that, willful and headstrong as she was, she might not accept his decree and stay safely indoors where he and his staff could keep her safe . . . every time the notion wafted through his brain, he panicked all over again.
And that panic shook him to his core, as if he’d been solidly knocked off his foundations.
Never in his life had he panicked like this; he had no idea how to manage it—how to rein in his out-of-control reactions, how to calm himself enough to think . . . the instant he thought of her, let alone saw her, instincts he’d never known he possessed overwhelmed him and took charge. He was so tense that despite his best efforts his jaw felt like it would crack, and he’d already bent one fork out of shape. And right at this moment, his sanity hinged on Mary believing—or at least accepting the tale—that this sleepy little corner of the English countryside was overrun by rabid rats. As big as cats.