The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [92]
He grabbed her wrists and pulled her fingers off his throat. He grinned up at her like a man who had just filched a packet of silver and discovered, to his utter amazement, that it was gold. “Will you declare that I am the master of discipline? That you are only a very distant second to me? Just look at you, Helen, trying to kill the man who so perfectly disciplined you.”
She stopped cold. She sat up on him. Her nightgown still hung around her, nicely open, and he just looked and slavered and enjoyed. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “It was a two-part discipline that was more than effective. It was devastating.” She leaned down and kissed him. Then she bit him, then licked where she had bitten. She felt his hand on the back of her head bringing her back down to him. Because he had no shirt on, her breasts were against his warm flesh.
He kissed her wildly, without restraint for perhaps thirty seconds. “Oh, no,” he said into her mouth, grabbed her arms and shoved her back up. Her eyes were slightly crazed, her lips parted, as were his.
“No, just stay there, Helen, even though you are crushing me into the floor. Now, dearest, I have to say this. You misled me. I had believed you possessed of one of the premier brains in all of England—at least that is what you led me to believe. I must reevaluate that now. Ah, I forgot that you are, after all, a woman, with all the drawbacks, all the problems, all the lacks inherent to your charming, albeit occasionally incompetent sex.”
She started to come down to kiss him again, then she paused and frowned. “Whatever are you talking about?”
He shook his head, disappointment written all over his face. He sighed, then said, “Well, you see, that took you much too long.”
She grew utterly still. She splayed her palms on his bare chest, a very nice chest with crisp hair. “What took me too long?”
But she knew, oh, yes, she knew. He loved her hands on him. He wondered if she could feel his heart speeding up. He said, “It’s the little half flick that you do with your wrists, that quick turn inward, that does the trick. The knots just slip right off. Yes, it took you a very long time to find the answer.” Then he reached up and cupped her bare breasts in his palms. “Just beautiful,” he said. “Now, before you have your way with me, do you agree to marry me?”
She just sat there on top of him, her nightgown hanging off her, her hair tousled around her face, disbelieving what he had done to her. She had never known a more beautiful man in her entire life. All of him was beautiful.
“I mean this, Helen. No more ecstasy, no more insane desire. I won’t make love with you again until you promise you will marry me.”
She still just sat there, leaning into his palms now, letting him hold the weight of her breasts. She closed her eyes. “I cannot.”
In a flash, he threw her off him. She was on her back in the middle of the rug and now he was on top of her, lying flat on top of her so that she couldn’t move.
Their noses were nearly touching. He yelled in her face, “Why the hell not? The truth, Helen, now, or I will tie you down again, and this time I won’t build in an escape route for you.”
She swallowed.
To his astonishment, tears were seeping out of her eyes, streaking down her cheeks. He cursed.
He rose above her. She immediately turned onto her side, bringing her legs up to her chest, and she cried. She stuffed her fist into her mouth. It didn’t matter. The tears kept coming.
The discipline mistress of Court Hammering was lying on her side on the floor crying her eyes out.
He cursed again, leaned down and pulled her upright. “This will surely bow my back,” he said, as he managed to pull her up and over his shoulder. He staggered to the large wing chair in front of the fireplace. He eased down into it, pulling her across his lap, holding her tightly against him. “No, sweetheart, don’t cry. It shatters me. You know that a big girl shouldn’t have