The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [121]
“Bloodless? Ha, do you so soon forget your screams and moans when I take you?” He shut his mouth for his sex was very painful now, his britches stretched.
He gave her a long brooding look. She was too close. “I wish you to remain here, in the house. Do not go out. Oversee our preparations to leave, early in the morning. Is that enough for you to do?”
She rose, her hands fisted at her sides. He simply wouldn’t give over, she thought. She wondered in that bleak moment if he would ever give over. Perhaps not. She gave him a smile, ah, but it hurt to make her mouth move like that, but she did it, then just nodded to him, and left the room.
She walked up the wide stairway, not turning when she heard Mrs. Goodgame call to her. She walked to her bedchamber, walked inside, and locked the door. She stood for a very long time in the middle of the room, then slowly, she went down onto her knees. She wrapped her arms about herself and cried.
She was deep in her misery and didn’t hear the adjoining door quietly open. Douglas, an order forming in his mouth, let the order die. He stared and felt a shifting hollow feeling in his belly. He hadn’t really scolded her, for God’s sake, nothing to bring on this misery. He couldn’t bear it. He walked quickly to her, lifted her into his arms, and carried her to her bed. He came down on top of her, his mouth on hers, and he tasted her tears and sought to make her forget the tears, the pain, forget all but the pleasure he would give her. He jerked up her gown, shredded her stockings and flung away her slippers.
He unfastened his britches and came into her and she was soft and willing, quite ready for him, and it amazed him, this awareness of him that was deep in her, this yielding that was his even when he had hurt her. “Alexandra,” he said into her mouth and thrust hard and harder still.
She opened her eyes even as she pushed upward against him to draw him deeper.
“I seems I must take you every day, for our health, you understand, otherwise we will grow quickly old and mean and testy. Do you understand? Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” she said, and pulled his face down to hers. She was hungry for him, always this hunger, and she kissed him, her tongue in his mouth, taking the lead, and it both surprised him and made him instantly wild.
“Ah, don’t,” he said, but it was too late. Always too late with her and he surged into her and over her, panting and heaving, his eyes closed against the intensity of the feelings coursing through him, and that pressure, always building, and then, quite suddenly, he jerked out of her. Her eyes flew open but he only shook his head. He lifted her hips in his large hands and brought her to his mouth.
Alexandra screamed.
Then she groaned, softly, beyond herself, and it went on and on and he forced her to ease then he built the sensations again. He was controlling her this time but there was nothing she could do about it. She cried out, her head thrashing on the bed until finally, he left her and came inside her once more and he arched his back and yelled her name at his release.
When it was over, when he could find a breath, Douglas came up on his elbows over her, and said into her dazed face, “Don’t you cry again. I don’t like it. There is no reason for you to cry. I came to you, did I not? Did I not give you great pleasure?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you did.”
He was still deep inside her. It was time for lunch. Absurd, the middle of the day and he was growing hard again. He forced himself to pull out of her.
“No more crying,” he said and rose to stand over her. He straightened his britches.
“Why can’t you trust me, Douglas?”
“You speak nonsense.”
“Did I not try to save you from Tony?”
“That has naught to do with anything.”
She managed to come up to a sitting position, pulling down her gown. She was wet with him and with herself, she supposed; she still felt the pull of the languorous feelings, the draining pleasure. She looked at her feet, bare, hanging over the side of the bed, not reaching the floor. “Very well, Douglas, I will do as