The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [99]
“Yes,” he said, “far too much for me to bear.” Then he leaned down and kissed her. She parted her lips for him and it began again. “Damnation!” he howled to the pure sweet air, then kissed her again and he was hard inside her and pushing more and more deeply only to withdraw, to find her with his fingers and his mouth and it went on and on as she spun out of control and yet turned inward, to him, to burrow inside his passion. She didn’t want him to be civilized; she didn’t want him to do anything differently. She wanted him to be a pig.
She told him again that she loved him between kisses on his jaw, his shoulder, his throat, her hands feverish on his chest and downward on his belly. Her fingertips touched his sex and he shuddered.
“No, not again.” He gently pushed her down onto her back. He stared down at her, his eyes hard. “No you don’t,” he said. “Heed me well, Alexandra. A woman says she loves a man because she has to justify her own passion to herself. If she is abandoned, if she finds great pleasure, why then, it must be love, not lust. You, particularly, are young and romantic; it is very important that you try to wrap your bodily pleasures in more inspiring packaging. It is the way your female brain functions, bolstered by all those trashy novels you have doubtless swooned over, but you will get over it if you will just be reasonable.”
“You absurd clod!” Alexandra sent her fist hard into his jaw. He was balanced on his elbow and the surprise of her blow sent him over onto his back.
“You stupid boor! You mindless rutting stoat!”
“Well, the last of it is true, I already laid claim to that.”
“Go to the devil!”
She was up and jerking on her clothing, panting and heaving, so furious with him that she was trembling.
“Alexandra, be reasonable. Stop it.”
She didn’t. If anything she jerked so hard a button went flying.
He came up on his elbows, lying stretched out, naked and sweating and feeling very relaxed. He was even grinning at her. “Alexandra, why become so distraught at the simple truth? Love is a poet’s nonsensical plaything and if he can bend one silly word to rhyme with another, why all the better. It is as insubstantial as a dream, as meaningless as the rain that flows through your fingers. Don’t use it as a crutch or as an excuse to enjoy me and yourself, you don’t need it. You and I do well together in bed. You respond fully to me, even though I seem to have this rutting-stoat disease with you. Don’t feel you have to cover it up with romantic nonsense.”
She was dressed now, though her stockings and boots were still on the ground. Her hands on her hips, she said very slowly, very calmly, “I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I knew that you don’t feel at all the same way about me and I was afraid it would give you power over me. I was quite wrong. You care so little for me that power doesn’t even come into it. I didn’t realize you would mock my words and my feelings, that you would make sport at what I feel. Your cynicism is pathetic, Douglas. If it makes you feel any better, if it makes you feel as if your beliefs are justified, well, I don’t love you at this moment. I should like to cosh you with a hammer at this moment. I would like to kick you on your backside. Instead, I think I will punish you in another way.” She picked up his boots and his trousers and ran with them toward the stream. She stopped and threw them as hard and as far as she could.
Douglas bounded up to grab for his clothes, but he was too late. “Blessed hell!” He jumped into the stream to grab his