Page 39 of A Duke of One's Own
‘No,Icannot. I cannot endure any more that you absent yourself from my bed. My wound is better, is almost healed, and hardly pains me.’
‘Hardly is not?—’
‘I am recovered. And I want you back. Need you back. I am not made of china, Gabriel, I am made of flesh.’
‘And blood.’
‘Is that the problem?’ She subsided into a chair at his side and looked sadly at him; she had feared this. ‘I thought it might be. Do you see me bleeding in your arms every time you look at me? Because if you do…’
He looked at her with dark hunger in his eyes and shook his head, his face pale but composed. ‘No. I must admit that I didfor a while, every time I lay down to sleep. It was terrible – a mere nothing to what you have suffered, of course, but still most distressing – but it is fading with time now I know you are safe. I am so very glad that you are alive, and here with me when I could so easily have lost you for ever.’
‘It must have reminded you most horribly of losing your brother last year, and your cousin,’ she persisted, not to be fobbed off.
‘It did, of course. How could it not? But it is fading,’ he repeated.
She was not sure she believed him. ‘Make love to me, then,’ she said.
‘I don’t want to hurt you. I could not bear to hurt a single hair on your head after all you have been through.’
‘You won’t.’
‘You can’t be sure of that,’ he said, with sudden impatience. ‘I would be very gentle, of course I would be, but even so…’
‘I don’t want you to be very gentle. You know I don’t.’
Again the sudden flare in his eyes that showed the desire he was keeping so tightly in check. She rose from her chair and slid to her knees between his thighs, the gauzy silver fabric billowing about her as she settled back on her heels and looked up at him, her neck and shoulder bare and her breasts barely covered, the sapphire glinting blue fire between them. He reached out and touched her cheek very softly, almost wistfully, and said, ‘You’re so beautiful. So desirable. I know you want me too, and it’s killing me.’
‘Why? Make me understand, Gabriel.’
‘I can’t make you understand anything while you sit down there and look up at me like that,’ he said roughly. ‘I can barely think straight, let alone speak.’ He was close to losing control, she thought, and she was fiercely glad of it. She was thoroughly sick of his self-control.
She put her hand on his thigh and stroked the black silk of his breeches very slowly and deliberately. She could feel the heat of his flesh through the thin material. ‘So let me give you pleasure with my mouth and lips and tongue, and then afterwards you can explain everything when your mind is clearer. You must remember that we only did this once, the day after we were married, so you may have to remind me of just what you would like. I wish you would tell me.’ Her voice was demure, in contrast with her words, and her fingers were on his buttons now, awaiting permission. Beneath her hands he was hard for her; she could feel it.
‘You’re deliberately trying to seduce me.’ It was almost a groan.
‘Of course I am. It doesn’t seem to be working. I’m probably not very good at it.’
‘Oh, but you are. You’re very good at it. And it’s so tempting, Georgie, to let you unbutton me and take me in your mouth. I know exactly how wonderful it would be. I have dreamed of this, and of so many other things, these last weeks.’
‘Why won’t you let me, then?’
He did not answer her directly, but shifted a little in his chair. ‘Could you be content,’ he asked her, ‘if we always made love like that – our mouths on each other, or our hands, or all the other ways that do not lead to conception?’
She looked up at him in naked astonishment. ‘I thought you wanted – no, desperately needed a child. An heir. I thought that was the whole point of marriage for you, with me – with anybody, for God’s sake!’
‘It was supposed to be. It is still supposed to be. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has. But now the thought of hurting you by my rough attentions, or, even worse, of you risking and perhaps losing your life to give me a child fills me with terror. And yet, if you take me in your mouth – Christ, I am so hardjust thinking of it! – in a little while I know it will not be enough, and I will want to lay you down on that table, pull up your skirts and join myself with you so that I can come inside you where I belong.’
‘I want that too. It is exactly where you belong.’
‘Christ, I know you do. Georgie, you are so good, so brave, you are everything that is admirable, but I am a terrible person. I have always known it, but now more than ever I realise it is so. There must be something wrong with me, as my father always said.’
He grimaced; now he had begun, he was obliged to go on, little though it appeared he wished to share these dark thoughts with her. ‘I said, did I not, that I wanted you so much that I was prepared to take you even if you were forced to marry me? That was true then, and that was bad enough. Unforgiveable, really, and I will understand if you feel you can never forgive me for it. But that was when I felt a mere fraction of what I feel for you now. Now, now I could almost wish that I had married some woman I did not care for, some woman I even disliked. Even though it would have meant losing you.’
She felt chilled, and could barely muster the voice to say, ‘Why?’
‘Because if she had died bearing me a child, I would not have cared. Not really. I would have been deeply sorry, of course, and felt responsible, I am not a complete monster, but… But ifyoudo, if I cause your death by my actions, it will destroy me too. I realised that when I thought you were mortally wounded. I knew then that my own life would be over if yours was.’
Georgie saw with shock and a sudden spark of hope, so intense that it was almost painful, that there were tears on his face, running down unheeded, and she could hear the raw anguish in his voice as he went on, ‘I don’t want to feel like this. I never have before, God knows, and I hate it. I love you,Georgiana, with all my heart and soul I love you, and it is torture!’
