Page 38 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
And now—now, every last one of those emotions she had hastily stuffed away came spilling back out in a horrid, wrinkled tumble. She choked on them, drowned in them, and scrambled from her perch upon the bed in a desperate bid to escape the flood. And still she was knee-deep, waist-deep, smothering upon them, every step across the floor a slog through this—this wretched miasma.
“Felicity. Please.” There was strain in his voice, the effort to maintain a gentle demeanor.
“I hate you.” The words shuddered from her lungs. She hated what he’d done to her, what he’d made of her. But more than that, she hated what she had let him take from her. What she had surrendered herself, buried in thatbox beneath all the rest of her anger, her grief, her pain. Ten years, and she’d gone nowhere. Ten years, and she was still that same girl she had once been, struggling to shove the shredded tatters of her heart somewhere down deep where they could not hurt her. “I hate you,” she said again, and it hissed across her lips in the same shrill tone as a kettle boiling over. And that was what she was; a kettle boiling over. That simmer that had burned her heart for so many years allowed to roil up at last.
“That’s all right,” he said, so quietly the words seemed to fall upon the rug at her feet to be stamped beneath them.
“Shut up.” She couldn’t bear the softness of his voice. He used it like cotton batting, like he would wrap her in it to protect her from her own sharp edges. “Aren’t you listening? I am telling you I hate you!” Her voice shredded itself on a screech; she pressed her hands to her face as if the pressure of them might quiet the chaos of her mind. Beneath the touch of her hands, her injured cheek burned.
“I always listen when you speak. I am telling you that I understand. I love you enough for both of us.”
“Shut up!” Her fingers itched to throw something, to break something—to satisfy the lust for violence that crawled beneath her skin.
Or perhaps it was justlust. And she had hated that, too. That despite his betrayal, despite the resentment that had been her constant companion for years…he could still make herwant. That there had been a few raw instances where she had woken in his arms when, for precious whole seconds at a time, she had forgotten everything that had come before. That there was some part of her, still, that ached for the pleasure of his hot hands on her breasts, or the pressure of his cock cradled against her bottom, or the abrasive rasp of his stubble against her shoulder.
She hated that Louisa’s words in the retiring room this evening had terrified her out of her wits, sent her fleeing the safety of the theatre against her better judgment and straight into the path of a violent predator. That in those moments when she had been so stiff with fright, with that same humiliating terror that had rendered her so helpless and immobile that she could only stare up at the night sky in petrified silence, still she had been so glad that he’d come after her. That he’d tucked her into his arms and held her on the carriage ride home. That he’d made her grateful for those gentle fingers that had stroked her hair, for the soothing nonsense he’d whispered as she had cried.
But she hated most that he sat there, now, upon the edge of the bed,looking at her so—so goddamnedsoftly, as if she were some wild creature he thought to tame. That he’d had the audacity to say that vile word in her presence.
Love. A scornful sound scratched out of her mouth, so caustic and corrosive that it burned her tongue. Her toes curled into the plush carpet beneath her feet. Her chest heaved with strange, frenetic breaths as a shiver slid down her spine, as her nipples pebbled beneath the thin linen of her nightgown.
She didn’t wantlovefrom him. But still she wanted. The warmth she’d been denied; the pleasure she had denied herself. She had controlled so little of her life, had been permitted so few choices of her own. Even now, her life was governed by a necessary adherence to propriety, by her responsibilities to her students…by the shadowy figure haunting her in the darkness, threatening all she held dear.
She couldn’t control those things. But she could controlthis. Satisfy the violent, chaotic turmoil that churned in her head, in her stomach, in her loins. Quiet the wild clash of her thoughts, garner a brief respite from them with an honestly-earned exhaustion.
Her fingers twitched at her sides. “Take off your clothes,” she snarled.
A muscle in his jaw jumped. His hands landed on his thighs, elbows bent outward as he drew in a long breath, let it out slowly as if steeling himself for something. “No,” he said on a sigh. “Felicity, you don’t want this. Not now. Not when you’re—” He hesitated, his lips flattening into a grim line.
“When I’m what?” The words were a feral growl; ominous, foreboding.
“Overwrought,” he said at last. “You’re overwrought. You’ve had a difficult evening. You’ve been frightened, injured. You’re in shock. You don’t wantthis, not really.”
A strange, strangled sound, half-despairing, half-enraged, tore itself from her throat. She could feel it there between them, that barrier she’d long thought inviolable. The one she’d been trapped behind all these years, one and twenty still, frozen—
No. Not frozen any longer. Now she burned, raged against the ice that had long encased her, seethed and strained and thrashed. Until her hand punched straight through it, fisted itself in the wrinkled fabric of his cravat. She didn’t know which of them she’d yanked across those years. She knew only that it wasn’t the broken-hearted waif he’d left behind who stood toe-to-toe with him now, who wrapped that snowy fabric in the tense clutch of her hand and dragged his face to hers.
It was the woman scorned who had finally found reason to come roaring out of her with the strength of a lion. It was the woman scorned who let every bit of spite she possessed saturate her voice as she snarled into his startled face, “You don’tevertell me what I want.”
Chapter Fourteen
All right,” he said through the pressure of the cravat half-strangling him as she wrapped her fist tighter. “All right.” It was a mistake, but she was entitled to make it. He’d tried to do the right thing, the honorable thing. Surely she’d remember that later.
At least, he hoped to God she would remember that later.
Another shiver swept over her. He felt it through her fingers, in the white-knuckled grip of them upon his cravat. “You’re cold,” he said. “Let me warm you.”
With her free hand she batted his hand away. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped, and that fire in her eyes blazed hotter still; violent, virulent green. “Youdon’t touchme,” she stressed.
He let his hands fall to his sides, bent toward her just enough to put the tiniest bit of slack in fabric. “Tell me what you want of me, then.”
“Get on the bed,” she said, and at last her fingers released their hold on his cravat.
Ian cleared his throat. “I thought I was meant to remove my clothes.”
“You had your chance.”
So she was going to use him, then. For whatever pleasure she could wrest from his body. A physical release, a relief from the pressure of the ruinous emotions that tormented her. And he would let her do it, just to be close to her however she would permit. In whatever way she would permit.
