Page 100 of A Lady of Means
She stepped away from him then, drawing back her arm, and slapped him across one cheek.He was so much larger than her, he could easily have stopped her.And as her eyes fixed on the reddening mark across his cheek, she thought,maybe he had.
“Are you done, woman?”he asked, reaching for her.
She knew she was blowing hot and cold, but that didn’t stop her from emphasizing each word.
“No, I most certainly am not done, Devyn.”She advanced on him, punctuating her syllables with little jabs of her small finger at his chest.
“You left.After you properly courted me.You proposed to me.You made me promises that didn’t seem to hold as much weight as your vows to your uniform.You led me to believe that no longer was I the girl that men loved in secret.That I was worth being loved out in the open.”The tears streamed down her face and she let them fall for once without wiping them away.
Let him see.
“You did all the things I romanticized a beau doing for me.And then you committed the most unthinkable crime.Youdied.And I…I couldn’t remember if I told you that I loved you.I was left with nothing but my pretty face and my reputation and my pride, for however long I could rely on them.”
She turned from him, hugging herself to shore up her resolve.He was just standing there, taking her in, not making a move to quiet or comfort or touch her while she got the words out.She loved him more then for what he didn’t do.
“And then he was attentive and he was generous.And he was a duke.I won’t say I hated the attention that I received from everyone else, but it was his attention that won me.While you were…well, I knew what you were to me, but I had to mourn you in secret.Now you want to say that I am hurtingyou?”
She gave a small humorless laugh, feeling like she’d slowly become unhinged at having to relive this entire saga in front of him, at the spell that had been uncast as she said it aloud.
“Perhaps now you can begin to know what I have suffered.”
He thundered his response, the muscles at his neck and temple alive with outrage.“You think I didn’t want to give you all those things?That I wouldn’t sell my soul to the devil if he showed up knocking right now to give them to you?”
She looked at him warily.He stepped closer, taking her face in his dwarfing hands.
“My girl, I have loved you quite desperately since the first time I saw you underneath that willow tree,” His chest heaved against her own.“I’ve been desperate for you; to tell you how you haunted me, how you traveled down to hell and led me out each day, with the hope of seeing you again.”
His fingertips brushed tenderly against her cheeks.“But I could never have given you the things for which you were born, the things you deserve.Now that you have found someone who can, and should, I’m so angry.And proud of you…and jealous too.”
She had been staring at the wall of his chest as he spoke, not realizing he was backing her up.When her knees collided with the bed, she let out a little breath of surprise.
“So, Moria, if you want to punish me, then do it.”
Her brows kissed in the middle, not understanding.Her eyes followed the movements of his hands as he pulled at the cravat at his throat revealing a tanned triangle of skin that weakened her knees, her resolve.Realization did not dawn until he placed the wadded piece of fabric in her hand.
All the air left her, left the room.Left England.Words lodged themselves in her throat, trapped against the frantic beating of her set-upon heart.
“Go ahead,” he said, motioning to the wooden headboard with his jaw, extending to her his two wrists, firmly clasped together.
“Dear god,” she breathed.
He stood still and expectant, his dark eyes trained on her with compelling force.She looked down at the strip of fabric he’d proffered into her hand.
“You’re serious.You want me to-”
He stole the shock, the words, the air from her mouth with his own.In their place, into the parted seam of her lips, he gave her everything.
There was a world of pain between them, woven into their past, but they could create something wholly pleasurable together.He pulled her tighter into him, the bulge of muscles, less corded than once before but still stronger than most men, straining against her.Her core was suddenly alive with longing for this man.
She reveled in the feel of his large jaw muscles working against her own as his tongue slid deeper and deeper inside her mouth, gliding over her teeth, the silk of her bottom lip.She drank him in as well, her world closing in around only this man, only the touch of his body where it met hers, only his breath.
He reclined on the bed.She let him pull her down with him.She toppled onto him, a mass of tangled and needy limbs.
“I want you to do whatever you want to me.Use me.Love me.Let me love you in return.”
“Devyn,” She sighed his name on a feverish breath.“What about before—that you wanted to put a ring on my finger—” He stilled her words with a finger to her lips.
That finger softly padded over the rim of her bottom lip, promising exploration to other areas.
