Captive Of Sin Part 23

"Of course." With difficulty, she relaxed her clawlike grip.

Down, down the blankets went, until she lay revealed to her bare toes. She closed her eyes because she wasn't brave enough to look into Gideon's face. Uncontrollable heat rose in her cheeks. He'd see she was naked beneath her shift. A nauseating mixture of nerves and embarra.s.sment kept her stiff and unmoving.

He was so still, standing next to the bed, that she couldn't even hear him breathing anymore.

He'd warned her he'd be clumsy. She was smart enough to believe him. She braced for him to grab her, but nothing happened.

What was he waiting for? Dear heaven, did the sight of her shatter his resolution? Now the moment of truth arrived, was he unable to go through with it?

"My G.o.d, but you're glorious," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

Her eyes flew open with disbelieving shock. "What?"

His expression remained troubled, but his gaze was avid as it traced her body. "Charis, you're beautiful beyond a man's wildest dreams."

How could he say such things? It was too painful. She couldn't find pleasure in his praise when he shook with disgust at her slightest touch.

"Please..." She swallowed to dislodge the lump of distress in her throat. "Please get it over with."

His face contorted with sorrow. "I'm sorry, Charis."

"Don't say any more." She closed her eyes, partly to stem her foolish tears, and slid down in the bed. "Just...do what you must."

"As you wish." He sounded remote, as though he too retreated behind some inner bastion.

The mattress sagged with his weight, then she felt encroaching warmth as he straddled her legs. She knew the act would be less painful if she relaxed, but every muscle tensed in fearful expectation.

After a moment, he raised the hem of her shift. To her thighs. Then past her hips. The cold air on her skin made her shiver.

She placed shaking hands over her mound. Which was stupid. He'd do more than look at her before he was finished.

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes to find him staring at her...there. His face was taut with such anguish and longing, she couldn't bear it.

Hesitantly, he placed one gloved hand on the soft plain of her belly. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s tightened, and restless heat settled between her legs. She was ashamed that she couldn't stifle her powerful and immediate reaction.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand back as if she scalded him. He was shaking. Of course he was. Touching her, even for such a short time, required every ounce of will.

She bit her lip so hard, she tasted blood. The urge to beg him to stop fought up through her closed throat. She could see in his strained, colorless face what this cost him.

She remained silent.

Still silent, she lifted her hands away from her s.e.x.

Gideon stared at Charis in helpless wonder while his gut churned like a millwheel. She was the most exquisite creature he'd ever seen. His hunger was a raging storm.

The shift bunched under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but he clearly saw the rich pink of her nipples. Nipples that peaked like ripe raspberries the moment he touched her.

Her swift response was just another of fate's mockeries. She was formed for pleasure, but she'd find no pleasure with the man she married. Nonetheless, his eyes feasted on the treasures of her body. The delicious inward curve of her waist. The flare of her hips. The long, coltish legs.

His c.o.c.k was hard and swollen and pulsed against the front of his trousers. If he took her now, he'd rip her to pieces. His mind might deem touching her as torture. His p.r.i.c.k didn't care.

Dazedly, she stared into his face. She was white as new snow. She'd hardly looked at his body, although if she dropped her gaze, she couldn't miss his arousal.

He gritted his teeth and stroked the smooth skin of her thigh. For one heady moment, even through his glove, he felt her enticing warmth.

Then, as always, his mind went black. Screams echoed in his ears. Her flesh turned to rotting carrion. Her peppery carnation scent became the stink of death.

He fought back the shrieking demons. Wrestled them until they lay supine and silent. The battle left him shaking. He sucked in a breath that reeked of decay. Slowly, as if he pushed a ma.s.sive weight up a steep and jagged path, he traced a tentative path to her hip.

He wasn't a small man. He needed to prepare her. But time was his enemy. The longer he waited, the more likely his demons would master him.

She was rigid with fear. The uncertainty in her beautiful eyes broke his heart. Her breath emerged in unsteady gasps. Not, he was grimly aware, of desire. The air bristled with tension.

He placed both hands on her thighs and carefully spread them. In a room lit only by firelight, her body's hollows were dark and mysterious. He knelt between her legs, and his nostrils flared as he caught her scent.

With clumsy fingers, he undid his trousers. His c.o.c.k sprang free. When her eyes fastened on his organ, she made a m.u.f.fled sound. Her hands curled into the sheet beneath as if she physically stopped herself leaping from the bed.

He hooked his hands under her hips and angled her up. Slowly, he pushed forward.

As he breached her body, she whimpered but didn't recoil. He pushed again, feeling the tissues give way.

To his grateful astonishment, she was damp. Damp enough to ease his entry.

Even so, she was d.a.m.ned tight.

He paused and sucked in a deep breath redolent of Charis.

She's alive, she's alive, he chanted in his mind as he eased into her. She's alive, he told the ghosts in his head, blocking his ears to their panicked clamor.

She whimpered again and shifted, drawing him deeper.

The voices grew more insistent. He couldn't hold them off. Cold sweat p.r.i.c.kled his skin. His grip firmed on her hips. As his vision faded, he inhaled. The world shrank to one spark of light.

He had to do this now or fail utterly.

"Charis, forgive me," he said in a strangled voice. He tautened and thrust.

Pain shafted through Charis with the vivid, immediate brightness of lightning. A scream welled in her throat, but she bit it back.

Still, a choked moan escaped. She felt like she'd been split in half with a blunt ax. It was excruciating. Blinding.

She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for it to be over.

Breathe. She needed to breathe.

She gasped for air, but Gideon's weight crushed her into the mattress. He was bigger and heavier than she'd realized. His height and superb coordination disguised how well muscled he was.

Frantically, she dug her fingers deeper into the sheets. He'd done what he needed to. Why didn't he pull out and leave her be?

Breathe, Charis, breathe.

The part he'd pushed into her chafed tender flesh. He was hard as granite. But unlike granite, he was hotter than a furnace. Stupidly, she'd imagined he'd feel cool, even cold, because of his reluctance to touch her.

His smell, familiar yet unfamiliar, surrounded her. She knew the clean scent of his soap and the essence of his skin. She guessed the extra spice in the air was male arousal.

His breathing was ragged, and he trembled. She raised her hands to grip his back, then remembered he hated to be touched. He wouldn't want her embrace, even as he lay buried inside her in the closest connection she'd ever known.

She sucked in another breath. An easier one. Where they joined, she still hurt, but the fierce agony faded.

He shifted with a soft grunt. The pressure changed, became less excruciating.

Charis waited for him to pull away. But his muscles tightened, and he thrust again. She bit back another moan and gripped the sheet to stop sliding up the bed.

She'd imagined this would be quick, over in seconds. But he was still inside her. He moved once more, and released a deep groan.

Another thrust. His hips pumped several times, and she felt a liquid heat deep inside her. He groaned again and slumped over her. In a cruel parody of tenderness, his head came to rest on her shoulder, his silky hair tickling her neck.

After all the hardness, the fleeting softness seemed alien, wrong.

After an endless time, Gideon withdrew and carefully pulled down her shift, hiding the tops of her thighs. Then he rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. His shirt was twisted and flapped free of his gaping trousers.

After one brief glance at him, Charis concentrated on the dark beams crossing the ceiling too. She didn't want to see the organ he'd pressed into her body.

She supposed she should say something, but she wasn't certain her voice would work. Her throat clenched so tight, it hurt. Although she was cold, she couldn't summon energy to reach for the covers.

Who knew how long they lay alongside each other? Not long, she guessed, although every second felt like an hour.

Where he'd taken her, she stung, although the piercing pain had subsided to a constant throbbing. She felt lost in a vast emptiness, as though the world had been destroyed in some unimaginable cataclysm. How odd that this most intimate act of all left her feeling like the only human left on earth.

Slowly, stiffly, he sat up. For one intense second, she felt him study her. She kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Like distant thunder on a summer's day, devastation nudged at her awareness. But for the moment, exhaustion kept it at bay.

Jamming her eyes shut, she willed herself not to cry. She was much better hiding in this numbness. Given her way, she'd lie here forever.

Charis listened to him move about the room. Water splashed into a dish. Perhaps he meant to wash. Perhaps he was desperate to rid himself of every trace of her disgusting person.

She recognized she tortured herself and scotched the thought before it went any further. Instead, she sought that cold empty s.p.a.ce in her heart where nothing could hurt her.

The rug m.u.f.fled his footsteps as he moved closer. She couldn't help tensing at his approach. He stopped by the bed. Unthinkingly, she flinched.

Although he wouldn't touch her. He'd never touch her again, now she was his wife in fact as well as law.

He didn't say anything. There was a soft clink on the bedside cabinet. He shifted away, his footsteps deliberate but somehow defeated.

There was a click as he opened the door, then another as he closed it behind him.

She opened her eyes. The blazing fire still lit the room. The whole episode had probably taken less than half an hour.

Half an hour for her world to change.

She turned her head to see a blue-and-white china washbowl on the nightstand and a pile of towels. He'd seen to her comfort, then he'd left her in peace.

The tears she'd fought since he'd come to her bed overflowed.

Eventually Charis roused to go looking for her husband.

It wasn't in her nature to avoid difficulties. Lying in the rumpled bed, surrounded by the unfamiliar smell of s.e.x, she had time to gather her courage.

And time to start worrying about Gideon.

As shock and discomfort receded, she began to think what price that joyless coupling had exacted from him. She needed to see him, to rea.s.sure herself he was all right. She needed to see him because the moment when she'd wished him to Hades had been brief indeed. Now only his nearness could soothe her aching sadness.

She rolled out of bed, the abrupt movement setting up a host of unfamiliar twinges. Reminder, should she need it, that nothing would ever be the same after what had just happened.

Wrapping a blanket around her trembling shoulders, she trudged across the floor. She pushed the door open and stepped through. The parlor was quiet and dark except for the low glow of the fire.

Had he gone out? After what they'd done, sleep would elude him. She ventured closer to the Stygian corner where he'd sat last night. Then she realized he sprawled in a ma.s.sive wooden armchair in front of the hearth.

"Gideon?" She hitched the blanket up and stepped around the chair's looming bulk to stand before him.

He didn't look at her. Instead, he stared at the fire. Something told her he'd stared into the fire for a long time. His gloved hand curled around a half-filled gla.s.s that dangled on the verge of spilling. Brandy, she guessed.

"Go back to bed, Charis."

The boneless curve of his long, lean body echoed the despair in his voice. His legs stretched toward the grate, and his shirt hung loose as it had in the bedroom. A frisson ran through her as she looked at his bare chest, gold in the flickering light.

A shiver, astonishingly, not of revulsion.

Charis beat back the cowardly urge to obey him and flee. Instead, she fixed an unwavering gaze upon him. "We need to talk."

His face tightened. With a savagery that made her wince, he lifted the gla.s.s and pitched it into the fire. There was the sharp tinkle of shattering gla.s.s and a brief flare as the brandy caught.

"Christ, no."

The eyes he focused on her glittered with anguish and a loathing that made her cringe.

"Do you hate me now, Gideon?" She didn't recognize the shaking voice as hers. She'd tried so hard to make the act easy for him, but to her shame, she hadn't succeeded in masking her discomfort.

His face contorted, and she stared aghast into naked torment. Only for a moment. He swiftly pulled the shutters over the turbulent depths.

"Of course I don't hate you," he said impatiently.

"But..."

"Go, Charis, now." His voice fractured.

She couldn't mistake his desperation to be alone. Although selfishly she wanted only to stay with him. The tumbled, lonely bed in the next room loomed like a gallows.