Married to a Stranger (Danger and Desire 3)

‘We go on,’ he said. ‘What else is there to do? We married for better or for worse, did we not?’ He straightened up and held the door for her and Sophia gathered the tatters of her self-possession around her and walked through it and upstairs.

Sophia sent Chivers away and sat for a long time, drawing the brush through the thick mass that waved slightly from its pins and braids. It was soothing and faintly mesmerising. She was very tired, too tired almost to hurt any more, and her focus blurred until she was almost brushing in a doze.

It took a moment to realise that the bedchamber door had opened. ‘Callum?’

He closed the door and came in, took the brush from her lax grip. Her hair crackled, sprang up to cling to his hands. ‘I think this is brushed enough.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed and got up. Why was he here? He was wearing the black robe, his feet bare on the carpet. As she looked into his eyes, dark green, shadowed, full of emotions she did not understand, Sophia realised she couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘I am so sorry.’ He would go now, she thought.

‘I find I want you,’ he said, his voice harsh. ‘I am not sure I understand why. I am angry with you, I am tired, but I want you. Doubtless it is something primitive and I should be ashamed of it. Tell me to go and I will—I’ll not take an unwilling woman.’

It never occurred to her until he said it that he might force her, or to fear that he would hurt her physically because of what she had done, but she knew many men would. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Stay.’

Callum stooped and kissed her, drawing her close against the thick fabric. Beneath it she could smell the familiar scent of him, the tinge of spice, the faint remnants of soap, the smell, so arousing, of male. His mouth was hard, demanding, but not brutal. A tear escaped and trickled down her face.

Callum lifted his head and licked his lips, tasting the salt. He rubbed away the moisture under her lashes with the pad of his thumbs. ‘Don’t cry.’ His harsh voice was at odds with the gesture. ‘It won’t help.’

‘No,’ she promised. She would not cry. He still wanted her, his body betrayed that all too graphically. And he was too much a gentleman to punish her for what she had done. All she could give him in return was her passion and her loyalty and her restraint.

Sophia reached up and pulled Callum’s dark head down so she could reach his lips and kissed him, trying to give him everything he wanted. ‘Make me stop thinking,’ she murmured against his mouth, not knowing if he heard her.

He lifted her without breaking the kiss and laid her on the bed, then shrugged off his robe. As she expected, he was naked beneath it. She closed her eyes, shielding the raw wanting, waiting for the bed to dip as he joined her. But instead he sat at the foot and began to run his hands over her feet, chilly from sitting without her slippers for so long.

His strong thumbs massaged under the arches, then moved to her ankles, circling them easily as if shackling her, then he opened his hands and ran his palms up to her knees. Sophia lay still, swallowing tears, trying just to let herself feel.

His hands were calloused from riding. She felt them snag in the hem of her nightgown as he pushed it up a little and she braced herself for his weight to come down over her, but all he did was to explore the hollows at the back of her knees. ‘Soft,’ he murmured and moved to nuzzle into them, nudging her legs apart to give him access.

Helpless against the need he was stirring in her, Sophia lay there, her legs sprawled wantonly as Callum’s kisses trailed up the sensitive inner surface of her thighs. So gentle. She could feel the restraint he was exercising, sense his need to just take her, punish her with his body. This was a worse punishment, this gentleness when she felt she deserved nothing of the kind.

Her nightgown rucked around her hips and Sophia arched upwards so he could push it free. As she lowered herself his hands opened her further and his mouth found her hot, moist core, his fingers parted the intimate folds so his tongue could stroke and torment in long, slow strokes that had her moaning out loud, her hands fisted in the covers.

Callum had done this before, but in the heat of desperate, urgent sex, never like this with deliberate, exquisite patience so she was forced to lie and suffer every lingering touch of his mouth, every gentle scrape of his teeth, every thrust of his tongue, deep inside.

Sophia reached down and threaded her fingers into Callum’s hair, cupping the elegant bones of his skull in her palms as wave after wave of pleasure seared through her, tightening her arousal almost to breaking point. ‘Please,’ she heard herself saying, ‘please, please.’ He shook his head, just a little. No, he was not going to release her, not until she was screaming. This was a punishment.

He was cruel, so cruel. She arched, straining, seeking her release as she pressed against his clever mouth and he lifted his head, surged up the bed to hold his weight off her so she could not press up against him as he began to torment her breast with the same ruthless expertise.

His tongue fretted her nipples into aching knots and then, finally, as she sobbed in desperation, he lowered himself, thrust and possessed her, sheathing himself deep within her needy, aching centre. Sophia felt herself unravel instantly, as though he had touched spark to powder. She convulsed around him, tight, tight as if to stop him withdrawing, leaving her, ever. But he thrust again, stronger and harder. He shuddered and was still.

The air was cool on her heated breasts. Sophia opened her eyes and found Callum still braced above her, elbows locked, only his hips pressing into her where they were still joined. His hair fell over his sweat-slicked forehead,

his eyes were closed. As she looked he opened them, dark and fathomless, on her face. Still watching her, he slid from her body and rolled off the bed.

‘Sleep,’ he said. He lifted his robe from the floor, shrugged into it and left.

Her body was nothing but boneless velvet. Her heart felt as though it was breaking. The candles flared and guttered round the room. Sophia lay on the bed, dry eyes aching in the light as she stared at nothing and wondered how she could endure this.

‘Is Mrs Chatterton at home, Hawksley?’ Cal dropped his hat and whip on the hall chest and began to strip off his gloves. He had come home early, although why, what good it would do, he did not know. He had left before breakfast that morning, broken his fast at a coffee house in the City.

It had been hectic enough at the office to keep his mind from last night and to energise him sufficiently to overcome the exhaustion of a virtually sleepless night shredded by dreams of the swirling grey fog. There had not even been the figure of his wife vanishing into it. She had gone.

Last night. He could let himself think about it now. The hurt that Sophia could not trust him, the shock of how close to ruin she had come, the reality of the pain he had dreaded ever since he had found himself in love with her.

And then in her bedroom. He closed his eyes in denial, but his memory and his body would not let him forget. He had set out to punish her, torment her, prove to her that she was in thrall to him here, and in their marriage. The memory of her softness quivering in his arms; the intimate salt-sweet taste of her lingering on his lips; the feeling of her closing tightly around him, a hot, wet velvet fist; her frantic begging for release and her cries as he gave it to her.

It had been a hollow victory, the one who was hurt most by it, he knew, was himself. But he had not been able to stay or he knew he would have poured out his feelings for her.

‘Madam said that I should ask you to be good enough to call at Lady d’Aunay’s residence when you returned, sir.’