The Hellion Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 2)

She turned her face away from him, and fisted her hands at her sides.

"You're beautiful, Sophie, not a dream princess like Melissande, certainly, but as she pointed out, you're pretty nonetheless. I'll keep you. Now I'm going to . . . no, let me just show you."

He came down beside her, lying on his side, and very gently he stroked his fingertips over her jaw, her lips, her nose, then smoothed her eyebrows. He simply looked at her and touched her face.

She looked up at him then.

"Ryder," she said, "I know that you want to take me. You don't have to play about with me as you're doing now. Please, just get it over with. I won't fight you. I know that it will do no good. I'm tired and want it over with."

He laughed.

"Ah, all those other damned men. 'Take you'. . . what a wonderful way to say 'making love.' Well, let me tell you something, Mrs. Sherbrooke, you're my wife. I want to play with you until you're yelling with pleasure. I want you to enjoy yourself. I want you to laugh and kiss me back and play with me. No, you can't begin to understand that, can you? But you will come to understand."

He leaned down and kissed her mouth, very gently, his own mouth light as moth's wings. He continued kissing her until he finally felt her ease beneath him. "Do you know how wonderful you taste to me? How much I enjoying kissing you?"

"It isn't bad," she admitted, sounding a bit wor­ried. Even as she parted her lips to speak, he gently slipped his tongue inside her mouth and touched hers.

She started, becoming stiff as a bed slat.

Ryder was again in firm control of himself, just as he'd been before. Everything in him was focused on her, on her reactions, her shifts of expressions, the lightness or darkness of her gray eyes. All that he wanted was for her to become one with him, to replace all her memories with him—his laughter, his sheer joy in life, his pleasure in her.

He simply continued what he was doing. There was all the time in the world. The night was long. He figured she didn't have a chance.

He talked to her, distracting her from the memo­ries he knew crept into her mind whilst he touched her. He told her how much he admired her breasts, that they were as white as fresh snow and as round as her belly would be when she was carrying his child. Ah, and her belly, he spanned his fingers to her pelvic bones and told her she should easily carry their children, as many as she wished to bear, and then he began to caress her, his fingers light and caressing her warm belly. When his fingers lightly touched her woman's soft flesh, she lurched up in bed and scrambled away from him.

He was so startled that she escaped him. He watched her blankly dash naked across the bare floor to the windows on the eastern side of the bedchamber. She stood there, her back to him, her head bowed.

He went to her, frowning, but said nothing, mere­ly placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her gently back against him.

"Now, what is all this about?"

"I feel so dirty."

Good Lord, he thought, staring at the back of her head, the dam had finally burst. About time too. He said slowly, "Finally you tell me the truth. It's about time, Sophie. Now we will deal with it."

She was silent.

"Somehow I don't believe it was my fingers between your thighs that brought this on, but it helped, didn't it? It made you remember—did you see one of the men doing that to Dahlia? Did one of the men force himself on you in that way?" He waited, but she said nothing. "All right then. You're not built as I am, Sophie. For you to reach a woman's pleasure, you must know caresses there between your thighs. There is no reason for you to feel dirty or ashamed or anything else except excitement and anticipation."

"It's not that entirely."

"Ah," he said, and felt a wrenching in his gut. As for his sex, all desire was long gone. "So some of those men touched you there? Fondled you there? Is that what this is all about? You would still have me battle memories, bloody ghosts?"

Ghosts, ha! she thought, shaking unconsciously.

"Sophie, talk to me."

"I'm sorry, Ryder."

He shook her then. "Damn you, woman, stop bleating like a twit sheep! You were a hellion when I met you and now you become a pathetic scrap on me. Stop it, dammit!"

She screamed at him, "All right, damn you, all right!" She jerked away, looked frantically around the bedchamber for something to hit him with, didn't see anything, and dashed from the bedchamber.

'You're naked!"

"Go to the devil!"

He was grabbing for his dressing gown when she ran back into the bedchamber. She was carrying a broom. She rushed at him, like a horseless knight in a joust, and he couldn't help himself, he laughed. He hugged his belly he laughed so hard, at least until she hit him on the head. Then hit him again and again, cursing at him all the while.