He laughed then—so heartily that she wanted to kill him—plainly not the slightest bit put out at her insult.
‘You prick my ego, madam! I assure you there are many who would give a great deal to be where you are this night.’
That she knew from gossip that he spoke the truth only infuriated her the more.
‘Well, I am not one of them, sir,’ she stormed back at him. ‘You flatter yourself indeed if you think I will ever pant after your favours like a bitch on heat.’
She knew she had made a mistake the moment the insulting words left her lips. Without a word he stared down at her until she felt as though his eyes bored into her very skull, and laid bare every single thought that was there.
‘Say you so, madam?’ he said silkily at last. ‘That being the case there is no need for me to waste my poor talents on convincing you otherwise, and the deed might as well be done with all despatch possible.’
‘It cannot be over soon enough for me,’ she responded bitterly, knowing now that there was no escape, and that no matter how she railed or argued she could not shake him from his purpose. She would, after all, endure no more than she might expect to endure with Francis. Wives could expect little consideration from their husbands after all. And if she did conceive…She grimaced inwardly. She had no love for Francis; it mattered little to her whose child she carried as long as Francis accepted it as his own. Afterwards, once she was safely married to Francis, she would find a means of dealing with his arrogant half-brother.
‘Well, then,’ her tormentor said softly, ‘let us to work.’
His hands gripped the top of her gown, his wrists twisting deftly as he rent it from top to hem, leaving her clad only in her silk stockings and garters. Her overriding instinct to cover herself from him was thwarted by the strong grip of his fingers round her wrists, forcing her arms above her head. She was fashionably slender with narrow hips and a well-formed bosom, but had never thought particularly about the appeal of her shape to the male eye until now.
As a tradesman’s daughter, no one had ever thought to protect her from the realities of sex as they might a true young lady. She knew all about the physical coupling of a man and a woman, and had lately endured several lectures from her aunt about the correct behaviour of a young bride, who ought not to question the wishes of a husband but simply accede to them. She had thought herself strong enough to do so, to be able to separate her mind from her body and simply blot out that which was unacceptable to her, but it seemed now that she had overestimated her own powers of self-control and a shudder racked through her helpless body as her tormentor continued his slow scrutiny of her.
‘A prize delectable enough to tempt any man.’ The words were drawled in a mocking tone, but she noticed the glitter darkening his eyes as they roamed her body for a second time, and she tensed automatically, sensing something outside her own experience.
The dark head bent towards her, his torso arching over her, her arms ached from being imprisoned. She longed to twist despairingly away but sensed that he would enjoy subduing her if she did, and so she stared as steadily as she could into his eyes until there was nothing but their vivid blueness. She felt his breath caress her skin and, in spite of her determination, shivered at the intimacy of it, waiting until the last moment to turn her mouth away from his, her body stiff and tense as she felt his soundless laughter.
‘By all means, if that is the way you wish to play it,’ he whispered softly into her ear, biting the tender flesh with sharp teeth, making her wince. ‘I merely thought to make it more pleasurable for you.’
He moved and she closed her eyes, gritting her teeth, shocked by the sudden sensation of his torso touching her own, her breasts pressed flat against hard muscle, his weight constricting her breathing so that she had to pant. His mouth touched her shoulder and moved slowly along it, her tension increasing with every breath she took. She hated him for drawing out her torment, willing him to get the deed over and done with. This was a greater torture than if he had simply taken her and gone, and she sensed that he meant to punish her for her earlier challenging words.
; His mouth burned her throat, his teeth sharp against the delicate skin. She wanted to move beneath him, to writhe away from the too-close contact with his body. Her skin felt hot where his mouth had touched it, and she was conscious of a strange dizziness, which she put down to the pain in her arms. His mouth moved tormentingly over her skin, and against her closed eyelids danced mental impressions of his dark head against her body. He moved, easing his weight off her slightly, and she drew in a much-needed breath, expelling it on a sharp, high cry of shock as she felt his mouth against her breast.
This time it was impossible to stop her body’s bitter writhing to break free, but her hands were firmly pinioned and his mouth retained possession of the deep rose centre of her breast firmly sucking on it until she felt a totally unfamiliar sensation flower into life inside her. That her tormentor knew of it too was shamingly obvious when he slowly released her wrists, lifting his head from her breasts and then cupping them both in his hands. She found she was trembling as though held in the grip of a fierce fever, her body shaking with an ague, which she told herself came purely from the pain of the blood returning to her aching arms. Too weak as yet to thrust her tormentor off, she willed them to recover from their imprisonment, closing her eyes the better to martial her concentration.
Her breasts ached and throbbed with a pain that was wholly unfamiliar and she jerked protestingly against the tormentingly intimate caresses being inflicted on them. When her arms finally stopped tingling she lifted her hands to his shoulders, trying to push him away from her, but he merely laughed, his mouth once again caressing her breasts, moving slowly from one to the other until in the fireglow cast over the bed she could see that her nipples had grown a rosily dark red and that, unlike her mind, they seemed to have no objection to her attacker’s continued ravishment of them, seeming rather to enjoy the moist attention of his lips and tongue.
Her fingers curled into his shoulders, one part of her mind registering with surprise how warm and pleasant his skin felt beneath them. How tempting it was to allow her hands to drift over the mystery of hard bones clothed in satin skin, and she reined in her thoughts swiftly, drawing her nails sharply over his skin, glorying in inflicting on him some measure of pain in payment for his humiliation of her.
Retaliation was swift and shocking. His teeth caught against the delicate flesh of her nipple making her cry out and shudder in torment. She seemed to be falling into some black abyss when instinct, and instinct alone, made her cling for safety to the warmth of his body, locking her arms round his neck, her body shivering in waves of shocked pain. Her fingers encountered something warm and sticky. She opened her eyes and saw the rowelling scratch marks against the darkness of his skin. Two of them oozed blood from her nails and her body tensed in shock that she had inflicted them.
Against her will her eyes were drawn to his. They glittered feverishly, bright with rage. He was breathing harshly, his voice thick and low as he demanded savagely, ‘Lick them, it will staunch the bleeding. The only blood I would have on my sheets this night, will be yours, madam,’ he added ruthlessly. ‘Unless, which I doubt, someone else has already had your maidenhead. You are fortunate my brother is always so befuddled with drink, and will not know the difference. Lick them, I say,’ he demanded again, grasping her neck with one hand, sliding his fingers into her hair until her scalp ached, forcing her against his skin. It was impossible to resist, to defy his will. She could sense that he intended to make her bow to it, and she would be the one to suffer if she did not. Her tongue brushed against the first scratch, recoiling from the salty-iron taste of his blood. She could feel the differing textures of his skin where it was smooth and where it was torn. He moved against her, pressing his skin against her mouth. Her tongue touched it tentatively again; she felt his mouth against her throat, his hand on her breast and a shuddering weakness possessed her. It seemed an age before she had cleansed his wound to his satisfaction, the movements of his heavy body against her own intensely disturbing.
When at last he released her, his eyes were dark, almost black, and they glittered hotly over her skin. ‘It seems you are not the cold creature I had assumed,’ he told her throatily. ‘Perhaps after all there will be pleasure in what goes forward—for both of us!’
‘No!’ She cried out her denial, hating him for even daring to suggest that she might find his embrace anything other than loathsome, but he ignored it, laughing at her, pulling her into his arms and savaging her body with his mouth and hands until she could no longer resist him, or the dark force he seemed to conjure up at will inside her. When his mouth finally stopped tormenting her skin, she opened her eyes to discover that she was still clasping him, her hands inside his shirt, gripping the firm muscles of his upper arms. He was breathing as fast as she was herself, and as he looked down at her, an aching weakness took possession of her lower body. Simply by looking at her he was turning her bones to water, making her yearn for…Helplessly, her glance slid over his body, noting its arousal and tension. His head bent towards her and this time she did not avoid it. His mouth touched hers, brushing it lightly and then fiercely until she was clinging helplessly to him, gripped by a need that seemed to drive out all rational thought.
When he moved away from her to strip off his clothes, she made no attempt to get up and escape. Wordlessly, she watched him, drinking in the masculine perfection of him in the light from the fire. He came to her, bending over her to remove her garters and then roll down her silk stockings. His mouth brushed the instep of her foot and she quivered in mute response, shuddering as his mouth moved lazily upwards, over her skin. Torn between the need to escape the intimate intrusion of his touch and the even stronger need to prolong it, her body tensed and then arched as though in obedience to some unspoken commands. His tongue teased the silken flesh of her thigh and she cried out his name, denying with words what she invited with actions.
As he knelt over her she could see the ridged muscles of his back, the taut flatness of his buttocks. She struggled to sit up and ran her fingers slowly down his spine, tracing each indentation, wondering at the satin smoothness of his skin, so delicate in comparison to the hard bone beneath. He shuddered beneath her touch, muttered something against her skin and drew her down beneath him so that he could lie between her thighs.
She felt the heat and maleness of him hard against her and reacted instinctively to its intrusion. His mouth on hers silenced her protests, muffling her cries of denial, frustrating her attempts to cry out against what he was doing. With her mind she hated the maleness of him and all that it represented but her body…how it ached and longed for his penetration and possession!
* * *
Muzzily, Jenna sat up and switched on her bedside lamp. Her mouth was dry, her whole body gripped in fierce tension. She often had dreams, but never one like this, never one so real that she could actually feel the ache of deprivation deep in the pit of her stomach. She felt acutely sick, shocked by the intensely physical nature of her dream and its undeniable reality. How could her mind so clearly have conjured up the image of that long-dead man? And to dream in such a way of him!
Acute self-disgust gripped her. Rape in any of its many forms was totally abhorrent to her, and yet she had just dreamed…Or had her mind merely provided her with an acceptable cloak for a desire to which she did not want to admit? Had she dreamed of being forced to endure caresses that she could not admit that she actively desired? Her mind rejected the thought instinctively. Her dream was just a result of becoming so intensely involved with the house. She had been struck by the portrait right from the moment she first saw it. But to imbue a portrait with all the attributes of a living, breathing man! Her stomach twisted into aching knots, her body tense. Forget it, she told herself determinedly. She must just dismiss the whole thing as some sort of mental aberration.
But as dawn broke and sleep continued to evade her, she found her dream wasn’t quite as easy to dismiss as she had hoped. It was the most erotic and flagrantly sexual experience she could ever remember having, and even now she could not shake the heavy lassitude from her body. When she closed her eyes she could still conjure up the swift surge of excitement her dream lover’s touch had aroused within her; she could still see those sapphire eyes…still feel the warmth of him in her bed. Angry with herself, she pushed aside the bedclothes and swung her feet to the floor. Since she could not sleep she might as well use the time to work. She had enough to do.