A thwarted expression settled on her face.
Gregor threw back a swallow of his port.
Meanwhile, she paced about, and her luscious figure was outlined in the candlelight, forcing him to observe it. This squabble would only be settled by an apology on her side or a rough bout of carnal congress. Preferably both.
“Notice if you will that I answered you civilly when you quizzed me about my doings. You would do well to learn such manners.”
She cursed aloud, her annoyance obvious.
Gregor laughed at the irony. “You are the most contrary woman I have ever known.”
She alighted on that, but not in the way he might have expected.
“What about the women you have known?”
She truly was in need of something to think upon.
“Tell me about them,” she added as she drew to a halt in front of him. “I want to learn.”
There was such a demanding air about her that Gregor suddenly relished the prospect of telling her every sordid detail. “You want to know about the whores I have encountered?”
Her lips tightened and her eyes flashed angrily. “Yes.”
Inflamed by her challenge, Gregor put down his glass. “In that case, I’ll tell you.”
He stood and snatched her into his arms, then thrust her toward the bed with one arm around her waist. Once there, he threw her down on the mattress, relishing the way her breasts spilled from her bodice when he did so. He put one knee on the bed beside her, pinning her there with his weight on her skirts. Steadying himself with one hand as he arched over her, he rubbed the other briskly over the mounds of her breasts as they spilled free.
Her eyes flashed with anger, but she put her hands flat on the bed. Her expression revealed her emotions. She had instigated this situation; now she would have to suffer it. Gregor smiled. He had never known such stubbornness in a woman. Even so, her nipples had crested and were delightfully peaked, and he could tell that the flush in her cheeks was brought on by desire as well as anger.
He threw off his coat and hauled his shirt over his head, tossing it aside.
Resentfully, she cast an eye over his bared chest.
“You see this?” He drew her attention to the small scar that ran down his left side.
As she peered at it, she nodded.
“I gained the wound in a knife fight in Morocco. The prize was a night with a dark-skinned beauty who had a talent for bringing a man off by stroking every part of his body with exotic oils, before mounting his oiled cock.”
Jessie writhed against the bed, her hands fisting.
“I won that prize, and enjoyed her immensely. In India I bought a whore who had pictures painted on her skin and precious stones studded through her ears, gems that dazzled me in the candlelight while I fucked her.”
Jessie cursed beneath her breath.
“In Italy I drank sweet wine from between a whore’s cupped breasts, and ate succulent fruit from her cunt.”
Jessie twisted under him, looking at him as if she hated him.
“I have seen a dancer so agile that she could pick up with the plump lips of her puss the coins men offered her.”
“Such talent,” Jessie snapped, her voice ragged with emotion. “It is little wonder you have been abroad so long.”
Gregor laughed, his bad humor mellowing as the prospect of bedding her took hold. “There are temptations aplenty, I’ll grant you that. Why, I have seen a woman charm a snake so thoroughly that it entered her cunt, offering its head and length to her, for her pleasure.”
“It is a wonder you came back here at all, with such lurid delights available!”
Despite her angry retorts, he could see that his diversions aroused her, too. She writhed against the mattress, her hands clutching at the surface, but when she looked at him he saw resentment in her eyes. Would he ever fathom this woman? The only thing he knew with any sense of conviction was that they both had to find release, and soon. His cock ached to mount her.