Argent (Hundred Days Series Book 3) (23 page)

“Officers in wilder parts pay their men
protection money
. Bribes to keep their obedience. In Newcastle, or Trenton there is mob rule among the detachments. The men do as they please, asking a great many
favors
of the citizens. And they are not always polite about being denied something.”

              Alexandra's chin raised a fraction. “We could have stood against them.”

              “No, we could not! Six men with pistols, muskets, knives. I'm not even flattered that you think so. It's foolishness.”

              “Foolishness?” She came away from the table, still claiming the sheet with white knuckles.

              “One instruction, Alexandra: to stay where you were told!”

              Her voice was hot, angry, and her eyes blazed like he’d never seen them before. “I don't take orders from anyone,
general
!”

              “That is apparent!” he bellowed back. “But you do not seem to grasp how it would
ruin
me to watch them hurt you!” He threw the pistol down onto a ladder-back chair beside the door, panting for breath to cool his temper. “You might not take orders at home,” he turned back slowly, grinding his words between clenched teeth, “but out
here
, in these moments, you will damned well take them from me.”

              Alexandra's eyes clouded, her shoulders slumped. For a moment she wouldn't meet his eyes.               He hoped she finally understood. Then she shook her head.              

              She might understand, but she was too damned proud and too beaten down by Paulina to admit it, and admission was what he needed to hear. He took a step toward her.

              “No. I am going back to London.” She backed away, tripped up by the sheet.

              Spencer took a strange pleasure in her widening eyes.
Fear
. And if she was feeling even a fraction of what he had with the soldier watching her,
stalking
her, that put them even already. “You are not going anywhere.” He let her swallow hard at an imaginary threat, not bothering to point out that she
couldn't;
the night was pitch black and pouring rain.

              “I'm sorry,” she whispered. She was, he had no doubt, but it wasn't enough. He took another step.

              “I’m going,” she murmured, glancing behind with open surprise as her back came up against a window. Her jaw set, and Alix squared her shoulders, not an ounce of intimidation on her face. She was fiercely beautiful.

              Spencer admitted that maybe he
shouldn't
touch her, right then. He wasn't feeling rational, and she wasn't helping.

He had struggled to confess his fear. Alexandra hadn't seemed to grasp what the soldiers could do to her, and what he would suffer if she'd been brutalized and violated while he stood helpless. More than anything, he needed to hear that she would never put him in that position again. She was contrite; it showed in a tender frown creasing her face, but no words were offered to match it.

              He snapped out a hand, taking her wrist, willing his own fear into her with fierce pressure.

              “Don't …” she protested, but she didn’t pull away. A hot blush burned her cheeks, and her full lower lip rolled out in a near pout. Her scent perfumed his every breath. It didn't quell his anger; instead it pulled at his insides. Stoked his lust and fanned something else he'd felt, but for days had been unable to name.

              She tried pulling her arm away. He snatched it back, pinned it to his chest and held her fingers to his heart, holding her eyes. Clutching the sheet beneath her fist, he drew down with even, uninterrupted tension. Her fingers relaxed their grip in surrender.

              “Spencer, I'm sorry,” she breathed, relaxing and leaning into him.

              Tension drained away at her words.

              “I live to touch you,” he whispered back, watching the slow reveal of breasts and hips, swallowing hard. The torrent of the last hour threatened to undo him, and the storm outside was nothing compared to what he felt looking at her now. “I'll put my hands on you, take you here on this bed.” Thunder rattled the windows, punctuating his promise. The sheet pooled over his bare feet in a whisper.

              Slender fingers circled his wrist in response, tighter until her nails dug half-moons into his skin. Her eyes narrowed to slits, raking him. She stepped in and ate up the space between their bodies. “You will take what
I
offer you.” Her arm bent, a vice around his neck, and forced his lips to hers while the soft mounds of her breasts pressed him away.

              Grasping Alexandra by both arms he turned her, drove her steadily down onto the mattress. “I'll take you now, or you me.” He had no patience for buttons and tore at his breeches until their flap fell away in surrender. He worked a knee between hers. “And again after. Either way, say you'll have me.” He murmured his plea into the silken curve of her shoulder. “Please Alexandra, say it.”
Was it for her benefit, or his own?
             

She raised both arms to him in silent invitation, stealing victory for herself. He drove into her, forgetting the question.

              In a flash there was only the searing heat of her body gripping him. When he'd got himself inside of her all he thought possible, he pressed harder still. He would possess her, even her deepest parts. Spencer pounded at her, short and sharp, as though he could drive a claim onto her very soul.

              Alexandra lay still beneath him, not touching any more than their joined bodies required. Eyes pressed closed, her lips barely parted as though she were napping.
Retribution
.

No woman had ever equaled her for exasperating him, or quenching something inside. He was desperate to be touched, to please her, catch his name on her lips. Her refusal spurred him on.

              He traced her belly, the curve of her hip, gripped her thigh and raised her leg to his waist. He murmured against the warm ridges of her ear, the skin of her neck; mindless, illicit confessions punctuated by urgent groans.

She gripped him deep inside and cried out at last. A trembling started in her limbs, and Spencer felt her transformation beneath him, taut and ready. Her body communicated to his that she had shown him his place, forgiven him. She arched and raised to meet his hips.

              His heart hammered against his ribs, trapped in a too-small cage. Sweat plastered their thighs and peeled at her belly each time he drew away. He sucked a breath at her finger tracing a damp path along his spine, and anticipated her brutality. Nails bit deep into his buttocks and scraped up his back in a path stung by cool air. Tension in his gut pulled, frayed, and unraveled.

              His effort shifted the mattress, scraped the bed frame over floor timbers and into the wall. He couldn't get enough of her, be enough inside her. “Look at me, Alexandra,” he managed, panting.               Alexandra turned her face away, pressed the back of one hand to her mouth, drawing desperate breaths through her nose.

              He jerked the hand from her lips and raised her leg higher onto his hip. “There's no one to hear. Only me, love.”

              At his words her head turned, and she cried out in earnest then, sobbing, igniting his determination. She clutched fistfuls of the sheet beneath them. “Spencer,
Spencer
...”

              His name on her lips picked the thread of his will and undid the last of his control. He ducked his head, took a nipple in the vice of his teeth and tasted salt, coaxing out a sharp cry.

              Breath from Alexandra's soft animal groans fanned his chest. She raised fully now, as if too proud to allow him down onto her. He had no say; she took him as deep as she pleased.

              She pleaded, chastised. He felt but didn't hear the words. Alexandra quivered, her body clutching at his, wringing him ruthlessly for the cries he spilled into her mouth as he spilled himself inside her.

              Alexandra took something from him in those final moments. He felt it in the silence after, listening to raindrops spatter against the panes ahead of each gust. His heart beat slowly in his chest, too slowly for what they had just shared, as though she'd made him content by force. Her own heart beat back, steady against him, reassuring.

             
What had changed?

              Attrition. They'd beaten at each others' will until they had both won. Or lost. Spencer wasn't certain which had occurred, and which was welcomed. He only knew that it was
right
. He fell to the mattress, gathering Alexandra's limp frame to his. She nestled against him and he caught her yawn. Then worry drifted away, and he slept.

*              *              *

              As quickly as the storm had come it passed, both inside and out. They'd fought out the night's animosity, inflicting punishment on one another until exhausted and resigned to sweet surrender. Tension had drained away like raindrops along the gutter.

              Alexandra lay on her back in the crook of Spencer's arm, cradled by the mattress and warmed by quilts, watching cotton wool clouds billow over the ocean's wide blue line. Sun glinted off wave crests and lighted the clouds silver at their edges.

He was awake beside her; slow, even breaths gave him away. She reached up and cradled his face in her palm.

              “Alexandra.”

              “Mm?”

              “No. Alexandra, look at me.” His rich voice trembled over an urgent bent to the words.

              She sat up, rolled onto him, and brushed the hair from his forehead.

              Spencer returned the favor, raking strands from her face, tracing her back from shoulder to hip, holding her eyes all the while. “I do not believe that we are having an affair anymore.”

              “No?” Alix thought she understood, by his expression and by the tense thread that had drawn between them for days, a thread which forced them to cling together or snap apart.

              “I'm angry,” he said in response to an unspoken question, “but not with you.”

              “Then what?”

              “London.” He sighed and scrubbed a palm over his face. “Crowded, noisy, clinging with all its busyness. Not a moment's peace to be had. A hundred pairs of eyes watching. You and I in the middle of it, shaving our words, hiding our glances. I think of being forced to spend days apart and …” He raised hands into trembling fists, eyes pressed shut a moment. “I could strike something.”

              Alix leaned onto one elbow, clasped his fist and smiled. “Spencer?”

              His eyes snapped open, wide and questioning in time with his hand, and he twined their fingers.

              “Are you saying …?”

              Nodding, he raised his head from the pillow and caught her lips. She barely registered the sensation, heart pounding until her head swam.
He loved her.

              “Madly, Alexandra.”

              “Then what should I do? Chas, Paulina …I have to go back, for him.”

              “Would Chas do the same for you?” he demanded.

              “No,” she admitted. “No, I don’t think so, but he is still my brother. I can't postpone going back forever.” She sighed at an ache in her chest when she thought of her brother alone with Paulina. “It’s all so tangled.”

              “I would never ask you to turn your back on your brother, but I also don’t believe that flying to London is necessary. Or wise, considering Paulina’s hand in last night’s visit.”

              “What do I do?” She repeated, desperate.

              “What do
we
do.”

              Alix shook her head, not understanding.             

              “I want to be married,” he blurted, looking as surprised as she felt.

              Alix held her breath, waiting for the spell to break, to wake up. One moment continued into the next unbroken, and she stretched further along Spencer's frame. “Are you certain?”

              “Yes.” He nodded with a grave slowness. There was a desperation on his face, to his words which Alix felt mirrored in her heart. “Will you have me or no?”

              It was a dangerous question, treasonous and defiant, tempting her to do the very thing she had feared for years. Only now, Silas seemed much smaller in her recollection, his reach shorter and Paulina’s thumb not as heavy as it had been just a week earlier. Spencer could protect her, would fight for her. Love her.

              “You ask as though I have a choice.” She pulled their hands apart and laced her arms behind his neck, trailing kisses across his mouth until he growled and fit their lips together for a long moment. “I will,” she breathed. “Of course I will.”

              “I'm sorry for last night. It wasn't gentlemanly behavior.”