Seduced by a Stranger (20 page)

Then he did. Oh, God, he did. A quick, smooth thrust and he was inside her, filling her, joined so close and tight, his pelvis pressed against the most sensitive part of her. She thought he would pump, hard and fast, seek his own pleasure. But that was not Gabriel’s way. Instead, he rocked his hips only a little. Just a little. Not enough.

She gasped and writhed, but he whispered—“Still. Be still, Catherine”—and continued that maddening, sensual, gentle rocking that wound her tighter and took her higher. But not high enough.

There was carnality in that, in giving herself over to his will, his desires. His control.

She shuddered.

Catching the back of her knee, he bent her leg and lifted it until her ankle rested on his shoulder, then did the same with the other, dipping his head to kiss her neck, her jaw. She clenched her fists tight to the headboard, beguiled, seduced. She wanted this, wanted him. Liked the places he was taking her.

Then he began a new rhythm, a hot, slick pump and slide, fast and rough enough that it left her mindless, left her gasping. She was lost, her hands tearing free of the place she had willingly fettered them, coming to rest on his shoulders, the cloth of his coat scratchy beneath her palms as she fisted and crushed it. She cried out as he pushed deeper, then withdrew, pleasure driving her, driving him.

One arm was outstretched to take his weight, the other cupped around her buttock, kneading roughly as he moved. He was beautiful, flexing and straining above her. She splayed her hands across his buttocks, pulling him closer still.

For an instant, she wished he were naked, wished it was his warm, smooth skin beneath her palms rather than cloth. And then she lost the thought, lost everything but the sensations he evoked.

Tension wound her like a clock key. And then it broke, she broke, a thousand glittering pieces falling apart and coming together with each pulsing wave that crashed over her. She threw back her head and screamed, the pleasure so hard and tight she was certain she would not survive.

Above her, suddenly rigid, Gabriel made no sound, only pulled from her and found his own release, his seed pumping from him, his head bowed, his long, beautiful hair sliding forward to brush her breasts.

She clung to him, her skin smeared with his seed, her heart pounding.

Slowly, he lowered her legs from his shoulders, turning his head to kiss the inside of first one knee, then the other. Then he smiled at her, a satyr’s smile. She could not do other than smile in return.

Rolling to his side, he drew her close, and to her astonishment, he smeared his seed all over her belly with the tips of his fingers, then turned and kissed her on her mouth with leisurely care.

“I—” She glanced down, watching his fingers trace slow swirls, and felt the dark edge of her sadness creep into this moment of joy.

She should tell him that there was no need for him to withdraw and spill his seed outside her body. There as no need for him to fear that she would catch with child. Tears pricked her eyes. She should tell him.

But to say it aloud…She never had before. It would make it real.

Of course it was real. She had known it for some time.

Why did she behave so foolishly now?
Tell him.

“What is it, Catherine?” he asked, his voice low, laced with tension. “Do you know regret already?”

Regret? For lying with him? For experiencing what she had only imagined in the past?

“No. Never.” She drew a deep breath, feeling the pull on her lungs that warned her she could inhale no deeper, then she blew out all the air in a rush. “It is only…You need not withdraw like that.” Her voice broke then, and with it, her composure, and she bit hard on her lip to fight back the tears. Finally, she whispered, “I cannot have a child. Not ever. I cannot—”

His hand stilled. His body tensed. For a long moment, he said nothing, and then, “You cannot have
another
child.”

He knew. Somehow, he knew, though she had not told him.

Of course, she should have expected that, perceptive as he was. Perhaps he saw the subtle signs on her body, though she had come away from her pregnancy with few changes save slightly rounder hips and darker nipples, and two fine, silvery lines that marked the skin above her pubis.

Whatever had given her away, he had seen it and guessed the cause.

“No, I cannot.” Pain twisted her heart until she thought the organ would break or burst or tear from her breast to lie beating on the floor. Old pain. She had thought she had it caged. She swallowed, wet her lips, dizzy with the speed that her emotions had risen high as a bird, then plummeted like a stone. “How did you know?”

“I did not. Not with any certainty. Until now.”

Of course. He had tricked her into revealing all, and he had revealed nothing. Not even his body. He was yet fully clothed.

Had she been the only one to participate here? To feel the things she felt? To feel lo—

No. She would not think that, would not string the letters together to form the word. Not even in her private thoughts. Love was like sand between her fingers, or smoke. Grab hold as tightly as possible, and still it would slip away.

Resting his chin lightly on her crown, he asked, “Where is your baby, Catherine?”

“He died.” Liar. He did not die. He was killed. He was murdered. His life was stolen.

She could not share this. Could trust no one with her pain. With the horrible truths that haunted her. Why would she trust him with any of her secrets when he trusted her with nothing? Nothing at all.

He was her lover, not her friend.

She was mad to do this. Mad to lie here. The physicality of their joining was one thing, the deceptive promise of emotional succor quite another. She needed to get away, to flee. She needed—

“Oh, God!” she cried, and tried to leap from the bed, but Gabriel only tightened his grip and turned her so she curled against his body, his arms wrapped tightly around her as horrible, choking sobs tore free. The torrent was shocking and sudden, a brutal wrenching-away of her walls and defenses that she had not expected, certainly not wanted. But she could not seem to make it stop.

On some level, she understood that she cried and ranted, words flowing like a sea of poison, that she struggled in his embrace, that she hit him, pummeling his chest with her closed fists.

That he let her.

In ragged, agonized spurts she cursed fate and men and the brutal world that cast women as lesser beings without rights, without recourse. And he held her and listened, not saying a word.

At length, she sniffed and scrubbed the back of her hand along her cheek, wiping away her tears, then shivered. She was naked still. Without loosing his hold on her, Gabriel shifted to draw the coverlet out from beneath him and drape it over her.

“It seems I cry more when I am around you than I have cried—” Almost did she say
since my son was murdered
, but in the end found she could not. “In a very long while,” she said instead, feeling drained and faintly ill.

“And I thank you for that.”

“Thank me?” She tipped her head to study his expression. It was as it had always been, calm, cool. “Why do you thank me? Because you see me at my worst?”

“You have no worst. You are who you are, every bit of you, every part of your present and past. You allow yourself to feel, to grieve when you are with me.” He stroked her hair back from her face. “Trust is a gift, Catherine. You have given me a gift.”

His assertions made her want to cry all over again. And they stole her own words because she knew not what to say. She did not trust him. Not fully. And she certainly did not want to allow such horrific swells of emotion to burst free when she was with him. It only seemed that circumstances arranged for her to behave this way.

The first time he had comforted her as she sobbed out her grief over Martha’s murder, he had stumbled upon her. That was happenstance, nothing more.

But today…perhaps today it
was
because she trusted him, felt safe with him. At least a little. She had no idea if she would ever trust him enough to tell all.

“What do you know of me?” she asked, certain that he knew all manner of secrets, though not her deepest ones.

“I know you became the ward of Jasper Hunt, Baron Sunderley, when he assumed the title after your father was killed. I know you became his lover, and now I know you bore him a child.”

She swallowed and nodded. “He wooed me. Made me such pretty promises. We would be wed, he said. I believed him. In the beginning, I loved him. With the love that a young girl bestows on her first suitor. Innocent, naïve love in a heart and mind that had no understanding of what might follow a first, chaste kiss. He came to my bed in the darkest hours of the night, and I lay there as he did what he would. Always quickly. Never”—she bit her lip, unwilling to compare, but seeing no other way to make it clear to him how she felt—“not like this. Never like this.

“It was not long before he began to change. He did not like the way I wore my hair and had me fix it in a different style. He did not like the gown I wore to supper and had me return to my chamber and don a different one, then said I was too slow and let me have no supper at all. Then he did not like my tone when I spoke. ‘Can you not be soft, Catherine?’ he would say. ‘Can you not be quieter?’ And other days it would be ‘Can you not speak up? Must you whisper?’ As time passed, he began to grow short and sharp with me all the time. Just the sight of me was enough to turn his temper. I pleased him less and less.”

“There are those in this world that will not be pleased no matter what we do,” Gabriel murmured.

“Yes. I know that now. But I did not know it then. He used to make me beg. ‘Say please, my cat.’ One night, I did not beg prettily enough. He took up a small wooden box from my table. It was a birthday gift from my grandmother the year she died, a small treasure that had not been sold to pay my father’s debts. He used his knife to pry off a bit of the ivory inlay. Then he used the heavy handle of the poker to smash it to dust. I begged, but it only made him angrier. He pried off the next bit and the next, and in the end, he smashed the whole box, bringing the poker down again and again, bidding me reach in and save the damned thing if I wanted it so badly.” She fell silent, shuddering as memories toppled against memories like a line of domino bones.

“You sketch for me a skeleton of your life with him,” Gabriel said. “I suspect the flesh of it was even worse.” There was leashed fury in his tone. She was stunned to hear it. He was normally so calm and even.

“Yes.” The word was no more than a breath as she remembered all, remembered that Jasper had broken her, but that, she would tell no one.

For a long while, they only lay on the bed, wrapped around each other, breathing in unison. Then Gabriel asked in his ever-blunt way, “And your child, Catherine?”

Her child. Her baby.

“When I became pregnant, he locked me away and told the servants I was not to be let free and none were to speak to me. I spent the months of my confinement in a single room. The windows were painted shut.” She could not help but glance at her hands now, remembering the way she had clawed at the frames until she bled. “The solitude was terrible. I think there is nothing so painful as to be alone, completely and utterly alone.”

“Yes,” Gabriel agreed, a wealth of meaning in that single word. She wondered that he understood. That he
knew
. She could hear it, feel it in the subtle tension that suddenly laced his frame.

“When were you alone?” she asked, certain that they shared this, that he had been locked away as she had been locked away, but unable to see the possibility of how.

“This is your time, Catherine,” Gabriel replied. “There is time enough for my story.”

Was there? Or was he simply avoiding sharing any of his secrets with her?

“Tell me,” he urged.

“Why?”

For an instant he looked nonplussed, and tilted his head in contemplation. “Because I wish to know.”

He was nothing if not consistent. He wished to know and so he expected an answer. Oddly, despite the tension of the moment and the terrible memories that bit at her, she found a measure of comfort, and perhaps even amusement, at his reply.

“Jasper…” She paused, hating to even say his name, hating that he still had that power over her, the power to make any emotion surge in her breast. “Jasper brought a doctor when my pains came, and when it was done, my baby born, the doctor took a”—she swallowed against the horror that swelled at the recollection of the hooked crotchet: cold metal and ripping pain—“he did something inside me, and I sickened after that. I burned with fever. I almost died. I remember him coming again and again, bleeding me, and speaking of scarring to my female parts. He told Jasper I could never again bear a child.”

“I will take you to London,” Gabriel said. “To Germany. To France. There are doctors there.”

She stared at him, not understanding at all. Then it came to her with stunning clarity. “You mean to take me to physicians until you find one that can give me hope?”

“Of course.”

“Why?” She shook her head, her confusion absolute. “Because you want a child?”

She could not misread the appalled horror that crossed his features, a fleeting flicker of expression that faded as quickly as it appeared.

“No.” Then, “I would take away your pain,” he offered gently, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Though it made no sense to her, given that he must surely need an heir, he clearly did not want a child, yet he wanted her to be able to bear one.

“You do understand the contradiction there?” she asked. A moment passed. “I have seen several doctors. Whatever funds I had were spent on them. The answer is always the same. There are no children in my future.”

Instead of offering a reply, he leaned close and kissed her lids, her cheek, her mouth. Then he drew the sheets higher over her naked form, rose, and crossed to the bell pull.

“What are you doing?” she asked.