Sinful (23 page)

“You are no doubt wondering about that afternoon in the carriage. You are probably questioning if that was only fucking, too. You are wondering if I felt anything more for you than fleeting physical lust.”

“You are wrong,” she said, her voice trembling with hurt even though she tried to disguise it. “You forced me to admit that what we shared was not an act for either of us. You made
me tell you the truth. Now, you tell me the truth. Tell me why you would pretend, still, to be the heartless roué.”

With a flash of anger, he had her pressed up against the wall. “I
am
heartless. Haven’t you realized that yet, Jane?”

“Matthew—”

He shoved his body against hers, trying to intimidate her. “Why do you insist on seeing the good when it is not there? Go back, Jane, before I ruin you.”

She smoothed her hands down his chest and he moved away. “Don’t…paw me,” he gasped, shuddering.

What she saw confused her. She had touched him before, while she had cared for him. He had wanted it, yet now he recoiled from it. What had happened to him to make him so angry, so full of pain?

The dreams, the crying out in his sleep. She remembered, when he was ill, he had fought the night men. He hadn’t wanted to be touched then.

Suddenly she wanted to hold him, to love him, to erase the past with her body.

“Matthew, tell me the truth, what happened in your past to make you abhor being touched.”

He looked shocked at her assumption, but it was swiftly replaced by anger. “You wouldn’t be able to listen to all the sordid details, Jane. You couldn’t possibly fathom the atrocities I have committed with this body.”

She reached for him but he evaded her touch. “Christ, leave me alone. Get out of my life! I don’t want you in it.”

“What of your soul, Matthew? Will you be able to relinquish me there?”

He glared at her, his chest heaving in agitation. “I haven’t got a soul, Jane. Besides, it’s been all of what, two days? You are hardly embedded inside me.”

“It’s been weeks, Matthew. I think we became entwined the
moment you arrived at the hospital. There is no denying what we shared.”

“What? Lust?” He laughed. “I wanted sex, Jane.
Fucking.
Can’t you understand that? It’s still what I want, to fuck the virginal spinster. I want to see if I can make you pretty as I shove my cock into you. There? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

She shook her head, denying his words, his purposefully hurtful words that he intended to use to make her run away from him.

“Do you know what I do to women like you, Jane? I look down my nose at them and laugh. I stomp all over their tender little feelings and don’t look back. You amuse me, Jane.”

“What has made you so full of hate?” she whispered. She reached out to touch him, but he captured her wrist before she could do so. Her lip quivered and she blinked back the tears that threatened to spill. He was hurting, lashing out because she had glimpsed a side of him he didn’t want her to know about. She wanted to soothe him, but oh, God, his words hurt, and her heart…it was being crushed.

She ran, ignoring the roar of her name in Matthew’s anguished voice.

He ran out of the cottage, dragged her back against him as she kicked and flailed. He turned her in his arms and kissed her, hard, forcing her to accept him. She felt the vibrations in him, the anger, the pain, and she gave in, allowed him to carry her back inside the cottage and put her against the wall.

“This is the only way I can do it, Jane,” he rasped as he lifted her skirt and ran his palms down her thighs. “I’m ruined for anything soft. I…I can’t allow your body on me, my past—” He choked back the thought and reached for her, gazing deeply into her eyes. “I’m broken, Jane, and I want so desperately for you to fix me.”

He tore at her dress, pulling the tapes free, sliding the bodice down until it was at her hips. The petticoats came next, then were discarded in a pile. Her drawers, he tore at, shredding them. He turned her around to face the wall and untied her corset strings with impatient hands. When he reached her bottom, he palmed her buttocks, pinching them, squeezing them.

Jane knew what Matthew needed. It was not softness or ten
derness. He needed the demon from his past purged, and she was willing to be the method.

Her corset fell to her feet and he removed her chemise, leaving her naked with her back to him. He was not soft. Not romantic in his words.

“Bend forward,” he ordered, “so I can see your pink folds.”

She did as he asked, supporting herself with her hands on the wall. He touched her, spreading the wetness up the crease of her buttocks.

“I want to fuck you like this.”

Her body heated.

“You’ve already creamed,” he whispered hotly in her ear. “You flow thick with excitement, Jane. Could it be that you are just as deviant as I in your needs?”

“Don’t say that,” she gasped as he circled her high between her crease. “You are not deviant.”

He laughed as he sunk his wet finger into her. “No? Would you think I was if I were to tell you that I have had fingers here,” he murmured as he gently moved his finger in and out of her bottom. She groaned. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel like his fingers had this afternoon when they had filled her quim.

“It’s sinful, isn’t it?” he whispered into her ear. “But it feels so good.”

He pulled out and turned her around. Reaching for her leg, he wrapped it around his waist, exposing her. He touched her, parted her, watching as he worked her sex. She wanted to hang on to him, but he reached for her hands and made her grasp the curtain behind her.

He undid his trousers, and his cock sprang free, jutting out at her. “This is fucking, Jane. It’s all I do. Do you want it?”

She whimpered and watched as he stroked the head of his phallus down her sex.

“Do you want this dirty thing inside you?” he asked. He
met her gaze, and Jane realized that he was not there with her. His body was, but his mind was somewhere else, some past time when he was young and…abused.

“I want to sink it into you,” he whispered. “I want you to want to claim it. Claim me.”

Her heart broke for him, for the yearning she heard in his voice.

“I want you to watch me inside you and…not turn away in disgust as you see me buried deep, knowing it’s me.”

“Matthew,” she whispered, reaching for him. “I want you.”

He pushed the head inside her, not far, only enough to feel that he was there. He looked down and watched as he inched farther inside her. She saw his lashes flicker, then look up at her. “You give me this, your virginity?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love me, then, Jane?”

She did. God help her for loving such a tortured beast, but she did. She didn’t know how, or why, just that she did, and that she wanted nothing more than to give him what he wanted. It was the only thing of value she possessed. The only gift she could give to the one she loved.

Guiding her hand to his shaft, she shoved him forward.

“Jane?”

It was a question, and she gazed into his eyes and arched her hips forward. Her one hand was still holding the curtain, the other was wrapped around his thick phallus. With a nod, she gave her consent to him to take what he needed from her.

With a swift thrust he buried himself deep and moaned, pressing his face into her neck. She wanted to clasp him to her, but was afraid he would stop, so she clutched the curtain and felt his cock make love to her.

She wished it was his body loving her, too, but he wasn’t ready for it.

“Won’t you watch?” he asked as he kissed her cheek. She didn’t understand his need, but she looked down to where their bodies were joined. His hard shaft glistened with her body’s excitement as it moved in and out of her. His hand left her buttock to trace the rim of her vagina. He was feeling himself stretching her. “You’re so full of me,” he murmured, his words a hot caress against her cheek. “Stretched wide, with me inside you.”

She nodded and watched him pull out and sink in again, her body and heart leaping at the primal possession of him taking her.

“I never watched, Jane,” he whispered. “I couldn’t bear to. It was shameful, sinful. But this…this looks beautiful.
Right.
” He reached for her hand and brought it to her sex where he made her touch, made her feel him moving in and out of her. It was arousing, so much so that she gasped, her nipples beading in pleasure, and she closed her eyes, enjoying the sensation riding within her.

“Open your eyes, Jane. I want you to know that it’s me here with you—in you.”

“I know it’s you.” She sighed, feeling her climax steadily growing.

“I need to know,” he said, his voice pleading. “I need to know it’s you. I need to see
your
eyes.”

Their gazes met, held, and he looked deep within her eyes as he moved inside her. He stroked her, his hands rubbing her bottom, stroking in caresses before he teased her clitoris and stroked her harder when she begged. When she clamped her thighs tight around him, he captured her face in his hands and withdrew from her, emptying himself onto her belly. Then he fell into her, his head buried in her neck, and Jane wrapped her arms around him, holding him through the storm.

Hours later, Matthew sat in a chair near the hearth. He had dressed Jane in her chemise and petticoat and had placed her on the settee, exhausted, languid. He had watched her sleep and felt his chest hurt with a mixture of euphoria and heartache.

What had he done to her?

His limp cock was dusted with drops of Jane’s blood. He had taken her virginity, a gift she said she was saving for the man she loved. Damn it, he had coerced a vow of love from her. He had not given her his vow in return.

Was that what this was, this pain in his chest? Was this love? Or was it guilt?

No, he couldn’t bring himself to feel remorse for what he’d done. It had been beautiful to watch her take him, to accept him as he was. Unfortunately, he could not accept himself as he was—damaged, broken. He was beyond repair, despite her hoping that Jane might put him back together again.

She stirred, and her eyes opened. Her glasses were on the table, and he thought about reaching for them and passing them to her, but he decided he wanted to look into her eyes with nothing in between. She had seen enough of him when he had been taking her. She had glimpsed deeply into a part of himself he locked away from the world.

“What are you thinking, Matthew?”

His lashes lowered, shielding his eyes, disguising the shame he felt. “How much I loathe myself. How I despise what I have done to you, Jane. I have wronged you. Not only…now, but in the past, after…” He swallowed hard, his lashes finally lifting, meeting Jane’s direct, unwavering gaze. “When you look at me like that, Jane, I feel compelled to confess everything I am to you. Your eyes, they pierce me, down to the very depths of the darkness inside me. I wish what you saw was clean and
pure, but I know there is only dark obsidian there. I wish what was there could please you, but I only know how to hurt, to seek to punish…. Jane, I sought out prostitutes after I left you on the sidewalk. I took them, knowing they weren’t you…pretending they were. Wishing, in vain, that they were.”

Her gaze softened, filling him with remorse. “I think both of us retreated to the comfort of familiarity. You returned to sex to numb your feelings. I hid myself behind a veneer of self-righteousness. I sought to punish you, as well. In our own way, we both mourned for what might have been. You owed me nothing, Matthew. Most especially your fidelity. In truth, if you had asked for mine, I would have refused you, purely out of spite. You see,” she whispered, “I, too, have flaws. We are both human. As you said, both scarred. By retreating to the way of life that has kept us safe after our abruptly aborted childhoods, we sought not to add to those wounds. We’ve learned to live and survive, the only way we knew how, behind a veil of detachment.”

“How can it be that you can see behind this mask of me?”

She smiled, one of sadness and perceptiveness. “Because I look out through the same sort of mask, Matthew. Because…we share the same fears. The same flaws. Our hearts, our souls yearn for the same things, except we cannot give voice to that fact. Can’t accept it because of the horror, the loss of control. Because behind the mask, we are only human. Fragile and frightened. And lonely, I think.”

“Yes, lonely,” he murmured, studying her face, which suddenly was luminous with beauty, which glowed with wisdom and insight and a soul-shattering amount of understanding and absolution.

“Neither of us wishes to drop the mask, to allow others a glimpse beyond the facade for fear that our humanity will show. Our humanity, which we fear because we cannot control
who we are, deep on the inside. We can only hide it, bury it deep and hope our frugality does not show.”

“I have seen yours, Jane, as you have been witness to mine.”

“Yes. We both have been hurt, destroyed by human deceit and capriciousness. Yet we have managed, in each other’s arms to lower the masks, if only an inch, to see inside each other’s guarded souls. I offer you forgiveness, if that is what you seek, but more important, I give you my understanding. That is the beauty of being human, I think, to understand another’s pain, as though it were our own.”

She was breathtaking in her beauty and her human spirit, he thought, unable to speak as he gazed upon her. Hers was the sort that would not fade or grow jaded with time and years, but flourish, grow more radiant with life and its experience. Hers was a beauty that no other possessed. A beauty he longed to keep, to hide away, to bask in, himself alone. She had become his. He didn’t know when, whether it had been the moment her fingertips had touched him when he was hurt, or if it had grown like a seed, slowly spreading until Jane had become the root anchoring the shattered pieces of his heart, pulling then tight together until it resembled the organ it should.

“Talk to me,” she whispered, her voice unsure, vulnerable. “Please, say something.”

When he looked at her, he felt his chest burn, then words erupted from deep within, words he couldn’t hold back. “You have complicated things, Jane. You have taken an act that was simple and straightforward and turned it into something I no longer recognize—something I can’t understand.”

She sat up and brushed her hair from her face. “How so?”

He wanted to touch her, to sit with her and brush her hair. He wanted to feel her lying over his body.

“It has become all about you, Jane, about how I want to
pleasure you—to show you passion, to make you experience it at my hands. It has become about us, the picture in my mind of us pleasuring each other. I never pleasure women. I touch them, arouse them, but with only one goal in mind,
my
pleasure. I never care about the act, or them. But you have made me care. You have made me see beauty where none existed before. You have made me yearn, when I only ever had a need.”

He walked to her, lifted her into his arms. “I want so much to show you that need, Jane.”

Matthew’s arms felt strong beneath her as he carried her to his bed. He wore a linen shirt that was unbuttoned, allowing her to feel the hot skin of his corded neck beneath her lips. Aware of the steely strength in his shoulders, she slid her fingers beneath the opening of his shirt and caressed his chest. His flesh was taut over the thick muscle, warm and scented with the smell of eastern spices and man.

Jane threw caution to the wind and allowed her hand to slide farther into his shirt. Cupping his breast, she discovered his chest was nothing but chiseled muscle that felt as unyielding as rock and as contoured as a sculpture.

Tilting her head back, she looked up into his face and saw that he watched her with unblinking eyes. His irises had turned to a brilliant, glistening shade of india ink and she could not help but think once more how beautiful and mysterious his eyes were.

He reached the bed and instead of tossing her on it, he gently placed her atop the blankets, which were folded back, and followed her down until his body half covered hers. Pressing against her, his weight sank them both deep into the mattress. She should have felt smothered by his strength and the strong, large bulge of his arousal that pressed eagerly at her sex, but
she felt only desire and comfort and a strange sense of safety and rightness.

“Can I touch you?” she asked, smoothing her palms along his shoulders.

He nodded. “I will tell you if it becomes too much.” He kissed her, partly to stem any questions, she knew, but she allowed it. Permitted him to choose their path.

“I was too anxious. I did not take my time to explore you as I should have—as I wanted.”

She covered his sculpted mouth with her finger, stopping his words of regret. “You gave me what I needed, Matthew. And I needed you so fiercely, and somehow you knew that. My body has not stopped crying out for more of it.”

His eyes darkened further and his lashes lowered. She followed the path of his gaze and saw that he was busy untying the strings of her chemise and she became mesmerized by the beauty and elegance of his long, dark fingers pulling and tugging and freeing the perfectly tied bow. Her breathing became rapid and she felt the light brush of his knuckles along her belly as he parted the cotton over her hip.