Untamed (29 page)

He reached down between them. It was his thumb this time, or so she thought, the flesh at the tip thick and sandpaper rough. He chafed the hard little nubbin she knew was there but had so far never seen—once, twice, thrice …

Kate fell back against the pillows and screamed.

They lay side by side on the mussed bed. Confessions came between hitched breaths.

Kate’s was the first. She looked up from tracing circles on the dark matting of his chest—he’d yet to take off his shirt—and said, “I really am sorry about the horse. Do you think you’ll get him back?”

He turned his head to look at her. “Hang the horse. You might have been injured, maimed for life, killed even.
Jaysus,
Katie, why did you do it? If you’d only wanted to defy me, surely you might have settled on some safer way.”

Kate swallowed hard against a telltale tightening in her throat. She’d hoped the hurt would have dissolved by now, but so far it had not. “Last night I came downstairs … looking for you. I found you asleep at your desk, but you weren’t all that I found. I found the play and the note from Daisy and Gavin. Rourke, how could you?”

His eyes widened. “You risked life and limb on account of a play?” He swore and scoured a hand across his brow. “I didn’t know how else to reach you, woo you.”

“Woo me!” Reminded it wasn’t the play at fault, but him, she elbowed her way upright, bringing the sheet with her. “Am I to believe that subjecting me to starvation, exhaustion, humiliation—public
and
private—was all done in the spirit of equanimity?”

He went stone still beside her. “I spanked you, which under the circumstance was a good deal less punishment than you deserved. And confess it, Katie, you enjoyed what happened here. Within these four walls, you liked setting Capable Kate free for a time and owning me as your master. You liked my hand on your arse and my thumb on your pearl and my cock in your cunt. Admit it, or better yet kiss me, for nay worries, I’ll tame you yet, my Kate.”

The last was the absolute worst thing he could have said.

Her face heated with shame. Nothing between them had changed. He still saw her not as chattel, little more than a slave. She’d played into his hands, abased herself in the very vilest of ways. She’d begged, actually
begged
him, to do those things to her. He’d turned her into a craven creature, a person she scarcely recognized as herself. And she’d let him. More than let him, she’d begged for it—for pleasure, for punishment, for
him.
For that, she could easily hate him all her days.

She yanked at the wrinkled sheet and swept it about her like a cape. “You may have taken advantage of me this once, but I’ll not let you ill-use me again.”

Kate had never before felt so truly naked, so achingly raw. He hadn’t only marked her body. He’d stripped bare her soul, peeling away the civilized surface layer and exposing every secret fantasy and dark desire.

He sat up beside her. Knowing emerald eyes met hers. “There’s no shame in showing you’re a woman, Katie, with a woman’s heart and a woman’s needs, including the occasional desire to be mastered.” He reached for her, but she jerked away.

“Get the hell out.”

“Katie?”

“How many times must I tell you, my name is
Katherine.
”

Kate didn’t come down to dinner that evening, nor supper, either. Rourke took both meals alone in the big dining room, though he mostly pushed the food about his plate. Even his dog had shunned him, preferring to dine with Kate in her room. From the sounds that had filtered through the door earlier, Toby must be savoring a fine feast.

I’ll tame you yet, my Kate.

If he’d mastered his wife as he’d boasted, then why was he lying abed alone nursing a brick-hard cock stand, aching balls, and a gouged cheek? But those physical discomforts couldn’t touch the ache in his heart.

He’d set out to teach her a lesson, but it turned out he was as much pupil as she. Never before had he so lost himself in a woman, not only her body but her soul. For a time reality had dissolved into a series of impressions—Kate’s nape, so slender and white, her honey-drizzled hair sliding over the side of the bed; her slight weight and beautiful curves covering his thighs; the slapping sound of first his hand striking her bottom and later his cock striking her creamy quim. He hadn’t known a woman could become so scalding hot, so mouth-wateringly wet. When he’d finally spilled himself inside her, he’d come harder and longer than ever before.

Hours later he could still taste the brine of her on his tongue and her orange blossom scent on his skin. Her hair, he mused, smelled like warm sunshine. A moment later he shook his head to think what an idiot he’d become. Mooning over a woman, his sharp-tongued wife, as though he was some love-smitten swain straight from the pages of one of Shakespeare’s damnable plays, what the devil had come over him?

Bloody hell, I love the woman.

Patrick O’Rourke, erstwhile purse snatch, top-notch bamboozler, and railway pirate, was in love—head over heels, over the moon in love. Who could have guessed that one pocket-sized woman would be the one to bring him to heel, to steal his heart as surely as once he had snitched gentlemen’s purses?

Looking back to their wedding day, though he’d been deliberately late and had donned his queer costume to vex her, his heart had felt feather light, his mood genuinely merry. As much as he’d tried telling himself he was marrying her to settle a score for the humiliation in the garden, now he owned the truth: he’d quite simply wanted her.

Unfortunately Kate didn’t want him, not anymore if, indeed, she ever had. She’d sent him away, thereby entering the league of loved ones who’d been rejecting him all his life. Never before had he felt so splintered, so aching, so absolutely close to coming apart.

Oh, Katie, I’ll break you yet.

The trick would be not to allow his own heart to be broken in the bargain.

The next morning Rourke sat alone at the breakfast table, nursing his cold coffee and pushing his food about his plate. His folded newspaper, still warm from the iron, lay unopened beside him. In the bright light of day, he admitted that spanking and bondage were no ways to go about bedding a virgin bride. And yet he’d sensed Katie had both wanted and needed the raw honesty of a hard, fierce taking, and so, he admitted, had he. These past weeks they’d been circling each other like hissing cats. The episode with Zeus had pushed him beyond the edge of patience and civility. Thinking how easily her slender white throat might have snapped sent ice water trickling through his veins. By the time he’d flung open her bedroom door, he’d buried his fear in blistering rage. And yet before last night, he’d never laid angry hands on a woman, not even Felicity. His wee wife most definitely brought out the beast in him.

Kate entered the room, dressed in a riding habit of hunter green and bowler pinned to perfect place. To the casual observer she would appear elegant and self-possessed, a fashion plate from
Harper’s Bazaar
come to life, the perfect picture of upper-crust English womanhood. But her shadowed eyes and less than springy step told Rourke otherwise. It seemed he was not the only one of them to come out of the previous night’s tumult the worse for wear. He fingered the scab on his cheek. Surely she couldn’t mean to ride?

Surprised and pleased to see her, he stood to draw out her chair. “Good morning, Kate. Did you sleep well?” He’d only slept in snatches himself.

She gave a quick glance to the chair and then moved to the sideboard. “You needn’t bother. I shan’t be sitting.” Spooning buttered eggs onto her plate, she glared back at him. “Unfortunately I’ve never been particularly adept at sleeping on my stomach.”

He opened his mouth to remark on the bonny view that must have been, but for once better judgment prevailed. Instead, he said, “I hadn’t expected to see you downstairs so early.” He hadn’t expected to see her at all.

“I’m headed to the stables to make my apologies to Mr. Campbell.” She slammed the lid down on the rasher. “So, if your intention was to starve me—again—as well as beat me, I’m sorry to disappoint.”

“That’s not… Oh, hell, Katie, can’t we call a truce? It’s not as if you didn’t manage to get in a few good licks yourself.”

“Speaking of which, how
is
your face? That scratch on your cheek must sting dreadfully.” She sent him a sweet smile, her first since entering.

He touched the cheek she’d marked and grimaced. “Shaving this morning hurt like the devil—and dinna look so pleased with yourself.”

She came over to the table and plunked her plate down. “But I am pleased with myself, about the scratch at least. Come at me like that again, and I’ll give you one to match on the other side.”

Exasperated, he raked a hand through his hair. “Christ, Kate, how can you speak to me so? Last night we made love. Last night I was inside you.”

Her gaze darted to the open door. “Kindly lower your voice. The servants, now that we have servants, will hear you.”

Temper rising, he threw his napkin down like a gauntlet. “I don’t give a damn if the whole bloody castle hears.”

“Well, I do. I’d just as soon we forget last night ever happened.”

Of all the things she’d said, the insults she’d lobbed at him, that last remark cut the deepest. He rounded on her. “Can you do that, Kate? Can you forget the feel of my fingers playing with your button and milking the cream from your cunt? Can you forget how you moaned when I thrust into you with my two fingers and you wiggled that bonny arse of yours as though begging for a third? Can you forget how you came for me, not once but twice in a row?”

Like a thoroughbred filly, a pulse beat high in her sculpted forehead, square between her eyes. She swallowed hard, the ripple traveling the length of her long, elegant throat. “A gentleman wouldn’t throw such a private moment in my face.”

“If by gentleman you mean that lot of pasty-faced pansies who courted you back in London, nay one of them would have been man enough to bring you to your knees.” He reached out, lifting her chin on the scarred knuckles of his hand. “Nay, you canna forget, Kate, and you canna make me forget, either. Like it or no, I’m in your blood now, as you are in mine.”

Later that day, Kate sat on a pillow in Hattie’s room, nursing a sore bottom and hurt pride in equal measure. In truth, she was more saddle sore from her breakneck ride on Zeus than she was from her husband’s spanking. Fortunately the stallion had been recovered, and the groomsmen who’d gone after him had returned with only a few bruises.