“Forgiveness requires penitence. She was warned. Given every explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted in her sinful behavior, and she would not repent of it.”
“She was a girl. Vulnerable. Trusting. Afraid. You threw her to the wolves to protect your own selfish, sinful pride. And you call yourself a man of God. You are nothing but a charlatan.”
“Tell me what I can do to atone. I’ll do anything. Anything.”
“There is nothing you can say. No excuse you can make.”
Ash drew a slow, deep breath. If he were here to satisfy his own wishes, he would have happily killed the old fellow here and now. Dispatched him to Hell in truth. But he hadn’t come all this way to take his own bloody revenge.
He was here for Emma.
Because she’d touched him, kissed him, made him feel human and wanted and whole. Because her disgusting coward of a father had hurt her so deeply, she still didn’t trust her own heart.
Because he was probably halfway in love with her—and wasn’t that the Devil’s bollocks.
For her sake, he would confine his vengeance to methods involving fewer sharp objects and entrails. He would let the man keep his life. But Ash would do his worst to make certain he didn’t enjoy it.
“What day is this?” Ash demanded.
“Th-Thursday.”
He shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”
“But . . . aren’t you damned already?”
“Silence!” he boomed.
The man jumped in his skin.
“I have the day wrong. You’ve a reprieve. A brief reprieve.”
“A reprieve?” He cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Thank you, Lord.”
“Don’t thank the Lord. You should be grateful to me.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Know this, you mammering canker-blossom.” Ash skirted the bed in ominous steps. “We will meet again. You will not know the year, nor the day, nor the hour. In the cold of every night, you will feel the flames licking at your heels. Your daily porridge will taste of sulfur. With every breath, every step, every heartbeat in the remainder of your miserable, lumpish life . . . you will quiver with unrelenting fear.”
He went to the window and prepared to climb through it, disappearing into the night. “Because I will come for you. And when I do, there will be no escape.”
Chapter Nineteen
Why, you little thief.
Though Ash had to admit—as thieves went, this was a deuced pretty one.
His morning had been filled with dreary correspondence. Once he’d sent off a contract to the solicitors for yet another revision, Ash had gone in search of luncheon. Then he’d returned to his library—only to find his wife ransacking his bookshelves.
Apparently the volume in her hands was sufficiently absorbing that she hadn’t noticed his presence. As he stood in the doorway watching, she tucked a stray wisp of dark hair behind her ear. Then she licked her fingertip and turned the page.
His knees buckled. In his mind, he scrambled to piece that half second into a lasting memory. The crook of her slender finger. The red pout of her lips. That fleeting, erotic glimpse of pink.
She did it again.
Ash gripped the doorjamb so hard, his knuckles lost sensation.
He wanted her to read the whole cursed book while he watched.
He wanted the book to have a thousand pages.
She closed the volume and added it to a growing stack on the chair. Then, turning her back to him, she stretched on tiptoe to reach for another. Her heels popped out of her slippers, revealing the arches of her feet and those indescribably arousing white stockings.
God’s blood. A man could only take so much.
“Don’t move.”
She froze. Her arm remained lifted; her hand was still poised to take a green volume from its shelf. “I only wanted a book.”
“Don’t,” he repeated, “move.”
“A novel, poetry. Something to pass the time. I thought perhaps I’d even try some Shakespeare. I didn’t mean to disturb—”
“Stay. Just. As. You. Are.” He approached her in slow, deliberate paces—one step for each low, deliberate word. “Not one finger. Not one toe. Not one tiny freckle on your arse.”
“I don’t have freckles on my . . . Do I?”
He didn’t stop until he stood directly behind her. He reached to cover her raised hand. With a flex of his fingers, he tipped the green book into place.
“I’ll leave you to your work.” She moved to lower her hand.
He pinned her wrist to the shelf. “Not just yet.”
She sucked in her breath. He knew her well enough to recognize that sound. It wasn’t fear, but excitement.
Good. Very good.
“Do you know,” he said in an idle tone, stroking his thumb along her delicate wrist, “I’ve been thinking.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Oh, it is.” With his free hand, he cupped the swell of her breast, stroking her softness through the muslin. “The object of this marriage is to get you with child.”
“Yes.” Her voice was drowsy. “I seem to recall that was our bargain.”
Her head tilted to the side, and he ran his tongue along the elongated slope of her neck. She tasted both tart and sweet. Delicious.
“So if we do this twice a day,” he murmured, “that would make our objective twice as likely.”
“I . . . I suppose it would.”
“No supposing about it.” He tweaked her nipple. “It’s simple mathematics.”
After a pause, he heard a little smile in her voice. “Is it, my fawn?”
Saucy, impudent wench.
The race was on. She helped him hike her skirts to her waist. He stroked the seam of her cleft, tracing it until he found that essential spot at the apex. She gasped with pleasure, gripped the bookshelf with both hands. He couldn’t unbutton his falls fast enough.
After what seemed an epoch of fumbling with garments, they finally pressed flesh to flesh. His hard, aching need against her wet, ready heat.
“Now?” He growled the word.
Her reply was breathless. “Yes.”
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
The dalliance in the library was the first of many daytime trysts. Now that Ash knew her to be game for unconventional bedsport, his imagination knew no bounds. His stamina was nowhere near depleted, either. Making love unclothed in full daylight still felt like too great a risk. When they were that close, that intimate . . . he hated the idea of pity intruding into moments when he ought to be strong. He worried that if she touched him, he might snap back.
And there was always the other risk: Repulsing her completely.
How could I bear to lie with . . . with that?
No, he couldn’t chance it. However, with a willing, adventurous partner, there were ways around the hurdle. Pleasure needn’t be confined to fumbling nighttime encounters.
Emma did not object, he found, to being bent over the nearest sturdy piece of furniture. The billiard table made for one particularly enjoyable liaison. He pulled her into shadowy alcoves and deep closets and took her propped against the wall in the hot, musky dark. They discovered all manner of accoutrements—cravats, sashes, handkerchiefs—could be pressed into service as blindfolds.
No matter what he suggested, she never told him no.
She always said yes.
She said “yes” and “yes” and “more” and “please.”
As always, those little sighs and moans sank straight to his cock, urging him closer to release. But as their passionate afternoons melted into weeks, her words found deeper targets. He even came to adore her endlessly absurd pet names. They pierced through his scar tissue, battered at the bony cage around his heart.
Ash struggled to rebuild that barricade daily.
Don’t make too much of her willingness, he scolded himself. She was a passionate woman by nature. No doubt she wanted this child-getting business over and done with, too.
And yet he could not stay away from her, could never satisfy his desire. There was no floor to the chasm inside him. It wasn’t only her body he craved, it was closeness. Acceptance. The feeling of being wanted, and never turned away.
Yes.