Beyond A Wicked Kiss (57 page)

Sir Alex told her this was the place where the bishops tested one's mettle. He had meant that in a very particular way, but Ria thought it might be true in many others. She removed her hand from West's and raised it to touch his cheek. Her fingers trembled a little, and she felt the weight of the iron cuff, but neither of those things held her back.

"Go on," she whispered. "Whatever you must do, do it before I lose my resolve."

He grasped her hand and brought her knuckles to his mouth. He pressed a kiss there, holding her in just that manner for a long moment before he released her. "Will you sit up?"

She did. Whatever she had expected, it was not that he would throw off the blankets and remove his coat from her shoulders, nor that what he would take from the coat's pocket would be the iron pin that had coupled her cuffs. "What do you mean to do with that?" But even as she asked it, she knew the answer.

West stood and carried the coat to the hook that had so recently secured Ria. It was not often, he supposed, that one of them was used in support of an article of clothing. He stared at it, steadying his breathing, before he returned to the bed.

When he pivoted, he saw that Ria had already pushed herself flush to the headboard. She sat with her hands behind her back, her knees drawn toward her chest, and she was staring warily at his closed fists, trying to determine which one held the pin.

"I won't fight you," she said.

"I know." He felt as if his heart was in a vise. "Can you stand on your own?"

Ria didn't know, and she didn't want to find out. How fast her resolve had crumpled she thought. He had only to show her the pin. She pushed back the sheet tangled around her ankles and slid her feet over the side of the bed. When she stood her knees held. Her chin came up a little as she pivoted in West's direction and fell again when she saw he was no longer standing where she expected him to be.

"Here," he said simply. "I want you here."

Ria blinked. He was beside the cheval glass. It was angled differently now, and when she turned, her full reflection came immediately into view. It was as if she were already standing at his side. She decided she would rather be there in fact than in fiction and closed the distance between them on surprisingly steady legs.

"Here," he said again. "In front of the glass."

Sipping a shallow breath, Ria took a single step sideways.

"Look at yourself, not at me."

With some difficulty, Ria dragged her gaze away from West and looked in the mirror, though not at herself. Her eyes fell on a point past her own shoulder. She could see most of the bed behind her. Her heartbeat tripped over itself, and when she drew her next breath it was too slight to fill her lungs.

West came to stand at her back and placed his hands on her shoulders. When Ria's eyes flew to his, he shook his head and directed her back to her reflection. "Look at my hand." He raised his right one and watched her eyes follow it. She was wondering what he had done with the pin, but he was not prepared to reveal the sleight of hand that had hidden it from her.

Ria fixed her blue-gray glance on West's fingers as they trailed along her collarbone. She felt his touch, but it was as if it were happening to someone else. His hand grazed her skin so lightly it could not properly be called a caress. If touch were sound, then his fingers were whispering.

His index finger trailed along the edge of her neckline, sometimes slipping under the material, scoring her skin lightly with the tip of his nail. He bent his head once and kissed the bruise on her shoulder before he straightened and used both hands to begin removing her shift.

Ria's hands came up. She flinched when she saw the iron cuffs so plainly held in front of her. For a few minutes she had forgotten them, yet here they were, hard and heavy and black, a stark and frightening contrast to the soft, nearly transparent shift.

"Put your hands down," he said.

She lowered them slowly. "It's not because you told me to," she said with quiet dignity. "I'm testing my mettle."

He smiled then. It was faint, briefly held, but it touched his eyes. "I know your mettle." He placed his lips against the pale, silky hair next to her ear and told her that he loved her.

Ria's eyes flew to his, but when he raised his head, he was no longer smiling. Neither was he catching her glance in the mirror. His eyes were on the lowered neckline of her shift. She looked down at herself, then at her reflection. He eased the material over her breasts, first the high, full curve, and then the puckered aureoles. The shift fell to her waist, but his hands stayed where they were, cupping her breasts. His thumbs passed over the tender nipples, teasing them to full arousal. She sagged a little in his arms, moaning softly as a measure of heat began to uncurl inside her. Her eyes fluttered closed.

"No," he said. His hands quieted. "Watch."

It was with no small effort that she lifted her lashes and stared at the images in the mirror. Her breasts felt heavy; they fairly filled his palms. She wondered what it would be like to see his mouth there, to watch him suckle her, to feel the draw of his tongue and teeth at the same moment she was seeing his lips on her flesh. Her breath hitched.

His hands slid from her breasts to her waist and rested on the curve of her hips. His fingers were long and slender, the nails buffed and squared off. Her skin flushed pink where his fingertips pressed. He made no comment about the bruises that were just becoming visible on her thigh and below her rib cage, but Ria did not miss the way his hand paused as it passed over this evidence of abuse. Afraid of what she might see in his eyes, she did not glance in that direction.

Instead, she watched him lift his hands so that her shift could complete its descent to the floor. She stepped out of the cloud of fabric at her feet when he ordered her to, though she was hardly aware of doing so. She didn't notice that he pushed it away with the toe of his boot.

West's hands dropped to his sides, but he supported Ria solidly when she leaned into him. The curve of her bottom rested snugly against his thighs; the crown of her head fit under his chin. Judging by the darkening centers of her eyes and the vaguely disquieted gaze, West doubted she had ever studied herself in so frank a fashion before.

"Lift your hands."

Ria blinked. She watched threads of her hair ripple as her body fairly vibrated in response to West's uninflected command. She raised her hands slowly to the level of her breasts and crossed them at the wrists in the manner she knew he would ask her to. She saw him rake back his hair with his fingers, then the pin was there in his hand again, and he was slipping it between the cuffs, coupling them just as Sir Alex had.

"Come," he said.

She hesitated, uncertain where he meant for her to go. He had stepped away from her but not indicated a direction.

"The bed."

Ria glanced back at the bed, quite certain she could not retrace her steps to it. She gasped softly as the choice was taken from her. West lifted her off her feet and carried her the short distance. He laid her down, then pulled the pillow from under her head.

"Lift your hips."

Biting her lower lip hard enough to draw blood Ria concentrated on that pain instead of what she was doing. She did not know the pillow was under her until she felt the gentle, insistent pressure of West's hand on her hip, pushing her down. Her skin retracted as his palm ran up the flat of her abdomen and came to rest between her breasts. He slipped his fingers under her linked wrists and raised them.

"What are you—" Ria cut off her question, craning her head around to see the truth herself. Embedded in the headboard was a hook like all the others in the room. It would be like the illustration in Beckwith's book, she realized. That was how he had known the hook was there. He meant to fix her wrists to the headboard, spread her thighs, and climb between them. Even the pillow was positioned exactly as it had been in the drawing.

Ria understood then that it was Beckwith's specific commands that were guiding West. This performance was for him, perhaps for him alone.

Looking back at West, seeing the small muscle jump in his cheek, Ria offered no resistance as he attached the cuffs. She thought of his purpose again in disrobing her in front of the cheval glass and drawing her attention to his hands at her throat, on her breasts, and caressing the curve of her hip and inner thigh. He had made her the observer, taught her how to watch what he was doing to her almost as if it were happening to someone else. That is how she would survive this, she thought. That was what West had given her, a means to survive.

Seen through the lens of her mind's eye, there would only ever be two of them in this room.

Ria closed her eyes as West ran his fingers along her arm, grazing the soft, sensitive underside of her elbow. A small shiver slipped under her skin. She felt a wave of tension come and go and a certain heaviness, not entirely unpleasant, settle over her limbs. It was as if she were bound by nothing more than his touch now, the weight of his palm on her shoulder, cupping her breast, her heartbeat, laying a trail across her skin that ended with his fingers slipping between her thighs.

"Open for me."

Lifting one knee, Ria did exactly that. She did not try to avoid this caress but gave herself up to it instead. If it was inevitable that he would be forced to take her, then this was in aid of not hurting her, and she felt herself respond to the steady, insistent pressure of his stroking fingers.

Surrendering, she became aware of the first stirrings of wanting. Her hips lifted a fraction. Between her thighs, she was wet. There were times when the heat of his fingertips was almost too much to bear, and then his touch would ease and give her a moment's respite.

She opened heavy-lidded eyes and watched him from beneath the fan of her lashes. His features were set, remote, and in startling contrast to the warmth he provoked in her, they were cold. Ria would have reached for him if she'd been allowed the freedom to do so. She would have laid her hand across his cheek and erased the lines at the corners of his grim mouth and the terrible chill from his eyes. What she did was show him her own naked need; in submitting to him now, lay her strength.

She felt her breath catch as he slipped one finger inside her. She held it for a moment, contracting around him, then did the same a moment later when the first was joined by another. Her heels made small crescents in the sheets as she found purchase there and rocked her hips. It was not always easy to know what she invited and what she could not help, but in the end, Ria supposed it did not matter.

She no longer felt unprotected; West had made her feel desired beyond all reason. It was all she could do not to cry out when he removed his hand and got to his feet.

Standing at the bedside, West began to loosen his stock. He glanced upward as a smattering of raindrops tapped the roof. Through the skylight, starshine caught his eye, and he glimpsed the cluster that was Cassiopeia. More rain pinged lightly off the glass. He glanced back at Ria and saw that her darkening eyes were still vaguely focused on him. She seemed wholly unaware of the approaching storm.

West tossed his neckcloth to the foot of the bed and unbuttoned his waistcoat. He shrugged out of it and let it drop beside the neckcloth. Tugging on his linen shirt, he pulled it free of his trousers and yanked it over his head. Instead of pitching it aside, he snapped it once, spreading it open, and then let it fall so that it draped Ria from her breasts to her thighs.

As his shirt drifted over her, Ria caught the faint change in the tilt of West's mouth. The line of it was still grim, to be sure, but there was something else there as well—a certain dark humor that was finally asserting itself. Like the flicker of candlelight across his face, what she thought she saw there passed very quickly. She wondered at it for all the time it took to come and go and did not think on it again. She lay under the fine linen fabric of his shirt, wrapped in his fragrance, in the very breath of him, and waited for him to come to her in just such a way, so that it was not the linen against her skin, but him.

West unfastened the buttons at his fly and sat on the edge of the bed. He paused, considering the problem of his boots, and decided against removing them. Stretching out beside Ria, he used his body to shield her from the view of the hidden panel—then, a moment later, from the shattering, splintering, shower of glass.

Shards of the broken skylight scattered across his scarred back, but West had barely any feeling for the pain. He held Ria protectively in his arms, covering her with his broad shoulders and torso until the rain of glass and pebbles ended. In quick succession he heard the panel being slammed shut, the sough of the wind overhead, profanity and pounding in the adjoining room, then a friendly, familiar voice calling from above.

"I say, West, the decent thing to do would be to avert my eyes, but I'll break my neck in the fall if I do."

"South." West identified the voice for Ria in the event she couldn't. To his friend, he called, "Miss Parr will break your neck if you don't."

"Right," South said. "Looking away now."

West sat up and quickly released Ria's wrist cuffs, first from the hook, then from each other. He helped her sit up and briskly massaged her stiff arms before he pulled his shirt over her head. She was shivering now, partly in response to the eddy of cold air that whipped into the room from the opening in the roof, but perhaps more so from the shattering skylight and the astonishing fact that South was standing above them.