The Lover (31 page)

He glanced up, his gaze unexpectedly bright, focused on her instead of the past. "Lie down, Anne."

She suddenly didn't want to hear what he was going to tell her.

She didn't want to know the horrors that he must have endured, living with his uncle.

She didn't want to lie down ever again and remember what it felt like staring up into darkness, helpless to stop the fear and the desire.

She didn't want to forgive this man for the unforgivable.

He had betrayed her trust.
Her passion
.

"He was going to let me die," she hoarsely accused him.

And there had been nothing she could do to stop it.

"Yes."

"Because of you!"

The violet in his eyes flickered. "Did you lie to me, Anne?"

Her breasts jiggled from the force of her breathing. Tiny cracks spread through the hardened chocolate encasing her nipple. "I never lied to you!"

"You said you wanted to know what I felt."

"I did." She fought the memories of his manhood buried inside her, his fingers rhythmically squeezing her clitoris while his penis moved in and out of her body. "You showed me what you felt."

"I am more than a cock, Anne."

Whereas she was exactly what she was:
a plain spinster
.

"I suppose next you are going to say that what we did was more than
fucking
!"

Anne choked on the vulgarity. Or perhaps she choked on the earl's sacrilege at calling what had transpired between a scarred whore and a spinster "fucking."

But she had never considered what they did as "fucking." Any more than she had considered Michel des Anges a whore.

His gaze did not waver from hers. "Lie down."

Her fingernails bit into the palms of her hands. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to listen. I want you to know the man behind the cock."

Anne couldn't breathe, staring into his violet eyes that all at once belonged to neither Michel, a man named for his ability to please women, nor Michael, a man who was heir to an earldom. All she could do was—

Lie down.

With his long, scarred fingers he brushed her wet hair off of her breasts and her shoulders until it spread over the pillow; he seemed impervious to the threads of gray that twined through it. Reaching out, he dipped his finger in the silver container.

Anne tensed, waiting.

"I sought solace in chocolate when my family died." Hot chocolate glided over her right nipple—a quick burning heat. "With my uncle ill, the servants gave me whatever I wanted."

Anne concentrated on his eyes that impassively stared at her breast and his ministrations rather than the lust that streaked through her body.

"That's how he found me when he unexpectedly visited me one night." He painted her right aureole. "In bed. With chocolate smeared on my face."

Anne glanced down and saw what he saw: chocolate smeared on her breasts.

As it had been smeared on his face when he had been an eleven-year-old child.

But there was nothing childish—or innocent—about the dark, glistening smears on her white breasts.

She glanced up.

The earl had said his nephew had been a very loving boy.

There was no love on his face now.

"He looked at me and asked one question," he continued in that flat monotone. Her aureole cooled, abandoned. He scooped all four fingers inside the silver sauce dish. " 'How much do you love chocolate?' "

Slowly, methodically, he worked the chocolate into the globe of her right breast.

Anne's breath quickened: with distress—with desire.

Liquid arousal trickled out of her vagina.

She clenched her muscles to stop the flow.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

"The next night Frank wheeled my uncle into my bedchamber." He surveyed his handiwork. "He brought me a chocolate bar. It was filled with worms."

Anne squirmed: at the unwitting sensation arcing between her breasts and her womb—at the image his words conjured.

He worked chocolate into her left breast, smooth heat and grating fingers.

"He asked me if I knew what my mother was eating, buried underneath the earth in a dark coffin. Worms, he said. He told me if I didn't eat the chocolate bar that Frank would bury me with my mother. I ate it."

"Michel—"

His name burst unbidden from her lips.

"I told you. My name isn't Michel." He raised his eyelashes. His violet irises had been swallowed by the black of his pupils. "It's Michael. The Honorable Michael Sturges Bourne."

But there had been nothing honorable in allowing a woman to solicit his services.
Knowing the price she would have to pay
.

"What he did to you does not excuse what you did to me."

"I loved you, Anne"—he reached for the silver dish rather than the chocolate inside it—"to the best of my ability."

Loved
rang out over the snap of the burning logs and the drum of her heartbeat.

"Your friend Gabriel. He knew about the earl."

"Gabriel knew," he agreed evenly.

And dribbled chocolate between her breasts, down her stomach, over her navel.

Everyone had known but her, she thought, anger rising anew. Even the butler had known.

Perhaps even the maid who had helped her into Madame Rene's black satin corset.

"Don't move, Anne." His voice was dangerously soft, as if he were poised on a precipice.

"What are you going to do?" she asked defiantly, refusing to show her fear—or her desire.

"Make memories," he murmured.

"I already have memories!"

Of death. Of desire.

His gaze held hers, reflecting her pain. Her need.

Her memories.

Of death.
Of desire
.

Melted chocolate and scarred fingers smoothed her stomach, a shock of heat that quickly cooled.

"He started taking his meals with me. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner." His lashes lowered. Jagged shadows hollowed his cheeks.

Anne raised her head and watched the progress of his fingers, her skin crawling with sensation. "If he noticed that I liked a particular food, he would bring a dish of it to me when I was in bed. I liked kedgeree for breakfast." His middle finger dipped into her navel, a stabbing invasion. "He brought me a bowl of rice that was alive with maggots.

"I liked pasta." He smeared chocolate onto her lower stomach, dipping lower, lower yet into her pubic hair… "He brought me a bowl filled with noodles that wriggled in the sauce. And always reminded me that worms ate my mother. Because of my carelessness she was dead, he claimed. If I did not eat them, I would join her, he said, and be eaten alive. Slowly. They would crawl into my hair. Up my nose. Into my ears. I ate whatever he brought because I was more afraid of being eaten by worms than I was of eating them."

Anne mentally writhed.

"Spread your legs, Anne."

She stared up into his flat, lifeless eyes. "It won't change anything."

"No, but come morning it won't be worms you remember."

She spread her legs—and closed her eyes when he dribbled chocolate onto her clitoris.

Burning heat. Rasping skin.

He worked chocolate into her clitoris, her labia, her clitoris again.

She arched up into his fingers—control perilously strained—only to drop down onto the bed when he left her.

Hot. Wet. Aching for more than chocolate.

For more than fingers.

She anchored herself to the sheet with both hands.

Her head plunked down onto the mattress.

Anne's eyelids flew open.

He stood over her, her pillow in his hands.

She held her breath.

He could kill her just as easily as the earl could have.

Leaning over, body blocking the light, he grabbed the pillow from the opposite side of the bed.

He straightened; light spilled across her. "Lift your hips."

"Why?" she asked shakily.

Afraid to die. Afraid to live.

Yes, Lord Granville, I am afraid
, she thought.

"So I can elevate your pelvis."

And she would be open, exposed, with no means to hide the plainness of her body or the carnal needs of a spinster.

"And when I am elevated… what are you going to do then?" she asked, trying to control her breathing.
Her desire
.

"You bought me because of my ability to please a woman." His chest rose and fell in cadence with her breathing. "Lift your hips and I guarantee you that I will please you. Come tomorrow, if you wish to terminate the contract, I will not object. But you need me tonight, Anne. What you have never realized is that I need you, too."

Anne lifted her hips.

A network of tiny cracks spread across her breasts and stomach. Cool air enveloped her buttocks. It was replaced by even cooler cotton.

Her pelvis was elevated, jutting forward as if she walked in heels.
Naked
. Her thighs fell apart in lewd invitation.

She had never been more vulnerable. Not the first night he had undressed her. Not when the earl had drugged her.

He grabbed the silver sauce dish and dribbled chocolate on her legs, her toes.

Anne felt like a mummy, covered breasts to feet with the hardening foodstuff. She watched wide-eyed as he put the sauce dish back onto the tray and picked up the banana. Light and shadow caressed his naked arms, skin smooth as dusk; his hands were ridged and scarred. He partially peeled the banana before smearing the outer skin with chocolate.

There was not enough oxygen to fill her lungs.

"You surely do not intend to…"

Her voice trailed off. A vivid image flashed before her eyes.

Of her,
naked
. Of him,
lying between her outspread legs
, dressed in a white linen shirt and trousers, fingers digging into her thighs.

She had wanted him to taste her. Lick her. Tongue her.

And he had.

The pulsating flesh inside her vagina assured her that he would surely do this too.

And she wanted him to.

"Were you fond of bananas?" she asked, unable to suppress the catch in her voice.

"Yes."

And the earl had destroyed even that.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he delicately parted the folds of her labia.

Her heart leaped up into her throat.

Cold hardness that was neither flesh nor rubber circled her, prepared her, penetrated her.

She instinctively tightened her muscles, rejecting what the earl had done to him. To her. Rejecting her own perverse nature that had brought her to this while Michel—
Michael
—had done nothing but become an orphaned child.

His dark eyelashes swept upward. "Take it, Anne. I know you ache inside. I can feel the heat of you. You're wet with desire. It's natural, your need to be filled; that's the nature of a woman's body. Let me fill you. Let me give you memories. Of fullness. Of pleasure…"

Gently, firmly, he pushed the banana inside her, holding her stare, overcoming her internal resistance until it lodged deep inside her and her muscles hungrily clenched, holding it in place, and she could not contain a gasp.

Of fullness.
Of pleasure
.

She stared up at him mutely, pierced to the core of her being.

At last she understood the difference between penetration and possession.

Lashes lowering, shielding his 'eyes, he lightly outlined the slick outer parameters of her vagina. She was stretched taut to accommodate the fruit, quivering, poised as he was poised, waiting for the outcome…

"By the end of that first year, there were few foods that I could stomach. Bread. Raw vegetables. Apples. Pears. Fruits that weren't pulpy or mushy. I was half-starved. He wanted me alive, so he did not tamper with those foods that I could still tolerate. I thought he had done his worst. I was wrong. One night he and Frank came to my bedroom. He said he had a surprise for me in the attic."

He did not have to tell her what the surprise was.

"I thought it was my mother in the coffin. Just as you thought it was your mother. I know what you felt when you were in that coffin, Anne, because I've felt it. Always Frank would come lift me out the next morning before the servants got up. And I would have to spend my day as if nothing were wrong, reading the books my uncle considered necessary for my education. As if my uncle were a saintly man who suffered because he had saved me and who now fed and clothed and educated me. As if I had nothing to fear when every moment I trembled in fear."

He gently, rhythmically prodded the banana, increasing the fullness inside her, fueling the hunger.