Part 23 (2/2)

The part he'd pushed into her chafed tender flesh. He was hard as granite. But unlike granite, he was hotter than a furnace. Stupidly, she'd imagined he'd feel cool, even cold, because of his reluctance to touch her.

His smell, familiar yet unfamiliar, surrounded her. She knew the clean scent of his soap and the essence of his skin. She guessed the extra spice in the air was male arousal.

His breathing was ragged, and he trembled. She raised her hands to grip his back, then remembered he hated to be touched. He wouldn't want her embrace, even as he lay buried inside her in the closest connection she'd ever known.

She sucked in another breath. An easier one. Where they joined, she still hurt, but the fierce agony faded.

He s.h.i.+fted with a soft grunt. The pressure changed, became less excruciating.

Charis waited for him to pull away. But his muscles tightened, and he thrust again. She bit back another moan and gripped the sheet to stop sliding up the bed.

She'd imagined this would be quick, over in seconds. But he was still inside her. He moved once more, and released a deep groan.

Another thrust. His hips pumped several times, and she felt a liquid heat deep inside her. He groaned again and slumped over her. In a cruel parody of tenderness, his head came to rest on her shoulder, his silky hair tickling her neck.

After all the hardness, the fleeting softness seemed alien, wrong.

After an endless time, Gideon withdrew and carefully pulled down her s.h.i.+ft, hiding the tops of her thighs. Then he rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. His s.h.i.+rt was twisted and flapped free of his gaping trousers.

After one brief glance at him, Charis concentrated on the dark beams crossing the ceiling too. She didn't want to see the organ he'd pressed into her body.

She supposed she should say something, but she wasn't certain her voice would work. Her throat clenched so tight, it hurt. Although she was cold, she couldn't summon energy to reach for the covers.

Who knew how long they lay alongside each other? Not long, she guessed, although every second felt like an hour.

Where he'd taken her, she stung, although the piercing pain had subsided to a constant throbbing. She felt lost in a vast emptiness, as though the world had been destroyed in some unimaginable cataclysm. How odd that this most intimate act of all left her feeling like the only human left on earth.

Slowly, stiffly, he sat up. For one intense second, she felt him study her. She kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Like distant thunder on a summer's day, devastation nudged at her awareness. But for the moment, exhaustion kept it at bay.

Jamming her eyes shut, she willed herself not to cry. She was much better hiding in this numbness. Given her way, she'd lie here forever.

Charis listened to him move about the room. Water splashed into a dish. Perhaps he meant to wash. Perhaps he was desperate to rid himself of every trace of her disgusting person.

She recognized she tortured herself and scotched the thought before it went any further. Instead, she sought that cold empty s.p.a.ce in her heart where nothing could hurt her.

The rug m.u.f.fled his footsteps as he moved closer. She couldn't help tensing at his approach. He stopped by the bed. Unthinkingly, she flinched.

Although he wouldn't touch her. He'd never touch her again, now she was his wife in fact as well as law.

He didn't say anything. There was a soft clink on the bedside cabinet. He s.h.i.+fted away, his footsteps deliberate but somehow defeated.

There was a click as he opened the door, then another as he closed it behind him.

She opened her eyes. The blazing fire still lit the room. The whole episode had probably taken less than half an hour.

Half an hour for her world to change.

She turned her head to see a blue-and-white china washbowl on the nightstand and a pile of towels. He'd seen to her comfort, then he'd left her in peace.

The tears she'd fought since he'd come to her bed overflowed.

Eventually Charis roused to go looking for her husband.

It wasn't in her nature to avoid difficulties. Lying in the rumpled bed, surrounded by the unfamiliar smell of s.e.x, she had time to gather her courage.

And time to start worrying about Gideon.

As shock and discomfort receded, she began to think what price that joyless coupling had exacted from him. She needed to see him, to rea.s.sure herself he was all right. She needed to see him because the moment when she'd wished him to Hades had been brief indeed. Now only his nearness could soothe her aching sadness.

She rolled out of bed, the abrupt movement setting up a host of unfamiliar twinges. Reminder, should she need it, that nothing would ever be the same after what had just happened.

Wrapping a blanket around her trembling shoulders, she trudged across the floor. She pushed the door open and stepped through. The parlor was quiet and dark except for the low glow of the fire.

Had he gone out? After what they'd done, sleep would elude him. She ventured closer to the Stygian corner where he'd sat last night. Then she realized he sprawled in a ma.s.sive wooden armchair in front of the hearth.

”Gideon?” She hitched the blanket up and stepped around the chair's looming bulk to stand before him.

He didn't look at her. Instead, he stared at the fire. Something told her he'd stared into the fire for a long time. His gloved hand curled around a half-filled gla.s.s that dangled on the verge of spilling. Brandy, she guessed.

”Go back to bed, Charis.”

The boneless curve of his long, lean body echoed the despair in his voice. His legs stretched toward the grate, and his s.h.i.+rt hung loose as it had in the bedroom. A frisson ran through her as she looked at his bare chest, gold in the flickering light.

A s.h.i.+ver, astonis.h.i.+ngly, not of revulsion.

Charis beat back the cowardly urge to obey him and flee. Instead, she fixed an unwavering gaze upon him. ”We need to talk.”

His face tightened. With a savagery that made her wince, he lifted the gla.s.s and pitched it into the fire. There was the sharp tinkle of shattering gla.s.s and a brief flare as the brandy caught.

”Christ, no.”

The eyes he focused on her glittered with anguish and a loathing that made her cringe.

”Do you hate me now, Gideon?” She didn't recognize the shaking voice as hers. She'd tried so hard to make the act easy for him, but to her shame, she hadn't succeeded in masking her discomfort.

His face contorted, and she stared aghast into naked torment. Only for a moment. He swiftly pulled the shutters over the turbulent depths.

”Of course I don't hate you,” he said impatiently.

”But...”

”Go, Charis, now.” His voice fractured.

She couldn't mistake his desperation to be alone. Although selfishly she wanted only to stay with him. The tumbled, lonely bed in the next room loomed like a gallows.

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