Chapter 18

She turned her face away. When he touched her, she must offer nothing. This was for the Beaumont heir. Money. Lady Margaret.

But it wasn't all for that. God Almighty. She placed her palms back against the silken bedspread to cool them. Maybe she was needing to do the same with her brain? Lock it in a trunk? Disown it?

"Fine. Then just do it. Thank you." She spoke as if she'd lumps of ice in her mouth. Perhaps she did. Hadn't she thought last night it was appropriate for him to sort out this mess, after all, when he'd caused it? Was that what this stupid twanging of her heartstrings was really about? The second's pity that had led to this?

"Your skirt. You want to take that up? It's just, you did say."

"James "

She bit her tongue. Why lose her temper? She hadn't, so far as she could recall, said anything in the rules about her skirt and who would not have the right to touch it. But she didn't want to display herself to him in this cold, clinical fashion either.

"Of course." As she grasped her skirt, she forced her lips to curve. Although quite how they curved, when they seemed frozen in her face, was a miracle. Nothing short of.

"I won't look, if that's your worry. Even if it's nothing I haven't seen before."

"Are you enjoying this? Is that it?"

"What? You want to write that in your terms too, I'm not allowed to?"

"If I'd thought of it."

"You could be in trouble there, if I don't. That's the fundamental difference between men and women. What you do about that is up to you. Though I'm guessing with that set of rules, enjoyment is off the menu."

Damn him. The bastard. How like him to know so. And say so. So now? Well, now, how damned right she was to have set these rules.

"Now. Hold steady, while I get on top."

"The commentary is unnecessary. I think I said no talking."

"Well, I didn't see you said no moving." He grunted. "Your legs for example, so I can get between them. You know, can you spread them or something?"

"Fine. Anything to get this over with."

He knelt between her legs, looking at her. "You all right there? You want me just to do it?"

"If you desire."

"I don't, sweetheart, but here goes anyway."

Exhaling sharply, he leaned forward on his elbow, and she focused all her gaze, every particle of it, on the bedside table, hiding her alarm beneath what she prayed was an impressive fa?ade. He fumbled his hand at the opening of his breeches.

She stared harder.

"Good. Just do it. With as little touching. Thank you."

He adjusted his weight, and she closed her eyes, her breath catching, as he entered her. The discomfort made her eyes water.

"So, how's this? Am I touching you as little as possible?"

He reached over her and grasped the bed railing with one hand. "Hmm? You want me to go on?" His voice came from deep in his chest.

"Please."

"You're dry. Don't say I didn't warn you."

She didn't care. A little pain was certainly preferable to a little pleasure. And she certainly didn't feel any pleasure. In that second it was hard to believe she ever had with him.

"See, I don't want you slapping me with a rule about that next."

"I think I told you not to talk. And watch my head on the rail. I don't want my skull fractured."

How on earth was her voice so calm a little faint perhaps when she was in places she didn't want to be? Because he knew exactly what he was doing here. What was this but a cheap bid to force her to remove these rules? So then he could say, Told you so.'

Had she thought, her body inch by inch to the crows? It could be quarter inch by quarter inch to the lions, the tigers, the snakes, the bears. This would be over in a minute.

In the meantime she'd whisper two words. Four actually.

Lady Margaret. Lady Margaret. Lady Margaret.

Beaumont heir. Beaumont heir. Beaumont heir.

He grasped the bed rail tighter and thrust so her head nearly whacked against the rail.

"If you want me to do something about the fact you're dry as dust, say so. But don't say I never warned you about the cream."

"Oh, no. It's fine. Pray do continue. It's not your fault my body just doesn't want you."

"Do you think that's wise to say so? You want this heir, don't you?"

"James, I'm not rescinding these rules. I'm not doing this for pleasure."

"I hope you think I am. Fine."

She closed her eyes as he set a rhythm, held her breath as his body bumped against hers and the bedrail bumped the wall. If she'd done that the first time, would she be here now?

She felt him throb inside her.It was over. Thank God. Now she could get the hell up off this bed. If he'd just pull out.

Loosening his hold of the bedrail, he did. She jerked upright.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"What does it look like? I'm getting up. You don't seriously think I'm going to lie here in your embrace, do you?"

"Fine. But you do that and you'll have to do it all again, which I'm reckoning you don't want to."

"I beg your pardon?"

She jerked her head around to meet his gaze. She couldn't do it all again. Not right now. Not the assault this had been on her senses. Her body too.

"Me too, sweetheart. You might say I'm not for it right now, either." He cut her off as her lips parted. "Now, you want that heir, you lie down."

He reached toward her, a study in rumpled sexuality. His shirt cascaded over his breeches, which somehow adhered just to his narrow hips. Nothing, yet everything, on display.

"I don't see what that has to do "

"Didn't your ma teach you anything? Or wasn't she around long enough?"

"Let's leave my mother out of this, shall we? This has nothing to do with her or indeed, with you. And frankly, you're the very last one to speak about mothers. We all know the sacred palace yours brought you up in wasn't an aristocratic one."

"Fine. But you want to be a mother yourself, you need to give things time to settle."

The fine hair stood up on the back of her neck.

"You haven't the faintest notion what I'm talking about, do you?"

A huff of breath escaped her. The faintest notion? He was the one who didn't have that. About Storm. About anything. Why would he?

Mastering the thought, she lowered her gaze.

It wasn't as if she wanted to sleep with him, so if he had something to impart, some knowledge, dragged up from some sewer he'd inhabited, the gist of which she could actually guess the sewer too, what a bore he was--shouldn't she govern her fury and pretend to listen, before telling him to get out?

"My mother died when I was four." God rest her, if she saw the lengths Fury had gone to, the straits she was in it was probably just as well. "You're meaning I should lie down if I want to conceive? Is that it?"

"Absolutely. I couldn't put it better. You're a married woman. How come you don't know these things?"

"How come you do?"

"Because I been halfway round the Caribbean. But maybe that's why you and old Tommie had a problem."

Old Tommie? Governing her fury was going to take a bit of doing.

Her voice lashed out as a hissing snap. "Thomas, which is what you will call him, was a year younger than you."

"Younger?"

He raised his eyebrows. No doubt he thought living with her must have put years on Thomas, aging him beyond recognition.

"He was twenty-nine. Why does that surprise you?"

Flint shrugged.

"Illness had, of course, wreaked havoc on him."

"Tommie was ill?"

A horrified furrow dented the bridge of his nose. Now he was going to accuse her of poisoning him, wasn't he? But he did, just possibly, have a point about the conception. She'd not been able to lie down with Thomas, since he'd become ill and his physical cruelties had become things she needed to escape.

Although quite how the blazes he could know, a man like Flint, who didn't care where he spilled his seed, was beyond her comprehension.

"Oh, he was very ill." She swiveled her legs back onto the bed. "Especially by the time I had finished with him."