At first he didn’t respond, then something broke loose inside him and he groaned.Cupping the back of her head with his large hand, he urged her forward, his mouth opening, his tongue touching the seam of her lips, prodding them open.
In the past, she’d been disgusted when her husband wanted her to kiss open-mouthed, but now she wanted Christien inside her in any way she could get him.She opened eagerly, hungrily, sucking his tongue in and causing him to moan.The sound vibrated through her, making her move her legs to ease the pressure between them.
The rigid outline of his erection pressed against her belly.Just one time she wanted to know how it could be between a man and a woman who loved each other.She’d heard the maids whisper and understood it could be so much more than what she’d experienced.She wanted that with Christien.
But he pulled away and took a deep breath, holding her at arm’s length.“We must stop.”
“Why?”
“’Tis not right.”
“I want you to show me how beautiful it can be.I want to see the beauty, Christien.I want to know it’s more than pain and degradation.That it’s more than being controlled and humiliated.”
He closed his eyes and groaned.His arms still held her at a distance but they were shaking with the effort.“I would like nothing more than to show you how beautiful it can be.But I cannot.”
“I see.”She looked away, embarrassed she had asked.Mortified he had rejected her.
“Madelaine.Love.Please do not think I don’t want you.You have already witnessed the proof.I want you very much, but there is nothing I can offer you.You are married to a brutal man who will kill us if he discovered our transgressions.”
“Is not being alone with you in this room a transgression?Have I not already broken my wedding vows?Don’t you understand, Christien?I don’t care anymore.He has destroyed everything I once honored and cherished.”
“Shhhh.”He pressed his fingers against her lips.“Do not say such things.”
She broke away from him and paced across the room.“Look at me, Christien.Look at me and tell me what you see.I am but a mere woman.You can teach me to fight, but it changesnothing.I will still live in this castle between two men—one who hates me and abuses me and one who hates me and wants me.I can fight, but in the end we both know what the outcome will be.I am a walking corpse.”
“Stop this!”He took an angry step forward.His fingers curled into fists at his sides, but she knew Christien well enough not to be afraid.He would never hit her.He was too honorable to ever hit a woman.“We will think of something.”
She opened her arms wide.“What?What can we do?Will you take me with you?How long before he discovers us gone and sends his men after us?How far will we get before we are found and brought back?What will happen to us then, Christien?You will be killed most certainly but not before he tortures you.And I…” She was unable finish her thought.It mattered not, they both knew what her fate was.
“Don’t you see?”She took a step toward him.“I’m already damned.”
Chapter Twelve
Christien stepped off the elevator and loosened his tie with a weary sigh.He’d left Lucheux’s office and returned to the club in time to help Sabine open.Normally Wednesday nights weren’t busy, but of course tonight was the exception.He’d been running nonstop since walking through the doors.
Even though Madelaine was constantly in his thoughts, he purposely didn’t check on her.When he left her with the vague excuse he had business to attend to—he had no intention of telling her he was going to speak to Lucheux—she’d looked beaten down, exhausted, weary beyond her endurance and haunted.He thought it best to leave her to sleep.He hoped she took the doctor’s advice and rested.Even though she was recovering well enough to leave the hospital, he was still concerned by how slowly she moved and how stiff she was.He hated that she was in such pain.
The elevator doors silently closed behind him and he rolled the tension from his shoulders, glad the night was over.
His home was dark with only strategically placed night lights illuminating enough to see where furniture was so he didn’t trip.He made his way down the hall, tired, but anxious to see her.
Quietly he pushed open the door to her room and peered in.She was lying in the bed, the covers drawn to her chin, eyes closed, breathing deep.Fast asleep.Something inside him loosened, a tension he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying.He’d put a man on each exit to his quarters and trusted his men implicitly to keep her safe, but until now he didn’t realize how much he had to see for himself that she was all right.
He wanted to crawl into bed beside her, to slide into her wet heat, to kiss the hollow of her throat and make her squirm beneath him.The thought had him hard and his blood turned sluggish.Instead he forced himself to step back into the hall and silently pull the door closed.
Much to his irritation, she was being stubborn, refusing to take the pain medication the doctor prescribed even though she was hurting.If he could take the pain from her and make it his own, he gladly would, but such was not his burden to bear and so he vowed to ease whatever suffering he could.And that meant leaving her alone.
Pulling his tie off, he entered his bedroom and suddenly stopped, his senses on alert.
Someone had been in his room.
He stood in the doorway, his gaze sliding from the bed to his dresser, to the open closet door, to the bookcase and back to the bed.Nothing had been disturbed as far as he could tell with a cursory look, but he knew someone had been in here.Every instinct told him so.
Only Madelaine had been in his living quarters today.His guards would have told him if someone else had entered.
He walked to the dresser and opened a drawer.His clothes were undisturbed.To the naked eye, nothing had been touched in his closet.His gaze roamed the room and fell on the trunk shoved into the corner and nearly forgotten until now.The contents of the trunk had followed him from place to place for centuries.The original had fallen apart long ago, replaced with another and still another, but the contents stayed the same.Why they survived and the trunks didn’t, he wasn’t sure.It’d been years, nigh on a century since he opened it, but he knew exactly what was inside.
His gut clenching, he slowly lifted the lid.’Twas as if his buried grief had been lurking inside and the raised lid set it loose.Like a whirlwind it nearly knocked him over.This was why he never opened the lid.The pain was almost unbearable, but he stood against it, weathered it like he had so many times before.
