Olivia stretched and pressed herself against the heat at her back. It seemed to her that she might have smiled, but it might have only been that she wanted to. A delicious sort of lethargy had sapped her strength, made her liquid. She drifted. There was no sound, no light. The current slowly turned her, then she became the current. Flowing. Rippling. Slipping effortlessly into the void.
She came up with a violent start. Fear wrenched a cry from the back of her throat. Her fingertips scrabbled along the edge of the covers to throw them off, and she kicked out in the same frantic movement. She was all elbows and knees, flailing between the sheets, digging her heels and head so deeply into the mattress that her back arced like an electrical current between two poles.
Griffin caught her just as she would have slipped over the edge of the bed and hauled her flush to his side. She was breathing hard in short, arrhythmic gasps that did little to fill her lungs and nothing at all to calm her. Her fingers curled in the linen of his nightshirt like talons, and when he tried to dislodge her she snarled at him.
“Olivia!” Her knee came up hard. Griffin tucked and took the considerable force of the blow on his hip. “Bloody hell, woman!” He shackled her wrists and tore her fingers loose from his clothing. She was panting, struggling. Firelight revealed her bared teeth and wildness in her eyes. Griffin wrestled Olivia onto her back and pinned her wrists above her head, a feat requiring no little force. He used one of his legs to trap both of hers but not without effort and almost being unmanned a second time.
He swore under his breath as she bucked and twisted and nearly succeeded in dislodging him. It did not seem possible that any woman could be possessed of such strength, but to experience it at the hands of this particular woman, with her willow frame and grave, graceful air, was in every way astonishing.
Afraid of hurting her, Griffin held fast and waited until she wore herself out. Come morning, she would bear the marks of his restraint. He imagined a bracelet of blue bruises around her wrists and perhaps a pale, purple medallion near her throat where he’d first pushed her back with the heel of his hand.
“Olivia,” he said again, his tone more weary than gentle. “Olivia.”
He was not prepared for her sudden collapse. It was not that she was merely still, but that she was boneless. The tension that had pulled her taut and defined her fight simply vanished. Suspicious, he eased his grip on one of her wrists, raised it, then let go. Her hand dropped like a stone. The same thing happened when he lifted and released her other wrist.
She had been asleep?
Griffin rolled away from her and lighted a candle at the bedside. He held the candlestick over her, letting the light wash over her face. Her eyes were closed, the long lashes looking like shadows just below them. Her lips were slightly parted, but her breathing was easy. Her complexion was smooth; for once she looked much younger than her four and twenty years. He saw peace here, the serenity she was denied when she was awake, and sometimes, it seemed now, even when she slept.
With infinite care, he drew her arms to her side again and rearranged the tangle of blankets over her when he witnessed her involuntary shiver.
He wondered what she might remember upon waking, if anything at all. What demons drove her to such violence? She was hardly more than a slip of a female, yet she had demonstrated a fierceness that set him back on his heels and gave him no choice in his manner of dealing with her. She had proven she was wholly capable of hurting him, even if she was hardly responsible for it.
Griffin set the candlestick aside but did not extinguish the flame. He lay on his side, his head propped on an elbow while he observed the gentle rise and fall of her breast. So easy was her sleep now that he could almost be convinced he was the one who’d had the nightmare.
He brushed away the tangle of hair that had been swept across her throat during the battle. His gaze narrowed on the crescent mark peeking out above the neckline of her shift. He gently turned back the fabric and saw the ruddy proof of his instinctive self-defense. He laid his fingertips against the stamp made by the heel of his hand and felt the heat of her skin and the faint pulse of her heart.
Without quite knowing he meant to do it, Griffin bent his head and placed his lips against the bruise. His fingertips slid over her shift, grazing her breast, then the slope of her ribcage. His palm came to rest lightly on her abdomen. He raised his head, but not before his mouth found the sweet curve of her neck.
That she was in his bed at all was something of a mystery to him. She was wrong in believing he required her there as compensation for keeping her. His failing was in not correcting her assumption. The words had come to his lips several times, but he’d left them unspoken. He wanted her here, had for weeks now, perhaps from the moment she’d accepted his first challenge, but he wouldn’t have forced himself on her, or even narrowed her choices so that she would accept him as the devil she knew.
What he’d done, though, upon reflection was perhaps no better. Allowing her to act on her assumption gave him what he wanted and placed the whole of the responsibility on her. There was no cause for pride there.
“What manner of things have you seen?” he whispered. He expected no response and received none. She did not stir except to draw another breath.
Griffin did not remove his hand from the flat of her belly as he dropped his elbow and lay his head against the pillow. He moved closer, turning her gently on her side, and fit himself against the curve of her body. His thighs supported the back of hers; his groin cradled her bottom. In this manner, he slept at last.
A slender chink in the drapes allowed the first hint of dawn to enter the room. Olivia lay on her side and watched the beam of light stretch itself slowly across the floor. It didn’t matter that all across London people were beginning to rise and set about their work for the day. Here on Putnam Lane it was for all intents and purposes still the middle of the night.
She felt the pleasant blossom of warmth from Griffin’s palm against her midriff. She didn’t mind that he held her in such a way, tucked against his body as though he were sheltering her. It was only a harmless fancy if she did not allow herself to make too much of it, and the hot and rigid press of his cock against her bottom kept her from doing so. If his lordship was thinking at all, sheltering her was not what he had in his mind.
Olivia drew up her shift to bare her thighs and backside, then rubbed herself slowly against him. She heard his breathing hitch. His hips jerked, thrust toward her. She reached behind her and yanked on his nightshirt, pulling it up roughly so when she settled back a second time it was her flesh on his flesh. He moved against her, sliding, grinding. Olivia clamped her teeth together, her jaw as rigid as his cock, and grasped him in her hand. She was breathing through her nose now, nostrils slightly flared, the set of her features strained by determination, not lust.
She raised her upper leg and slid it over his, widening the space between her thighs to ease his entry. She pressed back and guided him, then bit down hard on her bottom lip as his hips jerked again and he pushed those first few inches into her. Behind her, he made a sound somewhere between a groan and a curse.
So he was awake now, if he hadn’t been before.
Olivia forced herself to relax as she waited for him to move deeper. She’d expected he would begin to rut, especially now that he was conscious of being at least partially inside her. When he didn’t, she tried to find a better seat against him. He stopped her, palming her hips so tightly she couldn’t move.
“Would you have me rape you?” he hissed against her ear. “Christ, but you do not want this. You’re not ready.”
Not knowing what he meant, she squeezed her eyes shut, whimpered, and tasted blood on her lip.
“Be still!” She had only hunched her shoulders and ducked her head as though to prepare for a blow, but even this small movement shifted her body against his in a way that was pure torment. “For God’s sake,” he whispered a bit less harshly, “don’t move.”
She was tight, achingly so, but she was also as dry as a spent well. For all that she had provoked him to just this end, she was unprepared for it. She could barely accommodate his entry and not without pain, yet she would have him take her anyway.
“If we are to have done with it,” he said quietly, “then it will be in a manner of my choosing. Do you understand?”
