Chapter 10

CHAPTER10

Edwin slept fitfully, tossing and turning upon the bed, twisting the coverlets around himself until his unconscious mind feared that a snake had slithered like a rope about his body, constricting him. Yet, he could not awaken; he was too deep in a nightmare to be stirred by a mere serpent.

The dream was as familiar to him as the pages of Ovid’s Metamorphoses—his favorite of the ancient Roman poets. For over a decade, he had suffered through the same scene when he slept, like a perpetual punishment.

It always came to him in two parts, and, at present, he was in the midst of the first. He was a younger man of almost twenty, standing in the doorway of his father’s old study in the now-decrepit eastern wing. His father was crouched in the partial darkness, illuminated only by the sway of candlelight, making the shadows around him dance.

“Go to your chambers, boy,” his father growled. “You should not be wandering at night.”

But Edwin did not retreat. He never retreated, no matter how hard he tried to urge himself to step back through the doorway and return to his chambers. A rope dangled between Edwin’s hands as he continued onward, straight toward his father who had his back to him.

Someone else groaned in the darkness, but Edwin could never understand what was being said—whether it was a warning to cease, or an encouragement to do what would soon be done. It did not matter; Edwin never ceased, as he put the rope around his father’s neck and squeezed.

“Perhaps, you have not received enough squeezes in your life,” a different voice intruded upon the nightmare, making him pause. And when he turned to discover the speaker, the gloomy study transformed, stone by dismal stone, into the gardens where he had watched Joanna tend to a lone poppy.

But the gardens did not look like they did in reality; they resembled what they had been when he was a child, only grander. Flowers spilled from rich soil, bushes in bloom urged fragrant perfume into the air, and trees that had not yielded fruit in years were heavy with their sweet burden. The old trellises had been rebuilt, and flowered archways formed beautiful tunnels that curved over every white gravel pathway, providing shade against the fierce sunlight that struggled to pierce through the tangle of blooms and leaves.

And there, standing in the center of one of those paths, clad in a drenched gown as if she had just escaped a summer storm, was Joanna.

“I told you I would succeed,” she said coyly, sweeping an arm around to allow him to take in the majesty of what she had created.

It is but a dream, he told himself, though it did nothing to wake him up. Nor was he certain he wanted to be awoken, as his attention trailed away from the cascading wisteria and the fat, velvety roses, and the honeysuckle, and returned to the divine vision of Joanna.

Her sodden dress was crafted of a shimmering, white fabric that might already have been diaphanous enough without the addition of water. Indeed, he did not know why she was soaked to the skin when the sky above them was a perfect, cloudless blue.

“I went swimming,” she said, by way of explanation. “I would have invited you to join me, but you told me you do not like to swim. Or you cannot swim. I forget which.”

“I… do not like to,” he heard himself reply, hearing the voice of his older, thirty-year-old self. Panicking, he glanced down, but the rope he had held in his hands a moment ago had vanished, replaced by a bouquet of perfumed wildflowers.

“Are those for me?” Joanna asked, smiling. “You do not need to woo me with gifts and fancies, my darling—we are already married. The wooing has been done and the prize has been won, though I suspect that I am more victorious, wed to a delicious gentleman like you.”

Edwin swallowed. “Delicious? Do you mean to eat me?”

“No, but I might bite a little,” she replied, laughing so sweetly that his heart swelled at the sound, more beautiful than birdsong.

As she walked slowly toward him, the dappled sunlight dancing against her skin, he allowed himself a more leisurely view of her. She was the most exquisite creature he had ever beheld, her sultry appearance far more powerful than the sight of her as a warrior, seated atop her Pegasus when she had departed Tillington House. Every movement she made was as fluid as a dancer, every curve flawless, as if she had truly been crafted by the heavens. And her green eyes were ablaze with a passion that struck raw lightning from his chest to his loins, making every part of him tingle.

The damp fabric of her shimmering gown revealed an equally perfect, heaven-hewn figure, though it took him a moment to realize that she wore no undergarments to speak of. Pink, pert nipples pushed against the thin material, drawing his enamored eye to the full, ripe breasts that moved enticingly with every step she took toward him. Her narrow waist seemed even narrower in contrast to her ample bosom and wide, seductive hips that swayed from side to side.

Her legs were long and lean, a defined line appearing each time she bore weight on one foot and shifted it to another. The thighs of someone who rode horses often and was rarely not in control. He could not help but imagine what they would feel like if she were to straddle him, squeezing him with those thighs as she drew him inside her.

“You should not come any closer,” he warned, more panicked than he had ever been while lost in the midst of his usual nightmares. Those, he understood. This, he did not.

Joanna smiled and paused, leaning against one of the tunneling trellises. “Have you lost your ardor for me already? We have not been married long enough for that. I have heard it said that a husband usually loses interest in his wife after the first child is born, and we have not yet been blessed with children.” She continued her approach, reaching out a hand to him. “Do not be afraid, Edwin. I will not hurt you unless you ask me to.”

He knew he should ask her to stay where she was, he knew he should insist on keeping a polite distance, but as she walked closer, he found himself closing the gap between them. His hands came to rest upon the dramatic dip of her waist, his teeth grazing his lower lip in overwhelming desire as he gazed down at her breasts, so pale and full and inviting.

“My mouth is up here,” Joanna said, laughing, as she tilted his chin back up. “Now, cease this performance of restraint and kiss me before I burst with frustration. I have waited my entire life for you, Edwin, and I shall be exceedingly angry if you disappoint me.”

He obeyed. He could not help it. One moment, he was thinking of every excuse to run from her, and the next, his lips crushed against hers. Even in a dream of his own making, he had expected a young lady from a respectable family to be restrained in her passion, but she kissed him back with a hunger that made his body burn with need. As if she was the only thing that could cool him down, though not until they had blazed an inferno together.

Beyond the realm of dreams, he could not remember the last time he had kissed or been close to a woman. Before everything happened, he assumed. He had been a different man, back then—the sort of man who would not have hesitated to take his wife into his arms and do the things he could only dream about.

“I need you,” Joanna purred, drawing her kisses away from his lips, bringing them to his throat as her hands smoothed across the hard contours of his chest.

His stomach tightened, his own lips seeking out the elegant curve of her neck, while his hands explored everything his heart desired. He caressed the hourglass of her waist and slipped his hands over her hips to her pert backside, stealing a mischievous squeeze of soft buttocks before pulling her harder against him. She gasped as she brushed against his eagerness, and the sound almost cost him his senses; it was so tantalizing.

As he caught her mouth with his once more, sinking into the burning heat of their kiss, letting it consume him, his hand wandered to the supple flesh of her breast. He caressed the delicious roundness, his free hand making quick work of her dress’s front buttons, until she was almost entirely exposed among the flowers and the trees. Just as he had imagined for an embarrassing, fleeting moment when he had dined with Joanna earlier, and she had mentioned preferring the gardens to a new gown. It was the precise reason he had departed in a hurry, concerned she might mistake his fleeting spark of imagination for a lingering desire.

He dipped his head and took a pink, enticing nipple into his mouth, sucking gently until she bucked against him. Imagined or not, her moans drove him to the brink of madness, his heart pounding in his chest, his blood hot in his veins, his mouth ravenous to taste every part of her.

“I have longed for you,” Joanna whispered, clinging to him as his hand slipped between her thighs. “I thought you had abandoned me. I did not know what I would do if you did not return to me, to please me, to make me feel—oh!” Her back arched, her expression transforming into one of absolute bliss as his fingertips touched upon her most sensitive bud, circling slowly in the way that she liked. Or the way he thought she liked, for his mind clashed in confusion of what was real and what was not.

It was almost as if he was living a different, parallel life, and in this one, he and Joanna enjoyed a blissful history, where they knew everything about one another, including how to satisfy and be satisfied.

No sooner had he thought that, than she unfastened his trousers and reached for him, freeing him. Her hand moved skillfully, bringing a gasp to his own throat as he struggled to concentrate on her pleasure, and only her pleasure.

“I need you,” she repeated, wrapping her leg around his waist, bringing him closer to the entrance of her sex.

He hoisted her up into his arms, feeling both her legs wrap tight around him, experiencing the squeeze of her powerful thighs. Her bare skin was still damp from the swim she had taken, though he did not dwell upon that too keenly in case it woke him. After all, there was no lake close by, only a river that he refused to think about. A river that chilled him to the core.

“Do not wander from me, my love,” Joanna purred. “Keep your mind upon me and only me.”

She tilted her hips, and with a wrenching pull of desire, she sank down upon him, drawing him deep inside her. He buried his face in her neck, inhaling the moment, savoring her and the familiar closeness they seemed to share—the familiar hunger that made her desire rumble as much as his own.

But before he could relish a moment more, exploring the proximity and union he had not known he could crave, the gardens melted away and Joanna faded with them. The last thing he saw of her as he woke from the most pleasant dream he had enjoyed in years was her eyes widening and her mouth parting in a scream, but neither were formed of desire. Instead, she looked terrified.

Sitting bolt upright in his bed, he heard Joanna’s scream again. In his clouded mind, he wondered if the sound had followed him back from his dreams, but as he sat there, panting in the dark with the bedclothes tangled around him, he realized the sound was coming from the real world and not the one he had been loath to abandon.

A third scream splintered the air, spurring Edwin out of his bed in naught but a long shirt.

Barreling out of his chambers, he ran toward the noise, calling back, “Joanna? Joanna, where are you?”

And as the screams had not come from anywhere close to his wife’s bedchamber, he feared that his dream had not been a pleasant distraction, but an omen instead. One he had not listened to, for his mind and body had been too occupied with the agonizingly real sensation of holding her in his arms and feeling himself deep inside her as their lips danced together in a feverish kiss.

She is in danger, he understood, as a fourth scream—more chilling than the last—cut to the very heart of him, urging his legs to run faster than they had run in a long, long time.