Chapter 10

Atlas led her down a long, dark hallway, past the wing she'd slept in the night before and deeper into the house, which seemed to grow bigger with each echoing step they took into the shadows. No candles flickered in sconces on the wall, and a chill raced gooseflesh up her neck.

She rubbed her free hand up and down her arm. "Is this where the family sleeps?"

"No. They sleep on the other side of the house. I began, last night, preparing a room in this wing for Alfie. But it will not be finished for a few days. I know you'll wish to be close to him. My mother will listen for him tonight, will keep watch." Silence. Then, "I apologize for keeping such isolated quarters. But I find it necessary."

Necessary? For what reason? The chill on her neck turned into a full-body shiver. She barely knew this man. But she would learn more about him this night, more than she knew of most men. She would learn the shape and shade of his body, the way he moved when touched. She'd always possessed a healthy curiosity, and now it blazed, fully focused on her husband.

Her husband.

He stopped and opened a door, and light hit her immediately, warm and welcoming as he tugged her inside and shut the door. A fire leapt and crackled in a fireplace directly in front of them, and to the right stood a large bed, crisply made and free from curtains. A few large chairs had been grouped near the fire, as well as a screen, and on the side of the room opposite the bed, a curtain bisected the room in two. It fell from ceiling to floor in a flood of some dark velvet, and beyond the room extended into darkness.

He moved toward the fire, but she wandered toward the curtain. What lay beyond? Pulling it back revealed a large window through which the moon shone, shining down on a pianoforte with a bench behind it. Those the only furnishings on this side.

Atlas's warmth appeared beside her. "When I returned from the Continent, I put a pianoforte in the room next to mine. My own room was too small to fit it into. My father decided one day to tear down the wall between the two rooms, but that made the room too big to heat up, so I hung a curtain where the wall used to be. It helps. You'll not be cold. I swear it."

She ran her hands across the top of the instrument. This, then, was why he found it necessary to keep such isolated quarters. He liked to play without disturbing anyone. She laughed. What a goose she'd been to imagine he was anything other than what he was. If Atlas was a bit of literature, he'd be a love poem not a horrid novel.

He left her and knelt at the fire, poked it a bit, applied some magic that made it flare into hot life.

My. My, my, my. She flared into hot life, too. And all because he could stoke a fire into a rage. Would she ever be able to talk with a tongue like coarse wood?

He turned to her, flames casting his face with shadows. "Would you like me to leave? While you prepare for bed?"

"No. I think… Would like… That is to say, leaving is unnecessary. I can simply change behind the curtain. Or you could go behind the curtain or?—"

"Very well." He marched across the room and disappeared behind frayed velvet.

He took the fire with him, somehow, and she rooted her feet to the floor to keep from following, seeking out his warmth.

The curtain wavered as if he'd hit it, bumped against it perhaps, and the sound of rustling followed it, linen scraping across the body, being removed.

Focus, Clara.She must. On her own disrobing, on her determination to stay out of this man's bed. Her husband's bed.

She removed her fichu and draped it over the back of a nearby chair. Then she bent her arm behind her back, reaching for the gown's tapes, unable to catch them, despite a bevy of wriggles and stretches.

"Are you done?" Atlas asked, his voice stretching thin across the room.

"I've not even started yet." She leaned against the bed post, hiding her eyes with a hand.

Footsteps. "Is something amiss?" Atlas's voice washed over her, so close.

"I cannot reach." She groaned, casting a glance over her shoulder.

He chuckled. "May I help?"

She gave him her back and clasped her arms across her belly as his fingers flirted with her gown, flirted with her skin above her gown where the fichu had previously fitted close to her body.

He made a strangled sort of sound, and the light brush of his blunt fingertips turned into the hot brand of his entire palm on the skin of her back above her gown. "Hell." A hiss of a word, grumbly, too.

And it ruined her a little bit, toppled her resolve. Grasping for bricks to keep it upright, she said, "Should I turn around? You'll be less tempted by my front. Most men are, I shouldn't wonder. After a woman's had a child. My back possesses fewer scars of motherhood." She managed a weak laugh. She should dive under the bed and hope he entirely forgot her existence. What pitiful attempts at lightening the awkward heaviness that had settled around them.

His hands became shackles on her shoulders, and he spun her around, forced her chin upward until she met his gaze. Anger there. More fiery rage than she'd ever thought this man capable of.

"You don't believe that," he growled. She wiggled but could not escape. He only tightened his hold. "You believe it's what others think, but you do not share their sentiment." It wasn't a question, but he demanded her answer nonetheless.

"I do not."

A slow nod. "Know this, Clara Bronwen." His lip twitched. "Clara Bromley. You are bloody magnificent. From the first moment I met you, my soul praised your beauty. And now, touching you, even knowing I cannot have you, I have never been more aroused. All you have to do is exist, and I am hard, aching, needy for you." He closed his eyes with a shudder, as if wracked by the very need he spoke of, then released her and stepped back, opening his eyes once more.

Needy, aching arousal. Not just him lost to it. His words—only his words—had swept a living tingle up her spine, sent a bolt of heat straight between her legs.

She hung her head and mumbled, "I am such a fool."

His foot stepped into view, and his hand cupped her chin once more, and then, again, she looked into his eyes. Less angry this time. Yet more dangerous. "You are no?—"

"I am because despite my better judgment, I want… I want…"

"Say it."

"I thought I did not want you to touch me, but…" She cut her eyes to side, intent on escape.

His hold on her chin tightened. He would not let her leave. "Say it, Clara."

"I thought I did not want you to touch me, but I do."

"All of it. Say all of it."

"I want you to touch me."

Between one second and the next, he pushed her against the nearest wall, slicing one leg between hers and lifting until the ground fell away and she clung to his neck to keep from toppling through the air. She held tight to him to keep from falling. She held him tight because she wanted to. And he lifted until her legs bunched around his hips, wrapping round. He pinned her against the wall, the muscle of his thigh hard against the part of her that ached for him the most. No man had ever tossed her up a wall before.

And the only thing that felt better was when his lips met hers, and he parted her mouth with a kiss. Their third kiss. Another to add to the one when he'd agreed to pretend to love her and the one when he'd proposed marriage to her. The first soft, the second with a hint of heat. This third would destroy her. All three glimpses of a man seemingly at odds with the usual Atlas, the quiet giant who helped others.

Somewhere within, he possessed a rogue. Who kissed, who demanded, who threatened to fuck her. And every time that rogue appeared, she wanted to let him. Every time the rogue peeked out from the hidden core of this gentle soul, all her fears burned away.

Entirely mad. As mad as his kisses, growing harder and hotter.

Because every woman knew rogues were not to be trusted. They inspired fear instead of banishing it. But she could never fear Atlas. That why this did not scare her, that why she would forget her former follies—a marriage without intimacies—and let him ravish her.

She stroked her hands into his silky hair and pressed her breasts against his chest.

He groaned, his leg lifting higher as she rolled against it with a whimper.

She blamed the whimper for what happened next. He withdrew from the kiss, closed his eyes on heavy breaths, and lowered his leg, placing her on her feet.

"I mean it," she said, refusing to remove her arms from around his neck. Her own speech halted heavy between them. "I want this. A lady can change her mind can she not?"

His eyes flew open. "She damn well can. I've only stopped… your clothes. And I'm not yet undressed. And"—he swallowed, his hand twitching at his thigh. His wound. Had he hurt it when he'd lifted her? "Now, Shall I undress you, or will you undress yourself?"

"I want your hands on me." A rush of relief that he did not regret the kiss. A rush of greediness. As long as this man gave, she would take.

He spun her around, pulled her hard against his front. She gasped, she melted, and she let her head fall back into the hard shelter of his chest.

His arms wrapped round her, one hand finding her breast, caressing, squeezing until every thought in her head turned into firework—light and glory then ash. Gone.

Just like her gown, suddenly pooled around her feet, her stays falling with a thump to the floor, he reached for her shift, tugged, but she had urges, too. They must be met. She turned in his arms, made quick work of the buttons of his waistcoat, let it join her abandoned finery on the ground at their feet. His cravat gave way easily beneath a gentle tug, and once she'd unwrapped him, she kissed the strong column of his neck. That bobbing apple in his throat sat just at her eye height, and odd that made her feel small, when every other man of her existence made her feel a very Amazon. Small, yes, but not weak. The way he touched her, looked at her, gave her strength.

Then, with a growl, he lifted her, tossed her onto the bed, and froze. He stood a sky-reaching statue in the dark, his shoulders as broad as forever. She wanted to live on them, knew she'd feel safe there. From the distance separating them, his gaze met hers, slicing out of the darkness to catch her, hold her. Ha. As if she'd go anywhere.

In the distance between them, her need grew greater. Every minute he didn't touch her screamed across her skin. He must touch her. He must at least move, eventually. But when he finally did it was only to tilt his head to the side, his eyes hot coals.

"Let us play a game," he said.

"Pardon?"

"To get to know one another better. You say something you know to be true of me, and I say something I know to be true of you."

"Very well. You go first."

He leaned against the bedpost, crossing his arms over his chest, and stretching the linen of his shirt to its limits. "That is not all of it. There are stakes. If I state something that is irrevocably true about you, then you surrender a piece of clothing. And if you state something true about me, then?—"

"You surrender an article of clothing." The proposition seemed more than a prelude to lovemaking. It seemed a prelude to something deeper, the process of two souls growing to know one another. Not what they'd married for. But then she'd not married him for this, either—tangled limbs and panting breaths. But she could not refuse it now she'd had a taste. Nor could she refuse to play his game. She grinned. "Not much game to play, you rogue. I have but one piece of clothing left—well, other than my stockings—and as far as I can tell, you have at least two, possibly three." If he wore smalls.

His grin flashed white and wicked. "I'm not above taking clear advantage of a willing woman. And I've just one more layer than you." Shirt. Breeches. No smalls. And wasn't that tantalizing? "Particularly since I think I'll keep your stockings in place. I saw them peeking out from beneath your dress at the lake. I've been able to think of nothing else all day. Pink, Clara?" He shook his head. "Temptress."

She wanted to tempt him. And she wanted to win.

"I should begin, then." She knew exactly what truth she'd put into the air.

He sat on the edge of the bed, and she hinged upright to sit behind him, her legs running the length of the mattress, his bent over its side.

Even in the fire-lit dark, she appreciated the strength of his profile—the strong jaw and broad shoulders, the long nose and thick brow, those shapely lips. Everything about him big and defiant, yet…

"You, sir," she said, brushing a lock of his hair away from his temple, "are a poet."

The mattress creaked beneath his shifting weight. "You should have said soldier instead. Or farmer. Or estate manager. I do all those sorts of things here."

"Yes, but I think it is truer to say you are a poet. And isn't truth what we are reaching for?"

He laughed. "I don't know if I agree with you. I don't think I should surrender my shirt."

"Surrender your trousers, then."

"Neither. I'm no Byron. Songwriter would have been more precise." A grumble. He would not accede. His body beside her rippled warmth, and she shifted her legs closer to him, almost sighed at how delicious this man's hard warmth could be.

"I'm positive I'm correct," she said, "but I cannot help it if you disagree." She huffed. "Very well. Your turn."

He turned, dragging one knee up onto the bed, his gaze traveling down the length of her body as he rested his hand like a lazy cat's paw on her thigh. "You're brave. A good mother."

Oh. The words gems she did not deserve. She curved her entire body against the headboard to keep from having to accept them. His other hand joined the first on her ankle, and he squeezed. Then his hand settled beneath her chin, lifted it.

"You are, Clara."

"It took me too long to do what my son needed me to do."

"It's hard to know, I think, what it is children need sometimes."

Clara tried to look at him because something in his voice told her that his face would be the sweetest thing, a healing thing. But even though he tilted her chin up still, his fingers a sparking pressure at the tip of her chin, she looked everywhere but at him. In the dark portal of the window behind the still curtains, into the deep shadows gathering around the pianoforte, into the roaring flames of the fire.

She could not look at him, but she did find her voice. "I cannot agree with your estimation, not entirely. If a parent does not know, it is because they do not care to, because it is easier to tie a bit of linen over the eyes and not see." She swallowed hard. "I'm afraid you do not win my shift."

His hand dropped away from her chin. "Imagine that. We both lose the first round. Your turn." He lifted his hand from her thigh and kicked his knee to the side so it covered her leg, an intimate overlapping of limbs.

"You love your family," she said without hesitation, "though I think, perhaps, they infuriate you at times."

"True enough." He lifted the hem of his shirt, so slowly he must be doing it on purpose, teasing her, until it stretched over his shoulders, hid his head, and he tossed it aside.

Holy Hepplewhite.

Perhaps more accurate to say holy Atlas. She'd never seen a man shaped like that before. Broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist, not a bit of him soft. That glorious expanse of muscle, though—laced over with silvery scars. A tortured curve at his hip, a screaming knot at his shoulder. A wicked slice along the length of his abdomen. Such beauty. And such pain.

And it roused in her more than aesthetic admiration. She couldn't breathe, couldn't function in any way properly. Her heart tried to beat a hole through her chest, and that sensitive spot between her legs warmed, tingled. She lifted her hand, and as slowly as he'd taken off his shirt, she reached out to touch the hard ridge of his scarred abdomen. Then, as if shocked by the electric pull of all that muscle, she yanked it back to her much softer belly.

She laughed, a nervous sound. "How?"

"My turn." His voice a raw scratch in the air between them. Did he like her appreciation? Beyond that rawness something a bit wicked in his tone, something that managed to rip her attention away from his body and to his eyes. Oh, yes. Definitely something a bit roguish in those blues.

"Go on, then." Her own voice a breathy plea. Please continue the game so they could move on to the next portion of it.

"You, madam, are a skilled cabinetmaker."

Blast. "I did not expect you to take such an obvious route to victory. Feels like cheating, as if I'd said of you, ‘You're a very big man who enjoys playing pianoforte.'" She crossed her arms over her chest.

"The obvious route is sometimes the most successful one. As is the case this very moment."

"I can't very well deny my skill at my trade, you rogue."

"You could if you want to keep your shift."

"We do seem to have turned this into a game of denials instead of truths, but…" She sighed, then as quickly as she could, she released her body from the featherlight weight of the shift and tossed it to the floor atop his shirt. Now bare, her only barrier against her new husband were the blankets draped over her lower half. Shyness crept over her, unfurling rose-blushed tendrils over her skin alongside hotter, deeper pools of lust.

A moment's panic jerked her arms toward her chest, her belly. Everything larger than in her youth, everything softer. Stronger too. But experience taught men did not care for such things. She loved the white-silver lines curving over her belly and hips, over the tops of her breasts. She loved that her body had sheltered her child, mourned that her father-in-law had not let her nurse Alfie, had passed him off to a wet nurse as Clara's breasts had swollen, ached, leaked, burned with pain, then stopped producing milk.

Now no time for sorrows. She'd brought herself and her son to an entirely different place. They were safe here. At Briarcliff. In Atlas's arms.

Under the fire of his admiring gaze. She licked her lips and resisted the impulse to hide, to deny her pride.

Besides, he did not seem displeased with the view.

His chest rose and fell with heaving breaths as his gaze settled south of her face. "Hell." That single syllable of a word trembling, a chaos of fire in his eyes. His hands, resting on his thighs, curled and uncurled, as if resisting… something. He licked his lips. "Forget games, Clara. We know one another well enough for this."

And then he crashed into her. This kiss consumed her entirely, his hands roaming her body with reverence. If she hadn't become his this morning by word of the clergyman, she'd be his now irrevocably through the dominating demands of his own touch. A hand branding her hip slid up to cup her breast.

"I've never seen a woman so beautiful," he breathed, "so perfectly shaped. Everywhere I touch a lush handful, overflowing. Did a master sculptor shape you from marble then pour life into you with a wish? Or did you rise from the sea a fully grown goddess?" He nipped her earlobe and flicked his thumb over her nipple. She arched and cried out, and he flicked again, matching the sparking pleasure of his touch to the perfection of the words he whispered in her ear. "I want to see you in daylight, to put to memory every beautiful inch of your body."

"And you claim," she managed to say as he fitted his mouth to her nipple, making her shriek, "you're not a poet."

He placed his face between her breasts and inhaled, squeezed both as his lips moved gently against her sensitive skin. "When a man grows up surrounded by beauty, he recognizes it instinctively." He licked a line between her breasts, all the way up to her neck, and back to her lips.

And unsatisfied with the slabs of muscle open to her exploration when other lands lay hidden by wool, she wiggled her hands between their bodies to find his fall. Steady and with purpose, she flicked the buttons open—ripped them, more like—until she could push the material down his massive thighs. He sailed away from her for a moment, rising to his knees, then hopping to the floor where he wrestled out of his trousers and pitched them to the floor. Poised naked above her, a gleam of wild anticipation flashed in his eyes. But distracted as she was by his body bare before her, she had time only to note that gleam before another part of him consumed her attention entirely.

Big everywhere. She throbbed between her legs, pulsed to take him into her.

"Come back to me." She held out her arms. "Now."

But he did not move, merely stood above her like a conqueror happily drowning in the sight of her. "You are… unspeakably beautiful."

"You seem to be able to speak it quite well." And she could stand it no longer, the lack of his touch. She lurched for him, threw her arms around his neck, and dragged him down to her. "There will be time to look later."

He laughed, then winced, one leg flexing hard before relaxing once more. She sought out the gash that drove angry across his outer thigh, running gentle fingertips down it. Unlike the other scars decorating his torso, this one puckered his flesh, pulled it tight. She should have seen it immediately, but she'd been so occupied by his other appendage.

"This is the wound you spoke of?" The scar was softer than she'd expected for something that looked so wicked. "The day I proposed?"

He twisted his head, and the fire cast the shadows of flames about his face. "No. And yes. Mostly."

"Enigmatic man. Let me see if I can disentangle that. No, it does not hurt?" She pressed her thumb against an angry edge of the scar.

He flinched. Barely. Almost imperceptible just before she applied the pressure. If it did not hurt, he expected it to.

"And yes, it is the wound you spoke of."

He nodded.

"But there are others."

Another nod.

"Do you have… limitations?"

He twisted his head once more, and he wore a grin, playful and wicked. "You're about to discover the answer to that. But we can continue the conversation if you wish. Should I call for tea?"

"No tea. I'd like to feast on you."

His grin slipped away, and his eyes flashed wicked. "Me first." He kissed his way from the inside of her calf straight up to her inner thigh, then paused to kiss that aching spot between her legs. So long since she'd been touched there.

And she needed more.

He licked lower, his thumb finding the buzzing pearl at her center and circling.

And still, she needed more.

His tongue slipped into her, and he sucked and sipped until her hand clenched the sheets and her back arched off the bed, but still she needed more. Not because his touch did not destroy her. Then create her again in the same stroke, the same breath. But because she could not have his touch and not want more, not want all.

Still, he worked her higher. Just as she thought she might fly to pieces, he lifted, shifted a bit, and his warm breath washed across her belly. His strong hands wrapped around her waist. He kissed her navel.

She reached for him, her fingers claws on his shoulders, in his hair, urging him upward. His hands sank into her hair as his body settled over her, and by the time his lips found hers once more, his gentle touch had become hard, demanding.

She had demands, too. She'd freed him, after all, and his shaft pressed hard and thick against her center. What a pity it would be to forget that work, to leave him unexplored, unpleasured. Down the avenue of his torso, following the crisp trail of hair that started at his navel, she smoothed her hand until she found the length of him, and wrapped her hand around him. He hissed as she squeezed, rubbing the pad of her thumb over the wet tip of his shaft.

"'Tis an excellent thing I am not delicate," she said. "The size of you might scare me otherwise."

"You? Scared?" His laughter a huff of warm breath across her cheek. "I refuse to believe it."

Not scared. Not with him. In this very moment. She squeezed again, drew her hand up and down his shaft. And he snapped. His body moved like water rushing through a flooded stream, all at once and unstoppable, as he straddled her hips and placed the heavy head of his shaft at her opening.

"I can't wait anymore." He groaned, every muscle tight and shaking.

"Neither can I," she begged of him with nails scratching across the muscle of his back. "Neither can I." She grabbed the hard muscle of his backside and pulled him against her as she arched her hips up. A delicious collision. "Neither can I." One more final, breathy plea.

And then he thrust into her. His forearms rested on the bed on either side of her head, and he never looked away from her. She could not look away either. Did not wish to lose sight of this man who could still claim to be a stranger to her. Yes, a stranger. Yet something inside her knew him, trusted him. Some frantic part of her saw the frantic part of him. And together, bodies claiming one another, they could release that panic in a flurry of pleasure. They could soothe one another with each touch and kiss.

Folly, all of this. Likely. But it felt like bliss. So she'd call herself a fool and love it.

No more room for thought. Only him, stroking in and out of her body. Only his gaze, heavy and sweet on her. Only his hand fisted tightly in her hair. Only the sheen of sweat on his skin as she clutched at him everywhere she could. No agreement, no pretending. Only two real bodies needing and giving.

He filled her entirely, her body and her mind. Nothing but him and the pleasure growing rapidly, spreading from where he stoked it between her legs to her breasts to the moan escaping her lips and carrying like a melody across the room. His hand on her breast, squeezing, teasing, and?—

Pleasure shuddered through her body so hard and fast she cried out, dug her nails into his back, clinging, reaching for more. Finding it. He kissed her hard as she fell apart, melted into the mattress. And he thrust harder, faster. Then his hand tightened in her hair, his body jerked out of her, and he stole her breath with a kiss as he spilled his seed onto her belly.

Her consciousness drifted lazy and sated into the soft bed around them. She nuzzled his chest, pressed tiny kisses to it, and he stroked his fingers through her hair, untangling the knots his pleasure had made there before dropping a kiss to her forehead and leaving her entirely.

She had not the strength to see where he went, but he returned soon enough with a wet cloth he used to clean her belly. She opened her eyes and watched as he tended to her. When he'd finished, he settled next to her and gathered her into his arms.

He'd kept his promise to guard her from conceiving a child. Even in this, he'd protected her.

She pulled her knees to her chest. Her stockings had fallen around her ankles, rumpled and sad. She tried to pull them back up and fasten them as she spoke. "When you leave, where will you go?"

"The Continent. And… I cannot say when I'll return."

"How long will you stay away?"

"I don't know. As long as it takes."

She'd known. He'd told her he would leave, and she'd agreed to marry him anyway because she did not want him. She wanted the marriage, the family, the protection, his name a shield for Alfie to hide behind.

A marriage of convenience. She must not forget that. A difficult task when this house felt like happiness. It tricked her into a deep relaxation she had not felt in years. This man's family with their grins and teases and hugs and goodwill seemed a promise of her own future joy. And this man with the broadest shoulder and easiest grin made her forget he would leave her one day.

But wasn't the thoughtless pool of his embrace a lovely reprieve from her previous life? And it would dry up when he left. Why not enjoy it now, let someone care for her so she could rest until she, and Alfie, needed her strength once more.

She peeked at his face. Why would he even contemplate leaving such a home? Did he pursue business? Pleasure? The question rested heavy on her tongue, but she did not release it. His jaw too hard. He spoke of leaving with much finality and little detail. Clearly not a topic of conversation he relished. And did she need to know? He would leave whether she knew or not.

His arms tightened around her, and he kissed her ear.

Trust flooded her like light on a summer morning, silencing every dissenting, cautious, bitter voice. She would hold close what time he gave her, building from every stolen moment, a home of happiness.