by Raine Miller
“You will not. I am not fragile. I am here for you and I will not break.”
Her words were just enough encouragement to push him past his hesitation.
With a hiss, he crushed her down on the bed and took her.
He seized and she gave.
He dominated and she submitted.
She opened and he entered.
Hands and mouth firm and potent on her skin, he compelled her pliant body to surrender to him. It was only as he melded into her, that Graham felt the broken link in their bond mend itself. He felt himself shatter apart and then reform, anew, restored, and whole.
IMOGENE actually thrilled at Graham’s rough need of her. It gave tremendous satisfaction to know she was the only one who could fulfil his raging want.
He gripped her hips as he covered her from behind and took her in that position. Pounding strokes that drove him so deep inside her passage she felt him at her womb. His teeth nipped in between her neck and her shoulder, holding her in place as he worked himself deeper still. The angle of the penetration dragged his cock back and forth harshly over the edge of her swollen clitoris each time he thrust, driving her into a pummeling climax.
Graham didn’t stop as the sensual pleasure washed over and through her.
He continued to use her body, taking from her what he needed. When her knees buckled and she collapsed forward, he still moved within her—slower now—but still fierce and purposeful. Face down and beneath him, the intense plunges of his iron-hard cock forced from her a shocking second climax almost instantly, rendering her utterly undone.
Pleasure, feeling and sensation took over. Nothing else existed in those moments. Any thought or action beyond the act of his body and her body coming together in the most primal of ways was impossible.
Near the end of it Graham choked out a gravelly roar—something she had never heard from him before. He sounded so agonized, but yet so vitally complete.
She floated away with him and time lost all reference…
GRAHAM clutched her close and Imogene felt entirely replete. But her glorious state didn’t last very long when the good feelings were soon replaced with trepidation. Not from her, but from him. She felt his guilt play out in a kind of time delay as he realized what had just passed between them.
He bolted up in bed, looming over her, inspecting her body with raking sweeps of his eyes, the expression in them frantic. “Imogene? Are you all right?” he asked, not waiting for her answer. “I’ve marked you all over. I’m sorry. Please, please forgive me,” he demanded in anguish.
“What are you talking about?”
“Look at yourself. There are marks on your beautiful skin where I’ve touched you too roughly. There are love bites, too.” Gently, he touched the places where he had sucked hard enough and long enough to leave a mark that would be there a good while. “I am a goddamned beast. Look at what I have done to—”
“—Graham, you really must stop this.”
“I know I must. I don’t know what comes over me. I become demon possessed and I can’t say why. I am so very sorr—”
“—No! You misunderstand me. Look at me, Graham. Listen to me, and listen carefully.”
She waited for his eyes on hers before she spoke. “I refer to your recriminations, after. I do not care for them and have no desire to hear them ever again. Do you understand?” She paused for a moment, staring. “When you love me, fiercely, as you have just done, there is no shame in it for me. I know that you do it with love in your heart. You have not given me pain or harmed or frightened me. You have shown how much you need me. When we are together it is not always as it was just now. Sometimes we are gentle and tender and slow. It is a balance of expression, and all of the ways of our loving are right, as they should be. As for your love bites, I revere them and hope they remain visible for a long time so I can see them and remember how you loved me on this day.”
Graham’s eyes grew greener, if such a thing was possible. Imogene would swear she could see it happening as he took in her words. He gave a cry of sorts, almost like a sob, full of emotion, and spoke to her in French. “Je t'aime plus aujourd'hui que moi ai fait hier et je vous aimerai plus demain que je fais à ce moment.”
Imogene’s school French was not as proficient as his fluent prose, but she caught the gist of it. Something about loving her more today than yesterday, and that tomorrow he would love her even more than he did at this moment. The words were beautiful, and they sounded better in the French anyway.
Graham leaned over her, whispering, “Stay right here, I’ll be back in a moment, chérie.” Shrugging into his robe, he left the bedroom. When he returned, he’d brought back with him an enormous plate of food, a cup of tea, and a wrapper for Imogene.
“I know you did not eat dinner last night and you have to be starving. Although you would never ask me, I want you to have some food. And I want you to allow me to feed it to you. Please?”
Imogene gave him a little nod. It made him very happy, she could tell, and it made her happy to make him happy. Reverting easily into silent communication, it was no difficulty to converse with just nods and facial expressions. The words were thought and exchanged somehow, they both understood.
Graham draped her into her wrapper first, and then helped her to sit up in the bed. He took great pleasure in feeding her bites of egg and bacon and toast, sips of tea, and gently touching her mouth with the napkin when he needed to.
Imogene could feel love radiating from every part of him and for some reason it made her tears resurface. Graham saw.
He got back into the bed, gathered her close, and settled them under the covers. They slept for a little longer.
“WHAT did you plan to do today, chérie?”
“Honestly? I was going to wash my hair, which is quite a task and takes a long time, but I can do it tomorrow.”
“No. You will do it today and I will help you. I have no intention of leaving your side this day, so you are stuck with me for a lady’s maid, yet again.”
“You have no other work or obligations about the estate to attend to?” She seemed so surprised.
“Nothing more important than helping you to wash your hair. And since I am ignorant of how the process works, I think I should like to learn,” he stated matter-of-factly. “Everything about you is interesting to me.”
Imogene shook her head at him slowly, her brown eyes glowing up at him. “You are the most extraordinary man.”
You are the most extraordinary woman.
“Don’t you see? It does not matter what we do. I just need to be with you today. I truly do not care however we spend the hours. Wash your hair, stare into the fire, eat chocolate, read Byron, it matters not.”
She smiled and touched his cheek with her small, fine hand. “All right then, I’ll order a bath. What do I say to Hester?”
“Give her the time off. Tell her to take the day for her amusement, go to the shops, whatever she likes.” He drew her palm to his lips and kissed it. “If this goes well, Hester may be having a great many days off.”
She laughed at him. “First, I’m going to order the bath, and then we’ll wash my hair. Should you like a bath as well?”
“Yes, please,” he mumbled, mouth wandering leisurely down to her neck. “The day’s activities are shaping up quite nicely, indeed.”
Once their baths were complete and they started in on Imogene’s hair, Graham was astonished at the amount of labour involved. After dragging up buckets and buckets of water for their baths, the servants had to then come back to clear everything away. They’d returned with more water and basins for the hair washing. He was finding that Imogene was correct—the washing of lady’s hair was, indeed, a complicated undertaking.
Helping Imogene to rinse away the hair soap for the second time, he tipped the pitcher of lavender water over her head slowly, massaging as he poured from where he stood outside of the tub. A beautiful image of her began to form in his mind.
But he did not share it
right away, preferring to keep his vision to himself. And it was so lovely.
He handed her a towel, watching as she pressed the dripping water from her hair. “Now I have to comb it out. I usually sit in front of the fire, so it will dry faster. It takes hours to dry completely.” She was apologetic as she explained.
“I don’t mind helping you to comb it,” he told her. But he continued to observe as she took one section of her hair at a time, combing from the bottom, working her way up slowly until it was free of tangles. It was so long that when holding sections out from her head, she had to extend her arm completely to comb through its entire length. The sight of her mesmerized him as the vision took definitive form in his head.
“You look like a mermaid,” he said. “Sitting as you are on your knees to the side, your blue wrapper about your shoulders the same colour as the sea, your silver comb flashing through your wet hair. You look otherworldly right now, Imogene. I want to sketch it out—my vision of you—right now. May I? Will you allow me?”
At her soft nod, Graham got up and dashed to his closet to retrieve what he needed.
AFTER rummaging around in his closet, he returned carrying paper, a drawing board, and charcoal pencils. He sat on the floor opposite to her, leaning his back against the foot of the bed, getting right to work as she continued to comb through her wet hair, section by section.
“Does this make you uncomfortable, chérie?”
Imogene shook her head very slowly before she whispered, “No, not at all, my darling.”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment before asking, “Are you warm enough in front of the fire?”
She did not answer because she knew exactly what he wanted her to do. She just knew, so she decided to do it for him. Carefully, she set down her comb and opened the top of her wrapper, pushed the fabric off her shoulders, allowing it to fall to her hips where it bunched and rested. Deliberately she picked up her comb again and resumed the work of combing her damp hair.
Graham said nothing. The only sounds were the scratching of the charcoal upon the paper, the fire crackling, and the soft swish of the comb, for a long, long time. An aura of complete trust swirled through the air in the room, enveloping the both of them.
Finally he put down his materials, and crawled over to her. He came right up to her face, and looked at her deeply. “I am in awe of you, that you would allow me—you are so giving, chérie, you amaze me.” He carefully found the top of her robe, drew it up from her waist, and wrapped her back up. He kissed her softly and sweetly.
Imogene felt the pull of tears again. “What will you do with it?” she whispered.
“Nothing. It is private, just for me. No one will see it, and it will never become a portrait. You have given me a great gift, chérie. I try to remember my visions, but with so many in my head, details are lost. To be able to get this one down on paper was so very special. Now, I may take it out when I wish and look at it and I will be able to remember how you looked as a mermaid, and that you did it, for me.”
“Will you show it to me?”
He reached over for the sketch and slid it back toward them over the floor. It was an outline sketch; it was definitely her. He had placed her on rocks, sitting to the side, the sea behind her where the fireplace should be. Extending her right arm, combing out a section of hair, her left arm bent at the elbow, securing her hair close to her head. The swell of her left breast showed under the elbow. Her face in profile, the rest of her hair fell over her back, shoulder and down her stomach. Where her legs bent underneath her, were replaced instead with a single fish tail that went all the way around the back of her, ending at her side.
“That is a mermaid,” she spoke softly. “It is…beautiful.”
“That is you, Imogene.”
She looked at him, unconvinced. “Do you really see me like this?”
“At that moment, in my vision, you were a mermaid, yes. But your beauty is unchanged. Your beauty would be conveyed as this in any drawing or portrait done of you. You are beautiful.” Graham looked at her intently for a moment, questioningly. “Imogene, you are an extraordinarily beautiful woman, and not just outwardly.” He put his hand over her heart. “You are beautiful inside also, inner beauty does radiate and can be expressed through art, and that is what I saw while sketching you.” He smiled and arched his brows. “And you want to know what the best part is?”
“What?”
“Vous êtes la mienne. You are mine.”
GRAHAM ordered dinner sent up for them into the sitting room of their chamber. They spent the entire day locked inside together as he’d said he wanted to do—and it had been perfect. Imogene’s hair was now dry and braided into one long, thick plait.
She observed him as he thoughtfully scanned the walls around them. “Imogene, I had a notion about something we could do with your rooms. Having the baths in here and washing your hair today inspired the idea. It is such a tedious amount of labour for everyone, including you, having to wait on water being carried up here. What if we made you a bathing room, with water pumped up through pipes, hot and cold, and a drain to take it away? You could have your baths easily, and washing your hair would not be such a chore. I know people have such things already, it’s just a matter of modernizing.”
He showed her where the pipes could go and how the space could be closed in as a separate room, taking away very little of the generous space between sitting room and bedroom. The pipes would go down along the outside wall of the house and bend in where a boiler could heat the water down below.
“What do you think, chérie?”
“It sounds wonderful and convenient. I think I would love it.”
“I could use it too. We’ll order a bathtub so large we can both fit. I am going to call the carpenter up here to get some measurements straight away.”
“You amaze me with all of your modern thinking. Is there anything you cannot do, my darling?” She tilted her head at him.
“Absolutely, there is. I cannot be without you. As it has been made abundantly clear to me in the past four and twenty hours.”
She reflected for a moment. “When did you decide to come and get me?”
“When it was time to go up to bed and you were not here. Zuly stopped me on the way up and gave me a look of such disgust I turned on my heel and headed straight to the stables. Triton and I were flying down the road in minutes.” He gave a little smile at the remembrance.
“What now?”
“That horse is fast, Imogene. He is gentle, I know, but I have never owned a horse so fast. He has been misnamed surely. He should be Pegasus rather than Triton. I’ve half a mind to enter him at Newmarket. I should talk to Gravelle about him. He is a veritable expert on all things racing and Newmarket. If Triton were to win, I’d have to settle with Hargreave, though. He has no idea what he has given up.”
Imogene shook her head in amusement. “Bathing rooms and racehorses…what a great lot of ideas you’ve got rolling around in your head, my darling.”
“And they all come back to you, chérie.”
SEVENTEEN
A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness…
Do more bewitch me, than when Art
Is too precise in every part.
Robert Herrick ~ ‘Delight in Disorder’, 1648
THEIR money was almost gone after staying at the inn for a week. Mr. Jacobson was always very kind to Clara, indulging her with sweets from the kitchen and stopping to listen to her childish chatter. But Agnes was at the end of her rope because she had no connections here. The will to protect her child went before anything else. She must find work of some kind right away. But she knew not what sort of job it could be.
Mr. Jacobson walked through the common room right then, smiling kindly. She suspected he was cutting the rate of their room for it was far superior to the paltry sum he charged her for it. She wondered why he would do such a thing, too. The possibilities bothered her.
“Mr. Jacobson, may I have a moment of your time?”
“Of course.” He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and gave her his full attention.
“Sir, I am in need of—” she swallowed hard, “—employment.” She felt her face flush in embarrassment. “I can sew. I have been in service, in the past, as a seamstress. Do you know if I might find work in the area? Are there any great houses where I might inquire?”
“No great houses—not close by. No.”
Her hopes dashed, she tried to keep her dignity intact by nodding her thanks for his time to speak with her. “Well, thank you for your kindness of this past week. We must be leaving tomorrow to search for a permanent situation.”
Mr. Jacobson frowned at her news and Agnes got the idea that maybe he didn’t like her news very much. Interesting.
“I do know of an opening for a housekeeping position, though. It would require management of accounts—are you good with numbers and figuring?”
Agnes felt her immediate future had just brightened considerably. “Yes. I did the accounts for my father’s tailoring shop. It’s been some time, but I know I can do it, Mr. Jacobson. And you definitely know someone in need of such an assistant?”
“Indeed I do.” He smiled genuinely.
“Oh, Mr. Jacobson, that is wonderful.” She dipped her head at him in deference. “May I inquire who is this person?”
“’Tis I.”
“I must commission another portrait, Tristan. It is important and I need the thing completed by his birthday at the end of April. You can halt on the portrait of Terra and Triton for my chamber if that might help you with your time schedule. Can you do it for me?”
“Why the urgency I hear in your voice? Does it have something to do with your little overnight trip?”
Imogene was now a disciplined sitter but at his words she quickly lost her pose. “This is so very difficult for me to ask of you. Please bear with me. Yes, it very much does. I hurt him deeply and this is a way to make amends.”