A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau by Mary Balogh Read Free Book Online Page B

there was no comparison. None whatsoever.
    She observed their coupling almost like a spectator. Almost. There was, of course, the throbbing desire she had felt even while he still slept, and the crescendo of desire that built
there
, where he stroked relentlessly, and spread upward in waves, through her womb, up into her breasts, into her throat, and even behind her nose. He found her mouth with his and she opened to his tongue and did not even try to fight the total invasion of her body—or even the frightening sensation that it was her whole person that was being invaded.
    She was, she thought a moment before she burst past control to another of those intense moments of something that felt deceptively like happiness, though it was not that at all—she was a little frightened of Mr. Downes, Bristol merchant and cit. And that was perhaps a large part of the attraction. She had never felt frightened ofany other man. His own climax came a few moments after hers, as it had the first time. He was, then, in perfect control of himself, even in bed.
    She had made a mistake.
Of course
she had made a mistake.
    They lay beside each other, panting, waiting for their heartbeats to return to normal. The backs of their hands touched damply between them. She wondered if he had set out to make a fool of her, or if mastery came so naturally to him that he did not even think of her as a worthy adversary. She hated him in that moment, quite as intensely as she had earlier lusted after him.
    She got off the bed, crossed the room unhurriedly on legs that shook slightly—the candles, though low, were still burning—picked up her night robe, which her maid had set out over the back of a chair, and drew it about her as she went to stand at the window, looking out on the deserted street below. She drew a deep, silent breath and released it slowly.
    “Thank you, Mr. Downes,” she said. “You are superlatively good. A master of the art, one might say. But I daresay you know that.”
    “I can hardly be expected to reply to such a compliment,” he said.
    She looked over her shoulder at him. He was lying on the bed, the covers up to his waist, his hands clasped behind his head. Even now, sated as she was, he looked magnificent.
    “It is time for you to leave, sir,” she said.
    “Past time, I believe,” he said, throwing back the covers and coming off the bed with remarkable grace for such a big man. “It would not do for me to be seen slinking from your house at dawn, wearing evening clothes.”
    “No, indeed,” she agreed. And she stood watching him dress. She had never thought of any other man as beautiful—
oh, yes, she had
. Yes she had. She clenchedher hands unconsciously at her sides. But he had been youthful, slender, sweet.…
    She turned back to the window.
    She shrugged her shoulders when his hands came to rest there, and he removed them.
    “Thank you,” he said. “It was a great pleasure.”
    “I daresay you can see yourself out, Mr. Downes,” she said. “Good night.”
    “Good night, ma’am,” he said.
    She heard the door of her bedchamber open and close again quietly. A minute or so later she watched him emerge from the front door and turn right to walk with long, firm strides along the street. She watched him until he was out of sight, a man quite unafraid of the dark, empty streets of London. But then he had probably known a great deal worse in Bristol if his work took him near the dock area. She would pity the poor footpad who decided to accost Mr. Downes.
    What was his first name? she wondered. But she did not want to know.
    She stood at the window, staring down into the empty street. Now, she thought, her degradation was complete. She had brought home a total stranger, had taken him to her bed, and had had her pleasure of him. She had given in to lust, to loneliness, to the illusion that there was happiness somewhere in this life to be grasped and to be drawn into herself.
    And she was to be justly punished. She