A Christmas Promise by Mary Balogh Read Free Book Online Page B

to carry on with his life as it had always been except for the inconvenience of having to share his home with his wife for a year.
    But he was angry.
    He spread one hand behind her neck, pushing his fingers up into her hair, and tilted her head back and sideways. He brought his open mouth down on hers and worked at her lips with his own and with his tongue. He exulted at the immediate stiffening of her body and tightening of her lips, at the way she jerked her head back against his hand, which did not yield one inch. He lifted his head and smiled at her.
    “One might almost think that you were made of marble, my lady,” he said. And he ignored the voice of decency, very far back in his brain, which reminded him that however objectionable her character, she was in all probability a virgin who had never even been kissed before.
    Perhaps he would have relented if she had not chosen to stare steadily back into his eyes and to smile slowly. Except that it was not quite a smile. There was something almost feline about it.
    He watched her eyes as he reached out very deliberately to undo the delicate pearl buttons down the front of her nightgown. She lifted her chin even higher when he slid his hands inside to mold her shoulders with his palms and to move them down slowly to cup her breasts. They were warm and silky, firm, not over-large.
    “After all, my lady,” he said, nudging at the silk and lace with his wrists so that the gown fell off her shoulders and down her arms, exposing her to the waist, “you are my wife.”
    It was perhaps at that moment, or a moment later, that anger and the desire to humiliate were changed into desire of a different kind. She took him completely by surprise by reaching up with both hands to undo the large buttons on his nightshirt and very deliberately grasp it by the neck and draw it down over his shoulders.
    “After all, my lord,” she said, and he noticed her teeth for the first time—white and perfect teeth bared for the moment almost as if she wished to bite into him, “you are my husband.”
    After that he rather lost his head, he thought later with shame and amazement. He took her hands none too gently by the wrists and forced them downward to her sides so that her nightgown whispered down all the way to the floor and he shrugged out of his own nightshirt, though her hands, when he freed them, pushed at it too. And when he brought his mouth to hers again, her own opened beneath it without persuasion, and when he plunged his tongue inside, she fenced it with her own tongue and followed it out and into his own mouth. And when his hands touched her and explored her without either gentleness or subtlety, her own hands followed suit.
    One thing at least must have been as clear to her as it was to him before he finally stooped down to pick her up and half throw her onto the bed. He was going to have no trouble at all feeling enough desire for her to enable him to consummate their marriage.
    She wrestled with him on the bed, so that by the time he had her pinned beneath him they were both panting. He worked his knees between her thighs, pushed them wide, slid his hands beneath her, and lifted his head. She was staring boldly up at him, her cheeks flushed, her hair wild about her shoulders and over the pillow. He found the entrance to her and came inside her with one deep, swift thrust.
    Her expression did not change. Only her body tensed and tried to pull back away from his penetration. For a few moments. But as he watched, she half smiled again and slid her feet up on the bed on either side of his legs to brace herself and very deliberately pushed down against him.
    “Almost my wife, my lady,” he whispered to her. “The deed is almost done.”
    “I thought it was to hurt,” she said. “I thought it was to be something earth-shattering.”
    He might even then, his triumph complete, her body spread and mounted beneath him, have had some small mercy on her and finished quickly. But she