“I am not a good person. It was my fault they died. The least I can do is provide for their families.”
“Then you’re admitting it!” she cried triumphantly. “Aren’t I clever, Dex? I’ve figured you out. Why you would want to keep your generosity a secret from me is beyond comprehension. But you can’t hide from me. Like it or not, I’m intimately connected to you now. I’ll find out every little heroic attribute about you and force you to confront the fact that you, the Duke of Warburton, are changing people’s lives for the better.”
“After robbing them of the best parts, forcing them into poverty, illness, darkness. Stop it, Ana. Stop talking about this. You can’t understand what it’s been like, all this time, knowing I’d ruined so many lives. Not just the lives of the enemy, but the lives of men I cared for, and the lives of those they cared for.”
Ana heard the rawness of his voice, and it broke her heart. Forthe first time she could see clearly the magnitude of the burden he carried. The same burden that had introduced him to her, that had brought them into this marriage together. She understood, at least that part of him. It was a large piece to his puzzle, but the solving brought her no joy. Not when he was so obviously anguished.
She touched his arm. “I won’t mention it again, Dex. I thought you might like to hear good things about yourself, most people do. But you aren’t a bit like most people, are you?”
“No.” He turned his head to her, searching her face with unreadable eyes.
She shivered. “Well, I’m glad for that. Most people, it turns out, are predictable. The more I learn about the world, the more I find that to be true.”
“I can think of one thing you might learn tonight that won’t be predictable,” he said, a glint of fire sparking in his steady eyes.
An answering spark lit a fire deep in her belly. She allowed him to roll her over until she was face down on the bed and couldn’t ask him any more questions or confront him with secrets. She allowed her body to take over again.
“Take me again,” she whispered. “Harder this time.”
He held her by the waist as he took her from behind with long, sure strokes. She felt depraved. Desired. Cherished.
It was enough. But only for now.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“You always were an annoying child, Amsonia!” sneered her uncle in his sinister voice, folding his hands into his garnet sleeves. “When I learned you’d escaped, I sent my men after you, but that cursed Qavox thwarted them! I do wish he hadn’t, could have saved me from this annoying little confrontation you’ve contrived...”
“Enough!” she cried, tears of rage and fear coursing to her troubled breast. “Uncle, you do disturb me mightily! Have you no heart? Take me to my father at once!”
—The Dragon and the Blue Starby Analise Crewe
“You look uncommonly well this morning,” Tessie observed.
“I feel uncommonly hungry.” Ana attacked her bacon and eggs with voracious intent.
Tessie smiled knowingly. “I’m glad you have such an appetite.”
And not only for bacon. She hungered for Dex. Their lovemaking hummed in her veins, sang her a song about freedom. The freedom to seek pleasure, to give pleasure. It wasn’t only those hours in bed. The glow spread through her body and lasted the whole next day. Pleasant little after-ripples when she walked, crossed her legs, bathed.
Her body reminding her that she was something wholly new, a woman well-pleasured. A woman who had cried out her release not caring who heard, wanting the world to know how happy she was.
Let me love you.He’d said that to her last night. That was clear progress. Even if he only meant love her with his body, she’d heard the subtext, the silent message.
He was afraid to relinquish the armor he’d pieced together over his heart like dragon’s scales.
Take me again. Harder this time.Words she never thought she’d say. This secret pleasure-haze, this darkness that filled her with a need so sharp it felt like she was still subsisting on bread and butter... that he was the only thing that could fill her, satiate her.
Each morsel of him that she consumed made her want more. Not only his body, his confident commands. She wanted him to talk to her, tell her the dark secrets he held in his heart. She wanted to understand him.
She wanted more. She wanted everything. She wanted him wholly, not just during the nighttime. How could she make him see that it wasn’t enough? That as beautiful and feverish and ecstatic as it was, it wasn’t enough?
While he was away, she spent her days in Clovercote with the familiar characters living out their complicated lives through her pen, and completing the light edits she’d received on her fantastical novel from Mr. Norwood. She threw herself into the work, welcoming the distraction. She’d be finished very soon, then she would travel to London to submit the manuscript. It never ceased to give her a thrill when she thought about holding her book in her hands.
She’d stopped being upset with Dex for giving the publisher adonation. It was exactly as he’d said, her book would have to stand on its own merits upon publication. He couldn’t very well purchase the entire British public. The critics might hate her book, or they might ignore it completely. Or, just maybe, someone out there might read it and fall in love with it.
Someone other than her husband, of course.
Oh Papa, she thought.I wish you could be here to see me achieving my dream.