The wax candles sputtered in the sconces along the staircase wall; the candles had almost burned down.
Still stumbling and now cursing beneath his breath, Hiram continued up the stairs until he finally reached the second-floor landing.
He suddenly recalled what his plans had been before he loaded up on whiskey and passed out.
He had planned to go to Lavinia’s bedroom, awaken her, then tell her she had been wrong to avoid him for so long. It was time for her to face up to Virgil’s death and consider taking on another husband…him!
He was so drunk he wasn’t thinking clearly; without stopping to consider how Lavinia would react were he to awaken her almost at daybreak, Hiram wiped the sweat from his brow, then ran both hands up and down the front of his breeches so the sweat would be absorbed there. He had seen Lavinia wince when he touched her with his sweaty hands.
Tonight would be different in many ways. He had decided not only to awaken her, but also to have his way with her. Surely she was as hungry to have a man in her bed as he was for the feel of a woman’s soft flesh against his own.
He had often watched as Lavinia went hand in hand to her bedroom with her husband, closing thedoor and shutting out the world beyond it, which included Hiram Price.
He had closed his one eye and allowed himself to envision what they were doing behind that closed door.
His brother’s loud groans of pleasure had
reached Hiram, making his hunger for Lavinia almost unbearable.
But he had never heard any sounds coming from Lavinia.
He had assumed that her husband had not been man enough to give her the sort of pleasure she wanted.
Perhaps even tonight she had gone to bed with unfulfilled needs.
“I’ll show you what you missed when your husband was alive,” Hiram said beneath his breath, stumbling toward Lavinia’s closed bedroom door.
The candles along this corridor were also sputtering, the wicks now floating in what was left of what had been tall, stately candles. Reaching Lavinia’s door, Hiram stopped, attempting to balancing himself while his head began spinning again.
He grabbed for the door frame and held tightly to it to keep from falling. This was the worst time of all to be this drunk, when he was ready to make a beautiful woman his.
He was becoming sober enough to realize that he’d begun sweating again. He growled as he wiped the wetness from his face, and then ran his hands desperately up and down the legs of his breeches to dry the sweat that he despised even more than Lavinia did.
He had to live with it day in and day out, while she had only to look at it when she was with him.
But even knowing her distaste for the sweat, and perhaps even the man who was cursed with it, nothing would dissuade Hiram from going into her bedroom and letting her know who was boss.
If she didn’t cooperate, by gum, he’d go for his whip.
Surely one look at that whip would make her change her mind. She would recognize that a man’s loving was preferable to a whipping that might leave scars on her lovely flesh for the rest of her life. He smiled wickedly as he recalled the many scars he had left on the brown-skinned slaves at the plantation.
And by gum, he planned to add more and more. He’d do whatever it took to show the slaves that he was their master.
His heart began to pound as he placed a hand on the doorknob. Just being this close to Lavinia awakened that part of him that had been denied a woman’s touch for far too long.
His loins were on fire and ached unmercifully.
He had grown tired of the big-breasted, perfumed bodies of the prostitutes that were housed in every town he frequented.
Cribs.
Yep, they called those houses cribs.
The whores flaunted their “wares” in windows at the front of the cribs, beckoning for men to come and take their pleasure from them.
None of them compared with Lavinia.
He wanted sweetness when he made love to a woman, and Lavinia was all sweetness!