‘I don’t know what you mean...' she whispered, trying to capture the elusive quality of his words.
He answered her question literally, stripping off his jacket, and tie and shirt, and throwing them to the thick, richly patterned square of carpet beneath their feet. 'The first time in my bed.'
He reached around her and drew the zip fully down, his furry chest brushing her nipples, making her heavy breasts ache. He helped her step out of her dress, careful not to touch her with his hands, and threw it on top of his clothes. The bra was hanging open from its shoulder-straps and he slid it down her arms and on to the floor. He was naked before she, because he wouldn’t let her take off her silky green pants or the heavy necklace.
He was aroused, and with each slow movement seemed to become more so until every muscle in his body corded with the effort of restraint. And still he didn’t rush her.
Elizabeth was in a state of feverish wonder, hardly able to believe that the man who had threatened to kill her only a short while ago had suddenly become this mellow god of sweet gentleness, but content to accept the unexpected gift and worry about motives tomorrow.
The necklace sliding against her body particularly seemed to fascinate him. He turned and arched her in his arms so that he could admire the way it shifted and settled against her pale satin skin. When he placed her on his bed he took the time to arrange it to his artistic satisfaction before he bent and nuzzled her over, above and between the precious curves and curlicues, murmuring with fascination over the contrast between succulent, warm flesh and cool metal. He kissed her and stroked her hair from its neat rolls until it rained darkly across his white pillow. He ran his hands over her sides, tracing the billowing lines that he praised with erotic words of desire, his fingers teasing up the wide, silky legs of her pants until he became impatient with the barrier to his full enjoyment of her body and tore them in a hiss of splitting stitches. He cupped and suckled her breasts, so gentle that he caused her pain, his tongue drawing out the nipples until they glistened like the rubies that he so admired. He stroked her slightly rounded belly and kissed it, and murmured something secret into the pale, soft down that grazed its surface and then he parted her thighs and praised her there, too, in ways that made her writhe voluptuously in the crisp white sheets.
Elizabeth had naively thought she knew him as a lover. Now he showed her that she was wrong, that she didn’t know him at all. He curbed and channelled her eagerness with a ruthless strength and a single-minded purpose that heightened her arousal until just the touch of his mouth brushing across her skin was an unbelievable delight, moving languidly on her, over her, in her, until she couldn’t contain the building sensation any longer and exploded in an agony of pleasure, rising and falling feverishly beneath him until he grasped her by the hips and pinned her deep into the soft mattress in a powerful, bucking spasm that arched him like a bow and released him into soaring flight with a savage shout of victory.
Afterwards, as she lay tangled in his arms, still gasping for the breath that he had stolen out of her body, he raised himself up on one elbow and touched the necklace that she still wore.
'There's a family legend attached to the wearing of this... a very powerful legend that has come to be accepted as fact. Like this one, from the other side of my family...' he touched the ring in his ear '... being considered a symbol of the reckless luck of the Hawkwood men in fulfilling their deepest aspirations.'
'Oh?' Elizabeth tensed at the silky satisfaction in the lazy drawl.
'Would you like to know what it is?' His silver eyes taunted her with their secrets. 'Ever since the necklace was made, as a betrothal gift for the bride of a pre-revolutionary St Clair, it has exhibited a peculiar power over the women who wear it—'
‘It doesn’t have any power over me. I don’t even like it,' interrupted Elizabeth, quite truthfully.
'Ah, but you see, chérie, its power has only just been given its chance to begin to work on you...'
She was alert now to the danger-signals in his dark smile, and sat up, regarding him warily as he lay back against his high pillows.
'The flight of an arrow must terminate within its vessel—and you, ma chère, have just received a quiver-full .. .*
It took a moment for the penny to drop. 'You mean—'
‘I mean that it is a potent fertility charm. Any woman who accepts her St Clair lover while wearing that necklace is destined to be pregnant with a male child within the year...'
Elizabeth bunched the sheets around her as she rose up on her haunches, vibrating with outrage that he could frighten her so. 'That's ridiculous—it's just an absurd story! Surely you don’t believe that superstitious rubbish?'
'Absurd stories seem to be the norm tonight,' he replied smoothly. 'You may call it superstition, chérie, but in three hundred years the necklace has never failed, even on women who were thought to be barren. I did not protect you this time—there seemed no point, since your pregnancy was a predestined inevitability from the moment I entered you...'
She was wrestling frantically with the clasp to the necklace, at the same time trying to keep the sheet covering her breasts, only to fail in both and end up kneeling before him in a provocative pose of rosy nakedness that made him grin approvingly.
'Damn you, take this thing off!' She presented her stiff back to him and he saluted it with a series of slow kisses before he rose behind her, deliberately taking his time to untangle the delicate gold fastening from the strands of hair that had become caught there.
‘It's too late, Eliza-Beth, the deed is done; you are already fertile with my seed—soon your womb will swell with my bounty. A baby, to suckle life from where I have suckled pleasure in the process of his creation,' he murmured, looking down over her shoulder to where her swaying breasts displayed the soft red marks of his lovemaking.
'You're just saying this to frighten me, to punish me because I damaged your stupid male pride!' Elizabeth accused him wildly as the necklace suddenly slid from her
neck to pool on the tangled sheets and she leapt out of his bed, almost falling in her haste to be free of his cruel taunting.
'Would it be such a punishment to bear my child?'
'Yes. Yes!' She denied him the wild truth of her heart, hating him for the method and unbelievably ruthless calculation of his revenge. The fact that he had deliberately not used any contraception she could almost forgive, since she had abrogated that responsibility herself, but to gloat about the possibility of making her bear an unwanted, illegitimate child created from a moment of casual lust was utterly unconscionable!
‘I hate you!' she cried viciously. 'And rather than bear any child of yours I'd, I'd—'
'You'd what?' His voice was no longer lazy or taunting, but hard and sharp as steel as he rose from the bed to confront her in the full threat of his possessive masculinity. 'Beth—'
That strange hoarse note in his voice was another trick. She wouldn’t listen.
'You're sick, you know that? You don’t deserve to have any children and certainly none of mine!' It was the greatest insult she could think of. She longed to fling at him that she'd rather have an abortion. But she couldn’t. Not even in the depths of her greatest torment could she ever kill their child. It might be illegitimate but it wouldn’t be unwanted, and would never be lonely or unloved. But she would be damned if she would give him the satisfaction of knowing that.