Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(60)

Therefore, she shouted, “Let go of me!” and very nearly wrenched herself free but his hand at her cheek dropped and his arm sliced around her, slamming her back against his body.

“I said, stop struggling,” he ground out.

“They’re little girls, Colin!” she yelled and he immediately stilled at her words but she was so angry, she didn’t notice. “They’re little girls and they needed me. I couldn’t run out on them. I would have, I promise you, at any other time, but they needed me.”

She pulled free of his now loosened arms and sucked air through her mouth, expelled it through her nose like a bull and she stared at him with all the hatred she felt for him at that moment.

“They needed me,” she repeated. “I picked them over you. I did it on purpose because they needed me more. So, okay, you want to f**k me on the dining room table, you want to make me beg for it? Do it! I understood the consequences. But you should know why!”

He was watching her and she was breathing heavily and this went on for longer then Sibyl could endure.

“Do it!” she shouted.

“What little girls, Sibyl?” he asked quietly and her body jolted at the words.

“I… what?”

Good goddess, she’d said too much.

Her stupid, stupid temper!

“Who are these girls who needed you?” he pressed.

She threw back her shoulders at the same time she tossed her hair off them and her guard immediately came up. She wouldn’t let him in, couldn’t let him in.

“They’re a part of my life, a part you’ve no place in, so it’s none of your goddamned business,” she informed him truthfully. “You didn’t pay your fifty thousand pounds for that privilege.”

Something flickered in his eyes at that pronouncement but she was too caught up in her fury to register it and nowhere near a place where she would allow herself to understand it.

“What are you waiting for?” she demanded.

To her stunned surprise he turned and walked back across the room. Once there, he picked up his glass and resumed his stance at the window.

She stood there for what seemed like an eternity, watching him, but he didn’t move, although the muscle in his jaw did.

Her fury started to drain out of her (though not entirely) and she stalked to the kitchen.

She was pulling food out of the fridge and cupboards to make dinner, just to have something to do while Colin considered her next torment. She might as well be fortified enough to suffer it.

Bran came through the cat door, looked at his bowl of food which was full of biscuits, his expression showing his distaste for this repast and looked at her. His meaning was clear.

“You aren’t getting any more wet food, you had some this morning,” she snapped at her cat.

Bran regarded her haughtily for a moment then, although cats couldn’t shrug, still it seemed Bran did so and then trotted out of the kitchen.

“Greedy little minx,” Sibyl muttered under her breath as she slammed a pot on the stove. “He’d weigh two stone if I didn’t dole out food like a prison warden.” She knew she sounded like a lunatic, muttering to herself, but she also didn’t care.

A movement at the doorway caught her eye and her head jerked up to see Colin leaning against the doorjamb watching her.

“What now?” Her words where sharp.

“Sibyl, a warning,” Colin replied softly. “You’ve had a reprieve, you should be careful with it.”

“Meaning?” she retorted.

“Meaning, if I were you, I wouldn’t push me,” he replied.

“No, I mean the reprieve,” she prompted.

“I promised not to take you on the table; I won’t take you on the table. That’s what I mean,” he explained.

Instantly, her eyes locked with his, Sibyl felt something in her shift.

It was slight and if she wasn’t in a heightened emotional state, she might have missed it.

But she knew he wasn’t giving her this reprieve because of a promise; he was doing it because he was a decent person. He had a temper that could rival hers (even best hers most of the time) but having the thought of doing something cruel, and voicing the thought, was nothing at all to doing the thought.

If he had done what he said he was going to do, she would never have forgiven him.

And he knew that so he didn’t do what he said he was going to do so that would never stand between them.

Relief flooded through her but she carefully tucked it, and her thoughts, away.

Instead, she asked, “Do you want some dinner?”

She was not going to thank him for not “taking” her on the table but offering him dinner was the closest she would get.

“Will it be vegetarian?” he asked mildly.

“Of course.”

“Then we’ll go out,” he decided.

* * * * *

Colin did punish her, although not by ha**ng s*x with her on her father’s table.

He excruciatingly slowly made her cl**ax with his hands and mouth while he watched and, through it all, he refused to allow her to touch him, kiss him or turn to him nor did he slide inside her, no matter how much she begged.

It was magnificent.

And after, when she’d whispered not-at-all-convincingly, “I think I hate you,” then he’d taken her, her fully sensitized body so raw and open she’d actually cried out the second time she came and he feared she drew blood when she bit him on the shoulder.