An Unforgettable Lady(52)

chapter

11





The next morning, Grace fumbled to shut off the alarm. Her hand flapped around the bedside table, running into her diary, the lamp, everything except the clock. She opened her eyes, slapped the thing into silence, and collapsed back onto her pillows.

Outside it was storming and rain lashed against the windows.

She looked down and saw the shirt Smith had wrenched from his body. A flush went through her as she remembered what had happened next. She could still feel his mouth, hungry on hers, and his hands traveling across her skin. It had been a blur, going from his anger to their kisses, from the edge of reason to beyond control. She'd felt as if she was being possessed by him.

Pulling back, stopping him, had been an act of self-preservation.

Sometime after he'd laid her down, as he was kissing her belly and stroking her legs, taking her higher and higher into some kind of frenzy she'd never experienced before, she'd become overwhelmed and a little frightened. He wasn't hurting her but things had been moving so fast that she hadn't been able to process what bubbled up into her consciousness. Insecurities, insipid and disturbing, had cut through the passion and brought up memories she couldn't escape.

By the end of her marriage, her sex life with Ranulf had disintegrated into a painful exercise in humiliation for her. As he became more and more disenchanted with his wife, he grew rougher as a lover until she learned to dread the feel of the bed dipping down when he slid in next to her at night. What had previously been a pleasant enough experience became something she endured and her cool response to him only made the situation worse. He became impotent and laid the blame for his sexual dysfunction on her. With every failure, he railed against her, telling her she was frigid and hardly a woman. She had stood up to him once, explaining that a woman needed more than just rough hands spreading her legs to enjoy sex, and that had been the only time in her life she feared a man would strike her.

Although she knew Ranulf taunted her to be cruel, because he was humiliated as well as disillusioned with her and the marriage, a part of her wondered if he wasn't a little right. She'd had one lover before her husband and wouldn't have described her attraction to either of them as overwhelming. Between her past experience and Ranulf's vivid and disparaging vocabulary, she had doubts whether she could satisfy a man. And whether she herself could be satisfied.

Until John Smith had come along.

Her reaction to him blew the doors off the notion she was frigid. But it did nothing to dispel the other side of her self-doubts. If there was one man on the planet she wanted to satisfy, it was Smith. She just wasn't sure she could.

Knowing the basics of sex was no guarantee you could make all that thrusting anything more than a mild cardiovascular workout. Hell, she learned that from Ranulf— before he got mean.

When the doubts in her mind had cut through the desire in her body, she'd only wanted to slow down what was happening between them. She'd needed a moment to catch her breath, prepare to make the leap into unknown territory.

But when he didn't stop, she panicked because the struggle reminded her of Ranulf.

She didn't blame Smith for leaving in a foul mood.

Throwing the covers back, Grace got out of bed and picked up his white shirt. She didn't want him to think she'd pulled back because she hadn't wanted him. She might have lost her nerve temporarily but not her desire for him.

Pulling on a bathrobe, she left her bedroom and found him in his room, sitting on the chaise lounge by the window. He looked up from the book he was reading the instant she appeared at the door. His expression was totally closed.

"Are you skipping the run this morning?" he asked briskly.

She nodded as a gust of wind pushed the rain against the windows and the water landed in a pattern of sound.


"I—ah, I brought your shirt back." She put it on one of the beds and cleared her throat. "Listen, about last night—"

He snapped the book shut and stared out at the gray morning. "I owe you an apology."

Grace frowned. "What are you talking about?"

He shot her a dry look. "Aside from the fact that I never should have put us in that position, I didn't let you go when I should have. I didn't know you wanted to stop. The only excuse I can offer is that I don't usually get that... preoccupied."

Her mouth slacked in surprise. She'd expected him to be mad because he hadn't gotten what he'd wanted. That had certainly been the first response of her father and Ranulf.