They always spoke of trust, didn’t they? Perhaps she could show him a little.
Seized by an agony of indecision, she chewed on the inside of her lip. “I—I wanted to speak with you about the dig…”
“I’m not simply referring to the dig, Alexandra,” he growled, throwing his arms wide to present her with his magnificent form. “I’m asking you. Demanding of you, an honest answer!”
“I’m trying to tell you—”
“Would you have me like this?” He gestured to his features. “With nothing? Would you be my wife, even if you were not a duchess? Would you still dig for me with your bare hands if you didn’t need my heir in order to spend my fortune? Can you remain with me even if it means those who want what’s mine might try to take it by any means? Because if you’re hurt, I don’t think I can—”
“Yes, dammit,” she hissed, realizing they were both having a different conversation, but his needed to be addressed so he could calm himself enough to hear her. If he wanted some truths, these she could give. “You’re big and arrogant, wicked and bad-tempered, and I … I can’t help but want to spend every single moment by your side. So, stop being so bloody overbearing and listen to me for just one—”
Redmayne seized her, compelling her silence with his descending lips. His kiss was an erotic demand and possessive embrace as he propelled them both toward the cliff wall without breaking their intimate contact. He devoured her, ravished her mouth, drawing her lips open with his thumb and thrusting his tongue inside.
His big body drove her against the cliff, his arms plunging beneath her arms to cup the back of her head and shoulders, protecting her from the earth.
He was like a human incinerator, immolating her with his carnal heat.
Alexandra felt light-headed, not only disoriented by the swiftness of his kiss, but by the change in him. This was no patient, roguish seduction. This man grinding her against his very powerful, very naked body heeded no rules and brokered no patience.
He’d become a creature of raw, animalian need.
It wasn’t until he leaned his hips against her that Alexandra realized his towel no longer remained around his hips. He rotated his pelvis in slow, erotic circles, the ridge of his erection much larger now than when he’d emerged from the sea.
Terrifyingly so.
He broke their kiss to drag his lips down her jaw. “My God, wife,” he moaned. “I can’t take another moment of this. Of wanting.” His hands tangled in her hair as he abraded her sensitive skin with his beard before soothing it with his lips. “The idea that I could have died without making love to you is untenable. Impossible.”
Oversensitized and overwhelmed, Alexandra placed her hands on his biceps, hoping to anchor herself into this moment. Trying to keep time from falling away beneath her, merging this moment and another.
The past didn’t belong here. Not in his embrace.
She did everything she could to rein in her galloping heart. To gulp air into her lungs. He was her husband. He was kind and considerate and … she had nothing to fear.
She did not … fear … him.
“We can wait,” she whispered against his ear, smoothing a hand down the iron cords of his back. “Three more days. I don’t want you to regret—”
“I don’t fucking care about that anymore, I just need to be inside you. Now.” The hand in her hair curled into a fist, tugging her chin higher, exposing her throat to him so he could stroke and lave at the delicate skin there, nipping at it with his teeth.
His other arm lifted her against him, parting her legs so he could settle his hips between them.
Pinning her.
Pinning her down.
Pulling up her skirts.
Cold shards of sharp ice extinguished what heat had built in her womb, dousing it with a terror so pure and absolute, it seized every part of her until even her skin felt scoured raw by it.
She couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t scream.
Couldn’t breathe.
Feebly, she tugged at his arms to no avail. Panic stole the strength from her limbs just as brutally as it had seized her throat.
Her fingers curled into talons, nails biting into the flesh of his arms. He hissed, but the pain only served to inflame him further, causing him to press more insistently against her.
Helpless tears sprang to her eyes. Every one of her muscles locked tight and finally, finally, she was able to sob in a breath, dragging the strength into her lungs to push into her trembling limbs.
With a burst of power, drawn from the deepest recesses of her pain, she heaved him away from her.
He stumbled back a step, emitting an oath of puzzled opposition.
Alexandra sprang forward, bolting around him, evading his reach.
“What—Alex—?”
She shook her head again and again as she backed away from him. Injected with an instinct and an energy as old and necessary as life, itself, she turned on her heel and fled.
Fled his body and his unslaked desire. Fled the intimidating sex he’d meant to drive inside of her, and the desperate sound of her name ripped away from him by the wind. Wind that now tore the tears from her eyes and whipped her with loose tendrils of her damp hair, stinging her cheeks and invading her mouth.
She ran until she ran out of beach. Pumping her legs so swiftly, she wasn’t certain her feet touched the sand. She ran until her lungs threatened to burst. Scampered up the stairs even though her ankles ached, and her thighs seized.
She ran away from ten years of grief and pain and guilt and fear. She ran from the almost doglike confusion clouding her husband’s savage features. From constant anxiety for her friends, and the persistent threat of discovery. Of death. Of retribution.
And even as she ran hard and fast and long enough to possibly kill her, a part of her knew it was all for naught.
Because she could never escape what she’d done. What had been done to her.
When she had such demons chasing her, she didn’t even notice if hotel staff or guests gawked as she raced through the hotel to her rooms, locking the world out.
Every part of her hurt. Burned. Inside and out.
Wanting to go nowhere near a bed, she dove into the corner between her wardrobe and the wall, pulling her knees up into her chest and locking her arms around them, making herself as small as she possibly could. Her trembles became quakes, and then bone-clenching convulsions.
She tried to stop. To breathe. To cry. What little logic she still possessed began to lose hope. To fear that this was her new reality. That she’d been pushed beyond the brink of sanity. Her body was no longer her own. Her fears no longer contained.
She’d become her worst nightmare.
Helpless.
Even against herself.
Burying her face against her knees, she bit down on her skirts, filling her mouth with the taste of salt and wind and silk.
The scream crawling up her throat finally erupted, muffled by the fabrics as her entire soul rent apart in one quivering, bone-shattering cry of pure, helpless, hopeless anguish.
She’d thought she was healing. That her patient, tempting husband opened her body and mind, seducing her into the world of carnality.
But no. She was broken. Damaged. Dirty.
No matter how many baths she took. No matter how many tears she offered. How much restitution she paid or forgiveness she begged. No matter how many years were put between her and the night her body had been invaded. She was damaged. Soiled. Unclean and fallen.