Taming the Wicked Wulfe (The Rogue Agents) (41 page)

“Let’s see if we can’t remedy that.”
 
He stood and scooped Zachary up in his arms, turned around and laid him on his bed before tugging the covers up to his shoulder.
 
He turned and saw Rebekah attempting to wriggle out from under Ivy.
 
Thorn slipped his arms beneath Rebekah and lifted her, holding her close.
 
He savored the feel of her in his arms.

“My arms are asleep, not my legs,” she whispered.

“Humor me.”
 
As they left the room, Ivy rolled over, pulling her dolly close to her.
 
Rebekah wrapped her arms around Thorn’s neck.
 
He saw her blink rapidly and bite her lower lip.
 
“Hurt?”

“Like hundreds of needles.
 
It will go away soon.”

He carefully made his way down the stairs and entered her bedroom.
 
She pushed the door shut.
 
Thorn ruthlessly took her lips with his.
 
He was tired of the games and the threats.
 
He just wanted everything to be over.
 
He even found himself resenting the
Lady
for keeping him away from Rebekah and the twins.
 
“You’re beautiful,” he moaned against her mouth.

“You’re a liar, but thank you,” she responded.

“Truth,” he said, and before she could argue, he took control of her mouth.
 
He stood her on her feet next to the bed.
 
“Just stand there.
 
Do not do anything, understand?”
 
Rebekah nodded and watched him as he began to hurriedly strip off his clothes.
 
She started to reach around for her buttons, but he grabbed her hand, kissed her palm, and placed it at her side.
 
“No, just stay right there.”

Before long, he stood before her, nude.
 
She took her time looking at his chest, at the springy hair that covered it.
 
His muscular arms that had carried her down the stairs.
 
“Turn around please,” she said.
 
When he complied, she studied his strong back that looked like it might have been carved from marble, the only indication that he wasn’t was the warmth he put off.
 
His buttocks looked firm, and she found herself wanting to find out.
 
She reached out and gave a little squeeze, only to hear him take a strangled breath.
 
Yes, it was as firm as she believed it would be.
 
She continued her study as she came to his legs.
 
Who would have thought that a man’s legs could cause her to lose her breath?

“May I turn around?”

“Yes,” she answered huskily.
 
He did, slowly.
 
His feet were masculine and his thighs were muscular.
 
She quickly met his eyes, and thought she might could see his very soul at that moment.

“You can look,” he prompted.

“At what?”

“I believe you know at what.
 
You are its master, did you not know that?
 
It responds only to you.”

“I don’t know that I can.”

“You don’t have to touch, but you should know what you have done to me.
 
No other woman causes this reaction in me.”

At that, she could not help but look.
 
His member looked as if it stretched towards her.
 
It bobbed slightly as if attempting to get her attention, to let her know it wanted her.
 
That he wanted her.
 
She was wanted by her husband, and it was enough for her.
 
If he offered her anything else it would be too much of a risk.
 
Even now she felt him prying away at the mortar that held the crumbling bricks around her beating heart.

He cupped her face and tilted her mouth up for a kiss.
 
Before long, he was working on the row of buttons down the back of her dress.
 
As he pulled apart the fabric, he was shocked to find his hands met bare skin.
 
Thorn rubbed his fingers up and down her spine as he pulled away to look at her questioningly.
 
“No undergarments?”

“I decided to live a little dangerously,” she replied flippantly.

“You are going to be the death of me,” he said, before tugging her dress down her arms, to her waist, and then over her hips so that it fell in a heap on the floor at her feet.
 
His wife stood before him in all her glory, her chin tilted proudly in the air, her hands fisting beside her the only proof she was still slightly uncomfortable with this aspect of their marriage.
 
He turned and walked across the room to lock the door. When he turned back she was still standing there, a hint of stubbornness in her features.

“I thought you were going to leave.”

“Like this?”

“You’re much braver than I am,” she shrugged.

“I am not going to leave.
 
For better or worse, until death do us part, you are mine and I am yours.
 
I will want no one but you.”

“That’s all I could ask for,” Rebekah said huskily.

“No, you should ask for so much more, and you will have it, I promise.”
 
He walked her backwards and laid her back on the bed.
 
“Now, I believe we left off about right here this afternoon,” he grinned lasciviously before planting a string of kisses across her stomach.
 
They spent the rest of the night alternately loving and sleeping, neither pressing the other to talk about matters they did not want to or asking for promises that could not be kept.

Chapter 22

Rebekah slipped from the bed the next morning, leaving Thorn sleeping, or so she thought.

“Where are you going?” he asked, stretching.

“I have things to do.
 
I cannot stay abed all day and do nothing.”

“My plans did not involve doing nothing,” he grinned seductively, before grabbing her hand and placing kisses along her palm.

“Thorn,” she moaned, then slipped her hand free of his.
 
She walked over and kissed him, then pulled back.
 
“I have people to see today,” she said, then turned and walked across the room.
 
She was amazed at how unselfconscious she felt in her nudity in front of him.
 
“Don’t you have things you should see to as well?”

Last night’s encounter with the Duke of Walsh flashed through his mind.
 
“Indeed I do.”
 
He threw back the covers, stood, and crossed the room with determination.

“Go away,” Rebekah swatted at him when he came up behind her and wrapped her up in his arms.

“Are you certain that is what you want?”

She spun around in his arms and wrapped hers about his neck.
 
“You are incorrigible and insatiable,” she said before kissing him.
 
The next thing she knew, she was being lifted into the air and her back pressed to the door with Thorn sinking deep within her.

“Rebekah, every time we love, I feel as if I have come home,” he whispered against her ear.

“Me, too,” she breathed out on just the faintest of whispers.

He was slowly earning her trust, and that made him feel powerful and yet very protective of her all at the same time.
 
What had started out as a quick, furtive loving turned into one that was slow and languorous.
 
He tried to show her through his actions how he felt about her.
 
Each movement, every touch, was done with only her pleasure in mind, to leave her breathless, wanting, but ultimately fulfilled beyond all reason.

***

Rebekah sat in the parlor at Gertrude’s house.
 
Around her sat all the women that had coaxed her and given her advice, looking expectantly for information in regard to the success of their plot.
 
She calmly drank her tea and looked each one in the eye, refusing to give anything away.

“It worked,” Mikala announced to the group.

Rebekah almost sputtered her tea on those sitting nearest to her.

“How do you know?” she demanded, dabbing at her lips and the spots on her dress.

“You have the look of a woman who has been well-loved.
 
You seem less angry, more relaxed,” Mikala observed.

“Is she right?” Clarissa asked.

“I should not share our bedroom secrets.”

“And now you do not have to, for you have said enough,” Tessa said.

“Tell me one thing,” Clarissa said.
 
“The past?”

“Is in the past.
 
All of it,” Rebekah said as she reached out and took the hand of both Clarissa and Gertie in hers, reassuringly squeezing them.

“I believe it is,” Gertie said, hugging her tightly.

The women settled into a comfortable visit while the children played upstairs, watched carefully by their respective nannies.
 
Mikala’s daughter was brought down to be fed.
 
Afterwards, the little girl was passed from arm to arm to be cooed over and admired.
 
Just as the women were about to begin getting ready to return home, a bright lightning strike lit the room followed by a loud boom of thunder.

Rebekah did not believe in premonitions, but something had the fine hairs on her arms and nape standing on end.
 
It was not the twins, for they were still upstairs playing with Tessa’s two children.
 
Had something happened to Thorn?
 
No, he could take care of himself.
 
She rubbed her hand along her arm and told herself she was being foolish.
 
Rebekah looked out the window and saw that it had begun to rain heavily.

“I should go up and help nanny get the children ready.”

“I will go with you,” Tessa said in her Scottish brogue.
 
When the women arrived in the nursery, they had a fight on their hands.
 
Neither set of twins was ready to leave the other.
 
After several promises that they would get to play together once more, they reluctantly allowed themselves to be made ready to go home.

As she led the children down the stairs, someone beat on the front door.
 
An odd sense of déjà vu swept over her, causing momentary dizziness.
 
When the door swung open, she fully expected to see the Reverend on the other side.
 
She stood her ground and made sure the twins were hidden behind her.
 
But who she saw was even more shocking, if possible, for standing there in the pouring rain, a bag at her feet, and soaking wet stood her mother.

“Edith?” Gertie asked.

“Mama?” Rebekah echoed.

“He’s dead,” the thin, bedraggled woman said.
 
“Hezekiah has gone to meet his fate, may God have mercy on his soul,” she announced before collapsing in a heap inside the entryway.

Rebekah raced down the stairs to her mother.
 
Wind blew the rain inside the house, and she quickly shut the door.
 
“Mama,” she patted her cheek lightly, trying to rouse her.
 
This woman looked more than a decade older than her mother should.
 
And so much thinner, almost brittle.
 
Her eyelids fluttered, as if she were trying to make them open.
 
Rebekah heard commotion and talking behind her, but ignored it as she focused all of her attention on her mother.
 
She helped her mother to sit once she regained consciousness.
 
“Mama, why are you here?
 
Where is the Reverend?”

“He’s dead,” Edith said again.
 
She looked into hazel eyes so like her own, and cupped her daughter’s cheek.
 
“He can no longer hurt you, baby girl,” she said, tears stinging her eyes.

“How?”

“That man of yours.”

“Thorn killed him?
 
But he said…”

“Not with his own hands,” her mother interrupted.
 
“No, he used something much better.
 
He threw Hezekiah’s misdeeds up in his face.”

“I don’t see how that alone would do anything.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t have, but the church elders happened to be on the other side of a door that was not quite closed and heard everything.
 
Hezekiah admitted to several things that even I did not know about.
 
After your husband left, the elders dismissed him at once.
 
He suffered a major apoplexy that night.
 
He lingered for several days before he died.”

“And yet you stayed by his side.”

“I was his wife.
 
A long time ago, I loved him.
 
He was a different man then.
 
After that harlot stole his heart, he resented me and you girls.
 
That is when he became bitter and hateful, because he could not be with the one he loved and their child.”