“You’re being ridiculous.” She tossed the covers back and flopped onto her side of the bed. “And hurtful.”
Her slim arm whipped out from under the covers to lower the lamp, and the room plunged into darkness. He sighed and got under the covers, gritting his teeth at the stiffness in his lower extremity and the way his body hummed with awareness of her. But the tight way in which she huddled on the far side of the bed cut through his skin. Damn it; how was it that her pain affected him so much more than his own? It was like a hand pressing on his chest, making his flesh crawl with shame. Because he had caused it.
He drew a deep breath through his nose as he lay like a lump of coal on his side of the bed. “I did not mean to be hurtful.”
Silence greeted him. Then her small voice broke it. “I love this shirt.”
Hell. Win squeezed his eyes closed, even though it was dark as pitch. “I know.”
Her response was a decidedly feminine sniff that communicated both a grudging acknowledgment and made it clear that his effort wasn’t enough. Well, he rather doubted she’d appreciate his other method of apology. Win closed his eyes and prayed for sleep, for his c**k to go to sleep, rather. But no, it lay, a heavy, nagging weight against his belly, pushing against the strings of his smalls in a valiant attempt to get free. Architecture. That was soothing. Sleep often took him when he made a mental tour of London’s architectural wonders.
Westminster Palace, The Clock Tower, Tower of London, Cleopatra’s Needle. Christ, stop thinking of erect monuments.
Poppy made an abrupt, irritated move, disrupting his musings and unfortunately aggravating his current situation when her bottom hit his hip. Gritting his teeth, he risked a glance. The hunched shape of her shoulders were outlined in the darkness. Her head lay significantly lower than his. Again she shifted. A covert sort of move she employed when she did not want him to notice. Ridiculous, as he was always aware of her. He wondered how long she would go on pretending she wasn’t vastly uncomfortable. Forever, it would seem. So very Poppy.
Wanting to smile and wanting even more to roll over and push himself into her until they were both exhausted, he gave in and did the safe, less pleasurable thing. He smiled and lifted the pillow from under his head.
“Here.” He handed it to her. She stared at the thing as if it were a rat, and he sighed. “Take it. I know you don’t like the pillow you have.”
“It’s too flat,” she said after a moment.
“Yes, I know.” She preferred a plump pillow. Always had.
His throat closed, and he turned away, pounding the flatter pillow he took in exchange into a reasonable lump. “Now will you stop wiggling about and go to sleep?”
He felt her settle and then heard a little sigh of relief. Well good. At least one of them was comfortable.
Body aching and head resting upon a woeful pillow, he chased sleep once more.
St. Paul’s, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace—
“Win?”
He cracked open one eye. “Yes?”
A faint touch landed on the sheet at his back. And then it was gone. Her whisper drifted over him. “Are you sorry you did it?”
Again came that tender ache within the region of his bruised and battered heart. He gripped the pillow as he willed himself not to turn. “Sorry?” But he knew what she meant. Only it hurt too much to answer.
The sheets moved as she shifted. “Sorry that you gave up so much. For me?”
Ah gods, he couldn’t… White spots danced before his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut. “No.” Winston cleared his throat. “I am only sorry that I did not know the whole of you.”
The desire to let her secrets spill forth rushed through Poppy, but the familiar tug of repression caught her. Never speak. You lead a double life. Remember this always. She’d followed the instructions to the letter, even when it tore at her soul. Even when her sisters suffered and her husband turned away from her. The SOS was her other half, sometimes the greater part of her. To what end? If she let it, the SOS would take her happiness away and leave her empty.
“I was eighteen when I took over my mother’s position.”
Win’s voice came at her through the dark. “The year we met.”
She sighed. “Yes. The day we met, actually.”
He was silent, as if he too were remembering that day upon the platform. She wondered what the memory held for him. For her, it had been both the best and worst day of her life. Every step down the long, cold train platform had been a struggle to pull herself together, to remind herself who and what she was. And then he was there, as if forming from the mist. It had been such a shock to see the handsome young man walking beside her, looking at her as if she had just become his whole world. She’d thought she was dreaming.
“What were you doing at the station?” He laughed shortly, as if disgusted with himself. “Do you know, I never even thought to ask you.” Another choppy laugh filled the air. “I was too stunned with lust to think on anything more than keeping you with me.”
Her breath hitched, and she struggled to find another. “And I thought you were the most handsome madman I’d ever seen.”
His voice rolled over her like fog. “Mad for you.”
God, the things he could do to her. Just a few words and it was all she could do not to fling herself at him. She cleared her throat. “I’d just been appointed Mother. Lena fulfilled the duty while I completed my training. Actually, I thought she might keep the position, but she’s never liked the role.” Lena had always been strange in that regard, preferring to be a guardian of the SOS, rather than the leader of it. Poppy settled further into her pillow and continued her story. “There is an SOS tunnel exit at the station, and I’d used it to leave the ceremony.”
“You were eighteen years old.” The shock in his voice was strong. “And they appointed you head of an entire organization?”
“I’d been training for the position since I was six.” Pride prickled along her skin and she fought to tamp it down. “I am the seventh generation of first daughters to carry out the duty. My family, along with another, founded the SOS.”
Letting out her secrets filled her with utter weariness, but it felt easier to say them in the dark. “In the early days, we were simply called the Regulators. It was actually when we began to work in conjunction with the King and the Prime Minister that we became more formally organized and called ourselves the Society for the Suppression of Supernaturals.”
She shifted a bit, sinking further into the plump pillow. “That was in my great-grandmother’s time, though I can honestly say I’ve no fondness for the newer name as it stirred up trouble with certain supernatural factions.”
“Because it made them sound like a problem to suppress,” Win said with a decisive clip to his voice.
“Yes. At any rate,” she said, “the SOS has always been my life. You do not understand the will of Mary Margaret Ellis. Every day was a new lesson. Every day a reminder.” Poppy adopted the implacable tone of her mother. “Do not let the world know. Do not reveal your true purpose to anyone. Not even to family. Especially not to family.”
“She had to suspect that your sisters had talents of their own.”
“Oh, she knew. And she did not like it. Daisy was her little lamb, her sunshine. And Miranda was her rose, a delicate flower to be protected. She was adamant that neither of them be tainted by her dark world.”
“And you?” Win’s voice was tight.
A wobbly smile pulled at her lips as she blinked up at the dark ceiling. “I was the competent one. I never cried, nor fussed.”
“Which meant that you should live a life in darkness?” He made a noise of annoyance. “I never thought I would say this, but I think I prefer your father.”
Poppy could not help but smile a little. Even so, she needed him to understand. “She believed in me.” Poppy sighed. “And yes, at times it hurt that she did not seek to protect me as she did my sisters. But Win…” She licked her lips. Inside, she trembled. “I liked being useful. I liked what I was doing. I still do.”
The bed creaked when he rolled onto his back, their shoulders touching as he did. “He beat me. My father.”
She grew still. Enough to hear the roaring of her blood in her ears. How could it be? He never cowered, always stood so tall and proud. And yet shadows had always dwelled within his eyes at odd times. “Win—”
“I never told you,” he said over her, his voice strong yet brittle, as if he were forcing himself to speak, “because I was ashamed of the way…” His arm brushed over hers as he shrugged, “Well, you can guess. I was weak when I ought to have been strong.”
She tried to swallow and failed. “For how long, Win?”
“As long as I have memory.” In the dark, she could make out the lines of his profile as he stared up at the ceiling. “Too long.”
She wanted to kill his father. Her hand shook as she rested it on his forearm. He did not shrug her off, nor did he turn to her. “That is why I made the bargain with Jones.” His smoky voice was a living thing between them, making her heart bleed for him. “When I met you, I woke to life. You saw me for who I was. And in return, I wanted to live again. You gave my life flavor, color, texture, and I found myself willing to do anything to keep that.”
She moved to embrace him, and he sucked in a sharp breath. “Don’t.” His body was rigid. “Not now. Not because of what I said.”
“But—”
His voice grew emphatic, stern in that way of his that brooked no argument. “When I take you to bed, Poppy Ann, it will not be under the auspices of sentimentality.” He turned his head and, in the dark, she could see his eyes looking at her with clear, direct heat. “It will be because you’re wound up so tight with need that you fear you will break if you don’t have me.” He moved an inch closer, and his warm breath gusted over her neck. “And then we will be in perfect accord, sweeting.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Winston lay in the slumberous warmth of the bed he shared with his wife and contemplated her. Bright morning light gilded her sleeping form, highlighting the paleness of her arms and the dusting of copper freckles upon them. Those freckles had been one of many delights he’d uncovered when he’d first undressed her on their wedding night, for she hadn’t a one on her face. Stardust, he’d called them, those glorious freckles that were sprinkled over her arms and shoulders. He’d made it his mission to kiss every one of them. It’d had taken him an hour, and she’d quivered beneath him, her voice husky with need as she pled for him to take her now.
He’d meant what he’d said to her last night; he did not want her back from pity. And he knew she feared he wanted her solely because of the child—a ridiculous notion—but if he could acknowledge his fears, he’d acknowledge hers too.
It seemed such an easy solution to simply call pax, to say I am sorry, now let’s be done with this. Yet when Win tried to do just that, a wall reared up within, holding him back. He suspected the same wall rose within Poppy too, for shadows inevitably crept into her eyes when they shared unguarded moments. The ugly truth was that, deep down, they still distrusted each other, and he could not figure out how to fix this.
It wasn’t as if he did not want his wife. Sweet Christ he did. Lying next to her now, with the scent of her sleep-warmed body filling the air, and the sight of her long length spilled out before him, was the veriest of tortures. Every nerve ending along his body thrummed with an impatient need to thrust into that snug, wet cove whose embrace he knew so well. He shifted slightly, his h*ps rocking his c**k a little farther into the mattress. A sweet pain bolted through his lower gut at the action.
Poppy was a deep sleeper, which went directly against the alert way in which she conducted her waking hours. Right now, he didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse, because he could look his fill without her noticing.
She appeared younger in sleep, lying on her side with one arm tucked beneath her pillow and the other resting before her, her hand curled into a loose fist. Her pink lips parted just enough to let a soft breath out. Red rivers of her hair streamed over her shoulders and ran along the small slopes of her br**sts.
Breasts that moved with the steady cadence of her breath. Up. Down. And his blasted nightshirt she insisted on wearing hid nothing. The shabby shirt was gossamer thin now. Holes grew along the seam where it buttoned down the front. Those holes held his attention, for each breath she took revealed a tantalizing glimpse of the curve of her breast.
His body grew hard and heavy, a languid sort of ache that had him both wanting to move and to remain utterly still. She moved on a sigh, the sheets rustling as her body canted back just a touch. His breath stilled. The wretched nightshirt had moved too, one of those damnable holes slipping just over the tip of her nipple. For one tight, hot moment, the pink nub was revealed, then a thick lock of copper hair slid over it and clung, hiding his prize.
Win gritted his teeth. His fists curled into his pillow as he willed that tendril of hair to slip away. But it was stubborn, clinging lovingly to the pert tip. In, out, she breathed, her breast moving beneath the thin gown. A strand of hair fell, revealing just a touch of pink. He was going to lose his mind. His c**k throbbed against the mattress, and the sunlight burned hot against his bare back. But he remained transfixed. Like a randy schoolboy, he stared. It became essential that the nipple be revealed to him.
Another few strands drifted down. A quarter moon of rosy areola winked at him. He licked his lips, his breath growing ragged. From a nipple. He might have laughed if he wasn’t fighting a groan. Bloody hell, it was only a nipple. He’d seen it a thousand times before. He knew its taste, how it would stiffen against his tongue. Which was the entirely wrong thing to think. His blood thrummed through his veins. He could not stand it any longer.