He looked up at her then, and she saw that his jaw was locked, his eyes glazed, and all of him was pulsing madly. His seed was on himself, on the sheet, on her belly. It was an overwhelming upheaval that she couldn’t begin to understand, really didn’t want to understand, but she did know one thing for certain—he was a liar. It was obvious he knew very little about this lovemaking business.
She hurt really badly. She hated what he’d done to her and wanted to hurl him out of the window. And what had he meant that he couldn’t do it? Do what? Stay inside her? What was he talking about?
She didn’t care. Then he stopped his quivering, his shuddering, and just hung there over her, not breathing quite so hard now, his eyes closed, saying nothing, doing nothing.
She said loudly, right up into his face, “You shouldn’t have done what you did. It wasn’t right. You hurt me and then you just came out of me. I am going to kill you.”
* * *
Chapter 15
THOMAS COULDN’T THINK, just couldn’t gather his wits together. He’d managed to come out of her, he’d actually managed to make his body obey his will, and he hated it.
Suddenly Meggie lurched up and bit his shoulder as hard as she could. She hoped she’d make him bleed.
That brought him back to his brain and miserable body. He managed to straighten. He blinked at her. “My God,” he said slowly, disbelieving, “you bit me.”
“Yes, you hurt me.”
“It happened.” She’d actually bit him. He’d come out of her, not his fault, he’d simply had to. Well, for the moment, he didn’t give a damn about her feelings, about that damnable Jeremy. He wanted to punish her for what she’d done to him. He came down hard over her and went inside her again just as she yelled, “Don’t you dare have the nerve to hurt me more, you bastard.”
Then she shuddered.
He felt her muscles clenching around him, he was deep inside her, it was driving him mad, and this time, the rage banked, the desire to punish, to gain revenge on her both for what she’d done and hadn’t done, fell to his own need, his own wild urgency and that was more powerful than anything else. He pushed again. “Oh God,” he said, panting until he thought his heart would burst from his chest, “I don’t want this. Damnation. This will kill me.”
“Probably not, you clod. Get off me, damn you!” He fell forward, flattened her, kissed her and shoved hard again and again. It was over again in less than a minute. He was heaving and panting, nearly crying because his body felt so very fine—nothing but soul-deep satisfaction and the overwhelming urge to sleep, to forget what he’d just done. Damn him and damn her. At least no one could take her from him now. Damn her honor. He’d been rough with her. He was sorry he’d hurt her, but in the end, she would have to learn that whatever he did, she had no say in it.
He thought about that life-changing conversation between father and daughter he’d overheard in the vicarage gardens not three hours after she’d become his wife. His wife whom he’d wanted to pull behind a shrubbery and kiss her silly, but that hadn’t happened. He’d seen her father, taken a step forward to ask if he’d seen Meggie, but then he’d heard her say in a voice stumbling with pain, “I truly didn’t want him to speak to me, Papa, but Jeremy believed that since I’d married Thomas, he could now redeem himself because obviously I didn’t love him anymore and it bothered him that I believed he was an idiot. Papa, Jeremy is honorable. I should never have believed that wretched act of his. He did it to make me stop loving him, oh God—so noble and I hated him, scorned him.”
Her father had held her close and whispered against her hair, “It will be all right. You’ve got a fine husband. You will come to love him, dearest. You will see.”