Page 53 of If I Loved You
Thankfully, Zach withdrew from her and rolled away. He lay on his back, an arm flung over his head, the other scratching idly at his chest. He said nothing. Not for the longest time. And he did not look at her.
Fearing that a great weeping was imminent, for everything that was wrong about what they had just done, Emma turned away from him, onto her side, facing the wall and the pretty and dainty flowers that covered it. A long, long time seemed to pass before he said anything.
His voice was husky yet, the words were slow, reflective. “That wasn’t really the plan.”
She hadn’t any idea of what he spoke and made to lay as still as she could.
“But now you are mine, love,” he said tenderly, his breath tickling at her ear as he shifted onto his side behind her, pressing himself warmly against her.
Emma closed her eyes at this, the full complexity of this enormous mistake crashing into her with all the force of a damaging storm. “Oh, God,” she moaned, “what have I done?”
She felt him stiffen behind her, felt it upon the entire length of her body.
His words, when he spoke next, came cautiously. “You have, I hope, been struggling with the same desires as I, which led to this.”
She shook her head miserably against the pillow. No. No. No! This was all wrong, and Emma began to cry. It was not an outright sob, but a soft keening noise she made while inside she railed at herself for having let this happen. He has won, she thought. She was no longer her own person. She didn’t know herself anymore. “Please leave,” she implored on a ragged indrawn breath. When he moved not at all, save to rub his hand up and down her arm, she wriggled away from his touch and shrieked at him, “Just leave me be!”
“Emma—“
“Get out!” She raged.
And he did. Slowly, with careful movements, he left the bed. She heard him gather up his clothes, donning a few before letting himself out of her bedroom.
Emma pressed her face into her soft pillow and sobbed as she never had, for her own loss of innocence, for her foolishness in all things regarding the earl, for having learned nothing from her dear sister’s own heartbreak. She cried mostly for the very truth that she loved him too much to simply be his mistress, even though she’d just unmistakably aided and abetted him, and she was, if only for this moment, just that.
ZACH CLOSED THE DOOR, staring for several seconds at the barrier between them. He acknowledged that more than a door separated him from her, it seemed. Sighing, while the taste and feel of Emma still enveloped him, he angrily jabbed his arms into his shirt and threw it over his head as he descended the back stairs.
He stalked around the darkened first floor, unable to return his boots to his feet as he’d left them in her room. He seethed and stormed, exactly as the night did the same outside. Thrusting his hands onto his hips, he paced up and down the hall.
Having no experience whatsoever with virgins, he could only wonder if this were normal. Supposing the loss of innocence, something never to be recovered, was an emotionally raw wound, was this then a natural aftermath?
But shouldn’t he be with her, if that were so?
Good God, or had she been telling the truth when she’d insisted that she had no desire to be courted by him?
Zach swiped his hand across his face, over his stubbly chin. “Christ,” he groaned, at a complete loss. His pacing had brought him again to the front of the house. Glancing up the stairs, he considered his options just now, but every question seemed only to be answered by,you cannot leave her.
Purposefully, he pivoted and took the stairs three at a time, though his bare feet were quiet upon them, and slipped silently into Emma’s bedroom. She cried still, was the first thing he noticed, though she’d turned onto her stomach and now had her face hidden in her pillow. She’d pulled the bedcovers over hernaked body. She did not lift her head and rage at him, so was likely yet unaware of his return.
Grimly, Zach approached the bed, on the side in which she lay and sat beside her, his hip butting against hers. She jerked and jumped, quickly scrambling onto her knees, wiping clumsily at her tears.
“I want you gone.”
Quite possibly, she’d only exhausted herself, but not yet her venom, that had her demand sounded only weary and pitiful but not at all as desperate as her initial edict.
“I cannot leave you.” He reached up his hand.
She smacked it away, scrambled from the bed and fussed dramatically inside her wardrobe, withdrawing some heavy wrapper in which she covered herself, tying the sash with such virulence as to send the edges flapping smartly.
“Emma, that’s enough,” he said, standing as well, moving to the end of the bed. He tried to imbue a bit of calm, unnerved by her harsh words and tortured expression. “Let’s talk and—”
She strode right up to him, across the darkened room, and slapped him across the face. “Talking should have come first! How dare you! You want to talk? Should we discuss your overbearing and imperious self, taking away my job? Shall we speak of your constant disfavor with my neighbor? Let’s talk about your control of me! Or, pray tell, would you rather discuss the fact that I specifically said I don’t want your attention—”
He shook his head. She wasn’t allowed to use that argument, after all. Not when she’d answered every single touch and kiss and sigh with her own.
“Do not shake your head.”
“I will shake my head,” he informed her curtly. “Rant and rave at me for the things I’ve done wrong, but do not lie to me. You did want my attention, and your own response not so long ago right there—” he jabbed a finger at the bed, his voice thundering, “—proves that you lied!”
