Page 62 of The Phantom Duke
“I want to see you,” she said after a long, breathless moment.
“No. I can’t allow it.”
“Do you not see that your fears are groundless?” she said, feeling exasperated. “I will not detest you simply because I see your scars.”
“No.”
“I have given myself to you. You have been given what no other man has. You cannot take that and then slam the gates shut,” Maria tried to sit up, but Damien’s hand slid from her eyes, down her chest and between her breasts.
He held her down with gentle force, and she complied. His fingers spread over the slopes of her breasts, and her core ached with need. Her mind conjured several fantasies of what he might do with his hand there.
He could weigh her breasts in his hands or knead them, as he had her buttocks. Damien might circle her nipples, which she already felt had hardened into tiny peaks. He might pinch them or roll them between his thumbs.
“I can take it,” he said, his voice raw.
He withdrew his hand, and Maria could not contain a little whimper of protest at the sudden absence of his warmth. She listened to him gathering his clothes and walking away. She did not remove the blindfold until she heard the door to the bathhouse slamming shut.
CHAPTER 17
Damien looked at himself in the mirror above the fireplace in his private sitting room. With linen, he finished drying himself, casually tossing the damp fabric aside.
He had walked back from the bathhouse and through the house naked, confident in his standing rule that no servant be abroad after a certain time of night. He glared at himself, hating the reflection with its mask over face, shoulder and upper arm. With sudden anger, he tore the mask from his face, throwing it across the room. What now stared back at him looked no better.
My curse. My stain.
He found himself regretting the slamming down of his portcullis in the bathhouse, shutting Maria out of the parts of his life he had not yet given her admittance to. He wanted to be pleasuring her again. In that moment, he had almost been able to forget his disfigurement, had almost been able to pretend he was a normal man. Almost.
“You are not, and it does not serve you to forget it,” he told the man in the mirror.
“But you want to be, don’t you?”the man replied with a mocking smile.
“I want nothing but what I have. Except to be left alone. To be free of the prying ghouls. To be forgotten.”
“To be left alone with the woman who has already penetrated deeper into your mind than any other. You cannot deny it. Even now, you want to go to her again.”
Damien turned away from the mirror and strode across the room, into his bedchamber. He covered his nakedness with a robe and went to the window.
There was no bar of golden light flowing from Maria’s window. No tantalizing silhouette. Either she embraced darkness, or she was still in the bathhouse. Either possibility put hooks into Damien’s mind.
The thought of her body, slick and pliant, open to his instruction, was maddening. Whether she sported herself in the warm water of the bathhouse or lay on her bed, perhaps allowing her skin to cool and dry in the night air from her open window.
Damien’s mouth was dry, and his pulse raced. His body responded to his fevered thoughts, and he was glad to have sworn off drink years ago. At that moment, the courage ofbrandy would have run through his inhibitions with swift rapier strokes, and Damien would have been at Maria’s door.
To render myself helpless before her. I will not be helpless. I will not be vulnerable. That is a weakness.
He went to the bureau in a corner of the room, opened it and swiftly went through the letters stacked there. Acceptance from the board of directors of the Willow Street Orphanage.
That part of his plan was achieved. The dratted orphanage was safe. One of Maria’s requirements for their marriage was now neatly set aside. She did not need to remain at Winterleigh out of concern for the orphanage’s fate. He tossed the letter into the fire.
I do not want to be reminded of them. It is nothing to me.
Through the open door of his bedroom, he saw the mirror over the fireplace. Caught a glimpse of himself.
“But you do, don’t you?”the reflection mocked.“It has given you a warmth deep inside at the thought of defending the defenseless. Like you said to the boy.”
Damien growled and strode to the door, slamming it shut with one powerful sweep of his arm. The crash echoed from the walls. He stood before it, breathing deeply, teeth bared.
But the Phantom of Winterleigh remained… inside his mind.
