【蘇珊強森傑作選】： 消失的紅寶石—最終回

”There now,” he breathlessly declared, stroking her bottom lightly, his smugness plain. “You didn’t seem to mind me touching you…” He was beginning to withdraw when she caught him off balance; he was halfway off his knees rolling back on his heels when she twisted around and rose up in a maddened swirling movement, her arms swinging out like a windmill, catching him in the throat, her hip driving him backwards.

He’d hardly hit the floor when she fell on top of him and brutally grabbed his testicles in her fingers.

“Now then,” she said in a whisper, her wrathful gaze only inches from his, “tell me about the women at the races.”

He could backhand her across the room with one blow despite her bruising grip. But he understood her anger because he suffered from the same ungovernable urges. And he was contrite now that he’d forced his own manner of revenge on her. “Accept my apology,” he said. “I was boorish and rude.”

“Tell me about the women,”  she hotly retorted. She wasn’t contrite yet nor appeased as he was after exacting his sexual vengeance. She was furious for having succumbed to his expertise, raging that he’d consistently avoided her questions about the women. “No more evasion, Johnnie. I want a plain simple answer. I want to know about the women at the races this afternoon, the ones you were alluding to when you said you’d kill me if I was like them.” Her fingers tightened on him and he winced.

“I’m letting you do that, you know,” he said in a suppressed growl, his blue eyes full of warning.

“How chivalrous,” Elizabeth murmured sarcastically, still in hot-tempered dudgeon. “I’m waiting.”

His hand moved to free himself from her grip. “Ease up. It’s hard to think when I’m about to be crushed.”

“You haven’t told me anything yet.”

He sighed.  “All right then…it’s like this. Everyone knows everyone” he began with a grimace. “Everyone drinks deep, including the women. The mood is festive, particularly now during the holidays, and I was approached. That’s all,” he finished giving a brief, highly edited version of the numerous female overtures. “I was honestly surprised. I’d forgotten how convivial the company.”

“Convivial!”  She snorted. “A tame word for what they wanted.

“Everyone knows I’m in love with you. They’re harmless.”

“Maybe they don’t care whether you love me or not.”

“But I do, and they know that now.” His voice was quiet, low, his blue eyes free of subterfuge like a child’s.

“Please forgive my remark about killing you, although I couldn’t deal with it if you were ever like them. I don’t love you sweetly,” he said with a great heaving sigh. “I love you with my gut and then my heart and then my head.”

Her grip had loosened as he spoke; her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

“I don’t know how this happened to me,” he softly went on, “but it has, and I can’t live without you.  Everyone’s still at Wat Harden’s. I was the only one to leave—amidst much vulgar mockery and ridicule, I might add, about the chains of matrimony. But you needed me,” he whispered, gently brushing a ringlet behind her ear, “so I came home to you…” Drawing her close, he kissed the tears from her eyes.

“I’m violently jealous,” Elizabeth confessed, clinging to him. “I want you always close to me, inside me and around me and over me and near me,” she whispered, her emotions still feverish, obsessed.

“I know,” he soothed, “I’m beset with the same urge. I’m here.”  His arms tightened around her as they lay in the glow of the fire, her body dwarfed in the shelter of his, the sanctuary and fulfillment she sought willingly given. “You’re my precious wife,”  he murmured against her warm smooth temple. “I’ll always be here.”