The Pearl (The Godwicks #3) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,64
hand, hand shielding the flame. She followed him into the bedroom and to the bed.
He set the candle in its brass holder on the bedside table. She watched from the foot of the bed as he pulled back the covers and made a place for her.
“I should wash,” she said.
“I’ll do it for you.”
Regan let him raise her dress and pull it off her. He laid it neatly over the back of a chair. He unhooked her bra and slid the straps down her arms, laid it over her dress.
He whispered he would be back. Regan rested against the cool smooth wood of the bedpost. Arthur returned with a warm, wet flannel. He knelt again and washed his own semen off her thighs and ran it between her legs. It was the act of a body servant, bathing his mistress. The wind was wild again outside but inside everything was calm, serene.
Except it wasn’t. Arthur’s mouth was tight with tension. The book downstairs that had fallen off the shelf unsettled them both. They could only pretend for so long that what was happening wasn’t really happening.
But…they could pretend a little longer.
Arthur unzipped her boots and tossed them onto the floor. He stood up and finished undressing as she watched, his body more beautiful than ever bathed in the candlelight.
She laid back and settled against a pillow. Cotton sheets, with pale red stripes against white. The candle flickered and Arthur bent over it and blew it out. In that split second his face was bathed in golden light, Regan knew his was the last face she wanted to see before bed every night of her life and the face she wanted to see first thing in the morning.
But she didn’t tell him that. She couldn’t. Gently, he lay down next to her, on his side facing her.
“There are other rooms in the house,” he said. “If you decide you want to sleep alone. I know you said—”
She put a finger over his lips. “Forget what I said.”
He wrapped his hand around hers, kissed the finger that silenced him. She rested back onto the pillow, Arthur on his side pressed close. His hands found the enormous pearl drop she wore on a chain around her neck and lightly toyed with it.
“Some masters give collars to their pets,” she said.
He gently tugged the pearl on the chain. “Are you going to do that to me?”
She rolled onto her side to face him. “I think you’re like a collared dove. The collar’s already a part of you, born on you.”
His black eyes gleamed in the dark.
She put her finger over his lips again, then moved close to kiss him, to silence him for good, at least for now. He obeyed her silent order and as he lay there, she explored his body with her hands. She rested her head on his shoulder and stroked his chest and his flat hard stomach. She cupped his testicles and held them, then wrapped her hand gently around his soft penis which began to stiffen as soon as she held it. “Mine,” she said. “All mine.”
“Yours,” he said. “All yours.”
He wrapped his arms around her.
“You were right, you know,” he said. “When you said you can’t make up with someone until you’ve had the fight.”
“Are you going to talk to Charlie? Have a good old-fashioned row with him?”
“He barely speaks to me.”
“Give it time.” She touched his face.
“You know, my grandfather,” he said, “died of heart disease at only fifty-six. My father’s already sixty-one, and his cardiologist says—”
“Stop,” she said. “You can’t save me by wishing.”
“I can still try.”
“Either make love to me again or go to sleep,” she said. “Just don’t make me talk about it anymore.”
His fingers tightened around the pearl that dangled on the end of the chain.
“Killing you, isn’t it? That I have something you can’t fix?” she asked.
“I could sell my soul to the devil like my great-grandfather.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Why not?”
Wickedly, she grinned up at him. “Your soul already belongs to me. You can’t give away what you don’t own.”
He kissed her once and pulled back, looking down at her as if drinking in the sight of her in his bed. She drank in the sight of him drinking in the sight of her. Nothing had ever tasted better. Not whisky, not wine.
Arthur pulled gently until the clasp of the silver chain holding the large pearl broke in his hand.