Page 57 of The Music of Love

“I will undress myself.”

Daisy took one look at Portia’s thunderous face and fled.

Portia did not undress. Instead, she commenced to pace her chamber, winding herself up as though she were a watch. By the time she heard the door to Stacy’s room close three hours later she was nearly blind with rage. When she could no longer hear movement on the other side of the connecting door she flung it open without bothering to knock.

He was lying in bed, the covers pulled up to his waist, his chest naked, a book in his hands, and clear reading spectacles perched on his perfect nose. He looked from the door, which had bounced off the wall, to Portia.

“You will let me rest?” Portia asked in a nasty voice.

His eyebrows shot up and he set aside his book and removed his glasses.

“Good evening, Portia.”

“Don’t you dare ‘Portia’ me!” Fury roared in her skull like the crashing surf of the ocean, drowning that tiny part of her brain that advised her to get control of her emotions.

“I collect you are angry about something?”

“How bloody perceptive!”

His handsome features turned rigid. “Please don’t raise your voice at me.”

“Did you go into a brothel in Plymouth when you went to get the marriage license?”

He flinched back, as if she’d struck him. “I beg your pardon?” He spoke slowly and clearly, his words covered in frost.

Portia recklessly ignored both his freezing tone and look. “Perhaps you need me to speak more plainly? When did you last lay with a prostitute?” She enunciated the words in an insulting parody of his.

His eyes narrowed to dangerous red slits. “I would ask you not to use that tone with me, ma’am.”

“And I would ask you to answer my question, sir.”

“I have no intention of doing any such thing.”

A vicious wave of anger rolled over her. Portia recognized the feeling although it had been some time since she’d felt it—her last argument with Ivo. Pure fury seized her in its punishing grip; she needed something to throw, break, hurt.

Her eyes flickered over his body and moved to the rest of the room. The chamber was almost completely white: white silk hangings on the walls, a white counterpane, ivory carpets over dark wood floors. The bed was a huge mahogany four-poster that looked as though it had come from some gothic castle. And her husband looked like an angry, haughty god bent on disciplining an unruly human as he lay there with his arms crossed over his chest. Portia’s eyes landed on the cabinet beside her, where a wooden statue sat. Her hand moved toward it.

He was out of the bed like a flash of lightning, his hand on her arm as her fingers closed around the wooden projectile.

“No.” His voice was ice over iron. “You will not.” He squeezed her wrist hard enough that she released the statue. Her right hand moved toward his face, palm open, and again he anticipated her, catching that wrist, as well. He looked down at her with red eyes blazing, a muscle jumping in his clenched jaw. “What have I done to make you believe I am capable of such behavior? You do me a grave injustice.”

Portia heard the truth in his words—saw it in his eyes—but jealousy gripped her in its brutal talons and squeezed until all she could think of was him with some phantom woman—two beautiful people writhing in each other’s arms. A feral noise tore from her throat and she launched herself at his mouth. He met her with a violence that equaled hers. It wasn’t kissing, it certainly wasn’t making love. It was battle: it was the unrestrained impulse to dominate, subdue, and consume.

Something inside her began to unravel as he plunged his tongue into her, over and over. Portia couldn’t resist him and didn’t want to. She released his neck and slid down his body to her knees. He was long, hot, and erect and she took him into her mouth, subjugating him the only way she knew how.

He groaned. “Good God, Portia.” His hands came to rest on her head, his fingers threading into her hair.

She closed her eyes and worked him so relentlessly he’d never be able to remember he’d ever had any other woman. She would enslave him the way he’d so effortlessly enslaved her.

Her mind became a blank, empty of anything except the driving need to possess and control him—to make him hers.

It could have been a minute or an hour when his body began to shake and shudder. She redoubled her efforts, taking him deep into her throat, driving him over the ledge of self-control.

“Portia,” he hissed, trying to pull out of her mouth.

Portia slapped away his hand; she wanted every part of him—she needed all of him. When he drove himself deep, she dug her fingers into his hips and pulled him even deeper, until she could take no more. Every muscle in his body went taut and he made a sound of pure animal need, his shaft thickening and jerking as he emptied himself deep inside her.

Portia gloried in her ability to undo him; working him until he had nothing left to give. Only then did she pull back and release him, doubling over and gasping for breath, her lungs on fire. It took several moments before she could look up at him.