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‘Yes. And I also like rare flowers. They are complicated. And one must know just how to care for them. You must take great care to observe, take into account every aspect of the environment. It is not so different than what I do with women. Finding the perfect balance of pleasure and pain. Watching your breathing. Your eyes.’
He took another step towards her, and she took a step away, her bottom hitting one of the platforms that held all the plants. That section was empty, the surface clear.
‘You are like an orchid,’ he said. ‘You are in my care. And if I fail you, if you begin to lose your colour, the fault is with me.’
She could see. She could see it. He took total control, total responsibility, after a childhood spent feeling as if he had none. And she had felt... Insecure. Unsafe. She had wanted nothing more than to feel safe. As if she could trust all those in authority over her. But her father often acted in his own self-interest, her mother was distracted—even though it was her father’s fault—the doctors... She simply had to trust that their training was as good as they said.
And all the while, things were simply done to her, and none of it... None of it with her permission.
While Briggs made her feel safe, taken care of. When he put his hand on her, she knew that it would be with the right kind of care.
She was his orchid. And he the master gardener.
‘He said he wished I were dead,’ Briggs said, his mouth now nearly pressed against hers. ‘He said that he wished I were the one who had died.’
‘Briggs...’
‘And look at me, have I not done well? I’ve done better than him. It’s only a shame that he’s dead and he cannot see it.’
‘Briggs.’ She closed the distance between them and kissed him. Kissed him fiercely. And he wrapped his arms tightly around her, kissing her as if she were the source of all life. As if... ‘I want to know you,’ she said, moving her hands to his cravat and undoing it, pulling his shirt open. She knew that this was outside the realm of their games. That she was not permitted to take his clothes off. She was not directed to do anything of the sort, and if she was not directed to do it, she did not do it. But she was lost in this. And his kiss. In her desperate need for him.
She opened his shirt, pushed it down his shoulders, and he tore at the front of her dress, exposing her breasts and pinching her ruthlessly. She cried out, arching against him. She reached desperately for the falls on his breeches, bringing his cock out and wrapping her fingers around it. She squeezed him, an answering desperation building between her thighs. By now, she knew what she wanted. He would respond by pushing his fingers into her, but he never gave her what she wanted. What she craved.
She was not an innocent. Not any more. She knew exactly what she wanted from Briggs. She knew exactly what he could make her feel. And she needed it. She did not know how to reconcile all that they were with what they both had to have. His desire to protect her. Her desire to be free. The honour that he felt when it came to his relationship with Hugh, and her desperate need to comfort him. To be all that he could possibly desire and more.
He pushed her skirts up her thighs, his fingers going between her legs as he stroked her.
‘Please,’ she whimpered. ‘Please.’ She arched forward, and he set her up on that platform, her thighs spread wide. He pressed the head of his arousal to her slick folds, stroked her, made her mad with her need for him. He was teasing her with what she wanted. Him. Inside her. That thick, masculine part of him. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Inside me. Please.’
He didn’t. He was still.
And something stirred in her. A need.
His name.
She felt the head of him against her entrance, stretching her. He pushed in, a fraction of an inch and she gasped.
‘Please,’ she begged him. Because she was desperate. ‘Philip. I need you.’
He growled and surged forward, and she cried out, his strong hands gripping her hips in a bruising fashion, the hard length of him pulsing inside her.
Whatever remained of her maidenhead was torn away by his invasion, and she revelled in the pain.
This new pain. This new closeness. Him. Inside her. So deep she could scarcely breathe.
And when he began to move, it was not gentle. His thrusts were hard and wild, the platform she was on hitting dangerously against the glass walls, the sound mingling with their laboured breathing. With her gasps of pleasure. The surface of the table was rough, biting into the delicate skin of her thighs, and the sensation mingled with the feeling of him in her, and took her breath away. She was lost in this. In him. His every thrust electrifying that centralised source of her pleasure. He reached behind her, grabbed her hair and pulled as he thrust in hard, sending her over the edge, her release an endless wave that went on and on. Then he pulled away from her, stroking himself twice and finding his own release outside of her.
When it was through, he held her there, his breathing fractured. ‘That should not have happened,’ he growled.
She reached up and touched his cheek, a tender, swelling sensation overtaking her chest. ‘But it was always going to happen,’ she whispered. ‘There was never anything else. Briggs, I was always going to need you like that.’
‘It is not safe enough,’ he said.
‘You do not get to decide the level of risk I take with my life,’ she said.
> ‘No,’ he said. ‘You are mine.’
‘I am not an orchid,’ she said. ‘You do not get to keep me in a glass case. I am not that fragile.’
