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  Her gasp of pleasure incited him further.

  She grabbed his shoulders and clutched him as if she'd fall without support while he probed the delicate flesh of her sex, the soft silky folds, and the tiny nub of pleasure. She was hot and slick and wet, and so ready for him that he bit his lip to hold his lust in check.

  "Oh," she cried, "I can't – stand any – oh my God – oh, don't – stop – "

  He smiled with primitive pleasure, the mating urge so intense he felt he could die tonight and be deliriously sated. Unwilling to wait longer, he scooped her up in his arms and laid her naked body on the bed, staring at the glow of her flushed skin, her body moist and aroused with need for him.

  He quickly disrobed and stood a moment before her, letting her take in his full nakedness. Her eyes widened in amazement or surprise. He couldn't decipher the precise mood. He paused but a second to understand the emotion on her face before his urges took over and his primordial lust overwhelmed all rational thought.

  His heavy cock thrust forward, eager to plunge into her ready and willing body.

  He mounted her, kissed her deep and long, and probed the tender flesh between her legs. He felt her slick readiness and the ease with which the tip of him glided toward her entrance.

  Propping himself on his elbows, he framed her flushed face with his hands and gazed into her eyes, dark with passion. She moistened her lips and drew his attention to her mouth.

  He kissed her again and whispered in her ear, "Sweet Emma, are you ready for me?"

  Her eyes widened in bewilderment. "Yes – b – but you are so very large."

  He frowned and stared at her. "Not so very big," he protested.

  But by now his cock had a mind of its own and dipped and pushed into her tender flesh slowly, agonizingly so, until he could no longer bear the delay and thrust forward with a single powerful pump until he was deep inside her.

  He knew at once that something was wrong.

  The stubborn barrier had held him back for only a second, but he knew immediately that a sturdy blockage had tried to prevent his entry.

  Tried, but failed.

  Good God, she was a virgin!

  Even as he realized the damage was done, his mindless carnality took over at the same moment that she screamed and he spilled himself into her untried body.

  #

  The tonnage of a hundred-hundred pounds of unmoving flesh pinned Emma's body to the mattress. She felt a sticky wetness – surely her blood – running down her thighs as freely as the tears that flooded her cheeks.

  Why hadn't she thought of the blood? She felt like the lamb sacrificed on an altar.

  Why hadn't she realized he'd know? What had begun as a lovely, thrilling adventure had ended in such pain that her body felt ripped, raw and bleeding.

  Why hadn't she considered the consequences? His weight on her body was unbearable.

  She gasped for breath, emitted a tiny whimper, and shoved half-heartedly at the pressure his weight created on her lungs. At length Malachi shifted his body and rolled off her, lying on his back, one arm flung over his eyes.

  The silence in the room was as deadly as a tomb.

  After an eternity of clamorous quiet and silent recriminations, Emma rolled on her side and curled into a tiny ball, yanking the sheet up around her naked, stained thighs. Another eternity passed during which she lay quietly spent, drowsy even as the stinging pain between her legs subsided to a dull ache.

  Malachi hadn't spoken a word since they'd completed the act. Evidently her performance was sadly lacking, not that she cared a whit for his opinion. He'd also been a great disappointment to her. A fresh flood of tears threatened to overcome her.

  Finally, he sighed heavily, what sounded like a heaving of frustration and anger, and swung his legs over the opposite side of the bed. She glanced over her shoulder at his bare back and buttocks. He hunched, his head held in his hands as if the burden of Atlas lay across his shoulders.

  Well, he had not been pummeled and prodded, riven in half like a defenseless animal. He did not lie raw and bruised, sore and bleeding in his own bed. She sucked in her breath on a shaky sob and felt, rather than saw, the turn of his head toward her.

  Walking to her side of the bed, he crouched down, still naked and sheened with a layer of sweat, and peered into her face. A veneer of dazed shock covered his face. She realized how thoroughly she'd deceived him and felt momentarily ashamed.

  His brows drew together and his voice held barely suppressed anger. "You should have told me, Emma. You should have told me."

  He stood and entered her bathroom from which a moment later she heard the running and splashing of water in the basin. When the noises subsided and she heard him emerge, she closed her eyes.

  Perhaps he would just leave, go away and allow her to mourn in private, wash her body of the awful evidence of her conduct. For, if she were honest, she would admit that all of this ... this debacle was her own fault.

  She had committed a grievous error. She'd yearned to know sexual pleasure between a man and woman, but in spite of the wild stories of her foolish classmates, she'd never really believed something which began with such sweet pleasure could end in pain and humiliation.

  Soon she heard him roaming around the room, and when she opened one eye, she saw him pulling his trousers up over naked hips. Her heart beat faster and her skin grew warmer at the sight of his muscled thighs and buttocks. Another aching spasm ran through her private parts.

  Oh, no, she would not travel down that road again, she warned herself. She'd learned a severe lesson from this painful experience.

  Suddenly the mattress sank beneath a firm weight and her eyes flew open. Malachi held a cloth in his hand and while his face no longer looked thunderous, his blue eyes were devoid of emotion. "Let us clean you up," he said, reaching for the edge of the sheet.

  "No!" She clutched the cover to her waist and covered her breasts with her arm.

  "Don't be ridiculous, Emma. You'll feel better once you've washed." Now impatience tinged his practicality.

  "I can do it myself."

  "I know." He passed a hand wearily over his eyes. "But this is my fault. Let me help."

  Because she hadn't expected his admission of guilt, she allowed him to wash the tears and sweat from her face and breasts. He used slow, careful motions over her forehead and down her cheeks. His movements were so gentle she wanted to weep.

  He rinsed the cloth in a pan of warm water he'd fetched from the bathroom and ran the cloth down her arms and over her breasts in an intimacy that should've made her squirm, but did not. Then he pulled the sheet down to her ankles and wiped the evidence of their deed from her thighs and belly.

  She watched his large, brown hands as they swiped away the blood along with the sticky evidence that he'd spilled his seed into her. When he finished, he patted her dry with a large, fluffy towel, scooped her up in his arms, and positioned her in the arm chair by the fire.

  His motions were spare and accomplished as he covered her nakedness with her discarded robe. Such practice surely indicated his familiarity with deflowering virgins, did it not?

  While he ministered to her body so carefully, he never looked at her. Perhaps, as she suspected, her performance was so inept he couldn't bear to look at her.

  With the proficiency of a maid, he stripped the bed of its coverings, rolled them in a ball, and tossed them in a corner. He then rummaged for clean linen in the armoire while she watched him with wary eyes. Discovering the bed sheets on the bottom shelf, he began to remake the bed with military precision.

  Obviously, he'd done this before, damn his perfidious hide!

  He reached for the lavender gown lying on the floor, seemed to think better of it, and discarded it with the soiled linen. He found a less elegant, but warm cotton shift inside the dresser. Standing her up, he tugged it down over her head and hips. She felt the first tinges of exhaustion melt her bones and droop her eyes.

  "There, much better, isn't it?"
he asked as he led her back to the bed, tucked her in, and pulled the covers up to her neck. "You'll feel better in the morning," he said in a matter-of-fact tone before leaving and shutting the door quietly behind him.

  As if she could ever feel better again.

  She closed her eyes and slept.

  #

  Malachi shuffled around Sarah Ralston's kitchen – an invasion he was sure she would not appreciate – until he found the items he was looking for. Hot cocoa rather than tea or coffee.

  When he'd finished preparing the drink, he placed the utensils on a tray along with one of the cook's cinnamon scones Emma had remarked on earlier. He added a small pot of clotted cream and carried the tray upstairs.

  Emma's breathing was rhythmic and even, so Malachi placed the tray on the dresser and scooted a chair closer to the bed. He must remember that deflowering a virgin wreaked havoc on both the man and the woman, he thought wryly.

  She lay on her right side, facing him. Asleep like this, she looked frail and vulnerable – a misconception if he'd ever seen one. Emma Knight was anything but frail in spite of what had happened.

  For the tenth time he asked himself what he – a sensible, logical, rational man – was doing with a woman like her – unpredictable, opinionated, and stubborn as hell. He ought to have known she was lying to him.

  Not in words, of course – she'd dissembled on that quarter – but she'd fabricated the image of a femme fatal, a worldly woman experienced in all kinds of sensual pleasure. Now he realized that every act of wantonness she'd shown him was a sham, the worst kind of prevarication.

  But his conscience pricked him hard. As a man acquainted with both harlots and innocents, experienced widows and foolish virgins, he should have known she was lying. He should have recognized her bravado as a façade.

  Goddamn her!

  She'd put them both in a most prickly position. How in God's name would they extricate themselves from this situation? And yet he could not be totally sorry for the experience. Every moment until the final entry into her sweet body had been heady and heavenly, the likes of which he could not remember with another woman.

  Christ, her response to him! His hunger for her! It seemed he could not have enough of her.

  As he drowsed in the chair by her bed and watched Emma sleep, he thought only minutes had passed, but when she finally roused, he saw by his pocket watch that she'd slept nearly an hour.

  She frowned at him and blinked her eyes as if trying to remember.

  "So, you're awake then?" He brought the tray to her and helped her sit up in bed, stuffing plumped pillows behind her back. "The chocolate is cold now, I'm afraid."

  He sat back down and watched her pick at a scone for a moment. Then she pushed the tray aside and dangled her legs over the bed's edge, attempting to stand.

  As she wobbled on unsteady feet, he caught her. "Easy there." He guided her to a sitting position.

  They sat quietly while she garnered strength and he thought of how to approach the discussion they must have, to find a solution to their indelicate dilemma.

  But the wily maid beat him to the punch. "I suppose now you will be convinced you must marry me," she said without preamble, arching a brow at him.

  Damned chit! He'd already made it clear he was eager for her, but he wouldn't marry her – she knew that. Of course, at the time he hadn't realized she was a blasted virgin. He'd never seduced an innocent – not a true innocent, he amended, thinking of Constance's false claims of maidenhood.

  He raked his fingers through his hair and bit down hard to keep from tossing a quelling retort her way. "We had discussed the impossibility of marriage," he reminded her woodenly.

  "Oh, yes." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "You indicated that you had no inclination for matrimony, but you'd gladly participate in its conjugal amenities."

  "Conjugal amen – good God, girl, what would you have me do?" He spat out the words because he could not – would not throw her over his knee and beat her heartily on her perfect ass – although that was precisely what he wished to do.

  "I made that statement believing you to be a woman experienced in the ways of men," he ground out. "Obviously, I was mistaken."

  "Patently."

  "You deceived me," he accused, as furious with himself as with her. "You led me to believe – "

  "You chose to believe what you wanted," she corrected him, her fists tight balls of anger kneading her thighs.

  He stood and started pacing, his agitation over her stubbornness mounting with every step. "You didn't want me to know you were a virgin, Emma. Be honest with yourself, if not with me."

  She tilted her chin defiantly. "And what if I didn't?"

  "Are you insane? I'd never have — "

  "F – fucked me? You've never have fu — "

  "Don't." He knew she used this coarse language to shock and anger him and realized what it cost her, but it was a pathetic attempt at bravado. "That's not worthy of you, Emma."

  He sat beside her on the bed and took one of her balled fists in his hands, straightening the fingers out of their tight knots. "You can see that we might have to marry now. If there are consequences of our actions, there's no other option."

  If she'd lied about her innocence, she'd surely lied about contraception.

  A mantle of resignation settled on his shoulders. Although he hadn't intended marriage, he would not abandon her. But she surprised him yet again.

  "I won't marry you." She pulled her fingers from his grasp and sidled away from him. "I told you I do not wish to be tied to a man's whim and under his thumb."

  "If this affair should become public, you will be ruined," he warned. "And what if there should be a child? You made me believe you were practiced, that you took precautions."

  Her eyes widened and he realized she hadn't even thought that far ahead. Jesus Christ!

  He tightened his jaw. "You never thought of that?"

  "Neither did you!"

  Raking his hand across his scruffy beard, he jumped to his feet and stared out the bedroom window to the tree line below. "I would have withdrawn had I known," he ground out.

  "No one need know," she muttered. He turned to see her lips set in a thin, determined line. "I will tell no one."

  "Nor I." He gazed at her mutinous face. "But what if there are consequences? You must see that a child changes everything."

  She agreed, but with a grudging nod, and sat quietly on the bed examining her nails while he pondered their messy quandary.

  "What of the trial?" she asked after a few moments. "What of Alma Bentley's case?"

  He cleared the tray items away, and gently pushed Emma back in bed. After returning the chair to its proper place, he turned to her.

  "We must proceed with the case as if nothing happened between us. We cannot let an innocent woman suffer because of our foolishness." The words sounded priggish and self-serving even to himself.

  "Goodnight, Emma." He closed the door softly, gathered his clothes from downstairs, and let himself out the front door, clicking the lock in place behind him.

  All the way home, he thought, God, what a beast he was to spill her blood.

  Chapter 15

  "The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept." – Measure for Measure

  The next morning before Sarah could discover the soiled clothing, Emma wrapped the stained bed linen and her lavender gown and robe in a burlap bag she found in the outbuilding. She placed the bag in the mud room and explained to Ralston that he should burn it.

  Sarah's husband gave her a strange look. "Burn it, Miss Emma? Are you sure?" He scratched his wiry head.

  "Positive, Ralston, burn the damn things!"

  He scurried off without so much as a breath of reproach for her language.

  In truth, she did not know how she could face Malachi this morning at court. He had every right to be furious with her deception, but she wasn't going to apologize for her virginity.

  Having given the idea much thought, sh
e decided her thinking was accurate – her right to sexual pleasure was as important as any man's – even if her methods were suspect and she'd underestimated the power of the experience.

  Surely the act was not so painful for all women? If so, there would hardly be a burgeoning growth in the nation's population. She had understood from the whispered, secret conversations of her schoolmates at Wellesley that many of them enjoyed the sexual act. At least they behaved with a giddy silliness she found interesting.

  And the ones who'd spoken of pain, she'd dismissed as faint of heart. Perhaps the act required some getting accustomed to. She had expected blood, of course, but not such a profusion of it. Little did she know!

  In spite of the debacle of last evening, Emma felt strangely restless. Against Ralston's objections she drove the carriage herself into town several hours before the court session was scheduled to begin. There was no sense in putting off the awkward encounter with Malachi. She felt much better today and wasn't going to let him assume the experience had defeated her.

  It certainly had not.

  Malachi would likely be in his law office preparing for court, and she would ask him what he wanted her to do. Although he'd previously asked her to speak with Alma again, Emma wasn't sure what he wanted from her now. He'd said they would continue with the trial, but did he really welcome her help?

  She meant to find out right away.

  #

  When Emma entered The Gazette office, even Thomas had not yet arrived. The large, gloomy machines lay silent. The overcast morning gave the large room a forlorn and abandoned look in the dreary atmosphere.

  Moving towards her office in the rear, she remembered Malachi's suggestion of getting local help for the cleaning. Dust had settled over the back room like a light snowfall. Past issues of newspapers littered the shelves and floor, creating a general air of disuse. The place clearly needed a proper cleaning.

  She removed her jacket, hat, and gloves and sat down in the swivel chair behind her desk, reaching for a pad and pencil. Making a list of tasks to be accomplished always calmed her and focused her thoughts.