Page 23 of Beyond Dreams
And yet, despite her shock at his plain speaking—there was nothing subtle about this man, she’d learned already—she could not for the life of her ignore the thrill and tingle that raced down her spine at the very idea—even asconsummate the unionmight just have been about the most unsexy, unromantic thing anyone had ever said to her to try to get her naked.
But seriously, have sex? Now?
Holly balked and stuttered. “But...but we just met.”
“And married,” he reminded her tersely.
“Well, yes,” she acknowledged, her voice a croak, “but I still don’tknowyou. I can’t just fall into bed with you.”
“I dinna fathom your tone,” he remarked through his gnashed teeth, “which suggests the entire idea of a bedding following a wedding is unheard of. Plenty of lords and ladies I ken who marry without ever setting eyes on their betrothed until the day of the nuptials.”
“Sorry to tell you, but I’m not really interested in lords and ladies.”
“Lairds and lasses, then—” he began with no attempt to hide his impatience.
“No, I mean I’m not everyone else,” Holly persisted, bringing the cloth back up to her chest, covering the far-too-generous exhibition of her breasts. “I won’t be lumped into some unknown group, expected to behave a certain way merely because others did. I just met you and I am not having sex with you. I’m not comfortable with that.”
Her gorgeous husband, their marriage only hours old, said next, “I dinna need your permission to couple with you.”
Shock turned to outrage, and this came swiftly and brutally. Holly flapped the cloth at him to accentuate her upset and her point. “I’m going to recommend as vigorously as I can, that you don’t want to force yourself on your wife. I am terrified and I’m not half as big as you are, but I promise I can and I will make your life a living hell.” Lies, lies, all lies—but it was all she had, worthless threats.
“You threaten me?” He challenged, his lip curled ferociously.
“As you do me, sir,” she bit out.
Their gazes locked in a battle of wills. Holly’s heart pounded in triple-time inside her chest, hoping to God he wasn’t some medieval brute who would indeed resort to rape simply to consummate their marriage.
“I just ask for a little time,” she said desperately after a moment, when nothing in his dark and menacing gaze hinted at any coming submission. “This is extremely awkward. Can’t we get to know each other first?”
He seemed to consider this, or rather he didn’t pounce on her right away, refusing her plea. Holly froze while Duncan searched her face, looking for what she did not know. His gaze fell and remained on her lips.
“If not by force,” he said, “then mayhap by seduction.” He took a step toward her.
“Oh crap—no, don’t do that.” She backed away, putting the wide bed between them, having a fairly good idea that he would be able to seduce her into compliance in an embarrassingly short amount of time, with barely a touch of his strong hand or beautiful mouth. She wasn’t weak-willed in that regard, but then she wasn’t unaffected by this man who was her husband. Certainly, her dreams of him over the years did make it feel as if they were not necessarily strangers. More potently, she was very well aware that on more than one occasion, she had wished inside those dreams that he would look at her with something other than his always-present fury, that he might have been attracted to her, might have wanted to kiss her. But not now, not when he was so...real.
Not now, when she was not at all who she pretended to be, who he believed her to be.
He did not pursue her around the bed, but appeared to settle, as if he accepted her resolve to not have sex.
Instead, he insulted her again. “You have confirmed my earlier suspicion, that you are weak.”
Holly drew in a deep breath, her relief fleeting, replaced by resignation and not the indignation that should have come. “Whatever,” she said on a sigh, becoming less and less enamored with the man of her dreams. She liked it better when she couldn’t converse with him, had only his silent rage to deal with in her dreams. “Fine, I’m weak. That’s been decided. But I don’t want to be seduced into compliance before I’m ready. And I don’t want to be violated either.” She squawked at his reaction. “Well, don’t look at me like that. You did just threaten me with force, so don’t pretend to be offended when I throw that back in your face.” Attempting to take a little bit of the focus off herself and her refusal to sleep with him, she showed him what she hoped was a withering glare. “Geez, what is your hurry anyway?” She almost said she wasn’t going anywhere, but she dearly prayed that she might be.
“War will call soon. I want to plant my seed before I go.”
And here she’d thought her shock could not expand. How silly she’d been.
“Are you fu—are you kidding me?”
He stared at her, clearly not understanding why she might have taken offense, looking as fierce as he had, un-shriveled, as it were, by her glowering and sputtering.
“How do you expect to get to know me if you dinna lay with me?”
“Oh...Oh! You’re serious,” she decided with more frustration than anger. It must be the time period—either that or he was very good at playing an obtuse neanderthal. Holly snapped her fists onto her hips and glared at him across the bed. “I tell you what. How about you spend some time with me? Get to know me, let me get to know you and then maybe—” She paused when he clearly looked uninterested, looked about three seconds away from scoffing at this, or brushing it off without consideration. His eyes flashed darkly at her, and his mouth remained clamped, his nostrils flaring.
Calling upon mountains and mountains of fortitude, Holly appealed calmly to him, extending her hands pleadingly. “Duncan, please be reasonable. Consider it from my point of view.” She tried very hard to use a level voice and not screech at him for how obtuse he actually was being. She also decided enhancing the truth would work to her benefit. “Not only have I only just met you, but I’d only been at Hewgill House for a few days. I didn’t even know I was going to have to marry someone. And then the wedding...well, you have to agree that was a bit unorth—"
“I’ll nae beg my own wife to consummate our marriage,” he grumbled.