Pandora

The ride back to Willcrow Manor felt like the longest of Pandora's life. Every screech was like a sharp pain in her ear, every bump like a blow to her chest. When she arrived at the Manor, she was met with absolute silence. She took off her gloves and took in the silence of the halls, dark and foreboding with the drapes drawn shut as if the whole world had died. But it was merely late afternoon.

"Your Grace." Jemima bowed as she took her hat from her.

"Thank you, Jemima. Where is everyone?"

"The dowager's having tea in her chamber."

"By herself?"

"I'm afraid so."

Pandora hesitated a moment. "And his Grace?"

"His chambers, your Grace. Shall I come with to undress you?"

"No, Jemima, thank you," she said, making for the staircase. "It'll be all me tonight." And Emmett, she thought.

It would be all her and Emmett tonight. She hoped that it turned out as she wished. But she feared that it wouldn't.

This was it. This was where she looked in the eyes of this man who had swept into her life like a force of nature and had come to mean so much to her. This was where she told him that she loved him, that it wasn't her behind that gossip column. Pandora hoped that he already knew that, that it would be needless for her to say.

She should have come home to Emmett first.

She should have left her own party much sooner before he arrived. He shouldn't have met her there. All those shouldn'ts. So many wishes, so many different paths she could have trod.

But now was not the time to entertain regretful thoughts. She reached Emmett's chambers and drew in a sharp breath. She knocked twice and over again. Pandora was met with nothing but a cold, unforgiving silence.

But he was in there, he had to be. Jemima has assured her so. With a final breath and a small, heartfelt prayer she whispered to herself, Pandora twisted the handle of the door and went in, her heart beating in her mouth.

Emmett was lying on his bed, a philosophyist book clasped in his hands. He had taken off his coat and undone his buttons. A fine mat of dark curls peeked out from the triangle of skin that his chest flaunted.

"Are your chambers in ruin?" His tone was purposefully measured, his voice devoid of whatever flurry of hurt and accusation and anger was swirling through his head. Pandora had never seen his eyes so aloof, so cold. She feared that she had ruined something that had hardly started. And she yearned for the Emmett that she had come to know and grown to love, the one whose presence lit up a room and her heart from the inside out, the one who had wormed his way underneath her skin.

"What?" she answered him. "No, I wanted to -- "

"Then you should leave. I think it's best if we slept apart tonight and moving forward."

Pandora scoffed her disbelief. "Surely you cannot mean that."

"Do not speak as if you know my heart, Pandora."

"I do," Pandora said. Her forceful tone surprised even her, but she was charged with determination and she would not back down now.

She drew toward the edge of the bed until she was inches from him. She could smell the clean yet dangerous scent of him, the one that she had grown familiar with and come to love, the one that she yearned for in his absence, and relished in his presence.

"Emmett. Whatever it is that you read, it's not true. And it's not me. You know that, don't you?"

"I don't know what to believe."

"Emmett." She had forced the thought from her head, she had wished against it. Yet, faced with the reality that Emmett did believe she was capable of it, Pandora felt small and helpless. Her lips trembled, and she clamped them tight and steadied herself before she spoke next. "How could you possibly believe that I would do such a thing?"

"You've made a fool of me."

"No." She shook her head rigorously. "No."

"For how long have you scorned me behind your back? How long have you been hosting your parties to my ignorance?"

"I am sorry that I kept that from you, Emmett. I see now that I shouldn't have. But I gave up that gossip column the very day that I married you, I swear it."

"Just not your precious matchmaking."

"Emmett, I don't think that I could ever give that up."

He held her direct gaze, he did not blink as he answered, "And I never expected you to."

Pandora arched a bemused eyebrow, ready to call him out on his falsehood. But Emmett made a dismissive sound in his throat. "Initially I did. But I was coming around. I had come around. I wanted to surprise you."

She clasped her hands, waiting patiently for her husband to complete his statement, then realized that he had. "Emmett?” she urged. “Surprise me with what?"

"It doesn't matter now."

"Emmett." Tentatively, she reached into the sheets and took his hands in hers. They were strong and smooth and finely cut, and so familiar.

Memories of those hands slipping into her thighs and stroking her in the most intimate of places flashed behind her eyes, and Pandora dropped his hands at once, as if burned by his touch.

Emmett raised a bewildered eyebrow at her. "What is it?" he asked.

Pandora cleared her throat and waited a long moment before she spoke. She feared her voice would sound out husky, revealing the state of her aroused mind. "Nothing," she said, and quickly returned to the topic at hand. "Please, tell me," she said. "What did you want to surprise me with?"

"Someries Manor," he divulged.

"Where is that?"

"One of my properties. I was renovating it."

"Oh." Pandora tried to put two and two in her head. But she hated to be presumptuous.

"For you, Pandora." Emmett rolled his eyes. That had to be a good sign. His spirits were lifting. Or he was in a lighter mood, at least. But Pandora didn't heave that breath of relief, for it wasn't over yet. "I wanted to give it to you," her husband continued, "for your matchmaking parties, for whatever in the heavens you pleased to do with it."

Warm color flooded Pandora's cheeks. She felt shy and embarrassed beyond words. While she had been running behind his back, getting Edward to host her parties under his guise, and even suspecting Emmett of frolicking with women – or at the very least keeping a secret from her too – he had been doing something utterly different. He had been renovating a Manorhouse to gift to her.

Emmett was staring at her intently, and she wanted to bury her face in her hands. She couldn't hold his gaze. "That explains all that business you were lying about."

"It doesn't matter now." Not unkindly, he took his hand from hers and sat up on the edge of the bed. "It was forward of me to expect much from you. Including your trust. I'm not deluded about this union of ours, Pandora. We are a marriage of duty and of convenience. It's what we set out to be in the beginning. It's all we'll ever be."

"No," she said. Without taking the time to think much of it, she took his face in her hands. "I don't believe that, and I know you don't mean that." She took his hand and placed it gently on the rise on her bosom. "Duty and convenience do not do justice to the way that I feel."

"Pandora," he said. A single word. But his voice had lost all of its hurt and resigned edge.

"Duty and convenience is not the reason I wake in the morning and reach for your side of the bed, or keep your every letter like little treasures until the next." Her voice had died down to a whisper as she said, "It doesn't explain the way that my heart sings when we're next to each other or the way that my body cries from your bare touch."

His breath had turned ragged in her ears. He shook his head, but he didn't take her hands away from his face. He didn't retreat from her touch.

"Tell me that it's not real," she said. "Tell me you don't feel all of that and more. Tell me you don't love me. Because I do. I love you, Emmett Groves, you stubborn hard mule of a man. I love the way that your face catches the light when you're happy, the way that your eyes laugh before the rest of your face does."

His arms had looped around her waist, pulling her close to him until she could almost taste the brilliant, mouth-watering scent of him. His hand ran through her hair, sending the lush curls tumbling down her back. A thrill traveled down Pandora's spine, and she shivered in his arms. She struggled to gather her thoughts still. She wasn't done, oh no. This man had taken his time and care renovating a Manorhouse just for her while she had been running around behind his back hosting forbidden matchmaking parties. She hadn't even begun to make it up to him. "And the way– -- " he was tugging gently at the knot behind her back, and words failed her. She pulled her thoughts together still. "The way the corner of your lips quirk up when you tease me." Her knot came unloose in a final decisive tug, sending her dress into a sprawling heap around her feet.

"And the way that my body… -- " she shivered when his warm, wicked mouth found her neck, -- "my body comes alive when you're near."

"Like this?" he asked innocently, his strong yet gentle hand sliding up the apex of her thighs, and Pandora gasped. Liquid warmth swirled in her belly, in that sweet center of heat between her legs. "Yes," she breathed dreamily, all the words flying out of her head like treacherous little birds. "Yes, please."

His hand stroked her tenderly, one finger parting the damp folds of her cleft until he was there, right inside of her slippery, throbbing seam.

"Emmett," she sighed, and his mouth claimed hers at the same moment that his finger slipped inside her. His wicked tongue explored in her mouth, and Pandora cried his name. His fingers spread her folds down there, sinking into ready wetness until her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her legs shook as if she were possessed. She dug her nails into the hard planes of his shoulders, writhing in his embrace, lost in the heady thrill of pleasure.

She did not know when her feet had left the ground or when it was Emmett's whose knees were planting on the ground. But it had happened while she was lost to the throes of breathless, maddening pleasure. And now he was lifting her legs, spreading her wide, while his mouth climbed up her skin, from the curve of her knees to the warm flesh of her thighs. His tongue tantalized and teased, working her open.

He drove her wild.

Pandora's back arched of its own volition, jolting out of the bed. It was too much for her. She felt as if a volcano had roared alive in her belly, between her legs. Emmett's strong hand steadied her in place. She gasped and writhed, pulling hard at his hair. She grasped for the headboard and the pillows, anything that would save her from this mercilessness that her husband perpetrated against her, from the way that he was driving her mad, wild, and senseless. From the delirious sensation of his mouth trailing up her legs.

A fire burned her from the inside out. Her breasts swelled, her nipples puckered in desperate, writhing need. Still, she arched into him, begging for anything, begging for everything.

Emmett whispered the most precious words as he kissed up her legs. His lips on her calf as he told her she was the most that she was the most beautiful woman the world would ever know. The slow, sensual lick of his tongue along the expanse of her smooth, creamy legs as he told her there was no one he would rather be with. The small kiss on her knee, planted like a delicate flower, perfectly and precisely, as he told her he couldn't wait to taste her. Pandora's body was here, but her writhing, desperate mind sick with pleasure was buried up in the skies. Yet she could vaguely make out his words, and she listened to them, and she believed them.

But all of her senses came crashing down when his mouth, after trailing along her upper thighs, arrived at the wet center that was aching, throbbing with need. But surely he didn't mean to… . . .he couldn't possibly be–. . .

"Emmett!" she yelped in shock, her eyes flared and widened as she jolted out of his embrace. "Emmett. What are you doing?"

He gathered her toward him, hooking his hands behind her knees. "I implore that you wait to see," he said.

He started to lower his head into her legs yet again, but Pandora stopped him, her cheeks flooded with heat. She sputtered her words. "You can't… -- surely you don't mean to– -- "

"I do," he said, his voice drawing with amusement. The audacity! She was confused, speechless, and flush with embarrassment, and he was enjoying it. "I mean to, Pandora. And I want to. And I'm going to."

"Emmett, wait. Please." She put a stopping hand on his arm, which pried her legs open still. "I've… . . .I've never done that before."

"Oh, I know." A glint in his eyes as he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. She looked away, wondering if he could tell that her center had further pooled with heat as she watched the mere gesture.