Susan Johnson - Sexy As Hell

“I needn’t ask how she was,” Oz murmured, pushing away from the wall beside the door as Isolde entered, white-faced. “I saw Anne go out, but I thought Pamela was with you.”

“I wish she had been.” Isolde shivered faintly. “The woman’s crazed.”

“Poor darling,” he gently said, taking her hand and drawing her away from the door. “But consider, dear, you’re outrageous competition for a plain sparrow like Anne.”

“I’ve never given her any indication that I covet her husband. In fact, I told her in no uncertain terms I had no interest in Will.”

“And she didn’t believe you.”

Isolde grimaced. “She said I was looking at her husband during dinner-I wasn’t.”

“He was looking at you.”

“He was? Oh God.”

“He was looking at you with prurience, lust, and adultery on his mind,” Oz delicately said.

Isolde groaned. “Don’t start, Oz. I’m sorry I ever met the man.”

A smile transformed the trifling unease in his eyes. “In that case, would you care to dance?”

And so the drama continued in the small exclusive world of dinner parties and country entertainments.

Will was restive under his wife’s constant guard.

Oz was mildly watchful and surprised that he was.

Isolde, with nothing to hide, openly enjoyed her husband’s company and wasn’t amazed to discover that Oz also danced better than anyone she’d ever met. But then he did everything better than anyone she’d ever met.

Which meant she must remember her life was her own and not lose her grip on it. Oz exerting the full power of his charm made one forget.

A LOVELY, IDYLLIC week later, one in which the newlyweds had refused to leave Oak Knoll, they finally foreswore their hermitage because a singer Isolde particularly liked was performing at Constance Banning’s afternoon musicale.

“Do you mind?” she’d asked the previous day as she and Oz lay hot and sweaty in the shambles of the bed.

He’d turned his head as he lay panting beside her, a faint smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “After-that last orgasm-how can… I refuse you… anything.”

“How lovely, how sweet-”

“How likely… I am to fuck you again… as soon as I catch… my breath,” he’d rasped. “Yes to the musicale-now come here… I have something to show you.”

WHY IS HE here? Isolde thought as she and Oz entered the Bannings’ sunny music room. Will disliked sopranos, music in general, and Constance Banning.

Well, well, if it isn’t the ex-lover in hot pursuit. Oz knew very well why Will Fowler was here.

But after greeting their hostess, Isolde took a seat well away from Will and joined the gathering of well-dressed gentry who were fond of music. The audience was primarily female-no surprise. Oz had come out of consideration for his wife, as had a handful of other husbands. Will was alone and here out of consideration for himself.

A boy prodigy Constance had brought up from London performed first, his virtuoso skills on the violin breathtaking for someone so young. Isolde was entranced, leaning forward slightly as though drawn to the beautiful sound.

His head resting against the back of his chair, Oz watched her, aware of the violent passion she evoked in him, equally aware that his normal impersonal dealings with women had altered. As the boy’s dazzling technique brought Tchaikovsky’s fantasia to life with nimble-fingered energy and brio, the audience listened in breath-held silence, and Oz wondered, mildly disturbed, if he was less indifferent than he wished.

But the music came to a precipitous end, the crowd erupted in applause, and Oz’s musing gave way as everyone came to their feet in homage to the boy.

In the interval between performances, Constance Banning’s footmen carried around trays of champagne and sweets, the audience fell to gossiping, and Oz was drawn off by the few husbands in attendance where talk turned naturally to horses. Newmarket was the Nirvana of bloodstock fanatics, and Oz’s racers had won all the early meets in the neighborhood. The men were anxious to hear how best to obtain entree to the mountain tribes that bred Oz’s racers.

Oz noticed Isolde leave the room with Constance, and shortly after their hostess returned alone. Scanning the room, he saw that Will was absent as well, and experiencing an unbridled rush of anger, he excused himself from the group of men with a smile and a bland excuse and went in search of his wife.

Unfortunately he found her.

At the soft footfall on the threshold of a nearby drawing room, Isolde snatched her hands from Will’s and turned to meet the hard, ruthless gaze of her husband.

He was standing in the open doorway, challenge in his stance, in the merciless set of his mouth, menace in his gaze. “Am I intruding?” His voice was meticulously soft.

“No, not at all.” She was doing nothing wrong; there was no need to blush. “Will just called me in to tell me he’s going to be a father. Isn’t that wonderful news?”

Oz turned his unpleasant regard on Will, then his lids lowered slightly, there was a fractional pause, and he said in a controlled voice, “Congratulations.” He sketched Will a self-contained bow. “If you’ll excuse us. Come, Isolde. The Florentine soprano’s about to begin.”

Will was as tall as Oz, and heavier, a solid, handsome man with grey eyes that contemplated Isolde with more than a casual claim. “I’m not sure Izzy wishes to leave. You needn’t, Izzy.”

As Oz took a threatening step into the room, Isolde hurriedly said, “I’m perfectly fine, Will. I’m looking forward to Miss Rossetti’s performance. Do give Anne my best.” Quickly moving toward the door, she brushed past Oz and hastened away down the wainscoted hall adorned with portraits of Banning thoroughbreds.

Walking very fast, Oz’s swift tread behind her, she’d almost reached the music room when she was jerked to a halt and spun around. Grabbing her shoulders, his effort at self-control obvious in the slight tremor in his arms, Oz growled, “What the hell was going on?”

“Nothing. I told you,” she said, bracing herself against his implacable gaze. “I was on my way back from the powder room when I met Will. He told me that Anne’s having a baby. That’s all.” She tried to pull away. “You’re hurting me.”

His grip only tightened, his long slender fingers like vises. “He couldn’t tell you that in the music room?”

“We met by accident.”

“The hell you did,” said Oz shortly.

“Oh, very well. He may have been waiting for me.”

A muscle clenched high over his cheekbone, and when he spoke his voice was like steel. “In the future, I suggest you keep your hands to yourself if you don’t want to make Fowler’s wife a widow. Do you understand?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She met his cold gaze with a determined lift of her chin. “I don’t respond to male tyranny; you have no jurisdiction over me.”

“On the contrary, my dear wife,” he said with sudden impatience, “I have considerable jurisdiction over you. The law is not yet in your favor, and while the double standard is deplorable, in my current frame of mind it is not entirely objectionable.”

He sounded like any rich man, assured and confident of his place and power in the world, female autonomy no part of his life. She had a choice of further provoking him with bravura challenge or calming the waters and thereby avoiding a possible embarrassment should someone come out of the music room. “For heaven’s sake, Oz,” she said, her voice deliberately unruffled, “if you recall, our marriage is temporary. There’s no need for this autocratic display of temper. You’re making too much of an innocent encounter. Will and I’ve been friends forever and-”

“Slightly more than friends as well,” said her husband, his lip curled in a sneer.

“If only you weren’t an infamous libertine,” she shot back, “you might have cause to take issue with me.” A lifetime of indulgence was unlikely to long sustain a spirit of submission.

“Men can do what women can’t.”

“Allow me to disagree!”

“Just stay away from him or I’ll put a shot through him,” Oz said, his voice ruthless and uncompromising. “I won’t wear cuckold horns.”

“Unlike all the husbands you’ve crowned with horns?” Flaring irritability in every word.

“They chose to accept it. I don’t,” he answered with enormous self-control. “Nor do I fancy being made to compete for my wife’s favors.”

“No more than I fancy being ordered about by you,” she said tartly. For a moment she thought he was going to strike her, and whether prompted by panic or the oppressive atmosphere, she suddenly felt a wave of nausea roll up her throat. Hastily slapping a hand to her mouth, she said faint and unsteady through her fingers, “Oh dear.”

Oz dropped his hands as if burned. Say it isn’t so, he thought, even as he understood that it was not only possible but also highly probable considering their single-minded obsession with sex. Softly swearing under his breath, he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, shoved it into Isolde’s hand, leaned over, picked her up, and praying she wouldn’t vomit all over them, carried her down the hall, down the stairs, and out the door.

The fresh air helped Isolde’s roiling stomach, and by the time they reached her carriage she was feeling marginally better. Oz lifted her in, jerked his head toward Dimitri, ordered, “Drive slowly,” and climbing in, dropped into the opposite seat. Leaning back, he stretched out his legs. “Feeling better?” he asked as the carriage rolled down the drive, his voice notable for its restraint.

“Slightly, yes,” she whispered, ashen to the roots of her pale hair. “Tell me it’s not what I’m thinking.”

“Perhaps something you ate is the cause,” he said, not above negotiating with the gods of anarchy and disorder.