Bad Brides (46 page)

But it was pain and pleasure so deeply mixed together that you could never separate the two. The therapist would keep pushing on the spot, and release would start to flood through Brianna
Jade’s body, rebalancing her meridians like a hot rush that made her head spin dizzily. Afterwards, the therapist would know what to do to put Brianna Jade back together again, working down a
series of other, rebalancing pressure points. Now, though, she didn’t even feel as if she could have stood up without the rail of the pigpen, which she was gripping tightly for support. Her
legs were so weak she could hardly feel them beneath her; it was as if they’d dissolved the second Abel touched her. His hand was cupping her scalp now, so warm it was like a miniature
electric blanket, deliciously hot, and all she could think of was turning to him, curling up in his arms like a cat, absorbing more and more heat from his big body on this miserably cold day, heat
that seemed to be scorching away all the sadness she was feeling . . .

What exactly was she crying about? She couldn’t remember. She turned to look at him, and he reached out with his other hand and started, with his wide, spatulate finger, to stroke down the
trails the tears had left on her skin. They dried almost on contact with his touch; looking down at her with great tenderness, he placed both thumbs on either side of her perfect straight nose,
just below her eyes, and drew parallel, caressing lines around the curves of her cheeks, blending in the last traces of her tears, making them vanish into the smooth surface of the pale golden skin
that had been made perfect that morning by her daily application of BB cream.

‘Don’t cry, Brianna,’ he said softly. ‘You shouldn’t ever cry.’

That did it. She arched up towards him, her arms coming up, pulling down his head towards her; for a split-second he resisted, but Brianna Jade was absolutely determined, had been from the
moment his hand had cupped her head, and a heartbeat later, her lips met his. He was so tall that even the statuesque Brianna Jade had to stretch up to keep kissing him, go on tiptoes in her
wellington boots, but it was utterly worth it. His arms wrapped around her like two woven cables, lifting her a little more, his hands stroking her back, long steady caresses from her shoulders to
her waist that made her melt against him; it was the most reassuring, entrancing thing a man had ever done to her.

Eagerly she pulled his head down even more, kissing him deeper and deeper; his tongue shyly touched her lips, and she responded to it instantly. It was as big as the rest of him, which was maybe
why he was shy; slowly, carefully, it met hers, sliding further into her mouth, making her gasp around it, almost unable to breathe but feeling so completely filled by it already that she trembled,
pressed herself against him, opened her lips still further.

How long they kissed she had no idea. Wrapped in his arms, Abel’s big body sheltering her from the elements, she didn’t even realize that it had started to rain, slowly, the
occasional large, splattering drop that presaged a long steady shower to come. As the rain began to drip down inside the ribbed neck of his sweater, Abel raised his head and looked down at Brianna
Jade very seriously.

‘You should go back,’ he said. ‘Rain’s coming.’

She shook her head vehemently, grabbing the straps of his dungarees. She couldn’t find the words: all she could do was indicate as clearly as possible that she wasn’t going to let go
of him and make her way back to the Hall on her own. Not now, at least. Abel closed his huge hands for a moment over hers, feeling how strong her grip was on his dungaree braces; his immense
strength could easily have made her loosen her hold, but instead he let out a deep sigh, bent, and swung her off her feet as easily as he had done before, turning to carry her down the cart track,
his stride steady, Brianna Jade’s head nestling blissfully into the rollneck of his scratchy woollen sweater, her lips resting on the strip of white skin exposed above it.

She closed her eyes, feeling raindrops start to patter on her head, determined not to think about what was happening. If she started to think, she would have to stop, and the one thing she
didn’t want to do, more than anything else in the world, was to stop, so that meant that she couldn’t think, which was more than fine with Brianna Jade, because thinking really
didn’t seem to work for her anyway . . .

A barn door creaked open, shouldered by Abel as he carried Brianna Jade inside, out of the rain, and turned to kick it shut again. A few long steps and he had reached a big bale of hay, sitting
down on it with her on his lap; instantly, she started kissing him again, reaching for the buckles on his dungaree straps and sliding them down to unclip them from the brass buttons, pushing the
straps back over his shoulders, grabbing his sweater and pulling it and the T-shirt underneath it up in great folds so that she could feel his bare skin. It was hot as a furnace and lightly hairy;
she tangled her fingers in the hair as she stroked his back, trying to give him the same pleasure that he had given her.

They wrestled together in the hay, not to take each other’s clothes off – even with Abel’s body heat, it was too chilly in the barn for that – but to get their hands
where they wanted to go. From then on not a word was exchanged, just pants and sighs and moans as Abel unzipped Brianna Jade’s padded gilet, pulled up her sweater, closed his hands over her
breasts, the warmth of his palms even through her silk bra hitting her instantly with the same force as when he had touched her hair; she gasped, leaned back into the hay, lying down, pulling him
on top of her, wanting to feel that heat and heaviness all over her, on top of her, inside her. Her hands went to the denim dungarees, pulling them down impatiently: so much fabric, so hard to drag
it down far enough, especially when he was caressing her breasts with the same steady, hypnotic rhythm, his thumbs tracing small circles on her nipples, his fingers larger, wider ones, as if he
instinctively knew how to do Tantric massage.

She had the dungarees down to his hips now, and, lying on and over her, his body almost completely blocking out the light, he raised his bottom to help her push them down; unlike her, Abel
didn’t seem to be in a hurry. She was the desperate one, the one craving to have him inside her, to have his hands sink lower and lower. They were sliding slowly down her ribcage, and she
moaned as his thumbs reached the waistband of her jeans, the circles widening, the heat rising.

Abel wasn’t teasing her, she realized; this was just his way, slow and steady, in no rush to get where he was going. By the time he unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans and eased them down
her hips, her silk knickers coming with them, she was so frantic for him that her head was thrashing from side to side on the hay, a steady stream of whimpers coming from her parted lips; her hands
were gripping his wide, bare, muscular waist, but they slid up to his shoulders as he went lower, hardly able to make any dent in the solid flesh over even more solid muscle, now beginning to be
slippery with sweat.

He put one entire hand over her crotch, and she screamed out loud at the sensation as he began to trace the same circles, his four splayed fingers overwhelmingly hot, his thumb, as it gradually,
slowly, inexorably, began to slide inside her, finding her dripping wet already. She dragged furiously on his shoulders, pulling him down on top of her, finding his mouth with hers, kissing and
kissing him, her hands now in his hair; she couldn’t find words, but she could tell him with her actions that she wanted him inside her, and as his tongue once more filled her mouth, he
groaned deeply, his hips lifting, his thumb circling against her so exactly in the right place that she started to come, her eyes squeezed tight shut, concentrating in utter bliss on the sensations
that were rippling through her. Abel’s slow build of stroking and circling meant that when the orgasms came, they truly were almost Tantric; she lost herself in them, arching and arching
against his hand, taking everything he was giving.

Abel was infinitely patient. It was only when she reached down, trying to pull him onto her, into her, that he slid his hand from her, licked his fingers one by one with great satisfaction, and
then positioned himself to kneel over her, taking his cock and butting it between her legs. She widened them to make room for him, but her eyes flew open again as she felt him moving inside her,
almost a millimetre at a time, making sure that she was fully wet and willing and ready.

It was unbelievably intense. Abel was built fully to scale, never necessarily a given; he was probably, she realized, so used to going slowly and steadily not just because of his strength but
his size, needing to pace himself to avoid overwhelming his partner. A gentle giant, who was being careful to lower his hips in gradual stages, getting her used to the sheer size of him, the weight
of his pelvis on her, his heavy, hairy thighs; it
was
overwhelming, and she loved it, wrapped her arms around his back, as much as she could, encouraging him to do it, to do what he
wanted, to begin to move back and forth, to start really, fully, truly—

Abel was reaching his hands under her buttocks now, tilting them a little, finding the right angle, still careful, still in control of himself; Brianna Jade, spreadeagled beneath him, clinging
to his shoulders, thought dizzily that he would always be in control of himself, and that that was okay, because he was clearly getting exactly what he wanted, and God knew she was more than happy
with what he was doing. He started to rock them both together in the same rhythm, rubbing against her on every up-beat, barely pulling in or out but staying firmly lodged inside her, anchoring her
legs with his, gradually, relentlessly, working them both to climax, refusing to speed up no matter how much she pounded on his shoulders and tried to rock her own hips faster. His sheer weight,
bearing down on her, held her at his own pace, and when she finally trusted that pace, let go and stopped trying to rush him, she felt the orgasm building so fast that in a few more seconds it was
fully on her, rippling between her legs and out to her stomach and thighs like a tide that was sweeping inevitably to shore.

Whether Abel had been waiting for her to come again or whether her body’s juddering beneath him tipped him over the edge, she didn’t know. She heard him groan, felt his body heave up
and out of her, and she wailed in disappointment, even as she came, because he was no longer inside her. He managed to hold out just in time to come into the bale, kneeling awkwardly just beside
her as his cock spurted into the hay: then he reached for his T-shirt, tugging it free from his sweater, wrapping it around his still-huge cock to wipe it clean before he collapsed on his side by
Brianna Jade. Stretching his big frame fully out onto the bale, he spooned her as she wriggled into his embrace, pulling her sweater down for extra protection against the chill. One muscled arm
wrapped around her, weighty as a heavy rope winding around her waist, pulling her even closer so he could rest his forehead against her mass of hair. Their breathing slowed, became more even, and
in the comparative silence they could hear the rain pattering down on the barn roof.

‘We’ll wait out the weather, eh?’ he said into the back of her head.

She nodded, settling even deeper into the hay bale, which held the warmth their bodies had just generated. Firmly, she told herself to relish these moments, this body heat, this nest
they’d made for themselves, because this was as much as she and Abel would ever have: one afternoon in a rainstorm. She was going to marry Edmund. Her mother hadn’t worked so hard all
these years to contrive a fairy-tale marriage for her beloved daughter only to have Brianna Jade let her down with the kind of epic, nine-days-wonder scandal to which the revelation of what she had
just done would inevitably lead.

Abel knew it too, she could tell. This could never happen again, which meant she could no longer visit the piggeries. She would be up at the Hall, Abel would be down here, and they would both
get on with their lives and be absolutely fine. Edmund would make her a wonderful, kind, sympathetic husband, while Abel would doubtless find a lovely girl with whom he could share his fairytale
cottage.

But the most important thing was that Brianna Jade would, finally, have achieved what her mother wanted, realized her mother’s dreams for her. Tamra had spent so many years, made so many
sacrifices, to make Brianna Jade happy. Finally, Brianna Jade had been presented with a sacrifice she could make to return everything her beloved mother had done for her, and there was no way she
was going to back down from the challenge.

The only way she could handle this was to tell herself, very simply, that there was no alternative but to continue along the path laid out for her. No choice, no decision for her to make,
because God knew, she was incapable of making them. She was going to marry Edmund and become the Countess of Respers, and that was all there was to it.

By late afternoon, the rain had stopped and the cloud cover had opened enough to let a watery winter sun come filtering through. Enough, too, for Barb Norkus, having spent a
very pleasant several hours in the library, snoozing off her jet lag on the big leather Chesterfield sofas, ordering more sandwiches and cake from the footman and washing them down with beer, to
wake up, notice the weak sunshine outside, and decide that this would be the perfect opportunity for her to take some photos of herself outside to add to her Facebook and Twitter feeds. She had
already Facebooked and Tweeted pictures of the beer and sandwiches arranged on the silver tray, plus a couple of selfies of her lounging on the sofa, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other. Her
friends back home had posted appreciative comments already.

But the majesty of Stanclere Hall did not convey itself just with a couple of interior shots of the library, and now that Barb had had a nap and refreshed herself with another beer or two, she
was ready to dazzle her social media acquaintances with the high life into which she had so successfully infiltrated herself. She wasn’t remotely concerned that Brianna Jade had left her to
her own devices for several hours; she assumed, quite correctly, that her reluctant hostess had been thrown into so much emotional disarray by Barb’s sudden appearance on her doorstep that
Brianna Jade had retreated somewhere to have a cry and a lie-down. Though, of course, Barb could not possibly have imagined the precise circumstances of either . . .