Nola (3 page)

"Over his lap?"
she'd thought to herself. What kind of threat was that?

Of course, she'd
been entirely unable to keep her hands from defending her honor - even from her
husband - and she'd ended up upended unceremoniously over his lap getting her
first spanking and cursing his name and herself at the same time because he was
making her realize that she couldn't imagine a worse pain than the one he was
creating in her nether parts - at least until the next time he spanked her on
an already sore bottom. And it had seemed to her that he was never ever going
to stop.

But then he had
rolled her onto her back, sliding to her side and managing to keep her in place
with one well placed hand splayed on her stomach. "Lie still, Nola," he'd
whispered hoarsely, "you're mine, and I'm going to touch you whether you want
me to or not. You're my wife, and I can and will do exactly as I please with
you, in or out of this bed."

Nola had known
that some men felt they owned their wives - that was one of the things she'd
been trying to campaign against with her involvement women's suffrage and
rights groups. How ironic that she'd ended up under the thumb of a man who
thought exactly that.

The touching
wasn't the worst of it, though. It was bad and humiliating and embarrassing,
but it wasn't the worst. The worst thing was that he made her like it. He
seemed to know exactly what he was doing - which didn't surprise Nola in the
least - and, although everything about his attitude screamed that he felt he
owned her as surely as if he'd bought and paid for her, his fingers and hands -
and eventually his lips and mouth - were firm but gentle, especially at first.
Almost teasing and tickling in places as he explored every inch of her body -
some inches she hadn't much acknowledged owning herself. He'd dug his fingers
into her hair, combing it out away from her face, fanning it out on the pillow
behind her,
then
following the contours of her face,
her high cheekbones, and down her nose to full, pink lips that were slightly
parted with her anxious, quickened breathing.

He didn't linger
there, but didn't head for the most usual place, either. Instead, he trailed
his fingertips over her collarbone, down over her shoulders, all the way to her
fingers, then back up again. To Nola's complete mortification, she shivered,
which made her nipples peak proudly, as if they were trying to attract his
attention.

Before she knew
it, those huge hands were each cupping a more than generous breast. She'd
always been somewhat embarrassed by how ample her bosom was, and the way he was
massaging and pressing them only made her feel just that much more self
conscious. And yet, when his fingers found those pink tips and very gently
squeezed them, she couldn't stop herself from catching her breath.

It felt sinfully
good! Much too sinfully good, and there didn't seem to be a way to get away
from it - or him - either. When she tried, when she shifted her shoulders side
to side, he merely held on a little tighter, saying a tone she came to hate,
"Ah ah
ahhhh
, wife. I said no resisting. Apparently
that spanking wasn't sufficient to help you remember - " Her husband made to
move away from her and, apparently, give her another taste of her own hairbrush
- or his broad palm - on her poor rear.

Nola couldn't
believe that he'd reduced her to begging with one spanking, but he had. "No,
no! I'll be still." Tears flooded her eyes at the prospect of a second
spanking, as well as her complete loss of dignity and self respect.

He seemed to
consider her earnestness for a moment, then turned back to her, reclaiming
those still hardened nubs and pinching them more tightly than he had before, as
if to punish her for even considering trying to get away from him.

And Nola - to
her complete disgust and mortification - found that she liked it even when he
made her hurt like that. She had never experienced the depths of despair
before, but her husband seemed to delight in showing them to her. She had
always been in control of her own body - well, except once a month since she
was eleven or so - and now it was gleefully betraying her, conspiring with that
awful, despotic man to make her enjoy being degraded, being treated like a
possession and even making her moan in unwanted ecstasy when he deliberately
hurt her, pinching and pulling those virgin nipples as she arched her back and
begged him not to.

Brandon found
himself intrigued by this little chit, much more so than he wanted to be, even
though there was absolutely no doubt in his mind as to her innocence. Enough
that he'd found himself offering marriage, something that he'd sworn he had
absolutely no interest in. But it would get his family off his back to have a
wife tucked away somewhere, and keep his inevitable paramours from trying to
wangle a proposal out of him. He'd thoroughly expected to do no more than his
duty in their marriage bed - to begat the "heir and a spare" as the Brits so
succinctly put it, and then be done with her. His parents certainly didn't spend
any more time together than they absolutely had to, and he expected his
marriage to Nola to run very much along the same lines - separate residences,
separate lives, separate loves.

It was the
thought of her with another man - of someone else seeing her wide eyed
reactions to everything he did, someone besides him cupping those almost overly
generous breasts, tweaking her nipples and watching the color rise becomingly
in her cheeks. It didn't bear thinking of. He'd never felt in the least jealous
of any other man, but this woman was different for some reason, and he didn't
like it - not at all - mostly because he couldn't seem to stop the feelings,
and that made him crueler than he might have been if she hadn't invoked those
emotions in him.

She'd caught his
eye - along with everyone else's at that abominable Masquerade Ball. He'd
attended, because his father had absolutely insisted, which didn't usually
work. But Geoffrey Sawyer hadn't been doing well lately. He'd had a series of
heart seizures that had done more than anything else could to pull his
stubborn, wayward son into line with what the family wanted him to do.

So he'd gone. He
would be damned if he'd dress up as anyone or anything, but he'd gone. Then,
not too long after he'd arrived, she'd appeared in the double doors and
something in his chest had onto the tops of his boots. He wanted to run up the
steps, throw his cape around her and keep her from all of those prying eyes.
Most especially, he wanted to do something about her scandalous fall of hair.
Women who were of an age to be married - whether they were or not -
kept their hair up.
The only person who was supposed to see a woman with
her hair down was her husband, and yet, there she was, flagrantly flaunting
convention and smiling with it, her arm neatly tucked into the curve of that
fop Wilde Everest's distinctly limp arm.

He couldn't
believe that she was with him. For some strange reason, the idea absolutely
incensed him. And Brandon also realized that, probably because he refused to
attend these soirees except under penalty of death, he had no idea who the hell
it was that he was steaming over.

He
sussed
out a friend in the crow - not that he had that many
- and nearly bowled the poor man over with questions, all the while keeping a
watchful eye on that disturbing baggage as Wilde manhandled her about the
floor.

Roger Kennedy,
however, was used to Brandon's unapologetically brash ways. The two had known
each other since they were in short pants, and he was one of the few people who
Brandon counted on to tell him the absolute truth, not colored by a desire for
matrimony or money.

"Who's that
girl?" he asked bluntly, ignoring Roger's silent, raised glass offer of punch.

"What girl?"
Roger had somehow managed to affect a bit of a British accent, not that he'd
ever been to England, and "girl" came out much more like "gel" than it, by
rights, should have.

Brandon knew
when someone was being deliberately obtuse and simply glared at the other man.

Roger, who had
never in his life known Brandon to inquire after any woman - it was always the
other way around. Quite a few women - or mothers of eligible maidens - had come
to him as a way to get to Brandon. He intended to savor the power of this
moment as long as he could, looping his thumbs into his unfashionably broad
lapels; he'd come to this party as a town crier, completely with an extremely
loud bell.

"Well, let me
see what I can remember about her." He gave Brandon a sidelong glance, and knew
that he was closer to a true beating than he'd been in decades. Brandon wasn't
the kind of man to be toyed with, although Roger always liked to push him a
bit, since no one else seemed willing to. Brandon had been a champion boxer at
Exeter Academy, and Roger knew that he'd pursued his physical abilities more so
than any other man of quality that
Roger'd
ever heard
of. He might have been long in the tooth to be a bachelor, but he was at the
top of his game physically - and, just at his size, Brandon was a force to be
reckoned with, forget his ability to beat pretty much anyone to a pulp.

"I believe the
woman in question is Nola Hughes, daughter of Ephraim Hughes and Julia Beckham
Hughes. Made his money in livery stables, I believe. Not even nouveau riche,
really.
Merchant class money, at best."

"Good." Brandon
was heartily sick of the simpering females that were inevitably paraded before
him. It seemed the older he got, the worse that embarrassment became. He'd been
taking refuge on the patio - despite the cold - just to get away from the constant
stream of giggling females their mothers insisted on throwing at him. He'd only
come into the ballroom to try to find his Aunt and bid her good night before he
left.

As it was, he
knew he wasn't going to leave that quickly now, not with someone that
interesting in the offing. Middle class and an original - maybe she'd have the
gumption he wanted in a wife. Perhaps she even had a brain - although he knew
that some things were too much to ask for nowadays. Women were to become wives
and mothers, and few families saw fit to educate them much past their ABC's.

And yet, now,
here she was in his bed, fighting herself as he touched her body in any way
that pleased him - and pleased her, at least for the moment. She was such a
shy, reticent little thing, despite her blatant flaunting of convention, and
the dichotomy intrigued him to no end. He'd found he liked forcing her past her
natural inhibitions from the very beginning, and the more he did it, the more
interesting it became to him. He'd never felt like this about any other woman.
It had been two days, and he hadn't let her out of the bedroom, and he didn't
intend to for quite some time.

She had been so
wonderfully virginal on their wedding night. There was something more there
that niggled at him, and he promised himself that he would investigate it as
soon as he'd sated himself with her, but he'd been lost from the first moment
he'd found her in their bed, apparently completely scandalized that he would
come into what she'd thought was her bedroom, and hers alone.

He'd disabused
her of that notion quickly, but she'd flown out from under the covers towards
the robe that hung over her vanity chair, but he'd caught her wrist and stopped
her midway, tugging her back to stand in front of him, and reaching for the
neckline of her gown, ripping it to the floor in one ridiculously easy motion.

The look in her
eyes at that moment - even just remembering it now made him hard as a spike.
Fear, yes, uncertainty, but with a big dose of outrage that was what he'd
always felt was missing. This woman wasn't going to just lie back and think of
England - or rather the refilling of the family coffers or how to redecorate
the bedroom. This woman, beneath the expected apprehension, was bloody well
pissed at him.

And he loved it.

Even now, as he
cajoled and pressed and twisted and twirled her body into welcoming him
completely against her will, he knew that part of the reason her chest was
rising and falling so quickly was that, if she could manage it, she'd cold cock
him in a second. That was part of the reason there wasn't much in the way of
brick a
brack
around their bed. She was livid - with
herself as well as him, but he was the more likely target.

And tonight he
was going to give her even more of a reason to be unhappy. Brandon slipped down
her body a little, his chest naturally requiring that she spread her legs
almost unnaturally wide, which fit his purposes exactly. He stopped when his
mouth was level with that most perfect area of hers, staring down at it as his
forearms held her legs apart.

"No, no,
please!" She was trying to wiggle away, yet not trying to, and he let her
struggle for a moment, before catching her tear filled eyes.

Brandon reached
into the center of her, tugging those puffy lips apart so that he could deliberately
waft his hot breath over her most private place, still watching her as that
beautiful blush stained her chest and worked its way up her neck to her face.
The random thought that he hoped he was still blushing fifty years from now
flitted through his mind, making him frown fiercely.

"Don't look
away, or I'll paddle your bottom again, wife," he warned, letting his mouth
descend on that delicate area, suckling away at her tellingly prominent bud
while he watched her fighting herself and her shame as she kept her eyes locked
to his while he defiled her with his mouth.