The Bride of Larkspear (2 page)

“Are you drunk, Larkspear?” she demands.

“Yes,” I answer with the sort of dirty look she expects from me. “Intoxicated by you, my dear.”

I slide one finger along the delicate folds at the junction of her legs. Her softness is indescribable. My heart pounds, then pounds twice as hard as I encounter a warm, slippery moisture.

“You are wet,” I inform her. “Quite wet.”

Her gaze turns violent, as if she would love to take a bludgeon to my person. I, on the other hand, am overjoyed. Her heart might be aloof, but her body is far from indifferent to me.

“Yes, keep looking at me, darling. I will enjoy studying your face when you come.”

“You think it so easy to—”

Her next word disappears into a whimper as I slip my finger inside her.

She is hot and tight—incredibly hot, incredibly tight. I force myself to speak normally. “Nice. I will relish fucking you.”

She grits her teeth. “Why don’t you do just that?”

“And forgo all the fun and games? I think not. Such pleasures should be finely drawn out, every second slowly and purposefully savored.”

Something that is almost fear shadows her eyes. The urge comes upon me to tell her that she needs to dread nothing, that I will perish before I will allow anything to mar her happiness or her spirits. But I hold back, reminding myself that there is a larger war to be fought.

And because I know that should I hold out my heart before her, she would smile and stab it with a dagger of disdain.

I play with her slowly and purposefully, as I’ve promised, arousing her sensitive flesh with measured strokes, with an occasional pinch thrown in for variety and interest—and to feed her antagonism, because old habits die hard and I am, alas, as much a creature of habit as the next man.

“Tell me how much you hate my touch,” I order her. “Tell me how you shrink from it. Tell me how you are absolutely, absolutely not getting wetter by the second.”

Her reply is a low growl. “And you think I will give you that satisfaction?”

“Someone should,” I counter, my voice losing some of its steadiness.

For in arousing her I have also aroused myself to a fever pitch. Her readiness drenches my hand. I am desperate to plunge into her, to claim her body as mine and mine alone.

I do not permit myself easy gratification. My aim is not simply to ejaculate deep inside her, however much I want it, but to possess the entirety of her. Her body, yes, but also her mind, and ultimately her heart.

And to achieve that, tonight I am interested only in
her
pleasure,
her
satisfaction.

I wedge another finger inside her and watch hungrily for all the signs of enjoyment she cannot suppress. The small writhing motions of her lower body, the further dilation of her pupils, the little whimpers that escape her clenched teeth from time to time. Inside my still perfectly pressed trousers, my cock flexes—and engorges almost beyond what I can endure.

“I love how pink your cheeks are, darling,” I dare to tell her, knowing she will interpret my words not as admiration, but goading. “I love how that blush has spread down your throat all the way to your breasts. And what gorgeous breasts. You should have lived a century ago, when ladies rouged their nipples and proudly displayed them above the décolletage of their gowns.”

To punctuate my words, I kiss her other nipple, the one I have yet to properly worship—closemouthed, almost chaste pecks first, then a graze with the moist inside of my lower lip, followed by leisurely licks and swirls of my tongue, before I draw the nubbin deep into my mouth and run my teeth lightly across it.

All the while my hand intensifies its wooing of her lower body. My fingers are hilt-deep inside her. My thumb teases and rubs one particularly exquisite point of sensitivity. Her breath catches, as does mine. It unnerves me how much I want—need—her pleasure to surge past that point of no return.

“How much do you hate it?” I whisper in her ear. “Shall I make it ten times worse? So terrible that you will shriek obscenities at the top of your lungs? Shall I kneel down before you and put my tongue where my hand is?”

I see it on her face—she shuts her eyes tight—before I feel it in her body: that ratcheting of tension, the tautening. She teeters on the edge for a long, long time before suddenly dissolving into quakes and shudders, the walls of her cunt contracting as if trying to pull my entire hand inside.

She does not shriek, but her mouth opens wide, her breaths ragged. Her face, her neck, and her breasts are suffused with an even lovelier shade of blush. My gaze drops down the expanse of her belly to the sight of my hand still lodged inside her. My knees nearly buckle. My body screams for release. And I long, even more than to rampage her, to pull her close and embrace her hard in relief and gratitude that yes, there is a part of her that is within my reach.

But I do no such thing. When she opens her eyes, still dazed, I hold up my hand and lick each finger. “Delicious,” I tell her. “Utterly delicious.”

W
HEN I UNTIE HER FROM
around the bedpost, she sags a little. But as I place my hand on her elbow to steady her, she jerks away, her gaze hard. “I can stand, thank you. Now where should I place myself next for your pleasure?”

“For your pleasure, you mean?” I counter, some of the happiness in my heart dissipating.

Her hair has fallen forward. She flicks the strands behind her shoulders, plainly exposing her breasts, as if to demonstrate how little she cares about being naked before me. “Please, Larkspear, you only ever think of yourself.”

I turn cold. There is no possible defense against such a charge. Again, I have only me to blame, having always presented myself as a frivolous prick before her, for fear that doing otherwise would allow her to guess my true feelings.

“Well, then, for my pleasure, madam, you will occupy this bed.”

Coolly she climbs up, turns around, and lies down. Her hair spreads out on the pillow, a delta of bright red locks. Her eyes are fixed on the ceiling, upon which a mural brims with fat cherubs and golden clouds.

I bring out the black silk sash again. The first time I bound her, she’d watched passively, almost uncomprehendingly, before becoming alert to my nefarious purposes. This time, however, as I fasten her wrists to one of the thick slats in the headboard, she flicks me a look of contempt—with a twinge of disquiet, as if she hadn’t expected that I would continue to bind her.

I could tell her the reason for the constraints: I’d rather her tied up than lying beneath me like a martyr, resisting by not resisting. But I keep it to myself.

Once she is secured, I strip off my waistcoat and pull my shirt over my head. My years of sports at school and university have built a musculature that has often been described as strapping. My bride turns her head and inspects me, her gaze giving no clue whether my physique passes muster.

With no warning she smiles. I feel a distinct chill in my marrow.

“Showing off, are we, Larkspear?”

“Is there a man who doesn’t take off his clothes on his wedding night?”

“You need not try to impress me, my lord,” she says, her tone as light as a soufflé. “I will never care for any aspect of you.”

It is a cold, long knife that twists in my kidney. She might not know exactly what I plan to do, but she means to deny me success in every endeavor.

Suddenly it is almost impossible to keep up the façade of the blithe cad who just wants to fuck her for fun. I hold up another length of black silk sash. “Let’s make this a little more interesting, shall we? Besides, I do care so very much for my masculine modesty.”

Before she can offer any commentary, I tie the sash around her head, covering her eyes securely. And only then, when she cannot see my weakness, do I allow myself to brace my hand on the bedpost and breathe again.

The pain in my heart is an old one: the fear that my unrequited love will always remain unrequited. That whatever I do, I will not break through this wall of ice between us that I have helped build with my words and my actions all these years.

I stare at the blindfold itself, at the sharp contrast of dark, glossy silk against her skin. I stare at her slender throat, at the pulse I long to kiss. I stare at her gleaming shoulders, which I have stared at so often in the past, during dinners and soirées. In the firelight, she resembles a pagan sacrifice, a naked offering to the gods. My breaths grow more labored.

“What are you waiting for?” she asks.

Do I imagine it or is there a slight tremor to her voice? It would seem that she has misinterpreted my silence as a deliberate undertaking to make her wait while I concoct my next set of nefarious plans.

Her breathing accelerates.

Her nipples harden.

All at once I am euphoric again. “I am only contemplating how wrong you will prove, my dear. You will come to like many aspects of me, and you will come to
worship
my cock.”

I brace my hands on either side of her head and invade her mouth with mine, tasting the very tip of her tongue. She shivers, then holds perfectly still.

“Why pretend you don’t like it? I will not think less of you for enjoying my lovemaking,” I whisper against her lips, knowing very well that it is her self-respect that worries her, not my opinions.

“Mine is but the response of the flesh, nothing for you to crow about.”

“Then it is nothing for you to fret about either.”

I had a tray of fruits from the estate’s walled orchard sent up to her room. The tray now sits on her nightstand. I reach for a raspberry that was picked only hours earlier. It is tiny yet plump, a lovely deep red. I rub it against her lips.

“What is this?”

“Something delicious and succulent. Like you.”

She opens her mouth and takes the raspberry—not a submissive gesture, but an aggressive one, depriving me of what she thinks of as my implement of torture. I watch as she chews, then swallows. A tiny smear of raspberry juice remains on her lower lip. I lick it, tasting the tart sweetness.

The corner of her lips turns down, but not before another quick tremor passes beneath her skin.

“Would you like another?” I am not sure whether I am asking about berries or licks.

“Why such tenderness?” she demands archly. “I am already naked, fettered, and blindfolded. Go ahead. Have your way with me.”

How I would love to descend upon her like a famished wolf. My body is certainly primed, my cock hot and hard, my muscles straining against my own control.

“No,” I say. “I am going to play with you a little longer.”

And give her so much pleasure that she will never stop thinking about it.

I kiss her again, caressing her nipple as I do so. Then, fingers splayed, I explore farther afield. Her belly is soft and lovely, her hips made to drive a man mad.

“Spectacular,” I murmur. Then, catching myself, I make my tone cavalier, like that of a rich man displaying a new acquisition to his friends. “Everything first-rate.”

“Do you know?” comes her voice, cold and sharp as the edge of a stiletto. “I was beginning to like this blindfold. And now you had to spoil it with your voice. Kindly remain silent, will you? I want to be able to go on imagining that you are someone else altogether.”

My hand stills. There is indeed someone else, a disastrous someone else, the very reason she had to marry me.

“Don’t stop.” Now she is the one goading me. “Keep going. This is our wedding night, after all, and I’d feel like a terrible wife if you didn’t relish fucking me.”

My anger swells, a poisonous pain. My cock, too, swells to an almost monstrous size. It will be all too easy to ram myself into her and ravage her like a conquered city—and prove once and for all who rules her.

My hand tightens on her hip, but I pull back from the edge of barbarity. I understand the stark fear that one’s heart’s desire has moved beyond all reach. I understand the pain such fear engenders. I understand the resultant urge to lash out against the most convenient target at hand.

I have often behaved that way in the past. I might have behaved that way this very night.

I kiss her throat. “You’d like to pretend that I am someone else, no doubt, but I don’t believe you can. You are all too aware of my identity, of the fact that I am his diametrical opposite.”

She clamps her teeth over her lower lip. Perhaps my words worry her; perhaps the calmness of my tone does. It doesn’t matter: I rejoice in every reaction on her part, however minute.

“And even if I were to be as silent as you wish, you will still know that I am not him—my weight is different; my scent is different; the texture of my skin is different.” My hands are calloused from years of rowing; she cannot possibly fail to take notice. I trace the lower edge of the silken blindfold, following the contour of the bridge of her nose. “What really distresses you is that you respond differently to my touch.”

Her teeth cut deeper into her lip, almost enough to draw blood.

“What is the difference, darling?” I try my damnedest to keep my eagerness out of my voice—and do not altogether succeed. “Do you come harder? Longer? More uncontrollably?”