The Bride of Larkspear (3 page)

“Flatter yourself all you want. I would prefer a rendezvous with a dentist—without the laughing gas.”

I kiss her earlobe. “Disparage my lovemaking day and night if you’d like, darling. You may think it will thwart me, but the only thing I hear is a challenge for me to give you even greater pleasures. And it is a challenge I gladly accept.”

Her hands grip the slat to which they are tied. “And I will, of course, lie quiescent, since I am a dutiful wife. The law deems my body to belong to you, but my mind is my own, and I shall only think those thoughts that best please me.”

In other words, she will think of
him
.

I ignore the painful pinching in my heart. New battle lines have been drawn. Nothing left to do but for our forces to clash, and see whether her defense holds or my offense prevails.

I part her lips and lick her teeth. I bite her where her neck meets her shoulder. I nibble the inside of her elbow.

Patiently, devotedly, ignoring the insistent demands of my own body, I make my way down her torso, dipping my tongue into her navel before I head back north, to those gorgeously firm breasts that I had intentionally bypassed earlier.

So pliant, yet so resilient, those wonderful breasts. I squeeze them, push them together, and blow a breath across her nipples. Already hardened, they pucker even more. I blow again, watching them—and watching her exquisite face.

Her lips are parted, her breathing uneven.

My cock, thicker and harder than it has ever been, presses into her lower abdomen. And now I lift a thumb and rub her nipple. She hisses, the sound a balm to my soul. I drop kisses all around that rosy areola, never quite touching it except accidentally—or perhaps not so accidentally—with the corner of my mouth and the beginning of my stubble.

The next moment I pull her nipple deep into my mouth. She gasps. I let it go and watch it glisten moistly in the lamplight. I blow upon it again. She shivers. I lick it with the tip of my tongue. She whimpers.

From somewhere deep in the back of my mind comes the thought that I would like to make love to her only for the sake of making love to her, without pretenses or ulterior motives.

Someday, if I’m so lucky.

“Such pretty nipples. I must draw them. I must draw
you
. Then you will see yourself as I see you: naked, bound, and infinitely fuckable.”

“I don’t doubt my desirability. But you should doubt yours.”

Her retort would have injured me far more severely were it not for the moans I drew from her even as she spoke.

I continue to make love to her breasts, filling my ears with the whimpers of her rising desire. And then, when I can stand it no more, I take my cock in hand, part her legs, and position myself at the juncture of her thighs.

“My, but you are soaked through,” I whisper, allowing myself a moment of satisfaction.

She turns her face to the side. “From pretending you are someone else, of course.”

Intellectually I know it is not true. But intellect is no match for the twisted fears of the gut. I have to restrain myself from ramming into her.

“Of course, you must do as you see fit, darling. I, on the other hand…” I push the head of my cock into her and lose my ability to speak for a moment. So hot. So tight. I breathe hard, holding on to my control.

“I, on the other hand, am keenly aware that you are you and no one else. When I kiss you, it is
your
lips and
your
tongue I cover with mine. When I touch you, it is
your
skin. When I fuck you”—I drive deeper into her, and am again stunned with pleasure—“it is
your
cunt that welcomes me inside.”

I am now embedded in her to the hilt. I withdraw, then slowly enter her again, clenching my teeth together to not growl like a beast. Her jaw is just as tightly set, but a tiny sound escapes.

I freeze. Am I hurting her? How do I tell with her hands bound and her teeth gritted?

Her hips rise an inch to take me further inside—then
she
freezes, as if realizing what she is doing. But it’s too late. Now I know she wants more of the sensations, more of the pleasures. I am saturated anew with desire.

“I might never be able to stop fucking you,” I tell her, keeping my words carnal and dirty so that I do not blurt out the deeper secrets of my heart. “Every time I look at you I will be hard as a rock. I will fuck you in carriages, in broom cupboards and coat closets. On days when I am particularly horny I will fuck your mouth. And on days when I am in a really perverted mood, I will fuck you here.”

I run my hand between the perfectly rounded cheeks of her bottom, and find that other place. It is drenched with juices from her cunt. I insert the tip of a finger inside.

She cries out and thrashes, leaping instantly from arousal to orgasm. Her cunt grips my cock. I lose all control. Ramming myself balls-deep in her, I shudder, convulse, and inundate her with the essence of myself.

A
FTERWARD I DARE NOT HOLD
her for too long. Two minutes sprawled atop her, my hand caressing her side, and I force myself to pull away. I dress and untie her from the headboard. The blindfold I leave on for her to remove at her leisure: I do not want her to see me as I am—a man utterly ruined by having at last made love to her.

“Thank you for an excellent and memorable wedding night,” I say, my tone light and sardonic, as if my heart has not been pulled halfway out of my chest. “I wish you a good night and the most pleasant of dreams.”

She is silent, her breasts rising and falling agitatedly. Then she turns her back to me, pulls off the blindfold, and tosses it to the floor. A defiant gesture, but in that enormous bed she looks both lonely and defenseless.

I leave before I let slip that I feel exactly the same way.

Chapter Two

I
OPEN THE CONNECTING DOOR
between our rooms the next morning just as the sun rises. Her room is dark and gloomy, the shutters closed, the curtains drawn, everything swathed in shadows. I barely discern her outline beneath the rumpled beddings, her person still turned away from me. Approaching the bed slowly, I find her sound asleep, her breaths slow and even.

I have often imagined being married to her, provided she not only acquires the superhuman ability to peer directly into the innermost citadels of my heart, but also—miracle of miracles—adores what she sees. Invariably, in those reveries of mine, the two of us would be affectionately intertwined the morning after, slumbering in each other’s arms after a night of vigorous lovemaking.

I never thought I would still be separated from her by the same old chasm of all the stupid things I’ve ever done in order to keep my hopes secret and my pride intact.

I should incite her body to betray her again. I can almost see myself climbing into bed and holding her from behind. I can almost feel her long, lithe person fitted to mine, her skin soft as silk. And I can almost hear her sleepy moans as my hand closes around one firm breast, gently teasing her nipple into a sharp point. My cock leaps at the thought.

But I do not move an inch closer to the bed. Unless I am very much mistaken, she has had a long, restless night, haunted by the prospect of a lifetime with a man who, by all appearances, considers her a plaything. And perhaps she is even more haunted by the pleasures she derived from the touch of this husband for whom she feels nothing but scorn.

I leave and let her sleep.

S
HE DOES NOT COME DOWN
for breakfast, but at midmorning requests a tray in her room. I keep glancing at the clock. Minutes pass. Then a half hour. Then another half hour. She is not a woman who devotes herself to her toilette. The current standard may be five changes a day among ladies of our class, but she has often been one to dress simply in a shirtwaist, a jacket, and a skirt.

What is taking her so long? Does she plan to remain in her rooms all day?

I wait another few minutes; then, swearing under my breath, I leave my study, climb up the stairs—and find her in the bath, up to her neck in hot water.

The tub is enormous, almost capacious enough to berth a frigate. Upon the steaming surface of the water bobs an armada of flowers: lavender, chamomile, pink rosebuds, interspersed with bright green peppermint leaves. My bride sits with her arms stretched along the rims of the tub, her hair in a loose knot on top of her head, the rest of her neatly obscured by the floating garden.

At the sound of my footsteps she opens her eyes, the lashes of which have clumped into spikes in the hot mist of the bath. “Lo and behold, my lord and master. Here to drag me back into bed?”

Her tone is arch, but beneath that sophisticated defiance, I hear something else. Anxiety, perhaps. Or possibly even the beginning of panic. That I can pleasure her at will is a shocking new reality to her, one for which she has not yet devised a counterstrategy.

“Of course,” I answer. “Why have a wife if I am not using her hourly?”

I cannot admit that I already miss her—there has been a constant dull pain in my chest since I woke up this morning.

I lift her hand. Her fingers are long and pliant, her wrist slender. There are no freckles on her face but a smattering on her forearm. From the water I pluck a rose petal and set it in the crook of her elbow. Her skin is as soft as the petal—or is it the other way around? “Pretty,” I murmur. “So very pretty.”

My fingers trail up her arm to the hollow of her collarbone. Her flesh is hot from the heat of the bath, but her gaze—straight ahead—remains cool and blank. It would seem she has decided to ignore me harder. The ache in my chest turns into a bright pain. How do I get through? How do I make my case?

Lowering myself to one knee, I reach for the bar of Provençal soap on the bath stool. The soap lathers richly, its aroma that of lemon and sunshine. I start at her shoulder, working my way down to her hand.

“I know how this ends,” she says without looking at me, the back of her head on the rim of the tub.

“So do I: I fuck you, and fuck you well.”

She is about to say something when a series of enthusiastic barks erupt.

She raises her head. “Is that Grisham?”

“How do you know about Grisham?” I ask in surprise.

She has never before visited Larkspear Manor, so she could not possibly have seen Grisham, my three-legged pup that I found one morning on a country lane, miraculously alive after having been run over by a carriage.

“He made quite an impression the last time my brother visited.”

I rise to my feet, wipe my hands with a towel, and open the door of the bath just enough to allow Grisham entry. He leaps happily into my arms, tail wagging.

I set him down and point him in her direction. “Did you come to meet my missus, Grisham? There she is.”

Grisham looks toward her with great interest but he only barks and does not approach the tub.

“It’s all right,” I encourage him. “Nobody will try to bathe you today. You can approach.”

“That’s right. I won’t bite,” says my bride, holding out her hand.

Her expression is friendly, almost smiling; I am shamefully jealous of my crippled dog.