The Bride of Larkspear (9 page)

“A great deal more depravities, of course. I like happy endings.”

She looks back at me. I feel transparent, as if my heart is beating in the open.

“You could have told me that story five years ago. Ten years ago, even.”

The weight of all my years of stupidity presses down on me. “I didn’t know how to tell it then.”

Her eyes bore into mine. “Didn’t know how, or wouldn’t?”

“Maybe both,” I admit.

She shakes her head. And keeps shaking her head.

I get up, find my dressing robe, and kiss her on her forehead. “Good night.”

Her gaze follows me out the door.

Chapter Five

T
HE NEXT DAY I JOIN
Grisham and my bride at play, showing up with a vulcanized rubber ball used for tennis. “Here. He likes this one.”

“Thank you, my lord.” She takes the ball from my hand and sweeps me openly with a glance.

Heat engulfs me. But beneath the warmth, I feel the cold finger of uncertainty. It is a terrifying sensation to be at her mercy—she who’s always had so little regard for me.

She tosses the ball a good distance, her motion strong yet graceful. “Go get it, Grisham.”

Grisham lopes off. He cannot run as fast as his four-legged peers, but run he most assuredly does, listing a little, and at a very respectable pace.

She looks back at me. “Come to think of it, you never mentioned last night what Fidelia did with her bookshop after she married Prince Narcissus. Did she need to give it up, eventually?”

I did not expect that particular question. My answer, however, comes readily, as if I’ve always known exactly what happened after the end of the story. “She did sell the shop. But then she went on to establish a national library, one with a collection that was astounding for both its breadth and depth.”

She tilts her head, a slight curve to her lips. “Did she?”

“Of course. And everyone, from princes to paupers, was welcome in her library. But she did not stop there. She used her influence to foster a culture of reading in Pride, so that when the country celebrated the golden jubilee of her husband’s rule, there were many more bookshops in the capital than there had been when she’d dealt with books for a living.”

Grisham is back, the rubber ball held happily between his teeth. She rubs him on the head, takes the ball, and tosses it again.

Her attention returns to me. “You have interesting views of what a woman is capable of, Larkspear.”

“I am not afraid of who you are, Lady Larkspear.”

I am only afraid that she might crush my heart underfoot.

Her eyes gleam. “Really? Don’t you know that such a statement all but begs to be tested?”

My stomach tightens. “Then test me.”

She pulls down the brim of her hat and glances at me sideways. “I intend to. Most assuredly.”

T
HAT EVENING, BEFORE MY VALET
has even left, she walks through the connecting door into my bedroom, clad in a black dressing robe embroidered with a green-and-gold Chinese dragon at the hem. Around her neck, draped like scarves, are several of the sashes I’ve used to tie her to her bed—red, blue, green, all eye-poppingly bright against the black silk of the dressing gown.

The restraints are coming back. For me.

My stomach drops even as my cock rises.

“Thank you, Matthews,” she addresses my valet. “I’m sure I can see to any further needs on Lord Larkspear’s part.”

Her words are perfectly appropriate, but the proprietary look she casts my way…Matthews, that most phlegmatic of men, hurries out with a blush on his face.

Quite unsubtly, she locks the door behind him.

My mouth turns dry. “So, my lioness leaves her cage.”

She smiles with a wolfish flash of her teeth. “It is lovely to be back in the wild, prowling and scenting prey.”

“And the hunter becomes the hunted?”

“It’s only fair, isn’t it, that everyone gets a chance?” She draws the sash from her dressing robe.

I try not to stare too obviously at what the now-gaping robe reveals, but it is not easy, given that she
intends
me to look. Indeed to gawk at the swell of her breasts, the dip of her navel, and the red curls that mark the very center of my life.

“Take off your shirt, darling.” There is not an iota of hesitation to her voice. She is in her element. In command.

The last time she called me darling, it was to pretend that I was someone else. My heart trembles a little at the memory. “You will make me blush.”

“Then you will be blushing all night,” she replies with mock severity. “So put aside your maidenly reticence and do what I tell you.”

My blood pounding in my ears, I pull my shirt off. She comes close and trails a hand over my abdomen. “Pretty,” she murmurs, passing the sash through her fingers. “Very pretty.”

Then she pushes me against a bedpost and binds my hands behind my back with the sash. Now I am the one in fetters. She inspects me from all angles, smiling as if she has been let in on a marvelous secret.

“I’m beginning to see why you liked it so well when I was shackled. Did it make you feel powerful, Larkspear?”

Powerful? Yes, but only in the sense that at last I had the chance I’d long craved to change her mind. The chance for a new beginning.

“
I
feel powerful, darling.” She lets the robe fall from her shoulders, then extracts her hairpins and shakes her head. Her hair tumbles free, a glorious cascade, strands of it brushing her taut nipples. “Sublimely powerful. I can do anything I want. And you…you will like it.”

She walks away from me, the ends of her hair brushing the very top of her bottom. My mouth becomes completely parched. She swings herself around on the next bedpost and poses as if she, too, has her hands tied behind her back. Then she laughs at her own joke, strolls to a low chest of drawers, bends over it, her sex shamelessly displayed, and looks back at me. “Is this something you like?”

“Yes.”

She straightens, sits down in a chair, her legs wide-open. “You like this too?”

“Yes.” My voice is hoarse.

She returns to the other bedpost and rubs her breasts against it. “What about this?”

“You are making me mindless with lust.”

She laughs softly. “No, Larkspear, I am
going
to make you mindless with lust. And the first step is the removal of the rest of your clothes.”

She hooks her fingers in the waistband of my trousers. “Your body, darling, is a thing of beauty. Let us never obscure beauty, shall we?”

It should come as no surprise to her that I am desperately aroused. But still she draws an audible breath as she pushes my trousers past my jutting cock. “What a monster,” she murmurs. “You think I want to be sodomized by
this
?”

“Why not? It’s your monster.”

“My monster.” She runs a finger along the side of my cock. “Hmm.”

She drops to her knees before me. I forget how to breathe.

“You were terribly rough with my monster the other day.” She keeps stroking my cock. “Look at it. It’s still all swollen and tender.”

I stare at her. “Make it feel better, then.”

She gives the head of my cock a quick kiss. It flexes. “Does that help?”

“No.”

She licks it. “How about this?”

I breathe hard. “Still not much use.”

She looks down a moment, as if puzzled. Then, before I quite realize what is going on, she takes me into her mouth. I jerk with the pleasure of it.

She releases me with an audible pop. “That?”

“Perhaps, if you keep at it.”

“My goodness, you are demanding for a man with his hands tied behind his back.”

My knees turn weak as she takes me into her mouth again, slowly, slowly, then not so slowly. I want to spill my seed down her throat right away. I want to hold off coming forever, so I can remain in her mouth for the next eternity.

I cannot hold off forever. Her eager lips, her mobile tongue, her teasing, hungry eyes. My muscles tense; my breaths shatter; my hands clench behind the bedpost. I am on the verge.

She moves back just enough so that her lips hover near my cock, but do not touch it. “Are you better now?”

“No.” God damn it. I need to be enveloped by her hot, willing mouth. “No!”

She makes an exaggerated moue of disappointment. “Well, I guess there is nothing more I can do then.” She rises. “Perhaps I should bid you good night and go back to my own room.”

“Don’t you dare go anywhere.”

Her brow rises. “Oh, you want me to stay more time?”

She is punishing me. For having had the temerity to tie her up. The temerity to try to make her fall in love with me. “I want you to finish what you started. I never teased you like this.”

She takes my chin in her hand. “You can’t blame me for your own shortcoming. Why did you never tease me like this?”

I cannot think. “What?”

She smirks a little. Her hand grips my cock. I leap in her fingers, so close, so very close.

She lets go again. I growl with frustration. She cups my balls and lifts them, as if testing their weight in her palm. Then she spreads her hand on my abdomen, leans in, and licks my nipple.

I grit my teeth. She bites my other nipple, not hard, just enough to make me shiver.

She licks my bottom lip. “Did you enjoy doing all this to me—making me moan, making me writhe, making me lose control?”

“Yes.”

Her lips are so close. I surge forward, take them with mine, and find her tongue. She yanks away.

“Yes, I enjoyed doing all this to you,” I tell her. “I loved forcing a reaction from you. I rejoiced when you could no longer deny your arousal. And I daresay it made me grow two extra inches when you screamed loud enough to shake the rafters.”

Her countenance darkens. The next moment she is back on her knees. She sucks me vigorously, voraciously, her cheeks hollowing with the force of her draw. I cry out with the knifelike pleasure. She takes nearly the entire length of my cock into her mouth. I feel the force of her will as my cock slides into her throat.

I ejaculate, spurt after spurt after spurt. She swallows everything, her eyes never leaving my face.

When I am finished, my balls empty, my sinews limp, she rises to her feet. “Did you enjoy that? Or did you hate it?” she whispers in my ear.

“Both,” I answer, my breath rasping. “Maybe…maybe I hated it more.”

She bites my lower lip. “Then you know how I felt, darling. You know exactly how I felt.”

I’
M SORRY,” I TELL HER
as she unties me from the bedpost. “Please forgive me.”

She casts me an inscrutable glance. “Forgiveness has to be earned on your back, Larkspear.”

I chew the inside of my cheek for a moment, then climb onto the bed and lie down. “Like this?”

She puts her dressing robe back on and sits down at the edge of the bed. “Don’t you know I love someone else? Does that make no difference to you?”

She is not mocking me, or trying to hurt me, but only trying to understand why I behave as I do.

“I don’t doubt you loved him long ago. But for years now you’ve loved only the memory of the man he once was. He is not the same man and you are in love with someone who no longer exists.”