Defiant (12 page)

Smoke from the hearth swirled in the air, a dark, fretful mist. The ropes cut into his wrists, painful as wasp stings. The frame thunked and bumped on the floor. It humped across the planks this way and that.

Still the bonds held.

Dammit!

To be at the mercy of women was surely the worst sort of hell!

His new wife reached toward him. “Cease! You will harm yourself.”

“Untie me, wife!” His voice was scratchy.

Arms akimbo, she stared down at him as if he were a child to correct. “We did not mean to cause you any harm or distress. You are being unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable!” The skin around his wrists and ankles burned. His pride demanded revenge. And his groin, blast it all, still throbbed, overheated from her earlier touch as if that part of himself cared not a whit that he was bound for her pleasure.

She lifted her chin regally. “If you would just calm down, we could talk.”

Haughty, haughty wench.

He stopped flailing on the mattresss. His pride yowled, but there was no help for it. The hemp would not break, and so long as he was tied, she remained in power.

“That’s better,” she crooned.

Gritting his teeth at her condescending tone, he forced his voice to be calm and spoke to her as if she were a half-wit. “I would like to be released so we can converse in a
reasonable
manner. “ As if one could have a reasonable conversation with a woman who kidnapped him from a brothel, forced him to marry her, and now intended to poison him or send him away on some ship.

‘Twas one more
reason
a man should never, ever trust a woman—he’d been kind to Irma and this was how she repaid him. He’d thought of Gwyneth as some sort of paragon and she was as vile as the rest.

The temptress approached, ran her fingertip across his shoulder. His member sprang to life again as if eager for her touch. Curse it all!

“Do not touch me,” he gritted out. A deep sense of fury born of shame and hurt slid through him as he realized he could do naught to stop her if she wished to fondle his groin and laugh again as she did afore.

Undaunted, she gave a small smile and pressed her palm against his shoulder. She knew! Knew her effect on him. Heartless.

Rain pounded down outside on the door, and he concentrated on it. Anything to keep his mind off the beauty before him.

Discreetly, he felt around the parts of the bed frame that he could reach to find any sharp corners or nails that could aid him in cutting the ropes.

He grappled for a sense of control.

“Sir, prithee, hear me out.” She drew herself up in a haughty stance—one likely that she had oft used to get men to do her bidding. Her tone of voice was seductive. “I will make this worthwhile for you. I can give you gold and you can go free on your way.”

In that moment he realized what it was that she wanted. She wanted to swipe away her crime with no punishment, to use his name on a marriage document and send him away. She did not wish to poison him nor did she want to go along with Irma’s plans to set him on a ship. She merely wished him to go away, to leave her life and pretend she had not degraded him, harmed him. She wanted to do whatever she wished, treat him as less than a man and suffer no consequences for her actions.

Outrageous!

Resolve moved through him that she would get her comeuppance. She was the one who had insisted on this marriage and so married they would remain. There would be no ship, no poison, and there would be
no
annulment.

They had only to consummate the union to achieve permanence. Her best friend was a harlot, she had been comfortable in the whorehouse, and she’d been toying with his cock—laughing at it—when he had awoken: Of a truth, she was no virgin. And—his body was more than ready.

When he gained his freedom, she would simply belong to him, to do with as he pleased. To punish for the rest of her life. And that was that.

Taking a breath, he focused on getting free from his bonds. He could tell the rope was frayed, had began to come unraveled. Surely it was only one more stroke. One more rip.

He watched her walk across the chamber, back straight, shoulders rigid. Her hair, a curtain of shimmering satin, cascaded down her back and skimmed the tops of her thighs. Everything about her bespoke privilege and haughty imperiousness. She swiveled, looked over a shoulder at him. Of a truth, she was glorious. A seductress who was used to having her way with men, of laughing at them, trifling with them, bending them to her own devices.

The need to take, to conquer, pulsed through his mind as strong as the throbbing sensation in his groin.

She set the clay jar of poison in the cupboard.

Gathering his strength, he strained against the ropes, pulled, heaved. Agony ripped through his wrists; his biceps bulged; his stomach muscles quivered with exertion. More. More. He felt one strand snap. The moments dragged.

She walked back and forth several more times, her slippers quiet against the planks.

Another strand popped and still another.

Ripping himself free with a mighty heave, he let out a savage cry of triumph and sat up all at once. Success sang through his veins. He lurched off the bed, and hurtled toward his prize.

She shrieked and jumped back. Her hair flailed around her, the waves bouncing this way and that, but he was on her in two steps.

In a quick movement, he grabbed her by her shoulders, strong-armed her to the bed, and flipped her unceremoniously onto the mattress.

Breath whooshed from her lungs with a satisfying
oomph.
Her eyes went wide—two round moons—and conquest swam through his body like a raging river. She was his. All his. This time he would stay on guard. There would not be a repeat of what had happened in the church.

Her body sank onto the bed beneath him, warm and female.

A primal throbbing need to take and conquer coursed through his veins, scorching him, demanding restitution for his pride, to repay her for the indignity done to his body.

“You are mine,” he rasped, the words a battle cry from deep inside him. Slowly he began scrunching up her skirt.

Gwyneth gasped, unsure what to do or what to think as Jared’s big body crashed down atop hers, sinking her downward into the cot. He was huge, massive.

Stunned, she pushed against him, but it was like trying to move a catapult by oneself.

“What think you of this, wife?” His breath was warm and sweet, and his voice low and husky but the word “wife” was a sneer.

Her heart raced; she squirmed to get free. The bare skin of his torso was warm against her bodice and he felt so very male. “Cease!”

He forced her arms above her head and transferred both of her wrists to one hand.

Panic lurched into her throat. She wiggled, bucked, writhed, but still he held her. “Let me go! Stop!” she yelled, befuddled with the sudden change in situation—the overturning of power.

“Be still, wife. You are mine now, to take as
I
please. You had no issue exploring my body at will. And now I will do the same to yours.”

Her breath squeezed from her lungs. She turned her head to one side, anxiety climbing into her throat now that she no longer had control of the situation.

She wiggled beneath him, as caught as an insect in a web. “Get off me!”

“Nay.”

The word was spoken softly, calmly, but with so much resolve he could have been shouting.

A shiver went through her.

She could feel his huge hand rasping against the tender skin of her thighs. His fingertips grazed her, hot and commanding. Heat flooded her face. Is this how he had felt? Helpless? Vulnerable?

“Cease!”

“Nay.”

His palm slid up her thigh and cupped the area where her legs met together. His hand felt warm, firm, but not harsh. A bolt of sensation scattered through her body. A primal streak of alarm shot through her veins.

Holy Mary. Not like this! Not with her skirts flipped upward, tupped like a common doxy. But the creaminess between her legs seemed to laugh at her, to mock her. Only minutes before she
had
desired him, had wanted naught more than to couple with him.

But union should be on her terms, not his. Clearly, this man was unsuitable for such a goal and if the marriage was consummated, she’d never be rid of him.

“Please.” The word came out a little strangled.

“Was this not what you wanted?” he said, his voice still soft but with a core of strength about it. Power. Utter power. “To have a man inside you.”

“Nay,” she denied. But she had. She had wanted him. She’d wanted to feel how his manroot would fit inside her.

A controlled anger gleamed in his eyes. She could feel the fierceness rolling off of him in waves, as if his wrath was a tangible thing. “You think men are toys to play with, do you not? Is that not what you are used to—men falling all over themselves to do your bidding?”

Gwyneth blinked. “Nay—”

“No more.” He came off of her all at once. With a hard yank, he pulled her up to a sitting position, and flipped her onto her stomach. Reaching an arm beneath her, he fiercely tugged her up onto her knees so that she hung by her belly over his forearm. The sheets on the cot had the indentation of their bodies impressed into them.

She wiggled back and forth trying to buck off the man behind her. “This is not—”

“Shush.” With an ease of casual indifference, he tossed her skirt fully over her shoulder. The blue silk hung in a ripple by her side. A loud rent echoed across the cottage and chilly air caressed her bare bottom. Her undergarments were flung aside.

Growling, he pulled her hard against the thick bulge of his manhood and bent over her, his mouth near her ear. Like a savage, he sank his teeth into the tender skin of her neck. Chills slid down her overheated body and a small sting of pain lanced her flesh.

He did not break the skin, but held her as a lion would dominate his mate. For all his fearsomeness, she realized he was in complete control of himself. Her world spun as the joint emotions of fear and desire raged through her like a storm.

The fear she understood. But the heady dose of desire terrified her.

Her underarms stung, and the remembrance of how he’d held her at the church, of how he’d pumped the cot around the room using only his body weight shivered through her. He was strong. Powerful. He could hurt her, maybe even kill her if he took her roughly.

Yet there was nothing rough in his firm touch save the teeth sinking into her neck.

Frantically, she forced herself to think, desperate to find a way to appease him and send him on his way with a bag of gold. To consummate the marriage was unthinkable. This was a man she could not control.

“There is no need for this,” she started, using a voice she hoped bespoke calmness and rationality. “I wanted—”

“—me tied and helpless while you did your worst. So you could run your hands over my body, feel my cock, laugh at me, then either poison me or toss me on a boat out of your way. You wanted to use me.”

The skin on her neck felt hot and tingly where his mouth had been. A wave of guilt stormed through her. “I didn’t mean to laugh—”

“Nay? I felt your hands move over me; I thought it was a dream until I woke to find a buzzard staring down at me squeezing my groin with her claws. ”

His words mortified her. Did he know of how she’d lingered over his shoulders, dipped her fingers across the ridges of his stomach, taken guilty pleasure in exploring his body? And he thought of her as a buzzard? An ugly, awkward creature.

Shaking her head at the humiliating memory, she twisted and tried to look over her shoulder at him. “Please! We must get the marriage annulled. If you rape me—”

“It is not rape for a man to copulate with his wife.” The words sounded ominous, as if the whole body of the law and the church stood behind them.

She swallowed, realizing at once exactly how powerless she was, at what she’d brought on herself.

“Asides, I’m not so blind as to not notice the pleasure you took in exploring my body—”

Prickles spread across her cheeks. She’d felt warm, overheated as she’d touched him.

“You lingered over my arms, ran your fingers across my shoulders. ”

She wriggled to one side, tried to push her skirt back down, tried to buck him off of her. His forearm dug into her stomach and he leaned his body so that he was pressed against her, his thighs on hers, his groin against her naked buttocks, his torso against her back. His free hand slid beneath her so that his arm lay across her upper chest just beneath her collarbones and anchored her firmly against his body so she could not move.

A disconcerting spin of desire curled through her. Her shoulders tensed, and nervousness churned in her belly. She could not want him. Not like this.

“Get off me.”

“I do not think so, my captive bird. ‘Twas you who started this, who thought you could drug a man, humiliate him, and suffer no consequences.”

Damn male pride! “You are a peasant and I intended to pay you well! Get off of me and go about your way, falconer. My overlord will see you killed for daring to lay a hand on me, a noblewoman.”

He guffawed. “I am your husband, woman, your lord and master, your family now. You are mine to command.” He pressed against the soft area betwixt her legs, not quite entering her, but disallowing her any doubt of what would soon occur.

“Nay! “ No matter her body’s foolhardy attraction to him, she could not be married to a man such as him. He was too masculine, too much the conquerer. She needed a man she could control. If the marriage was consummated—

She gasped as she was pushed forward on the bed, her buttocks high in the air and her face pressed to the mattress. “Cease!” The linen sheet scraped her shoulder as she tried to scramble forward.

In one strong stroke, he plunged into her.

A scream ripped from her throat as a streak of pain shot through her sex.

He stilled. Perfectly still. As if his whole being had suddenly turned into granite. He didn’t release her, but he didn’t move either.

“Bloody hell. ”

A confusing mix of heat and fear stormed through her. Why had she touched him at all? Again, she tried to wiggle away, but he held her firm.