Frayed Bonds (2 page)

Tregarth threw his glass onto the fire in frustration. “Damn
it, Peter. Don’t you think I’d revel in it if she enjoyed a bit of roughness?
But she doesn’t, at least not with me. She doesn’t enjoy anything. She just
becomes distant and wan. This is your fault, you know.”

Peter watched her run after the puppy in the garden below.
It
was
his fault. She was the same vibrant, lovely young woman, but he’d
shown her a part of herself she was frightened of, and she’d run away. He
should have pursued her, taught her there was more to his mastery and her
submission than a physical connection, but she’d run straight into the arms of
Tregarth and announced an engagement inside the week. And John had married her
before the month was out and then their misery had begun. Peter was miserable
because he didn’t have her, John was miserable because she didn’t want him and
Amy was miserable because she wasn’t getting what she needed and didn’t know
how to accept it from John.

He shouldn’t have stayed away so long, let this happen to
John and the woman he loved, but he couldn’t bear to see her with another. “She
needs to be shown what she wants, at a time and in a place and with a man she
is receptive to. She needs to be shown that it isn’t shameful if she enjoys it.
And that she can enjoy it with you without guilt or embarrassment.” But John
knew that, wouldn’t be telling Peter all this if he didn’t know it.

“She’ll hate the man who does it,” her husband said, staring
into the fire.

“That is why it cannot be you. It has to be me.”

John Tregarth looked up from the fire with murder in his
eyes. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d be a monk if I didn’t enjoy it, but I’m not offering
because I want her.” It was only partially a lie. “I’m offering because you’re
my best friend, and you deserve to be happy with your wife.”

Tregarth stood motionless, wavering. Peter pressed on. “She
need never know it’s me. I’ll wear a mask. Send the servants away. I’ll come
back in three days and when I’m done with her, you’ll have her back, the woman
she was, the woman she really is underneath all the confusion and fear.”

“She’ll recognize your voice,” Tregarth insisted.

“She’ll be too shocked to recognize my voice.”

“I love her.”

“If you can’t stand to have me touch her, then do it
yourself. But it’s not as though we haven’t shared women before.”

“You imperious bastard,” said his oldest friend. “You have
no idea what it’s like to imagine the woman you love in another man’s arms.”

He did, but he couldn’t say that, because then John wouldn’t
agree. “No, but you’ll let me take her anyway, because you can’t go on like
this.”

John nodded. “On one condition. You can’t fuck her. I need
to know that Amy and I have something that is ours alone.”

* * * * *

Amy Tregarth had made a mess of her life. She knew it now
and was trying her best to make amends. She had always intended to marry John,
sweet, kind, loving John, who made her laugh and who had a steady presence she
knew she could grow old with. She’d been determined to turn down Lord Herridon,
who had made his intentions clear from their first meeting in Bath, whose gaze
had made her heart flutter and her intimate flesh flood with moisture. He was
not husband material. His passions, she sensed, were as unruly and dark as
hers, and with such a man she was sure she would be lost to her depraved
desires. Or worse, they would spiral down into depravity together.

And then there had been that night at Brinley, when Peter
Mainwaring had shown her exactly what she was. She’d woken up the next morning
determined never to see him again, determined to marry John and bury the wicked
part of herself forever.

It had all gone off without a hitch. She hadn’t seen Peter
Mainwaring again. He’d stayed away from their wedding, avoided them at parties
and in town and refrained from visiting them at Tregarth Farm. She thought
she’d seen him visiting with John three days ago, but when she finally went up
to the parlor there was no one there, and she decided she must have been mistaken.

Unfortunately, while everything she had planned for her life
had come to pass, she had not found happiness with John. She loved him. She was
certain of it. And when, so very rarely, he gripped her hard and pressed her to
the bed and took her the way she craved, she warmed to him, and her body
quickened. But when he tempered his passion, moderated his caresses, whispered
tender endearments instead of hoarse commands, her body cooled.

Her lack of response triggered the same in him, and while he
had soldiered on mightily in the past, now his erection often withered when he
pressed it to her dry slit. She wanted him to show her how to please him, but
his directions were vague, full of euphemism and awkward pauses, and her
unschooled fumbling did nothing to restore his vigor. She wanted to be told,
“Touch me here, lick me there.”

This, she told herself, was her lot, her punishment for
tasting perversion with Peter Mainwaring. But her body wasn’t willing to accept
this verdict. She woke up at night in the bed John was too heartbroken to share
with her, cunt streaming, nipples hard, fingers pumping between her legs,
tormented by vivid dreams of Peter Mainwaring. Only in her imaginings, he
didn’t leave her maidenhead to be plucked, with sweet but dull care, by John
Tregarth. He took it with a punishing stroke and she exploded, just as she had
for him at Brinley.

Her only outlet now was vigorous walking. She trekked for
miles every day, with the puppy bounding along beside her, until she worked up
a sweat. Then she would run up to her room, rip her clothes off, fling herself
on the bed and cry out her misery.

Usually the servants greeted her on her way in the door,
brought her their questions about the menu for dinner, updated her on tasks
accomplished in her absence. She had discovered her talent for household
management at Tregarth Farm. It was small consolation for her unhappiness, but
it was something, and she looked forward to the daily ritual.

Today the kitchens were empty. She presumed the cooks and
maids were off to town to market or in the dairy working. Everything seemed in
good order, although oddly neat and tidy. The tables were bare, no bread rose
in the bowl, no fires burned in the hearth.

When she reached her room, the bed was made, but her afternoon
dress was not laid out. Curious. She stripped down to her chemise and looked
outside the window to find an unfamiliar carriage standing in the drive. When
she opened the wardrobe to pick out a gown, she found the cupboard empty. The
clothes in her dresser were gone as well.

“They’ve been put away, Mrs. Tregarth. You won’t be needing
them.”

She whirled to find a stranger standing in her door and gave
a startled cry. He was masked. Not a party mask, an eyes and nose affair meant
to tantalize and intrigue, but a black leather hood that covered his entire
head, concealing the color of his hair, the shape of his forehead, the set of
his jaw—in short, anything that might serve to identify the man. Only his lips,
eyes and nostrils were visible through small openings in the leather.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Even as she asked
it, she realized the answer could not be good. Masked men generally weren’t
well intentioned. “We don’t have any money.”

He smirked, his lips curling up behind the mask. “Take off
your chemise, Mrs. Tregarth and kneel on the floor.”

“How dare you?” Her heart thudded in her chest, and she felt
moisture trickling down her thighs. “John,” she said weakly. “Where is John?”
She backed toward the window, looking for an escape. “My husband will kill you
if you touch me,” she threatened.

The stranger laughed. “You husband invited me here. Now
let’s dispense with the preliminaries. Remove your garment, and get on your
knees. If I have to ask again, I shall be very displeased. But perhaps that’s
what you were hoping for.”

She felt sick with apprehension, because he was right. She
ought to be thinking of escape, ought to be frightened out of her mind, but
instead a familiar lassitude had settled in the pit of her stomach, made the
apex of her thighs feel heavy and swollen. There was only one reason why she
was not obeying him already, giving in to her depraved desire to be dominated,
and that was the hope that he would make her.

Which was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. She must fight
against her nature as best she could. If not for herself, then for John, who
would be sickened by her depravity. She was determined to make it up to him, to
become a good wife, to learn to enjoy his sweetness, his pure lovemaking.

The masked man was between her and the door, but she must
attempt it. “You’re a liar,” she said. “My husband would never condone this. He
would be sickened by it.” She grabbed a vase off the dresser, flung it at his
head and made a mad dash for freedom. Even as she ran, she felt the slick glide
of her arousal on her thighs.

He deflected the vase easily, caught her by both wrists,
hurled her back into the room and closed and locked the door. She scrambled to
the window, determined to jump if she must, and discovered it nailed shut. She
turned back to find him lounging against the door.

“Do you understand now, Amy? Your husband has done this. He
has sent the servants away. He has nailed your windows shut. He has given me
carte blanche with one small caveat, to train your body for his pleasure so you
can accept yourself and be happy together. It’s all terribly romantic, if you
think about it properly.
Now get on your knees.
”

“Where is he?” she asked, hating the tremor in her voice.

“You’ll see him soon enough. Now submit to me, Amy, or I
will punish you. But you like being punished, don’t you?”

She felt the tears stream down her face almost as fast as
the slickness streamed down her thighs. Something deep in her soul cried out
for her to kneel before this stranger. Almost without realizing it, she obeyed.
She pulled the damp cotton chemise over her head and dropped it on the floor.
The cool air caressed her bare flesh, puckered the nipples of her swollen
breasts. She followed the chemise to the ground, kneeling with her back to the
window, her eyes fixed on the stranger.

She had the opportunity now to study him, his clothes and
the body under them. It was impossible to glean any clue to his identity from
his attire. His gray breeches and coat might be those of a gentleman farmer in
his best suit or those of a fine lord in his country attire. But the voice was
educated, cultured, rich, and the body was that of a soldier, hard, lean,
vigorous.

She felt self-conscious beneath his gaze and covered her
hated tummy, soft and round, with her hands.

“Put your hands behind your back,” he ordered.

She obeyed him, feeling a strange calm settle over her.

“Why did you cover your stomach?” he asked, curiosity plain
in his voice.

“Because I’m fat,” she said automatically, her deepest
insecurities stripped bare.

He knelt and touched her for the first time, running his
warm hand over her gently curving tummy. “No. You’re womanly. The ancients
sculpted their goddesses, their visions of perfection, with soft bellies,
because they’re beautiful. Is that why you don’t respond to your husband’s
caresses, because you’re self-conscious?”

“Yes!” she said, grateful for this escape from her shame.
“That’s it. It’s nothing to do with—”

“Liar.” His voice was harsh. He stopped caressing her tummy
and his fingers dropped to the curls above her slit. “That’s not your problem,
and you know it.” He twirled his fingers in the hair there and then tugged
sharply.

“Ow!” But she realized that she was more surprised than
hurt.

He tugged again, more sharply, and she felt her pussy lips
becoming even more engorged, couldn’t stifle the moan that rose to her lips. He
parted her with his long fingers, but it was an examination, not a caress.
“Lean back. Sit on your heels.”

It was awkward, but she complied. He pushed her knees apart,
pulled her labia wide open, touched the two tiny flaps of flesh that had once
been her hymen. “Such a pity,” he said. “A woman like you, who craves pain with
her pleasure, deflowered with poetry and tenderness. A travesty.”

He slid a single finger inside her vagina. “But you’re still
tight. Almost virginal really.” He added another finger, turned his hand upside
down and caressed the front wall of her body, hitting that sweet spot she had
barely known existed before…Brinley. An image of herself, naked on the grass
while Herridon whipped her, rose unbidden in her mind. Her eyes fluttered shut
and she pumped her hips in time with his clever fingers. Anguished sounds
welled from her throat.

“So tight,” he whispered. “And so wet. Your fluids are
dripping down my wrist. You want this.” His thumb flicked across her clitoris.
She was close, oh so close to coming.

Then he stopped.

She opened her mouth to protest, but he took his drenched
fingers and slid them between her parted lips. “Suck,” he commanded. She
thrilled to the sound of his voice, closed her lips obediently around his
digits and tasted the honeyed tang of her own arousal.

“Good girl. Back on your knees.” She obeyed. His praise made
her cunt tingle in an oddly familiar way, but she was unable to focus on that
now. She felt strangely free, as if no one else and nothing else existed in the
world but this man.

He stood, unbuttoned his breeches and took his cock in his
hand. It was poised inches from her mouth. His hand pumped the shaft. She had
never seen a cock up close. John had made love to her in the dark with the
candle extinguished. He’d kept his shirt on, his cock hidden beneath the
garment until the moment of penetration. She’d glimpsed it only briefly before
it was swallowed by her body. Watching it slide in had aroused her almost
uncontrollably, but then, with his shirt falling like a curtain between her and
the stage, her arousal fled.