Perilous Risk (42 page)

“No, you've been so ill. It is too soon,” she protested.

He wrapped her fingers about the shaft. “Does it feel like it is too soon?”

“Well, no but…it
is
too soon.”

He moved her hand up and down the smooth, hot flesh. Her blood quickened.

“I want to make love, Rebecca.”

“Make love, eh?”

He chuckled softly. “Yes, make love. I am not up to giving you a proper fucking.”

Despite her misgivings about his fitness for the act, she couldn’t help but stroke him. His cock was so magnificent. Her cunny was so empty, becoming wet, clenching and longing to be filled. She crossed her legs with the intensity of the ache.

But the best thing would be if she were to give him pleasure with her mouth, if he was so determined to have pleasure this night. And then they could go to sleep.

Intending to initiate just that kind of act, she bent her head towards his erection.

He took her hands and lifted them away from his body. “No.”

“But—”

“No, I want to make love to you. Not the other way around.”

“But you’re not well enough for this.” She tried to pull her hands free.

He held her firm. “Stop it, Rebecca.”

“Stop what? Trying to care for you?” She tried harder to pull free.

But he was like a block of granite. “Stop leading.”

His forbidding tone made her freeze. She glanced up at his face and what she saw in his eyes sent a shiver racing through her.

Oh, she had pushed too far.

He was pressing her back on the bed. “You need training.”

“Training?” That was something for a green girl. Not a woman of her age and experience.

“Aye, training. So long as you played his games, he spoiled you.”

“Spoiled me?”

“He must have, for you are often badly behaved. As you were that first night in the carriage.”

“How can you say that I am badly behaved? I have submitted myself to you fully.”

He shook his head. “Too often you try to take the lead whilst pretending to be the woman.”

Her breath came quicker and quicker. Tension tingled along her skin. Equal parts uneasiness and heat settled into her belly.

He pressed her into the featherbed, his strong body looming over her. His iron grip on her hands was a reminder of his strength, his force, his illness notwithstanding. “I am your lord and master.”

A new set of tingles radiated through her belly.

“What will you say if you really wish me to stop?”

“Halt.”

“But you know you were a naughty girl. You know you deserve to be punished.”

“Shall I be punished?”

“Definitely.”

Flutters erupted in her stomach. “When?”

“Now.”

But she was on her back. The flutters in her belly dissolved into a quiver of dread. How would he punish her in a position like this?

His handsome face was above hers, his dark blue eyes piercing into hers. “I see your thoughts. You wonder what I intend.”

She swallowed against an increasingly dry throat and nodded.

“I intend to show you that your body belongs to me. I claimed it. I am not some man that you seduced into your bed. You don’t have to anticipate my wants. I'll tell you my wants in clear and no uncertain terms.”

He took his cock and rubbed it against her slit.

His directness made her tremble.

“I want you. I want you just as you are. I don’t care if you can speak flawless French or not. I don’t want you to act more sophisticated or younger or wittier or anything else. I just want you to be you.”

“Was I trying to be anything else?” she asked in a sincere tone.

“Yes, at times. And I see your questioning as to whether I want you or whether I would prefer that you be something else, something better. I take care of your needs. I master your body. You do not need to entice me or think of how to care for my carnal needs. You need only to obey.”

He moved smoothly down her body, not stopping to kiss or caress her as he had always done before. He pulled her legs until her bottom came to the edge of the bed.

“Stephen.”

“Hush. Unless you tell me to halt, you are to say nothing.”

She pressed her lips together and watched him thrust his dark head between her thighs.

He put his mouth on her and sucked her nub quite firmly. Too firmly. And increasingly so. The intensity of sensation brought her hips off the mattress.

“Ah!” The cry was wrung from her as he continued. It was too sudden, too strong. She hadn’t been warmed up enough for that sort of contact. Yet her cunny was drawing. Her tension rose. Tingles shot from her sex, down her thighs to the soles of her feet. She clutched the quilt and squirmed, trying to rub her feet on the floor to ease the ticklish sensation.

He was moving his tongue against her now and—what was that? Humming? God, how could anyone move their tongue so agilely, so quickly? It should have been pleasurable.

But it wasn’t.

Well, maybe. Not exactly. Oh, oh, oh! Convulsive spasms wrenched through her sex, her hips bucked off the bed again and again. He kept sucking and tonguing her with the determination of a fiend. Then he took her nub between his forefinger and thumb. Pinched her harder than—

Fuck!
Bloody fuck!

Intense pleasure shot through her cunny up into her womb and belly. She writhed and twisted and cried out. But it had happened too soon. It lacked depth. Her moan began to echo like a mournful wail in her ears.

She fell back against the bed. “Ohhh!”

He fastened his mouth on her again. She was too damned sensitive. She rolled her head. “No, no!”

But he persisted, driving her back to the precipice.

She lay with eyes closed. “I can’t believe you wou—”

Her orgasm swept through her, powerfully, taking her breath. She couldn’t resist. She wanted to come so badly, so badly. She gave into the spasms that overtook her, fierce and hard. Yet the spasms were receding just as quickly as they had come. There had been no pleasure in it. She released a soft shriek and fell back on the bed.

“Damn you! Damn you!” she cried, her voice shaking as her sex convulsed one last time.

He did not release her.

“No, oh God no!”

He thrust his finger into her channel.

Wait
, not one, but two fingers, filling her, stretching her. Moving them in and out.

“Yes, yes…oh please, for the love of God, yes!” she chanted, hugging his head with her thighs, entwining her fingers in his hair. Faint bliss washed over her, coming in regular waves. Oh, she was going to come, really come this time—

He sucked on her nub, hard, too hard.

Pleasure-pain like nettle stings electrified her. Like lightning, the orgasm shot through her, sudden, jarring, violent.

“Ohh!” she cried as the painful contractions wracked her, going deep into her pelvis.

And then it was over and he released her.

Tears filled her eyes and she just lay there, letting them fall. She’d had no idea. No idea.

She’d been denied release before, certainly. Made to wait an unbearable time when she’d been really naughty. But never had any past lover forced her to come before she was warmed to it and her body ready for the sensations. An orgasm could be punishment…who could have ever imagined?

Apparently Stephen had.

He gathered her into his arms. “Shh,” he whispered against her temple.

She clung to him and pressed her head to his chest.

He caressed her hair. “It’s all done.”

At his tender tone, she cried all the harder. They lay there, sideways on the bed, she sobbing and he comforting her. Yet he had been the cause of her torment. No one else would or could ever understand but she felt closer to him in that moment than she’d felt to anyone in her life.

“Who is your lord and master, girl?”

“Ohh…” It was the only sound she could manage to utter.

He rolled on his side, carrying her with him and delivered a firm slap to her arse. “Who is your lord and master?”

“Stephen Drake.”

“That’s my good girl.”

She nodded and choked back a last sob. He had been right. All the times before, she had played at games of submission.

Tonight, she had submitted truly for the very first time.

He was aroused yet he made no move to take what she would have willingly given. Instead, he pulled her with him to lay properly on the pillows, then pulled the coverlet over them. He hugged her fiercely. “You’re mine, completely mine. I have claimed you just as you are.”

If possible, she went even more limp in his arms. A sense of safety, of being utterly cherished, warmed her from head to foot.

Sleep slowly drifted over her.

* * * *

Over the next few days, Stephen made good on his promise to train her. Once she had berated herself for forgetting the bread in the oven and burning it. And once she had apologised for not anticipating that he would want supper early since they had gone on a long walk and he had grown tired and hungry.

Both times, he had simply grabbed her and dragged her onto his lap and spanked her soundly.

Goodness, the shame of having earned his displeasure had hurt her to the core.

Now, on the tail of her latest infraction, having denied him sexual relations because she thought he should rest, she lay across his lap, waiting for the spanking to end. He had such large, powerful hands, he could spank harder than she’d thought a man could.

Or perhaps it was simply that he was more determined than other men.

Finally, the blows stopped. “I’ll hear your apology, but first let us be clear about what this punishment is for.”

Is for? Was it not over?

A sinking sensation rocked her belly.

“I would never punish you for refusing my husbandly rights. You are empowered to refuse carnal relations. I want that much understood.”

“I understand,” she said in a soft, small voice.

“I punished you because you continue to anticipate my needs. You are not my caretaker.” He gave her a gentle push out of his lap.

She stood on legs that still shook from the sensations humming in her blood from his sound spanking.

“If I want your service, I shall ask in clear and no uncertain terms.”

“Yes, Stephen.”

“On your knees.”

With her heart gone all fluttery, she hurried to comply.

He was unfastening the buttons on his fall. “I don’t require you to demonstrate a courtesan’s skill. Tonight, I just want a warm, moist mouth to suck me to completion.”

His blunt words might have hurt her at the start of their liaison. But tonight, oddly, she felt relieved to hear them. She didn’t have to worry about the women he’d been with before. If they were extravagantly beautiful, skilled, younger than herself.

It didn’t matter. She believed him. He would tell her exactly what he wanted and needed.

He was her husband and he didn’t expect to be entertained or to have sexual relations that could ignite fireworks every night. Had she honestly felt that the men before had expected that?

Yes, actually she had.

She opened her mouth and took him inside and set to sucking him with a slow but steady motion.

He threaded his hands into her hair and gripped her head. “Yes,” he said in his hoarse voice. “That’s it exactly.”

Later, listening to his breathing as he slept, she felt the night’s chill penetrating the thick quilt. They needed at least one more. But that would mean a journey into the cellar because she had searched everywhere else in the cottage.

Since coming here, she had oft imagined odd noises down there at night. She was developing a fear of dark, damp, closed-off places. Fear of what might happen to her in there. Fear inspired by men like Gerard and the Earl of Barnet.

She hated to ask her uncle to give up some of his blankets because he was always running short on them, always giving them away to patients who were needy. She had recently posted a message to her housekeeper in London to send several of her heavy quilts here. However, in the meanwhile that fear had kept her from searching the last place for more covers for the bed.

* * * *

“How dare you marry without consulting me first.”

Rebecca stared into her father’s eyes, cringing at the open censure, the open indignation. “Well, you see, it happened very fast.”

“I am hurt, Rebecca, deeply hurt.” He held himself stiffly, tossing his head and shaking his white mane back off his shoulders.

Barely a week and a half had passed since her marriage to Stephen. She had hoped that Father might simply be happy for her.

She had also written to Edwin and her son had already replied that if she were happy, he would be happy for her too.