The Flighty Fiancee (9 page)

“You assume I will sabotage the wedding?” she
asked.

“I think, India,” he said slowly, “That you are
trying to prove a point. I have no idea why. No idea about
anything, if I’m honest. Why the smiling lovely of the first weeks
of the season disappeared. Why you fight me at every turn. Why you
let me ravish you and then coolly inform me to send dinner up on a
tray. I don’t understand any of it. But there is one thing I do
understand. One thing I know for certain. You will marry me on
Sunday. There is no doubt at all about that.”

“Is that right?”

He nodded.
Distance.
That’s what he could
feel, and only now did he recognize it for what it was. Lady India
was putting up barriers between them. Why he did not know, how to
get round them….a wicked idea came to him then and even as he
thought it he called himself all kinds of depraved.
You
can’t,
his mind hissed. The very thought is outrageous.

“And what if I don’t want to?” she asked, the snitty
tone of her voice riling him up all over again. “What if I want to
leave you to dangle as you have left me? To make you wait and
wait….”

“What—”

“To put the shoe on the other foot, Bartholomew,”
she screeched, standing up and flinging her arms wide. “What if I
tell you I agreed to come to Grasswood Park with my own plans in
mind?”

“Plans? I don’t understand you. What did I make you
wait for?” he roared, standing too, his patience snapping into the
thinnest of pieces. “Tell me, woman, you are making no sense!”

“And nor am I going to. I’ll tell you nothing ever
again, Bartholomew. Nothing. We’re done.”

She turned towards the door, though where she
thought she was going completely naked, with the marks of their
passion all over her skin, Bartholomew didn’t know. Hell, he
wouldn’t put it past her to flounce to her room thus. “You wait
right there,” he called out. “I mean it, India, don’t you
dare—”

“Go to the devil,” she screamed.

And the anger pulsed and the outrageous plan seemed
eminently and suddenly very sensible. There was only one way to
deal with her. Only one way to get the answers he needed. So he
strode over to her, grabbed her arm and twirled her around.

“What are you—”

He cut off her exclamation by lifting her into his
arms and striding over to the chair at the head of the table. She
wriggled and shrieked but he ignored her. Settling into it instead
and lying her directly across his lap.

She gasped as his intentions became clear and cured
him. “How dare you!”

“There is no other way with you, India,” he growled.
“I can not believe I played the gentleman so long around you. Quite
clearly I should never have bothered. I need answers and you are
going to give them to me. If this is the only way so be it. You,
Lady India, need a spanking.”

Chapter Thirteen

The arms of the oak chair were cold on her thighs
and chest and India wriggled in an attempt to get away. What the
hell was Bartholomew thinking and how could she stop him!
Everything was turning on its head all over again. Her plan to
seduce him, ease the ache and then be on her merry way to her own
estate was crumbling in front of her and she didn’t know how to
right it again.
What did you expect?
her mind shrieked. It
was never going to work and you knew it! Did she, did she really?
The question burned her mind and India gasped as Bartholomew’s hand
palmed her ass cheek.

“Tell me why you’re angry,” he demanded.

“I will not.”

A light tap hit her cheek and she gasped again.

“Tell me.”

“Go to hell.”

Another tap, this one not as light and to her utter
mortification India felt her nipples harden against the oak.
Bartholomew’s prick prodded her belly, huge and erect all over
again and she bit back a moan. Her mind was muddled. Confusion
seeping into her brain. Her plan had seemed so brilliant sat in her
room in the Curzon Street. Make him wait as he’d made her wait.
Only she hadn’t thought on Bartholomew’s will. Or maybe just
willfully ignored it?

“Every time I ask you a question and you refuse to
answer I am going to spank you,” he said. “And they’ll only get
harder and harder.”

“This is barbaric,” India shrieked, trying
desperately to ignore the fact that his words had shot a ridiculous
thrill of pleasure through her.
Really,
she thought,
what
was wrong with her!
Normal ladies would not enjoy having their
breast bit or their ass cheeks slapped. Surely they wouldn’t?
Surely it wasn’t normal. Conventional….

Unconventional, just like her Papa.
Hammermsith’s words came back to her then and India wriggled again,
a blush staining her cheeks.

“Don’t do this,” India said slowly. “Please.”
Because already the pleasure was boiling. Her body thrumming at the
thought of Bartholomew inside of her again and then what? She’d be
nothing but putty in his hands. Left to languish for months on end
until he decided it was time for them to marry?
Where’s you
spirit, India?
she asked herself. Where’s that Indian fire? One
kiss and you give in?

You have never been a conventional miss….
And
she wasn’t so maybe it was time to live up to that?

“Don’t,” she demanded, her tone much firmer.

“Because it will hurt?” Bartholomew asked, the
weight of his cock burning into her.

“No, because….” She paused not wanting to say the
words she was thinking.

“Remember,” he continued, sipping one finger along
her ass until it reached her wet folds. India moaned from the
penetration and moved her ass up higher. “There isn’t anything you
can’t ask for. Nothing that I will find odd. Ask and I’ll
give.”

How easy it was to be seduced by his words. To
simply fall into them.
But he didn’t want you for so long. You
have to know why. Why now? Why after all this time?
Tonight had
shown her that Bartholomew was a man with high passions. Ones she
reveled in. But without the truth between them India would be
forever resentful, and she’d take every opportunity before Sunday
to make her escape—she knew she would!
Time to live up to
it!

“I’ll tell you if you answer a question for me.”

“Then ask.”

“Why did you stay away from me for so long? Why did
you keep me waiting for this?”

“This?”

“The passion! The desire!”

He kneaded the flesh of her ass, almost absently it
seemed. His other finger dipping in and out. India clenched her
fists to hold back a moan.

“I always wanted you,” he finally said. “Always. Now
answer my question.”

“I don’t want you to do it incase I like it!” she
gasped. “Please, Bartholomew don’t.”

“You will like it,” he said, satisfaction in his
tone. “Why do you think I’m doing it? You’ll be begging for me to
spank you harder every time and whilst you do you’ll tell me
whatever I want to know.”

“You—”

“This is how we’ll settle our arguments,” he added.
“Not with you being distant, putting up those barriers you’ve had
there for months. I should have married you immediately. Should
never have left you to your own devices.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Did you want me to?”

She shook her head, not because she didn’t want to
answer but because Bartholomew was straying into territory she
wanted to keep to herself. Those first weeks when she’d worn her
heart so firmly on her sleeve. Aching for the tiniest of affections
from him. Only he’d given her nothing!

“Go to hell, my Lord.”

The spank was shocking. Hard. Much harder than she’d
expected and India screamed. Pleasure and pain shot over her skin
and she felt her juices flood her thighs, making them sticky all
over again. Bartholomew dipped his finger into her, collecting the
juices before moving to her nubbin.

“You did, didn’t you?” he asked. “You wanted to be
married immediately.”

“No!”

Another spank and she groaned. Pressing herself
against his hand, encouraging the contact. Wanting the
friction.

“Be honest with me, India.”

“I waited for you to show me, to want me,” India
gasped. “I waited so long, but you never did. You just smiled and
patted my hand. Never any desire.”

Another hard spank, his finger back in her quim. “I
didn’t want to scare you. You needed time. I wanted to give it to
you, to make you happy.”

“If you really wanted me you would have claimed me
immediately,” India insisted. “But you didn’t. As soon as Papa
agreed to your offer you left me alone. Secure in the knowledge
that one day you’d have me you saw no reason to bother with me at
all. Only Lord Rockwell changed your mind. You thought I was
slipping from your grip. Admit it, Bartholomew, admit it!” The
words spewed out, India could not stop them. Her heart raced like a
wild thing, her body flushed. And all the while his finger dipping
in and out, his hands grasping her flesh.

“You think I wanted you from jealousy?” he asked.
“You think I wasn’t burning for you since the day you bounced down
those stairs all flush faced and fire eyed?”

“I don’t know!” But she needed to. She needed to
hear the truth from him.
No matter how much it hurts.
Because it would, she realized. She still wanted him as much as she
had that first week they’d met. All the anger and frustration and
disappointment meant nothing in the end. Her plan, so perfect in
her mind, sat in her bedroom seemed laughable now.
But maybe you
knew that
, she thought.
Maybe it was just the excuse you
needed to allow him to bring you here. To let him seduce you and
make you his?

“I never offered for you because of your Rockwell,”
Bartholomew said. “Or,” he continued when it looked like she would
interrupt, “because I needed a wife, or because we knew each other
briefly as children, or anything of the nonsense reasons you can no
doubt make up. I offered for you because I wanted you, India. It’s
as simple as that.”

“You didn’t, though,” India replied, her heart
racing, heat prickling over her skin. “You never so much as tried
to kiss me.”

“I didn’t want to scare you.” He reached out and
took her nub between his fingers, squeezing and pinching it with
such skill that India moaned and shifted her ass higher. He took
her hint and spanked her again. So hard she cried out but not from
the pain but because she loved it.

“Of course I didn’t realize that you were so
passionate, so giving,” he continued. “So filthy. So ready for
everything I had. A long way from the usual English miss. It’s not
expected that a man show his feelings for his wife in such a way,
not in our circles at least. It was so hard to stay away from you,
to pretend. But I did. I followed you at a distance and all the
while I wanted nothing more than to run my hands across every
delectable inch of you. The number of nights I spent pumping my own
cock to your image, India. Night after night.”

India’s heart quivered. Was it true? Could
Bartholomew have wanted her all along? “Why didn’t you marry me
immediately? If you wanted me so much?” she asked. “Why did you
leave me thinking you didn’t want me?”

Bartholomew tugged her nub again and moved another
finger along her ass before dipping into her hole. India groaned
and gripped the oak chair. Her hips moving of their own accord now.
Lifting up and down, finding a rhythm.

“I wanted you to have a season, to find some time to
enjoy the capital, to get used to England again. Of course I wanted
you. Rockwell himself said it. I’ve followed you around like a damn
lap dog!”

“I thought that was true in the beginning...but as
the season went on….” Another pinch, his finger moving deeper, her
nipples pushing against the oak….

“Is that why you became so cold, so reckless?”
Bartholomew asked. “Because you thought I didn’t want you?”

India nodded. Her hips moving a little quicker. “I
waited for you to kiss me, or try to claim me but you didn’t.”

“I offered for you, India, because from the first
moment I saw you I fell for you. How could you have not realized
that? I thought it was obvious to you.”

India’s whole body trembled against his. “Truly? You
don’t want a marriage of convenience?”

“I want you, in any way I can get you.”

The feelings India had tried so hard to bury, the
longings, the dreams, the love, burst forth—as if they had never
been hidden, and as they did something else burst. An orgasm
starling in its intensity, snaking all the way from her nub up to
her head and down to her toes. She screamed her pleasure. Moaned it
and screamed his name. Bartholomew wrung every drop from her until
she was left panting and sighing.

Chapter Fourteen

His cock was throbbing and needed release. India’s
orgasm had been almost enough to drive him over the edge. So he
lifted her and laid her on his lap so that she straddled him. Her
quim was soaking wet and he knew he’d be able to slide into it
without even so much as a pause, but India needed more than that
now. He was fast learning what his flighty fiancée needed and a
simple fuck was not going to do it. His head span with all the
possibilities laid out before them, all the things they could do
together. And he cursed his honor and stupidity for wasting so many
months.

All this time she’d thought he hadn’t wanted her,
when all along he was simply treating her respectfully, trying not
to scare her off! He felt like laughing, screaming his satisfaction
to the sky. Because India couldn’t be scared off, that was clear
now. She was as passionate as he, desperate for everything he had
to give and how he was going to love showing her everything.
Teaching her to take her pleasure and give him his.

It would always be India for him now because…he
paused…because he loved her. It was so clear to him. Because she
was his, just as he’d thought.
She was always meant to be
mine.