Wolf Bride (20 page)

‘It should have been better,’ he told her, his gaze dropping to the swell of her breasts in the tight gown. ‘I will make it better next time.’

His fingers played with her wavy golden hair, pulling it free from its pins, seeming to enjoy how it fell loosely about her face. His eyes darkened as he stared down at her. Then he bent and suddenly kissed her on the mouth, taking her by surprise.

She resisted at first, then felt her lips part almost instinctively under that pressure. His tongue darted in, tasting her, exploring her own tongue and mouth, and Eloise gasped. The kiss deepened, grew more demanding, and her body turned wanton under it, her secret place growing moist and warm, longing for him to enter her again as he had done that afternoon.

‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘Like this.’

His hand clasped the nape of her neck, holding her still, not bothering to be gentle, and something about that dominating gesture inflamed her senses.

She was his chattel, yes. But more than that, she was his wife. Even if it made her a wanton, she desired her enigmatic husband as much as he desired her.

Wolf fell to his knees before her, a hungry look on his face, and pushed up the skirt of her gown.

She felt cool air on her thighs, and moaned with shame and excitement. ‘Your servant . . .’

‘Yates will not interrupt us.’

Of course not, she thought, staring down at his head. Doubtless he had entertained women here before, as a young man, away from the disapproving eyes of his father, and Yates had served supper in the same way, knowing better than to enter the room again until the young Wolf had taken his pleasure.

He placed her feet on his shoulders. ‘Open your legs to me,’ he muttered. ‘I need to see you uncovered. To feel and taste you. Let me in, Eloise.’

She obeyed him without question, her body eager of its own accord to be examined and tasted by him. As her legs fell apart, he slipped his hands up her thighs, slowly, exploratively. She never wore undergarments, for they were considered lewd, and besides it kept a woman’s body clean to be open to the air. His fingers found her easily, spreading aside her flesh, finding and stroking her secret core until she gasped. Then his head bent between her thighs, and she felt the warm slick stroke of his tongue across that burning flesh.

Her head fell back against the wooden back of the settle, and she cried out, pushing back at him with her feet. He braced himself against her, pushing his tongue inside, and her legs shook. His tongue ran over the sensitive nub of flesh at her apex, then dipped back inside.

Again she cried out, no longer caring if his servants heard her. Wolf’s tongue played her like an instrument, flicking, licking, sucking and stroking while she moaned and trembled, her rear lifting off the settle as though to urge him on, draw him deeper inside.

‘My lord,’ she managed hoarsely, ‘my lord.’

Wolf pushed one finger inside her slick heat, and at the same time worked feverishly at her nub with his tongue. Although it felt good, it was not enough. He seemed to be learning every inner fold of her flesh, how it worked, why it needed his touch so much, what delicious strokes and pressures it required to make her shake and cry out. But what she really craved was to be entered and possessed again, to be shown in the most intimate, physical way possible that she was his wife.

‘My lord, what?’ he demanded, his tone almost brutal.

She could not deny him what he wanted. And it was what she wanted too, after all. For this sweet and sticky yearning to be satisfied by the hard length of her husband’s cock inside her.

‘Take me,’ she begged him.

He laughed, his fingers stilling on her wet flesh as though his caresses had all been a tease and he had no intention of bringing her to completion. He let her gown drop and stood in front of her, smiling down into her flushed face.

‘Come, don’t be so eager to bring our pleasure to a close, my bride. You only lost your innocence a few hours ago. There is much else to learn beside the act itself.’

Confused, she waited as he dragged his shirt free of his hose, then carefully released himself.

Her hunger grew into an urgent throbbing between her legs when she saw that strong column of flesh spring out into his palm once more. It was just as she had remembered it, an organ made to pleasure and satisfy both of them.

His lips twitched into a smile again at her expression; his fist encircled and tugged on the vein-swollen shaft. His hand moved, and its smooth head glistened as though already moist with longing, growing even fatter. She could not help licking her lips as she watched his movements, imagining him inside her.

‘Hungry?’

She stared up at him, dazed with need, then looked back at his cock. It stiffened under her gaze, growing more erect.

Hungry?

Could he be asking what she thought he was asking?

His other hand played with her tousled hair, pushing it away from her face, looping it over one shoulder. Then he ran his thumb across her parted lips, watching her closely.

‘You’re so very desirable,’ he breathed, his lids drooping heavily over his eyes as he looked down at her breasts in the tight bodice, her slender figure. She saw him stroke himself slowly, close to her body. His voice almost seemed to shake as he whispered, ‘If you’re hungry, take me in your mouth and suck me.’

Half out of her mind with excitement, Eloise ran her tongue across dry lips and saw his gaze fix on that tiny movement with a sudden burning intensity.

‘Suck you?’ she repeated, also in a whisper, not quite understanding what he wanted but having a good idea.

‘Yes, my bride, I want you to suck me. To take my cock into your mouth and pleasure me with your tongue as I have pleasured you,’ he explained, his language deliberately coarse, as though trying to shock her. His eyes mocked her stillness. ‘What? Did you think you had no role but to lie on your back and accept me inside you until you were with child? Oh no, my lamb. There is more to be done between a man and his wife than simple, dumb coupling. Much, much more. And I intend to teach you everything I know.’

Eloise knew what her husband was demanding, yet found herself momentarily unable to obey, her whole world shifting on its axis as she realised the fundamental error she had made. Her life as Wolf’s bride was far removed from that hazy, domesticated picture of marriage she had envisaged at court. Instead of facing the thousand daily boredoms of household management and other duties, it seemed Wolf wished her to be more concubine than wife.

She ought to refuse, to close her mouth. And yet she was excited by his unexpected order.

Her eyes focused on the smooth, shiny head so near to her mouth, the powerful shaft below it. For an instant, she could not breathe, her mind frozen. How could she ever hope to accommodate such a monster in her mouth?

Wolf made an impatient noise under his breath. He put a hand behind her head, pulling her down.

‘Suck me, Eloise,’ he ordered her again, and this time she knew she had not imagined the slight shake in his voice.

Inexorably, she was drawn towards his groin until her parted lips were almost touching him.

She was trembling herself now. But with desire, not fear. At the first understanding of his instruction, she had been frightened, yes, but also filled with a fierce, shameless desire to taste her husband, to ‘know’ him with her mouth, her whole body alive with it. And it was all she could do to hide her eagerness.

What would Wolf think if he knew how much her body yearned for his, a man who until that afternoon had felt like a stranger to her?

Her lips opened, stretching about the swollen head, and for the first time she tasted him. Salty, but clean, and with a faint hint of something else . . . the scent of love. She had smelt it about herself after he had left her that afternoon, a gorgeous lingering aroma about the bed and her body that had to be his seed.

Now she tasted it in her mouth, and it drove her wild.

His hand tangled in her hair, urging her to take him deeper. ‘More,’ he said hoarsely.

She responded, widening her mouth and her eyes too, staring up at her husband as his thick root slipped further inside her. His flat belly was at her eye-level, then his powerful chest, and above that she could see Wolf looking down at her with approval in his face. Approval and growing desire.

Experimentally, she swirled her tongue up and down his shaft, and saw him grimace as though in pain. His shaft jerked and swelled in her mouth, seeming to thicken even more.

He muttered, ‘Sweet Jesu,’ under his breath. His fist clenched in her hair, tugging her even closer.

Had she done something wrong? Hurt him, perhaps?

‘No, don’t stop,’ he muttered when she fell back a little, her eyes wide, looking up at him in concern. ‘That was . . . good. Very good. Keep going.’

Encouraged by his praise, Eloise licked more firmly along his shaft, and this time was pleased rather than disconcerted by its nervous jerks. She pulled him out a few inches, and rolled her tongue about the head of his cock instead, and tasted again that sweetish hint of seed. It seemed to be oozing in tiny beads like transparent amber from a hole in the tip.

Daringly, she curled her tongue up tight and dipped it into the hole, tasting him properly.

This time he groaned, stroking her head, and she closed her eyes, her whole being warm and humming with joy. She might not be experienced, but it seemed that just the touch of her tongue could give her husband pleasure.

‘Do you trust me?’ Wolf asked, withdrawing his length as she moved to lick him once more.

Her eyes flew open and she stared up at him again, slowly returning to reality. His handsome face was hard but inscrutable, his blue eyes darkened, jaw clenched against some tightly controlled emotion. Trust him? What had he meant by that question?

‘Because you have to trust me now, Eloise.’ His voice was suddenly hoarse and his hand seemed to tremble, stroking her hair. She was startled, for she had never seen Wolf so unsure of himself. ‘I know it’s been difficult for you, forced to leave court, to leave your . . . friends behind and marry a stranger. And I haven’t given you much cause to see me as a friend, let alone a lover. But I need you to leave all those doubts behind now, and trust me. Can you do that?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Wolf knew he was making himself vulnerable to this woman, beginning to feel more than lust when he was inside her, something he had hoped to avoid. Yet he could not seem to help himself. He had thought their marriage would be a simple, bloodless transaction: sexual union with a girl he had once ached for as a youth with no experience of the world, grieving for a lost mother. It had seemed to him fitting that he should be allowed, after such hard and lengthy service to the king, to come back here a few months of the year and bury himself in her body, recalling an earlier time before he had lost his ability to love.

That, at least, was how he had expected this marriage to work. In exchange for his protection and the comfort of his wealth, Eloise Tyrell would submit to him, despite her reservations and any feelings she still harboured for her former suitor.

Together they would make a child. Many children, perhaps. His honour would be fulfilled, his name could continue, and Wolf Hall might become a home again, no longer a vast empty shell which mocked him with its silence.

Only he had not expected to feel so much when he possessed her. Indeed, he had not expected to feel at all.

He had thought this burning raw emotion was impossible for him. His heart had been dead since Margerie rejected him as a youth, compounding his fears of women’s infidelity. Yet he could not believe in love, he thought, staring down at her.

He did not love Eloise, no more than she loved him. There was no such emotion as love. It was merely the word women gave to their need to be looked after, and which men used to disguise their rutting, beast-like natures.

‘I trust you,’ she whispered in response to his question. ‘What do you want of me?’

‘Tip your head further back.’ Briefly, Wolf showed her what he needed. His fingers lingered on her neck, her soft skin. ‘Like this. Open your mouth and throat to me.’

His need to come was so urgent he could scarcely control himself. His hands trembled as he positioned her, and he wondered with a flash of dry humour what she must think of him, her lord and master, whose hands were not even steady.

As soon as her head was tilted back, her lips parted wide at his instruction, he fed his cock back inside her mouth. Just the head first, then the shaft, which was more rigid than ever before, almost painful with the need to come. Wolf did not wish to frighten her with his length, but could not help himself. He kept pushing deeper and deeper into her throat, inch by slow inch, until he thought he would come from the incredible pleasure.

He praised her as she struggled, cupping her cheek, softly murmuring her name, keeping her head tilted back when she would have rebelled.

At last he was so deeply embedded that his balls were brushing her chin. He sighed, his fingers brushing her cheek in approval.

‘Such a talented mouth,’ he told her softly. ‘Who would have thought it of my innocent bride?’

He began to withdraw again, but painstakingly, holding her in position. When his cock was nudging her lips, he told her to taste him, then watched in near insanity while she obeyed, avidly licking her tongue round his swollen head.