“Coupled with you,” he muttered under his breath. “You make it sound so dispassionate. So stiff and cold.”
She continued to eat, not glancing up from her plate. He’d spoken low enough that she could pretend she hadn’t heard him, but he said the next words loudly enough to be clear.
“I want you to know that if you continue to bar the servants from your rooms, I’ll have your doors removed. That would make it interesting when we coupled, wouldn’t it?”
Her fingers tightened on her silverware. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“Am I to have no privacy then?”
“If I wish it.”
She took another miniscule bite of pheasant, chewing it for so long it must have turned to liquid in her mouth. She had magnificent lips. Fine, straight teeth. He wanted to put something quite a bit larger than a bite of pheasant into her mouth. Eventually, he’d try it.
Of course, she’d fight against him and refuse, and take to her bed in a fit of vapors like any well-bred lady would. Perhaps he wouldn’t bother to try. He doubted it would be worth all the outraged whining and crying he’d endure in return. There were a dozen ladies at Pearl’s who could perform exotic miracles with their tongues and lips, for a generous enough fee.
He looked away when he realized he’d been staring at her mouth. He was rigid, aching to push her back on the cushions and fuck her right here in her private, velvet-cushioned mouse hole. Perhaps she realized the bent of his thoughts, for she began to eat with greater intent. Pheasant, potatoes, roasted vegetables, and occasionally, a great drink of wine. Anything to delay the impending bedding, he thought drily. This marriage would kill him within the week.
He had no idea how he’d manage to live with her. He could send her to his country estate, leave her there and go on about life as if she didn’t exist, but that wasn’t an option until he had at least two sons in the nursery.
“Are you finished?” he asked as she picked at the assortment of cakes. She took a little taste of each, although she appeared to crave more. Why demolish the entire plate of pheasant and vegetables in self-preservation, and then leave the cakes? “You may eat all of them if you like.”
She glanced up at him guiltily. “A lady mustn’t overindulge in sweets.”
“Or she’ll be too fat to land a husband? Well, you’ve got a husband, so you needn’t worry about that anymore.” He wanted her to eat the cakes because he thought it would make her happy, and she was so unhappy about everything else. But she didn’t, and after she wiped her lips and hands, he put the tray aside on the bench.
“Before I take you to bed, Aurelia, I think I’d better inspect your bottom and make sure there’s no lingering damage from last night’s spanking.”
As he expected, she went beet red and pulled her dressing gown more tightly closed. “There’s no lingering damage. None at all.”
“I wouldn’t be a very good husband if I didn’t make sure. I doubt you can inspect yourself as closely as I can.” He put a hand on her arm and drew her resisting figure over his lap. “Come now. Don’t make a fuss or I’ll be forced to give you another spanking, and we’ll be right back where we began, won’t we?”
“It’s only—”
“It’s only what? That you didn’t learn your lesson about resisting me last night?”
She went still across his lap. While she let him draw up her dressing gown to bare her bottom, she vibrated with tension. Fury? Fear? Her reluctance aroused him, as did her ample, porcelain bottom cheeks dappled with two or three scattered bruises from the night before.
“You’re not fat, you know,” he said as she trembled beneath his fingers. “You’re perfect as you are. A man wants curves for pleasure. Nothing worse than a skinny, bony derrière.”
Aurelia lay tense and silent over his lap as he ran his palm over the sensitive skin of her bottom. Horrible, to know he stared at her nakedness. He handled her as boldly as he pleased, his full staff straining against his breeches. She could feel it against her hip. Was it true that he found her “perfect”? She’d always imagined herself plump beyond measure, and not attractive at all. She certainly didn’t have a bony derrière. If she had, she wouldn’t have had any padding at all when he walloped away at her.
Oh, she didn’t ever want that to happen again.
He kept her splayed over his lap for three minutes or more, groping and fondling her under the pretense of “inspecting for damage.” The only thing damaged was her dignity, because her husband had spanked her last night, and now forced her to submit to this lewd inspection. Now and then the edge of his thumb drifted between her bottom cheeks, and she jerked away from him. He only pulled her back and resumed his task.
At last, when her face flamed with humiliation, he released her. “Your bottom looks fine. It’s nice to know you can take a decent spanking if the situation warrants. Although I trust we’ll not have an encore performance tonight?” He raised an eyebrow as he took up the candle and gestured her to go out. “To the bed, my dear. Heirs don’t make themselves.”
She preceded him, thinking how terribly awkward and businesslike this was. If she’d wed Lord Warren, she was sure there would have been tenderness, even romance, between them.
But she hadn’t wed Lord Warren.
Lord Townsend lit a few more candles as she climbed into the bed. The sheets had been changed, the bloody evidence of their marriage’s consummation whisked away by a blushing maid as Clement clucked in a soft, pleased voice about honor and becoming a woman.
There was nothing pleasing about it, although Aurelia tried hard not to do anything tonight that Lord Townsend might interpret as “resisting.” He wanted to spank her again. She understood that, even if she couldn’t understand the reason. She didn’t want to give him any excuse to fulfill his wish.
She stared at the delicate floral pattern on the bed linens as her husband disrobed. What she’d seen of him the night before had thoroughly terrified her. He was made so differently from her. Well, of course he was, but he was even different from other men. He was larger, more physical somehow. She’d felt the hard muscles of his thighs last night as he’d laid her over them. She’d experienced the strength of his arms as he spanked her, and when he’d pushed her back on the bed and...mounted her... Well, then she’d felt an entire array of sensations that set her on edge. She had felt weak and fragile, and overtaken.
Her breath came shorter as he climbed onto the bed beside her. She stared at his face because it was easier than looking at the rest of his body. She felt his hard maleness poke her belly as he nudged her back on the pillows.
“There now, my little mouse,” he said. “It won’t hurt as much tonight, I promise.”
She blinked up at him. “Please don’t call me a mouse.”
“What shall I call you then?” He dipped his head, pressing his warm lips to her trembling ones. “Something more scandalous? More erotic?”
The way he kissed her...it scrambled her brain. “You may call me Lady Townsend,” she whispered.
“I don’t think so, little Aurelia.” He said her name in a low, breathless rasp. When she turned her face away, he grasped her chin and brought it back again. “I’ll call you ma petite chatte instead. Do you speak French, my little pussy?”
She startled as his fingers parted the lips of her sex. “I—I don’t think I speak the same kind of French you do.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“And French nicknames seem a bit scandalous.”
“How difficult you are to please. I might call you anything and you’d find fault with it.” He slid his fingers to a hidden, sensitive place between her legs, a button of flesh that warmed in a very pleasant way and made her jerk against him. He smiled and stroked her again, and again. “My little grasshopper. There.”
Her eyes widened. “Grasshopper?”
“Yes, because you’re jumpy, and because you chirp when I touch you. A disapproving type of chirp, and very soft, but there you go.”
Aurelia didn’t think she chirped, but it was possible. The more he fondled her, the less her utterances remained in her control.
“I don’t know if I like being called a type of insect,” she said, shifting to give him better access to that marvelous bit of flesh.
He chuckled and delved his fingers downward, into the shameful, hot wetness that had developed there. She tried not to resist but he was handling her so freely. “Please...that hurts,” she lied.
“It doesn’t. It feels wonderful, and your body wants more. Let me bring you pleasure, Aurelia.”
He did find the most effective places to touch her. The tips of her breasts, the curve of her neck, and that aching, hot place between her legs. She stared up into his dark eyes, thinking that he smelled very good, like cinnamon and sandalwood, and other things she didn’t recognize. An unfamiliar tingling crept up to her breasts and down between her thighs. It wasn’t a civilized feeling, but something very uncontrolled and disturbing. The more he touched her, the more the feeling grew. She grasped his arms, struggling to maintain her composure.