“Is that all?” she whispered. “Will you please get it out of me?”
“No,” he answered roughly. He drew back and then moved forward again, filling her, invading her, causing that frightening stretch and ache.
“Don’t hurt me.”
“I won’t hurt you, for God’s sake. It’s supposed to feel good.”
His voice sounded tight. She breathed in small pants. Good? It was the most outrageous, intrusive activity imaginable. This was what men loved to do, so much that they seduced women, and kept mistresses and whores? She couldn’t understand.
“Aurelia,” he moaned, as he withdrew and surged forward again. There was no denying it—he found pleasure in this. He gripped both her hands in one of his and used the other to tilt back her head. He kissed her, a strong, insistent play of lips and tongue that forced her mouth open. He pressed his tongue inside her the same way he pressed his—his—thing inside her. Her wrists ached where he held them. She felt an uncomfortable pressure in her pelvis above and beyond his presence there. She squirmed against him, not knowing her part in this bizarre exchange.
“If you do that, this will be quickly over,” he said through clenched teeth.
Oh, she wanted it over. She squirmed again and squeezed around him, as if she might be able to force him out of her. He gasped out indecent oaths that blistered her ears. She’d never heard such coarse language. Would he pull away and punish her? What would be worse, enduring more of this “lovemaking” or having her backside blistered again?
Her bottom felt sensitive and sore as his thrusts pushed her against the mattress. She didn’t know if she could bear another spanking. Better to be still and let him finish whatever on earth he was trying to accomplish. He kissed her jaw, her forehead, her temple, moving into her, deeper, deeper, deeper. It was fast and slow, hard and soft, long and shallow and then so forceful she slid across the bed. She couldn’t get her bearings and she couldn’t understand the nagging urgency she felt, that she should be doing something. But whenever she moved her hips he looked harried and displeased, and cursed again.
“My hands hurt,” she said against his ear. “My wrists.”
He let go of them. “Put your arms around my shoulders. Hold on to me,” he ordered in a voice so vehement she didn’t dare disobey.
Gingerly, she encircled her husband’s broad shoulders and let her hands rest on his back. She could feel his muscles work as he moved in her, could feel all the leashed power beneath his dampened skin. He didn’t hurt her so much anymore. Her body had finally come to accept his length and girth, but there was still that uneasy feeling of being joined to him. She couldn’t close her legs. She couldn’t escape him. She felt breathless and anxious to be finished.
With a shuddering gasp, he pressed his cheek to hers and went still. His hips ground against hers, lifting her from the bed. All the muscles in his back tensed as he jerked, and he made a noise that wasn’t words, only sounds, like he was dying.
He has had some kind of attack, she thought. He has died here in my bed and everyone will blame me for it.
She gave a small, whimpering cry, imagining her father’s disapproval, but then he lifted his head and looked at her. He was definitely alive. His gaze burned her, it was so intense.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Is it...finished?”
“Yes, damn you. It’s finished.” He shook his head when her face crumpled. “No, don’t. Don’t cry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He dropped his chin. “Damn it to hell.”
She bit her wobbling lip, not wishing to risk his wrath. A tear squeezed out anyway. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I did that wrong.”
He made a frustrated sound and pulled away from her, and sat on the edge of the bed. After a moment, he raked a hand through his hair, so that when he turned back to her, the black wavy locks stood on end.
“It’s not that you did it wrong,” he said. He reached and touched her hair, and rested his palm a moment against her cheek. He kissed her forehead, then drew away, his lips pursed.
She waited for him to say something else, to explain, to calm her confused agitation. But he said nothing. He stood and walked over to retrieve his dressing gown. His organ didn’t look so frightening now, having somehow shrunk to half its previous bulk. It wouldn’t have been so bad, she thought, if it had remained that size.
“I suppose you’ll be more comfortable if I sleep away from you,” he said gruffly. “If I stayed in my own rooms.”
“Oh. Yes.” She would prefer that a thousand times over what had just transpired. “If that’s possible, I would prefer it.”
He looked away from her, toward the ceiling, then toward the door. “Very well. Good night.”
“Good night.”
He didn’t even put on his dressing gown, only stalked across the room and opened the door, and stepped into the hall. A moment later, she heard his door slam with a bang. Well, my goodness, he was strange. His servants might have seen him in that state of undress. She thought it very reckless of him, even if his room was just across the hall.
She lay shivering in bed, trying to collect her scattered thoughts, trying to understand what had just happened. Her mother said this act could result in affection between a couple, as well as a baby. She put her hand over her womb, wondering how fast these things took place. As for affection, she felt nothing of that. The look he had given her as he quit her company...
She supposed men didn’t like being forced to marry, but she’d been forced, too. All in all, it had been a horrible day, even more horrible than she had imagined.
She wept as quietly as she could. She didn’t want him to hear.
Chapter Four: A Bloody Damn Waste
“My, my, what have we here? Observe, my friends. The married specimen.” Warren’s voice rang out in the dim, smoke-filled confines of their gentlemen’s club. A hand flattened atop Hunter’s news sheet as another lifted his half-empty glass.
“What are we drinking, Lord Townsend?” asked August in a mocking tone. He took a sip as he slid into one of the seats at the table. “Ah. A big, golden, whiskey-flavored glass of regret.”
“Don’t say such things,” Warren scolded. He knocked off August’s hat and made room for Arlington to set a chair beside him. “A married man doesn’t feel regret, only the lofty ecstasies of love.”
At those words, all three men stared at Hunter.
“Do you feel in love?” Warren prompted.
Hunter couldn’t profess to be in love, no. In fact, he’d languished in a most uncomfortable state of self-loathing since he’d left his wife’s bedchamber the night before. Aurelia had been beautiful, lush, nubile, innocent—and icy as her glacier-gray eyes. He’d enjoyed himself anyway, availing himself of her hot, tight pussy because it was his right, and because he’d gone without sex the entire week before.
That had been a mistake, of course. He hadn’t been as controlled as he ought to have been for her first time. He hadn’t been patient, at least not patient enough to overcome her deeply ingrained fears. He’d spanked her, to correct her in the notion that she might ever refuse his attentions, yes, but he’d done it selfishly too. He’d done it because it excited him, pervert that he was. The memory of her round, spankable arse still roused a rigid response in him. Had Warren asked him a question? He couldn’t remember.
“He’s rendered speechless by the blissful state of matrimony,” Arlington said, signaling for more libations. “Let’s hope Lady Dormouse flourishes in an equally blissful mood.”
“I wouldn’t think so, since he’s here at the club the day after his wedding,” Warren said glumly.
Hunter shrugged. “My wife’s in hiding. I hope the servants took her breakfast. Otherwise she’s starving to death in her bridal bower.”
“You’d best keep her alive, or you’ll have to answer to Laudable Lansing,” August said. “And he’s not one to be crossed. Then there’s Little Lansing to worry about. The Marquess of Whatever.”
“Severin,” said Hunter. “The Marquess of Severin.”
“The brother,” Warren nodded, still glumly.
They looked around. The Duke of Lansing never showed his face at the gentlemen’s clubs but his son—Aurelia’s brother—sometimes did. The Marquess of Severin did not appear to be in attendance but a bottle of whiskey was delivered to the table with a note.
“Ah,” said August, flipping it open. “With regards from the Earl of Newscombe. Congratulations on your marriage and all that.” He flipped the card over to Hunter. “You see, they all want to weasel into our depraved little group, since we’re down one member.”
“You’re not down one member,” said Hunter, once he’d turned to thank Newscombe with a nod. “I have no intention of turning into Laudable Lansing and forgoing the sins of the flesh.”
“But you’ve a wife now,” said Warren.
“What does that matter?”
“Here, gentlemen,” said Arlington, interrupting their spat. “As the first one of us to bed a virgin, I believe Towns deserves some type of commendation.” The duke poured for everyone at the table and held up his glass. “To Lord Townsend, who stuck his cock where no cock’s been before.”