Oh, aside from that hardened jaw, his face was completely expressionless. What was he thinking?
“A fortnight,” he said.
“A fortnight!” She gaped at him. Then she composed herself and said in a calmer tone, “Two months.”
“One.”
Relief swept through her. “One month, then.”
She would find a way to convince him into staying six weeks or two months. Whatever she could manage. As her uncle suggested, she would work hard at gleaning what was driving him to wish for death. But for now, she would gladly take one month. She smiled. Then she remembered. “But what about—”
“I shall read this letter before you send it.” He frowned slightly. “But I wouldn’t have thought you should want to be friends with her. She took him from you.”
“She’s just a girl.”
“She’s a former widow and a mother three times over now.”
“Yes, but any woman under thirty is just a girl to me, Stephen. And she is so painfully shy and yet beneath that shyness she has a very intelligent mind. She’s stubborn in her own knotty-headed way. I cannot imagine that she always finds it easy to be a countess or wife to Jonathon Lloyd. He can be so maddeningly determined to get his own way.”
“I see.” He was studying her speculatively.
Under his scrutiny, she found the words spilling out. “Gently reared ladies can be quite prideful. And gentlemen seem to have no understanding or compassion for how very public and demanding a lady’s position can be.”
Amusement lit his eyes. “And how did you come to be so understanding of noblewomen and their troubles?”
“So many of them are our customers at the shop.”
His expression turned softer, affection glowing in his eyes. “Ah, and they tell you their troubles, of course, because you have always been so kind, so compassionate.”
Was there admiration in his voice? Heat suffused her face. He was determined to see her as more than she really was. “It is easy to listen to people.”
“Few people truly listen to and hear others.” He was smiling broadly now. “Well, write your letter to her and I shall read it. I shall see it posted before we leave for this cottage your uncle has provided for us.”
She couldn’t help but smile. He really did intend to allow her to take him to the cottage…and to nurse him back to health? Yes, hopefully.
Her blood was practically humming and she stood on her toes, intending to place a kiss on his cheek.
He grasped her by both arms but gently. “You’re going to be my wife.”
Shock washed over her. Oh, she had forgotten—no, that part hadn’t quite sunk in yet. Her heart began beating wildly and her breaths came very fast, heightening her earlier sense of excitement. “So I shall.”
“Lady Drake.”
Lady Drake. Oh dear, she hadn’t fully thought out that part. Dizziness swept over her. She’d be a baroness. How would she ever—
He brought his mouth down on hers, his mouth lush, sensual, the fervour of his kiss as he opened his mouth sucking her breath away.
She would be his wife.
Elation swept through her at the thought and she kissed him back, every bit as fervently.
* * * *
Rebecca stood near the hearth in the parlour.
Oh, how she wished this part was already done with! She was still in her woollen day dress. She hadn’t thought to bring anything grander to wear. But what did it matter? Stephen was wearing his dark blue suit with a plain grey waistcoat, his stock simply knotted. It was the marriage that mattered, not the ceremony, wasn’t that so?
The marriage.
She had failed at her first marriage. She had failed Donald. And failed her father before that. She put her hand to her mouth to silence a miserable moan. Pray God that she wouldn’t fail Stephen.
She mustn’t.
But what if he discovered the real Rebecca, the one who couldn’t possibly measure up to his impressions, his expectations? Would the disappointment crush the life out of his affection for her?
Nausea wove through her stomach. She would never be able to bear it if he were to turn away from her.
A cough from Stephen tore her from her thoughts. She jerked her head up to him.
Why was he coughing? Was he feeling ill?
She couldn’t tell from his expression. His face was still pale and she noted the new delineation of his cheekbones, the growing hollowness in his cheeks. The extraordinary prominence of his Adam’s apple. He’d never been that lean before. Strangely, the thinness accentuated his handsomeness, made all the lines more deeply etched.
Was he exhausting himself? Should they take a break so he could rest?
Stephen showed the minister the special license. The minister took it and as he was retrieving his spectacles from his pocket, the minister’s wife glanced at the paper. Then she cut her gaze to Rebecca. Those pale blue eyes seemed to pierce into her, suspicious and desiring to penetrate all her sordid secrets.
Prickles tickled down her spine, icy tentacles that made Rebecca hug her shoulders to suppress a shiver. She fooled no one, everyone could see the commoner in her plainly.
Could they also see the wanton?
How would she ever play the grand lady? Society would hate her.
She’d never been hated before. Even with Jon, in the Dragoons, there had been an unspoken agreement to pretend that she wasn’t Jon’s mistress. People would come at night to seek her assistance with a birthing or an illness, and they would knock on Jon’s door and ask him if he knew where she was, as though they didn’t know perfectly well that she was in his bed.
Well, no such kindnesses would be done her in Society. There would be plenty of people who remembered her as the long-term mistress of the Earl of Ruel, the woman who had accompanied him on drives in Hyde Park and to the theatre.
And they would despise and disdain her for it.
They would especially make much of the eight year age difference between them. They would mock and snicker behind the polite veils of their silk fans.
She must steel herself for mass disapproval and possible snubbing. She didn’t know if she could bear that kind of thing. It had always been her second worst fear, next to rats. Was there much difference? Gossipmongers’ tongues tore at people’s reputations and feelings with the same viciousness as rats tore at flesh with their teeth.
Stephen turned to her with a smile. His eyes met hers, glowing with admiration. Love.
Warmth permeated her. She wanted only to be near him, with him.
For all of her days, for the remainder of her life?
With brutal clarity, she recalled the anguished, hopeless emptiness she’d felt when she found him at the roadside, ashen-faced and ill. She’d thought he was going to die in the next moment.
Yes, she wanted nothing more than to be at his side forever.
She wanted to be his wife. What price was she willing to pay for the pleasure and privilege?
She could face censure and social shunning for him.
She could even face the full-revealing of herself and the risk that he might find her lacking. There was simply no other choice. She loved him and somewhere deep in herself, she always had. Now she was about to have everything she had denied herself out of fear.
She could face a firing squad for this man. Slowly, she walked to him and let him take her hand.
Chapter Eighteen
The bed ropes creaked as Rebecca sat on the bed in the narrow little bedchamber of the cottage and watched Stephen remove his clothes.
Surely, he would not attempt to…no, he wouldn’t. After the brief ceremony that made them man and wife, he had fallen across the bed, fully dressed, and gone immediately to sleep. More aptly said, he had slipped into unconsciousness.
Yesterday had been their first day here. They had eaten simply and retired early, then he had slept late into the afternoon. Her uncle’s housekeeper had sent them a supper of mutton stew and fresh baked bread and a small wedding cake.
Stephen could not partake of it and she didn’t have the heart to eat it alone. So they had placed it in the yard for the birds to enjoy.
So far, he had followed his diet and taken his medications without protest. And she began to think her uncle had been mistaken in his belief that Stephen wished for death.
Naked, he approached her. His recent weight loss brought his hard muscled stomach into greater prominence.
She couldn’t resist placing her hand over those pronounced angles. He grasped her hand and placed it on his cock. His erection was quickly swelling under her touch.
“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 warm
ed 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.
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