The idea horrified her. “I don’t want to live away from you. Please, Hunter, I love you. I love you. You must believe I care nothing for Lord Warren or anyone else, not since we have each other.”
“I know. I understand that now.”
“And I’ve said that I’ll do whatever I must to make you happy.”
His hand squeezed more tightly around hers. “But you shouldn’t have to. Damn it, I should have more self-control. I want to give you a respectable marriage. I want to treat you like the lady you are, not my erotic concubine.”
She pursed her lips, feeling a wave of irritation. “I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to be your ‘erotic concubine’ and now you say you want to treat me like a lady?”
He frowned back at her. “My dear, I practiced that speech an entire hour on the way here. I did a great amount of soul searching and decided I must treat you with more respect.”
“I don’t want more respect,” she argued. “I want you.” She stared down at his strong thighs, his big hands that had brought her as much pleasure as pain. She looked into his eyes that could be dark and brooding, but also kind and affectionate. She wanted all of him, the darkness and the light.
“When I met you, I was only half a person,” she said. “I was prim and distant and so closed up. You might have come to hate me, but instead you tried to make me happier. I know it wasn’t easy. I fought you, and I fought my feelings until you gave me no choice but to relent, to play, to smile, to become fully opened to life for the first time.” She paused, holding her husband’s gaze. “It was important to you to help me be happy. How could I do anything less for you?” She took her hands from his and threw her arms around his neck, insinuating herself against his strong, masculine form. “I didn’t love you at first, but now I do. By God, I do. I couldn’t live without you, as maddening and perverse as you are.”
He relaxed by slow degrees, resting his head against hers. “I believe that is the most lovely thing any person has ever said to me.” He massaged her back, her nape, holding her so close her breath crowded her lungs. “Aurelia, I want to be happy, but only if you’re happy too. Only if you can forgive me for the ways I’ve hurt you.”
“I forgive you,” she said with all the feeling in her heart. “When you left last night, I didn’t know what you would do. I thought you might never come back, and I thought about a life without you, and...” She pressed her cheek to his, swallowing back a sob. “I would be happy if you would never, ever leave my side again.”
She felt him draw in a sharp breath. “Don’t fret anymore, my darling. Please.” He wound his fingers in her hair and pulled her closer still. She eased her hips against him, clinging to his broad shoulders. His sharp breath became a gasp. “If you don’t take care, this tender moment shall become a much less tender moment and a rather more carnal moment.”
She hummed softly, caressing the tense, bunched muscles at his neck. “Somehow you manage to be tender and carnal at once. It’s one of the things I love most about you.”
“Aurelia, I warn you that you’re very much in danger.” To clarify, he arched his hips against her. She thrilled at the thickness of his arousal.
“Danger, or bliss?” she whispered to drive him on.
“How naughty you are,” he whispered back, “to transform my selfless pledges of respectability into an erotic tryst.”
“The first night of our marriage, you were angry at me for resisting. Now you’re angry at me for being too eager.”
“Not angry. But I spanked you that night for resisting me. Perhaps I should spank you now for not resisting me enough.”
Aurelia burst into laughter at his now-familiar piratical expression. “You’d spank me for absolutely any reason, and we both know it. For blinking too many times in a minute. For breathing. For wearing the color blue.”
“For mocking your husband,” he said, pulling her down over his lap. His hands were gentle but firm as they arranged her, arse up. He spanked her once over her skirts and Aurelia felt an immediate surge of pleasure.
“What a tyrant you are,” she said. “It always comes down to another spanking.”
“As it should.”
“I suppose I should simply wear backless gowns and petticoats so you can spank me all the time, whenever you wish, without battling all that fabric.”
He stopped in the act of drawing up her voluminous skirts. “My goodness. What a capital idea. How very provocative that would be, especially when we went out in society.”
She let out a scandalized gasp as he landed a bare-bottomed spank. “I meant, of course, that I should wear such an outfit when we were in private, alone together.”
“What would be the fun of that?” At her outraged snort he spanked her again. “You could start a trend, my love. All the fine ladies’ bottoms exposed for whenever discipline is warranted. As an added bonus, we would all know which wives had recently been chastised, and gossip about the reasons why.”
She squirmed as his hand walloped her tender cheeks. “But there isn’t always a reason why, as in our case. Ouch! Must you be so severe during a playful spanking?”
“Are you trying to tell me how to spank you?” he asked, raising a brow.
“No, my lord,” she said quickly, lest severe turn to wretchedly painful. “But I am still tender from that switching.”
He paused to trace over the lingering welts, then spanked her directly on top of them so she wriggled over his lap.
“Oww, please... I’m not trying to direct you, but is this degree of spanking entirely necessary?”
“I thought you said I made you happy,” he teased. “And yes, it is.”
She gave a little moan of terror and happiness, and of all the other things he made her feel. Before she could quite figure out what those things were, he’d pulled her up and drawn her astride his thighs.
“Now you shall have a little ride, my sweet, on a very well-endowed stallion.”
“I’m not an exemplary horsewoman, I’m afraid.”
He undid the flaps of his breeches in jerky movements, and positioned his swollen cock between her thighs. “No, but you’re an exemplary erotic concubine, aren’t you?”
She thrilled to the feeling of her husband’s thick length pressing within her. Within moments, she was stuffed full of him to the hilt.
“Oh, Hunter,” she whispered. “It feels so much better than the spanking.”
He chuckled and gripped her buttocks, then smacked each one so hard that she clenched around his cock. “I wonder if you’ll like it along with a spanking.”
Oh. Oh. She clung to his shoulders, bracing for his favored pairing of pleasure with pain. When she tried to move up and down on his cock, he grasped her hips.
“No, naughty girl. I’m going to make you come like this, with me inside you, still.”
She gawked at him, thinking such a thing would never be possible, but even as he said it, her walls clamped around him and she became even more aware of his presence inside her body, stretching her wide. He spanked her left cheek and she clamped even harder.
Ohhh...
Next her right, then her left again. Each time he spanked her, she arched against him, contacting his pelvis with her most sensitive place. He paused in the spanking to tug at the back of her gown, loosening it. “Pull down your bodice,” he ordered. “Take out your breasts and offer them to me.”
She swallowed hard at the sensual authority in his tone and did as he asked. When he lowered his lips to suck at her nipples, she threw her head back and almost fell off his lap. He braced his feet upon the opposite bench, bending his legs so she was forced down into the curve of his hips. His cock delved even deeper as she pulsed around the thick intrusion.
He alternated spanking her and toying with her nipples, drawing them into pebbled peaks. Whenever she tried to reach for him, he spanked her harder and reminded her she was to be offering him her breasts, and so she’d be forced to cup them toward him for more torment.
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bsp; “You are going to kill me like this,” she pleaded, as an aching heat grew within her. “Please move inside me. Please, I want to feel you move.”
“No,” he said in a kind but inexorable tone. “Feel me inside you. Feel how I fill up your juicy, hot pussy. Feel how I inhabit you. For now, that’s all you’re getting, naughty girl.”
“Tyrant,” she whimpered, gazing at him in unfocused lust.
Hunter had every intention of letting her come, but he also had every intention of making her suffer for a while first. Not because he thought she’d been naughty, as he teased, but because he adored her reactions when he made her endure particularly lascivious things, and there was nothing more lascivious than resting inside her, thick and hard, and making her beg for more.
God, how he loved her for putting up with him.
When he had felt her tears against his neck, it was as if they entered his veins and coursed throughout his entire body, healing the last scars of his heart. She was crying for him, emotional for him.
She was happy with him.
It seemed a miracle. He would always value her love, but he thought he valued her happiness more. When she smiled, his entire world was painted in new colors. And when she whimpered...well.
That did something else to him altogether.
He spanked her, biting back gasps as each spank resulted in a tensing jerk at his cock. What a magnificent new activity to add to their repertoire. Between spanks, he teased and laved her nipples with his tongue, biting down now and again so that she squeezed around him even harder. He would have loved to do this for hours, spanking and caressing her and feeling her bear down around his organ, but he wasn’t going to last more than a few minutes.
“How does that feel?” he asked, spanking her again. “How do you feel, Aurelia?”
“I feel...at your mercy,” she gasped, still holding her luscious breasts. “I feel as if I’m going to explode.”
Did she have any idea that he felt the same way? His hips began to move against her in slow, measured increments. Her breath shuddered. She reached for him, but he made a warning sound.
“What are your instructions?”
“Oh please,” she cried. “Please let me hold you.”
He moved in her a little more. “You are holding me. Quite satisfactorily, I might add.” He fastened his lips over each nipple, exploring and sucking until she jerked against him. “Come for me, little grasshopper. My wonderful good luck charm. I want to feel you come.”
He caught her moans, drank them up in an encompassing kiss as he gave her a few final spanks and then clasped her against him. She wriggled and squeezed so expertly that he was hard pressed not to shoot inside her at once. He could see the signs of her impending climax, her stuttering pants, her wild gaze.
“Come for me,” he ordered, pulling her down harder upon his rod in quick, blunt jerks. “My beautiful love. My naughty wife.”
“Ohhh,” she cried, her exclamation resounding in the curtained window seat. She shuddered, fondling her breasts, bucking on his cock. Her walls clamped him in a rippling, delicious pressure.
He went off at once with a guttural groan, pressing her down so hard on his cock he worried he might injure her. But she only smiled and laughed with pure pleasure. He would always remember the first time he’d heard her laugh, the short, guilty burst of merriment when he’d flipped his fork into his forehead. To hear her laugh now with such abandon—as he gave her a rough rogering, no less—it made him feel replete.
When she collapsed against him, he held her hard, basking in her scent and her voluptuous femininity. She loves me, he thought. And she accepts me just as I am.
He pulled her head back, threading his fingers through her hair, and gave her a deep, forceful kiss, communicating all the eager love he felt. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such happiness,” he murmured against her lips.
“Well, that’s simple. You gave happiness in return, and taught me how to feel it too.” She paused, gazing up at him. “I did make you happy just now, didn’t I?”
He burst into his own merry laughter. “I think the answer to that is obvious, you little imp. Quite obvious.” He moved his still-hard cock within her sheath.
Her eyes went wide. “Oh my.”
“Oh my, indeed. I believe I could go again, if you’re up for another ride, Lady Townsend.”
Over the sound of her soft giggles, he heard hoof beats in the courtyard. Not one horse, but a team, and the rattle of a coach. “What the devil?”
He shifted without disengaging her from his lap, so they could both look out the window. A grand, gilded traveling carriage wound around the front entryway led by a team of four, with two groomsmen at the front and two at the rear. They wore gleaming white and gold livery and smart red caps that matched the horses’ harnesses. He squinted at the ornate coat of arms on the side of the carriage. “Who would be coming to visit us at this hour? Do you recognize the crest?”
“Yes,” said Aurelia with a soft moan. “I recognize it well. That’s my father’s carriage. I think we’d better save the ride for another time.”
Hunter thought his wife was probably right about that. “Bloody hell,” he said, lifting her from his cock and helping her to her feet. He had the distinct feeling this wasn’t going to be a friendly visit.
Apparently the Duke of Lansing’s sphere of influence spread to the country shires after all.
Chapter Eighteen: Happiness
A footman tapped at the door a few moments after they’d made themselves presentable, and handed Hunter a note. He flicked it open and scanned the contents.
“My lady, your father the duke awaits us downstairs in the front drawing room.” He turned back to his wife, watching the way she threaded her fingers together. “Everything will be fine, my love. You remain here while I meet with your father. Clement can help you compose your appearance, and stay with you until—”
“No,” said Aurelia. “I won’t let you face him alone.”
“But it’s undoubtedly my head he wishes to gnaw off.”
“He shall have to gnaw my head off too then.”
“Really, all this talk of heads being gnawed off,” he muttered under his breath.
“I believe you mentioned it first. Ah, here is Clement.”
The lady’s maid had spent many years in the Lansing household but her loyalties lay solely with her mistress. She moved into the room with brisk efficiency. “We’ll have you ready in no time,” she assured Aurelia. “And then you can go down on your husband’s arm.”
Hunter squeezed his wife’s hand and took himself off, leaving her in the woman’s capable care. He went to his rooms down the hall and had his valet freshen his appearance, and put on a newly pressed waistcoat and coat. His man configured a flawless, starched cravat knot within half a minute, which was one of the reasons Hunter paid him so well. After a quick glance in his looking glass, he met his wife outside her door. She looked pale and tense, the very image of the woman he’d married, the woman who had spent her early life under a tyrant’s hand.
“What if he’s here to take me away from you?” she asked.
“He won’t.”
“But what if he tries? He’s very powerful.”
Hunter placed a finger atop her lips. “No one is powerful enough to take you away from me. I’d never allow it. I’d fight him until my dying breath.” He moved his finger and pressed a kiss to her mouth instead. The rough embrace gentled to a tender exploration, and then he pulled away and smiled down at her. “Trust me. Everything will be well.”
He truly believed that, but he still proceeded with some trepidation toward the drawing room. The Duke of Lansing sat ramrod straight on a chair in the center of the room, attended by their household butler and his own stone-faced valet.
Aurelia stopped a few steps into the room and dropped a low curtsy as her father rose from his seat. “Papa. You should have said you were coming. What a joy to welcome you to our home.”
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nbsp; Her father screwed up a look that was not quite a smile and held out a hand to his daughter. “Come and give me a kiss, dear Aurelia.”
It pained Hunter to watch their stilted interaction, to include the air kiss she bestowed upon his jowled cheek. He determined then and there that he would be the exact opposite sort of father, and tumble about with his sons and his daughters, and greet them always with smothering hugs.
“Now,” the duke said in a commanding tone. “You must run along and leave me alone to talk with your husband.”
Aurelia took a couple steps back, but then stopped. “Anything you wish to say to my husband, you can say to me as well. We keep no secrets from one another.”
At that, the duke’s eyebrows snapped together in an almost comical fashion. Lansing scowled at Aurelia, but she held her ground, much to Hunter’s satisfaction. It was time for him to enter the fray. He moved toward Lansing in a manner of exaggerated ease. “Will you have some refreshments, Your Grace? We are not quite to the dinner hour.”
“I want no refreshments,” he said gruffly, sitting down again. Hunter led Aurelia to a nearby divan and settled beside her. Lansing glared at both of them. “I want a word with you alone, Townsend. Send your wife away.”
Your wife. Not his daughter? Hunter took her hand. “As my wife already informed you, anything you have to say can be said in her presence.”
“Not this.” The duke glowered again at Aurelia. “It is impertinent to remain when you’ve been asked to leave.”
“I wish her to stay.” This time, Hunter’s reply was edged in steel. “Say what you must say. I assume from your demeanor this is not a friendly call.”
“I wish it were a friendly call,” the man blustered, “but your continued disgraceful activities preclude it from being so.”
“Papa,” Aurelia said sharply. “I do not think—”
Hunter held up his free hand, the one not clasped in Aurelia’s. “Let him speak, my love.”
Training Lady Townsend Page 21