“I haven’t thought of him in some time,” I said honestly. I wanted to reassure him and, most of all, to calm him down.
“Well, you dream of him. Is that not worse?”
I realized then that something had changed between us. We were discussing this jealousy as though it was something real to discuss. My husband was, quite obviously, well...jealous. Wickedly so. It wasn’t just an animal jealousy, either, although that was part of it: a possessive male protecting his own territory. There was more to it than that. There was emotion to this envy that surprised me with its vehemence, and with its complexity.
“I told your stable boy I would challenge him to a fight to the death if he ever touched you again,” he said. “And I meant it.”
“Aye,” I commented. “I heard you.”
He strode over to one of his half-emptied trunks, riffling through it until he found what he was looking for. I couldn’t see what he held behind his back as he returned to me, the menace of him glimmering in the firelight. “I have other ideas for you.”
Kade stood close to me, his eyes uncharacteristically dark. “You deserve...a lesson, let’s call it. You can ask me for mercy at any time, of course, and I will do my best to honor your request. I have, however, been pushed past my boundaries. You should know this about me—I do not take vows lightly, and I expect you to uphold yours. I happen to be very protective of what is mine. You, whether you like it or not, happen to be just that. Mine. My wife. And I will not tolerate infidelity.”
It was true that my body was already responding to his potent virility; I couldn’t seem to stop my own deep-seated primal urges whenever my husband so much as entered the room. But I didn’t like the sound of his barely concealed threat. Already, I could feel my defiance rising. “I haven’t been unfaithful to you. His fingers barely touched mine. I didn’t even speak to him.”
“I don’t care if you spoke to him or not!” he said savagely, startling me with his loud outburst. “I will not tolerate thoughts of infidelity!” I almost smiled at this, gently; but I didn’t dare, in case he misinterpreted the reason behind it. His emotion touched me and endeared him to me with potent effect. He seemed genuinely hurt by the fact that I called out to Caleb in my sleep. I wanted to explain to him that my dreams were convoluted. Caleb was in them, aye, but so was he. My dream lover, my garden phantom. My husband, one and the same.
He paused then, his brow furrowed, his shoulders hunched slightly as if he was expecting a blow. “Do you love him?” he asked quietly.
“I—” Kade’s darkened eyes were searching for honesty. I decided to give it to him. “I thought I did, once. Yet it never felt like something that was meant to be. We were doomed from the start.”
“We’re all doomed from the start,” he replied.
“I felt safe with him,” I admitted, ignoring his morbid comment. “He was the only man I’d ever met who didn’t frighten me.”
He snorted lightly at this. “Nay, he is perhaps the least frightening specimen of mankind I’ve yet to come across.” Despite his scoffing, my admission cooled his rage by a single degree. “I understand, with your history, why you might have chosen someone so mild, Stella, but surely by now you realize you have no need for such preferences.”
I touched his bare arm, looking up at him. “Husband,” I said, “do you hear me call to you in my sleep, as well? Have you heard that part of my dreams? Because you’re in them, too. Those are the ones I remember. I had all but forgotten Caleb.”
I had meant to appease him, but my words seemed to have the opposite effect. Any reference to Caleb in my dreams or otherwise was too much reference of Caleb; this was clearly written on my husband’s face. “All but forgotten?” he said, running his hand through his hair, making his appearance all the wilder. “I am going to give you reason now to forget him entirely, wife, once and for all. I will keep my word to you, you need not worry yourself about that. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to make it very clear to you that I expect everything of you.”
Without meaning to, I took a small step back from him. But he would have none of it. He snaked his arm around my waist and pulled me roughly to him, so I was arched up against him, my breasts lifted against his chest. I could feel the many hard edges of him, uncomfortably, and I made a small sound of protest. Yet I had never been more hopeful, more receptive or more turned on in all my life.
“Is this dress one of your favorites?” he asked, and the question caught me off guard; it seemed wildly off-topic. He disengaged his hold on me, fingering the front buttons of my gown with both hands.
“N-not especially—”
My husband ripped my gown and my shift open in one swift yank. My full breasts bounced free of the constraints. I huffed in surprise. “What are you—?”
“I want you completely naked before me. Take off your clothing.” He observed my face, challenging me with the garish jewel-like glint of his turquoise eyes and his white teeth, exposed in a half snarl. “No fear,” he said. “I’ll not hurt you, and you know it.”
Did I know it? I contemplated the smoldering vulnerability of him. He looked bigger and more powerfully built than I had ever seen him, carnal and determined in the fire-flicked night. And here I was, half-naked, quivering from the cool air and my feverish responses.
And I decided that I did trust him. Not only that, but I wanted him. I didn’t want to protest whatever it was he was about to do. I wanted to find out exactly what unspeakable things he was capable of. Aroused and with defiant flair—I wanted to show him that it was me that was inviting him as much as he was making whatever point he had in mind—I did as he commanded, lowering the gown from my shoulders to drop to the ground, and stepping out of my shoes.
He circled me, letting his fingers trail across my skin in an unhurried claim. His hands brushed the taut surface of my nipples, playing lightly. Then his touch feathered down my stomach. He circled me again, lazily tracing the swell of my hips, and lower, delving gently between my legs, where his fingers slid silkily across the dampness. He leaned close to me, supporting some of my weight as I swayed. “You want me,” he purred into my ear.
I said nothing, forcing my own silence and unable to do so under the glide of his nudging fingertips. A small moan escaped me.
“Say it to me.”
“Aye,” I murmured, barely audibly, but he smiled.
“Say it,” he growled, pushing his fingers farther into me, stretching the unyielding tightness, finding the sensitive trigger he had already memorized.
“I want you,” I gasped unsteadily as the heat of his inspiration darkened and flared within me.
Smugly satisfied by my admission, he withdrew his touch. In a deliberate, contemplative movement, he held his fingers up. I was mortified to see that they were glistening with the effects of my own desire. Watching my eyes, he slowly licked his fingers. “Sweet, sweet Stella,” he said.
I was throbbing from my knees to my navel, wondering if I might crumple to the floor.
He surprised me by kneeling down on one knee before me. He looked up at me with an expression of assurance: he would allow me my hesitations, as always, but he would get his way. The humor in him lurked in his eyes, a detail that only succeeded in exciting me and also vexing me further. “Do you trust me?”
“Aye,” I whispered. I found that I did. Mostly.
“Good. Surrender to me. ’Tis, in fact, your only option.”
Kade placed his hands on me, curling his fingers around my thighs in a gentle yet bold clasp. Then he leaned his head closer, kissing between my thighs, where I was saturated with devastating lust. His teasing mouth kissed lightly, erotically restrained, touching me only once with the slow, carefully placed glide of his tongue.
But then he rose, keeping his hands secure on my body, and he lifted me into his arms in one easy movement. He carried me to the bed, settling me gently upon it. He sat next to me.
“I’m going to blindfold you, lass,” he informed me, pulling a length
of white fabric from a pocket; it must have been what he retrieved from his trunk. “It will add a certain...mystique to the proceedings, don’t you agree?”
“Why?” I said, my voice sounding undisguisedly flustered. I no longer feared him, yet the beastly streak in him had risen. My husband’s restraint had been tested, his dominating masculinity bruised by a weak, timid interloper—an affront that had riled him to his depths.
“’Tis best if you’re kept in the dark, so to speak, at least for now.”
“I don’t want you to blindfold me. Let me see.”
He held up the white cloth, turning it in his hands to fold it into a thick, opaque strip. Holding it at eye level between his fists.
“Nay,” I said, reaching to hold the center of the cloth as he held it. “There’s no need.”
“And I,” came his low reply, “said aye.” His words were disconcerting, but his smile calmed me, and when he bared his clenched teeth with a playful growl, I almost laughed.
I could handle whatever he gave to me, I told myself, not entirely convinced of my own hopeful strength even as I steeled the turmoil raging within me. I could handle him, but I wanted to see him.
He made a move to affix the blindfold, but I fought against him, climbing on top of him, straddling his hips. I knew there was no way he would allow me to escape him. So I drew closer to him instead of farther away. He held my wrists tightly in his hands, lifting us, laying me back on the furs. He was so much stronger, his manipulations seemed entirely effortless.
“Stop fighting me, wife. You can’t win. I’m going to blindfold you, and then I’m going to take you over my knee. For allowing yourself to be touched by another man, no matter how innocent the exchange may have been. I will simply not allow it.” Reading the anxiety in my eyes, he said again, “Trust me. I’m not going to beat you, lass. This is a small, inviting pain that only makes the pleasure more intense. I daresay you’ll offer no protests once I begin, little wife.”
His intentions were to blind me and punish me and control me entirely. And I wanted all of it even as I wanted to lash out at him, to somehow even the imbalance. “You...you big man!” I yelled at him.
He did not immediately react. But then his mouth quirked into a slow smile. For a moment, he lost all trace of his warrior’s mask. His tough, bold, impenetrable demeanor was temporarily lost, allowing his youth and his beauty to shine through. When the touch of happiness lit his features, he was shockingly, devastatingly handsome. If only he would smile more, I thought. Then he began to laugh. It was a real laugh, and I realized I loved the sound of it. “‘Big man’?” he said. “Is that the best you can do?”
I contemplated him shyly, somewhat overcome by this new side to him: this beautiful, exuberant side that stole my breath. His laughter was infectious, and I smiled along with him. But then I remembered that I was trapped underneath him, naked, powerless and furious.
“I’ll have to teach you some slightly more colorful language, lass. You’re too pure for your own good. That, of course, is an issue I plan to remedy once I’ve made good on my oath.”
I was becoming accustomed to his gentle, lurid taunts, laced as they were with the special breed of humor my husband had claimed as his own. “What is it you would prefer I called you in the heat of anger?” I asked him sulkily.
He laughed again, and the sound of it fed me a hazy warmth, as if a stray ray of summer sunshine had stolen its way into our chambers. I felt comforted by his laughter in a way that was unfamiliar to me, even as I lay naked underneath him in all his war garb and glory. “Good God,” he mused. “That’s the heat of your anger? We’ll have to work on that, too. I’ll have to be more clever, and think of a way to really get your sparks flying. A few ideas are coming to me even now.” He paused momentarily, as though overwhelmed by anticipation. He brushed the back of his fingers along my cheekbone. “My beautiful, feisty, tantalizing wife.”
His eyes held mine at the weighty clarity of the phrase and the affectionate tones of its delivery. My wife.
“Tell me what words you really use to describe me when you think of me,” he said, sitting up slightly to remove one of his weapons belts. And another. His eyes never left my body.
I watched him as he placed his arsenal to the side. “Nay,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to offend you.”
He pulled off his tunic, revealing his carved muscles, his sun-burnished skin. Without his weapons, he was free to lay his warm body more heavily over mine without danger of injury. The long strands of his hair fell in a soft curtain to frame our faces. Even as he held his weight with his arms, I felt unequivocally dominated. With him, I could admit, the feeling wasn’t at all unpleasant. “Tell me,” he rasped in a lightly menacing tone.
“I’m not afraid of you, husband,” I said, attempting a different strategy. “Your scare tactics no longer work on me. Bind me and blind me, but I’ve seen your softer side.” I closed my eyes to him, hoping to annoy him with my indifference.
“I have no softer side.”
“Aye,” I said, opening my eyes. The vivid hue of his eyes disarmed me momentarily with their vibrancy. He looked almost offended by my comment. “You do.”
“Where?”
“Certainly not on the outside,” I said. I was irritated to feel a small smile pull at the corner of my lips, which I made a point to banish. It wouldn’t do to let him know how easy it was for him to get past my defenses without even intending to.
“Nay,” he agreed. “If I get any harder, we’re both in for a bit of trouble.”
“’Tis inside you.” I was disconcerted to find that I wasn’t just teasing him now, or testing him. I found that I meant what I said. “In your heart.”
A sweet-edged silence comforted us and linked us as never before.
It was a few moments before he spoke again. The connective thoughtfulness in his eyes gave way once again to his mischief-laced power. “Tell me,” he repeated.
I paused, waiting. His body was stunningly solid, and heavy. His arousal pressed against a very sensitive place. “Brute,” I whispered.
He smiled, biting not so gently on the lobe of my ear, kissing a line down my neck, licking and nipping at my skin. “That one might not be entirely unwarranted, at times.”
“Ogre.” I could feel his light laughter everywhere. His hands were on my breasts.
“Truly? Ogre?” he said, looking up at me with mock offense. His gaze returned to my breasts, which he kissed and fondled with something akin to wonder. Then he took a nipple into his mouth, sucking strongly and biting with his teeth as he pinched my other nipple between two fingers, sending shards of reactive sensation to every inch of my body. “Tell me another.”
“Savage,” I whispered.
“I’m getting harder with each accusation,” he said, lifting me into a sitting position, placing the blindfold over my eyes and tying it securely. This time I offered no protest. The sudden darkness was startling. I was adrift, yet my senses became highly attuned. To him, to his every breath and movement. “Let me see if I can prove you right,” he whispered into my ear. “You will no longer distract me from the task at hand, even if you do happen to be outlandishly, achingly, mind-numbingly lovely to such an extent that I am, right at this moment, questioning my powers of resistance. With still eight days and fourteen hours left to go of my idiotic self-induced sentence. Already you possess my whole heart, wife. All that you are is exactly what I didn’t even realize I needed. I can see now that you want to trust me, and you’re beginning to. I will keep my vow, as I said I would. But I can assure you that doing so is not without intense, ravaging difficulty.”
He reached for something, then pushed me across his lap so that I lay on my stomach across him. His hands were strong, guiding me, and I didn’t protest, but I was not as agreeable as I could have been.
“Do not fear my punishment, lass. You’re going to enjoy this.”
He positioned me with care, lifting my hips until I was on my knees with my head d
own, laid against the softness of the furs. Not satisfied, he continued to adjust my body, until my knees were farther apart. With one hand, he began to caress my back, trailing ever lower. Exploring intimately, he reached between my legs, parting my humid petals, dipping and wetting me with my own desire. With his fingers he squeezed my aching flesh gently, tantalizing the sweetness. As he continued to play me, a soft material was dragged across the skin of my backside.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to turn to him, but he held me in place. My voice sounded muffled and husky.
“A leather strap,” he said, lashing the strap very lightly against me, not enough to hurt—just a light promise of what was to come.
The leather was drawn lower, across my raised buttocks, to fall between my legs, where it brushed against my saturated core, which was so sensitive that the light contact caused me to squirm. I felt a slight slap on my backside. Not a sting, but a caress that warmed me at the place of impact, and deeper. Again, the leather fell with gentle force, spreading the heat, igniting the center of my body with an exquisite, scorching glow. Again. The fluid ecstasy built within me. He lashed me again, at the same time pushing his fingers gently into the tight constriction of my body. This time the lash did sting—a sharp, painful shock that caused me to gasp. The lash licked me with pain, but it was a pain laced with burning, needy pleasure. I thought I might overflow with it. As soon as the leather left my skin, the pain eased to a radiating warmth, funneling strongly to the place where Kade caressed me with his fingers.
The lash fell again, lower this time, closer to the billowing ache that flared with the echo of his strikes. I was breathless, on the verge of begging him to show me mercy. But the pain had turned, mellowing into a deep, luscious craving. His fingers worked that pleasure, enticing it and energizing it.
“You have no need to favor weakness or mildness any longer, lass. You’re stronger than that, and you’re free now to follow your fiery instincts. To me, and with me. I’m yours and you’re mine, do not forget that. I vowed to give you this time to adjust to me, yet you are still mine to do with what I please.”
Juliette Miller - [Clan MacKenzie 02] Page 21