Hope Tarr

by Untamed

  “Whether I did or not, the deed is done. I’m your husband. That makes me responsible for you.”

  “The hell it does.” She shoved one arm inside the silk sleeve and held onto the towel with the other hand. “Husband, yes; lord and master, no.”

  Bold words, and yet his nearness was like a drug, making her dizzy, making her wet. His musk filled her nostrils. She wanted to taste him, trace that queue of hair down his chest first with her fingers and then follow with her tongue.

  “The vows you took before God and man say otherwise. Obedience, Kate, was only part of what you promised. Those vows you took of your own free will, I might add.”

  “Free will, ha! A fat lot of choice I had with your holding Papa’s marker over all our heads.”

  His emerald eyes narrowed. “We struck a bargain, you and I. You promised to obey me, Katie, and in turn I swore to protect and provide for you, to worship you with my body and to keep myself unto you alone. We’ve neither of us been verra good about upholding our end of the bargain, but that, dear wife, is about to change.”

  His arm shot out. The towel came off. Kate stared down at the pool of it at her feet, and then swung her gaze up to his. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

  “Giving you what you’ve been asking for ever since we met.”

  She tried covering herself with her hands, but he hauled her against him, pinning her arms. Her breasts flattened against him. He smelled of starch and sweat and bay rum and man. The stiffness of his shirt and the coarseness of the curls on his chest chafed her nipples. Lower, his hardness and heat bore into her belly.

  Warm breath struck her cheek. Emerald eyes seared her skin. His fingers dug into her flesh. “I want you on your hands and knees. On the bed. Now.”

  Breath hitching, she shook her head. No matter what he did, she mustn’t lose control, she mustn’t lose herself. “I will not.”

  He swung her up into his arms. The bed was only a few feet away. He carried her over to it. Panic flared, and she struck out, her nails scoring the side of his face. He jerked back and cursed.

  “You’ve claws, haven’t you, my wild Kat?”

  He dumped her in the center of the mattress and stepped back. Kate landed on all fours. She tried scrambling up, but he was too fast for her to escape and far too strong. He dropped down on the bed beside her, the mattress swinging like a hammock.

  “Come here, Kate.” He grabbed her, dragging her across his thighs. “We’ve unfinished business, you and I. Business I mean to see settled here and now.”

  Her face was afire, her sex weeping and strumming in turns. Her cheek pressed into the mattress, she tried levering herself up, but his arm cinching her waist held her firmly down. “Let me up.”

  He ignored her. “When I was a lad, I was tied to the whipping post, mind. Fifty lashes with the scourge, Kate. Surely you can take half as many from the flat of my hand.”

  Twenty-five strikes! She’d gathered he meant to spank her when he’d turned her over his knee, but she hadn’t thought much about what that meant before now.

  His hand cracked down. “One.” Furious, she tried shoving up on her forearms, but it was no use.

  “Two.” His hand came down again, harder this time. Kate gritted her teeth against crying out.

  “Three!”

  Wetness spurted between her thighs. The dull ache ratcheted to pounding.

  “Four. You’ve a bonny bottom, Katie. It’s pale as moonbeam and ripe as melon. My handprints look well painted on such a canvas.” He smoothed a soothing hand over the sting and skittered light fingertips between the lobes.

  Kate shivered. She bit back a gasp. A mental picture of his hands shot to mind—scarred knuckles, callused palms, thick fingers that knew just where to press, how to touch. He was spanking her as though she were a naughty child, a wicked girl, a slave. He was spanking her, and suddenly Kate couldn’t seem to get enough. She turned her face into the mattress, her hands fisting the sheets, her hips rocking back and finding a rhythm with his hand. He wasn’t only spanking her. He was marking her, marking her as his.

  And the shame of it, her shame, was that she didn’t think she could bear for him to stop. Twenty-five strikes no longer seemed nearly enough. Each successive strike lifted her to a new level of dark pleasure, a deeper understanding that surrender could be sublime.

  She needed this.

  As if sensing the shift in her, he slid the hand holding her around to her front. His palm took possession of her mons. He gave it a light squeeze. “Ah, I am giving you what you want, aren’t I, Katie? I thought as much.” He tunneled a finger inside her, pressing on some previously undiscovered, exquisitely sensitive spot.

  Kate’s head lifted. She moaned and twisted back to look back at him. The act of control being taken away was surprisingly thrilling. “Please … more.”

  “I’ll give you more, love, as much as you want, as much as you can take.”

  He stood, bringing her with him. They hadn’t made it to twenty-five strikes, at least she didn’t think so. This time he laid her on her back and came down atop her. His straddling thighs locked her hips in place and his big hands banded her wrists, pinning her arms high above her head. Wetness streamed her inner thighs, the hidden throbbing heavy and liquid. Her bottom felt raw, if not exactly blistered. She shifted on her hips, savoring the stinging.

  He brought his face down close to hers. Perspiration beaded his forehead, and blood from the scratch she’d given him streaked down his jaw in a thin line. She’d marked him, too, marked him as hers, and seeing the evidence brought a heady pride.

  “Tell me you want this, Kate.”

  Kate opened her mouth to answer but couldn’t bring herself to give more than a low moan. Her body knew what she wanted, needed, even if she did not. And so it seemed did Rourke. He wedged a knee between her thighs, pried her legs apart, and plunged a second finger into her slickness.

  Kate sucked in a sharp breath. His fingers worked scissor-style inside her, spreading her wider, driving the ache deeper. She thought about how open she was, how utterly trapped and yet completely free, and a grateful sob broke forth from her lips.

  I need this.

  When his one hand left her wrist to unbutton his trousers, she had no thought of trying to pull away. Her gaze riveted on the open flap—the long, thick cock, the thatch of coarse reddish brown curls, the shadowed testicles. Later once her hands were free, she would want to palm and lick him, to suckle and taste, but for now those sensations were too overwhelming, too rich.

  He held himself and met her eyes. A sliver of milky moisture leaked from the slit and down the side.

  “Tell me you want this. Tell me you want me.” His voice was a husky demand, his breath a warm breeze settling into hair.

  This time Kate found her voice. “I want this.” I want you.

  He fitted his head to the throbbing spot between her thighs and thrust, his entry brutal and beautiful, hard and deep. The stab of pain told her he was all the way inside. She was glad. He stilled, perspiration beading his face, a long ripple sliding down his throat. “Kate?”

  By now she knew what he wanted from her, knew her way to that place inside her soul that allowed her to surrender, to give. “Please.”

  And then he was on top of her, moving in and out of her, and through the fog that clouded her consciousness she understood that she was moving, too. Not against him or away from him, but with him. The rhythm into which their joined bodies had mutually fallen was building toward some sort of crescendo, something magical and earthy, wonderful and terrifying, that promised to carry her to a place so foreign and exquisite that she may have visited before but only in her dreams.

  At some point, he’d freed her hands. She sank her nails into his shoulders, cinched her knees about his hips, and held on for dear life. Above where they were joined, his finger flicked and teased and stroked and played. An ache, a different sort, was spiraling to some sort of glorious end. Reaching for it, Kate lif
ted against him. Her bottom burned, her vagina burned. Oh, such lovely, scalding heat.

  “You’re mine.” He let out a groan and slid an arm beneath her hips, bringing her high against him. “Say it.” He pulled out of her and then thrust hard and deep.

  Dancing on the knife edge of that lovely pleasure-pain, Kate bit her lip. She lifted her head, hoping if she did he might seal her baptism by fire with a kiss. “Yes, I’m yours.”

  He didn’t kiss her, but he smiled a smile of feral eyes and bared white teeth. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”

  He reached down between them. It was his thumb this time, or so she thought, the flesh at the tip thick and sandpaper rough. He chafed the hard little nubbin she knew was there but had so far never seen—once, twice, thrice …

  Kate fell back against the pillows and screamed.

  They lay side by side on the mussed bed. Confessions came between hitched breaths.

  Kate’s was the first. She looked up from tracing circles on the dark matting of his chest—he’d yet to take off his shirt—and said, “I really am sorry about the horse. Do you think you’ll get him back?”

  He turned his head to look at her. “Hang the horse. You might have been injured, maimed for life, killed even. Jaysus, Katie, why did you do it? If you’d only wanted to defy me, surely you might have settled on some safer way.”

  Kate swallowed hard against a telltale tightening in her throat. She’d hoped the hurt would have dissolved by now, but so far it had not. “Last night I came downstairs … looking for you. I found you asleep at your desk, but you weren’t all that I found. I found the play and the note from Daisy and Gavin. Rourke, how could you?”

  His eyes widened. “You risked life and limb on account of a play?” He swore and scoured a hand across his brow. “I didn’t know how else to reach you, woo you.”

  “Woo me!” Reminded it wasn’t the play at fault, but him, she elbowed her way upright, bringing the sheet with her. “Am I to believe that subjecting me to starvation, exhaustion, humiliation—public and private—was all done in the spirit of equanimity?”

  He went stone still beside her. “I spanked you, which under the circumstance was a good deal less punishment than you deserved. And confess it, Katie, you enjoyed what happened here. Within these four walls, you liked setting Capable Kate free for a time and owning me as your master. You liked my hand on your arse and my thumb on your pearl and my cock in your cunt. Admit it, or better yet kiss me, for nay worries, I’ll tame you yet, my Kate.”

  The last was the absolute worst thing he could have said.

  Her face heated with shame. Nothing between them had changed. He still saw her not as chattel, little more than a slave. She’d played into his hands, abased herself in the very vilest of ways. She’d begged, actually begged him, to do those things to her. He’d turned her into a craven creature, a person she scarcely recognized as herself. And she’d let him. More than let him, she’d begged for it—for pleasure, for punishment, for him. For that, she could easily hate him all her days.

  She yanked at the wrinkled sheet and swept it about her like a cape. “You may have taken advantage of me this once, but I’ll not let you ill-use me again.”

  Kate had never before felt so truly naked, so achingly raw. He hadn’t only marked her body. He’d stripped bare her soul, peeling away the civilized surface layer and exposing every secret fantasy and dark desire.

  He sat up beside her. Knowing emerald eyes met hers. “There’s no shame in showing you’re a woman, Katie, with a woman’s heart and a woman’s needs, including the occasional desire to be mastered.” He reached for her, but she jerked away.

  “Get the hell out.”

  “Katie?”

  “How many times must I tell you, my name is Katherine.”

  Kate didn’t come down to dinner that evening, nor supper, either. Rourke took both meals alone in the big dining room, though he mostly pushed the food about his plate. Even his dog had shunned him, preferring to dine with Kate in her room. From the sounds that had filtered through the door earlier, Toby must be savoring a fine feast.

  I’ll tame you yet, my Kate.

  If he’d mastered his wife as he’d boasted, then why was he lying abed alone nursing a brick-hard cock stand, aching balls, and a gouged cheek? But those physical discomforts couldn’t touch the ache in his heart.

  He’d set out to teach her a lesson, but it turned out he was as much pupil as she. Never before had he so lost himself in a woman, not only her body but her soul. For a time reality had dissolved into a series of impressions—Kate’s nape, so slender and white, her honey-drizzled hair sliding over the side of the bed; her slight weight and beautiful curves covering his thighs; the slapping sound of first his hand striking her bottom and later his cock striking her creamy quim. He hadn’t known a woman could become so scalding hot, so mouth-wateringly wet. When he’d finally spilled himself inside her, he’d come harder and longer than ever before.

  Hours later he could still taste the brine of her on his tongue and her orange blossom scent on his skin. Her hair, he mused, smelled like warm sunshine. A moment later he shook his head to think what an idiot he’d become. Mooning over a woman, his sharp-tongued wife, as though he was some love-smitten swain straight from the pages of one of Shakespeare’s damnable plays, what the devil had come over him?

  Bloody hell, I love the woman.

  Patrick O’Rourke, erstwhile purse snatch, top-notch bamboozler, and railway pirate, was in love—head over heels, over the moon in love. Who could have guessed that one pocket-sized woman would be the one to bring him to heel, to steal his heart as surely as once he had snitched gentlemen’s purses?

  Looking back to their wedding day, though he’d been deliberately late and had donned his queer costume to vex her, his heart had felt feather light, his mood genuinely merry. As much as he’d tried telling himself he was marrying her to settle a score for the humiliation in the garden, now he owned the truth: he’d quite simply wanted her.

  Unfortunately Kate didn’t want him, not anymore if, indeed, she ever had. She’d sent him away, thereby entering the league of loved ones who’d been rejecting him all his life. Never before had he felt so splintered, so aching, so absolutely close to coming apart.

  Oh, Katie, I’ll break you yet.

  The trick would be not to allow his own heart to be broken in the bargain.

  The next morning Rourke sat alone at the breakfast table, nursing his cold coffee and pushing his food about his plate. His folded newspaper, still warm from the iron, lay unopened beside him. In the bright light of day, he admitted that spanking and bondage were no ways to go about bedding a virgin bride. And yet he’d sensed Katie had both wanted and needed the raw honesty of a hard, fierce taking, and so, he admitted, had he. These past weeks they’d been circling each other like hissing cats. The episode with Zeus had pushed him beyond the edge of patience and civility. Thinking how easily her slender white throat might have snapped sent ice water trickling through his veins. By the time he’d flung open her bedroom door, he’d buried his fear in blistering rage. And yet before last night, he’d never laid angry hands on a woman, not even Felicity. His wee wife most definitely brought out the beast in him.

  Kate entered the room, dressed in a riding habit of hunter green and bowler pinned to perfect place. To the casual observer she would appear elegant and self-possessed, a fashion plate from Harper’s Bazaar come to life, the perfect picture of upper-crust English womanhood. But her shadowed eyes and less than springy step told Rourke otherwise. It seemed he was not the only one of them to come out of the previous night’s tumult the worse for wear. He fingered the scab on his cheek. Surely she couldn’t mean to ride?

  Surprised and pleased to see her, he stood to draw out her chair. “Good morning, Kate. Did you sleep well?” He’d only slept in snatches himself.

  She gave a quick glance to the chair and then moved to the sideboard. “You needn’t bother. I shan’t be sitting.” Spo
oning buttered eggs onto her plate, she glared back at him. “Unfortunately I’ve never been particularly adept at sleeping on my stomach.”

  He opened his mouth to remark on the bonny view that must have been, but for once better judgment prevailed. Instead, he said, “I hadn’t expected to see you downstairs so early.” He hadn’t expected to see her at all.

  “I’m headed to the stables to make my apologies to Mr. Campbell.” She slammed the lid down on the rasher. “So, if your intention was to starve me—again—as well as beat me, I’m sorry to disappoint.”

  “That’s not… Oh, hell, Katie, can’t we call a truce? It’s not as if you didn’t manage to get in a few good licks yourself.”

  “Speaking of which, how is your face? That scratch on your cheek must sting dreadfully.” She sent him a sweet smile, her first since entering.

  He touched the cheek she’d marked and grimaced. “Shaving this morning hurt like the devil—and dinna look so pleased with yourself.”

  She came over to the table and plunked her plate down. “But I am pleased with myself, about the scratch at least. Come at me like that again, and I’ll give you one to match on the other side.”

  Exasperated, he raked a hand through his hair. “Christ, Kate, how can you speak to me so? Last night we made love. Last night I was inside you.”

  Her gaze darted to the open door. “Kindly lower your voice. The servants, now that we have servants, will hear you.”

  Temper rising, he threw his napkin down like a gauntlet. “I don’t give a damn if the whole bloody castle hears.”

  “Well, I do. I’d just as soon we forget last night ever happened.”

  Of all the things she’d said, the insults she’d lobbed at him, that last remark cut the deepest. He rounded on her. “Can you do that, Kate? Can you forget the feel of my fingers playing with your button and milking the cream from your cunt? Can you forget how you moaned when I thrust into you with my two fingers and you wiggled that bonny arse of yours as though begging for a third? Can you forget how you came for me, not once but twice in a row?”