She should be pleased he would not treat her cruelly. But somehow what he demanded of her was even more frightening than the threat of violence. She began to tremble under his unwavering stare. Only the reminder that she did this for her beloved sister—and the rest of her family—gave her the strength to respond to him.
“I can,” she vowed, hating the tremble in her voice.
He studied her another long moment, then leaned back even farther in the chair. “Well enough, then. ’Tis no cause for alarm that you know nothing beyond kissing. You will learn the rest in goodly time.”
He stretched out his booted feet and gestured her nearer. “Come stand before me, wife, that I may begin your lessons.”
Was there ever so difficult a course for Linnea to traverse than the short walk across the lord’s chamber? She feared at first she could not do it. But then she recalled Maynard and the wounds he’d suffered for his family, and somewhere she unearthed the courage. Seven steps it took. She stopped just beyond his reach.
A mocking half-smile lifted one side of his mouth. “Closer, wife. Come closer.”
She took another step, albeit a short one. It brought her within the span of his large, booted feet. “Shall I remove your buskins?” she asked, wanting to keep her distance from him as long as she possibly could. It was a hopeless and foolish whim, she knew, for what was to come was inevitable. But she couldn’t help it.
“If that is where you wish to start, then do so. You remove my boots, then I’ll remove something of yours—say, your gown.” One of his dark brows slanted up as if in question. But it was no question and she knew it. He was tormenting her, plain and simple. And she must endure it.
“We’ll proceed in that manner,” he continued. “Each removing the other’s clothing until both of us are naked. Then we’ll move on to the next lesson.”
Linnea knelt on the floor. She hated him in that moment, more completely than she’d ever hated anyone in her life. But she feared him just as much. The next lesson. She couldn’t bear to think about that.
Her hands shook as she grabbed the low heel of one dark brown boot. It was warm, but she ignored that. She pulled hard, without any regard for his comfort. She just wanted it off as fast as possible so that she could back away from him.
Once both boots were off, however, he wiggled his feet. “The stockings, wife. Remove my stockings too.”
She wanted to spit on him, but she didn’t. She peeled off his stockings instead, relieved that they came off easily. But the sight of his bare calves and ankles, so strongly muscled and dusted with dark hairs, sent a strange jolt of mixed-up emotions through her. Though she should not, she felt an obscene curiosity about him. About men in general, she corrected herself. Men were hairier than women. Would he have hair … everywhere? A stain of hot color rose in her cheeks at the thought.
“Now ’tis my turn,” he said. He leaned forward, and with a hand on each of her arms, he drew her to stand before him. Then he stood also and without warning lifted her completely off her feet. As if she were as light as a down pillow, he turned and deposited her on the chair. He kept his hands on her waist, but now he looked up at her, not down.
“’Tis my turn,” he repeated to her shocked face. Then his gaze lowered from her eyes to her lips, and then farther, to her breasts.
Beneath her heavy gown and whisper-light kirtle Linnea’s entire body tautened in fearful anticipation of what was to come. No! her mind protested. She tried to pull away, but she was trapped on the chair.
“I’ll take this girdle first,” he said, unfastening the brooch that held the silk cording around her hips. “Now the gown.” His eyes raised back to hers while his hands found the lacings at her sides and made short shrift of them.
He must have felt how she trembled, for he paused a moment and looked up at her face once more. “You said you were willing,” he reminded her. “Have you changed your mind?”
Linnea clenched her teeth. She would not be a coward. “I have not changed my mind, but …” She looked away, unable to meet his astute gaze.
“But you are untried and afraid,” he furnished for her.
When she refused to answer, his eyes narrowed. “I wonder,” he said after a moment or two, “exactly how willing you will be.” His hands began to slide up and down her sides, a burning sensation that was not dampened at all by the heavy gown that yet shrouded her body. “Methinks you plan to lie still as a corpse beneath me in the bed, not recoiling, but not responding either. But I say to you that to behave so is not to be considered willing. So, let me explain better what I expect from you.”
He reached down and began to draw her gown up, past her knees and thighs, baring her hips and belly and breasts in the nearly sheer kirtle. He pulled the gown over her head, then tossed it unceremoniously aside and returned his hands to her waist.
Linnea feared she might faint. When he began lightly to stroke her hips and down her thighs, then up again, approaching her breasts, she began to tremble as violently as if the cruel wind outside did buffet her.
“No doubt you will resist me. A daughter of Edgar de Valcourt could do no less. But you are de la Manse now, whether either of us would have chosen to make it so. I will conquer you, Beatrix de la Manse. I will crush all your resistance and rouse you to a desire that you may very well hate. But I will make you willing. And I will make you revel in your own wantonness.”
His hands curved around to cup her buttocks and he hauled her up against him. Her belly crushed against his chest. His face pressed into the softness of her breasts.
“No!” she gasped, clutching his shoulders and trying to shove him away. But he had her caught and in her struggles she managed only to fit them more intimately together.
“Be still, sweet wife,” he ordered, nuzzling his face between her breasts.
“This … this is not … not seemly,” Linnea gasped.
“Between a husband and wife everything is seemly. Tell me the truth, bonny wench. Do you like this?” He rubbed one of his broad palms beneath her buttocks and she flinched in shame.
“Or perhaps this will rouse you better.” He began to kiss her breasts through the linen, wetting the nipples with his tongue. She shoved again at him, but he was stronger. When his teeth found her taut nipple in a soft bite, then he sucked it fully into his mouth, she let out a groan of dismay. His palm continued its wanton motion against her bottom and his mouth tortured her pebbled nipples until her fear and anger were muddied by an even more powerful emotion. He was doing something to her. She knew not what—No, she knew. It was like the wedding kiss when his tongue had roused a tiny, wicked part of her. He was doing that again now—and she was letting him.
With a mighty effort she wrenched free of his ungodly embrace. She toppled backward, but he caught her before she fell, and in an instant she was lifted high in his grasp. One of his arms supported her back; the other held her beneath the knees. Her kirtle billowed beneath her, exposing her legs and much more for anyone to see.
But Axton was the only one there to see. When he laid her down on the black fur pelt that covered the bed, then stepped back and ripped first his tunic, then his chainse from his body, she knew she was foolish to deny him anything. He would take it anyway.
Linnea struggled for control as he disrobed. But the sight of his wide chest and powerful torso was too much. She scrambled backward on the thick bear pelt until she was up against the headboard, her knees at her chest, her arms wrapped protectively around them. When he removed his braies, she closed her eyes too. She didn’t want to see.
A chuckle broke the silence, then the bed dipped as he sat on it. “This must go,” he said, tugging at her kirtle. Like a stone carving she sat there, eyes clenched shut, allowing him to lift this arm, straighten that leg—whatever was necessary to remove the last of her garments.
Only when she felt his fingers in her hair, spreading it over her bare shoulders and arms, did she at last lift her lashes to view him.
“I will
not begrudge you your maidenly fears,” he murmured, surprising her with the seriousness of his expression. He separated one long, golden strand from the rest and wove it between his fingers. “But I will not allow my wife to stand with my enemy. I will make you mine in every way, Beatrix, bring you to heel—break your spirit, if I must. Do not think to oppose me,” he warned. “For you will not like the consequences.
“Now,” he said, tugging slightly on the tendril. “I will teach you the pleasures of the bed.”
She would not fight him, she told herself when he gripped her ankles and slowly pulled her down the bed. Beneath her naked flesh the great bearskin caressed her skin with an obscene sort of pleasure. Above her his eyes did the same. She twisted to one side, ashamed to be seen so. But he rolled her onto her back, then held himself above her, poised on his knees and outstretched arms.
“This first time will hurt,” he said as he nudged her legs apart. “But we dispense with that now so that you may more quickly find the pleasure of it.”
So saying he sat back on his heels and began to run his hands up her legs to her hips and stomach. It was very odd to have him touch her so. A part of her was outraged; another part terrified. But a different part of her admitted that his touch was … it was interesting. He gentled her as she might do to a nervous cat or a restless pony.
Her eyes moved over him again, venturing past the pronounced planes of his face and down to his incredible chest with its pattern of dark hair and his hard-ridged stomach with its ripples of muscles. Then her eyes halted in horrified fascination at the straining muscle that reared between his legs.
He will grow it larger, her grandmother had warned her. But that large? she wondered, her eyes round with shock.
Before she could react, one of his hands moved down to the place between her legs, where that was meant to lodge. He stroked something and her eyes jerked back to his. He stroked it again, and Linnea felt as if a long banked fire inside her had suddenly been blown into flame.
A small flame, to be sure. But when his finger then slipped deeper and right up into her body, she nearly came off the bed.
“No! Don’t!” She tried to clamp her legs together but his knees blocked her efforts. She tried to scramble backward, but one of his hands held her hips steadily in place.
“The first time I will do it fast,” he told her, moving over her once more. “Just hold on and it will be done. Then afterward …”
Linnea did not hear what he said afterward, for that huge part of him fell heavy onto her belly, like a burning log might fall onto the hearth. He pushed back a little. Then she felt the thick tip prodding her where his finger had been.
“Wait—No!” she began as panic drove away all thoughts but of escape. “You have the wrong—”
“I have the right of it,” he countered hoarsely in her ear, halting her before she could confess, in her panic, to her true identity. Then he pushed himself wholly into her.
He did it fast, as he’d said he would. But it hurt just the same. It tore and bled and burned. She would not cry out, however. She refused to. She would not give up what little of her pride she yet retained. Any tears she shed were lost in her hair or in the black bearskin.
While she fought for breath and control, he began a rocking rhythm of penetration and withdrawal, of a stretching discomfort and a momentary reprieve.
When finally he looked into her face, Linnea at once turned away, clenching her teeth in determination. She would survive this, she told herself. She would survive.
And as his movements grew faster and his breathing more labored, she found with relief that the pain had begun to ease. He pulled almost all the way out, then broke his pace and eased more slowly into her.
“Oh,” she gasped, then immediately clamped her mouth closed. When he did the same thing again, instead of it feeling like a hot log ramming into her, it felt more like a stroke of hard, wet velvet.
“St. Jude,” she whispered, as a tremor of unwonted pleasure washed over her.
Axton slid all the way in, then out. “Is it St. Jude answering your prayers, wife? Or is it your husband?”
This time when he began to move faster, Linnea found herself unwillingly caught up in the frenzy of it. And when he began to thrust inside her at a furious pace, she could not hold back her own panting response.
Of a sudden he jerked against her as if he’d been struck. She felt the sweaty quiver of his thighs, and beneath her fingers his arms tensed almost to steel.
When had her hands begun to cling to him?
He thrust again, once, twice. Then the full weight of him came down upon her, and his only movement was the great heaving breaths he took.
Linnea did not know what to do. She pulled her hands from the slackened muscles of his arms, but that didn’t change the awkward, restless feeling that had come over her.
He’d aroused her—or he’d aroused that sinful part of her that she fought so hard to bury. Clearly he was finished—and he had not lied to her about what it would be like. Now, though, the feel of his warrior’s body bearing down on hers created the strangest feelings inside her, as if he’d begun something that was still not complete. But he was clearly finished.
So what was to happen now?
As his breathing came slowly back to normal, she began to think he might have fallen asleep. She shifted beneath him, or tried to. At once he moved, lifting up on one elbow to stare down at her.
“Well, wife. The worst of it is done with.”
Linnea looked up at him; there was no way to avoid it. The fact that they lay intertwined, with that male portion of him still resting inside her, was an act of such intimacy she could scarcely believe it. But to meet his astute gaze at the same time was almost unbearable. How could she hope to keep her secret from him now? He had but to look long enough into her eyes to see the truth.
Somehow she closed her eyes. She would have turned her face away too, but he caught her chin in his hand to prevent it.
“Look at me,” he demanded. His voice held neither amusement, nor even tolerance.
Linnea complied at once, for she recognized the anger implicit in his controlled tone, even though she did not understand its source. Hadn’t she done everything he’d demanded of her? But his eyes were hard as stone and narrowed into slits, and his body had gone tense.
“You will not turn away from me, Beatrix, or shut me out. Eighteen years has your family shut me and mine away from what was rightfully ours. But that has changed now and Maidenstone is mine again. I will not be shut out, not by your father nor by you. I will have my satisfaction from you, wife, here in this bed—”
So saying, he forced her legs wide and pushed himself deeper inside her. He’d become hard again, but though it did not hurt her this time, Linnea was even more frightened than before. He was angry this time. He did it now to punish her for her father’s transgressions. She knew little enough of the dealings between men and their wives, but she knew this was not the way it was supposed to be, a punishment.
“No! You can’t—Stop!” She twisted and flailed, then when that did not help, she struck out at him, hitting his arms and shoulders and finally his head.
But he was like a stone carving, impervious to her blows. That only made Linnea more desperate, though. Before it had been bad enough, but at least he’d not intended to be cruel. Now, though—
Her fist struck him hard on the ear. But with one hand he shrugged off the blow and her hand hit the headboard with bruising pain. In the midst of her panic, however, it reminded her of the dagger.
The dagger!
He began the same rhythm as before, but Linnea was too overwrought to succumb to the pleasure it could bring her. He did it to hurt her. That changed everything.
Her fingers clawed between the mattress and wood, searching frantically for the weapon. She would stab him with it. She would find it and make him stop.
Then she felt the cold metal and bone handle. She grabbed it with her left hand and struck ou
t wildly. Anything to make him stop!
“God’s bones!” He jerked to the side almost before the blade struck. Almost. Before Linnea could react again, though, her wrist was caught in a merciless grip that forced both fist and dagger down into the fur.
“You bitch!” He glared down at her with murder in his eyes. Linnea knew she was dead. He would kill her for what she’d done. But he would make her suffer first, she feared. Heartless bastard that he was, he would make certain she suffered long and hard for daring to oppose him.
She tried to glare right back at him. But the sting of tears heralded her complete failure. Unwanted, they nonetheless welled up, blurring her vision even when she tried to blink them away.
“Tears hold no sway with me,” he growled. “They will no more save you from your punishment than did your puny weapon.”
“’Tis your weapon that is so puny,” she responded, not caring anymore if she angered him. All she knew was that she must contradict him. She was already doomed.
“My weapon? Puny?”
He sounded so outraged that Linnea goaded him further. “Yes. Puny. And you are a fool to leave it in your cupboard for me to find.”
He stared down at her. Then, without warning and for no reason she could discern, he began to laugh. First he chuckled, then it grew to a great shout of laughter that shook her and the entire bed.
“Puny weapon,” he kept repeating between the waves of guffaws. “Puny weapon!”
Was he mad? Had ever a man been so perverse as he? Linnea could only gape at him, not understanding, but relieved that he did not mean to strangle her—at least not right away.
When he calmed, however, not much had really changed. He still lay upon her, pinning her to the bed with his greater weight and strength. He still gripped her wrist and she still held the dagger. The only difference was that a streak of deep red blood trickled from his right shoulder, all the way down his arm to his elbow.
“What shall you do now?” Linnea asked, unable to bear the suspense any longer.
The Maiden Bride Page 11