“That was before,” said Hunter. “Last night, I...I was frustrated. She was upset about Warren, and I lost my temper. I said and did unpardonable things. I don’t know how I’ll face her when I get home.”
“Might I suggest facing her on your knees, with apologies spouting from your lips? She’s an understanding sort of person,” said Warren. “If you had to fall in with the Doting Love-Shackle Brigade, I’m glad it was because of her, because I think she’s worthy of all the angst you feel.”
August rolled his eyes. “The Doting Love-Shackle Brigade. God save us.”
Arlington chuckled, then nudged Hunter on the shoulder. “Go on then, Townsey. The longer you wait, the harder she’ll be to face. You can borrow my horse, if Warren will go with you and bring it back again. Then the three of us will probably head back to town before we trouble your marriage any further.”
Hunter looked at Warren. “Will you ride with me? I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted these few days. You’ve always been a good friend to me, whether I deserved it or not.”
Warren clapped him on the back with a grin. “You don’t deserve it, you tiresome bastard. But yes, I’ll go. I promised to deliver you home to her, and that was almost two hours ago.”
Aurelia awakened to the softly spoken prompt of her name. She sat up on the window seat to find her husband looking in at her, framed by the draperies. He was in breeches and shirtsleeves, and he looked every bit as woebegone as she felt.
“When I first saw you curled up in the window seat in London,” he said in a soft voice, “you seemed too beautiful for words. Certainly too beautiful to belong to me.”
“Oh.” She remembered that moment. It seemed so long ago. “I was hiding there from you.”
The smallest quiver of a smile touched his lips. “I knew you were hiding. I didn’t blame you then and I don’t blame you now.” The smile went away, and he looked so sad. “I need to apologize and explain, and beg for forgiveness, but I don’t think I deserve it, so I don’t really know what to say. May I come in, Aurelia? Please?”
He had never asked for permission before. She granted it with a small gesture, since her throat felt too tight to speak. He ducked within the space and sat beside her.
“I wasn’t hiding here,” she said once she regained her voice. “I was watching for you at the window. I suppose I must have fallen asleep.”
“I’m so sorry for what happened last night, darling, for the way I hurt and frightened you. How wrought up you must feel.”
Tears gathered in her eyes. “A little.”
“And then I left you alone. I thought you would want me to go. I didn’t know what to do, how to face you. I didn’t know how to explain what came over me. I felt angry and jealous, and impassioned by suspicions that weren’t true. I’m not making excuses. God knows there’s no excuse for treating you so roughly. For making you…cry.”
She was very close to crying again. She wanted to break down sobbing, and hide her face in the soft pleats of his sleeve. “I was so worried,” she finally managed to say. “I was afraid you’d never come back.”
His hand covered hers on the bench between them, tentatively, as if he feared she might pull hers away. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want me back. Aurelia, look at me.”
She could hardly do it. But they had to speak now, just as she’d had to speak with Lord Warren earlier. She met his gaze with as much directness as she could, and then he spoke in a gentle, somber voice.
“I promise you, I’ll never behave in such a way again. My idiotic accusations—how I hate myself for them now. I know you’ve never encouraged Warren, and that you’ve resigned yourself completely to our marriage.”
She couldn’t bear to hear him say it that way. “I haven’t resigned myself to anything, Hunter. I came to love you.”
“Do you still love me?” His voice roughened with emotion. “Even a little? Please don’t cry, my darling girl.”
“I don’t want to cry.” She took her hand from his to press her fingers against her eyes. “I want everything to be sweet again, and comfortable between us, the way it was.”
“I want that too. I’ll do anything to regain your trust.”
“Just don’t frighten me so.” She reached out to him and buried her tear-dampened face against his neck. His familiar scent and warmth enfolded her. Oh, she had been so afraid he was lost. “Don’t leave me again. We have to trust each other, and have discussions about what we’re feeling before things turn into a snarl. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes. We must be open and honest with one another about everything.”
“You should know Lord Warren was here,” she said, drawing back from him. “I received him in the drawing room. Nothing untoward happened, I promise.”
He brushed away her tears. “I know. I saw him and he told me.” He cradled her head in his palm, then took her hand and pressed kisses to each of her knuckles, and then the sensitive underside of her wrist. She shivered, momentarily lost to sensation.
“You saw Lord Warren?” she asked when her thoughts cleared. “Where?”
“At Wroxham’s estate.” He paused in his tender ministrations and looked up at her. “Nothing untoward happened, I promise. Just an unfortunate amount of drunken self-recrimination. Aurelia, forgive me for the terrible things I said to you last night, and the things I did. For my rude and petty jealousies, and my unconscionable attempt to force you. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’m asking it anyway. I’m so unworthy of you.”
“No, that’s not true.”
He turned her face to kiss her forehead, and both her eyes. He pressed a kiss to her temple and slid his lips down to her ear. “I’m afraid it is true, little grasshopper. If I were a better man, I wouldn’t shame you the way I do. I’d let you go. I’d let you live away from me.”
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.
“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.