The Duke's Bedeviled Bride (Royal Pains Book 2) (8 page)

All at once, his warm hand was no longer there. Then, it was, cupped and accompanied by surprise and pain. She gasped in response. The hand returned, open and soothing. He took his time attending the spot he’d struck before moving the hand betwixt her legs. Her heart rate and trepidation increased as he played among her folds, stimulated her bud, and teased her vaginal opening. Arousal soon diluted her anxiety.

His increasingly ragged breathing and burgeoning erection told her she was not the only one enjoying herself.
 

The hand withdrew. She held her breath, bracing herself. The blow landed, harder than before. She bit back her cry, not wanting to appear too feeble to oblige him. He caressed the spot again, then her cunny, before landing another blow. Her bottom was now aflame, but so was her sex. Holy Mary. If he kept this up much longer, she would surely climax.

Would doing so please or displease him?

He spanked her again, hard enough to burn like brimstone. She hissed a curse under her breath, which he answered with another firm swat.
 

“You will speak only when commanded to do so. Is that understood?”

“Yes.” She could hardly answer otherwise after demanding the same of him.

He slapped her again, shocking her bottom and sex in unison. “You will address me as Lord and Master when we are thusly engaged.”
 

“Yes, Lord and Master.”

He hit her again and again in quick succession, each strike in a different spot and harder than the last. While the blows smarted, their reverberations were remarkably erogenous. With each assault, her blood sang louder. The second she reached the brink of orgasm, he stopped the slaps and resumed his caresses, making small circles on her fevered buttocks with his equally heated palm.
 

“How do you feel?”

“Remarkably aroused.”

His hand crept downward, fingers massaging, circling, and, finally, penetrating.

“So you are.” He was clearly pleased with his handiwork. “Are you beginning to see how pleasurable a spanking can be?” Without waiting for her answer, he added, “Now I want you to kneel on the floor and capture my cock between your breasts.”

“Why?”

He smacked her bottom, provoking a cough of surprise. “What was that for?”

“Questions defy my authority,” he told her, his voice gentle but firm. “Each time you ask another, I shall answer with a blow. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Lord and Master.”

Bottom stinging and cunny aching, she climbed off his lap and knelt down as instructed. Moving in very close, she took her breasts in her hands and closed them around his erection.

Gripping her shoulders, he held her there and fucked her cleavage. This did naught for her, but clearly did a great deal for him.
 

“Enough,” he said after a time, panting like a dog. “Now get on the bed on all fours.”

She started to ask why, but, remembering his edict, stifled the impulse in time. Pulling herself to her feet, she climbed on the bed and assumed the requested posture.
 

He came up behind her and ran his hands over her scorching backside before sweeping them down the backs of her thighs to the tops of her stockings.

“God, how good you look.” His voice was husky with desire. “Like temptation made flesh.”
 

At that, he pushed into her, burying his cock to the hilt. The possession felt so exquisite, an involuntary moan escaped her lips.

Taking hold of her hips, he moved inside her with deep, measured strokes. “Do you enjoy it when I fuck you, Rosebud?”

“Yes, Lord and Master.”

“It gladdens me to hear say so. For I do so love fucking you.”

His thrusts picked up speed until he was slamming furiously against her brutalized behind. With each forceful invasion, pleasure rocketed through her body. A thrilling fireworks display building toward an explosive finale. After a few more ardent thrusts, her orgasm broke with a power that ravaged her to the bone.
 

“Oh, Maggie,” he cried jubilantly, huskily.

Holding fast to her hips, he planted his cock deep and spilled into her with a guttural grown of pleasure. When he ceased shuddering, he tumbled down beside her, breathing hard.

She dropped beside him, her face turned toward his. She lay there, looking at him, waiting for her heartbeat and breathing to return to normal.

He stroked her face and hair with a tenderness that melted her insides. Then, he smiled. “Are you beginning to see the method to my madness?”

“Yes, Lord and Master.”

He pulled her into his arms, against his pounding, sweat-dampened chest, and stroked her hair—all sweetness. “You may call me Robert now.”

“I love you, Robert,” she whispered. “And would do anything to make you happy.”

“You do make me happy, Rosebud. Much happier than I have the right to be.”

* * * *

Maggie awoke the next morning alone. Either Robert, who’d been in her bed when she fell asleep last night, had risen early or she’d slept past breakfast. The blinding sunlight streaming through the window told her the latter might well be the case. The sunshine also inspired a deep longing to be out of doors.
 

Preferably with her absent husband.

Helped by her maid, she put on her favorite day frock and pinned up her hair before scavenging a barley bannock from the kitchen. The biscuit was as dry and flavorless as boiled bone, but curbed her hunger well enough.

Now, to find Robert. He was probably in the library, tethered to his desk by the usual odious affairs of the duchy.

Well, she’d soon put an end to that.

He lifted his gaze when she came in, meeting hers. His countenance visibly brightened, pleasing her unendingly. She hastened over, set her elbows upon the desk, and peered into his lovely gray-green eyes. When she gazed upon her handsome husband thusly, she felt like the luckiest woman on earth.

“Given the fineness of the weather, what would you say to moving the day’s lessons to the garden?”

“I would say here-here.” He put down his quill, rose from his chair, and pressed his hands in the small of his back as he stretched. “I have been sedentary for too long and could do with a bit of fresh air and exercise.”
 

“Oh?” She batted her eyes at him, playing the coquette. “And what sort of exercise did you have in mind?”

He waggled his eyebrows. “What do you say to taking a ride—but without the horses?”

“I say yes.” She beamed at him. “For that is precisely the sort of exercise I had in mind.”

An hour hence, they were sheltered with a dense copse a little ways beyond the garden gate. The sky above was blue and cloudless, the temperature agreeable, and the breeze soft. The air smelled of sun-warmed grass and pine. ’Twas as faultless a day as she’d ever known, made more perfect still by the duke’s affable mood. This was how she preferred him to be. Attentive, playful, and sweet. Her teacher, husband, and partner. Not her master or slave.
 

Yes, last night’s sex play had been thrilling and the orgasm nothing shy of spectacular, but the best part had been when he held her in his arms, kissed her tenderly, and called her his Rosebud.

If only things between them could always be that way.

But, alas, his needs and hers were very different when it came to sexual intimacy.

Releasing a sigh of resignation, she reached down to stroke her husband’s hair. Having finished her lesson on the Roman invasion of Great Britain, he’d moved on to vocabulary. At the moment, he was demonstrating a new word. Yes,
demonstrating
. The word was
gamahuche
, a French term meaning “mouth on genitals.” Leave it to the French. Not that the English lacked their fair share of erotic colloquialisms. Quite the contrary, as she’d only recently learned. Today’s etymology lesson began with the term “larking,” whose definition she had experienced the previous evening when he’d swived her cleavage.

A grin upswept one edge of his mouth as he added, “What a laugh ’twould be if Hugh were to come upon us in our present posture. How do you suppose he might react?”

“I would hope he’d believe our union a felicitous one.”

“And is it, my Maggie? Are you happy with your choice of brothers?”

The question called forth a jumble of thoughts and reflections too tangled to pull apart. All she wanted was to make him want her the way she wanted him. Tenderly, wholly, faithfully, and properly. No whips or blindfolds or
Godemichés.
Just cock, cunt, fingers, lips, and tongue. The tools God gave men and women to enjoy each other with.

“Of course I am.”

She reached out for him, pulling him upward until his head rested against her chest. He put his arms round her and sighed deeply, his breath warm where her breasts escaped the snug bodice.
 

“I sincerely hope you mean that.” He pressed his mouth to the soft swell of her décolletage.
 

He kissed his way to her mouth. She kissed him back with fervor and they lay there for a time kissing and kissing among the trees and grass and sunshine and clouds. Holding his body against hers, she ran her hands up into his dark, wavy hair, over his broad shoulders, along his powerful arms, and down his muscular back.

God, how she loved the taste and feel of this man.

Rising off her, he touched his finger very delicately to the edge of her bodice, near her collarbone, but instead of pushing the garment off her shoulders as she’d expected him to, he ran his finger slowly along the edge, down across the swell of her bosoms, and back up to the other shoulder. She watched his face as he did this, which felt almost as intimate as kissing him. By the time he’d finished outlining the whole edge, he’d barely touched her and yet she was so aroused she could hardly think straight.
 

He then trailed kisses down her body, jumped over her lifted skirts, and stopped at the edge of her pubic curls. As he ran his tongue along the soft, sensitive skin there, the velvet caress coupled with his humid breath, sent thrilling shivers through her. As a sigh shuddered from her lips, all the tension spilled out of her like water from an overturned pail.

An image intruded. Him on the big four poster in his bedchamber at the royal palace in Edinburgh with Lord Hardwick and the courtesan. Then, without impetus on her part, his companions transformed into herself and Hugh. The unexpected scene stirred something at her core. Something dark, bestial, and dangerous. Was Robert licentious enough to agree to a threesome with his own brother? Was she wicked enough to suggest such a thing?

Surely not, on both counts.

The image faded as he turned his head toward the hand in his hair and nipped playfully at the plump heel of her thumb. Then, meeting her distracted gaze with the sweetest of smiles, he said, “A rose by any other name would taste as sweet.”

“Do I taste pleasant on thy tongue?” If the smell was any indicator, she would have thought her womanly folds tasted closer to fish than flowers.

“You are nectar, dearest, and I the busy bee who delights in drinking deeply from you.”

Satisfied, she lay back and gazed dreamily at the canopy of branches overhead. The sun winked down at her from a deep blue sky. Sweet bliss washed through her, partly owing to the day’s perfection, but mostly due to her husband’s practiced devotions.

How many women had he been with? How many men?

She blinked the thought away, not wishing to sour the sweetness of the moment with hurtful contemplations.
 

With a slow-moving hand, he caressed from her ankle up the long line of her leg, around the curve of her knee, up the soft skin of her thigh, above her stocking. He then lifted the leg from the puddle of her skirts and placed the limb over his shoulder.

“Do you not wish to watch, my wee voyeur?”

Her gaze cut to where he lay betwixt her thighs, his long hair tousled, her leg tossed over his shoulder in wild abandon.
 

Anyone could come upon them.

Wicked delight sizzled through her at the idea of being seen in such a posture. Maybe she was an exhibitionist as well as a voyeur.
 

She caught Robert’s eye, ready to ask, but the words ran away at the sight of his knee-weakening smile. As their heated gazes locked, he slid one exploring finger along her private petals—a pirate drawing a treasure map.

Pleasure tiptoed through her, whispering sweet promises. She closed her eyes to better savor the honeyed sensations.
 

His tongue took the place of his finger, pleasing, teasing, tormenting. Robbing her of breath and thought. The pleasure coursing through her body was equal parts wickedness and divinity, blasphemy and blessing.
 

“Oh, Robert.” She lifted her hips, offering herself to him. Surrendering her will. Putting herself in his care. Trusting him, body and soul.

He accepted her oblation, closing his lips around her bud. He proceeded to suck, lick, and nibble in masterful combination until, disengaging his mouth, he uttered a one-syllable command.