WitchofArundaleHall (7 page)

“Perry,” she sobbed and arched toward him. “Perry! Please. I
need you.”

He growled again and dove between her legs. At the first
scrape of his tongue over her, she shattered. Her scream echoed in her ears and
the sensation went on and on. He gave her no reprieve but drove her back toward
that edge. He bit her, devoured her, his sinful mouth doing magic she knew she
could never undo.

Her breath came in pants as she spun into another tornado of
arousal. This time she shouted Perry’s name and his response vibrated against
her pussy. It was enough. It was too much. She wanted…she needed…the things she
thought were so erotic that she tossed her head back and forth.

She swallowed and did what she knew would please them both. She
begged. “Take me. Please, take me now.”

“No,” Perry answered. He intended to drive her to exhaustion
with pleasure. Even as his cock pulsed painfully and the beast beneath the
surface surged forward to place its Claim on her, he resisted.

When he’d been honorable, let her choose to reject him,
another wolf had tried to take what belonged to him. Now he was taking that
choice away. But when the morning light shone its harsh light on his actions he
was going to make sure she couldn’t say he took her without her permission.

He slid his tongue lower, his fingers still buried in her
sweet pussy. When he touched her arse with his mouth, she froze. Like a
predator Perry hummed with arousal at her stillness. He sucked and nipped at
her puckered flesh. As frozen as she’d been, an instant later she went wild
beneath his ministrations. She bucked and rocked, her whimpers firing him
further. He dove in, his nose near her pussy and his tongue lashing her arse.

His fingers were soaked as her pussy wept for him. Then her
whole body went rigid and she squeezed him in a vise that he felt all through
him. She gushed, her slick channel ready and hot.

It was too much. With bare control he extended his claws and
slashed through the material that held her legs. When he plunged inside her, he
wanted her thighs to squeeze him and her heels on his arse.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her, tilting
her even as she arched closer to try to capture his length inside her. “Who am
I, Sarah?” He made her meet his gaze. Her clouded, confused expression made his
heart wrench but he was not going to back down. Every step of the way he wanted
her capitulation, her surrender. “You know what I am to you. Say it.”

The vulnerable look in her eyes, the trembling of her lips
only inflamed him. If she didn’t speak he was going to come all over her skin. She
swallowed and he focused on the movement. Every single twitch of her body
belonged to him. He was only waiting for her to admit it.

“You are my Master,” she said.

He thrust inside her and she made a keening sound that
almost made him spill inside her immediately. She thrashed and bowed to deepen
his penetration. He groaned and cupped her arse as he drove harder, faster. She
was so wet, so needy, so perfect.

The beast beneath him burst forth through his voice and he
howled just as her cunt tightened around him, squeezing him, stroking his cock.
His release boiled and burned, exploding from him. Words spilled from his mouth
as he streamed his hot cum inside her. “Mine. You are mine. My mate. Mine. Mine.”
With each word he thrust to emphasize his possession.

His soul locked to hers, a snap that was almost audible to
him. The wolf howled again, a sound of triumph that echoed in Perry’s ears.

As he came down from those impossible heights he gripped
Sarah’s hair and plundered her mouth as he’d plundered her body. Her legs
clasped him closer and she convulsed around his spent cock, hardening him
again, making him moan against her mouth.

When he broke the kiss, he stared at her and her shocked
gaze met his. “Again.”

Reality did not intrude and Sarah gasped for another breath.
Again? How many times could a man pleasure a woman until she died from it? Her
heart beat so hard she thought it would explode. He had not left her, his spent
length inside her, a comfort she clung to like a lifeline. His fingers dug into
her flesh and shards of pain streaked through her. But rather than distract her
from the intense pleasure, the pain enhanced it.

He must have felt the natural response to the arousal,
because he groaned. She didn’t think it was possible to do more, go further,
but she should have known Perry would accept nothing but her complete
capitulation.

His thrusts were slower, deeper, more intense, and Sarah
couldn’t look away from him. He held her gaze as he drove her toward that
desperate place of need where he seemed to keep her. “Talk to me, Sarah. Tell
me how it feels,” he demanded.

“It feels…”
Like home. Like heaven.
She closed her
eyes and whimpered. “It feels like I’m dying, like I’m being born anew. It feels
like a dream, yet so real. Perry—” Her voice broke as she convulsed around him
again. She reached for it, wanting it, needing it.

She was owned, no longer able to deny the truth of his
mastery of her. Tomorrow she would have regrets. Tomorrow she would face the
cold facts—that he’d Claimed her only because another threatened to take her.
But for this moment he stared at her as if she mattered, as if she were life
itself. Those times at Wolford House when she had watched, envious of the women
who experienced that intense connection with their partner, she had not
considered how erotic it would be to have Perry watch her fall over the edge.

His hands stroked the fires again, touching her everywhere,
branding her with his desire as surely as he was branding her with his seed. When
he brought her breasts to his mouth she held her breath, unable to move. He no
longer stroked her but sucked on her greedily, and she cried out as a sharper
pleasure whipped through her.

He bit her sensitive nipples and growled with pleasure as
she thrust her hips upward to take him deeper inside her. Every nerve was on
fire and every muscle tense. His tongue lashed her breasts and she thought
she’d die from the pleasure. The harder he bit her, the higher she flew, until
she was there again, screaming, thrashing under him like a wild animal.

Out of control now, his movements were frantic and he pinned
her with his cock. Then he kissed her, his mouth fused to hers as he shouted
his release, the vibrations of sound filling her throat and her body with their
force.

His seed was everywhere. She could smell it. Limp and
exhausted, she dropped her legs and lay quiet. She loved the feel of his body
on hers, a weight that said she was loved, protected, wanted. When he moved she
made a sound of protest. But he only left her for a moment, his knife out to
cut the bindings on her hands.

Free to touch him, she reached out and threaded her fingers
through his hair and pressed her lips to his. Her soul and her heart were his,
had always been his. Whatever happened tomorrow, she had this moment.

At some point she must have fallen asleep but he woke her
and aroused her all over again, brooking no resistance. It wasn’t the bone-deep
desire or the intense muscle-clenching orgasms that made her heart soar. It was
the way he sheltered her in his arms and held her after his third and final
explosive release.

When the morning light streamed into the room, Sarah was
alone. All the doubts and fears were there waiting for her. But there was a
delicious sensation of being used, loved, worn to exhaustion by his desire.

She rose from the bed and poured some water into the bowl on
the dresser. With a cloth, she cleaned the sticky seed that clung to her
thighs. The full-length mirror showed red marks on her wrists and bite marks on
her breasts. But the mark on the inside of her thigh was now deeper and more
noticeable. He had Claimed her and there was no doubt in Sarah’s mind that she
was as bound to him as Elizabeth had become bound to Joshua.

She placed her hand over the mark and suddenly the room
spun.

The room was gone and she was in an orchard filled with a
strange plant she didn’t recognize, with green leaves. The air around her was
damp but hot. Not England.

Laughter led her down a worn track and she wove through the
rows of plants until she entered a clearing filled with green grass and one
lone apple tree.

Perry stood in the clearing, a warm smile on his face and
a tan to his skin, lifting a child of about eight years into the air. They
laughed as Perry swung the boy around. Matching gray eyes turned to her, saw
her.

Like the jolt of a carriage, Sarah was torn away from that
sweet vision and dropped back into reality. It couldn’t have been her child. She
knew that. Lady North had been clear about Sarah’s chances. Even if she
dismissed Lady North’s predictions as lies, there was still the information
from the scrolls, copied and kept at the North estate. Those papers also stated
that a woman born of her line must never mate with a DeFalk wolf.

So the child had to be another’s, not hers. Her heart broke
at the thought. She could selfishly cling to Perry, be his wife but bear him no
children. But her vision showed a child and her visions had always been
correct.

This had to stop. She could not allow this curse to go on,
to pass to another generation. Not when she knew the dire results. To succeed
she had to keep Perry out of her bed. She could not bear the anxiety of waiting
for the child to die, for the day to come that was predicted from the curse on
her blood.

But oh, how her heart longed to bear that child, to be a
mother, to be Perry’s true wife. She knew the answers to her future lay in the
scrolls in Bayeux. The papers Lady North possessed had been vague about the way
to break the curse. Sarah hoped to find more in the originals.

The knowledge she had was difficult enough. Claimed, the
only way to break the curse was with blood. Her blood. Probably her death. She
could not allow things between Perry and herself to go on this way. She
snatched her hand away from the mark on her inner thigh and she turned away
from the mirror. Her mind whirled as she dressed. The hallway was quiet as she
sought the top of the stairs. The house seemed deserted as she descended to the
first floor. She heard the low murmur of voices and followed the sound to the
dining room.

Perry was at the table and Jaimison stood behind him. The
men had stopped speaking when she entered the room. Perry’s gaze was filled
with lust, even though she noted a slight wariness too.

She cleared her throat and managed to speak. “Good morning.”
She knew her voice sounded cold.

“I’m sorry I left you this morning,” Perry said. “I wanted
to call for Jaimison to cancel our trip to France. We can go to the Arundale
estate in Jamaica for a honeymoon—”

“Mr. Jaimison, will you leave us please?” She said quickly,
interrupting her husband’s happy plans.

Jaimison studied her face and shot a worried glance at
Perry. The man knew what she was going to do. What choice did she have? When
Jaimison was gone she took a deep breath. “I do not want to cancel my trip to
France.”

There was a long, agonizing silence. Perry’s face blanked. “Your
trip.”

“I must end the curse and to do so I must go to Bayeux.” She
wanted him to understand. Already he might have gotten her with child. A child
she would never see grow to maturity.

“To end our connection. Do I understand correctly?” he
demanded.

He did not understand. She twisted her fingers together. “To
stop this horrible thing from continuing.”

“I see. I am a ‘horrible thing’.” He clenched his teeth and
rose from the table. “You wish me to believe that you did not enjoy last
night?”

“I wish you would see my point of view. This curse—”

“This curse is the only reason we are connected at all,” he
stated.

Being stabbed would have hurt less but she had to say the
words. “Yes. It is the only reason.”

The silence seemed to go on for an eternity. Sarah could not
speak. She could not move. Once, when her brother’s wife had been particularly
cruel, Sarah had wondered if someone could die from pain. Loneliness and
rejection were constant companions but Sarah had discovered that a person could
keep living. Even when their soul was shattered.

Like now.

It hurt to take a breath, but she did it. It was agony to
sit down at the table, but she sat. Food tasted like sawdust, but she ate. Numb,
she barely registered the breakfast she made herself consume.

Still he said nothing.

When she thought he would never speak again, he broke the
painful quiet. “I am afraid you are mistaken if you believe that breaking the curse
will free you. Divorce is not as easy to obtain as snapping your fingers.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You would refuse to free me?”

“Marriage affords advantages to me that I am unwilling to
give up,” he said smoothly.

Finally she reached for the one thing that would stiffen her
spine—anger. “Advantages?” she snapped.

His smile was humorless. “I’ve heard it said that a wife can
hide a multitude of sins. You don’t think I shall sleep in a cold bed alone, do
you?”

He meant to replace her with some whore? Jealousy and
despair warred within her and she fought the desire to tell him everything. But
to do what she knew she had to do, she must let him believe she did not want
him or need him.

Or love him.

When she rose from the table she drew his attention to her and
tipped her chin in defiance. “Since we agree that you Claimed me in error, you
will do me the courtesy of keeping your hands off me.”

“Of course,” he said immediately.

She swept her gaze over him with contempt. “You would say
that. Now that it’s far too late,” she twisted her lips in a sneer, “I do not
want your company in France. I do not want your company at all.”