Ann’s lips parted, but she didn’t cry out in shock or disgust. If anything, Edmund thought he spotted arousal in her swollen lips and flushed cheeks.
“And they aren’t random. I know them well. They’re known as the Grand Bucks. I am, in fact, one of them.”
Chapter 4
In Shropshire, London hada reputation for modernity, filth, and decadence. As the Montfort carriage rolled over the stinking streets, Ann reflected that no one on the estate had any idea just how decadent London was.
Edmund had explained the secret society to which he belonged: a group of men who gathered in a townhouse called the Forest to wear stag masks and share a woman. She’d been so stunned by the existence of such an association, straight out of the most scandalous of books, that she’d not felt anger or hurt that he’d been bedding other women with his friends while she was in the country alone.
Perhaps it was his willingness to allow her to experience a night with the Grand Bucks that softened the shock. His willingness to let some other man fill her with a baby. Since that night when Ann had taken up residence in the Montfort townhouse,she’d slept in the marchioness’s big bed, her thoughts shifting from anonymous masked men taking her over and over until she swelled with the child she’d wanted for a decade to thoughts of the man she really wanted between her legs making her a mother.
At some point in the last fourteen years, Edmund Wake had transformed in her mind from a beast who would hurt her to the man she craved. She’d touched herself between her thighs to imagined images of that hard, thick cock. Longed for his touch on some part of her so she might reach the heights of ecstatic release.
“Do you feel prepared?”
Edmund’s voice startled Ann from her reverie across the carriage. He was regarding her while tapping his cane against the floor as if he, too, was nervous about tonight.
They were going to the Forest. To get Ann pregnant. And Edmund was going to observe the whole thing.
The thought of her husband watching her with other men should have mortified Ann, but it excited her. She wished she could touch her breasts and show him just how wet their plans made her. But she sat primly on that bench, terrified of betraying just how much she wanted him.
She nodded no. “I feel…”
Edmund switched so he could sit on the bench alongside Ann. She looked up in shock that he would come so close to her. Might he touch her, as she wished he would?
“Fear not,” he said with a self-effacing grin. “I won’t touch you.”
“Then what are you doing here?” she asked, her bodice feeling suddenly tight. Would that he could place those enormous hands inside it and rip it apart at the seams, then take hold of her breasts. Would that he could—
“These men are going to put their cocks in you, and it will hurt if you’re not ready for them.”
Something must be wrong with her. At the sound of the pain and hard use to come, her thighs squeezed together reflexively and she felt herself grow slick. Surely this was wrong.
Ann looked at Edmund as if she was drowning and searching for a hand that might pull her out of the water.
“Your eyes,” he said lowly.
“What about them?”
“Well, first of all, they’re green.”
“Yes.” Her lips felt swollen as she formed the word.
“And your pupils…”
Her breathing quickened. She was not drowning. She was an animal caught in a hunter’s trap.
“Your pupils are wide.” He moved the tiniest bit closer to her, as if he, too, was under a spell.
“What does that mean?”
He shifted his cane from hand to hand, fidgeting. “Usually? Arousal.”
“What’s the other option?”
Oh, he was closer now for sure, his colossal body invading her space. He knew how to impose himself on her while clothed in this fine carriage. What about if he tried it in her bedroom with their clothes off again? What if he held her—
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, his voice rough.
