“Christ, Lottie.”
The muscles of his neck stretched taut as he slammed into her. He pounded her with his hips, nailing her to the desk, triggering another gush of pleasure. He shafted deep twice more, then suddenly stilled. He threw his head back and roared. She felt him pulsing inside her, the blast of his seed against the sheath.
Shuddering, he lowered himself over her. Took her lips in a slow, drugging kiss.
“I hope you are satisfied with your rewards, wife.” He tucked a loose strand behind her ear, exuding male satisfaction. “Although I can’t say which of us enjoyed them more.”
“I have no complaints whatsoever.”
Her smile was equally pleased because shehadenjoyed her rewards thoroughly.
Especially since he had given her not just two of them but three.
“Yes, yes. Fuck me. Take me for a ride, you stallion.”
Judith was on top, her arse slapping his thighs in a demanding rhythm. She was also making noise, too much of it. Especially since they were in the stable, and anyone passing by the stall could hear them.
“We have to be quiet.” Even though his voice had changed and deepened last year, it cracked now with panic. “Sebastian could come back from his ride at any time. I think we should stop?—”
“I don’t pay you to think,” she snapped. “You’ll do as I say. And I want to fuck.”
He didn’t understand how it happened, but her beauty disappeared in a blink. As if she’d removed a mask, revealing her true nature beneath. Her disdain churned his gut, reminded him of all the reasons why what they were doing was a bad idea.
Not that he needed reminding. Shame was like a shadow, dogging his every step, reminding him what a bastard he was. He’d tried to put an end to their couplings, but he was weak and could never stand his ground. This time, he’d managed to stay away from her for weeks, but she’d cornered him in the stables this morning. Stripping off her riding habit, she’d fondled her breasts and pussy, and he’d reacted, getting hard. She’d knelt in front of him, her mouth coaxing forth his lust even though he resisted.
Remembering, he felt desire drain from him. He softened and slipped out of her.
“Dash it all, I wasn’t done.” She pouted. “Hasn’t anyone taught you it is bad manners to leave a lady wanting?”
“S-sorry.”
Humiliation joined his shame, and he couldn’t meet her eyes. He pushed himself to sitting, brushing off the hay that pricked his bare back. “I should be getting back to my duties?—”
“Isay what your duties are. And I want you to do what you do best. Make me feel good, my darling.”
She was smiling again. The tenderness in her green eyes confused him, for he wasn’t used to kindness. She had a way of making him feel both worthy and despicable. She placed a palm on his chest, pushing him back down with an insistence that said she was getting what she wanted. And he gave in. He shut his eyes, submitting to her skilled mouth, letting her take him to the place where he didn’t have to think. Where he was here but not here. Where things happened, but not to him, and it was if he were merely looking on.
Like when his ma took her last breath, her beauty ravaged by the disease that had consumed her flesh and bone.
Like when the older boys at the orphanage had targeted him, bullying him, until he grew big enough to fight back.
Like when the butler had whipped him for accidentally breaking a porcelain plate, and the mistress of the house had tended to him afterward, her touch wandering from the welts on his back to other places, making him shudder in a different way.
Like now. When she had him in her mouth, and it felt good even as it felt bad. How could pleasure feel bad? But it did. It made him feel filthy and used, like the bastard the bullies in the orphanage liked to remind him he was. A whore’s by-blow, a nobody, a waste of space who would never amount to anything.
He wanted to escape, to come.
To be anyone but himself.
“What the devil is going on?”
His shame and disgust were amplified a hundred-fold in the expression of his best friend standing in the entryway to the stall.
“Sebastian, wake up.”
He didn’t seem to register her voice. He rocked his head on the pillow, his forehead sheened with sweat. His powerful body shuddered as if gripped by a fever.
“No,” he mumbled. “No…didn’t mean…”
