Bad Brides

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘I’ve missed you all too!’

  In her eagerness to reach his side, she skidded in the mud, nearly slipped and fell, flailed her arms in the air for balance, and only just managed to catch a rail of the pen in time to steady herself. They should have been laughing about it; the near-pratfall was potentially hugely comic, the yelps Brianna Jade made as she slid and thrashed around, the dive for the rail, the splashes of mud her boots kicked up, the way she grabbed and held on grimly as her legs threatened to slip from under her, should have had them both collapsing in fits as soon as she was stable.

  But neither of them laughed, not at all. Brianna Jade, gripping onto the rail, getting herself straight, gazed up at Abel with an utterly serious expression in her brown eyes that mirrored exactly the way he was gazing at her; he hadn’t reached out to help, even though, huge as he was, he could easily have extended a long arm to steady her. The Empress, a bulky pale mass beneath the rail, looked optimistically at the new arrival, recognizing Brianna Jade and hoping for an extra treat, or at least a nice scratch on the back. But after a few moments her head dropped again and, disappointed but resigned, she returned to working her way through the brimming contents of her trough.

  ‘Were you angry with me?’ Abel asked simply.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Brianna Jade looked puzzled. ‘Why would I be angry with you?’

  ‘You stopped coming round,’ he said. ‘To visit us. Me and the pigs. I thought you were angry with me – because of the cider. I didn’t mean to get you tipsy. Me and Gran were so sorry that happened. We didn’t think anything of it, but then you never came back. I thought maybe I should come up to the Hall to see you, but Gran said to leave well alone.’

  ‘Someone saw us,’ Brianna Jade blurted out. ‘When you carried me back. She was really snarky about it, and I thought I maybe shouldn’t come for a while. And then it went on for longer than I meant, and I felt so weird about it . . . I just feel so confused about everything, and I didn’t know how to handle it – but that’s my problem.’

  She started to cry again.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said hopelessly. ‘I don’t know how to handle things. I’m not up to this. I can’t deal with stuff like Mom can, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to . . .’

  Her shoulders slumped in depression and she leaned on the rail, her forehead resting on her hands, tears dripping down her fingers. Her sobs grew louder and louder, her back heaving, as she cried out her sense of failure; she couldn’t cope with Barb, had fled from Stanclere Hall rather than confront her, and she had come here in a pathetic search for comfort from the pigs and the pigman she had abandoned months ago.

  When Edmund had hugged her a short while ago, it had felt good, reassuring, a safe place to let out her tears. However, when Abel awkwardly placed a huge hand on her head, stroking her hair as if she were an animal whose pain he was trying to ease, Brianna Jade, to her surprise, did not feel reassured at all. Instead, it was as if he had touched a pressure point, like the Shiatsu massages she had had with her mother sometimes; when the massage therapist accessed, even lightly, a point of great sensitivity, it could make you nearly buck off the table with the shock, like pressing deeply on a bruise.

  But it was pain and pleasure so deeply mixed together that you could never separate the two. The therapist would keep pushing on the spot, and release would start to flood through Brianna Jade’s body, rebalancing her meridians like a hot rush that made her head spin dizzily. Afterwards, the therapist would know what to do to put Brianna Jade back together again, working down a series of other, rebalancing pressure points. Now, though, she didn’t even feel as if she could have stood up without the rail of the pigpen, which she was gripping tightly for support. Her legs were so weak she could hardly feel them beneath her; it was as if they’d dissolved the second Abel touched her. His hand was cupping her scalp now, so warm it was like a miniature electric blanket, deliciously hot, and all she could think of was turning to him, curling up in his arms like a cat, absorbing more and more heat from his big body on this miserably cold day, heat that seemed to be scorching away all the sadness she was feeling . . .

  What exactly was she crying about? She couldn’t remember. She turned to look at him, and he reached out with his other hand and started, with his wide, spatulate finger, to stroke down the trails the tears had left on her skin. They dried almost on contact with his touch; looking down at her with great tenderness, he placed both thumbs on either side of her perfect straight nose, just below her eyes, and drew parallel, caressing lines around the curves of her cheeks, blending in the last traces of her tears, making them vanish into the smooth surface of the pale golden skin that had been made perfect that morning by her daily application of BB cream.

  ‘Don’t cry, Brianna,’ he said softly. ‘You shouldn’t ever cry.’

  That did it. She arched up towards him, her arms coming up, pulling down his head towards her; for a split-second he resisted, but Brianna Jade was absolutely determined, had been from the moment his hand had cupped her head, and a heartbeat later, her lips met his. He was so tall that even the statuesque Brianna Jade had to stretch up to keep kissing him, go on tiptoes in her wellington boots, but it was utterly worth it. His arms wrapped around her like two woven cables, lifting her a little more, his hands stroking her back, long steady caresses from her shoulders to her waist that made her melt against him; it was the most reassuring, entrancing thing a man had ever done to her.

  Eagerly she pulled his head down even more, kissing him deeper and deeper; his tongue shyly touched her lips, and she responded to it instantly. It was as big as the rest of him, which was maybe why he was shy; slowly, carefully, it met hers, sliding further into her mouth, making her gasp around it, almost unable to breathe but feeling so completely filled by it already that she trembled, pressed herself against him, opened her lips still further.

  How long they kissed she had no idea. Wrapped in his arms, Abel’s big body sheltering her from the elements, she didn’t even realize that it had started to rain, slowly, the occasional large, splattering drop that presaged a long steady shower to come. As the rain began to drip down inside the ribbed neck of his sweater, Abel raised his head and looked down at Brianna Jade very seriously.

  ‘You should go back,’ he said. ‘Rain’s coming.’

  She shook her head vehemently, grabbing the straps of his dungarees. She couldn’t find the words: all she could do was indicate as clearly as possible that she wasn’t going to let go of him and make her way back to the Hall on her own. Not now, at least. Abel closed his huge hands for a moment over hers, feeling how strong her grip was on his dungaree braces; his immense strength could easily have made her loosen her hold, but instead he let out a deep sigh, bent, and swung her off her feet as easily as he had done before, turning to carry her down the cart track, his stride steady, Brianna Jade’s head nestling blissfully into the rollneck of his scratchy woollen sweater, her lips resting on the strip of white skin exposed above it.

  She closed her eyes, feeling raindrops start to patter on her head, determined not to think about what was happening. If she started to think, she would have to stop, and the one thing she didn’t want to do, more than anything else in the world, was to stop, so that meant that she couldn’t think, which was more than fine with Brianna Jade, because thinking really didn’t seem to work for her anyway . . .

  A barn door creaked open, shouldered by Abel as he carried Brianna Jade inside, out of the rain, and turned to kick it shut again. A few long steps and he had reached a big bale of hay, sitting down on it with her on his lap; instantly, she started kissing him again, reaching for the buckles on his dungaree straps and sliding them down to unclip them from the brass buttons, pushing the straps back over his shoulders, grabbing his sweater and pulling it and the T-shirt underneath it up in great folds so that she could feel his bare skin. It was hot as a furnace and lightly hairy; she tangled her fingers in the hair as she stroked his back, trying to give him the sa
me pleasure that he had given her.

  They wrestled together in the hay, not to take each other’s clothes off – even with Abel’s body heat, it was too chilly in the barn for that – but to get their hands where they wanted to go. From then on not a word was exchanged, just pants and sighs and moans as Abel unzipped Brianna Jade’s padded gilet, pulled up her sweater, closed his hands over her breasts, the warmth of his palms even through her silk bra hitting her instantly with the same force as when he had touched her hair; she gasped, leaned back into the hay, lying down, pulling him on top of her, wanting to feel that heat and heaviness all over her, on top of her, inside her. Her hands went to the denim dungarees, pulling them down impatiently: so much fabric, so hard to drag it down far enough, especially when he was caressing her breasts with the same steady, hypnotic rhythm, his thumbs tracing small circles on her nipples, his fingers larger, wider ones, as if he instinctively knew how to do Tantric massage.

  She had the dungarees down to his hips now, and, lying on and over her, his body almost completely blocking out the light, he raised his bottom to help her push them down; unlike her, Abel didn’t seem to be in a hurry. She was the desperate one, the one craving to have him inside her, to have his hands sink lower and lower. They were sliding slowly down her ribcage, and she moaned as his thumbs reached the waistband of her jeans, the circles widening, the heat rising.

  Abel wasn’t teasing her, she realized; this was just his way, slow and steady, in no rush to get where he was going. By the time he unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans and eased them down her hips, her silk knickers coming with them, she was so frantic for him that her head was thrashing from side to side on the hay, a steady stream of whimpers coming from her parted lips; her hands were gripping his wide, bare, muscular waist, but they slid up to his shoulders as he went lower, hardly able to make any dent in the solid flesh over even more solid muscle, now beginning to be slippery with sweat.

  He put one entire hand over her crotch, and she screamed out loud at the sensation as he began to trace the same circles, his four splayed fingers overwhelmingly hot, his thumb, as it gradually, slowly, inexorably, began to slide inside her, finding her dripping wet already. She dragged furiously on his shoulders, pulling him down on top of her, finding his mouth with hers, kissing and kissing him, her hands now in his hair; she couldn’t find words, but she could tell him with her actions that she wanted him inside her, and as his tongue once more filled her mouth, he groaned deeply, his hips lifting, his thumb circling against her so exactly in the right place that she started to come, her eyes squeezed tight shut, concentrating in utter bliss on the sensations that were rippling through her. Abel’s slow build of stroking and circling meant that when the orgasms came, they truly were almost Tantric; she lost herself in them, arching and arching against his hand, taking everything he was giving.

  Abel was infinitely patient. It was only when she reached down, trying to pull him onto her, into her, that he slid his hand from her, licked his fingers one by one with great satisfaction, and then positioned himself to kneel over her, taking his cock and butting it between her legs. She widened them to make room for him, but her eyes flew open again as she felt him moving inside her, almost a millimetre at a time, making sure that she was fully wet and willing and ready.

  It was unbelievably intense. Abel was built fully to scale, never necessarily a given; he was probably, she realized, so used to going slowly and steadily not just because of his strength but his size, needing to pace himself to avoid overwhelming his partner. A gentle giant, who was being careful to lower his hips in gradual stages, getting her used to the sheer size of him, the weight of his pelvis on her, his heavy, hairy thighs; it was overwhelming, and she loved it, wrapped her arms around his back, as much as she could, encouraging him to do it, to do what he wanted, to begin to move back and forth, to start really, fully, truly—

  Abel was reaching his hands under her buttocks now, tilting them a little, finding the right angle, still careful, still in control of himself; Brianna Jade, spreadeagled beneath him, clinging to his shoulders, thought dizzily that he would always be in control of himself, and that that was okay, because he was clearly getting exactly what he wanted, and God knew she was more than happy with what he was doing. He started to rock them both together in the same rhythm, rubbing against her on every up-beat, barely pulling in or out but staying firmly lodged inside her, anchoring her legs with his, gradually, relentlessly, working them both to climax, refusing to speed up no matter how much she pounded on his shoulders and tried to rock her own hips faster. His sheer weight, bearing down on her, held her at his own pace, and when she finally trusted that pace, let go and stopped trying to rush him, she felt the orgasm building so fast that in a few more seconds it was fully on her, rippling between her legs and out to her stomach and thighs like a tide that was sweeping inevitably to shore.

  Whether Abel had been waiting for her to come again or whether her body’s juddering beneath him tipped him over the edge, she didn’t know. She heard him groan, felt his body heave up and out of her, and she wailed in disappointment, even as she came, because he was no longer inside her. He managed to hold out just in time to come into the bale, kneeling awkwardly just beside her as his cock spurted into the hay: then he reached for his T-shirt, tugging it free from his sweater, wrapping it around his still-huge cock to wipe it clean before he collapsed on his side by Brianna Jade. Stretching his big frame fully out onto the bale, he spooned her as she wriggled into his embrace, pulling her sweater down for extra protection against the chill. One muscled arm wrapped around her, weighty as a heavy rope winding around her waist, pulling her even closer so he could rest his forehead against her mass of hair. Their breathing slowed, became more even, and in the comparative silence they could hear the rain pattering down on the barn roof.

  ‘We’ll wait out the weather, eh?’ he said into the back of her head.

  She nodded, settling even deeper into the hay bale, which held the warmth their bodies had just generated. Firmly, she told herself to relish these moments, this body heat, this nest they’d made for themselves, because this was as much as she and Abel would ever have: one afternoon in a rainstorm. She was going to marry Edmund. Her mother hadn’t worked so hard all these years to contrive a fairy-tale marriage for her beloved daughter only to have Brianna Jade let her down with the kind of epic, nine-days-wonder scandal to which the revelation of what she had just done would inevitably lead.

  Abel knew it too, she could tell. This could never happen again, which meant she could no longer visit the piggeries. She would be up at the Hall, Abel would be down here, and they would both get on with their lives and be absolutely fine. Edmund would make her a wonderful, kind, sympathetic husband, while Abel would doubtless find a lovely girl with whom he could share his fairytale cottage.

  But the most important thing was that Brianna Jade would, finally, have achieved what her mother wanted, realized her mother’s dreams for her. Tamra had spent so many years, made so many sacrifices, to make Brianna Jade happy. Finally, Brianna Jade had been presented with a sacrifice she could make to return everything her beloved mother had done for her, and there was no way she was going to back down from the challenge.

  The only way she could handle this was to tell herself, very simply, that there was no alternative but to continue along the path laid out for her. No choice, no decision for her to make, because God knew, she was incapable of making them. She was going to marry Edmund and become the Countess of Respers, and that was all there was to it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  By late afternoon, the rain had stopped and the cloud cover had opened enough to let a watery winter sun come filtering through. Enough, too, for Barb Norkus, having spent a very pleasant several hours in the library, snoozing off her jet lag on the big leather Chesterfield sofas, ordering more sandwiches and cake from the footman and washing them down with beer, to wake up, notice the weak sunshine outside, and decide that this would be the
perfect opportunity for her to take some photos of herself outside to add to her Facebook and Twitter feeds. She had already Facebooked and Tweeted pictures of the beer and sandwiches arranged on the silver tray, plus a couple of selfies of her lounging on the sofa, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other. Her friends back home had posted appreciative comments already.

  But the majesty of Stanclere Hall did not convey itself just with a couple of interior shots of the library, and now that Barb had had a nap and refreshed herself with another beer or two, she was ready to dazzle her social media acquaintances with the high life into which she had so successfully infiltrated herself. She wasn’t remotely concerned that Brianna Jade had left her to her own devices for several hours; she assumed, quite correctly, that her reluctant hostess had been thrown into so much emotional disarray by Barb’s sudden appearance on her doorstep that Brianna Jade had retreated somewhere to have a cry and a lie-down. Though, of course, Barb could not possibly have imagined the precise circumstances of either . . .

  Picking up her phone, she strolled out into the Great Hall, and after a quick survey of the area, she set the timer, put the phone on the piano, dashed up the staircase and stopped halfway up, sticking out her tongue to one side, flashing the V-sign with her right hand while her left held a half-empty bottle of beer. Pleased with how that photo had come out, she decided to go outside while there was still light and recreate the pose with the whole of Stanclere Hall behind her.

  Drafting a photo caption in her head that managed to get in both Downton Abbey and the pop star Miley Cyrus, whose tongue-out pose Barb had shamelessly imitated in her selfie, Barb dragged open one of the huge front doors and, with her usual self-protective instincts, made sure that she would be able to open it again, propping it just fractionally ajar, before tripping out and down the big stone flight of steps. She crossed the gravel drive, heading for the huge stone fountain at the centre of the green grass circle around which the drive made a loop before continuing on to the stables and garages. The fountain, which had also come over from Greece centuries ago in dubious circumstances, depicted Hercules wrestling the river god Achelous for the love of Princess Deianeira of Calydon. It wasn’t currently switched on; Tamra had had the pump replaced, and the stone thoroughly cleaned to remove all the algae, but there was still the risk of sub-zero temperatures causing the water to freeze and pipes to crack, so the fountain was always drained over the winter. Over the last few months, however, rainfall had filled up the wide stone bowl, since the base was plugged up to avoid water filtering into the pipes.