Training Lady Townsend

by Joseph, Annabel

  And she didn’t want to think of Lord Warren right now. He was too lovely to attach to this moment. “Please, just do it,” she whispered. “Don’t make me wait.”

  “Oh, but I think I’ll make you wait.” As he said it, his mouth dipped again to her breasts. She felt disgusted and powerless, being pawed and stared at and slavered over like some East End prostitute. She closed her eyes and laid her head back on the pillow, determined to endure whatever he did to her. He tongued her pebbled nipples, circling them, then he nibbled the sensitive skin surrounding them.

  She wanted to disappear. She wanted to feel nothing. But he wanted her to feel.

  He continued to tease and suck her breasts until some simmering heaviness developed in response. She didn’t feel the heaviness in her breasts, but lower, in her belly and between her legs. Now and again he’d stop and caress her neck and shoulders, pressing kisses along her skin. He kissed her cheeks and her ears, using his fingertips to tease behind them the way he had in Arlington’s garden. She wanted to be a proper lady, a good wife, but she felt so lost. The more he touched her, the more the hot heaviness within her grew.

  He shifted his pelvis closer, so his rod cradled within the folds of her quim. She tried to lift away from him, but then he contacted some part of her that ached in a completely novel manner. Now each time he touched her nipples with his tongue, she felt a longing there that had her shifting her hips.

  “You see, my little innocent? It’s not all bad, is it?” His fingertips whispered down her cheek, brushing at lingering tears.

  But it was bad. It was horrible, because she didn’t love him. Even more horrible—her body betrayed her, warming to his caresses. He shifted again, probing at her with his thick member, and she realized that she was wet down there, as if welcoming him to press inside. He moved his hips, tensed them in a sinuous way and slid back.

  He meant to enter her now. Panic overwhelmed her. “No,” she pleaded. She pushed at him, not even meaning to do it. He caught her hands and pulled them hard over her head.

  “Yes,” he whispered back, pressing them to the upholstered headboard. He gritted his teeth, his expression intent. He surged forward with a firm, abrupt thrust.

  Aurelia cried out, straining at the shock of his entry. He persisted, holding her hands hard, sliding his body over hers as he seated himself deep inside her. It hurt. It stung terribly as he stretched her. She arched her hips but it accomplished nothing, only wrested from him a guttural groan.

  “Be still a moment,” he gasped. “Lie still, Aurelia.”

  She lay still as a corpse. She never wanted to move again. Any movement only reminded her of the stretching ache, and her vulnerability, and his coarse domination. He touched her deep inside with that thrusting part of him. He was joined to her, within her, and it seemed to cause him as much anguish as it caused her.

  “Is that all?” she whispered. “Will you please get it out of me?”

  “No,” he answered roughly. He drew back and then moved forward again, filling her, invading her, causing that frightening stretch and ache.

  “Don’t hurt me.”

  “I won’t hurt you, for God’s sake. It’s supposed to feel good.”

  His voice sounded tight. She breathed in small pants. Good? It was the most outrageous, intrusive activity imaginable. This was what men loved to do, so much that they seduced women, and kept mistresses and whores? She couldn’t understand.

  “Aurelia,” he moaned, as he withdrew and surged forward again. There was no denying it—he found pleasure in this. He gripped both her hands in one of his and used the other to tilt back her head. He kissed her, a strong, insistent play of lips and tongue that forced her mouth open. He pressed his tongue inside her the same way he pressed his—his—thing inside her. Her wrists ached where he held them. She felt an uncomfortable pressure in her pelvis above and beyond his presence there. She squirmed against him, not knowing her part in this bizarre exchange.

  “If you do that, this will be quickly over,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Oh, she wanted it over. She squirmed again and squeezed around him, as if she might be able to force him out of her. He gasped out indecent oaths that blistered her ears. She’d never heard such coarse language. Would he pull away and punish her? What would be worse, enduring more of this “lovemaking” or having her backside blistered again?

  Her bottom felt sensitive and sore as his thrusts pushed her against the mattress. She didn’t know if she could bear another spanking. Better to be still and let him finish whatever on earth he was trying to accomplish. He kissed her jaw, her forehead, her temple, moving into her, deeper, deeper, deeper. It was fast and slow, hard and soft, long and shallow and then so forceful she slid across the bed. She couldn’t get her bearings and she couldn’t understand the nagging urgency she felt, that she should be doing something. But whenever she moved her hips he looked harried and displeased, and cursed again.

  “My hands hurt,” she said against his ear. “My wrists.”

  He let go of them. “Put your arms around my shoulders. Hold on to me,” he ordered in a voice so vehement she didn’t dare disobey.

  Gingerly, she encircled her husband’s broad shoulders and let her hands rest on his back. She could feel his muscles work as he moved in her, could feel all the leashed power beneath his dampened skin. He didn’t hurt her so much anymore. Her body had finally come to accept his length and girth, but there was still that uneasy feeling of being joined to him. She couldn’t close her legs. She couldn’t escape him. She felt breathless and anxious to be finished.

  With a shuddering gasp, he pressed his cheek to hers and went still. His hips ground against hers, lifting her from the bed. All the muscles in his back tensed as he jerked, and he made a noise that wasn’t words, only sounds, like he was dying.

  He has had some kind of attack, she thought. He has died here in my bed and everyone will blame me for it.

  She gave a small, whimpering cry, imagining her father’s disapproval, but then he lifted his head and looked at her. He was definitely alive. His gaze burned her, it was so intense.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Is it...finished?”

  “Yes, damn you. It’s finished.” He shook his head when her face crumpled. “No, don’t. Don’t cry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He dropped his chin. “Damn it to hell.”

  She bit her wobbling lip, not wishing to risk his wrath. A tear squeezed out anyway. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry if I did that wrong.”

  He made a frustrated sound and pulled away from her, and sat on the edge of the bed. After a moment, he raked a hand through his hair, so that when he turned back to her, the black wavy locks stood on end.

  “It’s not that you did it wrong,” he said. He reached and touched her hair, and rested his palm a moment against her cheek. He kissed her forehead, then drew away, his lips pursed.

  She waited for him to say something else, to explain, to calm her confused agitation. But he said nothing. He stood and walked over to retrieve his dressing gown. His organ didn’t look so frightening now, having somehow shrunk to half its previous bulk. It wouldn’t have been so bad, she thought, if it had remained that size.

  “I suppose you’ll be more comfortable if I sleep away from you,” he said gruffly. “If I stayed in my own rooms.”

  “Oh. Yes.” She would prefer that a thousand times over what had just transpired. “If that’s possible, I would prefer it.”

  He looked away from her, toward the ceiling, then toward the door. “Very well. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  He didn’t even put on his dressing gown, only stalked across the room and opened the door, and stepped into the hall. A moment later, she heard his door slam with a bang. Well, my goodness, he was strange. His servants might have seen him in that state of undress. She thought it very reckless of him, even if his room was just across the hall.

  She lay shivering in bed, trying to collect her sc
attered thoughts, trying to understand what had just happened. Her mother said this act could result in affection between a couple, as well as a baby. She put her hand over her womb, wondering how fast these things took place. As for affection, she felt nothing of that. The look he had given her as he quit her company...

  She supposed men didn’t like being forced to marry, but she’d been forced, too. All in all, it had been a horrible day, even more horrible than she had imagined.

  She wept as quietly as she could. She didn’t want him to hear.

  Chapter Four: A Bloody Damn Waste

  “My, my, what have we here? Observe, my friends. The married specimen.” Warren’s voice rang out in the dim, smoke-filled confines of their gentlemen’s club. A hand flattened atop Hunter’s news sheet as another lifted his half-empty glass.

  “What are we drinking, Lord Townsend?” asked August in a mocking tone. He took a sip as he slid into one of the seats at the table. “Ah. A big, golden, whiskey-flavored glass of regret.”

  “Don’t say such things,” Warren scolded. He knocked off August’s hat and made room for Arlington to set a chair beside him. “A married man doesn’t feel regret, only the lofty ecstasies of love.”

  At those words, all three men stared at Hunter.

  “Do you feel in love?” Warren prompted.

  Hunter couldn’t profess to be in love, no. In fact, he’d languished in a most uncomfortable state of self-loathing since he’d left his wife’s bedchamber the night before. Aurelia had been beautiful, lush, nubile, innocent—and icy as her glacier-gray eyes. He’d enjoyed himself anyway, availing himself of her hot, tight pussy because it was his right, and because he’d gone without sex the entire week before.

  That had been a mistake, of course. He hadn’t been as controlled as he ought to have been for her first time. He hadn’t been patient, at least not patient enough to overcome her deeply ingrained fears. He’d spanked her, to correct her in the notion that she might ever refuse his attentions, yes, but he’d done it selfishly too. He’d done it because it excited him, pervert that he was. The memory of her round, spankable arse still roused a rigid response in him. Had Warren asked him a question? He couldn’t remember.

  “He’s rendered speechless by the blissful state of matrimony,” Arlington said, signaling for more libations. “Let’s hope Lady Dormouse flourishes in an equally blissful mood.”

  “I wouldn’t think so, since he’s here at the club the day after his wedding,” Warren said glumly.

  Hunter shrugged. “My wife’s in hiding. I hope the servants took her breakfast. Otherwise she’s starving to death in her bridal bower.”

  “You’d best keep her alive, or you’ll have to answer to Laudable Lansing,” August said. “And he’s not one to be crossed. Then there’s Little Lansing to worry about. The Marquess of Whatever.”

  “Severin,” said Hunter. “The Marquess of Severin.”

  “The brother,” Warren nodded, still glumly.

  They looked around. The Duke of Lansing never showed his face at the gentlemen’s clubs but his son—Aurelia’s brother—sometimes did. The Marquess of Severin did not appear to be in attendance but a bottle of whiskey was delivered to the table with a note.

  “Ah,” said August, flipping it open. “With regards from the Earl of Newscombe. Congratulations on your marriage and all that.” He flipped the card over to Hunter. “You see, they all want to weasel into our depraved little group, since we’re down one member.”

  “You’re not down one member,” said Hunter, once he’d turned to thank Newscombe with a nod. “I have no intention of turning into Laudable Lansing and forgoing the sins of the flesh.”

  “But you’ve a wife now,” said Warren.

  “What does that matter?”

  “Here, gentlemen,” said Arlington, interrupting their spat. “As the first one of us to bed a virgin, I believe Towns deserves some type of commendation.” The duke poured for everyone at the table and held up his glass. “To Lord Townsend, who stuck his cock where no cock’s been before.”

  “Stuck is right,” said Warren. “How’d you fit it in there without me coming beforehand to loosen her up?”

  “All of you are degenerates.” Hunter shook his head, refusing to raise his glass. “It’s a nasty business, bedding a virgin. Nothing to celebrate, I’ll tell you that.”

  The men drank anyway, and Hunter drank too in the end, because it was easier than dealing with his conscience.

  “Wasn’t she grateful, then?” August put down his glass with a bang. “If she cried, you didn’t do it right.”

  “She was afraid, damn it. She—” His voice cut off. These were private matters. He leveled a scathing look at his friends and hunched over his drink. Before he married, it was no unusual thing to talk about the women they bedded, since they shared most of them. But now the woman in question was his wife, the mother of his future heirs. “It’s none of your goddamn business, but virgins are...skittish.”

  For long moments there was no sound save the clinking of glasses and the other muted conversations in the room. A gentleman in the corner crowed briefly over a hand of cards.

  “You must try to allay her fears then,” said August, breaking the heavy silence. “It can’t be that difficult. Not for you.”

  “How not? She doesn’t like me. She wanted Warren, you know.” He tried to make a joke of it, but his lips twisted and the jibe sounded more like a growl.

  “Warren?” August barked out a laugh. “God save her from demons she doesn’t know. Did you tell her Warren’s a worse deviant than you? An unrepentant hedonist and lover of unnatural sex acts?”

  “Well, that could describe any of us,” Warren retorted in an injured tone. “It’s not my fault Townsey’s wife developed a tendre for me. I never courted her. She was one of Minette’s friends.”

  Hunter ignored the ensuing bawdy accusations and innuendos. He believed Warren. The man wasn’t one to flirt with innocents. Like all of them, he adhered to a code of honor. A morally sketchy one, perhaps, but a code of honor nonetheless. The four of them fulfilled their objectionable desires with experienced, willing women, and by silent agreement, left the innocents alone.

  Of course, he’d been tempted to tell Aurelia about Warren the night before, especially when he felt her rejection and revulsion like a weight in his chest. He’d been tempted to pierce her precious, girlish fantasies and tell her just what sort of man she’d fallen in love with, but in the end he couldn’t do it. He’d already hurt her so much.

  Or had he? Hunter wasn’t sure where Aurelia fit into his convoluted code of honor. He hadn’t broken any laws, spanking her and bedding her last night. It was a man’s right to discipline his wife, and a man’s right to enjoy the bit of flesh between her thighs and put a baby in her womb if he wanted to. There were so many more things he could have done to her, sordid, depraved things, but he chose not to. He chose to protect her from that side of him—and from knowing the truth about Warren—and all he’d received in return was her fearful distaste.

  “I need to get back to my regular life,” said Hunter, and everyone at the table knew what he meant.

  “Do you think Lady Townsend will accept your ‘regular life’?” August asked.

  “She’ll accept what I wish her to accept. That’s one thing I’ll say for my wife. She’s easily cowed with the proper methods.”

  Warren frowned. “Always the disciplinarian. Beaten her already, have you?”

  “I would never beat my wife. I may have spanked her, though. She deserved it.”

  “For shedding virgin’s tears? It’s going to keep me up tonight, that vision.”

  “Are you judging me, Warren?”

  His friend gave a lurid smile. “I meant, it’s going to keep me up in the nicest of ways.” He glared at his friend in feigned frustration. “I have to pay Marta or Imogene whenever I want to wallop a delicious arse. You only have to accuse your wife of some breach of behavior and turn her over your lap.”r />
  “Marriage has its perks.”

  “For you, anyway.” Arlington grinned. “I don’t know how Lady Dormouse feels about those perks.”

  “She’s my little dormouse now, fully and legally. She’ll feel what I want her to feel, or she’ll be punished for it.”

  “Poor little dormouse,” said Warren, to general laughter.

  Hunter took a deep drink of whiskey and raked a hand through his hair. It was all very well for them to laugh. He was feeling damn unsettled about Aurelia, and about married life. He would try again tonight to show her some warmth and patience in bed, but he didn’t know how long he could hold out before he returned to his bachelor-style pursuits.

  *** *** ***

  Hunter wasn’t surprised that Aurelia cried off on dinner, but he felt damned pathetic eating alone the day after his wedding. He ought to have stayed at the club with his friends but that would have caused talk. Here at home, there were only the stone-faced servants to witness the obvious failure of the Lockridge-Lansing alliance.

  He sent a message for her to come down and join him, but it went unanswered when the servant was refused entrance to her rooms.

  “Has anyone been in her rooms today?” he asked in a fit of temper. The servant informed him that her lady’s maid had been admitted for a short time but that the marchioness had not touched any of her luncheon or dinner trays.

  “Fix another,” he said, pushing his plate away. She could refuse to admit the servants, but she’d not refuse him. He carried the tray himself, mounting the central marble stairway and stalking down the right side corridor to her suite of rooms. A footman materialized, sweeping open the tall, carved door without the least change in his expression, as if it were perfectly normal that his master might carry a dinner tray to his wife. After Hunter entered, the door closed behind him with a barely audible click.