by Liz Carlyle
“Freddie love,” he managed to say, “you really oughtn’t.”
Her eyes widened. “Am I doing it wrong?”
Wrong? Hell, no. The sight of his cock glistening and damp from her mouth almost undid him. Bentley closed his eyes and pushed gently at her hands. “No, but this isn’t something—” He searched his mind for the right words. “We just shouldn’t.”
“No?” He couldn’t miss the uncertainty in her voice. “This isn’t something you enjoy?”
He opened his eyes and forced himself to look at her. Freddie’s mouth was pink and swollen, her eyes round and ingenuous. Good God, what a picture of innocence she was with that cloud of black hair and her nightdress sliding off one shoulder. And how desperately he wanted her. Wanted her to suck him dry. Wanted to take her face between his hands and watch himself thrust deep into her throat. Until he…until he…
Oh, God, no. This wouldn’t do. His cock twitched insistently. Bentley swallowed hard and prayed for strength. “Freddie love, I always enjoy it,” he admitted, his voice a raw rasp. “But you shouldn’t…it isn’t—” He couldn’t think how to explain it to her. “Look, Freddie, this isn’t something a wife does.”
Freddie looked at him suspiciously, her eyes suddenly knowing. “Your whoring days are over, Bentley Rutledge,” she warned, her voice lethally soft. “Remember that, and get it here, or go without.”
Alarmed, Bentley shook his head. “No, no, sweetheart!” he choked. “I won’t—absolutely wouldn’t—even think about it.” But it was a miserable consideration.
“So you should let me.” With a sly grin, she dipped her head and nipped him hard on his inner thigh.
“Ow!” he squalled. “Damn it, Freddie, don’t bite!”
“Can I have my way with you?” Her voice was sultry enough to melt glass.
She really was determined. In answer, he closed his eyes, framed her face in his hands, and guided her mouth back to his body. She swallowed his heated length with exquisite slowness. He savored the feel of his flesh sliding through her wet lips, over her sharp, white teeth, and down the velvety length of her tongue. He was at her mercy, and it felt dangerous. Erotic. Wicked.
With one hand on the base of his shaft and the other caressing his inner thigh, his wife touched him with exquisite skill, her mouth hot and tight, the strokes of her tongue growing increasingly intense. Damn, but she was good. For long, sweet moments, it went on. Soon, he could barely control himself. His grip on her shoulders was too tight, his motions too urgent. He knew he should stop…had to stop…right now.
“Ah, God, Freddie!” He ripped his flesh from her mouth, pushed her down by the shoulders, and followed her onto the hearth rug. He tumbled across her, frantic and clumsy, his ankles entangled in his trousers. Freddie’s nightdress slid halfway up her thighs. Crudely, he rucked it up to her waist and heard fabric rip. He tore it off and hurled it into the shadows. Then he pushed her legs apart with his knee and shoved himself inside her on a jubilant cry.
To his shock, she was like molten fire beneath him. Her legs came up to encircle his waist, and her hips rose to meet his. She clung to him, trembling and needy. Stroke for stroke, gasp for gasp, she matched him, her eyes open wide, her lips slightly parted.
“Please, oh, please,” she begged, her shudder deepening.
And Bentley tried to oblige her, but his vision was fading, and his whole body was shaking. Freddie’s release came upon her with startling speed. By the glow of the fire, he watched as she lost herself in the rhythm, panting and arching beneath him, until at last she cried out. Twice. Three times. Deep, keening sounds of pleasure as she rocked and shuddered beneath him. And then his brain went black, and he exploded inside her. Inside his wife.
Oh, sweet heaven, how he loved her.
It was his first lucid thought when he returned to consciousness. He almost uttered it aloud, but the moment didn’t seem quite right. His head was on the hearth rug, his nose buried in her wild mane of hair. He breathed deep, drawing in her heightened scent of soap and feminine heat. Freddie still had one leg curled about his waist. Bentley wondered what had got into her; he couldn’t think what he’d done to deserve such a life-altering experience. He had believed it disrespectful—even crude—to let her do that to him. Was that true? He no longer knew. She had enjoyed it. God knew he had. And she felt perfect beneath him now.
He was going to regret this, perhaps, in the morning. And he was going to wonder what had put such a notion in his young wife’s head. He’d just tell himself it was feminine instinct and hope that he was right. But he had no wish to think of that at the moment. Instead, he stumbled up onto one knee, slipped his arms beneath Freddie, and carried her to bed.
So often in Frederica’s life it had seemed that happiness and security were things which fate had conspired to dole out to her in small, fickle dollops, like some too-rich treat. Often, as had been the case with Johnny Ellows, it soon became apparent that fate had done her a favor. Other times, the disappointment was an almost felling blow, never to be forgotten, such as that dreadful morning when she’d been turned away from her grandmother’s door.
On this particular morning, however, Frederica awoke before dawn, feeling happy, secure, and quite thoroughly sated. In the darkness, she rolled closer to Bentley, who still slept deeply. With one arm thrown across his eyes, he lay naked on his back, taking up two-thirds of the mattress and all of the bedcover. On her side of the bed, Frederica shivered. The room was chilly, and she was too lazy to crawl from the bed to look for her nightdress or poke up the fire.
No, in her drowsy state, it seemed better to wriggle beneath the blankets and curl against her husband’s side. He nuzzled her without waking, his morning erection tenting the blanket as she hooked one leg over his thigh. On those days when he did not rise insanely early, she would notice this remarkable phenomenon. Sometimes, he would ease her gently onto her back and put his phenomenon to good use, too.
At that delightful notion, she burrowed her face against his neck. Bentley still smelled of ash and smoke from last night’s antics on the hearth rug, and of sweat and sleepy, musky male. Perhaps she was not quite so sated after all? She hitched her leg a little higher on his thigh. His erection brushed her knee, and she shimmied closer, sliding one hand over the taut plane of his belly, then down to the thatch of dark hair at the base of his manhood.
She so rarely got the opportunity to touch him this way. But this morning, her entreaties seemed to meet with Bentley’s approval. As she stroked him, he made a sound in the back of his throat and began to move restlessly. Emboldened, Frederica crawled half on top of him and kissed him. In his drowsy state, he turned his face to hers, his mouth eager, blindly seeking.
Again, she caressed the warm, velvety length of his erection. The memory of last night returned, intriguing her. How thrilling it had been to pleasure him so decadently. Innocence, she’d concluded, was of little use to a married woman. She considered again the sketch she’d seen—the woman atop her lover, touching herself while he watched. A little thrill chased up her spine. Why not? Perhaps she could show her husband that she was not quite as innocent as he feared.
Slowly, she mounted him, setting her knees on either side of his hipbones. Bentley’s face shifted, seemed to change somehow. Frederica felt a moment of uncertainty. But there was nothing uncertain about his erection, which moved insistently. Gingerly, she rose up onto her knees and eased herself down, slowly impaling herself on his shaft. Slowly stirring, Bentley moaned again. Frederica sighed aloud with pleasure. Then, like a cat in the cream pot, she closed her eyes, tipped back her head, and sank down onto his hardness again.
In that split second, all hell exploded. On a bloodcurdling roar, Bentley bucked up off the bed, pitching her backward. He came up like a madman, fists and elbows flailing. Something caught Frederica hard across the temple, and with an awful crack, her head struck the wooden footboard. “God damn you, get off me!” he roared. “Get off!”
He towered
over her in the gloom. She must have whimpered. He moved as if he might lunge again. Her heart pounded in her throat. She was afraid to speak. Afraid to move.
The bed creaked ominously beneath his shifting weight. He pinned her with his body against the wood. His hard, powerful hands slid around her throat. “Damn you.” His voice was raw and rasping, like something torn from the pits of hell. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
Frederica huddled against the footboard. “Y-yes, all right,” she sobbed, wondering which of them had lost their minds. “Please, Bentley, j-just let me go—”
Something in him changed at the sound of her voice, quick as a lightning strike. She felt his whole body jolt, and then Bentley’s hands fell away. A long, awful silence hung over them, and then he exhaled sharply. “Oh, Christ Jesus.”
He was awake, thank God. Awake. She went limp with relief. Bentley fell back onto his heels, and even in the gloom, she sensed his eyes burning through her. He cursed again, violently, and shoved both hands into his hair.
“Bentley?” she said softly, but he wouldn’t answer. Instead, he leaned forward at the waist, still clutching his head, his elbows rolling forward, as if he wished to shut her out. As if he fought to turn inward and simply disappear inside himself. “Bentley, say something,” she whispered. “Oh, please, just say something.”
“Freddie?” His voice was choked with shock and horror. “Oh, my God.”
She sagged with relief. He really had been asleep. But what on earth had set him off? It came to her in a flash. It was what she had done. Crawling on top of him. That was something he had never let her do. In fact, everything they did in bed—or at least what she did to him—seemed tame compared with Randolph’s wicked drawings. Vaguely—and a little sickly—she recalled his having pushed her away once before. Damn you, don’t! he had said. Don’t smother me like that! And yet that instance had been nothing like this.
Suddenly, Frederica felt the warmth trickling down her face. She touched her temple with her fingertips, and they came away sticky. She remembered her husband’s heavy signet ring. “Bentley,” she warned in a shaky voice. “I am getting off the bed now, all right? I need to light a candle.”
He said nothing. In the darkness, she fumbled until the candle by the bed flared to life. Only then did he take his hands from his head. He turned and lifted his eyes to hers, his expression bleak and hopeless.
She realized it the instant he saw the blood. And she watched as the full awareness of what he had done struck him. His whole face crumpled, and tears pooled in his eyes. One hand reached out to touch her, but it could not quite span the distance across the bed, as if it were some awful symbol for the whole of their marriage.
“Oh, God, what have I done?” He looked down at the smear of blood on his signet ring. “Oh, Freddie. What have I done this time?”
Chapter Nineteen
A voice from Beyond the grave.
For Frederica, life turned suddenly surreal. It was as if the fear drained away but took her grasp of reality with it. More candles were lit, but by whom she couldn’t recall. She had only the vaguest memory of Bentley leading her to the chair by the hearth and tucking her into her wrapper. Numbly, she watched him jerk on his clothes, then fetch a washbasin. He began to sponge the blood from her hair and her temple, his touch tender.
Strangely, it did not hurt. She felt almost nothing. Bentley kept murmuring softly, his expression stricken. He was so sorry. So sorry. It was not her fault. But Frederica could sense that beneath it all, he was frightened. Terrified, really, though that brought her little comfort.
As Bentley wrung the water out of her face flannel, Frederica looked down into her lap to see that her hands were starting to shake. Reality was setting in. Good God, she really was in over her head. She was not yet nineteen years old. And she was with child. And married—married to a man whose heart seemed to hold terrible secrets.
Perhaps it was time to face the fact that something was wrong. She loved him. But was that going to be enough?
Bentley touched her temple again with his fingertips. The examination was meant to be clinical, but his hand, too, was trembling. “Ah, God, Freddie, it’s going to bruise.” His voice hitched; not quite a sob, but something almost worse. “I wonder if you will ever forgive me.”
He sat down in the opposite chair and took her hands in his. Abjectly, he lifted his eyes to hers but said no more. Frederica searched her mind for the right thing to say. “Bentley,” she said softly, “what was it, exactly, that you thought? What were you dreaming?”
His gaze was instantly shuttered. “I don’t remember.”
He was lying. She sensed it. “You don’t remember?” she gently probed. “Or you won’t tell me?”
He jerked from his chair and began to pace toward the windows, one hand set on his hip, the other at the back of his neck. “Damn it, Freddie, I’ve no excuse for what I just did,” he admitted. “I won’t even try to make one. So what do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”
Frederica was still shaken. “Just tell me the truth,” she demanded. “I love you, Bentley, but you have to stop hiding things from me. And from yourself.”
“Hiding?” he said, staring out the window. “Just what is it you think I’m hiding?”
Frederica’s emotions snapped. “I don’t know what,” she responded. “How could I? Why, I hardly know anything at all! I am just a stupid and naïve girl—and when I try to be a good wife, when I try to—to please you, well—just look! I think we can see what happens.”
He turned from the window and closed the distance between them. He took her hands in his and went down on one knee so that he might look her directly in the eyes. “Freddie, you are a good wife.” He said the words slowly and distinctly. “It is this marriage which was a bad idea.”
Frederica slowly shook her head. “Oh, no,” she whispered, horrified. “Do not say that! We both chose this marriage. We have staked everything on it.”
His lips thinned, and he shook his head. “Freddie, I chose it,” he said firmly. “I chose it like some spoilt child chooses a toy which is too fragile for his touch. I wanted you. Hell, I think I’ve always been half in love with you. And I thought it might be a chance—a chance to…oh, God, I don’t know what I thought! But if I’d truly loved you, well, I would never have tricked myself into believing what I wanted was best, would I? Not when there were a thousand better alternatives for you than a marriage to me.”
“What are you saying, Bentley?”
Still on his knees before her, he seemed to look beyond her, to a point somewhere far in the distance. “That I care enough now to do the right thing instead of the selfish thing,” he whispered. “I am saying that if you wish it, Freddie—if you wish, that is, to leave me—I shan’t try to hold you to that foolish bargain we made.”
It was as if he’d struck her a mortal blow, one far worse than a bruised temple. “My God, is that it, then?” she cried. “We are simply to give up? Over…over this?”
“Jesus Christ, it’s not just this, Freddie! Don’t you see?”
She shook her head. “No. No, I don’t.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and bent his head until it rested on the backs of her hands, which he still grasped. For many seconds, he was quiet, and when he lifted his head, his eyes were shimmering with tears. “I just want you to do what you think is best for you, Freddie. And for the child. Whatever that is, for God’s sake, please do it.”
Freddie felt her throat tighten. “But you are my husband,” she whispered. “I don’t think either of us should take the easy way out. Why, if you are at least a little bit in love with me, and if I am head over heels in love with you, isn’t it morally wrong to give up?”
Bentley’s shoulders sagged—with relief, she hoped. “Then we need to get away, Freddie,” he said softly. “I can’t stay here. And perhaps if it was just the two of us, things would be better.”
But Frederica was almost in tears now. “Going away
won’t help!” she cried. “It’s like running away from your troubles, Bentley. You have to stop doing that. I want to know what is wrong with us. I want to fix it.”
“Good God, Freddie, nothing is wrong with us. Is that what you were trying to fix last night? And just now? Were you trying to be something different for me? Don’t.”
“I only wanted you to—to stop thinking of me as such an innocent,” she sobbed. “I wanted only to please you. To pleasure you. I did not mean to make you so angry.”
He touched the wound at her temple again. “I was dead asleep, Freddie,” he quietly reminded her. “I was so deeply asleep I did not know what I was doing.” Then he looked at her more intently. “What on earth put such thoughts in your head? What could make you feel inadequate? You are perfect, Freddie, as you are.”
Frederica stared at the floor, and he continued speaking. “Freddie, that was quite a trick you pulled on me last night,” he said, his voice gentle. “I suppose I knew, even then, that we would need to have a talk about it.”
She regarded him suspiciously. “Wh-what do you mean, have a talk?”
He made no move to rise, but he tightened his grip on her hands. “You are an innocent, Freddie—”
Frederica cut him off. “For God’s sake, I shall go stark staring mad if you keep saying that! I am not an innocent. If I ever was, I certainly am not now.”
Bentley looked as if it pained him to go on. “Yet the fact remains, Freddie, that what you did last night—”
“Oh, yes!” she interjected sardonically. “That thing you did not like!”
For a long moment, he was silent, as if considering his words. “I am not scolding you, sweetheart,” he said gently. Then he rose from his knees, took the chair opposite, and cleared his throat. “Still, that little trick last night was not something which a gently bred lady should know anything about. And what you did this morning—well, God knows I’m not blaming you. I’m just trying to understand how you took it into your head to…to be so…”
