by Debra Glass
The slender plug made her so incredibly tight he knew he’d never last more than a few strokes. Then again, neither would she.
He ground hard against her clitoris. “Come,” he commanded.
Her eyes widened with a flicker of doubt.
“Come, dammit,” he managed through clenched teeth as he drove hard against her once more.
Her irises darkened. She gripped his arms, opened her thighs and tilted her hips into his thrusts. The corners of her lush lips turned up in a soft smile and her breath caught in her throat. She arched and her body clamped down hard around him.
Crying out, he gave in and release seized him with sudden force, building like a volcano and erupting until he couldn’t move.
He wilted over her and as the waves of pleasure ebbed, he became aware of her fingers burrowing into the hair at his temple. He turned his head toward her and she claimed his mouth, kissing him deeply until he grew hard inside her again.
Chapter Seven
Primrose felt empty when Adam finally removed the crystal plug over an hour later. Snuggled in the wealth of covers on his bed, she pretended to be asleep until the servant who’d brought up a tray of cold chicken, wine and a pitcher of milk left.
“Are you hungry?” Adam asked as he returned to the bed.
Primrose sat up. “Famished.” She smiled as their gazes met and her stomach quivered as if there were butterflies trying to escape it. Something was happening between them but she didn’t dare try to figure out what.
“We haven’t discussed this,” Adam said, loosening the belt of his silk banyan. “But just how deeply do you want to delve into submission?”
Warmth infused her cheeks at the mention of it. Submitting to him was one thing while actually doing it. Talking about it was wholly something else.
He stroked her cheek and tipped up her chin so that she looked into his eyes again. “You are safe to examine this with me, darling.”
Darling…
His tenderness tortured her far worse than any of his punishments.
He continued. “I was afraid I’d hurt you earlier. Had I known your limits I would have taken you further.”
She couldn’t quell a grin. “I didn’t say the word did I?”
He smiled. “No, you did not.” He shook his head in self-deprecation. “I’m far more experienced than that. I should have known you were willing to risk more. Next time I will most definitely carry you further.”
Her sex pulsed hungrily. “H-how much further?”
“Complete submission,” he said silkily. “I will feed you, clothe you, give you permission to experience pleasure. Withhold as I see fit. Prolong. Persist. If you wish I will control your every need.”
Primrose considered agreeing to all the things he’d mentioned. Every bit of it appealed to her and she didn’t know why. The thought of just how easily she could allow him full Mastery terrified her. This wasn’t who she’d been groomed to be. She was no street urchin given to hedonism.
And yet everything inside her cried out to agree to anything he wanted.
She hardly knew herself any longer.
She swallowed and searched his eyes. “Is that…what you want?”
He tore off a succulent piece of chicken. “Darling, this is not really about what I want. You know that, don’t you?”
Shame flooded her as realization settled. She did control this exchange between them. She commanded him every bit as powerfully as he commanded her—through one word. Love.
All she had to do was utter it for him to stop. She’d never dreamed she would trust him but something in his whiskey-colored eyes promised her he’d never cross a line where her pleasure was concerned.
Another realization dawned on her. “On our wedding night…”
His eyes darkened.
She struggled to finish. “You weren’t angry you’d been…forced to marry me. You were cross because you thought you’d hurt me.”
She leaned forward and accepted the bite of chicken he offered, the simple act taking her back to that peaceful space where she could simply be.
“Of course I was angry I’d hurt you. No woman should experience the sort of callous treatment I dealt you that night.”
“You didn’t know…” Her heart went out to him. “How could you have? I’d…I lied to you.” She hung her head, the shame that swelled inside her far worse than what she experienced under Adam’s command. This shame was…ugly.
“Ah that,” he muttered. “Yes, you never really told me why you felt the need.”
“The earl suggested it.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“He told me if I didn’t marry you he could not prevent my father from arranging a contract with Benedict.”
At that Adam gave her a wry smile. “And you thought me the lesser of the two evils?”
“You were so kind to me that night my horse threw me,” she told him, wide-eyed. Then she smiled. “Besides, it was only a little lie. You would certainly have spoiled me had you not passed out.”
He laughed. “Guilty as charged.” His mirth faded and the timbre of his voice dropped. “Would you have let me?”
She didn’t have to think. “I would have done anything for you.”
He stilled for a moment before tearing off another morsel of chicken to feed her. This time when she took it she let her lips linger against his fingers. She was being far too bold. She knew she was. But she couldn’t stop herself.
She chewed then swallowed her food. “Can you ever forgive me?”
His grin returned. “Oh I think a few more spankings are in order but yes, pet. You are already forgiven.”
Relieved, she reached for a glass of milk. He patted her hand, shooing her away. “Uh-uh-uh.”
She arched an eyebrow in question and without warning that subtle shift took hold of her, whisking her to that inner space. “May I have some milk…Master?”
“Yes, you may,” he uttered as he lifted the glass to her lips.
Watching him over the rim, she sipped the liquid.
“Am I forgiven for deserting you?” he asked pointedly.
She almost blurted a resounding yes but stopped short. Her heart felt like a painful knot in her chest. “I want to…but I know you’ll just leave again.”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. The bleak depths she’d come to know returned to his eyes. “You know me too well, Primrose.” He tore off a piece of chicken but neither ate it nor offered it to her. “Suppose I am the biggest lie of all?”
She stared, not understanding.
He snorted in derision, suddenly seeming torn. Stricken.
“What’s the matter?” Fear twittered in her belly.
He clenched his teeth and then gave her a disparaging grin that made her soul-sick. “I have little other choice. You have been kind to me when anyone else would have cast me to the wolves.” He took a deep breath and blew it out.
“Of course I have, Adam. I—” She was on the verge of admitting something she’d never thought she’d confess aloud when he put his finger to her lips, silencing her.
“You want an heir,” he said simply.
Her mind ran rampant with possibility. Was he incapable of producing one? Was he—God forbid—disease-ridden? “You’re frightening me, Adam.”
He blinked, looked up at the ceiling and then back into her eyes. The indecision vanished and the hard glitter returned. “Perhaps you should have married my cousin after all.”
Anger flared. She wanted to slap him for uttering such nonsense. She gaped at him. “You’re mad. Whatever are you going on about?”
He sighed. And then after several heartbeats he muttered, “Nothing.”
* * * * *
“After ’e ate his breakfast,” Irene told Adam the next morning. “He went into one of ’is fits, and I give him ’is tincture.”
Adam gazed at the earl who now slept—though from time to time a tic-like paroxysm contorted the muscles in his face and hands. Adam had never
seen someone afflicted thus and he hated the frustrating sense of helplessness he felt. In the few weeks he’d been home, the earl’s condition had neither worsened nor improved. “Has the physician been round?”
Blinking hard and fast, Irene worried her bottom lip. “Yes milord. Dr. Gallagher came early this mornin’ before the fits started.”
Adam reached for the brown glass bottle on the nightstand. Lifting it, he studied the label. “What’s in this?”
“I don’t rightly know,” she told him, casting her gaze downward. “I s’pose it’s mostly laudanum. It’s the only thing wot eases ’im.”
Adam returned the bottle to the night table and bent to touch Thorley’s folded hands. At once the old man’s eyes fluttered open. He began to mumble and panic filled his gaze. He grasped in vain at Adam.
Adam took both hands in his. “I’m here…Father. Can I get you something?”
Thorley’s throat rattled. “Ben…” His voice came out in a hoarse gasp.
“I don’t understand.”
“Ben…”
Adam grappled desperately for some meaning. He glanced at the nurse who’d begun nervously gathering her apron in her hands.
“Ben…Lashw—”
Comprehension sank in. “Benedict? Do you want Benedict? I can send for him if you like.”
The earl shook his head vehemently. He seemed frustrated. Tears seeped from the corners of his eyes and then his hands went limp and he fell back against the pillows, mumbling incoherently.
Irene came forward and checked Thorley’s forehead for a fever. “Lord Lashwood paid ’im a visit earlier this mornin’. Maybe ‘e thinks yer ’im, milord.”
“Does he get confused often?” Something didn’t seem right.
“Oh yes milord. Most days.” She reached for the drops and turned the bottle up so that some of the medicine fell on the earl’s tongue. “There, there.”
Adam watched her soothe the old man until he drifted back to sleep. He could not dismiss the belief that something was amiss. He resolved to speak with the earl’s physician.
Surely something more could be done.
He rose and bade farewell to the nurse before venturing out into the hallway, intent on paying a call to Thorley’s physician. But first he needed to attend to his wife whom he had left collared and plugged, kneeling facedown on his bed.
* * * * *
Primrose said a silent prayer as she listened to the sound of Adam coming into the room. Her passage tightened, shifted the crystal bauble secreted deep inside her bum. At least he’d left her kneeling on the bed this time, though he’d been gone for far longer than the other times he’d forced her to wait.
“Come here,” he commanded, the authoritative tone in his voice sending a shiver of pleasure through her.
She climbed off the bed and walked toward him, her movements causing the torturous plug to make her ache for more.
For six weeks now she’d surrendered to his beck and call. She’d sat on her knees wearing her jeweled collar while he perused the Times. She’d stood silently hidden behind the door, naked and throbbing for his touch while his valet dressed him. And when Adam had touched her, when he’d ended her torture and gave her release, she wept from the sheer pleasure of it.
His admiring gaze raked her. “On your knees,” he whispered as he undid the buttons of his fly.
She dropped and obediently opened her mouth as he nudged her lips with his erection. As he filled her, his fingers threaded into her hair, drawing her closer, coaxing her to take more and more of him.
His husky moans encouraged her and she flicked her tongue along the underside of his cock as he gently thrust into her mouth.
“So sweet…” he muttered.
She sucked rhythmically at the head and then engulfed him, delighting in the way his fingers tightened against her scalp. He tasted warm and masculine, like soap and leather. Relaxing her jaw, she opened to take more. She held his hips in place as she worked her mouth over him.
When she’d first seen him bedeviled by opium in that squalid den, she’d never guessed she’d take such pleasure in an act such as this. In him.
A tendril of fear snaked through her that he’d leave again but his voice dragged her out of her thoughts and back to the moment.
“God woman, slow down unless you want me to come down your throat.”
As she licked the head she cut her gaze up at him, telling him without words she was prepared for him to do just that. But he stepped back and stooped to gather her into his arms. He lifted her just enough to walk her to the wall then he hooked an arm under one of her legs and dragged her onto his arousal.
A gasp tore from her throat and he plunged inside her.
Bracing her against the paneling he held her legs up and claimed her with short, deep thrusts. Primrose clung to his shoulders, the sensation too wild, too passionate. The collar tugged at her neck. The plug seemed to fill her fuller with every drive of Adam’s cock.
His hand slid up to her throat and he lifted her chin. “Look at me,” he said, his words punctuated by the cadenced force of his hips.
She hadn’t realized she’d closed her eyes until she opened them. Her stomach knotted at the feral look he bestowed on her. She struggled to maintain his gaze.
“Come,” he commanded. “Come, Primrose.”
Her lashes fluttered. Her body reacted to his consent and sudden ecstasy rattled through her like a runaway cart, heightened by the sound of his rough moans as he found release deep inside her.
His mouth covered hers, surprising her, stealing her breath as his tongue plundered, entreating response. Her heart soared with joy. He’d initiated the most intimate of acts with her. Could he possibly have real feelings for her? She didn’t dare entertain the idea. It was far too frightening. Far too risky.
Finally his lips left hers. He eased her off his spent cock and lowered her to the floor then deftly popped the plug free. She ached for the loss of it, of him.
She searched his eyes and something deeper than a physical connection sparked inside her. She drew in a shuddering breath, needing something more from him than his touch or his domination. “Adam…”
Gazing at her, he swept his thumb along her cheekbone. Something akin to panic flickered in his eyes. His forehead crinkled as if he were in minor pain and then he sought her mouth again. His lips grazed hers, sure but tender and so at odds with the way he’d recently taken her against the unyielding wall.
Her body warmed. She could have stood there forever. Her naked. Him half-clothed. Tasting his delightfully sweet mouth as it plied hers. His body pressed against her and she found her shoulders once more at the wall.
Her fingers speared into his hair and she held his head captive.
When he licked at her lips she opened, admitting his tongue. Before when they’d kissed, he’d pillaged her mouth the way he took her body. Forcefully with a burning need to sate their mutual desires. But this kiss—this tender kiss—made her heart race. It kindled that emotion roiling in her gut she dared not name. This kiss was far more dangerous than any pleasurable punishment he meted out to her, for it had the power to destroy her, to dredge up that place where she’d stood five long miserable years ago.
Alone. Abandoned.
Unwanted and unloved.
She whimpered as he drew away. His hand caught her chin and he gently shook her back to her senses.
“I need you to come with me,” he told her, ripping her out of her state of confusion as he reached behind her neck to release the catch on her collar.
* * * * *
The physician’s office was filled with books, all manner of interesting models and even something macabre floating in a jar on a shelf but Primrose couldn’t take her eyes off Adam.
He sat in the physician’s office, long legs crossed casually, his black topper perched in his lap, his fingers drumming impatiently on the armrest of the camel leather chair. His dark hair seemed to wrestle the pomade his valet had combed into it.
Errant waves curled at the top of his starched, white collar. His frock coat fit his broad shoulders perfectly. Primrose leaned across the narrow expanse between their chairs and brushed a bit of lint away with her gloved fingers.
A dimple deepened on the side of his face when he glanced at her in thanks.
Primrose’s stomach did a flip when their eyes connected. She half wondered if Adam hadn’t brought her to Dr. Gallagher’s office to confront him about conspiring with Thorley. She cleared her throat. “Exactly what do you hope to discover?”
His forehead furrowed. “I don’t know. But something seems amiss with…the earl.”
Relief washed through her. She wanted to tell him if he’d seen the earl’s illness progress from the beginning he would understand.
Gallagher rushed into the office. Adam rose to his feet and Gallagher inclined his head. “Lord Black,” he greeted. “I would have been more than happy to pay you a call at Scarborough Hall.” His gaze swiveled to Primrose and he nodded again. “Lady Black.”
Guilt nibbled at her. She’d seen Gallagher coming and going from Scarborough Hall on nearly a daily basis but she hadn’t been in the same room with the man and her husband.
“Please take your seat,” he said to Adam as he skirted his desk and sat.
Adam gracefully sank back into his chair. “I hope that our conversation will remain private, Dr. Gallagher.”
The doctor pulled off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “But of course, my lord.”
“What is the nature of cure you’ve prescribed the earl?” Adam’s question was pointed. Almost accusing.
Gallagher raked his hand over the three strands of hair still clinging to the top of his round head. He sat forward, obviously rattled by Adam’s question. “Mostly laudanum for his spells. A blood purifier. Some herbal remedies. Very standard procedure in cases such as these.” He seemed straightforward.
“And what is the earl’s diagnosis may I ask?”
“Senile decay. Plain and simple. With episodes of palsy.” Gallagher sat back and folded his hands over his paunch. “Granted the earl is younger than most with such a diagnosis but unfortunately I come to no other medical conclusion. It saddens me to be so frank with you, my lord, but there’s no sense avoiding the issue at hand. If you are here to know how much longer before you inherit the title I cannot rightly say. Weeks. A month or two at the most.”
