The Bride of Larkspear: A Fitzhugh Trilogy Erotic Novella

by Sherry Thomas

  I almost do. I can’t keep quiet anymore; my grunts echo harshly against the walls of the room. I yank my cock hard, then harder.

  “You want to fall upon me, don’t you?” Her voice is low and seductive. She licks her lips deliberately. “You want to fuck me like a stallion in heat. And you want to come in me. You are dying to pump me full of seed and see it dribble down my thighs.”

  With a growl, I climb onto the bed. Her eyes are brilliant with both calculation and arousal. “Can’t wait any more, can you?”

  “No.” I grind out the syllable.

  Now she closes her eyes: She is thinking of someone else—or wants me to believe that she is doing so. I’d half expected just that, but still it hits me like a fist. I draw a couple of heavy breaths, then move forward to straddle her, but not in the correct place for penetration.

  Though her eyes remain closed, confusion flickers across her face.

  “I am not going to fuck you, not this time,” I tell her. “So you might as well open your eyes.”

  She does—and regards me with suspicion.

  I stare at her. “Tell me who you were going to imagine me as.”

  She only pants, but does not speak.

  “Tell me. Tell me everything you imagine—his build, his weight, the expression on his face.”

  She remains mulishly silent, her eyes fastened to my hand, still gripped hard onto my cock.

  “You weren’t thinking of anyone, were you?” I demand, propelled by an intuition I cannot explain. “You only had eyes for me. And even when you closed your eyes, it was still me you saw.”

  She stares back at me but does not deny my words. Then she yanks on her restraint; her breasts bob, the nipples pink and erect. And it all becomes too much for me. My scrotum pulls taut. I shudder. Ropes of my seed arc across the air and fall upon her chest.

  Her breath bellows, as if she’s run a footrace.

  I hang my head a moment, half-dazed by the force of my orgasm. Then, as she looks on, panting and scandalized, I rub my seed into the skin of her breasts. Her lips quiver as I coat her nipples, making them slick—and even harder.

  “I’ll order you another bath.” I get off the bed and pick up my clothes. “Tonight I will bring the blindfold back. And you can let your imagination run free.”

  Chapter Three

  WHEN I WALK PAST THE bath an hour later, I hear the sound of water.

  Part of me thinks she must be scrubbing her skin raw to get rid of any remnants of our not-quite-lovemaking. A different part of me fantasizes that underneath the innocent prettiness of all the floating flowers, she is frantically touching herself.

  Perhaps neither is true. Perhaps both.

  Hope is not just a chronic condition. In my case, it may very well be an incurable one.

  I wallow in Grisham’s company for a short while, before Mr. Donaldson, my gamekeeper, comes to take him for a round in the woods. I would have preferred to keep Grisham to myself, but Mr. Donaldson has a handsome bitch Grisham is wild about. Far be it from me to keep him away from his beloved.

  I try to read some of the correspondence that requires my attention—a task no man should bother with while on his honeymoon. But all I can think about is her.

  Have I made any headway with her at all?

  I open a locked drawer in my desk and take out a photograph of hers that I’d pilfered from her brother’s estate. He and I are close friends, and he would most likely have given the photograph to me, had I but asked. But I conceal my love for her the way others would a case of leprosy. Or worse, syphilis.

  The photograph had been taken years before and shows her at her favorite pastime, reading. It is impossible to make out the title of the open book in her hands, but I have decided long ago that it is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, her favorite for its delightfully imaginative absurdity.

  In the photograph she wears a light-colored frock. I know the dress. She hasn’t worn it in years but I remember it well, made of apple-green chiffon for summer, with puffed sleeves that narrow dramatically at the elbow.

  I love the pinned-up braid of her hair in the picture. I love the tilt of her neck. I love her fierce concentration. I love…

  I sigh. I love everything about her, including her talent for breaking my heart. In fact, I realize belatedly, it is one of the reasons I admire her. She does not accept the mocking, smirking, antagonistic version of me, because that me is nowhere near good enough for her.

  Indeed, why would she want a man who always presents as if she is beneath him? Why would a wife grow to love a husband if the only interest in her he professes is one for her hard nipples and hot cunt?

  What do I do then?

  I sketch her as she is in the photograph, young, beautiful, and, above all, content.

  The picture was taken before she’d fallen in love with the man who did not have enough spine to defy his family and marry her. Nor did he subsequently prove to have sufficient principles to leave her alone. She saw him from time to time at parties and soirées, an unhappily married man who still loved her and whose wife wanted nothing more than that he should take a lover so that she would have the freedom to do the same thing.

  At what point my beloved decided to throw all caution to the wind I do not know. But I can say with some confidence that her affair did not make her happy, any more than our lovemaking has made me happy. Yes, there are moments of thrill and elation that are enormously addictive, but the rest of the time is spent hurtling oneself at the wall that is reality.

  Her reality was that he could not share her life, no matter how much they both wanted it. And my reality, though I am still reluctant to accept it, is that she might never love me, no matter how well I fuck her.

  If all I do is fuck her.

  From my open window I suddenly hear her voice—she is thanking someone. When I reach the window, it is to see her ride away on a bay gelding, her person leaning forward in the saddle, her pace swift and hard.

  I finish my sketch, mark it with the date, and go up to her room. Before I reach her nightstand, I notice that there is a burned piece of paper in the otherwise clean-swept grate.

  My previous sketch.

  It is another moment before I gather enough courage to leave this new sketch on her nightstand, with a silent prayer that she will understand it to be a gesture not of further antagonism, but of goodwill and esteem.

  FOR DINNER I ASK FOR our places to be set across the width of the table, rather than at either end. My bride, in a closely fitted, shoulder-baring gown of hunter green velvet, raises an eyebrow at the arrangement but makes no comments.

  “Can you blame me for wanting to be closer to you?” I ask as we take our seats.

  In the dining room we have no privacy—my butler is present, as well as two footmen, all busy with the service of the first course, a clear consommé with julienned vegetables. My bride murmurs a thank-you as a bowl is set down before her. “Well, whom should I blame if not you?”

  Her tone is light and appropriate. She, too, understands that we have an image to uphold, if not one of actual happiness, then at least of harmony.

  “May I compliment you on your toilette, Lady Larkspear. You look ravishing.”

  Her hair, done up simply, exposes her fine, delicate ears. Her throat is a column of pure elegance. The tiniest pools of shadows gather in the hollows of her clavicles. And it is only with some difficulty that I stop my eyes from traveling lower.

  I do not know whether she notices the direction of my gaze. Her reply is a dry, “Thank you, my lord. And that is a well-cut dinner jacket you sport.”

  “Please, my dear, you will cause my heart to pitter-patter,” I answer, as my heart pitter-patters. I swear, it is the most naive and useless heart known to man. Hers was not even a compliment, but a neutral statement made to sound like one so that the servants would not hear anything amiss.

  All the same…

  At my reply, she flicks a gaze toward the butler and his underlings. They stand
still as statues, their faces bland. But the younger footman’s lips quiver, as if he is trying to hold back a smile.

  “I remember the last time I saw you in this dress,” I went on. “The dinner at Lady Francis’s house. May of last year, wasn’t it?”

  For a moment, surprise crowds her eyes. “You have a good memory.”

  “I never forget anything when it comes to you, my dear.”

  I regret the words even as I say them. How do I know my second sketch of the day hasn’t joined the first one in her grate, a similar heap of ashes? How do I protect myself if I go on like this?

  She does not say anything. I am not sure whether that makes things better or worse.

  “How is preparation for the magazine coming?” I ask.

  The spoon she is raising to her lips pauses in midair. “You mean the magazine you normally refer to as my folly?”

  “You should not believe all the stupid things I say.”

  I’ve always thought the magazine, aimed at the increasing population of young working women, a brilliant idea. And who better than she, already a successful publisher of books, which include volumes on educational and employment opportunities for women, to tackle such a magazine?

  “It must be a character defect in me,” she says coolly. “When people persist in saying stupid things, I believe wholeheartedly that it is indeed what they mean to say.”

  Now it is I who glance toward the staff. They are listening raptly, even my butler, who I could have sworn had never before given a single thought to my private life.

  “Last I heard, you have engaged an editor to commission articles.”

  She sets down her spoon and subjects me to a long look, as if trying to decide whether I am worthy of any further knowledge concerning her professional endeavors. “Mrs. Donovan has, as of last week, gathered a sufficient number of articles for the launch of the magazine.”

  “Excellent. What of advertisers?”

  She gives me another long look. “We are still waiting to hear back from Pears and a dentifrice manufacturer. But even without them, we have a sufficient number to go forward.”

  I ask more questions concerning the magazine’s subscriber base and her channels of distribution. Her expression remains skeptical, but she answers at length and in good faith.

  Half of me is exhilarated beyond words; the other half would like to run me through with a sword. Why, in the name of God, have I never before spoken to her like this, with simple human respect and interest? It is not arduous. It is not even difficult.

  “So when do you expect to launch the first issue?”

  “I do not—not anymore, in any case,” she answers as the footmen replace our soup bowls with plates of lobster tails in herbed butter.

  I frown. “Why not?”

  She cuts into her lobster. “Do you mean to tell me you will have no objections to my continued role as a publisher?”

  “That is indeed what I mean to tell you.”

  This time her gaze is a long sweep of my person, as if—my heart leaps so high it crashes into the roof of my mouth—she might indeed be reconsidering her opinion of me. “Your word, Lord Larkspear?”

  “You have my word, Lady Larkspear.”

  “September, then,” she says. “September was—or is—our projected launch date. Tomorrow I will write Mrs. Donovan and my secretary to let them know everything will proceed according to the original plan.”

  A glorious warmth permeates my chest, as if I have been entrusted with the map that leads to the Fountain of Youth. “I am sure you do not need it, but if I can be of any assistance, be sure to let me know.”

  She pierces a piece of lobster with her fork, puts it in her mouth, and chews meditatively. When she finishes with that particular morsel, she says, “I will consider it.”

  And that is as marvelous an answer as I can expect, under the circumstances.

  FOR THE REMAINDER OF DINNER our conversation revolves around her family. It isn’t a sparkling exchange, not a single bon mot tossed about. In fact, by any other standards, it is a remarkably mundane discussion: her sister’s new place in the country, her sister-in-law’s gardens, her brother’s annual shooting party, coming up in a few weeks.

  But for me, it is a startlingly novel experience, as what passes for mundane between us is my insulting her looks or her publishing endeavors while deploying a dirty leer, and her systematic verbal destruction of my manhood in response.

  I desperately, desperately do not want dinner to end. But like all good things, end it eventually does. She rises and departs, and I am left behind with a gentleman’s customary glass of port and cigar, in neither of which I have the remotest interest.

  I fiddle with both until a seemly amount of time has passed; then I vacate the dining room with the speed of Grisham dashing out the front door when he has been cooped up inside too long.

  She is still being attended to by her maid when I let myself into her room. Our eyes meet in the vanity mirror. I am not sure what she sees in my face—too much hope, eagerness, or familiarity? Her hand tightens on the lapels of her lustrous blue silk dressing robe.

  “You may retire,” she instructs her maid.

  The maid curtsies and departs, closing the door soundlessly behind herself.

  “You could have stayed for port and cigars,” I tell her. “I would not have been scandalized.”

  She smiles. No, the corners of her lips move upward, but it is no more a smile than fool’s gold is treasure. I feel my face becoming rigid, the boyish enthusiasm that has made me almost hoppingly excited for this night draining away like blood from a gaping wound.

  “Do you have that blindfold you promised me?” she asks, her voice as unruffled as the Dead Sea.

  As she speaks, I notice my sketch of her photograph on the vanity. I almost burst with relief, until she rises, the sketch in hand, and tosses it the fire.

  It is swallowed by the flame in no time at all.

  She turns around, that cold not-quite-smile still about her lips. “My blindfold?” she reminds me.

  “Of course,” I say stiffly. “If you will give me a moment.”

  When I reach my dressing room, I brace my hand on the nearest chest of drawers and breathe hard, my heart churning with both anger and anguish. This is why you should never let your guard down, screams a voice in my head. This is why!

  She had no choice but to be nice to you at dinner, don’t you see? The servants were there.

  You have been too nasty to her for too long. Her opinion of you is set in stone. It’s too late to change anything. No point trying anymore. Just fuck her as much as you want—that’s all you can salvage from this marriage.

  And then, from the din in my head emerges a tiny, diffident voice. Have you considered that perhaps she is even more frightened than you are? You have always been more fiendish to her whenever you’ve been more fearful that she would slip from your grasp. Think of how she must feel, especially if she feels a thawing in her heart. It would be terrifying for her, the thought of ever trusting you.

  I don't know which voice to listen to, so I stuff a few sashes and two other items into my pockets and return to her room.

  She is sitting before the vanity, brushing her glorious hair, her expression a strange, empty one. Without further ado, I approach her and tie the blindfold securely. Then I take the hairbrush from her hand and draw it through her hair, something I’ve always wanted to do.

  But not like this, with enough turmoil in my head to make me cross-eyed.

  “And you will be quiet this time, won’t you?” she asks, as if in afterthought.

  I set down the brush with a thump. She recoils just perceptibly. I lift her hair aside and bite her nape, causing her to suck in a sharp breath.

  I inhale deeply, trying to control myself.

  She does not wear perfumes. Occasionally I think of her as scented like orange blossoms, because she has worn them in her hair on more than one occasion, usually when she serves as a bridesmaid.
Tonight she does not smell of orange blossoms, but of the second bath she must have taken, its water fragranced again with lavender and peppermint leaves.

  I pull her to her feet and lift her nightgown over her head. The expression on her face—I cannot tell whether it is fear or arousal.

  Does it make any difference?

  I lead her to the bed, place her on her stomach, and bind her wrists to separate slats in the headboard. For the first time, she tugs at the sashes, testing their strength—testing the strength of my will, in truth. Her taut, firm bottom flexes with her motions. My cock comes alive, even though my heart feels dead.

  I kiss her from the soles of her feet to her slender calves. She squirms when I make love to the backs of her knees, emitting little whimpers. And squirms again when I nibble where her thighs join her buttocks. My kisses march upward, to the indentation of her waist, her slender back, her nape, where I first started, and I bite her again, knowing she is not finished with me, that she is only biding her time to unleash a new assault upon me.

  She shivers.

  Her face is turned to the side. I kiss her on her cool, unresisting mouth, then make my way back south. This time, when I reach her bottom, I place my hand underneath and lift her to her knees.

  She hisses at being hoisted into such a carnal position. The sight of her perfectly round bottom canted high in the air, her lovely cunt nakedly displayed—I close my fists so I won’t grab her like an animal. But I cannot stop myself from touching her altogether: My fingers are already spreading open her folds, dipping into the first moist beads of her arousal.

  “Darling,” she murmurs.

  I freeze.

  “Don’t stop, darling. I’ve missed you so,” she continues, her voice dulcet as honey. “And I’m so glad it’s you and not that despicable husband of mine.”

  That despicable husband of hers, despite knowing what is coming, finds himself paralyzed, unable to either speak or move.

  “Don’t be shy, darling. Do that trick you do that I love so much, that makes me scream like a banshee.”