“It is not guilt that motivates me. I genuinely desire to keep you safe. I admire your courage and your fortitude. That night at the Viscount’s home, you . . .” he trailed off and sat back down on the bed. He folded his arms and for a moment glanced away. It appeared I was not the only one in the room who found it difficult to talk about the intimacy we had shared in front of strangers at the Viscount’s abode.
“I want to leave,” I said. I could bear no more. “I can’t believe my aunt would have allowed you to simply take me from my home. She is a fierce woman and likes her family to be around her.”
“Yes, I received that impression very strongly. She likes to control you. Your aunt was very reluctant to believe Lord Grange was a criminal. I am sorry, Lady Gerard, but I had no option than to abduct you from your bed while you were unconscious. Accompanied by the physician, I brought you here. Until these men are rounded up and dealt with by the court, you must be kept safe.”
I forgot my injury and sat bolt upright in the bed.
“Are you to feel no shame for kidnapping me after the way I was so cruelly abducted and bound by Lord Grange? You clearly mean to do the same to me.”
I sat firm and stubborn, refusing to allow him to help me back against the comfort of the pillows.
“Lady Gerard, if you do not sit back and rest, I swear you will vex me enough to spank your bare bottom soundly,” he informed me with a dark look, giving me no doubt he had every intention of carrying out his threat.”
“How dare you. Just like you did in front of the Viscount and his men. You will not,” I said with sarcasm, truly believing myself safe. “I mean to quit this house and make my way back home alone. I do not wish to be under the power of any other man for reasons of safety or otherwise. You are a rake, sir, and I will not stand your presence around me any longer.”
“I do not regret spanking you so publicly at the Viscount’s home. Your conduct in aligning yourself with a cad like Lord Grange in the first place more than warranted the application of discipline. I did not wish to manipulate you to orgasm in front of the men. I prefer to make love to a woman privately. My actions were to protect you, however strange they appeared. If I had not continued to treat you as a bride for sale who required examination and assessment, the Viscount would have harmed you, and if you caused him enough trouble, he would have killed you without hesitation. Examining you to prove you were a virgin and palpable to sexual arousal intrigued him and kept you safe. It also helped to protect the other women held captive until help arrived. I would do it all again. I do not regret having the pleasure of making love to you such as it was. It was a delight and I will not be sorry for it. Your reputation is secured because I mean to marry you. I owe you the debt of binding you to me as my wife.”
His manner was aloof and cold, his words direct and designed to give me no choice in the matter. I stared at him with such anger. I was merely to become his wife for saving his life and for the way he had made love to me. I was not to be married for love. I would not have it.
I am afraid my temper was to out rule my common sense. I reached out my hand and slapped the man hard across the face for his insolence, verbal mistreatment of my feelings and his brash disregard for my right to make my own decisions.
A thunderous look crossed Lord Drake’s face.
“You have a temper that must be tamed. You do not see when others seek to help you,” he told me harshly. “You are a danger to yourself, Lady Gerard. You will remain in this house, a captive if necessary, locked in your room if I deem it fit until the danger is passed. During that time you will come to realise the folly of your stubbornness and you will consent to marriage. You have no other choice but to accept my offer. A scandal has been caused. No other man or friend will come to your rescue for fear of being shunned by polite society.”
“I will not marry for protection and propriety alone. The man I marry will love me and not simply wish to fulfill a debt out of guilt,” I said, close to tears. “I will provide my own protection and procure my own money from my inheritance. I will leave this house today,” I almost shouted at him, trembling with anger again.
Lord Drake still held me fast. He would not comment on my tirade, but his eyes blazed.
“No. You will remain here. I must protect you both from those men and yourself. I will not see you harmed. You give me no choice but to carry out my threat. You will remain locked in this room until you can control your temper and find reason in your mind once more. A woman has no place protecting herself. That is the work of men,” he said and shook his head with annoyed disbelief that I did not have a complete understanding of his role as a man and my own as a woman. “I will not hear of such female obstinacy.”
My temper overwhelmed my senses and I raised my hand to slap Lord Drake across his face as hard as I could. My heart pounded as I saw his face turn sideways with the strike and considered how he might react. I hoped he would not show me violence. I watched him rub at his jaw but he did not make any comment.
He studied my eyes and then my lips and his breathing appeared to increase. For an odd moment I believed I could see arousal darken his features, making them even more handsome than when I had first set eyes upon my captor. I wondered if he might kiss me. I fancied I could see his memories of that night and my naked body writhing upon the firm penetration of his fingers, his lips entwined with mine as his tongue probed hard fast and deep in rhythmic unison with his fingers inside my sex. I hardened my perspective. Lord Drake had made no effort to hide the fact he had derived pleasure from my taking, but to believe his eyes were betraying a loving connection through it had to be pure fancy. How could I expect a rake to love me?
Feeling even angrier, I took a breath and tried to move away from him across the bed, grimacing with the pain from my injury. I would not hit him again. I would prove to him I could look after myself. But he held me fast.
“I like a woman with strength, Lady Gerard,” he said in a dark whisper, tracing the outline of my lips with his finger and then across my bottom lip, studying it with such depth I was hypnotised and lulled into obedient stillness. My mouth swelled and moistened at his touch. “It is attractive but when it threatens to place her in danger, then forceful action must be taken to tame it for her own well-being. I am going to bare your delicious bottom and spank it every day and night until you accept your situation and my mastery as husband, my beautiful bride.”
He removed his finger and brushed his lips against mine before I could protest. Outraged, I struggled to move away, but he held me tight and captured my mouth firmly. I whimpered, but as his tongue probed my mouth with such dominant strength, I found myself soften and reach for him. The kiss was long and was to make me feel as though Lord Drake was staking his claim and branding me as his own. Yet he would not confess any loving connection to be part of the bond. I reminded myself of this fact and pulled away sharply. He stared at me hard.
“I won’t be joined to a man who does not wish to love me,” I reinstated with vigour. “You ill use me again, sir.”
I tried to exit the bed from the other side, but Lord Drake was not to allow it. As I valiantly struggled, he turned me over on to my stomach and placed a pillow under my wounded shoulder to support it comfortably. My angry cries were muffled against the bed and my struggles futile as Lord Drake positioned one of his palms in the middle of my back to steady me. Quickly his free hand lifted my nightdress, baring my legs and bottom. I was as helpless as a babe in his hold. I felt his hand smooth and cup a buttock.
“Such a beautiful bottom and still blushing a little from your spanking at the Viscount’s Hedonist Dragon Club meeting.”
I felt the bed dip as he sat down again, his hand still smoothing the skin of my buttock.
“I will not have a woman or indeed my bride killed because of her reckless obstinacy and disobedience. You will take a marital vow to obey me, madam, and I will ensure you keep to it with strict discipline,” he said with sternness. “You will be spanked with
my hand, but should you push me with your stubbornness for the rest of today, this evening I will bare your bottom and strike it with my riding crop.” True to his word, he struck my bottom hard with his hand.
I yelped, gagged against the bedclothes. My buttocks rose involuntarily with the blows, making his subsequent strikes easier to deliver and harder in their application. My skin tingled and flared with heat. He caught the neat small fold where the buttocks meets the back of the thighs and struck it harshly. I bucked against the bed as though ridden hard and firm by a man from behind. My face warmed both with shame and with the fury of my temper.
I felt as though my punishment would never end. Each blow was harder than the last. Tears gathered and I sobbed. The strange ache I had felt gather in my pussy the last time Lord Drake had taken me to task over his knee built and throbbed again. I was past myself with anxiety it should appear again. Why would I find being spanked like a recalcitrant child arousing?
I was forced to bear another three resounding slaps. They were loud and my spanking from the master of the house would most definitely have been heard by the servants and anyone of high standing who resided there. Shame and need burned inside me.
When Lord Drake finished spanking, he stroked my burning flesh with gentleness and then bestowed both buttocks with a cooling kiss. He gave my bottom a gentle pat and then caressed the crease below one of the fleshy mounds as it curved and flattened to the back of my thigh. I was sobbing against the pillow, humiliated and frustrated I could not exert my own will.
“Shhh,” he whispered softly, still holding me down against the bed. “I will provide you with a good life as my bride, and more importantly, you will be protected from a bride sale,” he soothed, moving his caress farther in to my inner thigh just before it curved upwards into the moist folds of my sex. The ache between my thighs pounded and I became desperate for him to ease it. I forced myself to concentrate on my anger. I would not allow Lord Drake to master me with arousal.
“But I will not be loved,” I sobbed, raising my head from the bed.
There was a pause. Lord Drake would not answer my retort. He slipped his hand between my thighs and made me gasp when he tickled one plump lip of my pussy by stroking his finger along its ridge through the dark curls nestling there. He teased and taunted the ache in my channel and the pulsing throb of my clit. I could not bear it.
“I can’t love you,” he told me suddenly. “I can’t. The last woman I loved and decided to take as a bride died because of me at the hands of a man like the Viscount. That is why I lent my assistance to the constable in exposing the Viscount. I loved Helen, but I was afraid at the strength of my love and I was unfaithful to her. I have no family. My parents and sister were killed when their carriage overturned, and I felt as if everyone I loved would die or leave me forever in a similar manner. Helen was kidnapped because she was an heiress. She was to be forced in to marriage by her kidnapper but she stubbornly refused to comply with his wishes and ran away. He hunted her down and killed her for sport. She would have been safe if I had not loved her and then regretted it. I am not fit for any good woman,” he confessed with coldness.
My heart forgot its hurt and leapt with sympathy for his loss.
“Love is not an emotion I find easy to acknowledge or accept. Everyone I have dearly loved has died because I was not there to protect them or assist. My love was for gambling, for debauchery and the pursuit of women. I was never there when it mattered and by my omission they died. Please do not ask me to even consider falling in love with you, Lady Gerard. I have no right to the pleasure of the emotion for my sins. Please take my protection for what it is. It is well meant.” His words were soft, resigned, and although they were also cold and factual, they made my heart warm to the man.
He was hurt and his own opinion of his worth to be allowed to feel love was heart wrenching. At that point, even though I would not admit it to myself, I believe I resolved to make Lord Drake capable of being able to feel love again and to forgive himself.
The sudden caress of his fingertip over the top of the droplet hanging ripe from my sex made me catch my breath.
“All I may confess to you is that you touch my heart and you are indeed a very beautiful woman. I wish I could let you go as you demand. But I will not see another woman hurt because of my omission. All that I have will be yours apart from my love. I regret I cannot give you more.”
He would say no more on the subject even when I pressed him.
“You are so moist. You are a treasure indeed. A punishment suits you well. I am not adverse to you taking your pleasure after being disciplined if you have taken a spanking well. I will make sure you are satisfied as well as disciplined. I will be a good husband, Lady Gerard. Now raise your bottom in the air and part your thighs so I might have better access to you. You will receive a mounting on the day of our wedding to consummate the marriage and to breed, but for now you will have to be content with manipulation,” he said firmly, as if it were some chore he would have to endure for the sake of propriety and marriage itself.
Lord Drake was to press down hard on my back to steady and restrain me again. My words of protest at his manner were lost. When I refused to obey, he removed his finger from my sex and slapped each bare buttock hard with a firm hand. With a yelp, I raised my bare bottom. Smoothing his hand over my rump, he found my sex again and inserted his middle finger.
The feeling of being filled was exquisite. I wanted more of him inside me and lamented that he would not mount me. Despite his cruel words and indifference, I wanted to be claimed by the man I was falling in love with. I cried for the need that would never be fulfilled, to be loved and cherished by him. I had to get away from him before he completely broke my heart and my will, but for now I decided to take my pleasure simply to feel his touch and closeness for the last time. When alone I would devise a means of escape and leave for my friend’s home in the Highlands.
Lord Drake began to thrust his finger devilishly fast inside my sex. Appearing satisfied I would not disobey him and move from my subservient position, he removed his hand from my back and stood. I began to move back and forth, my bare bottom dipping and swelling and riding his fingers as if on the crest of a wave.
He paused to pinch and nip my clit, raising a muffled cry from my lips. His now free hand travelled under my night shift and sought the teat of one of my breasts. He pulled the nipple until it not only scraped the bedclothes but reached it and was made to stay there, pulled taut. The painful sensation in my teat seemed to be strangely connected to my sex, pooling it with creamy juice to ease the path of Lord Drake’s finger. In response, he inserted another finger and then another until I felt my sex widen with discomfort and then relax to accommodate his invasion. He pumped them harder, faster.
I gathered the sheets up in my hands on either side, feeling passion ride me strongly. Inside, my muscles tightened around his fingers, drawing them deep inside. Again, I wished for his member to penetrate me, to break my virginal hymen and both brand and breed me as his own. Despite his words I would not allow it, not unless he came to love me. I had little hope of that ever happening.
“Buck down onto my fingers,” he ordered in a hard, aroused voice. “Buck, buck. I want to see you pound your pelvis in to the bed as though I am taking you from behind,” he ordered.
I attempted the action but because of my emotions, I was uncoordinated and distracted. Lord Drake was not pleased. His annoyance was made aware to me by a resounding slap to my rear. I received another three and to my dishonour I felt my sex bursting with wetness around his fingers.
“Good, that is better,” he informed me. “Keep bucking. Your clitoris is so heavy and swollen with need, little one. I warrant you are close to orgasm. I yearn to mount you, but it is forbidden until marriage. Come for me now,” he bellowed, slapping my bare buttocks twice before returning to grip and pull at my breast teat once more.
Desire pulsed and spiraled inside my sex. Its flames licked over the top
of my slick channel into the very depths of my womb. I came on Lord Drake’s command. My ardour was overwhelming and consumed me whole. I panted and screamed my violent release. Lord Drake pulled my nipple hard and intensified my passion until I thought I might faint. My hips bucked the bed as though humping it and then I slumped against it, spent.
Lord Drake smoothed his palm across my back as I sobbed uncontrollably, hurt by my situation and the power the man held over me both physically and emotionally.
Lord Drake moved his fingers in and out of me twice more and then removed them slowly. He covered my bare bottom with my night shift once again.
“Mmmm, you have a delicious taste, Lady Gerard.”
I managed to lift myself up to see him suck at his fingers. He removed them and helped me turn over, lifting me until I sat back on the pillows in comfort. He pulled the covers tight around me with tender care.
“You need to eat and rest. Then perhaps a bath,” Lord Drake informed me cordially as I still panted, my body attempting to recover from the pleasure I had been so willingly given.
“I must go for a ride and allow you to gather your thoughts and then attend to business,” he said standing. He picked up his coat from the chair and put it on. “I will return later to see how you are recovering and that you are being attended to with care. The physician will arrive to check on you this evening,” he said, holding his hands behind my back, suddenly reluctant to meet my eyes with his own.
I took in his tall, lean-muscled figure and the way his light brown riding coat and breeches so neatly fitted him and presented his handsome figure to great advantage. His clothes and finery were of the highest quality and put together with care, albeit they were disheveled from sitting by my bed all night.
He bore an air of authority and confidence that no man would question and no woman would doubt. He was not a man to be trifled with. That had been proven to me. He liked to praise a woman but when he believed the situation warranted it, he was more than happy to show her the error of her ways with a bare-bottom spanking, even in public, especially if she was to disagree with his will to protect and counsel her. I shuffled my bottom on the bed, feeling the sting of his discipline and the evidence of my deduction.
Kidnapped and Bound: Kidnapped, Book 2 Page 5
