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“But what of me?”
“My dear lady, you will have all that you need. I shall see you want for nothing. Your spoiling will continue, however, with this extravagance comes responsibilities. I shall be your lord. I shall command you, body and mind, and it will do you no harm to obey.”
“I thought I would be Geoffrey’s.” She twisted her veil around her fingers. “Do my needs not matter? Or only yours?”
“Geoffrey is going nowhere, I gather. He will still be here in three months. So, when the betrothal contract is completed, I shall return you, if that is what you wish, and if Geoffrey still wants you, then I can’t stop you marrying him. I shall forgo our marriage and accept it is your choice to love another man.”
“You said you wanted to bed me. I know what you want from me, and it is not marriage.” She glared, and for the first time, his demeanour altered. He flinched, and she knew that he had made a mistake in letting his true feelings to the surface.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’m yearning for you. I ache for your body. I wish to see you naked and beneath me. I shall satisfy myself with you, and I care not if some worthless priest has gone before me. Would Geoffrey be so forgiving in my place?”
Matilda sank into a chair and crushed her legs together. Her nipples were heavy stones, roughed against the fabric of her shift and thankfully hidden from sight, like her sex, which was coursing with saturating dew. What was happening to her?
“He will not have me after you have taken me. The choice is a deception to trick me into staying with you.” She buried her face in her hands.
Gervais moved and knelt on one knee before her. He peeled away her hands and held her within his. “I do not like seeing you cry. But ask yourself this: if Geoffrey refuses you, does he really love you? If I were him, I would not care who has foreknowledge of your body. I have bedded many lasses in my years, mostly for my pleasure, and I fell in love with none of them. Yet, here I am, believing that you might be the one to break me. It is strange, I confess, Matilda, that you should have this effect on me, but you do. And yes, I will bed you, and it will be a wondrous, exhaustive coupling of two willing bodies. I promise you that it will be so. Consummation will predate our future marriage, but will not be legally binding, only proof that you are capable of bearing children, and for many men, that is a gift. The contract is clear, you may read it.”
She blinked away the unshed tears. “Take away my fears, my lord. How will this betrothal change me for the better? Will I truly be myself, or what you desire? A shaped woman, kept, unchaste.”
He examined her palm. “I kissed this hand because it is part of you, and I wish to know all of you as much. You might think of marriage as a fetter, a chain between you and me; it will free you to think otherwise. Bound to me, I shall break those links that keep your mind imprisoned. You harbour doubts, and that is the purpose of this betrothal, to show you I can change you. That I can change too. For I wish to learn about love, something you can teach me, I think.”
“And what will I learn?”
“To give, yield, and kn
ow joy.”
“You threatened to spank me, humiliate me.” She withdrew her hand. “Remember?”
“I believe those things will do you good.”
She gaped. “Good? How? I shall feel pain and hate you for doing it.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Will you? Let me describe again how exactly I will punish you if you disobey me.”
She didn’t want him to do this. It would unravel her, send her spiralling into a place that she feared. “No...”
“Yes.” He rose to his feet and stood over her. With the tip of his finger, he tipped up her chin. “Listen.”
“Please, sir. Don’t.” Her breasts rose and fell.
“Stripped of clothes by my hands, if you refuse to undress—”
“I will not undress for you—”
She tried to turn her head away from his sharpening gaze. He held her chin steady in his palm.
“Bare, you will lie over my knees, and part your legs.” He spoke softly, and with an edge that quickened her heartbeats.
“You will have to hold me there,” she said curtly.
“Then so be it. I shall press my hand upon your back and with the other, smack it across your arse, over and over, until your smooth globes are as crimson as your face is now. And I shall see your wetness, like your glistening eyes.”
She shivered, almost violently. “It will hurt, you know it will bring me tears.”
“And afterwards I shall wipe them away and kiss your lips.” He stroked his thumb along her jaw.
“And that cruel stool?”
