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Here he had been, intent on his own suffering again. Whatever his vexation, he knew Bea to be generous. For her to turn away from him, he had hurt her deeply.
He let go of her arm, freeing her. “I never meant to, Bea. I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” she said softly after a time, then climbed the stairs without looking back.
Hours later, he sat alone in his study, watching his hand as he exerted increasing force around a crystal goblet, empty but for a few drops of remaining port. He squeezed with incrementally more pressure, surprised by how long the object held out until it broke. Staring at the jagged pieces on his desk for an untold time, he pressed his handkerchief against the wound on his palm. The deep, diagonal slash ran right through the flesh where he would grip his fencing foil. It stung like hell—a welcome, if transient distraction from the more profound pain afflicting his soul.
Idiot!
He had hobbled himself needlessly.
Later, he cursed himself again as he lay in his bed, his injured hand resting futilely next to him. Even in the total darkness, he was aware of the slab of wood on hinges that separated his bed chamber from Bea’s. Beyond that door was a lady who saw no use for him anymore at night. Under the laws of Britain and by social dictate, he was entitled to go into her chamber and demand his conjugal rights.
But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
With a groan half borne of frustration, half of relief, William’s left hand closed around his swelling prick. Not since he’d injured his arm falling off a horse when he was seventeen had he been forced to employ his left hand, but it took up the task, however awkwardly.
What would his seventeen-year-old self make of him now, just over twice that age? Make of the images he couldn’t dispel from his mind? When he touched himself in this bed, his nightshirt hitched above his waist, he didn’t call to mind the women he’d been with before marriage, nor the glimpses of the erotic illustrations from France that had been passed around at university.
No, his repository of material was something that at seventeen, he would not have guessed would saturate his dreams. He was, after all, now a thirty-five-year-old Marquess and father of four, whose Marchioness was, by day, a proper wife, and by night, a woman who, even restrained, had become his temptress.
Fisting himself in the dark, he saw only Bea. Here alone, he couldn’t help but appease his inner demons, even if his selfish indulgences would exact the price of shame later.
The images began as flashes of everyday moments, real memories, that served as kindling to his fire. He saw Bea at her dressing table, her glorious hair down. The mirror reflected her face softening for him—and her open dressing gown, revealing the hollow of her throat, her smooth décolletage, and the rounded tops of her breasts.
He saw her trying to contain her rapture while tasting her favorite dessert—trifle. Messy but delectable, the layered treat always caught her eye as it was carried to the table. Her ladylike smile as it was served inevitably disappeared by the end of her first bite, when her expression hinted at repressed bliss. Last time, a small dollop of pearly custard had lingered on her lip. Thank God it had only been the two of them at the table, for he couldn’t have hidden how he lived for the moment she discovered it, then how darkly captivating the hint of her pink tongue was, swiping up the creaminess.
Moaning quietly, William worked his thumb around the plump tip atop his stiff shaft, spreading the clear drip that had seeped from it. The sensations carried him to memories of pushing into Bea’s wetness. He pretended that he thrust into her, not into his own paltry grip.
He’d done his best over the years to be gentlemanly during their bedchamber visits, ostensibly ignoring that when he moved within her, her breath caught in her throat and her fingers dented into the mattress. But he’d not only seen and heard it all…her reactions had stirred him.
Were he to let go, however, it would be not only unbecoming of him as a peer of the realm to subject his Marchioness to his beastly desires, but brutal to her delicateness. His tailor was tasked with employing every trick of the trade to fashion his trousers and coats to hide how years of fencing had layered his thighs and arms with muscle. William engaged every bit of restraint to take his wife as gently as he could. What he had never been able to refrain from was the cruelty to them both of elongating their conjugal duties, pushing them both to the edge and staying there as long as he could.
Here in his own bed, only his sounds were hindered, restricted to quiet panting. Unfettered, though, were his plunging hips, driven by his thick thighs. Unbridled were his indecent thoughts; in his imagination, he and Bea were free. He tasted her peony-pink nipples. Her dainty fingers traced the veins on his cock and explored him. Her soft stomach rippled as took her with all his vigor.
In this created world of William’s, Bea partook as fully as he. Instead of him gently peeling her hands from him as he had been forced to do in years past, he reveled as she touched him freely, clutching his shoulders as he—
“For over ten years, I have laid on my back for you. I even used to like it. But not anymore!”
He turned his head away, avoiding the unbidden and unwelcome memory of her words. His climax had been gathering in his bollocks, but it lost force. He couldn’t push away the invading thoughts, and shortly, the hardest part of his body was his fist as it struck the mattress next to his thigh. He growled in frustration and self-disgust, then rolled over in a sad attempt to invoke sleep.
For years, he had secretly gloried in, yet suffered over Bea’s desire for him as a man. At times he’d felt like the luckiest Marquess, nay man, alive; other times, he’d decried the temptation her ardor posed. Now that it was gone, she not only didn’t want him, but resented him.
Could she be right? Instead of chivalrous, had he been a selfish ingrate?
Perhaps it’s not too late.What if he were to go to her, his wife, and give her everything he had always wanted to? Was it too late?
When she says she wishes for more, can she even truly fathom everything I have imagined doing to her? With her?
She had spoken so brazenly to him the night the Robertsons were over. Swearing even! It had shocked him, but he couldn’t help but believe she had little idea of the meaning behind her words. Her feminine understanding of love, even lust, would surely be tested by the depths of his own depravity and the shocking acts he feared he might do, were he to lower his defenses.
Between his aching hand, near constant half-arousal, and his tortured heart and mind, William barely slept. He rose with the sun and spent a few hours at his desk in the study, reading about the remaining matters before the House before summer recess. A servant had cleared away the broken crystal from his desk, but the reminders of his folly remained. In addition to his lacerated hand, he suffered from a dull ache that gripped his skull.
Before breakfast, he trod up the stairs to the nursery floor. The children had already eaten, and the governess set up the eldest two, Miriam and Edmund, at their slates, studying arithmetic in the small school room. After winking and waving to them, he proceeded to the nursery, finding the nursemaid tidying after the meal and Beatrice tending to Benjamin and Isabella.
Rosy-cheeked and cackling, Isabella was atop the large painted rocking horse, pushing the wooden beast to its limits. Holding onto Bea for balance, who sat on the carpet nearby, Ben stood, watching his two-year-old sister with glee.
“Good morning,” William said pleasantly. The sight of family lifted his spirits, and he put aside his fatigue and malaise, grateful to see their health.
