The Bride of Larkspear (11 page)

“We will have a picnic here when you return,” I call out. “My housekeeper makes an excellent gooseberry cake. And you can fight Grisham for the chicken-and-ham pie.”

She stops for a moment, glances over her shoulder, then resumes her departure and soon disappears around the bend.

I
DO NOT WRITE HER
. Instead, I send her sketches.

Sketches of her reading, her head bent just so. Sketches of her brushing her hair at her vanity. Sketches of her playing with Grisham, his three legs blurring with eager speed.

From her part, a resolute silence.

Sketches of her empty bed. Sketches of her bathtub, steaming with hot water, strewn with lavender, roses, and chamomile. Sketches of my bed—not hers—with sashes tied to the bedposts.

Nothing.

I send a drawing of my bookshelves, filled with her favorite titles.

Still more silence.

I do not give up, but I am beginning to despair.

G
RISHAM IS LISTLESS TOO
. I toss him the tennis ball; he slogs laboriously toward it, as if he has at last realized he is missing a leg, and slogs laboriously back me.

I sit down on a wooden bench and scratch him behind his ears. “You will see her again.”

He does not look as if he believes me. I don’t blame him; I do not sound as if I believe myself.

“It’s only been a week, not that long.”

Only the longest seven days of my life.

“Let’s give her three more days. After that I will set out and drag her back, and tie her to this bench so she has no choice but to throw balls for you all day long. What do you think of that plan?”

“It’s the worst plan I have ever heard.”

Her voice. I turn still as a statue. Grisham, however, barks with joy and sprints in her direction.

“My goodness, Grisham, you almost knocked me over.” She laughs. “What’s this? You brought me the ball? Here, fetch.”

Grisham takes off like a bolt of lightning.

I rise slowly. Clad in a utilitarian brown jacket-and-skirt set—surely the most beautiful clothes anyone has ever worn—she is gazing in the direction Grisham disappeared. But a few moments later, she turns her head and our eyes meet.

“How was your trip?” I ask in a surprisingly even tone. “And your family?”

“Everyone is well. They send their regards.”

“And you? Are you well?”

“In the very bloom of health.”

I wait a beat; when she says nothing else, I ask, “Are you not going to ask if I am well?”

“You have enough will and strength to come and drag me back home in three days. I assume you are well enough.”

Home
. My heart thumps.

Grisham returns, panting happily. She takes the ball from him and hurls it into the distance. He takes off with a happy “arf.”

She tucks a nonexistent loose strand of hair behind her ear. “My family was worried about you.”

“They wrote copiously.”

She laughs a little, and rather ruefully. “Yes, they let me know.”

“You might not have realized that I have been in love with you, but they have known for years.”

“They told me.”

“Only in passing, I’m sure. They know you listen to no one’s counsel but your own.”

She slants a glance at me. “You think I am arrogant.”

“I think you are stubborn, sometimes obdurate—it’s part of your charm. And I prefer it that way. Otherwise how would I know whether you are back because you bowed to the pressure of your family or whether you chose to return?”

“Now you are convinced I chose to?”

“Will you try to persuade me otherwise?”

Grisham is back again. She casts me another look, then sinks down and touches her nose to his. “Are you glad to see me, big boy, are you? Goodness gracious, I have missed
you
.”

W
E MIGHT HAVE STAYED OUTSIDE
all afternoon if it weren’t for the sudden change in weather. Half an hour after her return, rain splatters down. But it isn’t a thunderstorm; there are no flashes and no booms. We usher Grisham inside and he happily trots off in the direction of the servants’ hall to look for scraps from the table.

“Well, you’d better get out of those wet clothes,” says my bride.

There are only a few specks of rain on the shoulders of my day coat. But I am never going to protest such an order from her. “Let me go up to my rooms, then.”

“I’ll come help you,” she volunteers cheerfully.

My heart all but cartwheels with joy.

We walk up the stairs a decorous twelve inches apart and maintain the same distance as we make our way down the corridor to my door. But the moment we are inside, I push her against the door and kiss her like a wild man.

She returns my kiss with equal abandon, her hands in my hair, her fingers digging into my scalp.

“So have you really come back?” I ask breathlessly, between kisses.

“Take off my clothes, get me in bed, and we will talk.”

I do not need to be instructed twice. Our clothes fly about the room as we strip each other. We fall into bed in a tangle of limbs, kissing again.

“So
have
you really come back?” I repeat my question, unable to forget it even in the midst of having my person groped by my favorite woman.

She rolls us onto our sides, straddles me with one shapely thigh, and takes my chin in her hand. “On one condition.”

“What is it?” I plan to keep my soul and all of Grisham’s remaining legs. But everything else she can have. “What is your condition?”

“That you take this”—she grips my hard cock—“and put it here.” She places my hand right at her secret entrance, her gate of Sodom.

“Jesus,” I exclaim weakly. “Why?”

“Because that is how I plan to brand you as mine. I am going to take you so deeply inside me that you will never be free again.”

My breaths turn shallow. “I have been yours since I was fourteen.”

Her hand fondles my shaft, making me moan with pleasure. “All the more reason for me to put my mark on you without delay.”

I stare at her, speechless.

She licks my lips. “Are you afraid?”

I can hear my heart thumping in my ears. “Yes.”

“Then I am right, you see. You
can
become even more overwhelmingly mine.”

As she speaks, her fingers do something unimaginably delicious to my cock. I shiver with arousal—and the heady sensation of watching a lifelong dream come true before my eyes. She entwines her warm, searching tongue with mine. Then she kisses her way down the center of my torso—and hungrily takes my cock into her mouth, all the while looking up at me.

I am drunk with the sight of her, the fervor with which she sucks me, the depth to which she takes me. And her hands, cupping my balls, caressing them with such keenness…

I groan when she pulls back. But she smiles and says, “I love it when your cock glistens so—because my tongue has been all over it.”

My cock is so hard it stands almost vertical.

She gives it another mischievous lick and asks, “Now, where is that vial of oil?”

With a finger that almost doesn’t shake at all, I point to my nightstand. She retrieves the oil, lubricates my cock to my gasping pleasure, hands the vial to me, and gets up on all fours.

It is an inviting pose for any woman—perhaps because it is how beasts copulate, and men, for all our thousands of years of civilization, remain beasts at heart. But when
she
raises her bottom and exposes her cunt, when
she
turns her head toward me, with a gaze that is playfully dirty, yet at the same time starkly hungry—a hunger not only of the body, but of the soul…I have never seen anything nearly so searing.

I cannot look away from her face as I smear oil on her anus, slipping my finger inside to lubricate her passage. She moans her approval, her eyes half closing. “Yes, just like that.
Yes.
”

I push a second finger inside. She emits a keening cry. “Yes. More. Don’t stop,” she moans as she drops her head, burying her face in the pillows.

I remove my fingers. She grunts in disappointment. “Put them b—”

I turn her around onto her back. “Next time we will do it like animals. But this time I want to see you—all of you. Your cunt”—I caress her damp folds with my other hand—“your nipples, your gorgeous face, your beautiful eyes.”

A sob leaves her lips. Her eyes devour me.

“Besides, if I don’t take out my fingers, how will there be room for my cock?”

Another sob escapes her. “Do it now. Put your cock so far inside me that nothing separates us.”

My heart feels as if it is breaking apart, even as it rises to the clouds.

I ravage her mouth. And then, with my lips still touching hers, I tell her, “I am willing to be branded by you, my love, even if you take an actual branding iron to my back. But do you understand that I will also be branding
you
? I will be so deep inside you, you will never again be free of me, however long you live.”

She whimpers. I have never seen her so afraid, and yet, at the same time, so alive. “Yes.” Her voice quakes.

“Does that frighten you?”

Her breathing is labored. “Yes.”

I kiss her again, this time tenderly. “Do you still want it?”

She swallows, lifts her ankles high and sets them on my shoulders, exposing every part of herself to me. “Yes, I do still want it—more than ever,” she answers fervently. “Make me yours and I will make you mine.”

My heart pounds with lust, devotion, and hope. I place my cockhead at her newly sleek entrance and push forward. Her body resists, but the next moment I am inside, gripped relentlessly by her flesh, unbearably hot and unbearably tight. A string of imprecations leaves my lips.

Shock and wonder chase across her face even as she trembles. “More. Deeper. Give me everything”.

I am nothing if not made to give her everything. I ease in inch by inch, in constant danger of succumbing to the pleasure, so good, so intense, the wildest physical sensations married to the hottest kindling of the heart.

When I have embedded myself all the way, I tell my beloved, “I’m in deep.”

“I can feel you everywhere inside me.” Her words tumble out in fits and starts. “Exactly how I want to feel.”

I withdraw halfway and ram back in forcefully. “And how does this feel?”

She pants. “As if I’m made of electricity.”

I
feel as if I am made of lightning, all power and invincibility. I put my hand on her cunt and make love to her clitoris as I make love to her in that forbidden place, wringing pleasure from her everywhere I touch.

“For the rest of our honeymoon I demand that you fuck me every day, without fail,” she manages between whimpers, moans, and low screams. “I want you to fuck me in carriages, in broom cupboards and coat closets. On days when I am particularly horny you will fuck my mouth. And on days when I am really good and deserving, you will fuck me exactly where you are fucking me now. Do you understand?”

I recognize echoes of words that I’d spoken less than a fortnight and more than an eternity ago. I groan, push two fingers into her cunt, then three, my thumb never leaving her favorite spot as my cock slams again and again into her most sinful place. “And aren’t you glad I discovered this secret weakness of yours?”