Bound to Be a Bride (11 page)

And she answered him pleasantly and distractedly, because he had asked her to imagine she was in those places—the garden, or the kitchen, or her small, narrow room—so by the time she realized what he had done, she was standing at the end of the bed with the cool night air caressing every inch of her exposed, bare flesh.

But he had stopped asking questions and he was standing a foot or two away from her, staring at her. And suddenly, she was horribly aware of her nakedness and felt like Eve must have felt when she realized she was not an animal but a naked and shameful human, uncovered and wanton. She turned quickly to grab something with which to cover herself—something, anything!—the pale blue linen bedcover at the very least. She made a quick dash for the head of the bed, but she was not quick enough to reach it before Javier grabbed her.

He held her, one forearm pinning her waist, the other hand fisting in her braided black hair. She was panting wildly. Afraid for her soul. In a state of abject terror that he would hurt her, that everything the nuns had said was true—that men were brutal, animalistic, careless, cruel—Isabella began to struggle. She felt like she had to defend herself from something, but she hoped very much that Javier would prevail.

Even as she fought him physically, she heard her own voice as if she were in another room. “Take me… don’t listen to me… have me… please listen to me…” And through all her thrashing and insanity, he soothed her and contained her anxiety with soothing words and gentle, encouraging kisses.

All the while, he was restraining her, physically binding her to the large four-poster bed.

As when he had acted as her lady’s maid and divested her of her clothing, he was saying one thing while doing another. In the midst of her chaotic ranting, he had somehow managed to get the ropes out of his saddlebags, and Isabella thought she might faint. Her heart sped to a frantic hammer.

“No! Javier!” Her voice was pinched but it was starting to get louder.

“Am I going to need to gag you?”

The first thought that leapt to her mind was,
Yes! Yes, you are going to need to gag me! So I can cry out even louder from the joy of your possession without having to repress the extent of my passion!
Yet, still, the years of sanctimony made her uphold the pretense of meekness. “No, Javier. You do not. I will be passive.” Her body went limp, as if to show him how docile she could be.

“You most certainly will
not
be passive.” He was all over her now. He was also fully naked by that point, and in his busy efforts to restrain her, he kept rubbing along her. The hair of his chest rubbed against her tender nipples as he leaned to the head of the bed to secure her wrists to the wrought-iron headboard. She arched her back to increase the contact. “That’s right, my little wanton…” He rubbed his chest against hers, mercilessly taunting her.

He too was panting from the effort of getting her properly tied to the bed, but now that her hands were above her head in a meticulously tied series of knots and her legs were spread, so wide and beautifully open to him, and each ankle was similarly tied, Javier pulled away to admire his handiwork. And his wife.

She was nervous, obviously—her breath coming in erratic gasps—but she was also eager. Some part of her was still in the final convulsions of spewing the last bits of tangled religious rhetoric at his face.

“This is so wrong, Javier,” she whispered desperately, a tear sliding down her cheek.

“Is it?” he asked idly. And then he began to touch her. “Is this wrong, Isabella?” He let the tips of his fingers trail up those wide-open inner thighs as he crept onto the bed like a biblical beast, half-man, half-feline.

She kept crying. He wanted her crying, mourning the loss of her girlhood. He wanted her to come to him raw and stripped clean of every perverse lie that was being burned out of her. Burned by the fire of his passion and love for her.

He kissed her hot center and she cried out. He could hear the joy mingled with the terror. The very idea of a man touching her there, much less with his lips, and tongue, and teeth, was foreign and therefore evil.

“No! Javi! No! That cannot be allowed!” she whispered harshly, her head thrashing; she pulled at her hands with a desperate, repetitive tugging.

Her thighs began to tremble and he knew her body would overrule her mind. He let his tongue find her hard peak, then he dipped deeper into her, tasting, soothing, taunting her. He knew that she wanted him, and he was probably cruel—truly—to make her demand it out loud on her wedding night. He gave her more of what she craved and felt how her body responded. Her hips tilted to encourage him, her “No!” had taken on a dreamlike tone, as if someone had told her something and she was uttering her disbelief.
You
don’t say.
“
No?
”

He smiled and repeated the motions that she told him she wanted—not with words, never with words, but with her tilting and keening and cries of dwindling protest. He finally bit and sucked and sucked and soothed until her body demanded release and no clenched fists nor stiffened legs nor bitten tongue nor cry of “Nooooooo!” was going to stop that body from taking what it had been so long denied.

He kept kissing her there and she begged him to stop, but her begging was like that of a drunkard. Slurred. Imprecise. “Please… Don’t… Stop…”

While she was in that state of bliss, he dipped one finger then two into her. She whimpered again, but her voice was more precise. “I know for certain that that is absolutely not allowed.”

“How is it that I am availing myself of all these things that are not allowed?” And just to taunt her further, he took one of the slick, glistening fingers that had just been inside her luscious body and brought it to his mouth. She started to close her eyes, to avoid seeing something so wrong, so carnal, and he barked his command. “Eyes open. Now!”

She needed that level of discipline. She needed him to make her do the things she so badly wanted to do, but could no more bring herself to ask for than she could bring herself to ask for someone to throw a bucket of cold water on her head.

So she kept her eyes open, at first because he had demanded it, then because she wanted it. She wanted to see every delicious and debauched thing, to be the source of his joy, to let him take on the burden of her sinning, wanting self. Because he was making her do it.

“What about this? Is this allowed?” He took the wet fingers from his mouth and reached between the cheeks of her bottom, putting a slight pressure on the most inappropriate place Isabella could possibly imagine.

She cried out, but was proud her eyes never left his. “Definitely not!” she squeaked, but he watched her closely, and more to the point, felt the hot rush of moisture slide out of her onto his hand when he made that little glancing foray near her ass and continued toward her tight passage.

“Definitely not,” he whispered. “Then why does it feel so good, Isabella?” When he challenged her like that, she no longer felt like the coerced Eve, but the decisive Eve. And he was the serpent. And she was going to eat every apple in the garden. And it did not matter if all of mankind would suffer, because he was going to deliver on that promise of knowledge, and she wanted to
know
. She wanted to know every cruel, glorious, and base desire that was ever known to man. She wanted to prostrate herself before this man, to have his demanding hands take her, touch her, dig into her, bind her. She wanted to give herself to him, completely.

“Because I want you,” she whispered.

He looked up quickly. He had broken her. The resistance was gone, but not the passion. The joy was in her eyes.

“Say it again. Clearly.” He was slowly circling her moist entrance, then plunged a finger into her when he said it.

Her eyes rolled back into her head at the blinding pleasure of him inside her. She was drowning in it. He had promised. He said he could make her feel that way anytime it suited him. She would do anything to make it suit him.

“Because I want you,” she declared. Proud. Clear.

“And I you.” He moved his hand so he could push his thumb gently against the hard nub of her pleasure while he slowly put two, then three fingers into her, stretching her and watching her face closely all the time.

She wanted more. She wanted everything he could give her.

“Tell me what you want. Say it.”

“I want…”

He thrust his fingers farther into her and watched her mouth go slack with longing.

“I want!” she cried out as another orgasm overtook her. He felt the fierce clenching around his fingers as the walls of her passage tightened again and again. Her whole being surrounded him when wave after wave of pleasure tore through her.

“Yes. You do.” He was caressing her gently, on her stomach, on her breasts, along her exposed underarms with their tender downy tufts. He was working his way up her body with those subtle, soothing touches, until his mouth was right by her ear. He whispered, “I want you wanting, and I will give you everything you want.”

She tilted her hips to him, feeling the power and strength of his erection pressed against her swollen core.

“Are you wanting more, Isabella?”

It was a trick question. She had been raised, no, conditioned, to believe that the sin above all others was wanting more. But she had just taken her marriage vows. She knew that she would never lie to Javier.

“Yes. I want more.” She was crying again because she knew it was wrong. “And I don’t even care that it is a sin. I want more and more and more—”

And then he was inside her and she knew it was not a sin: that this wanting was a desire that made her a better wife, a better human being.

“Oh, Isabella! My bride!” Javier was perfectly still inside her.

The shock of it was at first all consuming. Isabella could not breathe. She felt as if he had stabbed her, not just where he’d entered her, but all the way up to her heart (which had also stopped beating). The two of them were frozen like that for a measure of time, a musical note, perhaps two, and then the rush of blood, of life, of everything glorious and splendid, coursed through Isabella in a crashing wave.

“Javier.”

“Isabella.” He was only an inch or two from her face. Eye to eye.

“I want to touch you,” she said.

He pulled away another inch or two, separating their sticky, sweat-moistened chests, to illustrate that they were already touching.

“With my hands,” she whispered.

He reached up, and with one quick tug, the entire impossible scheme of ropes and knots was loose and falling off of Isabella’s hands.

Her hands flew to his face, to his back, his neck, ears, lips, cheeks, shoulders, eyebrows.

Javier reveled in her audacity, her curiosity.

“Touch me everywhere, Isabella. Anywhere.”

He began moving inside her and she stopped touching him, paralyzed again by that other sensation.

“Touch me, Isabella.”

She was still staring into his eyes, through all of it.

“I need to concentrate…”

His laugh went through them both. “That’s the last thing you need to do, my love.” He used his hands to put her hands back on his shoulders. “Anywhere,” he whispered with a grin of encouragement.

He kept up a gentle, slow rhythm of long strokes in and out of her, and she gained courage touching him while he did. She touched his lips and he drew her finger into his mouth and sucked on it. She gasped, and then realized that the sucking sensation in his mouth made other parts of her body sizzle and pop. Her nipples hardened; his thrusts into her became more poignant.

“Mmmm.” He finished with her finger. “Yes. You feel it. I can see it.”

“I do.” She was in awe of what he was doing to her, but, coming back to herself somewhat, she was also in awe of her own body.

With that, Javier increased his pace slightly, hitting her little peak each time and dragging away with increasing speed. He leaned down and took the tip of one breast into his mouth.

Isabella wondered if anyone had ever died from too much love. “Everything about me loves you,” she said.

His eyes were beginning to darken and cloud with his imminent release as he released her breast. “I want you to come again with me…”

“Is this a time that suits you?” she asked with a hint of her usual sauce.

“Quite,” he growled. “And in this, above all things, I demand your wifely obedience.” He kept up the pace—the maddening, wonderful, relentless pace—and she tilted her hips to let him seat himself as deeply as possible within her.

“Now!” he demanded, ramming into her again and again until his command and her body and his thrusts and her sighs and his lips at her shoulder and her lips at his neck were all intricate, interdependent parts in a magnificent, unified machine. They blew apart into myriad tiny shattered pieces of themselves and simply floated away, out the open window, over the
barcos
, down the canals, out across the Atlantic, and up to the silver, glowing moon.

And later, when they had returned to that room—those impossibly small components of him and her—the pieces of Isabella returned to her with the same impossibly small pieces of Javier attached to them, so he was in her soul, and she in his, in a way that no nun or book could have ever described. Nor would they have wanted to describe it. For the human desire to achieve that level of communion was so profound, so rabid, that people would waste their lives searching, constantly reaching for an impossible joy, a taste of heaven on this earth.

And we certainly could not have that.

The history of Japanese tying and wrapping is extremely complex and far-reaching. For the purpose of this story, I chose a particular martial art known as
Hojojutsu
. The literal translation of
Hojojutsu
is from the following three Japanese characters and their meanings:
Ho
: capture,
Jo
: rope,
Jutsu
: artform or technique. Within samurai teachings, there are many different
jutsu
(such as
kyujutsu
, the art of the bow, and
kenjutsu
, the art of swordfighting).
Hojojutsu
was used primarily to restrain and transport prisoners.

The information about the Japanese delegation that came to Spain in the seventeenth century and their subsequent integration into the town of Coria del Río is based on fact.

Francisco Javier de la Mina is a real historical figure with whom I have taken extensive fictional liberties. He was one of the first guerilla leaders in Napoleonic Spain, and I was inspired to write about him after happening upon his dashing portrait. I have tried to be accurate with locations (the convent near Burgos, the university in Pamplona, the Duke of Feria’s palace in Badajoz, etc.) and overriding historical facts (the political climate during the Peninsular War, etc.).

Other than these bits of truth, the story is entirely imaginary.