Wolf of Arundale Hall (7 page)

Twenty, young, essentially innocent, she’d followed Perry to the brothel intending to bring him home from his wicked search for pleasure. She’d found him, bound, stripes on his back and an expression on his face of intense ecstasy. A woman had had Perry’s cock in her mouth and another had ridden him like a horse. He’d had a strange, long, phallic thing in his arse.

She’d stared at them until they were finished, fascinated and repelled at the same time. It had taken her ten full minutes to regain her composure and haul Perry out of the room, naked and sated.

It hadn’t been the first time she’d retrieved Perry but it had been the first time she’d found him during the act rather than after it. After that experience she’d made sure Jaimison and his men were with her.

She wasn’t afraid of the ruffians who ran the brothels or the rough women who serviced her brother-in-law. But she was terrified of herself. This uncontrollable sensuality wasn’t something she understood. While Perry had fought his Beast, she’d fought hers. In a way, she’d sympathized with his plight, even before she’d known what drove him to those dark places.

The anger that had kept her pacing the bedroom began to subside. Her husband had abandoned her to keep her safe, not realizing she was his mate. All he knew was the blood lust, the violence the Beast exhibited during unfulfilled passion.

But she knew he would have had to find release in the time they’d been apart. That he’d lain with other women. She tightened her lips. That was what angered her. It irked her. Some of it was raging jealousy. That another woman had given him sexual satisfaction made a red haze fall over her vision. Some of it was bitterness that her own sexual needs had been denied all these years.

She took a deep breath. Damn him. Now she was angry all over again.

When the heavy front door opened and closed, she tried to decide if she wanted to have it out with Joshua or just go to bed.

Then her husband’s footsteps sounded down the hallway and stopped outside her door. His knock was loud and insistent. It was very tempting to ignore him and pretend to be asleep. But she wasn’t a coward.

When she flung the door open, he stood there, handsome, dark and fit. She glared at him. “I thought you requested that I not wait up.”

“I did. Why didn’t you obey me?” he said.

She snorted. “You haven’t been a true husband to me for ten years and you want obedience?” She should have been shocked and appalled at her defiance but she wasn’t. Resentment and sexual frustration seethed inside her and needed an outlet.

“Yes,” he stated.

She tipped her chin. “I will not be subject to a man who ran from me.”

His eyes narrowed and she noted a muscle jumping in his jaw. “You will be subject to me.”

“No,” she said calmly. “I won’t.”

“You will.”

Something broke inside her, some dam of control that kept her emotions contained, and everything spilled from her. “I will not. I will not submit to a man who left me, alone, unfulfilled, and gave me no respite.” She stepped closer and stabbed a finger into his chest. “Not only did you leave me frustrated and alone, but I had to go to rescue your brother from places—” She’d said too much.

Joshua gripped her hand and yanked her closer. “Yes, tell me about that, Elizabeth.”

She struggled. “Tell you about what? You took my virginity and then left me here to rot for all you cared.”

He seemed unconcerned. “But you didn’t rot. Did you find solace in someone else’s arms?” he asked her, his voice harsh. His hands clamped on her shoulders and he shook her violently. “Did you?”

Elizabeth wasn’t easily frightened. Not by Joshua. “Why shouldn’t I? Could you judge me? I know how you kept the wolf at bay. You had to lie with other women, didn’t you?”

“Elizabeth—”

“But of course that’s a different matter, isn’t it? Why? Because you’re a man and I’m a woman? Do you think I needed any less?” She tried to jerk away from him but he held her tightly.

Too late she noticed the change in him, the way his eyes had changed to a bright, luminous blue and his teeth had elongated. “Answer my question,” he said, his voice deeper. “Did you fuck another?”

For a moment she considered lying and telling him she’d fucked many men. But though she desired to get back at him she wasn’t willing to tell the lie. “No.”

His relief was palpable. “When I ran away from you I thought the Beast would rule, seeking pleasure and violence. I believed I’d lost you forever and what I did no longer mattered. But do you know what I discovered?”

“I don’t care,” she snapped and renewed her struggles, knowing the Beast was close but unwilling to submit to him.

“I discovered that nothing—not the violence that gave me a temporary reprieve nor the rough feel of my hand on my cock—nothing compared to the sweet honey of my very lovely wife,” he said, his face near hers and his arms banded around her.

“Bollocks.”

“Tsk, tsk.” He pushed her back toward her bed. “Such language. I’ll have to punish you.”

Now she fought him in earnest, fear ripping along her nerves. His strength, always overpowering, pressed her back step by step. “Let me go,” she said, her mouth as dry as dust.

“Look what you’ve done, Elizabeth.” He glanced down and her gaze instinctively followed. The bulge in his trousers captivated her and she froze.

She jerked her gaze back to his face. “I am not the innocent maid you tricked on our wedding night.” Fury replaced fear in a heartbeat and she yanked against his hold.

“Tricked? How did I trick you?” His bright blue eyes widened and he bared his teeth.

“You only did half the job. So that you wouldn’t impregnate me.” She managed to get a hand free but he caught it before she could scratch him.

“Tell me, my dear wife, was it the fact that I spilled my seed on the soft skin of your thighs or the fact that I didn’t come inside you that bothers you the most?” His voice was soft and low, seducing her with every word.

“Both,” she said through gritted teeth.

With a casual flex of his muscles he pinned her to the bed and straddled her. Immobile, she cursed him, called him names out loud that she’d kept inside for years.

She took a breath and he covered her mouth with his. When he lifted his head he held her gaze. “Do you know why I won’t gag you? Because I want to hear your clear, sweet voice when I make you come.”

Her struggles only made things worse as she squirmed beneath him, her own body betraying her. The Beast was close now, Joshua’s eyes more wolf than human.

He ripped her nightgown, ignoring her fists pummeling his chest, and shredded it into strips. He used them to tie first her right wrist to the headboard, then her left. She yanked on the material but he’d knotted it tightly. Then he tore her underclothes off her body and used them to tie her ankles to the footboard.

Open and exposed, she seethed with rage. “Coward,” she snarled.

The growl he gave her in response should have scared her out of her wits. Instead her skin tingled with some sick sort of anticipation.

He inhaled deeply. “I smell your arousal, Elizabeth.”

“So I’m a whore. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

The wolf was dangerously close to the surface now. He snapped his teeth, his muscles bunched. “You are no whore.” He straddled her thighs and slid down further until his face was level with her pussy. “I’ll show you what I want.”

When he sucked on the scar he’d imprinted on the inside of her thigh, her blood boiled and churned. Pleasure tore through her and her pussy wept with need. His mouth locked on to her inner thigh, he thrust two fingers inside her slick channel and she couldn’t stop the roll of the orgasm that washed through her.

Her nipples tightened from the force of her release but she only allowed a small sound to escape her lips. She would not scream. He could make her come. He had before. But he would not win.

She yanked on the wrist restraints when he licked his way from the scar where he’d bitten her again to the seam between her thigh and her pussy. She tried to get away from his wicked mouth, terrified of what he would do to her, what it would cost her.

But he was determined and she gasped when he caught her clitoris between his teeth. All these years and her fingers were the only touch that sensitive nub had ever known. Now his tongue, his teeth, his lips, showed her everything she’d missed, everything she’d longed for.

The scream she’d sworn she’d never let loose rose in her throat. It choked her, strangled her. Her orgasm slammed into her like a wild animal, ravaging and tearing on its way. She writhed beneath his ministrations and exploded into a million pieces.

When her scream ripped free it sounded like a wounded predator and filled the room with its noise. But Elizabeth didn’t care. She was lost in the ocean of need that her husband had just unleashed.

Joshua growled with triumph when Elizabeth’s release flowed over his tongue. Oh, her sweet taste had haunted him. He devoured her, sending her over the edge again so he could feel her walls squeeze his fingers.

His little wife had not been with men while he was gone. She was tight and as innocent as the day he’d consummated their marriage. The wolf howled in savage glee and the man joined it. She belonged to him and no one else.

He watched her shudders subside and stroked her soft skin with his tongue. Beneath him, she lay completely still and he wondered if he’d killed her with passion. The idea made him smile against her skin. The smile died when he raised his head to study her.

Her face was turned to the wall, away from him, and tears dripped from her eyes. A deep red color flushed her cheeks but not from pleasure. Her expression of shame sliced through him. “Elizabeth?”

“It’s done now,” she said quietly, still not looking at him. “Please get off me.”

He stared at her. The dead sound of her voice, the finality, struck him like a slap. “But I’m not done.”

Her chest rose and fell in a broken sigh. “I will not fight you.”

Like fragile glass, Joshua’s hope shattered. She would not forgive him. He’d come home too late.

He reached up and yanked on the knot that tied her to the bed, releasing her hands. The emotional pain of sliding away from her, breaking more than just their physical connection, was like a punch to his gut. He jerked on the tie at her ankles, freeing her completely. “Why didn’t you write to me and tell me you’d found my mother’s diary?”

Her head whipped around and she glared at him. “You ask me that?” Her feet rose up and kicked him off the bed. She swung out of the bed and stood nose to nose with him, her fists clenched. “You who refused to discuss any personal issues? Have you forgotten your second letter to me? ‘It is, perhaps, best that we keep our letters about business rather than personal matters. I cannot guarantee others will not see our words.’” She sneered his words, her lips twisted in anger. “You weren’t worried about the eyes of others. You didn’t want to discuss anything with me.” She turned her back on him and yanked open a drawer, removing underwear and a nightgown. “You don’t discuss anything now. You have come home and barked out orders, taken me to bed, but there has not been any discussion.”

The next thing he knew, she had a pistol pointed at him. “I am sick of you and your entire family taking advantage of me. Get out of my room.”

How had this gone so badly? Would she truly shoot him? He studied his wife carefully.

He stepped closer, the muzzle of the gun against his belly. He slid his hands up her arms and winced when she shoved the gun deeper into his gut, her finger hovering over the trigger. “Even if it costs me my life, Elizabeth, I won’t go.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t think I’ll do it?”

He stepped away and picked up his discarded clothes. “You’re too good—”

The explosion of the gun echoed in the room and Joshua felt the sizzle of the air as the bullet missed his head by a fraction. The splat sound against the wall reverberated in the silence.

The gun was still aimed at him. Her face had changed from the vulnerable, sweet wife ashamed of her lustful side to a cold, heartless expression he’d never seen on her face before.

“Elizabeth!” He couldn’t stop the involuntary protest. He started for her but she backed away, the gun still aimed at him. “People will talk.”

For a moment he thought she was going to chuck the gun at his face. “Talk? Talk? What do you think they did when you left me for ten years? What do you think they did when Perry was found drunk almost every night?” She gritted her teeth. “Don’t tell me about talk.”

“Elizabeth—”

“Get out of my room,” she repeated slowly.

“This is my room,” he argued.

The snick of the hammer as Elizabeth yanked it back registered with him. It was nothing compared to the murderous expression in her eyes. Forgiveness wouldn’t be forthcoming this night. “If you change your mind—”

“I won’t,” she snapped.

He picked up his remaining belongings and headed for the door. When he turned back, she held the gun steadily at his head.

“So, tomorrow then.”

She tipped her chin. “If you’re still here. I will be amazed if you are,” she said.

For a moment, he considered taking the gun away but what then? He had given her pleasure using all the finesse and experience he had and she’d tried to shoot him. What was a man to do?

He cursed under his breath and did the manly thing. He left.

The door slammed behind him and he heard the bolt slide home. A scuffle and a slam indicated that she’d jammed a chair against the door. And then he heard a sound he never wanted to hear again. He heard his wife sob. It was a muffled, contained sound all the more pathetic because it made such little noise. It made his heart clench.

What had he been thinking? He leaned his head against the door, his stomach rolling and churning. Had he expected her to go back to the way they had been as children? For she had been little more than a child when he’d married her.

Fool. He’d come home thinking she was only waiting for him to arrive. Instead she hated him.

He pushed away from the door and pressed his fingertips against the solid wood that was only one small barrier between them. He wouldn’t give up. He had to prove to her that he was worthy of the love she’d given him when they were young.