Tempting the Bride - By Sherry Thomas Page 0,69

The Bride of Larkspear, had one place where Hastings had left a note saying, If you read nothing else, read this. But if she read nothing else, how would she be able to place into context the passage he’d selected?

She opened the manuscript to a random page to see just what it was that she didn’t absolutely need to read.

“Why are my hands tied?” she murmurs. “Are you afraid of them?”

“Of course,” I reply. “A man who stalks a lioness should ever be wary.”

“And what does he do when he has caught said lioness and put her in a cage?”

I brush aside a strand of hair that has fallen before her eyes. “He teaches her that captivity can be wonderfully enjoyable—and trains her to become a tame house cat, a sweet, willing little pussy.”

Her eyes darken at my not-so-subtle double entendres. “Lionesses do not become house cats.”

My hand travels down and grazes her rib cage. “Why belittle your ability to change? It is only your first hour of incarceration.”

I have always loved to antagonize her. Little wonder she’d long refused to have me. In the end she’d chose me over absolute ruin—not a choice that greatly flatters me, but now she is mine, for better or for worse.

It really was about them.

“Why?” she asks, her voice tight. “You are a man of wealth and position. You do not lack for feminine attention. I have even heard you described as charming—though I will never understand it. Why then have you chosen to cage me when many would be glad to be your pet, your sweet, willing little pussy?”

I step closer and watch the pulse at her throat accelerate. Her breasts rise and fall in a beautifully agitated cadence. Lust swells like a dark tide in my blood.

“Their eagerness bores me,” I whisper, my lips nearly caressing her ear. “It will be more fun to watch you struggle.”

A tremor passes through her—my darling is finding me more difficult to ignore.

“You revolt me,” she says harshly.

I do not doubt that. But if I revolt her purely and absolutely, we would not be here. Within her cool contempt, there has always been—or so I believe—an element of interest that she refuses to acknowledge.

“Excellent. Nothing spices pleasure like a little revulsion.”

Well, so far nothing that was terribly smutty.

I palm her breast and rub my thumb along her already hardened nipple.

Helena nearly dropped all the pages. She’d judged too soon; this most certainly was an erotic story.

The master of Larkspear brought his reluctant bride to pleasure with his fingers while she was tied to the bedpost. Then he tied her to the headboard and gave her yet another trembling climax—this time with his cock.

It was a few minutes before Helena could stop panting. She dared not read any further, or she’d crash through the connecting door and ravish Hastings—and she was far from sure how she felt about him.

But as she set aside the manuscript, she saw Hastings’s note again: If you read nothing else, read this.

Oh, why not?

The petite mort is powerful, one long, voluptuous convulsion of mutual pleasure. Afterward I untie her wrists and hold her in my arms. She believes it is her body that bewitches me, her smooth skin and tight quaint. She is not wrong; I am beguiled by her smooth skin and tight quaint. But it is this that has me completely in its thrall, this moment of paradise when she is still too suffused with pleasure to use her now-free hands to push me away.

I bury my face in the glory that is her unbound hair. I part her hair and kiss her nape. I stroke her shoulder, her arm, and her sweet soft belly with the greediness of a sot gulping down common gin.

But all too soon, she removes my hands from her person. “I wish to sleep now.”

I place my hands underneath my head with a nonchalant air—as if I haven’t been rejected again. “Let me tell you a good-night story.”

“If it’s about what the prince really does to Sleeping Beauty when he finds her, I’ve heard it before.”

“No one sleeps in this story—or at least not when it matters.”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. I tense, waiting to be further rejected.

“Well, why not? I might as well hear what other depravities have been rattling around in your head.”

She surprises me. I turn toward her, my head propped up on my hand. She gazes at the ceiling, my lovely wife, with no interest to spare for