10. Catherine
Icould barely believe I had been bold enough to run away from St. Erth, but something about how I knew that that huge cock in my mouth was now going between my legs had filled me with panic.
“Mistress, can I help you?” the innkeeper asked uncertainly as I tumbled down the stairs.
“I-I just got an urgent message from Bath,” I lied. “I have to rush there, I’m so sorry.”
I opened the heavy front door just enough to slip through. I would have to move quickly, before he called out or tried to stop me. Married ladies did not rush off to Bath on their own. Also, I had no idea in which direction Bath lay.
Gathering my wedding skirts in my hands, I rushed across the stable yards, and darted behind the first outbuilding. But when I poked my head in, it was filled with busy ostlers brushing down horses.
That wouldn’t work. I heard a commotion in the inn, the noise spilling out of the big windows. A crash that sounded like a plate, and then the Viscount’s voice raised angrily.
I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I didn’t think it was anything like “I’m fine if my wife runs away.”
The next barn seemed miraculously empty, and my heart gave a hopeful lurch. If it was abandoned, maybe no one would think of looking inside.
I could hear noise and bustle in the stable yards, and people yelling, so I hastened down past the stalls, heading to the far corner of the building. Casting my eyes over each stall, I chose what seemed like the cleanest and nicest-smelling hay to hide in and I dove down, with only a little pang for my beautiful wedding clothes.
What did they matter?I thought bitterly. The Viscount hadn’t really wanted to marry me. He would’ve married anything or anybody as long as her name was “Miss Wendover.”
When the barn door opened slowly, I felt a chill go down my spine.
Maybe it was just a random ostler.
I held my breath, not daring to make any noise.
“Catherine Wendover,” the voice came. Silky-sweet with malice, velvety, cruel.
It was my husband.
Then I heard his low mocking laugh.
“Oh, but you have a new name now, don’t you? That name that means legally I own you and can do what I want to you.”
Raising my eyes up carefully, I saw him pick up a big pitchfork. My stomach roiled with fear and I tried to tamp it down.
“Come out, Catherine St. Erth,” the Viscount said again. “You see, very unpleasant things happen to people who don’t do what I say.”
I suppressed a scream as he jabbed the pitchfork down savagely into the first stall, stabbing the soft hay there over and over again.
What if I had been there?He would have killed me! My husband was a dangerous madman!
“Come out,” he said, low and wicked, his slow steps seeming to echo against the wood. “It doesn’t suit the dignity of a Viscountess to sleep in a barn.”
My knees felt as weak as jelly, the fear coursing through my body. I didn’t want to wait for him to skewer me. But what would he do when he caught me? I didn’t think he was the kind of man to show mercy.
Maybe he wouldn’t try every stall? Maybe if I stayed absolutely still?
I lay there trembling. My husband moved closer, his tall body moving with slow sure steps in the shadows.
“Not going to come out, Catherine?” he asked.
Then he moved to the next stall, and down the pitchfork fell again. He didn’t even kick the straw, or feel around to see if I was in it. Just thrust the pitchfork down as hard as he could, the sickening clang of the viciously sharp implement hitting the barn floor rattling through my teeth.
I wasn’t even sure I could get up. I felt too frightened to move. Maybe this was better. At least if he killed me he’d get in trouble.
Wouldn’t he?
I was afraid I didn’t know. Maybe he had enough money to get out of that, too.
“There’s no escape for you, little Catherine,” my new husband said, and a shaft of moonlight illuminated the terrible beauty of his face as he drew closer. There was one stall left before mine.
“Come out, wife,” he said again. “You don’t want to know what I’m capable of.”
Then he struck at the stall, and it seemed to my terrified eyes that he struck hardest with this one, his broad shoulders stretching back so he could impale the hay.
I imagined that pitchfork going through me. Would the Viscount be surprised when his next blow pierced through my skin, when he skewered his wife through her guts?
He reached the door to my stall and I saw him raise the pitchfork high.
I lurched to my feet. “Stop!” I cried shrilly. “You’re insane! You could have killed me!”
I was trembling uncontrollably.
There was a beat of unpleasant silence and then St. Erth stalked into the stall and, before I could move, he had yanked me back against him and ripped open the back of my dress.
“Don’t run away from me again,” he said coldly.
Then I was shoved onto the floor of the barn, landing on my ass on the hard wooden slats.
“You seemed to enjoy hiding from me in the hay,” St. Erth said coldly. “So now you can get fucked in the hay.”
“No, please,” I said weakly, but I had seen enough of my husband by now to realize that he was not going to be swayed by pleading.
I tried to scuttle backwards like a crab, but he pounced on me, flipping me over on my belly and tearing at my dress.
“Beg for me to stop,” he said cruelly, his thighs pinning me in place.
I tightened my lips. I knew it was a play, a game for him. He wasn’t going to stop. But he shook me, making all the curls from my wedding updo fall out on my shoulders. Then he tightened his hands in my hair.
“Beg,” he growled.
“Please,” I whispered. “Please stop.”
My husband made a satisfied hum and he ran his hand down my back, tightening his hold on my back, my ass, then my legs.
“No,” he said, bending over me. “You’re here to be fucked and bred at my pleasure, Viscountess.”
As I tried to crawl away on my elbows, he flipped up my dress, and ripped at my undergarments, rending the delicate fabric in his hands.
I screamed then.
St. Erth bit me on the thigh and I yelped in pain.
“Hush,” he said sternly. “Unless you want everyone at the inn to come in and watch you getting fucked by your husband and master.”
Then he pushed my head into the hay and shoved a knee between my thighs, splitting them open.
For a moment, he just pinned me motionless as I strained against his grip.
“You’re at my mercy,” he said with pleasure. “And I don’t show mercy.”
Then he shoved his cock inside me, tearing through my maidenhead with a feral growl. The sensation was white-hot agony, sending searing pain through my core, up my spine, and down my legs.
My cruel husband didn’t stop, pulling out and thrusting hard in me again. One hand was on my hip, pinning me in place, the other on my waist, making sure I took the entire hard, painful length of him.
Cook had not exactly been clear, but from what she said I knew that this first time might be uncomfortable, but she had never said it felt like you were getting split open.
My cunt stung and I gritted my teeth, trying desperately to get some purchase on the floor, anything to stop my body getting dragged across the hard boards.
But St. Erth held me with tight, merciless hands.
I heard a low, deep sound from his chest, and I squeezed my eyes together, wanting it to be over.
There was a curious throbbing heat now in my core as he shoved his cock in and out of me, and I didn’t like the feeling any better as the heat pulled and tugged at me.
St. Erth moved one hand up to my hair, to yank my head back.
“I want to see you getting fucked,” he said. “I want to see you getting bred. You’re going to take me even though you don’t want it, wife. Remember that. You are here for whatever I want to give you. Whenever I want my cock in you. Now take my seed.”
His hand was so tight on my hair that I gave a little whimper, and then without warning he released inside me. I felt it all up my spine as he poured wicked liquid heat into me.
His breath was heavy along my throat, and he suddenly leaned forward and bit my ear, causing me to whine and try to shudder away from him.
I felt warm wetness deep inside me, and the Viscount pulled out of me and flipped me over onto my back, none too gently either.
He was like a devil in the moonlight, his hands roaming up and down my body.
He moved and his broad shoulders blocked out the light then, and he was a dark, big shadow looming over me.
My cunt was already aching and he gave me a sharp slap between my open thighs.
“Get up, Catherine,” he said. “You need a bath. There’s only one bed in our room and I’m not sleeping on the same mattress with someone who looks like a filthy street urchin.”
He stood up with lithe grace, and I staggered to my feet, clutching the side of the barn door.
“Why didn’t you just finish the job?” I asked bitterly, looking at the pitchfork. “It was only luck that you didn’t kill me with that.”
St. Erth turned around, his thick blonde hair impeccable, not a hair out of place, the strong planes of his face unmoved and cool. Like he fucked wives in the barn every day.
“If I wanted you dead, brat, you’d be dead already. I want you alive.”
Then he stretched his long arm out and pointed. There was a scrap of my beautiful white dress on the stall door.
He had known all along.
He had just wanted to torture me.
“Now move,” St. Erth said, and his voice was like steel. “Or I might lose my patience with you.”