16. Catherine
Iwas ignoring my husband so hard that I hadn’t realized when he’d left the room entirely.
Suddenly there was a respectful cough behind me and one of the footmen stood there.
“Oh!” I cried with surprise. “I didn’t know anyone else was here.”
My eyes darted nervously into each corner of the room.
Where had he gone?
“I’m bringing you a message from the Viscount,” the footman said. “He requests that you go to his room immediately.”
“Immediately?” I cried, a prickly, anxious heat breaking out across my neck.
“Yes, my lady,” he said, handing me a small candlestick and leaving the room.
For a moment I stood there indecisively.
I could try to run out the front door. If I could find it through the maze of hallways and doors that I wasn’t familiar with yet.
And then what would happen? Most likely, the Viscount would chase after me, since he knew the grounds much better than I did, and he’d catch and fuck me where he found me.
I shifted, uncomfortably aware of my extremely sore ass.
I could try to make it to my room and then slam and bar the door against my husband.
If I could make it there.
If only I thought St. Erth was the kind of man who would be too gentlemanly to try to break his wife’s door down in the middle of the night!
But I knew he was not a gentleman.
With a little spark of fear, I realized I had no other option than to obey him.
My heart had begun to pound, but I gripped the candlestick tightly in my hand and resolutely opened the door.
The hallway outside the sitting room was almost pitch-black, barely lit by a few candles that flickered with a thin light. They seemed to be placed at lengthy intervals, and I had to grip the side of the wall, running painfully into a table with my shin.
“St. Erth?” I whispered hesitantly as I moved along the hallway.
Surely the staircase was this way?
I suddenly felt uneasy trickles of fear down my spine. Rosewood Manor, which had looked so cozy and inviting during the day, had transformed in the night, the flickering shadows making shapes loom large and fearful in the hallway.
I moved cautiously out the door, my bare feet moving quietly across the fine soft carpets of Rosewood Manor. There were a variety of ornamental wall sconces lit along the hall, to make sure that those walking Rosewood Manor’s halls at night would be able to safely traverse the long dark passageways.
But I wasn’t safe in the light. I wasn’t safe anywhere my husband could find me.
In the deafening silence of the house, I heard a noise like scraping, clawing.
“Who’s there?” I cried, feeling the panic rush up my spine. “St. Erth? What’s that noise?”
It stopped for a moment, then I heard it again. A long, deep scrape and then a noise like claws drawn down a wall.
I whirled around again, trying to see past the flickering light of my candle.
Nothing.
As I turned back around, heading for the staircase, I heard a sharp, soft schick and the feel of a blade on my back as my dress gave way under it, falling in a pool of silk and satin around my ankles.
My heart in my throat, I rushed up the staircase as fast as I could, past the second floor where my room was, and onto the next one that would take me to the upper floors. I had no idea what would be there. I only knew I had to escape.
The upper hallway was not lit at all, and I fought the panic that threatened to engulf me.
If I could just get to an empty room, I could hide and put out the candle. Then maybe I could escape detection.
But I heard his voice again. Cool, silky, menacing.
“You were supposed to go directly to bed, little Viscountess.”
“I’m going to kill you!” I cried, afraid to run and afraid to stop running.
Even though it was summer, I shivered in my undergarments, feeling my nipples tighten and the goosebumps on my skin.
“Ambitious,” came my husband’s dry, cold voice. “Let’s see if you can, Catherine.”
Then suddenly he was upon me, and I swung the candlestick, miraculously managing to connect squarely with his face and split his lip open.
I gasped to see the blood spring to his lips, but St. Erth only smiled, his gleaming white teeth stained with blood in the flickering light of my candle.
“Lovely aim for a vicious little kitten, but you’d have to kill me to stop me.”
Then he yanked me onto his lap in a hallway chair and held my hand with the candlestick high.
“Keep that up. I want to watch your face as I fuck you.”
With the other hand he yanked at his breeches, bringing his cock out and I watched in horror as one drop of wax rolled onto his face from the candle.
It must have burned; it must have been hot, but he didn’t flinch.
I screamed then, as loud and long as I could, inflating my lungs as much as I could so the sound would carry.
And St. Erth didn’t even try to stop me or cover my mouth. He only put one hard hand on my back and drove my hips down over his cock, his hand pressing, forcing me to take every single thick inch as my core burned from his intrusion.
“Scream all you like,” he laughed contemptuously. “No one here would dare to interfere with anything I do to you.” I felt the rough tips of his hands skim my flesh as his cock stroked in and out of me, wet and slippery on my thighs and hard and punishing in my cunt.
“Help!” I cried. “HELP! Somebody please help me!”
My husband reached a hand up to tighten in my hair, the pins all tumbling out around my shoulders.
“Keep that hand with the candlestick nice and high,” he warned. “Or you’ll go over my knee. I am going to put a baby in you, Viscountess.”
Then with both hands this time he ground my hips over his cock and my arm with the candlestick trembled but I didn’t dare to do anything but watch his golden, savagely handsome face, the blood smeared across his lips and my breasts as he buried his face in between them.
When he had released in me with a loud feral groan, he picked me up, his cock still inside me, and carried me back down to my bedroom. There was a strange pulsating heat between my legs that I didn’t know the meaning of, and he laid me on my back and was already breeding me again.