21. Catherine
The next morning, I could still feel mice crawling all over me, and St. Erth was not around, so I ordered Mrs. Jeremiah to draw me up a hot bath, which I enjoyed defiantly.
I looked down at my body as I bathed. I had never gotten much attention in my season. Gentlemen usually found my shyness and occasional stammer off-putting, and my unfashionably colored hair, and diminutive stature (not to mention my embarrassing lack of a dowry) had not been tempting.
But my whole body showed the marks of St. Erth’s obsessive need to possess me and take me—the hair he obsessively played with and pulled, the skin he continually marked up and bit, the space between my legs that he fucked and filled, surely more times than was necessary to breed me.
I couldn’t understand it.
There was a letter with the Wendover family seal on it beside my plate at the breakfast table and I pounced on it eagerly.
I glanced both ways to make sure my husband wasn’t in the room, then opened it, hungry for news from home.
Maybe it was the explanation for what had really happened with his mother!
My dear daughter, it began.
Do everything you can to prevent yourself from expecting an interesting event.
St. Erth must not have an heir!
It will mean the utter ruin of the Wendover family.
I read the letter again. Surely I must have missed the comforting words, the expressions of love. But no! Not even a hastily-written postscript about missing me.
Oh hell!
Do everything you can to prevent it.
And what, exactly, would that be? I wondered irritably.
I had no say in the matter. How was I supposed to prevent him from breeding me when and how he liked?
“Enjoying your correspondence?” St. Erth asked, and I jumped to hear my husband’s voice right next to me.
I tried to crumple the letter in my hands, but he plucked it with his strong fingers and straightened it out again.
“Another letter begging for money?” he asked mockingly, but he drew his brows together angrily as he read the pages.
“How dare they tell you not to bear my heir!” he hissed, stalking angrily over to the fireplace and throwing the letter in.
For a moment he stood in front of the fire, watching the letter crumble into flames. The fire lit up his skin and the broad width of his shoulders as the fine fabric stretched across them.
“They are the ones who forced me to marry you!” I cried in some pique. “And now they regret it.”
St. Erth turned around and there was something almost supernatural glowing in his bright cornflower blue eyes.
“I’m the one who forced you to marry me,” he said coldly. “It was my will alone, Kitten.”
I dropped my eyes in confusion at the look in his and only added lamely, “I guess they fear that they will lose Wendover House and be destitute if I have a child.”
“They will lose Wendover House and be destitute,” St. Erth corrected me. “Your father’s and brother’s gambling debts are too much and they’ve exhausted the land around them. The land around Wendover House has been almost as poorly managed as your grandfather did the land around Rosewood Manor.”
“Oh?” I asked uncomfortably.
“Once you bear an heir, it’ll probably take some tremendous sum to get the land around Wendover House back to even part of its previous utility.”
“Oh,” I said, digesting this information. I felt embarrassed by my family’s actions. I had been used to think that it was just the cards were always against Papa and Millward and soon their luck would change. But maybe it was worse than that.
“Do we. . . are we getting low on funds?”
St. Erth flashed a quick glance at me, and I couldn’t read the expression in those sharp blue eyes.
“No, brat,” he said. “We aren’t getting low on funds. I am a very rich man indeed. Now go into the library.”
I didn’t feel like fighting him, so I turned around and headed for the library, listening to the satisfied hum he made as I obeyed him.
He turned around and folded his arms.
“I’ve just gotten some pamphlets from London,” he said. “Your humors might be out of balance, and that’s why you’re being a brat. Now get up on that table.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked uncertainly.
St. Erth struck like an adder, gripping my chin with his hand. “It doesn’t matter, does it Viscountess? Whatever it is, you will do it.”
I clutched at his hand convulsively, feeling his fingers move to lightly surround my neck. There was a heat to his skin that felt like it radiated to my own.
I got up on the table, settling on my back nervously.
He pulled at the curtains, ripping a few of the cords out, then strode over to me and began to tie my hands together, stretching them high above my head.
I began to panic, pulling anxiously at the cords. “What are you doing?”
My husband ignored me and moved to my feet, wrapping a cord around each one of my ankles and securing the excess length to the table leg beneath.
I was fully trapped, my legs spread before him, my hands stretched tight above my head.
He moved to the writing desk and grabbed a pamphlet from the top of it, and when he came back I wiggled nervously under the heat of his gaze.
He didn’t need to tie me down to fuck me. He could easily overpower me any time he chose.
So what was he doing?
“It’s called a Female Paroxysm,” St. Erth said. “According to this pamphlet, it’s the newest treatment for disobedient wives such as yourself.”
“I don’t want a treatment,” I said.
Why was my breath coming so quickly?
“Did you hear me ask what you wanted?” St. Erth asked coldly. “According to this pamphlet, this is a long and tedious process but, if done correctly, it will right your humors.”
He flipped my skirt and under-layers up impatiently. Even though I was tied so tightly that I couldn’t see, I could tell by the cool sensation of the breeze that blew through the window that I was now exposed and bare for him.
My husband set his jaw and he picked up the pamphlet again, scanning it impatiently.
Then he began to rub. . .in the place between my legs.
My cheeks flamed uncomfortably, and I strained at the bonds that tied me to the table.
“I don’t like it,” I complained.
“You’re not supposed to like it,” St. Erth said sharply. “It’s a scientific treatment.”
At first, his fingers felt rough and harsh on me, making my skin ache there.
I could feel his eyes on me, that prickling heat that meant he was gazing at me, raking down my body with his eyes.
Then his fingers moved from their harsh, sharp movements to a firm circular motion.
“What’s supposed to happen?” I asked in a small voice.
“If the pressure is firmly applied, then you will convulse powerfully,” St. Erth said, and I felt his other hand on my thigh.
My chest suddenly felt tight, and a strange pressure seemed to be growing in my belly.
“Hurry up,” St. Erth said after a few more minutes. “I’m ready to fill this cunt up.”
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut.
“Let me go,” I said, straining against the ties that bound me.
“Not until the treatment is done,” he said. I gasped as he suddenly pressed two of his fingers deep inside me. “Are you ready to have this cunt filled? Are you ready for my baby?”
There was a strange wet sound from between my thighs, and I tried to twist my hips back and forth to get away from the pressure that grew there.
“Stop wiggling,” St. Erth said sharply, pulling his fingers out and giving my cunt a sharp slap.
Then he pressed two fingers inside me again and it almost felt like my core was gripping him tightly. His other fingers circled between my legs, over and over, sending strange sparks of sensation along my skin. My chest and core seemed to be on fire, the flames licking up my neck to heat my face.
“Stop, please, stop,” I begged, my breath coming in little pants. “It hurts, it feels like pressure.”
“No,” St. Erth said, and his voice was hoarse.
For a moment I thought I was going to die and I moaned with the fact that my cruel, harsh husband was going to kill me right here on the table.
I strained against my bonds so hard that my hands and ankles began to sting, but there was no escaping the steady pressure of his fingers.
Then the painful knot deep in my core seemed to burst, but exquisitely, and I was filled with a strange and surely ungodly wave of pleasure. I could feel my cunt convulsing around his fingers buried deep inside me, tightening in waves around him.
I cried out with the strange sensations as my skin seemed to burst, fill with the light, heady joy.
My husband’s fingers kept going and it was too much, I was too sensitive, and I begged him to stop.
“No more, please, St. Erth!” I cried and moaned, begging him without shame.
But he went until I burst again, so hard this time that I lost the hearing in my ears, my mouth open to scream but nothing to hear. I saw pinpricks of stars burst in front of my eyes, and when my hearing came back it was to my own long, shrill scream.
With a snarl, my husband climbed on the table and settled between my thighs, and I shrieked again as the hard length of his cock hit my sensitive skin, but he didn’t stop, just pressed his cock deep inside me.
“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he groaned, then he wrapped a big hand around the back of my neck and kissed me.
I felt limp and boneless, my arms so weak that I couldn’t even strain them anymore against my bonds. My mouth was open and panting and he tangled his tongue with mine, groaning louder as his cock stroked me inside.
I was liquid and he was fire, and I let him burn and consume me as my body seemed to wrap and flow around his.
When he finally untied me, my arms and legs ached from being stretched against the table. My cunt felt soft and liquid, a warm glow that seemed to suffuse the whole of my hips, even though St. Erth had gripped them as tight as he normally did.
“I expect,” said my husband, “that you will be a good wife from now on.”