Chapter Nine
Raven stood alone in his study, the brandy decanter within reach but untouched. He didn’t need alcohol clouding his judgment—his thoughts were muddled enough. Ashley’s kiss still burned on his lips, a brand that seared through every carefully constructed wall he’d built over the years.
You’re going to have to trust me enough to be honest.
Her words echoed in the silence, an accusation and a plea wrapped together. Trust. God, if only it were that simple.
He moved to the window, staring out at the darkened garden where this had all begun. The same garden where he’d kissed her three months ago in a moment of weakness born from grief and too much brandy. Tonight’s kiss had been different—deliberate, hungry, a glimpse of what he truly wanted from her.
And he’d pushed her away. Again.
The shame that washed over him was as familiar as breathing. Twenty-nine years old, and still, he couldn’t separate desire from disgust. Still couldn’t accept what he was without hearing those words, sharp as a knife even after all these years.
Abomination.
Raven’s hand clenched against the window frame.
He’d been fifteen. Just fifteen, all awkward limbs and desperate need to prove himself a man.
When Lady Featherington had first summoned him to her private sitting room while his father discussed estate matters with her husband, the baron, he’d thought it an honor.
She appeared as lonely as he was, and he felt sorry for her, married to a man old enough to be her father or grandfather.
She was beautiful, sophisticated, five years his senior and worldly in ways that dazzled his young mind.
She spent a week befriending him, he thought. Looking back, he now understood she’d been seducing him. A boy reaching manhood but unsure of himself. She made him feel like a god.
Finally, one afternoon, she’d murmured, “You’re so tense, Raven,” her fingers trailing along his shoulders that sunny afternoon. “Let me teach you how to relax. How to feel pleasure.”
He’d gone willingly. Eagerly. What fifteen-year-old boy wouldn’t?
The memories came in fragments now, mercifully incomplete but vivid enough to make his stomach clench.
Her hands showing him how to use silk scarves.
Her breathless instructions as she guided his uncertain touches.
The rush of power when she’d gasped and arched beneath him, telling him how good he made her feel, how natural his instincts were.
“Some men are born to command,” she’d whispered against his skin. “And some women crave surrender. There’s no shame in it, darling. It’s simply nature.”
For two years, he’d believed her. Two years of stolen afternoons when his father brought him along on business. Two years of thinking himself fortunate to be educated by such an experienced woman. Two years of developing tastes he’d thought were simply…normal.
Until that afternoon in late summer when everything shattered.
The door crashing open. Baron Featherington’s roar of outrage. His father—standing behind the baron, his face purple with fury.
And Raven, seventeen by then but still young enough to freeze in terror, riding crop in his hand and Lady Featherington bound to the bedposts, both of them caught in the most damning position imaginable.
“Pervert!” The baron’s voice had cracked like a whip. “Deviant! What kind of sick bastard—”
“She asked me to—” Raven had tried to explain, fumbling with the knots, desperate to free her.
“Abomination!” His father had stepped forward, his contempt palpable. “Corrupting a married woman with your twisted proclivities. You’re no gentleman—you’re a monster pretending at civility.”
Lady Featherington had said nothing, not one word in his defense. She’d simply wept prettily into her hands while her husband untied her, playing the victim so convincingly that Raven had almost believed it himself.
Had she been the victim? The question still haunted him. She’d been older, experienced, the one to initiate everything. But she was also a woman, and he was the duke’s heir. In the eyes of society, in the eyes of the law, he’d been the one with power.
Even if it hadn’t felt that way at the time.
His father had been forced to pay an enormous sum to keep the scandal quiet. The Featheringtons had left for the continent shortly after, and his father had made it clear that if Raven ever spoke of what happened, he would ensure his penalty would be severe.
“What you did to that woman is unnatural. She is a lady and you only do that with a whore,” his father had said quietly, after the money had changed hands and the threats had been made.
“I don’t know where you learned such…proclivities.
But you will never indulge them again. Do you understand? Never. Or I’ll disinherit you myself.”
Raven had understood. He’d understood that something fundamental about himself was wrong.
He loved being the dominant. He loved tying her up and spanking her.
Yet his father told him the desires Lady Featherington had cultivated and encouraged were shameful.
That normal men didn’t want what he wanted, didn’t crave control and surrender in equal measure. Not with a lady.
Then a few months later, his father had died, and he hated that his father had thought so lowly of him before he left this earth.
For years, after his father’s sudden death, he’d buried his body’s needs for sex.
Focused on being a man his father would approve of.
He focused on duty, on learning to manage the estates, on being the perfect heir.
Staying scandal free and avoiding female connections.
He’d avoided women entirely until he was twenty-three and the need had become unbearable.
That was when he’d discovered Madam Bellamy’s establishment. When he’d learned that places existed where men with his particular tastes could find willing partners. Where women understood and welcomed what he wanted. Where he didn’t have to feel like a monster.
Kitty had been a revelation. She’d never made him feel ashamed. Never flinched from his desires or called them wrong. With her, he’d finally felt…normal. Accepted. Free to be himself without judgment.
And now she was gone, and he was married to Ashley—a lady, a duchess, someone who deserved a normal husband with normal desires. Someone who would be horrified if she knew the truth about what he craved.
He thought of Ashley’s gown tonight. The way she’d looked at him with such open desire.
The taste of her mouth, the soft warmth of her body against his.
He’d wanted her with an intensity that terrified him.
Not just to bed her in the conventional way, but to see her bound in silk, blindfolded, trusting him completely while he worshipped every inch of her skin.
The shame of it made him feel sick.
She deserved better than a husband who couldn’t make love to her without wanting to tie her up. Better than a man who got aroused thinking about restraining his own wife, about the pretty sounds she might make if he spanked her—
No. He couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t let himself imagine Ashley in those positions, even though the fantasy had been burning in his mind since their wedding night.
Raven pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window.
What would she do if she knew? Would she look at him with the same contempt he’d seen in his father’s eyes?
Would she call him an abomination, a pervert, a monster dressed in gentleman’s clothes?
Would she run to her brother’s home and his secret shame would become public knowledge?
Or worse—would she let him do what he wanted out of duty, lying there with that careful, polite expression she wore when forcing herself to accept unpleasant realities?
He couldn’t bear either possibility.
So, he would continue as he had been. Keeping his distance. Protecting her from the darkness inside him. Even if it meant denying them both the connection they clearly craved.
Even if it meant dying slowly from the loneliness of it.
But what about his need for an heir?
The clock struck two in the morning. Somewhere above him, Ashley was probably lying awake in her beautiful bedchamber, wondering why her husband had kissed her with such passion, then sent her away.
If she only knew the truth—that he’d sent her away precisely because of that passion. Because another moment and he would have done something unforgivable. Would have shown her exactly what kind of man he really was.
And lost her completely in the process.
He just had to find a way to bed his wife while keeping his real desires under control.
Surely, he’d only need to bed her until she got with child.
That was what she wanted. Not him precisely, just a child.
She wasn’t in love with him. She too wasn’t expecting grand passion. That should make it easier.
He owed her a child. He needed an heir. So, he made up his mind.
She wasn’t an innocent after all. Rumor was that she’d spent the night with the man she’d eloped with. If he simply slipped into her room one night in the dark and performed his husbandly duties, that should satisfy her. After all, she only wanted the child.
Not him.
*
Raven descended to breakfast the following morning after perhaps two hours of fitful sleep, steeling himself for tears, recriminations, or worse—cold silence. What he found instead left him completely off-balance.
Ashley sat at the breakfast table looking fresh and lovely in a morning dress of soft yellow, calmly buttering a piece of toast as if the previous night had never happened.
The scandalous sapphire gown might have been a fever dream.
The kiss that had nearly undone him—a figment of his exhausted imagination.
She looked up as he entered, offering him a smile that was pleasant, polite, and utterly maddening in its normalcy. “Good morning, Raven. I hope you slept well.”