Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Strip,” he commanded.
Elizabeth stood in her husband’s bedroom, stunned.
“I am not your whore,” she snapped.
“No, you are my wife, and as such I will not pay you to strip before me, I shall order you to instead.”
Her thoughts scattered like mice.
“Lizzie, I have demonstrated before what happens when you do not obey me, and I want to be very clear how our marriage will work. You will obey me in the bedroom, and I shall reward you with great pleasure. If you choose not to obey me, you shall be punished instead, at my pleasure.”
She was again shocked, for this was not the man who’d granted her bliss just last night. This was the man who’d tied her to a bedpost and roundly thrashed her; he was likely capable of worse.
She recalled the Duchess of Allendale’s words to her but this very afternoon: that it was better to meet anger and rage with gentleness, though the concept felt far removed from present circumstance. Very, very far.
He was testing her like he had all week.
And if she passed this last test then … Elizabeth’s mind opened.
If she passed this new test, then perhaps he’d not test her more.
Perhaps he’d allow her some leeway, some freedom.
If she acquiesced now, she might gain what she wished later, when it mattered more.
She dropped her gaze, training her eyes on his familiar shining hessians, and began to unhook her dress. She sensed him watching hungrily as her fingers continued their work.
Once her dress dropped, she began on her stays, fumbling at the lacing. When these dropped too, she paused.
“Pray do not stop, Elizabeth.” His voice simmered. “The view only improves.”
She steeled her nerves, for she’d never stripped naked before anyone but her sister and servants. Still, he was her husband; she would see this task through. When she stood before him in only her stockings, Milton let out a hiss of air.
“You are breathtaking, my dear.” He continued to look his fill. “Now on your knees before me; that is how a wife greets her husband before he takes her to bed.”
Elizabeth’s eyes flashed to his, which remained hard as glass. She worried he might hurt her, though he’d not hurt her in the least last night. He pushed her down with his hands, making her kneel before him as he tipped her chin.
“Take down your hair.”
She obeyed, pins scattering to the floor as her braid fell free, which he grasped, pulling her head back until her body arched, breasts pushed out. His other hand played with their tips until they peaked. Until she bit back an embarrassing moan.
“Now place your hands to your sides, palms flat to floor. Yes, like that. Open your legs, do not close yourself to me. When you come to my bed at night this is how you will present yourself, naked but for your stockings, braid down your back, breasts thrust forward and thighs parted.
She inhaled a sharp gasp.
“Does it not arouse you, Lizzie, to give yourself to your husband? To grant me ownership of your flesh? You are exquisite in your submission.”
She was ashamed of her slick thighs, humiliated to imagine she might enjoy presenting herself in this lewd manner. She was not that sort of woman.
Elizabeth burned with unbearable anticipation while Milton surveyed her kneeling form from every angle. And then he positioned himself before her, his waist at her head, tilting up her face again. Inside, she was a bundle of nerves, while he reflected back only calm. And lust.
“You will take me in your mouth first, Lizzie, as you observed Evie do at LeBrecht’s. Undo my fall and caress my cock, bring me to completion. You will taste my seed before I claim your maidenhead. In time, there will be no part of your body I will not take, and so own.”
Elizabeth’s heart beat so furiously she could not keep from trembling.
He stroked her cheek, then gently palmed her face.
“Do not fear this, wife. I took care to remain free of disease, despite my sordid past. When I did not sleep with virgins, I used French letters for protection. I would not endanger my ability to sire children, nor endanger my wife. I will be gentle with you tonight, but only if you obey me.”
He forced her again to look up at him; she had no idea what French letters were.
“Now do as you are told.” He removed her spectacles before he pressed his crotch to her face.
And God help her, Elizabeth did.
***
Milton wasn’t sure he could withstand his wife, because her innocence nearly rent him in two. He suppressed his tender urges, buried them, in fact, to administer this final test.
Because he’d not be married to a woman who defied or denied him physically.
Milton knew that if he mastered Lizzie’s body he had a chance in hell of mastering her mind.
Yet the unschooled manner in which she caressed his cock pierced him to his core.
She was every bit the aristocrat taught to fear and revile men such as he—yet here she knelt, fumbling to pleasure him with virgin lips and tongue, allowing him entry to her hot, wet…
He came too fast, spilling down her throat as he forced her to swallow, ashamed he’d lasted such a short while on this, her first time.
He beat back the jeering voice in his head, instead folding her in his arms right there upon the floor.
He unwound her thick, black braid so that her locks flowed like ribbons to her dimpled buttocks, then stroked those lush swells, knowing the curve of cheek beneath his palm, how her perfect twin globes warmed to his strikes.
Milton began to harden again with desire.
He’d have to pace himself to last, because he was damned if he’d now rush what he’d anticipated since he’d first laid eyes on his wife, on her knees before that butcher in her father’s kitchen.
He’d wanted her then, badly. Wanted his own fine lady to debauch whenever he wished, until every haughty trace of noble blood that flowed inside her veins was his.
And now, at last, he had her.
***
Elizabeth lay limp in her husband’s arms. She felt uncouth and unclean, his seed’s bitter taste lingering on her tongue.
She wanted to weep but found no tears, no sound.
Instead, she felt demeaned by the very act she’d found arousing when she’d watched Evie pleasure Miss Li’s man.
She knew not why she felt such revulsion now, she knew only that she’d done wrong.
No. Been wronged.
She remained motionless in Milton’s arms as he stroked her long locks. She waited for his next order, next punishment, to come, yet her husband only praised. He pulled her to her feet, placed her spectacles back on her nose, and settled her gently onto his bed.
He fetched her a brandy which she downed in one gulp, cleansing her mouth, while he sat at the bed’s edge, watching. Waiting.
Elizabeth no longer felt shame—though she still wore only stockings and her husband remained yet fully clothed. He’d debased her so thoroughly, what more could he take? Her pride?
He refilled her glass and she sipped more slowly, savoring the drink’s fiery spread to her numb breast. He traced her nose with his finger—“You have given me great pleasure, wife”—then slowly unbuttoned his shirt.
“I shall return the favor.” His voice was dark with desire as his shirt fell away, revealing a muscled chest peppered with vivid, angry scars.
The scars alarmed her, but inside her breast Elizabeth felt cold to her core. “It matters not what you do to me, sir, for you have robbed me of my innocence, made me more whore than wife.”
His eyes flashed blue-black. “Do you think that is all a whore gives of herself, Lizzie? To swallow a man’s seed?”
She looked away; his gaze was too ferocious, too desperate almost to withstand.
“I have not begun to make you my whore, wife. You do not realize the depravity I am capable of.”
“And is that what you desire, Baron?” She finally pushed back.
“Is that all marriage means to you? Subservience, debasement, degradation?” Elizabeth’s gut ignited, though she quickly doused the flame.
“That is not marriage, sir, that is servitude at best. You may be baseborn, Baron, but you presented a better version of yourself to me in courtship than you do now, on our wedding night.”
His eyes narrowed to slits, yet she willed herself to remain indifferent, to prove he could not hurt her.
“I did not expect affection from you,” she continued, “but respect for my person I did, in truth, expect. And if I must continue to suffer the man you’ve just shown yourself to be, I pity the children born of our ill union, who will discover in you a beast of a father, instead of a gentleman. ”
Milton pinned her wrists to the bed so fast his weight robbed Elizabeth of all air. All self-control escaped her as she berated him with the only part of her still free: her tongue.
“You wicked, bloody—!”
***
He stole her curse in a kiss of fury, then raked her flesh with his teeth, attacking skin with nips and licks. He ravaged his way down her shaking body, then rid himself of his breeches at the foot of the bed.
Milton would show this lofty hussy who was master of her world, if it was the last dastardly deed he did. He’d render her senseless with desire, then grant her no release. Because he, Jasper Audrey, would let no blueblood make a mockery of him.
Yet her gaze blazed orange in the glow of the room’s crackling, spitting flames, her eyes lit by a fire that matched his own unbridled lust. Milton paused his attack not to stop his assault—he’d force pleasure from flesh the only way he knew how—but to separate mind from body, to detach his soul from what now occurred.
He knew how to float, how to assess from a distance. Yet the man he looked down at…
That man was no better than his own bloody sire.