Chapter 26
Annabelle
The audacity of this man.
I thought I had secured my victory. Now it is all in disarray.
Alfred Saintsbury has once again broken me.
He found my weakness: that I want him to feel more for me than I am capable of feeling for him, that I am already addicted to his sweet attention and to the kind regard he shows me even when I am being cruel and impossible and demanding and horrid. Even when I am lying to him.
I need to reassert control.
Because right now, it is dangerously possible that, in claiming to love me, Alfred has gained the upper hand.
He stands before me, risen from his knees.
I scramble upwards and reach towards him.
“No, Annabelle,” he says.
I retract. I have no idea what he means.
“You cannot instantly best me. And you don’t need to. I have not beaten you.”
But it feels as though he has.
“Don’t you want me to please you?”
“Perhaps in time.” He sits on the bed and looks at me. “But right now I’d rather hold you. You look so beautiful with your skin flushed from orgasm. Is it wrong that I want to hold you afterwards?”
“I have no interest in such things.”
“Then do it to please me. I cannot see the harm.”
I think of commanding him to leave my chamber.
I should.
But he looks so pretty, so handsome, sitting on my bed in his smalls alone. It is hard to see the harm. What does it matter if the man loves me? I will certainly not fall in love with him. And he knows that.
I move towards him and he opens his arms to me. I lean against his chest, letting myself relax. It feels good after such an intense climax.
And it makes it easier to mention something that I am not sure he understands yet. And I feel honor bound to point out to him.
“This scandal. When it is known. It will make it difficult for you to marry. If you ever want to. I know you desire it—one day.”
Behind me, he tenses.
“Yes,” he says. “I know. It will make it impossible to have the kind of marriage I wanted.”
“Rightfully, you should hate me.”
“And yet I feel just the opposite.”
“Does it not upset you?”
He sighs.
“My potential marriage was years away. My father was very clear that I was not to marry before I had enough money. We quarreled about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told him that I wanted to marry. I was taught that the marital relation was the only honorable way to slake my lust. And well, it is embarrassing—I shouldn’t go on. You would laugh at me.”
“Tell me. I won’t laugh.”
“I told him that I found the conditions of my existence unbearable. That I could not live in this state of constant, unspent desire. That it was fraying my health. My sanity. He told me to wait.”
“He commanded you not to marry?”
“Yes. I tried to persuade him that I needed to marry. To be so untouched—it was killing me.”
“He told you no.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever think of defying him?”
“Had I loved a woman I might have. But I had no one in particular in mind. Just loneliness and desires that I found difficult to conquer.”
“He did not care that you were in pain.”
“No, I don’t believe he did. When it comes to me, he is often only capable of seeing worldly advantage and how I may obtain it.”
“Did you hate him for it?”
“At the time, yes, I did a little.
“And now you may never marry because of me. So it only follows that you will feel the same of me.”
“No,” he says, his mouth at my ear. “Because it was not marriage I actually cared for, I see that now. I wanted to be free of my prison. And you freed me, Annabelle.”
“I forced you.”
“That might have been the only way to free me. I suspect I would have been too terrified otherwise. But I want to ask you a question. Although I suspect you will not want to answer it.”
“Most probably.” I contemplate refusing him the liberty. But I feel so relaxed, lying against his chest. “But you may ask it.”
“Why had it been so long since you had seen your family?”
“Surely, Alfred, you can work out the answer to that question without my participation.”
“I am afraid I cannot.”
“I was depraved,” I say simply. “And a disgrace to my father. So he turned me out. At sixteen.”
“His own daughter?”
“To be fair to him, he gave me warning. And he did not disown me after my first transgression, even though he was not a liberal man. But for my dead mother’s sake, he told me, he hushed up the business of my lost virtue even though I never asked him to do so.”
“Then why did he throw you out in the end?”
“Another scandal. One that could not be contained. He was done with me by then. Our relationship had never been close, always cold, but even I can see that many fathers in his position, of his stature, would have done the same.”
“He let you go to London alone? Unprotected? With no money?”
“Yes—and no. I had money from my mother. Settled on me by her family. That is how I began my business.”
But I do not want to keep speaking of the past. The past depresses me.
And I can feel that Alfred is hard again.
More than anything, I want to reassert my dominance. Even more now that I am reminded of who I once was here—in Trescott.
And I have an idea of how I might do so.
I stand up and walk to my bureau.
“What are you doing?”
“You will see.”
There I find what I am looking for—a small bottle of oil.
I bring it to the bed.
“Take off your smalls.”
He looks up at me—and I see dismay and desire in equal measure.
“We’ve relaxed enough, Alfred.”
He obeys.
I let a small amount of oil leak into my hand. And then I begin to coat his cock in it, swirling my fingers up from the shaft to the head.
“Christ,” he swears when I repeat the motion. “What is that?”
“Oil. For sexual purposes. Did you not read of it in your green book?”
He shakes his head, and I stroke him.
“Many enjoy it,” I clarify.
“I can understand why,” he murmurs and then grabs my hand. “I’ll spend. It feels too good.”
“Not yet.”
I stop stroking him and move to my knees. Then without looking at him, I mount him but in reverse.
“Annabelle,” he says, his breath catching. “Are we—are you going to bed me like this?”
I don’t answer. I just move.
“Oh my God,” he groans. “Fuck.”
He brings a hand to my arse and kneads the flesh there. A shiver runs through me.
“Do you understand, Alfred,” I say, as if he is not affecting me, as if I am only doing this for his edification, “that the whole world is about to know that you are mine?”
He has both his hands on my hips now, but he is not in control. I am.
“Yes,” he gasps. “The whole world will know that I am your whore.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Everyone will know that, for me, you disgrace yourself. For me, you live in infamy.”
I pump harder now, my quim beginning to tighten. I will spend soon. But I want him to know, to accept, what he will be. What I have made him by force of will.
“Yes,” he says. “I know it.”
“And you accept it, even though it shames you?”
To my surprise he halts me. I try to struggle free, to continue my dominance, but he won’t let me.
“It doesn’t shame me, Annabelle. It may ruin me. I may regret the harm it will cause me and those close to me. But it doesn’t shame me.”
He drives me down on his cock and I see stars.
This is not what I imagined.
I try and regain control, but he is too strong.
He pumps into me, and I gasp.
“It does not shame me. I am happy for the world to know that I am yours. Even if I am only your whore. But to be yours at all, Annabelle, is an honor. And I am, Annabelle. If my only purpose in life is to pleasure you, to fill you with my seed, then I glory in it. I will be your whore every day.”
His words are too much. My orgasm nears—and I am very annoyed.
I am supposed to be the one in control.
But more and more it doesn’t feel like it.
“I will fill you with my seed every hour of every day if you like. As I am about to do right now.”
I know in some remote, logical part of my brain that this objective is the one that I have had from the beginning. I wanted Alfred Saintsbury to fill me up and get me with child. So that I can have my heir. My plan is still possible.
He comes shuddering underneath me, and a moment later I do the same.