AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She felt weightless. And she felt fearless. And then, he moved to the other side, but he did not build his pressure quite so slowly; this time he clamped down, his eyes making contact with hers as he did so.
Until she had to let her head fall back against the statue’s abdomen and surrender. She closed her eyes and shivered, shook, as pleasure and pain mingled together until she could not sort one from the other. Indeed, she wondered if they were different.
For one showed her that she could withstand, and the other was the reward for that patience. For that endurance. Then he fastened his mouth to her neck, sucking hard, before returning to her lips and kissing her, kissing her until she couldn’t breathe. Until she was senseless. But then, perhaps she had already been senseless. Then he bit her lip at the same time he pinched her again, and she felt something unravel inside her, and then bloom. And it radiated through her in a wave. On and on and she could barely breathe. Could barely think. And it reminded her of dying. Like when she would lose her breath and float towards that space where there was no sound, no light.
And then bursts of fireworks.
The vision of something bigger, greater than herself. And when it subsided, she shuddered. And slid down the statue. All the way to the ground.
And Briggs stood above her, his gaze something like triumphant, and something like terrifying.
He bent down, and gripped her chin. ‘You did well.’
And she realised she was shaking. Shivering from the cold and from something else that she could not name. She found herself gathered up into his arms and held close to his chest. And then he lifted her up off the ground, and carried her into the house, carried her up the stairs. Her heart leapt like a wild thing. She didn’t know where he was taking her. Or what would happen next. He took her to her room. And laid her gently on the bed, his manner suddenly soothing and entirely different to the way it had been moments before.
‘Sleep,’ he said.
‘Briggs,’ she whispered.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Do not speak.’
‘But I need to... I need to know. Are you going back to the brothel?’
‘No,’ he said, his tone hard.
‘Please don’t.’
‘I do not answer to you, darling wife.’
‘I know. I do not wish you to go, though. And I would hope that that matters, whether or not you must obey me.’
‘I will not return to the brothel tonight.’
And that she knew was the best she would get from him. But was that what he went to the brothel to do? To touch other women like that? To make them... She had no idea what he had done to her. She had never felt anything like it. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before, and she was desperate to experience it again. But also terrified. Because the way that it made her feel... Desperate and aching and restless inside... Well, she did not particularly care for that. That, she found, was almost entirely unbearable. She wanted him to hold her. She realised that with stunning clarity. But all of the confidence that she felt in that moment, all of the strength and brilliance and perfection seemed to fall away from her. She was simply... Undone. And she hated it. As much as she had loved all that had come before.
For a moment, she had felt strong. For a moment, she felt like a warrior. For a moment, she had felt like a woman. And now she was just back to being Beatrice. And it was enough to make her dissolve.
Chapter Eleven
Briggs was in hell. Because he had spectacularly ruined everything last night. And she had been... She had been a triumph. She was everything that he had suspected she was. And what a cruel joke that his best friend’s younger sister should be made quite so perfectly in such a twisted, glorious fashion that she could fit up against every kink in him? It was a cruelty. But she had come apart in his arms from just a bit of pain and pleasure, and he had a feeling that were he to push her further, faster, they would find heights together that... It did not bear thinking about.
Today, he had to deal with his son.
Today, he would be taking him to see the sights around London. For they had endured the trip all for that. On one score he suspected Beatrice might be right. That if William had the distraction of those things which he was most interested in, he would weather everything else quite well.
And after that nightmare of the trip, there had to be some compensation. He was practised enough in the art of indulging himself in a bit of mastery and then going back to being the Duke of Brigham, and father to William, without allowing any of the night’s previous indulgence to affect him in any way. Or to linger into the day. And yet he felt affected by this. By his indiscretion in the garden
with Beatrice.
An indiscretion with your wife? A new low, and who knew you could still reach those?
He would laugh, but it wasn’t funny. Nothing about the damned situation was funny.
He decided to find William and try to ply the boy with toast and drinking chocolate prior to presenting him with the day’s itinerary. If he knew one thing about managing William, it was that an itinerary was very important, but he had to be sure to stick to it, because if he did not, then his son would be sure to let him know all the ways in which he had failed. And the point of this was not to fail.
But when he arrived at his son’s room, Beatrice was already there, sitting on the floor beside him, engaged in what looked like a very intense conversation about shoes.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
