Frayed Bonds Read online

  Frayed Bonds

  Diana Thorn

  Peter Mainwaring, Viscount Herridon, fell in love with Amy in the Assembly Room at Bath. When he waylaid her in a moonlit garden and introduced her to erotic bondage and submission, he thought he’d found his bride. But Amy, frightened of her response, fled and married Peter’s best friend John instead.

  Amy loves John, but his gentle caresses leave her cold. When John confesses his unhappiness, Peter offers to help. He comes to Amy as a masked stranger and teaches her to embrace her desires. But when it’s time to return to her husband, Amy realizes the masked man is Peter, and that she cannot give her heart—or her body—to John alone.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Frayed Bonds

  ISBN 9781419928499

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Frayed Bonds Copyright © 2010 Diana Thorn

  Edited by Jaynie Ritchie

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication August 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Frayed Bonds

  Diana Thorn

  Chapter One

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what to do about it, Peter. She just lies there staring up at the ceiling while I fuck her. I’m at my wit’s end,” said John Tregarth, pouring out his frustration and a double brandy at the same time. He took a seat beside the fire and drank in morose silence.

  Peter Mainwaring, Viscount Herridon, looked out the window at the young woman in question, frolicking in the garden with a floppy-eared puppy, her sprigged muslin gown fetchingly disheveled, her chignon coming seductively undone. “She’s nineteen,” he replied at last to his oldest and closest friend. “She just needs warming up.”

  “She turned twenty last week,” said Tregarth. “I’ve spent hours warming her with every trick in the book. Fingered her ‘til my skin pruned, licked her ‘til my tongue was worn out. I’m afraid she’s frigid.”

  Peter turned his attention from the young woman outside to the unhappy man beside the fire. John Tregarth had been his schoolmate, his brother in arms in the Peninsular War, and most recently, his rival for the affections of the lovely young woman in the garden, Miss Amy Graham, now Mrs. John Tregarth.

  Peter hesitated to offer advice. He suspected he had played a part in the unhappiness of his friend’s marriage. They’d both spotted Amy at the same time, in the Bath Assembly Rooms, a sparkling jewel in a perfect setting. Her classical proportions, ripe breasts, wide hips and gently curved belly made her look like some Greek sculpture of Aphrodite. Her presence transformed the pillared hall in to an ancient temple to carnal delights.

  Both men had known, from the second they laid eyes on her lavish, untried curves, that the other must be a rival for her affections.

  With most women, the outcome would have been a foregone conclusion. Tregarth had a fine farm and a comfortable house, with a respectable fortune. But Peter had a title, an estate, political office, more money than he knew what to do with and an unlimited choice in women. A sensible woman, asked to choose between two equally handsome suitors, would always take the wealthier one.

  Everyone believed she would choose Peter Mainwaring.

  The conventions of the ton, or course, dictated that Peter select a wife with rank equal to, or only slightly beneath, that of his own.

  But the same money that ensured his place in society gave him license to do as he pleased. And it would please him, he had thought in Bath, to do Amy in as many ways as she might stand before exhaustion took her. Particularly with her skin flushed, her pretty mouth gagged and her wrists bound tight in leather traces. Tregarth, no doubt, felt the same. As young men before the army, and then during the war, they had discovered a shared taste for helplessness, a wicked delight in inflicting pleasure, and in the sweetest way possible, pain, on the only nominally unwilling. The truly unwilling were a different matter. Neither Peter nor John had any taste for rape. They had shared a great deal together, including some decidedly unconventional women.

  Amy was different. They could not share Amy.

  That night in Bath the contest was joined.

  John Tregarth pursued Amy as the rules of society dictated, calling on her in daylight, properly chaperoned, with the approval of her family and friends. He wooed her with tales of country life, of the quiet pleasures of the field and dairy, of long rambling walks and soft, moonlit nights. He told Peter that he was determined to treat Amy differently, to put aside forever his crooked proclivities and worship her as the goddess she was. Pure, tender, innocent, the mother he hoped of his children and a matriarch someday to his sprawling family.

  Peter, in complete confidence of his own success, chose a different road. He had no desire to call on her family, make small talk with her mother or discuss religion with her father. He wanted no partner in life who would not taste its sweetest pleasures with him. He had no pedestal on which to put her, unless of course he could turn her over it, paddle her until she begged for his cock and swallow it to the root before accepting the swiving she deserved.

  That was how he wanted Amy. All that remained was to determine if she would want him the same way. He enlisted an accomplice in this matter, a distant cousin for whom he had done a great service for in the past, Deborah Chambers, now the Marchioness of Brinley. His service had been of a decidedly carnal nature, as the naïve Deborah had been engaged to one of the most debauched men in England. Peter had seen what others had missed, that it might be a happy one if the correct steps were taken. Deborah, he knew, could be happy with her rich lord if someone broke her in first. Peter had been kind enough to oblige.

  And Deborah was willing to abet him in returning the favor. She’d invited young Amy and her family to a house party at Brinley. Though the Marquis was known for his questionable morals, his invitation was too exalted to refuse. The house would be full of exalted guests, and most importantly, exalted suitors for young Amy. And there would be a ball.

  The Grahams had been only too happy to attend. The ball was a glittering affair, and the dancing and drinking went on late into the night. Deborah had made certain that Amy “accidentally” observed an erotic tableau on the other side of the massive, winged house, far away from the decorous ballroom, namely Deborah taking cock from her husband the Marquis and another lover at once.

  It had been a rousing spectacle, even to someone as jaded as Peter. Deborah lay on her back across a piano bench in her conservatory, naked, wrists bound to the legs of the bench with lavender ribbons, sucking her husband’s cock with wet, slurping sounds of joy, while a stable boy powered into her pussy, encouraged in the most exp
licit terms by her happy husband. Yes, it was a decidedly successful marriage. The expression of joy on Deborah’s lovely face was proof enough of that.

  And Amy, sent on an errand to the moonlit garden to retrieve the shawl of an elderly aunt, had seen them. Not just seen them but watched them. She’d taken Peter’s breath away. Here was no delicate miss, gasping in fright and running for the safety of the house. Amy, though she didn’t know it yet, was a born sensualist.

  She’d been bound to stop of course. The glass doors to the garden had been thrown wide open in invitation, and light spilled from the pretty purple room, the color of the walls mimicking the hue of Deborah’s aroused flesh. Amy had paused just outside the crescent of light, arrested by the scene before her, the shawl fluttering to the stones of the terrace.

  Peter watched her from his hiding place in the deep embrace of a winged leather armchair.

  As she took in the scene, Amy’s pupils dilated, her breathing became shallow, her lips parted and her tongue darted out to moisten her parched lips. Peter wished he could lick them for her. He caressed his cock through his breeches, his only regret that he could not reveal his presence, draw her into the room and sink into her at once.

  Unconsciously she touched herself, her fingers coming to rest lightly on her breasts, circling her nipples then gripping more firmly until a sigh escaped her pink mouth.

  The stable boy turned and saw her, his face a mask of straining triumph, an exhibitionist as bold as his master and mistress.

  Amy turned white as her gown, gave a startled cry, and fled.

  Peter didn’t hurry. He knew that every door on that side of the house was locked, because he had locked them himself, knew that he had plenty of time to intercept her on the lawn, which she must cross, descending into the ha-ha, the trench that afforded the house an unparalleled view of the famous Brinley Gardens. He would catch her there, amidst the ancient statuary that failed to rival her own classical beauty.

  She was running blind down the long hedged aisle, her slippers dancing lightly over the gravel, when he stepped from the arched bower housing a copy of Bernini’s Daphne and Apollo. The statue was entirely appropriate, because Peter planned to catch Amy and ravish her—but there would be no divine intervention to save her from his embrace.

  She made no sound when he caught her, only sighed softly in surprise when he slipped an arm around her waist, captured her flailing wrists and drew into her the shadows of the grotto.

  “Lord Herridon,” she said, trying to get her breath back.

  “Miss Graham.”

  “I was just returning to the house.”

  “I know what you saw.”

  “I saw nothing. Really. Nothing.” She writhed in his grasp, and it delighted him that even in her confused state, her body knew what it wanted. She thought she was trying to escape him, but there was no mistaking the sinuous grind of her hips, her desperate need for the hard planes of a male body.

  “You saw Brinley and his wife and the stable boy. It made you pant. It made your eyes dilate. It made your nipples hard and your pussy slick. It made you ready, in short, for me.” He hooked a thumb in the bodice of her gown and rolled down the filmy cotton evening dress, freighted with thick glass and pearl beading, until her breast popped free.

  “No.” She said it without conviction.

  His other hand pressed lightly into the small of her back, rubbing warm, soothing circles over her coccyx. She looked down at her own breast, eyes widening as the nipple puckered in the night air. Then she looked back up at him like a child discovered in some transgression.

  “No,” she said, but this time it was breathy with awe.

  “Good,” he said. “The sight of your own flesh arouses you.” He rolled the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Her head fell back, her mouth opened and she let out an anguished moan. Then he lowered his mouth to the pouting areola and began to suck.

  He knew he had her when her fingers twined in his hair, pressing his head to her swollen breast. He withdrew his mouth, cupped her pussy through her gown, pressed her to the low stone bench that circled the grotto and whispered, “This is a game lovers like to play. You’ll like it. Just like Deborah. You want to be mastered, to give yourself up to a man entirely.”

  He kissed her then, letting her up for air only when she responded, to probe him tentatively with her tongue.

  “No,” she lied once more, tilting her hips up in offering and opening her legs as he slid her skirts up to her waist.

  “I see you understand me completely. When you really mean no, you must call me by my middle name, Alistair.”

  He took her anguished moan as compliance in the same moment he took the pads of his fingers to her slick opening. He avoided her clitoris, instead circling the hood, the soft lips on either side and the thin membrane above her perineum that was all that now separated her from womanhood. It was his for the taking, he was certain of it, but that was for another time.

  “Have you touched yourself like this before?” he asked, drawing her fingers down to her folds, tracing her contours as if he was teaching a child to form letters.

  She didn’t answer. He stilled their joined hands and she cried out, “Please!”

  “Answer me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl.” He returned their joined fingers to her sex. She sighed in contentment. “Then you know what happens next. Show me how prettily you come.”

  “No!”

  “No, what?” he asked giving her the opportunity to stop him with that single word. Alistair.

  “No,” she moaned, but it was more a syllable than sentience, and he realized that he was no longer guiding her fingers through her own folds, but that she was guiding his, circling closer to her engorged clit.

  “Do you ever put your fingers inside, Amy?”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t stop touching yourself,” he commanded. He was pleased to see how quickly she complied. He rewarded her with a single digit, which he curled upward to stroke the sweet spot on her front wall. A fresh gush of fluid answered his exploration, and her cries came faster, more urgently.

  He withdrew his finger. She cried out. “No.” But it was a very different no than her earlier responses. He pulled her hand away from her weeping pussy, grasped both her wrists and yanked her over his knees.

  “You are everything I desire in a wife, Amy, and I think we shall get along splendidly together.” He tied her wrists together with a handkerchief and pulled her gown up over her waist. She made no protest. He drew his belt off and caressed her mouth with the leather, then brought it down across her luscious upturned ass.

  “Yes!” she cried out, all pretense at resistance forgotten.

  He encouraged her cries, knowing that one of his servants was standing within earshot to ensure their privacy and warn off any wandering guests. He alternately frigged her and flogged her until he had her lying naked on the grass, hands tied above her head, legs open, begging him to use the belt on her pussy.

  He clutched the very tip of the belt and administered the soft caresses and the light stinging blows, stroking her engorged flesh with the soaked leather, until she screamed out her climax.

  Afterward he helped her on with her gown, brushed the grass and dirt from her back and directed her to go straight to her room and expect him to call upon her parents in the morning. He promised to show her every delight that lurked in the recesses of her submissive soul and never to take her further than she dared venture.

  With his fortune, his title and her enthusiastic response, he was certain she would accept him.

  In the morning, she and her family were gone.

  That had been eight months ago. Returning to the present, he looked at John Tregarth, the man she had chosen instead. “She isn’t frigid,” he said at last. “This is my fault. I frightened her with a little love play at Brinley, that’s all. She found out that she likes a taste of the whip, John, and it scared her silly. She’s been runni
ng away from herself ever since. Tie her up and make her suck you and she’ll be wet and willing in no time.”

  Tregarth threw his glass onto the fire in frustration. “Damn it, Peter. Don’t you think I’d revel in it if she enjoyed a bit of roughness? But she doesn’t, at least not with me. She doesn’t enjoy anything. She just becomes distant and wan. This is your fault, you know.”

  Peter watched her run after the puppy in the garden below. It was his fault. She was the same vibrant, lovely young woman, but he’d shown her a part of herself she was frightened of, and she’d run away. He should have pursued her, taught her there was more to his mastery and her submission than a physical connection, but she’d run straight into the arms of Tregarth and announced an engagement inside the week. And John had married her before the month was out and then their misery had begun. Peter was miserable because he didn’t have her, John was miserable because she didn’t want him and Amy was miserable because she wasn’t getting what she needed and didn’t know how to accept it from John.

  He shouldn’t have stayed away so long, let this happen to John and the woman he loved, but he couldn’t bear to see her with another. “She needs to be shown what she wants, at a time and in a place and with a man she is receptive to. She needs to be shown that it isn’t shameful if she enjoys it. And that she can enjoy it with you without guilt or embarrassment.” But John knew that, wouldn’t be telling Peter all this if he didn’t know it.

  “She’ll hate the man who does it,” her husband said, staring into the fire.

  “That is why it cannot be you. It has to be me.”

  John Tregarth looked up from the fire with murder in his eyes. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d be a monk if I didn’t enjoy it, but I’m not offering because I want her.” It was only partially a lie. “I’m offering because you’re my best friend, and you deserve to be happy with your wife.”