Frayed Bonds Read online

  Tregarth stood motionless, wavering. Peter pressed on. “She need never know it’s me. I’ll wear a mask. Send the servants away. I’ll come back in three days and when I’m done with her, you’ll have her back, the woman she was, the woman she really is underneath all the confusion and fear.”

  “She’ll recognize your voice,” Tregarth insisted.

  “She’ll be too shocked to recognize my voice.”

  “I love her.”

  “If you can’t stand to have me touch her, then do it yourself. But it’s not as though we haven’t shared women before.”

  “You imperious bastard,” said his oldest friend. “You have no idea what it’s like to imagine the woman you love in another man’s arms.”

  He did, but he couldn’t say that, because then John wouldn’t agree. “No, but you’ll let me take her anyway, because you can’t go on like this.”

  John nodded. “On one condition. You can’t fuck her. I need to know that Amy and I have something that is ours alone.”

  * * * * *

  Amy Tregarth had made a mess of her life. She knew it now and was trying her best to make amends. She had always intended to marry John, sweet, kind, loving John, who made her laugh and who had a steady presence she knew she could grow old with. She’d been determined to turn down Lord Herridon, who had made his intentions clear from their first meeting in Bath, whose gaze had made her heart flutter and her intimate flesh flood with moisture. He was not husband material. His passions, she sensed, were as unruly and dark as hers, and with such a man she was sure she would be lost to her depraved desires. Or worse, they would spiral down into depravity together.

  And then there had been that night at Brinley, when Peter Mainwaring had shown her exactly what she was. She’d woken up the next morning determined never to see him again, determined to marry John and bury the wicked part of herself forever.

  It had all gone off without a hitch. She hadn’t seen Peter Mainwaring again. He’d stayed away from their wedding, avoided them at parties and in town and refrained from visiting them at Tregarth Farm. She thought she’d seen him visiting with John three days ago, but when she finally went up to the parlor there was no one there, and she decided she must have been mistaken.

  Unfortunately, while everything she had planned for her life had come to pass, she had not found happiness with John. She loved him. She was certain of it. And when, so very rarely, he gripped her hard and pressed her to the bed and took her the way she craved, she warmed to him, and her body quickened. But when he tempered his passion, moderated his caresses, whispered tender endearments instead of hoarse commands, her body cooled.

  Her lack of response triggered the same in him, and while he had soldiered on mightily in the past, now his erection often withered when he pressed it to her dry slit. She wanted him to show her how to please him, but his directions were vague, full of euphemism and awkward pauses, and her unschooled fumbling did nothing to restore his vigor. She wanted to be told, “Touch me here, lick me there.”

  This, she told herself, was her lot, her punishment for tasting perversion with Peter Mainwaring. But her body wasn’t willing to accept this verdict. She woke up at night in the bed John was too heartbroken to share with her, cunt streaming, nipples hard, fingers pumping between her legs, tormented by vivid dreams of Peter Mainwaring. Only in her imaginings, he didn’t leave her maidenhead to be plucked, with sweet but dull care, by John Tregarth. He took it with a punishing stroke and she exploded, just as she had for him at Brinley.

  Her only outlet now was vigorous walking. She trekked for miles every day, with the puppy bounding along beside her, until she worked up a sweat. Then she would run up to her room, rip her clothes off, fling herself on the bed and cry out her misery.

  Usually the servants greeted her on her way in the door, brought her their questions about the menu for dinner, updated her on tasks accomplished in her absence. She had discovered her talent for household management at Tregarth Farm. It was small consolation for her unhappiness, but it was something, and she looked forward to the daily ritual.

  Today the kitchens were empty. She presumed the cooks and maids were off to town to market or in the dairy working. Everything seemed in good order, although oddly neat and tidy. The tables were bare, no bread rose in the bowl, no fires burned in the hearth.

  When she reached her room, the bed was made, but her afternoon dress was not laid out. Curious. She stripped down to her chemise and looked outside the window to find an unfamiliar carriage standing in the drive. When she opened the wardrobe to pick out a gown, she found the cupboard empty. The clothes in her dresser were gone as well.

  “They’ve been put away, Mrs. Tregarth. You won’t be needing them.”

  She whirled to find a stranger standing in her door and gave a startled cry. He was masked. Not a party mask, an eyes and nose affair meant to tantalize and intrigue, but a black leather hood that covered his entire head, concealing the color of his hair, the shape of his forehead, the set of his jaw—in short, anything that might serve to identify the man. Only his lips, eyes and nostrils were visible through small openings in the leather.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Even as she asked it, she realized the answer could not be good. Masked men generally weren’t well intentioned. “We don’t have any money.”

  He smirked, his lips curling up behind the mask. “Take off your chemise, Mrs. Tregarth and kneel on the floor.”

  “How dare you?” Her heart thudded in her chest, and she felt moisture trickling down her thighs. “John,” she said weakly. “Where is John?” She backed toward the window, looking for an escape. “My husband will kill you if you touch me,” she threatened.

  The stranger laughed. “You husband invited me here. Now let’s dispense with the preliminaries. Remove your garment, and get on your knees. If I have to ask again, I shall be very displeased. But perhaps that’s what you were hoping for.”

  She felt sick with apprehension, because he was right. She ought to be thinking of escape, ought to be frightened out of her mind, but instead a familiar lassitude had settled in the pit of her stomach, made the apex of her thighs feel heavy and swollen. There was only one reason why she was not obeying him already, giving in to her depraved desire to be dominated, and that was the hope that he would make her.

  Which was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. She must fight against her nature as best she could. If not for herself, then for John, who would be sickened by her depravity. She was determined to make it up to him, to become a good wife, to learn to enjoy his sweetness, his pure lovemaking.

  The masked man was between her and the door, but she must attempt it. “You’re a liar,” she said. “My husband would never condone this. He would be sickened by it.” She grabbed a vase off the dresser, flung it at his head and made a mad dash for freedom. Even as she ran, she felt the slick glide of her arousal on her thighs.

  He deflected the vase easily, caught her by both wrists, hurled her back into the room and closed and locked the door. She scrambled to the window, determined to jump if she must, and discovered it nailed shut. She turned back to find him lounging against the door.

  “Do you understand now, Amy? Your husband has done this. He has sent the servants away. He has nailed your windows shut. He has given me carte blanche with one small caveat, to train your body for his pleasure so you can accept yourself and be happy together. It’s all terribly romantic, if you think about it properly. Now get on your knees.”

  “Where is he?” she asked, hating the tremor in her voice.

  “You’ll see him soon enough. Now submit to me, Amy, or I will punish you. But you like being punished, don’t you?”

  She felt the tears stream down her face almost as fast as the slickness streamed down her thighs. Something deep in her soul cried out for her to kneel before this stranger. Almost without realizing it, she obeyed. She pulled the damp cotton chemise over her head and dropped it on the floor. The cool air caressed her
bare flesh, puckered the nipples of her swollen breasts. She followed the chemise to the ground, kneeling with her back to the window, her eyes fixed on the stranger.

  She had the opportunity now to study him, his clothes and the body under them. It was impossible to glean any clue to his identity from his attire. His gray breeches and coat might be those of a gentleman farmer in his best suit or those of a fine lord in his country attire. But the voice was educated, cultured, rich, and the body was that of a soldier, hard, lean, vigorous.

  She felt self-conscious beneath his gaze and covered her hated tummy, soft and round, with her hands.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” he ordered.

  She obeyed him, feeling a strange calm settle over her.

  “Why did you cover your stomach?” he asked, curiosity plain in his voice.

  “Because I’m fat,” she said automatically, her deepest insecurities stripped bare.

  He knelt and touched her for the first time, running his warm hand over her gently curving tummy. “No. You’re womanly. The ancients sculpted their goddesses, their visions of perfection, with soft bellies, because they’re beautiful. Is that why you don’t respond to your husband’s caresses, because you’re self-conscious?”

  “Yes!” she said, grateful for this escape from her shame. “That’s it. It’s nothing to do with—”

  “Liar.” His voice was harsh. He stopped caressing her tummy and his fingers dropped to the curls above her slit. “That’s not your problem, and you know it.” He twirled his fingers in the hair there and then tugged sharply.

  “Ow!” But she realized that she was more surprised than hurt.

  He tugged again, more sharply, and she felt her pussy lips becoming even more engorged, couldn’t stifle the moan that rose to her lips. He parted her with his long fingers, but it was an examination, not a caress. “Lean back. Sit on your heels.”

  It was awkward, but she complied. He pushed her knees apart, pulled her labia wide open, touched the two tiny flaps of flesh that had once been her hymen. “Such a pity,” he said. “A woman like you, who craves pain with her pleasure, deflowered with poetry and tenderness. A travesty.”

  He slid a single finger inside her vagina. “But you’re still tight. Almost virginal really.” He added another finger, turned his hand upside down and caressed the front wall of her body, hitting that sweet spot she had barely known existed before…Brinley. An image of herself, naked on the grass while Herridon whipped her, rose unbidden in her mind. Her eyes fluttered shut and she pumped her hips in time with his clever fingers. Anguished sounds welled from her throat.

  “So tight,” he whispered. “And so wet. Your fluids are dripping down my wrist. You want this.” His thumb flicked across her clitoris. She was close, oh so close to coming.

  Then he stopped.

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he took his drenched fingers and slid them between her parted lips. “Suck,” he commanded. She thrilled to the sound of his voice, closed her lips obediently around his digits and tasted the honeyed tang of her own arousal.

  “Good girl. Back on your knees.” She obeyed. His praise made her cunt tingle in an oddly familiar way, but she was unable to focus on that now. She felt strangely free, as if no one else and nothing else existed in the world but this man.

  He stood, unbuttoned his breeches and took his cock in his hand. It was poised inches from her mouth. His hand pumped the shaft. She had never seen a cock up close. John had made love to her in the dark with the candle extinguished. He’d kept his shirt on, his cock hidden beneath the garment until the moment of penetration. She’d glimpsed it only briefly before it was swallowed by her body. Watching it slide in had aroused her almost uncontrollably, but then, with his shirt falling like a curtain between her and the stage, her arousal fled.

  This man’s cock curved monstrously from the thick shaft to the pointed, purple glans. He pressed it against her closed mouth.

  “I’m going to fuck your mouth first. Resist the urge to gag, and keep your teeth out of the way.”

  He thrust. She almost choked when the tip hit the back of her throat, and his balls smacked her chin. She felt wonderfully abased, gloriously humiliated and desperate to please him. It was deliriously exciting to feel his smooth shaft sliding in and out of her mouth. She tried her best to keep her throat open and reveled in applying varying degrees of pressure with her lips. Once she was used to the motion of his cock, she started to explore it with her tongue.

  He encouraged her, murmuring the increasingly frantic endearments she didn’t know before now that she craved. Good slut, pretty whore, dirty girl, my sweet cunt. When she began moaning, he said, “Tell me how much you like it, Amy, how much you want your mouth filled.”

  She placed her hands on his hips to brace herself, squeezing his muscled thighs. “Good girl. Cup my balls. Cradle them.”

  His hips pumped faster and his cock jerked. She began to pull her head back, knowing he was about to spurt, but he wound his hands in her hair and gagged her with his cock. “Swallow,” he ordered.

  She choked at first but then felt oddly soothed as his cum slid down her throat.

  He stepped away and she felt bereft. She missed his cock, wanted it back in her mouth again, but he fastened his breeches and walked to the other side of the room. He pulled a low bench out from its place beneath the window. It was old, dark wood, petrified with age, nearly five foot long and adorned with an iron ring above each of its ten legs. “This will do nicely,” he said, patting the bench.

  She wanted to crawl across the room, to be near him, but she had to resist. “Please let me go,” she said, afraid she would disgrace herself further.

  “I can’t do that, Amy. But perhaps we can get a few things settled before we continue. Do you understand the game we are playing?”

  She wasn’t sure she understood anything anymore. John loved her, but he had sent a stranger to humiliate her, and she was enjoying it. She said nothing.

  “Have you played a game like this before?” he prompted patiently.

  The memory stabbed through her of Peter Mainwaring’s hands on her, so firm, so assured, so demanding, in the garden at Brinley. She shuddered with recalled pleasure, did her best to focus on the man before her, to summon some reply.

  She couldn’t find the words. He strolled across the room and tipped her chin up to gaze deep into her eyes. “I can see you have. There’s no need to be ashamed. We’ll play the same way. You may say ‘no’ all you like, but you must choose a word that really means ‘no’. Say it, and I will stop.” Something in his manner changed for a moment, became incongruously tender and a wave of déjà vu swept over Amy. “I’ve no desire to hurt you, my sweet.”

  “Alistair,” she sighed.

  He stiffened, his grip on her chin becoming sharp and hard. “What did you say?” he asked her slowly through clenched teeth.

  “Alistair. That is the word I choose.”

  “Why? Why that word? It’s a name. Why that name?” he asked with strange urgency.

  “Because it makes me feel safe.”

  Peter Mainwaring felt the world spin for a moment. He was in control of an intoxicating erotic tableau, had the woman he most desired entirely in his power, with the permission of her husband, and she was enjoying it. It was illicit, arousing, heady. Then it all stopped when she uttered those three syllables.

  When he had first seen her at Bath, he’d desired her as a plaything. When she’d responded so ardently to his decidedly unconventional wooing, he’d determined that she would make an ideal wife. She was the sweetness of day and the wickedness of night all in one unselfconscious package.

  He’d felt loss when she married Tregarth, jealousy when he’d seen them together and burning lust when she’d knelt before him less than an hour ago. But his heart had never been fully engaged. He’d loved her after his own fashion, in the way that he loved horses and paintings and good claret and a brisk hunt. But he hadn’t felt the desire to protect an
d cherish that had awakened in him when she spoke his middle name.

  He’d thought for a fraught second after the word left her lips that she was calling his bluff. That she knew it was him. And that was a terrifying thought, because he knew how she would react, how she had protected herself ever since that night at Brinley, from the truth about her own nature. She would become the cold, passionless creature that she had become with Tregarth. She could not, he knew, reconcile her two selves yet, could not be as free as she had just been on her knees with a man she might address across the breakfast table in the morning.

  But she had not been calling his bluff. She’d chosen the name because it made her feel safe, because he’d made her feel safe. For a few short hours, in a moonlit garden, she’d been free to be herself, and trusted entirely in the man who had guided her to passion. Then the morning had come.

  It was daylight now, a conscious decision on Peter’s part, to put as much distance as possible between the stranger he masqueraded as today and the man she had known that night. And because he wanted her to understand there weren’t two Amys. There wasn’t a part of her she must be ashamed of, which could only come out at night. The freedom she craved in bed did not diminish her in any way in the eyes of the man—the men—he realized—who loved her, and it should not diminish her in her own eyes. He would see to that.

  She was trembling now. He wanted to gather her in his arms, kiss away her fears, draw her gently onto the bed, bind her wrists as he wished he could bind their lives, and make love to her. But he could not. She was not his.

  Instead, he drew her to the long bench, bade her lie upon her back, and tied her wrists to the iron rings with supple leather traces. Then he unrolled the velvet case in which his most exotic possessions were housed, held up an exquisitely rendered carving in marble for her inspection and smiled with anticipation when she gasped.

  Chapter Two