Free Training Lady Townsend by Annabel Joseph Page A

don’t need to take the time to p-pleasure me.”
    His caresses stopped. He looked down at her and sighed. “I do need to take the time. It’s difficult to accomplish this properly if I don’t.”
    “If only you understood how uncomfortable this makes me. I don’t wish to resist you, but...”
    She cringed as he drew away. She expected a slap or a scolding, but he only lay back and rested his head on his arm. He stared at her a long time, his expression impossible to read.
    “I’m not like you,” she whispered. She sounded cowardly, like the mouse everyone called her.
    “You could be like me,” he said, moving closer again. “You could be exactly like me, and feel all the pleasure I feel, if you’d only allow yourself to do it. But they’ve drummed you so full of lessons on primness and propriety, and goddamned ladylike restraint.” He added a few more swear words that made her face burn. “They’ve raised you to be ‘good,’ to be cold and ashamed, and I’m the one who suffers for it.”
    “I’m sorry.” He was so impassioned, so very angry with her. “Perhaps you could do what you must to get me with child, and then find your necessary pleasures elsewhere. I wouldn’t mind.”
    His expression darkened even further. “Am I that awful? Honestly?”
    He looked so irritated, she feared he would spank her again. “I’m trying to be a good wife. Since I can’t meet your needs—”
    “Since you
won’t
meet my needs, you mean.”
    She rested a hand on his shoulder. It was a pure act of courage, to touch him when he was in this mercurial mood. “I want to bear children for you. I mean to do it, but the rest of it...”
    “It’s not your fault that you’re this way.” He sat upright and barked this out in a singularly frightening fashion. “It’s not your fault you’ve been raised to behave like some pure and precious vessel. All your cloying little friends are the same. It’s a damned shame, to my mind. A bloody damn waste of everyone’s happiness.”
    “I agree,” she said quickly, to mollify him. His cursing disturbed her, but not as much as the thought of another spanking. What did he mean by a pure and precious vessel? She was being a lady, a creditable wife. She was in bed with him, wasn’t she?
    He made a sound halfway between a mutter and a growl and climbed atop her, nudging open her legs. She felt his heavy, hard thing probing at her entrance and braced for pain, but he didn’t thrust inside. He kissed her instead, a soft, tender kiss that stole her breath and made the throbbing start again.
    “My lord,” she said against his lips. He moved inside her a little bit, and her body tensed to accommodate him. A small plea escaped.
    “Remember, I said it won’t hurt as much today,” he muttered. “And if you truly wish it, I’ll be quick about things.”
    She nodded, her heart and her head full of too many conflicting impulses to form words. As uncomfortable as this act made her, there was something fascinating about it too, something that made her want to pull him close and cling to his shoulders. She supposed it was the very fact that they were joined together in such a close and intimate way. When else did this happen in life?
    Her husband entered her, sliding in until their hips met, and then he went still inside her, staring down at her. As he promised, there was no pain like yesterday, only the nagging, stretching ache. She wished she could like this joining, but it was so strange. She held onto his shoulders and lay very still as he moved in her repetitively, in and out, cradling her beneath him. His body seemed a hard, dangerous thing, but his kisses and caresses were so gentle.
    As she pondered duty, and marriage, and babies, he tensed above her, and his breathing changed. He let out a ragged gasp and went still, shuddering as he propped himself over her. His organ pressed all the way inside her, holding her pinned to the bed.
    Tears formed in her eyes. She was very