Free The Bride of Larkspear by Sherry Thomas Page A

bid you good night and go back to my own room.”
    “Don’t you dare go anywhere.”
    Her brow rises. “Oh, you want me to stay more time?”
    She is punishing me. For having had the temerity to tie her up. The temerity to try to make her fall in love with me. “I want you to finish what you started. I never teased you like this.”
    She takes my chin in her hand. “You can’t blame me for your own shortcoming. Why did you never tease me like this?”
    I cannot think. “What?”
    She smirks a little. Her hand grips my cock. I leap in her fingers, so close, so very close.
    She lets go again. I growl with frustration. She cups my balls and lifts them, as if testing their weight in her palm. Then she spreads her hand on my abdomen, leans in, and licks my nipple.
    I grit my teeth. She bites my other nipple, not hard, just enough to make me shiver.
    She licks my bottom lip. “Did you enjoy doing all this to me—making me moan, making me writhe, making me lose control?”
    “Yes.”
    Her lips are so close. I surge forward, take them with mine, and find her tongue. She yanks away.
    “Yes, I enjoyed doing all this to you,” I tell her. “I loved forcing a reaction from you. I rejoiced when you could no longer deny your arousal. And I daresay it made me grow two extra inches when you screamed loud enough to shake the rafters.”
    Her countenance darkens. The next moment she is back on her knees. She sucks me vigorously, voraciously, her cheeks hollowing with the force of her draw. I cry out with the knifelike pleasure. She takes nearly the entire length of my cock into her mouth. I feel the force of her will as my cock slides into her throat.
    I ejaculate, spurt after spurt after spurt. She swallows everything, her eyes never leaving my face.
    When I am finished, my balls empty, my sinews limp, she rises to her feet. “Did you enjoy that? Or did you hate it?” she whispers in my ear.
    “Both,” I answer, my breath rasping. “Maybe…maybe I hated it more.”
    She bites my lower lip. “Then you know how I felt, darling. You know exactly how I felt.”

    I’ M SORRY,” I TELL HER as she unties me from the bedpost. “Please forgive me.”
    She casts me an inscrutable glance. “Forgiveness has to be earned on your back, Larkspear.”
    I chew the inside of my cheek for a moment, then climb onto the bed and lie down. “Like this?”
    She puts her dressing robe back on and sits down at the edge of the bed. “Don’t you know I love someone else? Does that make no difference to you?”
    She is not mocking me, or trying to hurt me, but only trying to understand why I behave as I do.
    “I don’t doubt you loved him long ago. But for years now you’ve loved only the memory of the man he once was. He is not the same man and you are in love with someone who no longer exists.”
    Her lips press together in a line of displeasure. “Very arrogant of you.”
    “Does not some part of you secretly agree with me? If this man takes up with your sister, would you be pleased for her?”
    Her face is stormy. “And what if I tell you that I still miss him?”
    I breathe past the pain in my chest. “Maybe you will miss
me
more, if you were to lose me now.”
    “Maybe I will leave tomorrow to find out,” she says darkly.
    I sigh and stretch out my hand. “Please come here.”
    She regards me suspiciously.
    “I just want to hold you, nothing else. You can leave and go back to your room anytime.”
    Her skepticism does not abate.
    “You are lonely,” I continue, “and I am lonely. Let me hold you.”
    She looks one way, then another. When she does climb up onto my bed, it is not with the resolve of a made-up mind, but more the resignation of someone who is tired of arguing with herself.
    She lies down beside me and carefully arranges her dressing robe so that no part of her actual skin touches me. But I still feel her warmth all along my right side. I take her hand in mine, turn my face toward the crook of her neck, and