Free Lord Regret's Price: A Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 3 by Joely Sue Burkhart

might complain, but she loved to torment him with her hair. And, honestly, there wasn’t anything better than the sensation of her luxurious, heavy hair falling over him, enveloping him in her scent. But it was more than the sensation and the vanilla spice of her hair that made his gut twist like he hadn’t had a meal in days.
    It was the intimacy. What that intimacy implied.
    Growing up in a privileged home of one of Britannia’s most powerful families, he’d never seen his mother let her hair down. She’d been perfectly coiffured and immaculately dressed every single moment of his life. Even while she’d abused him and his father. Not a hair out of place. Her gown a dazzling example of the current fashion, down to delicate, lacy gloves. While she beat his father with whatever implement she had at hand.
    Though she might curse him later if those gloves were stained with blood.
    Sig closed his eyes, trying to contain the hot flood of emotion that made him tremble. Not fear, not any longer. He wasn’t a child forced to watch while his father was beaten senseless. She couldn’t tie him to a chair and make him watch her break his father before his very eyes. But that’s exactly why he’d reacted so violently to the idea of Charlie bringing a flail into her bed.
    A harmless item, no doubt used countless times by others for titillation, but so it might begin. She already knew he enjoyed being bound. What if he enjoyed pain too?
    Like his father?
    He couldn’t bear the thought that he might be as weak and helpless.
    As a child, he’d hated his father for failing to stop his mother. Failing to stand up to her and protect them both. She only rarely ever struck Sig, but her verbal and mental abuse had been miserable. His father had been taller, bigger and stronger than his lady mother, yet he’d never once taken a stand against her. All he would have had to do was stand instead of cower. Pull that whip or crop or cane from her hand and beat her with it instead.
    Why hadn’t he ever taken a stand and told her no?
    After all these years, Sig still had no idea, unless the man had simply enjoyed the pain and brutality. Perhaps it’d been a gentlemanly habit never to strike a lady. All good aristocratic boys were raised to look to their lady mothers as the heads of the families, to honor their names and Houses above all. But, surely, when a man was injured and bleeding from extreme beatings…and seeing his son grow up under that yoke of violence and hatred…
    Why didn’t he stop it?
    Why didn’t he protect me?
    Years might have gone by, but those questions had never been laid to rest.
    Yet lying with Charlie and her other man after a surprising night of passion edged with raw sensuality, he couldn’t suppress the nagging fear that spread the darkness in his mind. In the end, was he no better than his weak, helpless father?
    He’d already allowed—no, begged!—her to tie him up. Would he allow her to beat him senseless too? Was that same weakness buried in his DNA, just waiting for her to find it and release it? And if so, to what depths of depravity would he then sink, helpless to stop her?
    Or worse, was there more of his mother in him than he’d ever suspected? Last night, he’d been harsher and coarser than he’d ever been with any woman. Let alone the feared and respected Duchess of Wyre. He’d used her mouth, for God’s sake, not gently but roughly, gripping her by her hair and shoving himself so deep into her throat she’d gagged, just so he could feel the muscles of her throat convulsing around him. He’d pinned her head while the other man thrust into her just as roughly. He’d tugged on the chains clamped to her nipples. And, yes, lying here with them in the stillness of their heavy slumber…
    He could see himself lifting that flail and bringing it down on her flawless skin.
    And enjoying it. A great deal.
    Maybe all these years he’d feared turning into his spineless father…while he should have