Free Born of Woman by Wendy Perriam Page B

buttocks dappled in the light. He slipped his hands beneath her belly and coaxed her up and back until she was crouched on all fours with her bottom humped towards him. He sniffed her faint female odour of mingled scent and sweat. She was trying to slump down again, burrow back into the blankets.
    â€˜Tired, darling. Want to sleep.’ Her voice was slurred, husky, unbearably exciting.
    â€˜Ssshh,’ he whispered, ran a finger slowly across her buttocks, down into the crease, found the forbidden hole, stroked around it. It was resisting him—tight, unwilling, locked. Hadn’t he learned to break locks? He eased the finger in, felt it give a little. Coiled spring around his finger. Rat-trap. Wedding-ring. She shocked awake, trying to push him off and tensing all her muscles. The trap closed tighter.
    â€˜ Don’t . You’re hurting, Linnet.’
    Stupid name. He wanted to gag her, force her. Sick of all the restraint, the rules, the should-nots, the gentle solemn loving, the pretty passive names. Right, he’d be a dog—a cocking, snuffling mongrel without his pedigree, a dog who had slipped his lead.
    He jerked the finger out and held her open while he eased the other in. It went only a grudging straining centimetre, then stopped. She was virgin there as she had been when he met her—everywhere—zipped up to the neck. He tried to force the zip down—two centimetres—three. It felt tight and fierce like handcuffs round a wrist. Jennifer was whimpering, making little gasping noises of pain or fear or shock. At least she wouldn’t swell. You couldn’t conceive in an arse-hole. He liked it in her arse-hole. It was tighter, safer, and she didn’t have a face—just that huge heaving arse rearing up in front of him, imprisoning him inside her. He had snapped the handcuffs now and found space and shaft beyond. Every tight, tighter thrust was tying them together, cancelling out his separateness. The bed creaked hoarsely underneath them. For a sudden anguished moment he heard Hester braying out her fury in the bedsprings. He closed his ears, thrust harder. He wouldn’t let her in.
    â€˜Jennifer!’ he shouted. If he had her loud enough, Hester would be drowned. His wife was noisy, too, now, little noises spitting out from under her as if she were an animal.
    â€˜ Darling ,’ she was crying in a sort of muffled breathless gasp. Darling could mean anything—pain or bliss or anger. She was butting her head against the pillow, arching up her back, twisting her buttocks so that he almost lost his grip. Was she trying to shake him off or goad him on? Couldn’t stop now, anyway. Not a mind or body any more, just a ramming thrusting piston. All his grief, fear, fury, force, centred on one point.
    His nails were digging into her back, his breathing laboured and distorted. She and the bed were both rocking underneath him, the squeaking of the springs cutting through her cries. She wasn’t fighting any longer but moving with him, thrusting with him, making her pace and rhythm one with his. Shameless, brazen woman who purred in the drawing-room and buggered in the kitchen, blotting out the funeral, bringing passion out of pain. As tight and wild as Susannah. Sluttish marvellous woman debauching all his boyhood, branding all his paintings, coming when he came. He was schoolboy, lover, husband, coming, COMING …
    His cry cut the room in half. He collapsed on top of Jennifer, sheet tangled round their limbs, blankets tumbled to the floor. He could feel her shuddering into stillness underneath him.
    â€˜Darling,’ she was sobbing. ‘Oh, my darling.’

Chapter Five
    â€˜Ah, Jennifer! We were just wondering where you’d got to. Do come in.’ Molly Bertram opened the door on a barking tangle of dogs. ‘We started dinner without you. Hope you don’t mind, but the men have to get back to the lambing. Where’s