2Rakehell (12 page)

She moaned into his mouth before finally tearing her lips
from his and burying her face in his neck. Ripple after ripple of bliss coursed
through her, and lost in her pleasure, she realized he too cried out. His hands
found her hips and he pumped her up and down on his cock, urgently at first and
then ultimately slowing to a stop.

“I love you.” The whispered words were almost silent against
his shoulder, blending in with his heavy breaths, not meant for him to hear.
Not really.

* * * * *

I love you…

Adam swallowed thickly as he recalled Primrose’s whispered
declaration. He’d known how she felt for some time. Emotion emanated from her
eyes. He’d sensed her affection in the way her hands trembled when she kissed
him. He’d seen it in the way her body came alive when they were together, in
her eyes when modesty compelled her to avert her gaze.

By God he’d courted it.

So why was he was so shocked to hear the words spoken from
her lips?

She lay snuggled against him, warm in his arms, her
breathing deep and even as she slept.

I love you.

His pulse accelerated and an odd sort of tension plagued him
between the ribs. Had he ever known love?

Images of his childhood, of the earl at his side as they
both romped in the garden, of happy Christmases past. Most of his schoolmates’
parents had had little to do with them, leaving child-rearing to a staff of
governesses and tutors. Not the earl who’d been quick with words of praise,
even hugs.

But Adam reminded himself it hadn’t been real. The earl
wouldn’t have loved him if he’d but known Adam’s true parentage. All the
wonderful memories Adam cherished were naught but lies.

Even if that had been love it wasn’t the same as this…this
tumultuousness he felt when he was with his wife.

He didn’t know how it happened or even when it started. But
he couldn’t help but anticipate her arrival to breakfast or the way the sun
shone behind her, illuminating her like the ethereal being she was, as she
entered the room. He longed for her when they weren’t together, for her knowing
glances, the little quirk of her smile, to gaze at the three little moles
adorning the delicate plane of her jaw until they transformed into stars.

He’d grown accustomed to walking the grounds with her in the
mornings, to paying visits to the bedridden earl—and then later, to removing
layer after frilly, perfumed layer of her clothing until she stood naked and
blushing and glowing, her sparkling blue eyes turning midnight as she descended
into the depths of her submission.

His pulse quickened whenever she walked toward him, worrying
the rings on her fingers and capturing her bottom lip between her teeth. Oh it
wasn’t that she lacked confidence. No. But he found her uncertainty incredibly
endearing. He adored that he had that effect on her.

Her very presence made him grin like an innocent boy.

And whenever they parted she took a piece of him with her.

Oh God if she were ever taken from him… He couldn’t spend
the rest of his life, nay, a day without her in it. If she’d been injured—or
worse—in that accident, he would have felt such a sense of loss that it would
have rendered him unable to go on.

The thought of losing Primrose put the grief of learning
that the earl wasn’t his real father into perspective.

Primrose shivered and Adam drew the coverlet closer about
her shoulders. She moaned contentedly and nestled closer.

How had this happened? Heat rushed to his head at just how
easily he’d given her the upper hand. Control.

He’d revealed too much. He’d made himself vulnerable and she
had boldly dared to utter words that terrified him to the core. He felt as if
he were drowning, sinking into an abyss from which there was no escape. Down,
down he went with no handhold to stop him.

Somehow he had to regain his strength, his command. And he
knew just the place to do it. Just the place to test her avowal of love.

* * * * *

“Adam! Son!”

Adam blinked, disbelieving. Thorley had improved. Vastly.

Irene stood and curtsied. “Milord,” she muttered.

“He seems immensely better today,” Adam said, regretting how
he’d talked to Gallagher about her.

“Sit down,” Thorley encouraged enthusiastically. He turned
to the nurse. “Give us a few minutes please.”

Adam stared, bewildered and pleasantly surprised.

After the nurse left Thorley rubbed his forehead. “I wish I
could shake this brain fog.”

Still somewhat shocked, Adam sat in a chair next to the bed
and leaned slightly forward. How could this be? He was like a new man
altogether. “You look much better today.”

“I feel better. More…more clear.”

Adam pushed away the fear that Thorley might merely be
making a last stand before taking a turn for the worse.

“Is that woman gone?” Thorley asked under his breath.

Adam looked toward the door. “Yes.”

“I don’t know how long this will last…or if the Good Lord
has seen fit to give me a brief respite before taking me, but…I…want to offer
you an apology for my part in your leaving Scarborough Hall.”

Adam’s jaw tightened. He didn’t know how to respond. “I…I
behaved foolishly. You did what you thought necessary with Primrose and…and it
seems she and I have more in common than—” His lips pulled into a boyish grin.

“Oh poppycock,” the earl said. “That’s not why I wanted you
to marry her, son.”

“I don’t understand. You know that I didn’t…despoil her.”

“It’s your cousin Benedict who should be furious with me.”
Thorley’s hearty laugh made Adam smile. “He was the one who wanted her.” Thorley
chuckled and then continued. “You don’t know do you?” He snorted.

“Know what?” Adam still couldn’t get past this immeasurable
improvement in Thorley’s health.

The earl’s face darkened. He heaved a sigh. “The estate is all
but bankrupt. I admit I’ve been a poor manager. Your cousin Hamish stepped in
during your absence and he’s made a colossal mess of things.”

Guilt flared in Adam’s chest. He should have been here. The
estate should have been his responsibility. “Bankrupt?”

Thorley nodded gravely. “I knew I was in financial straits
before you married Primrose. I learned a bit of information I wasn’t supposed
to know. Her father bragged about the inheritance he intended for her. And not
only that but upon the birth of a male heir he intended to levy a fortune on
her. Her parents were making a big play for her to marry Lashwood and well…I’m
not ashamed of what I did when the circumstance presented itself. Besides she
seemed happier at the prospect of marrying you than your cousin.”

A fortune? No wonder Primrose had been adamant about having
a child. The voice of old memories taunted him.
She was just using you all
along. Women are not to be trusted. All she wanted was the money.

He shook his head as if he could wrest free of his demons.

“Son.” Thorley’s voice brought him back to the present.
“Once you produce an heir, you’ll never have to worry about Scarborough Hall
again.”

Adam sat speechless.

The earl’s eyes softened. “I should have told you. But I
wanted more for you than what I had. Call me an old softhearted dolt but I’d
hoped you’d find love with her.”

The memory of Primrose begging him to sire a child in her
haunted Adam.

Thorley’s smile faded. “I know that your mother told you.”

Adam’s gaze shot to Thorley’s. Waves of heat rolled up his
spine. “I don’t want—”

“Let me explain…while I have the presence of mind to do so.”

Dread filled Adam as he leaned back in his chair.

Thorley cleared his throat and reached a trembling hand
toward a glass of water on a tray next to his bed. He drank clumsily and then
wiped what he’d spilled from his chin with his fingers. “Your mother and I were
married many years before you were conceived. She too had been given such a
stipulation. An inheritance for a male heir.”

Adam didn’t want to hear this. He shook his head.

“We were desperate you see. The estate was at risk. Our
home. Our way of life…” Thorley’s eyes misted as he dredged up the long-buried
details.

Adam averted his gaze, recalling scenes from his childhood.
Happier, carefree times filled with laughter and sunshine. With wonder and
innocence. He swallowed against the lump in his throat.

“We wanted a child so desperately but in my youth I’d
suffered a fever and it was thought that I might not…that I couldn’t…” Thorley was
silent for so long that Adam looked up to see if the man was still breathing.
“I gave her to another. God forgive me. I asked another man to sire my heir.”

Adam didn’t wipe away the lone tear that trailed down his
cheek. He bit his trembling lips and sucked in a ragged breath.

“I never meant for you to know,” Thorley admitted. “But her
last days were terrible. Terrible. She talked out of her head.” He paused. “I
loved you as my own from the first time I held you in my arms. You have to know
that.”

Adam’s forehead furrowed as he battled giving in to tears.
“That was the problem. I knew you loved me. I thought you didn’t know. I
thought it would destroy you to find out. I thought…”

“Son…” Thorley opened his arms and without thinking Adam
moved into them and embraced the man who’d raised him as his own. The only man
he’d ever known as a father.

Primrose quailed when Adam removed her cloak. Her nipples
tightened. Her thighs warmed. Her bottom clenched around the invasion of the
crystal plug secreted inside it.

Why had she agreed to come here?

In theory she had imagined something…well…more anonymous. In
her fantasies onlookers had been faceless, nonthreatening beings. The reality
was altogether different.

Without the shelter of her cloak she had but a flimsy
leather mask that only hid the top part of her face from view. Adam wore one as
well—as did the other members of the club.

She had assumed she would delight in being nude, collared
and plugged in front of an audience and as Adam had explained given over to a
masked dungeon Master for public punishment. Now that she was here, however,
she felt exposed. Resisting the urge to cover herself, she stepped closer to
Adam.

He removed his own cloak and passed it to a leather-clad
attendant. Her breath caught at the sight of her husband dressed in black from
head to toe, looking more like a dandy highwayman than the heir apparent. His
boots gleamed in the low light. His silk shirt was open to the waist, revealing
his sculpted chest and taut stomach.

She wet her dry lips with her tongue. Every inch of her
ached to disappear into one of the many dim alcoves where she could surrender
to his every illicit whim in private. The looming knowledge that another would
lay a hand on her had become unimaginable. She only wanted pleasure and pain
from Adam.

She dared not voice her desires however. He’d been in a
black, brooding mood ever since she’d agreed to come here tonight.

Her mouth went dry as both intrigued and intimidated, she
glanced into the dungeon-like room, recognizing half the barely disguised ton
in this shadowy underground chamber.

There was Lady Beckham naked and bent over some sort of
crude table. She moaned in ecstasy as another masked woman delivered hard
whacks to her already rosy bum with a leather paddle.

And others she knew from the season’s parties.

A woman sailed past, leading a man who crawled behind her on
all fours. Primrose’s gaze narrowed in recognition. “Is that—”

Adam quietly shushed her. “Here you will see all sorts.
Commoners, peers of the realm…and the occasional princess.” At that he grinned,
confirming Primrose’s suspicions. He leaned close to whisper in her ear. “But
never acknowledge them either by name or title. In this place a certain
anonymity is respected.”

She nodded but couldn’t quite get over the shock of seeing
those she knew either submitting or meting out punishments.

Everywhere Primrose looked, Masters tortured or pleasured
their slaves in myriad ways, some that captivated her, others that made her
turn away.

Relief washed through her when Adam’s hands cupped her
shoulders. “The rules we set up still stand here. You are mine. No one else,
save the dungeon Master during your initiation, can touch you unless I say.”

His words inspired a little confidence. “In what instance
would you give another permission?”

She gasped when he gave her nipple a firm tweak. “Master,”
she added.

“That’s better,” he purred in her ear. “If you need a
particular punishment at which one of the members excels, then I might entrust
you to him. Or her.”

Primrose shivered as a tendril of dread snaked through her.

Her gaze slid once more to Lady Beckham whose punisher had
moved on to more intimate things. Primrose cleared her throat as Lady Beckham
enthusiastically burrowed her face against her Mistress’s abdomen.

She’d never imagined such a sordid den of iniquity.

Some part of her clung to propriety and yet the piece of her
that belonged body and soul to Adam sang at the thought of surrendering
completely to this experience. Here, even collared or bound, she could be free.
Truly free.

Once the initiation is over…

Her mind could go quiet and give her body the permission it
needed to slip past old and ingrained teachings, to submit to pure physical
sensation. No desire too dark. No desire denied.

“Come,” Adam said, tugging gently on the delicate leash he’d
attached to her collar.

As they threaded through the crowd Primrose absorbed the
variety of sights. Dark and mysterious rooms winged off the main room. She
caught glimpses of lovers, of Masters and slaves all engaged in erotic play.
Moisture flooded her center and oozed onto her inner thighs.

A dais with a crimson velvet backdrop had been positioned at
the head of the room. Chairs and settees dotted the surrounding space where
only Masters and Mistresses sat, watching a man receiving a sound spanking from
his Mistress. Slaves kneeled on the plush rugs next to their Dominants.

Some had positioned themselves to be spanked or touched,
depending on their Dominants’ whims.

Was that woman the dungeon Master who would deliver her
punishment? Perhaps this wouldn’t be the ordeal she’d imagined. After all, a
woman’s touch didn’t seem as threatening as a man’s. She could endure this.

Adam dropped into a chair and gestured for Primrose to kneel
on the floor beside him. “I want you to watch,” he told her. “As you will be in
line when the initiations begin.”

This Mistress wasn’t the dungeon Master? Primrose’s gaze
shot to Adam’s. She swallowed thickly as he reached to stroke his hand down the
back of her hair. A tendril of erotic fear rippled through her at the thought
of being spanked on that dais.

“Watch,” he repeated, his gaze moving to the couple on the
stage.

The submissive male’s white-skinned bottom was already
scarlet with angry, red stripes. Adam had never spanked Primrose that hard.
Would the dungeon Master do so tonight?

After three more licks that made Primrose cringe, the male’s
Mistress bent and as she kissed each welt, the man sighed his pleasure.
Primrose averted her gaze as the Mistress reached between her submissive’s legs
to give him release.

Once he’d spilled his seed his Mistress led him away and
naked servants rushed in to clean the area.

“Let the initiations begin!” a hooded Master of ceremonies
cried to much applause. “Dungeon Master, bring forth the first supplicant!”

This was happening too fast! Primrose’s stomach tightened in
fear that she’d be wrested from the safety of Adam’s side but instead a masked
male led a lovely female slave onto the dais. There was something familiar
about the man’s height and posture and when he turned to leer at Primrose
through the eye openings of his mask, she gasped.

Benedict! No…

He
was the dungeon Master?

She shouldn’t have been so shocked to find him in this
place. Again she glanced at her husband but he didn’t seem at all surprised.
His fingers gripped the carved ends of his armrests and for a fleeting moment,
hope flared in Primrose’s breast that he’d refuse to allow Benedict to touch
her.

Benedict’s charge enthusiastically positioned herself over
the padded table designed to both restrain and display and gripped the
handholds. She spread her legs and flipped her long blonde hair over her
shoulder as she looked up at him. “I’ve been such a naughty girl.”

His lips pulled into a rakish smile. “No doubt.”

Watching them reminded Primrose of her interactions with
Adam though she was far less bold than the blonde Benedict was securing to the
table.

He nudged her bare feet with his boot toe, compelling her to
spread her legs even wider. Primrose had never before laid eyes on a woman’s
nether regions so openly. Her sex looked like a piece of ripe fruit, luscious
and juicy. She imagined herself so exposed for all to see.

Benedict didn’t use a paddle or strap. He wound one hand
firmly into the blonde’s tresses, anchoring her head at a high tilt that made
her lift her bottom in response and then he smacked the perfectly round cheeks
soundly and in rapid succession. Head down, an errant lock of wavy hair
stealing across his forehead, he seemed fixed on her punishment. Each sharp,
expertly delivered swat elicited hisses of ecstasy from the woman. Her flesh
shivered as bright-pink handprints appeared wherever he struck her.

She writhed against his handhold and the soft wool-lined
cuffs restraining her wrists to the table.

Primrose’s thighs tightened and her own backside burned in
trepidation of the punishment Benedict would soon deliver her.

And when Benedict pushed the woman’s head down to the table
and slid two fingers deep inside her channel, Primrose squeezed her legs
together to assuage the throbbing between them.

Why couldn’t Adam be slated to deliver her punishment? She
would never be able to find release through Benedict’s touch. Conflicting
emotions rampaged within her. Allowing another to touch her clashed with her
loyalty to her husband. And yet as his submissive the thought of disappointing
Adam made her sick inside.

The woman’s fervent keening dragged Primrose back to the
moment. Already the blonde’s fists balled and her toes curled as she strained
against her bonds in the throes of her ecstasy.

Benedict tangled his fingers into her hair and lifted her
head again before plunging the two fingers that had pleasured her into her
mouth.

Primrose watched in awe as the blonde gratefully sucked her
own juices from Benedict’s fingers.

Part of Primrose envied the woman’s ability to surrender so
easily. Even with Adam, to whom she trusted her body implicitly, she
inexplicably held something back.

After Benedict released the blonde she dropped down on all
fours and kissed the tops of his boots before rising to scamper joyfully away
to her Master.

Benedict turned to Adam. “And now I have the pleasure of
initiating your submissive.”

Primrose’s heart stopped beating. Adam would never—

Oh but he would. He was nodding. She bit her bottom lip,
begging him with her eyes not to allow this.

A dark reminder played through her head. She could have
refused. He’d told her as much. But the moment he’d collared her she’d
descended deep into submission. She gave herself little other choice than
complete obedience. Trembling, she stood and took Benedict’s extended hand, all
the while waiting for Adam to reconsider.

He did not.

Her heart sank as she stepped onto the dais. Pulse pounding,
she bent over the padded bench.

“Lovely,” Benedict murmured silkily, his fingertips grazing
the exposed tip of her plug.

Primrose held her breath as he fastened the cuffs around
each of her wrists. Even with the tenets of the club in place, how could Adam
have just given her to Benedict? Publicly? Tears welled in her eyes.

Benedict skirted the table and squatted so that he was eye
level with her. His fingertips whispering across her jawline, he tilted her
chin up so that their gazes met. She expected to find triumph. Instead she
discovered a softness that stunned her.

“You are so incredibly exquisite,” he said, his eyes seeming
to take in her whole face at once. “My cousin is a very lucky man to possess
your love.”

She couldn’t form words.

His thumb swept away one of her tears and his brows knitted
together. “Do you truly want this?”

No…
She gulped.

“For this moment I am your Master,” he said softly but
sternly. “Answer me honestly. Do you want this?”

“No.” She mouthed the word.

“Then I will tell you a secret.” His voice was so low she
could barely make out the words she realized he meant only for her ears. “You
do not have to endure this. At any time utter the word he gave you and it will
end.”

“I don’t want to disappoint him,” she squeaked.

Benedict’s lips formed a tiny smile. “I have a feeling he
would be far more disappointed if you don’t end it, sweet Primrose.”

She swallowed. Hard. Debating.

“Trust me on this,” Benedict added and then stood.

Out of the corner of her eye she watched him choose a
flogger from an array of instruments on the shelf. He lifted one eyebrow.
Waiting.

Her heart pounded so hard she could scarcely think.

Trust Benedict? Primrose had never trusted him. Why should
she believe him now?

She was torn. Torn between wanting to please her Master and
deciding her own fate. She didn’t want to be touched by anyone but her husband.
How could he ever be disappointed in her for that?

Perhaps Benedict’s advice was good.

She inhaled as he took his position behind her and trailed the
soft tails of the flogger down her spine. Every nerve in her body fired.
Indecision gnawed at her.

She didn’t want this.

She wanted Adam. She wanted what they’d had earlier.

Intimacy.

Honesty.

Love.

“Love.” She said it aloud.

Benedict brushed her hair back from her cheeks and shoulder,
exposing her face to Adam. “What did you say, slave?”

Her gaze found Adam’s. He’d leaned forward in his chair, his
expression expectant. “Love,” she said, her hoarse voice pleading and rough
with emotion.

At once he bolted out of the chair and onto the dais. He
hastily released her from the bonds before gathering her in his arms and
whisking her away from the main chamber.

Primrose wept against his chest. “I only want you. I’ve only
ever wanted you.”

“Hush,” he cooed against her hair. “Hush, sweeting.”

She didn’t raise her head as her cloak was thrown around her
nor as he carried her outside to the coach. Cradling her close, he climbed
inside and sat, drawing her into his lap.

As the coach lurched forward she looked up at him through
the murky darkness. She had to risk it. She had to make her feelings known no
matter the consequences. “I love you,” she whispered, barely able to form the
words. “God help me, Adam, I love you.”