His wife hissed in a breath. “I’m so sorry.”
Sin turned for the door and palmed her arse to steady her. Mostly. “You have nothing to apologize for.” A servant skittered around the corner of the hall, no doubt mortified at seeing his laird carrying away the marchioness. Sin didn’t care. “This isn’t a punishment, wife. This is a man who’s missed his wife’s touch and is looking to rectify that situation.”
She sagged, her body curving around his in apparent relief.
He gritted his teeth. He’d show her she had nothing to fear from him if it was the last thing he did.
Sweet words and tender touches would most likely by the most effective way to earn his wife’s trust.
He didn’t do sweet. Nor tender. It wasn’t something he was capable of, not when presented with his wife’s flushed body, the heat rolling off her skin, her parted lips. All control seemed to desert him when she was in his arms.
He’d just have to show her he took care of what was his in his own way.
His feet ate up the floor, taking the stairs and the hallways to his chamber in record time. He pushed open the door to his bedroom and kicked it shut behind them. With a twitch of his shoulder, he sent his wife tumbling off and caught her about the waist. Slowly, he let her body slide down his until her feet hit the floor.
Strands of her honey hair drifted about her face, pulled loose from its knot. He couldn’t wait to see it in a messy halo around her head on the pillow.
He tossed his jacket on the ground. “Remove your clothes.”
He yanked off his shirt and kicked off his boots. He was down to his trousers and she’d only removed her shawl. “Too slow.” Spinning her away, he ripped the row of buttons from their holes, tearing the gown from her body. Her stays and shift met a similar fate before littering the floor.
When she turned to face him, the skin above her chest was rosy, her nipples just beginning to peak. The pink buds just begged for his teeth to nip them a shade darker.
A whisper of unease slipped between his shoulder blades. He liked it rough, but these feelings he was having toward Winnifred weren’t normal. There was something, someone, different lurking just below the surface, clawing to get out. Something savage.
And, God help him, Sin wanted to let him free.
“It’s been three nights without my cock in your cunny. Has it missed me?” He advanced until his bare chest pressed against hers, then kept walking until her back hit the wall. He slapped his palms on the wood by her head and leaned close, breathing her in.
“Tell me you missed me.”
“I …” She swallowed. “Of course, I missed you, husband. What wife wouldn’t?”
Like it was her damn duty to miss him. “Don’t give me the words of a dutiful wife. Tell me.” He cupped her mons, rubbing the heel of his hand into her clit. “Did Winnifred miss me?”
Her breath wavered, caught. She nodded, the knot of her hair scraping against the wall, loosing even more strands.
Gripping her shoulders, he turned her around and yanked the remaining pins free. Her hair tumbled past her shoulders, thick and heavy on his hands. He wrapped it around his palm and tugged her head back.
“I missed you, too.” He ran his tongue along the top of her shoulder. Jesus, she tasted faintly of oranges, too. “The way your forehead creases when you think, the way you stretch in the morning then curl back into my side for five minutes more of sleep.” He pressed his hips forward, nestling his hardening length against the crease of her arse. “The way you open to me so sweetly even as you fight your responses with every fiber of your being. And always lose.”
Her resistance sent a deviant thrill through him. He hated the reason, that it came from a place of fear, but he couldn’t deny he loved the battle to make her succumb. The feeling of power it gave him when she finally submitted to her base needs.
He might be a very disturbed man.
Winnifred pressed her palms flat against the wall. She curled her fingers, scraping her nails against the wood. “I’m glad I please you,” she said evenly. Like she’d just served him a hot cup of tea.
He narrowed his eyes. Pushing back, he replaced his cock with his hand, running it over her round arse, squeezing the meaty part of the flesh, before moving lower.
He found her slick, and the animal in him howled in relief. His need to push, dominate, had found a willing target. She could try to hide behind her words all she wanted, but her body didn’t lie.
It liked his beast.
He yanked at his falls with his free hand, freeing his prick. “Spread your legs,” he ordered. “Push that sweet arse our for me.”
She took too long, her ideas of respectability getting in her way, no doubt, and Sin brought his hand smartly down on that arse he owned.
She whimpered and did as he said.
Sin stroked higher, circling her clit as he eyed his spoils. Winnifred was stretched out, her palms glued to the wall, her back arched, and her bum thrust back and up. Bending, he pressed his mouth to the base of her spine and licked his way up her backbone.
Her breath shuddered out of her lungs.
Sin’s cock wept. He wrapped his hand around it and squeezed. “Shall I take you like, mo ghrâdh? From behind, like a stag mounts his mate?”
She shuddered, and her head dropped forward to hang between her shoulders. “Whatever you wish.”
He thrust his finger into her opening. “That’s not what I want to hear. Give me something. Some damn reaction.”
“You want a reaction?” She pushed away from the wall and spun. Her elbow flew back and smacked him in the chest. “Oh!” She clapped her hand over her mouth.
The blow barely stung, the show of spirit only managing to make him harder. He gave her a dark smile.
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to strike you. But you keep pushing and pushing me.”
“Like this …?” Gently, he prodded her back against the wall.
Her eyes flared wide. She stepped forward. “Don’t do that.”
He pushed her again, this time a little harder.
She clenched her fists tight, her body quivering. “Stop it, I say.”
Crowding her against the wall, Sin put his mouth next to her ear. “Make me,” he whispered.
The need to provoke, to tear down her walls, was a craving he couldn’t resist. He gripped the base of her skull and twisted her head up. “In this bedroom, you can do whatever you want to me. Act however you will without consequences. So, tell me, love.” He nipped at her bottom lip, tugging at it until the swollen flesh scraped through his teeth and popped free. “When I push you so, what do you want to do about it?”
***
What did she want to do?
The question burrowed deep, ringing in her ears. What she wanted and what she ought to do were two very different things. She wanted to feel like she had for that amazing moment in the valley. She clenched her hands, her nails biting into her palms. She wanted to push him back, exorcise all her fears and frustrations in a decadently subversive manner by lashing out. But was he in earnest about wanting that from her?
Her heart pounded so hard her chest ached. She pressed her slick palms into her thighs. It was reckless. Foolish. But there was only one way to ascertain if she could trust him. She’d run numerous experiments by a system of trial and error. It was time to test her husband.
Tilting her chin up, she reached over his shoulder and yanked the black ribbon from his hair. The dark red locks swung loose, making him appear even more rakish. She dug her fingers into his hair and pulled him down to her mouth.
There. See how he liked it.
The growl that vibrated his lips just before they crashed into hers told he liked it very much indeed. His kiss pressed her head back against the wall, tore at her lips, and still she wanted more.
His need was so uninhibited. So raw. Her hands shook. He was everything she could only ever dream she could be.
And he wanted her to join him in the darkness.
She nipped at his lip, cautiously. waiting to gauge his reaction before pressing further.
He bit her back, twice as hard, and a shiver raced down her spine.
She pushed on his shoulders.
Sin slapped her thigh.
Wetness pooled at her core even as memories crashed through her brain. Every time she’d swallowed down her words, plastered a serene expression across her face. All the fear she’d buried deep, the terror that she might be sent away. The anger. The disgust that more hadn’t been done to help her mother. It overflowed, like storm water over a dam.
The pressure grew until it had nowhere left to go. Her emotions burst.
Her fingers tore at his flesh, wanting to claw their way inside. Her hands slapped at his chest, his abdomen, anywhere they could reach. Her lips bruised his, uncaring that they were being battered in return. Any sense of propriety, of measure, was lost. There was only a primal need to mark, to possess, to be possessed.
Sin tore his mouth from hers and sucked on her neck. He pressed his arm on the wall beside her, and she turned her head to sink her teeth into his bicep.
He hissed and yanked his arm free.
Banding an arm around her waist, he threw her face down on the bed. She pushed onto one arm, but his hard body hit her back, pressing her back down.
He pinned her easily. He licked and sucked across her back and shoulders as her struggles grew weaker and weaker, her strength no match against his. He had free rein to score his teeth into her flesh, to pull on her hair, the sharp stings in her scalp a reminder she was his to enjoy. Free rein to take her any way he wanted.
And she melted.
He dominated her, fully, easily, his mastery over her so complete she had no qualms that he would truly hurt her. He knew just the right pressure to torment her without causing harm. And she knew no matter what she did, how she fought, she could never truly harm him, either. The blows that she landed, he allowed. Her attacks, he controlled.
Absolute freedom rushed through her veins. She could act out her most impetuous, irrational, wanton sensibilities, and he would absorb it all. Take every part of her.
He pushed her leg up, until her knee was cocked up by her waist. The rough wool of his trousers scraped against her bottom and the inside of her thighs. Sin grabbed the back of her neck, pinning her in place, and notched the crown of his length at her entrance. He slid in on one hard stroke.
Winnifred moaned. He slowly pulled from her, his cock dragging along her nerve endings, before pounding back in. An agonizingly unhurried retreat; a fierce and triumphant hammering home. She needed more, faster, but she couldn’t raise her hips to meet him. She reached behind her, found the loose fabric of his falls, and tugged at him to pick up his speed.
Sin snarled and slapped her hand away.
Gripping her hip, he rutted into her. A steady stream of Gaelic rumbled from her husband’s lips, the foreign words making him sound savage. Feral.
She’d brought Sinclair to this. Just as he drove her past her limits, she’d done the same to him. The realization made her feel powerful. Desired. Accepted.
Sin understood what she needed when she hadn’t even known it herself.
The pads of his fingers dug into her neck, hard enough to leave bruises. Come morning, she’d be bruised all over Marked by her marquess.
His grunts filled the chamber. His thrusts shook even that huge bed. Winnifred held onto the coverlet, the muscles in her core coiling tighter. The friction against her sensitive flesh almost overwhelming.
Sin leaned down and licked a path across her shoulder blade. “I love how you taste.” His voice was a growl. “How you smell. It’s intoxicating. I could get drunk doing nothing but fucking this tight little pussy.”
“Oh God.” She clenched her eyes shut.
He chuckled softly. “I own this sweet pussy, don’t I?”
“Yes.” She gasped, her breath going short. Her channel clutched at his manhood, the beginnings of her crisis fluttering to life.
He yanked her head back. “Not yet. You don’t get to finish until I say.”
“Please.” Tears filled her eyes, the need to release so great. “Please. I need …” Her voice trailed off as her lungs squeezed tight. There was no way she could fight this. She was moments from bliss and no demand of his would stop it.
“All right.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Let go. Squeeze that pretty pussy all over my cock.”
With a cry, she did.
Her body stiffened, her limbs shook. Wave after wave of pleasure crashed through her, the release rivaling her flood of emotions.
She could bare herself, explore the darker emotions she’d always kept hidden. With Sin, she didn’t have to hide.
Tears burned her eyes. She had never felt so undone in her life.
Sin ground into her, groaning. A spurt of warmth flooded her core before he pulled out. Wet heat splashed across her bottom and lower back.
Another mark.
Branding her as his.
He lowered his body, his chest brushing her shoulders. His breath came hot and quick against her ear. “Know this. Whatever you do. Whatever you say. I’m never letting you go.”
Her body sagged into the mattress. And, for the first time ever, Winnifred let herself cry in front of another person.