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and longed for.

      But I would die before I let him know that he had taught me more in those wild, hot moments than I had learned in a lifetime.

      The reality was, I thought about what a wedding night with this man might entail and I...thought I might die, full stop.

      I knew that was melodramatic, but I indulged in it anyway as I made my way through the shadowy recesses of my father’s house. Why had I gone to Javier in the first place? Why had I been so foolish? What had I imagined might happen? I wanted to sink into a bath and wash it all away, let the water soothe me and hide me. I simply wanted to be back in my rooms again, safe and protected.

      Because a deep, feminine wisdom I hadn’t known resided there inside me whispered these final hours before my wedding might be the last bit of safety I would know.

      I knew too much now, and none of it things I’d wanted to learn. I had found a magic and a fire, yes. But now I knew how easily I surrendered. I knew how my body betrayed me.

      I knew, worst of all, that I wanted things I was terribly afraid only Javier Dos Santos could give me.

      And I wasn’t paying sufficient attention when I slipped out from the servants’ hall. I was usually far more careful. I usually listened for a good few minutes, then used the carefully placed eyeholes to be certain that no one was in sight before I slipped back into the house’s main corridors.

      But Javier had done something to me. He had used my own body against me, as if he knew what it could do better than I did. He had made me feel as if I belonged to him instead of to myself. Even with all this distance between us, clear on the other side of the rambling old manor house, I could feel his hands on me. Those powerful arms closed around me. His harsh, cruel mouth while it mastered mine.

      That was the only excuse I could think of when I stepped out and found myself face-to-face with my father.

      For a long, terrible moment, there was nothing but silence between us and the far-off sound of rain against the roof.

      Dermot Fitzalan was neither tall nor particularly physically imposing, but he made up for both with the scorn he held for literally every person alive who was not him.

      To say nothing of the extra helping he kept in reserve for me.

      “Pray tell me that I have taken leave of my senses.” His voice was so cold it made the ancient stone house feel balmy in comparison. I felt goose bumps prickle to life down my arms. “I beg you, Imogen—tell me that I did not witness an heiress to the Fitzalan fortune emerge from the servants’ quarters like an inept housemaid I would happily dismiss on the spot.”

      I had imagined myself brave, before. When I had taken off on a whim and found the man my father had chosen for me. When I had tangled with a monster and walked away—changed, perhaps, but whole.

      But I realized as I stood there, the focus of my father’s withering scorn as I so often was, that when it counted I wasn’t the least bit brave at all.

      “I thought I heard a noise,” I lied, desperately. “I only ducked my head in to see what it was.”

      “I beg your pardon.” My father looked at me the way he always did, as if the sight of me was vaguely repulsive. “Why should a lady of this house, a daughter of the Fitzalan line, feel it is incumbent upon her to investigate strange noises? Are you unable to ring for assistance?”

      “Father—”

      He lifted a hand. That was all.

      But that was all that was needed. It silenced me as surely as if he’d wrapped that hand around my throat and squeezed. The hard light in his dark gaze suggested it was not outside the realm of possibility.

      “You are an enduring disappointment to me, Imogen.” His voice was cold. Detached. And I already knew this to be so. There was no reason it should have felt like an unexpected slap when he took every opportunity to remind me how often and comprehensively I let him down. And yet my cheeks stung red as if he’d actually struck me. “I do not understand this...willfulness.”

      He meant my hair. He meant those curls that had never obeyed anyone. Not him and not me, certainly. Not the relentless nuns, not my old governesses, not the poor maids he hired to attack me with their formulas and their straight irons to no avail.

      “You might almost be pretty, if distressingly rough around the edges, were it not for that mess you insist on flaunting.”

      My father glared at my curls with such ferocity that I was almost surprised he didn’t reach out and try to tear them off with his hand.

      “I can’t help my hair, Father,” I dared to say in a low voice.

      It was a mistake.

      That ferocious glare left my hair and settled on me. Hard.

      “Let me make certain you are aware of how I expect this weekend to go,” he said, his voice lowering in that way of his that made my stomach drop. “In less than twenty-four hours you will be another man’s problem. He will be forced to handle these pointless rebellions of yours, and I wish him good luck. But you will exit this house, and my protection, as befits a Fitzalan.”

      I didn’t need to know what, specifically, he meant by that. What I knew about my father was that whenever he began to rant on about the things that befit a member of this family, it always ended badly for me.

      Still, I wasn’t the same girl who had foolishly wandered off in search of my husband-to-be. I wasn’t the silly creature who had sat on my own settee staring out at the rain and dreaming of a stable boy. She felt far away to me now, a dream I had once had.

      Because Javier Dos Santos had branded me as surely as if he’d pressed hot iron against my skin, and I could still feel the shock of it. The burn.

      “What do you suggest I do?” I asked, with the sort of spirit I knew my father would find offensive. I couldn’t seem to help myself. “Shave it all off?”

      My father bared his teeth and I shrank back, but it was no use. My back came up hard against the wall. There was nowhere for me to go.

      And in any event, it was worse if I ran.

      “I suspect you are well aware that I wish no such thing, Imogen.” If possible, my father’s voice dripped with further disdain. “I take it you imagine that your marriage will provide you with some measure of freedom. Perhaps you view it as an escape. If you know what is good for you, girl, you will readjust that attitude before tomorrow morning. Your new husband might not be of the blood, but I assure you, he expects total and complete obedience in all things.”

      “I never said—” I began.

      My father actually smiled. It was chilling. “In fact, Dos Santos is nothing but a common, rutting creature who handles any and all conflict with the deftness you might expect from an uncivilized beast. I shudder to think how he will choose to handle these displays of yours.”

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