The Fox: in his Henhouse (The Dubious Mates #1)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

C ome morning Charles was roused from sleep to feel Lord Wellesley’s manhood pressed hard against her backside, as it had been nearly every morning she’d awoken in his bed. Only this morning she knew he’d not hesitate. This morning he’d make good on past threats, which made her shiver with anticipation.

She could not believe how much she’d enjoyed him last night.

Wellesley drew her to him, then slipped a hand between her thighs where she was wet still from desire. He’d taken her more than once and he’d take her again, it seemed, with one thrust entering from behind this time, the position new to her, the sensation shocking. He stroked her with alarming skill as she cried out in surprise, making him press only harder, deepening his entry, his breath at the nape of her neck soon nipping skin as he grew in size.

Before she knew it, Lord Wellesley had rolled her onto all fours, arse up like a mare in heat, and proceeded to enjoy her thus.

Charles was overwhelmed by the onslaught of emotion clamoring in her breast, for to be mounted like an animal brought lewd and loathsome images to mind. She battled her body’s panic, at war with her shame and pleasure, appalled at passions she should not—could not—accept.

***

Wells had reacted instinctively, half aslumber and half aroused, for having found a warm body in his bed, he’d done what any red-blooded man would. Yet it was only after he’d spent himself across his mistress’s backside, collapsing onto the bed beside her, that he realized the gravity of his error. He’d promised to go slow with this girl, yet already he abused her.

He let out a snort of irritation at himself, afraid almost to look at her lying there beside him with her eyes shut tight, breathing hard still from exertion. She lay curled away from him, hugging her knees to herself in obvious distaste.

Fuck , he silently swore to himself.

“Charles.” He ventured to touch her; at least she did not flinch. “Charles, I am . . . I forgot myself in my state of half-sleep.”

Still she said nothing.

“Are you alright, girl?” he gruffly asked.

She sniffed. “I’m fine.”

She did not sound fine.

“I am sorry I . . .”

“Only you’re not,” she said, hurt. “You are not truly sorry ever, sir. It is not within a lord’s purview to be sorry, and so I cannot . . . I cannot even hold you accountable for such base and beastly actions.”

This, more than anything, struck a nerve. For his apology had been genuine and she’d dismissed him as if . . .

Realization dawned as to why this woman maddened him so. She did not, in truth, defer. Even in deference she remained defiant. Even in apology she oozed disdain. She did not believe him worthy of respect or trust. She held him to some impossibly high standard of behavior he would never be able to live up to, a standard no man could, and yet a part of him desperately, miserably almost, wanted to.

Wells remained sunk in his thoughts as his mistress stewed beside him, clearly appalled by his rough treatment. He hadn’t meant to be rough, damn it. Well, maybe he had. He’d enjoyed her, after all. He liked things rough but reminded himself she was new to all of this, newer than new as he’d only just taken her maidenhood last night. Twice.

Bloody hell , he swore again.

And then he huffed with disgust, angry at himself as much as at her. He should have sent to London for a mistress instead, someone he’d not have to train. Someone less prickly and more pliant. A woman from whom he could simply take what he liked, when he liked. Someone who . . .

A face swam before his eyes from his past, followed by the face of his betrothed, whom he’d by no means loved, but whom he’d settled on. And here he had a girl at his utter command, slave to his physical desires as punishment for her crime, and he had no idea why he couldn’t enjoy her more.

“I am sorry,” he insisted, “whether you believe me or not, Fox.” He took her in his arms, knowing no other way in which to prove himself to her, and began to stroke her hair.

She merely sighed into his chest, that small puff of air her sole response. Or so he thought.

“I beg your pardon, my lord, for my liberty of expression.” She stiffened in his arms. “I should not have been so bold.”

Yet this irked him only more—that she should foist some insincere apology now at him , when he knew damn well she wasn’t sorry for her words one bit.

He rolled her away from him. “Take it back.”

“What?” She looked surprised.

“Take back your half-wit apology.”

“But my lord, I?—”

“Do it.” He glared at her.

“No!” She glared back.

Wells pinned her down, looming over her as he repeated the order that was now a threat. “You mock my own sincerity with an apology so hollow it rings yet in my ears.” His will hardened. “Take. It. Back.”

***

“You take yours back!” Charles threw at him and then flinched as his face came to within an inch of her own, eyes boring into her skull.

“Do you really want to test me, girl?” he snarled. “Or would you like me to be rougher still with you? Because I can, and will, if you continue to defy my direct orders.” His tone and his grip on her wrists told her she should stop— must stop—before he hurt her more.

Only Charles could not seem to stop herself.

“I have no power at all, my lord.” Her voice hardened, though her heart galloped in her breast. “You’ve already shown yourself rough, sir—cruel, even. What difference should it make were I to beg, apologize, or accede to your demands? You may own my body at present, Lord Wellesley, but you will not ever own my soul.”

And rather than strike her, his lips crushed her in a ferocious, bruising kiss, his mouth traveling down her neck to suckle her skin almost painfully, teeth and tongue ravaging her flesh till she was shaking beneath his assault. It was as if he demanded full ownership of her, insisting some part of her acquiesce and furious that she did not. His mouth traveled lower, nipping flesh until he splayed her legs and landed there between her thighs, his tongue far from tender, but far from brutal too. He was making her body relent, if not her soul, and Charles realized with damning clarity this was how he’d make her pay for her insolence.

Every fiber of her being was aflame, every bodily nerve lit with a burn, a hunger, she did not know she possessed. He was feasting on her core, bringing her to a point of no return, and though she fought with all her might to resist this man’s effect she could not. He owned her entirely. He controlled her every physical response, the sounds emanating from her alien even to herself as she pleaded for mercy, yet he would not relent. He brought her steadily ever closer, yet never to release, and when at last she wept outright, begging for absolution, he merely pulled away to stare down at her reduced and ravished state, then took his body from her.

Charles had never felt so humiliated in her life.

***

Wells turned from his tortured mistress, leaving her precisely as he wished: desolate. Because a woman denied completion was a woman he could control.

He did not look at her again until he had fully dressed. And only when he saw the swollen tears streaming down her face did he tremble a little at what he had done, for she looked broken, all the fight in her gone. He’d wanted her surrender, and he’d achieved it. Whether she would hate him now forever was a possibility he’d not considered in his rage.

Wells paused as a voice in his head whispered he should remedy this quick, else find himself a different mistress quicker, because Cuthbert had been right: This woman would only give him hell.

He abruptly sat back down at the edge of the bed and put his face in his hands, muttering “ Bollocks” under his breath, paralyzed by what to do or say next. He heard sheets rustle in response and imagined the ache she must feel in her loins, the searing hunger. No doubt she’d been unaware such a lurid act could even be done.

Shame overtook him. Her words did not help.

“I take it back, my lord,” she gulped, voice cracking. “You have proven your point, sir, for it is true I am no more sincere in apology than you.” Her breath stuttered. “My body deceives me, sir, it fails me yet again. It is a cruel trick God played on Eve, to make her the physically weaker sex. A bitter, awful trick.”

For the second time that morning Wells swept her into his arms and cradled her to him, kissing the top of her head as he loosed a string of curse words into her hair. She froze in his arms yet he did not let up, continuing to mumble passionate, incoherent nonsense into her scalp, the words sounding strange and strangled even to himself. She allowed his caresses without response, until at last he felt her soften in his arms.

His mouth left her scalp to murmur in her ear, “Your master is a fool and a fiend, Fox. Though he tries to improve, he fails again and again. But I wish to be better, do better. Truly it is my honest intent. It is why I came to Cumberland: to be a better man, to leave all that is ugly behind me in London. Only I see I have not. I bring London’s ugliness with me.”

She stilled in his arms, remaining stiff as a board, while inside his breast Wells’s heartbeat spiraled. He should let her go, only he didn’t want to. He wanted this woman’s fealty and respect. Shockingly, he wanted her affection and trust. He didn’t know why he desired that which he did not deserve, yet he did. Forever, it felt, he was in want .

“Can you stand me yet, Fox? Can you learn to like me still, if but a little, after this?”

When she did not answer he comforted himself by inhaling the warm, earthy smell of her, burrowing his nose in her hair. “Stay, Fox, and I will try harder, I swear. Stay but longer and I shall make it up to you, Charles. Only stay . . .”

“I have no choice but to stay, my lord.” She spoke in a quiet, small voice. “I am your prisoner until such day as you release me.”

Her words rang oddly false, though she spoke raw truth. He gripped her more tightly to him and shockingly felt her hand touch his cheek, that brief tenderness nearly rending him in two.

He kissed her, swift and sweet. He kissed her nose, her cheeks, her forehead. He did not attack her with kisses as he had before. This time he was deliberate and determined to assuage her fears for good. He felt a shiver run through her as he laid himself beside her in the bed, spooning her gently beneath the covers as he shut his eyes tight.

Wells willed himself back to the night before, to another beginning and a very different end. He willed them both back to sleep.

***

Charles left his lordship snoring lightly in his bed to hurriedly dress. She needed distance from Lord Wellesley—from all that had just transpired. She needed time and space in which to think.

She also had a job to do.

She went about her duties in a fog, her mind a maze of contradictions, not to mention the fact that she was sore. Three times he’d had her, and she felt him still. She wanted a bath: a long, hot soak to ease the ache between her legs and the greater ache in her middle. How this man could be so tender and terrible at once defied all reason. A man could not be both, could he? A man must choose his path, must he not? Yet her mind whispered no , no man or woman was ever forged so simply. Each held light and dark within as each struggled to command the wayward impulse of the soul.

Charles winced at her own recent actions—she was no paragon of virtue herself—and recalled Lord Wellesley’s attempt at apology. She had scarce believed her ears, to hear him speak like mere mortal gadgie, no longer heir to a dukedom. It was the closest to sincere a lord like him might come, she thought, remembering how his lips had left an imprint at every place they’d landed, as if branding her flesh. Yet despite her mind having screamed at her to flee— run now, fast! —she’d simply stilled in his arms. Her heart had slowed, her gut had eased. And then, without thinking, she’d reached her hand to caress him.

What the devil was wrong with her?

Charles renewed her scrubbing with vigor, polishing the surface of a particularly dull marble table in an attempt to clear her thoughts. She was still furious at Lord Wellesley but equally livid at herself for not keeping her mouth shut. Had she simply bitten her tongue, he’d never have reacted as he had. She was lucky he’d not beaten her again. And yet the punishment he had meted out—the searing intimacy of it, the manner in which she’d been so unequivocally reduced . . . Charles flushed to recall the act, knowing her response had been just as base and wanton as his.

Lord Wellesley had made her recognize how readily lust could control a body— any body, her own body—for she was no less guilty than he of caving to carnality.

The thought only tortured Charles more.