Bound To You: Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Blanche

White noise rings in my ears.

            I drag in heavy breath after heavy breath, left palm centered on my diaphragm, the right settling over my heart. Like that’ll actually be enough to ground me when there’s no chance of outrunning the earth-shattering entreaty John just laid at my feet.

            Set me free.

            Set me free.

            Set me—

            “You’re a prince,” I whisper above the ringing, snatching a fistful of my chiffon blouse. “There’s no saving you from the fate you were handed at birth, John. You’re as good as stuck.”

            His blue eyes, so hot, so fierce, move over my face. “Rebellion doesn’t mean walking away from the Crown.”

            “Then what do you want?”

            “A life without artifice.”

            I blink, startled.

            “A life,” he goes on, dropping his hand from my face to grip the desk, “where the world feels safe and comfortable when they sleep at night. I’ll give them that illusion. Every smile, every moment where I swallow the truth behind clenched teeth and play the gentleman prince—all of it executed with single-minded purpose to keep the public out of my affairs.”

            “And privately?” I prompt, softly.

            He says nothing.

            The silence stretches on, drowning out the ringing until I’m only aware of my own heartbeat. Swallowing past the knot of uncertainty in my throat, I try again. “What do you want behind closed doors?”

            As though expecting me to disappear, my husband presses his palm directly over my left hand. Together, we feel the rhythm of my breathing. In, out. In, out. Too fast, too needy. On the third inhalation, he finally speaks. “I want to give your wings flight.”

            “This marriage has clipped—”

            “Tell me a dream,” he says, dipping his thumb under the hem of my blouse, “or a fantasy. Something you’ve told no one else.”

            Dreams are for those who can afford to dance with whimsy; fantasies for those who succumb to the obsession of wishful thinking. In the years since Mum left, I’ve pursued only one goal: saving the funds to leave Father behind. All dreams were abandoned in the dusty cobwebs of my youth, quashed under the burden of survival and forgotten with the passage of time.

            Embarrassment burns in my throat. “I have none.”

            “We all dream.” The thumb under my shirt boldly wanders north. Centimeter by centimeter, the slow, determined glide exposes bare flesh that tingles under my husband’s expert touch. It’s not seduction, I don’t think, but rather an annihilation of my senses until I’m circling John’s wrist and squeezing tight. He doesn’t stop, though. Not until his fingertips are splayed under the twin weights of my breasts, his hand spanning the width of my ribcage. “What burns within you?” he asks, dropping his voice to a husky murmur. “What sets you on fire, wife, when everything else is cold as ice?”

            The truth, ugly and destructive, sprints for freedom: “Power.”

            He makes a rough sound in his throat. “Explain.”

            “I-I can’t.”

            “No artifice behind closed doors. Remember?”

            “It’s not that . . .” Scraping my teeth over my bottom lip, I shake of my head. “It’s—”

            “Do you enjoy putting others down?”

            My eyes go wide. “What?”

            “Just answer the question.”

            “I’ve spent my entire life being berated by my father. I may have grown thick skin over the years, but I would never want to make someone feel less than. I don’t even know how you could ask—”

            “Is it money, then? The prestige?” The calloused pad of his forefinger slips upward, over the front band of my bra, to my breastbone. “Does it make your cunt wet when you think about fancy yachts and grand countryside estates and the tiara you wore when you said I do this morning?”

            Ignoring his crude language, I hold his gaze with narrowed eyes. “If you really think that about me, then we’re doomed before we’ve even begun.”

            The flash of satisfaction in his expression is lightning quick, there and gone again before I can even begin to pin it down. Like the wolf he’s made my namesake, he tilts his head to the side and nudges my nose with his own. The gesture is affectionate, tender; the masculine fingers that pinch my nipple through my lace bra, then twist, is anything but.

            Hot, liquid fire pours through my veins, and I jerk back with a gasp.

            “Wrap your hand around my throat.”

            “John,” I breathe.

            “Wrap your hand on my throat,” he repeats, his voice hard, “and take your revenge.”

            “But you’ve done nothing wrong.”

            Heat suffuses my limbs as those fingers pluck my nipple again, tugging relentlessly on the sensitive peak. A shiver drives down the pearls of my spine, cracking open something foreign that I can’t even begin to recognize, let alone name. A lick of fire, a stretch of fury, a breath of truth.

            The sight of my small, pale hand encircling John’s neck nearly brings me to my knees.

            But not even that can compare to the glory of his wolfish grin. Blue eyes home in on my face, the bright irises gleaming with tightly leashed control. “You can hide from the world,” he murmurs, pressing his hand flat over my fluttering heartbeat, “but you can’t hide from me.”

            Reflexively, my palm tightens over his Adam’s apple. “W-what are you saying?”

            “Any other man would expect you to kneel while he stands above you. He’d strip the light from your eyes and the ferocity from your claws. You’d shatter under his touch, for no other reason than for him to see your soul fucking wither.” John’s grin is a dangerous blade of white in his handsome face. “But he’d be wrong to break your spirit because there would be no greater tragedy than seeing you fall from grace to become just like everyone else.”

            Before I can even edge out a reply, he’s reversed our positions.

            My breath leaves me on a sharp exhale as I’m bent ruthlessly over the walnut desk. The world turns murky on my periphery, the shadows dancing wildly like Lucifer himself has come to usher me into the realm of debauchery and chaos. And the big body pressing into me from behind?

            Hot.

            Possessive.

            Dominant.

            John’s voice is a silken rumble at my ear: “We’re two alphas locked in a stalemate, Blanche. We both toe the line of war and willingly step into the fray, to hell with the rest of the world. When I get on my knees for you, it’s awe that’ll drive me to the ground at your feet. And whenever you look down at that gold wedding band on your finger, you’ll do it with a smile.”

            “Because I’m so happy to have you as my husband?” I toss out, turning my head so that our lips nearly brush.

            “No.”

            “Then why?”

            “Because from this moment forward,” he growls tightly, “I’ll always encourage that flame in your belly. Every dream you have, every fantasy, will be brought to me so that I can cement it in reality. Together, we’ll fly free of our gilded cage, little wolf. I promise you that.” And then, without giving me the chance to scamper away, he fuses our lips together in a collision of power that shatters me completely.

            John’s kiss isn’t poetry on the page.

            It’s not soft or wondrous, romantic or forgiving. No little girl sits in her bedroom at night, dreaming of a kiss like this. The fairytale prince has retreated to the shadows to make room for the villain, and I feel every powerful line of his frame rocking against my own. The hard ridge of his cock pressed to my bottom; the bands of his arms locked on either side of my hips so that I have no chance of wriggling to somewhere far, far away from him.

            He eats at my mouth as if he’s been starved of my taste for his entire life.

            To my everlasting horror, a keening cry rises in my throat. Wanton, desperate. It doesn’t sound anything like me but then again, I have never felt this good. Before I can stop myself, I swing my ass flush with his groin, circling, circling, circling, just to feel the length of him against my aching core.

            “There you are,” he praises against my lips, moving slightly so he can press a hand to my spine and hold me down. With a nip at my parted lips, he eases the sting with another bruising kiss before pulling back. “Do it again. Let me watch you.”

            My heart jolts inside my chest at the gravel-pitched command. It’s as if he’s threaded a hook down my spine and made a marionette doll out of me, prodding me into obeying his every command. I arch into his touch with my head thrown back. Blond strands fall loose from my bun, curtaining my vision as I dance my fingers across the desk and stretch my bottom back to give him exactly what he’s demanded of me—a show, an experience.

            Sensuality at its most carnal.

            His hips shift forward to meet my backward thrust. “Fucking gorgeous,” he grunts, palming the curve of my ass as his fingers sink beneath the waistband of my trousers. “Now make me beg for you.”

            I pause.

            Look over my shoulder at the man who’ll stand beside me for the rest of my life. His expression is grim, the black of his pupils blown open with hunger. I slide my gaze down, down, down, to see the way he kneads my flesh, the muscles in his corded forearm flexing and releasing with the movement.

            He wants me, I realize.

            Even more, he wants the power exchange that exists between us like a coiled wire.

            Where he pushes, I pull. Where I shove, he tugs. Back and forth, over and under, until there is no delineating where my desire ends and his begins. It’s the struggle for dominance he craves, and he’s inviting me into the ring to play.

            I lick my lips.

            His reaction doesn’t disappointment.

            The grip on my ass tightens, as does the breadth of his shoulders. Those blue eyes lower to where he holds me captive, his fingers anchored on my waistband, the heel of his palm digging into the swell of my bottom. “You have five minutes,” comes his dark rasp, “to bend me to your will.”

            “Or what?” I whisper.

            His gaze snaps to mine. “Or I’ll strip you naked, tie your wrists behind your back, and make you mine just like this.”

            I swallow the whimper threatening to escape and turn away before he can read the fervent need in my expression. Palming the desk, I push myself upward and heave a hard breath when John retreats to allow me space to move around. He’s giving me power over him to wield as I see fit—just as he did at the ballet—and I’ll be damned if I let the moment pass me by because I hesitated for a beat too long.

            Needing fortification, I reach for the glass tumbler.

            John’s voice stops me before I can down the amber liquid: “A whisky that rare is meant to be savored, little wolf.”

            I glance over at him.

            “Dalmore 62,” he says, dipping his chin to indicate the bottle that I abandoned on the far corner of his desk. “Only twelve bottles were created that year. Another decade or two and it’ll fetch me a pretty price.”

            “So, you’d planned to let it sit for another twenty years just to make a profit?”

            His lips tug to the side. “I considered it.”

            “How very entrepreneurial of you,” I murmur, feeling the prongs of inspiration strike deep. Setting the tumbler aside, I bring my fingers to the pearl button at the base of my throat. With a gentle twist, the button pops free, and the chiffon loosens its chokehold. I move to the next. “Does the bottle lose value once it’s opened?”

            “Blanche . . .”

            “I’ll admit, it feels almost blasphemous now that I’ve had a glass. But I’d say it’s already too late for your bank account to recoup its future loss.”

            One by one the buttons slide free and the two halves of my blouse billow open to reveal my bra and the gently curved landscape of my stomach. John’s mouth presses into a flat line and, down by his sides, his big hands curl and flex open with tension.

            I smile.

            Allowing my blouse to fall from my shoulders, the gossamer fabric gathers at my bent elbows as I settle against the desk and lean over to dip two fingers in the whisky. The liquid is warmer now than it was, but I still shudder when I drag down my bra and circle my nipple with Dalmore’s rarest scotch whisky.

            “What are you . . .” John trails off, the words twisting and turning into something guttural, something more animalistic than human when I repeat the gesture on my other breast. “Blanche,” he growls.

            Another dip of my fingers.

            A line of whisky that’s drawn from my sternum, down past my belly button, to the waistband of my trousers. Shimmying the fabric down over my hips, I step out of the material and kick it to the side. The last time I was bare before this man, shadows hugged my figure and the gown I wore hid the rest.

            There’s no hiding now.

            Afternoon sunlight exposes the curve of my waist and the scar on my right knee from my one and only attempt of escaping my house when I was just a child. Pale skin glows with vitality that captures my husband’s attention and doesn’t set him free, not when he watches me inch my knickers down my legs and hop onto the desk, not when he stares, consumed, by the sight of my wet fingers trailing over the sensitive skin of my inner thighs.

            I paint myself in his finest whisky.

            I dip my fingers in the hollow of my pubic bone and sink my teeth into my bottom lip when I circle my clitoris once, twice, and feel the strain of desire ripple down my spine. “A woman ought to be savored,” I murmur, lifting my chin to meet eyes so dilated that the blue has been swallowed entirely by black, “and here I am, husband, bathed in your rarest whisky.”

            His big shoulders heave.

            Those fists clench and tremble.

            I lean forward. “Will you beg for me, John? Will you settle for just one taste when we both know how much you want to devour me whole—”

            He moves before I can anticipate the attack, my wrists pinned to the desk beside my head, his powerful frame snug between my spread thighs. The air outside the train whistles sharply as the car follows the curve of the tracks, but there is nothing but this moment, nothing but this man.

            His tongue is a lash at my nipple, circling, tugging with his teeth. He drinks the whisky from my skin with a guttural groan at the back of his throat, his fingers flexing around my wrists. Every pull of his mouth against my flesh is punishment for pushing him to the edge, and then shoving him right off the jagged cliff.

            I feel no shame.

            He rolls his hips against my core. Drags his lips down my stomach to swirl his tongue in the splash of whisky caught in my belly button. Pleasure spirals through my limbs as he lowers down, down, down to sample a taste of Dalmore 62 off the very center of me.

            “Delicious,” comes his harsh grunt.

            And then he’s releasing my wrists to snag the tumbler off the desk. I watch with air trapped in my lungs, my exhalation long forgotten, as he tips the glass and a stream of whisky splashes against my skin to run in rivulets of amber down over my folds, my clitoris.

            Gooseflesh turns up the fine hairs on my arms.

            I open my mouth to whisper John’s name but only a cry emerges when he sucks on the sensitive bead at the hood of my sex, stubbled cheeks hollowing, his blue eyes locked on my face. The whisky is gone from my skin but has turned on a fire beneath us both. And I am burning from the inside out.

            Too hot.

            Too incendiary.

            Too much of this one man and the power that’s quickly changed hands once more.

            Tumbler abandoned on the desk, John prods at my entrance with a finger, then two. There’s a hiss of pain in my spine when he plunges them deep, but any unease is swept away when he curls his fingers and brushes something that steals the breath right from my lungs.

            “Yes,” I whisper on a hard pant, “oh, God, yes. Please. Again.”

            He’s gone from me a moment later.

            When I start to protest, it’s the sound of John’s belt buckle that stops me in my tracks. “You’ll come with me inside you,” he rasps, shoving his trousers down to his thighs and exposing the thick length of his cock bobbing against his flat abdomen, “and I’ll have you begging for me when I do.”

            I swallow, hard.

            “It will hurt,” I say, the words tumbling out like a question.

            His blue eyes burn into mine as he shifts me upward onto my elbows, his erection pressed to my core. “No dream is without a little pain, little wolf.”

            I squeeze my eyes shut. “Then do it.”

            Fingers grasp my chin in a light hold. “Watch me,” he orders, his voice like velvet, “and do not look away—not for even a second.”

            His deep baritone is a silk noose around my throat, and I bend to his demands like a sapling in the wind. My gaze finds his swollen flesh, nudging into my entrance, centimeter by centimeter. I spy the dark hair sprinkled over the back of his hand as he holds my left thigh wide, giving him room to play. Heat fissures through me and the pressure increases tenfold.

            Deep and deeper he presses inside, pausing only when I grit my teeth and let out a small whimper. Our wedding night has been transformed into something depraved and wanton enjoyed in the middle of the day. All of society would be horrified—but I decided a long time ago that society could go hang itself.

            I cling to John’s shoulders as he seats himself fully.

            I breathe through the discomfort and try to relish in the stretch of my flesh, the bite of heat that fans out from my center.

            And then, finally, my husband begins to move.

            Thrust after thrust, each groan that’s pulled from his lips bleeding into the next. The discomfort fades the second that he presses his thumb to my clitoris, rubbing the flesh in time with his increasing pace. A sharp breath pierces me, and all that tumbles out is the single syllable of his name.

            “John,” I chant, “John, John, John.”

             Dimly I realize that I’m rotating my hips against him, working him deeper, milking him with inner walls that clench and spasm under the onslaught of sensation. I’m as wild as he, my teeth nipping his bicep, fingers leaving pink imprints that will surely bruise over his wrists and forearms.

            Panting, I meet his gaze helplessly.

            He swoops in, catching my lips with his. He eagerly tastes me, every thrust of his tongue a pure mimicry of his cock between my legs. He takes what I offer willingly and then demands everything else that I have to give—pieces of my soul, the cracked edges of my heart, the flesh that trembles and shudders with every powerful drive of his hips.

            “Come on me, wife,” he growls against my mouth, “let go and fall right into the dream.”

            For the first time in this marriage, I obey my husband.

            With a tremor and a cry, I clutch his shoulders and climax. His palm lands gently on my collarbone and then he’s leaning me backward, planting a knotted fist beside my hip on the desk, and falling into the dream right alongside me. His hips churn, gusts of air fall from his parted lips, and the fingers gripping my thigh tighten and loose with every pump of his cock.

            “Heaven,” he groans, his head falling forward to watch the glide of his rigid length enter me again and again and again, “you feel like my wildest dream come true.” And when he comes not even a second later with a throaty roar, I’m hard-pressed to believe that I don’t feel the same.

            John is a prince, a future king.

            But in this moment, with his come coating my thighs as he once promised, he feels like my dirtiest secret, my darkest fantasy, and the one man who will break me for good.

___________

Someone sound the alarm because John & Blanche are straight fireeeee together! Good Lord.

I can’t wait to share Chapter Thirteen. More drama? Yes, yes I think so. Until then, feel free to leave a comment below or drop a line in BBA with spoiler alert added. I am here for you!