Bound To You: Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

Blanche

I ought to pummel his chest.

            Or scream, at least. Maybe drop to my knees and throw back my head and let the tears run down my cheeks. Any other woman in my position would. And I would do, too, I think, if it weren’t for the fact that I entered this marriage with my eyes wide open.

            John, the Prince of Wales, does not love me.

            I’m the bride he chose when told by the king that he had to marry. The woman he almost shagged in a theater teeming with London Society, no matter the fact that I have never—not in all my life—known such a thrill as I did that night with his face buried between my thighs. At the end of the day, he promised to unlock my gilded cage and set me free.

            He didn’t vow fidelity.

            He never spoke of love or devotion.

            Only a fool would dream of Prince Charming and happily ever after when faced with cold, brutal reality.

            As it stands, I am that fool.

            I bite down on the inside of my cheek and force myself to release John’s pullover. One by one, I straighten my fingers from my husband’s heat and drag myself back a step, as if the distance will minimize the damage to my heart. Hysterical laughter tickles the back of my throat. Was it only hours ago that I stood dressed in lingerie, hoping that he’d knock on the door that connected our separate bedrooms? Idiot. I want to forget every moment that I spent imagining him ripping the delicate lace with his teeth. And then I want to burn it all, damn the consequences.

            John lurches forward. “Blanche, please under—”

            “It would be easier,” I say, sidestepping his touch, “if I didn’t understand.”

            “Just listen to—”

            “You don’t love me, John.” When he visibly startles, his blue eyes popping wide, I swallow, hard. Then I put three paces between us, so I’m not tempted to wrap my arms around his waist and beg him to give us—give me—a chance. “You never lied and said that you did. You were honest—as honest as you could be, I guess—and now . . . Well, now I understand why you couldn’t marry the one you truly love.”

            Because the soul who owns my husband’s heart isn’t another woman but a man.

            “There’s so much you don’t understand.” Undaunted, he steps closer. “So much you can’t understand unless I tell you everything.”

            I don’t want to hear everything.

            I don’t bloody want to know if he took me to bed and imagined another set of eyes peering back. Or if, when he ran his palm down my spine before pulling me in for a devastating kiss, he wished that he’d be meeting a different pair of lips. It’s one thing . . .

            I slam my eyes shut.

            It’s one thing to know that he loves another—a nameless, shapeless woman who was left behind in the name of duty and the Crown—and something else entirely to realize that if the law allowed it, my husband would not have chosen me.

            I’m unwanted, as I’ve always been.

            Tears burn to the surface and I’m ashamed of the way I swipe at my cheek to erase the display of weakness. The fact is, I’ve managed to escape one cage only to find myself locked in the shell of another. One where my new husband pretends that I’m someone else for the rest of my life.

            When I open my eyes again, it’s to see John’s handsome features twist into something stark, ugly.

            “I disgust you,” he says.

            “No.”

            “You say so,” he bites off, “but your expression tells me otherwise.”

            Heart thudding fast, I shake my head. “John—”

            “Which is worse, do you think?” he drawls, prowling toward me with narrowed eyes. “That the mouth you’ve kissed has also tasted his? Or that I know the exact pitch of his groan when he comes all over my hand?”

             I don’t want to imagine it—the intimacy of my husband with another—but there’s no stopping the visual from exploding in technicolor. A hard, masculine body tucked in front of John’s, his hands clutching the edge of a desk while his head tips forward to feel the rush of my husband’s breath on the back of his neck. Wide shoulders heaving and his unbuttoned trousers tight around his thighs, and John . . . John may be a sensual creature who gets off on giving pleasure, but dominance runs hot through his blood.

            He would make Godwin beg.

            With one calloused hand wrapped around Godwin’s cock, and the other planted flat on the desk between Godwin’s trembling hands, John would surround him, his towering body a fortress with no possible escape.

            Resistance would be futile.

            As it is now.

            My back collides with the stone façade of Holyrood Abbey and I feel my lungs empty of all oxygen when John’s hands land flat on the wall behind me. I’m cornered, stuck, completely at his mercy—and he knows it as well as I do.

            “Have you nothing to say?” He ducks his head and drags his nose along the column of my throat, like he’s inhaling the very essence of me. “Or have I managed to frighten your fragile sensibilities?”

            I can’t breathe.

            At least, not enough to do anything more than whimper his name.

            A low growl barrels through his chest. “The man who was told to keep me safe has gone down on his knees for me. I’ve bent him over and I’ve held him astride, his cock hard and leaking while I worked myself in deep. I’ve come down his throat so many times, I can feel the pull of his mouth even now. And somewhere, little wolf . . . Somewhere, along the way, I lost the other half of my soul.”

            He captures my hands and pins them above my head.

            The rough stone abrades my skin.

            The wind rips through the fabric of my clothing.

            And, despite it all, I’m no more able to tear my gaze away from hot, searing blue than I can catch a thread of rage to throw back in his face. Because beneath the harsh slash of his mouth and the molten glare daring me to turn my back on him, I sense his anxiety looming like a shadowed beast.

            The Prince of Wales is terrified.

            “These hands have touched him,” he says gruffly, his thumb finding my pulse of my inner wrist as if to illustrate his point. “They’ve learned him, same as they’ve touched and learned you. Will you spit in my face now, wife? Will you look at me with contempt and see a faggot in place of your husband, as if I’m nothing more than—”

            “The only one showing contempt is you.”

            The hand holding my wrists spasms like I’ve caught him off guard.

            I don’t take pity.

            Thrusting up my chin, I snap, “Do you think me so ignorant of the world, Your Highness? Do you think that because I’ve been locked away by the earl, that I’m somehow unaware that there are men who love other men and women adored by other women?”

            “Blanche—”

            “I’m not disgusted by you and I’m not naïve. I know you didn’t live like a bloody monk before we married.” Breathing hard, I rip a hand away from his grip and punch him in the chest with the tip of my forefinger. “I’m hurt. And I’m angry with myself for even feeling this way—for wanting more of this, of us—when I know you only married me because you had no choice.”

            Blue eyes darken. “You’re wrong about that. No matter what you think, I chose—”

            “You didn’t.” I press my hand to my diaphragm. “If the law was different—if the world was different—you wouldn’t have picked me. I need to be okay with that. I need to understand that I’m not . . . that I’m not”—at the embarrassing prickle of tears, I squeeze my eyes shut—“who you want.”

            Dreadful silence descends upon us.

            I feel the push of his chest against mine as he pulls in a shallow breath before exhaling just as quickly. A late evening fog has rolled in. Goose bumps tease my flesh, and it takes every bit of inner strength to keep my attention rooted to John’s face, to the emotions that he can’t quite hide. Whatever his thoughts, they twist his lips and furrow his brow and harden his jaw.

            And then, softly, he asks, “Do you love me, Blanche?”

            Something indefinable swells in my chest. I want to put a hand to my heart, to ease the sudden ache there. John must sense my unease because he wraps a hand around my wrist and presses my palm to his chest instead.

            Beneath my fingers, I feel the quick pounding of his heart.

            “Answer the question,” he says in a low voice, his head bent to mine so that his lips brush my forehead. “Do you love me?”

            I want to say yes.

            For the sake of winning this argument, and appearing high and mighty, I want to lie and tell him that my heart has been his since the first moment we met almost two months ago. Right now, right here, I would love nothing more than to see him shattered.

            You are not that person.

            The earl is the liar in my family, the fraud. Long ago, I promised myself that I would never be like him. Which means that as much as I want to put myself in a position to make John feel little and small for breaking my trust, I can’t.

            Damn it all.

            No, damn him.

            “No,” I mutter, snapping my gaze down to where he holds my hand against his heart, “I don’t love you.”

            I hoped to.

            I want to, but I don’t. Not yet.

            Perhaps, after tonight, not ever.

            Firm fingers grasp my chin and lift, forcing me to return my gaze to those flame-blue eyes that I know will haunt me for the rest of my life. His touch softens, his thumb tracing the seam of my lips. “I have known Henry Godwin all my life. He’s been my bodyguard and friend, my mentor and lover. If you were to have asked me a week ago if I loved him, I would have said no.”

            “Why?” I ask.

            “Because I thought . . . because I believed—” Dark strands fall over his temple when he shakes his head fiercely, as if he can’t get the words out.

            Or perhaps because he doesn’t know the right words to use in the first place.

            “You can say it,” I tell him, feeling his heart race beneath my palm. “We’re already broken. Nothing you tell me now will do any more damage.”

            “We aren’t broken, little wolf.”

            I feel a sharp pull in my chest. “Aren’t we?”

            “No, we aren’t.” His hand slips to the base of my skull, his touch somehow gentle but still unbelievably dominant. “The way I see it, we’re standing at a fork in the road with two choices before us.”

            “Annulment or divorce, you mean.”

            “No,” he growls. “I asked if you loved me when I already I knew the answer. You don’t. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t sense your want or that I don’t feel it in return. I crave you, wife. I crave you in a way that I feel down to my fucking marrow. It’s the wildness in you, the strength that irons your spine. You look at me like I’m a man worth saving.”

            “You are. You’re good—”

            “If I were good, I’d grant you the divorce.” The palm cupping my head fists my hair and pulls sharply to the right, exposing my bare neck to him. At my gasp, he ducks down and nips the juncture between my neck and shoulder. Once, twice. Hard enough that blood spirals down to my core. Then, on a hoarse rasp, “I’m not a good man, Blanche. Try to walk away and I’ll shackle you to my bed for the rest of your bloody life.”

            Dominant. Possessive.

            My nostrils flare. “So, you want to be selfish and have us both.”

            “At least I’m honest.”

            At his tone, I let out a quiet hiss. “Are you implying that I’m not?”

            His tongue needs no words when his gaze does all the talking for him. Those blue eyes slowly rake over me, starting at my lips and stopping at my chest. In my bulky jumper, there’s nothing to see—no swell of my breasts, no telltale sign of my nipples hardening beneath his intensity—but he seems to take satisfaction in the rapid rise and fall of my shoulders, the way that I can’t seem to suck in enough air.

            Heat spears my cheeks. “If you’re thinking something, just say it.”

            “You blushed when I spoke of me and Henry.”

            I open my mouth, then snap it shut. “It was unexpectedly descriptive,” I mutter, averting my gaze. “I was . . . I was—”

            “Embarrassed?”

            “Yes.”

            “I didn’t mistake you for a liar.”

            That earns my attention.

            Straightening my shoulders, I narrow my eyes on the man who vowed to stand by my side until death do us part. “You’re going to call me the liar when it’s you who couldn’t be honest about how you feel about Godwin? The sheer, fucking hypocrisy—”

            “You blushed,” he cuts in, winding his fingers in the strands of my hair, “and I want to know why.” When I press my lips firmly together, refusing to give in, John gives a low, humorless laugh. “Shall I guess, then?”

            “Don’t you dare—”

            “Did you imagine it, little wolf?” Blue eyes fasten on my lips. “Did you picture me and Henry together?”

            Yes.

            God help me, but I did.

            “No,” I whisper, proving once and for all that I am my father’s daughter. A liar. A fraud. The earl would be so pleased to learn how far I’ve fallen while Mum would no doubt be disappointed to know that I’ve become just like the man she despises.

            But all I can think of is yes.

            Yes, I imagined John’s hand wrapped around Godwin’s cock.

            Yes, I imagined Godwin down on his knees.

            Yes, I imagined it all.

            My mouth feels as dry as the Sahara. No matter how many times I swallow, there’s no dredging up any moisture. I might be dying—a fast trip straight to Hell, I’m sure—and then my husband solidifies my damnation:

            “Be selfish, wife, and make me repent.”

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Ahhh who else is screaming right along with me right now? But never fear because the next chapter is ready for you right now! Go, go, go!