Nola Read online

  But she didn't like the idea of some stranger trying to tell her what to do. She had enough of that from her father. "I'm fine, thank you," she replied, her tone as chilly as the air around her.

  "I don't believe we've been properly introduced," the masculine voice detached itself from a pitch black corner of the portico, the end of a cheroot flaring for mere seconds before he carelessly flicked it away and confronted her. There was no other way to put it. He planted himself in front of her and grabbed her hand away from where it had been clutching her fur to her bosom and pumped it up and down several times.

  It was the stranger who had stolen a dance from her hours before. It was as if he'd been lying in wait for her out here.

  "My name is Brandon Sawyer. And you are Nola Hughes."

  Obviously, he'd done some intelligence gathering about her, but that didn't impress her in the least. Neither did his manners, or rather the distinct lack thereof. She withdrew her hand from his with an icy stare, saying, a she turned to go back into the ballroom, "We still haven't been properly introduced."

  A proper introduction was made by third parties - a mutual acquaintance, often a relative. They most certainly were not made by the individual themselves.

  He snorted impolitely, but then she was coming to expect the impolite from him. "Oh, come now, Miss Hughes. Your companion is hardly the height of conformity, and you're standing there wearing a completely scandalous loose hairstyle, and you remain stubbornly unmarried at the age of twenty one. You can hardly comment on convention without looking around for the proverbial bolt of lightening."

  Her face got tighter at his words, if that was possible. Brandon wasn't really sure. He didn't know her well enough to judge that - yet.

  "Regardless, Mr. Sawyer. I bid you good night." She dropped him the barest of curtsies, and tried to sweep by him, going so far as to lift her skirts to make sure they didn't touch him as she passed.

  Brandon wasn't so socially inept that he didn't know when he was being given the cut, but he had a hard time not breaking into a huge grin that this young upstart woman would do such a thing to him. Didn't she know who he was? Could she truly not care that his family was powerful enough to completely crush hers and their upper crust pretensions with a mere flick of their wrists? A word here or there?

  As she passed, his hand shot out and grabbed her forearm - an innocuous touch, as touches went, but a definite no-no according to polite society. Bachelor gentlemen didn't touch unmarried women. Of course, they weren't supposed to be out here alone under any circumstances, either, but here they were.

  "I will be coming to call some time this week, dependant on my business."

  Not "may I come to call" or "I might like to come to call" but he would becoming, and it was quite obvious to Nola that he didn't expect that she would decline the honor.

  "I'm afraid I shall not be home," she spit out, trying to reclaim her arm, but failing miserably. Finally, she simply stood stock still, staring at the doors to safety, heartily wishing she'd never come out there.

  Partly because he wanted to, partly because he wanted to shock her out of the blase facade that had settled onto her usually expressive face, Brandon used his leverage with her arm to tug her towards him, pulling her off balance, so that she landed flat against his broad chest. Then he stole a kiss as quickly and efficiently as he'd stolen the dance, planting his lips onto hers firmly, not letting her go until he was good and ready to do so, and making sure she realized that she couldn't get away from him until he let her.

  Her skirts kept her from being able to kick him, and even stepping on his foot didn't garner so much as a grunt, dammit. There was nothing she could do but bear it. He couldn't keep her out here forever.

  She hoped.

  But this man was a force of nature, completely unconstrained by convention, and she knew that if she managed to get back to the relative safety of Wilde's side, it would only be because he was feeling somewhat benevolent. And Nola had the distinct impression that he and benevolence had never been fast friends.

  And now, days after marrying him, she knew the absolute truth of that thought.

  Chapter Two

  She didn't know how many swats he applied to her scandalously almost bare bottom, except that it was too many by far for her comfort. When he finally leaned over and replaced the hairbrush on her nightstand, she had long since broken her promise to herself not to cry - it was damned near impossible not to, considering his strength and her hairbrush.

  But there was something that was a thousand times worse than being spanked - and that was saying something, as far as she was concerned. Neither her father nor her mother had ever touched her in a disciplinary vein, and yet since being married she'd been spanked more times than she ever wanted to count!

  The worse thing, however, was right this minute poking prominently into her stomach. Part of the strange ritual he liked to perform - after rather violently relieving her of her quite proper nightgown - involved touching her. Everywhere, even the most embarrassing an intimate of places. Particularly those places, it seemed. Now, Nola had been hugged and kissed - always on the cheek, of course - all her life. More so by her Mother than her Father, but that was only right. But she'd never been touched anywhere else by anyone else, beyond the occasional handshake or hug and kiss from a female friend. Even doctor's appointments were conducted while completely dressed, and the doctor had certainly never laid hands on her, or he would have been thrashed soundly by her father and subsequently drummed out of the profession.

  But her brand new husband had insisted on doing much more than just touching, which he did as if he owned her, making her feel not unlike how a slave on the block must've felt - hefting both of her naked breasts in his hands as she made embarrassingly futile attempts to either escape or relieve his hands from her person. That was, until he gave her a look she was becoming alarmingly familiar with - raised eyebrows nearly hidden in that midnight black hairline, glaring at her fit for the devil himself. "Keep your hands to yourself, woman, or you'll find yourself over my lap."

  "Over his lap?" she'd thought to herself. What kind of threat was that?

  Of course, she'd been entirely unable to keep her hands from defending her honor - even from her husband - and she'd ended up upended unceremoniously over his lap getting her first spanking and cursing his name and herself at the same time because he was making her realize that she couldn't imagine a worse pain than the one he was creating in her nether parts - at least until the next time he spanked her on an already sore bottom. And it had seemed to her that he was never ever going to stop.

  But then he had rolled her onto her back, sliding to her side and managing to keep her in place with one well placed hand splayed on her stomach. "Lie still, Nola," he'd whispered hoarsely, "you're mine, and I'm going to touch you whether you want me to or not. You're my wife, and I can and will do exactly as I please with you, in or out of this bed."

  Nola had known that some men felt they owned their wives - that was one of the things she'd been trying to campaign against with her involvement women's suffrage and rights groups. How ironic that she'd ended up under the thumb of a man who thought exactly that.

  The touching wasn't the worst of it, though. It was bad and humiliating and embarrassing, but it wasn't the worst. The worst thing was that he made her like it. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing - which didn't surprise Nola in the least - and, although everything about his attitude screamed that he felt he owned her as surely as if he'd bought and paid for her, his fingers and hands - and eventually his lips and mouth - were firm but gentle, especially at first. Almost teasing and tickling in places as he explored every inch of her body - some inches she hadn't much acknowledged owning herself. He'd dug his fingers into her hair, combing it out away from her face, fanning it out on the pillow behind her, then following the contours of her face, her high cheekbones, and down her nose to full, pink lips that were slightly parted with her anxious, quickened breathing.

  He didn't linger there, but didn't head for the most usual place, either. Instead, he trailed his fingertips over her collarbone, down over her shoulders, all the way to her fingers, then back up again. To Nola's complete mortification, she shivered, which made her nipples peak proudly, as if they were trying to attract his attention.

  Before she knew it, those huge hands were each cupping a more than generous breast. She'd always been somewhat embarrassed by how ample her bosom was, and the way he was massaging and pressing them only made her feel just that much more self conscious. And yet, when his fingers found those pink tips and very gently squeezed them, she couldn't stop herself from catching her breath.

  It felt sinfully good! Much too sinfully good, and there didn't seem to be a way to get away from it - or him - either. When she tried, when she shifted her shoulders side to side, he merely held on a little tighter, saying a tone she came to hate, "Ah ah ahhhh, wife. I said no resisting. Apparently that spanking wasn't sufficient to help you remember - " Her husband made to move away from her and, apparently, give her another taste of her own hairbrush - or his broad palm - on her poor rear.

  Nola couldn't believe that he'd reduced her to begging with one spanking, but he had. "No, no! I'll be still." Tears flooded her eyes at the prospect of a second spanking, as well as her complete loss of dignity and self respect.

  He seemed to consider her earnestness for a moment, then turned back to her, reclaiming those still hardened nubs and pinching them more tightly than he had before, as if to punish her for even considering trying to get away from him.

  And Nola - to her complete disgust and mortification - found that she liked it even when he made her hurt like that. She had never experienced the depths of despair before, but her husband seemed to delight in showing them to her. She had always been in control of her own body - well, except once a month since she was eleven or so - and now it was gleefully betraying her, conspiring with that awful, despotic man to make her enjoy being degraded, being treated like a possession and even making her moan in unwanted ecstasy when he deliberately hurt her, pinching and pulling those virgin nipples as she arched her back and begged him not to.

  Brandon found himself intrigued by this little chit, much more so than he wanted to be, even though there was absolutely no doubt in his mind as to her innocence. Enough that he'd found himself offering marriage, something that he'd sworn he had absolutely no interest in. But it would get his family off his back to have a wife tucked away somewhere, and keep his inevitable paramours from trying to wangle a proposal out of him. He'd thoroughly expected to do no more than his duty in their marriage bed - to begat the "heir and a spare" as the Brits so succinctly put it, and then be done with her. His parents certainly didn't spend any more time together than they absolutely had to, and he expected his marriage to Nola to run very much along the same lines - separate residences, separate lives, separate loves.

  It was the thought of her with another man - of someone else seeing her wide eyed reactions to everything he did, someone besides him cupping those almost overly generous breasts, tweaking her nipples and watching the color rise becomingly in her cheeks. It didn't bear thinking of. He'd never felt in the least jealous of any other man, but this woman was different for some reason, and he didn't like it - not at all - mostly because he couldn't seem to stop the feelings, and that made him crueler than he might have been if she hadn't invoked those emotions in him.

  She'd caught his eye - along with everyone else's at that abominable Masquerade Ball. He'd attended, because his father had absolutely insisted, which didn't usually work. But Geoffrey Sawyer hadn't been doing well lately. He'd had a series of heart seizures that had done more than anything else could to pull his stubborn, wayward son into line with what the family wanted him to do.

  So he'd gone. He would be damned if he'd dress up as anyone or anything, but he'd gone. Then, not too long after he'd arrived, she'd appeared in the double doors and something in his chest had onto the tops of his boots. He wanted to run up the steps, throw his cape around her and keep her from all of those prying eyes. Most especially, he wanted to do something about her scandalous fall of hair. Women who were of an age to be married - whether they were or not - kept their hair up. The only person who was supposed to see a woman with her hair down was her husband, and yet, there she was, flagrantly flaunting convention and smiling with it, her arm neatly tucked into the curve of that fop Wilde Everest's distinctly limp arm.

  He couldn't believe that she was with him. For some strange reason, the idea absolutely incensed him. And Brandon also realized that, probably because he refused to attend these soirees except under penalty of death, he had no idea who the hell it was that he was steaming over.

  He sussed out a friend in the crow - not that he had that many - and nearly bowled the poor man over with questions, all the while keeping a watchful eye on that disturbing baggage as Wilde manhandled her about the floor.

  Roger Kennedy, however, was used to Brandon's unapologetically brash ways. The two had known each other since they were in short pants, and he was one of the few people who Brandon counted on to tell him the absolute truth, not colored by a desire for matrimony or money.

  "Who's that girl?" he asked bluntly, ignoring Roger's silent, raised glass offer of punch.

  "What girl?" Roger had somehow managed to affect a bit of a British accent, not that he'd ever been to England, and "girl" came out much more like "gel" than it, by rights, should have.

  Brandon knew when someone was being deliberately obtuse and simply glared at the other man.

  Roger, who had never in his life known Brandon to inquire after any woman - it was always the other way around. Quite a few women - or mothers of eligible maidens - had come to him as a way to get to Brandon. He intended to savor the power of this moment as long as he could, looping his thumbs into his unfashionably broad lapels; he'd come to this party as a town crier, completely with an extremely loud bell.

  "Well, let me see what I can remember about her." He gave Brandon a sidelong glance, and knew that he was closer to a true beating than he'd been in decades. Brandon wasn't the kind of man to be toyed with, although Roger always liked to push him a bit, since no one else seemed willing to. Brandon had been a champion boxer at Exeter Academy, and Roger knew that he'd pursued his physical abilities more so than any other man of quality that Roger'd ever heard of. He might have been long in the tooth to be a bachelor, but he was at the top of his game physically - and, just at his size, Brandon was a force to be reckoned with, forget his ability to beat pretty much anyone to a pulp.

  "I believe the woman in question is Nola Hughes, daughter of Ephraim Hughes and Julia Beckham Hughes. Made his money in livery stables, I believe. Not even nouveau riche, really. Merchant class money, at best."

  "Good." Brandon was heartily sick of the simpering females that were inevitably paraded before him. It seemed the older he got, the worse that embarrassment became. He'd been taking refuge on the patio - despite the cold - just to get away from the constant stream of giggling females their mothers insisted on throwing at him. He'd only come into the ballroom to try to find his Aunt and bid her good night before he left.

  As it was, he knew he wasn't going to leave that quickly now, not with someone that interesting in the offing. Middle class and an original - maybe she'd have the gumption he wanted in a wife. Perhaps she even had a brain - although he knew that some things were too much to ask for nowadays. Women were to become wives and mothers, and few families saw fit to educate them much past their ABC's.

  And yet, now, here she was in his bed, fighting herself as he touched her body in any way that pleased him - and pleased her, at least for the moment. She was such a shy, reticent little thing, despite her blatant flaunting of convention, and the dichotomy intrigued him to no end. He'd found he liked forcing her past her natural inhibitions from the very beginning, and the more he did it, the more interesting it became to him. He'd never felt like this about any other woman. It had been two days, and he hadn't let her out of the bedroom, and he didn't intend to for quite some time.

  She had been so wonderfully virginal on their wedding night. There was something more there that niggled at him, and he promised himself that he would investigate it as soon as he'd sated himself with her, but he'd been lost from the first moment he'd found her in their bed, apparently completely scandalized that he would come into what she'd thought was her bedroom, and hers alone.

  He'd disabused her of that notion quickly, but she'd flown out from under the covers towards the robe that hung over her vanity chair, but he'd caught her wrist and stopped her midway, tugging her back to stand in front of him, and reaching for the neckline of her gown, ripping it to the floor in one ridiculously easy motion.

  The look in her eyes at that moment - even just remembering it now made him hard as a spike. Fear, yes, uncertainty, but with a big dose of outrage that was what he'd always felt was missing. This woman wasn't going to just lie back and think of England - or rather the refilling of the family coffers or how to redecorate the bedroom. This woman, beneath the expected apprehension, was bloody well pissed at him.

  And he loved it.

  Even now, as he cajoled and pressed and twisted and twirled her body into welcoming him completely against her will, he knew that part of the reason her chest was rising and falling so quickly was that, if she could manage it, she'd cold cock him in a second. That was part of the reason there wasn't much in the way of brick a brack around their bed. She was livid - with herself as well as him, but he was the more likely target.

  And tonight he was going to give her even more of a reason to be unhappy. Brandon slipped down her body a little, his chest naturally requiring that she spread her legs almost unnaturally wide, which fit his purposes exactly. He stopped when his mouth was level with that most perfect area of hers, staring down at it as his forearms held her legs apart.

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