Chapter 17

Fortune favored the bold, indeed, Emily thought giddily as her husband practically dragged her down the hall to her bedchamber. All her earlier tiredness had fled as had the anxiety she'd felt over the lingering argument with her husband. Benedict hadn't promised her anything, not really, but in a way, that felt even more comforting than any grandiose vows of perfection might have done.

He said he would try. And somehow, she believed him.

And when the practiced voice of prudence warned that she might be convinced more out of lust than logic, she hushed it. She'd been cautious and careful for far too long. She was tired of it.

Maybe she would never have love. That was fine—she'd never had it before except for the begrudging love her sisters offered, tempered as it was by their continual frustration with her. And her friends loved her, but that was different. And besides—they always would.

So yes, maybe she had to resign herself to a future where the tender scene she'd witnessed in Diana's rooms was never echoed in her own home.

But just because she couldn't have love didn't mean she couldn't have fun.

And judging from the night prior (not to mention the highly indelicate things that Diana had let slip over the course of her marriage), what waited ahead of her would be great fun, indeed.

Even surly Benedict seemed to be enjoying himself if the sly smile she glimpsed before he pressed her against the inside of her bedchamber door and pressed his mouth to hers was any indication. He leaned his full weight against her, and she let the syrupy feeling—now becoming familiar and honestly addictive—overtake her as he crushed her against the unyielding wood.

They kissed and kissed, a hint of bourbon on his tongue, until he (far too soon in Emily's opinion) pulled back.

"Why!" she demanded, not even caring that she sounded terribly spoiled and petulant.

Benedict apparently did not care either. He grinned.

"I want to try something," he said, the words eager and almost playful for all that they were lit with wicked promise. "Do you trust me?"

What a question! Emily knew it had to be some sort of lust-induced lunacy, but she found herself grinning back at him.

"Yes," she whispered and was rewarded with another deep, probing kiss that, again, ended far too quickly.

The truly mad thing was that she did trust him. Perhaps not with her heart—he'd made it plenty clear, after all, that he had no wish to be trusted with anything so fragile as that. But no matter that they constantly snapped and swiped at one another, like angry cats posturing for the show of the thing, she had never yet been disappointed with his handling of her body.

So, whatever clearly devilish thing he wished to try?

Yes, she trusted him.

"Come," he ordered, herding her across the room, seemingly unable to remove his hands from her. It took ages longer than it ought to have to cross from her doorway, though the small antechamber, and to her bed itself, their progress interrupted by Benedict's wandering hands and his playful nips at her neck and shoulders where they were exposed by the neckline of her practical day gown.

"Have I ever mentioned," he asked as he pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses to the curve of her neck, "how much I adore that you're tall? Which of your ancestors gave you your height? I'm going to lay flowers on their grave every day of my life."

She let out a startled laugh, half at his exaggeration, half at the absurdity of his compliment.

"You do not," she scolded, the effect somewhat ruined by the way her words were slurred with pleasure. "I'm a giantess. Nobody likes their women this tall."

He stopped his kissing. Rude, that.

She, in a picture of benevolence, decided to forgive him when he snaked one hand down to her belly. He pressed hard against her lower stomach, forcing her back to come more firmly in contact with his body.

With one certain part of his body in particular. One certain part that was unusually pronounced, not that Emily was any great expert.

"Tell me again how I don't like it," he growled against her ear, grinding himself against the soft flesh of her derriere. Emily struggled against a moan.

But she told him again anyway because she was obedient and helpful like that…and because she liked how he made his arguments to her very much, indeed.

"You don't," she insisted breathlessly. "I'm very, very tall."

His hands flew to her shoulders, whirling her. In an instant, she was held tightly against him again, only now this time it was her front that was pressed against that prominent part of him. This, she found, was even more to her liking.

He inclined his head slightly, his forehead pressing against hers.

"No," he corrected, voice vicious in a way that made Emily shiver down to her bones. "I am very, very tall. You are pleasantly tall. I can say this with authority due to my superior tallness. And do you know what's the most pleasant about how pleasantly tall you are?"

The word tall was starting to sound like nonsense, but Emily muddled through to find the question anyway which was no mean feat, given the blazing lust in her mind.

"No," she said hoarsely. "What?"

"It's that I can do this—" He kissed her swiftly, thoroughly, brutally, leaving her breathless. "—without bending at the waist. I am not a young man, darling. Have some pity for my poor back."

Every time this playful side of him appeared, it set her reeling. She wondered if this was because it mainly occurred when he set her reeling with other affronts to her senses.

"Yes," she agreed, falling short of insouciance. "You're ancient. Six and twenty. We'd best arrange for pallbearers posthaste. Who knows how much time you have left to you?"

"Insolence," he chided, swatting halfheartedly at her behind. The word sounded like a compliment. "Whatever shall I do with you?"

"I thought," she said because if they did not get this affair back on track, she was likely to combust right there on the carpet, "you had something you wished to try?"

The gleam in his eye brightened, and Emily was glad the fire still burned high enough that she didn't miss it.

"Indeed, I do," he said. Then he grasped her by the hips and maneuvered her so that she was sitting on the edge of her bed.

This, Emily felt, was promising.

"Stay here," he said.

And then he left.

Emily stared in shock at the door that connected their bedchambers which he'd left open behind him. He was going to come back. He had to come back. She was broadly inclined to follow his order and stay where he'd put her—as following his guidance had thus far been highly beneficial to her, at least in matters of physical pleasure—but if he didn't come back, she was going to have something to say about it.

Something loud, most likely.

Fortunately for everyone involved, he returned quickly, something clasped in his hand. He came closer on silent feet, and Emily's mouth dropped open.

"Is that rope?"

"So it is," Benedict agreed. There was that wicked cant to his expression again, but there was something cautious in his face, too, like he was trying not to spook her. "Here. Take it."

Fingers trembling, she reached out and took it. The rope wasn't the usual type—not coarse or scratchy at all. Instead, it felt like woven silk, smooth enough that Emily couldn't resist running a short length of it through her fingers though she stilled the motion when she noticed that Benedict was watching her with a sharp spark of interest.

"Rope," she said again, pleased when her voice did not shake.

"Yes," he said, the word comfortingly firm. "And Emily—understand this. We needn't do anything with that. Not tonight, not ever. I can return it to my rooms—I can cast it into the fire." He paused. "But."

She swallowed hard. "But?" she asked.

Benedict reached out a hand, slowly enough that it would have been easy for her to evade his touch. She didn't. He wrapped his fingers around hers which were, in turn, wrapped around the silken length of rope.

"But," he said, looking down at where fingers and fabric looped around and over one another, "some people find that bindings do not always limit them. Some people find, rather, that being held back physically—" His fingers trailed down to the end of the rope which he moved to snake gently around Emily's wrist; she felt the gentle clasp like an intimate caress. "—allows them the liberation of their pleasure."

He let her sit with that thought for a moment. Was that how she felt? Part of her wanted to cringe back against the notion. She would have to be perverse, broken in some way, to see bondage as freedom. But another part, the part that kept chiming up with its irritatingly insistent voice whenever she and Benedict found themselves in an amorous situation, thought that maybe, just maybe, he was right.

She thought of the wall at her back and her hands on the settee. She thought of her arms trapped beneath her, of Benedict's firm hands clamped upon her thighs.

But no. She couldn't. For surely, surely it was unforgivably wanton.

Perhaps her husband sensed her conflicting emotions because he spoke again.

"You needn't say yes, Emily," he murmured. "Or you can say yes and then change your mind. I shan't be cross with you, not at all. But know this: I do not own this rope by happenstance. You would not be the first, nor the only, to derive pleasure from such a thing." She was looking down at her hands, but she could hear the wry smile in his voice. "I don't mean to shock you, but the realm of human pleasure is…surprisingly vast. We are not at sea, my dear. We are merely dipping our toes into the waters."

Despite the ongoing turmoil inside her, Emily felt her own lips quirk into a smile as well.

"And you would," he added, almost as an afterthought, "look so very beautiful."

It wasn't his words that convinced her as much as the way he said them; his voice was nearly a groan, thick and heavy with longing. That hunger made the matter clear. If she was a wanton for finding such a thought appealing—and yes, she admitted, the mere idea made her pulse quicken and her breaths grow shallow—then surely her husband would not object, not when he seemed so wildly compelled by the very same notion.

"Yes," she said, the words falling from her lips like a prayer. "Yes, I think I would—would like that. Very much."

She was still looking at their hands, at the rope clasped between them, feeling half hypnotized by the sight. Thus, she startled a bit when Benedict's fingers came under her chin, his touch gentle, lifting her gaze to his.

"Tell me to stop, and I shall stop at once," he vowed to her, eyes bright and intense.

She nodded, swallowed, then nodded again. "I trust you," she whispered.

Something flashed through his expression, but before she could tell what it was, his mouth was back to hers, the hank of rope pulled from her grasp. He pulled her to her feet then quickly turned her, making quick work of the buttons of her gown. She'd dressed simply, was still wearing casual morning attire, having not had time to change while sitting at Diana's bedside.

This was a blessing, she decided, a nervous giggle threatening to rise from her throat. She bit it back, fearing it would cause her husband to take it as a signal to stop. And she didn't want him to stop, not when she'd just been thinking how convenient it was that her clothes could be dispensed with so quickly.

Too quickly, she realized when she heard a snick of sound, and her corset suddenly snagged. On instinct, she clasped the garment to her chest, looking over her shoulder at her husband, mouth agape.

"Did you just cut my stays?" she demanded.

If his unrepentant grin didn't answer her question, the pocketknife he was tossing onto a nearby table would have done so.

"I shall buy you new," he said without apology. "Now drop the bloody thing; there's a good girl."

She didn't know if she was more shocked by the disregard for her wardrobe, the swearing, or the phrase good girl. Whatever the cause, her body responded without question, and her ruined corset fell to her feet.

When Benedict's gaze traveled over her body, scarcely concealed by her thin chemise, she felt her nipples harden in response, making his view even more scandalous.

"Don't rip this," she warned, the caution somewhat undermined by the tremble of desire in her tone. "It's my favorite." It was, too—perfectly worn and comfortable.

Benedict's eyebrows raised in a clear challenge.

"Best take it off quickly, then," he said lazily.

Now her gaze travelled him. "You're still fully dressed!" she protested.

"I bet it would be fun to rip," he mused, tapping his chin thoughtfully.

She gasped again, wishing the noise was more affronted than eager. But her hands came to the tie at her neckline, loosening it until the chemise could slip free.

And then she was bare before him except for her stockings. The incongruousness—of his clothing and her nudity, of her bareness except for her simple stockings—made her feel even more exposed. The feeling from the day prior, the one that said she had too much space at her back, threatened to swoop in again.

But Benedict responded before it could, pausing only to tug once, violently at his cravat.

Then he stepped forward, grasped both of her wrists in his, and used his grip to guide her back to the bed. She sat and then, at his urging, laid back, the fine wool of his jacket an obvious rasp against the sensitive skin of her breasts and stomach. He kept pressing her hands up and over her head until they were crossed at the headboard and his weight was, once more, laid out upon her.

It was not even a conscious decision the way she squirmed against him. Benedict briefly let his head drop, his mouth pressed against her temple as he murmured a long, low litany of swears. When he gathered himself enough to look up again, his expression was stern.

"Good Lord, Emily, do not do that," he ordered. "I have plans for you and won't let you undo them."

Emily felt certain she would have found his high-handedness irksome if her bones hadn't turned to liquid at the word plans. Instead of a protest, it was a whimper that left her mouth.

He didn't lift his weight from her as he reached for the rope and used it to secure her wrists, lashing them first together then to the head of the bed.

"How does that feel?" he asked, running a finger beneath the rope. His movements were straightforward and competent, and they set Emily aflame.

"Oh," she said absently. She felt oddly comfortable, given the strangeness of her highly exposed position. "Good."

"Good," he murmured back. He pushed back, so he was kneeling upright, his weight on the mattress between Emily's spread legs. She didn't even recall spreading them.

Then he began cursing again.

"Fuck, Emily, do you have any idea how perfect you are?"

The old insecurities, Emily found, were so very quiet at this moment. Bound like this, laid out before him, she had no choice but to accept whatever praise he saw fit to bestow upon her. In fact, there was only one thing she wished to change about her present circumstance.

"You're still dressed," she observed again. This time it was not an accusation. This time, there was a definitive whine to her voice.

Benedict's smile was indulgent.

"Does this displease you, My Lady?" he crooned, his voice a caress. "I am ever at your service."

He was teasing, she was sure, but as his hands went to undo the buttons first on his waistcoat then on his shirt, she decided that a little teasing was a fair trade.

When he shucked his clothing, leaving his torso bare, she felt the briefest flicker of regret that her hands were bound. Benedict's height gave him the impression of being slender, and he was, to be sure. But with his form bared to her, she could see the impressive strength in him and the rippling muscles of his chest and arms that she wanted to stroke, caress, lick.

It was this third thought that made her blush. When he saw it, Benedict grinned an evil grin.

"Oh, my darling girl," he murmured, "how you flatter me." He ran a hand up the length of her thigh, from knee to hipbone, and her legs tried to clasp around them.

Instantly, Emily realized her mistake. Benedict's hands clamped down firmly on her thighs and he tsked at her, his expression growing even more deliciously wicked.

"Patience, darling," he chided gently. He reached for the remaining length of rope and before Emily had fully registered what he was doing, he had removed her stockings and lashed her ankles as well, one to each of the bed's immovable posts that stood like sentinels at the foot of the mattress.

"Benedict," she panted, her voice needy, desperate. She didn't care.

His gaze grew assessing for a moment. "Tell me to stop," he reminded her.

She shook her head. She didn't want him to stop. She didn't know how to phrase what she did want—everything, her mind insisted, give me everything—but she knew she did not want him to stop.

The wicked look returned.

"Well, then," he said, sounding very, very pleased indeed. "I think I shall take my time with you at my mercy."

Emily's chest heaved, the word mercy an echo and a promise in her head.

She did not, as it turned out, know the true meaning of the word.

Benedict—still wearing his trousers, damn the man—did take his sweet time, barely even touching her to start. With gentle hands, he guided her head to one side then the other, plucking hairpins one by one from her coiffure until her curls spread out in all their massive, chaotic glory.

"God, woman, the hair on you," he murmured, his tone making this unmistakable as anything but the highest praise. "It's the only part of you that should never be bound." He played with a long, dark curl, tugging it straight and then letting it spring back into shape. It grazed along the sensitive curve of her breast as it went, making Emily whimper.

"Benedict, please," she said. Her hips were the only part of her with any mobility, tied as she was. And though the ropes grounded her in a way nothing else ever had—made her feel as though every inch of here was here and now instead of spiraling off worrying about this or that—it was blisteringly frustrating that she could not reach for him.

Still, she was never once tempted to ask him to release her.

"Please what?" he teased, leaning over her so that his lips grazed hers in the barest of touches.

"Just…please," she said, exasperated and delighted all at once. "This isn't lovemaking!"

She was so hungry for him that she didn't even feel embarrassed saying the word lovemaking.

His mouth grew crooked again. It was so unfair how that crooked look suited him when sternness also made him look so well.

"Isn't it?" he asked. He traced the trail of the curl along her skin, down her neck, over her shoulders, across her breast, and to the upper ridges of her ribs. "Are you certain?"

Well, no, she wasn't, but saying so felt as though it would be directly in opposition to her overall goals.

"Then do it more," she insisted.

And finally, wretched, cursed, wonderful man, he did.

"Oh, very well," he said lightly. "I suppose I would enjoy it very much as well though I cannot offer any criticism to you the way you are now. Lovely, laid out. All mine." He caressed down her side as he went, leaving gooseflesh in his wake. He pressed a kiss to her mouth then her neck. Emily fought to stay still, lest she disrupt this very promising change of tactics.

She managed it for approximately three seconds. When his mouth traveled down to press hot, lingering kisses to her breasts, she started to twitch. When he kissed her stomach, she squirmed. When he kissed lower, she arched up toward the divine sensations he was creating, the heat in her stoked like a fire with far, far too much fuel.

When he stopped, she gathered that he was lucky he'd tied her ankles because she could have kicked him.

"What? No, no, Benedict, no," she pleaded, feeling half mindless with desire. She tugged against her bindings, strangely relieved when they did not give.

"Fuck, darling, no wait," he gritted out, sounding pained. Good, she thought with a desperate vindictiveness. She was being tortured; he could share in that suffering.

She found herself growing far more forgiving when she realized what he was up to. He pulled off his trousers, tossing them over the end of the bed. When he kneeled up between her legs, it was in his full glory.

He was strong and rugged. Masculine and beautiful. Her gaze lingered on his manhood, shocked to see it extending in front of the rest of his body. She'd felt a…presence through his trousers, but this was…

Intriguing. There really was no better word for it. Again, her fingers itched with the desire to touch, to feel. She didn't know what she wanted more—to look at him longer or to have him resume touching her.

When one of his hands casually touched his length, she amended that. No, she definitely wanted him to touch her.

"You're a dream," he growled, dropping to hands and knees, so he could kiss her so thoroughly that she felt lightheaded. "A bloody dream. Do you know that? You clever, brilliant, gorgeous girl?—"

He cut off with a groan as he pressed against her, the pressure alien at first. She'd expected pain—it was nearly the only thing she knew about marital relations that a woman ought to expect pain—but it was a stretch, not an agony, and she was so aroused by his lengthy tormenting of her body that she'd have accepted any amount of discomfort for some release.

Any mild protests that her body put up at his entrance soon yielded, however, both to his firm, sure press forward and to the mounting pleasure that his entry offered. When he was seated fully inside her, his face only inches from hers—and, damn it, Emily was happy with her height, too, in that moment—he paused.

"Benedict," she said, her voice full of wonder.

"Emily," he returned, the sound a sigh of relief. When he kissed her then, it was the gentlest kiss he'd ever offered. It was a promise. She let him take and take and then gave back to him in return.

And then, when she could take it no longer, she broke the kiss. "Please move," she begged because finally her body knew how to articulate what it needed.

He flashed her another one of those quick smiles before finally obeying her command.

It was a marvelous feeling, strange and new and compelling. She felt him inside her, causing pleasure in a place she hadn't known existed but that she now recognized as the place in which she needed his touch the most. Their words fell silent, their breaths becoming a melody of pants, groans, moans. Dizzily, she admired the flexing motion of his arm, pressed to the side of her head, as he moved and moved.

"Oh," she said after a while because there was something coming, something that she feared would make the previous day's pleasure look laughably simple. "Oh. Benedict."

His head fell forward, his forehead bracing against hers briefly. Then his mouth pressed to the space right below her ear, his breaths puffing against her in gasps that sounded almost pained. He reached one arm in between their bodies and touched his fingers to that sensitive place at the apex of her thighs.

And Emily died. For a moment, she did wonder if she'd truly died because surely such pleasure was an impossibility while still possessing of a human body? Except she must be alive, because the pleasure was clearly in her body, was coursing through her, reaching for her toes and her fingers and the top of her head and her heart?—

Benedict cried out, his hips pressing to hers with one last, fevered push, like he felt he could never get close enough. And then his limbs went liquid in a limpness that was echoed in her own body. She wasn't sure if she was pleased or disappointed that he had the presence of mind to drop to her side instead of directly atop her though she knew that she enjoyed the weight of his heavy arm and leg that still draped over her.

All she knew, really, was the absolute crushing delight of good sensation. Her body felt marvelous. Benedict's body felt marvelous. The bed beneath her felt marvelous. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to form sentences again, but who cared, really, when the world was this beautiful and built of light?

She didn't move when Benedict sat up, nor when he gently removed the rope from her ankles and wrists. She didn't move when he rubbed softly against the place where the ties had been, nor when he pressed one soft, affectionate kiss to the inside of her right ankle.

She only moved, in fact, when Benedict said, the smallest note of worry in his voice, "Emily? Are you all right?"

Even then, she only cracked one eye, only smiled with one side of her mouth. It was the best she could do. And he, she noted with some satisfaction, looked only marginally less wrecked than she.

"Oh, yes," she said, the words vaguely muddled. "I am wonderful, aren't you?"