My Wife, My Rules – 19. chapter

Aiden swung down from his horse, let it be led away, and walked slowly toward the house. There was nowhere he needed to hurry. He no longer knew how many days he had been out of his wife’s favor. Each time he returned, she was there. Beautiful, delicate, noble. And distant. Every look at her hurt. She was right there under his nose, within reach, yet forbidden. He had tried that once too. He had told her to undress. She had started to do it after a brief hesitation. But she had not looked at him with that devoted gaze that always sent his arousal soaring. She had been only obedient, accepting her marital duties. In her eyes there was no yielding, no longing. Only coldness and distaste. He lasted until around the third or fourth undone button before stopping her. 

He could have taken her. But hell would freeze before he took her when she did not truly want him. And now she did not. He did not know why. He had stopped begging. It was useless. Something had wounded her deeply. He had no idea what. He had replayed it a thousand times. What could have happened between how happy she had been in the forest and how she had flinched when he tried to embrace her at night? He found no answer. And she would not give one. Still, he was not willing to spend more time without her than work required. He would not give her space to drift away completely. He would rather look every day at the treasure he had lost. Because he believed it was only for a time. One day she would do something. Make a mistake in that distance of hers. And he would be there. And he would take back what was his.

“The lock on milady’s bedchamber has been repaired. The key is in the door,” a young helper announced as he passed him.

“Mhm,” Aiden murmured absentmindedly. Then the words reached him a few seconds later. He turned sharply.

“Wait. What?”

“Milady wished for the lock on the ladies’ bedchamber to be fixed so it could be locked. It is done.”

Cold ran through Aiden’s body. A deep, suffocating unease. Like the air before a storm. He turned at once and hurried inside. He took the stairs two at a time and was still on them when he saw his wife in the long corridor, some clothes in her arms. Coming from his bedchamber toward the ladies’ bedchamber he had never allowed her to use. Not even on the very first day, when she had trembled from his gaze alone.

“Tess?”

She startled and looked back at him.

“Um, I did not expect you so soon,” she said nervously.

Well, now this is the first sentence in a long time that I believe.

“What are you doing here?” he asked aloud.

He knew at once this would end in a quarrel.

“I am moving into my own bedchamber,” she replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Yes. Here it begins. That tone stirred his anger.

“I neither ordered nor permitted that.”

She turned to him, her voice unusually bold.

“I am your wife, not your prisoner. Am I? Your words.”

A few more points of anger.

“Yes. But both statuses have certain rules,” he said, forcing calm.

“And what is the difference?”

“I know what they share. In both, I am the one who decides.”

His jaw tightened with resolve.

“I think I have grown used to you well enough. As you wished.”

Ten more points of anger. He reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto the corridor. He sensed he would have to run.

“You don’t decide that,” he said.

“Haven’t I?”

“Not enough for you to leave my chamber.”

“Then what is the difference between a wife and a prisoner?”

Twenty more points of anger.

“Do you TRULY want me to show you the difference?”

His voice jumped up a pitch. She did not dare nod.

“I will guess,” he said, no longer calm. “You meant to move while I was away and be locked in another room when I returned. Is that it?”

“I believe we have been together long enough. I have a right to my own room.”

She turned and walked away.

Twenty more points. He stood on the edge of eruption.

“Tess. Stop.”

She did not.

A hair’s breadth from exploding.

He tensed his muscles, wanting to give her one last chance, one final warning.

“Tess, don’t do this. You will not like me,” he ground out.

She turned just before the door.

“I don’t like you already**!!**”

She grabbed the handle and opened the door.

BOOOOM!!!

“Enough!” he growled and charged.

She crossed the threshold but did not close the door. He burst in and seized her around the waist. Lifted her with ease as everything fell from her arms.

“No!” she screamed, but his hands were firm. He lifted her easily, as if she weighed nothing, though her whole body thrashed with all its strength. She tried to knee him, struck him with her fists, but he only pulled her tighter against his chest.

“Let me go!” she shouted, kicking, throwing herself around in desperation. Her hair flew into her face, her bare feet struck the wall as he carried her across the corridor.

He said nothing. His movements were steady, certain. He entered his chamber and closed the door. In one instant, he held Tess with one arm and with the other seized a heavy wooden hairbrush from her dressing table. He moved farther in, lifted Tess higher, turned, and in one violent second threw her onto the center of the bed. She landed face down. She tried to roll away and escape. He was already on her.

“Get off me!” she cried. She thrashed, struck blindly, but he forced her down. He caught her wrists and pulled them behind her back. One hand pinned them firmly, pressing her wrists to her back. Her chest hit the coverlet, her hips twisted, but she could not twist free or lift herself.

“Let me go! Now!”

Her face burned red, breath broken, body taut as a bowstring. He did not hesitate.

With his other hand, he pushed her skirt up to her lower back in one pull. She snarled with rage, struggling in vain. He held the brush ready, her wrists still pinned firmly against her lower back under his grip. When she jerked her hips, she only bared herself further.

“Stop!” she shrieked. “Aiden, stop!”

He ignored her screaming. With the fingers of the hand holding the brush, he pulled her linen down below her ass. Tess froze.

“Don’t dare!” she screamed.

He stood over her, immovable. She could not shift an inch. He held her so she could not move even a centimeter. Her wrists were pressed into her back, her face buried in the coverlet, and her legs could do little. He drew a deep breath. A deep one. Anger, frustration, pain, everything that had built up over those days, flooded his chest. That he would give her a proper spanking now was already decided, and it did not bother him. Not in the slightest. He only needed to master his rage so he would not harm her.

He looked at her bare ass, tense between lifted skirt and rumpled linen. She still resisted. He hesitated for a heartbeat.

Twenty-five, he told himself. He swung.

The first strike. A sharp, dry sound.

“Ow! Damn it, Aiden!”

He did not hold her cruelly. Only firmly enough to keep her still.

The second. The third. She writhed, twisted, but remained trapped.

“Let me go!”

The fourth. Her anger left her. She clenched her lips. Her wrists slipped in his grasp, but she lacked the strength to free herself.

The fifth. She began to cry. Quietly, restrained. Breathing into the pillow, shoulders shaking. He did not stop. He did not soften. He struck steadily, counting each blow with care.

The tenth. The fifteenth.

Her taut skin was already shining and beginning to redden. Her soft sobs tried to move him. He resisted. He held the rhythm.

The twentieth.

She struggled harder, crying without pause. It did not stop him. He knew he simply had to do this to her. He pressed her deeper into the mattress, his palm locked around her wrists. She would not escape.

Twenty-four.

His breath deepened. He was almost at the end. One more. The last one.

Twenty-five.

He stopped. 

Still holding the brush, he turned her onto her back.

She sobbed softly, lay still, not daring to move.

“Well,” he said coldly, looking into her tear-streaked face. “Feel like talking now, or shall I continue?”

She searched for words. He took her silence for defiance and seized her shoulder, ready to turn her back onto her stomach.

“No, no, no, wait!” she cried. She would not endure more.

It pleased him. He had not been exactly thrilled with this method either. But it worked. Tess began, still a little tearfully.

“I saw you. You. With her.”

He did not understand.

She sniffed.

“I thought the visits you received and paid were friends. Now I know it is a lover. Perhaps not only one. I saw only one.”

He tried. He certainly did not want to beat her any more, but her words made no sense to him.

“Aiden, please, spare me the theatrics. I’ve had enough of them,” she said bitterly.

“Um, I definitely don’t want to beat you more than necessary,” he replied, ignoring her contemptuous snort. “But I have no idea what you mean. Please, take it from the beginning.”

“That evening when you showed me the corridor, we had visitors. I wanted to please you. To be the hostess you deserved.”

A pleasant feeling of joy and gratitude flooded his heart.

“Love, I truly don’t need this,” he said gently.

“I know that now,” she snapped, hoping that would be enough, but Aiden’s expression had gone confused again.

“Oh, come on, stop insulting me already,” she shook her head. “I saw you with that woman on the sofa. Laughing. Touching. No decent woman visits a man alone. Least of all a married one.”

Understanding dawned. That night the Montellan couple had visited. Tess had seen Isadora.

She is jealous of me! he realized, pleased. But that passed quickly when he understood everything connected to it. He went still. She believed he had betrayed her. Not only believed it, she had been certain. She had suffered in silence, withdrawn, refused his touch, his love, believing he belonged to another. All because of one harmless image, one innocent scene in the salon where he had sat with Isadora.

“Tess, you think I would…”

“Stop! Spare me!” she cut in. “I understand how it is. I am not foolish. I mean, not ANYMORE. I was until now.”

“Tess…”

“I would just appreciate it if you… Well… If you have enough of it everywhere else, could you not want it from me?” she pleaded.

He looked at her and knew he could not reason her out of this enormous mistake. He would have to take her into hell.

He rose.

“This evening we will have guests,” he said. “Both of us.”

Her blood ran cold.

“No, please! Aiden, have mercy! You may fuck me whenever you wish. Even if you fuck others. I will be willing, I will always do absolutely anything you want, but don’t do this to me! Please!!”

Salt in open wounds was nothing compared to the pain he felt now. He knew what he was doing to her, and he knew he had to do it. If he did not endure this, he would lose everything. But how was a man to resist the desperate pleas of the woman he loved, knowing he was the only one who could end her pain? And yet, if he ended it now, he would lose Tess. He could not yield. But neither could he watch her suffer. He had to leave.

“I don’t care if you slip outside. At sunset I will come for you. Be dressed.”

“Please!” she cried, and as he closed the door, he heard her burst into tears. He was not far from tears himself.