The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [47]
She yelled at the shock and pain of it. She hit him with her fists, shoving against him, trying to throw him off her, but it only sent him deeper and he just kept driving, feeling her flesh convulse around him, driving him and pushing him, and he couldn’t stop himself. He heard her cries but he didn’t slow, he couldn’t, and again he climaxed, raw groans ripping from his throat.
He was flat on top of her again, breathing hard, wondering what the devil had come over him.
“How many times will you do that?”
“I think I’ve stopped for a while. Joan, you’re not crying, are you? No, tell me you’re not crying. I’ll hold very still now, I promise.”
Her voice came steadier, which relieved him, until he heard her say, “I do care for you a lot, Colin, but it will be difficult to bear this often. It wasn’t pleasant. I know we had to do it so that Douglas couldn’t take me back to London with him and annul the marriage. But now that you’ve done it, will you have to do it often?”
He wanted to tell her that he could easily take her again, a third time, perhaps a fourth, but he held his tongue. He’d hurt her, and she had no idea of what pleasure could be. “I’m sorry,” he said, and slowly forced himself to pull out of her. He felt the pulling of her flesh, heard her whimper.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and disliked himself for apologizing like a damned parrot.
“I don’t understand though.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“I always thought that Douglas and Alex—that’s his wife, you know. Well, I always believed that she much enjoyed staying with him in the same bed. And Ryder and Sophie, too, but now . . . perhaps it’s just kissing they enjoy, and the other, they must bear it, they choose to bear it because they love their husbands. But it’s difficult, Colin. I didn’t realize what it would be like.”
“I told you that when I take you again you will enjoy it. I promise you that.”
She clearly didn’t believe him, not that he could blame her, for hadn’t he just lost himself again, slamming into her when he knew it would hurt her? “I’m sorry,” he said for yet a third time. “I will make it up to you.”
She lay there, sprawled on her back when he rose to stand beside the bed. There was his seed and her virgin’s blood on her thighs and on the white sheets. He leaned over her, and Sinjun, fearing the worst, yelled at the top of her lungs.
Then, in the next instant, there was a hammering on the bedchamber door and Douglas was yelling, “What’s happening in there? Sinjun, what’s wrong?”
“Move out of the way, Douglas, he’s killing her!”
It was Ryder who flung open the door and burst into the bedchamber, Douglas on his heels.
There was appalled silence. They stood there, their dressing gowns flapping around their bare legs, staring at their new brother-in-law, who was standing naked by Sinjun, who was sprawled on her back on the bed, but that was just for a flash of an instant, for in the next, she grabbed the covers and pulled them to her neck. “Get out!” she screamed at her brothers, so filled with humiliation she thought she’d die of it. “How dare you! Damn you both, get out!”
“But Sinjun, we heard you yelling, screaming in pain—”
She got ahold of herself. She didn’t think it was possible, but she did it. She even managed to smile at them, but it was wobbly and mean and utterly mortified. “Now, Douglas, I’ve heard Alex yelling her head off—many times, in fact. Can’t I yell as well?”
“Yours wasn’t pleasure yelling,” Ryder said, his voice so cold she shivered at the sound of it. “Yours was pain yelling. What did this bastard do to you?”
“Dammit!” Colin roared. He grabbed his own discarded dressing gown and shrugged into it. “This is bloody ridiculous! Cannot I have privacy in my own house? Yes, she yelled, damn you both to the devil. What the hell do you expect? She was a bloody virgin and I had to get through her bloody maidenhead!”
Douglas looked at Ryder, then back at