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“Never.” When she didn’t say anything else, he slapped her thigh, his brow raising.

“Never what, angel?”

“N—never, Daddy. I—I’m always yours.”

By the end of the night, she was too dizzy from orgasms to think of anything but his skin on hers, and his wicked promises as she drifted to sleep.

****

The next days were ... different. She woke up in the master suite instead of the guest room they’d originally used, and Nicholas refused to let either of them leave the bedroom until she’d had her private orders for the morning. As Lady Clarendel and the inheriting party for Sunderland House, she was meant to oversee her stepmother’s move to a dower house and prepare the staff for the main home’s temporary use as a rental. But she was also Mia Blackmore, whose wicked husband demanded very precise favors.

Sometimes, Nicholas dressed her in her stays, so that he could seat toys into her body, held in place by a devious bit of harness. He’d make her sit and curtsy, and usually suck his cock, then clean her up and tell her he expected to find her in the study at a certain time. Other days, he used wicked little cord knots to pinch her nipples and left them tied and throbbing in her stays and told her she wasn’t allowed to beg for them to come off until he finished his morning ride or a meeting. It kept her distracted with the immediate sensations rather than thinking of the past.

In the evenings, he captured her in different rooms of Sunderland House. She never knew if he would be sweet or if she’d have to beg. It didn’t always work. When he had her in the library, they accidentally ended up against a panel her father had slammed her head into. Amy’s passion became panicked gasps, and her husband ended up carrying her back to the master suite to a bath.

She wept silently into the pillows, hidden by the bed hangings, while the maids filled a bath they expected to be for Nicholas. Once the servants were gone, he helped Mia out of the bed and stripped off her clothing with more care than her maid, kissing her shoulders and neck but not touching her otherwise until she lowered herself into the hot water where he started washing her off. He usually didn’t administer her baths unless he’d been terribly rough, but this time her ass wasn’t sore, and her nipples only stung a little from the morning’s game.

“Do you want to stop, Mia?” he asked, running a washcloth along her right arm. He’d stripped to his linen shirt and a banyan robe rather than staying in his clothing. An old scar peeked out where his shirt hung half-open. “We can stop the game now. I’ve got the cash freed up to send you off to Bath until I can finish here.”

“H—How long? Would I be ... there? Without you?” She wiped at her tears, inhaling the jasmine scent he’d dropped into the water just before she got in.

“I’m not sure, my love. I keep stepping into the quagmires your father’s left the accounts in. I think he hid money as much from himself as from his in-laws. I could be done in two weeks. But it might take a month with all the tenants and getting better figures than his lying steward put down on the books—”

“I c—can’t go to Bath. Without you.”

“Portia and your stepmother can go as well. You needn’t be alone, Mia.”

“You know it’s not that. N—not them. I...” Mia’s face crumpled into an ugly sob, but she couldn’t hide in the tub. She tried to get up, but he held her down.

“Mia.” His voice was hard, demanding. He grabbed her shoulder, then her face, making her look at him. “Mia. What is it? Tell me. Right now. Why can’t you go to Bath?”

“I ... I’ll miss you?”

“I’ll take the crop to your breasts,” Nicholas threatened, his hand moving into her hair, a rough palm gripping her left breast. Squeezing. “Now tell me the real reason. Because I damn well know you can entertain yourself. You’re not a puppet, Mia. You’re my wife, who is clever and survives absolute hell without batting a single eyelash. A few weeks at the seaside with toys instead of her husband’s cock—”

“Y—you won’t come back!” She sobbed again, but his hold lightened. He still held her in place in the tub. “W—what if ... the house ... y—you hate me now too? Y—you’re the only person ... I c—can’t lose you...” She wasn’t making sense anymore. She knew that, but he pulled her into a wet, iron-hard hug.

“I will never hate you. You could march to Bath and fuck half the local regiment. You could bankrupt the accounts. Do you understand, mia dolcezza?” Nicholas pushed her back against the cold copper of the tub. His dark eyes bored into hers.

“H—He did. H—he w—was supposed to be my father, but he...”

“Do you want me to have his body torn out of the crypt and left in a ditch?” Nicholas’s hands cupped her face, but she wasn’t sure she could’ve looked away from him in that moment. He wasn’t just her husband. He was the hard-edged stranger she’d glimpsed in a ballroom or coming out of financial meetings. The one he must have been when he was a soldier...

“I will, Mia. I’ll see him burned in a goddamned plague pit with that hideous portrait we already pulled out of the entrance hall. Make me a list of everything in this house that he loved, and I’ll burn that too. We need the damn house, or I’d make the offer to burn it all, my love. But we can in ten years, if you need that.”

“T—ten years?” She sobbed again, reaching for his arm, clinging weakly. “Will we be happy in ten years, Nicholas?”

“I very much intend to be herding you and two or three ungrateful, bratty little offspring through the world by then, with full accounts and no need to worry where the next meal is coming from,” he whispered, kissing her lips. “Will you be my willing, well-ruined wife, do you think? Or will you have closed the games, and shut the door between our chambers?”

“Never. I ... I don’t know how to be without you now.” Amy stared into her husband’s worried face, wondering why she’d never realized the games were how he held onto her, too. “If I ... If I stopped this game, could we start a new one in Bath?”

“Of course.” He swiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “I hate seeing you cry about anything I didn’t mean to happen.”

That made her laugh, strangely. She caught his hand to kiss his thumb, then met his gaze and licked away the tear. “You are a monster, Daddy.”

“Very much.” His frown deepened. “Does that mean you want to keep playing?”

“Yes.”