Nola Read Online Free

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,