The Orchard's Shadow

"Is this what you want?" He thrusts against me, the table groaning with every brutal push. "A rough fuck from a dirty orchardist?"

Yes. God help me, yes. "Shut up and do it."

He rears back. His eyes are wild, pupils blown. "Say please."

I bare my teeth. "Go to hell."

He smiles. It's feral. Terrifying. "Say it."

My breath stutters. "I... damn you..."

His hand finds my throat. Squeezes just enough. "Say. Please."

"Please!" The word rips from me. "Fucking please!"

He claims my mouth again, his free hand fumbling between us. Buttons fly. My cock springs free, slapping against my belly. He grips it, rough and perfect, his callouses catching on the sensitive skin.

"Christ." He huffs a laugh against my lips. "Even your cock is aristocratic. Pretty. Pampered."

I moan, arching into his fist. "You talk too much."

He squeezes, twisting his palm over the head. "And you don't talk enough." His thumb presses into my slit. "Beg."

"Fuck you." But my hips are moving, chasing the friction. "Oh god. Oh fuck."

"More." He jacks me harder. Faster. "Beg me to fuck you."

The need is a wildfire in my blood. "Please. God. Do it. Fuck me."

He releases me. I whine at the loss. He spins me around, bends me over the table. My cheek presses into cold wood. Splinters prick my skin. Behind me, fabric rustles. Leather creaks.

"Last chance," he pants. His spit-wet finger circles my hole. "Tell me to stop."

I push back against him. "Just... hurry."

He spits again. It hits my cleft, warm and wet. His cock nudges my entrance. Big. Blunt. Unforgiving.

He thrusts.

Fire. White-hot. Searing. I cry out, fingers scrabbling at the table edge.

He stills. His breath saws in and out. "So tight." He sounds almost awed. "Like a vise."

I press my forehead to the wood. Breathe through the burn. "Move. You son of a bitch. Move."

He pulls back. Slams in. No mercy. No gentleness. Just raw, animal need.

It hurts. It hurts. Oh Christ it hurts.

And then... it doesn't.

Pleasure ignites at the base of my spine. Sparks up my cock. I groan, low and broken. "Harder."

He grunts. Obeyed. His hips piston, relentless. The table shrieks across the floor. Dishes rattle. My balls slap against my thighs with every brutal thrust.

His hand fists my hair. Yanks my head up. "Look at you." His voice is guttural. "Spread out like a feast. Taking my cock like you were made for it."

I clench around him. He curses, nails digging into my hip.

"Harder." I'm shameless. Wanton. "Fucking break me."

He does.

He fucks me like he hates me. Like he wants to ruin me. Like he owns me.

And I take it. All of it. Every savage thrust. Every branding touch.

"Fuck." His rhythm falters. "Can't-"

He comes. Hot. Wet. Pumping me full. Marking his territory.

I sob against the table. Desperate. Denied.

He pulls out. Seed and spit trickle down my thigh. Humiliating. Filthy.

I don't care.

I reach for my cock. He bats my hand away. Grips it himself. One hard stroke. Two.

I come. Violent. Endless. Screaming into the polished mahogany.

We stay like that. Me, draped over the table, panting. Him, softening cock still leaking onto my skin.

He steps back. Tucks himself away. Doesn't look at me.

"Clean yourself up." His voice is cold. Dismissive. "You're dripping onto the Persian rug."

Shame crashes over me. I push myself upright. My legs shake. My hole aches.

He's already at the door. "I'll be in the orchards. Try not to bankrupt us before luncheon."

The slam echoes in the sudden silence.

I sink to my knees amid the shattered china. My come stains the tablecloth. His seed slicks my thighs.

What have we done?

What have I become?

The question hangs in the air, unanswered. All I have is the scent of him on my skin, and the terrifying knowledge that I want more.

God help me, I want more.

The shame of it follows me for days. Jasper avoids the house, rising before dawn and returning long after dark, his boots caked with mud, his shoulders slumped with fatigue. We speak only when necessary, our conversations clipped and cold.

I throw myself into the estate books, determined to prove I'm not the useless fop he believes me to be. The numbers swim before my eyes, a testament to my father's mismanagement and my own neglect. Jasper's funds have stanched the bleeding, but the patient is still critical.

A week after the breakfast room debacle, a letter arrives. No return address, sealed with cheap wax. The script is cramped, hurried.

"Thought you should know," it reads. "Tongues are wagging in the village. Your husband's not exactly discreet. Ask him about the cooper's son. Or the blacksmith's apprentice. Or the-"

I crumple the paper, my gut churning. Rumors. Vicious, poisonous lies. Jasper would never... would he?

That night, I confront him in his study. He's poring over maps of the orchards, his brow furrowed.

"Something you need?" he says without looking up.

I toss the letter onto his desk. "Care to explain this?"

He scans it, his expression unreadable. "Gossip. Ignore it."

"Is it?" I press, my voice tight. "Is it just gossip?"

He sighs, rubs his temples. "What do you want me to say, Silas? That I've lived like a monk since we wed? That I don't have needs?"

The admission lands like a blow. "So it's true. You've been-"

"Nothing of consequence." He leans back in his chair, his gaze finally meeting mine. "A quick fuck behind the cider house. A handjob in the hayloft. Nothing that matters."

"Nothing that matters?" My laugh is brittle. "Our marriage vows meant nothing to you?"

"Did they mean anything to you?" he counters. "Beyond saving your precious estate?"

I flinch. "That's different."

"Is it?" He stands, cirks the desk. "You think I relished binding myself to a man who despises me? Who flinches from my touch?"

"I don't-" I start, but he cuts me off.

"Spare me your denials." He crowds me against the bookshelves, his scent filling my nose - earth and sweat and something uniquely Jasper. "You've made your feelings plain from the start."

"And you've given me no reason to change them," I fire back, my heart hammering against my ribs. "You're crude. Controlling. Impossible."

"Yet here you are." His breath ghosts over my lips. "In my study. Demanding answers about my dalliances."

"They're not dalliances," I hiss. "They're a betrayal."

"Only if you care." His hand finds my hip, his touch searing through the fine wool of my trousers. "Do you care, Silas? Do you lie awake at night, imagining my hands on another man? My cock inside him?"

"Yes." The admission is ripped from me, raw and ragged. "God help me, yes."

His eyes darken. "Why?"

"Because you're my husband." I fist his shirt, yanking him closer. "Because despite everything, you're mine."

"Yours?" He laughs, low and rough. "Such a possessive little aristocrat."

"Shut up." I kiss him, hard and punishing. He opens for me, his tongue tangling with mine, teeth clashing. It's messy. Desperate. Alive.

He shoves my trousers down, spins me to face the bookshelves. "You want me to be faithful?" he growls against my ear. "Then give me a reason to be."

I brace my hands against the leather-bound spines, my cheek pressed to the cool wood. "Do it."

He doesn't hesitate. One spit-slicked finger breaches my hole, then two. Rough. Demanding. Perfect.

"Say it." He scissors his fingers, stretching me. "Say you're mine."

"Never." I push back against him, greedy for more.

His laugh is dark. "Stubborn bastard."

He replaces his fingers with his cock, sinking deep in one brutal thrust. I cry out, the shelves rattling with the force of his claiming.

"Mine." He sets a punishing rhythm, his hips snapping against my ass. "Say it."

I bite my lip, blood copper-bright on my tongue. "Harder."

He fists my hair, wrenches my head back. "Mine."

My cock throbs, trapped between my belly and the unyielding wood. "Yours." I gasp as he nails my prostate. "Fuck. Yours."

"Again." He punctuates the demand with a savage thrust.

"Yours!" I come, my release striping the shelves, my hole clenching around him. "All yours, goddamn you."

He follows me over, his seed flooding my channel, marking me. Claiming me.

We slump against the books, sweat-slick and panting. His lips brush my nape, shockingly tender. "Good."

I shiver, spent and shaken. He's still inside me, softening but present. "Does this mean the cooper's son is out of a job?"

He nips my shoulder, a playful reprimand. "Only if you keep me too busy to stray."

I twist to look at him, my heart too full of tangled emotions to speak.

He meets my gaze, his own unreadable. "You've made your point, Silas. I'm yours."