Their Treasured Bride (Bridgewater Ménage 4)

"A cane?"

I cleared my throat, shrugged with a feigned nonchalance. "Something like that."

"Something like what, sweetheart?" Connor's hands settled on my shoulders and I flinched, but they did not move. They were warm and gentle and felt somewhat reassuring. "Tell us. I wish to know what ye endured, nae false generalizations so ye are nae seeming to be complaining."

"How did you...?" I bit off the remainder of my question.

"We are from Scotland, sweetheart. We know how a woman of yer ilk was raised to behave."

She sighed. "Very well. Everything you said, plus missing a meal or being left in a closet."

I believe I heard Connor growl.

"Look at me, Rebecca," Dash said. With his voice almost a plea, I had to look at him, to look in his dark eyes. "How old were you when you were sent away?"

"Six," I replied honestly.

Connor bit back an oath; I'd heard Cecil do the same when he was angry.

"And Montgomery, your brother? Where was he at this time?" Dash asked, his voice dark.

I licked my lips, worried that tone was directed at me. "When I was six? The army. I believe he was stationed somewhere overseas with you." Most likely in this country of Mohamir they all spoke so sincerely about. "He was much older than me; my mother's child from his first marriage."

"Your mother?" Dash asked.

"She died birthing me."

"Your father?" Dash's fair eyebrow went up at the question.

"He is well, the last time I saw him at least. Cecil heard of my father's plan to marry me to the widower Reginald Thompson-Trewes, Third Earl of Crawford. His only heir drowned at the age of thirty-four and he needed another. Somehow Cecil caught wind of this mismatched arrangement and retrieved me from London. I did not complain."

"I swear, Rebecca Montgomery McPherson MacDonald, that I willna raise my hand to you in anger. I will nae touch ye in any way that brings ye harm. Only pleasure." Dash lifted his hand to my cheek and with his thumb, brushed my cheek and pulled me down toward him and kissed me. It was soft and gentle and without any tongue, for which I was surprised and oddly disappointed. He released me and turned me toward Connor.

"No one will raise a hand or a switch or a ruler or a cane to ye again," Connor growled. "Tis our job to protect ye and take away yer problems. But we will do things with ye that may go against what ye've been taught, nay because they are bad, but because they are good." His thumbs, too, stroked over me, but his were making half moon strokes at the base of my neck. "Like saying the word fucking. Tis nothing wrong with that word, for ye will only find pleasure it with us, and we're going to be doing it often."

Often? Wasn't it just at night, in bed? "I'll...I'll try," I shared.

"Dinna worry, we have our own way of training ye."

I didn't know what he meant by that, but I doubted it involved a classroom and was reassured it did not include corporal punishment.

Dash smiled and the hard angles the conversation brought about faded. "I wager ye'll be begging us to fuck ye soon enough. Know this, ye will have to say the words, sweetheart."

I did not consider this a problem, as I doubted I would ever beg to be...to be taken.

"When we fuck, we will be naked. We will do it in broad daylight and often nae in a bed," Dash commented as his hands came up to the tiny buttons at my neck. "That is why we are here in the parlor for yer first time, to show ye we dinna need a bed."

I tried to step back, but I bumped into the solid wall of muscle. Connor.

"What...what are you doing?" I asked, stopping the motion of Dash's hands with my own.

"Getting ye naked."

"But...but I've never been naked with a man before."

"I bloody hope not," Connor growled from behind me.

I felt my heartbeat race again. The idea of being naked and exposed had me panicking. "Can't you...can't you do what you're going to do with me in my dress, at least until it's dark?"