Forty-Three

HER mother was with her sisters-in-law and her female cousin when Adalene had to explain what happened right away, that it wasn’t the Baron that did this to her, and she told them about what happened when they were in the castle, meeting Lady Madeleine, and Lady Veronique and her schemes.
Lastly, of course, was about her painful experience with the thieves on their way home for which, even when she did not provide as many details, her scars already told what she couldn’t say.
She had never seen her mother that flustered in her life as she cried as she checked every scar on her body.
She made her promise she would take care never to leave the Baron’s side whenever they were outside.
She asked her if she truly wasn’t raped, a question the others were numb to ask her.
“I wasn’t. Fabian and the others came before they could do it,” she replied. “But mother, stop crying. It would still have been rape if the Baron hadn’t taken me that day, but it would be a husband who could do it every day, over and over. So, listen, I’m all right. I would rather have these scars than be subjected to that kind of life.”
It stopped her tears, but it was still hard for her to imagine she would be safer being Fabian’s wife.
She was confused and unbelieving until she observed what others observed, too.
Adalene was friends with the workers in the manor, and the knights had brought her something on arrival from wherever they had been sent off.
Even Sir Bertrand peeked inside her room and sang a short melodious song about birds chirping in the garden, and then left a beautiful pin with a single pearl for her.
And they were all confused for another reason.
A good reason. But still as baffling.
Adalene smiled. “They’re family. Fabian has kept this together and we’re family here. I wish you could all stay a little longer and I’m still not so weak but… a week more and you will understand, mother. I really am happy here.”
There was no sane explanation about how everything Adalene had told her mother could really have happened to her since they last saw each other at the chapelle, before the Baron rode away with her only daughter upon declaration of jus primae noctis, his right to her first night.
But she could understand that her mother and family were having a bit of difficulty believing what they could see.
Hadn’t she been as disbelieving as they were when she first landed here?
Hadn’t she been suspicious about the Baron’s kind treatment of her when she was just a tenant?
She was nothing to him.
It was so good a timing that Lady Madeleine arrived and distracted her mother, and she stayed by the older woman’s side to reminisce about so many things in the past.
She couldn’t help appreciating Fabian’s great-aunt and what confidence she could give her because of her support.
She’d become Adalene’s filter to others in the royal court.

“WHERE did you go, *ma bichette*?”
She raised her face to his and she smiled. “My mother and Lady Madeleine are below, helping with the supervision of the banquet. She’s wearing a beautiful dress and my father, I think, is smitten anew with her,” she said.
“I can see where you got your beauty,” he said as he leaned and looked down, then smiled at her. “But I must say, she could have done well instead of your father.”
“Tst. Don’t say that. My father has a soft heart and is more hardworking than most. He always means well, but he is poor.”
He stared at her. “I’ll have to watch him closely then, see what he can do. Maybe I’ll need to have a second assessment of my father-in-law.”
She nodded. “Thank you. I think it’s coming together little by little, and I’m so… happy.”
“*Je t'aime (I love you)*,” he said tenderly now as he lowered his head to kiss her shoulder. “I wanted nothing more than to make you happy.”
“*Je vous aime aussi (I love you, too)*. I hope I make you a happy husband.”
He took her in his arms. “You... have already made me happy many, many times,” he said huskily before kissing her hungrily. And as always, heat spread from their lips to their bodies.
“My gown...” she whispered. They were about to go out in a moment and she was already in her wedding finery. But she would never tell him to stop. “Be careful, Fabian…”
“I’ll take care of you,” he said while opening his surcoat and unstrapping the belt on his breeches. His face already displayed the flushed shade of desire, his eyes tender yet passionate as he gazed at her.
“Oh, Fabian. Is our life always going to be like this?” she asked him as she laughed softly near his lips.
He grinned as he took his rock-hard cock out. “We are working on it, are we not?”
And Fabian made good on his promise.
He made her sit on a pillow on the edge of the desk in the corner of her room. She helped him raise the hem of her skirts, and he spread her thighs wide open with deference.
“Beautiful...” he whispered before he lowered his head and lave her pussy with the pad of his tongue. She was still moaning when he clamped his lips to her mound to gently suckle.
She moaned harder, her head thrown back, her body arching towards him in response. As his lips sucked at her, the tip of his lips flicked at her pleasure bud and she could actually feel herself getting soaked with the juices produced by her lust.
He did not relent, suckling, drawing her inside his mouth, until she was begging and pleading and panting hard.
“Please...” she whispered as she felt her face and neck warming up with delicious arousal. “I want you, my Baron. I want to feel you inside me. Now.”
He straightened up and set her feet against his thighs. He bent a little and then maneuvered his head’s cock towards her slit. That was the only warning she got. He slid in, fast, inch-by-unrelenting-inch, until he’d buried himself fully inside her.
They groaned hard, together.
“This is going to be fast, *mon amour*,” he whispered as his eyes locked on her eyes.
“Fast,” she whimpered as she held on to his powerful shoulders. “I want fast, my Fabian.”
And he did fast, slipping in and out, hard and full, throbbing and slick with her wetness, piercing her over and over.
They groaned hard and panted and cried against each other at each powerful and pleasure-full thrust. The slapping of his skin against her skin filled the room together with the noise of their pleasure. It was all so heady and arousing.
He caught her mouth and kissed her hard. Hard and rough, his kiss and his cock, roughly, faster, deeper...
She exploded, and he took in her scream inside his mouth.
He pounded at her and made her pleasure unbearably exquisite, and she rolled into another climax. That was when he climaxed, too, and they rode the waves together, writhing and convulsing as they held each other tight.
They touched down from that glorious experience kissing.
He held her for some time more as they got themselves together. The different cadence in the noise below alerted them that they had better be ready in minutes. And after cleaning up, they soon had their clothes straightened.
“Are you ready to be a wife to me and love only me, ma bichette?” asked the Baron with raised eyebrows. He held his hand to her when they felt and heard the gathering outside the door.
He was teasing her, but she could not speak right away. So much in awe….
Be the Baron’s wife... be the only woman he will love... forever.
“There was no other man before, my Fabian. You are the only one. So… yes, de tout mon cœur (with all my heart).”
He kissed her, then opened the door to the people who waited outside to fetch them to the marriage ceremony.
And the next phase of their lives together begins.