Wolf of Arundale Hall by Jennifer Leeland Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t wait for her to recover but bent his head down to take possession. He punished her mouth, enjoying the way she sagged against him, her moan signaling her surrender.
    When he released her she lifted her hand and pressed the back of it to her lips. Tears shimmered in her eyes and she whisked around, fleeing as though the hounds of hell were at her heels.
    As he stared after her he chided himself for being a bastard. He’d come home to help her, not dominate her. Hadn’t he?
    “Isn’t that a pretty picture?” his brother sneered.
    Joshua turned back to his brother. What had he expected after years of neglect? “Time to face facts, Perry.” He emphasized his words with actions that sent Perry reeling out of the door. Joshua knew damn well and good the wolf would erupt, fury guiding its motions.
    But his brother had learned some control and the Beast remained dormant behind his flaming gaze. “Why did you come back? No one wants you here.”
    “You know why.”
    Fear wafted from Perry and Joshua froze. Could his brother have murdered that man, sliced him up and left him to bleed on the doorstep? If so it was Joshua’s job to stop him.
    “You have no right—”
    “I have every right. As first born, I am the Earl of Arundale.” Pathetic and sad. That argument wasn’t going to tame the wolf.
    He gripped his brother’s arm and shoved him into the carriage. “I have been a poor landlord, but I’m home now. I will set things to rights.”
    It pained him to see Perry huddled in the corner, beaten down, despairing. “You cannot make this right, brother. I am a devil, a demon in human form.”
    Joshua sat down and knocked on the roof. The carriage leapt forward. “I once believed I was a monster.” He leaned forward and held his brother’s agonized gaze. “We are like men who have been born very tall. It can be a gift or a curse.”
    “This is no gift,” Perry said bitterly.
    Joshua nodded. “I believed that too. But I know better now. Have you ever avoided a confrontation because you could smell the violence on another man?” His brother shifted in his seat. Yes, Perry had experienced the positive aspects of the wolf. “It can be a gift.”
    “I don’t want it.”
    “Like most gifts, that is not important. It has been given to you. What are you going to do with it?”
    Who was he really asking that question? He hadn’t done much with his own gift. It occurred to him that he’d been a coward, afraid to come home and find his wife distant and his family in tatters. Though he had found those things, he’d also found that his wife was not unaffected by him and his family needed him.
    He should have come home years ago.
    *
    The day I discovered that William was the Beast of Arundale Hall, I thought my life was over. Our wedding night, usually kept in girlish secrecy, was one I must share so that following Arundale women are not shocked or pained by the method our men use. The Beast is so much a part of William that I no longer think of them as separate beings, but parts of a whole.
    Early on I discovered that pain, sexual arousal and domination all serve to control the Beast. It may stun you to see such words used by a gentlewoman. But I do not want my sons to suffer. The wolf creature is part of the Arundale heritage as much as blue eyes or tallness.
    It appears during puberty, somehow influenced by sexual need. From an Arundale boy’s crossing into manhood, he is tortured by the demands of this inner demon—for uncontrolled, the Beast is harsh and violent.
    Sexual extremes seem to satiate the Beast, but it is the final claiming of a mate that calms the Beast permanently. Until an Arundale male finds his lifelong mate, he is subject to the Beast’s whims of sexual games.
    When I met William, he visited brothels and paid women to allow him the full scope of his Beast’s nature. But I was his true mate, blooded by him and claimed. I wear his mark proudly, though none know it. Inside my thigh, he