Bound to Be a Groom Read Free Page B

I’ve seen your patience with the younger girls. I love watching you.”
    “I’ve watched you too, Anna,” Pia confessed, her breath shallow. “I’ve watched you grow into this woman who knows her own mind. I see how you look at the world. How you will take what you want.”
    “I will take you. I know that now.” Anna’s voice was low and demanding, and she watched as Pia’s body responded to its strength—her strength. “My wild ideas about you have become so real to me.” Pia whimpered at the words, and Anna kissed her full on the lips, savoring the texture and taste, the feel of Pia’s tongue against hers.
    Anna broke away for a moment. Pia leaned her forehead against hers and said, “I’ve dreamt of you so many times, Anna.” She reached tentatively to hold a strand of Anna’s silky blonde hair between her curious fingers. “You come to me at night, into my bed, like an angel.”
    Anna laughed, low and mischievous. “If I am an angel, I’m an angel of darkness.” She spoke as she worked, removing the last of Pia’s clothes with rough, tugging movements. Every time she gave a firm pull at a piece of fabric, Pia seemed to come emotionally, as well as physically, undone. “The thoughts I have about you, Pia, they are dark and heathenish. Beautiful and raw.”

“Oh God,” Pia whispered after Anna removed her coarse overdress and her well-worn underclothes. All that remained was the long skein of linen that Pia used to bind her large breasts. She had never been naked in front of anyone. Out of fear or habit, she reached up quickly to prevent Anna from removing the last vestige of her modesty.
    A stormy look of disapproval passed across Anna’s face, and she took a step away from Pia. Many years later, when Pia would look back over the course of their life together, Pia knew this for what it was: the first small punishment for her defiance. At the time, Pia was confused, both timid and exhilarated at once.
    “Don’t ever do that again,” Anna said, in a gritty voice that Pia felt in the deepest parts of her throbbing body.
    Pia had spent her entire life in the convent, where her very existence had been defined by obedience; this felt like something else altogether.
    “Drop your hands and open yourself to me, Pia.”
    The submission Anna was demanding of her was something far more complex—far more rewarding—than the monotonous conformity of her daily life. Anna’s voice elicited a kind of sensual obedience that required strenuous complicity, not complaisance. A shiver ran down Pia’s spine.
    “Do you like when I tell you what I want?” Anna trailed a single finger along Pia’s neck. “When I am firm with you?”
    Pia nodded, almost weeping with the truth of it.
    Anna held her chin. “Answer me, my sweet. So I know you feel it, too. I want to hear your gentle voice crack under the weight of it.”
    “Yes, Anna . . . I love when you speak to me thus.” Pia gave herself to Anna in that moment, gave herself into the other woman’s keeping. With her head tilted back against the rough bark of the tree and her hands hanging loosely at her sides, Pia arched slightly forward, offering herself to Anna. It was as if they had become one in mind and spirit before they had even begun to explore one another’s flesh.
    “Remove the binding, my love.” Anna’s hands grazed over the linen where it was pulled tight and firm across Pia’s breasts. “Slowly.”
    Pia wanted to do as she was told. Resolved, but with trembling fingers, she began to unravel the fabric from around her ribs. She feared her heart was unraveling right along with it and hoped Anna was not orchestrating their mutual destruction. The possibility was distinct, if not deterring.
    When the fabric pooled at her feet, near the overturned basket, Pia didn’t know what to do with her hands. Seeking something to ground her, she reached her hands behind her and let the rough bark of the tree dig into her palms, as if she were tying