His Last Duchess by Gabrielle Kimm

she should take no active part at all in what was transpiring.
    She began to feel increasingly unconnected with her body. Alfonso’s touch excited her, but it was like trying to hold an image from a dream: as fast as she acknowledged the sensation she was feeling, so it retreated from her, disappeared into nothingness, leaving her bemused, confused and hungry.
    It was not long, though, before Alfonso’s hands became more insistent; her heartbeat began to quicken, and anxiety pushed thick fingers up into her throat, as she realised that the loss of her maidenhood must be fast approaching. She had been longing for this moment for months, but now, as she faced its immediate arrival, a suffocating feeling of panic began to tighten around her chest.
    Even as she thought this, Alfonso lifted his mouth from her breast and, eyes black in the almost-dark, ran the tip of his tongue over wet lips. He did not smile, and Lucrezia shivered.
    Alfonso shifted himself up her body and pushed one knee in between her thighs. At first she tried to hold her legs together, resisting him, her face cold and hollow at this unprecedented sense of exposure, but Alfonso edged his leg more firmly into place, crooking her knees upwards with his hands. Lucrezia closed her eyes and held her breath, expecting the stabbing soreness she had once been warned might come. Alfonso pressed down against her hips, but although she could feel a blunt nuzzling, as though of some hot-nosed animal, she was surprised that, in the event, it seemed quite soft and made little impression.
    Alfonso swore quietly and pushed his hand down between Lucrezia’s body and his own. His arm jerked awkwardly against her stomach, and then he tried again. She felt the hot nudging once more, then Alfonso’s hands pulling and probing—she was startled as his fingers slid inside her, and let out a sharp mew of surprise. She was unsure what he was doing and did not dare to ask him, for her husband now seemed quite oblivious of her, other than as an obstruction to his achieving fulfilment.
    He tried a third time, muttering angrily to himself and, as he failed yet again, Lucrezia’s eyes filled with tears that ran, scalding, down the sides of her face and into her ears. After all the months of expectation, it seemed now that her new husband did not truly want her after all. He had seemed to at first—her body had appeared to please him—and she had thought him so assured, so grown-up, so experienced as he had begun to make love to her. It had to be her own failing, something she was or had done, that had debilitated him like this.
    Despair draped itself around her like a wet sheet.
    Alfonso rolled away from her to lie on his back on the far side of the mattress. Lucrezia sat up, dragging the covers up and over herself. With the untidy linen clutched in white-knuckled fists, she could just make out his profile, staring up at the ceiling. The whites of his eyes caught the light from the window. A sob swelled in Lucrezia’s chest and she tugged the sheet nearer to her chin. Say something to me—please! she willed Alfonso. Tell me you are not angry with me. Hold me!
    And then, after a few long seconds he turned, but he did not hold her, and still he said nothing. He reached forward and unfastened the rope of red stones, unwinding them slowly from Lucrezia’s throat. Then, with the jumble of crimson clasped in one fist, he sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood.
    Stiff with misery, Lucrezia watched him. It was now so dark in the room that she could not properly see what he was doing, but she heard the click of a tiny lock and the muted rattle of what sounded like glass. A rustle of material followed.
    With a pinprick of shock, she realised he was dressing. “Are—are you leaving?” she said.
    The words sounded horribly loud, whispered into the silence. There was no reply. Lucrezia watched her new husband cross the dark chamber.