Chapter 24 #2
Her gown fastened at the back, and he turned her gently and undid her.
She stepped out of it, along with her soft slippers, turning wordlessly back to face him, and he pushed the straps of her petticoats off her shoulders, so that they pooled about her feet.
She stood in her chemise, stays and stockings, and he asked, ‘Enough?’
She liked the fact that he asked; it gave her courage. ‘No,’ she said.
They did up at the front, her stays, and he unlaced them and threw them aside.
He did not let his hands linger, as he might have done, but he was a little less controlled now, she thought, and breathing harder.
She liked that too. Her chemise came over her head, and was also discarded.
Just her stockings now, and her garters – perhaps they could remain.
‘Sit down,’ she said. He sat on the sofa, looking up at her, his face unreadable beyond the ever-present hunger, and she came to stand before him, very close.
Their mutual craving was an honest thing, she thought, when so much else in her life was not.
‘Don’t ask any questions, but tell me frankly.
If I married a man who just wanted an heir from me, who didn’t desire me at all apart from that, he wouldn’t wish to see me like this, would he? ’
‘I don’t suppose he would,’ Max Severin told her gravely. ‘I expect he’d come to you in the night, in the dark, and do what was needful, and then go. It wouldn’t be necessary for you to be naked, Allegra. Or him. May I touch you? That’s a question, but I hope it is permitted.’
‘I wish you would. I didn’t mean that sort of question. That’s allowed.’
He put his hands on her, on her hips at first, and very slowly caressed her.
He traced the skin at the tops of her stockings, and then ran his fingers up across her belly to stroke her breasts, to cup and hold them.
‘I see you, Allegra Constantine, naked and unafraid as you are,’ he said unsteadily.
‘I love to touch you. Your skin is like velvet. You have the body of a goddess. I could worship you. Any man who would not do so is an utter imbecile.’ He added almost reluctantly, as if determined to be fair, ‘But he might still seek to give you pleasure, you know, your fool of a husband. It is widely thought that women are more likely to conceive if they experience release. God knows if it’s true. So he might do that.’
‘Let’s not talk about it any more,’ she said, and leaned forward to kiss him. This at least she could choose for herself.
He pulled her closer so that she straddled him, and they began to devour each other, mouths hungry, limbs entangled, breath coming fast. She found that she enjoyed the peculiarly intense sensations that came from being naked in his arms when he was still fully clothed.
The leather of his breeches was slick beneath her hot skin, and the wool of his coat slightly rough where it rubbed against her taut nipples.
His cheeks were slightly stubbled – perhaps he had not shaved – and felt deliciously rough against her breasts, and on the tender skin of her neck, and wherever else he kissed.
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,’ she told him, held tight in his arms, her body covering his, suddenly close to tears, ‘but I am afraid. Being naked here with you is far less frightening than my future. Do something to me, with me, for me, that nobody else will.’
‘Do you mean that, Allegra?’
‘I do, with all my heart. I don’t want to lie in the dark with a man who doesn’t even really want me and wonder if this is all there is. If I’m being deprived of something, I’d rather know. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s just ignorance.’
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, in what was almost a whisper that tickled her cheek, ‘A man who has no real interest in you will not engage fully with your pleasure. He may wish to make you come, as I have said, but for his own ends, not yours.’
She understood what he was saying. ‘As a duty…’ It was not a welcome thought.
‘I don’t want to make anything even more difficult for you. But yes. I would be very surprised if he would ever ask you to show him what pleases you, so that he could be better for you.’
‘You want to watch me…’
His hands were warm on her and his voice gentle.
‘I want so much that I cannot have. There are many things I could do to you, Allegra. I could worship you with my mouth. I could turn you over on this sofa and take you in a manner that a husband who only wants an heir never would. Or I could teach you to do things for me – but I think such knowledge might be dangerous for you later, if you incautiously revealed you had it. You are naked and vulnerable to me already, and you know that I find you glorious, and wonderfully brave. Will you not indeed show me something you may never have the chance to show anyone else?’
She settled back on the cushions across from him, and when he saw the expression on her face he sank to his knees, looking up at her.
‘I am honoured by your trust in me. Would you close your eyes, goddess, if you were alone?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Please don’t. Watch me as I watch you, see how it affects me.
Share this with me and me alone. Let the world burn as long as this is ours, and always will be. ’
Suddenly she wasn’t embarrassed in the least. If all she could have was to know that once she had been desired as much as this, seen as clearly as this, it would have to be enough.
She stroked her breasts, and pinched her erect nipples, always aware of his amber gaze intent upon her.
Her hand slipped down her body and tangled shamelessly in her dark curls as still he watched.
Her pleasure built as she caressed herself, and it felt strange not to lower her lids and drift away on a tide of private sensation.
But she did not, and the hunger written on his face aroused her more than she could have imagined.
It was his gift to her, she understood. He was kneeling between her spread thighs, and when she began to peak and cried his name, he reached out and held her.
His hands hard and strong on her hips, his eyes still devouring her, prolonged the waves of intense pleasure.
When at last they began to recede, and her left hand lay cupping her sex in the aftermath, he picked it up and began kissing it, licking it, sucking greedily on her fingers, biting the soft places, inhaling the scent of her, glorying in the taste of her.
She’d not imagined he might do that, and because of it she was not done, she found, not done at all.
Soon he was back on the sofa again with her, his weight welcome on her body, his mouth hot on her breasts, his fingers replacing hers and bringing her once more to a place where she saw stars and lost herself for a precious time.
Then his thigh ground hard between hers as they moved against each other, slick and sweating, and she understood that he was seeking release too. She was glad of it.
It was a reverie that could not last forever.
At last they acknowledged without speaking that it was time; he picked up her clothes and helped her dress, kissing her with a new tenderness that brought tears stinging to her eyes as he did so.
‘Allegra, there is little enough I can do for you beyond this. But let us agree always to be honest with each other, as far as we are able, and I will then lay another duty freely on myself: if you are ever in trouble, come to me at my home in St James’s Square, and I will do everything in my power to help you, and ask nothing in return.
’ He must have seen doubt in her face, because he added with a little heat, ‘If you ask me why I should say such a thing, let me respond that I wish it. Call it an idle whim if you please. You may never need a friend; in fact, I trust you won’t…
but if you do, come to me, or send to me, and I will come to you. ’
‘There’s no point me saying the same; it would be a pure fiction. I have no freedom and no power.’ She hoped this didn’t sound petulant, after all that had just passed between them, but even if it did, it was a stark fact.
‘Whether that’s true or not, and you seemed powerful as a goddess to me a little while ago, it makes no difference to what I say, Allegra. I told you: no obligation save that of honesty.’
It was a word that sounded simple, but was not. ‘Honesty is hard.’
‘For most people, I am sure it is – most people in the world lie as easily as they breathe. Not for us; not for you. Don’t tell me that you lie to your mother, that you lied in order to come here.
You know what I mean. But now you must go.
There is such a thing as too much danger, even for me. For us.’
He was right, of course. This precious time together was too good to last, or to be repeated. They tidied themselves and shared a final embrace, before she opened the door and slipped reluctantly back through the velvet curtain, where the real world waited.