Chapter 14
Fourteen
The concubine had not come to her king an untouched maiden, but she would never speak of her past to him, no matter how he plied her with sweetmeats and jewels and by putting his tongue between her legs.
— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.
Susannah’s face had been so open, so alive just a moment ago, but now it shuttered. All that thought and feeling disappeared. Her magic was gone, drained out of her by him, by something he had said or done.
She pulled away, got off of him.
She was leaving, she was going, bullets flew, cannons fired, men screamed. He couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t stop her, he couldn’t stop his heart.
His heart.
He didn’t want his heart if she didn’t have it. It belonged to her, with all its blood and scars. He wanted to rip it from his chest and shove it into her hands.
Her hands.
“Wait,” he got out.
She hadn’t gone anywhere, she was still in bed with him, here, in his bedchamber at Bledsoe Park. He had told her about his marriage, his sons and how they hated him. He had told her all of that, and she hadn’t left.
She had come to him, instead. And she was still here. With him.
“Wait, wait.”
The smell of blood and gunpowder faded, replaced by roses and her.
She was still here. She had waited. Her body quivered, inches from his. He was going to reach for her and keep her here.
With words, not arms.
“Tell me what’s wrong.” Wrong. Try again. “Did something happen?”
Those soft golden-brown eyes of hers blinked. “Yes. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You’re—” He should not be the one to tell her what she was doing, that she was making his dreams—only the good ones, the best ones—come true. “What did you think you were doing?”
“I had an idea I was showing you that I— Oh, Henry, that I cared for you.”
She cared for him. He had, deep down, known she cared for him. But hearing her say the words made him want to grab her and never let her go.
He finally dared to touch her. He put his hand on her face, stroked her cheek, tucked her hair behind an ear. “You were showing that.”
He wouldn’t say more when she had more to say.
“I didn’t think about you caring for me,” she said. “I wasn’t ready for that.”
What had they been speaking of when her face went dead?
“No one has ever cared for you,” he said.
She stiffened. “That’s not true. Hodge and Dando and—”
“I mean a man who’s not your brother. I was speaking of a man who wants you and wants your satisfaction.”
She bit her lip. “No, you’re right.”
“I want both things.”
Her legs moved against the mattress. She wouldn’t look at him.
“Who told you that not spending during coitus was not natural? Who made you think it was disappointing?” He could hear how cold he sounded. He wasn’t cold, at all. He was on fire with anger.
If Susannah sensed his anger, she didn’t show it.
“My sweetheart. Well, I called him my sweetheart. Ned Greenway.”
That name. “The owner of The Swan?”
She nodded.
“Mr. Greenway is mistaken. I don’t want you to think my experience is so extensive that I profess myself expert in this, but my mother’s brother’s wife .
. . well, my aunt was and still is a woman who cares nothing for propriety, and, when I was sixteen, she took me aside and gave me a lecture about women.
It was very embarrassing for me even though she was blunt and plain-spoken and spent more time on my responsibilities to my bed partners than anything else. ”
Susannah had gotten up on her elbow, was leaning towards him. She was totally absorbed in what he was saying, and Henry silently offered up thanks to the marchioness for that long-ago lesson.
“She explained to me that many women, indeed, she thought most women, required more stimulation than simple coitus.”
“How did she know this?”
“She claims she knows everything. I have only recently begun to doubt that, but I believe she does know the truth of this matter.”
“And she said many are like me?”
“Most.”
“And you believe her? Your not-extensive experience has shown you . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“But you would want to . . . do that?”
Explore her sweet body, learn the sounds of her gratification, taste her? Oh, Susannah.
“I did say I wanted to do anything that gave you pleasure.”
She smiled ruefully. “I thought that was something men said and didn’t do.”
Damn Ned Greenway and his ilk. Henry strained upwards from the pillow and kissed her lips.
“Let me pleasure you.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He touched her breast lightly as he kissed her mouth again. “Does this give you pleasure?”
“Yes.”
He held and squeezed her heavy breast, ran his thumb over her nipple, and it perked as he swept back and forth, over and over again.
“Yes,” she said, although he had not asked.
She lay back upon the pillow, and he kissed her soft, hot mouth again and then her neck. He licked her collarbone. She tasted of fruit and salt and secrets.
He wanted to know all her secrets.
He moved his head lower—and his body, too, as it would not do to get a crick in his neck when he had so much still to give her—and kissed the breast he held, gathering it to his mouth.
“Yes,” she said.
His roving tongue found her nipple, and he licked it. Oh, he had been hungry to do this, to feel the bud become even firmer, the skin puckering. He closed his mouth over it and sucked.
She gasped, her belly clenched. “Yes.”
He took the other breast in hand and kept sucking at the nipple of the first breast. Her hands touched his head, scuffled through his hair, ran over his ears.
“Ah,” she said. Then a moan.
I care for you, Susannah.
She grasped his shoulders, and he turned his lips against the breast he held and laved that one with his tongue, too, before lapping at its nipple, which soon became as erect as its twin.
“Henry. Yes.”
Yes. She was giving herself over to him, forgetting her fears. He went to the underside of her breast and licked the crease of her flesh there, and the taste of her was even stronger here, in that warm place with delicate skin, but she did not tell him yes or moan.
Instead, she giggled as he moved his lips and tongue to her belly. He rolled on top of her again, his knees between her legs, his elbows on the mattress as both of his hands pinched at her nipples, and he made his inexorable journey down, down, down, a trail of kisses.
Her giggling stopped when the trail led to her navel. He kissed it tenderly before continuing onwards, downwards.
“I don’t know this,” she whispered.
He slid his hands over her flanks to her hips and wedged his hands under her bottom and pushed himself farther down the mattress.
“There’s nothing for you to know,” he said. He kissed her skin right next to her maidenhair.
“Will this give you pleasure?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Her hands on his shoulders squeezed.
“But if it doesn’t please you, you must tell me,” he said. He could hear the rasp of his own voice, feel the throb of his cock against the mattress. “And I will please you another way.”
Please let me please her. Please.
Some tension went out of her. “If you are determined to please me . . .”
“I am.”
One of her hands left his shoulder, stroked his jaw. “You are. You do.”
He turned his head and kissed her palm. Then he moved even lower, and the frisson of desire he felt did not come from the rub of his cock on the mattress but that she spread her legs to accommodate him.
Welcome, she said without words.
He had not done this in many years. But he remembered certain things. He must take his time. Gentleness could arouse more than fervor. At least, at the start.
Then he saw and smelled her cunt and forgot everything.
Susannah.
He made his tongue flat and wide and licked her from bottom to top, relishing her taste.
She inhaled sharply but did not say anything.
What a selfish animal he was. One whiff and he was slavering over her.
He began again. Gentle kisses. Discovering her. Caring for her. Pleasing her. He found her opening and kissed her there, his nose nestled into her folds, her maidenhair brushing the skin next to his nose. He put his tongue into her, penetrated her, tasted her.
Oh, my God.
“Oh,” she said.
He was right at the heart of her desire, and he wanted to feast on her beauty, cover himself in her, bury his whole face in her.
But, more than that, he wanted to please her, not himself.
He brought his hand up from under her gorgeous, lush hips and replaced his tongue with his finger and set up a rhythm of fucking her as he moved his mouth to the top of her slit.
Her leg and his head cast a shadow in the moonlight, but his tongue knew its way to her clitoris as if he had been here many times before.
A delicate lick. She clenched, her cunt squeezed his finger, her thighs lifted up by a fraction of an inch.
An even lighter application of his tongue directly on the sensitive nub. And again. And again. She relaxed. She trusted him now, knew he would not be careless, would not hurt her.
He built his pressure and speed, both with his mouth and his finger.
“Oh, Henry,” she said. A whimper. “I never . . . I didn’t . . .”
He was surrounded by her. Her taste, her sounds, her smell, the hardening of her clitoris under his tongue.
“I don’t,” she gasped.
She clawed at his shoulders just as he had wished, but he barely took note of the scratch of her nails, so intent was he on making her come.
“I don’t know what to do,” she pleaded.
He could answer her. He could tell her there was nothing for her to do but to accept her pleasure, that was all he wanted her to do, just to take, even though she was not used to that, but, please take, take, take, Susannah.
But he could not answer her. His tongue was occupied.
“Oh, Henry. Henry. Henry.”
His name had never been said as she said it. He attacked her nub with his tongue, lashing at it furiously, wanting more and more for her.
“You please me, you please me, you please me, you please me!”
The last me was nearly a scream, and she clenched again and again and again, and his finger felt each pulse rippling through her.