Chapter 6 #2
“I have had to learn how to survive,” she said shortly, sitting as close as she could to the flames as she felt the chill of night cool her back.
Her cloak had been pulled around her shoulders, but it was not enough to keep out the December air.
“Without that experience, I would not be the person who I am today.”
She was going to say more, but catching his grey eye across the fire, Giselle stopped. It would not do to give too much away, and allow him to discover her secret identity as the Great Whisperer. After all, she had to protect herself. She was the only person who would.
“I…I wanted to say…” éduard’s voice trailed off, and he looked genuinely desperate to say something.
Giselle smiled, trying to tell him silently that he had permission to continue, and found herself wanting to reach out and take his hand in hers.
“I wanted to say how sorry I am about your family,” he said in a rush. She could do nothing but nod, more words too painful, and éduard continued. “You…you must miss them very much. What were they like?”
She swallowed. This was dangerous ground with anyone, let alone a man whose purpose was to find her out and hand her back to the French revolutionaries, but it was tempting, this opportunity to dwell on the past.
“My father used to sing whenever he was walking on his own,” Giselle said finally, in a faltering voice that grew stronger with éduard’s encouraging smile. “I could always hear him walking from half a mile away, so strong was his voice.”
“And your mother?”
“Gentil. My mother was incredibly kind, kind to everyone. Kind beyond her own comfort, which was why so many loved her.”
There was pain in these remembrances, but somehow, with éduard’s face staring at hers, it hurt less. The pain receded.
“And siblings?” éduard prompted. “Brothers, sisters?”
Giselle shivered slightly, though the fire was increasing in strength and heat. “My brother is still missing. I have no idea whether or not he is dead or alive, and if alive, where.”
She could have said more. She could have opened herself to him and said that her brother had been taken, or she thought he had; that she was being blackmailed to act as messenger for the rebels against the revolutionaries, that she did not care for politics or glory but for Pierre, her brother Pierre who had disappeared that terrible day and no one had heard from him since.
“Perhaps when the Great Whisperer is caught,” said éduard softly, “you can hunt for your brother.”
Giselle’s heart tightened. Yes, even after her duties as a spy were over, another hunt, another search would begin. Would she ever be able to return to her normal life? She missed it now, not that she had ever valued it when it had been hers.
“Perhaps,” was all that she said. Another log was needed to feed the fire, and she added it. Darkness had come now. Night had swallowed the sun.
She shivered, and éduard shook his head. “It saddens me to see such a beautiful woman as you so sorrowful.”
Giselle coloured, and was glad that he would not be able to see her features in too much detail over the firelight. “Beautiful? I thank you sir, but I have look become accustomed to being naught but mediocre.”
“You cannot be serious?” éduard’s voice sounded genuinely shocked, and it caused a thrill to spark up Giselle’s body. “Giselle, I have seen no one as strikingly beautiful as you in my entire life. Your eyes, the way your lips dance in a smile when you think I am not looking, your elegant…”
His voice trailed away as his eyes moved, unashamed, down her body. Giselle could feel herself grow hotter, even with most of her body covered by a cloak.
“I – I do not think that you should say such things,” she whispered, but she wanted to say, keep talking.
éduard shrugged, and she watching his broad shoulders move, but his eyes did not leave hers. “Why not? We are French, Giselle, let us not be ashamed of the feelings that we stir up inside one another.”
It was as though he could read her mind, as though he could see the hunger in her heart.
“I do not know what you – ”
“You know perfectly well what I mean.” éduard’s voice was not harsh, rather soft but certain. He smiled at her, and it made her want to melt. “If I could be but sure of your own heart, I would do something that I would almost certainly regret.”
Before Giselle knew what was happening, éduard had sat behind her and brought his legs either side of her, nestling her into his chest so tightly that she could feel his heart beating through his chest.
“Oh!” She gasped, almost embarrassed at the very physical response that she had to his presence.
“There, that should keep you warmer,” éduard murmured in her ear, his breath hot on her throat. “I would hate to see you cold, Giselle. I want to warm you up.”
She was warmer, certainly, but for very different reasons.
Her attraction to him which she had not been able to deny for many hours now flowed through her, waking parts of her body that she had never thought would awaken – or even could.
His strong thighs were penning her in, and she could feel a hardness pressing up against her back that she was almost sure was –
“You know,” éduard whispered in her ear still, his hands moving to his knees, tantalisingly close to her, “I could never have imagined meeting someone like you in my entire life, let alone running after her from an inn and becoming stranded on an island. It is like all of my fantasies have come true at once.”
Before Giselle could even think to respond, he laid his lips on her neck and kissed her. She gasped; his lips were like a brand, marking her, marking her as his own.
“Oh,” was all she managed before his hands moved to wrap around her, forcing her closer but it was a closeness that she longed for, that she had wanted ever since she had considered whether or not to seduce him on this very beach.
His hands were strong, and firm on her waist, but they did not stay there for long.
As Giselle arched slightly into the kisses trailing down her neck, éduard moved his hands up to her breasts underneath her cloak, and she gasped aloud at the pleasure that jolted her as his fingers caressed her breasts, as though searching for a particular spot.
He found them. Pinching her nipples tightly through her gown, éduard tightened his legs around her and kissed her hard just below her right ear.
“Oh, éduard!”
Perhaps it was hearing his name cried out by her, perhaps it was the feeling of her writhing in his arms, perhaps it was the need to push his hardness against something softer than her back, Giselle never knew, but éduard groaned and tipped her on her side, keeping her wrapped in his arms and twisting her slightly to face him.
His eyes were hungry, hungry for her, and he took his pleasure from her mouth, raining down kisses as he moved on top of her. Giselle welcomed his kiss, welcomed the possession that he took of her mouth, glorified in the weight of him.
His hands left her breasts but only to clutch at her hips, to bring them tighter to his own, and Giselle moaned in his mouth at the feeling of him, the temptation of pleasure, the promise of ecstasy that seemed so close.
Her hands were wrapped in his hair, but as his kisses deepened and he teased her tongue, Giselle found herself desperately pushing away his clothes, trying to rid him of as many layers as possible.
All thoughts of coldness gone, she was on fire, on fire for him, and there was a fire building up in her stomach that she did not know what to do with.
She did not know how but soon he was shirtless, and her fingers moved instead across taut muscles as he strained to please her.
And please her he did. Those wandering hands, those pleasure giving hands were now apart: one returned to her breast and gently teasing a nipple, and the other moving in the opposite direction, towards the warmth in her stomach and the wetness between her thighs.
“Giselle, you torturer,” éduard moaned as he broke away from her to look fiercely down into her eyes. “I have wanted to do this from the very moment that I saw you in that inn.”
In one swift movement, his right hand had moved the skirts of her gown up, pulled down her underclothes, and touched that warm, wet, secret place.
“Oh, mon dieu!” Giselle arched her back and pushed herself against éduard’s hand, wanting more, desperate for more than the gentle touch that he had just given her. “More, more, deeper éduard!”
As though waiting for her to beg him, éduard lowered his face to hers once more but mirrored this with a delving into her softness with his hand, and Giselle thought that she would faint with pleasure.
There was nothing like this, nothing at all, nothing could compare to the rapture that he was building in her, first with slow and jerky movements, and now with quickening speed and a rhythm that was echoed in her beating heart.
His other hand sweetly tortured her breasts, first one, and then the other, and Giselle wanted to cry out in tears of joy as her entire body seemed to glow with pleasure.
His hands moved in unison, faster and faster, and she could feel something building in her, something glorious, something that would rock her very existence.
“Oh, éduard, I think I am going to – ” was all Giselle managed to say before she exploded, waves of pleasure rocketing through her body and causing all of her limbs to spasm as she cried out his name again and again.
He watched her with such fierce joy that she did not want to look away from him as the dust settled around her.
“That was incroyable,” she managed. “éduard, you are such a man that I could never have…”
éduard grinned, and twisting slightly to lie next to her, started to unbutton his breeches. “‘Tis not over yet.”
Giselle looked at him through mists of receding pleasure, and smiled as she saw him now completely naked move over her once more – but her eyes widened as she saw what was in his right hand.
Her dagger.
Her heart was already pounding faster than she thought possible but now it accelerated, as she croaked, “éduard?”
éduard leaned forward, lust and something else in his eyes, and in one swift movement cut her gown’s ties and ripped it apart.
There she lay, completely naked before him, on fire for him and everything that he did. Her breasts, large and full of longing and pleasure, moved with her heavy breathing.
“Mon dieu, I want you inside me,” was all she managed, pulling him down towards her.
She was so slick with herself, so unbelievably aroused by his removal of her gown that Giselle felt that she could ride once more on that heady flight immediately, but éduard would not be satisfied with that.
He worshipped her body, his mouth kissing, licking, and teasing her breasts as his fingers gently fluttered over her stomach and her thighs, getting ever closer to that wet spot but never quite reaching it, driving her wild until Giselle finally lost patience.
“éduard!”
She moved, and so unprepared was he that she was able to flip him completely. Lying on his back, éduard looked up at her straddling him, and wet his lips.
“Now this is not what I expected,” he began in a hoarse voice, but Giselle stopped it with a kiss, and gently lowered herself onto his hard cock.
“Oh, yes!” She moaned as she speared herself, feeling herself tightly around him.
éduard’s eyes had widened and he had gasped in unexpected pleasure as she took him inside herself. “Giselle, are you sure you – oh, Giselle, yes!”
Though she had never done this before, Giselle knew enough of riding a horse to understand the mechanics, but her body’s instincts took completely over.
Her hands on his chest and throwing back her head, she rose slowly until he was almost out of her and then dropped down quickly, arching her back to feel his cock rub up against the inside of her.
Her rhythm found, she increased the pace, his hands on her buttocks as she rose and fell, his eyes on her breasts, her nipples dancing tantalisingly before him.
Giselle tried to stay slow but she could not, the heat inside her was just too great and she had to keep moving, she had to. And éduard did not help.
“Faster,” he moaned, writhing underneath her. “Faster, plus rapide Giselle, oh my sweet beautiful one keep going – oh, mon dieu I am coming, yes!”
Giselle felt him shudder and explode into her, and it was enough to push her over the edge for the second time, her entire body spasming with pleasure as she thrust him into her again and again and again until she was completely spent, and collapsed onto him.
éduard could barely see, but he could feel, by God, he could feel. Every inch of him seemed to be tingling as Giselle collapsed onto him, her heavy breasts pressed against his broad chest. He was still inside her, and with each panting breath she made, he jerked inside her and warmed her afterglow.
“I cannot imagine anything greater,” éduard managed after several minutes lying there in warm silence, “than this feeling. Than this feeling of being inside you, and you against me.”
Giselle chuckled, and he could feel her laughter from inside her, and it made him want to pin her down and take his pleasure from her another time.
“You do not think that catching the Great Whisperer would be the same?” She said in a joking air.
éduard swallowed, and brought his hand to stroke the long dark hair that was spilling in delicious curls across his body. “Perhaps.”