Chapter 5 #2
Hungry herself—for those lips upon hers—she wove her fingers in his hair and tilted his face up to hers, bending to put her lips to his.
Only then remembering her mask.
He drew away, but with a smile. “Can we dispense with the mask yet? You can trust me to be discreet….”
He was already tugging at the strings, but she seized his hands. “No!”
He stilled. “Trust me.”
She wavered, pained by his honest need, longing to be honest with him. But then, like icy water, she remembered what lay beneath the mask. Not just her identity—something that could ruin everyone—but her damaged face.
“No,” she repeated firmly.
He shrugged. “Then there can be no lip kisses.” Instead, he bent to kiss her nipple, drawing it deep into his mouth.
With a choked cry, Rosamunde went limp, but when it seemed he might stop, she clutched him to her. He laughed softly against her mouth-wet skin. “I fear your husband is not just neglectful, but ignorant, my sweet.”
Digby? Digby should have been doing things like this?
He’d squeezed her breasts sometimes, but she hadn’t liked it. He’d certainly never done the things this man was doing. Now, he was working the same magic on her other breast.
Assailed by sweet sensations, she laughed softly, recognizing a natural force, greeting it as a birthright long denied. He looked up, warm eyes smiling as if her laughter gave him genuine pleasure. Then he touched the important place at last, delicately, almost questioningly.
In answer, she spread her legs, but he didn’t cover her and enter her.
He just stroked her there. Without pride or dignity, she clutched him, silently begging.
For the first time in her life she truly wanted a man inside her.
It was an extraordinary need, an aching hunger, an instinct, almost, that could not, must not be denied.
He just touched, and stroked.
“Now,” she commanded. “Do it now. Now!”
His eyes flashed heated humor. “Are you sure?”
It wasn’t a serious question, and she didn’t even try to answer. He grinned and moved over her.
Though braced for it, she didn’t feel squashed or smothered. She even relished his weight in the cradle of her hips and raised them, seeking. As if in direct response, he guided himself slowly into her.
At last.
She relished every inch of it, but then, startled by the fullness of completion, she cried out. Laughing, he put his hand over her masked mouth. “Hush. No matter how safe you think we are, we can’t have you screaming and yelling.”
Rosamunde put her own hand over her mouth, because for the first time she could imagine screaming and yelling.
She’d cried out the first few times Digby had claimed his rights, but that had been from pain, and after the first time, she’d tried to suppress her noises because it hadn’t been his fault.
That pain had stopped, but in the years after, she’d never made any kind of noise except the occasional grunt if he squashed her.
Now, she braced herself for the pounding thrusts, commanding herself stay silent.
It didn’t happen.
He was back to her breasts again, nibbling and sucking and moving only slowly inside her. Now her hand served to stop pleas for more, for quicker, for harder.
Now!
She mustn’t interfere. She couldn’t afford another failure like Digby’s recent efforts. She couldn’t help but move her hips, however, feeling his so hard against her. How different it was without a round belly between.
How tightly he filled her. She supposed that Digby filled her, too, but with all the bouncing and pounding she’d never been so aware of it as now when she felt the friction of his slow movements, as she flexed her own hips in synchrony with his.
She stared up at him, looming over her, many inches taller than Digby, and broader. Perhaps it should be frightening to be so overwhelmed, but it wasn’t. Instead, she felt sheltered. Cherished. At home. A creature safe in its burrow, lovingly tended.
Sliding her spare hand up his muscled arm to his broad shoulder, she silently thanked him for precious gifts. But then, caught by a startling pang of need she dug her nails in his flesh. He grinned, eyes afire, and thrust once, hard.
And she arched, lifting him off the bed, counting her own hot pulse pounding through her flesh like a drum, reveling in her liquid need tight around him.
He coiled down and sucked at her nipple so hard it should have been agony, but it made her cry out against her hand and arch up harder, like the hard thrusts she’d expected from him.
And this time he met her.
At last he met her need for need, urgently, powerfully driving her back down where she wanted to be. Beneath him. Around him. Part of him.
He was saying things, urging her to things as he moved harder and faster.
Never stopping.
Never pausing.
She began to almost want him to stop. This was too much.
Too hard.
Too unrelenting.
Don’t stop!
Oh mercy, mercy.
She was mad with something that must be completed, terrified of the hovering doom, racked with a pain that she loved, groaning with fear and pleasure….
Sobbing with it.
Until—at last, at last—it happened!
No wonder she’d never started a baby, she thought with startling clarity just before she burned up in sudden, obliterating fever. She’d never done it properly!
She held on to that thought as she spun wildly through the fire, and afterward, as she wept into her mask. She wasn’t at all sad and was glad the mask hid her folly.
She held on to the thought as a promise—a promise of the baby she’d surely created. Held it as she lay beneath his shuddering heat, feeling as if she’d melted entirely into a puddle of sated senses and sweat.
Truly, that had been the most remarkable thing that had ever happened in her life, and she was very grateful not to have missed it.
He was kissing her neck, her breasts again, but she just wanted to stay a puddle, a surely pregnant puddle….
He rolled onto his back, taking her with him, holding her close. After a languorous while—a moment, an eon—he whispered, “Delightful mysterious lady. More?”
“What?” Even talking seemed too much effort.
He slid down a bit, holding her up on his arms, and suckled her dangling breasts.
“Oh no.” Rosamunde had never imagined doing it more than once a night. Or day.
“Oh yes.”
“We can’t.”
“We can.”
“I can’t.” And she couldn’t. She felt as wrung out as a boiled sheet on laundry day.
“Yes, you can.” He nipped at her, making her want to giggle. “I’m not niggardly when it comes to paying debts. You must let me pay in full.”
“You’ve paid….”
“For my very life?” He ignored her feeble protests, lowering her and soon trapping her in need again.
Twice to make sure. Why not?
But when he rolled her onto her back, he used his hand between her legs, slowly, slowly, so she was whispering pleas and even cursing his control before the brilliant end.
As he stroked her and soothed her, she said, “But we didn’t do it. Did we?”
“Do what?” Though she was too embarrassed to look at him and talk about this, she could hear the humor.
“Er … the whole thing.”
“Didn’t you like it?”
She knew it was pointless to lie, but tucked her head down as if there was a point to hiding her masked face.
He raised her chin. “You know, your husband could do that for you, even if he can’t do other things.”
Rosamunde tried to imagine prosaic Digby indulging in such antics.
“No?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“Some men don’t deserve their treasures. But most of it you can do for yourself.”
“That’s a sin!” How absurd, when she was here, sinning.
“More?” he asked.
Limp and almost quivering, she shook her head and meant it. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“I’ve killed no woman yet. Turn, my dear.” He didn’t wait, but turned her and raised her onto all fours. From behind, he covered her, nipping her protesting neck like a stallion with a mare. “More?”
Stiff in shock, Rosamunde resisted a moment longer, but he wrapped an arm around her and brushed her sensitive nipples while his new erection stirred between her thighs.
A moan escaped her and he licked around her ear, whispering, “More? Please?”
“More,” she agreed, and he entered her, quick and fast this time. Like a bitch, or a mare, or a ewe with a tup she let him master her and take her, until they collapsed down in shattered ecstasy, him half over her.
Tangled like that, they slept.