Chapter 9 #4
“It’s like an ache,” she whispered. “No, like an itch I cannot scratch. Inside me. Yes!”
She felt him inside her, just a little way.
She wished it went deeper, but it seemed churlish to complain.
“Keep talking,” he said, “and I’ll keep moving.” When she looked down she saw a teasing challenge in his heavy-lidded eyes and laughed out loud.
“I could call your bluff.”
Humor deepened. “One day you must tell me how an innocent comes to know so much. Yes, if you call my bluff, you’d win. But I’d like to hear you tell me how this feels. Let’s pretend your words can drive my loving.”
Abruptly, all words escaped her except a string of incoherent pleas she would not utter. “What you did before,” she said desperately. “I liked it.”
“You surprise me.” It was a mere whisper against her breast, where his mouth played, but it carried laughter.
“I suppose that’s why you watched. I always thought these things happened in the dark, you know, but seeing does seem to be quite exciting . . . Oh!” He had pushed forward a little more. “Yes! Er . . . that wasn’t a cry of objection, my lord.”
“I didn’t think it was. Call me Fort.”
“Fort.”
Elf remembered imagining saying his name in the secret dark of a bed.
They weren’t in a bed or the dark, but the pleasure of speaking his name this way still entranced.
She said it again, pulling his head up and kissing him, attacking him with the hard need still knotted within her, tormented by his nearness.
He returned the kiss, but when it finished they were little further forward.
“You’re a wretch to tease a lady so!”
“You’re a wretch to stop talking.” A shudder rippled through him. “Have pity, Lisette, and tell me how you feel.”
“As if I want to scratch you,” she said, almost crossly. “Hot, sticky. Aching.” Taking control, she wriggled forward. “Ouch!” She hastily squirmed back.
Hard hands seized her hips, pulling her back. Pain shot through her and she cried out again as he filled her completely.
Now she knew how deep it should go.
She sat rigid under astonishing sensations, some of them distinctly unpleasant. “I suppose I’m not a virgin anymore.”
“If you start to complain at this point, I’ll throttle you.” A tension in him, almost a vibration, told her of his need. Did he feel as she had, hovering on the brink, aching for release?
She made herself relax. “No complaint except against nature who made women so.” It felt a little better. The pain was subsiding and the feel of him, big and deep, was . . . was again beyond description.
His lips moved back to her breast, which helped, and she tangled her fingers in his hair. “I think I’m rather pleased actually, my lord. Fort. My lover . . . My first lover. Does it please you, I wonder, to know I’ll never forget this?”
With a sighing shudder, he looked up at her. “You are a remarkable woman, Lisette. Despite your desire for the conventional, I might not let you go . . .” His hips flexed, and he moved within her so she shuddered too.
She kissed him, loose-lipped and hungry. “You cannot keep me.”
“Perhaps you won’t want to leave. Tell me how it feels.”
“Tell me how you feel.”
“As if I’m about to explode and fly into tiny pieces. But as if I’m going to be very happy, very soon. You’re tight, and hot, just the right size and exquisitely responsive. I’m a lucky man. Or will be if you’ll just talk to me.”
“You’re impossible! Just do what you have to do.” But when he didn’t, she added, “There’s pain. But it’s not too bad. More a fullness.” She moved her hips, trying to adjust herself around him, then quivered as a new need stirred.
He groaned and she liked that. She wished she knew what to do to make him groan like that again.
“It’s a strange sensation,” she whispered, almost to herself. “But I think it’s good . . .” He moved them both, and she gasped. “Goodness!”
“From good to goodness.” But he stilled again except to suckle hard on her breasts, sending a new burst of power to explode along her oversensitized nerves.
“Mercy on me!” she gasped, thrusting her restless hips against his. He groaned again, so she did it again. Still he held himself rigidly still, jaw set.
“I want to stretch,” she gabbled. “As if I could touch the edge of the world . . . It’s like a hunger. A fierce hunger. As if I’m eating for the first time, but can’t satisfy myself . . .” She seized his hair and turned his grimacing face to hers. “I could get quite cross about this, my lord.”
“Fort. I insist that you call me Fort.”
Elf looked into passion-dark, desperate eyes. “It would serve you right if . . . Fort, then. Fort. Fort. Fort!”
She chanted it as he rose, still inside her, to lower them both to the carpet. She chanted it in time to his thrusts, until breath and coherence escaped her. She chanted it in her mind when she could only grip him, tighter and tighter, for fear of extinction.
Then she sighed, “Fort,” in dreamy surrender, remembering at last to say, “Thank you.”
He laughed as if he scarce had breath to laugh with. “You can’t imagine how delighted I am to have been of service, dear lady.”
He had left her body, but sensations lingered everywhere to remind her. Flat on her back on the carpet, Elf stretched and smiled up at him. “You sadly underestimate my imagination, my lord. Fort.”
Somewhat unsteadily, he pulled her to her feet, gathered her in his arms, and carried her to the undisturbed bed. He set her on her feet again in order to pull back the covers, but when he turned to her, he smiled and touched her lips with his finger. “I like that.”
“What?”
“That smile. You look very pleased with yourself.”
Her smile widened. “I am. And pleased with you, Fort.” Cheekily, she added, “If you ever need one, I’ll give you a reference!”
Laughing, he picked her up and tossed her onto the sheets. She realized then that she was still partially dressed, if a loose-topped shift, lace stockings, and one shoe could be in any sense called clothing. He plucked off the shoe and tossed it on the floor.
She moved to strip off her shift, but he said, “Don’t.”
She looked down at the stained and sweaty garment. “Why not?”
“A woman is most beautiful in sensuous disarray.”
Elf didn’t think she had ever felt more beautiful than at that moment in the mirror of his eyes. “What of you, then?”
“What do you want?”
She considered asking him to put on the black silk robe, but realized she liked the sight of his body too much to want it veiled. Strong body, tangled hair, and a face so relaxed she hardly knew him.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. “You can ask whatever you want.”
“That a man is designed to pleasure the sight of a woman.”
He grinned, and she thought perhaps he might even have blushed a little. “Men think it works the other way around.”
“Which merely proves that God designed both sexes perfectly.”
He leaned over to kiss her. “Don’t bring God into this, sweetheart. Remember, I promised to show you the way to hell.”
She discovered that his buttocks were available to her eager hands and explored their firm roundness. “I’ll never think of hell in quite the same way . . .”
He pinned her to the bed with strong hands, but Elf relaxed in his grip. It wasn’t a dangerous moment, just a lustful one. She would trust this man with her life.
That thought surprised her.
Naked trust.
Was that the truth he had spoken of? She did wish she could rip off the mask and be honest with him.
Deliberately, she moved matters back to the simply lustful. She licked her lips. “Do you have something else wicked in mind, Fort?”
He laughed out loud, and suddenly the universe shifted.
Just like that, thought Elf. Did a person fall in love just like that? Or was it realization that struck like Cupid’s dart?
Her heart had started a new rhythm. A rhythm that had nothing to do with lust, only with love, with a fierce protectiveness and a need to be-with that pushed close to agony.
For she could not have him. If he knew who she was, he would not want her.
She would only ever have this one night.
But for this night, at least, she had her laughing lover.
As he relaxed down beside her, she snuggled against him, savoring perhaps the most precious moment of all—closeness, so relaxed, all barriers down.
This, she realized, was what she had really sought this night.
If only she could shed Elfled Malloren and all it entailed, and be Lisette.
She’d do it in a moment to be so close to this man, to bring him laughter and pleasure every day and night, and be exquisitely pleasured in return.
Just the thought of marriage, of this closeness through eternity, brought the agony of suppressed tears—because it could not be.
Or could it? She was a fighter, a Malloren. With a Malloren, all things are possible . . .
Fort pulled the covers over them and his arms came comfortably around her. “Sleep a little, Lisette. I promise I’ll wake you later to continue your education in wickedness, but for the moment we both need a bit of rest.”
She never could have imagined the beauty of sliding into sleep wrapped in his arms.
He kept his promise, waking her with kisses and nibbles and fiery touches.
When she asked, he showed her how to touch him so he groaned and writhed.
Though watching in the mirror had been exciting, this was perhaps even more delightful.
The candles had guttered into darkness, and touch, taste, smell, and hearing were intensified beyond belief.
He did not enter her, but they shared pleasure anyway, inventively, wickedly, before tumbling back again into exhausted slumber.
When she woke to find herself smothered in dark cloth, encircled by strong arms, Elf thought he was up to yet more wickedness, but something she did not care for. She squirmed and tried to protest, but a hand clamped cloth down over her mouth, cutting off what little air she’d had.
Damn him, what did he think he was doing?
When the hand moved, she sucked in a breath through heavy, musty cloth and started to cough.
“Stifle it, or I’ll throttle you,” growled a voice. Definitely not Fort’s.
A voice with a Scottish accent.