Chapter Forty-three
“Sylvie!” rasped Angus, his voice raw with panic.
“Mm,” she murmured, a slow, blissful smile alighting on her face as her lashes fluttered open. “I think I just died and went to heaven. I feel like I’m floating… everything feels… brighter, more wondrous.”
“Oh, dear God!” he half-laughed, half-scolded, covering her face with desperate kisses. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“What?” she giggled.
“Stop talking! You never stop talking, you never stop moving! I thought you had fainted… or worse…” His words dissolved as his mouth found hers, the kiss full of relief and trembling emotion.
When he finally broke away, she whispered, “You even taste different, it’s rather… exciting.”
“I taste of you…” he murmured, brushing his lips along her jaw, “of your pleasure…”
“Oh.” Her cheeks instantly flushed, and she turned her head aside in shy disarray.
Amused by her sudden shyness, he caught her chin gently and guided her gaze back to his. “You excite all my senses. The way you look, the way you smell, the way you taste, even the way you sound as I pleasure you.”
“Do I?” she chirped, “really?”
“Um?” he teased, then laughed softly against her neck, “yes, really, very pleasing in every…” Freezing, his words caught in his throat as he felt her fingertips tentatively stroke along the length of his arousal.
“Sylvie!” he groaned in warning, but she just smiled.
“And my touch? Does that please you too?” she whispered, her hand a little bolder now. Her eyes widened in wonder as she whispered again. “It feels as soft as velvet,” she mused, closing her fingers around his girth, “and yet…” she squeezed gently, “… hard… like a rolling pin beneath!”
He gave a breathless laugh. “A rolling pin?” Then gasped and held his breath as she squeezed again in curiosity, sending heat straight through him.
Her eyes, dark and heavy with desire, met his. She worried her bottom lip for a second. “Angus,” she whispered, “I think I would very much like to try this joining thing.”
Every muscle in his body tensed, his manhood jumping further to attention, the throbbing ache nearly unbearable. His control was hanging by a thread.
Suddenly aware of how he was lying — the warm softness of her thighs encompassing his hips, her curious little hand unknowingly positioning him. He gritted his teeth, willing himself to retreat.
“Please, Angus. I want you…”
His body moved before his mind could catch up. All restraint lost as he felt the exquisite sensation as his tip found her slick folds. His hand instantly covered hers, guided himself further, stroking up and down her silky heat, teasing her button with the slick head of his manhood.
“Oh, Angus,” she moaned beneath him.
His own voice, tight with desire. “It may be painful for a moment.”
“I don’t care.”
Her hand slackened under his and fell away as he finally guided himself slowly to her entrance.
So tight. So impossibly soft. So ready for him.
He willed himself to be careful and grit his teeth as he eased forward by degrees.
Tight resistance. He held his position, her body trembling as it slowly yielded to his invasion.
He withdrew, then slowly slid back in a little deeper, letting his hips rock slowly back and forth one more time, then held again.
His legs were trembling, his balls tightening, the sweet agony of denial making him dizzy.
“Oh, Sylvie,” he groaned as her hips rose to meet his, “are you sure?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
His hands already on her hips, he held her firm and took a deep breath as he finally thrust deep inside her.
At the little gasp of pain, he held them steady, his heart hammering against his chest. “Alright?” he managed to rasp out.
“I think so, it was just a quick, sharp pain, but now, now it feels…”
“Feels?” he whispered urgently.
“Warm,” she whispered, “and… and filling.”
Her body softened, adjusting to him. He withdrew slightly, then pushed forward again, inch by careful inch. Her gasp turned to a sigh — his became a groan. Agonisingly slowly, he started to withdraw, then rocked gently back inside.
She whimpered in pleasure, and that was all he needed. “Wrap your legs around me,” he murmured.
She obeyed, and the change in angle tore the air from his lungs.
His rhythm grew instinctive, the pace quickening with every thrust until the sound of their breaths filled the room.
Her body lifted to meet him. He grasped her by the hips, guiding her thrusts to meet his own, quickly finding their unique rhythm.
His desire was starting to crescendo. She was panting beneath him.
He couldn’t hold much longer and slipped a hand between them, his thumb finding her button, and she instantly cried out.
Her climax took her with shuddering force, her body tightening around him, the sweet spasms dragging him over the edge, nearly killing him as she wrung the last of his control from him.
He thrust one last time, hard and deep, and held.
He flung his head back as his whole body tensed, as release surged through him in exquisite, blinding waves.
His heart hammering, his breath ragged, he finally collapsed on the bed beside her, their bodies slick and spent. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their uneven breathing.
At last, when his heart had steadied, he murmured, “You alright, sweetheart?”
Instantly, she turned on her side and tried to prop herself up on one elbow.
Knowing she would be bursting with things to say, he adjusted his position, wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close.
Her head resting on his shoulder, her fingers toying with the hairs on his chest, she sighed contentedly. “Oh, Angus.”
“I didn’t hurt you?”
“Gosh no. It was… glorious. I didn’t know a body could do such things, feel so, so … and I really do think they should discuss such wonders at morning teas.”
“Do you now?” he laughed softly into the top of her head.
“Indeed,” she said dreamily.
His heart now steadying, he closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth of her pressed against him.
He breathed deeply, catching the delicate scent of her hair, and found himself smiling, wondering if he had ever felt this content before as he started to drift off to sleep.
Sylvie’s voice droned softly against his chest, recounting sensations, half-formed thoughts, excitedly describing how this felt, and that…
“… and I love you so much, Angus, I think my heart might explode.”
“Mm,” he smiled, murmuring sleepily, “I know you do, sweetheart, and I lo….”
His eyes instantly snapped open, the words freezing in his throat. His heart sped in panic, momentarily crippling him with fear as realisation hit him like a blow to the guts. A sickening wave of regret, so powerful it made him shiver, and he shot from the bed.
Quickly turning, he pulled the covers over her with a trembling hand. “Try and get some sleep. We depart in a couple of hours… for Wales.”
“What?” she gasped, sitting up. “Wales! But, but I thought…”
But Angus was already gone, the door to the adjoining room closing quietly behind him.
* * *
Leaning back against the door, he buried his face in his hands.
How could he have been so stupid? So reckless?
So utterly weak and thoughtless? Yet, he knew the answers and loathed himself for them.
Sighing deeply, his hands still trembling, he crossed to the washstand and poured water from the blue and white porcelain pitcher into the matching bowl.
The sound of the water seemed deafening in the stillness.
He splashed the icy liquid across his face, gasping as it hit his skin, but it did nothing to cool the fire burning inside him.
* * *
His soul in turmoil, Angus prowled from Hayford Abbey and followed the winding path down to the beach.
He told himself a bracing walk in the sharp sea air might clear his head, calm him, though he doubted even the rhythm of the crashing waves or the plaintive cries of the gulls could soothe the tempest within him, as it once had.
He found the beach more through memory than sight — the first rays of dawn just starting to creep over the horizon. The sea — a dark, ominous mass, its inky surface rising and swelling like a tortured, writhing monster in one of old Lord Hayford’s stories — was a perfect reflection of how he felt.
The stretch of beach at the entrance to the pathway was exposed, the wind biting cruelly at his face.
He shrugged further into his coat, pulling the collar up to his ears, and strode out.
Long, deliberate strides, eating the distance between him and the headland.
Increasing the distance between himself and the wife whose heart he knew he would surely break.
Without warning, he stopped abruptly. The grief, the fury, the self-disgust all rose up at once, choking him.
His hands balled into fists, and he turned and roared at the ocean.
The guttural, agonising sound ripped from somewhere deep and primal — the wind tearing it from his throat to be swallowed by the thundering waves.
His latest torment and pain to be held forever in the watery depths alongside those from his childhood.