Chapter 29 #2
She abandoned herself to his touch, to the growing pressure within her body, losing herself in the melody of his murmured love words.
His fingers were warm, slightly heating the sparkling wine before bringing it to the ripe nerves behind her ear, to her temples, to the thickly beating pulse in her throat.
The heady fluid played beguiling tricks as the air cooled and dried it, leaving a hot, penetrating residue that saturated deeply into her fluttery senses.
She turned her head weakly to the side, skimming her lips along his forearm, and then, as he offered it, his wrist, the rise of his palm, its warm hollow.
And as his hands sank downward to lift and caress her breasts she heard a softly pleading sound escape her throat, and she said his name in anguished desire.
His quiet laughter flickered against her shoulder.
“No, little flower. Softly, love. I need you too, but we have to give your body more time to be ready for love.” His mouth, covering hers, caught her pleasure cry as his thumbs found her nipples, stroking them through fabric.
Gliding over the moist surfaces of her lips, he whispered, “Tonight I want to pull the soul out of your body, Merry, and bring it together with my own.”
She said something—a husky little utterance that sounded like “Yipes”—and he was laughing again as he slid his fingers under the narrow ribbons of her chemisette and drew it over her shoulders and down the smooth trembling flesh of her arms. Letting the fabric spill in a shimmer like new snow around her hips, he brought his hands back to stroke tenderly over the length of her hair, lifting it in a mass to his face, inhaling its hypnotic fragrance.
Peeking shakily upward, she watched the reflected image of her hair, a reddish tumbling cascade, as it mingled with his wild honey fairness.
Her eyes had a liquid radiance, her mouth shone wetly, passion-flushes tinged her cheeks and neck.
She stared at the puzzle of herself for a quick-breathing moment, until his hands found their way back to her breasts and she closed her eyes, gasping against the sweetness of his flesh pressing into hers.
Her body pushed backward into the coaxing warmth of his thighs and bare stomach.
Blindly searching, she brought an arm up to touch his face and to rub the back of his neck.
And it was his turn to gasp as the motion arched her breasts into his fingers.
Burying himself in the splendor of her curls, his palms pressed her overtender flesh, gently distorting the soft shape of her breast with their pressure.
His thumbs, dewed in wine, slightly lifted her aching nipples.
For a long time he held her thus against his body while his hands played luxuriantly over her bewildered flesh until she was hot and sweat-damped and shivering, and as he drew her to the bed she pulled at his clothing, undressing him with clumsy, shaking fingers as he laid her crosswise on the bed.
“Devon—I love you… love you,” she whispered thickly. “Love me… love me…”
“I will, little flower.” But instead he brought his mouth down to rock gently over her panting lips.
His hand began a light kneading motion on the skin below her navel that traveled slowly to her lean thigh muscle and then, more slowly yet, to her inner thigh.
She was in a restless delirium of pleasure and need before he dipped his fingertips in the wine and slipped them into her.
The fluid lubricated her to the love-nuzzle of his fingers, and his gently careful touch had brought her almost to rapture when he withdrew them.
Her bliss-numbed eyes flew open, and he kissed away the gathering tears of confusion.
His own eyes were warm and blurred as he murmured, “It can be even stronger… higher, Merry. Trust me…” And this time when he brought his mouth to hers, she met him with an open burning passion that exploded through his blood.
Holding her face in wet, unsteady fingers, he whispered, “Shall I—Yes, sweet flower, touch me… yes, again. Love, shall I make you fly? I’ll show you.”
He kissed every part of her. The lingering wine smears, heated and incensed by her flesh, were severely intoxicating.
He could taste her from his throat to his loins.
Her supple moist skin was like an expensive and subtle spirit: the fermented sepals of orchids, powdered silk, flecked gold and myrrh.
He picked up the soft weight of her hair and rubbed it over her and himself, over her cheeks, her breasts, her mouth, his mouth.
And his clever tongue, more articulate than it was even in speech, dragged her spirit to some high drifting heaven where her body shimmered like mist, in separate shining cells.
She knew nothing beyond wet hot ecstasy, could not divide sensation into its parts; she could hardly follow the path of his hair brushing a rhythm on her skin or recognize that the shoulders and heels pressing so urgently into the bedclothes were her own.
And then she saw him smiling lovingly, dreamily down at her as he entered her, spreading a smooth, exquisite voluptuousness through her, catching her writhing hips in a gentle grip and saying, “Slowly, love… slowly.”
She had an unearthly beauty to her, her eyes with a ravished angel luster, her body answering his motions, quivering with exalted anticipation and then releasing a deep-rooted shudder each time he thrust himself slowly into her.
As from a distance, he heard himself repeating her name, asking her in a shivering whisper to hold him, helping her to wrap her beautiful legs in their ankle bracelets around his body; and taking her face in his palms, he gazed into her feverish eyes and murmured, “I love you, I love you, I love you” until at last, under the worship of his body, she touched the heights he had brought her toward, in love, and his adoring hands caressed the tremors of her surrender.
Her fluctuating senses, battered by the potency of her release, led her to weep afterward, and he held and cherished her, curving her body to his in the way two bodies will curve together after love.
When he could, which was not soon, he rose and brought another glass of wine, and sitting up, he pulled her body, limp as a heavy sheepskin, onto his lap and into his arms. He fed her a little wine, and when he saw she could hardly swallow, he kissed the excess from her lips.
To his delight she said in a cross little voice, “If that was the glass you’ve been sticking your fingers into… ”
“Oh, no,” he said, stretching an arm back to the bed-stand to lift the other glass.
“This is.” With a wickedly teasing glint in his eyes he put the glass to his lips, and she watched with fascination and a little awe as he swallowed the remaining wine, savoring it.
He gave her a smile of breathtaking charm, laid his fingers, barely touching, on her lips, and said, “Nectar of Merry.”