9. Prudence
Prudence
His mouth moves against me, and my body betrays everything I have been taught.
You will not derive pleasure. Pleasure is damnation.
Housemother Ruth’s voice loops through my skull—flat, certain, immutable—while Ronan’s tongue slides through my most intimate place with a slow, deliberate pressure that makes my hips buck off the mattress before I can stop them.
I force my spine flat. I clench my jaw. I recite: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not—
His lips seal over a place I have no name for, a swollen knot of nerve endings that sends a bolt of white heat from my core to the tips of my fingers, and the psalm evaporates from my mind as though it were never there.
What is happening to me?
There is heat. Gathering, pooling, tightening into a coil deep inside me that winds itself tighter with every stroke of his tongue.
I do not have words for what is building.
I have never been told it exists. Housemother prepared me for pain—dull, dutiful, righteous pain—not this mounting, spiraling pressure that is pulling me toward something I cannot see.
My fingers are in his hair. I do not remember putting them there. I grip harder, and a sound escapes Ronan—a low groan that vibrates against my flesh and sends a fresh wave of sensation crashing through me.
I try to suppress it. I press my lips together. I dig my nails into my own palm with the hand that isn’t fisted in his hair. My thighs tremble, locked against the sides of his head, and I cannot tell if I am trying to push him away or pull him closer.
The coil tightens. And tightens. And tightens.
Something is building toward a peak that frightens me, a crest I can sense approaching the way you sense a storm gather before it breaks.
My breathing comes in short, shallow bursts.
My body arches without my permission, every muscle straining toward his mouth even as my mind screams at me to stop, to be still, to be good.
I try to wrench myself away. My heels dig into the mattress and I push, but his hands grip my hips and hold me in place. His grip is firm, not painful, but immovable.
“Let go, baby.” His voice is a rough murmur against my skin. “You’re safe. Let it happen.”
“I can’t—I don’t know what—”
“You can. Trust me. Let go.”
The tension snaps.
Something detonates inside me—a violent, obliterating convulsion that seizes every muscle I possess.
My back arches so hard my shoulder blades leave the mattress.
A cry tears from my throat, ragged and stunned, louder than any sound I have made in front of anyone, ever.
My thighs clamp around his head. My fists twist in the sheets.
Wave after wave of sensation crashes through me, relentless; each one crests and breaks and is followed by another, and I cannot breathe, cannot think, cannot do anything but ride it until my body releases me.
When it passes, I am shaking. My limbs have been unstrung. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes and trail into my hair.
I do not know what that was.
Ronan lifts his head. He presses his lips to the inside of my thigh, my hip, the plane of my trembling stomach, and climbs until his face is above mine. His mouth finds my forehead, my damp cheek, the corner of my lips.
“Perfect,” he says. “You are perfect.”
He kisses me, and I taste something unfamiliar on his mouth—warm, musky, intimate. It takes me a full breath to realize the taste is me. The thought should horrify me. It doesn’t. I kiss him back, clumsy and urgent, and grip his shoulders to anchor myself.
He draws back enough to study my face. His green eyes are dark and intent.
“Are you alright?”
I nod. My voice is gone. My mind is reeling, sorting through a myriad of thoughts it has no explanation for, trying to file what happened into a structure that cannot hold it.
I was supposed to endure. I was not supposed to enjoy. I was supposed to feel nothing. Instead, I felt…everything.
Housemother told me a wife submits. A wife lies still. A wife does not cry out.
Either Housemother was wrong, or I am damned.
A fragile thought surfaces, so quiet I nearly miss it—maybe Housemother was wrong about this.
The thought is terrifying and exhilarating and forbidden, and I hold it the way I once held that penny—precious, guilty, mine.
My awareness returns to the room in pieces. The glittering city beyond the glass. The warmth of Ronan beside me, propped on one elbow, his breathing uneven. My skin is damp with perspiration. The sheets are tangled around my calves.
And then I notice what I could not notice before. He is aroused. The rigid length of him presses against his sleep trousers, straining the thin fabric.
He gave. He did not take.
In the Enclave, men take. That is the order of it. A husband takes what is his by covenant, and a wife offers what she owes. But Ronan put his mouth on me and brought me to a place I did not know existed, and he asked for nothing.
“Do you want to stop?” he asks. His voice is strained. “We can stop. There’s no rush.”
I look at his face. The tightness in his jaw, the tendons standing out in his neck, the way his hand grips the sheet beside my hip. He is holding himself back. For me.
“I do not wish to stop.” The admission doesn’t come from duty. It comes from a greedy place. My body is still humming, still warm, and there is a new ache between my thighs. A curious desire. I want to know what happens next.
His eyes search mine. Then he stands and strips the sleep trousers from his body.
I have seen penises. Not human ones, but those of the farm animals at the Enclave. I have even watched as the animals mated.
I have never seen a man unclothed. Not fully, not this close. He is lean and sculpted, his abdomen ridged with muscle, his shoulders broad. My gaze travels lower.
His penis is large and long. The sight of it, thick and flushed and rigid, sends a spike of nervousness through me even as a rush of heat blooms anew between my legs.
He returns to the bed and settles over me, bracing on his forearms so his weight doesn’t crush me. His skin is hot against mine everywhere we touch—his chest, his thighs, the hard length of him pressed against my hip.
“If it hurts,” he says, reaching between us, positioning himself, “you tell me and I stop.”
I nod.
He pushes forward. There is pressure, then a stretch that steals my breath, then a pinch—sharp, tearing, quick. I brace for the agony Housemother promised.
It does not arrive. There is discomfort, a fullness that borders on too much, but beneath it, that same gathering warmth. My body adjusts around him, accommodating the intrusion.
He pauses, fully inside me, his forehead pressed to mine. His arms tremble against me.
“Okay?” His voice is wrecked.
“Yes.”
He moves. A slow withdrawal, then a careful thrust, and the sensation ricochets through me. My hands fly to his shoulders. My fingers dig into the muscle there.
“God, you feel incredible.” His mouth is at my ear, his breath ragged. “So tight around me. So fucking perfect. You were made for me, Prudence.”
His language is crude and foreign and it sets me aflame. He moves again, and again, building a rhythm that my body rises to meet. My hips tilt without instruction—instinct, pure and primal. My legs wrap around his waist, drawing him deeper, and the angle shifts, and—
“Ronan—” His name breaks from my lips on a gasp.
“There,” he growls. “Right there. That’s my girl.”
He finds the spot and works it with devastating precision, each thrust deliberate, measured, his hips grinding against me on every downstroke. The tension is building again—faster now, more savage, fed by the fullness of him inside me and the friction of his body against mine.
I grip him harder. My nails rake down his back. I cannot be still. I cannot lie silent and motionless. My body is a creature that has broken its leash, and it strains toward him with a hunger that would have horrified me an hour ago.
“Let me hear you,” he says, driving deeper. “Don’t hold back. Give me everything.”
I come apart a second time. The wave is quieter but deeper, rolling through me in long, shuddering pulses that clench around him in rhythmic surges. His name tears from my throat.
Seconds later, a groan rips from him as well—low, guttural, and ground out against the curve of my neck—and I register the hot jets of his seed inside me. He buries himself deep and holds, his body pinning mine to the mattress, his breath coming in harsh bursts against my skin.
We lie tangled together like this for several minutes. I feel his heart pound, and mine pounds back.
He eases out of me. “I’ll be right back, baby.” He presses a kiss to my forehead and rises from the bed.
Water runs in the bathroom and he returns with a warm, damp cloth. Kneeling beside the bed, he cleans me.
His hand is gentle, the cloth soft, and he works with a tenderness that does not match the size of him or the roughness of his hands. He wipes the blood—my blood, proof of my purity—from my thighs, and his touch is so careful I have to press my knuckles against my teeth to keep from making a sound.
This consummation of our vows has not gone as I expected at all. It is nothing like what Housemother Ruth prepared me for.
No man has ever tended to me. No man has knelt beside any bed I have slept in and touched me with care. I have been told my entire life that I exist to serve. That my body is a vessel of sin to be corrected, controlled, and used.
And this man is on his knees. Cleaning my body. Serving me.
He sets the cloth aside, lies beside me, pulls the covers over both of us, and draws me against him. His arm wraps around my waist, my back against his chest. His chin rests on the crown of my head.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He presses his lips to my hair. “Don’t thank me. You deserve the world.”
I deserve. The notion is strange and I do not quite believe it. But it is also beautiful and, just for tonight, I shall hold it close.
I fall asleep with a smile on my face.