Persuasion (The Wild and Wanton Edition) (6 page)

She could understand that. The warm area between her thighs was now uncomfortably achy as well. Anne shifted restlessly on her feet, and she discovered that she was
wet
in the area that dully throbbed to the same rhythm as her erratic heartbeat.

“I ache, too,” she murmured distractedly.

She heard his quick intake of air, and then the hand that was not holding her fingers against his arousal grabbed her free hand.

He intertwined their fingers. “Where, darling?”

Too desperate to be embarrassed, Anne guided their laced fingers to her lower belly. She did not have to guide him further.

Frederick slipped his fingers from hers and cupped her mound through her skirts. They both moaned. “So warm,” he muttered almost unintelligibly.

And that was the last time either of them could string intelligent words together. He curved his fingers upward and brushed against a point of focus that shot through her. Anne swayed forward as her knees weakened, and Frederick scooped her against him with the hand that had been holding her fingers against his arousal.

He grunted softly, and then his lips descended upon hers. This was not the sweet and innocent kiss. This was not even the kiss where their tongues had lightly dueled. This was a full, sensual invasion of Anne’s senses.

He thrust his tongue deeply into her mouth, sliding it against hers in a rhythm that Anne found made her even more mad for him. His fingers where he cupped her moved again, rubbing back and forth against the epicentre of her need. She moved her own fingers where they were surrounding his length, squeezing and releasing.

It was wonderful.

It was not enough.

She whimpered and moved her hand against him even faster. “More,” she pled against his lips.

He made a noise of assent and lowered her to the grass without separating their lips or removing his hand from the area where she needed him most. As soon as she reclined, he covered her body with his own.

“
Yes
,” she heard herself whisper in a voice she did not recognise through its desperation. Some instinct she could not identify had her raising her thighs on either side of his hips. His lower body sank into hers, and the length of his arousal pressed against her core.

She gripped his shoulders with fierce fingers. “Please!” She canted her hips against the length she craved more than her next breath of air.

He groaned long and low as he braced himself above her with one arm while the other moved to grab her skirts and pull them up.

Her heart exploded in joy as she realized that he was going to give her what she desired. He was going to love her. “Yes,” she muttered in a rush. “Do it, please.” Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of his breeches. She jerked at them so hard, she was sure she removed one or two.

As his arousal sprang into her hand, she felt his large, blunt fingers brush against the naked skin of her sex. “
Frederick
,” she moaned sharply. “
Now
!”

“Anne — ” He sounded in pain and his hips moved, thrusting his hardness through her grip. “We should not — ”

A ragged sob sounded from Anne’s chest. He was going to refuse her? She ached so badly. She writhed against his fingers and felt them spread her wetness over throbbing skin. “
Please
.”

“God forgive me,” he moaned. His fingers replaced hers around his arousal, and he nudged her thighs even wider apart with his knees. She felt the tip of him brush against her entrance. “Love you so,” he muttered just before thrusting into her. The sharp sting from his first enthusiastic entrance into her body made her gasp. He quickly fell forward, bracing himself on his elbows and cupping her face with both hands. He pressed a hurried kiss to her lips. “I h-have been told it will not hurt — ” he gritted his teeth “ — for long.” He took three gulping breaths. “Anne, I cannot — ” His earthy groan rent the air. “I cannot stop.
So tight
.”

He drew his hips back, and as the length within her retreated, pleasure lit in its wake. She gasped and clutched his firm rear end through the fabric of his breeches, trying to draw him back into her. “Do not stop!” she begged breathlessly.

“Never,” he promised on an exhale as he thrust back into her. He withdrew again, just as quickly, and then surged back. The next moment, he fell preciously out of control. His thrusts lost all measure. He began moving within her far too quickly; even Anne in her inexperience knew that. His weight upon her was heavy, his hold almost too tight. His words of love were whispered breathlessly into her ear as he thrust himself into her over and over erratically — one moment too deep, the next too shallow.

He was a virgin, as well
. The thought arrived amid the cacophony of pleasurable thoughts in Anne’s head, and she knew in an instant that it was true. The knowledge caused a rush of moisture where they were joined, and he must have felt it for he cried out her name, and then he arched over her one final time. Heat spread in her womb as he jerked against her, and she felt so loved that tears stung her eyes. Then something even more wonderful occurred. The pleasure that had been building steadily reached some sort of peak as he spilled his seed within her. Flashes of light shot behind Anne’s vision, and her back arched. Waves of ecstasy cascaded through her, wrenching a cry from her chest.

Frederick pulled his face from her neck to look at her with something akin to wonder spreading across his features. When she could finally breathe again, he leaned down slowly and pressed the softest of kisses to the corner of her mouth, never releasing her eyes.

“I cannot believe I was able to give you that,” he whispered into the kiss.

She breathed a laugh. “Me either.” She squeezed his bottom. “Want to give it to me again?”

His response faded into memory as Anne pulled herself from the past to look at the letter she held in her hands in the very spot where they had first consummated their love.

She had to smile to herself, even through the pain, as she remembered the details of that afternoon. It had been the most wondrous event of Anne’s life. The period of her life to follow was the happiest she had ever experienced, and but a short one.

Troubles soon arose. Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, for it was obvious that he suspected them of doing exactly what they
had
been doing, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter. He thought it a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with more tempered and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one.

Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to think of! Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! It must not be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from one who had almost a mother’s love, and mother’s rights, it would be prevented.

Captain Wentworth had no fortune. He had been lucky in his profession; but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing. But he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted. He had always been lucky; he knew he should be so still. Such confidence, powerful in its own warmth, and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it, must have been enough for Anne; but Lady Russell saw it very differently. His sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind, operated very differently on her. She saw in it but an aggravation of the evil. It only added a dangerous character to himself. He was brilliant, he was headstrong. Lady Russell had little taste for wit, and of anything approaching to imprudence a horror. She deprecated the connexion in every light.

Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Anne could combat. Young and gentle as she was, it might yet have been possible to withstand her father’s ill-will, though unsoftened by one kind word or look on the part of her sister; but Lady Russell, whom she had always loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion, and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain. She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. But it was not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end to it. Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up. The belief of being prudent, and self-denying, principally for
his
advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and every consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the additional pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a relinquishment. He had left the country in consequence.

A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance; but not with a few months ended Anne’s share of suffering from it. Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect.

More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him, but she had been too dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place (except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture), or in any novelty or enlargement of society. No one had ever come within the Kellynch circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he stood in her memory. No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the small limits of the society around them. Nor had she been able to reconcile the fact that she was a ruined woman with the fact that many a man would overlook such a thing. She mentally used that excuse when the need arose, and she could not acknowledge that she could simply not consider another man for the very reason that her heart would never accept another man.

She had been solicited, when about two-and-twenty, to change her name, by the young man, who not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger sister; and Lady Russell had lamented her refusal; for Charles Musgrove was the eldest son of a man, whose landed property and general importance were second in that country, only to Sir Walter’s, and of good character and appearance; and however Lady Russell might have asked yet for something more, while Anne was nineteen, she would have rejoiced to see her at twenty-two so respectably removed from the partialities and injustice of her father’s house, and settled so permanently near herself. But in this case, Anne had left nothing for advice to do; and though Lady Russell, as satisfied as ever with her own discretion, never wished the past undone, she began now to have the anxiety which borders on hopelessness for Anne’s being tempted, by some man of talents and independence, to enter a state for which she held her to be peculiarly fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits.

They knew not each other’s opinion, either its constancy or its change, on the one leading point of Anne’s conduct, for the subject was never alluded to; but Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently from what she had been made to think at nineteen. She did not blame Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her; but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good.

She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it; and this, she fully believed, had the usual share, had even more than the usual share of all such solicitudes and suspense been theirs, without reference to the actual results of their case, which, as it happened, would have bestowed earlier prosperity than could be reasonably calculated on. All his sanguine expectations, all his confidence had been justified. His genius and ardour had seemed to foresee and to command his prosperous path. He had, very soon after their engagement ceased, got employ: and all that he had told her would follow, had taken place. He had distinguished himself, and early gained the other step in rank, and must now, by successive captures, have made a handsome fortune. She had only navy lists and newspapers for her authority, but she could not doubt his being rich; and, in favour of his constancy, she had no reason to believe him married.

How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

With all these circumstances, recollections and feelings, she could not hear that Captain Wentworth’s sister was likely to live at Kellynch without a revival of former pain; and many a stroll, and many a sigh, were necessary to dispel the agitation of the idea. She often told herself it was folly, before she could harden her nerves sufficiently to feel the continual discussion of the Crofts and their business no evil. She was assisted, however, by that perfect indifference and apparent unconsciousness, among the only three of her own friends in the secret of the past, which seemed almost to deny any recollection of it.