The Captive (21 page)

Except to her, it wasn’t minor.

And they weren’t married.

His hand moved again, with more purpose, and more heat spread through Gilly, from low in her belly and between her thighs. She put her hand over his to stop him from further caresses.

“I thought you were awake.” His voice was a rumble in the darkness, right behind her ear. “I’ll stop if you wish it, Gilly, but only if you wish it. This is where fancying a fellow can lead, for a widow with the courage to indulge her pleasures, and I’m almost sure you do fancy me.”

He opened his mouth over that place where her shoulder and neck joined, while Gilly tried to think.

And failed. She wanted him; he desired her as well. They were of age, neither one was married, and he was no longer nattering on about his honor, or hers, or—

He set his teeth on her and scraped a slow slide out to her shoulder. She closed her eyes and savored the feel of Christian holding her close, savored his heat and the strange sensations—part need, part desolation—that must be inchoate desire.

The desire she would examine soon, but first, Gilly gave herself a moment to enjoy the pleasure of revenge.

Greendale might have been a decent husband. Gilly hadn’t been his first wife, he’d been experienced, and he might have relied on that experience to show her consideration.

He’d shown her shame, misery, and mishandling, and now—now—Gilly was in bed with a man who knew how to cherish, how to go slowly, how to
pleasure
. She hoped the knowledge had Greendale spinning in his grave and trying to claw his way out of hell.

Christian shifted, and the loss of him along her back and side was physical and emotional both, and then he was back, nudging her flat onto her back and shifting his weight over hers.

“Spread your legs, love. Make a place for me, or tell me to sleep on the balcony.”

“Don’t go.” She was sure of that much, sure she didn’t want to be alone in this big bed, but as for the rest… She was wicked to want it, to want him, but also…right. Right that they join, though he wasn’t speaking of marriage.

Nor was she ready to raise the topic with him.

“Stop thinking, my lady.” He hitched up on his forearms, so his body caged hers, and evidence of his arousal, hard and warm, lay against her belly.

“I can’t…” She couldn’t see him, couldn’t read his features in the darkness. “Don’t rush me.”

He might have laughed silently. His belly bounced against hers, they were so very, very close.

“Haste is the last thing on my mind.” His lips brushed against her temple, then her eyes, her brows, her chin, and occasionally, as if it were just another feature, her mouth.

“You like this darkness. You like learning me by feel.” He would also like having his scars invisible to her, which Gilly understood better than he knew. Feeling very bold indeed, she nuzzled at him until she found his mouth with her own. “I like it too.”

She sensed endless patience in him, and so she learned at the age of almost twenty-six how to kiss a lover. Such kisses involved tongues, lips, taste, feel, and soft, needy noises that had her pressing up into his body, into his arousal, and wanting to consume him with her hands and her mouth.

“Now who rushes whom?” he asked.

Was he laughing at her? “If you can manage ducal grammar, I’m doing it wrong, aren’t I? I thought so. Tell me then what I must do. I’ll do as you ask, as you say.”

Please
don’t leave me.

She hadn’t been able to get free of her husband’s attentions fast enough, had dreaded the man’s every touch, his every visit to her bed. With Christian, she wanted to surrender herself to an eternal night.

“A biddable countess is an alarming prospect,” he said, closing his teeth over her earlobe. “Though I’m entirely your slave as well, as it should be in a shared bed. You, for example, might ask me to attend your very sensitive breasts.”

He dipped his head and ran his nose over her nipple. Her fingers sank into his hair—she’d long since destroyed his queue.

“You want to take off your nightgown, don’t you, Gilly?”

Oh, she did. She wanted to badly, entirely, immediately. He shifted up to straddle her, and between them, the garment was gone, tossed off into the darkness.

“Better, hmm?” He settled down, but lower, resting his cheek against the slope of her naked breast. “Better for me, but for you too, I think.” And then he turned his face and nuzzled her again, but this time without the interference of fabric.

“Mercia…Christian.” She arched up, wanting his mouth. Needing it more than she needed her very dignity. “Please.”

“I live to bring you pleasure.”

Such a declaration ought to have sounded mocking or at least ironic, the sophisticated aside of a man happily at ease with bedsport, but to Gilly, his words rang like a vow. He closed his mouth over her nipple and drew on her with a slow, wet heat, making her back arch and her breath hitch.

“You like that, or am I mistaken?” He rested against her again, his tone pleased.

“It’s…almost too much.”

“Too pleasurable, or too intimate?”

“What a thing to ask me.” She tried to sort the answer out in her mind, except he’d switched breasts, and Gilly felt as if he were drawing the tide of desire up through her body with his mouth. Too pleasurable
and
too intimate, both. Intimate because he knew the havoc he created inside her.

“If you were bored, or perhaps looking for diversion,” he said, “you might use your hands on me.”

Her hands? Where were…? They rested on his shoulders. She winnowed them back from his temples, indulging a long-suppressed desire to tangle her fingers in the abundance of his hair, not simply brush a hand over it. She caught a rosy scent, but not quite the soap she preferred herself.

“You smell of roses.” She brought a silky lock to her nose and caressed his cheek with it.

“To remind me of you.” He left off using his tongue on her nipple, and shifted as if he’d similarly torment her belly.

Her belly?

“Where are you going?” She held him motionless by a fistful of hair. “I can’t kiss you if you disappear under the sheets.”

He stopped, and a considering silence ensued before he shifted again, back up over her. “Your wish is my most sincere desire.”

Holy, everlasting
feathers
, the man must be unloosing on her a year’s worth of very skilled kisses. His tongue flirted, teased, appeased, and flirted again. He tasted her, he coaxed her into exploring his mouth, he offered her his tongue and she took it, and all the while, Gilly grew more and more tense, more needy.

“Your…Christian…” She wrapped her legs around his flanks. He let out a groan, mostly humor and something else that suggested his patience was at least tried, though by no means exhausted.

He braced an arm under Gilly’s neck, which left him a hand free to torment her breasts. If his mouth was skilled, his fingers ought to be declared illegal by act of Parliament.

“You have to tell me if you want more,” he said, his mouth near her ear. “Tell me, Gilly.”

She nodded against the pillow, arched her back to thrust her breast into his hand, and realized the wretch wanted to hear her speak the words, too. “I want…”

“You want me? You want what all this entails?”

He flexed his spine, and the rigid length of his cock slid over the top of her sex, and up her belly, then subsided.

“I want you,” she said, trying to turn his head with her hands so she could get her mouth back on his.

“You shall have me then.”

He was a cavalry officer, Gilly reminded herself. He understood strategy, and he was applying it. His hand shaped her breast, not quite as gently, and his touch made her desire leap. His fingers knew how much more was perfect, his kisses grew hotter, wetter, and even Gilly’s sense of balance threatened to abandon her.

“Christian…Christian…please. I don’t know how…”

“I know,” he said. “Trust me, Gilly. Do you trust me?” He moved again, his cock sliding over her sex, gliding wetly up, then down. She strained against him, frustrated and gratified and more frustrated still.

“You have to tell me, Gilly. Say yes.”

“Y-yes…”

Above her, he slowed, his thrusts became languid, and Gilly wanted to scream and pound on his back with her fists.

“You’re saying yes,” he whispered. “Yes, Christian.”

“Yes, Christian, but please God,
now
.”

She tried to flex her hips when he retreated, to change the angle so he’d cease this maddening
rubbing
and join their bodies. That had to be what she sought, though there was no way to know anything for certain, not when she was so befuddled and overwrought.

“Oh, sweet, merciful feathers…
Christian
.”

He came into her body slowly, and she was glad now for the dampness easing his way, because his proportions challenged her to the point of near-pain.

“Relax, love. Take a breath, let it out. I won’t move until I feel you relax.”

But she wanted him to move, needed him to. She did as he bid, breathing in, then slowly easing the breath from her body.

“Again.”

He remained exactly as he was, poised above her, but his hand brushed a caress over her brow, then came to rest around the back of her head so her face was cradled against his shoulder. He did it again, more slowly, and the sheer
tenderness
of his touch had Gilly sighing.

He pushed in deeper, and she sighed again until he set up a shallow rhythm.

“You can move with me, or not. I’ll last longer if you don’t, but not much.”

She wanted to ask what he meant, but he’d settled his mouth over hers, his kisses again lazy, and then…not so lazy.

Something in Gilly’s vitals began to hum, to heat up and spread out and take over her limbs and her mind. She lifted up to meet his thrusts, and tried to grip him when he’d recede from her.

“Ye gods…” he whispered against her neck. “Just holy… Ah, Gilly.”

His tempo picked up, but more than that, he stopped being so delicate with her, and Gilly’s body began to sing.

“More.” She meant to whisper in his ear, but the single word must have conveyed desperation, because Christian cast off any semblance of politesse and possessed her in fierce, carnal abandon.

She came undone, utterly, completely, unexpectedly. Somewhere between
what
on
earth
and
oh, God, Christian
Gilly’s body became a ravening, mindless creature of pleasure, surprise, and more and more pleasure. She keened into his neck, clung, shook, clawed at him, and started all over again when she felt the damp heat of his seed deep inside her body.

When the storm passed, he went back to petting her hair, and she experienced for the first time the post- coital intimacy of breathing in counterpoint to a lover.

“I had no idea,” she said, smoothing his hair back. “No earthly clue…”

“Ah, Gilly. You unman me all over again.”

He shifted to his side and pulled her into his arms, which caused his cock to slip from her body, and the sensation brought her pleasure, even as Gilly endured a sense of loss at Christian’s absence.

“Shall you weep now?” He held her close, his chin on her temple, and the very snugness of his embrace was reason enough to weep.

“Is it expected?”

“How does a man answer such a thing? From what I recall of my distant, misspent youth—you will note my tact—some women do, some of the time. I understand it now better than I used to.”

“You want to weep?” She cuddled closer, listening for his heartbeat. She couldn’t see anything of his expression in the dark, but she was newly wise to the nuances of his words and to the ability of her body to listen to his.

“Maybe I will weep a little, for joy.” He reached away from her. “Spread your legs.” She lifted a leg, awkwardly, and he tucked a flannel against her sex. “Lest my seed be so rude as to leave your body and mess the clean sheets, when it might be about putting my babe in your belly.”

He rubbed at himself with another cloth, and Gilly marveled that she should feel no lapse of dignity between them.

“You would weep for joy,” she said, nuzzling his chest with her cheek. “One understands this.”

“Does one?” His tone was dry, indulgent too. “You can’t possibly. Give me your hand.”

He took her hand, removed it from where she was caressing his chest, and put it over his softening length.

“Do you feel anything different, Gilly?”

“Of course it’s different. Men don’t stay…aroused but for a few moments, and then…it’s supposed to be like this, isn’t it?”

Had Greendale lied to her? He’d filled her head with all manner of nasty comments, but she’d regarded those as his opinions, to which he was entitled. He’d had his opinions regarding marital relations, too, but in those, she’d been so terribly at his mercy.

“I’m supposed to be soft, yes,” he said, kissing her brow, “because I am so thoroughly satisfied, but here…” He brought her fingers to the end of his shaft. “I have no foreskin.”

This was of some moment to him, she sensed that, but Gilly hardly knew what she was supposed to say. She wouldn’t have known if he’d had three foreskins, whatever a foreskin was.

“Your functioning doesn’t seem impaired. You were…”

“Yes?”

“A revelation, Christian. You were a wonderful revelation to me.”

He was silent while she explored him in the darkness, traced his length, shaped his stones and sifted through the nest of hair at the base of his shaft. His hand fell away, and he lay quietly while she learned him, until he grew aroused again.

“Was it the French?” She asked the question now, while she still could, while it was pitch dark and she could plead she didn’t know any better, though she’d known the answer the moment she’d conceived the question.

“Yes. The French.”

She moved over him, straddled him and curled down onto his chest as if she’d protect him bodily from the memories. He framed her face and held her still while he kissed her, and then he nudged at her sex with his cock.

“I can touch you like this,” she said, tracing her fingernails over his nipples. He drew in an audible breath, then settled a palm over each of her breasts.