Venus (15 page)

Nick inhaled sharply at this independence. He had not expected it, had expected her to remain passive as he aroused her, obedient to his orchestration for this first time, at least. It was a most welcome surprise. He drew back to look down at her. Her eyes were heavy and languorous, her skin damp and flushed with excitement, those peerless breasts proudly outthrust, grazing his chest.

Holding her gaze, he moved to untangle the wadded material at her waist, loosening her kirtle so that it fell to her ankles. The top of her smock hung over the waistband of her petticoat, and it required the attention of eyes as well as hands to unfasten the latter. He pushed both garments off her hips, his hands sliding, lingering over the curves thus
revealed. Polly quivered as the heat of the fire licked her bared skin, and passion’s flame flared in the emerald eyes riveted to her body, clad now only in her stockings and garters and leather pumps. He dropped to his knees to unfasten her garters and roll down her stockings, lifted each foot in turn as he eased them into nakedness.

Still kneeling, he ran his hands up the straight, clean length of leg to hold her hips as he kissed her belly. She jumped against him, and his grip tightened, holding her steady for the nuzzling caress of his mouth, for his dipping tongue exploring the tight bud of her navel. Convulsively, her fingers twisted in the long auburn curls that fell over his shoulders, whispered against the skin of her abdomen. But when his fingers moved, parting the soft, golden fleece at the apex of her thighs, slipping into the moist, secret furrow, she started with a small cry of protest, pulling on his head.

He looked up, seeing the panicky flutter in those huge eyes, the quiver of her soft mouth. Slowly he rose to his feet. “You must trust me,” he said, and there was quiet, calculated reproof in his voice. “I will bring you only pleasure, I swear it.”

She hung her head in sudden embarrassment, but Nick caught her chin, forcing her to meet his eye. “Do you believe that I will not hurt you?” She nodded, knowing it to be the truth. “And do you believe that there is no shame in what is about to happen? None for you and none for me?”

There could be none, Polly thought; not when such wonder filled her at his touch, when she felt such a powerful wanting; not when his eyes held such a tenderness, softening his own wanting—a hungry longing that she could read as clearly as her own.

“No shame,” she said, and reached a hand to touch his lips. He lifted her then, carrying her to the bed, holding her strongly against one upraised knee as he pulled back the coverlet before laying her down upon the cambric sheet. He leaned over her, his arms braced on either side of her body, and licked the tip of her nose again so that she wriggled deliciously. The tip of his tongue explored her face, moistening
her eyelids, her cheeks, tantalizing, sweetly playful at the corners of her mouth, nuzzling into the deep cleft of her chin. The hard bulge of his awakened manhood pressed against her thigh, and when he drew her hand down, guiding it to feel the power throbbing against the constraint of his breeches, she made no resistance, but her eyes widened at the thought of that power entering the narrow, unviolated portal to her body.

Nick stood up to remove his hose and breeches, and Polly gazed upon the shaft, springing erect from the curly nest at the base of his concave belly. “Stand up,” he instructed softly, reaching a hand to help her as she got off the bed. “Hold me. You will not be frightened when you are acquainted with me in this way.” Again he guided her hand as she stood in front of him. She enclosed the pulsing root in her hand, feeling it hard yet pliant, the blood throbbing in the ridged veins against her palm. With her other hand, she touched the dark, flat buttons of his nipples, and Nick threw his head back on an exhalation of pleasure; his eyes closed as she continued to stroke him, tentatively at first, then with increasing confidence as she saw his pleasure and learned her own. His hands moved ’round to her buttocks, cradling the firm roundness as he drew her against him, so that his manhood pulsed strongly against her belly. He held her like that, until she leaned into him of her own accord, her legs parting in a natural movement indicative of the readiness of desire.

“Lie on the bed now,” he whispered, easing her backward, turning her so that she lay again looking up at him, no awkwardness now, just unvarnished need in her eyes. “If I am not to hurt you,” he said, stretching himself beside her, “I must learn something of you.” He moved aside a heavy swatch of hair that concealed her breast, taking her nipple between his lips again as he stroked, long and languorously, down her length, feeling her relaxation under the almost hypnotic caress. This time her thighs parted for his probing fingers, which opened her gently, entered her to seek and find what he sought. Her hips arched involuntarily at this invasion. Her body tightened against the alien presence, but
he gentled her with a soft word against her mouth, and proceeded inexorably to bring her to the edge of delight with the skillful play of his fingers.

Polly felt the curling spiral tighten in her belly; her hips lifted and moved, responding to the rhythm of the presence within. Her head moved restlessly on the coverlet; hot blood surged through her veins, and that part of her body she had thought of as peculiarly her own responded to another’s possession. With an incoherent cry, she took her release in the only way possible, the muscles of thigh and buttocks tightening around his hand as the juices of arousal flowed sweet and her body opened in joy.

Nick swung himself across her supine body, stopping her mouth with his own as he guided his surging flesh within the still-pulsating gate. He knew now how deeply lodged was her maidenhead, and, with one determined thrust, plunged to her core. Her eyes opened, wide with shock, but in the aftermath of climax her muscles were capable of no resistance and the moment passed, to be remembered only as the briefest spark of an irrelevant pain.

She looked up at him as he hung over her, raking her face for knowledge as he moved himself within, slow and easy now until she picked up the rhythm. She smiled suddenly. It was such a wonderful smile, so expressive of surprise and delight, that he laughed joyously.

“I did not think it possible for you to be more beautiful,” he said with soft wonder. “But never have I seen such glorious radiance. I will take you now into a world outside this one, if you will give yourself into my charge.”

“Gladly,” she returned, her eyes locking with his as he took them both to the outermost edge of bliss, to hover in a timeless, sensate universe until the ultimate could no longer be held at bay, and they slipped over the edge, into the beyond.

Polly came back to a sense of the world around her very slowly. She opened her eyes to find Nick, propped on one elbow, smiling down at her. He brushed a lock of hair from
her forehead and kissed her.” It appears that you are an apt pupil in everything, moppet.”

“I do not think,” Polly said consideringly, “that I could have done otherwise than I did, sir. Matters seemed to take care of themselves.” Her eyes twinkled roguishly. “For which I must thank you, I suspect.”

“You may thank me by using my name. I have asked you to do so once already this day.” His fingers traced the curve of her mouth.

“I have a lamentable memory, Nicholas.” She sucked his finger into her mouth, curling her tongue, tasting the slight saltiness.

“Then you had best set about improving it,” he retorted, running his free hand down her body in a leisurely caress, smoothing over the fine turn of a hip, one long damask-toned thigh, cupping the curve of her knee. She had the most beautiful knees; but then, it would be ridiculous for such perfection to be marred, even by something as insignificant as a knee, Nick reflected dreamily. Her body shifted in lazy response to the caress, and a bright smear of blood showed on her inner thigh.

Nick got off the bed, crossing to the tiring table, where ewer and basin stood. The water that he poured into the basin was tepid, but the fact that it had once been warmed bore witness to the care of Goodwife Benson. He dipped a towel in the basin, then came back to the bed, where Polly still lay, watching him. “Let me make you a little more comfortable,” he said softly, sitting down beside her. She stretched, catlike, as he drew the damp cloth down her body, freshening the sweat-slick skin, parting her thighs to cleanse her of the bright blood of innocence and the residue of passion.

It was the most sweetly tender intimacy, and Polly quite suddenly felt tears welling behind her eyes. They were not tears of sorrow or of joy, but of amazement at such an unexpected ministration so lovingly offered. She had been touched in many ways in her seventeen years, but rarely with
gentleness, and never before in this cherishing manner, and the tears rolled unbidden down her cheeks.

“Do not weep, flower,” Nick said in distress, not understanding why she should produce this reaction when a bare instant before she had been all teasing, sensual mischief.

“I cannot seem to stop,” she sobbed.

Nicholas thought of the dramatic manner in which her life had been transformed in the last few hours, of the suddenness of the change, and he ceased to question. He stood up, going into the parlor, returning with a cup of wine. “Sleep is your best medicine, sweetheart. Drink this first.” She swallowed obediently, choked, and managed a misty smile.

“I am not in general a watering pot.”

“Not unless it will serve some nefarious purpose,” he agreed with a twinkle, pulling the heavy quilt up to her chin before going over to mend the fire, building it high so that it would warm them through the night.

Polly, snug and sleepy, watched him, marveling at the elegance of his movements, an elegance not at all impaired by his nakedness. Indeed, without his clothes, the power of that broad, muscled frame, wide shoulders, narrow waist, slim hips, was there to be viewed in all its inimitable glory.

“You are most beautiful, my Lord Kincaid,” she murmured as he trod over to the bed, bearing the single candle that he had left alight.

“You are too kind, madame,” he said, placing the candle on the bed table and bowing. Chuckling at the absurd contrast of the stately salutation and his bare skin, she pulled aside the quilt in invitation. Nick blew out the candle and slid in beside her, drawing the bed curtain against drafts and the fire’s illumination. Her hand moved in sleepy exploration. He smiled in the dark, catching her wrist. “You will be better served after sleep, sweetheart.”

“Oh,” Polly said on a distant note of disappointment. “Then I hope it will soon be morning.” She rolled into his embrace and was instantly deeply asleep.

“
I
cannot help feeling that you are neglecting your duties, my dear Barbara.” George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, took snuff with a delicate twist of his wrist, and arched an ironic eyebrow at his cousin, my Lady Castlemaine. “His Majesty has an air greatly disconsolate. Was he, perhaps, impervious to your usual forms of consolation last night?”

The king’s mistress shrugged plump white shoulders, the gesture lifting her breasts clear of her décolletage to reveal the nipples. “He had set his heart upon flying his new hawk this morning.” She gestured to the long, snow-encrusted windows of the Privy Gallery looking over the Pebble Court at Whitehall Palace. “It is hardly possible in such weather, and you know how he detests being thwarted.”

“Then it is surely incumbent upon us to suggest some diversion,” Buckingham mused, flicking at his satin sleeve with his lace-edged handkerchief. “There is no knowing what he may decide to do when he is allowed to brood.”

“Or whose company he may choose to favor,” said Lady Castlemaine, with a shrewd, knowing look at her cousin. “He seems uncommon pleased with Clarendon this morning. They were closeted in his Privy chamber for upwards of an hour. Methinks the lord chancellor is returning to grace.”
A laugh, tinged with malice, accompanied the suggestion that she knew would arouse Buckingham to supreme irritation.

The greater part of the duke’s energies these days was expended in the discrediting of the chancellor to the king—a task hindered by the facts that Clarendon’s daughter was married to the Duke of York, His Majesty’s brother, and that Clarendon had been Charles II’s most trusted counselor throughout his exile and in the years since his restoration. But the king was coming to apostatize the old man as a bore, a dull dog who would put a bridle on His Majesty’s pleasure seeking; one who was forever demanding that he turn his mind to the business of governing, and the placation of Parliament if he was to secure further revenue from them. King Charles did not consider it his task to placate the Commons in order to be provided with the money he required to pursue his pleasures. The granting of such funds was Parliament’s duty.

“My dear cousin,” said Buckingham deliberately, “it is no more in your interests than ’tis in mine to advance the chancellor’s cause. You would be better employed in joining forces with me than in amusing yourself at my expense.” Almost indolently, he reached out a hand, catching her wrist, shaking back the fall of lace that had obscured a diamond bracelet. The stones caught the light from the chandelier. They were exceptionally fine stones in a most intricate setting, and His Grace made great play of examining them. “An expensive trinket, madame,” he drawled, pointing his meaning with an arched eyebrow. “A present from your husband, no doubt?” He dropped her wrist abruptly, and his eyes, cold and hard, met hers. “Take heed whom you make your enemy, my lady. I will govern the king, and when I do I will remember my friends
and
my foes.” With a neat toss of his head to throw back the heavy fall of his peruke so that it should not obscure his face, His Grace bowed deeply.