He smiled, raised his eyebrows, and then touched my lips with his very softly and briefly. I opened my eyes to find him staring intently into them, the green of his irises deep enough to lose myself in them. He kissed me again with a little more force.
Branford placed his hands on my hips. He pressed against my mouth as his body pushed me backwards until my shoulders touched the cool stone wall behind me.
“Do you remember what I said last night?” he asked. “About trusting me?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Trust me now?” His words were both a question and a command, so I nodded and tried not to let any of the fear that lurked in my belly show itself in my eyes. Branford took my chin in his hand and leaned close, looking directly at me. “I’m not going to hurt you, Alexandra. I swear it. I just want to touch you like I did last night.”
I nodded again, and Branford’s head dipped, and he placed his lips against my throat, sucking softly on the skin there. My breaths started coming in pants almost immediately.
His gaze took me in, first looking over my face, then darting to my lips and lower. He moved his hand quickly up the length of my arm and to my shoulder. He moved slowly across my neck before dipping lower, grazing my collarbones on the way back.
“I want to touch you lower, Alexandra. Do you want me to stop?”
Lower…lower? What did he mean by lower?
“I don’t think so,” I finally said as I wondered what in the world I was agreeing to let him do to me. Part of my brain said it didn’t matter. Whatever he wanted to do was just fine. There was one thing I was sure of at that moment—I did not want him to stop.
He moved his hand over the top of my breast once more, on top of the fabric of my clothing, and then very, very slowly, his fingers crept over my entire breast until his hand reached the bottom edge and curled his fingers around, lifting my breast into his hand as his thumb traced over the center, causing it to tense and tighten.
But it wasn’t just the nipple he touched that I felt tightening.
I felt the muscles of my thighs also clench, and a strange, unfamiliar feeling that started in the pit of my stomach, slowly worked its way downward as Branford’s thumb gently massaged the nipple of my left breast. My legs moved closer together of their own accord, and the feeling became more intense and focused on a spot directly between them.
“Do you like that, Alexandra?” Branford’s mouth ran along my jaw, and his thumb graced my nipple again. “When I touch you here…do you feel it in other places? Do you feel it between your legs, my wife?”
“Yes.” I was panting. How did he know? How could he possibly know what my body was doing when I didn’t understand it myself?
“Do you like the way that makes you feel, Alexandra?” Branford’s hot breath invaded my ear. “Do you want more from me?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t know!”
Branford chuckled softly.
“I know what you want, and I want to give it to you,” he said. “I want to teach you what it is you want from me.”
He nipped lightly with his lips at the skin of my neck, down to my shoulder, and then back up to my ear. He traced the edge of my ear with his tongue before he whispered again.
“Tonight,” he said quietly so I had to strain just to hear his words. “Tonight I’m going to touch you where you’ve never been touched. Slowly and gently, Alexandra…so gently…and then you’ll understand what it is you want from me.”
*****
Having missed breakfast altogether, I found myself in the Women’s Room with Ida, eating a simple lunch of breads, cheeses, and berries while my brain turned somersaults. I considered Branford’s words to me over and over again. Between his promise from the previous night and those right after I had shaved him, my head was a maypole of twisted emotions.
Ida discussed my hair with a young woman named Ramona. After some conversation between the two of them, I found my head dunked in water and then washed with mead, of all things. I sat near the window and combed it, as Ida instructed me to do, until it was dried from the sun. I was surprised at how soft it was and wondered if it would feel different to Branford when he ran his hands over it tonight.
Tonight.
I felt my body tense at just the word, which echoed through my head with a memory of his breath in my ear. The tension—so different than it had been when I thought of him before—ran up and down my torso with the remembered movements of his fingers over my skin. I shivered, shook my head, and tried to concentrate on the conversation at hand.
“I think she should wear it up,” Ramona was saying.
“I’m not so sure,” Ida replied.