“Is there someone behind you?”
“Nay, but I’m naked and I am not at all certain if I should be doing this.”
“Do it. I did.”
When she was standing in front of him, between his legs, he reached out his hands and cupped her breasts. Her flesh was soft and smooth, and she was so very white. He wanted to weep. She looked down to see him close his eyes. He wasn’t looking at her. That was better. She moved a bit closer, resting her hands on his bare shoulders. The wound had healed nicely, the scar long and nearly flat.
His hands closed about her waist. He squeezed inward, his thumbs angling downward to touch her navel. His hands were large and dark against her white skin. Just looking at his hands on her made those odd urgent feelings grow stronger. She wanted him to touch her lower. It was that simple. She had held him and he had wanted her to hold him, she had realized that quickly enough. And now she wanted his fingers on her, where, exactly, she didn’t know, but the feelings were beginning to pound into her now, and there was so much heat, liquid heat, and she could feel it in and on herself, but she didn’t care.
“Severin,” she said.
He didn’t raise his head. He opened his eyes and stared at her belly, stared at his hands that were parting her woman’s flesh now, staring at her, and she thought she would die from the incredible feelings that were roiling through her. Then his callused fingertips were touching her and she cried ou
t, a low, hoarse cry that filled the bedchamber, and her back arched, and she was pressing herself against those fingers of his, and her belly was nearly pressed against his face. Then to her utter shock, he held her parted with his fingers and touched her with his mouth.
She screamed, hard and loud, not caring if someone were passing outside the bedchamber to hear that scream and to wonder. Not with shock or embarrassment, but at the bolt of pressure that tore through her, very low, yet it seemed to be throughout her entire body, and somehow she knew there was more. But what he was doing to her, where his mouth nuzzled, she had never known, never imagined such a thing.
“Severin, I don’t know—”
She felt his finger ease upward inside her even as he caressed her with his mouth, and it was all over for her. She crumbled over him as the pleasure took her, and he caught her and gently laid her on her back, his fingers on her now, stroking her, keeping the feelings churning and erupting in her, and she wondered how a woman could survive such a cataclysm. She closed her eyes, arched her back, and whispered, “Severin, this is like nothing in the world.”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t. Hold still, I would come into you now.” And he did, but slowly, easily, and he was hard and slick and she found herself lifting her hips to bring him more deeply into her. He felt wonderful, filling her, making her want to hold him so close he would meld into her even as his sex was deep and deeper still inside her belly. He shuddered and tensed and reared back, and she watched him take his release and it was a very different feeling she had watching him now than when she’d lain cold and angry beneath him before.
He was sweating, breathing heavily, his chest heaving, but he kept up on his elbows, looking down at her, and his eyes were vague, the dark blue warm and blurred, not cold as she had first believed when she saw him stride into Oxborough that day to marry her.
“You are not ordinary,” he said, leaned down, and kissed her mouth. “Part your lips for me.”
She did. He kissed her again and she felt his tongue glide over her lips, then ease inside her mouth. She made a tiny sound and he drew back to look down at her.
“This is all very strange,” she said. “Is that Trist?”
“Aye, he is mewling so loudly it pains my ears.”
She laughed, a sweet sound that made him kiss her again. Then he sighed and pulled away from her and rolled onto his back. He brought her with him, resting her face against his shoulder. Her palm lay over his heart.
“That is pleasure, Hastings.”
He felt her lashes against his chest. He felt the warmth of her breath as she said, “It is something I could not have imagined.”
“Few can until it overtakes them. You responded well to me.”
“As you did to me, Severin.” She pictured holding him as he backed away from her. She giggled.
She felt his hand stroking down her back, stroking over her hips. She pressed herself closer against him.
“You are filled with my seed.”
There was such satisfaction in his voice that she bit him, then licked him. “Aye,” she said against his warm flesh, “and I brought you into me and held you deep and close and filled you with myself.”
He shuddered, then moaned. He said nothing more. She listened as his breathing slowed and evened into sleep.
Thank God for Dame Agnes and Alice.
Trist stretched out on Severin’s chest, his paws over Hastings’s hand.
How would one possibly have the strength to do this five times in the space of one day?
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