Sattler, Veronica (76 page)

"But
Ashleigh, my darling, it's the
you
that's
inside
that draws me
far more than all your lovely physical charms. It's your heart and soul that
draw me to you, sweetheart. It's like you're the other half of me... of my
heart, my own soul... and that will always be, with no amount of infirm flesh
or silvered hair to change it."

He
shifted his weight and reached down to take both her hands in his. Turning them
over, he bent to place a kiss, almost reverently, in the palm of each before
gently folding her fingers and then drawing her closed fists to his heart.

"Love
took almost half a lifetime to reach me, Ashleigh," he continued softly.
"Do you think that something as superficial as physical beauty—or its
loss—would ever cause me to cast it aside? Ah, no, my love. I shall love you
beyond time... I shall love you forever."

The
blue of Ashleigh's eyes deepened, yet they sparkled, becoming two midnight
prisms where light and shadow mixed, and he thought their brilliance put the
stars to shame. "And that's how I love you, my darling," she
whispered.

But
then a glint of mischief shone from beneath her thick, dusky lashes.
"Brett...?" She grinned as her audacious hands began to slide under
his shirt.

"Aye,
minx?" he answered, catching his breath as she began to remove the shirt.

"What
if I weren't to, um, experiment in order to learn ways to hold your
love...?" The shirt was pushed down, off his shoulders. "But,
instead, for the sake of..." The shirt found its way to the grass beside
them. "Of giving you pleasure? Would that be so wrong?" Her slender
fingers wound through the matted chestnut hair on his chest, then found the
flat male nipples and began to stroke and entice them.

With
a shudder, Brett fell back and threw one arm across his forehead, then took a
deep breath before answering her.

"That
would be like carrying coals to Newcastle, love. Just
being
with you,
touching
you, already affords me so much pleasure, I—" He gasped as Ashleigh's
delicate fingers completed the undoing of his britches.

"Ashleigh,
love, I beg of you!" he rasped. "Do you want this loving to be over
before it's begun?" With a fierce growl, he wrapped his arms about her
small frame and rolled with her until she was trapped beneath him.

"I—I
don't understand!" she stammered. "These are the things you do to
me!"

"Little
innocent," he said softly, looking adoringly into her eyes. "No, I
suppose you don't understand... yet... but I think I can demonstrate better
than tell you."

"Demonstr—?"

But
her words got no further as his hands began to move over her body, gliding over
all the treasured parts of her as lightly as a butterfly's touch, sliding over,
slipping between her heated flesh until she began to writhe and twist in his
arms, begging him to take her.

But
Brett only shook his head and smiled, taking his time, and further arousing her
passion with caresses that were deliberate and slow.

One
by one, the pieces of clothing she wore joined his shirt on the ground, until
she lay moaning on the lush grass, wearing only her delicate shift, which had
been deftly raised from below, until it bunched about her waist—it was long
since lowered from above—so that her aching breasts spilled free for his touch.

By
now Ashleigh was a frenzied, twisting, wild thing, crying out to him, pleading
sharply with him, begging to be taken. But Brett continued at a measured,
studied pace, gently pressing her hands to the grass on either side of her
while his mouth took over what his practiced hands had begun.

Each
rosy-tipped breast succumbed to the magic as he traced circles about her
nipples, languidly, magically, before finally taking them, first one, and then
the other, into his mouth to suckle.

"Brett!"
she
cried, driven half out of her mind with an aching, pulsing longing at her core.

"No,
love," he murmured as his mouth and tongue began to work their way lower,
to her tiny waist, her flat abdomen, her navel, her twisting hips and trembling
thighs, "for I mean to show you how it is when pleasure is heaped upon
pleasure...."

Then
she felt his lips brush the soft triangle of hair that covered her woman's
mound. Startled, she would have stopped him, but he held her hands firmly at
her sides. Frantically she tried to twist away.
This was so intimate! This
was so—!

But
then she could no longer think at all. Her husband's tongue found the delicate
bud above the entrance to her throbbing femininity and began to stroke... and
stroke again....

Suddenly
Ashleigh was mindless with pleasure as wave after wave of it washed over her
and through her, making her shudder and convulse with each deft pass of his
tongue. She became a delirious mass of sensation, sobbing out her pleasure,
crying out her love for him as she came, again, and again, and again.

At
last he heeded her cries and released her hands as his head returned to hover
over her ecstatic face, watching her, loving her, glorying in the pleasure he
could bring her.

Ashleigh
opened her eyes and sanity returned for one full heartbeat as her gaze locked
with his. Then, with a cry, she moved her hand downward and found him, and her
fingers closed over him.

Brett
shuddered and shifted his weight, taking her fiercely, carrying her swiftly
with him into a maelstrom of frenzied, thrashing ecstasy that finally burst and
showered about them, making them one as they'd never been before.

It
was a long time later, a
very
long time later, before the two of them
could even move, or feel, or think.

Ashleigh
was the first to break the spell. "Brett?" she whispered.

Brett
blinked twice before opening his eyes to gaze lovingly down into hers—oh, so
blue, and heavy-lidded now with sated passion. "Aye, love?"

"I...I
never knew pleasure could be... almost too much," she sighed.

He
chuckled, then raised Ashleigh's limp, delicate hand to his lips and planted a
kiss on the fingertips. "That was part of my... lesson, yes," he
said, "but I doubt if a woman could ever really have too much pleasure.
But sweetheart—" He raised himself up on his elbows, but Ashleigh noted he
made no move to disengage their lower bodies, which were still intimately
joined. "Ashleigh, with a
man,
it
could
be too much."

"It
could!"
she whispered, her blue eyes as round as saucers.

Brett
nodded, then smiled. "Do you remember how it felt when my tongue made you
shudder with pleasure, love?"

A
blush suffused her already glowing face. "I... I remember," she
whispered shyly.

Brett
smiled, then reached to claim her lips for a soft kiss. "Well, love,"
he explained, "what happened to you then is exactly what happens to me
when... I spill my seed. Are you aware of that?"

"I...
I never thought of it that way, but I suppose it's true because, in the past
it's happened to me when we've made love, and I've felt you giving me your seed
at about the same time."

Brett
laughed softly, delighted by her innocence despite the fact that she'd already
borne him a child, delighted further to be her teacher in the ways of how it is
between a man and a woman.

"But
Brett!" Ashleigh suddenly withdrew the fingertips he'd been playfully
nibbling and touched them to her own lips in a gesture of wonder. "This
time it wasn't—" She paused, blushing. "That is, this time, when it
happened to me,
you
weren't
inside
me yet... and it—it didn't
happen to you until later, when—when you
were!"
She finished with a
lowering of her lashes, embarrassed to be speaking of such intimacy.

Brett
tipped her small chin gently upward until she was forced to look at him.

"That's
true," he smiled, "but you had your pleasure anyway, again and
again."

Mutely
she nodded, wondering what he was getting at.

"Such
is the advantage of the female body over the male, love," he explained, a
tender smile on his face. "I pleasured you again and again, and still you
were ready to repeat your pleasure when at last we joined—all in a matter of
minutes, I might add.

"But
how would it have been if
you
had pleasured me in, ah, similar
fashion?" Noting her wide-eyed questioning look, he couldn't help grinning
and planting a soft kiss on the tip of her straight little nose. "It would
have been over in an instant, my sweet. I'd have had my pleasure—not to be
repeated for some passage of time—and you'd have been left to have yours
alone."

Ashleigh's
eyes widened with dawning comprehension. "Ohh," she breathed,
"you mean that a man—"

"Exactly,
my sweet innocent," he nodded.

There
were several seconds of silence as Ashleigh digested this fact. Then a tenuous
smile played across her lips. "But, Brett..." she ventured
thoughtfully.

"Mmm?"
he murmured, his gaze intent upon her ripe, love-bruised lips.

"It
must be possible for a woman to learn, somehow, how to be... er...
active
in
pleasuring her man without going too far, don't you think? I mean—"

A
burst of delighted laughter met her ears. But then Brett quickly sobered at her
look of chagrin. "Forgive me, love," he told her. "It wasn't you
I was laughing at. It was the delight I found at your quick, ever-discerning
mind!" He bent and kissed her with some passion, fully on the mouth.

"Yes,
my love," he whispered happily when he'd released her eager lips,
"there
are
ways to learn how to... pace yourself in your...
attentions..."

"Ohh,"
she breathed, fully cognizant of the growing hunger in his gaze, feeling his
manhood stir as it lay still buried within her. "Then will you teach me
how?"

A
slow, tantalizing nod was her answer as her husband's eyes locked with hers.
And then all talking ceased.

"Happy
birthday, love," Brett whispered as he bent over the drowsy form of his
wife in the bed. He watched her stir and murmur something unintelligible as she
sought to burrow deeper into the bedclothes. He smiled. His wife was one of
those rare women who looked just as beautiful in the morning as she did during
the rest of the day—perhaps more so. She lay there with her magnificent ebony
tresses charmingly tousled, her rosy lips barely parted with quiet breathing,
her creamy skin lightly flushed, looking for all the world like an elfin
princess sent to show mortals how short of beauty's mark they fell.

"I
say, sweet slugabed, how does it feel to be quit of your teen years?" he
persisted, then grinned as he put his lips to one perfect, shell-like ear.
"Or were our ardors of last night too much for one of such a vast,
advanced age!"

"Advanced
age!"
came
the reply as Ashleigh's blue eyes snapped open and flashed her disbelief that
he could have said such a thing.

Brett
chuckled and bent to kiss her parted lips. "I love to tease you, I'm
afraid." He grinned. "Your eyes turn the most incredible shade of
blue when you're vexed."

Ashleigh
affected a mock pout. "Nevertheless, Your Grace, 'twas an ungentlemanly
thing to say, even if it was in jest." Her lips curved into a small smile.
"Besides, you say the same thing about the color of my eyes when I'm...
when we've..." She blushed, lowering her lashes against his amused gaze.

"When
we've just finished making love and you're deliriously sated?"

The
blush deepened and she nodded, making her husband laugh lightly as he sat on
the bed and drew her into his arms. "Ah, but, little one,
that
is a
different shade of blue entirely! Trust me, and you must, for it is one that
only I have seen." His hands moved deliciously over her bare shoulders,
for her thin night rail lay on the carpet where he'd discarded it last night.

Responding
instantly to his knowing touch, Ashleigh felt a shiver course through her; she
threw her arms about his neck, seeking his mouth.

A
long minute later, when the kiss finally ended, Brett murmured huskily into her
ear, "If you kiss me like that again, love, we're going to spend your
entire birthday in bed."

Suddenly
Ashleigh withdrew, turning her head to glance at the clock on the mantelpiece.
"Good Heavens, it's after ten!" she exclaimed. "I promised Lady
Margaret I'd meet her at the cottage before noon! And I haven't even selected
my dress for the luncheon!"

The
invitation to the luncheon she spoke of had come as a startling surprise. A
note delivered the day before yesterday by a footman from Cloverhill Manor,
invited her and the duke to the Hastings estate for a luncheon in honor of her
birthday, and it had been personally penned by
Elizabeth Hastings!
She'd
been hard-pressed to fathom this about-face attitude in her old nemesis, for
the note had been full of cordiality and language that strongly implied Lady
Elizabeth wished to let bygones be bygones and was using Ashleigh's birthday as
an occasion to begin healing their differences.