Susan Johnson (10 page)

She nodded, desire overwhelming all else. She pulled the ribbon loose at her waist, grasped the ruffled silk, lifted it, and he saw the pearly fluid sliding down her inner thighs. Shutting his eyes briefly, he resisted the sudden urge to pull her down and plunge inside her.

And when he looked again, she was dragging the garment over her thrusting breasts. She slipped it over her head and tossed it aside. “And now it’s my turn,” she said in a heated whisper. “Don’t move.”

Straddling his hips a moment later, she brushed her fingers across the engorged crest of his arousal, circling the smooth distended head, the pads of her fingers gliding downward after a time, lightly grasping the hard, rigid length, forcing it upright.

He didn’t move, his entire nervous system expectant, roused, riveted on the lady. He watched her rise slightly on her knees, watched her delicately adjust the ridged head of his erection between the sleek tissue of her labia, felt her move slightly in a minute teasing friction, experienced a new level of lust as she lowered herself the merest fraction.

And suddenly expectation was swept away.

His hands came up, the pain of the saber cut ignored,
his long, slender fingers curved over her hips, closed so hard they left marks on her pale skin.

A small whimper broke the hush of heated breathing.

He glanced at her. Her eyes were shut, a half smile curved her luscious mouth, and fleeting concern dismissed, he pressed downward on her hips as he arched upward in a savage thrust, driving in with a seething violence.

Her scream filled the room, a high, wild, delirious cry that excited him and made him surge larger and longer, bringing him hard against her womb.

He didn’t ask if he’d hurt her; he didn’t care. He’d been waiting too long to be here, doing this. Feeling this.

But a second later a modicum of reality intruded, and wondering if he’d been overzealous, he murmured, “Forgive me.” But he was already lifting her again, driven by urges beyond chivalry and courtesy, drawing her up for another descent. Her lashes lifted marginally and gazing down at him she uttered a deep, satisfied sound of pleasure.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded and smiled, placing her hands over his, guiding him, drawing him back inside her. “Go to sleep,” she softly breathed, a lazy smile lifting her mouth, lowering herself slowly, the deliberate, leisurely friction exquisite. “I’ll be quiet now.”

“I’m awake.”

“I can tell …”

Moving his hand, he pressed his thumb to the place between her legs, where her flesh rested on his, exerted a gentle pressure that quivered and curled deep inside her. “I needed this while I was gone … I thought of this while I was gone …” His voice was hushed, his eyes half shut, his thumb nuzzling her moist, dark curls. He traced a lazy circle in the sleek dampness while she whimpered to the movement of his hand and then he slipped his thumb inside her. A breath-held instant passed as wild, seething tremors collided between and around and inside them.

Fatigued beyond weariness, he felt sensations insinuate themselves into every part of him with a skewed impact, acute and pervasive, and he groaned under his breath at the jolting pleasure.

“I’m keeping you here,” she whispered.

His lashes slowly raised and he gazed at her with attention. “For how long?” he murmured, lust tingeing his eyes.

“I haven’t decided.”

An enigmatic seductress, a slender, dark-haired Venus riding his cock—and offering paradise. “One can but hope …” he whispered, his smile flashing.

“Be still; I’ll move.”

He swelled inside her.

“No.” She placed a restraining hand on his stomach.

“No?”

“Behave.”

His immediate response forced her wider, stretched her, and breathless at the stunning rapture spiking through her brain, she took a moment to catch her breath. “You’re not cooperating.”

“I didn’t know I had to. Are there rules?”

“I was thinking about some,” she said with a faint smile. “Obviously—”

“I don’t favor rules,” he softly concluded, swiftly reversing their positions, the ease with which he’d accomplished the maneuver the result of well-honed muscles and seamless grace. “Now then,” he murmured, a smile in his voice, “concerning the passive role.”

Lifting her hips, she thrust upward in a slow rhythm of enticement, then lowered herself again, her sleek tissue enfolding him, releasing him, lascivious flesh on flesh. Pulling his face down, she gently bit his lip, held it between her teeth.

His hand came up. Inserting a slender brown finger between her lips, he eased her teeth open, unclenching them. Sliding his fingertips down her chin, he cupped her jaw in
the curve of his hand. “I’m new to this cooperation,” he whispered, his eyes heavy-lidded, his lower body moving steadily, matching her rhythm.

“I’ll teach you.”

“We’ll teach each other.”

“Perfect,” she whispered.

They moved together in another kind of perfection, a silken harmony strange at first to an urbane man familiar only with sybaritic intercourse and lushly novel to a susceptible young woman still marveling at carnal passion. She trembled with longing, ablaze for him, and he felt an indelible thrill as if this were his first tryst. His rough hands stroked her tender white skin, his mouth tasted the richness of hers, bit, nibbled, savored, and she took him into her virgin heart and body, thrusting up to meet his driving rhythm, quivering beneath him. The room took on a new heat, their skin slipped together, damp, flushed, and very soon impatience replaced harmony and the rhythm of their breathing changed.

His strong legs swung forward and they both drew in a sharp intake of breath, sensation like a shock, the powerful flux and flow of his lower body moving with consummate skill, Teo’s artless response eager, urgent, unconstrained.

They plunged and rocked, fevered, hot-blooded, filling, taking, devouring. He could never get deep enough, pressing home over and over, his gaze veiled, remote, only half aware of her, lost in carnal urges. She moved against him more and more urgently, letting him go only to draw him back again, each stroke making her desperate for the next. His primal antenna, subconscious, discerning, gauged her cresting arousal, waited for that first incipient orgasmic ripple. And when it came and she frantically raised her pelvis to draw him in deeper, whimpering in wild, physical craving, he stayed firmly inside her, his hands hard on her body, and profoundly submerged, he came with her in a violent, shuddering climax.

“Jesus …” Braced on his elbows, sweat sheened, panting, his dark curls damp, he could hardly speak.

Teo opened her eyes at the sound of his voice and then shut them again, the last remnants of ecstasy still radiating outward from her pulsing core.

She didn’t notice the blood. Several drops had splashed on her shoulder before she slowly opened her eyes and glimpsed the red stain. Redolent still, she lazily took note of a crimson rivulet oozing over his collarbone. And then recognition struck her senses and she came awake with a start. “You’re bleeding!”

Brought to a sluggish attention, he muttered an apology, grabbed a handful of sheet to wipe away the blood, and drawing away, he collapsed into a sprawl beside her.

The wound came into view as he lay facedown on the bed; a portion of scab had ripped away. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back,” Teo commanded, rising from the bed.

Eyes closed, Duras mumbled an unintelligible reply, and when she returned with a washbasin of warm water and a makeshift dressing, he was already asleep.

She sat up all night and watched him, like a lioness guarding her last surviving cub, adjusting his pillow if he moved, tucking the blankets around him when he rolled over, protecting him from drafts and the evil of the world. Lying beside him at times, she’d watch him breathe or survey at close range the length of his dark lashes or the perfection of his nose or mouth or graceful jaw, deeply grateful for the finite detail, the collective wonder, the sum and parts and glory of the man.

Her happiness was immeasurable, boundless as the sweep of the universe. He was beside her.

Hours later when the shadows were gone from the room and the candles had all burned down, Tamyr opened the door and mimed a question about breakfast. Teo shook her head and waved her away. But the second time she opened
the door, she came into the room, holding several papers in her hand, and Teo sighed.

She didn’t wake him though, not until Tamyr had gone with orders to return with breakfast and bathwater. And she said to herself, “It’s March fourteenth of my twenty-eighth year,” when she turned to kiss him awake, wanting to remember forever their first morning together.

He came awake before her mouth touched his, his senses vigilant, and as his eyes flashed open, his gaze held a cool assessment before he remembered where he lay. Then drawing her head down, he kissed her as if he’d not seen her for a millennium.

“Bonjour,”
he whispered at last, smiling up at her. “Has the world survived while I slept?”

He knew
, she thought. “Some messages just came for you.”

He pushed himself up into a sitting position as she reached for the papers Tamyr had placed on the bed. Taking them from her a moment later, he swiftly scanned the pages, his brows coming together in a faint scowl on some, easing back into normalcy with others. Saving two of the messages, he placed them on the bedside table, tossed the others on the floor and said with a boyish grin, “We’re safe for the interval.”

“You’re mine?”

“All yours.”

“What would you like to do?”

He laughed and lay back against the pillows. “Guess and it has to do with staying in this bed.”

“Just in the bed?” she teased.

His lashes lowered delicately. “In this room, then, if you’re in the mood for something more adventuresome.” Although adventure wasn’t high on his list of priorities after having risked his life continuously the past few days and months and years; soft beds and soft flesh and the novelty of food appealed more.

“Should I lock the door?”

“Are you shy?”

“Are you not?”

He thought of the company of men with whom he’d spent the majority of his life, of the lack of privacy, the brutality and lewd amusements. “Of course I am,” he lied.

They spent the morning behind locked doors, opening them only briefly for breakfast and bathwater. And when Teo said with lifted brow, “Food or a bath?”, after the servants left, Duras unequivocally replied, “Food.”

She fed him like a child in bed, and for the man least likely to need care, he indulged her whims because she took pleasure in it, and he kissed her between servings to indulge himself. When the worst of his hunger was assuaged, he said, “Now
you
eat.” He didn’t feed her because it didn’t occur to him to offer; he’d been too long a general. But he did pour her chocolate and unrestrainedly offered kisses and tempted her beyond reason with his lean, muscled nudity and blatant erection.

He lay like a potentate on the pillows watching her dip her breakfast bread into the chocolate.

“How do you expect me to eat with you lying there like that?”

“I’ll wait.”

“I don’t know if
I
can.” Her gaze was drawn to his splendid arousal.

“You should eat.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she murmured, setting her cup down.

“I like the sound of that.”

“And I like what I see.” He looked breathtakingly beautiful lying against the rumpled linen, his dark head resting on the embroidered pillows. His hair was tousled on top where he’d run his fingers through it, tendrils
curled on the nape of his neck—the stylish haircut with its Roman antecedents appropriate for a citizen-soldier of another era. His sun-bronzed arms were spread wide across the piled pillows, their corded muscles and the veins that overlay them a vision of strength like the hard, ridged power of his lean torso and his strong legs covered with coarse, dark hair sprawled the length of the burgomaster’s bed.

Men had lain like this in ladies’ beds after battle, she mused, since the dawn of time. An unmistakable heat in their eyes, faintly challenging, distinctly libidinous as if, duty done, they were now waiting for their reward.

And if the erection drawing her attention wasn’t so impressive she might have been able to delay succumbing to such casual assurance. But a sexual frisson fluttered through her vagina; she unconsciously licked her bottom lip. Fully extended, the flesh stretched taut, his erection was a shade lighter than his brown skin. The rigid length rising from a cloud of dark hair lay thick and arching against his stomach to navel height, the pulsing veins in high relief, the broad, swollen head gleaming like satin.

And all she could think of was having it deep inside her.

“I’m ready whenever you are,” he said, smiling faintly.

She felt a quick new tremor and his smile broadened. He knew, she realized, because every woman responded to him like she did. “Are we all the same?” A small heat infused her tone.

Sitting up quickly, he said, “No … don’t even think it.” Reaching out, he grasped her hand, tugged her closer, the amusement gone from his face. “This is all virgin for me—this wanting, this obsession … this love,” he whispered at the last. Lifting her hand to his mouth, he brushed her knuckles with his lips, his gaze direct. “Show me what you want.”

She stared at him. “Me show
you?
”

“I’m not sure,” he murmured in a velvety whisper, placing her hand on his hard thigh, stroking the back of it with a fingertip, “exactly what to do.”

She scrutinized him from under her lashes, gauging the equivocation in his words, a flutter of expectation warming her senses.

“I’ve never been with a woman before,” he shyly said.

A dramatic silence vibrated in the air; his dark gaze meeting hers was chaste, angelic. A slow smile formed on Teo’s mouth. “Never?”

“Never,” he said, husky and low. “Although I’ve always wanted to.”

Her glance flickered from his face to his pulsing erection. “It looks as though you want to now.”

“Very much,” he murmured.