Sandra Brown
Fanta C
Chapter 1
The first time was enchanted.
We made love in the stable amid the smell of hay and horses and dust. Our coupling was hot and lusty. Our bodies were shiny with sweat when it was over. Replete, we lay with limbs entwined. Straw was tangled in my hair. He playfully plucked out pieces of it, while I delighted in the way the sun shone in through the cracks in the walls, casting stripes of light and shadow on his wide hairy chest.
It had been destined to happen, though the selection of the time had been exclusively his. Mounted on one of my father's prized thoroughbreds, I had returned to the stable after the daily ride. My heart had begun to beat vigorously at the sight of the stable foreman leaning against the corner of the building. No one else was in the yard.
I looked at him with the haughty condescension passed down to me through generations of aristocratic breeding. He, in no great hurry, sauntered forward. Smiling arrogantly, he raised his hands and placed them around my waist to assist me off the sidesaddle. Wanting to shake his unshakable self-confidence and conceit, I deliberately let my body slide enticingly down the front of his before my booted feet touched the ground. I watched his eyes grow dark, but my triumph was short-lived.
Defying convention and propriety, he continued to hold me close against him. I gazed up at him with unmitigated desire. It was made even stronger because he was employed by my father and far beneath my social status. Any kind of intimate relationship between the stable foreman and me was forbidden. Deliciously, temptingly so.
Then, too, he was Irish. I, English. He was wild and undisciplined and possessed of a temperament as stormy as the Irish Sea. I had been reared in an atmosphere of gentility and refinement. I knew French and Latin. He had only a rudimentary knowledge of English and was frequently overheard using vulgarities the meanings of which I could not begin to guess. If the gossip was true, in his possession a bottle of whisky rarely outlived the night. I was sometimes allowed to sip one glass of sherry before dinner, and then only on special occasions. My hands were immaculate. His were not. But that didn't matter when he slid them around my waist and pulled me closer still.
He bent his head and kissed me as though it were his right instead of tantamount to the capital offense it would be should we be discovered. A lock of his long, unruly hair brushed across my smooth brow as he dipped his head lower and pressed his open mouth upon mine.
Though he was responding to the desire he had no doubt seen in my eyes, his audacity enraged me. I pushed against the front of his leather jerkin. But I was fighting a losing battle, not only against his superior strength, but with myself and the passionate stirring of my blood. Admittedly, I didn't try too hard to escape his embrace or his marauding tongue when it thrust between my lips and deflowered my mouth.
At that point, I felt quite faint.
Breathless and weak, I stumbled along behind him as he drew me into the deep, musty shadows of Father's stable. This is what I had wanted, wasn't it? Isn't this what all those smoldering looks that we had been exchanging for weeks should culminate in? Hadn't I, with accidental touches and provocative postures, issued an invitation for him to do just this? Secrets were about to be revealed to me. Didn't I crave to know what the servant girls whispered about behind their hands?
Even had I changed my mind, he wouldn't have allowed it. He pressed me against the slats of one of the stalls. The hay was knee-deep, sweet-smelling, and fresh. It was warm inside the building. And dim. Dust motes waltzed in the air as crazily as my senses were spinning. With his lips still glued to mine, he angled his body forward so that I might feel the evidence of his desire behind his tight britches. The strong, agile body I had safely admired from behind the curtains in my bedroom window now pressed against me with alarming familiarity. My thighs trembled, but parted obediently as he wedged his knees between them and rammed his hips up and forward.
His hands went straight for the stock tied in a demure bow around my throat. He undid the knot with a gentle jerk and began unwinding the white silk, dropping it into the hay when it came off. The pearl buttons of my blouse were no deterrent to his questing hands. They slipped from their hand-embroidered holes without protest.
I gasped when I felt his work-rough hands on my breasts. My batiste camisole made him impatient. He shoved it down and my breasts fell free into his callused palms.
Overwhelmed with the strange sensations coursing through me, my eyelids fluttered closed. My head fell back against the slats, and I surrendered totally when his mouth descended to cover my quivering flesh with ardent kisses. I had never imagined that a man's lips and teeth and tongue were capable of giving such incredible pleasure. It was sinful, wasn't it? Didn't The Book of Common Prayer describe these feelings riveting through me as carnal delights? They were so terribly wicked. Yet so splendid. My nipples became hard and pointed beneath the damp, rapid stroking of his tongue. Arching my back, I pushed them deeper into his mouth. Involuntarily, I cried out his name.
"Shh, shh, my love," he whispered in the lilting, melodic accent I loved. "It's careful we must be."
His hands exercised no decorum. They obeyed no rules. They slipped beneath the skirt of my ruby velvet riding habit, tangled in the layers of lacy petticoats, and waded their way through my clothing until they touched my naked skin. Roughly whispered endearments, enriched with his decidedly Irish flamboyance, filled my ears as he fondled me intimately with a tenderness at odds with his growing impatience.
He opened his trousers and I saw him. The extent of his arousal frightened me. He saw my fear and soothed it with words of comfort and reassurance. His manhood was warm and smooth and hard as he entered me, stretching me, filling me. Our moans filtered through the shadows of the stable. The exquisite pleasure of our joined bodies lifted me out of myself. I plowed furrows through his hair with my fingers. He kissed my breasts fervently. With each thrust he delved deeper into me. And deeper still. Until —
"Elizabeth!"
Elizabeth Burke was rudely yanked out of her fantasy by her sister's exasperated voice. Eyes which had been cornily described as china-blue blinked into focus the woman standing on the threshold of her gift shop. Her sister's face was drawn into a frown as affectionate and tolerant as it was disapproving. Lilah, younger by two years than Elizabeth, shook her head and clicked her tongue. "You're at it again, I see."
"At what?"
"Don't play dumb with me, Elizabeth." She shook her index finger at her sister. "You were daydreaming. At least a million miles away."
"I was not. I was, uh, thinking about the order I'm filling out." Elizabeth rearranged a stack of papers on the glass showcase to give her lie credibility. Her cheeks were as warm with embarrassment over having been caught fantasizing as they were flushed from the heat of the fantasy itself. As she feared, her perceptive sister wasn't fooled.
"You're blushing. If it was that good, share it with me." Lilah dropped down onto one of the high, velvet-cushioned stools Elizabeth had provided for her customers to use while looking at the merchandise in the shop. The stool had a lacy white wrought-iron back. Lilah stacked her hands on the crest of it and gazed up at her sister. "Give. I'm all ears."
"You're all baloney. I wasn't fantasizing about anything except the ringing of the cash register. What do you think of these perfume bottles? They're made in Germany." She pushed the catalogue across the countertop.