I heard myself making the oddest sound, and then I went deaf to myself and the rest of the world as he slanted his head and took me deeper.
Things became rather frantic after that. I tore at his shirt, and he ripped my chemise apart, thrusting my bare breasts against the bruising plane of his chest. I rubbed myself shamelessly against him, eager to relieve the heavy aches and sharp tightness all over plaguing me. Like water on a lamp fire, I only caused it to spread.
His hands kept moving and adjusting me, a supreme annoyance until I felt more cloth tearing and the night air on my bare thighs. The shock and delight of it sent me up on my knees, my spine arching as his mouth attacked my breasts and he shoved his hands between my legs.
I felt the smooth bulb protruding from his fist the moment it touched the astonished, slick folds of my body; after a moment I understood he was positioning himself, and gazed down at him as I curled an arm around his neck.
“Lucien.” I took in a quick breath as he pressed up, seating that heavy, full plum of flesh against me. “A certain confession is perhaps in order.”
“So I feel.” He already knew, but he didn’t cast me away or shove through the thin membrane that kept him at bay. He held me suspended, watching my face. “I want it, Charmian.”
Rina had educated me about the gift I was only supposed to give a husband. Among other things, the giving often caused discomfort and sometimes bleeding. She firmly believed a woman should see to it herself before taking her first lover and had often scolded me to do the same.
I hadn’t, and now—perversely—I was glad. “Then have it.”
Dredmore’s entire body tightened as he laid me down in the grass and came up over me. At the same time, his body pressed into mine, and I felt a burning, tearing sensation.
Prepared as Rina had made me, I still bit into my lip to keep from yelping as he worked himself deeply inside a place Rina swore was made for just such a reason. I was beginning to have serious doubts. “Tell me this is the worst of it.”
“Aye.” He seemed to be in as much pain as I was.
“Just . . . be . . . still.”
Skewered as I was, I couldn’t seem to do that. My insides clenched around him, and there was some quivering involved. My body wanted up and I wanted him out, and my hips rose under his.
He withdrew, leaving behind a hot, wet emptiness, but that was no good, either. I clutched at his waist, not knowing how to make it right, and then he filled me again with a force that was only slightly less painful than his initial foray.
“I don’t think we’re suited,” I told him once I felt the full length of him throbbing within me. “But I did like the touching, very much. Could we do that—”
He cut me off with another of his open-mouthed, completely indecent kisses, which distracted me from the other things he did for a time. Only gradually did I become aware of his hands on my breasts and his shaft in my body, and how he was using them with steady, deliberate intent.
I wanted it to stop. The way he worked inside my body, dragging the heaviness of himself out before driving it back in again, created a new degree of discomfort, not as injurious but just as unbearable.
He kissed my eyelids. “Look at me, Charmian.” When I did he moved faster, driving deeper. “You can feel it now.”
I shook my head, pushing at him. “Leave off. I gave you what you wanted.”
“So you did. Now this is what you will have in return.” He propped himself up higher, spreading my legs wider so that the top of my sex lay open and exposed to the thrust of his. The knot of nerves there seemed to swell, and my body went liquid as the intolerable ache grew to a silent, wrenching agony.
He wouldn’t stop, he was never going to stop, and then something caught me, a dark and furious engine of pleasure and pain. I couldn’t fight or think or free myself, and suddenly I didn’t want to. Some terrible, glorious beast came to life inside me, one that roared in my ears and laved my skin, and wrapped around me, a demon from hell torching me alive; an angel enfolding me with the softest, silkiest of wings.
Dredmore held me as I convulsed and murmured to me, words I didn’t understand. His body became a merciless mech, hammering at me without stopping. Only when he went very still and said my name did I understand that his own beast was having at him.
I was convinced I couldn’t move after that and felt grateful that he could as he turned on his side, his hand latched against my body to keep our parts meshed.
When he kissed my brow I actually stiffened, thinking there might be more and convinced it would be the end of me. But he only held me and stroked my hair back from my face.
He looked all over my face before he smiled. “Thank you, Charmian.”
“My pleasure, Lucien.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Is it always like that?” I asked him a little later as I let some strands of his hair sift through my fingers. “Or are you insanely talented in this area?”
His chest rumbled with a chuckle. “No, not insanely, and it is never like that.”
“I beg to disagree.” I snuggled closer to him. “If you’d done this the first time we’d met, I’d have liked you much more.”
He thought about it for a minute. “There wasn’t enough room in the coach.”
“Lust at first sight?” I lifted my head. “On the Hill? For shame, Lucien.”
“You weren’t on the Hill. You were standing in the fruit market. It was a Tuesday morning.” His expression grew as distant and detached as his tone. “Connell stopped to allow some goatherd to cross the street, I looked out, and there you were, haggling with an old woman over the price of peaches.”
I didn’t recall the day, but it sounded like me. “I haggle with everyone.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. “The sun was very bright that morning, so much so that I could see the motes of dust in the air, and the blemishes on every face. Except yours. Your hair seemed to soak up its radiance and pour it back out through your eyes and skin.”
“You noticed me because I was glowing?” I didn’t know how to feel about that. “Maybe you mistook me for a lamppost.”
“I am a man of this world, Charmian. I know how relentless its indifference is. I solved all the mysteries of navigating through it long ago.” He looked at me. “Or I thought I had, until that moment I first saw you.”
“So you were after my peaches,” I tried to joke.
“I wondered if you’d smell of them, or sunshine.” He put his face in my hair and breathed in. “Tonight you’re all over moonlight and roses.”
“We’re in a rose hedge maze,” I reminded him, “under a full moon. What were you thinking anyway, spying on me like that? Surely you had better things to do.”
He shook his head. “That day I thought of very little, except the manner with which I could persuade you to get into my coach so that I might take you away with me.”
“You could have had Connell snatch me off the street.” Then I remembered the time he had sent his driver after me, and reared up. “That’s why you had him chase me down and gag me that day? So you could make off with me? You bastard.”
“On that day I had every expectation of success,” he said, “until Connell informed me that the rear wheel rim that he’d repaired with a mending spell that morning had for no apparent reason split in two.”
A dim memory of hearing a sharp crack came back to me. “That’s why you let me go.”
“That was when I realized what you might be. What I discovered you are.” He ran his hand along my arm from shoulder to elbow and back again in a smooth, soothing caress. “It was maddening to watch you and know I could do nothing. A hundred years ago I could have claimed you that day in the market.”