When he lifted his head again, he was smiling his rather mocking smile at her.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that I may explode as soon as I mount, quite as speedily as you just did. But we have the rest of the night in which to play at our leisure. Am I excused in advance?”
“You are excused.” She smiled back at him, though in truth she did not understand what he was saying.
He came down fully on her again and she felt his hands come beneath her buttocks to hold her firm. She felt him hard and probing at her entrance, but before she could draw a steadying breath he had plunged into her. There might have been pain. She was not at leisure to notice. There might have been shock.
There was no time to absorb it. There was only a wondering surprise that a man could be so large and so hard and yet fit fully inside her. And then he moved in her, almost withdrawing and plunging deep again, over and over, faster and harder until he strained deep, cried out, and collapsed all his weight on her. She wrapped her arms about him. He was hot and slick with sweat.
She felt the shock then. Her virginity was gone. Just like that. And with the shock came knowledge.
Knowledge not only of what happened between a man and a woman, but of what it felt like. It had been disappointing. And yet not entirely so. Part of her exulted. She had mated with a man. She would not go through life without that most primal of human experiences. She had mated. She still lay beneath him, her breasts pressed to his chest, her thighs hugging his powerful legs, his ... that part of him inside her.
She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry. She never would be. He had touched her and delighted her and made her feel feminine and beautiful as no one had ever done before—quite the contrary, in fact. And she had mated with him and satisfied him. He was sleeping, she realized. He was heavy. She was having difficulty breathing. Her legs were going to cramp soon. She would surely be sore inside. But she willed him not to wake up. She hugged her splendid, stolen dream to herself.
After Rannulf woke up and rolled off her, apologizing for squashing every bone in her body, Claire Campbell excused herself. He could hear her washing herself behind the screen, and grinned, lacing his fingers behind his head. A fastidious lover. He would soon have her wet and smelling of sex again.
She was magnificent. Her body and her hair were enough to keep any red-blooded male in a state of constant arousal, but there was more to her than just those attributes. There were her eyes with their drooping, come-hither eyelids when she was aroused, and her perfect teeth, and her low, seductive voice. There were her acting skills and her smiles and laughter. And there was her knowledge of the game.
An actress of her allure and experience might well have tried to lead the way, and their first sexual encounter might have become a clash of wills and expertise, each trying to establish mastery and control.
He would have enjoyed it— how could one not enjoy any sexual encounter with someone like Claire Campbell?—but not as much as the game he had set out to play and she had complied with. The game of slow, quiet seduction.
She had sat on the bed like a prim virgin while he had brushed the red glory of her hair and felt desire course through him like an ever-building flood that would sweep all before it when it burst its dam. She had allowed him to lead every step of the way though he had felt her growing heat and seen her peaked nipples and felt the wetness of her desire. Her orgasm had been powerful and flattering. So many women faked it and imagined that their lovers did not realize. The genuineness of her release had given him permission to take his own swiftly without feeling inadequate, like a randy schoolboy.
She appeared from beyond the screen and came around to the empty side of the bed. His mouth turned dry at the sight of her. His big regret was that this was a one-night-only encounter. He would need a month or more to explore all the delights of her body and slake his appetite for her.
“Don’t lie down,” he told her. “Kneel on the bed.”
She did so, facing him, and gazed inquiringly down at him. The fire had been reduced to mere glowing embers, but the two candles still flickered across the room.
“Let’s play,” he said, reaching out and touching her hand.
“Very well,” she said gravely.
He chuckled. “Little Miss Prim has already been done,” he said. “Exquisitely, I might add. I do promise you that I am not usually so ... frenzied in my mount. That was merely the effect your quiet compliance had on me. I had my way with you that time. It is your turn now. What would you like to do?”
She stared down at him for a long time. Even her stillness and her steady look could stir arousal in him.
“I do not know,” she said at last.
“Is your arsenal so vast, then?” He grinned at her. “I wish the night were a month long so that you could try the whole of it on me. Would a month be long enough, though? Make your choice. I am all yours.
Your slave if you will. Have your way with me. Make love to me, Claire. Have sex with me.” He spread his arms and his legs on the bed.
She knelt there for a long time not moving. But her eyes were roaming over him, he saw, watching her, and her eyelids drooped over them. Once she licked her lips, the tip of her tongue moving slowly from one corner to the other.
She was very clever and clearly far more experienced than he had expected. He had anticipated that she would fall on him and subject him to any number of blatant, exquisite sex tortures to drive them both into a precoital frenzy. He had observed that her manner of dress was understated. But so was her behavior.
He grew pleasantly warm under her slow gaze, tingling with anticipation.
And then she leaned over him and touched him with her fingertips, cool from the water with which she had just washed herself. She touched his forehead, sliding her fingers up through his hair. She feathered her fingers down over his face, running her forefinger down the hooked length of his nose—a family legacy that he shared with most of his brothers and sisters—and then very lightly over his lips, and set her palms on his shoulders while she lowered her head and kissed him on the mouth. Curtained by her red hair, he felt her tongue move across his lips, and when he opened his mouth she stretched her tongue inside. He resisted the desire to suck on it. His role was a passive one for some time to come—for a long time, he hoped. He did not know what she was about, but he was liking it very well so far. Perhaps she was doing to him what he had done to her—slowly seducing him. And succeeding. His toes curled with pleasure.
Her hands and her mouth—and her tongue and her teeth—moved slowly down his body, pausing whenever he gave the slightest indication of pleasure. The witch! As if she did not know very well every one of a man’s pleasure spots. She suckled his nipples, rubbing her tongue lightly over them as she did so until he almost reared up and ended her game before it had even approached the climax she must intend.
He lay still, concentrating on his breathing.
She covered every inch of his body with her light, cool, erotic touch except for the part that had stirred into life again and stiffened into its full hard length well before she was finished. She skirted all around it, the tease. He was finding it more difficult to breathe quietly.
And then she did touch him there, taking him in her two cool hands, at first so lightly that he almost exploded, and then with more assurance, closing her hands about him, stroking him, rubbing her thumb over the sensitive tip.
“Does that feel good?” she asked him in a low, throaty voice that just about hurtled him over the edge.
“Too damned good,” he said.
She turned her head and smiled at him and kneeled upright and pushed her hair behind her shoulders with both hands. She stayed that way for a long time, looking down into his eyes.