"You are indeed, sweet'un," he responded, muttering huskily in her damp mane of hair, some of which stuck to his mouth. "Vraiment!"
"You have lied to me," she accused, suddenly.
"Hah?" Lewrie gawped, stiffening in shock.
"You can speak French… when you care to." Charite chuckled.
"Only enough to get in trouble, dear," he laughed, greatly relieved that her plaint was harmless. To further distract her, he slid a hand down her sleek stomach and belly to her thatch, playfully twining his forefinger in her love-matted hair, flirting even lower round her clitoris, where his member was still sheathed inside her, making her roll her head, moan, and giggle.
"I am split… I am ruined, forever," Charite vowed in a weak whisper. "Zut!" she cursed a second later, as Lewrie limply slithered from her at last. Matter-of-factly, without shame, she flung herself forward to the headboard and piled pillows, rolled over face upwards, and swiped her damp hair from her forehead, with her fine, slim legs still wide apart, knees slightly raised as if welcoming another romp before sunset or suppertime.
Lewrie shuffled forward to recline alongside her, admitting to himself that he might not be the "All-Night-In" Corinthian he had been in his wilder twenties… After four blissful bouts he was just about utterly spent, and a longish nap wouldn't exactly go amiss. He snaked an arm under her neck and about her shoulders, getting no closer for a bit, as they lay there and genteelly "glowed"… perspired… on the nearly soaking sheets.
"You will miss me among the savages, mon Alain?" she pressed at last, rolling to her side to face him, propped up with a hand under her head.
"Desperately, ma cherie," he earnestly, nigh honestly vowed, rolling his head to look at her and seeing her impish expression. "And you? Et vous?"
"Et tu, Alain," Charite amusedly insisted. "Not the impersonal vous, but the intimate tu, mon etalon." She stroked a hand over his hot chest, a fingertip circling his near-side nipple.
"Your stallion, hey?" He chuckled, feeling risible after all as she teased.
"Ah, oui. The stallion le plus puissant. You spoil me for… After you, the most powerful, what man could ever compare, mon amour?" Charite said, frowning for a second and lowering her eyes as if she had said the wrong thing, had come close to reminding him that other lovers had existed, would exist in the future.
"Then I'd best hurry back to New Orleans before you run across a better," Lewrie suggested, tongue-in-cheek. "So we can have days and days like this. Days and nights… early mornings, the crack of dawn?"
"Oh la, I tempt you so much, you would surrender all your other lovers for me, Alain?" she asked, trying to be light, but with a slight edginess in her voice, as if his reply actually mattered.
"Hah! What other lovers?" he barked with laughter. "Damme, if you haven't spoiled me, d'ye know. If I had one, or a round dozen, a 'wife' in ev'ry port, I'd toss 'em all off a cliff, aye. Charite, you are sans pareil. Lovely, passionate… abandoned. Maddening! There, ye see? Another French phrase. We keep this up, I'll parler …"
She rolled half atop him, embraced him, twined with him and bestowed a dozen fond kisses to reward such gallantry.
"Oh, pooh!" she said after suddenly breaking away, pouting very prettily and desirably. "It would all end in tears. I could not have an Anglais lover! You are not even Catholique! A heretic, Protestant… 'Bloody,' born and bred to kill the French, and Catholics? Never, not in a thousand years, could you be acceptable. What Papa and Maman would say… my brothers!"
"Well, don't they say that 'love conquers all'?" Lewrie jested.
"Oh, we marry, and I am disinherited?" Charite huffed, though still pressed against him, up on her elbows. "I must go to a British seaport as your kept woman, your wife… when you admit that you cannot even keep yourself? Zut, putain!"
"Well, nobody said…" Lewrie began, daunted by her intensity.
"And then you give me babies," Charite further fantasised, one hand flying in objection as if swatting flies, "and after a few, I am the fat, dull matrone and you take your pleasures elsewhere, kein? I become hideous to you? Non! I wish never to be a matrone! No matter how grand the man, there is so much more to life, certain! I wish to do more with my life than marry, breed, and die anonymously, Alain."
"Well, /think you're famous," he essayed, much confused.
"Even so… " Charite said, her heat evaporating as she turned pensive and lay down atop him again, her head on his shoulder and her voice muffled against his neck. "I would have your babies, Alain. I would be your belle amie. Just so long as I am the only one!" she concluded, with a mock-fierce nip at his earlobe. "And when you are among the Indians, you do not take a lover there!"
"Well, I might be more among the Yankee Doodles than Indians," Lewrie said, yelping as if really nipped and playfully wrestling with her 'til he had her under his weight, her wrists pinned by his hands.
"Oh, they are even worse!" she snarled, wriggling and thrashing.
"How fair could they be, in their homespun junk, and all muddy barefeet?" Lewrie snickered, feeling even more risible as she squirmed most fetchingly under him, belly to belly, even pinioned as she was. "You wouldn't trust me out of your sight, would you? Would you? I thought so. You'd have me clerking for Pollock, here in New Orelans. All ink blots and smudges on my nose, in a countinghouse, instead of adventuring."
"No, you can have your adventures, Alain," she insisted. "Just so you come back to me… often. Always," she softly, fondly, added.
"But what could I do to earn a living, if I don't go venturing for Panton, Leslie?" Lewrie innocently asked, thinking it about time to try to dredge some information from her.
"I told you, cher, Learn the river trade from your adventures, prove yourself, then… meet with those wealthy men I mentioned, who wish to own their own ships before the Americans control all the shipping trade," Charite reiterated, turning still between his thighs. "If you wish to begin at once, I could introduce you to Monsieur Maurepas, the banker, He is in touch with… oh, im alors! Putain! I cannot. You must go upriver, I must go to my parents' plantations. It will be weeks and weeks before I could introduce you properly."
There's a name t'conjure with! Lewrie silently exulted, to hear one of Pollock's suspicions almost confirmed.
"Though, he is… many of his associates," Charite hemmed and hawed, writhing beneath him as if spurred more by dread than pleasure. "They are proud Creoles, Alain, tu comprends F French Creoles, who hate the Spanish subjugation and wish to be a part of la belle France once more. France is strong, and Spain is weak, and they believe that someone must save them, before the Americans… or you 'Bloodies' eat us up!" she spelled out for him, though turning the traditional epithet for Englishmen to a joke, instead of a taunt. "You must be careful in your dealings with them, mon coeur, before one of them spins out some fanciful dream about revolution against Spain. Oh, how do you English say, to… " she asked, frustrated.