The door of the lodging was bolted against the encroaching night, and he hammered vigorously upon the knocker. Goodman Benson opened it, his face creased with anxiety. "Is summat, amiss, m'lord?"
"Not in the least, Benson," returned his lordship. "But 'tis cold as charity, and we've need of the fire." Striding past the landlord, still holding Polly tightly, he made for the stairs. "God be praised!" Sighing with relief, he kicked the parlor door shut behind them and swung Polly into his arms.
It was a kiss that seemed to devour her, an embrace that would swallow her. She strained against him, desperate to become one with him, her mouth opened beneath his, receiving eagerly the deep penetration of his tongue as the hard shaft of his arousal pressed through damask and velvet against her thigh. His gloved hands pushed beneath her cloak
to span her narrow back, holding her against him. With an urgent movement, her mouth still locked with his, she unhooked her cloak, throwing it off with a shrug of her shoulders. Her breasts were crushed against the silken brocade of his coat; with another impatient movement, she pulled the neck of her gown lower so that her bosom was bared. Her head fell back on a sigh of abandonment as he released her mouth and bent instead to capture the hard, thrusting nipples, his hands forming a support against which she leant, bent backward, her hair falling almost to the floor, her lower body still pressed to his.
A soft moan escaped her as he nibbled and nuzzled her breasts, bringing that strange tugging deep in her belly, that liquid fullness in her loins so that she moved restlessly against him. The hilt of his sword obtruded with bruising pressure, but she barely noticed it as her flesh, heated under the living flame of passion, yearned for union. Her fingers twined in the auburn head glistening against the white skin of her breast; she spoke his name in urgent plea.
He raised his head to look deep into her eyes, where golden lights flickered in the green-brown depths, gazing up at him in suspended wonder. He laid a hand on her breast, against the jolting of her heart. Then the instant of patience vanished under the spiral of need; with a fine disregard for the delicate material of gown and kirtle, he pulled them from her body, his hands, rough in their vehemence, rending the thin cotton of her smock. Then she was naked, her breath coming in little gasps as she writhed in the hands and beneath the mouth that explored and possessed her, opened her and probed her, bringing the most sweet and piercing pleasure until she was lost in sensate rapture, trembling before him, held in thrall, body and soul, to him who possessed as he worshiped her body with his own.
Nick thought he would drown in her softness, in the fragrance of her skin. Her body's unashamed acknowledgment of the pleasure he was bringing her delighted him and aroused him more powerfully than he would ever have believed possible. He could not take his lips from her as he
branded every inch of her with his kiss, tasted of the eternal richness of her womanhood, felt her shuddering release again, and yet again.
With fumbling impatience, he divested himself of his own clothes, maintaining contact with her body even as he did so, a stroking finger, a brush of his lips, the quick dart of his ambrosia-sipping tongue, while she stood as if robbed of the power of movement or of will until he, too, was naked. Then, with a whispering sigh, she dropped to her knees, offering her own gift as she caressed him with her mouth, enclosed him in her small hand, returned the homage he had paid to her.
When the need for total union became finally invincible, he lowered her to the rug before the fireplace, smoothing a hand over the indentation of her waist, the soft curve of hip, as she lay bathed in the fire glow reflected in the emerald luster of the eyes that consumed her. Then he drew her beneath him, her thighs parting eagerly at the nudge of his knee, the tender, sensitized entrance to her body closing with joy around the throbbing monolith. He pressed deep inside her, lost in his own joy, sinking, plunging into her core, and she rose to meet him with a cry both wanton and wild under the suffusion of excitement that burst upon her, ripped through her, tearing her soul from her body, banishing all sense of self, of place, of purpose. Her hands gripped the corded muscles of his upper arms as she felt his body jarring, shuddering, heard her name on his lips; then they were caught in the wondrous flood of surcease, tumbled, drowned, to be tossed upon the shore of satiation while the tide ebbed.
Nick looked down at her as she lay clasped in his arms, the golden lashes fanned upon the damask cheeks kissed pink with his loving. Of all the wild cards he could have been dealt in the game he had intended to play, the onslaught of love was a rogue he could never have guessed. And the devil of it was that he could not help but thank the dealer-for all that it bode fair to play havoc with the game.
Chapter 11
The piercing wails rending the air as Nicholas sauntered into Thomas Killigrew's playhouse at Moorfields a week later sounded as anguished as if they were wrenched by the rack. However, experience having taught him that the vigor of Polly's protests tended to bear little relation to the severity of their cause, he made no effort to hasten his step as he strolled down a narrow passageway in the direction of the tiring room, from whence emanated the pitiable cries.
Sounds of hammering and laughing voices came from the stage to his right. A lad, clutching a piece of planking taller than himself, scurried past at an imperative bellow from the scene-setters on stage. Nicholas pushed open the door to the tiring room, where he stood, for the moment unnoticed by its three occupants, surveying the scene.
"Halt an inch more, Lizzie." Thomas Killigrew, perched on the edge of a tiring table, instructed the flushed and flustered tirewoman, who was struggling to tighten the laces of a bone corset behind a furiously complaining Polly.
"It is impossible!" Polly yelped, gripping the back of a chair until her knuckles whitened. "I cannot breathe. You would suffocate me."
"Nonsense," retorted the impervious Master Killigrew.
"A little discomfort is inevitable until you become accustomed to it."
"I will never become accustomed!" She squirmed, twisting her head over her shoulder, peering at Lizzie's busy fingers. "Oh, Nicholas!" Her eye fell on the spectator in the door. "Tell Thomas that he cannot do this. My bones are breaking!" This last emerged on a long-drawn-out wail as Lizzie finally secured the laces.
"Ah, Nicholas, you are well come, indeed." Killigrew, pushing himself away from his perch, greeted the new arrival with visible relief. "Perhaps you can better explain the realities to Polly."
Nicholas regarded the fulminating figure of his mistress. Only the linen of her smock protected her skin from the bone stays, which prevented any curve of her spine, any slump of her shoulders, and lifted her breasts to swell invitingly over the smock's low-cut bodice edged with a teasing scrap of Venetian lace.
"You must wear it," he said. "What you wear beneath your gown is more important than anything you may put atop."
"As I have been saying," interpolated Killigrew. "The corset governs your form, controls the way you move. Without it, your gowns will not sit right, and you will not be able to perform any stage movements correctly. It is particularly vital with the curtsy. Surely you would not wish to spoil the effect of what you already do so well?"
"I will not be able to do anything at all if my ribs are broken and I have no breath," she said, still mutinous, holding her narrowed waist.
Nicholas crossed the room, turned her around, assessing the fit with an expert eye informed by intimate knowledge of the shape beneath smock and corset. "It is a little tight, Killigrew," he pronounced. "It could be loosened somewhat-at least for the first time." Without waiting for agreement, he released the laces himself, not by much, but sufficiently to afford the sufferer considerable relief in contrast.