A Lady's Pleasure (6 page)

was
his fantasy woman.
"I kiss her."
"Like this, you mean?" Her lips teased him, more confident now, more taunting. She gently rubbed them against his. Until he felt like his lips would burst into flame. Then she tasted them, delicately, her tongue swirling into the corners of his lips, along the seam, before her mouth opened and covered his, gradually learning the art, sucking slightly to adhere their flesh, her tongue touching his, then mapping out his mouth, the roof of his mouth he exhaled sharply at the stab of desire that shot through his groinunderneath his tongue. Her breath fanned his cheek in little warm puffs while she smoothed his hair back from his forehead.
Robert had never realized how deeply a woman's tongue could penetrate a man's defenses. He fisted his hand in the warm curtain of her hair and took control of the kiss.
Only to find that when he dueled her tongue back into her mouth, she sucked on his like he had earlier sucked on hers until she wrung from him a groan.
"What else, Robert?" Her breath was a whisper of heat on his lips. "What else do you fantasize about?"
Bloodied faces flashed before his eyes. Men he had killed. Men he had sent out on missions to be killed. Innocent women and children caught in the crossfire of war.
And with the images came the need that had kept him alive.
But Abigail wanted fantasies, not a battle-scarred soldier's needs.
Before he could think of a lie, the cold, damp cloth trailed down his neck, his chest.
He groaned, knowing what was in store for him. And found that it was a fantasy of his. A fantasy that he had never known he possessed.
"You never answered my question, earlier," she said, the cloth circling and circling a hardened nipple. "Is it as sensitive for a man here as it is for a woman?"
"Yes," he growled.
"Good." The cool cloth lifted. Only to be replaced by a scalding mouth.
He could feel the pull of her lips and tongue all the way down to his testicles. My God, he had
never
felt like this. Had never known that the male body was capable of this much sensation.
He grabbed the back of her head when she freed his nipple. "Don't stop."
"I read that a woman can orgasm from a man suckling her breast. Do you think a man can orgasm from a woman suckling his?"
Robert almost orgasmed at the mere thought. "I don't know."
He gritted his teeth, prepared for Abigail's next move. Only to find out that he was not prepared at all.
He had just spent himself not more than thirty minutes earlier.
He should not even be hard, let alone on the verge of coming. She ran the now-warm cloth past his straining manhood and cupped his testicles.
"Abigail ..."
She ignored his growl of warning.
He could sense her hesitance, could have told her the second that she made up her mind. The cloth slipped lower still, pressed into his perineum. Silky warm hair covered his groin at the same time that her mouth daintily gulped his manhood.
A jolt of heat flashed through his body.
Shame.
That he could not control himself.
Awe.
That she had brought him to this point.
"Jesus Christ.
Abigail!"
With a groan he jerked aside.
She grabbed on to him and swallowed him as deeply as she could while his flesh exploded inside her mouth.
When he could breathe again, he reached down and caressed her head, needing her close, needing to hold her. Needing her to hold him. "Come here."
She sat up. "Did I do it ... properly?"
She was trembling. With desire? Disgust?
"No one, Abigail, has ever done it more properly. Did you enjoy yourself?" he asked warily.
"Yes, thank you. I have always wondered what a man tastes like."
"And what does a man taste like?"
Robert should have been warned by the hair that suddenly spilled around his face. But he wasn't.
"Taste for yourself."
He was momentarily paralyzed by shock, allowing her mouth to cover his and her tongue to thrust inside him. It was coated with his sperm.
He blindly grabbed her upper arms and hauled her back.
"Jesus."
"Have you ever done that before?"
He plunged his hands into the silky heat of her hair. "What? Tasted myself?
Never."
"No. I mean ... Have you ever kissed a woman between her legs before tonight?"
Her hair clung to his fingers; it was as soft as butterfly wings. He hesitated, "No."
"Why not?"
"Whores are not always the cleanest of people."
"Do you do it to your fantasy woman?"
Robert picked her up and sat her sideways across his stomach.
Abigail squealed.
Children squealed like that when they were shot. As did some women. And men.
Grabbing her right leg, he pulled it up and over his body so that she straddled his hips.
Her hands smacked against his chest. "What are you doing?"
He reached up and cupped her breasts. "Guess."
"Butcan you do it again?"
"Perhaps. If not, I can satisfy you in other ways."
Her nipples were rock hard. He rolled them between his thumbs and forefingers until she was squirming and pressing her hands over his.
Incredibly, he felt himself stir underneath her seductively soft bottom.
"Robert. Robert. Not there. Touch me somewhere else."
He continued rolling her nipples, wanting to push her to the limit. Wanting to push himself to the limit. Wanting to end once and for all the darkness of death. "Where, Abigail?"
"You know where, Robert."
"But I want to hear you say it, Abigail, I know you know the words."
"Robert"
"I won't stop teasing your nipples until you say it."
"I want you to touch myto touch my
my pearl!"
There was no question about what was or was not stirring underneath her bottom. Abigail, too, noticed the phenomenon. She ceased attempting to pry his fingers away from her nipples and reached behind her to grab his manhood.
Without guidance, she lifted up. Holding him tightly in her fist, she brought him to her vaginal lips, a wet, hot kiss of intimate desire. Only to tease him with herself. Or perhaps she teased herself with him.
"Do you mind?" she gasped.
Robert gasped when she slid him past her opening and up to the top of her clinging, swollen lips. He could feel the hard bud of her clitoris, could feel it throbbing. She rubbed the crown of his manhood against her there, round and round, slid it back down to tease her opening. Again. And again. On the forth pass he couldn't hold back a reflexive arch of his hips.
It wasn't going to take much for Abigail to gain satisfaction. Suddenly Robert minded very much that she should orgasm alone.
When next she brought the crown of him down to moisten it at her opening, his hand was there, too, holding his manhood steady while, with his left hand, he pulled her right thigh wider, forcibly bringing her body down closer.
This time the gasp belonged to her.
"Easy. Are you sore?"
"A little."
He pulled her thigh out furtherand sank further up inside her.
Her muscles clenched and tightened around him as if they could force him out.
He gripped her more tightly.
He
would not
let her reject him.
"Bear down, Abigail. Once I'm in, I won't hurt you anymore, I promise. Open up. Relax." Having breached her body, he slid his right hand down to her left thigh; using both hands, he steadily, relentlessly, pulled her thighs wider and wider apart until she had no choice but to "Take it. Take all of me, Abigail."
She did.
He knew he was causing her pain. He also knew how to take that pain away.
Lightly he soothed the taut muscles in her thighs. "Relax, sweetheart. Relax, Abigail." When her muscles eased, he slid his left hand up and rubbed her nipple. Bringing up his right hand, he touched her clitoris.
A pearl, she had called it.
From
The Pearl,
no doubt.
Below her swollen bud was a taut ring of wet, pulsing flesh her surrounding him.
Robert had never realized before how thin feminine skin stretched to hold a penis ... or how fragile was the bonding of a man and a woman.
She quivered as he rimmed her clitoris with the pad of his thumb. Her inner muscles told him all that he needed to know. They told him how hard to press, how fast, until suddenly the taut band of flesh surrounding him relaxed utterly. In the next instant it clutched him so tightly it was almost painful.
Abigail cried out.
Robert cried out.
But he didn't move. He had promised her he would not bring her any more pain, only pleasure, and he meant to keep that promise.
Before she had time to catch her breath, he rubbed her swollen bud again. Until her inner muscles again gripped and milked him in climax.
He used her pleasure to bring about his own peak. It took six orgasms in all. When he arched up into her, she collapsed over him in a blanket of soft hair and damp flesh.
Mustering up energy he had never known he possessed, he jerked the bedcovers out from underneath his body and pulled them up around her.
Holding her tightly in his arms, his flesh snugly encased in hers, he prayed that the storm would last another night.

contents
Rain was a steady drum of sensation; it pounded against the walls and the ceiling, impaling Abigail's body on a shaft of raw heat. She shifted to find a more comfortable positionher pillow was fuzzy and the bed bone-hard.
The feeling of being impaled grew. As did the raw heat inside her lower body.
Her eyes flew open.
A mat of wiry black hair greeted her gaze. It covered a very broad, naked chest.
Stifling a cry of alarm, Abigail lifted her head.
She stared into pewter-gray eyes framed by ridiculously thick, long black lashes.
Every muscle in her body clenched in recognition at what filled her to capacity.
She had taken a stranger into her bed. She had taken him into her mouth. And she had taken him into her body.
Where he was still lodged.
Pale-gray light illuminated the dark stubble lining the oddly tensed face of the man underneath her. "Good morning."
In the dark heat of night Abigail had been a woman; in the cold light of day she was once again an aging spinster.
An aging spinster who had propositioned a strangerand then had begged and cried for him not to stop.
Abigail stiffened her spine. "Good morning."
He folded down the covers from around her shoulders and eased her upright so that she sat across his hips. "Do you mind?"
Do you mind
ricocheted inside her headthe words she had asked before using his manhood to rub against her engorged flesh.
Flesh she had named.
I want you to touch my
to touch my
my pearl!
Her muscles tightened in protest; she felt as if she sat on a fence post. His shoulders were brown against the white of the sheet and pillowtight little brown nipples peeped through black chest curls.
Which meant that her breasts were equally visible.
Breasts he had suckled like a starving infant.
She slapped her arms across her chest.
His hips surged upward with unmistakable intent.
Abigail gasped. At the sensation of him prodding the very depths of her body. At the realization that the intolerable pressure had nothing to do with what was inside her vagina and everything to do with what was inside her bladder.
Freeing her right arm, she braced her hand on the mat of wiry chest hairchest hair that
she
had rooted around in like a starving infant. "Actually, yes, I do mind. You see, I need toto"
Words failed her.
She closed her eyes at the loss of whatever dignity she still possessed.
There simply did not exist a polite formula for informing a man buried deep inside a woman that the dictates of nature preceded the urges of the flesh.
A boisterous laugh penetrated her mortification. The motion of his body combined with that of the bed caused her to jiggle up and down on the extremely solid flesh planted between her legs.
Opening her eyes in pained outrage, she anchored herself to his chest with both hands; her freed breasts swayed unimpeded. Hard, calloused fingers dug into her hips while pewter-gray glinted up at her.
"A lesson for the both of us. Men wake up with a hard-on. Whereas women, I take it, wake up merely needing to relieve themselves."
Gritting her teeth, Abigail attempted to scramble off him, only to find that her legs refused to movethey were numb from lack of circulation. "I beg your pardon, but I seem to require assistance in gettingdownup"
The tanned skin around his eyes crinkled. "My pleasure, but you reversed the order. First we lift you up" Strong hands circled her waist. "Then we help you down."
Robert jackknifed up in bed and onto his knees in one fluid motion. Abigail hardly had time to gasp before he was out of her body and she lay sprawled on the bed. He loomed over her with his manhood jutting in front of her face.
It was every bit as impressive in the pale light of day as it had been in the murky dark of night.
Grabbing the gray blanket at the foot of the bed, she pulled it around her naked body. "Thank you."
His grin widened. "It's still storming outside."
She was all too aware of the weather. "Yes."
"I take it you have a chamber pot."
She did. Under the bed.
Supremely unself-conscious in his nakedness, Robert climbed off the bed and leaned down. The monotonous patter of rain was interrupted by the drag of smooth porcelain over hard wood.
Robert straightened. "Shall I help you?"
The heat blazing in Abigail's face felt like it would burst into flame. "I think not."
"Abigail, there is no place for modesty inside a one-room cottage. Men and women share the same bodily functions. I have to make use of it, too. What is the difference, for God's sake?"
She refused to look away from him. "The difference, Colonel Coally, is that women squat and men do not."
His gray eyes widened momentarily; then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.
He had very white teeth.
The laughter stopped when Abigail scooted out of bed slowly, carefully; the flesh between her thighs stung as though she had been impaled on a shaft of nettles. Her legs were like two slabs of wood, with no feeling in them whatsoever. Standing, bracing herself so she would not fall flat on her face, she reached for the faded green dress that lay heaped on the floor.
"Don't be ridiculous, Abigail." It was the colonel's voice of last night, sharp and autocratic. "It's pouring down rain outside."
Firmly clasping the blanket across her breasts, she threw the dress over her headand got totally lost inside it. Her stilted reply was muffled. "You may dictate to your men, Colonel Coally. I, however, am not ruled by military law."
Long, hard fingers reached inside the dress, grabbed her left hand, thrust it into a sleeve. "You did not object last night, Miss Abigail."
They both knew they were not discussing military dictatorship.
"Last night, Colonel Coally, was an anomaly."
"It is not necessary to go outside." The muted voice was suddenly flat. Her right hand was forced into a sleeve. "I give you my word as an officer that I will not intrude on your privacy."
"Thank you, but no." Her head cleared the dress. "I am in need of fresh air."
"Very well." He whirled her around.
Abigail stared past his dark headhis hair was hardly mussed, while hers felt full of live rats. "I can button up my own dress, Colonel Coally."
"Can you, Miss Abigail?" he asked enigmatically. Reaching inside the open placket of her dress, he grabbed hold of the blanket and yanked it up and out. Before she could voice her objection, he pulled her dress together and commenced fastening the tiny buttons.
Abigail silently endured his ministrations. The colonel just as silently retrieved her drawers.
She grabbed the silk from his hands and turned her back to wriggle inside the flimsy underwear.
"Where are your shoes? Or do you make a habit of running about barefoot?"
Blushing, back ramrod straightwhere
had
she put her shoes?
ah, yes
she marched to the door and crammed her feet inside the half-boots there. She contemplated putting her hair up, but knew there was no time to waste.
The wind almost knocked her back inside the door. It was accompanied by a blast of memories.
I want a woman to make me forget that I have spent the last twenty-two years of my life killing.
He had thought she was reading devotional literature when he had peeped through the window. Matrons and spinsters read devotional literature, not a woman who a man would choose to help make him forget.
What a shock he must have experienced, seeing
The Pearl
clutched to her chest.
What a whore he must have thought her when she had propositioned him.
How pitifully desperate she had been, an old maid unable to accept her virgin status.
I did not take you because I thought you were wanton, Abigail. I took you because I needed you.
The rain was icy.
For a second Abigail's intent wavered.
He knew everything else about her body, what was so shameful about this aspect of it? But then reason prevailed.
The colonel knew the wanton she had been in the night; not the spinster she was in the day.
Bowing her head, she fought the wind to close the door, then fought the wind and the rain and the mud all the way to the backyard privy. Only to fight it all the way back again on the return trip.
The colonel met her at the door; a towel was wrapped around his lean hips. After one look at Abigail's sodden clothes and dripping hair, he unbuttoned her dress and peeled it and the silk drawers off her. Wrapping the blanket around her, then, he picked her up as if she weighed no more than a child and sat her down on the wooden chair at the table where the air was unaccountably warm.
Abigail should have been outraged at such cavalier treatment. Instead, she felt chastised ... and oddly comforted.
Hunkering down in front of her, he matter-of-factly removed her shoes. "I fired the stove and put a bucket of water on to heat. All I could find in the cupboard was a tin of tea, half a loaf of bread, and a jar of strawberry jam. Would you like some toast now or would you rather wait for the water to heat up and have it with your tea?"
Abigail turned her head to look at the wood box behind the stove. It was missing a hefty portion of wood. The other chair was pulled up to the far side of the stove; it was draped with his clothes that she had dropped last night. Turning her head in the opposite direction, she surveyed the floor in front of the cupboard. There was no broken glass littered abouta broom leaned against the wall.
The Pearl ,
where she had dropped it by the bed last night, was gone, too. As were the hairpins he had taken from her hair.
She faced the man who waited at her feet. "I will wait for tea, thank you."
"You're a stubborn woman, Miss Abigail."
Abigail stared into the stark gray eyes that were on a level with her own and felt her heart skip a beat.
He lookedvulnerable. And intensely masculine.
Last night
had
been an anomaly.
It must have been.
He had gone out into the stormand had come upon her cottage. Once past the initial heat of lust, a man like him would not want a woman like her.
But you are not just any woman, Abigail. For the duration of the storm you are
my
woman.
It still stormed.
Abigail braced herself against the rejection that was certain to come. "You lied, Colonel Coally."
The dark face grew shuttered. "In what, Miss Abigail?"
"You said you wanted everything."
"You
said last night was an anomaly."
"Then
I
lied."
For one endless second the steady rhythm of the rain ceased. Then tiny lines radiated out from the corners of Robert's gray eyes, and they were no longer stark but warm pewter.
"How does the sponge feel?"
Blushing, Abigail tilted her chin. "It feelsthere."
"I'll take it out for you."
The blush grew hotter.
"After I soak you in hot water to relieve the soreness."
She refused to look away from the pewter gaze. "And what then, Colonel Coally?"
"Then I'm going to put it back in."
Suddenly the damp, dreary rain was more pleasant than a sunny day.
"Perhaps I will have that toast now, Colonel Coally."
"We made a bargain, Abigail. Until the storm ends we call each other by our first names and you are free to indulge in any sexual urges that you wish."
The red-hot stove hissed as water boiled over onto it. Grabbing a towel, Robert picked up the handle of the bucket and poured the hot water into the little hip bath beside the sink. Steam roiled up to the ceiling. The remainder of the water he poured into a tea pot. Then he refilled the bucket and set it back on the stove.
"Are we on bread-and-water rations?"
"Only until Mrs. Thomas makes it through the storm. She and Mr. Thomas look after the cottage. For a few extra shillings a week she cooks and cleans and does my laundry."
"I doubt she'll make it today."
"No." A warm glow of anticipation grew inside Abigail's stomach. Another night with this man was well worth a little starvation.
Robert toasted bread to a fine turn. And spread strawberry jam lavishly.
She waved her cup toward the cupboard. "There's butter insidenot much, so unless you want to save it for later ..."
His gray eyes darkened. He met her gaze, a half-brooding, half-searching look. "Why did you pull away last night?"
She squared her shoulders, fully prepared to lie. If he had not discovered her faults, who was she to point them out? Instead, she said, "You were taking my hair down."
"You have beautiful hair, Abigail."
"I have gray in my hair, Robert."
She did not expect evidence of her rapidly approaching old age to inspire laughter. But it did.
She tilted her chin and held up her cup of tea with her little finger sticking out at the required degree. "I am glad you find my age amusing, Robert."
"Abigail, I am five years older than you are. And if you had any gray hairs, I would not be laughing."
"But I do," she stubbornly insisted.
"Then I don't see them."
"A woman my age should not let her hair down."
"Perhaps that is why there are men like me, to take it down for them."
She lowered her eyelashes to block those pewter eyes before she started believing in the impossible.
"Is your leg well?"
"Which one?"
Abigail's gaze rose to the bait. "Your left one"
Only to be stopped by the glint in his eyes.
"You have a wicked sense of humor, ColonelRobert."
"And you have a sore bum to look after, MissAbigail."
"It is not my bum that is sore."
"I know what is sore. And I know how to make it better."
The bucket of water on the stove hissed. He added it to the hip bathand disappeared behind a fog of steam. Vigorous pumping sounds penetrated the gray mist; they were followed by the cascade of water pouring into water. The writhing steam thinned, revealing Robert leaning over the tub, checking the temperature with a seductive swish of liquid.
He straightened. "Your bath, madam."
Abigail approached the tub and boldly dropped the blanket. Robert just as boldly picked her up.
He kissed her.
His tongue was scalding hot. It was flavored with strawberry jam.
The bathwater was just as scalding hot, with none of the sweetness.
Disregarding dignity, Abigail threw a leg over each side of the tub and heaved herself up. Robert was equally determined to hold her down. And far more successful.
"Let me up! This is scalding!"
"Hold still, Abigail. The water is not going to do you any good unless it is hot."
"Only a lobster would benefit from water this hot!" Closing her eyes in pain and frustration, she tried a more civilized approach. "Please let me up."