Duty Before Desire (34 page)

His breath hitched. “Sweet Christ, look at you.” It was close to what he'd said before, but with an added layer of lust this time. The hands he brought to her shoulders trembled. He ran his hands down her arms as though inspecting a horse for purchase. One hand slid around her waist and came up her ribs to cup her breast. The other came to her back, drawing her close.

The feeling of her bare chest against his was extraordinary, like coming home and embarking on a voyage all at once. Slipping her arms around his neck, she pulled his mouth to her.

He released her breast, locked both arms behind her back, and, for a moment, seemed content simply to hold her like this, his hands stroking up and down her back as his tongue took possession of her mouth.

But soon, soon, that needy frustration found Arcadia again. She rubbed her chest back and forth, teasing her nipples against the soft hair on his chest.

“Yes,” he rasped. She dropped an arm to his waist, then allowed her fingers to slip below. His shaft twitched against her palm; he bit back a sharp moan, and she thrilled at her power.
Look what I can do.
Intuitively, Arcadia tightened her grip, and was rewarded with a sharp buck of his hips against her.

He broke from their kiss. A sheen of perspiration on his throat glistened. “Jesus God. I'll be staining my breeches like a green boy if you don't stop.”

He was trembling all over, his motions jerky as he fumbled with the tie at her waist. “You too, you too,” Arcadia said, pawing the buttons of his fall free of their loops.

She shimmied out of her skirt while he shucked his breeches. For a second, she drank in the sight of him in his glory, his powerful thighs and long, thick manhood. He was as unashamed in his nakedness as
Discobolus
, but infinitely more beautiful.

Sheri's hands came to her hips, and his mouth crashed down on hers. He palmed her buttocks and kissed a path from her throat to her breast. His tongue flicked lightly over her nipple.

“
Ah!
” Arcadia cried, sensation spearing her. That wicked tongue worked circles around the sensitive peak, then he drew it into his hot mouth, while his fingers found the other nipple and teased it mercilessly.

A moan rose in her throat, primal in her own ears. Sheri lifted his head and took her mouth, his fingers plunging into her hair, freeing it from hairpins to tumble loose down her back. His hands stroked through it, over and over, while he ravished her mouth.

Arcadia wanted—
needed
—more. She wantonly rubbed herself against him, seeking relief for her aching flesh. A growl rumbled in his chest.
Thrilling.

He lifted her by the hips. Arcadia brought her legs around him, locking her feet at the small of his back.
Yes
. This was what she wanted. To climb him and rub. Everything. Everywhere. The rubbing was bliss.

A rush of dizziness struck an instant before her back touched the bed. Sheri followed her down, covering her body with his. Her feet came flat to the counterpane, her knees bracketing his hips. Her hands roved his back; she couldn't get enough of the feel of his firm muscles moving beneath that hot, smooth skin. She raked her nails up his spine. He groaned, rolling his hips as he reared over her on his knees.

Gripping her thighs, he kissed his way down her neck and chest, his skin sliding lightly over her breasts and belly, her entire body feeling caressed all at once. His hands slid to her calves, his fingers massaging, and then his mouth was on her leg. His tongue and lips scorched a path on the inside of her knee and up her thigh on a course to her aching sex. Arcadia's heart thundered in her ears. “Oh,” she gasped, uncertain whether to beg him to stop or to continue.

He decided the matter by giving her other leg the same treatment. Except this time, as he kissed his way upward, his hand came to the apex of her thighs. Sheri's fingers plucked lightly at the soft curls covering her mound, then slipped down the slit of her swollen folds. She whimpered as he parted her gently. The pad of his thumb came to the center of her pleasure and worked small circles on the throbbing nubbin.

“Sheri,” she gasped, her fingers clenching into his hair. “Kiss me … please, kiss—oh!” One finger slid into her sheath as he raised his head. Greedy for his mouth, she met him with her lips open. His tongue slid right into her, and it was such welcome relief, familiar ground in this foreign realm of intimacy. He slanted his mouth, deepening the kiss further. His finger kept stroking and stroking. Pleasure darted through her abdomen. Arcadia arched her spine and threw back her head, overwhelmed by the sensations swamping her body.

“Oh, sweetheart, look at you.” Sheri's voice was gravel, his pupils wide. “You're gorgeous, Arcadia. Everything about your body is perfection. Oh—” His hand rode with her as she lifted her hips, his thumb unrelenting in its ministrations. “Let me help you feel good, love.”

“You do,” she cried. Then, “I trust you, Sheri,” because she did, and because it needed to be said.

His eyes were strained, but they softened a fraction and he smiled—pleased and cocky but a little tender, too.

Then his head dipped to her breast and covered her nipple with his mouth. He sucked hard, sending a wash of pleasure up her throat and into her face. He withdrew his finger. A needy whimper rose in her throat. He plunged inside once more, two fingers this time. He was stretching her from within. There was an edge of pain to the stretching, but mostly it was good, so good. Better than anything she'd ever felt.

He changed the tempo of his thrusting and angled his wrist higher. His thumb slipped to the base of her nub and rubbed back and forth. “Do you feel this, Arcadia?”

“Yes, yes,” she sobbed, her body a writhing thing beyond her control. The pleasure was decadent—hedonistic, almost. She wanted more and more. Her body took the pleasure he served her and stored it up in ever growing heaps that were growing precariously high. Something was going to topple and fall—

“Come on, love,” he rasped. “Come for me. Let me see you. Give it to me, Arcadia. Give me your pleasure.”

Her face was hotter than she'd ever felt, her breath rasping in her throat. “I can't,” she cried. “I can't.”

“You can. Arcadia, look at me.” His eyes were steady, her anchor in the storm, even as his lips blew out on huffing breaths. “Trust me, peahen.”

“I do, I do—
ah!
” He rotated his wrist, twisting the fingers inside her. And she fell. Long and hard, the pleasure had its way with her, bowing her back off the bed and wrenching cries from her lips. But Sheri was there to bring her through it, whispering soothing words and kissing her mouth, her eyes, her shoulder.

She was dazed and scarcely returned to herself when he came between her legs and nudged her thighs farther apart. His shaft was thickly erect with prominent veins roping the circumference. The head was a dusky purple-red, a bead of moisture glistening at the tip.

Gripping himself, he rubbed that slickness over her nub, and she was surprised to feel another shock of pleasure. He drew his shaft down, trailing the head between her sensitized folds. His eyes were riveted on where their bodies met. “
Oooh,
” he moaned. “You have the prettiest quim. Pink and wet and opening up for me. Just like that.”

He nudged the head in where his fingers had been, then with short thrusts of his hips, fed in another inch, and then another.

The fullness was greater now, the stretching more intense. Her nails dug into his forearm. She clamped her belly and bore down against the intrusion.

“Shh, shh, shh.” Sheri ran a hand down her ribs. “Breathe, sweetheart. Relax and breathe.”

His words sounded so like an admonition she'd heard a thousand times while practicing yoga that she laughed.

• • •

While she was distracted, Sheri pulled back, then drove home in one long stroke. She was wet and tight and felt so good his eyes crossed.

She writhed, bucking her hips and tightening again. Her limbs were lithe, lean muscles softly delineated beneath supple skin. Her abdomen flexed. “Calm, peahen, calm,” he urged, but Sheri himself was anything but. His control was wearing thin. His cock was harder than he could ever remember being. The corner of his mind that always monitored his boon companion fretted that such a raging erection might do him harm.

But he was inside her now, and everything was going to be all right. He held himself still, grinding his teeth against the animal urge to rut and pound and claim her. She liked to be kissed, and so he lowered his mouth to hers. Propping his weight on his elbows, he smoothed sun-streaked tresses from her golden face. His golden goddess.

Her tension eased. Sheri gave an experimental rock of his hips. She gasped, but pleasurably this time. And so he did it again. “Better now?”

Arcadia hummed and brought her arm around his shoulder. “Better, yes. It feels so good.” Her accent was richer now, a song that reached inside his heart and grabbed his cock and filled his brain with one thought:
I make her feel good.
He was consumed with male pride. Reaching down, he hooked his hand behind her knee and drew her enticing leg to his hip.

“Put your legs 'round me.”

Her soft feet slid along the outside of his legs, her firm thighs lifted around his haunches. Her notch opened further, drawing his cock deeper. His balls tightened and throbbed. He shook from head to toe. Involuntarily, his hips jerked back and forth. He moaned, grasping her hip, pulling back, and driving home.

Arcadia gave a breathy “ah!” and so he let himself loose, gave over to the primal rhythm of mating. Every stroke took him deeper, every breath drew more of her essence into his lungs. His pubic bone clapped against her mound, giving her pleasure where she needed it most with every thrust.

Sheri's climax built at the base of his spine, tightly coiling through his groin and down his thighs. His spine bowed towards her as he plunged on and on, urged by her gasps and cries. Deeper into Arcadia, deeper into madness.

She cried his name as she came, the rippling contractions of her ecstasy pulling him over the edge. “Arcadia,” he groaned. He poured himself inside her, lost himself in a pleasure that went beyond pleasure, wiping his mind of any sense of self or place. There was only her, and it felt as if it had always been this way, and that it was right and good to know nothing but her. She was where he belonged.

Later—a moment or an hour, he didn't know—he held her in his arms, her head resting on his chest. Sweaty and sated, he floated on a cloud of bliss. Infinitely better than spirits, this was an intoxication to which he could become a willing slave. Eyes closed, he kissed her crown and felt her smile against him.

“So it's done, then?” Arcadia asked. “Consummated.”

He squeezed his eyes tighter. He'd asked her only for this. For one night. “Yes, consummated,” he confirmed. “Wedded and bedded.”

She snuggled in beside him, her little hand curled over his heart, and he raged silently at a world that would continue turning and march relentlessly into the dawn, and steal his goddess from his bed.

• • •

Arcadia awoke slowly. She was cocooned in the most delicious warmth and was loathe to admit to consciousness if it meant getting out of the bed. She sighed, rolling on decadently soft pillows. Her nose bumped a male shoulder.

Sheri.

Smiling to herself, she burrowed deeper into the covers, luxuriating in the presence of her own private heat source.

“Are you awake,” came his sleep-roughened voice, “or are you the most gleeful dreamer in existence?”

Reluctantly, she lifted an eyelid. “I haven't been this perfectly warm since India. It's marvelous.”

He propped his head on an elbow and looked down at her. His jaw was darkened with morning whiskers, and his hair flopped over his forehead. Without thinking, she reached up and swept it back.

“So …” he said. “We're both awake.”

An unwelcome chill that had nothing to do with the air stole into her lungs. “Morning.”

Their wedding night was over, the marriage consummated. Arcadia's part of their bargain was fulfilled. As soon as she found her brooch, she and Poorvaja could go home.

“It doesn't have to be.” Beneath the blanket, his arm hooked over her waist. He pulled her close, tucking her back against his chest. Direct contact with the warmth. Bliss.

“What do you mean,” she said drowsily, “
it doesn't have to be
? It is. Light is coming through the cracks in the curtains.”

He kissed her shoulder, the softness of his mouth framed by the prickling of his whiskers. His hips rolled, stroking his hard member in the cleft between her buttocks.

“It's still tonight if we say it is.” His hand came to her breast. He rolled her nipple beneath the pad of his thumb, toyed with it as it swelled and hardened. A soft cry caught in her throat. She pressed back against his cock, enjoyed the hiss of breath between his teeth. “If we don't get up, the night isn't over, you see?” he reasoned, his voice strained.

Arcadia turned her face up, meeting his mouth. Their tongues twined together, stroking and teasing. Sheri's hand came between her legs, and she parted them, inviting his touch. His finger slipped between the folds and probed gently.

“Are you too sore?”

There was some tenderness, but her spiraling desire quickly eclipsed the discomfort. “Not too much,” she panted. “It isn't morning. Not yet.”

Sheri turned her onto her belly. He licked and kissed his way down her back and rump. He rose onto his knees, gripped her hips, and pulled them up. Arcadia made a sound of confusion.

“Up on your knees and elbows, sweetheart.”

She did as he suggested, resting her cheek on a pillow between her hands. She felt exposed and vulnerable, but then his hand was at her entrance once more, spreading her slick wetness to the taut bud at her apex. She pressed onto her palms and bore against his hand, seeking more of that delicious friction.