Wicked (35 page)

His tongue dipped inside and he kissed her ear the same way his thrusting tongue played in her mouth. He sucked in a deep breath that sent chills down her neck, over her shoulders and arms, and seemed to center in her breasts, where she wanted to feel his pulling mouth.

“I shall kiss your neck,” he whispered to her. “But first we must remove these pearls.”

She reached up with her hand, but he grasped it and pressed a kiss to her palm.

“I shall do it.” He unclasped the pearls and slowly began to unwind them, pressing kisses on each part of her neck that was revealed. By the time he held the strand of pearls up before her, her eyes were dreamy and her body lax; she felt as if her bones had melted.

She took the strand of pearls and set them on a small table beside the bed. She turned back to him. She loved the way he looked at her, as if she were the only woman in the world. He was looking at her like that now. “Where were we?”

“I was telling you where I want to kiss you.”

“Where else?”

He leaned forward and his arm slid under her back and pulled her close to him. “On your chin.” He gave her a soft kiss there.

“And your lips and tongue and teeth.”

His mouth came to hers. His arms tightened under her. He rolled over with her so she was sprawled atop him. He pressed his hands all over her back, stroking her from shoulder to bottom.

He moved to the ties on the back of her gown, played with them, then pulled them loose, one at a time. He grasped the shoulders of her gown in his fists and jerked it down, pulling her linen shift down with it.

She heard a ripping sound. She smiled, for she did not care a whit. He could rip her clothes off her forever and a day as long as they were both naked and touching each other.

His hand pressed her breast up and his mouth closed over the tip of it. He teased it with his tongue and sucked it into his mouth again and again. Hard, so she felt the pull in the very core of her.

He kissed her breasts for so long. She loved it and she couldn’t stop moving; it was as if every suck of his mouth made her hips shift up.

Finally he moved downward, pulling her dress with him, his tongue and lips kissing her ribs, her belly, her waist. He traced her hip bones with his mouth. He suckled her belly low and hard, and made a small trail of red marks there.

“I want to kiss you everywhere, sweet. Taste you. Love you. Hold you.”

She loved it when he talked to her. There was little silence to their loving and she liked that. She buried her hands in his thick dark hair.

His head moved lower, to her thighs. He nudged her legs apart. He pulled off her clothes, tossed them off the bed, then sat up, spread her legs apart and just looked at her.

His eyes studied her from her feet, up her legs and to the center of her. He raised his hand to his mouth and licked his finger, then touched her, the center of her, and rubbed slowly, oh so very slowly, watching her the entire time.

It felt so good, she moaned and raised her legs so her feet were flat on the bed.

He kept on touching her, then slipped his finger inside of her, pressing it in, drawing it out, then sliding over the most sensitive part of her.

Her knees began to quiver and shake.

He pulled his finger out and lifted her foot to his shoulder, then he kissed a path down the inside of her leg and stopped before he got to where his hand had been. He took her other foot and did the same thing, kissed all the way to the hollow in her thigh. Then he slid his hands under her buttocks and pulled her toward him, and up to his open mouth.

He blew on her and slowly pressed his lips to her. She was ready to beg for his tongue. She wanted him to do more and more.

He gave her what she wanted. He gave it to her for so long that she was crying out again and again. Still he did not stop. She pulsed against him.

He drank it all in, then finally he stopped when she was almost crying from the joy of it, when she was certain she could take that same touch no more. He lowered her hips to the bed and jerked off his tunic and undergarments, pulled off his hose, his loin cloth.

He was as naked as she was.

He took her hand and pulled her up, so she was sitting before him and he was kneeling before her, his legs splayed slightly. He looked into her eyes and grasped her hand, then put it over him, showed her how he wanted to be touched.

“Touch me . . . Feel me . . . ”

She picked up the rhythm.

He moved his hand to her breast and lifted one and bent toward it until it was in his mouth. She kept moving her hand over him, feeling him grow.

He kissed her ears again and slid his fingers inside of her, telling her how she felt and what he wanted to do to her and that he wanted to do it all night long.

He told her things they would do that she did not know men and women did. But she did not care, for she loved his touch and the things he did to her, loved the way he made her blood soar, and the way he could make the center of her throb around his fingers, his tongue, or around nothing at all.

She felt so hot and warm and wet it was as if she were melting. She gave a ragged cry when she pulsed around his fingers.

He leaned over her and brushed his mouth against hers and made her cry out again, but he told her it would be all right.

She gripped his shoulders and felt him shift, and he pressed his hips down and in between her legs. Like before, he inched inside of her in small amounts, moving slowly, just the tip of him, in and out, over and over.

She twisted on the bed. She wanted him deeper still.

“Please,” she said. “Please.”

He cupped her face in his hands. “Look at me, Sofia.”

She did.

“I swear to you I am going to go all the way inside of you. Now. Where it’s hot and deep and wet. I want to be there. Do you want me there?”

“Aye,” she said. “Aye. Come into me.”

“I will hurt you. You know that?”

She nodded.

He paused and looked at her.

“Dammit, Tobin, just do it!”

He gave a small and quiet laugh, then lifted her up. “Look at me. Let me see your eyes when I join with you, my wife.”

She fixed her gaze on his.

He shifted his hips back and then sank inside.

Something ripped. ’Twas like he was tearing her apart. She groaned, made a soft and whimpering sound that she wished she could take back.

“Look at me.”

She opened her eyes.

“Look at me . . . ” His breathing increased.

She tried to catch her own breath.

They breathed together, panting as if they had been running a race. But they were completely still.

He was inside her.

She was surrounding him.

The pain was waning, drifting off to a place that did not matter when they were one like this. There was nothing but him inside of her, filling her in ways that had nothing to do with size, but everything to do with the senses.

She could taste him on her tongue.

She could smell him in the air around them.

She could feel him on every part of her—on her skin, on the fine hairs of her legs, on her belly and deep inside her breasts. She was no longer Sofia, a separate being. The being was the two of them.

She ran her hands over the muscles on his back. They were taut and bulged in a way that reminded her that he was male and so different from her.

But why then did this feel so right, when they were so different? She could feel the curly hairs on his thighs, feel them rubbing just a bit against her soft, bare skin.

She shifted her knees up, put her feet inside his thighs, and ran her feet down along his, rubbing over the backs of his knees and down his calves, before she moved up again.

He pressed down harder against her and rested his weight on his elbows.

“I’m going to love you, now. Feel it, sweetheart, and tell me if I’m hurting you.”

She nodded and waited to feel the pain again. But she did not. All she felt was him filling her and moving ever so slowly, pulling back and almost completely out of her. She pressed her palms to his tailbone and pushed down, eager for him to come back inside, where it felt as if he touched her soul and where the only pain was not having him there.

How very strange this all was to her. He was part of her now, moving in her, kissing her and his hands were all over her, shifting, so each time he moved it was different and she felt something more.

He whispered her name again and again, said it in quiet moans and in whispered moments, with a rhythm almost like a monk’s chant, there in her ears and on her neck and face, against her lips, all those places, he said her name, as if it was as important to his life as each breath he took.

But part of her was worried she was making too much of this, of him touching her, of what they were doing. She loved him but he did not love her. He was doing what he was supposed to do in the marriage bed, nothing more.

But it did not feel routine or mundane. It felt wonderful. She turned her head slightly. Night had come and she could see through the glass of the windows.

In the distance she saw the moon come from behind a dark cloud. She wondered why it looked the same when everything inside of her had changed so. Why were the stars still there, as they always were? Why did the moon look no bigger? Why did the whole wide world move along as it always had, when her world would never be the same again?

He began to move more quickly and she lost herself to the motion of the moment, the thrust that seem to sweep her away as if she were riding on those stars outside, higher and higher.

She heard his name, and realized it was her voice that had called it out. “Don’t stop,” she whispered against his mouth. “Please, Tobin. Don’t stop.”

“I won’t . . . I won’t . . . ” he said to her. A breath of words as he moved more surely and quickened the motions of his hips, then clasped her knee in one hand and shoved it up near her shoulder. He rode upward and thrust harder and faster, until something happened and she caught her breath, sure she would die from within at any moment.

Then she slipped away as if in a dream, to another place and time, where her body took her up to heaven and all the way back down again, over and over.

From someplace far away she heard him shout her name, as if he were calling her back to him. He stilled inside of her, frozen, like he had died too. But she felt something warm inside of her.

It came from him, the seed of his life. She could feel him release it. She lay there, under the weight of his slick and damp body, lay there in wonder and relief and an ecstasy that she would have never thought existed in the world.

Together they lay there in quietude, just the two of them. He drew back and stared down at her. The look on his face was one of surprise. He did not have the tension she always saw there. He looked at her as if she were someone he did not know.

“What is wrong?”

He gave her a bit of a smile, then shook his head. “Nothing is wrong.” His thumb traced her hairline.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Differently.”

“Am I?” He shook his head. “There is no reason. I think you imagine it, sweet.” He slid off of her and onto his side, his head resting on his hand and his elbow next to her ear.

They said nothing for the longest time, then he said, “Your skin is so beautiful. It looks like these pearls.” He reached over her and took the pearls from the table, then laid them across her breasts and shoulders. His finger traced her shoulder bone, down her arm and over her ribs.

She laughed. “That tickles. Stop.”

“’Twas only a few moments ago you were making me swear not to stop. You are a fickle wench.”

“Ah, you! I am no wench!”

“No. You are my wife,” he told her with sudden seriousness. “My wife,” he whispered as if he had to do so to believe it.

She stilled, her eyes fixed on him.

He reached across her and threaded his hand through hers, and just held it. She lay there, listening to the even sound of his breathing. Soon his arm relaxed across her breasts, his hand still holding hers.

“My husband.” She turned and watched as his eyes drifted closed.

And there was nothing more, for a moment later they were both asleep.

Chapter 30

Sofia woke early.

Her husband’s hands were all over her, touching and stroking her. They made love by the dim light of the rising sun, then rose to bathe and dress. It was late by the time they descended the tower stairs and moved along the hallways that led toward the hall, where all would break fast.

They walked into the room, her husband’s hand on her back. The King and Queen were not there. As was their custom, they broke fast together in their private quarters. The servants had spent most of the early morning hours cleaning up around the guests, most of whom were either still drunk or suffering the after effects of their revelry, their heads down on the tables.

Sofia had expected a few winks and some ribald humor, ’twas part of the wedding, and a part that most of the guests enjoyed. She was prepared for their attempts to make her blush, which she knew would fail, so that gave her some feeling of security. They would never know she was blushing inside.

She was not prepared, however, for the sight before her.

On the back wall, hanging over one of Eleanor’s fine tapestries, was the linen bed sheet from their wedding bed. An ugly brown mark stained the center of it, there for all and sundry to see.

She stood almost rooted to the floor. Her stance was rigid. Tears of humiliation filled her eyes. She bit her lip and tried to tell herself it did not matter.

She tried, but failed.

It was no longer the custom to hang the bedding sheet as proof of the bride’s virginity. It had not been custom for her whole lifetime and a good twenty or more years before. To do so nowadays was a slap in the face of the bride, an insinuation that she was impure and had to prove to the world her virginity.

She had stopped so suddenly that she could now feel Tobin’s startled look on her. For just one fleeting and horrid moment, she wondered if he had ordered this done.