He kissed her mouth in a leisurely fashion, tasting the familiar sweetness of her, his big hand cupping the back of her head. “We Scots are a contentious people, Jasmine. We are just as apt to murder our kings as obey them. Our lords, great and small, are an unruly lot. Jamie was always afraid of them, and rightly so, I think. If we live in Scotland, you will learn ‘tis a turbulent and tumultuous land to which I have brought you, darling Jasmine. You will find, like your mother, that you will want some time in England each year. Our climate is unique, you will discover. Autumn is our best season.” His hand slipped from her head to smooth down the length of her back, caressing her buttocks.
She purred with contentment, twisting herself about, and drawing his dark head down into the shadowed vale betweenher breasts. He rested there a moment, listening to the beating of her heart beneath his ear. Then, affixing his hands about her waist, he straddled her and, bending, began slowly to lick the flesh of her torso. The flat surface of his tongue moved all about the swell of her breasts, and beneath them. It blazed a trail across her chest, her shoulders, and up the slender column of her throat. Then, his head moving swiftly like a darting butterfly, he blew back the wetness, finally fastening his mouth about one of her nipples, which he at first suckled, and then gently bit.
“Beast,” she murmured, and, raising her head up, nipped hard upon his muscled shoulder, her teeth dangerously close to drawing blood.
“Little bitch!” he groaned, his hands pinioning her down hard. Then he transferred his attentions to her other nipple, his fingers kneading the tender flesh of the first breast as he drew hard on the second. He half released her so that he might push his hand between her silk thighs, his fingers seeking. “Jesu, you’re a hot little bitch. Wet, and hot, and very ready, darling Jasmine!”
She easily broke his light hold on her, her arms sliding about him. Her hands gently stroked him as she whispered hotly in his ear, “Fuck me now, Jemmie! I will die if you do not!”
“Not yet,” he insisted. “I have barely begun to delight myself with your ripeness, sweetheart.” A single finger found what it sought, and he began to tease at her most vulnerable spot, flicking the digit back and forth over the sensitive flesh, feeling it swell beneath the tender torture until she was gasping with pleasure.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders.“Bastard!”she hissed at him. “I want you!I want you!”
He laughed happily. “In time, darling Jasmine,” he promised her, and then began to kiss her even as he pushed two fingers deeply into her sheath, moving them quickly backand forth until she drenched them with her love dew. “There, sweeting, that should take the edge off your hunger,” he told her.
“I hate you,” she half sobbed weakly, but he had eased her longing, and they both knew it.
“And I’m wild for you,” he teased her. His lips met hers again, rendering her dizzy with the sweetness. “Each night I’m away from you I will remember tonight and all the other nights we have lain together making love to one another. I will count the days until we are married, and you are mine forever, Jasmine.” He kissed her lips once more, and then her closed eyelids, the tip of her nose, her determined little chin. “Tell me you will hunger for me as much those long weeks we are apart.”
“Yes, damn you!” she managed to gasp. What was happening to her? Usually she was equally in control of their lovemaking; but tonight he had taken firm charge, and she found she was utterly content to allow it. She wanted him to take her roughly, overwhelm her entirely, make her a slave to his masterful passion. She felt like a very young girl again.
Releasing his grip upon her, he slid down the length of her torso, leaving her breasts aching with longing to be touched by him again. Catching up her small, narrow foot in his big hand, he kissed it, suckling lightly upon each toe, his tongue tickling her high arch. His kisses trailed over her narrow ankle, up her shapely calf, across her dimpled knee and, sweeping over her silken thigh, moved across to her other leg. Then reversing the process, he worked his way back down to her left foot.
Pulling himself back up, he began to nibble lightly once more upon her ripe lips, while her fingers tangled in his dark hair. He nuzzled his face against her navel, rubbing his cheek against the satiny flesh. Every pulse in her body was throbbing with her desire. Lower and lower, he moved along her torso. Her vulva was swollen, and already pearlescent with her love juices. He licked at it, smiling to himself when she whimperedfirst, then swore at him furiously. Spreading her wide, he settled himself between her legs, gazing at her sex, which he revealed to his eyes, opening her nether lips with his thumbs to expose the tumescent core of her sex, throbbing beneath his hot look.
“God,” he groaned, “you are so damned beautiful there!”
“Jemmie! You are killing me!” she cried out low.
Leaning forward, he licked several times about the coral shell of her, and then, fastening his mouth about the jewel of her sex, he sucked hard on it while her body arced wildly beneath him, almost dislodging him. His hands fastened about her hips, holding her still beneath the sweet assault.
Pleasure such as she had never known rolled over her in such wild excess that she thought she would surely die. Then, as suddenly as he had offered her this delight, he was mounting her swiftly and fiercely driving into her very womb, bringing yet another surge of pleasure so great that she could hear a violent roaring in her ears as her body began to convulse with a powerful orgasm the like of which she had never known. Her nails clawed at his back, and she moaned wildly.
He couldn’t get enough of her. Over and over, and over again he thrust into her, unable to cease the furious motion of his loins. He groaned as she wrapped her legs about him, giving him greater access to the exquisite pleasure that their two bodies were capable of generating. Finally, when he thought relief was not attainable, his lance quivered wildly, then burst with such intensity that he thought he would never stop coming as his love juices poured into her womb, flooding it to overflowing. Exhausted, James Leslie collapsed upon his lover’s pillowing bosom, sobbing with relief.
“Ahhh, you exotic witch,” he finally managed to say, “you have come near to killing me, and I, you.”
Jasmine managed a small chuckle. “Wasn’t it wonderful?”she said, her arms going about him again.
“And now I must leave you for a month, more or less,” he complained.
“Ride quickly,” she encouraged him. “I do not know how long I can bear St.Denis’s company, and holding him off will be both difficult and irritating. Thank God the queen is my friend!”
“If he so much as touches you,” Glenkirk growled, lifting his head and staring into her turquoise eyes, “I shall make him this court’s first eunuch. I hate the way the randy bastard looks at you, as if he were contemplating a delicious meal.”
“He’ll find himself poisoned if he attempts to take a bite out of me,” Jasmine promised him. “I am yours, James Leslie. Body and soul, I am yours. I will have no other man as my husband. Now, get off of me, you great beast. I need to prepare love cloths so we may begin another sweet round of passion. I have hated being without you, and I need strong memories to last the next month.”
“You are totally insatiable,” he grinned at her.
“So are you,” she shot back at him.
“Prepare the basin,” he instructed her. “I’ll need those memories too, darling Jasmine.”
When she awoke long after sunrise the following morning, James Leslie was gone from her side, and she didn’t even know when he had departed. On the pillow where his dark head had lain was a perfect half-open blood red rose. With a smile she lifted it and inhaled its fragrance, her mind awhirl with the memories they had made before the dawning. Those memories would have to sustain her in the weeks to come, Jasmine knew. The basin was gone from the bedside, and she realized that her servants, discreet as always, had already been there. Reaching out, she pulled on the bell cord to inform them she was awake and ready for her Assam tea.
Shortly Adali entered her bedchamber, the tray, with its blue-and-white porcelain cup and deep saucer, in hand. “Goodmorning, my princess,” he said, setting the tray down. Taking the handleless cup up, he spilled some hot, fragrant tea into the saucer, and brought it over to her. “Your tea.” He took the rose from her to put in a bud vase.
Jasmine sipped the beverage slowly. Then she said, “When did Lord Leslie leave, Adali?”
