“If you were one of those women up in the castle, you would have been mine already,” he assured her. He grinned and pulled her body closer. “I would have singled you out, hunted you down, carried you off, married you, and taken you to wife in less than an hour’s time.”
Her eyes widened and her porcelain cheeks began to flush. She opened her mouth to reply, or maybe even to chide him, but then she closed it. After a couple of tries, she swallowed and asked, “Why me, sir? I am nothing any longer. Spending your time with me will get you nowhere and bring you no privileges. I have no more kingdom, and I will lose my crown after the trial.”
He squinted at her, wondering if she just couldn’t reason that someone could like her for more than just her crown. “Because I love being in thesame country as you. Breathing the same air. I love the way you look at me. I love this small nose,” he kissed her nose, “and these pink lips,” he kissed her lips, “and this wrinkle that appears between your eyebrows when you’re worried,” he kissed that too. “I have been dreaming of you since I met with you for barely over an hour eight months ago, and I want to find out how much you’ll devastate my world when I spend just one night with you.”
“But you nearly beat me,” she protested, sounding a little short of breath and beginning to tremble slightly as his hands continued to caress her.
“You make my blood boil,” he agreed, and then kissed her again.
This time, she put her hands up and onto his chest, and shoved slightly. Just before he ended the kiss, however, she balled up her hands into his tunic, and kissed him back.
Lightning felt like it had struck through him from each of his toes to the tips of his ears when she kissed him back. His cock, which had already been quite hard, now strained as if determined to break free of his clothing of its own accord.
He dropped his hands from her head down to her waist, slinging one arm around her to bring her body in closer to his own while, with the other, he grabbed her bottom.
“Oh!” she squeaked, suddenly ending the kiss and attempting to jerk her body away.
For a second, he didn’t know if it was his brazen grasp that had her thinking twice, or the passion that was beginning to spark between them. And then he remembered, “You’re still sore,” he said, not as a question.
She didn’t reply, just blushed and averted her eyes.
He pulled her close to him and nibbled at her jawbone until she began to calm and melted into his embrace once more. As soon as she did, he began to pluck at the buttons that laced her gown. She froze, holding in her breath, but she didn’t stop him.
As the lacing became more intricate and difficult to undo properly, he pulled himself away and slowly turned her around, gathering her thick black hair and carefully putting it over her shoulders so that he could look at the fastenings that held her velvet dress together.
He pulled the cloth down her arms and toward her waist, then untied her two layers of underskirt. When the fabric was pooled around her knees, he kissed her neck and then stepped back to admire her in the lantern light.
His breath stopped.
Susanna was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen before in his life, and he hadn’t even seen the front of her yet. He focused on her bottom, which was beautiful as could be, somehow even more so with pink blotches covering it from her spanking. In a way, the scene struck him as extremely domestic. As she stood, she trembled and looked over her shoulder shyly at him.
He pulled off his tunic in a single motion and then, suddenly raging with energy, he stepped forward, swooped down, and picked her up into his arms. She thrashed around after squealing slightly from surprise, but then he found her simultaneously smiling, biting her lip, and covering what he could only assume were the most glorious breasts he’d ever see with her small, fair hand. “I’ve never seen skin glow so perfectly in candlelight,” he told her, and wondered if he was being possessed by a poet. He felt like one tonight; he felt overwhelmed by everything that was happening and everything that he was feeling. The world had never felt so right and wonderful.
He brought her to the pallet of cushions and laid her down on them carefully. “Don’t move a muscle,” he demanded as she began to reach for the nearest fur. He stood back, trying to pull his boots off and nearly falling on his face doing it. He had never been so eager to bed a woman in his life, not even his first.
She laughed slightly as he stumbled and he grinned at her. As soon as he could, he crawled onto the pallet and over her body, then nipped her playfully on the stomach.
He could already smell her sex, and he slowly moved his hand over her slender thigh, leaving a trail of goose pimples. He found her slit with his fingers. She was wet and hot for him.
“Gerhard!” she gasped, crunching her body upwards.
He put his other hand on her stomach and kissed her belly again. “Shh.”
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Has a man never touched you here, my beauty?” he asked her, then pressed his thumb down into her wetness until he found her swollen little nub.
“Of course not!” she replied as if he was being scandalous just to mention it. He wasn’t surprised. Though most noble women he had ever met, unmarried though many of them were, weren’t virginal, Susanna looked at him like she was fascinated by his every move. That look filled him with fire.
He moved his body down and kissed along her knee. He was glad that she hadn’t been taken before. He wanted her as his. He didn’t want to think about the future, about what lay in store for her. He just wanted her all to himself, right now, as if there was no tomorrow at all.
He rubbed his thumb back and forth over her quim until her body began to writhe and she let out small, quiet little whimpers. She tried pressing her thighs together, and with a chiding tsk, he spread them back apart. “Relax, Susanna. I’m taking care of you this eve,” he reminded her.
She chewed at her bottom lip, looking more girlish than regal now.
Unable to keep from grinning like a cat in the proverbial cream, he kissed her inner thigh and began to move his mouth toward her center.
“Gerhard!” she chided.
