He cast aside the edges of the silk and exposed her breasts. The pulse of pleasure made her sway against him and arch her back. Light touches, torturous ones, had her close to groaning. He circled and brushed her nipples, drawing gasps out of her, pushing her to the edge, where abandon beckoned. She felt his arousal, swollen and hard, heating the back of her neck.
A scandalous impulse joined her fever. A shocking one. The notion turned into an urge. Should she? Dare she? She heard his voice in her memory.No rules.
* * *
She was honest in her passion. Free. She did not resist what it did to her. How it transformed her. His desire turned savage when he saw her like this.
She sprawled in the little chair now, her legs parted, the silk of the shawl’s ends falling between her thighs. Her head pressed him and her breasts rose high, their tips tight and dark. She shuddered whenever he caressed them. Lips parted, she watched through the slits where her lids had not closed entirely.
He cupped one breast and bent over and licked. A little cry escaped her, then another and more yet in a rising pitch of need. She raised her arm to circle his neck and hold him like that. He moved to the side of the chair for better purchase.
Only she did not want more. She took his head in her hands and held him to a deep kiss. Her tongue plunged and explored and demanded. She refused his attempt to join her, fending him off aggressively. While she kissed him, she unbuttoned his banyan.
He shrugged it off gladly. During the next kiss, she took his cock in both her hands. She stopped the kisses and pressed her lips to his shoulder, then his chest. He stood tall and watched what she was doing, balanced on rigid legs so pleasure did not bring him to his knees.
Her hands had him reeling. The path of her kisses made him grit his teeth. She could not know how suggestive this was, and what it was doing to him. He was on the verge of asking, begging, instructing when she showed she needed no encouragement. Her mouth closed on him, then took him in more fully. He threw back his head and closed his eyes, and his mind split while an ever-tightening pleasure thundered in him.
He lifted her up in his arms and dumped her on the divan. He dropped to his knees, spread her thighs and lifted her hips. He found enough sense not to ravish her, but to start slowly, but soon her cries begged for more, and he indulged in what he wanted, using his mouth and tongue, claiming what was his, only his. Her surprised gasps drove him on. He made her moan with want, almost weep with it, before he felt the trembles that heralded her end. Her earthy scream almost took him with her.
Almost blind now, raging inside, he pulled her down onto his thighs, so her legs flanked his hips. Her head and shoulders pressed the seat cushion, and the silk still draped her like a Venus. He pushed into her and drove hard while the tremors of her orgasm still shook her, reviving them, taking her with him into a cataclysmic storm.
* * *
She slowly emerged from the bliss. She felt him still beneath her and in her. He braced himself on extended arms against the divan’s cushion. Tiny shivers still tantalized her where they joined, like little echoes of what had just occurred. Eyes closed, passion spent, the face mere inches from hers looked so beautiful. Almost innocent in the absence of awareness and thought.
She watched as he regained himself, as the man emerged again and the jaw firmed and those crinkles at the sides of his eyes found their tiny furrows. He opened his eyes and looked right into hers. They wordlessly acknowledged the power of what had happened.
“Was that one of my gifts?” she asked.
“I was about to ask if that was to thank me for my gifts. If so, you will have to set aside a lot of room for all the silk shawls and pearls you will be getting.”
“It was a wild impulse.”
They disentangled, and he sat beside her on the floor. She noticed a book on her other side. It must have fallen off the divan. “What is this? Did you bring it?”
He looked over, then his head sank onto the edge of the cushion again. “I did. I want to show you something in it.” He stretched, then stood. In his naked state, she was able to see the scars on the back of his leg very clearly.
He bent and took the book, then offered his hand for her to stand. Together they walked to her bed. He moved the light to a close-by table. She sprawled on the bed, pulling the shawl over her shoulders and back for some warmth. He sat beside her and opened the book. Inside was a folded paper, which he set aside.
“It is from Teyhill. Stewards keep logs, much like captains of ships do. They note anything of importance, problems that arise, episodes needing attention. It creates a little history of an estate and its lands. This one is from about forty years ago.”
She turned the first few pages and saw what he meant. This was not like the ledger Mr. Roberts had shown her with the financial accounts. It was a personal record.
“I thought about what the whisperer told us and realized that if a theft happened, it might be noted in the log.” He flipped through the corners of the pages, and turned to one far along in the book. “And it was.”
She looked where he pointed. The steward had written about the theft.
Today, a stranger entered the house and removed several items in a wooden box. He claimed to be the last baron’s son. Because I have reason to think he was telling the truth, I wrote to the duke to see if he wanted to lay down information with the magistrate before I did so on my own authority.
“Then this, ten days later.”
His Grace wrote that I am not to bother the magistrate, that the thief mentioned earlier was probably far gone by now.
“I wonder what he meant when he wrote that he had reason to think he was telling the truth,” she said. “Do you think this steward spoke to him?”
“There is no way to know. But for some reason, that steward accepted that the son had not died. Back then, there were probably those alive who knew about what happened to the son. It is not the kind of proof that would convince a magistrate, Davina, but it is one more piece of evidence that your grandfather was right, and that you have been too.”
“I do not need to convince a magistrate. Only myself.”
