She breathed in and out deeply, trying to remain calm. He plunged his hands beneath her skirts and deftly slid her drawers to the side. The strum of his fingers across her body introduced a brighter, more lovely burn, and she cried out again.
She wanted another strum, she wanted so much more of everything, but he was fumbling with his trousers again, taking himself in hand, and then he dropped down, burying his face in her neck, and pressing inside her with one deep thrust.
Sabine cried out, shocked by the jab of pain amid something that otherwise shimmered with pleasure. Stoker froze. His sawing breath stopped.
She tried to turn, to see his face, but he burrowed deep against her neck. She stared at the ceiling, waiting for more pain or less pain or some other sensation that no one had ever mentioned. He was petrified inside her and above her and silent. For an indeterminate number of minutes, they hovered there, fraught and breathless, and Sabine realized that she could engage her brain again. The pleasure had abated.
It was not so terrible, the pain. Tight and new and nothing like the swirl of sensation and mounting... something that made her press and arch and beg him to reach this point.
She was confused by the cause and effect of her body’s want and the resulting dissolution of all pleasure, and she was frustrated with Stoker for burying his head, departing from her for all practical purposes, in this of all moments.
But perhaps this was what he was trying to warn her against all along. This stabbing moment of pain? That made no sense; it was unpleasant but it was hardly worth demanding some jewel or service in exchange. All the lovely moments leading up to it had been an equal trade in her view, and even now, it was not terrible, being so very close to him, locked in his muscled arms, with the glorious heavy weight of him pressing her down, safe and secure, into the bed, his face against her neck. It was so far and away, more intimate than their long talks or even the emotional theatrics they had navigated tonight. All of it was essential, she thought, including this,especially this, and she would tell him all about it, if ever he—
All of a sudden Sabine realized that the pain had subsided to a tiny sting of sensation, and the flicker of pleasure had returned, now rapidly overshadowing. She breathed deeply and moved her right leg, pressing Stoker’s hip with her knee.
She’d meant to animate him, but instead she set off a spill of sensation inside her own body. She squeezed again. Now she pressed the other knee. More—better, so much better. Sabine experimented with a small thrust, raising her hips as before.
Stoker swore into her neck when she did it, a long, breathy sound that ripped from somewhere deep inside him.
Sabine smiled and continued to move, delighted that the sensations had resumed and the pain was gone. After the third or fourth rock of her hips, Stoker’s body answered back with a thrust of his own.
This, Sabine realized, was even better.
“Oh,” she cried.
Against her neck, his breath had begun to saw in and out. His excitement stoked hers, and she felt herself get caught up in the thrilling mix of urgency and pleasure and the rising pressure of before. Stoker was up now, pressing above her slowly, inch by inch, centering over her while his hips thrusted.
He rose so slowly and evenly, she thought for a moment they had reinjured him, that his wound or ribs hurt, but then she caught sight of the expression on his face—an eye-closed twist of restraint against desire—and she realized he was invoking all of his strength to hold himself back.
“Stoker?” she panted.
His eyes remained shut.
“Stoker?”she repeated, her voice high and desperate.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped.
“It’s not a moment for sorrow,” she managed. “Please.”
He laughed without humor. “Do not say that.”
“I will say it.” She surged upward with her hips. “It’s what I want. Stop restraining.”
“You don’t know what you want.”
Now it was her turn to growl. “Do nottell mewhat I want.” She grabbed him by the hips and moved his body in rhythm.
Something seemed to snap inside him. He didn’t let go so much as hurtle forth. His thrusts increased in speed and strength; he fell against her bared breasts, slavering them with sucks and nips. If he kissed one, he touched the other. This attention shot a new jolt of desire through Sabine, and the drive of his body was suddenly, exactly, perfectly right. She heard herself cry out and call his name. She screamedyes! more times than strictly necessary, but she didn’t care. Every care and inhibition and anxiety left her, pounded away by Stoker’s body and the command he took of their combined pleasure.
His ferocity allowed her to lie back and receive and receive and receive, and her only thought was that she could take him forever—except they were building toward something that had a definite end; she could sense that now. She knew it as surely as she knew the next thrust would take her another rung higher.
She matched Stoker thrust for thrust, reaching for each rung, delirious with the anticipation. When finally, she reached the top, Sabine experienced an explosion inside her body—an actual explosion; why hadn’t her friends been more clear about this?—and she surged up one final time, floating on a mist of sensation and release and languid, moltenyes...
Stoker sensed her release and finally opened his eyes, watching her with something like disbelief, but the look of rapture on her face was clearly too much; he tore his gaze away and drove into her again, only a few more thrusts, and then he cried out, seeming to float on the same mist before he collapsed on top of her, panting.
By some miracle Sabine managed to muster the strength to toss her boneless arms across his back and hold him, opening and closing her hands on fistfuls of his loose shirt.
“Well done,” she said after a moment. “I think. Would you say, Jon? Well done?”
“Oh my God,” he breathed, and he rolled off her and lay beside her, staring at the ceiling. He fastened the buttons of his trousers quickly, efficiently, without sitting up. He jerked his waistcoat back in place.
“You may cover yourself,” he said softly. He reached out with a weak hand to tug ineffectually at the side of her skirts.
Sabine dropped an open hand over her eyes and rolled her head back and forth on the pillow.
Now this?she thought as her levitating heart sank.
