The Pirate and the Pagan

by Virginia Henley

  “I’m going to stand up now to take off the rest of my clothes,” he warned her gently.

  She sat up, her eyes like saucers as his hands moved to his hips to slide off his breeches. From the crisp dark hair his shaft rose up proud and blood-crimsoned.

  “Ru!” she cried, half-afraid, half-mesmerized. His legs were like columns of marble, his thighs bulged with hard saddle muscles. He reached down to pull her up into his arms and he was relieved when her hesitation was only a slight one. His hands immediately went to the straps of her shift to remove the barrier of lace which stood between their naked bodies. “I wondered what my breasts would feel like against your fur pelt.” He groaned as her shift fell to her hips and she stood on tiptoe to fit her breasts closely against his chest.

  “Now I’m not finished looking,” he said as he held her away from him at arm’s length.

  Her skin gleamed like a tropical pearl, as if it were dusted with translucent powder. She aroused him to near madness. Though she’d never been with a man before, she was totally unself-conscious. His hands caressed the silken mass of her hair, wondering at its fine texture and shining blackness. The feel of it between his fingers excited him and he took up a curling tress to taste it. Summer reached out to feel the coarser texture of his hair as it fell upon his shoulders, and as he had done, she brought it to her mouth to taste. He shuddered.

  Her eyes were slanted with desire, making her the most beautiful woman in the world. “Lord God, you are exotic as a tropical storm,” he said, and buried his lips against her throat.

  His hands eased the lacy shift over her hips and it fell to the carpet with a whisper, then he picked her up and sat her on the edge of the bed. For the first time she became aware of her surroundings. Her eyes widened at the size of the massive four-poster with its brilliant teal-colored curtains. On one of the pillows lay her flame hibiscus as a symbol of her deflowering and she realized that like herself Ruark was a true pagan at heart.

  As he knelt before her to remove her lace stockings, she watched every minute detail of his expression. She watched his eyes grow heavy-lidded with smoldering desire. Her gaze lingered long upon his mouth, longing for its tenderness and its fierceness. He opened her legs to gaze between and she gave him back his own question. “Am I as you expected?”

  “Exactly! I’ve pictured you for weeks.” He lifted her foot to his lips and placed a kiss upon its sole. “I lie, you are a thousand times more lush than I dared dream.” Then, because he hoped he could say anything to her, no matter how intimate, without shocking her, he said, “Whenever I pictured you, I saw myself lying between your legs.”

  She slid from the bed until she knelt touching him. His shaft rose up between their bellies like a steel rod with a head of velvet. “Initiate me in the mysteries of sex,” she invited, and he knew in that moment that he loved this woman beyond discretion, beyond reason.

  He slid his long, rampant maleness between her legs and his neck arched back as a groan of sensual pleasure escaped his lips. He slid back and forth across her lips and she gasped with hot pleasure. The slow strokes brought exquisite sensations as if she, too, were swelling; each caress made her more sensitive until she wanted to scream with excitement.

  “Oh, Lord Jesus, I’ve dreamed for weeks of being deep inside you. Let me lift you onto the bed before I slide inside you,” he gasped.

  She laughed. “That would be impossible, Ru, don’t tease me.”

  He was swept with a wave of misgiving. She was so loving and trusting because she thought this was all he would do to her.

  “Oh, I love it so much, Ru, do it again,” she begged, and arched against his hardness. She was so unbelievably eager, he knew he wanted her this way for the rest of their lives. This first time he wanted her pleasure to be so great she would remember it always. He knew he must not do anything which would bring her the slightest twinge of pain. She must not connect this intimate play with pain or even discomfort. He realized he had set himself an almost impossible task.

  He lifted her to the bed, opened her legs wide, and knelt between them. His hands slid beneath her thighs and he lifted her closer until her bottom rested on his folded legs. Then with his fingertip he traced the tiny folds she offered so trustingly.

  A cry of pleasure burst from her lips and she opened her knees wider to aid his ministrations. He took the head of his shaft in his hand, inserted the tip, and rotated it in a circular motion around the tiny pink bud of her womanhood. She moaned and writhed in abandon.

  “Dear God … don’t move,” he ordered, and she stopped for the space of two heartbeats. It was enough for him to clamp an iron control on himself and continue the slow, delicious, circular rhythm.

  He watched her face, watched her eyelids become heavy with the enormity of her pleasure, and her head moved from side to side as she begged, “Ruark, please, please.” She knew not for what she begged, but mercifully he did. Deliberately he stopped moving around her bud in a clockwise direction and started circling it the opposite way. Immediately she quivered as if something had exploded between her legs and the opening of her sheath closed over his tip in convulsive possession.

  His mouth tasted hers as she cried his name. “Did you like that, little love?”

  “Oh, Ru, I loved it … and you really did slide inside me,” she said with wonder.

  He swallowed hard and drew a couple of ragged breaths. “We’ll go a little deeper next time,” he ventured, to carefully gauge her reaction.

  “I have so many questions,” she said breathlessly.

  He breathed deeply to quiet his raging lust. “Ask me anything, love.”

  “Can … can we do it tomorrow in daylight or do we have to wait until bed?”

  “God’s flesh, we don’t have to wait five minutes.” He lowered his mouth to kiss the softness on the inside of her knees, then opened her legs again to fit himself between. This time he placed his thumbs on either side of the pretty pink lips between her legs and gently pressed until she opened a little. He pushed the smooth, marblelike head of his long shaft inside her opening until he felt her stretch and then withdrew it. He did this over and over with a slow rhythm that set up a singing in her blood.

  Her sheath felt like velvet and she was so fevered she scalded him each time he entered. He did it over and over and each time imperceptibly his thumbs forced the opening wider so he could penetrate a little bit deeper. Finally he could see she could take half his length without pain, but any more than four inches of shaft would have torn her hymen.

  She grew so aroused and frenzied he almost lost control and drove himself to the hilt, but he was discovering that he loved her with his heart and soul as well as his body and knew he must sacrifice some of his pleasure to bring her to exquisite bliss. She was half-mad with passion, crying and biting his shoulders with sharp little teeth, then he felt her muscles spasm all the way down her legs and she arched up off the bed to impale herself on him, but he had grasped his shaft instantly to withdraw it.

  His shudder was ten times more violent than hers. She looked down to where they had been joined and saw with amazement the hot, thick lovemilk spurt inside her. He collapsed onto her and she welcomed his weight, but when he rolled beside her, she mourned the loss and rolled against him.

  The tips of her breasts burned holes in his chest and his shaft was scalded by the heat between her legs. He whispered smoldering love words which told her in explicit, decadent detail what he was going to do to her. He told her how it would make her feel, how it would make him want more. He told her how long he was going to make love to her and how many times he was going to make love to her and how many different ways he was going to make love to her. His hands explored every soft curve until she moaned and writhed and arched and finally screamed her need.

  Her scream told him that her mouth needed his attention and he took it in a demanding kiss, parting her lips to thrust his tongue in deliciously deep. Then her tongue fought his until finally he relented a little and
allowed her entry into his mouth.

  As they lay breathlessly entwined, Ruark said wickedly, “I’ve just had a diabolical thought. Perhaps I should keep you virgin for the whole honeymoon. I should keep you at the peak of your arousal so that you would respond to my lightest touch. When I take you to Stowe, it would drive the other men mad to watch you touch me, cling to me, hunger for me.”

  She sat up in the bed and gazed down at him in disbelief. “I’m still virgin?”

  “Technically, yes … I haven’t yet taken your maidenhead.”

  “And you want to keep on doing this every night of our honeymoon?”

  “No, darling love, I’m just teasing you.”

  “I don’t mind, Ru darling, but I think it only fair to keep you at the peak of your arousal, too,” she teased. She slid down his body until her face was on a level with his flat belly, then she probed his navel with her pink tongue and he was lost, lost.

  “If you want the truth, I could not summon that kind of control again if my very life depended on it. In truth, I can wait no longer,” he said, pushing her back upon the pillows, towering over her with the blood beating in his throat, his loins, even the soles of his feet.

  “Will there be pain?” she asked softly, not really afraid.

  “There will be pain, love … at first, until I stretch your small sheath to fit me and tear the hymen, but after I’ve loved you two or three times more there should be only pleasure.”

  “I will ignore the pain and concentrate on the pleasure,” she whispered.

  He separated the tiny folds between her legs, experimented for a moment with one finger until he touched the sensitive little bud of her womanhood and felt her arching response, then he positioned the velvet head of his shaft and slowly thrust inside her.

  Summer was surprised that there was no pain for the first part of his penetration and she relaxed her muscles and her guard. Then his fingers opened her to accommodate his great size and he thrust home sharply and deeply.

  The pain for one second was unendurable as his weapon split her hymen and rammed all the way inside her. She screamed in spite of her determination not to.

  “Stay with me, darling,” he urged raggedly.

  She took a deep breath and he held himself absolutely still so she could endure the impaling. The new and strange sensation of being filled with his long, thick manroot was not altogether unpleasant. The feeling that it was too much, too big, too soon, subsided slightly and as she held her breath she could feel it pulsing, burning, expanding, and she lay in wonder as she realized she could feel his heartbeat inside her own body.

  Then Ruark began to kiss her and move rhythmically in and out and in a very few moments she caught the magic and let him take her with him to the edge of the universe. They clung there for heart-stopping moments then flung themselves over the edge in an ecstasy of abandon.

  Ruark cried out as he felt his seed start and she joined his cry as he erupted into her, making all her muscles contract down her long legs to her very toes. She had never known anything on earth to compare with this melding, becoming one flesh.

  They clung together in the warm nest they had thrashed out in the massive bed, savoring these precious moments when they could lie naked together. Each knew nothing would ever be the same again. Summer sighed to her very soul as she luxuriated in her husband’s fierce embrace. All her troubles would be over now. She had never felt more safe or secure in her whole life.

  She smiled across the pillow into Ruark’s eyes, suddenly sure in the knowledge that not all men were evil as she had imagined. She was lucky to find one of the rare exceptions.

  “Do you still love me?” he whispered fiercely.

  The corners of her mouth went up languidly. “With my heart, I thee love; with my body, I thee honor.”

  He knew he possessed someone very rare. Here was a woman to cherish and savor.

  Drowsily she asked, “Did you say something about Stowe?”

  “I’m invited to Stowe for the next three or four days, so that’s where we’ll have our honeymoon,” he murmured, tucking her head beneath his chin.

  “But isn’t Stowe a great mansion? The most important family in Cornwall, the Grenviles, live at Stowe,” she protested.

  “Mmm, it is big and fancy, two footmen behind each chair in the dining hall and a ladies’ maid for every female guest. Only place that can decently accommodate the King and court, aside from Plymouth Castle, which is nothing more than a barren pile of rock.” He kissed her temple. “But I assure you, Jack and Bunny Grenvile are the easiest, most casual men in the world. No airs whatsoever.”

  “Heaven be praised.” She sighed with relief, then as all his words filtered through her drowsy mind she sat bolt upright. “The King and court?”

  He sat up instantly, drawing her down in strong arms. “In the morning you can collect your maid and your clothes and bring them over here. We won’t leave early. Whatever you need I’ll buy for you in Plymouth.”

  “I … I let my maid go, she didn’t suit,” she murmured.

  “You don’t much like servants do you, darling?” he asked, amused at such an oddity.

  “I like Mr. Burke,” she said truthfully.

  “And Mr. Burke likes you, my love. As a matter of fact I think you’ve taken the place of my mother in his affections. They came from Ireland together, you know. He was fiercely protective of her.”

  “Ru? Must we go to Stowe?” she whispered.

  “I’m summoned by the King, darling, and I’m certainly not going without you. You’ve met Charles, you’ve already made a conquest of him, so I don’t know why all the reluctance.”

  That’s just the trouble, she thought worriedly, you don’t know. You don’t know that I’ve never dined elegantly or danced. I’ve never mingled with lords and ladies, earls and countesses, Kings and Queens. I don’t know which fork to use, or which dress to wear, or how to address a duke. And Lord God, I don’t know how I’m going to go running off to Stowe with Spider rotting in prison.

  His low, rich voice brought her thoughts back to him. “Sweet, let me see you again.” He turned down the covers so his eyes could roam where his hands wished to follow. Her red drops of blood were scattered across the sheet like rubies. The effect upon him was instant and marked.

  She watched his erection rise up hard as marble and knew she possessed a new and thrilling power over this magnificently powerful man. His hands roamed over her, teasing, caressing, exploring for a long time until she sprawled wantonly, letting the pleasure build and recede, then his lips and his mouth and his tongue played with her until she tossed and arched wildly in a fever of need.

  He spread her thighs apart and entered her with one deep plunge. She responded to his thrusts immediately and wrapped her legs high about his back. She fulfilled all his erotic fantasies of being deep inside her, but he had never dreamed she would be this tight or this hot.

  They wore each other out with passion, then with limbs still entwined they fell asleep, totally sated for the moment. Rarely had two lovers been so well matched or so deeply in love after only one night.

  When Summer opened her eyes, it was still pitch dark outside and she had no idea what the hour was. She became fully awake instantly when she realized Ruark was not in the bed with her. She had never felt so alive before in her life.

  She was filled with such vitality and energy that she felt a compulsion to greet the dawn with her pagan ritual as a form of celebration, a thank-you to the gods for their splendid gift of Ruark Helford.

  The air was soft and warm, the subtropical weather still blessing this sheltered, magical corner of Cornwall. She picked up Ruark’s fine white shirt from the chair and slipped her arms into the long sleeves. It covered her thighs and for Summer this was enough. The faint, delicious scent of her husband lingered upon the garment and filled her senses. Her delicate nostrils flared at the maleness of the fragrance.

  On bare feet she crept from the house and made her way to the
stables. All was in total darkness as she led Ebony from his stall, not bothering with either saddle or bridle.

  Astride the horse, she used only her knees as he delicately picked his way down the face of the cliff, then once she was down on the sands, she threaded her fingers through the black stallion’s flowing mane and dug in her heels. With a great surge of power he leaped forward in the ride which brought him as much pleasure as it did his mistress.

  A faint light was just beginning to show upon the horizon beyond the sea at the edge of the world. Summer felt her blood racing through her veins. She was transformed. She was invincible. She was in love!

  Suddenly out of the darkness loomed a rider bearing down upon her in a relentless gallop. She had only time to take a deep breath; no time whatsoever to swerve from his path. But the other rider was so expert he came alongside her with only inches to spare, reached out strong arms, and, lifted her from Ebony onto his own mount.

  “Ruark!” she cried exultantly.

  “I knew you would come, it was inevitable,” he said triumphantly.

  He was naked, she realized as her arms went about his body for support. With a joyful cry she flung off his shirt and pressed herself against his bare, muscular body, then like riding on the wind, they thundered down the deserted beach to greet the dawn.

  On the way back it became a daring race with the tide as it swept in to hurl itself against the rocks of the cliff. Ebony had followed the other horse up the shore and back and stayed close as they tackled the steep bridle path back up the face of the cliff. Ruark unrolled his cloak where it lay on the saddle and wrapped it about himself and Summer just in case some of the servants were about early.

  They slipped through the French doors in the south wing and gained the sanctity of their bedchamber before dawn had spread its pink fingers up the sky. They were laughing and carefree as children, totally happy in the moments they had stolen from the rest of civilization.

  “I watched you ride like a pagan the first morning I was here. I went up on the roof to the widow’s walk and became enchanted by your spell.”