The essence of a man and a woman.
He had never felt himself on a woman before. Had never felt himself inside her.
The combined sensation of the slick viscous fluids warmed by her body struck him with the force of a bullet.
When she would have jerked her hand away, he forced their fingers between her swollen, passion-slick lips, pushed upward until two fingers slid inside her flesh, one his and one hers.
"I never knew two people could be this close." Her voice was a sough of breath.
"Neither did I," he murmured hoarsely. "Why did you pull away from me when I started taking down your hair?"
"It gets tangled."
Robert recognized a lie when he heard one.
Another secret to unravel, another obstacle to overcome.
"I'll brush it for you tomorrow. Spread your legs wider."
Clumsily she acceded; her body dipped lower to the mattress, forcing their fingers further up inside her.
The muscles inside her vagina rippled. "Robert."
"What?"
"Did you really peep through the window?"
"You didn't open the door when I knocked."
She clenched her body, forcibly trapping their fingers inside her. "I was reading."
He wondered what sex act she had been reading about to put the sublime expression on her face that he had witnessed when looking through the window. "So I saw."
"What did you think I was reading?"
"Devotional literature."
He waited for her next question, could feel it trembling on the air.
When it didn't come, he answered her anyway. "I did not take you because I thought you were wanton, Abigail. I took you because I needed you. And you were right. What we shared tonight is not dirty."
The huskiness in her voice deepened. "Robert."
"What?"
"Lean forward."
"Why?"
"Because I want to kiss you."
Heart lurching inside his chesthe who killed without blinking an eyehe leaned forward, made her lean forward, too, for the pleasure of feeling her body adjust around their fingers.
Her lips missed his at first. She raised a cool hand and found his jaw, aligned her lips accordingly.
It was a virgin kiss.
A first kiss.
He let her learn his lips while inside her he could feel the myriad little convulsions the two of their fingers were causing. And then, suddenly, the wet heat that inundated his fingers covered his lips.
Abigail learned quickly. She rimmed the seam of his mouth with her tongue. Immediately he opened for her, allowed her to enter him as he entered her.
But he wanted more.
More of the storm.
More of Abigail.
He sucked her tongue more deeply inside him, then he suckled it as he had her clitoris and her nipple, suckled until the tiny ripples around their fingers became one large contraction, and with a little gasp she came into his mouth.
Gently he released her tongue and her hand. And found the remaining hairpins in her hair. They fell to the plank floor like a rain of firing pins. Carefully searching for more, but finding none, he plunged both hands into her hair and worked it loose until it hung wild and free down her back, a curtain of living silk.
He felt his penis grow another inch.
"Lie down."
"Why?"
"So I can crawl over your body."
"Not into it?"
"Later." Robert's lips twitchedhis prim and proper lady was game to the end. "First we need to get you cleaned up."
"I am quite capable of washing myself, Robert."
"That's not the bargain, Abigail. You agreed toeverything."
He ended the conflict by the simple expediency of scooping her up and lying her down. And ruefully wished that skirmishes were as easily won on the battlefield.
"If you wash me, I will wash you." Abigail's dignified threat was meant as a warning.
Robert grinned. In the next second it felt as if the wind had been knocked out of his lungs.
He had not been washed since he was a childa lifetime ago, before the killing had started and overnight he had grown into a man. "I'll hold you to that, Abigail."
The bucket was underneath the sinkhe primed the pump. Icy water splashed into the worn metal. He pumped twice more before grabbing the washcloth on the rack beside the sink.
Setting the bucket onto the floor by the bed, he dipped the washcloth into the water and wrung it dry before easing down onto the edge of the bed. He warmed the cloth inside his hands. "Doesn't your fantasy man ever do this for you, Abigail?"
"There is no need to wash after a fantasy man," she replied tartly.
Robert found himself smiling in the darkness.
He had smiled and laughed more with Abigail in the last few hours than he had in the last twenty-two years.
The two should not go togetherlaughter and passion. Then again, a man like him and a lady like her should not fit together, either.
But they did.
He was not going to let a belated sense of modesty interfere with their union.
She held perfectly still for his ministrations, as if she derived as much enjoyment from being touched by him as he did in touching her. He memorized her face through the rough, damp cloth, discovered a high, smooth forehead, a slender nose, a rounded jawand regretted only that he had not thought to light the candle so that he could see her as well as feel her.
She had brown eyes, he suddenly remembered. They had widened in outrage when he had opened the trunk and revealed her erotica. Then they had flamed with amber when she had glimpsed his unchecked passion.
Abigail arched her neck. She had a fragile neck, long and slender like those of the Egyptian busts he had seen when stationed in Egypt. Her right breast filled the palm of his handher nipple was hard. Slowly, so slowly, he eased the cloth over her stomach, a soft little mound that had rippled beneath his hand when he had suckled her, and then there was slick wetness that owed nothing to water.
With single-minded intensity he explored the changes he had wrought in her body. With heart-stopping trust, she allowed him.
Her flesh was swollen where he had entered her, the opening stretched, so that now he could easily penetrate her with one finger, two, not as easily with three, hampered by the cloth. Gently he swirled away the evidence of their passion.
Working down to her thighs, he cleansed away the stickiness there, unerringly returned to the mystery between her legs.
He washed Abigail slowly, thoroughly, lost in her heat and softness, here the skin crinkly with hair, there plump and smooth. Reaching further back, he found the top of the soft crevice and swirled the washcloth round and round, down and down, in tight little circular motions.
The washcloth was plucked out of his hand.
Robert's muscles coiled. "I saideverything, Abigail."
"You saidmy fantasies, Robert." The mattress dipped, then the bed was empty. "Lie down."
Robert found himself smilingagain. She knew him for what he was, yet she dared give him orders as if he was a normal man who had never experienced the horrors of war. He lay down.
Abigail rinsed and rinsed the cloth out.
He wondered what thoughts were going through her head. If she thought about what he had done to her. If she thought about what she was going to do to him. Or if she thought about what she had been reading before he had barged into the cottage.
Erotic acts she wanted to engage in but didn't dare.
Sexual acts her fantasy lover dared.
Sexual acts perhaps Robert was unaware of, steeped in war and death instead of erotica.
Sexual acts he would dare… before the storm was over.
Suddenly the cloth was on his face, cold, with the heat of her fingers penetrating underneath. Robert could feel the anger and despair of his past draining out of him, as if underneath his skin there still existed the innocent youth he had once been.
"Kiss me." H
is voice grated in the dark.
"Only if you tell me what you do to your fantasy woman."
He stared up at the dark silhouette hovering over him. And closed his eyes to the truth.
Abigailwas his fantasy woman.
"I kiss her."
"Like this, you mean?" Her lips teased him, more confident now, more taunting. She gently rubbed them against his. Until he felt like his lips would burst into flame. Then she tasted them, delicately, her tongue swirling into the corners of his lips, along the seam, before her mouth opened and covered his, gradually learning the art, sucking slightly to adhere their flesh, her tongue touching his, then mapping out his mouth, the roof of his mouth he exhaled sharply at the stab of desire that shot through his groinunderneath his tongue. Her breath fanned his cheek in little warm puffs while she smoothed his hair back from his forehead.
Robert had never realized how deeply a woman's tongue could penetrate a man's defenses. He fisted his hand in the warm curtain of her hair and took control of the kiss.
Only to find that when he dueled her tongue back into her mouth, she sucked on his like he had earlier sucked on hers until she wrung from him a groan.
"What else, Robert?" Her breath was a whisper of heat on his lips. "What else do you fantasize about?"
Bloodied faces flashed before his eyes. Men he had killed. Men he had sent out on missions to be killed. Innocent women and children caught in the crossfire of war.
And with the images came the need that had kept him alive.
But Abigail wanted fantasies, not a battle-scarred soldier's needs.
Before he could think of a lie, the cold, damp cloth trailed down his neck, his chest.
He groaned, knowing what was in store for him. And found that it was a fantasy of his. A fantasy that he had never known he possessed.
"You never answered my question, earlier," she said, the cloth circling and circling a hardened nipple. "Is it as sensitive for a man here as it is for a woman?"
"Yes," he growled.
"Good." The cool cloth lifted. Only to be replaced by a scalding mouth.
He could feel the pull of her lips and tongue all the way down to his testicles. My God, he hadnever felt like this. Had never known that the male body was capable of this much sensation.
He grabbed the back of her head when she freed his nipple. "Don't stop."
"I read that a woman can orgasm from a man suckling her breast. Do you think a man can orgasm from a woman suckling his?"
Robert almost orgasmed at the mere thought. "I don't know."
He gritted his teeth, prepared for Abigail's next move. Only to find out that he was not prepared at all.
He had just spent himself not more than thirty minutes earlier.
He should not even be hard, let alone on the verge of coming. She ran the now-warm cloth past his straining manhood and cupped his testicles.
"Abigail…"
She ignored his growl of warning.
He could sense her hesitance, could have told her the second that she made up her mind. The cloth slipped lower still, pressed into his perineum. Silky warm hair covered his groin at the same time that her mouth daintily gulped his manhood.
A jolt of heat flashed through his body.
Shame.
That he could not control himself.
Awe.
That she had brought him to this point.
"Jesus Christ.Abigail!" With a groan he jerked aside.
She grabbed on to him and swallowed him as deeply as she could while his flesh exploded inside her mouth.
When he could breathe again, he reached down and caressed her head, needing her close, needing to hold her. Needing her to hold him. "Come here."
She sat up. "Did I do it… properly?"
She was trembling. With desire? Disgust?
"No one, Abigail, has ever done it more properly. Did you enjoy yourself?" he asked warily.
"Yes, thank you. I have always wondered what a man tastes like."
"And what does a man taste like?"
Robert should have been warned by the hair that suddenly spilled around his face. But he wasn't.
"Taste for yourself."
He was momentarily paralyzed by shock, allowing her mouth to cover his and her tongue to thrust inside him. It was coated with his sperm.
He blindly grabbed her upper arms and hauled her back."Jesus."
"Have you ever done that before?"
He plunged his hands into the silky heat of her hair. "What? Tasted myself?Never."
"No. I mean… Have you ever kissed a woman between her legs before tonight?"
Her hair clung to his fingers; it was as soft as butterfly wings. He hesitated, "No."
"Why not?"
"Whores are not always the cleanest of people."
"Do you do it to your fantasy woman?"
Robert picked her up and sat her sideways across his stomach.
Abigail squealed.
Children squealed like that when they were shot. As did some women. And men.
Grabbing her right leg, he pulled it up and over his body so that she straddled his hips.
Her hands smacked against his chest. "What are you doing?"
He reached up and cupped her breasts. "Guess."
"Butcan you do it again?"
"Perhaps. If not, I can satisfy you in other ways."
Her nipples were rock hard. He rolled them between his thumbs and forefingers until she was squirming and pressing her hands over his.
Incredibly, he felt himself stir underneath her seductively soft bottom.
"Robert. Robert. Not there. Touch me somewhere else."
He continued rolling her nipples, wanting to push her to the limit. Wanting to push himself to the limit. Wanting to end once and for all the darkness of death. "Where, Abigail?"
"You know where, Robert."
"But I want to hear you say it, Abigail, I know you know the words."
"Robert"
"I won't stop teasing your nipples until you say it."
"I want you to touch myto touch mymy pearl!"
There was no question about what was or was not stirring underneath her bottom. Abigail, too, noticed the phenomenon. She ceased attempting to pry his fingers away from her nipples and reached behind her to grab his manhood.
Without guidance, she lifted up. Holding him tightly in her fist, she brought him to her vaginal lips, a wet, hot kiss of intimate desire. Only to tease him with herself. Or perhaps she teased herself with him.
"Do you mind?" she gasped.
Robert gasped when she slid him past her opening and up to the top of her clinging, swollen lips. He could feel the hard bud of her clitoris, could feel it throbbing. She rubbed the crown of his manhood against her there, round and round, slid it back down to tease her opening. Again. And again. On the forth pass he couldn't hold back a reflexive arch of his hips.
It wasn't going to take much for Abigail to gain satisfaction. Suddenly Robert minded very much that she should orgasm alone.
When next she brought the crown of him down to moisten it at her opening, his hand was there, too, holding his manhood steady while, with his left hand, he pulled her right thigh wider, forcibly bringing her body down closer.
This time the gasp belonged to her.
"Easy. Are you sore?"
"A little."
He pulled her thigh out furtherand sank further up inside her.
Her muscles clenched and tightened around him as if they could force him out.
He gripped her more tightly.
Hewould not let her reject him.
"Bear down, Abigail. Once I'm in, I won't hurt you anymore, I promise. Open up. Relax." Having breached her body, he slid his right hand down to her left thigh; using both hands, he steadily, relentlessly, pulled her thighs wider and wider apart until she had no choice but to "Take it. Take all of me, Abigail."
She did.
He knew he was causing her pain. He also knew how to take that pain away.
Lightly he soothed the taut muscles in her thighs. "Relax, sweetheart. Relax, Abigail." When her muscles eased, he slid his left hand up and rubbed her nipple. Bringing up his right hand, he touched her clitoris.
A pearl, she had called it.
FromThe Pearl, no doubt.
Below her swollen bud was a taut ring of wet, pulsing flesh her surrounding him.
Robert had never realized before how thin feminine skin stretched to hold a penis… or how fragile was the bonding of a man and a woman.
She quivered as he rimmed her clitoris with the pad of his thumb. Her inner muscles told him all that he needed to know. They told him how hard to press, how fast, until suddenly the taut band of flesh surrounding him relaxed utterly. In the next instant it clutched him so tightly it was almost painful.
Abigail cried out.
Robert cried out.
But he didn't move. He had promised her he would not bring her any more pain, only pleasure, and he meant to keep that promise.
Before she had time to catch her breath, he rubbed her swollen bud again. Until her inner muscles again gripped and milked him in climax.
He used her pleasure to bring about his own peak. It took six orgasms in all. When he arched up into her, she collapsed over him in a blanket of soft hair and damp flesh.
Mustering up energy he had never known he possessed, he jerked the bedcovers out from underneath his body and pulled them up around her.
Holding her tightly in his arms, his flesh snugly encased in hers, he prayed that the storm would last another night.
chapter 4
Rain was a steady drum of sensation; it pounded against the walls and the ceiling, impaling Abigail's body on a shaft of raw heat. She shifted to find a more comfortable positionher pillow was fuzzy and the bed bone-hard.
The feeling of being impaled grew. As did the raw heat inside her lower body.
Her eyes flew open.
A mat of wiry black hair greeted her gaze. It covered a very broad, naked chest.
Stifling a cry of alarm, Abigail lifted her head.
She stared into pewter-gray eyes framed by ridiculously thick, long black lashes.
Every muscle in her body clenched in recognition at what filled her to capacity.
She had taken a stranger into her bed. She had taken him into her mouth. And she had taken him into her body.
Captivated Page 33