Then Felicia made a small noise of pleasure as he kissed her throat, there where the pulse beat like a hammer. Blaic could look at her face as it grew pink and know that he had made her sigh like that. He had believed himself used to power, but he’d never known anything so strong before. It seemed to come from every part of himself and to be linked inextricably to her. His voice quavered with awe as he said, “Felicia ...you’re trembling.”
“Yes, I know. So are you.” She clutched the broad lapels of his coat as though for dear life.
“Don’t stop.” He raised one of her hands to his mouth, kissing and nibbling along the sensitive fingers until she was gasping. She tore her hand free with a muted cry.
Cupping his face in her hands, she laid her mouth to his and kissed him with unrestrained desire. Blaic forgot about human versus Fay methods of lovemaking. He was taken captive by her passion to a place where everything but their hands on each other seemed impossibly trivial.
He tore the linen band from his throat, letting the cravat fall to the floor. Her fichu followed, and he caught his breath at the first sight of the creamy mounds that had been hidden. “I knew you were beautiful, but—Dragon Fire!”
Felicia was blushing, but she did not take her hands from his skin to hide herself. “Blaic, 1 don’t know ...”
His shirt was hanging open between the long sides of his coat. He pressed her hands against his heart. “I just want to see you ... and have you see me.”
“Yes.”
She slipped her arms about his waist and leaned against him while he shrugged off both coat and shirt in one motion. She laughed softly on a note of intimacy. “Your hair tickles my face.”
Frustrated, he tugged at the laces that held her bodice together. Meanwhile, her fingertips wove patterns of flame on his back and sides. “I can’t—concentrate—if you do— that....” he said, breaking one string.
“I can’t let go to help you.”
He felt her lips moving across his chest. She discovered the flat nipples hidden in the hair. “Oh!” They puckered as her soft exhalation passed over them. “Are all men like you?”
“How would I know ... ah!” The bodice opened and he reached to touch hidden skin, only to meet another layer underneath. He growled with frustration and heard her soft laugh.
He broke the lacing of her stays quite intentionally while she laughed. Then, gently, he took her stays off as though he were opening a priceless, delicate gift. Underneath, she wore a white linen shift that disappeared into the two petticoats beneath her black skirt. But what stopped his breath and increased his trembling was the sight of her full breasts pushing against the linen. He could make out the deep rose circles of her nipples, and, as he stared down, he saw them change.
With a cry of triumph, he bent to take one tip into his mouth, feeling it bloom through the fabric. He’d stopped thinking entirely, acting purely on an instinct that he’d never known he possessed.
Felicia stiffened as wicked sensations stormed through her. She was blind, letting him lead her wherever he would. The hot tugging wetness of his mouth propelled her into a landscape with no signposts. She clutched at his shoulders, leaving the tiny marks of her nails, as her knees shook so much that she could hardly stand. She realized she was calling his name again and again as she moved against him in a way that seemed both utterly abandoned and completely right.
He swept her up and carried her the few steps to the narrow bed. Felicia opened her eyes but made no protest as he swept the pillows off and laid her down. His eyes were hard as emeralds, his jaw rigid. She ran her fingers over his jaw, tiny whiskers abrading her fingertips, and smiled up at him. He gave her no answering smile to ease her fears.
He said harshly, “Take your hands away. Command me to leave you and never come back.”
“Why should I? When I want this—you!—so much.”
Blaic groaned. His arms as he leaned over her were like carved marble pillars, yet she felt that she had the power to topple them. She kept on touching him, running her hands up his arms and down again. His muscles were tense and hot, fluttering beneath his skin as her touch skimmed over him.
“You’ll regret it,” he said tightly.
“My regrets are my affair. Please... are you going to make me ask you? Shall I beg?”
“You show me no mercy,” he said. “I ask for none.”
He lay over her, crushing her into the bed, and Felicia exulted in knowing for the first time the full weight of her lover. She only wished she could remember if he had locked the door. Then his mouth was moving on her throat, his work-roughened hand had covered her breast, and she forgot everything.
She twisted beneath him, wanting still more. He pulled down the thin shift and tasted what he’d uncovered. The sensations he unleashed were wilder still, as though the passion within her had awakened and begun to know itself. She tossed her head restlessly on the mattress. “Blaic, please ...,” she said.
She’d raised one leg, and Blaic found himself cradled between her thighs. But still, layer upon layer separated their bodies. He felt somehow that this was wrong, that there should be nothing between them but desire.
For the moment, however, it was almost enough to give her pleasure this way. He unveiled her other breast and gave it a meed of worship. It felt like one of the rich berries of the Living Lands between his lips, only sweeter and infinitely more satisfying. Being new to this art, he tried various methods and found a rich reward as she tensed beneath him.
Then it occurred to him to run his hand over her leg. The stocking was smooth beneath his fingertips until he reached the ribbon-garter tied above her knee. The skin of her thigh was as smooth and soft as chamois. She had gone completely still now. Blaic looked into her eyes. “Shall I stop?”
“I—I don’t know. What are you going to do?”
He smiled down at her. “I have no idea. Tell me what you like or don’t like.”
“I like the way you feel.” She trailed her fingernails over his shoulders and laughed softly when he shuddered. “I like the way you touch me.”
He moved off her and saw the disappointment in her eyes. “Keep your hands on me.”
“I will. I couldn’t stop now....”
His eyes were glittering with a hunger that almost frightened her. Perhaps she should have taken the withdrawal he had offered. She would have, had she not been certain that he was seeing a hunger equal to his in her. She felt it devouring all that she had been before this moment. When he ran his hand up her leg again, she willingly abandoned that former identity. She didn’t know, or care what new person she would become so long as Blaic was there.
The thin white petticoats foamed around his hand. Felicia held her breath as he stroked her leg over and over again from knee to ankle. She realized that he was slowly increasing how far up he went each time. Light perspiration broke out on her body as he reached her hip.
Then, so lightly that she could not for the moment tell where his hand was, he brushed over the most sensitive part of her body. Felicia couldn’t breathe until he’d moved away to caress the other thigh.
He returned to brush over her again, teasingly light, watching her face every moment. Then again, lingering an instant longer each time. She couldn’t enjoy the sensations he aroused as he ran his hand over her leg because of her nearly painful anticipation of his return to there.
He said in a deep voice she’d never heard from him before, “You promised to say what you liked.”
For the first time, he stayed his hand a moment, pressing close, finding her deepest secret. Feeling her hold on reality slip, she kept both hands locked on Blaic’s shoulders. She answered him wordlessly, rolling her hips forward against his hand, biting her lips with apprehension.
He didn’t reject her. He stroked her over and over, not teasing now but searching for the one gift that made being mortal worthwhile. He sought out the swollen bud hidden in the cleft and saw her eyes widen as he found it. He bent down to her breast again, ad
ding to the tension that twisted and coiled through her body. She began to move in concert with the rhythm of his hands and mouth. His name burst from her lips.
Blaic had never known a prouder moment than when Felicia reached ecstasy in his arms. Nor had he ever heard sweeter music than her cries of pleasure as she shuddered against him. She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him until the waves of raw sensation ceased roaring through her body.
She tried to shake the hair out of her eyes. He smoothed it back for her and gazed down into the depths of clear blue. She looked sleepy and ever so delectably embarrassed. “Thank you,” she said politely, as if he’d brought her a cup of wine at a party.
Blaic laughed, fondly. “You’re wonderful....”
She tucked her head under his chin as they lay together, glad for a moment to be hidden from his gaze. “I hardly know where to look.”
His hand still rested on her thigh under the courses of lawn. He gave a gentle squeeze to her resilient flesh. “Your skin is as soft as the down of a swan’s breast. In the Living Lands they will call you Felicia of the Swans and you shall live with me on an island I know of where only white flowers grow. I will choose a different blossom every day to lay on your breast until we find one that can match that perfection.”
“It doesn’t sound like much of an occupation.”
“Then we shall travel to the far-flung corners of the Wilder World in search of a perfume half so rare as the fragrance of your—” She hastily put a hand across his lips. Blaic kissed the fingertips and said, muffled, “Your hair. It has its own fragrance, you know. It acts on me like an aphrodisiac.”
“A what?”
“A foolish notion of men. With a woman like you to hold, such a thing is as unnecessary as perfuming a rose. You are, in yourself, the only love-philter.”
“Such fine words . .. you should set them to music.” Feeling oddly languorous, Felicia sat up. She continued to keep hold of Blaic’s hand, for she felt that to hear him say “Command me” after what he’d just given her would have brought her to tears. Sooner or later, she’d have to hear it. Just not now.
He reached out a tender hand to cup one breast. “So full and warm ...”
Felicia had always heard, even as a child, that a woman who enjoyed physical contact with a man was a whore. Even when she had lived with her mother, who had enjoyed many men, she had heard it. Looking back with older eyes, Felicia realized that even her mother had believed it. Yet there had been something in her eyes when a lover was expected—half-shamed, half-tremulous with excitement.
Felicia felt like that now, but she did not believe herself to be a whore. Sir Elswith hadn’t made her feel this way; nor had poor William Beech. Blaic alone had the power to wake her desire—even with no more than the tickling draw of one finger along the heaviness of her breast. She glanced at him and unexpectedly met his gaze. He was studying her face as he touched her and smiled teasingly when she looked at him.
“When I was a girl,” she said, “I overheard things I wasn’t supposed to. At the end of my mother’s life, we lived in one room. All her protectors had gone away. She talked to me as one woman talks to another. I have forgotten much of what she told me; my father and my nurse told me that ladies never spoke of such things, were not supposed to know anything about lovers.”
“Strange custom...”
“How funny to think of maidenly modesty as nothing more than a strange tribal custom.” How to tell him that she had pushed all the memories of her mother, good and bad, into a dark cupboard as one puts away the books which she is ashamed to own. Now the lock had sprung, freeing everything. She could pick and choose among them. One thing she remembered vividly.
“She wasn’t a whore....”
“Of course not... ,” he said consolingly.
Felicia wanted him to understand as she did. “No, listen to me. She wasn’t. She loved those men—even the worst of them. There was a look in her eyes when one was expected, a kind of happiness that shone from her. She would bustle around making things beautiful for them. Even when we lived in squalor there’d always be a rose or a crushed lily she’d found waiting in a glass on the table. Even the poorest man, the last — what was his name? He was a poet; he limped and had red hair....”
She let the name go. Turning toward Blaic, uncaring that she was naked from the waist up, she said intently, “How she loved them all! How it killed her when they left her. She wasn’t a whore who entertained men for money alone. She wasn’t a whore at all!”
Felicia did not know what caught her attention. Suddenly aware of something amiss, she glanced around her small room. Then, hearing a gasp, she realized the door now stood ajar. Lady Stavely stood there, her hand pressed to her heart. Over her shoulder, peering in, stood Sir Elswith, his eyes agleam. Under his elbow, Doctor Danby looked aghast.
Felicia leapt up, grabbing her discarded bodice to hold in front of herself. Blaic lay back on the bed, laughter bubbling up from somewhere deep within. She glared at him, but all he could force out between gasps was, “Command me.”
* * * *
While Sir Elswith beat the bushes for the cowardly rascal who had defamed his old friend’s daughter, Lady Stavely stormed and raged in the drawing room. Doctor Danby sat like a silent gnome in a too-large armchair. Felicia found his disillusioned silence harder to bear than Lady Stavely’s long-winded denunciation.
‘ To think I felt so sorry for you that I gathered our old friends to see what could be done for you! Then to find you engaged in such immoral behavior, and with the children just downstairs.”
“I am sorry for that,” Felicia interrupted. “I should have thought of the children.”
“Indeed you should have! Leaving the poor dears in charge of the maid — of whom I have never had any great opinion — while you rollick about with an outdoor servant.” Lady Stavely spoke as though she could have countenanced a liaison with an indoor servant but that to love a gardener passed beyond the pale.
After a few more minutes of being treated like a scarlet woman, Felicia realized Lady Stavely had begun to repeat herself, without, however, showing any signs of slowing down. She cut into another objection to her morals to say, a touch impatiently, “I admit to all that! But putting my indiscretion to one side for the moment, there still remains the question of what is to be done about the children. No one could expect to feed and clothe even half so many without funds.”
Doctor Danby raised his head from his contemplation of the carpet. Had she thought for one moment that her truest friend would join in condemning her? On the contrary, the eyes behind his falling glasses showed pride.
“The girl’s right. Stop your ranting my lady, and let us consider what is to be done about the children. I’ve seen them often enough — awful-looking crew by and large — et they seem healthier and happier under your tutelage, Felicia, than I have ever known them. What are you feeding them?”
“Mostly fresh milk and rough-grained bread with a boiled egg for tea.”
“Sensible girl. Most sensible. If she’ll add a scrap of bacon and a vegetable or two, I should say you’ll see them all live to grow up. Don’t like the sound of that littlest one’s chest, though. Bit of a rattle.”
“Yes, we noticed it. Mary says her very own cousin heard the same sound in her first son’s chest. She bound a plaster of comfrey and juniper to his back. The boy was cured in three days, though it later died of something else.”
“Hmm...well, if judiciously used, I don’t see why it shouldn't cure....”
Lady Stavely broke in with something akin to a scream. “Never mind the chest of some beggarly brat! It’s what we are to do with her. Surely your first concern, Doctor, must be for these children’s precious souls? Leaving them in her care would be the same as leaving them asleep under a upas tree! Sooner or later the poison will seep into their blood — all the more quickly due to their own infamous mothers.”
She fished a handkerchief from her capacious pocket and made
a charming play of blowing her nose. From the window, Sir Elswith said, “Bravo, my dear lady. Girl’s a harlot — recognized it at once.”
Doctor Danby snapped, “From your vast store of experience, sir, no doubt!”
Felicia had not been given time to put on her stays after Blaic had jumped out the window. Her body felt light and easy beneath her bodice. She smiled to think that she really was a loose woman, in every sense of the word.
Sir Elswith ignored the doctor. Swinging his leg over the low sill, he stepped into the room, ducking beneath the overhanging sash and grunting a little with the exertion. “No sign of the blighter. Seems to have known what was good for him and vanished.” He snorted. “Can’t say much for his technique, Felicia, my lass. Feller didn’t even trouble t’take his boots off.”
“Didn’t he? I hadn’t noticed.”
Sir Elswith’s slightly protruding eyes seemed to goggle even more at this brazen statement. Felicia couldn’t be bothered to give him any more of her attention, though he burbled and chuffed like a cooling kettle for some little time.
When the others had shown up, Felicia had whispered to Blaic that he should escape immediately. Under the compulsion of the Law, he had done so, seizing his coat and leaping through a bedroom window, which, fortunately, had been open. Lady Stavely had screamed, Sir Elswith had raced downstairs, and the doctor had stuck his head out of the window to say, “By God! He’s made it clean away. I should have expected a shattered ankle as the very limit.”
Now Lady Stavely said, “You are entirely right, Sir Elswith. There’s nothing else to be done. Felicia must leave here at once.”
“I beg your pardon?” Felicia said angrily.
Lady Stavely turned her chilling stare on her stepchild. “You can hardly expect me to continue to allow your residence here. We Stavelys cannot permit our name to be besmirched by seeming to condone your scandalous behavior. I told you when you left Hamdry Manor that I would do nothing to protect you if your evil blood rose. Well, it has. You must leave.”
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