Her head ducked down as raindrops tickled into her hair and her shoulders hunched up, bare skin chilled by the damp feeling that was slowly suffusing her dress and making it cling to her legs. The heavy wooden doors groaned as Jeffrey pushed one of them open and tugged her into the dimly lit hallway, torches flickering in sconces at intervals down the length of it. She didn’t have time to see if anyone was there in the hall, though, as she found herself tugged through another arched doorway and down a set of stone steps that curled into the damp smelling dark of one of their food cellars.
There wasn’t time for her eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness before she found herself pushed up against a cold wall. Her semi breathless giggles curtailed by the warm brush of lips against her own, the forbidden strike of contact shocking her all over again. Her body warmed, the feel of the cold wall fading, absorbed into her even as his body leaned heavily into her own, warmth eating away the cold of the chilled air outside. She didn’t have time to think about touching him because all she could feel was his hands on her. Each moment where she didn’t push him away seemed to embolden him. His fingers brushed up against her petite waist and skimmed up to where string drew the material of her dress taut. Fingers deftly loosened them and tugged, the sudden lack of pressure on her chest getting her to take in a full breath that lifted her bosom. The rest of the material seemed to relax and drape over her shoulders, sliding down so he could tug it down further and free her breasts.
A cinch at her waist kept the skirt of her dress from falling, but he didn't seem too concerned with it. Even if he did take a moment to let his hands skim over every inch of her chest and waist and over the curve of her butt. It was almost like he was drinking her in with touch alone. Like he was seeing her even in the deep dark of the cellar.
Shivering at the touch, she found air touching against her legs. The cool feel of it catching her up as he drew the material of her dress up around her waist, holding it against her and baring the most private places of her body that none had seen before, except perhaps nurse-maids, her mother, and Harold. It caused a blush to catch her cheeks, hidden in the dark thankfully. She was supposed to be the seductress… not a maiden. His hands were heavy on her and he didn’t seem to be possessed of Harold’s hesitation. Instead he seemed to know exactly what he wanted. A part of her admired that and it made it easy to fall into character, easy to know what to do and not fumble it.
Every single glancing touch against bare skin drew a gasp out of her, because it was unexpected and in that unexpectedness, thrilling. Pleasure gained a new definition, it became attached to the forbidden, to the way his fingers played against her core and then pressed into her. The shock of it, it was so delectable, more so than he could ever hope to be himself. She had never felt her body respond to her husband, it had never dampened in welcome, she had never felt her stomach twist and her knees weaken. She had never felt that electric thrill of anticipation. It wasn’t until after the deed was done that her body would respond, would keen for more, for more than he could ever hope to provide. It would leave her listless and distraught, even if she disguised it.
Her voice caught against his lips in a way it never had for Harold, the very sob of her breath caught her body up around his fingers and had her body pressing into the pleasurable slide of them. Was it merely acting? She didn’t know. There was a small removed part of her that was separate from what was going on, that piece of her logically loathing the position she was in. But it kept her prisoner nonetheless, a slave to her burgeoning desires. Could Jeffrey give her more? Even if it wasn’t what she’d once dreamed intimacy could be?
In a way he already was.
He was strong enough to lift her up against the wall, strong enough to pin her there even as he finally pressed his body tightly into hers. She was no virgin and it showed with the easy way their bodies came together as he pushed inside, with the effortless shock of impact between them that had her moaning out like some two pence whore he’d just pulled in from the streets.
It felt so wonderful, though. The thick feel of him inside her.
Even if the self-derogatory thoughts churned in her heart and mind, a dissatisfied sort of greed catching at her. Her own fingers clutched at his shoulders desperately, sifting up into his hair, tugging and yanking at it. If only he feared her. If only she had more control. But she didn’t, all she had was this torpid manipulation. It wasn’t who she was, but in that moment it was everything. It crept into every thought she had, added to every sensation, and she never wanted it to stop. His hips rocked into her and each hit of bare flesh against bare flesh had her entire body keening. A subtle pleasure spread in her gut, deep in her core, and clenched her insides to heat her skin up until she reveled in every bit of exposed shoulder and breast. In every bit of visible leg and the way her body so easily fell against his and impaled itself.
More, she needed more. It wasn’t enough, but she couldn’t do anything. All she could do was ride out the unsatisfying drag of him and burn, her body falling apart from the way it wept heated warmth each time his body pulled away from hers and left her bereft. His lips caught hers, busied them until each shaky breath she took and each sound became something intimately perfect between them. Each soft gasp and moan was something that was secretly divine.
He had more stamina than her husband, she could give him that. Harold would have paused for breath, would have been desperate at this point to reach his own climax before the exercise of it all wore him out completely. This… this did not end so quickly though and for that she loved him in the most superficial flare of intensity possible. More than her crazed adoration of his expression of everything she couldn’t speak out, more than even his rivalry and potential ability to free her from her bondage to her husband.
Just another moment, it was a mantra in her mind. Please, just one more moment… please just a little more. She was so used to falling short every time, dreading the end of her partner’s stamina. The feel of Jeffrey inside of her made her squirrely, it pleasantly rippled through her inner muscles in a dancing squeeze of muscle that never quite intensified.
It made her want to cry.
Later in her room, she probably would. She would probably prostrate herself across her soft bed and bury her fingers in the comforters and just… let the warm tears pool in her eyes to drip down her cheeks into her feathered pillow... But not now, even if her heart constricted and ached in her chest and her eyes burned, a weight threatening to suffocate her she pushed past the emotion.
“Please…”
Her voice sounded desperate, broken. A plea drenched in the innocence of pure, unfettered need. It caught raggedly in her throat and tore free of her soft lips in a way that made her wonder how much of what she was doing was acting… and how much of it was just pent up desperation and need that was finally being grazed against. “Please Jeffrey…”
Her cries seemed to galvanize him. It had never done anything for her with her husband. Every pleading word she’d uttered in Harold’s presence had concluded with an excuse for why he couldn’t be bothered. Because he’d worked so hard to satisfy his urges, his strength was weakened and his stamina was depleted and wouldn’t they rather just rest. Wouldn’t she rather just rest, she needed her rest, to remain as beautiful and as titillating as she could possibly hope to be so he could show her off and take his pleasure off of her like some aged rutting dog that was blind and deaf and weakened in the joints.
This was so much different than that. If she didn’t know any better she would have thought that Jeffrey actually cared whether she felt sated by the end of their little dalliance. Each thrust into her that had her entire body spasming against him only solidifying this thought, even as her thoughts were driven out of her head. The forefront of her mind occupied by how each move he made had her gasping for air and keening softly. Her gut tensing, chest heaving slightly as she fought to catch a full breath.
And then her head tipped back against the wall, “Please, please, please…”
The words were soft as his lips trailed down her neck to nibble at her collarbone and she felt her entire body jump into a sensitized tangle of nerves. Her legs shook, her fingers trembled in his hair, and she could feel a smile against her skin. His lips grazing over sensitive flesh and teasing against it in a way that had her almost want to jump away from the electric touch, even if she wanted to push herself into it in the same moment.
With the next shuddered breath, his length pushing into her once more, she felt her entire body tense up. Her back arched up off of the wall, pushing her more into him, and she groaned softly. Voice soft and whimpered as she felt the delicious tightening of muscle around his next push into her. It nearly choked her, the noise caught up in her throat. She hardly heard he himself panting and moaning for the fact that the entire world had dimmed out, all she knew was that the feeling that tangled up her insides was the most exquisite feeling she had ever felt in the hands of a man.
Entire body shaking, she rested against him as he pushed into her a couple times more before spending himself inside her. She couldn’t see the look on his face, her own eyes were bleary and it was dark, but she could imagine it from the way he groaned out her name.
He leaned into her, skin damp with sweat and brushing against her own. Her breath panted past her lips, shifting past her dry throat. “You’re better… at that… than he is.”
“I’d like to think so…” The answer was breathless but still held all of the attitude of a younger sibling reveling in being better than the older one. It made her want to smile, so she did. A sweet sort of grateful smile. The adoration in her eyes for how affected he’d gotten her wholly genuine.
“Jeffrey…”
His name sighed free of her lips, almost like an invocation, her fingers trembling slightly as she clutched at him. She felt it when his attention turned to her, when his focus diverted, his heavy breathing quieted. It encouraged her, had her fair trembling in his arms from the force of her emotions.
“What is it?”
He sounded, concerned. As though her wellbeing was important to him, when they didn’t even hardly know each other. But she didn’t care, if he wanted to play into it like it mattered than she would take full advantage of that.
“I’m afraid.”
It was true, she was, she was petrified.
Terror clawed at her, shocked guilt for what she’d done lingered deep in the dulcet tones of her muted admission. “I wish…” Her voice hitched as the tears she’d held back finally pricked at her eyes and blinded her, fingers clinging tight to his shoulders. She hated crying. “I wish he would just go away.” It was girlish, childish, and undoubtedly a comically innocent statement of dislike and yet it was so much more at the same time.
Her breath hitched again softly, her bosom heaving for a moment and then silence choked the space between them. “I wish… he was dead.” There it was. It was the heavy statement that had weighed down her mind for the longest time, finally being voiced. A small, loyal part of her somewhere inside cried ‘treason’ at the admission, but she couldn’t, for the life of her, bring herself to care whatsoever. The fervent sort of breathy tone to her voice could not be matched, her utterance as hushed and as plaintive as it could possibly hope to be…. And it wasn’t even a calculated tone.
It was possibly the truest statement she’d made since being married.
“And I’m so afraid he’ll look at me and know… Jeffrey he will know… There isn’t any possible way he couldn’t....” Her continuation wasn’t necessarily untrue either, but it was slightly more clouded than the crystalline purity of the first statement.
She felt his weight shift, her body falling a little so that her toes grazed the floor and then her feet touched down. The wood of the floor was cold, prickling into the toes of her right foot. A shoe had been lost at some point, she would have to track it down. Her skirt fell down around her legs, gravity dragging the heavy folds of cotton and silk down to the ground once again, the material brushing enticingly against bare skin in a way that had her shivering.
Her entire body still felt… alive. As though she had been struck by lightning and it had left her prickling at every touch.
“He won’t.” Jeffrey sounded so sure.
Her soft cry of dismay could be matched by none as she pushed lightly at him, “He will!” She had no strength to speak of, so he hadn’t budged an inch. In fact, she could have wondered if he even felt her pushing at him.
Fingers clutching at his shirt desperately, tears creating a glistening path down her cheeks in the darkness, she stared up into the shadowed color of his eyes. “He will know. The moment he looks at me, my hatred for him will be plain on my face… I am not such a trickster that I could school my expression so well?” So… the last bit might have been a lie. She had been smiling and nodding since she found out she would be marrying the King… and there was no reason she could not do so even then in the dark.
She needed Jeffrey, though, needed him to make real what she had forbidden herself to think for so long. It was something that he could do. He was a man, after all, and she was attempting to play a man’s game.
“My brother is one of the most ill witted, blind people that I know… certainly you could manage to hide something like that from him. He will see what he wants to, and nothing past that point. Have you not yet noticed that he sees only your happiness, where I could see you beginning to wilt… being tied to someone so dull?” Jeffrey wasn’t wrong, his brother truly was one of the least likely people to notice that anything had changed.
“I cannot suffer it any longer… I cannot suffer his presence. I cannot lie with the King in his bed, unsatisfied, when I have known you? I will not be able to hide it from him. He will notice.” Her gaze dropped and her fingers slid free of his clothing to find her own dress, pulling the bodice of it up to lace the front of it tight once more. “If only I had married you instead…” Crouching, shakily as her balance had not returned and her nerves were still on end, she found the slipper she had lost. “If only you were the King, would it not be lovely? Had we been the pair instead?”
Her fingers found her own hair as she straightened back up, pushing the strands of it back away from her face before she wiped the dampness free from her eyes. He hadn’t spoken, though his eyes had followed her every move. “There are a number of times where I wished that I was the older sibling… or that on one of these hunting trips my brother might not return. Terrible though it may sound….” It seemed he had found his voice, “but nothing will come of it, beautiful one. These wishes are best kept close to heart… if the wrong person heard, it would be the end of any wishes or happiness you may find in life at all…”
She knew that. She did. There was a part of her, though, that would rather die than be chained to Harold for the rest of her life. Even if no piece of her actually wanted to die. There was so much to life she had yet to explore due to the shackles that bound her to her husband. If only she were freed. “Perhaps you are right…” The words were soft, entirely the opposite of what she was thinking, and yet genuine sounding. “But I cannot help but think the awful thought that everything would simply be better had you been in your brother’s position… King Jeffrey Karhardt…” There was a wistful tone to her voice, then, “first of his name, ruler of the Nordland and the Sundi Isles.”
Her head shook slightly and she moved to slip away from the wall and find the stairs that had come down. “You would be a wonderful King, Jeffrey. Far better than your brother ever could be… all he wishes is to drink, hunt, and spawn an heir to the throne…” A foot found stone, shuffled against it as her weight shifted and a hand moved to find a wall so she didn’t fall.
“I’d like to see you again, my Queen…” His voice chased her up the stairs, “like this…” Of course he did… he was as much a man as she thought he was.
“Perhaps… I am positively wretched at lying to your brother, though. Nor do I feel quite right knowing a man I am not wedded to.” Lies, all lies,
but necessary lies. She could barely hear the trap snap closed as she moved up the stairs and crept from the doorway.
She did not see him again that evening, but she felt sure enough that he would find his way to her before Harold returned. When she lay in bed that night, there were no thoughts of dread or tears that caught at her lashes. Rather, she felt excitement for what she was orchestrating.
Perhaps it would end as she wished.
Laying there in bed, without the raucous sound of her husband’s snoring, she could feel herself drifting into a contented zone in between waking and sleep. A place where she felt wholly secure and happy with herself.
The deep groan of the door barely managed to get her eyes to open once again, but they did and she glanced toward the soft glow of a candle being lit. A strike of panic moved through her at the thought of Harold being home so soon, usually his hunting trips took at least a few days? She was not ready for him to be back yet? Everything was not fully in place?
But when her eyes finally focused in on the figure, it was not the overset and stumbling silhouette of her husband that she saw, nor was it one of her handmaidens. It was the selfsame body that she had seen in the dark what felt like moments ago, but would have had to been hours upon hours ago.
“Jeffrey?” Her voice was tinged with drowsiness, but clear enough that she saw the man jump slightly before he approached the bed.
“Yes…” His voice answered as the candle was set on the bedside table, “May I?” He gestured to the bed she was curled up in the very center of. All of her pillows snuggled up around her as though to comfort her and keep her safe in her dreams.
“... Yes… of course?” Rolling, she moved further to one side and watched him seat himself.
He looked like he hadn’t slept at all since they had last spoken, and his eyes flicked away from her multiple times before coming to rest on her again. “I gave thought to what you said, earlier… “
Romance: Pummel Me: A Boxing Romance Page 64