A Basket of Wishes

by Rebecca Paisley

  She cried out his name, a sweet oath, and then his name again, and again, and again until the name of Jourdian sounded throughout the room like a silvery aria.

  Music accompanied the song she sang. A sprightly and completely enchanting melody, it swelled as Splendor’s cries became louder.

  Jourdian needed only seconds to finally comprehend the mysterious symphony. She was a fairy, he reminded himself. A fairy in the thrall of passion.

  When sensual joy was upon her, Splendor made music. Jourdian had never imagined anything more beautiful.

  A thread of tenderness wove through his desire, enhancing his resolve to pleasure her thoroughly. He moved his hand a bit lower and began to circle his thumb around the most intimate opening of her body. “Splendor,” he said softly. “Feel how you weep for me.”

  “Weep?”

  He moistened her inner thigh with the dew of her own desire. “Here,” he whispered, circling his thumb upon her again. “Here is where you weep.”

  When full comprehension dawned on her, her excitement deepened. “And will you dry the tears, Jourdian?”

  “Nay.” He smiled slowly. “I’m going to bring you more.” He entered her then, just a bit, with a finger, and then he slid another inside her as well, pumping them slightly in rhythm, slightly in depth.

  “More,” Splendor begged, her eyes closed tight, her forehead creased as she concentrated intently on the pleasure she knew was yet to come.

  God, Jourdian thought, as her joyful music grew louder. She was so tight, so hot, so wet. He wanted to plunge himself inside her. Wanted that tightness, that heat, that moistness to squeeze him, set him afire, and drench him with ecstasy.

  His rigid sex pulsated next to her hip. He ground it into her soft skin, pushed his fingers more deeply inside her, and knew that the bliss he would soon find within her beautiful body would eclipse any he’d ever experienced.

  First, however, he had to concern himself with her virginity. The thought worried him until a sudden possibility came to him.

  Perhaps fairies didn’t feel pain the way humans did. The prospect was highly soothing.

  He noticed that her music softened, almost stopping completely when he slowed his intimate caresses. Soon, he would give her cause to play her joyous melody again. “Splendor,” he murmured, “do fairies feel pain?”

  “I feel nay a bit of pain at this moment, Jourdian, only a pleasure that would certainly blossom if you would touch me with your fingers—”

  “I didn’t ask if you were feeling pain now, sprite.” He kissed the warm crest of her cheekbone. “I asked if fairies feel pain.”

  “Jourdian, put your fingers deeper—”

  “Splendor, I will have your answer to my question before I continue.”

  She huffed with impatience. “Aye, husband. Fairies feel pain. Do you nay remember when I told you about the cat that scratched me? I took to my bed and stayed there for a full fortnight.”

  Jourdian moaned inwardly. If a mere cat scratch had kept her in bed for two whole weeks, he couldn’t even imagine what losing her virginity would do to her. "Listen to me, Splendor,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and steady. “I want you to try your very hardest to lie still, do you understand? No matter what magical thing you might be tempted to do when I—when I begin to make love to you, don’t do it.”

  When he moved above her and straddled her hips, she aimed a confused expression into his eyes. “What are you talking about, Jourdian? What magical thing do you think I will be tempted—”

  “I don’t know.” He watched a tinge of worry come into her eyes, and hated himself for making her feel nervous. But he couldn’t just ram himself inside her like some unfeeling animal! Couldn’t just break through her virgin’s shield without giving her some hint of warning! She’d hate him for that.

  And something deep inside him rebelled violently against the prospect of Splendor hating him.

  “Jourdian?”

  “You might want to disappear, or something, Splendor. Perhaps your mist will appear and you’ll want to dissolve into it.”

  “But—”

  “Just don’t do any of those things, sprite. Lie still, and I promise to make the pain go away. I promise, Splendor, and I do not go back on my word, not ever.”

  “Pain.” She spoke the word as if testing to see what sort of flavor it would leave in her mouth. “Pain, Jourdian?”

  “It will be swift, and I’m going to hold you tight and still, all right? I’ll hold you in my arms, and I won’t move again until you’re ready.”

  “But you said this making love would bring me the pleasure—”

  “It will.” He leaned down to her, his hands touching her, caressing her, trying desperately to work magic of their own so she wouldn’t fear him.

  He murmured something to her she didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter. She felt his soft voice vibrate upon her neck. His big, strong hands moved beneath her to stroke her back and her bottom, and she knew he was trying to comfort her in a wordless way.

  “Your legs,” Jourdian said, straightening his torso so that he was once again upright over her hips. “Lift them, sprite, will you do that? Curl them around my back, like this.”

  His hands behind her knees, he raised her legs, and smiled encouragingly when she encircled them around his back. Slowly, softly, but then with increasing pressure, he grasped her hips, pulling her closer to him, into him, directly against the moistened tip of his manhood.

  She gasped sharply.

  Jourdian frowned. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “I am merely preparing myself, Jourdian. Practicing, if you will. Pain is not an easy thing to accept, and I want to be ready for it when it comes.”

  Jourdian clamped down on a fresh wave of worry. He pulled his hips back, then arched them forward and upward so that the crown of his staff glided smoothly between her tender folds and over her soft, sensitive female jewel. She began to pant and she made mewling sounds, and he repeated his sensual caresses until she began making her joyful music once more.

  The exquisite melody filling his room and his senses, Jourdian touched the crest of his arousal to the hollow cleft of her sex. He shuddered with imprisoned need and stretched slightly into her.

  He’d never wanted anything more than he wanted her.

  “The pleasure,” Splendor panted. “’Twill be yours as well.”

  God, how her sweetness touched him! “Yes. We’ll share it, sprite.”

  He read a royal command in her eyes then. Hurry, it demanded. “Yes, Your Royal Highness,” he acquiesced.

  He grasped her hips more tightly, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of her bottom, his pulsing hardness easing up farther inside her. With his own eyes, he told her he was sorry.

  One quick, solid thrust broke through her taut maiden’s veil. She bucked wildly beneath him; he settled his full weight atop her body and gathered her in his arms to keep her still.

  Her warmth, her tightness…the very silk of her presented a challenge that tested every shred of his will, every bit of his determination and patience. Absolute lust, a primitive and a basic element of the man he was, made him yearn to drive into her over and over again.

  But another side of him, a person he was only just beginning to know, forced him to subdue his base instincts. This was Splendor beneath him, his wife, and some profound and caring emotion hitherto unknown to him compelled him to lie still and give her all the time she needed to fully accustom herself to the feeling of having him so deeply inside her.

  “Splendor,” he whispered. With his entire being, he regretted having hurt her. She lay still now, but he wondered what she was thinking.

  He waited to see if she would seek some manner of revenge against him. Buried to the hilt inside her impossibly tight sheath, he closed his eyes, ready to be turned back into a slug or to be tossed back into the pit of snakes. Or perhaps she would disappear, and in his arms there would be naught but air and a few folds of th
e bedspread.

  Nothing happened.

  He opened his eyes, and what he saw fairly strangled him with deeper remorse.

  A mass of innumerable white diamonds flashed upon the dark blue satin coverlet and Splendor’s copper tresses. Even as he looked at the glistening jewels, more slipped from Splendor’s cheeks.

  “I’m—I’m so sorry, sprite,” he choked.

  Splendor clung to silence as she waited for the pain to subside. The sharpness of it receded quickly, but a dull, throbbing ache remained. She felt too tightly stretched, too full, and was afraid to move.

  Jourdian, she thought, the mere sound of his name in her mind somehow easing her discomfort and apprehension. How strange this was…holding his body deeply inside of hers. No longer were they two beings, she realized.

  They were one, joined in the most intimate way she could imagine.

  Suddenly, the ache that lingered within her no longer mattered. She felt stretched, yes, and so full, but how beautiful this union, she thought. How completely wondrous it was to receive and accommodate a part of Jourdian in such a sensuous and glorious way.

  “Our joy,” she whispered up to him. “You promised.”

  With a gentle touch, he brushed away several diamonds that clung to her long, sweeping lashes. His forearms lying beside her, he lifted his upper torso from her and moved his hips slightly, cautiously, prepared to stop in a second if she wept or winced again.

  But her beautiful face glowed with a silver sheen of happiness, and her lovely lavender eyes twinkled with excitement. And when she timidly raised her hips to meet his, he knew without question that he no longer had to hold his desire in check.

  Giving free rein to his passion for her, he withdrew from her in preparation to drive back inside.

  “Jourdian, you cannot mean to end this so quickly!” Splendor cried when she felt his thickness leave her body.

  “Splendor, we’ve only just begun.” He pushed into her again, pumping his hips firmly and steadily, drawing in and out of her depths with a rhythm and pressure he knew would again bring back her pleasure.

  His own bliss began almost instantly. Straining to hold back, he realized he’d never come so close to losing control. “Let me hear your music, sprite,” he coaxed her, “and I’ll waltz you straight into heaven.”

  She had no idea what music he was talking about, nor did she care. The only thing that mattered to her at the moment was the delicious sensation that mounted within her. The pleasure was different now than before. More gratifying, richer, and deeper, and she knew in her heart it was because Jourdian was a part of her, and she a part of him.

  She caught his rhythm, the timing of his powerful thrusts, and her hips rose and fell in the cadence he set. It surely was a dance, she realized, this stirring making of love. A waltz as Jourdian had said, and she didn’t miss one exquisite step.

  He lunged into her faster then, and she felt him become harder and thicker than he’d been before. The base of his masculinity pressed firmly, yet gently across the outer regions of her female flesh, and the heat of his loins burned her with blazes of pleasure.

  She dug her fingers into the rock-hard planes of his back, and imagined him swirling her along a path of stars. “Jourdian,” she panted, “I am about to—”

  “I know, Splendor. I know.”

  “We are going to float,” she warned him, her bliss heightening. “Toward heaven.”

  He no longer heard anything but the ethereal music of her joy. Louder the melody became, reaching its crescendo and reverberating through his bedchambers with all the force and magnificence accomplished by a hundred-man orchestra.

  Closing his eyes, Jourdian yielded to the power of his own release then, moving faster and faster, harder and harder, driving into Splendor with a force that hurled him straight into the same bliss that caused her to writhe and cling beneath him. Deep, bone-melting pleasure flamed through his loins, spreading fire through his torso and limbs, searing even his thoughts and setting aflame the very heart of his soul.

  He stiffened, every part of him hardening and straining as he felt the burst of his seed stream into Splendor’s depths. The very real sensation of floating came over him. Floating…on a wave of rapture that carried him higher and higher toward the heaven he’d promised her.

  Splendor.

  He tried to call her name, but his continuing ecstasy made speaking impossible.

  I knew it, he tried to tell her. Yes, he’d known it would be like this. Had sensed it even before tonight. Her innocence, her sweetness, and her giving nature had made their lovemaking the most incredible experience of his entire life.

  Splendor. Her name described perfectly the gift she’d given to him. He wanted to say something tender to her. Something gentle.

  But he could not. The words would not come.

  “Heaven,” he whispered to her.

  “Aye,” she whispered in return. “But I suspect we will come down before we get that high.”

  Her strange reply made him open his eyes and look at her face.

  He saw more than her face.

  He saw the floor, about six feet below. Turning his head, he saw the ceiling, about two feet above.

  He and Splendor were, indeed, floating. They’d come right off the bed and were drifting through the room. His first reaction was shock, but his surprise quickly faded. Anger never rose, either. He was, after all, married to a fairy, and therefore had to accustom himself to such strange goings-on.

  “I don’t suppose it would do me a bit of good to tell you to get us down from up here, would it, Splendor?” he asked as they glided above the fireplace mantel.

  “I cannot get us down until my pleasure has completely waned, husband. I still feel soft tremors, especially when you move.”

  “I see.” He moved a little more for her, wincing when he bumped the back of his head on the ceiling.

  She made music of sensual joy, he mused again.

  She floated on waves of sensual bliss.

  Making love with Splendor would never be boring.

  “Did I please you, Jourdian?” Splendor wanted to know the second the leisurely flight around the room came to an end and they’d floated back to the bed. “Did I give you joy?”

  His body still on top of hers, Jourdian rolled to the mattress. “Are we going to fly about the room like that every time we make love?”

  She sat up and leaned over him, her hair spilling red fire over his chest. “I nay mean to do it, husband. ’Tis something that simply happens when I am consumed with such ecstasy. You felt the rapture too, did you not?”

  He’d felt it all right, so much so that his heartbeat had yet to return to normal. “You pleased me very much,” he said, pulling her down and holding her close.

  She shimmered with happiness. Finally, she’d given Jourdian true joy. “Will you kiss me?”

  “Why? Do you feel like you will soon shrink?”

  “Nay. I just want a kiss. I like kissing.”

  With his fingers, he tilted her chin up, then touched his lips to hers. He kissed her languidly, as if he had all the time in the world. Lightly, he traced the outline of her lips with his tongue, all the while playing with the thick copper curls that lay spread all over the bed and his chest.

  “Did I hurt you very much?” He picked up a handful of the costly tears she’d shed earlier and sprinkled them over her flaming red hair.

  “Aye, you hurt me, Jourdian.”

  Her honesty was painful to hear. “I’ll never hurt you again.”

  “If you do, I shall nay mind because I know now that there is supreme pleasure after the pain.”

  “No, Splendor, you don’t understand.” He shifted to his side so he could look into her eyes. “There is pain only the first time. Once you have known a man, your body is never so tight again. The next time I make love to you, you will receive me easily, sprite.”

  “You have opened me.”

  “Yes.”

  She lapsed into sile
nce for a moment, but kept steady hold of his beautiful silver gaze. “I felt you spill, Jourdian. Felt the hot burst of you. ’Twas your very essence, was it not?”

  He laid his hand over her flat belly, wondering if even now his son had been conceived. “Yes, it was my essence, and it mingled with yours. That’s how a child is created. With a part of each of us.”

  She had not conceived. She knew she hadn’t. “Let us continue to make love until we create the child. Every day…”

  “Every night, every morning,” he promised her.

  “Now?”

  “So soon?”

  “We will not get the child if we do not keep our essences mingling, Jourdian.”

  He smiled. She spoke as if she were an expert on the subject of conception. “How right you are, wife.”

  She slipped her hand between his legs to fondle him, and discovered him soft and pliant. “Jourdian,” she said, looking down at him, “this is the most pitiful cattail I have ever seen.” He tried to feel insulted, but could only feel amusement. “Splendor, I lose strength, too. Almost the way you do.” He tried to make her understand. “After a session of lovemaking like the one we just had, I’m bound to be a bit drained.”

  She nodded slowly, then squirmed upward to kiss him passionately. Pressing her lips against his, she plunged her tongue inside his mouth.

  Taken aback by her boldness, but certainly not opposed to it, Jourdian returned the kiss with the same ardor with which she’d begun it.

  After many long, delicious moments, Splendor raised her head. “There,” she said, smiling. “You are infused with fresh energy now, are you not?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  She lowered her gaze. The sight that met her eyes caused her to laugh out loud. “Oh, Jourdian, I have never seen a cattail grow as quickly as yours! And ’twas not done with a hint of fairy thrall!”

  “No, but with a wealth of fairy beauty.”