Virgin Seduction

by Kathleen Creighton

  Presently, when her body had quieted, she turned her face again-not toward him, this time, but downward, as if she wanted to hide from him. With her arms drawn in under her she spoke in a muffled voice to the bedspread. "Cade, I am sorry. I did not mean for that to happen…I do not know why-I could not help it. Such a thing has never happened to me before."

  Please, oh please, he thought, just let me do this right.

  With careful gravity, he said, "No, probably not. What you felt, Princess, was an orgasm." He paused. Then, letting a smile leak into his voice, he added, "A small one."

  She lifted her head to stare at him, half her face veiled behind the midnight fall of her hair. "Really? Is this true? I did not know it would feel like that. I have read about this in books, but-"

  "Books?" It was such a relief to laugh. "Where in the world did you get hold of a sex book?" There were obviously unplumbed depths to this princess of his.

  "In boarding school, one of the girls had one. I think she was French. We used to look at it at night under the blankets with a flashlight." She looked down, catching her lip and dimpling at remembered mischief. Then she brought her eyes back to him and in that feeble light he caught the tiny movements of her swallow, the quivering of her mouth. "But it is impossible to know from reading a book how something will feel."

  He lifted his hand, slipped it under her hair and gently cupped her cheek. "I don't know, either, how it feels for you," he said softly. "I only know how it feels for me."

  She tipped her head, resting it in the cradle of his hand as her eyes clung to his face. "It must feel very, very good for you, then."

  "Oh, yeah…" The words vibrated under his sternum like a tiger's purr.

  Her lips quivered again, this time with a smile that flickered out before it could reach her dimples, then vanished when she turned her lips into his palm. "I want you to have this feeling," she said huskily as her eyes drifted closed.

  "Oh, I will, don't worry about that." Again, the laughter felt good to him.

  "And…you must not be afraid of hurting me."

  For a moment he was silent, struggling with emotions new to him and words he didn't know how to say. He'd been enjoying the interlude; it was new to him, this quiet intimacy wrapped in a cocoon of almost-darkness, with his mind at least temporarily at peace and his body like a pressure cooker on slow simmer. He'd been in no hurry to have it end, using those moments to marshal his strength and shore up his sagging self-control. Because he knew, as she didn't, that she was nowhere near ready for him, not if he was going to have a prayer of keeping the promise he made to her then, in a fierce and determined growl, "I'm not going to hurt you, Princess."

  She gave a patient, acquiescing sigh. He allowed her to turn onto her back then, and his eyes to feast on the banquet of feminine beauty he'd only seen, before tonight, camouflaged in the modestly elegant clothes she always wore. Camouflaged now by the darkness, allowing him veiled hints of creamy mounds and dusky hollows, of purple-rose areolas and an ink-black triangle, kitten-soft above the juncture of her thighs. Hungry for more, he was reaching for the flashlight when she spoke, raising herself up on her elbows.

  "I would like to see you," she said.

  And he kissed her instead, and murmured against her mouth, "You will…but not now."

  "But why?"

  So he kissed her again, and more and more deeply until, overwhelmed, she sank back onto the bedspread and reached hungrily for him, already panting and gasping and arching her body toward him as she drove her fingers into his hair. He drew back, then, and stared down into her dazed, midnight eyes. "You have to trust me," he said.

  Trust me… .What choice did she have?

  She was lost in a world she could not have imagined, a world of senses and sensations, some so exquisite and lovely she wanted to reach for them, hold them in her hands like a child grasping at soap bubbles. Some so overwhelming she was in awe of them, frightened by their power, like one standing on the edge of a waterfall. She was lost, and yes, she was frightened, too. But there was a delicious, shivery excitement to her fear. Because there was Cade.

  Yes…she trusted him. There it was…as simple and glorious and mystifying as that. She trusted him with all her heart and soul. Her body was no longer hers to command-she was his, now, completely, only clay in the potter's hands.

  A potter? No. Though she had no scale by which to judge such things, to her it seemed he must be an artist…a master. His hands…his mouth…they commanded and consumed her…controlled and demanded, molded, manipulated and presumed. But never, never did they cause her pain. Only the most exquisite joy and unimagined pleasure. Twice more she felt the strange and wonderful sensations as her body first seemed to grow hot and huge and intense as the sun, then come suddenly apart into a cascade of a thousand pulsing infant stars, once when he had drawn apart her thighs with his hands and kissed her…kissed her the way he kissed her mouth, deeply, with his tongue…just there, where she was already so hot and swollen and sensitive to the slightest touch. The feeling then…it was so intense she cried out and arched and trembled in his hands, not knowing whether she struggled away from, or toward the terrifying sensations, only certain she could stand no more than this-more than this, and she would surely die.

  Then…and now it seemed too quickly…he was holding her tightly and she was rocketing over a precipice and falling, falling, breath forced from her lungs in pants and cries, and her body throbbing inside and burning, tingling all over, in every part of her, and she understood finally what Cade had meant when he had said, "A small one."

  She trusted him. Completely. And when at last he drew her legs wide apart and knelt so carefully between them…when he had taken Salma's bottle of soothing oil and poured some in his hand, then stroked it gently between her legs and deep, deep inside her…when he leaned over, bracing himself on his hands, and looked a question and a promise deep into her eyes…she gazed back at him from under half-closed lids that had somehow grown too heavy to lift…and smiled.

  She trusted him. But she gasped when she felt him fit himself to her softness; she couldn't seem to help it. She gasped again when she felt the first intense, steadily building pressure. And instantly he was there, taking her face between his hands and stroking her cheeks, her eyelids, her temples with his thumbs. Taking over her consciousness, whispering urgently into her mouth, " Stay with me…relax, sweetheart…don't tense up on me now…"

  She nodded, let her breath out and opened herself to him.

  By slow and careful degrees she let him come into her body, and she accepted the mounting pressure with something akin to triumph. Was this pain? She did not know, and anyway, if it had been she would not have let him know. She simply did not care, for this was her husband…from this moment he would forever be a part of her. She could never have imagined such a fierce and all-consuming joy.

  Oh, but now, as the pressure in her body was increasing almost beyond her ability to endure it, so was another kind of pressure altogether. She could feel it coming, feel it filling her throat, making her chest jump and quiver…making her breath whimper and her eyes sting. She tried to stop it, but it came anyway, like that other tumult her body could not control.

  "I am sorry," she gasped, and her chest was heaving, her voice high and broken with panic. "I do not mean to cry-I do not want-it does not mean-please do not think you are hurting me. I do not know why-I cannot seem to stop it-"

  She had trusted him in all else, she should have trusted him to understand this, as well.

  For he only whispered, "Shh…it's okay," and she could hear a smile in his voice as he kissed her and stroked her puddled eyelids. "It's just emotions… go ahead and cry if you want to."

  Then, strangely, she began to laugh instead. But it was a different kind of laughter than any she had ever known…laughter mixed with tears, gentle, wondering laughter. Miraculously, he seemed to understand that, too, kissing her tears, then her lips, again and again, mixing his laughter with hers.<
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  "You do not have to stop," she murmured, awed and sated by the feel of him inside her.

  "Yeah, actually, I do," he said with an odd, breathless little chuckle. He lowered his head to touch a tiny kiss to the end of her nose. "That would be…about as far as I can go-in more ways than one." He kissed her again, her mouth this time. She could feel tension vibrating in his arms, could hear it in his voice, as if his jaws were clenched. "I'm afraid…I've had about all I can take. It just feels…too good inside you, sweetheart. I think…you're going to have to let me have that feeling, now…"

  Before she could even really understand or prepare, she felt him gather himself…felt him pull back and his muscles bunch and harden…felt him surge into her with a force that drove the breath from her lungs. Dazed and a little frightened, she was simply caught up and swept away by the strength and power of his maleness…and for the first time understood the extent of his control, the depth of his restraint, the price of his gentleness.

  This was Cade-her husband-imposing and magnificent and powerful.

  Yes, but vulnerable, too. Along with her understanding of her husband's maleness, for the first time she understood her own femininity as well. Understood that this man she had married might be bigger and harder and physically stronger than she was, but that she was powerful, too. Because, all his wonderful strength and vitality he must pour finally into her. She had the power to make this strong man tremble…to make him vulnerable.

  That realization came to her in a great wave of that strange protective tenderness she'd felt for him, out there in the rain. Only now she knew what it was.

  But… this can only be love, she thought in wonderment. Yes, it must be. It is true. I love him.

  Another wave of emotion swept over her, this one cold and terrible, full of longing, and it made her hold on to him with a kind of fierce desperation as his big body surged and emptied into hers.

  Cade, I love you! Her heart cried it, but she could not say it out loud. She loved him. She knew it, now. And that made it all the more terrible that he did not love her.

  * * *

  The evening had long since eased into night and the flashlight had burned itself out hours ago. Leila's breathing was soft and even in a darkness thick as wool when Cade slipped out of bed and made his way- with a confidence born of regular practice-to the bathroom. With the door closed he felt for the matches on top of the toilet tank and lit the candle he'd left there…oh, hours ago, now…stuck in a coffee mug with its own melted wax. How Leila had loved that.

  He closed his eyes and gripped the edges of the sink with both hands as images swamped him…memories so recent, so sharp and clear he could actually see her now, right there, lowering herself into the bathtub, wincing a little when her soft feminine parts touched the barely warm bubbles. He'd felt such anguish, and had thought of bruised fruit and crushed flower petals, but then she had looked up at him and smiled that irresistible dimpled smile of hers, and a moment later he'd slipped into the tub behind her and what was meant to be the aftermath of something had become instead the beginning of something even more.

  Even now, exhausted and drained beyond all endurance, just remembering the feel of her soap-slippery bottom fitting itself between his legs, and himself sliding between hers…yes, somehow, both at the same time…her body arching and his hands filling with the sweet, hot weight of her breasts…even now, remembering that, his groin ached and his head swam with desire. How could it not?

  He lifted his head and stared at himself in the medicine cabinet mirror. The candlelight made his face gaunt, his eyes shadowed and bleak. What the hell was the matter with him? A bridegroom after a night like this-he should be considering himself the luckiest, the happiest man in the world. Either that, or, considering his circumstances, he ought to be kicking himself all the way to kingdom come and back. In actual fact, he wasn't feeling either one of those things. Truth was, he didn't have any idea what he was feeling.

  So, he'd made love to his wife. He'd consummated his marriage, even knowing what it would mean to both of them-so much for his willpower. And it had been about the most mind-blowing, intense pleasure of his life. And, except for the fact that it pretty much committed him to this marriage whether he wanted it or not, what had it changed? The woman sleeping in there in his bed was still, in almost all the ways that counted, a stranger to him. The woman he'd committed to share the rest of his life with came from a culture so different from his, she might as well have been from another planet. The woman he'd held in his arms, immersed himself so totally in he couldn't have told where he left off and she began…the woman into whom -God help him-he'd poured his genes…was still Leila Kamal, princess of Tamir. Wasn't she?

  So why did his arms feel empty now without her? Why did his body still ache with wanting her? And most mystifying of all, what was this terrible ache of tenderness he felt for her in his heart?

  Having no answers for himself, he went into the bedroom where he'd stowed his overnighter, took out a clean pair of shorts and put them on. Then he went out onto the porch and sat on the steps and watched the dawn come.

  At least he knew what he was feeling, now. Blitzed, shell-shocked, bewildered. And scared half to death.

  * * *

  Leila woke up with a delicious stiffness in every muscle and joint, the kind that felt so good when she stretched, long and luxuriously, like a great, lazy cat. There was also a mysterious swollen ache between her legs that registered her pulse in little pleasure taps, tiny echoes of what had happened there not so long ago. Under the blankets, she hugged her nakedness against a shiver of…what? Fear? Happiness? Perhaps, Leila thought, what I am is fearfully happy.

  She was not surprised to find herself alone in the bed she had shared with Cade, but she was disappointed. When, she wondered, would she finally know what it was like to wake up in the morning beside her husband?

  But she would never say anything of the kind to Cade. She must not presume too much. After all, just because he was her husband, just because he had made love to her, did not mean he loved'her. She was not so naive as to think those two were the same. And just then she was far too vulnerable to want to know the truth about how Cade felt about her.

  Last night he had seemed so tender. She had even allowed herself to believe he must love her, in his own way, perhaps in some buried part of him. But this morning, he was gone from her bed, and no…she would not allow herself to presume. Never again. The risk was far too great. She would guard herself, as she had been doing ever since that terrible moment in Cade's bedchamber in the palace, when she had realized how disastrously she had misunderstood him.

  Her body was now and would always be Cade's. So was her heart. But that was her secret, and for now she must bury it in the innermost keep of her soul.

  She rose and dressed quickly in slacks and a long-sleeved blouse-and she really must, she told herself, buy some blue jeans, which seemed to be all people in Texas ever wore. After a brief stop in the bathroom, she went looking for her husband. He wasn't in the house, and for the tiniest moment she felt twinges of unreasoning panic-ridiculous, of course, did she think he would leave her here? But then through the living room window she caught a glimpse of him, on the front porch. Before going to join him, she paused and with her forehead pressed against the door, said a prayer. Please, God, let my face be serene. Please… let it not show him how hard my heart is beating.

  He was leaning against a post and looking out over the railing, smoking one of his thin, brown cigars and holding a heavy crockery mug with symbols on it that Cade had told her were brands for cattle. Though he did not look much like a cowboy this morning, wearing blue jeans, yes, but with a white short-sleeved polo shirt and sunglasses. He looked fresh and clean as rain, lean and relaxed…and utterly unapproachable.

  He turned when she came onto the porch. His face was composed as he lifted his mug to her and said, "Good morning."

  "Good morning," she said back to him. She wished she could see h
is eyes. She wished he would smile at her, just once with that lifting, unfettered joy she'd seen that morning in the palace courtyard. Just once. Then I would know, she thought.

  "Want some coffee? There's still plenty…"

  She glanced over her shoulder toward the house, then shrugged and said, "Yes, thank you. I will get some in a minute." She hesitated, then asked, "Have you been up long?" Making it light, casual, not presuming too much.

  He took a sip of coffee, then the cheroot. "Awhile," he said, blowing away the smoke. Then, softly, "How 'bout you? Sleep well?"

  Her heart gave a bump, and to keep it from her voice, she took a deep breath. "Yes, I did, thank you. Very well." We are like two strangers, she thought bleakly. How she wished she could go to him and slip her arms around his waist with the perfect faith that should be natural between husband and wife, lay her face against his chest and tell him joyfully and without reservation what was in her heart, that this morning was beautiful beyond words because he was in it.

  Instead, she walked to the railing a little distance from him, and, leaning on her hands, looked out upon a morning that was fast becoming less beautiful. "It smells fresh, after the rain," she said, filling her lungs with air that felt heavy and smells that were alien. "Will it be a nice day, do you think?"