"You’re welcome."
She bent her head back to her proof-reading and that was the end of the matter. He stared at her, wondering how she could be so calm when it was apparent she had been fiddling with his cod and cullions.
Perhaps she thought he didn’t know. He had been asleep after all. Well, in that case, he wouldn't dream of mentioning it to her.
He wheeled out of the room as the blush flooded his features, and wondered if she had any more of that wonderful tea for him tonight.
Bryony was surprised she could appear so calm in front of him after what she had done, but what she was planning to do tonight was even more bold. She had felt so fiercely aroused last night after she’d explored him and given him his release that she’d ended up exploring herself even more intimately than ever before. She felt poised on the edge of a whole new world which only she and Michael could share.
A trip to see Ash and get a massage of her own, and a long hot bath and a loose robe in sapphire silk which Eswara had given her, set the mood as she headed to his room that evening once the boys were safely in bed.
Annie the maid would be watching over them, with instructions to keep an eye on them until noon tomorrow. The girl had given her a knowing smile and told her to enjoy herself.
Bryony went down to Michael’s room and took extra care with his massage that evening, making it even more slow and sensual than was her wont. After starting him in the chair whilst he sipped more of the wonderful tea, she got him into the bed. With only an occasional token protest she gradually got all of his clothes off and worked her way right down to his toes.
"Now that we’ve done your whole back, we’re going to do your front."
"Oh, no, please, Bryony," he gasped.
She handed him a towel. "I’m going to roll you over slowly. Hold this to yourself if it makes you feel better."
He clutched it to his loins as she kept her head raised and eyes averted so as to give him some sense of modesty. She started at his chest and went down to his abdomen, then up his legs from his ankles to his thighs.
There was no mistaking the bulge under the towel, but he was more relieved to see that she did not appear to view what he assumed to be his many scars and tattoos with anything resembling horror.
The sizzling sensation in his loins from the tea and her ministrations were even better than the night before, for he was fully awake and able to concentrate on the beauty of what her hands were doing to them now that he was not so exhausted from having climaxed.
Bryony exulted in her own power as a woman to love and treasure him. Starting a second time with his scalp, she let her hands travel along him again even more lightly and sensually, before at last slipping under the cloth to come to rest on his throbbing flesh.
Michael’s eyes flew open and he snatched at her wrist, sorely tempted, but petrified of his own reaction. Of ruining everything he had built between them, everything he had come to love about his life. "This is madness. You can’t possibly-"
"I do. I do want you, Michael," she protested, her voice trembling with urgent need. "You’ve been kind, generous, tender with me. Tender with the children. Why should I not feel attracted to you? Desire you?"
Michael gave a snort of self-mocking laughter. "You can have your pick of any eligible and successful man about Town. How can I ever compete with that?"
Bryony stroked his face lovingly. "You’re right. There is no competition. I went for eligible and successful once before, and look at the disaster which befell me. I was sixteen. That can be my only excuse. I thought my husband was everything I could have ever dreamed of in a man, and more. Handsome, glamorous, rich.
"It just goes to show you what a stupid little fool I was. Vain and empty-headed. The only true word in that description was handsome. But even that was in the eye of the beholder. By the time he died, I came to dread the very sight of his face."
She raised her eyes to his candidly. "It wasn’t love. It was infatuation. The product of the idle fantasies of a young girl with no understanding of the world, or men.
"I’ve learned some hard lessons since then. One of them is that true love exists. In all of the most unlikely places, true, but it does exist. I know because I’ve found it here with you."
"Bryony—"
She shook her head. "I’m not asking you to love me in return, Michael. Just let me love you. Let me move our relationship forward to the final physical one. We’ve shared everything else. Why not that? I need to know. Need to be one with you. I find I long for you so badly, I can barely stop my hands from shaking when I touch you. The thought of you touching me arouses my body so, I can scarcely breathe."
He stared at her, hardly daring to believe her words. "No, it’s not possible…"
"It is," she whispered, taking his hand in both her own and caressing the back and palm of it. "I’ve seen you looking at me. Responding to my touch. I know you’re able. I’ve seen it. Caused it. I’ve been waiting for you to, well, caress me more openly than you have done. Admit your feelings. Choose to recognise that part of yourself once more. But you’ve been so restrained, so fearful."
"It isn’t proper," he maintained. "You’re in my house, under my protection, an employee, a dependent…."
"Then marry me. Marry me and make me yours in every way," she proposed, her head swimming with the enormity of what she had just dared to say.
"Don’t you think I want to?" Michael bellowed, all his pretense of indifference at an end at last.
His breath came in huge ragged pants as if he had been running for miles. "Long to? With every ounce of my being? But I can’t! You’re still so young. You’re confusing pity with love."
She gave him a long look and rose from the bed.
His heart sank into his boots. She was leaving him….
But pride refused to allow him to ask her to stay.
She promenaded around the room in a semi-circle, pausing only long enough to snuff out all the candles in the room except those by his bedside.
She had done it often enough before. But the look in her eyes was so different from anything he had ever seen that for a moment he was almost frightened. Had he angered or upset her to such an extent that that she was about to leave him forever?
"Please, dearest, you know I’m right. It’s for your own good. You have the boys to think about, and many years ahead of you to meet the right man. Someone who can make you happy. A whole man. Not a pathetic cripple haunted by his past.
"But you don’t have to go, leave this house. I mean, I know I can’t marry you. It would be so unfair to you in every way that it can’t possibly be contemplated. If I were a normal man, of course I would, Bryony. I would do my best to make you happy. But as things stand—"
Her eyes flicked over him appraisingly as she reached the door.
His heart gave a huge lurch-she was leaving him. He opened his mouth to do a complete volte-face—to beg her to stay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Michael opened his mouth to beg his beloved to stay.
But instead of opening the portal to leave Michael, Bryony turned the key in the lock, and began to approach the bed once more.
As she moved with purposeful strides, her hands were already upon the belt of her sapphire silk robe. She allowed it to fall open, baring her to the floor. Her full pert breasts jutted up against the silk, and the shadowy thatch of black curls against the ivory of her flesh sent shivers through him.
Any other protest Michael had been about to utter withered on his tongue at the sight of such incredible beauty. He swallowed convulsively as Bryony took his unresisting hand and placed it upon her breast.
The nipple immediately sprang into his palm, and Michael was enthralled at the response. She let his hand rest there for a moment before she bent one knee and placed it on the bed.
Then she trailed his right hand down over her delicately curved belly, to her navel. Despite his widening eyes and quickening breath she slid it down to the curls at the apex
of her thighs.
He tried to pull his hand away, but her heat had already radiated outwards, almost begging him to touch her. She slid his hand between her legs and trapped it there gently, stroking his wrist and forearm.
"Do I really seem confused to you?"
He cleared his throat. "No, not confused. Aroused."
She smiled alluringly. "Most definitely aroused already, just from me touching you. Being with you. But there’s so much more."
She angled his hand and her body until she was able to slide onto his first two fingers. She began to shudder as she did, the powerful inner tremor and pulsating softness telling him all he needed to know about her longing, her desire for him. She was so hot and wet he thought he would faint from the excitement of it all.
"And more," she murmured, rotating her hips twice to drive him even deeper, until his fingers and hand glistened.
In a trance, he lay back upon the pillows as she knelt on the bed fully, and moved his hand once more. She dragged the towel back off his bareness. With their fingers entwined she rubbed her dampness onto his pulsating head.
He sucked in a juddering breath at the contact, and tried to pull her wrist away. But already she was swinging one leg over him, her other hand holding his shaft steady.
"Please, Bryony, no. What if you regret this, hate me?" he gasped in a near-panic.
He had hoped to make her pause long enough to get control over the situation, to summon the strength and presence of mind to roll away from her onto his front.
But Bryony never faltered. She glided onto him silkily, setting off a shower of sparks which had him gasping and roaring out his passion in an uncontrollable burst.
She could feel the power of his orgasm right up through her womb. She had a fleeting vision of two sons and a daughter with his incredible eyes. The image made her smile.
As she caressed his chest and the delicate pouch between his legs, her smile widened even further. He moved his hands up now to touch her breasts reverently, and he stroked down her waist and panted, "Thank you. It was so wonderful."
"Was? Is." She moved to illustrate her point.
His eyes rolled up into his head. His hands upon her bosom became more restless, and her nipples were almost painful as they ached for his lips upon them.
"Please," she urged, "please, kiss me?"
The floodgates opened then. "With the greatest pleasure," he murmured huskily.
The kiss was like nothing either of them had never known. It was honey and roses and chocolate and wine, delectable in every way, and so addictive that one kiss left them craving ever more.
Their coming together at last as lovers was all they had suspected it would be, and far beyond their wildest fantasies. Michael could have kicked himself for not simply giving in to his desires without any further struggle the night they had first touched so long ago. But then, it would never have been like this. Now there was no fear, regret or hesitation, just pure delight.
His mouth slanted across hers to deepen the kiss until it became an act of possession, a declaration of intent. Michael’s hips began to thrust in time with his tongue, until she gasped into his mouth and her feminine softness began to wring another incredible climax from deep within him.
He could feel her pulse beating against his tip, the vibrant life within her embracing him, encompassing him.
He had engaged in the physical act before. But he was sure he was a virgin reborn with her arms, for here was love, pure, selfless, joyous, being bestowed upon him with no thought for anything other than his needs. He could sense her almost fighting to hold back her own pleasure to make sure he was fulfilled.
He ran his hand down her back, scooping her buttocks more closely to him, while his other slipped between them to rub her engorged bud.
Already in so deep he felt sure he might never be able to withdraw, her voluptuous response to the contact drove him in still further, until they came together as one in a explosion of passion which almost lifted them off the bed.
She called out his name against his lips, her hands clinging to his hair and shoulders as her paroxysm trembled through her.
At last she collapsed onto him, her cheek against his chest, her breath coming in almost panicked sobs.
"Oh, Michael, I never knew. I’m sorry. Did I hurt-"
"No, no, not at all," he soothed, rubbing her back with long sweeping strokes. "What didn’t you know, love?" he asked a few moments later, his breath gliding over her face and hair as he turned his head to look at her.
"That it could be so, so powerful. So all consuming. I mean, I knew there was some pleasure. I’d felt it once or twice perhaps when I was first married. Once or twice by myself since," she admitted with a blush. "But this with you was like…"
"Like what?" he prompted softly, when she shook her head, completely at a loss.
"Like my soul was being torn from me, and fused with yours."
He nodded. "That’s it exactly. But it wasn’t painful. It was beautiful. You’re beautiful. I mean, I always knew you were," he said, tracing the fine bones of her cheek with one finger, "but that’s on the outside. I’m talking about your inner beauty."
"You’re beautiful, Michael." She took his hand and kissed it. "I knew that ever since the night we met. Not to mention from the massages I’ve been giving you. Your skin, your eyes, the way you make me feel when you touch me."
Still incredulous and mistrustful over her response despite what they had shared, he would have raised her off his torso had she not begun to stroke his face and broad chest. Her fingers were followed by her lips as she began to plant kisses as light as thistledown all over his flesh.
At his heated groan, she opened her mouth, running her tongue along the thin trail of silky hair which led to his most sensitive maleness. She lifted her hips from his, and he almost wept at the loss of her delicate softness.
But his lids flew open in alarm as he realized what her intentions were. He made a grab for her forearms to pull her back up, but it was already too late.
"Bryony, no, you can’t-"
"Sush, it’s all right. My gift to you for all you’ve given me," she murmured, suckling him so sweetly he was rock hard again in an instant.
He pressed back flat upon the mattress as her lips glided over him, feasting upon him until he was poised on the brink.
"No, really, you mustn’t-"
Desperately, Michael tried to hold back, but she slipped him in still further, her lips locked firmly mid-point around his pulsating shaft as she laved his engorged head with the most sensual savouring. She revelled in the tang of their lovemaking, his heady maleness. Her hands cupped his tender flesh, and she sought out the small indentation below it that Eswara had told her was a sacred spot guaranteed to give a thousand delights.
She had found it during her leisured exploration the night before, and now knew that Eswara had not exaggerated.
Michael was so delighted he was not able to withstand her an instant longer. His passion echoed around the chamber as she took all he had to give, and gave herself.
Her fingers and mouth drove him wildly onwards, tears springing to his eyes. He clutched her silken tresses with one hand, while the other convulsed in the sheets, wringing them hard.
At last he quieted, and with one last sultry twitch of her tongue, she raised herself up to snuggle against his side.
He hugged her to him, but Michael could feel the dreadful jealousy that burned through him every time he thought of Damien Dalrymple emerging once more. "I didn’t think wives shared that sort of thing--"
"Share? With you, yes, darling. With him, he made me. Liked it better than the regular way, he said. Liked to see me on my knees, submissive, don’t you know. Wanted to degrade me. Have all the fun so he didn’t need to share, or bother to try to make me happy. Made me do it if I was, er, indisposed. After the babies. That sort of thing. Whenever and wherever he said. Any kind of intercourse. When we were with each other, of course. And he wasn’t otherwise
occupied with the serving wenches. So not that often, but often enough to show me who was master, and who slave."
Michael looked at her in horror. "I would never make you-"
She put her fingers to his lips. "I know. You didn’t make me. I wanted to." She reveled in her own sense of power. She was no longer a passive recipient of pleasure or pain, but a bringer of it, an equal partner, and even the one in control.
"Because you think you have to?" he asked, the bile rising in his throat.
"Not at all." She traced his brows and lashes in a sensual caress that had him fizzing with passion anew. "Because I want to cherish you. Show you how much you mean to me."
He kissed her long and lingeringly. "I already know that. You would never have come into this bed with me if you didn’t." He shook his head and laughed, though the sound was without mirth. "I can’t believe any of this."
The Model Master Page 18
