by Judith Ivory
She sighed, laughing at her own story. "Though not tonight," she said. She leaned back against the rails of the balustrade, the banister slanting upward over her head. She looked inviting. Her chemise was damp, its lace lying wilted against the curve of her breast. "Tonight," she said, the gypsy come-hither aura shining shyly again in her eyes: looking to be fanned to life. "Tonight I was no mantis."
"No," he said sincerely, wishing he didn't feel the truth of his words as sharply as he did. "Tonight you were the most desirable woman I have ever looked upon, ever watched move or draw breath."
Her breasts, there in the dim light of the hallway, swelled as she softly inhaled his compliment.
It was crushing to watch her. She was so full of life. Her mind was shining, bright. The beauty of it, of her here in the hallway, pierced him, the pain as exquisite as catching his fingertip in the spring of a trap: a pinch so hard it brought tears to the backs of his eyes. It ravished him; it shimmered and blurred his vision. Winnie, the beautiful, could be his.
Till the end of the week.
Then she couldn't.
Next week, he'd became a ratcatcher again. Or a valet perhaps, though now the two felt almost the same in light of the fact that neither were good enough for Edwina Bollash. Sunday morning, when the impossible magic of Emile and Jeremy Lamont evaporated, as in the fairy tale, Michael's fine horses and clothing would return to Mick's rats and rags once more. He and this remarkable woman would no longer struggle with the make-believe of him. When he walked out her door—whoever, whatever he was—the only thing certain would be that neither his "what" nor "who" would be the equal of Edwina, Princess of the Empty Tins.
She was waiting for him to respond. She expected him to kiss her.
Mick smiled, hesitated. God knew, nothing would be so sweet as to make love to Winnie the gypsy girl tonight. Nothing better, that is, than making love to her while knowing it was no magic or pretense or heedless moment: that he could make love to her as his own, his other half, his mate.
He could pretend a lot of things. He could fake much. Yet he couldn't fake this: He couldn't pretend tonight was forever. Such a lie would have made his chest so tight no air could enter.
So he laid his palm against her face, as if he could touch for a second what was inside her bright, waiting expression. He smoothed his thumb down her soft cheek and met her glistening eyes—they were fixed on him in a way he would not easily forget. He leaned, pressed his dry lips to her forehead, drew the smell of her hair into his nose, his lungs, held it there, then pushed himself back and spun on his heels.
He turned and fled down the hall, across the dining room and into the half-kitchen, then down the stairs and into the servants' quarters where—Milton was right—he belonged.
He ran like Freddie. Too many dark, ugly things down there, Mick. And the teeth are sharp; I know. Can't knowingly jump down into a rat's nest anymore. You just got to understand.
And he did. Oh, he did. Too well.
* * *
Mick was undressing for bed, the placket of his shirt open, his trouser braces dangling, standing there in his bare feet, his back to the door, when he heard her. He turned, expecting the sound was his imagination.
But no, there Winnie was, framed in his doorway. She'd rallied the courage to follow him downstairs—now of all times suddenly uncowed by the fact that Milton was asleep only three walls away.
"Well," Mick said, then couldn't think how to follow the pointless remark. It seemed rude to ask simply, What do you want?
How funny: Her eyes fixed at his chest. She loved his chest, and he loved that she did. She eyed what she could see of him inside his open shirt. It was a strain for her to bring her eyes up to his face, even though, clearly, she had something to say.
Bloody hell, he thought. She was finally going to say it. Something brave and romantic. Too late, he told himself. They were past where it would do them some good. Still, he listened attentively. He waited, half-hoping, half-fearing he might finally hear "Kiss me" or "I love you." I love you would have been nice.
Instead, her sweet-soft, classy voice said, like silk, in her tea-party singsong, "I figured out what I want. I want you to be as naked as a statue: I want to see you in the rude with your widge hanging out."
* * *
Chapter 24
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Mick burst out laughing. He tried to contain it, then couldn't. What release. "My widge?" he said finally. And that started him all over again. "Oh, God," he said, trying to get hold of himself. He put his hand in his hair and leaned his shoulder on the bedpost. He didn't know where to look. His widge? She wanted to see his widge?
Winnie smiled at his discomposure. She liked it. It made her bold. She told him, "You promised. You told me when I could say what I wanted, I could have it."
And so he had. "Winnie—"
He didn't know what to tell her. He touched his lip, in his distress forgetting for the hundredth time his mustache was missing. He shaved it off every morning, then forgot he had, at least once a day. He brought his hand down and tried telling this unusual woman the truth. "Winnie, I'm in love with you," he said.
It was not what she was expecting. She glanced down quickly. She couldn't look at him for longer than a second at a time, but her face filled with wonder. She was happy one moment, then sad the next. She finally squinched her face and held his eyes long enough to ask mildly, "So that means you can't make love to me?"
He shook his head. "It means—" He couldn't explain it neatly. "It means I want more than I can have. And having a little, a taste, might hurt worse than having nothing at all." He shook his head again, frowned. "I wasn't prepared to feel as I do about you, Win."
With a new curiosity and a kind of timid, but growing confidence, she stepped into the room. "Mick," she said, "don't worry about the future so much that you make our present less than what it should be. We could die tomorrow." She spouted his own philosophy. "Anything could happen." She came to a stop right in front of him and whispered, "Make love to me now. Please."
He shook his head, then muttered, "No escape." It was true. He laughed helplessly at where he'd gotten himself. Up to his eyeballs here in trouble, and only able to dig himself in deeper. Muttering, still laughing, he looked at her and repeated, "In the rude? Honest to God, Win. With my widge hanging out? Where did you hear such a thing?"
"You said it."
He did? He sat down on the end of the bed, bewildered.
In the end, though, he knew what to do. He lifted his arms and peeled his shirt over his head. He wore no underclothes; he hated them and no one knew the difference. Until now. Winnie looked rather amazed by the fact.
He tossed the shirt, then patted the mattress beside him. "Right here, loovey. Put it here. The wicked widge of Michael Tremore would love to make your acquaintance."
Winnie only stood there.
After a moment, he complained with humor, "You tell me to make love to you. I tell you how to start, what I want you to do, then you won't do it. You are not the obedient girl you once were."
"I know." She smiled and murmured, "I want to see. Show me."
"Aah. The widge," he said. He felt himself lift—from simply the sound of her voice, the cool-soft, feminine plush of her saying in her tony English, Show me. Yes, he was going to have something to show her. "Close the door."
* * *
Winnie turned and leaned against the door, watching as Mick's dexterous fingers undid the buttons of his trousers. His long-fingered hands moved with a slow grace that was almost courtly as he opened them for her. She wet her lips and watched with concupiscent curiosity. Then started at what dropped into view. He continued, shoving his trousers down his legs, not the least bit inhibited. Already barefoot and bare-chested, once he stepped out of the wool worsted, he stood naked in front of her.
A statue, yes. Warm and breathing.
She watched the rise of his chest as she walked forward. She already knew he was broad and muscular throug
h the chest and shoulders, but she hadn't realized how narrow he was through the hips. Sturdy, but slender. His thighs were long and cut with muscle. But between his thighs—
She walked close, riveted. She said, "That wouldn't fit under any fig leaf. In fact"—she looked up into his face with a sudden frown—"that won't fit anywhere I know of."
"Oh, yes, it will." He laughed at her. "And perhaps I might mention"—he mocked himself—"it ain't a widge, loov. Not now." When she knit her brow, he explained, "It's a widge when it's quiet. Or when it's nosing around just a bit. At some point, though, Win, it becomes a cock: mine especially."
Whatever he called it, it was as stiff as the boom on a ship. It stood straight up, slightly mobile in an upward-angled way. As she inspected him, he took her hand, then leaped and gasped as if surprised when he placed it on him. Covering the back of her hand with his, he put pressure, sliding her palm slowly up and down him, pushing forward with his hips. He groaned from it, a single deep rasp of breath.
Then took her by the shoulders and turned her around toward the bed. "You can look more later. I'm sick with waiting, Winnie. I'm having."
Indeed, they were both past ready. The backs of her legs hit the bed, and he pushed her. She fell, a delicious plunge through the air that lifted her stomach and ended on bouncing bedsprings. He lifted her skirt and pushed her legs apart at the same time, then got his knee between, on the bed, as he put his hand on her, rubbing between her legs, through her knickers. He rubbed for a moment, hard, a few times, then said, "Let's have done with these. Lift up, loov."
He stripped her knickers off, just like that, then lay over her, bringing his naked weight on top of her. Oh, his body. Free of his trousers, his penis fell heavily, nestling naturally into the sensitive crevice of her. They both leaped, tensed at the contact, caught their breaths in unison. She tried to relax again, though relaxing wasn't exactly what she wanted. She closed her eyes, then found her mouth kissed. Mick's mouth touched hers and she opened it to him, then his tongue penetrated this intimate place. Tentatively, she let her tongue push into his. He groaned, twisted his head, and went at her mouth harder, his body curving to her in rhythm.
It was the last she knew of sanity.
She knew the sliding of his body, a desire for the contact of skin that became a sliding everywhere and particularly a rhythmic grind of hips. His hands went into her clothes, owning the inside of them and her naked flesh … then the inside of her. He reached between them and did what he'd already done once tonight. He touched her inside.
"Aah!" she called out.
He made a low sound, something near a growl of satisfaction.
Their communion became the way it always was with them: rough—not for what either one did, but from sensation itself. She wanted whatever he would do with an intensity she could never foresee. Then, with each contact, the feeling was so powerful, it seemed to knock her senses flat. She jumped and gasped through his stroking her, his rubbing his face against her cheek, his chest against her breasts … his hips … his finger moving in her. She loved it, yet her own ears might have doubted she loved anything. Sounds came out, not unlike those from an animal crying out, beaten, torn apart.
They touched each other with relative gentleness, yet they each reacted as if from violence: bombarded with pleasure.
Mick flinched and let out a long, dragging rasp of air, when all he did was open her with his fingers, then draw the head of his penis down her—she shivered with enough power to shake the bed—to where he could guide it with his hand. He was shaking himself and muttering epithets as he planted himself into position, then with a thrust of his hips—one, single, swift, elegant deflowering—he buried himself deeply into her and they both buckled up into each other as if reacting to being scorched.
"Gaw-aw-awd bah-less-s-s," he breathed out. "Be still oh be still," he warned.
Winnie couldn't have been anything else. Her body had contracted around his, arms, legs, torso, the very inside of her. It felt like what it was: her flesh torn. A strong pinch, then a burning. She lay there, aware of the fullness of him. An alien, thick pressure, a weight that was surprising, yet satisfying, indescribably satisfying.
He began to unfold himself, move again. The burning lessened through friction. He withdrew then thrust again with the sure force of passion, a thrust then pull, each time flinching, his breath rasping with his deep bass groan. While each stroke made her dizzier, consciousness itself in question at the peak of full penetration. He pushed his hips, as if he couldn't get himself deep enough, yet each time the heat of him went so deeply into her body that it moved something inside, something unearthly and wonderful.
Winnie let instinct take control. She returned Mick's strength. She savored his power and her own. She loved his movement and the vigor of him that translated into a hardness not just inside her body but everywhere along him, in his muscle and sinew and bone, while she clutched this rock-solidness in his flexed shoulders, dug her fingers into them.
A fever took hold as if it flowed in her veins, as if she had grabbed hold of an electric wire charged with pleasure. Volts and volts of it. It coursed through her, leaving her helplessly connected to it while it traveled up her nerves. It gripped her—him, too, for he called out as he convulsed—and drove them into each other. Till it grounded, like lightning, down her spine into the low center of her, between her legs, shocks of bliss…
In the throbbing aftermath, she felt the ghost of Mick's masculinity inside her, as if it were thunder, rolls and rolls of it in the distance, continuous. It resounded through her veins, booming, as she lay exhausted, leveled by it. As if she were singed from the bolts of their contact. Struck. Love-struck. She understood the analogy all at once in more particular detail. Yet was bewildered to understand that it came from something so simple and seen daily: the skin and muscle and heat of Mick's male body.
Winnie had had no idea…
* * *
Mick pursued sexuality the same way he pursued everything else. For the rich, full joy of it and for all he was worth. He had a penchant for whispering wicked things in Winnie's ear. Oh, the horrible-delicious things he promised to do. Attacks, atrocities, on her modesty. And he liked her up against walls and straddling him on chairs and in his arms, rolling around in bed, not to mention once rolling around in the grass of the back garden in the middle of the night. Oh, the fine old time they had.
Lovers.
They were naked for most of the next three days. Milton became so put out with them, he went to his sister's. Mrs. Reed mysteriously didn't come at all. Mick and Winnie had the house to themselves. And they put their privacy to good use.
"Look," Winnie said one afternoon. She was exasperated. "Look at these pathetic things." She glowered down at her breasts. "So small they don't round even a little. They point."
There on the bed, Mick looked as if from politeness, since she'd asked him to. His eyes, when they rested on her naked body, darkened; they became the green of a still sea reflecting black clouds overhead, the sky closed off, a black green, deep in hue. These eyes didn't miss a spot on her. If she showed naked flesh, they found it and stared.
They looked directly at her breasts now. Then Mick smiled. "Here, you complain you aren't petite, Win, when you have two somethings that are petite and don't even appreciate them."
"Petite breasts! Who wants petite breasts!"
"I do." His hands took them, one in each, curving his fingers around them as he rubbed his thumbs over the nipples, back and forth slowly. Back—"They are the sweetest little things I ever laid eyes on"—then slowly forth again—"or mouth on." He bent his head.
He opened his lips over her breast, widening his mouth enough to take the whole of it. Inside, he tongued the nipple and the area around it, while her entire breast sat enveloped in the warm, slick softness of his mouth. Then he slid his lips back up the little mound out to tip, riding the breast as he closed his mouth, sucking as he went, then nipped the tip with his teeth. She shiv
ered. Both nipples puckered tightly.
"M-m-m," he said. He did the same trick to the other one, leaving both her breasts wet and cool to the air when he was finished, their nipples little hard pebbles of sexual awareness. "M-m-m," he said again. "Warm little dumplings, sweet as cream." And so it went. A man of many talents.
He could make his erect penis nod yes and no, on its own. He could move it left and right. Neither trick impressed her so much, though, as the fond relationship he had with his body that made him willing to entertain her with it.
"Imagine," she said. She took him into the grip of her fist, making Mick huff as he tried to maintain composure. "And only a moment ago you were half this size. How do you do it? How does it work?"
"H-h-ha-a-ah," he said at first. Then, "H-h-h-you do it." He grabbed her hand and pressed it to him, as if the pressure would relieve some of the delicacy of feeling. "You know how you're always worrying that you've done something you didn't mean to do?" he asked, then made a wicked laugh deep in his chest. "Well, this time, you have." He repeated, "You do it."
"I don't do anything." She teased him. She wanted him to say more.
He leaned his face into her neck and touched his tongue lightly to the spot where her jaw and ear and neck all met, then whispered, "You do. You make me hard." He bit the lobe of her ear. "Hard and long and thick as a post. You've been doing that to me for six weeks."
She laughed and lay back, happy. "I am strong," she said. It amazed and pleased her to think so. "Potent."
She was glad when he understood what she meant. "You are indeed. Heady stuff, Win. You are two-hundred proof, loovey." He whispered, "Do it some more."
* * *
They played like children. Adult children playing games all through the house. The time went by so quickly.
