He sat up, eyeing her, thoughtfully stroking her stomach. She looked miserable, sheepish and disappointed. “You trust me, don’t you?” he asked her, and she nodded immediately. “Sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
He found his trousers where he’d flung them and reached into the pocket for his knife. When he opened it, her eyes went wide, not with fear but puzzlement. He grinned. “No, I’m not going to stab you. Sexual inhibition isn’t a capital offense.”
“Is that what’s wrong with me? Sexual inhibition?”
He bent to kiss her navel. “Nothing’s wrong with you.”
The edge of the perennial garden bordered their grassy trysting place. Leaning, Sebastian cut one white lily off at the base of its long, thin stalk, then two of its neighbors. Snipping off the tips, he laid the flowers on her breasts, and a whimsical one pointing up between her thighs. She smiled, embarrassed but amused, and he laughed for the sheer pleasure of seeing her smile. Throwing his knife aside, he began to bend the stems all along their crisp stalks, top to bottom, snapping them in half-inch segments until he had three long, whippy branches.
“Give me your wrist.”
She waited a beat, then slowly extended her right hand. Circling her wrist with the end of one of the stalks, he tied a loop and knotted it.
“The other one.” Her hesitation was longer this time. Her eyes clouded with doubt. “You trust me,” he reminded her.
She gave him her other hand.
He made another loop, another knot, and with the third lily stalk he bound the two wrist-cuffs together.
“Why are you doing this?”
“To make you helpless. You have too much self-control, and I’m taking it away from you.”
He sat back on his heels, scanning what was available nearby. To his left, a thin wooden stake was holding up some tall, droopy flower, possibly a dahlia. The stake came out of the soft earth easily; he had more trouble pressing it back into the porous soil beyond Rachel’s head. But he managed, because where there was a will, there was a way.
She watched him in rapt silence all the while, missing nothing.
“Sit up for a second.” He took her tied wrists from her lap and kissed them, then lifted her arms over her head and slipped the juncture of her bound hands over the stake.
“Lie down.” She obeyed, and he said, “You’re caught now. You can’t move.” Of course she could; a couple of strong yanks, and her stalk-shackles would shred to pieces. It was the symbol that counted—which was why he stopped smiling then, and why he used a quiet, dangerously patient voice to tell her, “Don’t think of trying to get away from me, Rachel, because you can’t. You’re completely helpless. And you’re mine.”
Her dilating pupils darkened her luminous eyes; either she believed him or she was learning very quickly to play this game. Either way, his own excitement was mounting higher with every heartbeat.
He made himself comfortable beside her. He took note of her breathing—fast, uneven. When she licked her dry lips, he reached out and began to stroke them with his thumb, caressing the slippery insides, pressing lightly against her teeth. He found her tongue and rubbed it, just the tip, enjoying its nervous quiver.
He’d forgotten McCurdy’s strawberries; the little pail was under his coat. He found a fat one and took a bite out of it, letting the juice spurt into his mouth. He brought the rest of the berry to Rachel’s mouth and rubbed it against her parted lips until they were the same color as the juice. “Bite,” he commanded, and her white teeth closed around the succulent fruit. Their eyes met in a frank, erotic glance. He took a sticky, juicy kiss from her mouth while he dragged the wet berry over her chin and down her throat. She stopped breathing when he circled her breast with it and then the aureole of her nipple, not touching the peak until she groaned in frustration. “What do you want?” he whispered.
“You know . . .”
He took pity on her and sleeked the fruit across the turgid tip of her bosom, slowly, playing an intent, luxurious game, dyeing her nipple with the purple juice. She was trying to be quiet, trying not to moan. “That’s very nice. Very tasty-looking,” he said in the detached voice—a sham, since he was anything but detached. “What do you want, Rachel?”
“You know.”
“You must say it.”
She couldn’t—so he ate the strawberry and picked another, leisurely nibbled the tip, and went back to rubbing her with the slick, juicy rest of it. “What do you want?”
“Damn it,” she burst out with a short, helpless laugh. “I want—you—to kiss me.”
“Where?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Her arm muscles tensed and her fists clenched; she looked as impotent and incapable of escaping as he’d told her she was.
“Where?”
“Oh, God,” she said to the sky.
“Where?”
“My—breast!”
Good thing she’d capitulated, because he couldn’t have held out much longer—he had to taste her. Bending, he tongued the sticky liquid off her hot skin, taking long, slow licks, skirting her nipple, gradually narrowing the circle. He took it suddenly, suckled it strongly, and she gave a low, hoarse cry, her body stretching, straining. He sucked harder, until she couldn’t stand any more. When he touched her between her legs, she bucked in surprise and then pressed upward with her hips, wanting more.
He moved down over her, fluffing her soft hair with his palm, but giving her nothing, tantalizing her. He picked another berry from the pail. There were so many things he could do to her now. She was panting, her eyes slightly glazed, watching him intently. She jerked whenever he touched her.
“What would you like now?” She rolled her head from side to side. “Tell me,” he said with manufactured menace, “or I swear I’ll tie your legs apart.”
She gave a tortured whimper, biting her lips. “I want you.”
“You want me to what?”
“Please . . .”
“Please what?”
But she couldn’t say any of the words he’d taught her for what she wanted now.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” he said threateningly, leaning over her until they were mouth to mouth. While he spoke, he skimmed his finger down the moist crease of her sex, making her suck in her breath through her teeth. “I want to put my cock inside you very slowly. Feel your heat. Feel you stretch and tighten around me. I want to feel the beat of your pulse deep inside. I want to see your face when you lose control—and you will lose control. And when you come, Rachel, I want to hear you cry out my name.”
Two spots of bright pink color stained her cheeks. She couldn’t catch her breath. He rested his finger over the tight, swollen nub of her sex just to let her know he knew where it was. “What do you want?”
“I want you to touch me,” she ground out through her teeth. “There. Now. Do it.”
He smiled. “Yes,” he said, and began to make gentle, insistent circles around her little kernel, listening to her choked-off cries. “Don’t move. Don’t think of moving. You’re at my mercy, and I don’t have any mercy. And I’m not going to stop.”
His gruff threats changed gradually until he was grating love words in her ear and saying, “Now. Now. Now,” as desperate for her release as she was. They were striving together, both panting, straining. He took her fruit-stained mouth in a rough, hungry-kiss, and when he pulled away she followed, arching up with her neck and shoulders for more, trying to bite his lips. He kissed her again, again, plunging with his tongue in time with the remorseless caress of his fingers. All at once she drew in a harsh breath and went rigid.
He could feel the edge nearing for her as surely as if it were his edge, too. Her eyes went wide with surprise for an instant before she shut them tight, grimacing, jaws clenching to hold back a high, ragged cry. Gentling his touch, he dipped into her and felt the warm, slow pursing of her secret flesh. He had to kiss her, even though her mouth was distorted in a grimace of pure, shocking pleasure.
&nb
sp; His chest ached. He pressed his cheek next to hers and called her his love, his dear. By slow degrees, her body softened. He calmed her with his hand while a strange and altogether new peace stole over him. His own body throbbed with wanting her, but he lay still and watched a tear squeeze past her closed eyelashes and glide down her flushed temple into her hair. Another one followed, and he traced its path with his finger. He could smell her skin, and the crushed grass under her body, and the dying scent of flowers. He found his knife, and used it to cut her flower-stalk bonds. Her arms went limp, collapsing on the ground over her head.
He kissed the side of her breast, her armpit, the warm skin inside her elbow. Her breathing had become deep and even; she’d stopped crying, but she wouldn’t look at him and he couldn’t quite fathom her mood. “Darling,” he said, molding her breast in his hand.
“So . . .” she breathed. But then she said no more, and he began to think she’d only sighed.
“What are you thinking? Talk to me.”
She heaved another deep sigh. Of satisfaction, he hoped, but he was afraid he heard sadness in it, too. At last she turned her face to his. “Thank you,” she said.
He smiled, trying to make her smile back. “The pleasure was mine.” The expression in her eyes troubled him. “Are you sad? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Hurt me?” She shook her head slowly.
“What, then?”
“I’m not sad. How could I be?”
She was lying, he knew it. “What do you think I’ve taken from you?”
“Nothing. You’ve given me a beautiful gift. The most generous gift.”
“Rachel.” He felt confused, disappointed. “I would do anything not to hurt you.”
“But you haven’t.”
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing.” She turned, reaching for him. “Nothing.”
He closed his eyes, needing her to touch him. He felt her lips brush his cheek, the warm fan of her breath. “Tell me you’re happy.”
“I am.” She lifted her arms and slipped them around his neck.
“Tell me . . .” Tell me you love me, he thought, but he didn’t say that. Too many lovers had said it to him, at this precise moment. He knew how cheap it was, and how easy the answer. “I wish you could talk to me,” he said instead. “I know why it’s hard for you, but I wish you could. It’s something we shall have to work on.”
Her straight, sweet mouth softened at the corners. “Will we work on it?”
“Yes,” he said positively. “We will.”
She touched his shoulder, the hollow of his throat. “I wonder for how long,” he thought she murmured. Before he could answer, she drew him down, embracing him. “I would like to tell you what that felt like—what you did to me. But I don’t have any words. I don’t think anyone could describe it.”
“Many have tried,” he said, smiling determinedly.
“No—hopeless—there aren’t any words. But I could show you. I’d like to show you.”
An inkling of the cause of her wistfulness glimmered at the corners of his consciousness, but when he tried, he couldn’t catch it; like a faint, faraway star, he couldn’t see it when he looked at it directly. Her warm lips were enticing him, her hands stroking him to life. She kissed her own tears from his lips, and his mind began to shred at the edges. He would think about it later, he told himself, turning and turning with her in the sweet-smelling grass.
XVII
PLYMOUTH SOUND was alive with boats, so many that the dark blue water served as a mere backdrop, a recessive frame for the colorful tapestry of white sails, black masts, and bright red chimney stacks. Rachel and Sebastian were peering at the ships through side-by-side telescopes mounted on a stone wall at the end of the Hoe, a popular promenade on a headland overlooking the bay.
“Look at that one,” Sebastian told her, pointing. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Which?”
“Just behind the second blue buoy, almost—”
“The barkentine?”
“Barkentine? Is that what it is?”
“The one with three masts? Yes, I think so. If it had two, it would be a brigantine.” Straightening, she glanced at him. He was staring at her as if she’d just said something remarkable, like the names of all the constellations in alphabetical order. She smiled, shrugged. “I read an encyclopedia once. Abridged,” she added when he looked amazed. “It’s left me with a peculiar expertise in any number of obscure subjects.”
“Has it?”
“Yes, it has.” She didn’t say so, but as a matter of fact she could name the constellations, although not in alphabetical order.
A burst of the bracing wind pushed at her, stinging her cheeks and making her eyes water; she grabbed her hat to keep it from blowing off. Gulls swooped, screaming, for the bits of bread an elderly couple nearby was tossing over the low stone wall. Beyond the ships, beyond the green slopes of Mt. Edgcumbe, a cloudless sky met the endless blue line of the Channel at the knife-edge of the horizon. It was a perfect day, the kind Rachel had often dreamt of in prison, a day so achingly beautiful it gave her a hurtful, too-full feeling in the chest, and had her more than once on the brink of tears.
Sebastian turned back toward the Sound, shading his eyes with his hand. The sea breeze blew his hair straight back from his forehead and whipped the two ends of his wine-colored necktie over his shoulder. His profile against the stark azure sky was sharp, hard, and indescribably handsome. She loved the haughty angle of his aristocratic nose, the clean line of his jaw, the way his voluptuous mouth could curve in a smile of unbearable sweetness just for her. He turned his head and looked at her then, and for the instant their gazes held, she saw softness in his sea-colored eyes, then awareness, then a flare of pure sensual anticipation.
She looked away first, flushing. He slipped his hand under her arm and pressed her to his side, oblivious to bystanders. She felt the back of his hand against her breast for a half second before he let her go. “Shall we find a place to have lunch?” he asked lightly. In a softer voice he added, “Or shall we go back to the Octagon?”
“Lunch,” she answered, but not very forcefully. Returning to their hotel room at one o’clock in the afternoon would be for only one purpose. Tempting as it was, she couldn’t get past a notion that she ought to be opposed to such daytime dalliances. She was a fallen woman with that most onerous of burdens, at least according to her lover: a middle-class conscience.
“Lunch,” he said, with mock wistfulness, and they began to amble up the grassy hill, away from the sea. The Hoe was Plymouth’s finest amenity, a spacious promontory overlooking the Sound, with flower-lined walks and delightful gardens, and views of the estuary reaching from Mill Bay to Sutton Pool. To see the sky and the ocean like this, great gulps of the wide world in vistas that stretched literally for miles—it was almost too much. It was another of Sebastian’s gifts, this clandestine three-day escape from Lynton and everyone who knew them, but sometimes Rachel felt she needed his hand to anchor her to the ground. The opportunity to stare at dozens, hundreds of people was wonderful, too, but even more dizzying. She’d been doing it for the better part of two days, and the novelty hadn’t worn off. Children in particular fascinated her; for nearly an hour this morning she’d watched, engrossed, while a ragtag group of boys sailed toy boats and played fox-and-geese around a fish pond in the Hoe. What Sebastian thought of her preoccupation she couldn’t tell, but he’d indulged her in it without impatience or complaint. A most generous gift.
They found a pretty eating house in Alfred Street, from whose second-story window they could see the people on the promenade and smell the sea. Sebastian ordered prawns and mussels with lemon and butter, a creamy chowder made with clams and succulent oysters, two salads, one with tomatoes and the other with watercress and endive, a whole loaf of bread and a crock of Devon butter, fresh blueberry tarts still hot from the oven, a platter of cut melons and fruit with a dish of whipped cream in the center—
> “Stop!” Rachel protested. “There’s no more room on the table.” Much less in her stomach.
Unperturbed, Sebastian refilled her glass from a bottle of Bordeaux wine and clinked glasses in a silent toast. “We might be hungry again later. We’re not in a hurry, are we? Unless you want to go now—there’s a band concert in the Esplanade at three o’clock; we could go and hear it if you like.”
“I might have said yes half an hour ago, but now I can’t move. Anyway, this is lovely, isn’t it?” She gestured toward their open window, and the dim, cool, nearly empty restaurant at their backs. “I think I could sit here all day.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
“No, they close at two-thirty,” she reminded him.
He sent her a bland look. “We won’t worry about that.”
“Oh.” He must have given money to the proprietor. It was something she’d expect of Lord D’Aubrey, but for the last two days he’d been Mr. James Hammond, and she was Mrs. Hammond. “Why Hammond?” she’d whispered when he’d registered at the Octagon. Because his name was Sebastian James Ostley Selborne-Hammond Verlaine. Did she like any of those better? Hammond was fine, she’d said from the corner of her mouth, and he’d smiled back conspiratorially.
But privately, the need to lie distressed her, even though she knew the subterfuge was for her protection, not his. And although it was foolish, she couldn’t help wondering how many times, in how many other hotels, he’d signed the registry for “Mr. and Mrs. Hammond.”
“Would you like to go on a picnic tomorrow?” he asked, interrupting her reverie. “There’s a beach at Stonehouse Pool. Or we could take the ferry to Cremill. We might even go for a swim if it’s fair.”
“But we have no bathing costumes.”
“We’ll buy them.”
“Not on Sunday.
“Ah, Sunday. Well, then, we’ll go tonight. In the nude.”
She laughed at him—although she considered it highly likely that he wasn’t joking. “I’ve never swum in the sea before. Once when I was a child my family went to Lyme on a holiday, but it rained every day and we never bathed. It was a bitter disappointment.” He touched her hand in sympathy. “Tell me about your travels,” she urged, gazing out at the ships in the bay. “I’ve been to London once, but I was twelve and my memories are very childish. Have you been everywhere?”
Patricia Gaffney - [Wyckerley 02] Page 26
