by Susan Ward
An aroused gasp floated through her parted lips, a laugh, and then a chide. “I don’t think when you made that threat that feeding me berries and ravishing what’s left of my flesh was what you contemplated.”
When she lifted her face to him, he was sure his eyes were glowing shamelessly. His laughter made her jiggle atop of him like isinglass jelly. “I am afraid to disappoint you, but this is exactly what I contemplated. It’s why I tolerated your disobedience without stopping it. It is why I always order you in a tone I know will stir your temper and disobedience. I savor the punishment even when it’s only a pleasure in my mind.”
Merry face went crimson. She took a handful of berries from the bowl and shoved them in his mouth before Varian could turn his face away. “You are an insufferable man. You can either incite or distract me to get what you want.”
He caught her face and passed from his teeth into her mouth one berry, not crushed, he’d caught from the handful in her tiny fingers. “Don’t swallow it unless I tell you,” he warned on a husky growl.
She was laughing, even while he could tell the deeper moves of his body was making her boil. He sensed Merry could feel the wash of humor in him and, even in building pleasure, didn’t trust the presence of it in him. Even in chaotic passion, at times she could not push away the compulsion to be silly, and the mischievous matching that occurred to him were often a scandalous shock to her.
A little lump rose in the delicate curve of her face as she tuck the berry into her cheek, and he watched as her lids drifted closed. Varian was enthralled by the dramatically altering lines of her delicate features as she was claimed by the shudders within her surging as vibrations against his touch. Her building pleasure sent her head into slow rolls.
All his senses slept, except the no longer patient ones, as each of her shudders and whimpers rocketing his blood. Her convulsive intakes of air melted into the faint breathes that followed. Lost in the fierce need of his body, he was about to give way to the release, when at once she stopped him by pressing her hands on his shoulders.
She demanded on berry-in-cheek muffled voice, “Why can’t I swallow the berry?”
In her wide doe eyes above him, suspicion mingled in her questioning gaze with a mirth driven eagerness to find out. Fighting back a laugh, Varian shook his head on the pillow in blissful agony and was astounded by the want in him to move from completion back to play.
As his kisses roamed upward, shoulders to neck to chin to lips, he commanded huskily, “Don’t swallow the berry. Kiss me instead.”
Merry’s face flashed with confusion, as though the berry and the kiss at once were impossibility. He brought her lips to his, guiding her with an erotic move of his mouth to part her lips. His tongue swirled with the twirls of hers, touching hers, tracing the under line of her teeth, and then the berry before his kiss left her. Her confusion melted into excited wonder.
Holding her face in sticky fingers, Varian whispered, “Don’t swallow or I will stop. Don’t crush it or I will stop. Don’t.”
Her sparkling eyes widened, as she promised, “I won’t, Varian.”
He felt a shudder sweep down his limbs. She only spoke his name, in that breathy way, when her blood was passion hot, knowing the way she said it—almost air—excited him madly. He caught her writhing hips to gentle her, surprising himself in wanting to prolong the play, wanting to luxuriate in the shivers it was sending through his senses by waiting to give in to the demands of his flesh.
“Slowly or you will crush it,” he urged on a ragged whisper.
He kissed every part of her face, the smear of berries heated and blending with her own sweet spice, the taste of her running from his lips to lions. Her skin was a satiny smoothness that sipped his touch and the glide of his tongue. She feverishly offered her body. Her hair was a tumbling web around them, and her laughter a wayward spirit floated in spurts between pants and pleas, making his arousal more brilliant.
Later, her limbs a languorous band around his, she floated like a feather down across his passion-damp muscles, giggled once, and lifted suspicious eyes. Muffled, she asked, “Can I swallow the berry now, you insufferable man?”
He’d been lying there, lost in the aftermath of his own rapture, had forgotten about the berry, and was startled she still had it.
Fighting back laughter, Varian whispered, “Let me have the berry, Little One.” He spread his fingers across her cheeks to lower her face to his.
Capturing her lips, his seeking kiss found and pulled the berry between his even white teeth, held it for a moment before Merry’s widening eyes so she could see its perfect shape, then he deliberately savored the swallowing like a man feasting on the most delicious fare. His eyes glowing in rakish approval into her fascinated gaze, he announced on a pleased whisper, “I have cured you of your proclivity toward disobedience and, as I suspected all along, this was the most satisfying way for us both.”
Before he could stop her, Merry sprang from the bed. Varian watched her scamper away, pink-cheeked and outraged.
Merry snatched from the floor his shirt and, in graceful quickness, pulled it on. Easing onto his side, Varian propped on an elbow, cheek in palm as he watched the struggle on her face being waged between mirth and wanting to be indignant with him.
Which emotion would win? He suspected he failed dismally at trying to look contrite, since Merry stood a pretty statue of flushed features and hands on hips encased in his partially, crookedly button shirt.
In laughing annoyance, she exclaimed, “You are a wicked man to have cured me. My disobedience is my only protection against you.”
The poor dainty creature was most probably right, he thought. As much as he was enjoying this, Varian was a touch ashamed of himself for his greedy consumption of her newly shared body and emotions. And there was no excuse for his repeated compulsion to shock her youthful modesty with his conduct. There were times she floated back and forth between being a frustrated martyr not knowing what to do about him, and a woman claimed in laughing naughtiness not endeavoring to figure it out.
She was the picture of a martyr at this juncture. That made it easier to look remorseful this attempt. “If I promise not to be wicked will you come back?” he asked.
Merry’s hair danced as she gave a determined shake. Fighting his own laughter, straight-faced he inquired, “If I promise to be wicked will you come back?”
Martyr gone. Merry exploded into laughter, her hair puffing around her like a rapidly swelling storm cloud. Saucy and obstinate, she shook her head with greater flurry because he knew his eyes were glowing in that way she described as a demon.
She chided obstinately, “I can’t come back. I am without armor to battle you. You seemed not to possess a proclivity to stop doing this.”
Varian whispered, “Come here, Merry.” He noted the want and the caution in her wide bluebell eyes. “You have the protection of my anatomy.”
Merry frowned, remained where she was, and stared at him. It took a moment for her puzzlement over what he meant, to slip into understanding, leaving her red faced with embarrassment.
Watching her, his laughter refused containment. He hoped she understood it was the bliss she gave to him that prompted these uncharacteristic stirrings of his humor. It would be unpardonable, as proud as she was, if she thought, even for a moment, he was laughing at her instead of from the joy of being with her.
His rolling waves of mirth made Merry stop and stare at Varian. His humor was in total ownership of him and was a much fuller, happier display than she had ever seen before. Each unsuppressed mood rising to the surface of him only made him more desperately appealing as a man. These brilliant evidences confirmed to her that concealed within all those many controls and manipulations he was, in his center, the man she knew him to be.
He was in truth Varian not Morgan. He could not sparkle like this if it were false. Every possession, whether passion, humor, tenderness, affection—and even his quieter states—in the too brief moments of thei
r unbound custody of him, brought to Merry a sense of wonder that Varian subdued for almost all moments of his life this vast wealth of who he was.
The need for tempering what he locked inside was a tragically made endeavor. Merry wondered if it were a learned skill, or a part of his character, or simply part of the protection of himself on this ship. Varian knew how to show only what he wanted to show, and he showed too little of this wealth within him. If she had her way, his inner being would be running loose, just as he was now, in all moments he breathed.
Merry’s eyes ran the wonderfully nonsensical picture he made. Varian was reclined on his side amid a spray of crushed berries on the sheets, strongly molded cheek resting in the heel of his hand, watching her with dancing black eyes. The relaxed posture of his body was still neat and imposing. He somehow remained noble amid this fit of her delirium that dragged him along as well.
In her mind rose a picture of her less than dignified scurry. It brought to her the striking awareness that her hours with him only seemed to bring about an exaggeration of her own nature. Her emotions that always ran too wildly, somehow were running even more wildly. She burned for him, inside and out, in every mood, in every breath. And the burn only seemed to be building.
Loving Varian was like existing too close to a fire, making every emotion flaming in the rising. Too close, and yet so euphoric, till the thought to move back was never the urge, the urge was only to move closer to him.
In the midst of their laughter, a sudden shock sobered Merry as a thought floated through her mind. She was alone with a naked man, not even by the proper rights of him being her husband, a man only partially covered by blankets, and alarm wasn’t ringing. It should have been a deafening chorus from the moment she’d climbed into his bed.
Their passionate hours had passed in raging spells of frolicking eagerness, unclouded by even a mild hint of shame over her wanton behavior. Shame at some moment, logically, should have visited her during some of the things she’d done. She’d blushed a thousand times, she was sure, but never once did she blush in shame of what she was doing. That shame had been in total absence was a sobering thought. Her laughter melted downward, then was gone.
Varian’s own mirth quieted when he noted the flickers of distress in Merry’s eyes. She said on an unsteady voice, “There must be a wicked vein in my character that urges me always to be improper in all things. I am not behaving in a proper manner. I am wild even in this. It’s little wonder I have always been a disappointment to my father.”
In a low tone that had a tender quality to it, he said, “Every part of you is a treasure to me, Merry. There is not a thing about you I would wish differently. You are perfection.” And then with just a hint of humor, because humor always lessened her unease, he added, “I am wrong. You are too far from me. That is something I wish differently.”
Merry realized how foolish she must look to Varian, standing here so discomposed by their naughtiness. Aware she had lowered her eyes to stare at her hands, a pathetic habit of self-protection she hated, she took in a ragged breath and lifted her glance to those eyes she could feel watching her. What she found on Varian’s face made her jitteriness over meeting his gaze seem only a thing of glaring nonsense.
Of all the things she had learned about Varian, what had surprised her the most was that there was in him a deep sensitivity that owned his fluid gentleness. Even though he was a mature man, boldly sure of himself and at ease in the world, he was aware she was less sure, less at ease. He was always patient, sympathetic, and infinitely gentle with her.
Appalled by her conduct and humiliated by her childish lack of composure over it, Merry climbed atop the blankets of that goliath bed, close but not touching that goliath man as she perched on knees with her bottom on heels. Facing Varian, she settled in a spot still warmed by his legs.
He pulled cross legged beneath the sheets in a pose she recognized as more resembling her than his of relaxed sophistication, which was the unconscious natural arrangement of his body. The gesture gave to her a second reminder of the great difference there was between them in the people they were.
Twice her eyes strayed expectantly over him, but for some reason he didn’t speak. So she floated her gaze to the window and then came back. Then it occurred to Merry his silence, like the posture of his body, was deliberate.
He had proven over the months he possessed an amazing ability to perceive how her emotions functioned, and the kindness to respond as she needed. She saw its evidence here as he eased back just the right degree from her, knowing she needed him to, knowing not to touch her, knowing to give her time to step forward with her thoughts so she wouldn’t be more embarrassed by her discomposure. She now understood he had reacted in precision to her every requirement of self from her first night here. In all moments since they’d met, he moved in perfect concert with her. Even that was a necessary need of who she was Varian had perceived first.
With what could have been a devastating vulnerability in being read so flawlessly, fate had let it walk held in hand in the blessing that Varian was a man of soul deep kindness and good. If he had possessed this power to read her, as a different man, she would have found herself seduced her first night here.
She knew now why Morgan had never been, in any moment, anything she had ever expected him to be. Morgan was no more a part of Varian than the shirts he wore. Varian was a tender man, inside and out.
For a moment, Merry was exasperated with her own difficulty of person. As she inspected the knit of her fingers, resting on her lap, she wondered what he made of her. Wondered how this miraculous man could live fully concealed beneath a guise that was all he was not. Wondered why such a man would go to so great of an effort to have her. And, she wondered what to say to him that he wouldn’t find foolish, after surely having said a lot that must have sounded foolish to him.
In spite of a thousand reasons for it not to happen, they were here, together, loving each other. Her want of him was no great mystery. She could not begin to unravel the mystery of Varian’s want of her.
Opting for safety, Merry ventured to say lightly, “I am a vexing nuisance. You would wish that differently about me.”
Cautiously, she lifted her eyes to meet those black orbs that were mature and worldly. Varian’s half smile was reassuring, not the soulless twist of a demon, but with the warmth of a man richly generous of heart.
“The part of you that makes you a vexing nuisance is the part of you I cherish most, Merry,” he said.
Merry’s eyes widened, by way of giving response, but she paused, concentrating on her finger as she toyed with wayward particles of berries, since she hadn’t a clue what part of her that was or why any man would cherish it. She took note of the ruin she’d made of the bedding, and she wondered if she dared asked him to explain that comment. That she debated at all, instead of voicing a logical response, made her feel only more pathetically young and unsure.
Not willing to abandon all carefulness within herself just yet, she pressed a piece of berry until it stuck on the tip of her finger and held it before his black eyes. “The vexing nuisance part of me is that part that just ruined your bedding,” she whispered. “Why would any man cherish that?”
He caught her finger, and Merry watched him slowly bring it to his mouth, kiss it once in the gentlest of touch, and the berry was gone. “That part of you brought you to me. I will always cherish it the most.”
Taking her finger back, she focused on the spot where he kissed. Blushing, she remarked, “It is also the part of me that makes me a shameful girl in your bed. It was kind of you not to point that out, since I am not very comfortable with my shamefulness at this moment.”
This time Varian had no choice but to laugh. She was so dear to him in every way, even now, tragically appalled with herself, not out of regret, but only because she wasn’t regretting behaving shamefully. It would have been a harsh intrusion in this sheer ecstasy of her, if she were regretting him.
The hoverin
g smile on Merry’s lips told him she was starting to feel less unsure within herself. “Come back to me, Little One. I am just going to hold you.”
With carefully placed touch, Varian eased her to him until she sat a little curled ball with her back against his chest. Merry tilted her head as his lips moved in her curls, light touches bent on comfort, nothing more.
She became conscious there had been tension in her body before by how it felt now easing back into his chest. She lay her face turned up, bathed by his kisses and the glide of his fingertips on her arms.
Merry’s voice beneath him was an amused, though confused, whisper, “We are a mismatched picture in puzzle in every way. The only not mismatched piece between us, as far as I can see, is we are both shameful.”
“Oh, Merry, you see all things as either black or white. You don’t see shades of gray. We are very alike in the ways that matter. I don’t think of either of us as shameful,” he whispered, hearing the smile in his voice. “I think of us as perfectly matched and fortunate. Too few people ever share what we share in passion. Stop thinking badly of yourself over something that is a treasure we are fortunate enough to share.”
Merry looked down at his arms relaxed around her, fascinated by the well-formed muscles with their hairs so different from the soft spray on her own pale flesh. His hands went to her shoulders, his touch through her shirt reminding her that her desire for him breathed in her flesh and never slept. It quieted. But it never slept. It danced through her in this moment, when she wanted only to be calm with him.
“A treasure? We are behaving gluttonous in this. Merry is gluttonous. Varian is gluttonous...” she gave a little laugh. “... I think Morgan was the only one, of the three of us, with any proper restraint of conduct.”
As serious as her mood was, she laughed after that, but he fought his own laughter because in trying to make logic of who he was, she had separated him into two beings, Morgan and Varian. It worried him she didn’t understand there was no complete separation ever possible. Some of the less appealing parts of him were merely bound to him by necessity. Some of the other less appealing parts, she discounted, were really him.
