by Lisa Cach
She pulled his face into her neck, leaving her mouth free. He chewed gently at the spot where her neck met shoulder, and against her thigh she felt the turgid length of his arousal. His finger dipped into her once again, pushing farther, and she lifted her hips against his hand even as her passage tightened against this unfamiliar entry.
“Relax,” he said softly, and rubbed the heel of his hand against her mound.
She did her best to obey, and he slid his finger deeper within her, then began stroking her somewhere inside, she could not tell where, for the shimmering sensations he produced seemed to come from everywhere at once. With each stroke she only wanted more, and heard herself moaning softly in entreaty.
“Nathaniel,” she pleaded.
He withdrew his hand, and nudged her thighs. She opened them willingly to him, and he rolled over on top of her, forcing her legs wider with the width of his body. She felt him guide himself to her, and then a stretching as the broad tip of him entered her. His thumb played against her folds as he slid within her, but even that pleasure could not keep her from feeling the gritty discomfort of his entry. He moved slightly in and out, sliding deeper with each thrust. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him home with one hard thrust, a cry of pain escaping her throat.
He lay still, his hips pressed against hers. She could feel the throb of his pulse where his flesh met the tight opening to her, as if his very heart were connected to her in this embrace. He began to move again, thrusting slowly and deeply, then more quickly. He propped both hands beside her, keeping the weight of his chest off her.
The pleasure she had felt earlier was lost with his entry, and she could not regain it. With each thrust home the breath was forced from her, and she listened through her pain to the sounds she made and to the wet slaps when their sweaty bodies met. The discomfort had not lessened, and she wished it were over. From some deep instinctual wellspring of knowing she clenched her interior muscles despite the pain, squeezing him when he thrust inside her, hoping to finish this.
His movements slowed and he groaned out her name, “Valerian . . .” He thrust once more, and then froze in his pose above her, his body jerking. She moved her hips slightly, and he grasped them with one hand, stilling her. “Do not,” he gasped.
All at once the tension left his body, and he collapsed atop her, her legs still spread wide, knees raised above his thighs. She could feel her muscles trembling with weakness, but did not ask him to move.
It had been gritty and painful, but she had expected that for the first time. She liked the weight of him on her, the feel of his chest hair against her breasts. She stroked the back of his head, combing out the damp tendrils of hair with her fingers. There was something satisfying in having this large man lying weak as a baby upon her, brought to this state by her.
“I am crushing you,” he said, and rolled off her, his half-turgid manhood stinging as it slid from her. He lay on his back, and pulled her against his side. She lay her head on his shoulder, and almost timidly laid her leg over his, still feeling weak. He held her there with one arm around her, his hand stroking her arm. She let her fingers play with the hair on his chest and rub softly against his flat nipple.
“It will be better next time, I promise you,” he said quietly, and she thought she heard a trace of sheepishness in his voice.
“I knew it would hurt the first time. It was not as bad as I had expected.”
He grunted at that, then pulled her closer and kissed her forehead. She lay within his arm, enjoying this new contact between naked bodies, so much warmer and smoother than she had imagined, her flesh giving way to his. There was comfort in feeling bare skin against skin.
A few minutes later his hold on her began to loosen, and then his arm dropped from around her shoulder. His breathing deepened, and she raised her head. “Nathaniel?” He gave no answer.
She put her head back down and tried to snuggle closer, but the comfort of his presence had lessened with his descent into sleep. Even naked next to him, she began to feel alone now. With each of his deep breaths, her sense of isolation grew, her sadness creeping back.
She was tempted to wake him, but if she did she might tell him about Aunt Theresa, and she did not know if that was something she wanted to do. Instead, she slid from the bed and found her chemise, dressing in the dark. She stood on one leg to put on her shoe, her muscles quivering like they had after riding Nathaniel’s horse, feeling a soreness where he had been inside her.
She looked back at him, a faint shape in the bed. Her emotions were in too great a welter for her to know what she felt about him at this moment. She let the question pass, to be analyzed beyond recognition at some later time. She climbed through the window, dropped onto the ground, and retreated to the forest.
Chapter Twelve
Nathaniel awoke a few minutes after Valerian’s departure. The half-smile on his lips faded as he realized he was alone in his bed. The sheets where Valerian had lain were still warm.
“Valerian?”
Silence was his answer. He threw back the covers and walked naked to check the chair by the fire. “Valerian?”
A draft from the window sent goose bumps up his arms. He went and leant out into the night, searching the shadowed landscape for some sign of her. He heard the rustling of leaves in the wind and saw the black silhouetted branches moving against the sky, but nothing more.
“Damn,” he cursed under his breath. It was an unpleasant experience to have been left while sleeping, and a new one.
He closed the window and went back to his bed, punching up the pillows with unnecessary vigor. The action did little to make up for the absence of Valerian’s warm and plush body between his sheets.
Tomorrow he would find the little she-devil and make her explain herself, and then he would give her the proper bedding he would have bestowed if she had stayed. He had not been surprised to find she was a virgin, and had intended to love her more gently, but the feel of her body finally beneath him had driven him beyond restraint. It was not as bad as I had expected, she had said. He snorted in disgust.
As he lay in the dark, unable to sleep for thoughts of how poorly he had acquitted himself, it occurred to him to wonder what had made her come to him. He considered asking her when next they met, but then thought better of it. Best not to look a gift horse in the mouth, as they say.
At breakfast he was still mulling over that question when a bleary-eyed Paul came in and collapsed into a chair across the table.
“Late night?” Nathaniel asked.
Paul grunted and scrubbed at his eyes. “Late enough. If I were not such a good friend to you I certainly would not have dragged myself out of bed.”
Nathaniel cocked an eyebrow. “And how, pray tell, does your lovely countenance at my breakfast table prove your friendship? I can think of far more cheering sights.”
“I think you should be warned. Your black-haired healer is a cock snatcher.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She turned into an owl and snatched Eddie the blacksmith’s cock.”
He laughed: It was too ludicrous, even for Paul. “Did she hang from his crotch, wings flapping against his legs as she chewed it off? And I suppose she took it home and roasted it with a bit of pepper for her supper.”
“I would not laugh if I were you. You may be next. Has she shown signs of coveting your manhood?”
“I do not know that that is any of your affair,” Nathaniel said primly.
Paul leant forward, his arms on the table, his red eyes glazed and intent. “This is a serious matter. The boy is a wreck. He will show no one the wound, and but huddles in a corner of the smithy. He says the iron around him will ward off further attacks.”
“Well, she has what she wants. Why would she come back? Unless he has another hidden in his breeches.”
Paul thumped his hand upon the table. “There is no reasoning with you! If she would steal the cock of this man, what will stop her from doing it to you? You
are playing with fire, Nathaniel. I would not see you burned.”
“I thought you said it was an owl I should beware of,” Nathaniel said, considering the possibility that despite the early hour his friend might be drunk.
Paul narrowed his eyes. “If she comes to your bed, search her body for witch marks and signs of the devil.”
“Like hooves, perhaps, where her feet should be?”
“Look for moles, Nathaniel, where she suckles her familiars. Prick her with a pin, and see if she bleeds the red blood of a mortal.”
“ ‘Tis not a pin with which any sane man would wish to prick her.” He did not add that there was a small smear upon his sheets to prove she bled as red a blood as himself.
“God’s foot, Nathaniel, will you not take this seriously?”
He finally lost his good humor. “Take seriously the superstitious conjectures of a drunken imagination? Why should I? What I do take seriously, and indeed am most concerned about, is how quickly you have slipped from being a man of reason to one indiscernible in thought from the ignorant, dung-brained villagers with whom you drink. That does concern me most sincerely. There are no witches, Paul, and you are a fool to believe there are.”
“If you will not listen to me on behalf of yourself, then at least be aware that the townsfolk grow increasingly distrustful of her.”
He went cold at that. “Explain.”
“The mood is turning against her and her aunt.”
They were neither of them too young to remember the gruesome ends that women found guilty of witchcraft had met in the not-so-distant past. “They will not harm her,” Nathaniel stated, his voice filled with both menace and determination.
“I have heard no plans to do so,” Paul admitted. His tone became softer. “Do not listen to me about Valerian’s nature, if you will not, but at least pay attention to the threat of scandal. What will your family say if they hear you are caught up with a local witch, whether she is one or not? Will they be pleased to hear you have the citizenry of your town set entirely against you? They will hardly think you have mended your ways.”
“I will set this out for you a final time, Paul. One: My family will hear nothing of what I do in this piddling backwater. Two: They do not care for the gossip of farmers. Three: Valerian is not the manipulator that Laetitia was, if that is what you are trying to imply, and there is no family that will be brought to ruin because of any involvement I may choose to have with her. And four: I do not have to explain myself to you.”
“And you would not have, unless you knew I was right.”
They glared at each other for a long minute, and then Nathaniel sighed. “We are neither of us going to convince the other.”
Paul gave a crooked smile. “Which is not to say that we will stop trying.” He rubbed his temples. “Agh. This has done nothing for my head.”
“You enjoy spending your time at that inn. I think you fancy you would have been happier born the son of a sheepherder.”
“Maybe. Then I would not have had the job of protecting the good name of such a pig-headed friend.”
“I am sure you would have found yourself a similar companion to attempt to correct. You seem unable to stay out of affairs that do not concern you.”
“Aunt Theresa, are you certain you are up to this?”
“I will not be treated as an invalid. I am not on my death bed yet, you know.”
“But it is such a miserable morning.”
Theresa fastened her cloak at her throat, and lifted the hood of the woolen garment up over her head. “And it is not likely to get any less so for us standing here discussing it.” She paused, and reached out to cup Valerian’s cheek in her hand. “Do not worry so, child. It will do nothing to hasten my end, and you know I could never be confined indoors, just as you could not.”
“I know.” Valerian bit her lip, restraining herself from saying more. She wanted to wrap her aunt in blankets and hold her until she was well again.
“I understand how difficult it is to sit by and do nothing,” Theresa said, “But that is what I ask of you. You will be doing me the greatest of favors by allowing me to follow the course I choose.”
“You want me to pretend that nothing is wrong, that nothing has changed?”
“For a little while yet, in action if not in thought. Soon enough there will be no pretending possible.”
Valerian lifted her own hood over her hair and followed Theresa out the door into the drizzling rain. The cloud-heavy sky cast little light over the dripping trees and meadow.
Oscar flew on ahead, giving them a raucous caw as he flapped past, and then the two walked in silence, their footsteps squishing in the muddy path. After a time the quiet became an invitation to speak.
“I went to my hot spring this morning, before you awoke,” Valerian said hesitantly.
“I thought you might have.”
A silence stretched again, and Valerian felt an intuitive certainty that her aunt knew how she had spent her night. “It was not entirely how I had expected.”
“The water?” Aunt Theresa asked innocently.
Valerian could not see her face, as her aunt walked in front of her, but she thought she heard a smile. “No.”
“The cave, then?”
“You already know, you awful woman.”
Theresa cast a glance over her shoulder and blinked at her in a grotesque mockery of naïveté. “I do not know to what you are referring, young lady.”
“Do not try to play the innocent with me. I have never encountered a woman with a less chaste mind.”
Theresa laughed. “Dearest, we are all wantons at heart. It simply takes some of us longer to realize it.” She put her arm around Valerian, and walked beside her. “I do hope he was not a disappointment.”
“I am not at all certain I want to discuss the particulars,” Valerian grumbled.
“Come now. Who else can you tell? Did you take the Queen Anne’s lace seeds afterward?”
“Yes, after the hot spring.” The chewed spoonful of seeds would keep her from getting pregnant. “I sometimes wonder what Mother would have thought if she heard our conversations. She was so much more restrained.”
“She was not always so, or at least not to such a degree. Our mother’s murder had a sobering effect on her, and she had certain ideas of what a village doctor’s wife should be like. When at long last you came along, she thought to give you a different life than the one she had led as a young woman. She may have been happiest if you never knew that your grandmother made her living as a kept woman, but it is in our blood to follow such a path.”
“Charmaine has not.”
“Charmaine has contorted her natural passions into a most uncomfortable form.”
“I do not see how you can argue that it is in my blood to be a man’s mistress, just as it is in my blood to be a healer.”
“When at least four generations of women before you have followed that course, it does not seem so unlikely that you will as well. It seems to be one of the family talents, and it is no shameful thing. Your grandmother was a woman of importance because of her choice of lovers.”
“Not so important she could not be killed.”
“Yes, well, one must be careful when one also has gifts of a more spiritual nature. Now tell me, how was your encounter with the manly baron different than you expected?”
She sighed, and gave in to Theresa’s curiosity. “It was not different so much as it was not as important as I thought it would be. I mean the act itself. Given the fuss that is made of it, I expected something more dramatic emotionally. I thought I would feel like a different person afterward.”
“You mean you are still the same Valerian, after allowing a man to know your body? I do not believe it!”
“Stop it. You know what I mean.”
Theresa squeezed her shoulder. “Of course I do. I have sometimes thought that the true loss of innocence is not when a maidenhead is broken, but when a woman realizes she cannot change who she is
inside by putting a man in there with her. There is something frightening when he pulls out of you and you discover you are as alone in your body as you ever were.”
“Do you suppose married women feel the same?”
“It is one of the truths of life that no words or ceremonies can blend two people into one.”
“What about love? Can that do it?”
“Love. Now that is a tricky one. Love casts the illusion that two people are one, but it is the nature of illusions to be false. Eventually, if you are fortunate and wise, you are glad to break the illusion and remain as yourself.”
Valerian did not answer. The idea of not being alone in her own skin appealed to her, and she could not understand how the wise choice could be separateness.
When they reached Greyfriars they parted company. Theresa needed to tell Charmaine about her own illness, having decided in the night that it would be unfair to keep it from her. About Valerian’s sense that the baby might not be well, however, she would say nothing.
Valerian herself headed for Sally’s home. The boil she had lanced had healed quickly, but she wanted to check on the children and bring Sally a fresh supply of St. John’s wort. The woman had suffered from melancholia for years, and the herb was showing signs of helping to lighten her mood, as well as helping to impair her fertility and give her body a needed rest from childbearing.
She felt the eyes of passersby on her as she walked down the street, stronger than usual. Gwen’s father, the miller, actually stopped and stared at her as she went by.
She was frowning when she reached Sally’s home. She called in to her through the open shutters, and Sally quickly came to the door. Her eyes were wide and searched the street nervously from behind their curtain of stringy bangs. “Inside!” Sally whispered urgently, and all but yanked Valerian into the dark little house.
