The Butterfly Formatted

by Vale, Victoria

  She released a little huff of frustration, raising her hips and urging him to give her more, to deliver the promised pleasure. Instead, he took one of her hands and guided it between her legs, gazing at her with expectation in his eyes. Her mouth fell open, but no words were forthcoming when she realized what he expected of her. He settled her hand over her mons, until she cupped herself, her middle finger pressed tightly along the slit and compressing her little bud. Even that innocent a touch felt decidedly naughty, with her so very much aware of how hot and wet she was, as well as his intent gaze fixated upon where her hand touched her body.

  “Like this,” he whispered, placing one hand over hers and helping her along, applying more pressure.

  She gasped when he began to move his hand, and hers along with it, coaxing her into a slow, languorous rhythm. The friction between the pads of her fingers and her quim sparked something deep within her—something primitive and visceral.

  “Oh,” she whispered, then, “Oh!”

  Niall smiled, giving an encouraging nod. “That’s it. Dinnae fight that feeling. Strain toward it … ye want to reach the height of it.”

  She couldn’t have fought it if she had tried, her legs shaking and her belly clenching. He coaxed her middle finger right against her clit, showing her how pressing down on it and agitating it in circles could send the most delicious waves of heat and bliss rippling out to the far reaches of her body. She felt the pleasure of it all the way to her scalp, all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  Shame ceased to exist as she surrendered, legs spreading wider, her own touch becoming bolder. The more she stroked and petted herself, the closer she came toward … something. Some unnamed feeling that built and built inside of her until she felt she might explode.

  “Touch here, too,” he said, grasping her other hand and pressing it to her breast.

  He urged her fingers to her nipples, showing her how to pull and twist at them the way he had. Once she got it right, he took his hand away and applied it to the other, the two of them working the tips of her breasts together, in a rhythm as one.

  It felt more wondrous than she could have imagined. The little sparks of delight caused by the touches on her breasts shot straight down between her legs—adding strength to the flutters rippling through her insides.

  “Niall, I …”

  Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears, coming out strangled and husky, as if some other wanton creature spoke with her lips.

  “I know, Livvie,” he replied, his hands now holding her thighs open, gaze still fixated upon the motions of her fingers and the flesh they teased. “Ye’re almost there.”

  Biting her lip to keep from crying out, she urged herself closer and closer to the edge of that most elusive feeling—the thing tearing her up inside and making her limbs tremble and her insides flare with volcanic heat. All sense of propriety or modesty fell away, and she surged her hips in time with the motions of her hand between her legs, creating more of that rapturous delight. Her other hand pinched at her nipple, harder and with more urgency as she loomed on the precipice. And then, she was on fire, the little flutters she’d previously experienced overtaken by pounding spasms that unfurled from deep in her cunt. Her inner channel clenched, the nub at her fingertips throbbing in unison, a rush of moisture soaking her fingers. She bit down on her lip until she tasted blood, muffling her gasps and moans. She stroked herself until she could not any longer, the intensity of her rapture becoming too much to bear.

  Going limp beneath him, she felt as if she floated on the surface of a gentle stream, the sun warm on her skin. Had this been possible all along? Had she suffered for want of him needlessly, possessing the power to give herself the pleasure she craved?

  No, she realized, when he took her hand and urged her fingers toward his lips. No, it had not been possible.

  She could not have reveled in the slick caress of his lips sucking the proof of her arousal from her fingers, nor the mind-numbing sensation of him licking the same flesh she had just been touching. The pleasure of it was ten times that of her own touch, the hot strokes of his tongue urging her back toward that climactic end.

  “Niall!” she cried, not bothering trying to quiet herself.

  Just then, she did not care if everyone inside Dunvar House heard her or knew that she was being pleasured by him. If any of them had ever felt anything half this good, they would not judge her.

  He moaned against her, his lips and tongue working her into a frenzy, until she thrashed beneath him, her fingers clenching tight to his worn quilt. Wrapping his arms around her thighs, he held them open, keeping her pinned down and spread for his devouring mouth. This time, when that ecstatic paroxysm overtook her, it stole her breath, sweeping her away on a tide even more powerful than the first. Niall went on until the end, his erotic assault not ceasing until she’d gone still beneath him, panting and sobbing, hot tears splashing her face.

  “Livvie,” he whispered, swiftly coming back up over her, lying between her spread thighs and wrapping his arms around her. “Are ye all right?”

  Burying her face against his shirt, she clung to him, nodding as even more of the tears came. “I am all right, I just … I never thought it would be that way, Niall.”

  “It isnae … not always. I s’pose it’s only like this when … when two people …”

  She gazed up at him, seeing that he could not say more, but clearly hearing his unspoken words.

  “Show me more. Let me touch you like you touched me.”

  As she waited for him to begin again, Olivia noticed the hesitance in his eyes. It occurred to her then that he’d never intended to allow this to go beyond her pleasure, even though he had told her otherwise. Something held him back, and that, she could not abide.

  She stroked his hair, then cupped his face, her finger lightly tracing the scar Conall had left with the bullwhip. Some might think it frightening, marring an otherwise handsome face. She found it alluring, a testament of his strength. That he lay here with her now, even after having suffered the injury, spoke of how deeply he cared for her in a way words never could.

  “Niall, please,” she whispered, raising her head to kiss his cheek, then the edge of his jaw. “Let me touch you. Let me kiss you.”

  He grunted when she kissed his neck, her lips resting against his pulse—which galloped as hard and fast as hers, proof of his state of arousal. That most male part of him was as hard as ever, pressed right against her.

  “Let me see you.”

  He stiffened when she dipped her tongue past the edge of his shirt, her fingers working at the top button. His hand came swiftly over hers, halting her just after she’d loosened the button, revealing the delectable column of his throat.

  Brow furrowed, she stared up into his eyes, unable to read the dark gaze. He’d shuttered a part of himself away from her and was withdrawing, already trying to pull away physically.

  “No,” she pleaded, wrapping her legs around him and holding fast, refusing to let him go. “You cannot leave me now. We’ve gone too far. I want this, Niall.”

  “No, ye don’t!” he snapped, his face reddening. “I never … I always keep my clothes on. Ye dinnae want to see. I … I cannae let ye.”

  Her frown deepened, more confused now than ever. They had known each other so long, she had thought that nothing between them could be kept secret. But, here they lay with her bared completely, and Niall still keeping something to himself.

  “I have seen you undressed before—”

  “Back then,” he argued. “Not now. Not after …”

  She kissed his cheek again, her lips lingering as she inhaled his scent. One would think a man who worked with horses would carry some sort of unpleasant odor. But not Niall. He smelled like soap, clean, open air, and fresh hay.

  “Do you think there could ever be anything about you that I would not like? That any part of you would cause me to stop caring for you … wanting you?”

  He did not reply, but
the look in his eyes told her that he did. Somehow, he had convinced himself that she’d be easily put off. Now, more than ever, she was determined to prove him wrong.

  “Would you allow me to show you everything and still hide things from me?” she urged. “Here I lie with my skinny body and barely any bosom—”

  “It’s perfect,” he snapped. “Ye’re perfect in every way, Livvie.”

  “I am practically shaped like a boy, and we both know it,” she chided. “But you look at me and I feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. Why would you think I’d see you as anything other than the most beautiful man?”

  Shaking his head, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. She allowed him this moment, lying beneath him and waiting silently for him to work himself up to what would come next.

  After a while, he sighed, then swiftly tore open his second button, then his third, exposing more of his chest and the dark hair covering it. She held her breath, waiting for him to show her the rest, to prove to her that he was everything she’d always thought he would be.

  Moving fast, as if afraid he would change his mind otherwise, he reached back to grasp his collar, giving it a quick jerk to pull the shirt over his head. His mussed hair appeared first, then his face again, just before he tore one arm free and shifted his weight to toss the garment aside.

  Olivia sucked in a sharp breath, releasing it on a sigh of wonder at the sight of him. He had changed so much, even since the last time they’d swum together in the pond, his chest and arms bulging with brawn, more of the dark hair covering him in a soft smattering. She laid one hand flat upon his chest, smiling at the feel of his heart beating a rhythmic cadence against her palm.

  So intent was she on drinking in the parts of him that pleased her—his broad shoulders, the grooves between the muscles of his abdomen, the enticing lines etching where his waist ended and his hips began—that she did not notice the scars at first. It was only when she began paying closer attention that she noticed them. One marking his chest, a slender, raised line just shy of a nipple. Another curved over his shoulder. More streaked across his ribs, arcing from his back. They were very much like the one upon his face.

  With a gasp, she laid her hand against the ones on his ribs, following their path toward his back. Niall shifted atop her, but she kept her legs around him, refusing to let go.

  “Livvie, don’t …”

  Some horrified sound choked off in her throat, the sting of tears nearly blinding her as she reached his back only to find even more of the scars at her fingertips. They were everywhere, crossing his back this way and that, raised lines carving his skin like paths on a map. There were more of them to be found than smooth skin, and as she came to the largest one—the one stretching across his shoulder blades, the one caused on the day he had been caught kissing her—she began to weep in earnest. The day Conall had attacked him, she hadn’t been brought to see him until after the physician had stitched him up. She had never actually seen the wound for herself—had not seen the mess the bastard had already made of Niall’s back.

  “Oh, Niall … he did this to you?”

  Instead of answering her, he jerked out of her hold, forcing her legs apart so that he could roll away from her. He tried to lie on his back, but a touch of her hand stayed him. He remained upon his side, his back presented to her unobstructed. She tried to choke down a sob, but found herself unable to at the sight of what had been done to her precious Niall.

  “Why?” she managed, trying to steady her voice, to cease blubbering like a child. “Did he do this to you because of me?”

  She bent her head and kissed one of the marks, one just below the nape of his neck. He shivered at the touch of her lips, but did not pull away, allowing her to kiss away his hurts the way he had always done for her.

  “No,” he said after a while. “He did it because I got too big for him to use his fists. I was too strong. I fought back. The only way for him to keep me in my place was to use the whip.”

  She wrapped an arm around him, pressing her body against him from behind. She could never be strong enough to shelter him in her embrace the way he could her, but damn it, she could try.

  One of his hands rested atop hers, his fingers interlacing with her own.

  “Dinnae cry for me, Livvie. It’s all right.”

  “It isn’t,” she insisted, kissing him, wetting him with tears that refused to abate. “It is not all right that you have suffered this way and I could do nothing to protect you. I would have, you know. If I’d known … if you’d told me …”

  “My da is a mean drunk who hates himself, so he hates me, too, ’cause I’m a part of him. There’s nothing ye could do about that.”

  She propped herself up on her elbow and gazed down at him, trying to urge him to turn back to her. “Niall, look at me. Please.”

  He hesitated, as if ashamed to look her in the eye now that he had allowed her to see his closely guarded secrets, his deeply rooted pain.

  “Niall, please,” she begged.

  At last, he turned onto his back, staring up at her with as vulnerable an expression as she’d ever seen upon his face. He looked as if he waited for her to reject him, to tell him he was ugly, after all. Instead, she smiled through her tears and stroked his cheek, then his mouth.

  “All knights carry the scars of their many battles. In fact, the more scars, the more feared the knight, because they are evidence of what he has survived. And, to me, they only make you more beautiful. My perfect knight …”

  She bent her head to kiss his lips, gently at first, then with mounting urgency when he began to respond. His hands came against her back, holding her close, one of them sliding up and into her hair as he returned the kiss.

  “Livvie,” he whispered against her mouth. “Ye cannae keep sayin’ things like that, or I’ll get it in my head that I can keep ye.”

  The reminder that this could only be temporary nearly made her tears begin anew. But Olivia did not want to cry any more. She did not want sadness to rob them of what this night had given. So, she did the only other thing she knew to do.

  She came on top of him, sitting astride his hips. “Show me what to do to please you.”

  The simmering embers of desire in his dark eyes flared to life once more as he gazed down to where she straddled him. Wordlessly, he grasped her hips and shifted her so that he could access the placket of his trousers. Her mouth went dry as he began unbuttoning them, slowly revealing the impossibly large organ between his thighs. The thing had to be as thick as her wrist, which did not seem like much given her small stature. Even so, it appeared gargantuan now when she thought of it breeching her maidenhead, taking up space within her body. That was the one and only part of intercourse she’d ever understood, having witnessed animals mating enough times to realize that humans were not much different. How, then, could she have ever taken Niall’s cock inside her body? For a moment, she found herself almost grateful he’d decided not to ruin her. Surely, he’d kill her with it.

  Her wandering thoughts faded into nothing when he took hold of his shaft with one hand and gave it a stroke. Curiosity overwhelmed her then, as she watched him do it again, then again. The organ swelled even more—if such a thing were possible—the flared head glistening with a substance like what slicked the insides of her thighs.

  Remembering what he’d just done to her, she lowered her head on impulse, flicking her tongue at the tip of him—producing even more of the wetness and a rough groan from Niall. She sneaked a tentative glance at him and found he’d made the sound out of pleasure. He was watching her, his chest heaving with every breath, his jaw tight.

  “Again,” he ground out.

  He stroked himself at the same time she lapped at him, the two of them moaning in harmony. He tasted wildly masculine, salty and so … well, so much the way she’d thought Niall would taste. She liked it.

  He took one of her hands and wrapped it around him so it rested just above his. His free hand came over hers, an
d he began to show her how to touch him, how to pump his cock with her hand the way he’d just done himself. Only, when she began to do it, he gasped and groaned, his eyes sliding closed and his lips parting in an expression of pure rapture. Apparently, her touch affected him the same way his had her.

  “Christ, yer hands … ye’ve the softest hands I ever felt.”

  He urged her other hand to take hold of him, still using one of his to guide her, to show her how tight to hold him, moving her slowly, then more swiftly. The telltale flutters of lust began between her legs again, her own body responding to his pleasure as if he touched her, kissed her. But she would not have wanted him to just then, enjoying the sight of him beneath her, the big, strong knight reduced to a panting, moaning animal by only the touch of her hands.

  She licked him, then enveloped his head inside her mouth, and his hips bucked, urging more of him between her lips.

  “Shite,” he mumbled, his free hand tangling in her hair, holding her at just the right angle to thrust in and out of her mouth. “Just like that, Livvie. Christ … yer sweet little mouth feels so good.”

  Her nipples tightened and tingled, her insides melting into liquid fire as he went on groaning and writhing beneath her. The things he whispered to her set her face aflame, but also emboldened her, hinting at what he liked, at what he needed to reach that rapturous height he had taken her to twice already. She suddenly wanted it for him more than anything, as well as for herself. She wanted to know what it sounded like to hear him climax, to taste his culmination on her tongue. So, she applied herself even more, tightening her grip on his cock, sucking more of him into her mouth, as much of him as she could take.

  He spent with a hoarse shout, his grip on her hair growing almost painful as he thrust up into her mouth one last time before flooding her palate with the taste of his seed. She struggled to contain it all, the thick, salty fluid flooding from him and down her throat almost too fast for her to keep up.