by Win Hollows
Her hesitance and desire were obvious as she finally asked, “What were you thinking about?”
He breathed out. “This.” Pulling her tighter against him, he thrust upward to let her feel how hard he was for her.
The tiny moan she let out sent him over the edge into a black void of dizzying hunger. He couldn’t stop himself from wanting to possess her entire body, to take her over the edge with him until she could never climb back to a place where she could exist without him. Reaching up with his right hand, he skimmed his thumb over her budding nipple and smiled when he felt it harden beneath his finger. The dress she wore today was thin in response to the French summer heat, and she had only worn a stomacher with it, leaving her breasts free to respond to his touch. Using his forefinger and thumb, he rolled her sensitive bud until she was gasping and arching back into him.
“Shhh,” he admonished. “You don’t want to get us caught, do you?”
She drew a breath in, and it was sweet torture to hear her try and fail to control her response to him.
He grasped the edge of her bodice and pulled it down, exposing both of her breasts. They were perfect globes of heavy, malleable softness tipped with rosebuds. Max could tell she wanted him to touch both of her sensitive nipples from the way she pushed up into his hands. He obliged, first barely grazing the buds with his fingertips so that they were equally hardened into firm cones beneath his touch.
Elorie groaned, and Max used one hand to cover her mouth while drawing circles with the other over the engorged tissue of her breast. He felt her breathing hard against his hand, but she didn’t resist his constraint further.
He licked his thumb and forefinger and smoothed the wetness over one nipple, then the other. Then he left her breasts open to the air with his spit spread over them, knowing the sensation would be excruciating. Moving his hand down over her stomach, he slipped a hand underneath her hitched skirts and glided up her thigh. In her current position sitting atop him with her legs on either side of his, she was open to him and unable to close her legs without rising up out of the butter churn.
Perfect.
Still keeping a hand over her plump mouth, he relished the trembling of her thighs as he ran a finger over the slit of her underclothes. Now that she had trusted him to touch her once before, he knew the shaking was in anticipation instead of fear.
“You’re so lovely down here,” he told her. “I can already feel you wet and ready for me.”
Elorie arched again, and he wondered…
Leaving that area to take one of her hands, he raised it to cover her breast. She went still, but didn’t protest. He guided her fingers to her nipple and moved them in a slow circle. Elorie’s small whimpers made him tighten his hold over her mouth as he continued to make her pleasure herself. “Don’t stop,” he commanded, moving his hand away from hers and back down between her legs.
While she touched her breast, he slid his hand beneath her drawers to feel the petal-smooth hills and valleys that were already slick with her own moisture. He knew then that it wouldn’t be enough to just touch her this time. He was ready to burst with wanting to be inside her tight, dripping passage.
But he also knew that he couldn’t take advantage of her current state to satisfy his own needs without ruining her. And no matter much he wanted her, he would never be able to live with the knowledge that he had taken the choice between himself and the duke away from her.
So he created space between their hips and unbuttoned his trousers. Leaning back as much as possible, he nudged Elorie up so that his cock sprang free between her legs. Although he couldn’t see it, the thought of his weapon being so close to her opening was making him harder than he thought possible, his member curving up against her mons.
She gasped against his hand, and he shushed her. Now would not be a good time to get caught be the Hand operatives.
Max took her free hand and guided it to his cock, biting back a growl as her fingers instinctually wrapped around it. “Up and down. Yes, there you go,” he whispered, trying to hold back the tide that her motion had initiated. The touch of her on him was exquisite, better than he had imagined. She gripped him with hesitancy at first, but grew bolder with each stroke. So good was the sensation that he almost forgot what he’d been intending to do before, but now he reached between them and felt for her wet center again. As she stroked him, he slid a finger into her passageway, and matched the rhythm she was following with her hand.
He could feel her heart pounding in her every inch of her as her head fell back onto his shoulder. When he slid another finger in, she squeezed him even harder, and he gritted his teeth to stop himself from coming. He couldn’t even remember his own name with the way she was rubbing him so perfectly, but he increased the rhythm of his fingers into her, and she bucked into his hand, keeping up with the change of pace on his member.
Everything with her was worlds above any experience he’d ever had. Colors were brighter, sensations more acute. Every part of his body longed to claim hers, and he knew she belonged with him just as surely as he knew the sun would still be in the sky when next he looked. She was the opposite of him physically, just as they were the same in spirit. Where he was hard, she was soft, and where she had empty spaces, he needed to fill them. They were two parts of a whole, she and him, and no one could ever make him feel the way she did. How had he resisted this for so long, seeing her nubile body and deceptively angelic face in front of him all along, always just out of his reach?
It couldn’t be stopped now. Max felt the rush approaching, and he closed his eyes, picturing Elorie with her hands on him and herself, writhing as he touched her. He was careening over the edge just as he felt her muscles tighten around his fingers. Hot pulses of wetness flowed over his fingers as he pumped knuckles deep into her. Soon after she started, bliss began to roll through him, and focus dwindled to the single cadenced motion of her hand sliding up and down on his throbbing rod. He bit Elorie’s exposed shoulder and sucked to keep from letting out a roar as he spilled his seed onto her hand in a wave of blinding ecstasy. He felt his fluids roll down over her hand and onto her delicately-haired mound where his own hand was riding out the last grips of her cum.
The cramped rigidity of the butter churn in which they were positioned came slowly back as she collapsed against him with his dick still in her palm. He took his hand away from her mouth, and she sighed. The sigh caused triumph to trickle through his veins, her replete slackening all the satisfaction he needed. In all honesty, he could have gladly stayed there for another go with her, but he knew they needed to keep moving.
Listening hard for sounds from without, they wiped away the evidence of their contact and waited for another moment before cautiously coming out of the churn.
“I’d never seen one that big,” Elorie commented in a low voice as they looked around the corner of the pantry.
“Really?” Max mused, both flattered and now concerned as to how many she had seen.
“It really was an enormous butter churn,” she replied, leaving him to follow her back into the mellow sunshine of the grapevines.
****
Walking with Maxwell Berisford through the vineyards of La Réole was the happiest she had ever been in her life, Elorie reflected. She took another glance at his strong profile, the edges of it glowing from the westward downing sun. He hadn’t reached for her hand or declared undying his love for her at any time since they’d vacated the bakery, and she was glad. But it was as if the tendrils of their thoughts had reached out anyway and touched, winding around each other until the space between them could never be empty again.
Warmth suffused her from inside and out, and for a brief moment, she let herself consider his words to her that evening at the piano… “We aren’t like other people, Ellie. We can be whoever we want to be. Stay with me and never look back.”
Perhaps if they both left, traveled to that place in her mind with palm trees, undiscovered wonders, and sand for miles… It was the only w
ay either of them would be able to live in peace with the other. There were just too many chains here for them to simply move on. Max would have to give up his family. And she would never see Celise again.
It was too much and they would grow to resent each other. There would always be something in the way. Any future for them was impossible, and she should learn to accept that.
But for now… She had Max all to herself for a little longer. He was right. She had needed one last adventure. What would come after that…
“I think you have a bite mark on your neck,” Max interrupted her thoughts.
Elorie looked over at him with startled eyes to see his sly smile as he gazed at her throat. She immediately reached a hand up to feel the skin where his eyes were focused. “I do not.”
“You do,” he answered, looking ahead again with a satisfied smirk. “I like it.”
“Max, I can’t— I can’t—”
“Can’t what, exactly?” He waved his arm at the grapevines around them. “It’s not as if you’re attending a ball or explaining your state to your chaperone.”
“I suppose that’s true,” she conceded, lowering her hand. She had covered up worse injuries and marks with her face powder, but that was now gone, along with Losif, Porthos, and their carriage.
They had both agreed it was wiser to keep off the roads now. Their plan was to steal a pair of horses on the outskirts of La Réole and cut across the country for the remainder of their journey. The Hand would not stop looking for them, and speed was now the name of the game. They had one advantage in that the Hand didn’t know where they were headed. She just hoped Losif didn’t end up in their hands, being tortured for information. Losif was many good things, but close-mouthed was not one of them.
“Just think,” Max expounded. “I could put a little mark somewhere on your body every night, and it would be our little secret.”
Her stomach did little flips at the thought of Max nipping at her in unexpected places. “Where would these marks be?” She couldn’t help it. Even when she knew Max wasn’t for her, she wanted to hear every little fantasy he created for them. It was like laudanum, drugging her senses and dragging her into the dark places in her mind she knew she shouldn’t go.
“The first night, I’d give you one just below where your hip bone protrudes. It would tickle, and I’d have to hold you down.”
Elorie’s breath stopped in her chest as she pictured him kissing her skin in a place no one had ever even touched before. She swallowed. “And the next night?”
“The next night would be on the inside of your thigh,” he murmured.
She blushed, which almost never happened to her. Men had told her salacious things, thinking she was someone she was not, but never had she actually wanted anything they’d offered.
Yet she wanted Max with every drop of blood in her heated veins.
“Then I’d have to marry you, of course. I can’t be going around kissing people on their thighs willy-nilly. You’d have to make an honest man of me.”
That jolted her right out of her lustful reverie. She rolled her eyes. “Max, do you ever hear yourself? I have no doubt you’ve kissed plenty of women’s thighs without proposing on the spot.”
“Not plenty. I’m not as prolific as my dear cousin. Just enough to know that if I ever kissed yours, I think I’d be inspired to do just that.”
Elorie laughed. “If I let you kiss me there, you mean. You might not get that far.”
Max looked at her from under his lashes. “Oh, I think you’d let me. You let me get fairly far today.”
Her insides melted at the memory. “My thinking was compromised.”
“I’d be worried if it wasn’t.”
“Not by you,” she retorted, kicking at a pebble in front of her shoe. “I was distracted by the men chasing us.”
“You were distracted by something, but it wasn’t them.” He looked so pleased with himself, she could kick him.
“Horses,” Elorie stated.
“Your French is showing. I believe the phrase is horse shi—”
“No, you idiot. Horses. Over there.” She pointed through the trees to their right where she could see the fencing of a paddock and at least a few horses within it. They approached cautiously, but no one seemed to be nearby. There were five horses within the paddock, which was attached to a small stable on the far side. After watching for a few minutes to make sure no one was coming, they quickly stole into the stable and took two riding saddles. Although Elorie was in a dress, she had learned how to ride astride in skirts years ago, so there was no need for a sidesaddle.
Max chose a blue roan stallion, while she opted for a tall blood bay mare that came to her immediately when she beckoned. Neither horse fussed as they were saddled and seemed happy to be led out of the paddock for what they probably thought was a jaunt through the nearby orchards. When Elorie mounted the mare, it was with relief she found the saddle to be comfortable, and the horse responded quickly to her touch. They had been trained well, most likely as mounts for the owners or managers of the vineyard.
And then they rode, leaving the vineyards behind as they cut across the countryside toward the southern coast.
It was eight days’ ride to St. Raphael, but they made it in seven. Their route was made more difficult by keeping to the fields and old roadways to avoid another encounter with the Hand, but it was sometimes a shorter distance if one wasn’t concerned with keeping to the main thoroughfares. The horses were pushed to their limit, and then switched for another pair every other day.
Max rode beautifully, of course, but Elorie had no trouble keeping pace with him, except for one morning when it turned out the horse she had chosen couldn’t be persuaded to cross the province line. It halted suddenly, almost throwing Elorie from its back and simply stood there, no matter what she did. It was as if the thing could see an invisible line in the pasture separating its wandering grounds from forbidden territory, and it really was where Languedoc Province began, if the wooden sign awhile back was correct. Max had had a hearty laugh over that one and was much too pleased that Elorie then had to send her horse trotting back toward home and ride with him until the next town.
When they weren’t flying down the road at a gallop, they talked. They spoke about everything that made their lives what they were, about their sisters and mothers and fathers. About friends, and the lack thereof. They recounted childhood memories and more recent adventures the other hadn’t been a part of. Favorite foods, beloved pets, and despised mannerisms were examined, Elorie giving a convincing impression of England’s Chancellor of the Exchequer with a penchant for blinking excessively while chewing.
Most of all, laughter was the language in which they preferred to converse, and it was as if nothing could touch them during those seven days. There was nothing but the sunlit way ahead and the way the person riding next to them ate up the moments with unfettered banter and freely shared secrets.
The nights were difficult, though. They slept in barns or under trees, and once, in an abandoned monastery filled with cooing doves. That was all fine, but lying close to Max and invoking her no-touching rule was torture. She half prayed every night for him to ignore the promise she’d forced him to make outside of La Reole and pull her toward him, but he didn’t. He whispered things to her in the dark, things that made her ache with longing, but he never touched her once.
She imagined this was the punishment she faced for allowing herself to fall in love with the Earl of Eydris. Heaven during the day and Hell at night.
By the time the coastline came into view, Elorie sighed in both relief and disappointment. If all went as planned, Losif would meet them in St. Raphael, and the veneer of intimacy would fall away between them. For she was now more captivated by Max than ever before, seeing parts of him she never had as the Viper.
“There’s the cathedral.” Max pointed to a spire sticking up above the rest of the town. As they approached on their horses a few moments later, however, it became c
lear that what Max had seen wasn’t a cathedral spire, but a lighthouse along the rocky outcropping near the edge of the village. While Elorie waited outside, Max slipped into a tavern on the waterfront to ask where St. Raphael’s Cathedral was, since it didn’t seem to be a grand or centrally located building.
“There is no St. Raphael Cathedral,” Max stated as he came out of the back of the tavern.
Elorie frowned. “I don’t understand. This is St. Raphael, there must be.”
He ran a hand through his hair, which Elorie had noticed had lightened in France’s sun. “Yes, well, apparently, the town was named by monks in the twelfth century and doesn’t have much to do with its current status as a fishing village. There are no cathedrals at all.”
“No cathedrals? This is France!” she exclaimed. “You can’t throw a stone in any direction without hitting a cathedral!”
Max shrugged. “Clearly, France is a more Godless nation of heathens than you thought.”
She punched him lightly in the stomach, but it didn’t affect the rock-hard surface whatsoever.
He merely said, “If Losif is here, he must have found somewhere else to lie low. But I suspect he hasn’t arrived yet. We made better time than we could have in a carriage, so it’s likely he’s still a ways away, if he wasn’t taken by the Hand.”
She sighed. “I agree, it’s best to assume he’s not here yet rather than wandering about, asking questions that might get us noticed by the wrong people. The Hand usually places people in the most prominent inns and taverns frequented by local and visiting government officials, so t’wouldn’t be a good idea to start searching in those places.”
Max paused. “Then it’s on to the Damarek?”
Elorie looked at him, and the familiar thrill of the chase swept through her. “On to the Damarek.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Max had never met another woman who looked as happy on a tiny fishing vessel with salt spray in her hair as she did waltzing in a ballroom with diamonds around her neck. Her green eyes sparkled at him as she watched him try to keep his balance on the swaying boat as it headed out along the coastline. He wouldn’t change her for the world, although he knew she was just waiting for him to fall overboard.
