Rexanne Becnel

by Where Magic Dwells

  His tongue pressed urgently against the seam of her lips, probing for entrance, demanding more from her, and Wynne opened at once. She wanted him there inside her, awakening all her senses, bringing her alive with the erotic play of his lips and tongue. The stroke of his tongue filling her mouth fully, then pulling away, rubbing her sensitive inner lips like warm, rough velvet cloth, aroused the most sinful of feelings in her.

  He held her in a fierce embrace, with one hand covering her derriere and pressing her hard against his loins. Fire leaped between them there, and without being conscious of her actions, Wynne slid one of her hands down his back to the curve of his muscular buttocks. He jerked in reaction, a convulsive response to her artless caress.

  “Sweet Mother, but you have tortured me too long,” he breathed in her ear. His lips found the delicate edge of that orifice, then his tongue. Wynne gasped and arched in helpless pleasure—or was it pain? The two seemed so very much alike. The desire that built within her seemed ludicrously about to explode beyond the meager confines of her body. Yet she was certain that explosion would nonetheless be exquisite, and she wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything before.

  “You torture me now,” she panted, sliding her hands up along his back. Through the soft linen of his chainse she could feel every muscle, every ridge and curve and hollow of his torso. The warmth of him was there too, like a fever, a contagion that would soon consume them both, for the fever was now in her as well.

  “I shall torture you more and more. The whole night long will I torture you,” he vowed, interspersing his hoarse words with an erotic trail of kisses. Down her throat the trail moved, down along her collarbone, pressing against the hollow at the base of her neck, then lower, nuzzling the neckline of her kirtle down until he pressed his hot lips to the upper swells of her breasts. Only then did he pause.

  “You are indeed a witch, my wild Welsh rose. A witch who has me in her thrall. A seeress who has enchanted me.” Without warning he lifted her into his arms. His strides were swift and sure through the dark and the high grasses. He only stopped when he reached the rug he had prepared for them.

  “You’ve bewitched me,” he murmured. “Whether with some dark potion or just the dark glow in your eyes, I don’t know. But I must have you, Wynne. There can be no other way.”

  He set her upon her feet, then pulled her once more against him. His hands stroked slowly down her back, melting her, she thought through the fog of passion that had her in its grasp. But his touch, though lingering, was no less urgent. “Lie with me, love. Here and now. Forever,” he added in a soft, heated breath against her ear.

  “Forever?” She sought his lips with hers, probing within his mouth, seeking to undo him in the same wanton manner with which he always managed to overwhelm her. Then she pulled a little away from him. “There can be no forever,” she whispered, as much to remind herself as to let him know. “There is only now. That’s all there can be for us.”

  But Cleve ignored her words. As if he fought their dampening effect on both himself and her, he captured her lips once more. “We shall see,” he murmured. He pulled her down upon the rug so that they were kneeling face-to-face, their thighs touching, her breasts pressed against his chest. “We shall see.”

  Wynne, however, fought the overpowering effect of his touch. “No.” She shook her head. “There can be only now. You must know that.”

  There was a pause. “There can be more, Wynne. If you’ll just let there be.”

  Like a cold rush of wind between them his words drove her a little farther back from him. “You are a fool to still believe that,” she whispered, her heart breaking from the intrusion of reality into this sweetest moment of unreality.

  “Bedamned!” he swore, though he did not release her from his grasp. “If you believe that, why do you come to me this way? If you would keep me your enemy by day, how can you come to me as a lover by night?”

  Wynne did not have an answer, at least not one she could express to him. She could hardly say that he was the one man in her life whom she would cherish above all others. She could never reveal that her feelings moved far beyond mere passion. An avowal of love would gain her nothing, and perhaps cost her everything.

  But her silence only increased his agitation. “Why do you come to me?” he demanded, shaking her for emphasis.

  “I would … I would see this passion to its fruition!” she cried in frustration. “ ’Tis nothing more than that. No, nothing,” she insisted.

  “You are untried, are you not?”

  Wynne gritted her teeth. “I am a virgin,” she confirmed. “But what has that to do with it?”

  “In England a maiden such as you is kept well away from men. Her purity is a prize reserved for her husband.”

  “We are not in England!” she cried, exasperated by this pointless discussion.

  He laughed. “Ah, but we are in England, my love. Just beyond the Dyke is Wales, but where we sit, this is English soil.”

  He had her there. But even so, Wynne did not see the purpose of this conversation.

  “Do not expound your English values to me. If the English valued virgin maidens, they would not rape so freely. And what of you? You do not value my purity, else you would not be trying so adamantly to take it!”

  He studied her a moment in the darkness. “I do not have to try very hard.”

  “Oh! Why you … you utterly wretched man!” She tried to jerk free of his hold, but he had a merciless grip on her. A part of her knew he spoke very near the truth. Yet she refused to shoulder all the blame.

  “If you believe I am so … so free with my … my … myself, then begone from here! Leave me be.”

  For a long moment they glared at each other. Then he gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “I cannot,” he admitted. “Whether you tempt me in order that I will lower my guard against your bloodthirsty ways, whether you think to sway me to your way of thinking regarding your children—it hardly matters. I want you, and that is all. I want you and I must have you.”

  Like a blast of hot summer air his profession of desire melted her icy rage. It kept coming back to that. They desired each other beyond all logic. She trembled despite her best efforts to appear composed. “You do not trust me, and I most assuredly do not trust you. All we have is this shared passion. Must there be a reason beyond that?” she finished in a soft, almost pleading voice.

  He regarded her steadily. “Ideally, no. A shared passion should be enough reason.” Then his thoughtful tone grew more businesslike. “But it seldom works that way. Especially with untried maidens.”

  “We Welsh do not view it in the same way you English do. We believe a girl’s purity is hers for the giving, not something her father or brother may barter away.”

  “So why are you giving your purity to me?”

  Wynne swallowed hard. They had come full circle, it seemed, back to the one subject she could not discuss with him. “I … I am curious,” she answered, but rather weakly.

  His hands ran up and down her arms, making her aware of the great contrast between the cool night air and his warm touch. “There is no other reason?” he asked. “No ulterior motive?”

  She stiffened. “ ’Tis not my intent to poison you, if that is what you fear.”

  Once more he laughed. “No. If anything, I fear you will do me in with your truly lethal kisses and devastating touch. I may expire from the pure pleasure of your body pressed against mine.” He pulled her closer and bent to kiss the tender flesh at the side of her neck. “Would you do that for me, Wynne? Kill me with the exquisite pleasure of your sweet body?”

  Wynne’s breath caught in her chest, and she arched her neck to better accommodate his searching lips. How could a man be at once so exciting and so exasperating? She licked her lips as a wave of fiery warmth flooded through her. “If you wish me to do you in that way, then … then I shall try.” She gasped the words out.

  In a trifling moment he had her on her back, the rug prickly beneath he
r and his hard body warm above.

  “Do your worst, then, sweet witch.”

  With those words he seemed to release all the repressed passions within her. Like one being they communed. His hands found those areas of her body that most desired his touch. His lips brought a sort of heavenly salvation to her starving flesh.

  Likewise did he respond to the bold ventures of her hands upon him. When one of her palms slid beneath his chainse, up the straining muscles of his back, gliding over the damp flesh there, he groaned and shifted. One of his hands found the hem of her kirtle and raised it to bare her legs. She felt the rough wool of his braies on the tender skin of her inner thighs. Like a threat and a caress it was. Something both to fear and to desire. Then when his hand followed, she gasped out loud.

  “Cleve … what … wait.”

  “Wait for what, sweet witch? Until we are both melting from this heat between us? If we wait any longer, I fear there may be nothing left of us but a puddle in the grass. No.” His hand slid higher, into the unchartered place between her thighs. “There is no time left for waiting.”

  He was right. She knew it when his fingers found the damp center of her, and she cried out in wild abandon, arching convulsively. There was no time left for waiting. His magic was too strong for her. He was seducing her with it, making her bend to his touch, and there was nothing more she wanted in the entire world.

  She heard his gasping breath. He sucked in air in time with the terrible, wonderful stroking he was doing to her, sliding over the entrance to her most private self. Then he slipped farther, thrusting his finger right up into her, and she nearly came up off the rug.

  “Relax, my sweet. Don’t fight it. Just let it come to you. Let it come,” he murmured. He pressed her down on the rug, capturing her mouth in a deep and penetrating kiss that mirrored the thrusting rhythm of his touch down there.

  She was sinking, drowning in the pure ecstasy of the sensations that bombarded her. It was too much to bear. It was not enough.

  “Touch me.” She heard his ragged whisper in her ear. He moved his head down and found the rigid peak of her left breast through the linen of her kirtle. He teased it at first, then took the nipple wholly into his mouth. Then he bit lightly at the aroused nub.

  “Touch me,” he ordered in an almost painful tone. “Touch me, Wynne.”

  She did as he said, finding his hard arousal instinctively. Wynne understood about how things worked between men and women. She knew from raising three boys how men were formed. But what she discovered now, so hot and stiff beneath Cleve’s strained braies, was something beyond her meager knowledge. It was at once something quite apart from him and yet most integral too, something essential to this mysterious and powerful attraction between them.

  Was this the answer? she wondered as her fingertips traced the long length of him. It felt too large, too threatening to fit where she knew it must fit. Yet with just the touch of it she felt herself growing even more wet with desire.

  Cleve groaned against her neck when she flattened her palm upon the pulsing length of him, then began to rub up and down, adopting the same rhythm of his intimate stroking of her. At once his fingers stilled within her, and he bucked hard against her hand.

  “Sweet Mother!” he rasped out. “Damn, but you … you bewitch me.”

  Wynne smiled and became even more bold. This was a power she had over him. It was not solely the other way around. Yet the giving of pleasure to him only seemed to increase her own desire. She moved against his hand, and he began once more the slow, exquisite stroking deep inside her.

  When she whimpered her pleasure, he caught the sound in another stirring kiss. Only when she was breathless and limp beneath him did he pull back. She was so befuddled by the voluptuous sensations that gripped her, she hardly noticed when he pulled her hand away from him.

  “ ’Tis too fast, woman. I shall surely explode if you touch me again.”

  “Cleve …” She breathed his name like a prayer and reached up to his face. He caught her hand against his cheek, then turned his head slightly to press a hot kiss to the very center of her sensitive palm.

  “You are verily a witch,” he muttered, his voice half wondering and half—half what?

  Half angry, Wynne realized.

  “Please … oh, don’t be angry with me.”

  He laughed, but mirthlessly. “ ’Tis not you, sweetheart. No.” He stood and quickly shed both his chainse and his braies. Before her eyes could trace the full beauty of his virile body, he lay on the rug again, partially covering her half-clad body with his warm, naked flesh.

  He kissed her, hard and possessively. “ ’Tis not you who are to blame, but I.”

  Without waiting for her response, he pulled her kirtle high, dragging it over her head and casting it aside. One of his hands began to stroke and tease, down the center of her chest, circling her full and aching breasts until her nipples were taut and erect. He wet his finger and touched one nipple, then the other, bringing Wynne in arching desire up off the rug.

  “Cleve … oh, please …” she panted.

  “Shhh, my love. Just be patient,” he answered in a low, breathless gasp of his own.

  Then his hand slid, palm down, fingers splayed, past her breasts to her waist, then over her belly. With excruciating precision he cupped the soft mound of dark curls, curving his fingers toward the aching entrance to her woman’s place. One finger slid into the sweet dampness, and she lifted up to meet it. But he withdrew it and instead began to stroke the small hidden nub that seemed suddenly to become the focus of every sensation she’d ever experienced.

  “Do you like that?” he whispered, punctuating his words with an erotic kiss to her ear.

  She swallowed and nodded, hardly able to respond, so incredible were the feelings building in her.

  “Haven’t you ever touched yourself here, Wynne?” When she only rose up more frantically against his hand, grasping the rug in her fists and digging her heels in, he kissed her ear again. “ ’Tis your sweet spot. The source of your deepest magic. The one place too many men neglect in their haste to satisfy themselves. Am I too hasty?” he murmured.

  There was no answering him. Wynne was too caught up in the power he wrought with just that one finger, with just his simple touch, his flesh to hers. She was swept along into a storm of emotional and physical sensation. It enveloped her entire body, from her fingertips to the ends of her toes, from deep inside her belly to every square inch of skin that covered her. Yet it was also centered where his finger stroked in an ever-increasing rhythm.

  She heard his harsh, gasping breaths—or were they her own? Then in a shattering vortex it came, like lightning striking down at the earth, unexpected even though the storm had raged all night. It struck, and she cried out in the most exquisite agony.

  “Cleve … Cleve …” She sobbed his name out loud, over and over, while her body convulsed in violent reaction.

  “I’m here,” he whispered, cupping her once more with his entire hand, seeming to hold all her feelings, all her emotions in his comforting grasp. “I’m here,” he repeated, sealing his words with a kiss that was sweet and yet more intimate than any other so far. He touched her heart with that kiss, and without hesitation she threw her arms around him, pulling him down upon her.

  “I lo—” Her artless avowal was swallowed in his hungry kiss. Wynne was so filled with love and gratitude, with the warm need to fill him with the same wondrous happiness with which he’d filled her, that she opened completely to him. Mouth, arms, heart, she took him to her. When one of his thighs edged her legs apart, she did not hesitate. When the heated center of him probed for entrance, she pressed up in response. “Put me in,” he instructed in a voice thick with need. She found him with her hand, and for a moment she just held him, wrapping her fingers around that overheated flesh, wondering at the smoothness there when so many other places were rough with hair. He jerked against her touch and, if anything, grew even hotter than before.

 
Put me in, Wynne. Now.”

  She guided him to the damp entrance to her, feeling as she did her own need returning.

  This was truly amazing, she thought in a passion-induced fog. The most amazing thing that had ever happened to her. This was truly magical.

  Then his erect manhood began to slide into her, and her eyes came open in shock and then dismay.

  “Wait,” she gasped as he pressed into her, filling her with his burning flesh, threatening with his very size to rip her asunder. “Wait!”

  “I cannot wait any longer,” he muttered.

  Yet he paused even as he spoke. For a moment they seemed suspended awkwardly, somewhere between coming together and pulling apart. He was half within her. The frantic pressure of her hands against his chest were but an insignificant barrier to the completion of the act they had begun. But he held back, and though Wynne was overwrought with too many confusing emotions to be sensible, she did appreciate that fact. His arms trembled with his restraint. Every one of his muscles strained and beaded with sweat, but he held back.

  “Just relax, Wynne. Relax and you shall see how good it will be.”

  She shook her head, unmindful of the salty tears that trickled now past her temples to be lost in her hair. Just inches from her own, his eyes burned down into hers, willing her to pliancy.

  “Just try to relax,” he murmured again.

  “ ’Tis too … too big,” she confessed, feeling an abject shame at her admission. A woman was meant to accept her man this way. Was something wrong with her that she could not? “I liked your finger better,” she revealed, and she began to cry in earnest.

  “Don’t cry. No, Wynne. Sweetheart. Don’t cry. Here.” He sought out her mouth with his and slowly began to kiss her. Wynne responded at once to the stroke of his lips and tongue. This was a pleasure she’d come to understand. This was something she knew brought only pleasure.

  Bit by bit, as their kiss grew deeper and more passionate, Wynne shed her tension. Her panic faded, and as it did, she was once more, steadily and inevitably, filled with that heated rush of desire. Her hands slid from his chest to circle his neck and pull him nearer. Her legs eased from their taut resistance, and with that he began to slip naturally within her.