His Stolen Bride

by Judith Stanton

  “We can,” she said, not sure whether she ordered him or begged. In either case, she utterly trusted him not to break faith with her, not tease or mock or actuady tum her away. She rose up on her knees, braced her hands on his broad shoulders, and inclined her head to kiss his forehead, eyebrows, lids, claiming every special feature that had stirred her blood in darkness and haunted her in dreams. So much more precious here alone, in the flesh, under the silvery moon. She went on kissing more of him: high cheekbones, raspy, stubbled flat-planed cheeks, strong chin. Eagerly, she returned to the mobile lips that had initiated her into desire.

  Kisses, kisses.

  He groaned beneath her mouth and broke away.

  “Damn it. I will not ruin you too,” he said harshly

  Her blood was singing with the taste of him. “’Tis not min to love.”

  He took her arms in his enormous grasp and held her away, attempting to sway her with his rare earnestness. “You are a Single Sister. One wrong step is your undoing.”

  She disagreed. An utter certainty streaked through her. “Make me a Married Sister, then, tonight. Make me your bride.”

  He gave his head a violent shake, as if to dispel dreams or summon reason. “No,” he said unconvincingly. “As things stand with the watches, I will be reprimanded at the very least. But if you turn up with child, they will disassociate us both.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “but I don’t care. To be expelled does not worry me, but the thought of our child is so … so …” She trailed off, too moved to speak.

  “Abby!” he persisted, sounding desperate to uphold the virtue she wanted to abandon. “The Brethren are your life. You are good.”

  Goodness-her life’s ambition up till now-sounded like a curse. Exile with him was preferable to another day alone.

  “I already decided, Nicky. I choose you.”

  She heard his breath hitch. “You’re sine?” he asked, his low tone rimmed with desire.

  “Absolutely certain.”

  “Danke Gott,” he said slowly, with conviction. “Danke Gott, Abbigail.”

  In the silvered silence of the room, he raised up and let the woolen blanket fad away. He was naked, on his knees before her like a pledge, and when he pulled her to her knees before him, she was amazed: kneeling made them equal. He was not so large, nor she so small, as when they stood side by side and he towered over her, and that gave her new courage. Not quite enough to look beyond a stolen glance at his body, splendidly naked, magnificently male, revealed for her. For she was too aware that she was clothed and he was not, too self-conscious that she did not know where to place her hands or rest her gaze.

  He tilted his head toward her and claimed a short sweet kiss. “Afraid?”

  “No.” A shaky breath betrayed her. “Yes.”

  Her answer must have pleased him. His gaze heated with fierce masculine appraisal. Then, never looking away, he took her idle hands in his, drawing first one and then the other to his mouth, kissing her palms with his lips, then licking them with his tongue. Sensation exploded in the centers of her hands like biting into tart fresh fruit, and her stomach dipped alarmingly.

  “Ahh-Nicky,” came out of her mouth on a hissing breath.

  “There will be more, but ‘twill be no worse than that,” he said softly.

  But his dimple flashed with pleasure and his crooked smile teased. His kisses traveled up her arm but encountered sleeve. “Every thread of this must go.” He ran his fingers over sleeve and slip and skirt to show what he intended. “This first” He touched the ribbons under her chin that held on her Haube.

  She nodded, worrying her lower lip but agreeing. Whatever else she wanted, most of it still unknown, she knew she wanted no more starched and woolen barricades between them.

  “I am going to touch you,” he said more urgently. “Everywhere.”

  Silent she gave him her permission, her facility with sharp retorts stilled by the marvel of his scrupulous attention. He released the Haube first then ran his fingers through her freed, abundant fall of hair, lifting it arranging it over her shoulders, over the bodice of her dress.

  “So thick,” he said. “So dark, so beautiful.”

  It was very strange to feel his blunt fingertips knead her scalp, his great strong hands gently comb her hair, strange to watch fascination play across his face as he unhurriedly arranged her hair to suit himself. When he had finished to his satisfaction, her scalp tingled. Everywhere her hair brushed her skin, it was as if he touched her still himself.

  His fingers deftly sought the pins within the folds of her bodice and quickly bared her bosom. Her heavy breasts swung free. She gasped. Cold air, warm breath, hot hands-a welter of impressions assailed her. He stripped off her bodice, skirt, and shift, and tumbled them aside. He knew the ins and outs of women’s garments, she noted at the far back corner of her mind. And the ins and outs of a woman’s body shed of them. His hands wandered over her newly bared skin, savoring, testing, claiming her.

  “I want every inch of you,” he told her, his voice grown taut but his touch steady as he cupped her breasts. He balanced them in his hands, weighing, even slightly crushing them as if to test for shape and density. She could not look, could only feel sparkles of sensation, on her skin and then within, then coming to a point. His fingers squeezed her nipples into tighter buds, pinched them into yearning, and the yearning spiraled into her core. Then he took one in his mouth and suckled gently.

  “Nicky,” she gasped, her hips curling toward him, out of her control. “Nicky,” and then ad speech turned into sighs and moans.

  “Perfect, perfect,” he murmured, taking the other breast and pulling it to the same hard peak, suckling her until a tremor shook her body.

  While he stayed calm.

  “Not fair!” she cried out. She was breaking into fragments ad around him while he watched, testing her, observing the indiscretions of her body. She had been alone all her life. Wherever he was taking her now, she didn’t want to go there by herseif.

  He released her nipple, exposing its wetness to the chill. “What?” he muttered thickly.

  “You are … you are …” Making me do this without you, she wanted to protest, but could not eke out the words.

  “I am loving you, Liebling

  “I am doing nothing,” she protested.

  “You are making me burn. And it feels so good to please you.”

  She was feeling braver, finding words. Her hands wanted a task. “I want to please you too. With my hands.”

  “We can arrange for that,” he said formally. But for the first time, his voice was raw. She felt a thrill of power to affect him. Still, she did not know what to do.

  He did not move to show her right away.

  “How?” she asked, impatient with him, with her own innocence.

  His half smile was tender, hot with readiness. “Like this, Liebling. ‘Tis simple.” He placed her hands flat against the landscape of his chest, inviting her caress.

  “Oh!” she said, astonished at the mat of hair, crisp beneath her sensitized palms, at the bum of skin, at the rock-hard muscle underneath. His chest barely moved with breathing. Then he sucked in a breath. Her hands explored him, touching lightly, pressing harder, testing the texture, shape, and limits of his body as he had tested hers; she could feel him, strong and manly, could feel the drumming of his heart. “Oh, Nicholas,” she murmured, understanding his absorption when he touched her. Her fingers found his smaller nipples, budded and excited as hers were. She teased them with her fingertips as he had done. Gendy, then harder.

  “Abby!” He flinched and ducked one shoulder back to escape her torture. Then it seemed he couldn’t speak at all. With a groan of surrender, he pulled her to him. The fullness of his embrace claimed her, breasts to chest, belly to belly, thighs to thighs, his swollen manhood nudging at the juncture of her legs. She wriggled close, then closer, feeling the landscape of his surfaces against her tender skin and her thin angles. Feeling all exposed.

/>   Then he gave her his massive strength, contained to protect her, released to ravish her. And she was alone no more. He crushed her mouth with his, his teeth to her teeth, then his tongue demanded entry. She opened and received him, his insistence mirroring the sharpness of her yearning. He deepened the kiss, and his arms lifted her to him, his hands kneading her buttocks as he pressed her to his groin. The searing heat of his hard shaft throbbed against her belly, and she coiled into him wantonly, shocked by the force that drove her, moaning on the edge of her desire. He eased off abruptly, yet left not enough space to slip a feather in between them.

  “Hold on, love. I want your legs around me,” he murmured as he sat back on his heels and easily lifted her onto his lap. Not sure what he wanted of her, she circled her legs around his powerful torso. Disconcerted, she discovered her very innocence splayed wantonly against his manhood. He shuddered.

  “Nicky …?” she whispered.

  “Shh, Liebling, trust me,” he said, his voice grating with effort

  She felt his breath now falling upon her budded breasts. Too taut with arousal to pucker more, they shivered exquisitely. She was shivering all over, when she had never been so warm.

  “Give me your body, Abbigail, your heart, your soul,” he whispered urgently. His head tilted up to claim her mouth, for perched so on his lap she was now just slightly taller. And he began again to kiss her with the earnestness that lay at the heart of all his charm. She surrendered to that earnestness, to his charm and strength and power, and kissed him back from the bottom of her heart. Then he slipped one hand free and found the pulsing nub protected by the thatch of thick dark hair between her legs. She almost bolted from the shock of his intimate touch, but he held her fast, whispering, urging, telling her what to do. He made deep sweet squeezing pinches with his fingers there, launching her up against his manhood.

  And then she was sailing, soaring, flying into blinding light.

  His powerful body absorbed the force of her convulsions as she shattered around him, bucking as the spasms rocked her, crying out her passion and amazement. She clung to him for the longest time, breathing in great gulps, his breath harsh and ragged, too.

  “Ah, Abbigail,” he muttered finally. She thought that she could feel no more, but his moist breath at her ear set off a bright cascade of tingling down the side of her neck. She let out a whimper of pleasure.

  “I never should have shown you how to kiss,” he said, his voice rich and full. She looked and saw his grin, a man’s joyful pride in conquest freely granted.

  But she was embarrassed to the tips of her toes. She had made herself an utter wanton for him. She bravely tried to tease, managed a muffled laugh. “’Twas a tragic error on my part, Brother Blum.”

  Nicholas sobered. He should not have teased her. He didn’t want her teasing back, losing the knot of their intensity, blunting the press of their passion. He was about to explode in his desire, but his mind was mush. If she changed courses now and said to stop, he would honor her, but it would kill him.

  “I wanted you to have this first. Make sure you want me now,” he rasped, control fraying. “Once done, ‘tis done forever.”

  She nestled into him, in apology, her body slippery and wet and willing still. “I want you, tonight, forever.”

  He said a silent prayer of thanks and promised to uphold her trust as he arranged them, side by side, on his pathetic pallet in the back room of his shop. Hardly a bedchamber, or a bed, for a bridegroom to offer his bride for her deflowering.

  And now what to do! For the first time in this night of unexpected delectations, he did not know what next. It pricked his conscience to recall the positions Mary Clark had taught him. But it pricked him worse to use them!

  He did not know which one would work in this. It had gratified and pleased him to have learned enough of love to satisfy the woman who had won his heart. Not to be the bumbling Single Brother he had been in the spring.

  Should he be grateful to poor Mary-or ashamed? The former, he thought, if what he’d learned from her brought Abbigail more pleasure. The latter, if Abbigad ever found out. She would pin his hide to the smokehouse wall and pde coals beneath his feet. No, Mary Clark’s name would never pass his lips.

  Abbigad lay there, warm and slick and sweet, abandoned to his will. He recognized the languor of love in the lines of her body. Assiduously he set about to arouse her once again, knowing only that what came next would hurt her. And so he told her as he ran his fingers up and down her silken skin, from breast to belly to the tempting bush of hair that protected her innocence.

  “I know that!” she said sharply.

  Oh, do you now! he thought, amused by her bravado. “And just how does a proper Single Sister come by such forbidden knowledge?”

  She was smiling; he could see her profile in the moonlight. Before she had been pretty. Now she was beautiful to him, smart and jaunty, boldly striking out on this new and unfamiliar path.

  “Women talk, Brother Blum,” she said smugly. “Birthing hurts, and that hurts.”

  He was back in control. “That what!?” he quizzed her.

  “You know. You.”

  Moonlight did not betray her blush. But he knew precisely how she turned the most exotic shade of coclico, a shade of red he had learned from the ribands in her store. He grinned with pure male pride. Abbigad had felt his manhood up against her innocence and had liked it, but could not bring herself to to say the words. Equally pleased by her courage and her modesty, he ached and throbbed and burned for need of her.

  “Touch me.” His voice shook at the thought of those small hands taking him.

  “Nicholas!”

  “You can,” he assured her. And he clasped her hand, her slim, fine-boned, hot hand, and directed it to his erection. She was shaking. “Abby. Hold me.”

  Slowly, tentatively, her soft fingers closed around his hardened shaft, and between his teeth he let out a hiss of pent-up passion.

  She jerked back as if she’d touched fire. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Taking her hand in his, he gendy guided it to his shaft again. “It doesn’t hurt, exactly. Move your hand.” She hesitated. “Slide it. Like this. Up and down.”

  She tried. His whole body strained with the effort of holding back. But beads of ready moisture spilled out, affording no release and wetting her small hands. She stopped caressing him. He was bursting, bursting. He started kissing her, quick kisses, deep kisses. Nothing was enough. He broke away.

  “I have to, Abby,” he grated out the words. “Be in you. Have … to.”

  He moved above her, showing her how to spread her legs to let him in. He took his shaft in his own hand and guided himself to her petaled center. She was still wet, the silky damp of passion, and the head of his shaft slipped in. So far and no farther. He tried to dip in deeper. The maiden barrier would not yield. He battered at it briefly, as innocent as she, her hot, silky tightness taking him to the edge. She moaned in sweet surrender-or in pain. Her flinching stopped him, scared him. He would not hurt her; she was so small, so precious. He waited, shuddering, throbbing painfully, not yet halfway inside her.

  “Do it, Nicky,” she commanded. “Do it, now.”

  Freed by her command, he drove through, gasping from the suddenness of rupture, the warmth of welcome. She contained him, enfolded him! Tiny as she was, all of him drove deep into her, lost, abandoned to her sweet heat. Finish now, instinct told him, and he did in quick short strokes, his seed so near the surface he exploded almost instantly, crying out, his new-claimed bride quivering around the orgasm that rocked him to his core.

  His lungs burned, and every fiber of his being fired with aftershocks. He could die happily here above her on his elbows, his arms trembling, his life’s blood drained, his man’s seed spent for love. Or he could crush her, too depleted to suspend his exhausted bulk over her for long. He slipped a hand beneath her buttocks to hold her to him, rolling onto his side and then his back, spreading her slight weight across h
im. She complied, completely trusting, completely his. The fierce male pride of total possession jolted through him. But it was her inmost core cleaving to him that hardened him again.

  “Don’t leave me, Nicky,” she whispered breathlessly.

  “Never,” he said fervently. “Never.”

  But her demand was more immediate. To his utter astonishment, her tight sheath began to clip and squeeze his new erection in the unmistakable rhythm of love. Awed, exhilarated, he put both hands around her slender hips, his fingertips ad but meeting, and lifted her up and down, her sheath clasping his erection. She moaned and arched her body, lowering her head and her dark fall of hair. It brushed his face, his throat, his chest, taunting him with siren’s song.

  “There’s no rush. I wdl be here for you all night long, my love,” he said, something between a joyous laugh and a rapturous moan coming up from deep inside. In the silvered light he smiled at this miracle. His Abby had an awesome aptitude for love.

  “Deeper,” “More,” and “Now,” were the only words she said, and she said them intently, in rhythm with the way her body stroked his shaft And he willingly obeyed his tiny tyrant, as he had done since the day they met, driving up as she ground down onto him, finding her fulfdlment and igniting his.

  “Abby?”

  She opened her eyes. She must have slept The moon was at the window’s height, and beneath her Nicholas’s body warmed her, heated every inch of her. She could smell his musky, manly scent and the sharp salty scent of the love that they had shared. Goodbye, goodbye, she thought, to tedious reputation and tiresome virginity. For the first time in her life, Abbigail Till was so perfectly happy, perfectly loved, that she could not move her hps to say a word.

  “Abby?” He sounded worried.

  “Hmm.” She managed just a mumble, to reassure him.

  Gently he eased her onto the pallet and propped up on his elbow. A devilish grin spread across his face. “Aha! I now know how to silence your sharp tongue.”

  But she had a new and better answer for him now. In the moonlight she reached up and threaded her fingers into his lion’s mane of mussed hair, drawing him down for more of his munificent kisses.