Aye, rest while you can. Make the most of the quiet, well, relative peace, anyway," he said after listening for a moment.
She performed her toilette as if she were at home, then hesitated for a moment longer before finally tucking herself back in bed beside Simon.
"I'm sorry--"
"I'm not. Maybe it is shock or gratitude, but I want you to touch me, Simon. Not like a rare piece of porcelain, but, well, like a woman. I see some women in the clinic who go numb because of the abuse they have endured. With you, I just want to feel." "I know," he said with a nod, before rolling over to face her. "If I just stay calm, there's no pain. But being with you is so exciting, its worth any small agony I have to endure."
"Oh, then we shouldn't--"
"I think we must. Really." He grinned up at her for a moment before nuzzling her neck with his lips. The apron top soon dropped away as he kissed down her neck and suckled her right nipple, the one nearest him without him rolling right over on top of her and really giving the game away.
His long hard fingers found the slit in her drawers and she could feel her hips thrust right up off the pallet in stunned surprise comingled with the most desperately urgent need.
"Simon!" she panted.
Her face aglow with a light dew of perspiration, he moved his mouth up to kiss her lips into roses, petal-soft, moist with loving, engorged with life.
His licking her upper lip was her undoing. She could feel her own flood of passion explode. She gave him one uncontrollable caress with her whole juddering body and sent him spilling over the edge of sanity once more.
They both tensed as Antony gasped and snuffled in his sleep. Then they were silently roaring with laughter as they both tried to mop each other up. Another rending snore from her cousin had her holding her sides for fear they would split.
He kissed her warmly once more, his eyes sparkling. "I said it before, but it's true. Quelle une femme incroyable. What an incredible woman you are."
"And you're an incredible man," she rejoined with a warm smile. "Just as long as you don't snore like that, of course."
He shook his head. "I don't think I do. But then, I've never had anyone to tell me apart from my brothers, and that was a lot of years ago."
"No one?"
"No one."
"I won't tell if you don't."
Antony let out another ripping snore that shook the room.
"If he's going to do that all night we might as well get in the tub for a better tiddle," Simon joked.
"I thought you were tired?"
"I am, but this is too good. I can't believe you're here, that I'm touching you."
"I can't believe you're touched me," she whispered back, stroking his cheek tenderly. "It was heart-stopping."
"So is what you did with your hand. Perfection. But you don't have to do this just because you feel sorry for me. I mean, it's not as if they don't let me have a whore every three months or so if I really need..."
"What?" she gasped, deeply shocked.
"Aye," he said, nodding. "they let us have an outlet. I mean, I don't, well, all the way. Just sort of what you did to me now, though most of the time it's just..."
Antony's loud snore interrupted what he had been about to say. He nearly collapsed in a paroxysm of laughter.
"Gosh, we might as well get up and go to the other side of the tub and kiss if he's going to keep doing that," he said, shaking his head.
"I still think inside the tub and a tiddle is the best idea."
But Simon shook his head. "I'll lose all control with you if you kiss me again. But if I can have a breast-"
She nodded, running her fingers through his hair as he moved his lips to her bosom.
He laved her nipples until she wanted to weep in frustration, for embarrassing thought their passionate writhing had been, she was desperate for more.
She guided his hand down and he swirled the strange peak which had sprung up at the front of her mound. She longed for his fingers to penetrate her, but he could sense from her tightness and shyness that this was uncharted territory, not to be invaded at any price.
"No, love, we can't. You mustn't..."
"I feel like I'm going to climb the walls if you don't," she gritted out urgently.
"Easy, ma petite. Here's your little magic seat of pleasure, your clitoris, or in my language, un bouton d'amour. If I wet my fingers I can give you a lot more pleasure. May I?"
"Do it, please," she gasped, quivering with need.
He licked his fingers, commenting on how delicious she tasted, which caused her to blush and shoot a terrified look over at Antony.
He was still oblivious, and so was she as Simon began to tease her and run his fingers over her peaks and valleys with a surety of touch which had her hips thrusting against his hand so desperately he had all to do not to take her there and then.
He whispered in her ear, "If we were alone, do you know what I would do to you?"
She shook her head.
"Do you want me to tell you?" he asked, nuzzling her ear and nibbling the lobe.
"Mmm, yes please."
"I would lick you all over, running my tongue inside and out. Explore you fully with it, and my fingers and finally my straining manhood. Penetrate you with all three until you melted against me and called out my name. I would wander over every part of your body, so that you would know my touch everywhere. I'd possess you utterly, so that you could never think of anything but my touch, my passion. Oh God, Gabrielle, j'ai besoin de toi."
"Oh, Simon, it's like fire. I need you too," she panted, before feasting on his lips and tongue with her own.
Antony's next snore certainly didn't elicit a giggle from either of them. She was clinging to his shoulders and almost begging him to take her, and the hell with the consequences.
He pressed her hand and said in a thready whisper, "I'm sorry. This taste of heaven isn't enough."
"What can we do?"
He shook his head. "No, I can't..."
"Please, I need you..."
"All right, but you need to promise me you'll keep your legs together tightly no matter what."
"Yes," she said, willing to promise him anything, anything to free herself from the passionate prison she had suddenly found herself enmeshed in.
"Go on, press them together," he instructed a short time later.
He had by now worked the tapes of her drawers loose and peeled them off her hips, then dragged his own trousers down to his knees. Still on his side, he carefully inserted himself between the plump flesh of her thighs, setting her completely atremble with the most incredible longings.
The whole length of him stroked her outside, including her whorl of delight. She could feel her body both tightening and loosening as they lay face to face, aching to draw him even closer, draw him in....
He kissed her like a drowning man gasping for his last breath and brought them both to a climax all the most startling for having been so sudden and powerful. Her eyes flew wide at the stunning sensation, and she gasped his name into his mouth.
Afterwards they lay in each other's arms like two spent swimmers clinging to each other for strength and their very survival. Antony's loud snoring was the only sound in the room apart from some contented sighs and kisses as they eventually floated back down to earth.
What they had shared truly went beyond words. He ran his tongue along the crease of her lips softly. Then he grasped the cloth.
"Let me, love."
He cleaned her soaking thighs and adjusted their clothing back into some semblance of order.
She made a murmur of protest but he shook his head.
"I don't dare leave us like that. I can't trust myself in my sleep. I want you so much, I might just climb right up inside you and never come out."
She trembled at his word and cradled him against her breast. "Oh Simon, I want you too."
"What is this incredible gift you've given me?" he asked in wonder. "I can't believe we met only a few short hours ag
o in the midst of absolute madness and chaos.
"Now my desire for you is both of those things, and so much more. I feel so lost and yet found. Torn in two. I keep telling myself this is terribly wrong. I mean, a young girl like you, so young and tender as I remember from past happy days, yet now so womanly too, and look at me now. An opium addict and an incarcerated lunatic.
"Yet I touch you, kiss you, and I feel such certainty. As if I'm sheltered in the storm and the winds and rain can buffet me, yet I'll be safe no matter what."
Gabrielle stroked his cheek gently. "Oh, I wish I could, Simon. I promise you, I'll find out who you are, why you're here, where we met before. We can see each other, maybe get you out..."
Simon shook his head bitterly. "They'll never let me go. Never. And you can't follow me in here, or into my world. It's too dangerous."
"Maybe we can break free..."
He cupped her cheek and shook his head sadly. "Don't, please, Gabrielle. Don't make me allow myself to start dreaming. You're so lovely and warm and soft in my arms now, sated by the loving we've shared, viewing me as some sort of hero who rescued you from a fate worse than death, but believe me, I've see far worse than what you've witnessed tonight and I am not going to drag you into my hell on Earth."
But Simon--"
"I'm sorry, my dear, but the plain fact is that but there will come a time when you're going to hate me."
"No! Never!" she protested, truly shocked. She planted a kiss on his lips which set them both panting anew.
Yet Simon remained adamant and untwined himself from her embrace. "Yes, love. You will hate me." His golden eyes blazed with absolute conviction. "You're going to look at me and there will be doubt in your eyes. And it'll damn near kill me. Then it will be all over. You'll walk away from me, and I'll never see you again." He sighed heavily.
"No! Never!" she protested again. "There's nothing you could do, nothing they could say, that would make me abandon you..."
"But then you're really just a dream anyway, Gabrielle. One of the dreams that mock me as I try to escape from this place even for a short time, only to wake up in my cold, lonely, narrow cell and realise that this is all a fantasy. None of it is real."
"I am real, Simon, and I won't forsake you..."
He gave her a loving smile, and she was sure she had never seen a man more handsome.
"My darling Gabrielle, even if you were real, and not just a recollection of happier times in my long ago past, your love could never be. I'm blighted, not even human any longer. I'm nothing more than a creature of the night, a savage beast of war and the apocalypse. The pale rider bringing nothing but death with only a word or two. There isn't a place for me in the real world after the war."
She shook her head and argued vehemently, "No, it's not true! Even out of death there comes new life. Just think of, well, bone meal in a garden to fertilise roses. How something as reeking of mortality as manure can also foster such things of beauty."
He gazed at her, startled. Roses....
He heard her saying as if from a distance, "My friend Eswara is from India. She believes that nothing ever dies, but is reborn and tries to aspire to a higher and higher level of being. To be at one with the universe at last. Reincarnation, I think is the word. Even if I'm not a very good Christian, I have to believe there's more than this world, just as you have to believe there's more than Bedlam. I won't forsake you, Simon, I swear."
He rested his hand on her cheek. "That's exactly what you should do. A quick tiddle or two isn't worth your life, my dear. There will be other men, and..."
She pouted mutinously. "Even if there ever were, which I doubt, you're still my friend. I owe you. And I shan't forget it. Do you hear me, Simon?"
He simply nodded, unwilling to spoil the few precious moments they had left in fruitless arguments.
She got up to check on her sister and then knelt back down to rearrange their bed more neatly.
"Thank you for rising to my defence so stoutly." He stroked one auburn curl, then asked softly, "Kiss me again?"
She did more than that, throwing her leg over his waist and tugging at his trousers until his velvet tip branded into her through his clothes.
The whirlwind was upon them again, but Simon once again was the one who took command and drew back where she would have pressed forward with their passion to its tumultuous conclusion.
He bathed her face in kisses, but finally flattened her leg back down on the pallet before he really did ruin her irrevocably.
"We can't, darling. It's going to happen in a second if you do that again. And then your cousin is really going to kill me. I'm not taking you on the bathroom floor like some mindless brute, do you hear me?"
"Then let's do what you did before. Please. I need you. Need you so much," she panted, stroking his high cheekbone.
Eventually he gave a reluctant nod. He positioned himself as he had a few moments previously and wrapped his arm around her legs to still her, not trusting Gabrielle to keep herself safe from his huge manhood, which he feared would split her tiny body in two.
For she was certainly most slender, the tiniest and most lithe girl he had ever met, yet all woman with it, her body a lush oasis of delights in the desert of his existence.
He brought them to another incredible climax even more powerful than all the others combined. She clung to him fiercely, almost sobbing out her need for him.
He sushed her with his mouth, curving her neck backwards to deepen the kiss so that she would not try to pull him into her more than welcoming body.
But she could see what he was doing. "Please, if this is all the time we have..."
"No, I've told you. I just can't do this to you. And they will be here soon. Try to sleep."
"I can't. I don't want to lose you. Have you vanish into thin air."
He shook his head sadly. "I'm a ghost, a dead man."
She ran her hand along his abdomen before he could stop her. "You feel awfully lively to me."
"Stop, please. Don't you understand, I feel dreadful enough about what we did already?" he hissed.
"Was it so terrible for you?" she asked, her hurt unmistakable in her tone.
He kissed her hard, then said, "It was heaven on earth. But I don't want you do this out of gratitude."
"I've told you, it's not that--
"Or while your wits are addled by the violent attacks you've endured--"
"It's not that either, Simon. It's you, us..." She shrugged. "I can't explain it. All I know is the four of us here like this, well, everything happens for a reason and this is the start of something new, I'm sure of it. New for us all."
He sighed heavily. "It's new all right, new for you as a virgin. I should never have gone so far. I'm sorry. I've awakened something inside you now that it will be hard to quench. Just think of this is a pleasant fantasy. But I'm not a real man. The terror of the circumstances has made you feel, well, romantically inclined towards someone you would never otherwise give the time of day to."
Her eyes flashed fire. "Is that what you think this has been between us? Some mere reaction to the danger and my near-rape? I'm so hysterical that I've decided to throw myself into the arms of the very next man I meet?" she accused as she jerked her body away from his.
Simon nearly cried out at the loss of her warm softness. "Not exactly. Just that you would be inclined to view your rescuer as some sort of hero. But I'm a madman."
Her eyes narrowed. "You're more sane than most people I've met outside these gates. A real madman would be gibbering and would most certainly have taken all I had to offer, and more."
He moved his head to nuzzle her hair. "Please, dearest, it's getting late. They will come for me soon. So I would like to spend our last few minutes in your arms, revelling in your softness, not arguing with you about what's really for your own good.
"You're so young. It would be a dreadful mistake to rob you of that which can never be replaced. And while some women can have many partners without any thought
for the consequences, I suspect you're not one of them. I think once you give your body and heart, they can never be regained."
His hand moved from her shoulder down the curve of her back to cup her more tightly to him. "It would be the height of folly and selfishness to become your man for one night and leave you with nothing but memories and regrets tomorrow, and perhaps even worse consequences."
"But it doesn't have to be like that, Simon. I'll come see you whenever I visit Lucinda and..."
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 6 Page 7
