"All right, if you're sure."
"The food has done wonders for me. I'll be fine."
“Warm enough?” Gabrielle asked as he settled down facing the door.
“Steaming,” he said through gritted teeth, earning himself another stroke of Gabrielle’s hand.
She didn’t like to think she was teasing him or leading him on, but if anyone was in need of some human comfort it was Simon.
She stroked his chest, arm and hand. He clasped her fingers against his chest. When he was sure Antony wasn’t looking, he brought it to his lips to plant a long, lingering wet kiss upon it.
Gabrielle could feel her hips thrusting against his backside and her knees coming up even more tightly to fit into his curled body. She couldn’t imagine how it seemed so natural to be lying with this man in such a way.
But ever since they had met she had been drawn to him irresistibly. All he had to do was look at her and she felt sure she would melt into a puddle at his feet.
It was a good comparison, she decided, for she felt the most incredible moist heat flooding through her now as he pushed backwards against her, filling her lap. Her breasts were flattened against his back intimately. Boldly she unlooped the bib of the apron from around her neck, and dragged the loose shirt up to his shoulders.
She pressed and glided her breasts along the scarred flesh of his back, wondering as she did so just how much he could feel. Her nipples peaked at the contact and she shivered with longing.
He grabbed her hand now and thrust it down between his legs. She started and would have pulled away, but he had already released her wrist, giving her a choice.
She touched his manhood again, softer than satin, harder than steel, and felt it pulsing into her hand. Fascinated, she insinuated her fingers under the waistband of the trousers. She could hear him grind his teeth.
“Quelle une femme incroyable,” he gasped when she dared move her hand.
Gabrielle had never been told what an incredible woman she was before. It made her feel even more heated.
She squeezed him, hoping that might silence him before her cousin, five feet away, noticed anything was amiss. But it only made things worse.
Simon sounded as if he were choking, and she covered the noise with a cough. Her hand was now very damp indeed, and she guessed what had happened even as she was surprised at the speed with which it had occurred.
She wriggled her other hand down and reached into the pocket of her apron. She fished out a cleaning cloth, and handed it to him under the blanket.
“Merci beaucoup, ma chérie.”
He mopped her hand and then himself. When she brought her other hand back under his neck once more he kissed her hand again.
“Bonne nuit.”
“Are you all right?” she whispered.
“Just so tired now. Too much excitement for one day. But thank yo, my treasure. You have no idea what this means to me, to be treated like, well, like a man again, in every sense of the word. Especially by someone as lovely as you.”
She looked over to see if Antony had stirred but he was still lying with his eyes closed. She removed her hand from his trousers and sought his left hand.
She pulled it backwards and rested it on her buttock. His hand was so huge that a small shift had his fingers splayed over both. He also rubbed up and down the small of her back until she was sure she was on fire.
A few gathered handfuls of skirt gave him better access to her posterior. As she grew more heated she reached to the front to feel him once more.
He was both pliable and rigid, and she could sense him gathering his energies for another torrent of passion. With another look at Antony, who was now snoring, he rolled gently onto his back.
“Kiss me, please?”
She remembered with a smile that he had refused to kiss her the first time because he had not been able to brush his teeth. Well, he had now, so she drew the covers right up over his shoulder, shielding them somewhat from her cousin’s gaze, and brushed her lips softly with his.
“Mon Dieu, I’m going to explode again,” he rasped against her ear as he nuzzled her.
She could feel the rousing power in his loins as it gathered. This time she took a much less short and tentative stroke. Her fingers cupped his tender pouch lightly before stroking all the way up his shaft.
She felt him swell and surge. His hand grabbed hers to trap her palm around the throbbing velvety tip. It sprang into her delicate fist and he rammed his mouth over hers to silence his gasp of passion.
She tasted his tongue and actually found herself gladly drawing it into her mouth.
One man had tried to treat her thus at a ball one evening after he had had too much to drink. She had thought it the most repellent thing in the world.
But now it was as if she wanted to inhale and absorb every part of Simon's body into her, starting with his mouth.
Then she realised her legs had spread and her own flesh had swollen and distended. She was shocked. It was almost as if she had grown a new part of her body, something which could only ever be conjured up by the incredible passion he evoked deeply within her.
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.”
“I don’t think I do. I’ve never had anyone to tell me apart from my brothers, and that was a lot of years ago.”
“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 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.
&nbs
p; 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.”
“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 whole 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 ago 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, but there will come a time when you’re going to hate me.”
“No! Never!” she protested, truly shocked, and planted a kiss on his lips which set them both panting anew.
Yet Simon remained adamant. “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 God 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. 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.
“Thank you for rising to my defence so sto
utly." 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.
Madness Page 6
