by Merry Farmer
“Do it,” she panted, moving her hips in a way she hoped would speed things along.
Whether she did it right or not, he jerked inside of her with a groan. She gasped at the sensation—a quick burst of pain followed by a fullness that had her panting and sweating. “Oh, yes,” she moaned, feeling as though he filled every part of her, not just the cavern between her legs. She tested him by squeezing her inner muscles around him, which left them both making sounds of delight.
Then he began to move. Elaine’s eyes popped fully open at the ripples of pleasure his rocking caused. He went slowly at first, filling her to what felt like impossible degrees. She was just catching on and matching his rhythm with her own movements when he picked up his pace.
The change sent another jolt of desire through her. She gasped in time to his thrusts, digging her fingertips into his back. The throbbing sensation of arousal that would end in those cataclysmic sensations of pleasure began to fill her. She risked a glance at him, only to find him studying her with fiery, hooded eyes as he thrust.
That was where she found the Basil she knew, the Basil she’d come to cherish in so many ways. He was in the steadiness of their coupling, in the teasing way his lips twitched into a grin as their eyes met. Without words, he was telling her he’d known all along how much she would like this, and he was telling her that he intended to have her this way, and a thousand other similar ways, until she was a quivering puddle of desire for him. They didn’t need words to confess their love, or to tease one another.
She arched an eyebrow in challenge, shifting her hand to clutch his backside. His teasing look fluttered to something far more dangerous, and he picked up the pace of his thrusts once again. His hand found its way to her breasts and squeezed. The gesture forced him to rest more of his weight on her as he drove into her so vigorously the sofa scraped noisily against the floor. Not to be outdone, Elaine shifted her hips, attempting to throw one leg farther around him.
They tipped off balance, rolling right off the sofa, along with the books that she’d discarded earlier, and hit the floor in the middle of a thrust. Basil groaned as the air was knocked out of him. He rolled to his back, Elaine straddling him.
“Don’t stop,” she gasped, dipping down to cover his mouth with a clumsy kiss. “Don’t ever stop.”
She tried to imitate his movements, controlling the speed and depth of his staff inside of her, but she had no idea what she was doing, and as erotic as her efforts were, he slipped out. Without missing a beat, Basil rolled her to her back on the carpet, in the pile of her nightgown and his pajamas. He lifted her hips and fit himself back inside of her.
His thrusts were more purposeful this time, and each one sent ripples of pleasure through her. The sensations were different somehow, though just as amazing. He panted and made the most tantalizing sounds to convey just how much pleasure he was taking from their joining. Those sounds drove her wild and caused her to cry out, which intensified his thrusts. It was a spiral of lust and longing that she was sure would leave both of them out of their minds if they weren’t careful.
She grasped his back with one hand and tried to reach for his hair with the other, but his thrusts were too powerful, and her arm flailed out to the side. She grabbed the corner of the Indian scarf covering one table instead, tugging on it until books and pamphlets rained down beside them in a clatter. His foot hit something behind them, and there was a crash, like shattering china. And still the pleasure intensified, consuming her completely.
Her body erupted for a second time, milking him inside of her. She cried out at the sensation, throwing both arms around him and holding on for dear life. A heartbeat later, he let out a fierce groan, and his whole body tensed. His thrusts intensified for a moment before slowing. Then, with the heat and glow of spent desire encompassing them, he went completely still, collapsing above her for a moment before spilling to the side. She clung to him until they were laying in a splayed mass in each other’s arms, gasping for breath and dripping with sweat.
Elaine was speechless, her chest heaving in an effort to fill her lungs with the oxygen she’d forgotten she needed just moments before. Rose had been wrong. The Romance of Lust had been wrong as well. Mechanics were one thing, but no one could have prepared her for the emotional bliss of making love with the man she loved.
“I love you,” she said, sounding far more surprised than she should have. She pushed herself up enough to flop across his chest. “Good heavens, I love you.”
“Could you say that again?” he panted, resting his hands on her back, then sliding them lower, to her backside.
“I love you?” she asked, one brow raised.
“Yes, that.” He laughed, thumping his head back against the floor. “Say it again.”
“I love you,” Elaine said, trying not to giggle. They were completely mad, naked on the floor of the bookshop, in desperate need of a bath. “I love you, Basil,” she repeated.
He groaned with pleasure. “That’s even better.”
“What is?”
“You, saying my name.”
“I love you, Basil,” she laughed. “I love you, I love you, I love you, Basil.”
He was silent for a moment, suddenly serious. “I’m going to remember you said that.”
“I love you?” she teased, not sure why he had gone so serious.
He sat up, managing to keep her in his arms, straddling his waist as he did. “Yes.”
His eyes were suddenly full of sadness, and he stroked her hair as though seeing her for the first and last time.
A shiver passed through Elaine’s heart. “Basil, are you all right?”
He leaned forward and kissed her lightly. That light kiss turned into a second, deeper kiss, then a much, much longer one. But the sadness hadn’t left his eyes.
“How would you like to go upstairs to my bed and do all of that again?” he asked. “Preferably without the bruises.” His sadness drifted away, replaced by desire.
A thrill of anticipation prickled along her skin. “Yes, please,” she hummed, kissing him.
They managed to untangle long enough to stand and gather their nightclothes and the candle before stealing, hand in hand, up to the flat. Elaine felt like she’d stumbled inside of one of the naughty books, but she didn’t regret it for a moment. If the people of Brynthwaite blanched at the thought of an independent woman being friends with an older man, they would positively expire at the two of them being lovers. For the first time in two weeks, she was looking forward to her future.
Chapter 8
Basil had made mistakes. So many mistakes in his sorry excuse for a life that he couldn’t count them all. He’d made at least a dozen mistakes with Elaine during the night, including his failure to proceed with tender caution during what was clearly her first time, spending himself inside of her instead of somewhere that wouldn’t risk pregnancy, more than once, and failing to let her rest after their first, heaven-rending coupling. His mistakes were momentous as well as numerous. He still hadn’t told her who he really was, even though it could be argued he’d had ample opportunity. But as he lay propped on his side in bed, Elaine splayed on her back beside him, the morning sunlight bathing her naked body, he found it hard to care.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, matter of factly, as her eyes fluttered open. He stroked her from her thigh to her breast, reveling in the sensation of her petal-soft skin under his fingertips.
She sighed and stretched, sending his blood racing through his body. “I feel beautiful,” she said, resting a hand on the side of his face.
Her thumb brushed across his lips as though she was a practiced lover and not a novice. He nipped at it, catching it and sucking. She laughed deep in her throat, and joy spilled through him. She may have been a virgin up until the night before, but she was a natural in love.
Every ounce of the gripping tension he’d lived with for two years was gone. Peace and desire had settled over him in a blanket that wouldn’t soon lift. Even though h
e knew disaster loomed immediately before them. He couldn’t manage to worry about it. Not with Elaine in his bed at last, arching and sighing as he stroked her body, like a sculptor bringing clay to life. He let his fingers trace their way across her inner thigh, teasing the damp folds of her sex. She’d been thoroughly wet for him from the moment he’d touched her, something he would never stop gloating about. Knowing he could reduce her to a state of hopeless desire—the same state he’d lived in for two long years—made him feel powerful and young again.
“You like this, don’t you?” he asked with a languid smile as she inched her thighs apart, allowing him to stroke her deeper.
She hummed and smiled. “I do,” she purred.
Those two words sent a jolt of something far more potent than lust through him. He increased the intensity of his fingers’ work, slipping inside of her.
She winced and caught her breath, and immediately be drew back. “Sore?” he asked, gazing at her sleep and passion hazed expression. She nodded, and he switched to rubbing her clit in gentle circles. “I’m sorry. I overdid it last night. I should have known better and had more control.”
“No,” she breathed, working herself against his hand. “I loved every minute of it.”
“Even the bruises from falling off the sofa?” He arched an eyebrow.
She nodded and giggled, her face flushing as she came closer to orgasm.
“Even the scrapes from making love on the floor?”
She gasped, and her breathing quickened, but she still managed to nod.
“Even though this insatiable old man barely let you get a moment’s sleep last night?”
“You’re not that—ohhh!”
Her body burst into powerful contractions. He pressed his hand against her so that he could feel every one as they consumed her, until they softened and subsided. His cock ached for a similar relief, but he didn’t dare bury himself inside of her soreness, no matter how desperately he wanted to. Instead, callous as a thief in the night, he took her hand and guided it to his erection, teaching her how to bring him release…which happened with surprising speed. He came with a pleasured grunt, spilling across her hand and thigh. Yet another mistake to add to his record, he was sure, though one he couldn’t help but feel was highly erotic.
Rather than looking disgusted and offended, Elaine studied him with wide, curious eyes. “Do you know,” she began, a hint of teasing in her voice, “I believe I’ve just made sense of something Rose told me yesterday. About men and their cocks.”
“Do I want to know?” he asked, trying valiantly not to drift off to sleep in a post-orgasmic fog.
She muscled herself to her side, wiping her hand on the sheet before embracing him with her whole body. Her delicate fingers toyed with the puckered flesh of the shrapnel wound he’d received in the Crimea. She kissed him gently, then said, “I hope to become extremely well-acquainted with every part of you and all the ways men like to be pleasured.”
The comment was so typically Elaine that Basil laughed. Her blend of innocence and desire was so far from every casual conquest in his past that the scores of other women he’d wasted his time with years ago faded into nothing. With a burst of renewed energy, he rolled her to her back, his body covering hers, though he was careful to keep his weight distributed.
“I shall endeavor to help you in your efforts with thorough instruction,” he said, bending to kiss her with as much passion as he could manage in his exhaustion.
She returned his ardor with her own. It was beyond divine. They were perfectly matched in every way. Every expectation he’d had of their coupling had been matched and exceeded. It was almost enough to make him forget that the chance of them never making love like this again was high.
He was halfway through debating whether he wanted to fold her in his arms and sleep the morning away or whether he wanted to make her come again when the bell over the shop door downstairs jangled. Elaine gasped and tensed.
“It’s just Andrew,” he said, kissing her lips and cheeks and nose to calm her. “He won’t hear us.”
“It’s not that.” Elaine moved under him as if trying to get away.
Immediately, he lifted up enough to let her scurry and tumble out of the bed. For a moment, the sight of her naked and glistening body pushed all possibility of thought out of his mind.
“It’s nine o’clock,” she said, snatching up the small clock he kept on the mantelpiece at the other side of the small bedroom.
“Do you have somewhere to be?” he asked with a wry grin, settling back against his pillow.
She surprised him by saying, “Yes. I have a train to catch at quarter to ten.”
His brow shot up. A moment later, he remembered the mission she’d mentioned in passing to him before their walk the day before. “Windermere,” he said, sitting and pushing the rumbled bedclothes aside.
Elaine nodded as she rushed to the small water-closet between his bedroom and the main room of the flat. Basil got up to follow her. The water-closet was too small for a bathtub, but she turned on the sink and began splashing herself with water. “I have to sign those blasted papers of Mr. Sudbury’s, saying I agree to the eviction and will not make a claim on his property or bring suit for any of the house’s contents. Not that I want any of it at this point,” she added, snatching a washcloth from a hook beside the sink and wetting it. “He can have his damned property. I have better things to do with my life.”
Basil crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe, beaming. There would never be anyone else like Elaine. His heart was so full of her that he was spoiled for anyone else, no matter what battering life was about to give him.
“Are you going to—” She stopped short as she glanced to him, mid-scrub. Her cheeks went pink as her gaze dropped past his scar to his genitals—which were in a far milder state than they had been for the previous six hours, or two years. Her wide-eyed shock melted quickly to a kittenish grin, which dissolved into giggles.
“Am I going to snatch that washcloth out of your hand, drag you back to bed, and ravish you all over again?” he filled in where she had left off. He shook his head. “Not presently. You have a train to catch.”
She continued to giggle as she rushed through cleaning up. “Does it make me ridiculous to be disappointed by that?” She ran the washcloth under the spigot a few times and finished up bathing. “Does it make me wanton to wish we could spent the whole day in bed together?”
He plucked a towel from one of the pegs on the wall and wrapped it around her as he pulled her into an embrace. “Yes,” he said, kissing her with the full force of his unfettered love. “But I like it.”
“Good,” she answered breathlessly. “Because I do too.”
She inched back as though she would continue drying herself and getting ready. Their eyes met and held. The joy that radiated from Elaine was enough to make Basil believe that anything was possible, even recovery from betrayal. She loved him as he’d loved her all along. He couldn’t have asked for a wilder or more touching first night together. Perhaps he was selling himself short and giving up the fight before he’d so much as taken up a sword. Perhaps she would understand his need to keep his old life to himself after all.
“Elaine, there’s something I need to tell you,” he said as she brushed past him, heading back into the bedroom.
“Can it wait?” she asked. “We’re desperately short on time.”
“It can’t wait,” he said. “And we’re shorter on time than you think.”
“All right, then,” she said over her shoulder as she marched to his wardrobe and threw it open to select her dress for the day. “But tell me while you’re cleaning up.”
“I should really tell you to your face,” he insisted.
She draped her dress over to her arm and moved to the bureau to pull out underclothes. “All right, but are you going to walk me to the train station in the altogether like that?”
Basil let out an impatient breath and looked down at himself.
“No, I’m not.”
His confession would have to wait until after he washed and dressed. He made it through the former in record time, although what he really needed was to drag the old, copper tub out of the closet where he kept it to fill with hot, soapy water so he and Elaine could take a bath together. Which would probably lead to getting sweaty all over again. The image made him smile all the same, but it didn’t help with time.
“Hurry,” Elaine chided him as he searched through the bottom drawers of his bureau and the clothes he hadn’t taken with him to the room at the pub.
He ended up dressing in an odd assortment of clothes which were either out of season or in need of repairs, as Elaine brushed out her hair, but at least he was dressed. His shoes were still at the pub too, so he was forced to don a pair of boots that he usually saved for tromping through the forest after a rainstorm.
“You look as ridiculous as I do,” Elaine laughed once he’d finished tugging them on. She grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the bedroom and through the flat’s main room to the stairs. “Come on. I only have twenty minutes to get down to the station.”
“Do you have everything you need for the journey?”
“Yes.” She grabbed an old satchel from a hook near the stairs and threw it over her shoulder as they descended. “What did you want to tell me?”
Basil took a steadying breath. This wasn’t the way he wanted to reveal all. “I need to tell you about my past,” he began.
She grinned at him over her shoulder. “All those other lovers you’ve had?”
“Well—”
His words died on his lips as they reached the shop. Andrew glanced up from the counter, and it took Basil all of half a second to see that the man knew exactly what had happened overnight. In fact, judging by the pile of the books Elaine had been reading when he found her the night before on the side of the counter and the dustpan with broken shards of china that sat next to it, Andrew had cleaned up from their illicit activities.
If he had been the only one in the shop, Basil could have had a quick word with him and been done with the embarrassment. But a pair of middle-aged ladies stood gaping at him and Elaine beside the stand of journals close to the front door. He’d only barely managed to wash up, he was wearing mismatched clothes, and he hadn’t shaved or brushed his hair. If they’d had any hope of keeping the change in their relationship from the rest of Brynthwaite, those hopes were immediately dashed.
