by Nan Ryan
The black silk robe fell open, pooling at her sides, exposing her pale bare body. Thankful for the room’s cloaking darkness, Suzanna fought the urge to hastily grab the robe and wrap it securely around herself. A firm resolve, born of her mission, made her refrain, but the palms of her hands were perspiring with nervous anticipation. She willed herself to appear composed and confident. She didn’t want this handsome Yankee to think she was a starry-eyed innocent who might fall in love with him and quickly become a nuisance, tearfully demanding that he commit himself to her.
Suzanna reminded herself that she had but one purpose—to please Mitch Longley sexually. She had to convince him she was an experienced libertine, the kind of lover with whom he could enjoy a casual affair. An affair that was no more important to her than to him.
But her heart almost beat its way out of her chest when Mitch sat down on the bed facing her, placed a long arm across her and, bracing himself with a spread hand on the mattress, leaned down and kissed her hotly, hungrily. Suzanna quickly responded to his masterful lips, her mouth yielding to his, her nervous hands clasping his bare biceps.
As they kissed, Suzanna struggled valiantly to stay calm, but found that it was futile. She was anxious, yet eager. She was trembling, inside and out. She was chilled, yet burning hot. Patriotic duty was rapidly giving way to erotic desire. This tryst was to have been her grand sacrifice for the Cause. But here, in the arms of this formidable enemy, her generous offering was becoming eclipsed by selfish physical pleasure.
Suzanna sighed against Mitch’s burning lips when he drew her up into a sitting position, wrapped strong arms around her and pressed her against his broad, muscled chest. Suzanna tingled at the ticklish brush of crisp hair against her bare breasts. She could feel her nipples tightening from the contact. Her skin burned from his touch and she was having trouble breathing.
Mitch urged the silk robe off her shoulders and down her arms. He freed her from the sleeves and the robe fell away. Suzanna felt Mitch’s warm hands glide slowly up over her back and into her hair. He took his lips from hers and began removing the pins from her upswept tresses. As they spilled down around her shoulders, a flash of lightning struck nearby. Suzanna could see Mitch’s handsome face; desire was clearly etched in his strong, masculine features. His eyes were smoldering with passion, and she felt a quick stab of fear.
Then the room went dark once more and Suzanna was back in his arms. The hairpins tossed onto the night table, Mitch’s lean fingers tunneled into her hair, tightened their hold and urged her head back. He bent and pressed a kiss to the sensitive hollow of her throat, and Suzanna shuddered involuntarily. She winced when she felt his hand gently cupping her left breast, his thumb slowly rubbing back and forth across the stiffening nipple.
Mitch raised his head as another burst of lightning struck, clearly illuminating them and the entire room. Suzanna gazed into his hypnotic green eyes and heard him say, “If you want me to stop, sweetheart, I will.”
The room again in darkness, she brazenly replied, “Don’t you dare stop. Make love to me, Mitch. Make love to me.”
Then she blinked in surprise and struggled to hold still when she felt his hot lips moving down over her breast. He kissed her nipple softly, tenderly. His smooth, warm lips felt like a flame singeing her flesh. Suzanna gave a strangled gasp of surprise when he opened his mouth and wetly enclosed the rigid nipple. She looked down, but in the darkness could not see the handsome head bent to her. She could only feel those beautifully sculpted lips tenderly tugging on her nipple, shocking her, thrilling her, setting her on fire.
Suzanna lifted a tentative hand, placed it on the back of Mitch’s moving head. Her slender fingers toyed with the lustrous locks, and hardly realizing she was doing it, she pressed him steadily closer as she squared her bare shoulders and thrust her breasts forward.
Both dazzled and frightened by the new sensations she was experiencing, Suzanna felt herself beginning to sag weakly back onto the mattress. His lips never leaving her flesh, Mitch followed her down. Suzanna released a shuddering sigh as she stretched out on her back and continued to stroke his dark head while he teasingly licked, playfully bit and gently sucked at her diamond-hard nipple.
Guiltily, Suzanna longed for another flash of lightning so that she could see them, could witness this stunning act of intimacy. As if the heavens had read her mind, the strongest bolt yet streaked across the sky, and Suzanna was rewarded with a thrilling glimpse of Mitch’s tanned face at her pale breast. His beautiful eyes closed, lashes fluttering restlessly on high cheekbones, his lips clasping her rigid nipple.
Again darkness fell and again Suzanna was glad the light was so quickly gone. Her face burning with a mixture of pleasure and shame, she lay there luxuriating in the stygian blackness, hoping there would be no more flashes of lightning, and wondering what he would do to her next. She bit the inside of her lip when Mitch’s mouth abruptly left her breast and he rose from the bed. She strained to see where he was and what he was doing, but it was too dark. Seconds later he came down onto the bed and stretched out beside her. She was instantly aware that his trousers had been discarded.
He was naked.
Suzanna swallowed convulsively.
Mitch gathered her into his close embrace, tugged the silk robe out from under her and dropped it onto the floor beside the bed. Trembling uncontrollably now, choking with sexual excitement, Suzanna accepted his kiss, her mouth quickly opening beneath his, her tongue stroking his. She felt his tall lean body pressed against hers, his skin scalding hot to the touch and that hard, heavy, most male part of him throbbing insistently against her thigh. Her hand spread on his chest, she felt his thundering heartbeat and realized that he was as aroused as she.
Kissing her deeply several times, Mitch finally maneuvered her onto her back, then rolled up on his side and lay close against her. When their lips finally separated, he was resting his weight on a bent elbow. He whispered endearments as he toyed with her kiss-moistened nipple, his forefinger circling it. And as he unhurriedly set about readying her for the act of lovemaking, he told her in a low, husky voice how much he wanted her. He confessed that he had wanted her from the moment he’d walked into Mattie Kirkendal’s ballroom and seen her in the arms of another officer.
“Yours are the only arms I’ve been in since that night,” Suzanna shakily told him.
“I don’t want you to be in anyone else’s arms while I’m away, sweetheart.”
Suzanna did not reply, didn’t reassure him. She wanted him to worry and wonder, and therefore want her more than ever. Mitch didn’t press her. He took his hand from her breast and moved it down over her ribs and laid it lightly on her flat belly. Suzanna tensed and waited, not sure what would come next, wondering what she was supposed to do, how she could possibly convince him she was experienced at this game of love when she knew next to nothing about it.
She felt Mitch’s lips brush her temple and slide down to her face. His mouth moved slowly across her cheek to settle on her lips, while his lean fingers stroked her constricting belly.
Suzanna squirmed and her toes curled. When she felt his fingertips slip into the triangle of springy coils between her thighs, she stiffened and lost her breath entirely. She whimpered and he took his lips from hers. She anxiously gasped for breath, but Mitch didn’t remove his hand. He brushed kisses to her feverish cheeks while his palm moved between her legs and he gently cupped her with all four fingers.
And he waited.
When Suzanna was breathing more easily, Mitch lifted his hand a little and deftly parted the flaming red curls. That slick button of female flesh now exposed, he whispered her name in the darkness as he touched her with just his long middle finger. Suzanna’s hips involuntarily lifted from the mattress and she clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from gurgling in protest. She had not counted on him touching her with his hand. Nor had she supposed that he could so excite her with just his lean fingers. Her hot face reddened with embarrassment. He had s
aid that he would stop anytime she asked, so that’s exactly what she would do. She would order him to stop right this instant! But if she did, then he’d know that she was inexperienced. She couldn’t let that happen.
Again Mitch waited while she calmed a little. Then he slid his finger down and dipped the tip into the wetness flowing from her. He spread that wetness upward and around the tiny button of throbbing flesh. He began to very slowly, very gently caress her, and Suzanna’s young healthy body responded to his masterful touch. There was no further thought of making him stop. She didn’t want him to stop. Ever.
Suzanna surrendered completely to the passion engulfing her, and from that moment forward, the heated lovemaking became a blinding blur of building ecstasy for her. A bolt of lightning exposed to her wonderment-widened eyes the sensual sight of Mitch’s tanned hand between her pale legs, touching her, toying with her, pleasuring her so expertly that she totally forgot the purpose of this clandestine rendezvous.
When darkness returned, she was grateful. But she was profoundly awakened and highly aroused as well. What his fingers were doing to her was thrilling beyond belief. She had never dreamed she could feel like this, never considered that she might be suspended in such a state of delicious desire. She was growing hotter by the second and her feverish body was taut with yearning for more.
Suzanna’s eyes opened when Mitch took his hand away, and she sighed deeply when she felt him move between her parted legs. Lightning flashed and his passion-hardened face and wide, muscular shoulders filled the entire scope of her vision. She was gazing into his flashing eyes as he entered her. Darkness returned just in time.
She was glad that Mitch couldn’t see her grit her teeth and squeeze her eyes shut against the piercing pain as his hard, pounding flesh slid into her.
When he stopped abruptly, Suzanna was confused. Had she done something wrong? She waited, hardly daring to breathe, her heart pounding. Was she supposed to do something more? But what? Suzanna felt Mitch pressing gentle kisses to her lips, heard him say her name over and over as if offering an apology. She was confused by his sudden hesitancy and wondered again if she was doing something wrong, something that made him wish he had never started making love to her.
After what seemed an eternity, he began to move inside her, to thrust slowly, carefully. And to Suzanna’s surprise, it didn’t feel all that bad. She began to relax, to move with him, to recapture some of the joy she’d experienced earlier when his hand was touching her.
Then Mitch was kissing her again and she was kissing him back. Her arms were around his neck and the two of them were moving together in a slow erotic dance of desire that made all prior pleasure pale in comparison. Suzanna hardly realized that she was saying Mitch’s name over and over as she lifted her hips to meet each slow, driving thrust. And she had no idea that he was valiantly fighting to control his body’s aching need for release.
A patient, caring lover, Mitch spent the next half hour delaying, with great difficulty, his threatening orgasm. Intent on pleasing his beautiful partner, he held back and took pride in smoothly tutoring Suzanna in the art of lovemaking. Skillfully, he began teaching her the secrets of her own lush body and how to derive the ultimate pleasure from making love to a man.
But finally the moment came when he could no longer stall the inevitable. He hated knowing that she hadn’t attained orgasm yet, but he couldn’t help himself. She was too beautiful, too sweet, too sensual.
Mitch tore his lips from Suzanna’s as lightning illuminated their twined bodies.
“Baby, baby,” he choked.
Then the echoing thunder drowned out his groan of ecstasy as his orgasm exploded, draining him until he collapsed, sated, atop the bewildered Suzanna.
Twenty-Three
Mitch, still breathing heavily, lay stretched out flat on his back, holding Suzanna close. Her head supported by his raised arm, she was curled on her side against him, her hand on his chest, nails absently raking through the dense crisp hair.
“Mitch,” she said, finally breaking the easy silence.
“Hmm?”
“Where do you go when you leave in the morning?”
“I wish I could tell you, sweetheart.”
“Why can’t you? You do know where they’re sending you, don’t you?”
“I do, but I’m not at liberty to tell anyone.”
Suzanna raised her head. “Surely after tonight, after we…ah…I’m not just ‘anyone.’ Am I?”
Mitch lifted a hand, cupped her chin. “No, of course not. You’re the most special person in my life.”
“Then tell me where—”
Interrupting, Mitch said, “I don’t want you worrying, Suzanna.”
“I’ll worry a great deal more if I don’t know where you are and what you are doing. In which battle you’re engaged.”
“Listen to me, sweetheart. I’ve come through almost four years of constant war without suffering so much as a scratch. I’ve been unbelievably lucky and I fully expect my luck to hold. And as I recall, you read my fortune and assured me that I’d live to be an old, old man. So you see, there’s no need for you to be concerned.”
Suzanna hid her frustration. She lay back down, brushed a kiss to his tanned throat and tried to sound casual when she ventured, “I’ll bet I can guess where you’re going. I’ve heard rumors that a major naval battle is brewing down at Mobile Bay in Alabama and…”
“I wouldn’t put much store in rumors, Suzanna.”
“Then give me some facts. What’s the name of your ironclad? Which fleet do you command? What battles…?”
“Darling, it’s almost midnight. Only six short hours before I must report for duty. I have no intention of wasting that precious time talking about the war.”
Bested, she graciously acquiesced. “You’re absolutely right, Admiral Longley. If I’m not to see you again for weeks, perhaps months, then…” She shrugged bare shoulders.
Even then he was not forthcoming. He gave her no indication when he might be back, when she would see him again. He said, “Suzanna, if you’re reluctant to stay out past a decent hour and risk being seen by those who might gossip about you, damage your sterling reputation, I’ll take you home. Now.”
“And if I’m not?”
“Then you can sleep here in my arms, which is what I’d like.”
She snuggled closer. “If I stay I’m afraid you won’t get much rest.”
“I should hope not.”
* * *
The pair didn’t sleep a wink all night. They talked and kissed and touched while the blinding rain continued to pelt the windows and lightning intermittently illuminated the room and the bed where they lay.
The kissing and touching was but a lovely, lengthy prelude to the complete lovemaking Mitch was planning for his beautiful companion. It was sometime before 3:00 a.m. that Mitch, promising Suzanna it would be better this time, at last made slow, sweet love to her again.
He was right.
Suzanna found the intimacy to be exquisitely pleasurable. Mitch skillfully drew out her escalating ecstasy, teasing and tormenting her until she was fairly panting with passion. A patient, tender and accomplished lover who knew how to give a woman extraordinary sexual elation, he purposely kept Suzanna at a heightened state of arousal for the better part of an hour before finally taking her over the top.
When she cried out and desperately clung to him as the last little tremors of her orgasm buffeted her, Mitch held her and soothed her as one might comfort a fretful child. When at last she had calmed, she confessed dreamily, “I’ve never felt like that before.”
“I know,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me, sweetheart?”
“Tell you what?”
“That this was your first time. When you agreed to come out to the cottage with me tonight, I assumed that…”
“And you assumed correctly. For heaven sake, I am twenty-three years old and have entertained more than my share of sophisticated suitors! My first time to make
love? Certainly not!” she declared emphatically. “I’ve had any number of lovers.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“I most certainly have. Why, I…I…” She shook her head. “You could tell?”
“Yes, darling, of course I could tell. I’m your first lover, and if I have my way, I’ll be your last.”
Suzanna liked his answer. It sounded as if he was already falling in love with her. Good! That’s exactly what she wanted. Once he was madly in love with her and felt he could trust her completely, he would share all kinds of vital information, which she in turn could pass on to her Confederate operatives.
“Mitch, it was foolish of me to pretend I was an experienced woman, wasn’t it?” she said.
“Why did you do it?”
“I was afraid you’d be bored with me, that you wouldn’t want me if you knew the truth.”
“My sweet, naive Suzanna, you have much to learn, I’m afraid. Knowing you were an innocent when you came into my arms tonight makes you all the more desirable.” He paused and added, “But unfortunately, it makes a scoundrel of me.”
“No, it doesn’t. I wanted you to make love to me.” She traced his beautifully sculpted lips with her forefinger and stated honestly, “You didn’t seduce me, Admiral. I seduced you.”
* * *
“My dear child, I’m so glad you came,” said Mitch’s aunt, the formidable Edna Earl Longley.
“Thank you for inviting me, Miss Longley,” Suzanna said with a smile.
The invitation to join Edna Earl Longley for lunch had arrived at Suzanna’s rented rooms not twenty-four hours after Mitch departed. When Suzanna opened her front door, a messenger had handed her a small vellum envelope. Inside was a brief note, scrawled in a large, shaky hand, stating that “the two of us should get better acquainted. Won’t you join me for a light noon repast at one sharp on Friday, May 21.” It was signed “Edna Earl Longley.”
Suzanna was immediately apprehensive. Still, she had seen no way out. It would have been rude not to accept. But the prospect of being grilled by the indomitable old woman had filled her with dread.
