by Pamela Morsi
He glanced down at the bed and suddenly grinned. "Miss Gertrude, I am shocked!" he said, feigning social horror. "Boots on the bed! What would the ladies of the Algonquin Society think?"
"I cannot imagine."
"Well, I certainly can. Mrs. Wentworth would say it was further proof that you have no good sense at all. Naomi Pruitt would agree that it is exactly the kind of thing that a woman like yourself would do. And poor Claudy Mitts would 'oh dear, oh dear' herself into a near frenzy."
Gertrude laughed out loud. She gazed in wonder at the man beside her. Mikolai Stefanski, the rather dour Polish businessman that she had known all her life, was transformed before her eyes into a smiling gentleman with a sense of light good humor.
"However did you get to know the ladies of the Algonquin Society so well?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Just because a man does not speak much doesn't mean that he is not listening. One thing about attempting to converse in a foreign language is that it gives you more time to think about your words before you utter them. Given time to think, I've discovered that much of my own speech is better left unsaid."
She smiled back at him, trying to take in this new image. The eyes of the man she knew so well were now crinkling with smile lines.
"Now let me help you with these boots before the ladies become unhinged."
He was still acting with jovial nonchalance as he pushed the hem of her petticoat up to her knees. Certainly higher than necessary for the unlacing of her black dress boots. His big hands were adept and unhurried. He looked up at her, once more his eyes were lazy as if his thoughts again were lascivious.
"Perhaps next time you put on these boots, you will think of me," he whispered huskily.
The timbre of his voice made Gertrude tremble. "Because you have unlaced them for me?"
"Yes, that," he agreed. "And because of the action required." He pulled out half a length of the shoelace from the eyelets. "It must go in," he said. "And out. In . . . and out . . . in . . . and out."
Gertrude's brow furrowed in puzzlement.
"You don't know what I'm talking about?" It was a question.
"No, I don't."
He threw the boots off the end of the bed. "You will," he said in a tone that sounded like a promise.
He scooted up on the bed upon his knees and pulled her feet into his lap. He began to massage her instep and she sat up in bed.
'Too much?" he asked.
"I'm ticklish."
He nodded and released her feet, only to explore a length of leg covered by black silk stocking.
"Would you like to see my chest?" he asked. "I would like to remove my shirt, but only if you are not offended."
The idea of a shirtless Stefanski upon the bed with her was really quite thrilling. "Please, remove your shirt," she said.
He discarded his tie, slipped his suspenders off his shoulders, and made quick work of the half-dozen mother-of-pearl buttons that had kept it fastened. He jerked its tail out of the waistband of his trousers and threw it from him. The shirt hardly had time to hit the floor before he also discarded his silk fleeced undershirt.
It had all happened so quickly that Gertrude found herself somewhat taken aback by the sudden appearance of his naked flesh before her. She had always thought him to be a stocky, almost portly man. But there was not one ounce of fat on his broad, heavily muscled torso. What there was, Gertrude discovered, was an unbelievably abundant amount of thick brown hair.
"Oh my!" she said.
"Would you like to touch me?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"You can touch me this way," he said, taking her stocking-covered foot and laying it in the center of his naked chest.
Gertrude waited, unsure for a moment before she began to tentatively investigate the hills and valleys he had placed beneath her foot.
"The silk feels wonderful touching me," he told her. He ran a questing hand up the back of her calf and beneath her petticoat. She felt rather than heard the snap of her garter being opened. An instant later the cool air of the room was against her skin as he rolled the thin tube of black silk down to her ankle, baring her limb. "But I'd rather feel the texture of your own flesh," he said.
She allowed him to remove the stocking. He tossed it carelessly over the footboard. 'Touch me, Gertrude, please touch me."
She used her foot to explore the thick pelt of chest hair and to discover the hard points of his nipples as he relieved her of her other stocking.
"Such strong, beautiful legs, Gertrude." He caressed them as he spoke. "I am a great admirer of ladies' legs," he admitted. "I've often wondered about yours." He lowered the tenor of his voice measurably. "Lately I have dreamed of them wrapped around my waist, holding me so tightly."
Gertrude found his words almost as startling and provocative as the touch of his hands.
He took her foot from his chest and raised it to his lips where he pressed his mouth passionately to her instep. Gertrude's breath caught in her throat, but was released in a startled cry as his tongue darted out to taste that delicate flesh.
"I know, darling," he comforted. "You are ticklish."
Gertrude felt more than ticklish as he spread her legs on either side of his thighs and came forward to lie full length upon her.
Up on one elbow, her held himself just above her as he gazed down into her face.
"Kiss me, Gertrude," he whispered. "Kiss me."
She did. First just with her lips, openmouthed and tugging gently as he had taught her. Then, she lay her hands upon his shoulders, his broad, strong shoulders, and suddenly she couldn't bear not to touch him, to caress him, to explore the feel of his body, so different from her own.
As one of the same mind, Gertrude and Mikolai sought knowledge of each other. She, rejoicing in the hard, unyielding muscles of his back. And he, sculpting and shaping the soft yielding mounds of her bosom. The pace of their exploration increased as their need to touch outstripped their patience and caution.
When Mikolai finally unleashed her right breast from the confines of her lacy cambric camisole, he could barely allow himself an instant to gaze and a moment to touch before he had to taste.
Gertrude cried out at the heat of his mouth upon her and bowed her back rigidly to offer him more. Her position allowed him to fix his thigh more firmly between hers and she was stunned by the sudden inexplicable need to press her most tender parts firmly against that thick, unyielding bolster.
He was twirling his tongue around the hard, aching flesh of her nipple. She wiggled and squirmed beneath him, needy, searching.
He pulled back and raised himself to his knees, struggling to regain his control. His eyes were bright with passion, his breathing labored and quick. Her own eyes seemed to be glazed with some warm, glittery syrup that both delighted and incited her.
She felt the cool air upon her wet bosom but it made not half the sensation as the lightning touch of his eyes upon the same spot.
"Mikolai!" His name was a whimpered plea on her lips, but he seemed well able to understand it.
"We've got to get these drawers off you," he said with a firmness of conviction that was indisputably the cause of his tradition of commercial success.
He tossed the hem of her petticoat up over her head and delved near her waist for the fastening. Gertrude pushed the lace-covered satin out of her face and attempted to help him.
The hook released at last, he raised her hips off the bed as if she weighed little more than the sheets and removed the pretty confection of muslin and eyelet that had suddenly become so superfluous.
Mikolai threw the drawers over his shoulder, but didn't look back. His vision was focused solely and most intently upon the naked feminine secrets spread out before him.
"You are so beautiful," he whispered with near reverence in his voice.
His words were somehow more intimate, more frightening than anything that had gone on before. Feeling momentarily vulnerable and exposed, Gertrude attempted to draw her limbs
together, but he grasped her knees and held them wide.
"Let me love you, Gertrude," he pleaded. "Let me."
She relaxed. He spread her before him wider still and then released her. Gertrude did not move to hide herself as his hands went to the placard at the front of his trousers. She watched, eager, spellbound, as one by one he freed the buttons that kept him hidden from her. Once the buttons were undone he eased both his trousers and his underwear down over his slim hips, nakedly displaying himself to her.
Gertrude swallowed, her blood still pounding in her ears.
"Am I supposed to say that you are beautiful, too?" she asked.
"Only if that is what you think," he answered.
Gertrude nodded slowly. Her courage seemed to be deserting her. "Not beautiful exactly," she told him. "But ... but formidable."
He bent forward to plant a gentle kiss on the inside of her knee. "Not too formidable, I hope," he said.
She couldn't quite hide the fear in her eyes. He lay full upon her once more, her legs wrapping naturally about his hips. He kissed her.
"I'll try not to hurt you, Gertrude. That is the very last thing that I want to do. But they say the first time . . . well, they say the first time is not good."
She ran a caressing hand along his cheekbone. "Then I will get through the first time, Mikolai, dreaming about the second."
Chapter Twenty-Six
MIKOLAI COULDN'T REMEMBER a time when he had felt more daunted by the most pleasant task before him. The afternoon sun shed bars of bright yellow light and shade across the rusty iron bed. The rusty iron bed in which he held Gertrude Barkley in his arms.
She was generous and eager and willing to suffer whatever ignoble pain might be associated with her deflowerment. But Mikolai was not. He wanted her to enjoy it. He wanted to please her. He wanted it very badly. He could never recall anything having mattered so much before.
He brought his mouth down to hers, joining their lips with tenderness and passion. She had puckered up like a schoolgirl no more than an hour ago. Now she met his kiss with practiced eagerness. He gently allowed his tongue to slip inside her mouth, mimicking the movements of the act that he wished to teach her.
She seemed startled at the invasion, so he quickly withdrew. He would not scare her, not force upon her anything that she didn't like. He was hard, aching, but more than his own release, he wanted hers.
He could have called out thanks to heaven when she cried out with pleasure at his mouth on her breast. He wanted that from her, pleasure. He wanted to give it to her. He wanted to feel her having it. But she was a virgin, and this would all be so new to her.
He would take no pride in hurting Gertrude that way. He wanted to fulfill her desires, not relieve her of a useless badge of innocence.
He pushed the sweet bouncy curls out of her face so that he might kiss her brows and her temples. He thought of her tears on the night of the dance at Monument Park. She'd lived her dreams in books and cried that life had passed her by. She had loved a man who had not loved her back. For this, she had missed much of the sweetness of life and certainly the raw pleasure of sex.
He wanted to give her that. Not just sex, but pleasure in sex. He wanted her memories of their time together to be as fine and as shining as anything her wonderful imagination could have conjured up. He was a man, not a hero in a book, but he wanted to be as loving and caring of her as any man she might create in her stories.
He let his kiss drift down along her throat once more and to the softness of her exposed breast. Her camisole still shielded most of her nakedness and he wished the pretty feminine thing in Hades. If he could get her to sit up, he could pull it off over her head. He tenderly urged the crown of her dark pink nipple into his mouth. He'd get the camisole off in a minute, just a minute or two.
Slow down, he cautioned himself. Give her time. She is a virgin. The truth of that unnerved him.
He knew that there were tricks. Tricks that a man could use to ease his way into a woman. But tricks with Miss Gertrude might not be the thing. She had become embarrassed when he had looked at her most private parts. He couldn't imagine that she would let him put his mouth and tongue upon them. And as for taking her stallion style, a position said to aid ease of entry on the unbroken maidenhead, it seemed patently utilitarian and downright unfriendly.
He increased the pressure of his tongue on her nipple, and she cried out her approval beneath him. He smiled against her breast. With her legs wrapped round his waist, his thigh was no longer there to ease her. But he would make it better. His Gertrude ached with need and he would make it better.
Pushing aside the satin of her petticoat, he slid his hand down to that soft pelt of curls he had viewed so thoroughly earlier. He clasped her and she pressed against him. She was so wonderfully wet.
"So sweet," he whispered. "So very sweet."
To prove his excitement, he clutched her tightly to him, allowing her to feel his erection. Her heard her gasp in shocked surprise. He loved the sound.
She was kneading the muscles of his back, strongly, passionately, lovingly.
His hand had begun to delve into the damp, heated hollow of her female body. With the pad of his thumb he found what had once upon a time been described to him as "the mistress button."
"You press that button," his cousin Jozef had told him and his brothers one bright, blue-skied summer afternoon back in Poland. "You press that button on a woman and the dutiful wife becomes a naughty mistress."
Mikolai pressed it now. The expected result came quickly and with great intensity. Her cry was sweeter than the most beautiful of music and the scoring of her nails upon his back was more welcome than a caress.
He began to ease his fingers inside her. She was smooth and damp and wonderfully warm. The passage was tight; marvelously, thrillingly tight. He didn't want to wait. He didn't want to do things for her the right way. The blood was pounding in his ears. He just wanted to do it. He wanted to do it now.
Forcefully pulling the reins on his own need, he pushed his lusty selfishness back inside the cage of his control and thought again of her. Not of woman and man and mating, but of her, his Gertrude. Dear, sweet Gertrude.
He would control himself. He would glean his pleasure from providing hers. Again he teased and toyed with the mistress button, now stiff and pulsing beneath his thumb.
"What are you doing to me?" Her question was heated and throaty with passion. It sizzled through him, enhancing the play of his questing fingers, buried deep inside her.
"I'm doing to you what you want me to do," he answered her. "Let me touch you more, Gertrude. Let me touch you more."
Whether from his words or her own needs, he felt her relaxing, opening to him.
Gently, lovingly, stroking her tenderly and stoking her fire, he pressed farther inside her. He sought to locate and weaken that tiny wall of inexperience that separated them, but he found no barrier.
He raised his head from her breast to meet her lips once more. As his kiss comforted, he delved yet deeper. What he didn't find there turned his lips from cajoling to joyous.
"Sweet, sweet Gertrude," he whispered.
Mikolai lay his head lovingly upon her breast and sighed into the soft, warm skin. There was no barrier. Thank heaven and fate, there was no painful boundary to be breached. At some time in the course of Miss Gertrude's thirty-odd years a stumble on the staircase, a carriage accident, maybe even a pony ride, had removed any impediment to their full enjoyment of this afternoon.
"Gertrude," he whispered. "I am going to give you all the pleasure that I know how to give."
Her answer was more a breathy sigh than an actual word.
"Yes, oh, please yes," she answered, her words nearly a plea.
He was hard and hot and throbbing with need as he pressed himself to her narrow entrance. Her whole body stiffened with fear at the invasion. He didn't allow her to dwell on that fear.
He took her gentle hands that lay trembling upon the sheets and put
them to good use. One he wrapped around his neck that she might hold him. The other he carried between their bodies to the place where they were barely joined.
"Help me, Gertrude," he said. "You have invited me in, now guide me."
In truth he required no help. His need to push farther inside her had him trembling. He held himself back only with rigid control. Yet, he wanted her help. This joining should not be, he was certain, something that he did to her. It must be a thing that they did together.
"Help me, Gertrude," he begged against her throat once more.
He felt her swallow her fear as she reached out to touch him, oh, so tentatively.
He had to grit his teeth against the power of that hesitant caress.
"Oh yes, yes, my darling," he whispered as he awarded her bravery with kisses. "Yes, I love the touch of your hand upon me.”
Those kisses turned to licks and nuzzles as slowly, painfully slowly, she eased him, by centimeters, into her hot, silky depths.
When her hand became more an obstruction than an aid, he pulled it from between their bodies and kissed her fingers with loving gratitude. He pressed her to him that final inch, causing a startled gasp to escape from her throat. He was buried inside her. Mikolai's teeth were clenched in a desperate attempt to maintain control. The sweat upon his brow was not from the sweet labor of his entry, but from the restraint on his nature.
He rocked very gently, assuring himself that he was not hurting her, that he was lovingly, completely, gloriously, inside her. He moaned her name in a delight that was very near physical pain.
She trembled beneath him and he opened his eyes to look down into hers. They were bright and sparkling with a little uncertainty, but there was much desire there, too.
"I always wondered what it would be like, and now I know, Mikolai," she breathed. "Oh, how nice."
Mikolai grinned at her. He might have laughed if the desperate control he was maintaining hadn't been such torture.
"This isn't it, Gertrude," he said. "We've hardly started."
