The Lover (5 page)

Releasing her hand, he opened the top drawer in the oak nightstand and took out a tin stamped with a portrait of Prime Minister Gladstone. Taking off the lid, he held the austere box out to her.

Incongruously, she remembered that her tin was stamped with a portrait of Queen Victoria. The monarch's expression was no less stern than Gladstone's. Anne tentatively chose a tightly rolled-up piece of rubber.

Replacing the lid—as if it were perfectly commonplace to offer a woman a condom—Michel set the tin on top of the table by the vase of roses.

Anne lowered her head; her hair slithered over her shoulders, framed her face.

Carnal need warred with maidenly modesty.

Overriding both was the need to impress this man with her expertise, to prove that she was as worthy as the women who had come before her.

Sublimely unselfconscious, Michel positioned his manhood for her.

The flesh deep inside her vagina pulsed in time to the tiny heartbeat that throbbed in the engorged, purple-hued crown he offered her. A single drop of clear moisture glistened in the glare of the lamplight.

The conspectus had not mentioned that a man secreted moisture when aroused.

She touched him lightly, hesitantly. "You are wet."

"So are you, mademoiselle."

Ignoring the flash of embarrassment his observation provoked—
it was too late to be embarrassed
—Anne awkwardly attempted to roll the thin rubber sheath onto him.

The head of his penis was too large.

No matter how forcefully she tried, Michel's French flesh would not fit inside the French letter.

Anne stilled. Stinging tears blurred the erect penis that pulsed against her fingers.

Utterly humiliated, she still wanted him.

Hot, labored breath gusted her hair. Motion caught her eyes—his right hand reached between her legs. A long, scar-roughened finger delved between her nether lips.

Hard flesh pressed down on her bowed head—his forehead. He gently swirled his finger, making her feel the wetness of her arousal. Then she saw it, when he brought his hand back up. His middle finger was coated with her feminine essence.

"It wants lubrication,
chérie
." Michel took his already slick finger and smoothed the clear drop of his own essence around the crown of his penis. "Pinch the end of the condom," he instructed her raggedly, "to leave room for the sperm. Now roll it up."

Slowly, carefully, hardly daring to breathe, Anne rolled the thin sheath of rubber up over the plum-shaped head.

The French letter did not mask the pulse underneath his skin, or the smell of masculine arousal: musk mingled with the sweet pungency of roses.

The backs of her fingers brushed his. Instantly he withdrew—first the hand holding his erect flesh, then the hard pressure of his forehead. Feeling strangely bereft, Anne sheathed the remaining two inches of his manhood, up to the thick bush of wiry black hair that matched in color and texture the hair that covered his chest and arrowed down his stomach.

"I am finished," she announced unnecessarily, afraid to meet his gaze, afraid she would see the laughter that must surely be lurking in his eyes.

Warm, rough fingers gathered the twin ropes of her loosened hair and pulled it away from her face so that she had no choice but to lift her head.

Violet fire glittered in his eyes. Sexual need—not laughter at a plain spinster woman's ineptness. "No,
chérie
, you have just begun. You will not be finished until you are too swollen and exhausted to orgasm. But I will make you come again. Even when you beg me to stop."

She did not glance away from the hard intent in his gaze. "I will not beg you to stop, monsieur. No matter how many orgasms you give me."

When she returned to Dover, she would do so knowing that she had experienced the full extent of her womanhood.

A smile twisted his lips. He had such beautiful lips, the top one bluntly edged, the bottom one soft yet hard. "You are so certain,
chérie
."

Slowly, gently, he tugged on her hair until she turned in synchronization with his body. Light shone in Anne's face; it sharply delineated the scars on Michel's right cheek.

Her heart skipped a beat. "I am prepared for a degree of pain, monsieur."

Smoothing back her hair, he rested his hands on her bare shoulders, heat weighting her down. "But are you prepared for the pleasure?"

She locked her legs to keep them from buckling underneath her. "Yes."

Oh, yes.

He lowered his head; his breath teased her lips. "How can you possibly be prepared for the pleasure I will give you, mademoiselle, when you do not know what to ask for?"

"But I do know what to ask for," she whispered.

She wanted him to perform all the sexual acts she had always yearned for but had not known existed until this night.

Suddenly her knees gave way and she was falling, grabbing for an anchor, finding it but still falling…

The bed rose up and caught her buttocks.

Michel kneeled in front of her on the wooden floor. His forearms were corded underneath her fingers. The black hair sprinkling his dark skin was prickly soft. Heated rubber nudged her knees.

"Tell me," he rasped. "Give me the words,
chérie
. Be a woman for me. Tell me what you want… and then take your pleasure."

Her heart hammered in her chest, her breasts, between her thighs. "I want you to taste me."

"Open your legs."

She released the coiled muscles that were his arms and clutched silk in one hand and velvet in the other. "Should we not get between the covers?"

"No." He gripped her thighs up high, just above her white lace garters. "You saw me. Now I want to see you."

"Surely you have seen other women."

"I have seen many women. But I have never seen the woman that you are, Anne Aimes."

This was as close as any man would ever get to seeing the woman that she was.

Anne opened her legs.

Sitting back on his haunches, he grasped her knees and spread them more widely apart—wider, wider yet, until her muscles screamed in silent protest and icy air invaded her most private regions.

Her heart kicked wildly at her ribs.

There was nothing he could not see in this position.

She was open, vulnerable.

Completely.

Unconditionally.

"Scoot forward… Keep your legs open."

Black, silky hair brushed the tops of her thighs, there where her skin was not protected by the cotton stockings. Petal soft lips met petal soft lips, a whisper of a touch.

Anne gasped. Agonizing sensation ripped through her stomach and shot to her breasts.

"I tasted you." Hot breath laved the gaping folds of her labia. "What else do you want, mademoiselle?"

Her entire focus centered on the dark head between her thighs and Michel's mouth that was only an inch away from oblivion. "I want you to lick me."

Scalding heat leisurely lapped at the arousal that leaked from her, as if it were rich cream and he was a cat daintily dining. He licked the wet, slick valley between her swollen lips, stopping just short of her clitoral hood, licking and licking.

She closed her eyes, straining downward, downward…

"What else,
chérie
? Tell me what else you want."

Anne barely recognized her voice. The woman who shamelessly strained to gain her orgasm she did not recognize at all. "I want you to tongue me."

Galvanizing heat. Unbearable pressure.

He thrust at the opening of her vagina, a burning prelude, as if he would take her virginity with his tongue.

Her muscles clenched.

He tongued and probed, tongued and probed the small, taut membrane that protected her, until she did not know if it was pain or pleasure that she felt.

She had never imagined a man doing this, tasting her, licking her, testing her maidenhead with his tongue—

Piercing pain replaced the burning pressure.
He had bitten her
!

Eyes flying open in shocked awareness, Anne grabbed Michel's head. For one heart-stopping second his lips closed around her clitoris; his teeth sank into the stem while he suckled her. Sharp pain turned to equally sharp pleasure as his tongue swirled round and round,
there
, where she was most sensitive.

She had never imagined a man suckling a woman's clitoris as if he were a baby—a hungry baby with sharp teeth—who suckled and suckled for nourishment…

Michel abruptly kneeled upright, his lips shiny wet…
from her
. His hips held her legs splayed, so closely wedged between her thighs that his wiry pubic hair mingled with hers and the hard, rubber-sheathed flesh that was his penis jutted against the nether lips he had licked and tongued and nibbled.

Cupping her right cheek with his left hand, he leaned into her. His mouth was hot, slippery; it tasted… of her.

Of hot, wet sex.

"It's all right to cry, Anne."

Anne swallowed her breath. Something large and round and blisteringly hot separated the lips of her femininity, prodded the portal of her vagina.

She remembered Mrs. Kildairn's prized plums. The largest in Dover, the widow boasted. They were four inches in diameter.

The same size that the plum-shaped head of his penis felt like.

Anne clutched his shoulders. She had thought he would take her virginity while she lay on her back—the way she had always imagined it while safely tucked inside her empty, lonely bed. The way he had described it in the cab. "Can it be done… like this?"

"Yes." Michel's lips moved against hers, slippery soft, beguiling as the serpent that had enticed Eve. "If that is what you want. Do you?"

She wanted whatever he did to her.

"Yes," she said, panting.

His left hand slid down her cheek, a slow caress, down over her chest—her nipple stabbed his palm; desire stabbed through her breast—smoothed over her waist, spread over the small of her back and the swell of her buttocks. He pressed her closer while the pressure against her maidenhead pushed inward.

"Relax,
chérie
. It is like a kiss. First I tasted you." His mouth opened over hers, hot and wet. The blunt pressure between her thighs throbbed. "Licked you." Slick heat glided over her lips. The bulbous head of his manhood swirled against her tautly stretched portal. "Tongued you." He prodded her mouth, her teeth, almost entering her but not quite. "And now I will penetrate you."

His tongue pierced her; at the same time the pressure between her legs knifed forward.

Anne forgot dignity. She forgot control.

She cried out—she who had never cried out.

The sound was muffled by Michel's mouth. He took the breath he had forced from her lungs and gave her his breath in return.

Anne involuntarily tried to push him away, to escape the pain, to regain a sense of self-control.

He grabbed her hip with his right hand while his left hand burrowed underneath her buttocks. "Hold still."

She felt spitted, unbearably stretched and vulnerable—as if her body were no longer hers alone.

This was not what she was paying for, this invasion that rendered her helpless.

Babies were helpless.

Invalids were helpless.

She did not want to be helpless.

Anne gritted her teeth. Tears stung her eyes. "It hurts."

"Look at me. Tilt your hips down. Feel what I'm doing." He captured her hand, guided it between their bodies. "I'm not all the way in. The pain will pass,
chérie
. Feel me sandwiched between your lips… There."

Dear Lord, he
was
sandwiched between her lips. Hot, wet, and slick, they furled around the solid thickness of him in a sexual embrace.

"Don't close your eyes, Anne. I want you to look at me. I want to see your passion." The scars edging Michel's cheek were livid. "You had the courage to tell me what you wanted. Now let me see how much you want it."

Anne took a deep breath. She blurted out the only coherent thought she could form. "The French letter. It feels… like rubber."

"It is rubber."

"I didn't…"
Know
. "I feel…"
Like a stranger inside my own body
. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I cried out."

Shadow engulfed his face. "Don't say you're sorry… not to me. Not ever. I want you to scream. And moan. And groan. I want you to lose yourself in what I do to you. I want you to want me."

For a blinding second she was hurtled outside her body. "You don't think that a spinster woman wants to be wanted? Perhaps I want you to moan and groan for me. Perhaps I want to hear you cry out, too!"

He pressed his forehead against hers. His skin stuck to her, hot and gluey with sweat. Or perhaps it was her skin that was hot and gluey with sweat.

"Then make me cry out," he whispered hoarsely. "Tilt your hips. Ride the shaft of my penis with your clitoris. Let me give you pleasure,
chérie
. Let me make you come. And when you come, grip my cock so tightly that I cry out with you."