Caius couldn’t believe he’d said those words out loud but they’d fallen out before he could stop them. He saw how Poppy’s eyes widened. But he couldn’t take them back because that was how he felt…right now. As if he couldn’t imagine touching another woman again.
Not when his hands were full of her and he was so hard it hurt. He took his hands away from her momentarily and went to lift her top up and off. ‘OK?’
She nodded, lifting her arms up. Now she wore only her shorts and they sat just under the small bump.
Caius came close again and massaged her breast with one hand while sliding the other one around, over the bump and then down, under the shorts, dislodging them.
‘Spread your legs for me, Poppy.’
She did, and he explored down, through the springy curls around her sex to where she was hot and slick and so ready that he almost exploded there and then.
He watched her as he moved his fingers in and out, while squeezing her breast. Her breath came faster, and her skin flushed. Her eyes looked glazed and her mouth opened. She was biting her lip and her hips began to move, pressing her ass back against him, against his straining cock.
She brought her arm up and hooked it around Caius’s neck, and her hips were undulating now as he thrust into her, deeper and deeper until she stopped and gave a keening cry as her inner muscles clamped down hard on his fingers.
Caius couldn’t wait. He had to be in her right now or he would die. He removed his hand and pulled down her shorts and then turned her around as he undid his jeans and pushed them down, releasing his straining erection.
‘I need to be in you, now, Poppy.’
She went over to the bed and got onto it and lay back, spreading her legs. He could see where she glistened from her orgasm. From his fingers. For a second Caius had to wonder if in fact she’d been some kind of sorceress all along and she’d bewitched him. She looked like an earth goddess with her curves and the one holding his child. It made him feel feral with a need to possess and also something else, a need to protect.
Somehow, he got naked and he came over her, guiding his aching, throbbing flesh to the centre of her body and sinking in slowly, mindful of her relative inexperience. But she raised her hips, forcing him to go deeper. He cursed. ‘Poppy, I don’t want to hurt you.’Or the baby,came into his mind. Of course, it was natural to care about the baby, he assured himself. He just hadn’t ever expected sex with the mother of his child to feel so…intense.
He sank into her, to the hilt, and then pulled out, and back in, until every limb was shaking with the need to pound into her, slake his lust. She wrapped her legs around him. ‘Take me, Caius, I’m not some delicate little flower.’
The tiny fraying piece of control he’d been clinging onto snapped. Caius pulled out and said roughly, ‘Get on your knees, Poppy.’
She did, and she looked at him over her shoulder and he had no idea how he didn’t spill there and then, but he managed to wait until he plunged into her tight sheath again, and he held her hips as he drove into her, over and over again until she was crying out and he reached under and found that little cluster of nerves and cells and pinched it. Poppy screamed as her body fell over the edge and the spasmodic contractions of her orgasm sent Caius flying so high he wasn’t sure he’d ever come back down to earth again.
Eventually he did, collapsing back onto the bed and pulling Poppy into him. He felt the heavy slackness in her body. She was as spent as him. Normally he’d never countenance pulling a woman close after sex but he didn’t usually feel as though he’d been through an earthquake.
And this was different. Poppy was his wife. The mother-to-be of his child. It was more or less sanctioned. It wasn’t as if he had to be careful around her. They knew what this was. A temporary glitch in the mainframe.
And then he felt her breath feather over his skin as she asked sleepily, ‘Is it always like this? Now I know why you liked it so much.’
Caius couldn’t stop a half-grimace, half-smile at her innocent question. He knew it would be easy to tell her,yes, it’s always like this,but he couldn’t. He said, ‘Truthfully? No. This is…rare.’ Unprecedented. ‘We have a very potent chemistry.’
She huffed a laugh against his chest. ‘Just as well it’ll burn out. I don’t think I could survive if it was like this for ever.’
For ever.The word caused a twisting sensation inside Caius. There was no such thing. And yes, he was thankful this would burn out too, the sooner the better, because he was in danger of forgetting who he was, on this little island in the picture-postcard chateau with a queen who was confounding him at every turn.
The days after that night seemed to pass in a bit of a blur. A sex blur. It was as if Caius had awoken something inside Poppy, a part of herself that had been locked away, pushed down, denied, not given room to breathe…and now she couldn’t stop breathing, taking massive gulps of air.
They were careful not to talk too much about anything more serious or personal than likes, dislikes, surface subjects, and as soon as it seemed respectable, they would let the staff go for the evening, Caius would cook, or Poppy would—from her own limited repertoire—and then they would go to bed. It was as if they’d made a tacit agreement to lean into indulging in this very traditional aspect of a veryuntraditional marriage.
This evening, they didn’t even make it to dinner. Poppy’s stomach gurgled and she turned her face into Caius’s chest. It rumbled under her cheek as he laughed.
‘Hungry?’
She lifted her head. ‘Well, I am eating for two, you know.’
‘Yes, you are.’ Caius put his hand on her bump. It had grown—even in these few days—almost as if it were flowering under the attention. Poppy pushed the ridiculous notion aside. She knew this could be a time for a growth spurt.
‘Are you going to find out the sex?’
Poppy tried not to love how much it felt to have Caius’s hand on her, over where their child grew. She was afraid that actually she was in serious danger of forgetting the boundaries around this marriage. Sex was turning everything hazy and rose-tinted.
‘I’m due my five-month scan in a couple of weeks. They can tell me—us—there. If you want to come.’
