This time, she did not choose to stand between his legs. She was wearing, he saw, a robe of some sort, and she stripped it off and cast it aside now, to reveal a flimsy nightgown with simple puffed sleeves. It was scooped low at the neck, and looked like the sort of garment that might easily slip off a shoulder, leaving it bare. She pulled up the skirts with ruthless intent, and moved to straddle him, knees either side of his thighs, her weight full on him.
‘Does this hurt you?’ she thought to ask.
He was trying to be completely honest, wasn’t he, even to the extent of self-sabotage? ‘A little, in truth. Perhaps if I lie back more…’
Her hand on his shoulder pushed him down flat, and now she was above him, straddling his hips rather than his thighs. This was much better, though, in every possible sense, even before she bent to kiss him.
Cecilia did not linger on his mouth, this time, but pressed soft butterfly kisses around it, across his cheeks. She did not make a great business of kissing his scar, but she did not take special care to avoid it either. He could easily have wept at the gift of her tenderness, and probably would have done, had he not been aware of so many other wonderful things that were happening all at once. Her hair was down tonight, in a dark cloud loose about her face, and it brushed him, tickling deliciously. He was kissing her back eagerly, too, wherever he could reach, and his nostrils were filled with her scent: warm skin, and some flowery soap. She smelled like spring. His hands had completed the work of pulling up her nightgown, and were tight on her buttocks again, but now there was no barrier between them, and his fingers moved on her bare, velvety skin. Her very core was pressed hard against the fall of his breeches. He was aroused, and straining towards her again, and since she was almost naked, she must certainly know it.
She whispered against his mouth, her breath making him shiver, ‘You have said you have not forgotten the debt of honour you owe me. You will have realised, no doubt, that I was very wickedly thinking about just that in church today.’
‘So was I,’ he said hoarsely. ‘God knows I was. Presumably. And yet I cannot regret anything, even if it sends me to hell instead of heaven. The only heaven I have any interest in is right here and now. What do you want from me, Cecilia? I long to give you everything I can possibly give you.’
‘That’s good to know, and quite right. If you were to choose how best to give me pleasure, sir, how would you do it?’
The bold words were even more arousing, and yet… It hurt and shamed him to say it, but he must. ‘I would put my mouth on you. I would kneel at your feet and bury my face between your thighs and devour you with lips and tongue till pleasure carried you away. But I do not think I can kneel, not without pain. And this bench is not really large enough for me to lie beside you and do that, as a bed would be… It is a little awkward. I am sorry.’
‘Well, I certainly don’t want to give you pain. What is to be done?’ she asked. ‘I have faith in your ingenuity, though. I can tell by your voice that you have thought of a solution, but for some reason, you hesitate to put it into words. Don’t. Tell me.’
31
Cecilia was naked, in the summerhouse, and she was… Best not to put into words what she was doing. Her hands were flat upon the wooden wall, for stability, and the Major was… beneath her. Between her thighs. Trapped there, a most willing prisoner. His hands were tight upon her buttocks, which seemed to be something that they both liked excessively, and his mouth, his tongue, were everywhere, as promised.
He had told her, with a blush that she could see even in the shadows, a blush that aroused her even more, what he proposed that they should do, and she had instantly stripped off her nightgown and positioned herself as he suggested. At first, she had felt awkward, even ridiculous, but that embarrassment had quickly vanished. He had begun kissing her, she supposed it might be possible to call it that, his lips gentle at first as they explored her most secret places, and she had moved with him, so that she was, in a wickedly perverse sense, kissing him back. And then his tongue found its way inside her, and she was clutching the wall and moaning, turning her head and sucking on the soft flesh of her arm to stop herself from crying aloud.
She was trying, she wasn’t quite sure why, to cling to some shreds of rational thought, but her usually busy mind was slipping away from her fast. Melting. Soon there was only sensation, a depth of pleasure she had never dreamed of before. She was riding him, and he was devouring her, holding her tight and feasting on her, as she gripped him with her thighs and pressed herself to him. Stars exploded behind her closed eyes, but he did not stop; she was vaguely aware of him bucking violently beneath her.
Eventually – she could not have said after how long – the waves of pleasure receded, and as conscious thought came creeping back, she realised she’d better check if she had killed him. It seemed possible, even likely. She moved aside clumsily, found room to wriggle down and lie beside him.
‘Are you alive, Alistair?’ she whispered raggedly. If he didn’t answer, she’d have to prod him. Shaking would be next.
His voice was a mere whisper. ‘I’m not sure. I might be. I don’t think I care, though, either way.’
‘I was just wondering what I’d do, if I’d killed you.’ He did seem to be living, and had full use of his faculties; his arm had come to wrap around her and pull her close.
He chuckled feebly. ‘That would certainly take some explaining. Especially if the people who found my body removed my breeches. To lay me out, you know.’
After last night, she understood this statement quickly enough. ‘I suppose I should take that as a compliment.’
‘Another one. The feel of your thighs about me as you moved, the taste of you, my mouth and my tongue and your delicious shudders, my hands squeezing your soft flesh… It was too much for me. You utterly intoxicate me, Cecilia Constantine.’
She smiled against the pleasantly rough fabric of his coat. ‘I don’t think I want to talk about what just happened to me. It would only give you a great conceit of yourself. But if I understand you correctly, sir, I am still in a pleasure deficit. That can’t be right.’
‘It’s true, you know.’ His hand was not still on her back, but was moving, stroking lightly over her naked skin, making her shiver. ‘And one of the many ways in which women are superior to me, of course, is that we need a little time to recover ourselves – just a little, you understand – whereas you do not. Unless you wish it, of course.’
‘I think that is a most fortunate circumstance. No, I don’t wish it. It seems I am a sadly wanton creature.’ It must be true, and what was worse, she did not care.
The Major could move fast on occasion, she discovered. In a split second, she found herself on her back, and he was lying at her side, his hands and his lips hot on her breasts. Her nipples were hard already, and he murmured broken endearments against her heated skin as he worshipped them. She buried her hands in his hair and held him fiercely to her, thrusting her almost unbearably sensitised flesh up into his eager mouth. Soon she was squirming under him, and his large, agreeably roughened fingers had found her pearl of Venus, and were tormenting it with delicious purpose. When she began to spasm once more, he slipped one finger inside her, and she clenched and writhed on him, arching her back. His other hand was at her mouth, and she bit on it in her passion.
‘Now we are even,’ he said at last. She’d been drowsing in his strong arms, drugged with pleasure; he had taken off his coat to cover her and keep her warm. ‘But can I ask you something, Cecilia, before I go, as you know I must?’
‘That sounds ominous.’ She hoped he wasn’t going to say anything to ruin this precious time they’d been sharing. Of course it must be fleeting, and of course he must soon go; she didn’t need to be reminded of any of that, and certainly not by him.
‘Well, I wish it might not be. I was just wondering… I know you’re all going out for a picnic with the Pallants tomorrow. It’s not idle village gossip; your Miss Macintyre told me. It’s none of my affair what you do, and I’m not saying it is, but do you trust him? Lord Pallant, I mean.’
‘Miss Macintyre doesn’t, certainly. No, I don’t. I could find no polite way of saying no, and I don’t like being manipulated in such a manner. I thought he was extraordinarily false. But it’s just a picnic. If we all stay together, I don’t see what harm can come to us.’
‘No. The harm of greater intimacy, I suppose. I’m not saying this because I’m jealous. I honestly don’t think it’s that. He might easily be interested in any one of you for yourselves, and I could not blame him. But there’s no denying that he stands in great need of your fortune. Anyone’s fortune, but heiresses do not grow in the Suffolk hedgerows like rosehips, you know. Beautiful heiresses, even less so.’
