Page 10 of Be-Djinn At The Beginning

He pushed her back against the tree the second the words left her mouth. The moment his mind caught up to his body, he knew he’d made a dreadful mistake. There she was, up against him, so tiny in spite of her luscious curves. She looked up at him with eyes as fearful as they were determined. His hips were too close to hers, her generous breasts against his rib cage. His heart drummed with every shuddering breath. His leather glove creaked as he dug his fingers into the tree bark above their heads.

“If he wishes to… to please you,” he said through clenched teeth. “He will touch you. In… intimate places.”

Bea’s breath stopped and her face burned again, so hot that she felt she must be glowing in the darkness of the woods.

“And he will need to be patient,” Sahar continued, unable to keep a hand from reaching up to brush back a few wild curls from her face. “And learn which places you like to be touched. Or kissed. Or penetrated.”

That last word barely got out of his mouth alive, the way he clenched his teeth around it. His hand lingered at the side of her face and Bea leaned into his touch before her eyes shot open.

“I beg your pardon?” she whispered.

Oh please do not make me say it again, he thought. Let me slink away into the darkness and be nothing more than a memory to you.

“Your b-body has places where you may enjoy… being filled,” he said, stroking his thumb down her soft cheek. “But that is—he must—your husband, that is, he must… use patience. Listen to you—to your… sounds. To learn what you like.”

Sahar looked away, shaking himself free of dangerous thoughts. “There, that is a fine start to your education.”

“Sounds? What sounds?” Bea grabbed his wrist as he tried to pull back. “I’m to make sounds when he… if he touches me?”

“Only if he does so the right way.”

Beatrix was beginning to grasp what sort of sounds he might be referring to. With his closeness, his soft voice in her ear, the way he touched her face just barely with his glove, she was struggling not to gasp and cry with every new sensation.

“Show me?”

“Damn it all, Beatrix, have you no sense of⁠—”

“Propriety? None, sir, and don’t pretend you ever wanted me to. Now show me what you mean or I shall go back to the bonfire and find someone who will.”

It was an empty threat but it had the desired effect of transforming the burn within Sahar’s chest into a howling wildfire. With a panther-like growl he rammed his hips harder against her, pressing his forehead to the tree trunk as if it could ground him.

“Lift your skirts,” he ordered.

Beatrix nearly dropped to the forest floor with the sensations that swept over her at those words. She felt as if she’d drained all the cider in town, she was so wobbly and light headed. Now was the time to put a stop to this if she wanted… But whatever was to come in her new life, in marriage, she would rather hear it first from him. Keeping her eyes fixed upon that inscrutable skull mask, she gathered up the thick black muslin of her skirts and petticoat, raising them almost to her knees.

Sahar wanted to tease her for choosing this moment to be shy, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. Gently, he laid his hands over hers and raised them higher until he could easily reach beneath.

The gloves made it more difficult to tell where her corset ended and her soft underclothes began, but he knew better than to touch her with a naked hand. Already, he would be lost forever after tonight; he did not need to add the sensation of her skin against his fingers to his eternal torture.

“I ought to stop,” he whispered, watching her face as the tips of his fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her chemise.

“Stop and I will never bring you another soul cake,” said Bea, gripping his forearms tightly while glaring up into his face.

She saw a flash of that bright white smile under his mask, heard a breathless laugh, and then Bea felt his fingers dip lower, stroking along the seam between her thighs before parting it gently to press inside. Something hot and slick made his gloved fingers slip against her, sending sharp arrows of heat up from where he touched her. She gasped, slapping a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.

“J-Jack!”

By all the dead stars, he could hear that again and again till he crumbled to dust. He didn’t even care that it was not his true name—it was real enough to her and he adored the sound of it.

What a beauty she was, flushed and panting at her first ever touch. He could feel her shaking through his glove and he wanted so desperately to keep feeling her, to make her come on his fingers, to bury his face between her breasts and kiss every inch of her.

“Well,” he said in a strangled voice, keeping his hand still but not yet willing to pull back. “There. That is… what I meant.”

“Is that the end of it?” Bea asked, struggling to put even a few words together.

Sahar shuddered, fighting back the ravenous beast within; its appetite grew as he felt her heartbeat pulse against his fingertips.

“No, Little Bea. There are miles to go yet,” he said, unable to stop from offering another stroke, just the barest curl of a fingertip, so he could feel her jump again. “But that is something… you ought to discover with your husband.”