AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll just…” he finally said, then cleared his throat. “Don’t move.”
No chance of that. She thought she’d only just closed her eyes, but suddenly the bed dipped and a cold cloth touched her back.
“Sorry,” he said when she gasped out a little shriek. The towel caressed her lower back and then her buttocks and thighs. “I got you a bit, um…”
He finally lay down at her back with a deep sigh. When his arm snuck around her waist, she smiled. This was a better kind of happiness than she’d dreamed.
Lancaster was rather worried about the state of his heart. It had pounded like mad when they’d made love, of course. But it still beat so hard and fast that his chest began to ache. It wasn’t quite anxiety, though that was part of it. Mostly, it was an excess of pleasure. Physical pleasure, yes, but something emotional as well.
He’d never felt quite so…connected during sex. He’d never felt treasured or even valued, because he didn’t let women that close.
O
ver the years, he’d learned how to manipulate his sexual encounters. Unless he was paying a woman specifically to indulge his roughest desires, he made sure his partners weren’t aware of his need to control. But these machinations kept him distant. Always removed even in the friendliest of encounters.
He’d manipulated Cynthia in the same way, and that made his gut burn with shame, but somehow he’d felt her joy too. Her joy in him.
No one had ever felt joy just to have him near. Desire, yes. And lust and satisfaction and maybe amusement if it was a rare encounter that didn’t involve coin. But not joy.
Pressing his forehead to Cynthia’s shoulder, he breathed in her skin. He felt almost…normal. Almost peaceful. Until Cynthia spoke.
“That wasn’t at all what I expected,” she sighed.
His heart finally slowed. Actually, it stopped entirely. He held his breath, but Cyn seemed happy to leave it at that. “Oh?” he croaked. “How so?”
“It wasn’t anything like my first time.”
He pressed his forehead a little more firmly to her back and squeezed his eyes shut. She’d realized. She’d known.
Her first lover had probably laid her down in a field of wildflowers. He’d probably kissed her all over and held her to his bosom and whispered of love and moonlight and stardust.
While Lancaster had taken her from behind like an animal. “I’m sorry,” he breathed into her skin.
Cyn laughed. “Sorry? You must be mad. My first time was horrid. This was…Well, this was rather spectacular.”
He opened his eyes and stared hard at the pale peach skin in his vision. “Really?”
She flipped to her back, forcing him to pull away. “Are you fishing for compliments, Nick? Come now. You’re the more experienced one here. Shouldn’t you be petting me and telling me I was lovely?”
He couldn’t quite believe she was smiling at him. His brain hadn’t made the transition from horror to relief yet. “You were lovely,” he answered stupidly.
“Thank you.” When she laughed, his brain finally caught up with the conversation.
“Why was your first time horrid?”
The smile faded a little. “It just was.”
He supposed he should feel glad that her first time had been with someone else. He hadn’t been the one to cause her pain. But he didn’t like the sadness in her eyes. Lancaster stroked a finger down her cheek. “Because it hurt?”
“Yes.” Her gaze flickered down to his chin.
“And?”
“And,” she sighed, “because it was a mistake. An awful mistake.”
When he laid his hand against her cheek, Cynthia closed her eyes and nuzzled closer.
“Well, I can’t disagree with that,” he said. “First, because you were with another man. And second, because it makes you look sad to speak of it. Will you tell me?”
