She cried out, her head tilted back—and then she relaxed, and smiled.
“Not so bad,” she said softly.
Grinning like a fool for an accomplishment he truly couldn’t take credit for, with solid, bold strokes Rhodri strove to keep his promise. With each thrust and withdrawal, his smile faded a bit more, as did Nicole’s.
Sweat beaded on his upper lip. Nicole’s eyes closed, her lips parted and breath ragged. His grip on his control began to slip away, the agony an ecstasy all its own.
With a shudder and hiss, Nicole bucked upward. The pulse of her bliss washed over him, permitting the rapture of his own release. Tremors shook him to his core, deeply, violently, with pleasure too intense to describe.
Nicole went limp, staring up at him in awe. “Oh, Rhodri,” she whispered and reached for him.
To answer Nicole’s invitation to embrace, he reluctantly slipped from inside her and, with a bit of rearranging of limbs, joined her on the blanket. The only way for them to both lie down in the small space available was on their sides, her back pressed to his front, their knees raised.
Her tight, firm bottom squirmed, and parts of him that should be satisfied and silent began to anticipate activities he shouldn’t be able to perform as yet. Hellfire, how could he become randy again so soon?
Perhaps it was the scent of her hair, so close to his nose the stray hairs moved with his outward breath. Or because he could feel the silken skin of her breasts on the arm he’d wrapped around her.
Or maybe he’d simply been without a woman for too long.
Rhodri scoffed at the inept attempt to explain away the incomparable experience of coupling with Nicole. No woman had come close to pleasing him half so much, and Nicole had not done much physically at all. Sweet mercy, even when he was old and gray and withered, he would remember this night in a fern-covered shelter with unrivaled fondness.
She sighed. “Do you think the rain might fall for a day or two? And if it does, must we venture out in it?”
Her wistful questions gave him pause and, for a moment, he entertained the idea of halting their journey and staying curled up in the shelter—naked—for another day.
“The earl’s patrol is out there somewhere, and I suspect Connor is beginning to watch for us. Rain or not, we must move on.”
And Connor wasn’t going to be happy if he learned Nicole was no longer a virgin. She wasn’t meant for the likes of him, but for a prince, as a means to unify a country, and to bear fruit on the Welsh branch of Pendragon.
Rhodri tried to upbraid himself for taking advantage of the foul weather, and Nicole’s state of undress, and the overwhelming temptation he hadn’t been able to resist—and couldn’t.
Perhaps at some later time he’d feel the need for contrition or atonement. But for tonight, and for several nights yet to come, Nicole was his, and for that Rhodri couldn’t summon a wisp of sorrow or regret.
He pushed away the hair from her shoulder and placed a string of kisses along her bare skin, paying particular heed to the curve of her neck.
“Mmmm.”
He smiled at her approval. “You like that.”
“Oh, aye.”
So he continued, his hand moving slightly to cup the swell of her breast, his thumb finding and grazing the nub at the tip.
She laughed lightly. “Now I know why Sister Amelia was always so joyful when Bishop Edward came to visit.”
He didn’t have to ask why and was rather pleased that Nicole considered their coupling enjoyable.
The notion of a nun servicing a bishop didn’t shock Rhodri. He knew of many men of the Church who kept a mistress or a housekeeper. Sons of bishops could be assured of high positions within the Church, and their daughters of good marriages.
“Odd for a bishop to keep his mistress in a nunnery.”
“The arrangement suited them. Mother Abbess did not approve, but short of locking Amelia in a cellar, there was naught she could do to keep the lovers apart.” She was quiet for a moment before softly asking, “Do you have a mistress?”
The question was fraught with danger if he wasn’t careful in answering. But Nicole needed assurance that, for the present, she was his only lover.
“No mistress.”
“But you have had other lovers.” Before he could form a suitable comment, she continued, “Naturally, you have, or you would not have known so precisely what to do. I suppose I should be grateful that one of us had some knowledge of coupling, because I knew naught.”
Rhodri wasn’t sure which irked her more—his having had previous lovers, or her lack of knowledge of carnal matters. He could do nothing about his former experience with women, except use his knowledge to add to hers, selfish beast that he was.
“You now know somewhat of the pleasure a man and woman can share, and I would be pleased to teach you all I know.”
“Tonight?”
“Not
all
tonight, but enough so you do not feel so unskilled next time. And truly, Nicole, most of making love to a partner is merely doing what makes the other feel good. Like this.”
Rhodri applied himself to the delightful lesson of showing Nicole which parts of her body were most sensitive to his touch, petting and kissing until she again moaned with need.
“This seems unfair,” she said. “Surely I should be taking a more active part, pleasuring you, too.”
This time she could. This time he would be slower to rouse and better able to maintain control over a cock again readying to do its duty and be blissfully compensated for its efforts.
“Come up atop me,” he said and was rewarded with near instant obedience.
On his back, with Nicole half lying, half sitting across his body, he cursed the space constraints that limited their movements, didn’t allow them the freedom to enjoy each other to full measure. But there was always tomorrow night, and that would be another new experience.
Nicole’s doe-brown eyes were wide and full of the curiosity and eagerness of a new student wanting to know which harp strings to pluck, in which order, to play a pleasant melody. Best to allow her to explore the instrument first.
He placed his hands behind his head. She gave him a questioning look, then smiled in a way he thought a bit too knowledgeable and cunning for a novice.
“I am to touch you as you touched me, am I not?”
It wasn’t truly a question, and she didn’t wait for an answer before testing her assumption. Lightly, at first, she explored his upper chest, fingers fluttering over his collarbone, palms massaging his breasts. She used her thumbs as he had, teasing his nipples to hard nubs, a normally sweet stimulation that he enjoyed but didn’t usually respond to overmuch—until now, when it was Nicole’s thumbs grazing his nipples.
Next she found the jagged scar over his lower ribs and frowned at the result of an old wound. “Dagger?”
“Sword.”
“Practice?”
“Battle.”
“Did you allow the wretch to live?” she asked fiercely.
He smiled at her ire that someone should dare mark him and not pay the penalty. “No.”
“Good!” she declared, then bent down to gently, reverently kiss the scar from end to end, as if to ease any lingering pain.
The brush of her lips sent tendrils of heat straight to his loins, but the veneration of her actions tugged at his heart and brought a lump to his throat. But before he could sort out his peculiar combination of reactions, Nicole discovered that if she raked fingernails across his stomach she could make the muscles twitch.
He sucked in hard, tightening that area too vulnerable to tickling, refusing to double over in laughter under her effort to torment him. She gave up tormenting him quickly enough, only to try her hand at exquisite torture.
A touch so light, so innocent, shouldn’t stiffen him to steel so fast. All she’d done was circle the tip before lightly stroking the shaft, and already his cock appreciated the attention as if it had been expertly handled.
This wasn’t right. He’d obtained release only a few minutes ago, should be able to withstand hours of lustful fondling without fear of erupting in a woman’s hand or worrying about his stamina when it became important to his partner’s pleasure.
He feared. He worried.
Rhodri pulled Nicole up for a kiss before she could further damage his threadbare control over his desire to toss her on her back and rut like a wild beast.
Except her kisses fueled the flames, his sanity slipping away with the smoke. From somewhere in the haze he heard his name on her sweet lips.
“Hmmm?”
“So as a man can take a woman, so can a woman take a man.”
Oh, blessed be, if only she would just
do
it.
And then she did. Straddling him, she found the source of his need and slid down, down, down until she fully entrapped him in her slick heat.
He shuddered at her possession, questioning the wisdom of allowing Nicole to become the aggressor and he her willing victim. More fool he, he’d meant to teach and ended up learning.
But he
was
a bard, and he knew that while a melody played with single notes could be entrancing, the song was always enriched with harmony.
Her hands pressed to the blanket on either side of his head, Nicole hovered over him like a victorious goddess, splendid in her nudity and unbound tresses. And it would be his pleasure to haul the goddess back to this earthly realm.
With deft movements, he latched on to a dark rose nipple and suckled hard, using teeth and tongue to nip and soothe. She remained still, her eyes closing, her breath soon breaking into passionate little pants. Her hips began to move, imitating the stroking rhythm she’d learned when he’d taken her.
Almost, he let her have her way, but for harmony her body must thrum with his. Reluctantly, he released her breast and pushed her upward, pulling her knees forward so she sat upright.
Never had he been so deep within a woman, but while his cock cried for release, he slid a finger between them and played insistently within her moist folds.
She arched and shattered first, with her head thrown back and a moan in her throat. For the second time on a rainy afternoon, Rhodri enjoyed the bliss of a successful sensual encounter.
The goddess fell, limp and sated, onto his chest. “Sweet heaven above, never tell me there is more to learn.”
He chuckled. “No more lessons tonight,” he said, wondering which of them would, next time, be the teacher.
Alone in the shelter, wrapped in the blanket which now bore a small dried bloodstain, staring out at the night’s rain turned to morning mist, Nicole marveled at how very alive she felt, and how very tired and sore.
And at how very willing she was to endure another lesson if Rhodri would only allow it.
He would not, however. Even now he was fully dressed and out “taking bearings,” or so he’d said. He’d left her here to also dress and begin preparing for a walk in the English mist, and she hadn’t yet brought herself to budge.
She shook her head at her foolishness, sitting here like a petulant child, wondering what the devil was wrong with her.
Last night had been a magnificent revelation, and during their lovemaking she’d taken great pleasure in the sensations of touching and being touched. The stirring kisses. The blissful, astounding completion.
Afterward she’d slept the sleep of the innocent, warm and safe in Rhodri’s arms, beneath the blanket he’d covered them with when insisting their coupling was over for the night and they should sleep.
Truly, she didn’t regret having lain with Rhodri, allowing him liberties and taking several of her own. She’d come into her full womanhood willingly, joyfully. The signs of her lost innocence were all there, from the soreness of chafed nipples, to the niggling sensation in her nether regions of having been stretched to accommodate Rhodri’s size, to the bloodstain on the blanket they’d frolicked on and then slept in.
So why did she feel somehow incomplete this morn, as if she’d missed something important in Rhodri’s lessons last eve?
If she were now fully a woman, shouldn’t she feel more than the physical effects of the coupling? Shouldn’t she feel older, perhaps wiser and more worldly?
Why the discontent this morn when she’d been utterly content throughout the night?
Would Rhodri know?
Again she shook her head, sure that she wouldn’t ask Rhodri about her probably foolish, useless musings. Perhaps all women experienced an emotional bloodletting on the morning after their first coupling, even if the coupling had been a splendid affair. To have him realize she hadn’t even known
that
about coupling wasn’t to be borne.
And oh, how she wished to share a private moment with either Gwendolyn or Emma! One of them would surely have an answer to soothe her upset. But her sisters were beyond her current reach, and she wouldn’t see them anytime soon, so she would simply have to work this out for herself.
Resolute, she flung off the blanket, yanked on her clothing, and prepared to make ready to leave. From outside she heard a rustle in the brush and, believing Rhodri purposely alerted her to his return, thought nothing of it.
Until a male voice softly called her name, and she froze.
Not Rhodri. Not a spirit.
Her heart beating wildly, she recognized the voice of the beloved mercenary who’d married her sister Emma.
Somehow, he’d found her.
How?
Why?
Having no answers, but praying her sister Emma might not be so far away after all, Nicole burst out of the shelter and flew into the arms of Darian of Bruges.
R
hodri crouched out of sight, sword in his sweating hand, his heart pounding against his ribs.
Somehow, a tall, well-hewn man garbed all in black had slipped past his guard and entered the camp. Nicole must know the man, or she wouldn’t be hugging him, smiling. A smile also softened the intruder’s otherwise rugged face.
Rhodri’s grip on the sword tightened, ready to run the man through for doing no more than embracing Nicole and making her smile. But more, he wanted to punish the man for having entered the camp unseen and unheard, posing a new danger Rhodri didn’t know how to deal with as yet.