Authors: Astrid Lee Donovan
Hopping onto the bed in a single smooth flourish, Gaston gathered her trembling body into two strong arms and held her closer than close, showering her face with sweet gentle kisses as he whispered, “What you just experienced, milady, was only a small sample of the pleasure I can give you--of the incredible pleasure I can show you, this and every eve.”
Catherine nodded.
“I desire ye,” she insisted, opening her arms to him, “Now, my knight.”
Sweeping her up in adoring arms, Gaston cradled her in a tight embrace as he lowered her onto the bed beneath them; seizing her parted lips in an intense kiss as he unlaced the sparkling girdle that formed the top of her exquisite ball gown, soon peeling the dress from her sweat lined body to leave her exposed in her bodice and chemise.
“I wish to see ye,” she hissed, stripping off his tunic and hauberk to reveal a massive bronzed chest; one that gleamed in the light of the solitary candle that stood on her engraved bed stand. “Ye are beautiful.”
Standing tall and proud from the bed, a grinning Gaston flexed his golden pectoral and abdominal muscles for the pleasure of his duchess.
“Like what ye see, milady?” he hissed, adding with a wicked smile as he grasped the border of his sleek hose and pulled them down nice and slow over long, trim legs, “Care to see more?”
Catherine gaped outright as, for the first time, she bore witness to the shaft that she and her friends had giggled over and rhapsodized about, the beautiful man part that was longer and more beautiful than she’d imagined.
And now that she’d seen, the lady longed to touch.
“Come to me,” she growled, licking her soft, pearl pink lips as she threw herself down into the cushiony surface of her luxury sleeping place; a spot where, or so she suspected, she wouldn’t be getting much sleep this eve.
True to this notion, her passionate knight descended upon her in a gentle but passionate frenzy, gathering her up in encompassing arms as their naked bodies joined.
Burying his head in her neck, an ardent Gaston kissed and licked her nape as he slipped off her sweat lined chemise and unlaced her corset; soon tossing both on the floor beside them as her breasts crushed against his rock hard chest. Their arms and legs entangled between them as his long, hard shaft soared upward to tease her cleft, seeming to salute her as her famished hands stroked the length of his firm, planed back—laying a firm slap on his peerless ass as the lovers reveled in their sinful and most delicious act.
Their hips and thighs locked between them as they rolled fast and reckless on the bed. And as Gaston buried his head in Catherine’s heaving breasts, licking her nipples as his sturdy hands ran the length of her sensitive sides, Catherine massaged his back and rock hard behind as she tossed her head back in a fit of ecstasy.
“Ye know not how long I have dreamed of this moment,” he hissed against her skin, his rock hard hips gyrating hard against hers as he added in a breathless tone, “I never thought this day would come. And now that it has, I must contain my excitement. I must be gentle with your breaching.”
Accenting these words with a passionate kiss, Gaston ran a loving hand across her tender breasts and down her rounded stomach; finally reaching between her parted legs to once again stroke open her tender feminine folds.
Gasping as she felt once again the divine feeling of pleasure she’d experienced before, his lover ducked her head to rain adoring kisses across the breadth of his masculine chest; then seizing his lips in another heated kiss as he settled himself between her thighs.
Clutching her body to his, an adoring Gaston licked the roof of her mouth as his lips plied hers and his fingertips teased her enflamed clit; reawakening feelings of intense desire that seized her body and soul.
She threw her head back as his hands and mouth served to stoke a fire within her, one that finally inspired her to throw her legs around his trim waist and arch her hips against his.
“Now!” she hissed, running her fingernails down his planed back and throwing her body against his.
Taking this as a cue, her aroused lover eased the tip of his mighty shaft through the slit of her wet femininity; advancing forth inch by inch as she moaned outright in obvious approval.
Catherine bit her lip as a quick flash of pain was consumed in a greater haze of pure, unmitigated pleasure; one caused by the feeling of his magical fingertips working and kneading her nub, and by the deepening penetration of his long, hard shaft.
Their hips found an immediate rhythm as his free hand stroked her back; their hips and thighs locking between them as their bodies danced and writhed together.
“I, too, have dreamed of this,” she revealed, sinking in his warm embrace as their free hands finally enclosed, and his pulsating member slithered within her--surging forth through the confines of her lush feminine garden and toward her feminine core. ‘I, too, wondered if we’d ever come together.”
“I rejoice that we did, my love,” Gaston hissed out, laying a final firm squeeze on her throbbing feminine fruit as his reverberating shaft plunged forth to her core. Soon he sent them both over the edge of an incredible, multi-layered orgasm.
The couple clung together in a haze of sweet pleasure as ecstasy overcame them, driving them deeper into one another’s arms as they cried and howled their pleasure.
“Aye, that was incredible,” Catherine sighed relieved, her tired, satiated body collapsing into the all-encompassing embrace of her ever-loyal knight.
“I am so glad that I please you, milady,” Gaston pulled her closer to him, smattering her cheeks with sweet kisses as he added, “As ye have pleased me, so very much, and made my dreams come true.”
Catherine smiled.
“Twas a beautiful night that we have shared,” she agreed, adding as her beam dissolved, “Yet what, I must ponder, will happen on the morrow?”
As was customary, Lady Catherine answered her own question before dawn next morn, when she and her knight servant stole away from the royal feasting hall and took off on horseback in the direction of Ballamore; the palatial castle that Catherine shared with her parents, the honorable Lord Dirk and Lady Sophia, servants to the Royal Crown.
“The last thing we be needin’ is for Gerald to catch ye coming out of my chamber before dawn,” she told Gaston, adding as she bit her lip, “I did leave a missive for him, to assure him that all was well and that I simply needed some time to consider things. I also told him that I well loved him.”
Gaston nodded, sitting astride Nuit, his trusty ebony stallion, as he kept his gaze trained on the emerald grassed meadow that lined their path to Ballamore.
“If I dare ask, milady,” he asked her. “How much of that sentiment do ye actually mean?”
“Every word of it,” Catherine answered immediately, reaching forth to stroke the silken mane of her chestnut mare, the ever whinnying and much beloved Carissa. “I do indeed love Gerard very much. I am no longer certain, however, that I wish to be his bride.”
Gaston nodded.
“Do I happen to play a role in that decision, Miss?” he queried, casting a cautious glance in her direction.
Catherine bit her lip. Again.
“Yay,” she said finally. “Of course ye do, Gaston. Our friendship has ignited something more, something beautiful. I cannot be ashamed of the affair that has brought me such joy and freedom. And do ye know what, my friend?” she paused here, screeching outright as her lilting voice carried high across the meadows, “I want more of ye, ye gorgeous man! AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”
Gaston guffawed outright.
“And ye indeed may have me, milady,” he assented in a deep, booming voice that equaled her own in terms of sheer and unbelievable amplification, “As many consecutive times as ye so desire, and AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”
Yet with his tone lowered, and he penned her with a serious stare.
“As much as I adore ye, my dear, sweet Catherine, ye must remember our stations in life. I as a knight cannot wed a duchess—and ye most certainly cannot marry a knight,” he reminded her. “Ye must abide by your parents’ wishes. It is their demand that ye wed Lord Gerald.”
Catherine shook her head.
“It is my choice who I marry, and how I lead my life,” she insisted, hoisting her rounded chin for emphasis. “And although I do indeed love Gerald, I well love you as well. And, for that matter, I have an equitable love for the arts. I wish to continue my painting and embroidery, and for that matter to travel England. I wish to go to court and sit at the queen’s feet, to bask in her strength and endless wisdom, and—furthermore—to shamelessly copy her every word and deed. I desire to be a great woman of my time, in the likeness of her majesty Queen Elizabeth I—not just somebody’s wife.”
“And I, milady, would not have ye in any other fashion.”
Catherine and Gaston froze as one, stilling their mounts as a third commanding voice permeated their spirited conversation.
Catherine knew immediately the smooth, lushly accented tone that resounded from just behind them; and although it was a voice she knew and loved, an ethereal tone that made her pulse thrum and her heart race with the fondest love, it was in fact the last sound that she wished to hear at this point.
“Gerald,” she greeted him, turning her blissfully oblivious horse in her fiancé’s direction as she and her knight exchanged uneasy looks. “What are ye doing here?”
Her fiancé, cutting a splendid figure dressed in a sleek scarlet tunic and tight ebony pantaloons, sat astride the lovely ivory steed she identified as Beausoleil; a magnificent beast that seemed to issue a haughty snort in her direction as his owner mirrored the sound.
“Funny I should meet ye here,” he sniffed, pinning his intended with a sardonic grin, one that never failed to annoy her to no end. “As quickly as ye ran away from me, I thought ye would be home by now—or mayhap at the queen’s palace, trying to stage a coup of our land.”
Catherine cleared her throat.
“I was not running from ye,” she insisted, adding as she spread her sturdy arms in a broad, expressive gesture, “I was running toward myself, Gerald. I do not wish to surrender my interests, my passions, my very life as I have lived and enjoyed it to this point, to retire and become little more than the lady of your castle.”
Gerald sighed.
“Why, love, did ye not speak to me of this last night at the feast? I would have told ye that I do not expect ye to change one bit in the wake of our wedding ceremony. I wish for ye to continue painting, knitting, travelling, and doing whatever ye please—and, with your kind permission, I would love to do all these same things (yea, even the embroidery—I have sat long at my mother’s loom and often harbored a secret curiosity for the sewing arts. I am passing sure that my three brothers would beat me senseless in the castle battlements if they well knew),” he assured her, adding as the sarcasm inherent in his beam dissolved to something warmer. “I would have assured ye that it is your spirit, your intellect, your strength that make ye so beautiful in my eyes,” he paused here, adding in a softer tone, “so very, very irresistible.”
Catherine thought a moment, and then nodded.
“Well I do apologize, my love, for underestimating ye—and knowing your kind and respectful ways, I should not have,” she admitted on a sigh, adding as she inclined her head in the direction of her fiancé, “Yet I must question the assertion that you find me irresistible—not when ye have canoodled with virtually every lady at court, except for myself.”
Gerald sighed.
“I told ye, Catherine,” he reminded her, shifting tall in the saddle of his restless mount, “I wished only to preserve your innocence, chastity and maidenhead until the night of our marriage.”
Catherine sighed.
“I would have well exploded by then, Gerald,” she insisted.
Gaston laughed in spite of himself at these words; drawing a hard and scornful look from their unexpected guest.
“Aye, my lad,” Gerald spat out, blue eyes inflaming like diamonds on fire as he regarded his evident rival. “Do ye think it is humorous to come between a lord and his betrothed? To toil with and possibly endanger their future together—as well as the future of their families and kingdoms?”
Gaston shrugged.
“As the knight servant of our beloved Lady Catherine, milord, I have a single role and purpose in life,” he answered, holding up a single strong finger for emphasis. “That purpose revolves at all times around the protection and satisfaction of our lady. And I do assure ye, my good man; I shall go to any lengths to fulfill that mission—along with the extraordinary woman that I’ve been proud to serve since the time of our childhood.”
Gerald nodded.
“And is that what ye were doing in her chamber last eve, my good man?” he shot back, tone angry and brittle. “Serving and protecting Catherine?”
He glowered outright as his rival met these words with a smooth, catlike grin.
“Indeed I was milord,” he declared, squaring his substantial shoulders as he added, “Since ye were not there by her side, to fulfill your duties as her lover and protector, then I as her knight felt compelled to take your place.”
Gasping outright at Gaston’s brazen words, Lady Catherine covered her mouth as her gaze shot to the face of her intended; who, as she could have guessed, was good and furious.
For a long moment he glared outright at a smirking, boastful Gaston. Then he hopped off his horse and struck a bold stance in the face of his rival.
“Sir,” he said, tone low and deathly serious. “Draw your sword.”