He let go of her arms to take her face into his hand, a palm on
her cheek, and penetrated her mouth with his tongue. For an instant, she
squirmed. For the love of Pete, he thought, it was new to her. He cooed,
"It'll be okay," and did it again. So much for his noble intentions,
if ever he had any.
She let him. She gave her mouth up to him, letting him lead her
into a full, deep kiss.
Pushing his tongue into her warm mouth was so pleasurable, it was
unholy. The inside of her mouth was small. Foreign, female. He breathed in and,
through their open mouths, her smell and heat and humidity entered his chest.
The feel of it made his heart thud so hard he could feel it down through his
belly, all the way into his groin – his arousal there, already firm, rushed to
full readiness. He was so hard and heavy so fast he was dizzy with it for
several moments.
While Liddy followed and responded at every turn, as cooperative
as a little bird being fed in the nest. She sighed when he slid his hand up
into the back of her hair, digging upward till his fingers tangled in soft,
snarly curls, his palm against her warm scalp. He glided his other hand down
her side, past her hip and partly under her – suddenly in full-palmed
possession of her unbelievably round backside. He pressed his thumb into one of
the dimples where it met her spine. God Almighty—
He pulled her hips toward him with more force than he meant to,
instinct driving. His muscles trembled from holding back, from trying to go
slow – he'd given up trying to stop. She startled when he first ground himself
against her hipbone, but then she crooned. The sweet thing really took to
lovemaking, even if she didn't know much about it, which was going to be a
whopping good thing for some fellow, though it sure made her a rotten guardian
of her own chastity at the moment.
He continued, kissing her, half on top of her, pressing against
her, while images of full intercourse lit up his imagination. Lord oh Lord oh
Lord. He kissed her hard enough that it was possible that the cut at the corner
of his mouth opened again. He tasted the faint metallic tang of blood, though
the cut didn't hurt. It mingled with the taste of her mouth; it became part of
his awareness … the flavor of knowing the softness of her, the curves of her
body against him, the promise of her open mouth, sultry with humidity and heat
and pure responsiveness. He wanted her breasts bare. He wanted to touch her
naked skin. Intimacy; he wanted it. He wanted her skirts up, his trousers open—
He pulled back and drew in a long, ragged breath.
"Liddy," he murmured. She was breathing hard, too. Cussed woman. He
couldn't decide if he wanted to give her directions –
lift your hip here so
I can get at your skirt better
– or make one last attempt to warn her. He
worried she didn't know what was happening.
Whichever, before he could get words out, he was already striking
compromises with himself. Go 'head, kiss her deeply, draw her further into love
play. Enjoy it. God knew it couldn't be more wonderful. You can stop when you
need to.
While, in some darker place in his mind, a voice calculated: And
if you don't stop, how could you keep her from getting pregnant? Could you pull
out? You have nothing with you. Would you dare leave it to chance? God help
him, he was as erect as a post, his blood flowing with the damnedest questions.
While his cock was hot and fat with its own kind of answer; it felt blissful,
it ached. He was sore after a whole night of fighting arousal. He couldn't
endure any more. He didn't want to; he shouldn't have to. He wanted inside her.
He wanted relief with a kind of narrowing focus that was making it difficult to
think of much else.
Sam was wrestling metaphorically, then was all of a sudden up
against a very concrete something that held him back: her hand. She'd seized
his fingers as he'd started to pull up her skirt.
He halted dead still, a man instructed to do so.
After a moment,
Lydia
opened her
eyes enough that from beneath her lashes she found Sam's face. So close. Oh, so
nice. He stared down, doing nothing, motionless. She complained, "No,
don't stop."
He looked confused. "You just stopped me."
"Well, from
that
."
He laughed – deep, devilish laughter. The sound fascinated her.
She had heard of, though never actually heard, such a thing: a
dirty
laugh, full of sexuality. "Liddy," he said, "you're being
seduced."
"No, I'm not," she said easily and smiled.
She closed her eyes again as she felt him shift his weight and run
his fingers down the tendon of her neck till they rested at the indentation of
her throat, at her collarbone. He flipped a button open. As easy as that,
flip
.
She drifted in the sensation of his warm hand hovering near her breast.
A different world, all this – a warm, beautiful blur. It wasn't
the real world, she wanted to tell him. They could dally a little, because they
lay inside something else, a hiatus … a sweet limbo that didn't count. Where
she could take perfect, poignant pleasure in a man's kiss and touch; never mind
their differences. Here in the whiteness, the clouds, was a … a little miracle
… of autonomy – no one to answer to but herself – of private pleasure and human
connection.
Lying on damp ground in the cool blindness of fog, she raised her
arms over her head again, stretching, lifting any barriers away with the hope
that he'd understand he was free to continue. Within limits, of course.
He let out that laugh again, a little shudder of it that seemed to
run up her arms. "Oh, yeah, this counts," he said.
"What?" she said dreamily.
"It counts. Less than a hiccup, too."
Oh, that. "No, it doesn't, I was already down."
"Do you want up?"
"No."
"Then it counts." More of his soft, low laughter as she
shoved him in the chest. "I win," he announced.
What Sam won was another good look at Liddy's tongue, a quick,
full extension, followed by a crinkled up face, a wrinkled nose at him.
He didn't even think about it – he just plain enjoyed her so much,
right down to her amusing competitive streak, that, laughing, he leaned
forward. He planted a full smacking buss on her twisted mouth that left her
startled. She didn't have time to understand what was happening, to gauge her
reaction. He was too quick.
Except that, when it was over, there they were again, an inch
away: her face expectant, her wide, thick-lashed eyes looking up at him – he
could've counted her eyelashes.
He asked. "Why don't you just dance naked in front of
me?"
"Is that what you'd rather? Should that do it then?"
"Yeah," he said and laughed, though for the life of him
Sam couldn't figure why everything now was striking him as funny. Along these
lines, as if it were a joke she'd own up to finally, he murmured, "You're
not really some muckety-muck's daughter, are you?"
"A viscount's. Yes."
She was lying. "Don't," he said. "Tell the
truth."
"I am."
"All right, then lie to me." He laughed at himself for
saying it, wanting it. "I could get playful with, well, a governess or a
lady's maid—"
"
Well
nothing,"
Lydia
told him,
lifting her brow as she rested back on the ground. "How very un-American –
undemocratic – of you to have different rules for different classes of women.
Kiss me again."
She knew of course that he was right, that her family would be
horrified had they known what she was doing. Yet they weren't here. And was
this any of their business? And didn't they give her the most beastly advice
sometimes?
She loved the feel of his mouth, the heat of it, the way he moved
it over hers, the way it stirred her. She loved the press of his body against
her, the breeze drifting over her skin where the throat of her dress was open.
What else? What other pleasure might she like to explore in this glistening
moment – which was temporary after all, she told herself. She and Sam would go
their separate ways, and she didn't mind. She felt protected somehow, perhaps
because
they would.
He stared. She watched his smile grow tentative, uncertain.
"Oh, don't get distant again," she said.
His eyes narrowed. Such a serious look.
She risked telling him in a whisper, "You want to."
He broke eye contact and scowled into the fog.
When he looked back at her, she was surprised to find his
impatience with her – his interesting, flattering exasperation she so enjoyed
playing with – held a fleck of rage, indignity. His eyes, their blue, were
dark, steely, a metallic sheen. Hard, bright. He said, "Yeah, I want to. I
want to kiss you while I lie on top of you. I want to take your clothes off and
touch you everywhere, while I pin you to the ground and kiss you hard – hard,
wet kisses full on your mouth" – his dark, beard-stubbled face grew deadly
earnest – "
in
your mouth. I want inside your mouth, inside your
clothes, inside your body. I want to lie naked over you and slide myself inside
you."
She blinked. "No," she said immediately. She felt
herself flush. Then she knew a zing of anger herself. A kiss, she thought. A
little more maybe. This was as playful as she dare be. "No," she said
again.
He remained in full, sincere engagement with her watchfulness, eye
to eye, and nodded. "It's a good decision, Liddy. I'm glad you've come to
it. Now give me a little slack in the rope here, will ya? Roll over. Stop
making life so difficult for me – and for you, too, if you think about
it."
With that, he lifted his leg and rolled away, flat out on his back
beside her. He crossed his foot to his knee, pushing his hand into his hair,
and dug his fingers through it as if he might pull it out. He let out a long
breath, blatantly adjusted the front of his trousers, then changed the subject.
"All right," he said, "your turn. What's the
farthest you've been from home, and what's the best and worst thing you've seen?"
Lydia
's mind went
blank. Or almost blank.
Touch you everywhere?
"Um, I went to
France
once."
Hard,
wet kisses full on your mouth
. "I saw a bare, I mean, a bear, no, a
bull. I saw bulls, bullfighting."
In your mouth. Inside your clothes
.
It was indecent. She shouldn't think of it.
Yet she could hardly think of anything else
. I want to lie
naked over you and slide myself inside you.
*
The
fog thinned to reveal an evening sky, one area of the horizon slightly brighter
than the rest – the setting sun, Sam hoped. West. Through a mist, the rocks and
open spaces of the moor's terrain once more became visible. The world returned.
Sam and Liddy found a near-toppling tor in the distance and fixed their
direction on it, then congratulated themselves for sitting tight all day:
Within a matter of yards, the ground sloped, grew spongy, then wet, then muddy.
For a time, the mud was broken up with drier patches of damp heath
tufted with coarse-bladed grass gone to seed, lots of long stemmy spikes. Then
muddier again, with both of them complaining, then they actually longed for it:
Their southerly route, no matter how they tried to avoid it, became a horrible
yellowish slime over which, to cross, they had to leap from one clump of grass
to another.
The sky continued to clear, a moon appearing. Because they could
see reasonably well, and because they had made such poor time all day, they
pushed on, past their landmark tor, looking for the road. The going was slow
though, their path turning from mess to mud to mess again. The land was lower
than before. How could the road be this way?
Lydia
wondered. How
could they be having such a hard time finding it?
As the sun set, the evening brought them some unwelcome eerie
visitors – glowing eyes in the dark followed them for a time. They turned out
to belong to half a dozen sheep, but
Lydia
knew a little
of her old fear again. Then even Sam jumped when, as he and she treaded up a
rocky rise, something clanked curiously under his foot, something metal. He
picked it up, then they both wished he hadn't. It was rusted grappling irons, a
reminder that the moor was home to a prison and the occasional escapee.
Lydia shivered and stayed so close to Sam after this that she
occasionally bumped into his arm or side – though Sam couldn't imagine what
he'd do if they were truly confronted with the convicts or hounds from hell she
feared. He sympathized, though. Moving across the moor by moonlight was
awe-inspiring. Not impossible, but fraught with enough unknowns, as well as
perfectly explainable slipping or heels sinking suddenly and deeply into the
wet ground, that even Sam was spooked.
The temperature dropped, and Liddy suggested they don their trusty
petticoats for warmth, so they halted. She was reaching around to hand Sam his,
when she suddenly stood, taking the wad of petticoat to her chest. Clutching
it, she lifted her other moonlit arm and exclaimed, "Look! Oh, look!"