The Slightest Provocation

Chapter Fifteen

“I agree with you,” she said. “It’s neither right nor good nor moral. But here I am anyway.” She laughed nervously. “It probably won’t take very long. No doubt we’ll begin squabbling soon enough.”

“Why did you come?” he asked her.

“Why did you ask me to?”

“That’s not an answer,” he told her.

“Because I wanted to,” she said. “Is that an answer?” Well, is it?

Is desire an answer or a question?

Luckily, when you’re in its toils, you find you’re not awfully concerned with the fine points.

Better to concentrate on practical matters: the bed in want of a sheet, grate of a fire; the gown and stays, coat and waistcoat that must come off as quickly as possible. All were dispatched with brisk, wordless, and rather solemn efficiency so that it was soon enough that Mary stood in the middle of the room in her shift, shoes, and stockings and Kit sat at the edge of the neatly made-up bed, his shiny new pocket watch on the rickety table next to it.

The room was small enough that their hands would have met if they’d extended them forward.

Mary’s shift stirred softly in a draft of warm air. Her pale pink stockings had elaborate clocks down their sides, disappearing into fragile black slippers.

The light in the room was dappled green from the vines at the windows.

Her voice seemed louder than it was, when it broke the watery silence. “And if we hadn’t argued at Calais? If we’d drunk our Calvados and exchanged our compliments? What do you expect we would have done next?”

He reached to pull her shift over her head.

“Please,” he said.

She smiled. They both knew perfectly well what they would have done next. But it was pleasant, all the same, to be asked.

She knelt between his legs. He held her shoulders between his doeskin-clad thighs, hugged her hips with his boots. She could smell the oil his valet had rubbed into the leather to make it flexible. Clasping him around the waist, her face rubbing against the linen of his shirt, breasts crushed against the rising tautness between his legs-she could smell all his smells now, sweat and skin and the mysterious humors of masculine arousal, through the clean, cared-for, and supposedly impervious materials that separated him from her. Doeskin and leather-it piqued the imagination, a gentleman enveloped in skins besides his own. She shuddered; he stroked and played with her hair. She breathed the dark smells; the tremors inside her rose, crested, and subsided.

“Unbutton me.” His voice was hoarse.

“Yes.” Hers was ragged, distant. Yes, yes, of course.

Her fingers felt swollen, clumsy. Damn. The buttonholes were tight. “Bloody hell and double damn,” she muttered.

Still, finesse wasn’t everything-not, at least, in the matter of buttons. Now, however, that she’d finally gotten to him… but now she was home free. She kissed the head of his cock, bent her head to lick it along the length of the shaft, lightly stroking the underside with her fingers. Kissing, nibbling… she sighed a deep, long sigh, arched her neck and softened her throat, heedful, alert-aroused once again (and so soon too) by the weight of his hand on her nape, his fingers grasping her curls.

There was always a moment, he thought-at least there’d always been a moment; yes, there it was-where she’d stop to lick her lips and wet her mouth. No propriety or pretense of being taken unawares-for even if she sometimes fumbled with the buttons, in the main she was proud of her skill, open and unaffected about wanting to do a good, capable job where it mattered most. Softening her jaw, she’d make herself all moist velvet down to her throat before allowing him to guide her down over himself. He’d been waiting for this moment since… Calais? Merciful heaven, since long before Calais.

His hand at her head, her lips around him now. Faster, sweetheart, yes, that’s right, that’s good-the liquid insides of her cheeks, the nimble, clever tongue. Her motions growing eager, greedy-he allowed himself a growl of contentment. A sigh of selfish delight, to have all that attention, will, and intelligence in his thrall.

He tugged again at the curls at her nape: he wanted it slower now, deeper-yes, just like that, oh, very good indeed. No need any longer to show her. He dropped his hand, letting himself fall back onto his elbows. To watch.

The shadows of her eyelashes on her flushed cheeks.

Her lips, curved and supple, careful and attentive.

The more he lengthened, thickened, hardened, the more devoted she’d become. Taking him. As a challenge. Well, he hoped she still found him a challenge.

Yes, he could tell. Good, she was having to put a bit of work into it. Her shoulders quivered (wings, poised to take flight); he tightened the muscles of his thighs to hold her clasped between them. Stay here. Captive. At home on earth. With me.

Her knees ached and her jaw had grown a bit tired-for there was rather a lot of him to take. Had she forgotten? No, not really and not ever. Still, the naughty books never told you just how stiff and tired a pair of knees could get; you had to learn that part for yourself, surprising yourself each time. Thank heaven for the threadbare and slightly mildewed rug on the floor at the side of the bed.

She stretched her back and shoulders as he hugged his feet and legs more tightly around her. Naked against his boots, thrilled and yet at ease. For when you knew someone so well, when you were so familiar with what he wanted now and would want next… when it was new and old at the same time… when you were making scandalous, challenging love to someone you very possibly knew better than yourself…

Because with all the tricks and goads, the embellishments and elaborations, it was as though they’d made these movements yesterday, or last night, or (as once they might have) every afternoon for a month at least.

He’d begun thrusting more quickly now-forceful, demanding, joyfully exuberant-well, there really wasn’t any word you could substitute, could you, for joy? She clasped her arms around his waist, crushed her breasts against the side of the bed, arched her back, pressed her flanks hard against his legs. Parting her knees, to plant herself more squarely upon them-savoring the moans she’d wrought from him, tremors at the root of his cock.

He wanted her throat now; she could feel coarse hairs pressed against her lips. Breathing deeply through her nose, his darkest, mossiest smells. She could smell-no, she could taste-the salt of his sweat and (ranker, saltier) the semen coursing up from him; it would overwhelm her, spill out from her lips…

No it wouldn’t. For she was taking him. Take him, drink him, breathe him, swallow him, have him, drown in him. Wash up to shore now, in his lap.

She heard his contented and very self-satisfied sigh just as she’d begun to think she’d really be a great deal more comfortable next to him on the bed, rather than collapsed all on the floor between his legs, on that not-so-nice little rug.

“Come up here.” He stretched out a hand. They arranged themselves somewhat charily, for he still had his boots on, and there wouldn’t be any servants to change the linen.

“You’ve got many too many clothes on.” Her voice came out a bit muffled, for she’d whispered it into his shirt, where his neck met his shoulder. She raised her head. “Well, it’s not very fair to me, is it?”

“Are we playing fair?” One of his hands was cupped over her quim, the tips of his fingers moving slowly over the place where the lips met, and sometimes straying down over her thighs.

“You aren’t,” she told him. “Not at this moment. Not… oh, my word, Kit.” For there are moments when the smallest, simplest fingertip touch-from a lover who knows just where-is all that’s needed. She nestled into his side. How lovely, she thought-in some last moment when it was still possible to think. She spread her legs, stretched her back and arms, and took up all the room she could. To enjoy it completely.

“I should apologize,” he said sometime later, “for how things went in Calais. It wasn’t the right way to meet each other after so long.”

“I expect you should,” she replied. “Are you? Apologizing, I mean.”

“More like saying I should.”

“That’s like you. Are you going to tell me about what you’ve been doing since you arrived here? Oh yes, and who was the man that Peggy saw anyway? Will you tell me any of that?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes, I think so. Sometime. Not right now.” She raised her head. “Because right now it’s time to get you out of your clothes,” she told him. “Sit up.”

She straddled his legs. He kept his face cool and noncommittal as she unknotted his neckcloth, unbuttoned his shirt, and rose on her knees to pull it over his head.

Hesitating now, for in truth she was fearful of what she’d find. And it did come as a shock, how long and livid the scar was, the stretched and puckered flesh snaked from shoulder to collarbone and almost to his neck.

She tried to hide her dismay, to keep her voice light and her expression unconcerned. “Well, I expect we’re both a bit worse for wear.”

Too late for her to offer comfort.

He shrugged. “Worse for not knowing how to stay out of harm’s way, one’s first real time in battle.”

Nor would he offer any comfort to her.

She slid back and off the bed, standing on the floor in front of him again. Chin tilted and hands on hips. “And about them boots, Major Stansell? I’m good with boots, you know, sir.”

Coyness and posturing didn’t suit her, but it was the best she could do at the moment.

He shrugged, almost grimaced, and managed a smile instead. “Yes, I do know. You’d have made a good batman. Well, come on, then, be quick about it. There’s a good fellow.”

Even when he hadn’t cared much about clothes, he’d liked a good pair of boots. And so she’d gotten good at boots, in order to have them off him quickly.

She knelt at his feet while he braced himself against the bed. Gripping the toe of his right boot with her left hand and the heel with her right, she gave a light tug, being sure to pay close attention to the angle of her hands and his foot. The boot slid off easily, and she grinned up at him.

“Nothing simpler. The left boot now, if it please my lord major.”

But the left, in the inevitable way of an intractable world, refused to budge. She shouldn’t have been so cocky over her first success. Nor allowed herself a dizzying breath of the leather’s oily perfume, darker and more redolent as her palms grew hotter and more slippery.

For that matter, she shouldn’t have stolen that little glance up at him, his eyes so calmly fixed upon her breasts, which would continue their stupid fleshy jiggling, the harder she tugged at the damn, bloody, sodding left boot.

When had she begun muttering to herself?

“Now, now,” he chided her. “Can’t allow my batman such indecent vocabulary. Filthiest language I’ve heard since I poked my head in on the Penley sisters having their tea.”

She snorted. “Don’t make me laugh, Kit, or I’ll never get this damn thing off you.”

There was nothing for it, finally, but for her to straddle his outstretched left leg with her derriere indecorously turned toward his face. She sighed and he laughed at her. Let’s just get this over with, she thought.

She held tight to the infuriating left boot.

He’d pulled the stocking from his bootless right foot. “Less slipping about this way,” he explained, as he propped the sole of the warm and lively foot against her bum.

He wriggled his toes a bit. “Now, when I count three…”

She and the boot would both have gone flying across the room if he hadn’t caught her around the middle-hands squeezing her breasts; mouth against her neck; cock hard and impatient once more.

She might lose every remaining shred of dignity if she were to continue rubbing back against him so crudely. She dropped the boot onto the floor and he loosened his hands from around her.

“Let’s do this properly,” he said.

He made short work of pantaloons, drawers, and his other stocking. Gloriously naked at last, he took the briefest of moments to preen for her before sweeping back the quilt with an extravagant flourish that made her giggle, and putting out his hand.

She took it. “Dance for me,” he said.

Nodding silently, moving slowly, while the years swirled and dissolved around them.

He propped his head against the pillows and put a hand on each of her hips. His broad chest, coarse whorls of black hair interrupted by the vicious scar, rose and fell with his breath as he prodded her to straddle him, to open herself and grasp and envelop him. Not that much prodding was necessary-his hands, her hips, the pulse in his throat and the flesh rising and stiffening at the apex of her vulva, were all caught suspended in an aching sweetness of shared movement and slow time.

Rising, she almost lifted herself off him. He shuddered, whistled through his teeth. She lowered herself as slowly as she could, coming back to rest against him, her arse against his hips and belly.

More quickly now: she arched and curled her back, stroking herself against the length of his cock and molding herself around its thickness. Gasping, she watched the lines his features took, mirroring what her own must look like, eyes black and opaque, pupils distended as though drugged, mouth loose and slightly open. Thoughtful, almost meditative.

He moved slowly beneath her, just the smallest arching of his hips keeping time with hers.

Dance for me.

In Constantinople, she’d watched a pasha being entertained by a suave-hipped dancing girl. Behind the curve of smoke from his hookah, he’d seemed almost bored by the painted eyes, veiled face, exquisite bare feet below ankle cuffs tinkling with tiny silver bells. But Mary had caught a slantwise view of his hand-the one not holding the hookah-compulsively opening and closing upon itself, in perfect rhythm with the drums.

She’d pled a megrim and hurried back to her hotel. Her companions had supposed her offended by the spectacle, and Matthew Bakewell had begged her pardon the next morning, for exposing her to it.

Kit would have known better than to beg her pardon.

She raised her arms, stared down as though over a gossamer face veil, wiggled her shoulder blades, and felt her breasts raise and bounce in rhythm. He couldn’t look completely serious; well, it was a bit ridiculous that he and she could take such delight in their shared, crude, dancing girl fancy-ridiculous and absurd, childish and really rather marvelous.

He touched her nipples with cold fingertips. She gasped, moaned, and would have made a botch of the rhythm if he hadn’t taken it up for her, moving his hips and thrusting his cock up higher within her, with vehemence and perhaps a little more heat.

But suddenly, there wasn’t a rhythm anymore. Nor a dance. There was only flesh and breath, muscle and movement and blood coursing beneath the skin. The oriental fancy had dissolved. There were only-they were simply-Mary and Kit once more. The notion that they could have imagined themselves anyone else was quaint and utterly nonsensical.

Nothing more than what it was, and everything quite good enough. His hands, his mouth on her breasts: stroke and squeeze, tease and tongue and pull and suckle. His arms around her now, drawing her downward to grasp and hold him, beneath and within her, drenched and clinging, no music but their ragged breath.