A Lady's Pleasure (7 page)

"Did I tell you how beautiful you are?"
Abigail knew perfectly well that she wasn't beautiful. Her eyes snapped open. "You are fond of the color red, I take it?"
A low, masculine laugh filled the hot steam. "Abigail, you get much redder when you blush. I promise that after you've soaked for a while, you will feel much, much better."
"You mean that after I have soaked for a while, I will be well done."
"Done enough to eat."
The blistering heat that flooded her body had nothing to do with the water.
With a little sigh, Robert sat down on the floor at the head of the tub. "Lean back, Abigail."
With an answering sigh, Abigail leaned back. The hair on his chest made a wiry pillow. A sure hand came up and brushed the damp hair off her forehead. It repeated the soothing motion until the water and the caress became one and Abigail felt as if her bones were dissolving. She tilted her head back.
His head tilted forward to meet her gaze.
She felt her heart skip a beat.
He looked so alone.
No man, regardless of what he had done, deserved to bear that much pain.
"Tell me," she softly commanded.
The gray eyes grew opaque. Bending his head down, he rubbed his nose against hers. "Tell you what?"
"Tell me why you entered the Army at the age of thirteen."
"But you said that was illegal."
"And then tell me what you did in the Army."
He raised his head. Thick black lashes veiled his eyes.
"I enlisted in the Army because I was ambitious and I wanted to see the world. I was a big strapping boyno one questioned my age. No sooner did I sign on as a drummer boy than my dream came trueI was shipped to India ."
Steam collected on his lashes, pearled on the black stubble covering his face.
" India is a diverse country," Abigail prodded. "What section were you stationed in?"
The thick black lashes lifted. He looked so terribly remote, staring at her out of eyes that were looking back twenty-two years. "Have you been there?"
"No."
"You are correct, India
is
a diverse country. It has jungles. It has deserts. And it has mountains. When the morning sun rises over the mountains, it turns the sand blood red."
"It sounds beautiful," Abigail said quietly, cautiously, wondering what could possibly have happened there to put that kind of expression on a man's face. "Were you there for the Sepoy Rebellion?"
The pewter-gray eyes filled with cynicism. "It's ironic, actually. The Sepoy Rebellion started because the Muslims and the Hindus objected to the British use of rifle cartridges greased with pig and cow fatwhereas the British infantrymen would have been perfectly happy to have some of that fat on their hardtack."
He shrugged, a fleeting scratch of hair and muscle against her back. "No, the rebellion was over by the time I arrived in India . My regiment was stationed at the foot of the mountains. I sneaked away to practice my drumming one morningit's easier to drum than to sew and cook, which were the duties assigned to me until I learned how to properly drum a march."
Robert paused, lifted his right arm. Long fingers gently stroked her throat.
She arched her neck, giving him access to her body, the only comfort, she suspected, that he would accept. "So that morning did you learn how to drum?"
"No. A
Sepoy
a Bengal army mancame upon me where I was playing in the ravine. The rebellion wasn't over for him. He thought it sport to kill a drummer boyone less British soldier to deal with in the future. Not worth a bullet, but certainly I was worth the effort of skewering on a bayonet."
Abigail writhedinside. Outside, she calmly held his bleak gaze and accepted the gentleness of his touch while she tried to imagine her eldest nephewthirteen now, still playing with hoopsin the Army facing death.
"What happened?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes." Her voice was firm.
"The
Sepoy
taunted me, rushing me with the bayonet, drawing blood, pulling back. After a while he got overconfident, thinking that the English boy with blood and sweat and snot and tears running down his face was no threat. He forgot about the drumsticks. They're tapered, you know, and made out of good, solid wood. I drove the first one into the soft part of his belly."
Abigail's breath caught in her chest, seeing the blood red sand, seeing the
Sepoy,
seeing the child Robert had once been.
"Did it kill him?" she asked evenly.
"No. But it took him off guard."
The fingers thrumming her skin pressed down at the base of her neck where her pulse wildly drummed. "I drove the second drumstick into his throat. The moment I did it I wanted to take it back. I will never forget the look in his eyes. He pulled the stick out and stood there staring at it while blood and air gushed out of his throat and I thought,
he's not going to die.
But it was too late, there was no stopping it, the blood, it kept coming even when the wheezing breath stopped."
Hot, salty steam ran down Abigail's cheeks.
"When my commander saw what I had done, he gave me a rifle. The rebellion hadn't really ended; wars never do. We weren't there to establish peace, but to establish British rule. I killed my first man three months to the day of my enlistment, Abigail, and I have been killing ever since."
"You had no choice, Robert." The words that were meant to be a practical condolence were curiously thick.
Something flickered in his gray eyes. His chest moved against her headhis left arm came up. He cupped her face in both hands, thumbs smoothing her cheeks.
Abigail tensely waited, willing him to say it all.
"When my enlistment was over, I went back to England , quite prepared to take whatever work I could find. But it wasn't the same England . I wasn't the same man. I couldn't tell my family the horrors I had committed, fighting for their beloved country. I couldn't take the same pleasures they did in their simple day-to-day lives, knowing what so-called God-fearing men were capable of doing. So I reenlisted."
He bent his head. A whisper of a kiss closed Abigail's eyes; hot breath caressed her lashes.
"In hand-to-hand combat there is a certain closeness; you almost feel an affinity with the enemy. Black man, white man, brown man, yellow man, it makes no difference. When a man is stabbed, or shot, his eyes open wide in surprise. Surprise that the impossible is indeed possiblethat they should die while the enemy lives."
TearsAbigail distantly recognized the hot, salty substance that spilled down her face as tears, not steam. She was crying the tears that he was unable to.
"Four months ago, I didn't shootso I got shot." His thumbs continued smoothing her slippery cheeks. "They shipped me back to England . The leg healed and I knew I would go back to the Army. And I knew that the next time I looked into the eyes of a man, that the surprise would be in mine. And I found out something about myself while I was laid up, convalescing."
She had to strain to make out the rest of his words, feeling them rather than hearing them. "I found out that I did not want to die without knowing what it is like to lose myself inside a woman."
He raised his head and rested his chin on her forehead, a soft prick of stubbly beard. "I am not indulging you, Abigail. You are indulging me."
Dear God, she had wanted to know, and now she knew.
Abigail swallowed the lump in her throat. "Robert."
"Hmm?" His response was a low rumble in his chest.
"I think the sponge is growing."
The rumble grew, until it erupted full force into a shout of laughter.
Her head fell back from loss of support.
Robert leaned over the tub and extended long, brown fingers.
Without a moment's hesitation, she placed her hand in his. And was hauled up in a cascade of water.
"No. Don't stand. Squat down."
She stiffened, tears forgotten.
"Trust me."
The stark gray eyes were warm pewter.
She squatted.
"Spread your legs."
"In case you have failed to notice, Robert, this is a hip bath. There is no room to spread my legs."
Before she could divine his intentions, he bodily picked her up and faced her sideways in the tub.
"There is now. Lean back against me and spread wide, sweetheart."
Sweetheart.
No man had ever called her by an endearment. Five-foot-nine-inch-tall women were not endearing. Yet this was the second time he had used the word. Once in the dark of night, and now in the light of day.
Excitement coiled in her stomachand spine-melting vulnerability. Spreading wide her legs, she pressed her back against his chest, trapping her hair between them. The small pain seemed insignificant in comparison to what was going to happen.
Very firmly, very gently, he reached between her legs.
"Relax," he whispered. He nuzzled aside a strand of damp hair and rimmed the tip of her ear with his tongue. "Bear down."
His tongue stabbed into her ear. At the same time, his fingers delved inside her, creating pain, giving pleasure. And then he had it, the sponge, and he was pulling it out and holding it up for her inspection.
It was engorged, as big and swollen asas if she had washed dishes with it.
Amusement was rife in Robert's voice. "A far better fate than to be scrubbing the back side of a pan, I would say."
Abigail threw her head back and laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
It was so totally ridiculous, that a common household item could be used for sexual protection.
It was so totally unexpected, that a man like Robert Coally would have a sense of humor.
He nipped her ear. "Still sore?"
"How can I tell?" she asked tartly. "My whole body is boiled."
"English meat, Abigail. Time to eat."

contents
Abigail opened her body willingly when Robert pushed the brandy-soaked sponge inside her. And tangled her fingers into his hairunbelievably soft and warmwhen he commenced "eating."
The orgasms she had experienced last night faded in comparison with the sensations that spiraled higher and higher inside her body. Last night she had not known what to expecttoday she did.
She lifted her head up from the pillow and glanced down. The sight of his tanned fingers digging into her pale hips and his dark brown hair buried between her flexed thighs plummeted her over the edge.
When she opened her lashes he was there, leaning over her with pewter-gray eyes narrowed intently.
She smiled, equally intent. "My turn."
"I don't believe in waste. The sponge is ready."
"But you have the advantage over me."
Two hard, hot, hairy legs settled between hers. "In what respect?"
"You have seen my all, whereas I ..."
"You saw my all before you decided to trek outside."
"But not like this." Abigail lifted her hand and touched his cheek. It was prickly with dark stubble. She wanted more than anything to examine this man, to record every inch of his body, every texture of his skin. She wanted to make herself as much a part of him as he had made himself a part of her. "In my books it says that a man changes color when he orgasms. I want to know, Robert. I want to know everything there is to know about you."
His gray eyes grew shuttered. Rolling off her, he lay down on his back and threw an arm over his eyes. "Then know me, Abigail ... and let me know if I change color. The knowledge might come in useful on the battlefield. I could, armed with the information, astound and confound the enemy. Like a chameleon."
A reluctant laugh escaped Abigail. "You are mocking me, sir."
He lifted his arm and slanted a look at her. "Not at all. You will forgive a sudden sense of vulnerability on my part. It's not every day that a man bears his all for a lady's private schooling."
A twinge of reality intruded on her pleasure. "I am not a lady, Robert."
He reached out a long, tanned finger and flicked her nose. "You are a lady, Abigail, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And I am here to give you pleasure."
"What about your pleasure?" She trailed a hand down his chest, a muscled, contoured belly, and grabbed the root of their discussion.
"Get on with your studies, Miss Abigail, else you lose a student."
Abigail scooted down the bed. And was distracted by the sight of the angry red scar on his thigh. She lightly touched it with her left hand.
"Does it still hurt?"
His gray eyes were unreadable. "That's not part of the lesson plan, Miss Abigail."
"You were limping last night."
"Because I fell on it when the bloody horse threw me. Continue with your studies."
Abigail obligingly studied the swollen shaft that sprang out from a bed of black, curly hair. It seemed impossible that he had fit inside her. "Have you ever measured yourself?"
"You're putting me to blush."
"The head is purple." She ignored his sally. "It is very large, like a small fist. It has an eye." She captured the single drop of moisture that glistened on the tip and smeared it over the swollen glans. "And it weeps. Is it sad, Colonel Coally?"
"Very, Miss Abigail." Robert's voice was strained. "Why don't you kiss it and make it better?"
Abigail leaned down and touched her tongue to the purple-hued bulb. "You tastesalty, sir."
"You cannot judge the flavor by a single taste. Take it between your lips."
Robert knew exactly what he tasted likejust as Abigail did. Yet he was as entranced by this play between a man and a woman as was she.
Grasping the stalk of his penis in both hands, she pulled it taut so that she could take the crown of him fully in her mouth. And re-tasted him for flavor.
"You still taste salty, sir."
Robert's breathing quickened. "Perhaps you are mistaken you should try again. Taste made in haste is not a good method by which to judge."
"Perhaps. But only if you tell me if you have ever measured yourself."
"Never."
"Then I shall do so." She spanned the length of his manhood with her fingers. They fell short of the purple-hued crown. "My fingers spread six incheshere. If I take my other hand and spread it out, so, then I spannine inches, Colonel Coally. When next you go into battle, you can not only astound your enemy with your chameleon properties, but you can also intimidate him with the size of your great lance."
The mattress shook with Robert's laughter.
"But you have yet to determine whether it does indeed change color, Miss Abigail."
"How do you suggest I test that, Colonel Coally?"
His laughter stopped.
"By suckling me, Abigail. As hard and as deep as you can take me."
Abigail cradled him between her handsthe purple-hued crown throbbed. "But I did that last night, Colonel Coally. Today I want to do something else."
A half-smile formed on his lips. "Your fantasies, Miss Abigail."
She gently rubbed the thick shaft between her palmsand imagined him all alone on the eve of battle. "Do you ever touch yourself?"
"Do you?"
The rain echoed softly inside the cabin.
Abigail swallowed her fear and uncertainty at confessing what no respectable person did, let alone admit. "Yes."
"I think we all do. The only problem in the field is finding privacybut sometimes even that doesn't matter."
"Show me how you touch yourself."
It could have been a blush on Robert's cheeksthe light was too dim and his skin too dark to be certain. The thought that he could still be rendered as vulnerable as she warmed herand fired her determination. "You said everything, Robert."
Closing those dark eyelashes, he reached down and cupped his hands over hers. "Rub me between your handslike this."
Abigail's hands were sandwiched between heat and friction. She quickly learned the motion, varied the motion, until he took his hands away and he was all hers.
She could feel his readiness through his body, drawn as tautly as a pulley. See it in the stomach that corded and strained for release.
Suddenly the bulbous head grew a deep burgundy. Even as she watched, marveling at the change that was occurring, it throbbed and shot up a geyser of white fluid. At the same time, a groan worked its way past Robert's throat.
The sound drew Abigail's attention. Robert's eyelids were squeezed shut and his lips pulled back from his teeth as if he were in the throes of agony. Slowly his features relaxed into an expression of utter peace.
His black lashes lifted.
Abigail stared into the depths of those stark gray eyes that had seen too much death and pain and wanted to give this man ...
everything.
Reaching out a finger toward his stomach, she touched the mound of warm, white fluid there.
His essence.
Last night it had shot up inside her.
"So, do I change color, Miss Abigail?"
Abigail thought of him, inside her, doing all of the wonderful things she had just witnessed. And felt tears clog her sinuses.
"Oh, yes, Colonel Coally."
His gray eyes were too intense. Just when she thought she would laugh or cry or do something else entirely uncalled for if he continued to stare at her so, the skin around his eyes crinkled.
"Lance,
Abigail?"
"Do you prefer a different name, Robert?"
"Prick."
Hot color flooded Abigail's face at the explicit word that she had only ever been exposed to in print. "Battering ram."
"Cock."
"Jacob staff."
Robert threw his head back and laughed in that purely masculine, uninhibited way of his. "Wherever did you learn such phrases? Never mind. Your erotica. You were quite enraptured when I peeked through the window last night. What were you reading about?"
Before Abigail could reply, Robert crawled over her and stood up on the floor.
She watched the sway of his testicles with interest as he leaned over the foot of the bed. They were rather hairyand oddly touching; man at his most vulnerable. And exposed.
He was all too aware of her interesthis gray eyes, when he turned around, glinted. He held up a copy of
The Pearl .
"Is this the one you were reading?"
"What number is it?"
"Twelve. Do you have them all?"
She flipped the quilt over her naked body. "Yes."
He flipped the quilt away from her. "Come over to the window."
She gazed at the front of him. He had gone from limp to hard. "Why?"
"I want you to read to me."
Abigail's mouth dropped open. "Absolutely not."
"Ashamed, Abigail?"
She closed her eyes against the truth. She
was
ashamed. That she had desires. And pursued those desires.
She opened her eyes. "No, I am not ashamed. Merely feeling very vulnerable. It's not every day that a woman shares her secret life."
Robert's dark face hardenedshe could imagine that look on his face before he killed. Without warning, he reached down and grasped her hand in his, his skin hard where hers was soft, calloused where hers was smooth.
For a second she felt trapped. And knew that he, too, was trapped by the desires that, for however long the storm lasted, were neither his nor hers, but theirs.
He pulled her across the bed and up to her feet.
"Go stand by the window No, the other window."
Abigail skirted the cupboard and stood uncertainly in front of the surviving window on the opposite side of the door. The open curtains offered neither warmth nor concealment.
Robert deposited a chair in front of the window. "Sit down."
Abigail primly sat down with her back toward the light. The wood was cold and hard against skin that was flaming hot and achingly sensitive.
Robert dropped a pillow onto the floor, then dropped down on his knees in front of the chair. He held out the journal.
"Turn to the page you were reading when I walked in on you last night."
She flipped through the pages. The murky light penetrating the window blurred the print, as if the only thing real in the room was her ... and him.
"Have you found it?"
"Yes."
"Start reading exactly where you left off. But first tell me what happened before, so I can follow the story."
She cleared her throat. "The story is called 'La Rose D'Amour; Or the Adventures of a Gentleman in search of Pleasure. Translated from the French.' The man, Louis, is forming aa harem of women, and he has kidnapped Laura, a virgin. When I stopped reading, he was in the process of persuading Laura of the pleasures to be had if she travels with him and allows him to deflower her."
Robert leaned closer, cocooning her in his body heat. A single drop of desire bridged her knee and his manhood. "How was Louis persuading Laura?"
Abigail inhaledsmelling him, smelling her. And stared into his stark gray eyes mere inches away from her own. "He had his finger in her cream jug."
The expected laughter did not appear, only a blazing heat that took her breath away. Holding her gaze, he grabbed her hips and pulled her forward in the chair until her buttocks were draped over the edge of the seat.
Gasping in surprise, she dropped the journal and grabbed the sides of the wooden seat.
He promptly picked up the journal. Prying her right hand free of the chair, he clasped her fingers around it. "Read, Abigail."
It was one thing for Robert to be aware of her collection of erotica; it was an entirely different thing to read it aloud.
"Robert. I really think I would prefer
you
to read."
"Not part of the bargain, Abigail." His voice was as intractable as his expression. "I want to hear
you."
"Is that all you want?" she asked tartly.
"No, Abigail, I want far more than thatI want you to share your secret life with me. Tell me when you end a paragraph."
Licking lips that were suddenly as dry as the paper she was holding, she found the appropriate page and raised the journal to best catch the light. Her breasts bobbed up and down on her stomach with each breath she took. She had a curious feeling of d é j à vu, looking at the black print.
"My desires were excited to the highest pitch. I depicted to her the pleasure she would experience when, after arriving at the chateau, I should deflower her of her virginity, and triumphantly carry off her maidenhead on the head of this, 'dear Laura,' I said, as I took one of her hands and clasped it round my"Abigail took a deep breath, uttered the forbidden word"prick. 'Then,' said I, 'you will know all the joys and pleasures of a real,' " she took another deep breath, " 'fuck.' '
Hard, hot, calloused thumbs dug into the tops of her thighs.
Abigail peered over the top of the journal. He was waiting for her.
"I finished the paragraph."
"Read on." His voice was dark and low and gravelly.
The fluttering inside her stomach traveled to her heart.
" 'You will then,' I continued," Abigail read on in a ragged voice that bore little resemblance to her own, " 'experience all the sweet confusion, far different from what you now feel, of stretching wide apart your thighs to receive man between them, to feel his warm, naked body joined to yours, the delicious preparatory toying with your breasts, the hot kisses lavished on them and on your lips, his roving tongue to force its way between your rosy lips in search of yours, the delicious meeting of them, their rolling about and tickling each other as mine now does yours,' at the same time thrusting my tongue to meet hers."
Abigail's voice died away on a moan of wind. Heat flooded her body: A mingling of embarrassment and desire.
Without warning, Robert stretched wide her thighs. Cold air invaded her most private parts. It was immediately replaced by heatthe touch of a finger.
"You're wet, Abigail. Is this what happens when you read to yourself?"
She shivered, feeling more exposed than she ever had in her life. "Yes."
The hard, naked strength of his body pressed into the vee of her thighs. "Move the journal."
She lowered
The Pearl .
His mouth swooped down on her right breast, scorching hot and wet. It felt as though he was trying to swallow her whole. Hard, hot fingers closed around the soft mound, squeezed it to fit more deeply inside his mouth, while his other hand found her left nipple, a raspy touch of pure fire.
Pain was a sharp intrusion.
Even as Abigail opened her mouth to protest the not quite gentle biting of her nipple, the teeth were gone and his mouth covered hers, still scorching hot, flavored with strawberry jam, brandy, and her.
She inhaled sharply, in response to the gentle twisting of her nipples; in response to the stroke of his tongue against the roof of her mouth.
She forgot about
The Pearl .
She forgot about shame. She wrapped her arms around Robert's neck and pulled him closer,