Beast (19 page)

He found other secret, sensitive parts of her, one place in particular awingly sensitive…
awwww
, that was what she said as he took this spot over, a coup d'etat, an overthrow of any last trace of modesty, then fiddled with her—Oh, God,
fiddle
, the perfect word; he played her like a violin. Her body arched again, high.

He pressed her down again with his weight, his voice moving to her ear. "Louise," he said while she heaved for breath and wiggled and made sounds she would have never thought she'd utter in another's company. "I am going to take the hymen with my fingers. It ought to be possible, and it should save you the pain when I want your attention elsewhere," softly, "'when I possess you fully."

She felt more than one finger; she didn't know how many. It felt like half his hand. She struggled briefly.

"Sh-h-h," he said. His thumb found that place again, like a button he could push, a touch that made her weak with longing for something imprecise… inchoate… only God knew what, while making her insanely malleable to anything he wanted, anything he might suggest. "Sh-h-h," he repeated, crooning to her,
shh,
shh
. "I will make it as painless as possible." He added a little coldly, "Though we both know I have to force a tear in your body."

His hand seemed to shove and pinch her at the same time, quite suddenly. She let out a yelp. Then his palm, gentle, settled over her belly again.

He murmured, "No longer a virgin." He laughed; brief, husky. "Except technically."

He rolled his weight on top of her, drew back his hips. She felt something much larger than his fingers, rounded, rigid, hot flesh. He didn't hesitate. He lunged, entering her. And he was wrong. It hurt again.

"Ah!" she cried out. He was huge, thicker and longer than he could ever have duplicated with any other part of his body. Except maybe his whole arm, she thought.

She lay there stunned. So strange to contain something, someone, in so small a space.

Though not strange to him apparently. He waited a few seconds, as if to assess her willingness to proceed. Then without the least bit of self-consciousness, he pushed himself deeper into her—she hadn't thought it possible—till their pelvises bumped together.
Lord, what a sensation
.

He made a deep animal groan that seemed to say he liked where he had put himself. His head fell into the crook of her neck, his wet, open mouth at her jawline—as his hips pulled back.

His long, sliding withdrawal was something else again.
Lord
. The room, the world seemed to recede.

He immediately drove back in again. This entry faintly stung, while being mindlessly pleasurable. Her whole body shuddered, a quiver that spread through her from her core down to her toes, up her spine to her nipples all the way into her eyes. Her hands, her wrists, shook from it.

This man, this marvel atop her, set up a rhythm that worked somehow with a low, soft crooning in his throat, a vocalized drawing of breath in single, gravelly syllables. He sounded delirious. And Louise could sympathize. This bonding between a man and a woman, this copulation, was a fairly delirious experience.

She was wet at the source, a warm, messy wet that lubricated a pleasure that came in rising surges. Like nothing she knew or could even begin to compare it with. Like nothing conceivable. A faint, feminine grunt, she realized—gasps too punctuated to be called anything else—had begun to come from her own throat. Sensation shifted.

She took hold of his shoulders, tensing, lifting, as her head dropped back into the pillows. Oh. it was magnificent! Bizarre but incredible! He spread her, compacted her tightly with each swift filling of what she had never considered empty. Yet when he retreated, she longed only for the next drive into her.

He found her mouth, and she gave it over to him completely as she wrapped her legs around him, her heels digging into the naked, contracting muscles of his buttocks, heels and calves sliding for a moment with each thrust against the wool rumple of his trousers. Louise couldn't pull him close enough. Her hips couldn't encourage his to a hard enough, a deep enough plunge. As all the while she thought she would die of sensation itself.

Until what lay just beyond seemed like a kind of death. A daunting intensity, something that existed beyond the already ragged fierceness of their joining.

"Let go—" he whispered, the two words sounding swollen, coming from deep in his throat.

Yes. She wanted to. but didn't know how. And she was partly afraid to. Each entry into her body seemed to push farther, toward pleasure so far outside her knowledge and experience that it threatened a severity. She unclenched her fingers from his shoulders, yet held herself up, curled to him, thinking to steel herself for a blind run toward her own senses.

He murmured again, "Let go," his voice itself strange, low, deeper, the words harder to get to. as if borne from his chest. He took another ragged breath, then kissed her mouth wetly, ending the kiss with a sharp, hard thrust of his hips, burying himself. His head bent forward. She could feel his hair, soft against her cheek, her mouth, a rhythmic brush, light and silky. "Oh God." he groaned. Another thrust. Like the one before, hard, a kind of paroxysm of muscle, almost volitionless, followed immediately by another, then another. His last coherent words came out in a low, wrenching string: "Let—go—You almost can—I can—feel it—Come with—OhGodcomewithme-justfall—"

And she did. She let her arms fall out, away from her body into the pillows and sheets. She let every muscle go slack.

Her body took over on its own. It was like discovering she could fly. The mattress seemed to come up under her back and lift her. Her stomach rolled over, folding her into a series of exquisite, piercing spasms. Stars. Spasms that contracted muscles she didn't even know she had. Spasms that burned and twinkled in her veins, her pulse. Blood. Within the wetness there between her legs, the burning admitted that he slid in her blood.

Then her blood mingled with his seed: He cried out, a suppressed guttural of anguish, rapture. His chest came up off her, his shoulders seeming to levitate into the nothingness above. His arms on either side of her head straightened, rigid; they became pillars of thick muscle she grabbed hold of. While his hips shoved forward, driving fiercely into her. producing three, four more deep, quick rhapsodic convulsions.

The contractions continued and continued, shooting a quiver up through her. The skin of her arms, her neck, her spine rose in goose bumps. Her nipples shriveled. Pleasure rippled out from these tightly puckered tips, as if from a stone dropped into water. spreading, overflowing her veins, to meet a flood from the lower reaches of her body.

When her Charles collapsed, long-limbed and heavy onto her, his heart pounded so hard against her chest, she couldn't tell the beats of his heart from hers.

Meanwhile Charles's whole body throbbed with a sublime satisfaction that left his limbs too heavy to move. His body was joyous. But his spirit was ill at ease.
You have just taken a drunk virgin. Out of
pique
, it told him.
A girl who trusted your counsel
.

And who had walked half the length of a blind, limping ship just for this, he argued with himself.

His conflict ended quickly, however, when the lovely Louise threw her arms and legs around him. She pulled him tightly to her and giggled, her breathy laughter sleek as silk against the skin of his neck.

"Charles," she said, "you are marvelous." She sighed a deep, contented sigh right in his ear, then asked,

"Oh, can you do that again?"

Could he do it again? Well, maybe, given half an hour's recuperation. He was not as young as he used to be.

But, in light of this question, just how bad should a man feel?

Not very. He promptly kissed her, eventually shucking his trousers completely. They rolled around.

hardly speaking at all, except with their hands and mouths, their bodies. After which, he "did that again."

Without a condom.

Now you idiot
, Charles thought,
go get one
. He had a drawerful after all. Yet he himself had been careful. And Louise had come to him untried completely, as pristine as a new package he himself had just unwrapped. And, should the other misadventure befall them—a child between them—well, he was about to marry the girl, for God's sake: They would celebrate and push the wedding up.

The wedding
, he thought. It couldn't come soon enough! No condom! Ever! Oh, the idea sang in his brain. For that was the point, wasn't it? A wife. A mate. A faithful companion. A life together. Tightly together. Skin to skin… oh, her skin was divine…

This was where he'd considered turning on the lights and ripping off the metaphorical mask, so to speak. This was where he'd meant to let her see whom she'd lain with and. if she was capable, see herself in all her shallow glory. Yet she was snuggled against him so sweetly. Her seduction had gone so well and happened so quickly. And there were still at least four more days aboard ship, a ship darkened by the loss of a generator. It just all seemed too perfect. Besides, here was a girl who had no place to turn, no better place to take her fear and concerns but here, to him. Any sort of trick or confrontation now seemed unfair.

There was time for that later, he thought, if he chose to follow through with his joke. At this point, though, he started to understand himself and his own small deviations that had begun this afternoon in the kennel. He was holding the softest, sweetest—most fearless—creature he had ever entered. She smelled like heaven. She felt like paradise. He wanted to draw this situation out, not bring it to a swift conclusion.

He would nuzzle her as long and as often as she would let him while they crossed the Atlantic.
Then
he might carry through and let her horrify herself, if she was so inclined. After all, a woman who lumped a man with a bad eye in with hunchbacks deserved the shock. Didn't she?

Yes. Of course.

No. He realized something else: He liked her and didn't want to make a fool of her. He didn't want to hurt this girl in any way. If her judgments weren't profound, well, whose were all the time, and didn't she have reason for a little superficiality? Her youth, for one. Her lack of experience with life. Parents who

doted on her. Then there had to be a bevy of young men willing to tame tigers and level mountains for her. Charles frowned and drew the sleeping Louise closer. Her legs curled round his thigh as she nested against him. No, he was going to have to resolve any discontent with her some other way. He would think about it and figure something out.

He was clear about one thing, though. If he liked this young creature and wanted her affection, he was certain that teasing her all the way across an ocean was not the way to get it, nor did lying and pretense seem a very good introduction to her new husband.

She left just before the dawn's first light. He jiggled her awake, handed her her clothes, half dressed her himself, and with a kiss at the doorway booted her out into the hall.

Charles sighed as he closed the door. And secretly prayed that she would be back. He wanted this night all over again. And again tomorrow and the tomorrow after.