Rose Bride (24 page)

Margerie lay on her back, naked but for her stockings, staring up at the ceiling as though she could see angels there. Her eyes were open, a soft green. Nothing stirred in their depths as he approached the bed and stood looking down at her. No recognition, no shame at her bareness, no sign that she was even aware of his presence.

The somnambulant, he thought, studying her: asleep, but with the appearance and actions of one waking.

Night wanderings.
A disordered mind that cannot tell night from day.
Treat with one to three drops of poppy juice at bed, and such restraints as may be required to keep the subject from wandering.

‘Margerie,’ he tried.

No response.

Virgil studied her in dispassionate silence, from the gartered stockings up to the reddish curls between her thighs, then over the softly rounded belly to her breasts, the pink nipples almost dusky by candlelight. Her full lips were slightly parted, and he could see her chest rising and falling with each shallow breath.

His gaze returned to her
mons Veneris
, the delectable mound of Venus which was now the property of one Lord Munro. The shock and strangeness of it were acute. A perfect dewy-skinned goddess, stretched out naked on his own bed. It was hard not to stare open-mouthed, ogling her like a schoolboy faced with his first whore.

Asleep or not, Munro’s or not, Margerie Croft was all but offering her body to him. His cock stiffened and grew long, and his breathing quickened. He considered how it would feel to unfasten his codpiece, part her thighs and roughly mount the wanton, her body only open to him again because her mind was asleep.

Good, he told himself fiercely, staring. It would feel good. Better than good. It would be a fine revenge for her rejection.

His hands moving slowly, his gaze fixed on her relaxed body, he began to undress.

She did not stir.

His cock was already partially erect when he released it from the confines of his leather codpiece. He stroked it swiftly to rigidity, breathing hard, thinking again of how she had entered his room as though entranced. How she had bent over and raised her shift over her head, exposing her deliciously rounded bottom, and lain down on his bed in open invitation.

Margerie wanted him. Even in the depths of sleep, she wanted him to lie with her. What other explanation could there be?

Virgil smiled, watching her breathe, her chest steadily rising and falling, a faint rosy blush in her cheeks. He climbed onto the cot beside her, the ropes that held the straw mattress on the frame creaking, and studied her face while he stroked himself. Then he blew gently onto her cheek. ‘I know you are awake, Margerie. So you can stop pretending.’

Her head turned slowly, and she fixed him with an intense green stare. ‘What gave me away?’

‘My luck is not this good.’

Her lips trembled into a smile, then it vanished. ‘I should not be here. I cannot be here.’

‘Then go,’ he said savagely.

Her eyes gazed into his a moment longer, then her eyelids closed and she sighed. Her hand slipped between her thighs and he watched, his mouth dry, as she teased her red-glinting curls apart and stroked herself.

She was utterly shameless, he thought, watching as Margerie pleasured herself. A born wanton. He should tip the woman off his bed and march her to the door. He could not understand why Margerie had come here tonight, pretending to be walking in her sleep, to be guiltless of desire. Should she not be serving his lordship instead, taking her joy of him, perhaps a bellyful of seed too?

Damn her
.

Nonetheless, he soon found himself aping the languorous movements of her hand, reaching down to touch himself in the same way. At first he only stroked his cock from root to tip, his fingertips light, watching with fascination as she moaned and writhed, drawing up her knees.

Then his hand closed about the eager shaft, squeezing, plumping out the enlarged head. His cock thickened and twitched with each slow pump of his fist. As his balls tightened, Virgil gave a harsh gasp, and had to restrain himself from rolling on top of her and riding out his pleasure.

Why banish him from her bed if she still wanted him?

He was angry and aroused at the same time, an unsettling mixture, the one bleeding into the other, a raw fury feeding his hunger for her body. ‘Margerie,’ he whispered, and kissed her warm shoulder, turning in towards her nakedness.

She did not respond. His hand still gently pumping his cock, he watched as her mouth opened on deep gasping breaths, her knees drawn up to her chest, her hand working between her thighs. Her belly and thighs were pure white, like alabaster, never touched by the sun. But her cheeks were flushed and her chest too, her breasts taut, tinted with rose, swaying as she shifted and moaned.

He was close to the edge himself, his cock full and hard, only holding back so he would not miss a moment of her lascivious self-pleasuring.

‘Virgil,’ she gasped, then arched her back off the mattress, her mouth a wide O, her cry high and agonised. ‘Now, now sir . . . Mount me.’

He came above her at once, pushing her thighs down and apart, staring down into her face.

‘I am not your puppet, mistress.’ He was terse, wanting her to serve him, not the other way about. ‘You came to me, I did not summon you. If you want this mounting so badly, let me hear you beg for it.’

She moaned, holding her damp lips apart for him. ‘Please, master.’ Her submission was unfeigned, her voice pleading for consummation. ‘Fill me, sir, I beg you. Ride me.’

He drove into her, crying out as she stretched around him, her velvet-soft flesh wet and clinging. His head felt thick with pleasure, he could not seem to breathe properly, snatching at the air as he pumped, using her hard and fast, not wanting to feel anything for this woman, his thrusts almost cruel.

‘Wanton,’ he muttered, wishing to punish her, and heard her moan his name in reply.

So she was able, after all, to tell him apart from Munro, he thought bitterly.

Virgil pinned her to the mattress, suddenly furious. But he kept fucking her. He grasped her wrists and dragged them above her head as far as the wall, stretching her out as though on the rack. She was long, pleasingly narrow at the waist, her pale breasts jutting out. He stared down at their lower bodies, working fiercely as one, moving together with heat and precision and unadulterated lust.

She should be his alone. No other man’s plaything.

He shut his eyes, not wanting to see her anymore, almost hating her. ‘Give it to me,’ he muttered against her throat. He was in charge. Whatever he might demand, she was helpless to refuse him. He wanted her to understand that. ‘Hold nothing back, I want it all. Open yourself to me properly.’

She understood.

Shuddering, she wrapped her legs around his back, urging him on. ‘Yes,’ she hissed in his ear, and rotated her hips slowly against his, driving him mad with lust.

He wanted to hear her lose that controlled facade, to cry out in helpless passion beneath him. But he knew there was a good chance he would buckle first.

Her nails dug into his shoulders, then raked down his back to his buttocks, and he gasped as he rode her, gritting his teeth. His scalp was prickling, every inch of his skin alive with sensation. She was so slick and hot inside, it was like plunging in and out of a furnace. Blood-hot, her body made his seed rise swiftly. She was tight too, tight beyond what he had expected, as though no man had used her since they last lay together.

And yet he knew she had been intimate with Lord Munro many times since. For it was no longer a secret at court that she was his mistress. Jealousy gripped him cruelly. His rhythm became harder and more determined, thrusting inside her again and again, an iron driven into the heart of a fire. He wanted this to be fiercer than any past coupling she might have enjoyed with Munro, to be more memorable, fixed forever as the best.

Suddenly she shook violently and climaxed again, her eyes wild, writhing under him like a deer struck by an arrow.

‘
Virgil!
’

Taxed beyond human endurance, he stood the provocative movements of her hips for less than three more gasped breaths, then let go.

His cock grew thick and impossibly hard, then abruptly he was spending inside her, pumping long jets of seed with every jerk of his hips. The white-hot pleasure felt like it was being ripped out of him, the world falling away as he arched his back and drove deep, crying out as though
in extremis
.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

She must be out of her mind, Margerie thought, waking in his arms some hours later, the candle burnt down, the fire burning low. Her bones felt deliciously liquid, and she was sore between her thighs as never before, he had mounted her so forcefully. But to be lying naked in this chamber again . . .

To speak with Virgil Elton would be dangerous in itself, after the queen’s warning. For both of them. But to come here as though in her sleep, too ashamed to admit she needed him, and then to couple with the man so fiercely and without any thought for safety. The only conclusion was that she had lost her good wits.

Virgil stirred against her, his head resting on her shoulder, one arm thrown warmly about her waist. His voice murmured against her skin, ‘Why did you come here, Margerie? And in such a guise?’ He hesitated. She could almost hear the frown in his voice. ‘Did you think I would believe you asleep and take you anyway?’

So she was not the only one to think this was madness. Yet whatever had driven her to act so wildly tonight, she was not ready to answer his questions.

When she said nothing, fearing where truth would lead them both, he continued more sharply, ‘That is not the kind of man I am.’

‘You know why I am here.’

Virgil shifted, slowly removing the arm about her waist, then pushed up to a sitting position in the bed. She turned to look up at him in the dull flicker of firelight, but his face was in deep shadow, unreadable.

Without the warmth of his body, she felt oddly bereft.

‘Munro not enough for you?’ His voice cracked the silence, shocking her with its fury.

‘
What?
’

‘You are his mistress, are you not? Is he inadequate in some way?’

She swallowed, recalling her promise to young Lord Munro not to reveal his secret. He had kept his side of the bargain, even discussing with her how she would like her gift house furnished when their arrangement came to an end.

‘No . . . no. His lordship is a man, like any other.’

Not a natural liar, she was glad of the dark masking her blush.

‘So your appetite demands more than one man, is that what you are telling me?’

Dear Lord, that was even worse.

‘I . . . I needed your company tonight, that was all.’

‘My company?’ he drawled. ‘Alas, what a disappointment you must have suffered. And I thought it was my cock that had drawn you here like a moth to the flame.’

She could not reply at first, her cheeks hot, then said furiously, ‘Must you always be so uncouth?’

His voice was laconic. ‘Come now, I have heard all the unsavoury tales of your whoring, you need not dissemble. Long hard nights sweated out in Munro’s palatial quarters in London, or so they say, your slick
quicunque
shared between his lordship and another man, far from the queen’s prim looks. A man whose identity nobody knows, for he appears by stealth and heavily cloaked.’

She was not fooled by the lazy laughter. There was a hint of steel beneath his voice.

‘You will not give me his name,’ he finished, ‘so I shall not waste my breath in demanding it. For all I know, it could be the king himself. It would not be the first time His Majesty has played at that game.’ His voice hardened. ‘But by God, woman, do not come to me with that air of innocence. I cannot stomach it.’

Virgil swung out of bed, crossing with swift hard strides to the table. She followed him with her eyes, drawn to his naked form with fascinated admiration. His buttocks were neat and tight, his thighs ruggedly muscular. When he turned, fetching a fresh candle from the mantel, she stared at the broad expanse of his chest, accentuated by the narrow hips, his belly flat and strong. His powerful forearms were thick, veined, and dusted with dark hairs like his chest. She recalled their strength as he had supported his weight above her, with seeming effortlessness.

It was like looking at a god. A god who had just fucked her senseless.

Margerie sat up in his bed, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms about them, very aware of her own nudity. She could never be as confident as Virgil, moving on bare feet about the chamber without a stitch on his very male body. She watched, holding her breath as her lover bent to kindle a fresh candle from the remains of the fire, then carefully poured himself a cup of wine, turning to offer her a drink too.

‘Wine?’

She averted her eyes from the thick length of his cock, swinging deliciously between his thighs, still hard despite their love-making. But her mouth was dry as she remembered suckling on him once, how his cock had tasted, and the noises he had made when she sucked on him greedily. Somehow she managed a husky, ‘I thank you, yes.’