She lay against the cushion. In her life she'd made certain that men thought her iniquitous, lethal in her loves and passions. The Princess Melanthe looked like no one's fair and mortal wife. But she'd never before lain naked beside a man, uncovered, without shield or mask, reckless.
"Nothing?" She made a pout, stretching her arms overhead. "Alas, you'll destroy all my wicked sport."
He caught her chin, rubbing his thumb across her lips. "If you don't drive me to inordinate desire, wench, which is deadly sin, wed or no."
She brought her arms down about his shoulders. "And is your desire now ordinate, learned monk? Perhaps we'll delay this loving then, and take us to the chapel for a day and night of prayer and fasting, to prove you."
"Perhaps you're the Arch-Fiend's daughter, come to harry me until I'm undone body and soul."
"Only your wife, fair and mortal," she said virtuously. "Chaste, too, so far this day."
He leaned on his elbow, ungirding his golden belt. The linked bosses dropped to the carpet with a rich chink. "You're uneasy in the state, I see."
Agreeable it was to trade words and love-talk. But the turn of his broad wrist, competent and brief, and the sound of the belt falling gave Melanthe pause. She drew her knees up, uncertain if he would mount her and have done—she didn't object; she welcomed it, hoping that by God's gift she would breed his child, but experience of four times, thrice with Ligurio and once with him, taught her that it marked the swift conclusion to all love-liking.
She'd been most delighted with this play and wasn't eager to see it end so soon. As he leaned over her, she put her palm upon his chest. "What study is this, learned monk? Still lacks my instruction. The first and second sins of lust only have I beheld."
But he didn't answer, only gave her a thorough demonstration of the first again while he loosed the buttons on his doublet. She could feel the force of his intent; he'd grown impatient with disport and love-amour. With a little dejection she let her hand relax, trailing it upward, sliding her fingers idly in his hair as he lifted himself over her.
She spread her legs, yielding obedience to what she owed him. Her body tensed slightly, anticipating the discomfort.
But he did not lie hard upon her. Instead he held his weight up and kissed her mouth, and her throat, and her breasts. She sighed, savoring, drowning and pleasuring in the last moments.
The freed cloth of his shirt and his doublet brushed her skin. He drew hard on her teat. The sensation shot through her, half pain and half ecstasy. She clutched the loose velvet, pulled and arched, trying to bring him down to her.
"Merci." She gasped, all her muscles contracting with each tug and sweet spike of pain. "Merci, merci."
He made a wordless sound, moving away, downward, shaping her with his hands. She wanted him back for more; she dragged at him, lacing her fingers in his hair, but he was leaving her, pulling away in spite of it, dropping kisses down her belly.
Just as she would have exclaimed in despair of his withdrawal, he pressed his mouth to her privy part. He held her hips and touched her with his tongue.
The delicious bolt of feeling transfused her. She trembled beneath him, drinking air, moaning between her teeth, her body twitching as if seized by each lascivious stroke. She tilted her head back, lifting her breasts and her spine and her hips, pressing up to him to take the waves of lust, asking, begging—demanding with her flesh.
He rose above her. For the moment that they were separate, she whimpered in anxiety: she wanted him to go on kissing her that way, but he sat back and pulled off the doublet and shirt, baring shoulders muscled as fine and thick as the destrier's. He reached down to his hose and breeches that showed his full member through linen, crammed heavily against the cloth.
She felt distraught. He would use her now, and it was over, and she was near weeping for the feeling he had given her that still demanded more.
He released the lacing on his breeches. She lifted up her arms to embrace him as he came over her. She didn't flinch, though he was so much larger than Ligurio; she lay herself open for him despite her thwarted yearning.
He rested on his hands, looking down into her face. "Lady," he said, with a quick grin, "in your studies, that last that I taught you—falls it within the thirteenth sin, indecent manner of embrace."
She made a faint wild laugh, a mindless answer, for he was lowering himself on her, this time using his body as he had used his hands and his tongue to urge that impossible pleasure. In surprise she felt it coming again as his hard member pressed at her, parting her a little with each push, until the head was inside her.
His arms trembled. He stared down at her, a blank distance in his look, a blindness. He drew air in his chest, his grin going to a baring of his teeth as he drove himself into her.
Though his size was a sore burn, she took him deep. No coupling she had ever known to be like this. His unchaste kiss, his unchaste touch, his breath a harsh sob at her ear; his weight on her and his penetration to the very depth of her. Over and over she rolled and shoved herself wantonly against him—and culmination came upon her like an ambush.
"God save!" she cried. Her back arched. Her body shuddered, beyond command. She died as he did, in full ecstasy, lost and cleaving to him in the flood.
She slept against Ruck's chest, on the floor, turned to nestle with one leg drawn up and her hips curving, her hand resting possessively on his waist. Propped on his elbow, he watched the firelight play orange and rose over her skin.
Softly he moved his hand over her, a gentle stroke. With each breath he could feel the tips of her breasts touch him. He could lower his lashes and look at them, marvel among many marvels. Without her gowns and jewels, she had a womanly shape, all roundness and long lines, not so coldly slender as her close-cut fashionable robes made her appear, but sweetly pillowed and cushioned, full ripe in life.
In his despair her comeliness made him think of how he would lose her. It must be impossible; he could not imagine any future in which he would have this moment again.
His finger trailed down into the shadow between them. He followed an odd flaw in the satin of her skin, an irregular line from her merkin curls up to her belly. He drew his fingertip downward, tracing another beside it, and another. They were strangely feminine, faint and light, soft at the edges like no scars he'd ever seen in a wide experience of battle wounds. He wondered at how she might have come by such ghostly marks, but the very idea of questioning the Princess Melanthe on such a topic as her flaws made him smile inside himself.
She would freeze him in his place. She would not understand him, that he only wished to know more of her, nor believe that because she wasn't perfect beneath her furs and silks and jewels, he loved her the more. Arrogance and unexpected blemish, and such courage to ride with him alone. Shameless and coy by turns, her marvelous blue-lilac eyes sulky with fear that he was repelled by her appearance.
As he traced the marks, she caught his hand, folding up her leg up with a quick move, as if to hide herself. Her eyes sprang open. "What are you about?" she asked sharply.
He locked his fingers into hers and leaned over, caressing her brow with light kisses. "Inspecting your great age and ugliness, wench."
She brought his hand up, making him rest it on his own thigh, trapping it firmly there over the black hose he still wore. "I've lost count of these times you've called me wench. You must be flayed alive to atone for them all. It's a great tragedy."
"Bassinger will make a woeful lay of lamentation, to remember me."