“Nicholas, you’re not going to France?” He turned to look down at her, slowly pulling away the counterpane, the blankets and the sheet. He removed one last wayward pearl pin from its hiding place, and tossed the covers aside. She whispered, “Now I’m cold.”
“I can see that,” he said, his fingers tracing the swell of her breasts. “When you’re cold, your nipples rise like little dark studs.” He rubbed his thumb over her shadows, then pinched, teasing through the thin linen of her shift. “It happens exactly the same when you’re aroused.” He grinned. “But this time I think you’re simply cold. Now what, I wonder, should I do about that?”
“So you are staying tonight, Nicholas? I got rid of my maid on purpose, and when Martha said she’d sleep on the truckle bed, I said no, even though I knew she’d be disappointed. You’re not leaving too soon, are you? Not before dawn?”
“I have all night and all tomorrow.” He leaned forwards, pushing her hard back against the pillows. “Now how much of that, do you think, can I spend with you in bed?” Then he kissed her, his mouth forcing her ever back, his tongue pressing between her lips. He tasted the wine on her breath, and the yearning in her throat. While he kissed her, he forced his hand between her breasts, pulling down the open neck of her shift so that she was part uncovered. His fingers continued to tease, first soft, then harder, then sharp, then gentle again. She moaned slightly and he smiled. Releasing her, he sat back and running his palms down her body and her legs, reached for the hem of her shift and drew it quickly up, tugging it off over her head and tossing it to the ground. In the sudden little breeze, the bedside candle blew out with a flicker and a blink.
The chamber sank into greater shadow. Now one solitary candle flared from its far corner, and the light travelled like a golden moth across the high beamed ceiling, scattering sudden illumination onto carvings, a moment’s vivid face in a tapestry but lost again immediately, a splinter jutting from a slat on the window shutters, the swing of tasselled drape where the bed curtains were closed on one side to eliminate any draught from beneath the door. Emeline lay in the darker depths of shadow within the bed, though where she was now naked, her breasts and shoulders and belly caught in a faint saffron glow. Her smile remained lost in darkness. The drapes rustled as he moved, shifting to face her.
She whispered, “I’m not cold anymore.”
He didn’t answer. His fingers travelled her body just as the candlelight travelled the walls around them with exploration and discovery. He used his palms, flat where she was curved, soft as a tickle, then pulling back. He watched her expression, smiled at her sighs and waited until he knew the depth of her arousal. Then he dipped his finger into the cup he had set down, and with a trail of dark wine, painted her nipples in liquid rubies. The little chill droplets trickled from the tilted tips down across her breasts, a sticky snail’s path in the flaring light and shadow. Then Nicholas bent, and licked, sucking clean and drinking his wine from her body. She shivered, but this time it was not from the cold.
When he sat up again, smiling at her, he said, “No sleep tonight, my love. I have other plans which will take us to dawn.”
“Will it be the last time then, before you go?” He nodded, and kissed her again. The wine from her breasts was on his tongue and his lips, and now she breathed its perfumes from his mouth. And his kisses travelled too, softly down her neck to the curve of her shoulder, to her breasts again and the hard thrusting nipples, and on to each little valley between her ribs. He kissed her navel, his tongue very warm. Then to the belly, all around and across as if he was searching. On to the line at her groin where her hair tightened into thick little curls, the dark russet now streaked with gold in the changeful wayward light. His teeth nipped, pulling at the soft pubic hair, and then forced lower, kissing the small entrance between her legs as if it was her mouth, his tongue pressing within the lips, opening where she had been tight closed. She grabbed at his shoulders, pulling him back up to her. “Oh my love, don’t leave me. I wish you were truly the fool they all think you. Act the coward, and stay here with me.”
His fingers followed where he had kissed, pressing between her thighs and pushing just a little inside. “Here,” he whispered, voice gruff as if his own passion made speaking difficult, “this is a nipple too, of sorts. It swells, and hardens, and pushes up, as if waking and sitting to stretch after a warm sleep. This way you tell me what you want, even without words.”
“I don’t have words. But it feels more like a dream than waking up.”
“Sometimes waking is the dream.”
“I don’t like waking to an empty bed.”
“Then tomorrow you won’t, my love. You’ll wake in my arms, and I’ll call for ale and cheese so we can breakfast in bed, and if any strength remains to me, I’ll make love to you again before you face your relatives.”
“No morning chapel? No prayers? You face danger and a long journey. We should both pray for your safety.”
“These are my prayers. And the bed is my chapel.” He took her hand, bringing it between his thighs and wrapping her fingers around him. “Here, my sweetling, a prayer as potent as any other. Hold firm. Now pull a little away from my body. Not too much yet, or you’ll lose me too quickly to temptation. Now, feel that ridge. Press your thumb under and up, gently at first, and see how the shaft hardens ever larger under your palm. We’re both responsive to each other, my love, and can explore old ways and new ways.”
“You call it a shaft. Like an arrow.”
“Perhaps it is.” He smiled. “There are other words I might use, if you weren’t my wife. But an arrow sounds well enough.”
“So, if I wasn’t your wife, what would you say?” she asked, invisible blushes. “Is prick too vulgar? But it does so very much more than just pricking.”
He chuckled. “Names don’t matter. It’s touch that tells stories. Vulgarities apart, my love, marriage is for learning and teaching pleasure, giving it, and receiving it, and remembering it when responsibility calls and the bed goes cold. Reliving it in thought perhaps, when alone and following cold paths and other duties, but missing the warmth.”
“I don’t want to think about being apart yet. Can I touch you here, down further, and below?”
“Kiss me.”
“There?”
“Does that frighten you? Now, my own love, use your tongue. I have an opening too. Find it, and explore inside me as I intend exploring inside you.”
It was more than an hour later when he released her, both of them exhausted. The last candle had guttered and the chamber slumbered in seething, panting blackness. Nicholas kissed his wife’s trembling eyelids, and again pulled the warmth of the blankets up around her chin, tucking her in, and pressing close to her side. He fingered the dampness at her thighs, and smiled, and wished her sweet hours until they awoke together the next morning. “Then I shall want you again, I warn you, my sweet, just as soon as I reopen my eyes. Already I know how I’ll take you, and how you’ll sigh and moan, ready or not.”
She whispered back, “I love you so much, Nicholas my dear.”
“Then dream now, little one.” He shook his head, still smiling. “And so shall I.”