“We want our swords!” Toby announced, jumping up at the hook.
“Here.” Rufus took them down. “Now go with Will.”
The three of them left and Rufus turned back to Portia. He came over to her, catching her chin on the palm of his hand. “The day seems to have gone off course,” he murmured. “Forgive me if I seemed too abrupt, gosling. It’s a failing of mine, I know.”
“Oh, I quite understand,” she responded with a demure smile. “You’re such a busy commander. So many lives depend upon you… why, even a king’s throne and-”
The sweet little diatribe was silenced by his mouth. And this time Portia yielded to the wave of pleasure, her lips parting, her tongue flickering against his mouth, dipping into the corners in insistent little darts like a butterfly on buddleia. She had her plan and she was going to demolish Rufus Decatur’s prissy ideas about what a woman could and could not do in his world. Until she was ready to spring her surprise, she could afford to pretend submission.
Rufus held her chin on the palm of his hand as he kissed her, moving his mouth from hers to touch the tip of her nose, her eyelids, the high, angular cheekbones, painting her features with the tip of his tongue and the pliant brush of his lips.
A trumpet blast calling for the general muster brought him reluctantly upright. “Let me put you back to bed, gosling. You still look exhausted.”
Portia offered no objection and within minutes she was back in bed, Juno, after another visit outside, curled breathily into the small of her back.
“There now,” Rufus said, with a mischievous twinkle. “All tucked up and waiting for me. Just as I like.” The clatter of his booted feet on the stairs had faded before Portia could come up with a suitably tart response.
The sensation that awoke her was so delicate, so tantalizing, that for a moment she thought she dreamed it. Then she became aware of the air on her skin. Her robe was opened, the sides spread wide, baring her body. And something was moving over her skin, something exquisitely insubstantial, arousing little flickers of dreamy pleasure in its wake.
Her eyes opened and met the intent gaze of Rufus Decatur. He was naked, propped on one elbow beside her, and he was smiling with pure mischievous delight. “Don’t speak,” he said softly, and as if to enforce the command, he touched her lips with the soft plume of a quill pen.
Then she understood what had been causing that strange and wonderful sensation. She lay still, gazing up at him in wonderment and surprise. The quill pen whispered on her ear, tracing the shell-like curve, dipping inside so that she squirmed with a sensation so exquisite that it was almost painful and she would have spoken if he hadn’t placed a finger on her lips. The plume painted the curve of her cheekbones and then the line of her collarbone.
Portia quivered, a curious tightness building in her belly. Her nipples cried out for the brushing caress even before it came. Before he traced the small mound of her breast and then delicately… oh, so delicately… flicked at the nipple until it tightened and the spiral of tension coiled ever tighter in her belly. The fluttering touch moved over her stomach, flicked into her navel, and then gently he parted her thighs, spreading them wide on the bed.
The air, cool and yet not cold, laved her heated center, making her feel truly opened, exquisitely vulnerable, and yet not afraid, only filled with a deep and inarticulate longing. The plume whispered over her inner thighs, so that her opened body throbbed, and then the sensation changed. The tip, sharper than the feathers and yet surprisingly soft, pricked her skin as he drew it up her thigh in a long steady line, drawing ever closer to her center. His gaze held hers. She was drowning in the bright blue pools that were so intent and yet so filled with that mischievous delight. She wanted to speak, to urge, to cry out with the anticipation that filled her so completely her mind no longer held sway over her body. Her loins throbbed, were filled with an unendurable longing-and yet she must endure.
With her eyes she begged for release and yet in this sensate world of utter confusion she begged too that this would never stop. He opened her center, the moist and swollen lips that guarded the secrets of pleasure. His touch was so delicate and yet it rendered her utterly exposed, utterly at the mercy of the pleasure only he could bring her. For an eternity, nothing happened. She lay untouched, suspended on the very outermost brink of bliss, and then he wielded the dainty instrument of delight. Her body jumped as the current of unimaginable joy jolted her again and again. She was lost to the world. Mindless. Aware of nothing but the great crimson waves of bliss breaking over her.
And before she came to shore, Rufus smiled and took her mouth with his as he gathered her against him. He slid into her tender opened body, his own flesh now a pulsing throb of need. Her eyes were wide open as she gazed up at him, still caught in the rolling peaks of a climax that had changed shape, had begun to sharpen, to build anew. Rufus knelt up between her thighs and drew her legs onto his shoulders. He drove deep into her, to the very edge of her womb, and he held himself there, sliding his hands down her thighs to cup her raised buttocks. She arched her back with a little sob, trying to draw him even further within her as her inner muscles tightened around him. With a wicked little smile, he withdrew slowly inch by inch until the very tip of his flesh stroked the nerve-stretched entrance to her body. Then, with one swift movement, he sheathed himself within her again.
Portia cried out, again and again. It was unbearable, it was astounding, it was unimaginable. Her fingernails raked his back and she clung desperately to him, clasping him tight in her arms, clinging to him as if he were driftwood in a raging sea.
But at last her hands fell limply from his back. “Sweet Jesus, what was that?” She could barely speak, her mouth pressed into his shoulder, tasting the salt sweat of his skin.
Rufus rolled sideways and lay still, his chest heaving, his belly glistening with sweat. One heavy hand moved blindly to cover her pubic mound, the fingers tangling in the damp curls, possessing her.
“La petite mort,” he murmured. “For those lucky enough to experience it.”
“The little death.” Portia turned her head sideways to look at him, the wonderment still lingering in her eyes. “I could become accustomed to such a dying.”
He chuckled weakly. “It doesn’t always happen, lass. There are always disappointments in the business of loving.”
Portia stroked his nipples with the tip of her forefinger. “Is that a warning?”
He captured her hand with his free one and kissed her palm. “Don’t expect the heavens to fall in every time, love.”
“All right then, I won’t.” She grinned at him. “Even something a little less cataclysmic would be worth having.”
Rufus laughed and reached over to close the sides of her robe. “You’ll get chilled.”
“It’s quite warm in here.”
“It’s a furnace!” he corrected with some vehemence. “Before I dared expose that fragile little body to the air, I built the fire up until it was close to setting the chimney afire.”
Portia sat up. “So you’d planned this?”
“Not really.” He swung to the floor. “It came to me in a flash of inspiration.” He stood, hands on his hips, looking down at her on the bed. “We had some unfinished business, if you recall.”
“Oh, yes,” she said lazily. “I recall.” Her gaze sharpened. “When are you leaving?”
“In the morning. We have to prepare our own reception for Granville’s men, and the disposition of the treasure. It can’t lie around the countryside.”
“No,” she agreed, managing to sound a little forlorn. “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“It’s hard to say. But at least a week.”
“I see,” she said with a mournful droop to her mouth.