Tarnished Amongst the Ton

Then his weight and heat had gone, leaving her reaching for him. She opened her eyes and saw his dark head where his hand had been, his hair fanned out over her thighs, startling against the white skin. He pushed firmly but gently to open her and then kissed her there, even as he slid two fingers into her. Shocked, she tensed. It would hurt, she had known it would…

‘Oh.’ It was a murmur, a gasp. Instinctively she tightened around the intrusion, arched up against his mouth, sobbed wordless pleas that he would never stop, never, because it was almost there, that wonderful sensation that transcended reality.

He moved, too fast for her to protest at the absence of his lips, his hand. He was over her, holding her, whispering what she knew were love words although she did not know the language. His hips moved in the cradle of her thighs and he filled her in one long stroke and she shattered, broke, heard her own voice crying out.

Phyllida came to herself to find the pleasure was not waning, only changing. Ashe moved within her, his body part of hers, his gasps of pleasure hers as well as his. She curled her legs around his hips, tilting up until he was as deep as she could take him, and clung to the broad shoulders, slick with sweat, kissed him wherever she could reach and heard her own voice, ‘I love you, I love you’, as he groaned and went rigid in her arms.

They lay locked together in a hot, sticky, blissful knot on top of the tangled sheets. Phyllida kissed the angle of Ashe’s neck, the only place she could reach. ‘You were not arrogant at all,’ she told him. ‘Very modest, in fact.’

He pushed up on one elbow and smiled down at her. ‘I’m glad you think so. Does that mean that you have not changed your mind?’

‘It does. I intend making an honest man of you, my lord.’ She wriggled out of his embrace and surveyed the room. ‘Just look at this! Your breeches are hanging from my dressing-table mirror, there is a boot in a hat box and that dreadful brown gown will never be the same again. And to think that before you came in I was lying here trying to convince myself that no one died of a broken heart and that somehow I could get over you.’

‘Do you think you might?’

‘Get over you?’ Phyllida placed her index fingertip in the middle of her chin and assumed a pose of deep thought. ‘I suppose I could possibly become tired of you. To be on the safe side you had better ask me in, say, eighty years’ time.’

‘I will make a note in my memorandum book,’ Ashe said seriously. ‘I do love it when you pretend to be serious and prudent.’

‘Well, make the most of it.’ Phyllida ran one fingernail down the middle of his chest, down to the flat belly with its intriguing trail of hair, and tickled into Ashe’s navel. ‘Because I fully intend to be scandalous, frivolous and utterly naughty.’

‘Excellent,’ Ashe murmured, submitting to her hands. ‘I will do my very best to survive eighty years of this, my love, but I warn you, we had better practise as much as possible.’ And then he ceased to be able to say a coherent word for the next half-hour.