The Duchess (Montgomery/Taggert 16)

“Trevelyan,” she whispered.

He put his fingertips over her lips, then withdrew them and kissed her. Claire stopped thinking. When he looked at her like that, she couldn’t seem to form a thought.

He began kissing her body. Slowly, languorously, as though he had all the time in the world. No rush. He moved from her neck down to her breast, taking the peak in his mouth.

Claire arched her back and put her hands in his hair. His hair was soft and thick and full; she could feel the darkness of it.

Trevelyan moved downward, kissing her waist, his tongue making little circles about her navel.

All the time he was kissing her, his hands were touching her. Claire had never been touched before. She had grown up in a house where there was little physical touching, and until she’d met Harry she had not so much as been kissed. But now Trevelyan was touching her as though he meant to memorize her body, as though he had wanted to touch her for a long time and planned to enjoy it. His hands ran over her breasts, down her thighs.

He kept kissing her, kissing her thighs, then her calves, and at last her feet. His big hands caressed the arches of her feet.

Claire sat up on her elbows and looked at him. He was fully dressed and she felt rather like one of those women in a Renaissance painting who was nude while all around her were people in clothes. It was not a bad feeling. Perhaps she was Leda and he was Zeus come to mate with her and give her a child.

Trevelyan smiled at her as though he knew what she was thinking, then he put his hands on her knees and slowly slid them up her body, over her breasts, up to her neck, and at last to hold her face. He looked in her eyes then. No, he didn’t just look, he studied her, as though he were looking for something, as though he were trying to find something within her eyes. He turned her face toward the light of the candle and continued to look at her.

“Not yet,”

he whispered at last, then, before Claire could ask what he meant, he kissed her again.

Claire thought she might die from one of Trevelyan’s kisses. They made her forget everything. They seemed to make her entire body become involved. He lowered his body onto hers and Claire gasped. She had never heard of the gloriousness of the weight of a man on top of one’s body. He was so large and she was so small, yet his weight felt heavenly. In the past, when she’d been told what men and women did in bed together, she had worried that the man might crush the woman.

She rubbed her bare thigh against his clothed one as he kissed her. She knew he was teaching her about kissing, that he was taking his time and showing her what could be done with two mouths. He showed her kissing with his tongue and without it. He softly bit her lips, ran his tongue over them. He turned her head one way, then the other. He showed her deep kisses, soft kisses, hard kisses.

As she always had been in everything else, Claire was a quick learner when it came to kisses. At first she lay under him, passive, allowing him to be the teacher, then she began to push at him. He seemed to know what she wanted to do. He rolled off of her, but pulled her with him so she lay on top of him as she began to kiss him. She experimented. She tried this way and that way. She began to kiss his eyes, his temple; she bit his earlobe.

Trevelyan gave a little yelp when she bit too hard, then rolled her to her back. “Want to play, do you?” He put his face in her neck and growled. Claire giggled and pushed at him.

Trevelyan, in mock anger, began nipping at her shoulders, then lower, until he was at her breast. In moments, he seemed to go from being a calm man with supreme patience to a wild man.

Claire reacted to his passion. She tugged at his shirt, wanting to feel his skin next to her own. Trevelyan was out of his clothes in seconds, his mouth never leaving some part of her body while he undressed. She heard fabric rip once and she felt the way he moved his knee against her body while he undressed.

He began to kiss her mouth again, but there was a new urgency in his kisses—as there was in hers. Inside, she felt as though she were running, running toward something or someone, but she didn’t know what.

When he was nude and she felt his bare skin against her own for the first time, she gasped, then she began clawing at him, running her nails against the warm skin of his back. She moved her thighs against his, feeling how hairy and rough they were; the contrast made her even more excited.

She was shocked when Trevelyan entered her. Shocked and in pain. She pushed away from him but he kissed her to keep her from crying out, then entered her fully.

“Lie still,” he commanded. “The pain will stop in a moment.”

She did as he said, but not because she believed him. She was sure she was going to be torn in half.

He began to kiss her again, kiss her neck. His hand moved to her breast, his thumb on the peak. From somewhere deep within her, Claire began to respond to this ancient ritual.

“Vellie,” she whispered.

“Yes, my love, I’m here.”

She moved her hips just a bit, clumsily. Trevelyan put his hand on her hip to guide her next movement. It didn’t hurt. In fact she rather liked it.

Trevelyan put his hands on her thighs, holding her to him as he began to move himself out of her.

“No!” she cried and clutched at him. “Don’t leave.”

Trevelyan made the oddest sound. It was half chuckle, half groan, but it told her that he’d as soon die as leave her.

Claire couldn’t help but smile as her arms tightened about him. Then, suddenly, her eyes opened wide as he slid back into her. “Oh,” she said, surprised at the sensation. “My goodness.”