Chapter Twenty-One
July 2, 1811
About two thirty in the morning. The caravansary in Aleppo. Neither Foye nor Sabine were asleep. They should have been. But they weren’t.
Just when, Foye wondered, had he gone utterly mad? What in God’s name had possessed him to strip naked in front of Sabine? Lust, he thought. Pure, roaring, boiling-his-blood lust. He had no intention of making love to her. He wanted to. He wanted his body over hers and inside her, but when they were married. When she was indisputably his. England was months away by ship, and the stark reality of that was if he made love to her now and she conceived, by the time they were home, she’d have quickened. He could hardly get her to St. Paul’s in time, and even if they managed to disguise her condition, they would be hard-pressed to explain a child born so early.
At the moment, however, he had an even more pressing concern. Which was what Sabine would do. He kept his eyes on her and waited for a maidenly protest or even amused laughter. But none came. Which was really quite interesting.
She was silent, but hers was not precisely a shocked silence. She sat cross-legged on her mattress, frozen, so yes, perhaps she was a bit shocked at what he’d done. So was he, actually. But he rather thought she was schooling her reaction, carefully hiding from him what she was thinking inside that clever head of hers. Eventually, however, her gaze moved downward from his face.
Now, admittedly, his face was awkwardly put together. There was not much to admire there. But the rest? Enough women had expressed their delight with his person that he thought it likely he pleased Sabine. Though, true enough, he was imposing in a way some women enjoyed and others did not. His time among the Turks had stripped him down to the point where he was leaner than he’d ever been in London, and he had never been prone to fat. His skin fit closer to the muscle now.
They were perhaps an arm’s length apart. One of his arms. All his flaws and assets were on display for her. She still wasn’t objecting. Her examination was slow, and yes, she lingered at his cock—he was erect, no helping that either—and if he was not mistaken, her cheeks turned pink before her attention traveled on. If she’d seen those Greek amphorae, she knew about a man’s before-and-after state, as it were.
The sketchbook he’d given her was open on her lap, his face captured on the white sheet. She picked up her pencil, turned to a fresh page, and began to draw. As she worked, he heard her pencil moving over paper, and he relaxed in respect of her objections to his nudity. Perhaps she would decide she didn’t want him. She may have decided that already. Or perhaps she would decide she liked a man built on his scale.
God help him.
His body reacted predictably to that particular line of thought. He didn’t move or in any way try to hide the particular part of him that ached. There were certain realities of the male body of which, one way or another, she was not entirely ignorant and his present physical state happened to be one of them.
He was mad for her, mad to have her, mad to be with her. That he was entertaining some rather coarse desires where she was concerned did not help matters much. He forced his thoughts to less titillating subjects than unsuitable places for her mouth and brought his physical reaction to a less rampant state. Foye wondered if he could, after all, manage to keep his honor, and hers, intact. Perhaps Sabine would spend all night drawing him and so save them from his base desires.
She turned a page, and he watched her pencil moving again. When she concentrated on a part of her drawing, she had a habit of chewing on her lower lip. It occurred to him as well that she rarely resorted to the bit of gum rubber he used when one of his efforts went awry, which was often.
She was a gifted artist. If she’d been a man she might already be working in oils and be a member of the Royal Academy, painting female nudes and taking commissions for formal portraits. What he’d seen of her work in mere pencil was breathtakingly good. What might she accomplish in oils?
Presently, she put down her pencil and said, “I believe I’m done.” She sat with the sketchbook on her lap. Almost immediately, the earlier tension between them returned. In force.
“May I see?”
“If you like.” Her cheeks turned pink beneath the coloring on her skin, which made him wonder. Sabine was never coy, but what was this blush of hers? “There is another on the page before.”
He was quite comfortable being nude in front of her and didn’t bother to cover himself with his blanket or stop to pull on his shirt. He pushed up on one elbow and took the bound sketchbook from her. In remarkably few strokes, she had captured his outsized body and transformed all his physical awkwardness into something heroic. And yet every line was as familiar to him as the face he saw in the mirror. That was his body there, big and muscled beyond the elegance of, say, someone like Crosshaven. And she’d formed him with a series of strokes that rendered him lithe and sensual, a desirable male whose partner was waiting somewhere not far away. Any moment, the man on this sheet of paper would have his lover in his arms.
“They’re only studies,” she said. “For something more formal later, if I have the opportunity.”
He glanced up. “When you have the opportunity.”
Slowly, she inhaled, and damn, but he wanted to know what she was thinking. “Thank you for letting me draw you. I know how difficult it must have been.”
“Not at all. You’re talented, Sabine.” He turned the page backward and didn’t know whether to laugh or shout or be deeply appalled at what he saw there. She’d drawn, in exquisite detail, his erect penis. There was only the barest suggestion of the body to which it was attached.
“I suppose,” she said, “you think me wicked.”
He pushed himself the rest of the way up. He was going to hell anyway, so he put down the book, looped his arm around the back of her neck to draw her to him, and kissed her. Nothing tender or sensitive, but an open-mouthed, deep kiss that started out electrifyingly arousing and stayed there, getting more intense by the second.
Her mouth was soft against his, accepting. Welcoming. Her palm lightly touched his torso and then flattened on his chest, one finger sweeping over his nipple, and his arousal ramped up to a nearly unbearable pitch.
He pulled away, not far, enough to say, “You understand this is fatal for us, don’t you?” he said in a gruff voice. “Nothing will be the same between us if we do this. It means there’s no wedding at St. Paul’s.” No more bloody waiting.
“I don’t care what happens.” Her lids swept down, briefly hiding her eyes from him. “Not today, nor tomorrow. Or ever. So long as I have lived one day in my life. Just one. With you.”
“Sabine.” He reached out to brush a finger along her cheek. “A day? Only one out of all the days you have left? Do stop frowning.” He pressed his thumb over her mouth. “That’s better. Surely you realize that I will have to marry you here, not in England.” He pressed his mouth to the side of her throat. “It’s for the best,” he said. He tightened his arm around her nape, bringing her closer. “I don’t think I could have held out much longer anyway.”
“Kiss me again, Foye,” she said.
He frowned and drew back a bit farther. “You do understand, Sabine, yes? We would have married anyway, but this means sooner, before it’s convenient for either of us. We merely anticipate our wedding night.”
Her tongue darted out to touch her lower lip, and Foye was swamped with visions of what he’d like for her to do with him. “Are you certain, Foye?”
“Hell, yes, Sabine.” He started working at her clothes, an occupation that got him farther away from her, not closer. She took a breath and relaxed. “Jesus,” he said in a low voice, “if anyone comes in, he’s going to think I’m about to bugger my dragoman.”
She gave a soft laugh at that. He found the sound ravishing.
He unraveled the sash around her waist then slid a hand underneath her outer cloak and pushed it off first one shoulder and then the other. She did the rest, and before long she was free of the garment. Their eyes connected when he pushed apart the two halves of her jacket. His state of arousal was nearly enough to make him forget this was to be her first sexual encounter.
“You’ll tell me if I do anything to make you afraid?” he asked. She nodded, and he said, softly, “Do not lie to me, Sabine. There are ways for us to do this without me scaring you to death. If you need time, if you reconsider or want this to be slower, you have but to tell me.” He took her head between his two hands and kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her closed eyes. “I promise you that, my love. I will be as gentle as possible.”
“I trust you, Foye.” She spoke so gravely, he thought his heart would break. She lifted a leg so that the inside of her thigh brushed his leg, and he went back to adoring her body inch by inch. He dropped lower to kiss her while he pushed her jacket off her shoulders, and she shifted her body to make it happen. He decided he loved her mouth.
They worked at her shirwal next, and when the garment was loosened, he pulled me thing down her legs, touching skin that was soft and shockingly pale after her artificially brown face and arms. Her skin was warm and smooth beneath his palms. By the time he had her stripped down to that length of silk he’d been thinking about all bloody day and night, he was ready to scream with pure lust.
“You’re right,” he said. He slid the tip of a finger between her skin and the silk and used that to pull her toward him. He’d tied the knot between her shoulder blades, which meant that she needed to sit up in order for him to get it off her. “This is far too tight. No wonder you couldn’t breathe. What benighted oaf did this to you, Sabine?”
“I’m thinking of hiring him as my lady’s maid.” As she bent toward him, her shorn hair fell across her temples. “I wonder if I should.”
He turned her around so he could unfasten the fabric and unwind it from her torso. The knot was stiff and tight, and he had to fight to get it loose. “Sack the fellow, I say. There are more interesting things he can do for you.” When he had it off, she stayed with her back to him, leaning down with one hand pressed to the mattress and the other on her upper torso while she took a deep, deep breath.
Foye stared, transfixed, aroused beyond belief. The flickering light made her skin gleam like closely woven silk. Despite her being so small a woman, her curves were luscious. He drew a finger slowly down the line of her spine. Her skin was as soft as it looked, smooth everywhere and pale wherever it was free of the coloring. The slide of her ribs to her waist aroused him as much as the curve of her waist to her hips. He bent to kiss the nape of her neck and cup a hand over one of her breasts. She kept her torso bent.
“Is this all right?” he asked, aware that his position was an aggressive one and that if the difference in their sizes bothered her, this particular arrangement of their bodies would only serve to emphasize that disparity. On the other hand, it was possible she liked it.
“Yes,” she said on a breath.
He shifted so he was behind her, using his other hand to bring her upright until her back was pressed against his front, and she was on her knees while his thighs spread on either side of her. He kept his hand moving upward until his fingers were in her now nut-brown hair, sliding over her skull from back to front. Golden blond sparkled from the uneven brown coloring. Her hair was thick and soft underneath, and he thought about what it would have been like to hold that once glorious mass of golden hair in his hands. He brought her head back to lean against his shoulder.
“Sabine,” he whispered. “Oh, Sabine, you’re so lovely. Too lovely for a beast like me.” He put both his hands around her waist and reverently slid them downward, molding his palms and fingers to the shape of her, pressing her against his erection. He returned to her breasts, looking at her from over her shoulder. Sabine sucked in a breath when he covered her. “Do you like when I do this?”
“Mm.”
“That is not an answer.” He brushed his palms over her nipples. “Do you like this?”
“Yes, Foye.”
She had a narrow rib cage—hell, she was smaller than him by a terrifying amount—but her breasts were magnificent. Not unduly large, but far more than he expected. She was quite pale. Even her nipples were a pale, pinkish brown. He felt a surge of disbelief that he should have gotten them to this point of aching desire and mutual nakedness. And here he was, holding her, cupping her breasts, and feeling the beat of her heart underneath his palm. He wasn’t considering anything like sedate intercourse with her. He was, in fact, in serious danger of losing his self-control.
That could not happen. Not for her first time with him. Her first time ever. He would be gentle. Tender. Restrained.
His hands, the backs browned by the sun, looked entirely, wonderfully masculine on her, large and bordering on coarse. He caressed her and dropped a line of kisses along her shoulder. “Such a lovely body, Sabine. Divine.”
He laid her down on the mattress and knelt between her legs, looking at her. Another shiver of arousal shot through him. He drew a hand along one of her thighs, bringing his fingers around to the inside. He knew he could all too easily overwhelm her. The last thing he wanted was to see her looking at him with fear. He was trying his best, really he was.
He cupped her sex, tangling his fingers in her pale, crisp nether hair. She might change her mind. She could. She might take a long, hard look at him and decide she would never accept him. This was not, after all, a true wedding night, where there was, in essential fact, no possibility of his wife denying him. He pressed his hand over her, between her legs, sliding a finger along the folds of her body, and Sabine, quite gratifyingly, bowed toward him. Her eyes fluttered open, and she raised her knees to give him access. He came up against her maidenhead. They locked gazes. “I’ll try not to hurt you, Sabine.”
“It’s all right, Foye.”
There wasn’t any possibility of going back now. Foye smiled and lowered himself in order to taste her, sliding down to kiss the inside of her thigh and then her quim. So much for restraint and reserve. Her skin was salty, and he didn’t give a damn about much but seeing to her thorough pleasure. He slid farther down and nudged her thighs apart. “Lovely, Sabine.” He breathed the words against her skin.
Her sex was warm and damp for him, and when he kissed her there, she tensed, but not with fear, with desire. “Foye,” she said on a long, low inhale. “My God, keep doing that. Please.”
He was happy to oblige. He adored bringing a woman to climax this way. The taste and texture against his mouth and tongue never failed to arouse him, the pleasure that ended with them both sated.
He listened for the changes in her breathing, waited for the tension in her body to tell him she was close, and adjusted touch and kiss to bring her to the point where her body would belong to him, when she would allow herself to surrender to her body, to pleasure, and to him.
After he’d brought her to climax, he pulled himself over her, careful to keep himself well above her. Sabine gazed at him with sleepy, pleasure-sated eyes. His cock brushed her belly, he could not help that contact while he lowered his head to her breast and still kept his weight off her.
She groaned when his teeth found her nipple, a light scrape, a touch, a sweep of his tongue around and across the taut nub that meant she was responding to him. She arched against him, and before he could think, he pressed his cock against her belly, imitating the motion he would make when he was inside her.
Her legs came up, the soft, sweet inside of her thighs brushing against the outside of his. He fell deeper yet into his own arousal. He pulled away long enough to reach out and drag his mattresses next to hers. When he’d done that he rolled onto his back and brought Sabine over him to straddle his lower torso.
“Foye,” she breathed.
Just the sound of her voice aroused him. He bad the loveliest view of her body this way. He slid his hands from her belly to her breasts, palming them. Her short hair swung forward past her temples until she arched her upper back, filling his hands. His fingers tightened on her, plucking at her nipples. She clasped his wrists with her brown-dyed hands, then brushed her hands along his forearms.
“Foye,” she whispered as she looked down and into his face. She wasn’t afraid of him. Not at all. Not afraid and not repulsed. “When you touch me…” She drew a breath. “It’s so lovely. You make me feel…unsettled.” She bit her lower lip. “I need you, now, I think.”
He managed a smile at her. “Now? Are you certain?”
“Please, Foye.” She tightened her hands around his wrists. “I don’t want to wait any longer.”
Hell, he could barely speak he was so out of his mind with desire for her. He pushed himself up, holding his weight on one arm while he put her on her back. With her supine, he bent his head to kiss her mouth then trail his lips down her throat to her breast. Her nipple budded hard when he tongued her. He reached between them and put a hand around his cock, and oh, hell, he was close.
“Sabine,” he whispered. So close. So close to sliding his cock inside her. “Sabine, tell me this is what you want.”
She looked into his face. “Fiend,” she said. “You torture me on purpose. I’ll never forgive you for this. Never.”
“Tell me,” he said, settling his belly against hers. “I want the words from you.”
“Yes, Foye! I want this with you.”
He put his mouth by her ear, one hand planted on the mattress near her shoulder, holding his weight. “I’m going to put my cock inside you,” he said. “I’ll be inside you, warm and snug, and it will be the moment I’ve lived for since I met you.”
Her hands rested on his shoulders, moving lower, sliding over his chests, touching him, burning him. “Stop torturing me.” She bowed against him. “Beast. You are a beast.”
Foye pulled back his head. “Listen to me.” He waited until she opened her eyes. “I’ve not made love to a virgin in a very long time. If I hurt you, it’s because of your maidenhead, not because that’s how it is for women. It’s just this once. Only this time, my love.”
She nodded, and then he let go of himself and got the head of his cock at her entrance, very aware that he was bigger than she was. He pushed his hips forward, and, he pushed through her maidenhead with very little trouble and just hell, his foreskin slid back with the friction of entering her, and he flew to an even higher level of arousal. She was hot and tight around him, and it was all he could do not to drive himself as far into her as he could.
With one arm around her body just above the slope of her hips, he rocked forward. He went slowly because she was very tight, and she arched her throat and he watched her mouth open on a moan of pleasure. She put her hands on his shoulders, fingers angled toward his back. “Now,” he whispered. “Now, Sabine. I love you.” He held her, and with a single thrust, he penetrated fully, and God help him, he adored the sound of her breath catching in the back of her throat, and the give of her body to his. She enveloped him, hot and slick around his cock. Heaven. Bliss. He was inside her where he had dreamed of being for far too long. Jesus, he was at the edge of his control.
His. She was his at last.
“Are you all right?” he said. Her body was tense against his, and he didn’t want to have hurt her, though, of course he must have. Her fingers gripped him hard, digging into the skin of his shoulders. His balls were tight, and he had to fight the urge to thrust. Sabine drew in a long, trembling breath.
“Foye,” she whispered. She twined her arms around his neck. Her fingers tangled in his hair and brought his head down to kiss him. He fit his mouth over hers and kissed her back.
Yes.
He drew partially out with a backward tilt of his hips and upward pressure from his free hand on her hip. She slid her hands to the top of his shoulders, not pushing him away at all. She bent her knees again, and her inner thigh brushed his hip. Foye pushed into her again, muscles tensing as their bodies merged.
“Like that,” he said. “Hell, yes.”
Heaven. Considering that he was a large man, and she was so small and elegant, they fit together very well. When he was all the way in again, he stayed there, wanting to be sure she was all right. But she was slick around him, and he wasn’t mistaken in his interpretation of her groan. She opened her eyes, and they looked at each other.
“Foye,” she said, settling a hand on his cheek. “Oh, Foye.” He pressed forward, and his world narrowed to just the two of them. “Foye,” she whispered. “Why are you torturing me like this? Am I as awful as that?”
“No, Sabine,” he said when he had the wits to speak. He slid deeper inside her. “I am torturing you because I intend to see you break apart while I watch. I am a selfish man when it comes to your pleasure. I intend to see it all.”
“Beast,” she said with a smile.
Words filled him, a dozen, a thousand, a hundred thousand, but he couldn’t speak a one. He put his palms on the mattress at the top of her shoulders and drew back, then forward, slowing watching her face the entire time. His breath hitched as his foreskin slid back, exposing the sensitive head of his cock to her body. “Sabine.”
Her answer to that was a tilt of her pelvis that sent his cock sliding inside her, into the warmth of her body. The sensation was so exquisite he forgot everything but that. But her. Their bodies matched very well. This was all he could manage. Just the two of them, just his body inside hers. Her eyes took on a drugged look, and he thought he’d expire just from looking at the way her expression changed. She’d caught on to the essential motion, and damn her, she’d learned already how to move so as to drive him mad.
He slipped a hand between them and found the exact spot that would bring her to climax. “I adore your body,” he whispered. “Your breasts, your mouth, your eyes.” As he, too, hurtled toward orgasm, she leaned in and kissed the side of his throat. His hips were moving harder now, faster, and when she did break apart, he threw back his head so he could watch, and then he let go of himself, and it didn’t matter that he came inside her because in the morning he was going to marry her anyway.