Chapter Twenty-Three
Mid-May 1817
The sound of the softly strummed guitar carried over the gentle evening breeze, bringing with it the scent of wildflowers – the jasmine-like genestra, underscored by aromas from the nearby herb garden, rosemary and lemon.
The tune was wistful, hinting at love and loss.
Laura lay on her bed, looking up at the ceiling.
She ran a hand down her stomach and felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness.
Strange, to have a living being inside you, your body enveloping it, holding it until one day it becomes a separate part of you.
She had not wanted a child, not like this anyway. She wanted one who was conceived in love by a man who could bring her pleasure and who would love her.
She had struggled to erase Selim Omar’s face from her memory – but not some of the carnal pleasures. Her body remembered them. And wanted them again.
That contradiction had given her many a sleepless night since the birth of Benjamin. And it was something no one could understand – not even Kit Hardacre, God bless his soul. She understood very well what had happened to him as a boy at the hands of these people. But it had been different for him. His misuse could arouse no pleasure, only pain. It was done to him and he suffered because he had been helpless.
God help her! What was wrong with her that at times her body had reacted with unbidden pleasure, even as, over-and-over again, she cursed her tormentor’s name in her mind as he used her?
In the fresh breeze of the spring night, Laura felt her body respond to her thoughts. She shifted restlessly, feeling her nipples become sensitive and an ache begin between her legs. Languorously, still half-asleep, she brushed a hand across her belly, and down further.
But more than just to feel the pleasure between her legs, she wanted someone to hold her, touch and kiss her.
What might it be like to experience the pleasures of the flesh with a man who didn’t repulse her? Someone who wouldn’t hurt her? Someone who plainly adored her?
Someone like Elias Nash.
And what if she was the one in control?
She rose and didn’t bother with a wrap over her cotton nightgown.
She glanced into the anteroom where Benjamin slept. Silhouetted in a shadowed corner, Gina slept, too, despite no longer being needed as a wet nurse.
Laura wasn’t sure what time it was. The house was in darkness and quiet, except for the soft playing of Elias’ guitar. The music called her through the central hall of the house, through the sitting room that opened onto the wide terrace. Half-hidden in the shadows was the wide day bed, which during the day had a glorious vista down into Palermo and the sea beyond.
Now, only illuminated by the moon and a sprinkling of white stars, it was intimate.
Laura stood in the doorway, allowing her eyes to get accustomed to the dark.
Elias semi-reclined on the day bed, the guitar resting across his chest. He strummed gently.
She approached quietly and he did not cease his playing. As she got closer, she could see his eyes were closed. She used the opportunity to observe him.
His hair was longer than would have been acceptable in England, and the ends of it curled about his nape. In repose, the sun-kissed lines on his face were softened.
It was warm this evening and he wore a shirt with its sleeves removed.
The moonlight highlighted broad shoulders and arms muscled with years of hard, strenuous labor. His fingers, though, were finely tapered with nails trimmed short. His legs were long. And she stood a few inches away from where they lay on the cushion barefooted.
Laura felt the thrum of arousal through her. Yes, she wanted this man.
She paused in the shadows and allowed her imagination to take flight. In her mind’s eye, she felt his touch… no, she would touch him. She would own his body. And that would give her pleasure and he would give her pleasure because she willed it to be so.
Her arousal increased her courage. She climbed onto the day bed beside him and leaned over for an open-mouthed kiss.
She tasted his surprise but he didn’t resist as she removed the guitar from his chest and straddled his hips.
“Am I dreaming?” he asked.
“Shhhh. Let me do this.”
Her fingers tangled in his open shirt but she found the warm skin on his bare chest and brushed her hand across the silky hair upon it until her palms felt the hardness of his nipples.
“Laura? What–”
She pressed down on his chest and felt his growing erection pressing between her legs. She knew full well he was stronger than she and could overpower her if he wished. But he hadn’t so far.
As she leaned down, the neck of her nightgown opened and it afforded him a view of her breasts, full and ripe.
“You want this,” she said, her voice husky. “You want me. I’ve seen the way you watch me.”
She rubbed herself against his hardness and he groaned. Hands that had lain by his side now gripped her forearms and she used that support to bend down and kiss him full on the lips. In this position, she was nearly lying on top of him.
She continued kissing him. He whispered a few words but, consumed in the heat of her own passion, she only heard the last three – “as my wife”.
“Tonight, I am your wife, Elias.”
Those words affected him. His hands left her arms and reached across her back, holding her to him as the raw, open-mouthed kisses continued.
She had kissed a few men before Selim Omar, and had even allowed some of them a few further liberties. She had even read Fanny Hill on the voyage out, for God’s sake, yet nothing before had aroused her like this.
She was all powerful, all pleasure. She became aware that her night dress had gathered up to her hips, exposing her legs.
Elias’ hand slid down her back. He groaned as his hands encountered the bare flesh of her bottom.
He threw his head back. Laura surged forward, gripping her garment. She pulled it up over her head, leaving her naked before him.
She did not feel shame at being so exposed. The look of shock, then dark desire on the face of the man before her, made her feel powerful. Mighty.
“I know how much you want to touch me.” She ground down her body on his covered erection and whispered harshly. “I know how much you want this.”
She leaned back and raised herself slightly so she could work the two rows of buttons on the placket of his trousers that hid him from her.
Until now, Elias hadn’t moved, he seemed focused on her breasts before him. He reached forward to touch, but then he seemed to remember himself and stopped.
“Laura…” Her name from his lips made him sound like he was in pain. Those honey-brown eyes were hidden under weighted lids.
“I touch you because I feel like it. Because I want to. Because it makes you feel good.” She smiled and cajoled. “How much do you want to touch me, Elias Nash? How much do you ache to put your hands on my breasts and touch? How much does your cock ache? How much does it demand release?”
“Stop… wait… I…”
“Give in to me, Elias, give in to what your body wants… satisfy me. Do this for me.”
Elias surged upright and kissed her thoroughly. She doubted he was even aware she had undone his trousers.
She abandoned herself to the eroticism of the moment, feeling pleasure across every nerve as he kissed the column of her neck, as his fingers, tentatively at first, touched her breasts, brushed across her nipples, fleetingly, but with growing confidence as he correctly interpreted her moans of pleasure.
He paused in his exploration, feeling his member exposed to the night air. Laura seized on his hesitation and lowered herself onto him where she was already slick with desire.
He cried out. She clenched her inner walls. He was hard within her. He had not spent himself. He felt good. In the haze of her own passion, she moved, eliciting another groan from him. She moved again, feeling the peak of her desire close, but nowhere nearly enough.
Laura put her fingers between her legs. She rubbed her clitoris, and felt her orgasm build, losing herself in the sensation.
She was vaguely aware of Elias’ first tentative thrusts into her as his own control yielded.
“Yes, yes, yes…” she encouraged him breathlessly as she rose and rose on the peak of her own pleasure. She squeezed his cock, gripping it tight inside her.
She heard her name chanted in a litany of gasped endearments. His hands were firm at her hips, keeping their bodies joined.
He came with a shout, then hauled her to him before rolling her beneath, still within her.
About now, she would have started to feel the panic that always happened when Selim Omar rutted with her, but she didn’t. Instead she felt… sated.
“I love you, Laura,” Elias whispered in her ear, sending a final shiver of pleasure through her.
Then tears pricked the back of her eyelids.
She wished she felt the same for him.
Laura woke up to warm satisfaction. She had stretched, just like the little calico barn cat did that had made herself at home on the end of her bed. She felt good. It had felt good, as she imagined coupling would be, when both parties were willing.
Elias’ touch had brought her to arousal so quickly and her mastery over his desire delighted her. If the act of love was truly like that all the time, she would never fear it again. And if the man who brought her to the peak of her desire was Elias, then she could learn to be satisfied, indeed. She might even be able to return some of his love.
She stared at the empty easel before her.
Today, she felt inspired. On as beautiful a day as this one, she could do justice to any subject. Her mind brought her back to Elias. Would he allow her to paint him again as she had once done on the Calliope, on the voyage over from England?
He was a striking figure in his dress uniform. But, now, Laura wished to paint him in repose, his seductive brown eyes and full lips, a guitar in his lap, his fingers playing skillfully. Laura flushed at the memory of those hands on her last night.
Eventually, the desire for breakfast won over her desire for an early start on her painting. She found Elias at the kitchen table with Serafina. Next to him was Benjamin, jam smeared across his face, bouncing on Gina’s knee. The baby thrust a lump of soft, fresh bread in his hand toward Elias, offering it. Elias leaned forward as though to take a bite and Benjamin pulled the bread away with a giggle.
Such a sight should have made her smile, but now a sourness that began in her stomach reached the back of her throat.
It was her son grinning happily on that girl’s knee.
And she didn’t like the way she looked at Elias, an adoring proprietorial look, it was. And this morning, she realized that objects on her dressing table had been rearranged yet again – and she knew she hadn’t done it.
No, she wasn’t going to let that spoil her mood.
“Good morning.”
Gina started bolt upright, almost forgetting Benjamin who just about fell into Elias’ arms.
“I’m sorry,” she said, although, to Laura’s ears, the girl sounded anything but apologetic. “I have no tea made for you. Miss Laura does not rise until after ten o’clock.”
Laura raised her chin. “Well, Miss Laura has risen now. In fact, Miss Laura has been up for hours, even before you rose.”
Elias stood also. He spoke calmly but firmly. “Gina, please take Benjamin and get him cleaned up. I want to have a word with Miss Laura.”
Gina looked to Laura and then back to Elias before picking up Benjamin and leaving the room. Wisely, Serafina accompanied her.
Several seconds passed between them in silence broken only by the ticking of a mantel clock in the adjoining formal dining room. From elsewhere in the house, she heard the sound of a door close. Elias sat.
The animation that had been on his face when he played with Benjamin was gone and he looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept.
“We need to talk about last night.”
She basked in the thought of their passionate coupling and gave him a seductive smile as she stretched languorously in the doorway. She’d grown uncertain of Elias’ feelings over the past few weeks, but now she was on firmer ground. She approached and placed a hand on his shoulder. Feeling bolder, she cupped his cheek.
“Hmmm? What about last night?”
She stroked his stubbled cheek, reveling in the feel of the rough bristles against her palm. His lips were just there, and she stared at them. Perhaps she should kiss them.
“Are you listening to me, Laura? It can’t happen again.”
The words doused her as cold water.
“I beg your pardon?” She blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of a conversation twisting out of control.
Elias gave a long, drawn out sigh.
“Unless last night represented a change of heart, you’ve already made your feelings clear about how you feel about marriage to me,” Elias said quietly, “and I won’t do it again without vows being said before God and man.”
The blood which had fallen from her face returned with scalding heat. How dare he? How dare he take a night of pleasure then cast her in the role of a Jezebel?
“You were very enthusiastic at the time,” she said. Her voice was low, as his had been, but her tone was bitter – oh, so bitter. “You’re a big, strong man, you could have stopped me.”
He acknowledged the rebuke with a small nod. “And it’s to my eternal shame I didn’t. I curse my weakness when it comes to you, Laura. You came to me like a vision from one of my dreams. A beautiful, sensuous woman who loved me as much as I loved her, who accepted my pledge of devotion, and returned it equally.”
Laura’s fury erupted into a full blown gale. “You men are contemptuous. I should hate all of you. It is all well for you men to take pleasure as and where you will, oh, but God forbid that a woman seek the same comfort for the sheer sensual pleasure of the act.”
She watched anger begin to grow in Elias – the redness of his face, an uncharacteristically bitter turn of his upper lip. She relished it, savored it, and stoked the heat of her own anger with it.
“Do you say such pretty words to the other women you’ve dallied with – the tavern wenches, the prostitutes?” she taunted.
Elias stood. The bench scraped loudly on the stone floor. His fists clenched.
“How many women have there been, Elias? How many poor girls have there been who have waited to hear such pretty speech from you?”
Bang!
Elias slammed both clenched fists on the table. His arms were locked rigid with rage.
“None!” he roared. “There have been none before last night!”
Laura reeled from shock. It felt almost like a physical blow. Silence descended.
Elias glared at her, his face still red. He opened his mouth as though to say something, but changed his mind, and stalked through the door to the garden outside.
Laura brought a trembling hand to her face and lurched on shaky legs to the table.
Oh God, what had she done?