Chapter Five

 

Soft, feminine fingers slid up his thighs, slowly, sending shivers of desire straight to his cock. Nothing better than an erotic dream to wake him.

He tried to reach down to cup his balls, but couldn’t move his arm. He tested his other arm. Then his legs. Nothing moved.

What the hell?

It took a minute for the whiskey to clear from his mind. Someone had tied him spread-eagle to the posts of his bed. He tugged on his bindings. They weren’t rope. They felt…silky.

“Relax.”

Bella’s voice drifted from the bottom of the bed, her breath warming the cool skin of his left hip.

“Untie me, Bella,” he said, still trying to clear his head.

“No, I don’t think I’ll do that.”

He pulled on the bindings, realizing she’d tied them very securely. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Teaching you a lesson.”

Shit. She was going to get even for his forcing her to submit to him earlier. Like the air hissing out of one of those hot air balloons he’d seen used for air reconnaissance in the war, he went limp in the bed. Whatever punishment she meant to deal out, he owed her.

“Do you know there are hundreds of muscles in the human body?” she said as she traced her finger up his calf.

He swallowed hard. “And you know this how?”

“My father suggested I take an anatomy class, hoping it would help me focus on my sculpting while you were off in the war. I needed something to take my mind off worrying about you, especially after your letters stopped coming.” She pinched the skin just inside his knee. “It didn’t help.”

He gritted his teeth a moment at the pain before answering. “I’m sorry, Bella. I tried to write when I could. Then there was no time, no paper. Then no sight.”

“I know, Michael. But I did learn quite a bit in my study.” She slid her fingers up the inside of his thigh. “For instance, this is the vastus medialus muscle. And this is the Satorius.” She traced the spot from his inner thigh to his hip.

His cock responded immediately to her touch, thickening and rising to attention.

“Did learning this help your sculpting?” he asked, trying to sound more relaxed than he felt.

“No. Not really. I am still pitifully untalented.”

He’d disagree. He’d always thought she was quite talented, but now wasn’t the time to get her into an angry discussion on the topic.

“What I did learn was that the body can respond to the slightest touch.” She reinforced this by sliding her fingertips over his abdomen. “The slightest caress.” Her fingers traced his ribs with just the right amount of pressure. “The slightest pain.”

Without warning she pinched his left nipple. Arching his back, he moaned and strained at his bindings, this time from the zing of pain and heat her actions sent to his balls and cock.

“Earlier today you told me how losing your eyesight had turned you into an animal, remember?”

“Yes,” was all he could manage.

“Remember saying that blind, you couldn’t be an artist again? And that was why you were no longer a man?”

“Bella, I know what I said. I still believe it.”

“Well, I don’t agree. An artist’s talent doesn’t just lie in his ability to paint pretty pictures. It resides in the soul. A true artist uses all his senses, not just his eyes.”

Suddenly, something soft rolled teasingly down the muscles of his stomach to his groin then over his balls. He clenched his hip muscles and thighs.

“What is this?” She asked.

“A feather.”

“Yes, but what kind of feather?”

What kind of game was she playing? A feather was a feather. “I don’t know.”

An exasperated-sounding sigh came from his left. “You’re not even trying. Is it soft?”

“Yes, it’s soft.” It was his turn to give into frustration as he tugged on his bindings again. “Untie me. I’m tired of this.”

“I don’t think so. You haven’t begun to understand what I’m trying to teach you. Once again she pinched a nipple, a little stronger, more punishing than pleasurable this time.

“Bella,” he growled in warning.

“This is important, Michael. I want you to cooperate.”

The air beside him moved, cool gusts caressing his heated skin. He strained to hear her skirts rustle as they had earlier, but not one bit of silk moved. Nothing but the soft pad of her feet on the wooden floorboards.

Damn. She was naked!

The image of Bella stark naked filled his mind. He’d painted her that way so many times he’d memorized every detail. If it was possible his cock grew harder.

As he still grappled with the idea of Bella naked, her lips slipped over his. Warm, supple, intoxicating. She teased his lips with her tongue, just liked he had the first time they’d kissed, coaxing her to part her lips for him. It was his turn to submit. He parted his lips and moaned when she slipped her tongue inside his mouth.

Heat filled every inch of his body.

Slowly she lifted her lips.

“What do you taste?”

“You.”

“Yes, but what else?” She pressed her lips to his again, quickly slipping her tongue inside.

He tasted her and…peppermint. He moaned deeply and sucked on her tongue. Oh, God, peppermint. Dressed in a pink and white confection of a dress she’d teased him unmercifully at a symposium by sucking on peppermint rock-candy stick, her pink lips pursed and sliding up and down the striped piece of candy. When he’d gotten her alone, he’d practically ripped her clothes off to get inside her.

“What did you taste?”

“Peppermint.”

“Very good.” Humor laced her voice. She was smiling.

A different kind of warmth flooded him. Bella’s smile always lit up her whole face and the very air around her. Or was it the warmth caused by the pleasure it gave him knowing he’d been the reason behind her happiness?

“You’re remembering that symposium, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are your memories black and white, Michael?” she asked as she trailed her hand back down his chest. “Or are they in color?”

“Color. Just like my dreams.”

“You know,” she said, the sound of something splashing in water coming from beside the bed, “most people dream in flat, black and white images, not color.”

“We’ve had this discussion before,” he said, trying to concentrate on hearing what she was doing.

“Yes, we did. That’s when I knew you had a true artist’s soul. As much as I want to create something magnificent and awe-inspiring with my sculpting, I can’t convey my thoughts to the clay or the stone.”

“I’ve seen your work, Bella. It isn’t that bad and you do have talent.”

A warm cloth settled right between his legs, over his ball sac. The heat relaxed his body at the same time sending another thrill of pleasure to his thickening cock. He sniffed. Sandalwood. She was using his soap. Cleaning him. She could’ve simply asked him to bathe. She didn’t need to restrain him for that.

“My talent is small. Yours is immense,” she said as she slid the cloth over his balls in a firm, massaging motion then up the shaft that now pointed toward his belly.

“And it was taken away with one cannon blast.” This time he sounded less defensive. How could he feel badly when she was working his rod from base to tip?

For a few minutes he enjoyed her hands and the warm, soapy cloth massaging his cock. Just as he thought he couldn't fight it anymore and would let her bring him to fulfillment with her hands, she stopped, removing the cloth. Cold air hit his feverish skin, sending shivers through his body. Or was it need—the need he’d always had for this one woman, his Bella?

A moment later splashing occurred beside him again and then the warm, wet warmth returned. This time with no sandalwood scent. He lost himself to her ministrations, even moaning at the pleasure of her cleaning him so intimately, his hips bucking up and down, legs pulling on his restraints.

Again, before he could spill his seed, she stopped her stroking.

“The cannon blast took your vision, Michael, not your artist's talent or soul.” She laid one soft hand on his chest, branding him with her touch. “Those are still right here. All of your senses have kept them alive. Once you accept that, you'll be able to open up to alternate ways to create art, using all your senses.”

He bit his lip to keep from asking if he agreed with her, would she return to working his balls and shaft?

Footsteps sounded to his left, disappearing out the door. Where was she going? Why did the vision of her padding naked through his house increase his desire to tear free of the bonds and claim her? What was she up to?

He cleared his mind of the questions and strained to listen for her movements.

A soft pop. The opening of a bottle? A clink. Glass connecting against the china his mother had brought to the Ohio valley on her marriage to his bastard father? Soft flesh striking the floorboards, coming closer. China thudding oh-so-softly on the wooden table beside him.

“What do you smell?” Bella asked.

At her question, he sniffed. Drawing his eyebrows down, he tried to focus, but the heat of her body so close to his distracted him. He sniffed again. Nothing but the obvious. “Oak burning in the fireplace?”

She chuckled, the sultry sound teased his nerves once more. “You can do better than that, Michael.” She leaned closer, her breasts grazing both his chest and the spot where his arm extended over his head to be bound to the post. “Sniff and tell me what you smell.”

He obeyed and immediately a sense of warmth and comfort filled him. “Cinnamon.”

“What image does it bring to your mind?”

“Mama making apple pie on Sunday. I can hear her humming as she worked. It was the only day my father wasn’t out drinking. It was her favorite day of the week.” The only day they knew the bastard wouldn’t use his fists on either of them. Both thoughts, his mother and his sire, relaxed the need straining in his cock, thank God.

Bella moved, the scent leaving, and then she was back. “Now what do you smell?”

He sniffed again. “Orange blossoms and ginger. Your favorite scent.”

“And the vision?”

He couldn’t stop the smile. “You, standing in the doorway of the cotillion before I left for the war. I removed your wrap and you were a vision of cream and orange. I nibbled on your neck just to see the blush heighten all your lovely skin. You slapped me on the arm in mock punishment.”

“You always were the devil of temptation. I wanted to leave and spend the night with you, but father insisted we attend the dance.”

“And dance we did, scandalously close, your intoxicating scent driving me wild.” He wiggled his hips a little. “Just like it does now. Release me, Bella.”

“Not yet, love,” she whispered. A soft pop sounded and her scent faded slightly. She’d closed the bottle.

The air beside him stirred. Another soft sound. Flesh along flesh? Was she touching herself? Another vision popped into his mind. Bella lounging on the settee—naked, one leg bent, her head resting on the back of the cushions, her arm draped over her body, her fingers spreading the tender folds of her sex—exposing the pink heat to him as he painted her.

A catch in her breath sounded.

God, she had her fingers inside her pussy, sliding her fingers into the moist heat.

A moan escaped her. It was like lightning to his body, sending lust, desire and need straight back into his groin.

Another movement.

“Michael,” she whispered right into his ear, her fingers against his upper lip and below his nose, “what do you smell now?”

He inhaled.

“You, Bella, all you.”

“What does it make you see?”

“You with your legs spread wide as I eat your pink slit.”

“Mmm, I love it when you talk like that, my love. When you were painting and you would call it so many things. The words made me hotter, wetter, more…needy.” The last word came out in a sigh and he had to wonder if she was using her other hand to tease the little button of her pleasure?

A moment later the air beside him shifted again. What did she have planned now? He couldn’t take much more of this delicious torture. If she wanted him to beg, he was nearly there.

A weight between his spread thighs made the mattress sink. It undulated.

Bella was crawling between his legs.

He bit down on his lower lip even as his hips clenched and thrust his sex happily toward his torturer’s approach. Dammit, he would take what she was about to do and take it like a man. No, a man would keep from letting her control him and send her away. Soon he’d be begging her like a simpering fool for more.

Her soft hands settled against his inner thighs. “I’ve always loved your thighs, my love,” she said as she pushed them slightly wider, forcing his knees to bend and pull the cloth binding them to the post tight. “They are so powerful, each muscle delineated as if chiseled from marble.”

A moment later her tongue slide up the muscle of his right thigh to his groin.

“Ahhhh.” As much as he tried, he couldn’t help the sigh escaping.

“Mmm, I remember how much you love this. Almost as much as I do.”

She shifted and ran her tongue up the other thigh then latched her lips to the junction of his thigh and groin. Sucking softly, she pulled another moan deep from inside him.

He knew what was coming next. He’d taught her just how to pleasure his sex.

As she leaned in closer, the outside swells of her breasts slid along his thighs, the tendrils of her blonde curls flowing over his flesh like a silken curtain. Then her nose pressed into the top of his sac, and her tongue swept over his balls. First one, then the other, laving them over and over, like a cat with cream—the pleasure soaring through him another form of her delightful torture.

With every pass of her tongue on his heated flesh, he wanted to sink his fingers into her hair and guide her up to his raging erection, but she’d bound him much too securely. All he could do was endure her achingly slow ministrations.

A few more minutes of the circular tongue motion on his balls and she shifted. Her hands left his thighs to straddle his hips, her hair teasing all his upper thighs and hips as she pressed her breasts with their taut nipples into the flesh she’d just cleaned with her tongue.

Time froze as he prayed she wouldn't stop. Then—merciful heaven—her lips slipped over the head of his cock.

“Ahh, yes! That's it, sweet Bella. Take me deep.”

Taking his words seriously, she swallowed half of his thick shaft before sliding back to the crown.  Then she delighted him by swirling her tongue around the head.

“Oh, so good.”

Clenching his ass muscles he tried to thrust farther into her luscious, warm, wet mouth. She took the hint and reversed course, working him deeper with each bob of her head. His world centered around the searing pleasure of Bella's mouth and throat sucking on his cock. Another pull on his shaft and he'd be pouring his seed into her throat.

As if she read his mind, Bella slipped her mouth off him.

“No, please.” Damn. He didn’t want to beg, but he wanted—no, needed—her mouth back on him.

“Easy, Michael,” she murmured and slid her body up his, careful to climb over his erection until her knees straddled his body.

Like a sensual nymph he’d seen in a painting in Boston once, she pressed her breasts over his stomach and chest. The silky feel of her skin, the tight nubs of her nipples and the lush curves of her body glided over him until the folds of her hot sex lay just at the tip of his cock. Impossibly, the feel of her poised to take him sent more blood to his cock, making it bob and a small dollop of his seed leak out the top.

Just as he wanted to beg her again, she laid both hands on his chest and pushed up, forcing her nether lips to slide over his aching shaft then down, until she sat, completely sheathed around him.

Desperate to thrust inside her he tried again to clench his muscles and move his hips, but his bindings hampered the effort. To help prevent him from moving, she clamped her thighs against his hips.

“No, Michael. I’ll take care of us both. I want you to relax and concentrate on using your artist’s soul to picture us joined like this. Before the war you would’ve simply painted us.”

“Yes, in the glorious reds and golds of our passion and all the creamy silk of your flesh.”

As he described it, Bella rocked forward so his cock slipped out of her just to the head. Then she moved back to take him in deep.

“But our love is so much more than a painting can give.” She rode him more. “So much more than a flat, two-dimensional canvas can convey. Use all your senses to see us in a three-dimensional medium, like a sculpture.”

“Oh, God, yes, Bella. Ride me,” he begged.

With a few more rocking movements he felt her clench him tight and spasms of her pleasure rippled through her body, around his shaft, pulling him deeper and tighter.

“Michael!” she cried at the same time he spilled his seed into her womb.

As he crested the pinnacle of his climax a vision popped into his mind. A long slab of stone he’d seen all his life in the riverbed not too far from the cabin. It would be the perfect piece to carve Bella as she’d just been riding him in all her glory.

*****

“Can I help you fellas?” Bert Higgins asked the two burly strangers who stomped the snow off their boots inside his store the morning after the blizzard rolled through town.

“We’re looking for some information about a former comrade in the war,” said the older and larger of the pair, spitting tobacco juice on the floor.

Dammit. He’d have to get that up before his wife saw it. Thank goodness she’d stayed home with the children this morning because of the cold. Clara didn’t take kindly to bad weather or spittle on her polished floors.

“There’s a lot of ex-soldiers in these parts. Anyone in particular?”

“Goes by the name of Barclay,” the other man said, scratching his beard. “Heard tell his place ain’t too far from here.”

Something in the way they asked for Michael by his last name only set Bert’s nerves on edge. Same feeling saved his hide more than once while in the Union Army.

“Some Barclays lived about five or six miles west of here, over the Raccoon Creek. Seems to me only the son lives there now.” He started gathering wood to add to the fire in the store’s potbelly stove. “But the road out that way is probably impassible, especially the bridge over the river, after last night’s storm.”

“How long do you think it’ll take to make it passable?” the first man asked.

“Few days at least. Depends on if we get a warm spell or not.”

The two men looked at each other as if they were reading each other’s minds. After a moment they nodded, as if their decision was made. “We’ll be back for some supplies when it does,” the second one said, and the pair left the store.

Bert exhaled and went to the big glass window overlooking Main Street. The pair stomped their way through the snow toward the saloon. Without a doubt those two were up to no good. He’d watch for a break in the weather and hightail it out to Michael’s as soon as it warmed up some.

A friend didn’t let danger come calling without a warning.