Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

Rubbing the spot where she’d bitten him, he grinned down at her. He still wore his pantaloons and boots-she felt herself squeezed tight by his thighs pressed hard into her sides. She contented herself with what wriggling, kicking, and thrashing about she was able to do, while he lifted her skirts and tossed them over her head. Leaving her sputtering in a sea of white ruffles, he moved downward to dive between her legs.

“A pirate treasure,” he declared while he rubbed his rough, unshaven cheeks against her belly. Kissing, nibbling, sniffing at her-practically drooling like a hunting dog. She bounced about from the hips, arching her back, shrieking in mock terror.

“Villain, monster! Unhand me, you vile knave!”

By now he would have known (having caught a faint whiff of vinegar) that it was all right to proceed as he might. “Never! I’ll have my treasure, and the very enlightened lady too,” enlightened lady pronounced with a wry twist of a London workingman’s accent-she’d become familiar with the intonations when he’d taken her out adventuring all those years ago.

She tried to close her legs against him and found that she couldn’t. He’d always been strong, but he was a lot stronger than she remembered. All that loading of muskets, she mused; she couldn’t have fought him off if she’d wanted to.

The light of midday shone gauzily through the white cotton of her petticoat. Nice to picture the muscles in his arms, held taut as he forced her legs open. Her thighs trembled. His face was scratchy against her skin. How long since he’d shaved? Had he scandalized his sister-in-law by appearing that way at breakfast? He kissed her thighs, slowly moving his head upward now.

“Rogue, swine, how dare you!” And whatever you do, don’t stop -but she knew he wouldn’t. On the contrary, he was using his tongue to bring her off quickly. She arched, crested, lay panting while he raised himself back up, brushing the skirts and petticoat away from her face to kiss her mouth, her neck, her breasts… Voraciously, with just a hint of her own smell on him.

There’d been a fichu about her neck and shoulders when she’d set out today. Gone. Lost in the sea of bedding. If there’d been pins, they’d long since been pulled out. At least he hadn’t torn her clothing. She was lucky that the tartan gown she wore had a wide neckline.

Lucky? Or had she given it a bit of offhand thought this morning when she’d pointed to it hanging in the wardrobe… A bit old, Peggy, but surely good enough for a ramble in the forest. And had she just imagined the wry, knowing stare Peggy had returned? Yes, my lady, good enough for that.

He had one of her nipples between his lips. She whimpered, writhed underneath him-tossing her head back, thrusting out her chin in a simulacrum of aggrieved hauteur. She hoped he was enjoying her playacting-she was doing her best to make it as broad, as ridiculous as his.

Ah, but she’d also let out a deep groan, at the feel of his large warm hands, so tight around the cheeks of her arse. Lovely to be held so firmly. To be spread, opened, handled …

He chuckled. “But what’s this?” he exclaimed. “Another way into the treasure chest?”

Rolling her over, one of his hands tracing the curve of her rump, slapping her now, murmuring that the enlightened lady was far too bold and needed a little pirate discipline.

She felt herself bouncing beneath his palm. Her skin must be growing quite pink, she thought, and she found herself suddenly, humiliatingly, wishing that there were a mirror close at hand so she could see it.

He must be reaching with his other hand to undo his buttons.

With her wrists bound as they were, she wouldn’t be able to balance on hands and knees. Shoulders and knees it would have to be, then-breathless, with her face buried in the bedding beneath her. No matter-he’d manage the angles; she wasn’t sure how, but the nice thing about his uncouth lady-and-the-pirate game was that she didn’t have to know quite how he’d… take her, the words inescapable, if crude and beneath her dignity.

He’d manage it. Yes, he was managing splendidly. For he’d entered her now and she heard herself calling out with surprised pleasure, to feel the parts of her quim that usually went quite untouched when one did it from other positions. She squeezed back against him-one wouldn’t want to be entirely passive (would one?) while being (but how might his enlightened lady prisoner put it?) ravished, taken? … And with such profound, cheerful, and energetic disrespect.

He’d reached a hand now under her belly, his finger touching her flesh where it became hard and knotted. “Pearl,” he whispered. Pearl in the oyster. His tongue traced the whorls of her ear; his finger continued to thrum against her while he made his last thrusts and even as he gushed into her. She screamed against the thrumming and then against the suddenness of his release and the intensity of her own. Until her scream became a gasp of astonishment, for her cries had frightened the doves in the eaves, who now took flight in a great cacophonous flapping of wings.

Difficult to pull himself off her, he thought. He’d like to stay just as he was-mouth against her nape, cock and belly against her arse. But he could feel her shoulders growing stiff; she needed to have her hands freed.

The knot he made was quite a bit tighter than necessary; the linen of his neckcloth would never be the same. It had been years since he’d had to make excuses to his valet for this sort of thing. Still, he wouldn’t have wanted to go to the village shop for drapery cord.

He used his teeth to loosen it.

“Ahhh, much, much better.” She rolled into his arms, laughing softly, kissing his throat, his ears, even his shoulder where the scar was.

“Your arms aren’t too terribly stiff?”

She laughed. “The left one has gone quite numb, but I don’t mind. All in all, you managed to get things quite… correct.”

He laughed too, and reached out to massage the poor arm. Agreeable to have succeeded so well, delightful to be appreciated. Interesting to remember her youthful fancies about a cruel governess. Even then she’d needed an occasional holiday from her willfulness, her intelligence, her everlasting fastidiousness of mind.

Too bad he hadn’t understood this better, back when it would have counted. Might have saved him some boring nights with paid companions who only pretended to enjoy it.

Her eyelids had grown heavy. He kissed them. He thought she’d sleep.

Certainly she wouldn’t remember what she’d proposed yesterday, about telling her his business in the district. He drew her closer to him.

She rolled over on her front, eyes wide and clear as though she’d slept ten hours, chin propped on her hands.

“Now,” she said, “tell me what you’ve been doing in the countryside.”

Oh, Lord.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

He was right. She didn’t like it at all.

By the end of their rather brief conversation, they’d moved to separate sides of the bed.

“I liked you a great deal better as a pretend pirate than I do as a pretend magistrate.”

Damn that everlasting fastidiousness of mind. She had an answer for everything.

The letters from Traynor? (“But of course an informant would lie and exaggerate,” she said. “Keeps him in business, after all.”)

Secret meetings? (“Well yes. If the government insists upon making it illegal to meet in public. Not to speak of disseminating and discussing certain literature.”)