Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

And if she hadn’t known to do it back then? Well, that would’ve put us in a pretty fix, the two of us being hardly more than children ourselves.

What would they have done so long ago if they’d conceived a child?

He’d always wondered what it might have looked like.

Presentable enough, he supposed. While as to the matter of its character? Willful and demanding, without a doubt. Disobedient? Yes, without question.

Stubborn.

But hardly stupid or insipid.

A challenge, rather.

He jumped at the sudden sharp tapping on his shoulder. Her voice came throaty, amused, close to his ear. “Have you lost interest, darling?”

Woolgathering, while he should at least have been unbuttoning himself. He laughed and made short work of it now. “What do you think?”

He’d show her whether he’d lost interest. “Come here.”

Rising, turning, and moving to straddle him-naturally, she’d chosen the very instant when the coach had begun to pitch about, tossing the both of them forward and bidding fair to bump the top of her head against the ceiling, which might be covered with padded velvet but which (as he knew from experience) could be bloody uncomfortable to crack one’s pate against.

He held her tightly against that possibility, as she clambered atop him and both of them struggled to maintain their balance.

No, she hadn’t bumped herself.

“Thanks,” she whispered, and kissed him again, her hands clasped tight about the back of his neck.

No more pitching about, it seemed; at least for the moment the road below them had smoothed itself out. He slipped his hands under her gown, cradling her arse, caressing her with his fingertips-stroking one careful finger along the crevice and then between her legs where she was just beginning to moisten. She closed her eyes. And when she opened them, her gaze had softened.

“Thanks again.” Her voice came more faintly now, rough, unsteady, her body swaying, trembling beneath his hands.

He touched her near the small of her back, just below where the stays were tied. Fascinating to feel the play of little muscles there as she lowered herself onto (no, he corrected himself, it was around him; no, onto him). Well it was both things, wasn’t it? Even if she would insist on being so bloody slow about it.

She liked to test herself, to see if she could reserve control-to take him at her own pace and as she would, inch by fraction of an inch, opening, softening, and then grasping, engulfing him. Well, almost engulfing him, for he’d continued to grow, to lengthen and thicken as she made her leisurely way downward.

Teasing him, ceasing to move for moments at a time, bracing herself on her knees, having her own subtle pleasures along the way. “Selfish,” he whispered once. And “you’ll pay for that later…” hissing at her, with knit brow and reddened face. She kissed him lightly. He caught her lower lip between his teeth; she could feel the pinch of it.

But it’s his own fault, she thought, for continuing to grow as he enters me…

Wasn’t there a mathematics for this sort of thing? Perhaps if she found the right equation, moved with some precise degree of slowness, they could go on forever, never…

So much for mathematics. Damn the vile coachman anyway; they’d hit another bump in the road and were suddenly thrust hard against one another. Not even air between their flesh-their sweating bellies and thighs slipped and slapped against each other-Lord, she hadn’t prepared herself to be filled so deep; skewered, she expected, was the ungraceful word she wanted. In up to the hilt, the sort of masculine metaphor that would doubtless appeal to him.

Indeed. For he was chuckling with pleasure, bouncing her on his knees with great gusto, thrusting up and into her and glorying, it seemed, in every bump and jolt, every rock-hell, every stone and pebble and rut in the road.

Wasn’t this supposed to be a well-sprung coach?

Ah, well, subtlety wasn’t everything. Finesse had its limits.

She giggled and gave him a few good bounces back.

He’d buried his face in the spaces above her clavicle. Something pricked his face-an errant pin, he supposed, at the neckline of her dress. He moved his tongue upward now, along the sinews of her neck; he could hear the pulse in her throat, sense the tremors in her belly. Feel all the glorious clutchings inside of her, where she held him so tightly and warmly and suited her movements so sweetly to his.

Followed his movements-there, is that really so difficult, Mary?

She’d thrown her head back, spine taut as a bow-string (Mary Artemis, goddess of the hunt- I think her name is beautiful, your lordship ), movements fast and fluid; he thought of silver sunlight on swiftly moving water, a few yellow leaves of autumn poplar swept dizzily along by the current. Lovely to watch her slip into her ecstasies, mouth loose and careless, loud cries and even a low laugh bubbling up from deep in her throat. Her face glowed; he licked the sweat from where it had pooled in the hollow below her plump lower lip.

But when had the brook become a rushing river? How did it come to exert such force, gathering him up, pulling him along? Her eyes keen, bright, happy, amused.

Catch me, Kit, take my hand. Too stubborn? Well, then I shall wait for you on the other side.

He swam, he leaped, shimmering like a brown trout in sunlight-his vision a rainbow of fragmented color, quick, bright, dazzled but safe at home within her, falling into her and out of consciousness for a moment, even as he clasped her into the circle of his arms and felt himself engirded by her thighs.

Thus intertwined, they must have slid down off the velvet seat cushions, almost to the wooden floor, jolted and tossed about by the wheels and the springs and the rocks and the road and…

“Kit, darling…”

“Ummmm…” There was a fierce cramp in his left leg, an ache somewhere below his left buttock, and some throbbing where his shoulder had been torn during battle.

“My love.” Her whisper somewhere between amused and urgent. “Do you suppose we could get back on the seat? Your bum’s very heavy on my fingers, and I’m quite bruised at my right hip…”

No serious harm done, they decided, each and both of them breathing deeply, testing and trying limbs and digits, groaning about bumps and bruises to the trunk, the bum and hips, and each of the extremities. He rotated his shoulder-anxiously at first and then with greater calm as the throbbing began to subside.

No blood except a tiny drop of it, she told him, on his exquisitely shaved cheek. “Let me lick it off. No, it didn’t stain your linen. But I do apologize, for being such a pincushion.”

“Don’t apologize. Quite fun in its way…”

“In its way, yes.”

“Exciting. Challenging.”

“An experience, one might call it.”

“Hardly subtle, though.”

A contemplative silence followed.

“There’s a bottle of wine in the basket, if you’d like any.”

“Thanks, not so early in the day.”

“Springwater?”

“Yes, that might be nice.”

Jessie had packed a couple of pewter plates and cups. “You don’t mind drinking it from the bottle, do you? I’m afraid I might spill it.”

“The bottle’s fine. Give it here.”