Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

He began immediately on the hooks at the back of her green chambray gown.

“While as for tonight,” he told her, “I got the distinct impression that you wanted something else to put between your lips.”

“Wherever did you get that impression?”

“Can’t… imagine.”

“And you, Lord Kit? Do you crave… anything?” The gown had fallen to her feet. After all his practice in the cottage, the light stays she wore would hardly present much of a challenge.

“Now that you mention it…” He’d tossed the stays onto a chair, and then did the same with her petticoat. Her shift followed. She pulled his neckcloth open while he wriggled out of his coat and waistcoat.

His boots now. She’d grown so skillful at it, he thought, that she could give Belcher a pointer or two. Slipped the left one off while he caressed her nipples, growing hard and dark under his fingers.

“Your… ah, cravings… Kit?”

“Well, the gooseberries were tasty enough, and the… cream as well…” She’d gotten his pantaloons all unbuttoned, and had taken his cock in one hand, stroking it while she nudged a slow finger up and down the middle of his scrotum.

He’d intended to tell her that he craved something less sweet than gooseberries. Something spicier.

But he’d lost the words for it, moaning softly under her hands, gasping now as she let go of him. He stared most intently at the picture she made lying spread-eagle on the lumpy, saggy, altogether pathetic bed, her eyes on his cock, lips parted, back rounded to tilt her hips upward toward him.

Spicier, saltier than gooseberries.

He climbed atop her, head between her legs, hips suspended over her face.

Her lips still parted-he thought he could feel the warmth of her breath as he lowered himself, her fingertips nudging him into her mouth.

The insides of her cheeks smoother, slipperier than Devonshire cream, she pulled and sucked and gobbled at him as though he were more delicious than berries or wine or even a good strong English Stilton.

Her hands on his arse now, to bring him closer.

Ah.

She needed to breathe very slowly, she thought, and through her nose, to take in all his deepest, saltiest, sourest-his ripest smells as she moved her mouth and tongue and opened her throat to taste him.

While another part of her wanted to kick and buck and writhe under his mouth. Thank heaven he understood this, and thank heaven too for his hands cradling, soothing, holding her still below his lips and tongue-oh yes, for now she could feel the flicker of his tongue, bright wonder amidst dark labyrinth.

Confusion, befuddlement, sweet sea of swirling distraction: she couldn’t tell (didn’t know and obviously was in no position to say) whether she was moving or sensing, doing or done to, lover or beloved or both at once.

Was it possible to be both at once? Could one sort it out, separate the each from the both of them, find the beginning or skip ahead to the ending? While the snake swallowed its tail, beyond words or thought, where there was only the endless circle, the ring of pure light, the blank low sound of ohhhhh, words faded to humming, ecstatic spiral of sensation? After heroine and hero have pushed and pulled, teased and taunted, come and gone and come and come again, to this quick, bright, simultaneous and happy confusion, bonds loosed and boundaries no longer distinct? Where does one pick up the story again, the then and now, he and she, lover and beloved?

In the homeliest things.

In Mary’s slow realization, that time had passed and her feet were cold.

And moreover, that the bruise on her hip had begun to throb. More pleasantly, she knew that Kit was awake as well. For he was kissing her belly, in the places where she knew she’d never again be so lithe and taut as the girl who’d done splits like an opera dancer.

Awakened to time and sensation, and always, most humanly, to need, “Come here,” she whispered, “up with me on the pillow. Come close so we can warm each other.”

Drawing together beneath the covers, limbs entangled, torsos flush between threadbare, much-mended linen, he raised his head to blow out the candle while she drifted off on the happy knowledge that when she woke to find the story continuing, he’d be here to wish her good morrow.

He did wish her a good morrow, smiling down on her as she woke to the new day. Lovely to watch her open her eyes, so eager and happy that he could do no less than fall upon her in a long, passionate embrace.

Which soon enough revealed itself as a hearty and dutiful embrace, in truth with very little passion about it. He should have realized just how distracted his attention was by the looming prospect of meeting the person he’d been so angry at for so long. And by the dream of the seventy thousand men, only in last night’s version it had been Morrice whispering to him, saying something he couldn’t remember, and the men were bloodier, and Oliver had looked even taller up there on his podium.

None of which had done much for his performance in bed this morning. Too late to stop, though: his and then Mary’s movements became clumsy and disjunct, the shame of it all quite palpable, the failure ( his failure) a humiliation.

Should have known. Shouldn’t have been misled by yesterday’s easy pleasures-both times, and even before, during the morning meeting in the forest, her hands so mischievous, her whispered voice so randy. I expect you’ll manage quite splendidly. … Hell. Forget about England expecting every man to do his duty; it was a woman who really put the pressure on, and a wife was quite the worst. Was it any surprise that he’d wanted to prove himself this morning-to her, to himself, did it matter which?

Nothing to be done about it now.

And nothing to be done either about the communication he’d dispatched to her friend Morrice. Disgusting, the swill that had leaked out from his pen- wrongs on both sides, spineless womanish twaddle. Dutiful little soldier he’d been, to send the bloody thing off to the Misses Raddiford’s house before dinner, so he wouldn’t be tempted to tear it up. Today there’d be no escaping the consequences. Morrice had assuredly read it by now; perhaps he’d even sent his answer.

On the whole, Kit thought, it might be a relief if the man simply refused to see him. A relief or an additional humiliation. He tried to steel himself for either eventuality, even as he found himself plagued by Mary’s efforts at cheery reassurance. Salt in a wound; he scowled and grimaced until she grew equally glum and nasty over a late breakfast of watery coffee, bluish milk, and lumpy porridge, the glassware chipped and smudged in harsh, hazy daylight.

“Well, you needn’t mope about it,” she told him. “Nothing matters that much. To look at you, one would think the sun rose and set by it.”

Thanks, just what I wanted to hear. What a hypocrite she could be: if there existed another woman to whom such things mattered more, he, for one, had yet to make her acquaintance.

At which affectionate juncture, the landlord came by to inquire about how they’d found the bedchamber.

Excellent. Very fine indeed, we slept wondrously well.

Delightful couple we make, Kit thought, nodding and grinning like a pair of condescending monkeys. Though he couldn’t help thinking it a good thing, that acting the hypocrite to the landlord had stopped him from calling Mary a hypocrite to her face.