Delphine Dryden - Gossamer Wing

“We’re not going to die at sea.” She had intended to scoff, but managed only a hoarse little whisper instead. Pathetic .

“Probably not,” he admitted. “The ship seems sound and I don’t think the storm is all that bad. But the possibility certainly does lend weight to my position, and I’ll confess I’m that desperate for you.”

He didn’t sound desperate. He sounded serious, and full of fierce need that he had been keeping under control too long. She swallowed and tried to think again. The effort was not meeting with success.

“Charlotte.” A fraction of an inch closer every second. “If the storm hadn’t interfered, I would have kissed you. And more. I could have taken you over that table. I think you would have let me.”

She nodded, her eyes closing. Then she opened them again, trying to take it back, shaking her head violently. “No! I was only lightheaded from the implants coming out. I was about to—”

“Well now you’re just lying,” Dexter said flatly, “and I don’t have to tolerate that .”

He kissed her hard, because her attempt to dissemble had clearly made him impatient. If it had been softer, or he had approached more carefully, she might have had time and space to reconsider. With no time to think herself out of it, Charlotte just reacted and kissed back. And kissed, and kissed, until she wasn’t sure if she could ever do anything else. As if kissing Dexter were now her sole purpose.

It felt so good to feel . She realized as she raised her arms to his neck that except for the night of their engagement and their fleeting kiss at the wedding, it had been years since she’d touched another person beyond a polite clasp about the shoulders or a handshake upon greeting. She had forgotten what an embrace felt like, what a man felt like. Reginald, however, had never felt quite this substantial in her arms.

Reginald had been considerate and kind. He had been her very dear friend and he had wanted her in his bed, but not this desperately, not with this greedy urge to take and devour. Charlotte knew Dexter had that urge, because she had it herself and recognized it in him. It was something shared, created between them, and as ignoring it hadn’t exorcised it, they could only try to exhaust it.

It was Dexter who broke away first, sighing and staring. He still cupped her face in one hand. Brushing his thumb down her cheek, he traced her lips and blinked a few times before finally speaking.

“I’m trying to remind myself that you were hardly married before you were widowed. Three nights. I know this isn’t entirely new to you, but—”

“Behave as if it were.” She already suspected it would be vastly different from her short time with Reginald, in any case. “You’re new to me. This feels . . . new. Assume I know nothing. It won’t be far from the truth.”

He nodded and sat back on his heels, looking as though he were trying to solve a problem. Charlotte stared back, puzzled.

“Take off the gown.”

A simple suggestion. An unprecedented suggestion. She blushed to her toes and tried to think of a suitable response to it. Dexter’s eyes were dark, impossible to read in the inadequate light.

“You see?” Charlotte replied at last. “That’s something new.” Before she could make herself more anxious thinking it through, she reached for the hem of her night rail and tugged it up and over her head as quickly as she could. Like jumping into cold water all at once.

But this wasn’t cold. It burned, the heat of his eyes on her body. Charlotte knelt with her hands wrapped in the quilt on either side of her knees, resisting the urge to cover herself. Braving the onslaught of his attention.

“This is new?” Dexter sounded baffled. “You never took off—”

“No. Never.”

Reginald had treated her like a princess, or like his dearest friend. But he had been shy, hardly more experienced than Charlotte, and he had never seen her bare breasts. He had never bent his head to lick her uncovered nipples, as Dexter did now.

The molten heat of his mouth was almost too much to bear, and it awakened nerves throughout her body in sympathetic response until she felt almost dizzy with vitality. By the time he returned his lips to hers, Charlotte wasn’t sure whether it was the storm or her heart that raged so fiercely. She throbbed and ached, off-balance in a profound way. If she felt this horrible need for the first time now, what did that mean about who she was before ? This felt like an expression of her very soul. So what had her soul been doing all this time?

Dexter picked her up as though she weighed nothing, scooped her down flat to the bed and covered her naked body with his still-clad one, never breaking their kiss. She felt something not completely new, the hard evidence of his masculinity pressing against her in a rough approximation of the act they would soon be performing. She thought of the pain, the blood of that first time, and the gingerly way Reginald had taken her on the second night. Apologetically, almost. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought him shy or even squeamish. But he had clearly enjoyed the act itself once he had initiated it, and been absurdly grateful afterward. Quite endearingly so.

There was no apology in Dexter’s body, his lips, the broad shoulders that sheltered her, his hips pressing down in no uncertain terms to bring his erection firmly against her sex.

He seemed so practiced, so comfortable with his own body and with hers. He smoothed one big hand over her breast and rolled the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, chuckling when she gasped and arched up off the bed. When he kissed her neck, the sensitive skin behind her ear and the smooth muscle of her shoulder, Charlotte nearly wept with untapped desire.

She was almost angry at having never experienced this. At having never even known of it. The married women with their subtle innuendos and ribald remarks had never suggested this madness of wanting . Perhaps it was just she herself who was mad.

If so, Dexter shared her insanity. He seemed hungry as a beast, eager as a boy. And so knowing. Where did he learn this? Charlotte had to wonder, even as she told herself she didn’t want to know.

She didn’t want to know how many other women had felt his lips suckling their breasts, his bear paw hands on their hips in a fond caress, or sliding— oh! —between their thighs and teasing a path upward until those big, callused fingers met petal-soft slickness.

On the third night of her first marriage, Charlotte had thrilled to hot lips over the silk covering her bosom and gentle fingers teasing into her, easing a path first. Exploring her slowly, and the shy joy on Reginald’s face when she made those tentative motions against his hand was another thrill, one they had shared. It had been so sweet, and embarrassing and exciting all at once, learning each other like that. Working it all out together like a puzzle. She’d seen for the first time how a best friend could become something infinitely more precious, and she’d wanted to stay in that bunk with him forever. In a sense, of course, Reginald would be there forever. The memory tugged at her, wanting to distract, but was ultimately unable to withstand the power of the present.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Dexter whispered, “did you . . . enjoy yourself, those few times?”

“I suppose so.” She was thinking how very odd it was, to have a conversation with a man whose finger was sliding into one’s vagina. Then she ceased thinking as his thumb brushed higher and set every nerve in her body alight.

“No,” he said, and chuckled yet again. “I mean did he make you come? Have a climax,” he clarified when she looked at him curiously.