Victoria Janssen - The Moonlight Mistress

Their fingers touched as she accepted the map. “Do you have an eidetic memory?” she asked.

“For some things,” he said. “Why do you wish to know?”

“You needn’t snap,” she said. “I was only curious. It’s a useful talent.”

Pascal took her hand again, and kissed the back. “I am sorry. I tell no one.”

“I won’t tell anyone, either.” It was a strange thing to be embarrassed about, but he was entitled to his secrets. She did not reclaim her hand, and soon he clasped it to his thigh, interlacing their fingers. She asked, “Have you told anyone before?”

“My mother knew,” he said. “My father does not. He would tell the government.”

Enlightenment struck. “I see. You would make a most excellent spy.”

He smiled grimly. “I would make a terrible spy. I am not…diplomatic. Also, I doubt I could withstand torture, or die with patriotic dignity. I wish to do neither of those things. I am not a brave man. I want to live.”

Lucilla tightened her fingers on his. In a rush of boldness, she said, “Kiss me.”

Pascal studied her, then took off his hat. “Come and sit across my legs.”

“Striving for efficiency?” Lucilla knelt, leaned over and kissed his mouth, awkwardly and sideways. Thoughtfully, she teased the corner of his mouth with her tongue. “Mind your arm,” she said before climbing into his lap.

His uninjured arm closed around her so tightly that the boning of her bust bodice dug into her flesh. She hooked her arms around his neck and yanked his face to hers. The heat and slickness inside his mouth forcibly reminded her of how his cock had felt inside her, each slide hot and sweet. She shifted restlessly as their tongues darted and tangled. She dug her fingers into the back of his neck, then her nails, and he groaned and pulled away. “Off,” he said.

Disentangling herself reluctantly, Lucilla sighed. “Of course we must stop. We’re right beside the—”

She landed on her back in the fresh grass. “Road,” he said. “We’ll have to hurry.” He shoved up her skirt, having to unfasten both sides to do so. It wasn’t cut for such unconventional activity.

“Pascal!”

“You wear too many underthings,” he said, flipping up her petticoat. He swooped down and kissed her through her drawers.

She couldn’t get her breath. He hadn’t done this the night before. His fingers shaped and massaged her thighs while he slowly and deliberately rasped his mustache against the cambric covering her sex. The hair on her arms prickled. He nuzzled deeper, and hot velvety sensation flooded over her rear and belly. “Christ almighty,” she choked out.

He lifted his head. “Did I hurt you?”

She stared at him, dazed. She licked her swollen lips. “You don’t have to hurry too much,” she said. “If we drive through the night, this…this might be…”

“It will not be the last time.” Pascal bent and firmly kissed her thigh. “I will go to England and find you.”

“What if you’re killed?”

“What if you are? Don’t fret about that now. Have you no romance in your soul? You English,” he said, fumbling with the drawstring of her drawers.

“It isn’t romantic to be ravished beside a country lane?” Lucilla asked.

“Bees, flowers, I suppose so,” he admitted. “Touch me.”

She couldn’t reach much of him, so tangled her fingers in his hair. She didn’t let go even when lifting up so he could drag off her drawers and her awkward skirt. Her petticoat made for admirable protection from the grass, which she quickly forgot about as his rough cheek brushed her thigh. He spread the lips of her sex with his fingers, and for a moment the air on her wet skin was like a chill up her spine. Then his hot breath gusted over her, and his tongue pressed her open with a long lick. She arched into his mouth, her eyes fluttering closed. Delicately, he searched out each fold and traced its path while she twitched in pleasure. She’d never experienced such a light, slick, exact touch; it was as if he found thousands of nerves too hidden for fingers to discover, nerves that tingled and sparked deep inside her belly and sent electrical currents coursing through her arms and legs.

Her belly twisted, coiling her ever tighter. “More,” she said at last. “Please, Pascal. More.”

He shifted her leg, and to her shock lifted her knee over his shoulder. A brief awkwardness, and he did the same with her left leg, wrapping his injured arm lightly around her thigh. She felt splayed open, yet secure because he held her. She tightened her calves against his back and he sighed before bending to kiss her again, his tongue flicking inside her with unbearable intimacy and lapping at each fold of flesh as if it were her mouth. Her body throbbed ceaselessly, and she writhed in his grip, panting for breath. She moaned when he slipped the very tip of his finger into her opening, the sound a momentary relief of the pressure building inside her, until his finger slid deeper and she was forced to moan again. She couldn’t think. “Please,” she said. “I can’t—”

“Harder?” he asked.

“Yes—deeper—”

He slid two fingers inside her, massaging his thumb over her sensitized flesh and, after a moment, closing his mouth over her clitoris and sucking, a bolt of feeling that speared her to the ground. Her back arched; she both craved and winced away from the intensity of his fingers thrusting within her, his lips pulling at her. A brief climax shuddered over her skin without giving her relief. Her body continued to fight toward pleasure until she let her mouth open and screamed, short and satisfying.

Pascal froze and withdrew. “You aren’t hurt?”

Lucilla panted. “Needed air,” she said. “More.”

Lubriciously, his fingers slid into her again, reaching up and in, rotating on withdrawal. He laid his cheek against her thigh, watching his hand move, his expression intent upon her. Lucilla watched his face until she had to close her eyes from the intimacy of it. She laid her head back on the grass and drew deep breaths. The pressure inside built inexorably now, as if her first climax had been only the first road sign on the way to fulfillment. She could feel the tightening within her beginning again, from a different place than before. “It’s so good,” she said, then moaned when he touched his mouth to her again. “Pascal—”

He didn’t withdraw this time, suckling harder, thrusting faster with his fingers. Lucilla lost count of how many times her skin shuddered, flutters of climax teasing her toward some unknown peak. When she crested, at first she expected another small spasm, but it built and built, and then the heavens ripped open and golden sunlight spilled through her and over her, racking her with pleasure in its wake.

She fell into sleep almost immediately after, aware of Pascal kissing her mouth, covering her with her skirt and easing his jacket beneath her head, then no more. She woke, and it was dusk. A dog howled, then another and another, like a pack of foxhounds baying—she realized that was what had woken her. She blinked at the emerging stars, too few as yet to pick out the summer constellations. Pascal was watching her.

“You needed to sleep,” he said, his tone brusque. His finger gently traced the shape of her upper lip. “I don’t think we should stop again.”

Lucilla lifted her arm, which seemed to weigh ten stone, and closed her fingers over Pascal’s wrist. “I will miss you,” she said.

He leaned down and kissed her, a quick hard pressure. Then he took her hand and helped her to her feet. They didn’t speak as they stowed the remains of their meal, lit the motor’s lamps and set out again.

IN THE UNDERGROUND LABORATORY, TANNEKEN did not change form, so as she had expected, her wounds took three days to heal. She no longer regarded the pain. She refused to think of it. She had long ago given up imagining herself free; now she imagined the hot salt of the old man’s blood coursing across her tongue. She ran pattern after pattern in her head that might lead her to this goal.