The Soldier's Dark Secret

Celeste lay shattered by a climax so intense she thought she might faint, and at the same time, she thought she might fragment into a thousand pieces. She could hear herself moaning, panting, pleading, and she could do nothing, wanted to do nothing, save yield. She was utterly sated, and yet at the same time, even as the pulsing eased, her body was already demanding a different, more primal satisfaction.

Instinctively she pulled at Jack’s shoulders, her back arching under him. He covered her body, rolling her on top of him and kissing her. He tasted of her. The solid ridge of his erection nudged between her legs. His hands tugged at the strings of her corsets. When they were loose enough, she flung them off. With a sigh of satisfaction, he pushed down the top of her shift to reveal her breasts, rolling her on to her back again to kiss them, lick them, taking her nipples into his mouth, sucking, nibbling, sucking.

She could barely think. She was aflame, burning with the need to have him inside her, wantonly, shamelessly egging him on with her hips and her hands and her mouth. The muscles of his back rippled under the flat of her palms. She slid her hands down, inside the waistband of his breeches. His buttocks tautened. He let her go only to rip the fastenings of his breeches open and cast them off. He sat astride her naked body, only for the second time, and for the first time—gloriously naked and thickly erect. She reached out to touch his silky hardness, forgetting all her doubts and all his too, in the need which consumed them.

His kiss changed. Deeper. Slower. He touched her slowly too, his hands on her shoulders, her back, feathering down her spine, then back to her breasts, cupping, stroking, slowly but surely making her tense, tighten, throb, on the brink of another climax, and also, rather curiously, on the brink of tears. She touched him. The hollow in his shoulder where the musket ball had hit him. The hard wall of his chest. His nipples. The curve of his rib cage. The dip of his belly. She curled her fingers around his shaft. One slow stroke. He inhaled sharply. Another.

His hand covered hers. He shook his head. ‘Need to— Not that. Too much.’ He kissed her again, and rolled her under him, masking her body with his. ‘Sure?’ he asked.

For answer she wrapped her legs around him and kissed him hard. ‘You will be careful, Jack?’

‘Of course. I promise. Of course.’

The first thrust was tentative, parting her carefully. The next was surer. She clenched around him, clinging on to her self-control, not wanting to let go yet, though it was already building. Jack’s breathing was laboured. The sinews on his arms stood out like ropes. He thrust again, more confidently, higher, deeper. A harsh groan escaped him. She clung to him as he lifted himself, then cried out as he thrust again, and she met him this time.

She sensed his straining for control. She clung desperately to hers. Not yet, not yet, not yet. But their bodies found a rhythm of their own that could not be resisted, thrusting and arching, harder and faster, higher, tighter. He slid his hands under her bottom, tilting her up, and she cried out as she opened up, as he pushed inside her, feeling the waves of her climax take her, digging her heels into his buttocks, her fingers into his back, saying his name urgently over and over as she surrendered, sensing him thicken as she came, another thrust, another that she met wildly, before he withdrew at the last second and his own climax took him, dragging a guttural cry from him as he shuddered, pulsed, shuddered.

The tears might have been sweat on his cheeks. She kissed them away. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against him. Their skin clung, heat and sweat, rough and smooth. Her own tears tracked unnoticed. She was in another world, floating with bliss, mindless, and at the same time, every nerve was on fire.

But as the final waves of her climax ebbed, the fear was already making its insidious way to the front of her mind. Dare not, Jack had said, because he was afraid he would find it difficult to walk away. He had not considered that she might have the same difficulty, but she was already fairly certain that she would.

She had never been in love. She had always thought herself indifferent to love, or even incapable. But then, she’d thought herself indifferent to so many things that had subsequently proved not to be the case. She could see it, sense it, waiting to pounce on her. If she turned her back it would creep up on her. She felt as if she were standing on the top of one of Cassis’s white limestone calanques and looking down at the turquoise sparkle of the sea. Tempting. Glittering. Lethal.