When the Duke Returns(90)

And lower she went.

He tasted like soap, and felt soft and hard at once. He said “No, Isidore,” seeming to wake up, so she put her lips around him.

He fell back then, surrendered, gave in. She played with him, teased him, loved him, until he suddenly surged from beneath her and flipped her over.

“Isidore,” he growled. There wasn’t a bit of control in his eyes, or his hands, or the way he was holding her hard, at the hips. She arched toward him, loving it. He lowered his head to her breast and she started to whimper, almost to scream, except he was—

It felt different this time. She felt softer, welcoming, wetter. The largeness that had felt intrusive earlier felt delicious. She gasped and instinctively tightened around him.

“Don’t ask me to stop,” he said, and the catch in his voice filled her with joy.

“Don’t stop,” she cried. “Don’t…”

He thrust forward, and again, again, again, until she started to give little screams every time. His eyes flared and he smothered her pants with the taste and the shape of his mouth. She thought he was going to stop, but he didn’t, he kept going, and going. Every stroke made the fire burn higher until she was breathing as hard as he was, moving with his body as if they were one.

Finally she tore her mouth away from his and flew free, shuddering against him, crying out and as if Simeon had waited for her, he surged forward, desperate, violent, free…

Then they sank together back onto the bed. It was different, it was all different. They were two bodies, and yet one body.

He rolled them to their sides. She slid her arm around him, still trembling a little, and didn’t say a word.

When a man like Simeon lost every vestige of restraint, it wasn’t ladylike to show exuberance.





Chapter Thirty-six




The Dower House

March 4, 1784

The next evening

“You see, Princess Ayabdar is an extraordinary woman. She is the granddaughter both of the empress and of Ras Michael. And she married Powussen, the Governor of Begemder. I had the privilege of spending quite a good deal of time with her.”

“Why did you do that?” Isidore asked suspiciously.

“Because I was appointed a royal magician.”

“What?”

“I demonstrated that I could break through three shields with a mere tallow candle.”

“How did you do that?

“I loaded my gun with powder and a farthing candle and it went through three leather shields. And I had a magic weapon.”

“Which was?”

“My virginity.” He laughed at the look on her face.

“And here I thought you were saving it just for me.”

“Virginity is a very useful thing. The fact that I was a virgin, attested to by my men, and more seriously, by a court magician who read it in my palm, meant that I was allowed to converse with the princess.”

Isidore snorted. “How many other virgins did she have speaking to her?”

Simeon leaned over and nipped her lip. “I was the only one. There are few grown men who can claim the status.”

“Who would know? I’ve never met anyone who announced it as freely as you do.”

“I had my palm read on entering the Court, and the court magician shrieked it aloud for all to hear.”

“Were you embarrassed?”

He shrugged a little.

Isidore nodded. “I would have been humiliated too, were I you. It was becoming embarrassing to be a virgin wife at twenty-three. You can’t imagine how many men thought that was a tragedy.”

“Yes, I can.”

“I was starting to think that I’d never make love.”

“There were days when I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer,” he confessed. “Instead of a lion, some poor woman would find me leaping out at her from behind a bush.”

Isidore started giggling. “But it turned you into a magician. Did you think about bedding this princess?”

“You couldn’t not think about it,” he said, a little smile curling his lips. “She is so utterly brilliant: she can speak five or six languages, and quote Hindu poetry for hours.”

Isidore decided she didn’t like the princess. “Hindu? But she’s Abyssinian.”

“She has sent men to India to bring poetry back, which she translates, preserving it for the pleasure of her people and their culture.”

“Admirable,” Isidore said. She forced herself to relax. The princess was back there in the sand somewhere, living in a hut. She could afford to be generous.

“And her palace,” Simeon said dreamily. “You can hardly imagine, Isidore. It’s made entirely of pink marble, and it looks over the banks of a huge rain plain. Sometimes the plain fills with white flowers, thousands and thousands of them. If there’s rain, the plain forms a great blue mirror to the sky.”