Page 40 of The Secret Word
A knock on the door was followed directly by Chris. Martha bobbed him a curtsey and left. Clem stared at him, hoping hertrepidation didn’t show. “The tea tray arrived. Would you like a cup?”
Chris seemed to be examining her. “Shall I pour you a port or a sherry, beloved? You seem anxious. A drink might help.”
“Is it that bad?” Clem blurted. “Do I need to be drunk to bear it?”
In two swift steps he was sitting on the sofa at her side, his arms around her. “What have people been telling you, you poor darling? It isn’t bad at all. In fact, I mean to make certain you find it wonderful. And, as I promised, if I do anything at all that you don’t like, you need only say.” He punctuated his sentences with kisses, and Clem could feel some of her worries melt away.
“What do you need to know to feel more confident?” Chris asked.
“What do you put inside me, and where does it go?” Clem demanded. “Is it your tongue, Chris? Because you have done that already, and I liked it. Am I with child now?”
Chris’s eyes widened. “No, kissing isn’t how we will make a baby,” he said. His frown was thoughtful. “Have you never seen one of those naked statues? People sometimes have them in their gardens.”
Clem shook her head.
“Or a dog or a stallion that is ready to mate?”
“Not that I know.” It was annoying that she was so ignorant. As if the whole world knew a secret and she was the only one left out. “Can’t you just tell me, Chris?”
“Give me your hand,” Chris said, and when she did, he placed it on his groin. He had something long and hard—a rod or a cylinder—under his banyan.
“What is that,” she asked. “Something in your pocket?”
“It is part of me,” he said. “Put your hand around it, Clem. Feel it.”
She gripped it, and Chris shuddered. She snatched her hand back. “Did I hurt you?”
He shook his head. “Not hurt, no. It’s just—Darling, when a man wants to be with a woman the way I want to be with you, that part of him grows hard, ready to enter her. When you touch it, it feels…” He shook his head as if he was lost for words, and settled for, “Amazing.”
“May I see?” Clem asked.
He showed her, untying the sash of his banyan and folding it back.
She frowned at the strange appendage. “I don’t understand. Where does it go?”
“There is a part of you that it is made to fit,” he assured her. Let me show you. I’ll just touch you with my hands, Clem, and won’t do more unless you wish it.”
“Kiss me some more first,” she said, bargaining for time. She was not afraid of kissing. She was, however, afraid of this mysterious part of him that was, supposedly, made to fit somewhere on her body. She’d never seen the like.
Fortunately, Chris did better than just kissing her. He encouraged her to kiss him back until she forgot to be nervous. He taught her how to use her lips and her tongue and to share an intimacy with her mouth that she’d never imagined. Nor had she thought it possible that doing so would cause a heat to rise within her and kindle glorious feelings in parts of her body she’d mostly ignored until this very moment.
And then he was touching those parts, murmuring praise because she was unaccountable wet down there, and apparently that was a good thing. When he introduced first one finger and then another inside her, they slid easily in the moisture. “This is where we shall join, beloved,” he told her, and she wondered if that part of him truly would fit.
But there was no room in her for fear, for her new husband filled her senses. With skilled fingers and mouth, with murmured words of love and praise, he introduced her to the pleasures of which her body was capable.
When at last he joined with her, placing that part of him at the entrance his fingers had so recently breeched, she was more than ready—and he was right. He and she were made to fit together. The pinch that Martha had predicted was so mild and over so quickly, she barely catalogued the moment before it was swept away by the rhythm they established between them.
It was the same rhythm he had been setting with his lips and fingers, but now it was all consuming, driven by the pumping of his hips and hers, and building her pleasure higher and higher until she screamed his name, desperate for…something.
“Let go, my love,” he murmured. “That’s it. Let your thoughts go and feel.Bewhat you feel.”
Was it fireworks, or falling off a cliff, or a crescendo of music, or a combination of all of those? She did not have the words for the peak of sensation that left her floating, boneless, and satiated.
As she stilled, Chris pumped twice more, then stiffened above her. She opened the eyes she did not remember closing, and saw his eyes screwed shut, his mouth twisting with effort as she felt a warm gush deep within. Had she not just been through the same experience, she would have thought he was in pain. And indeed, the pleasure was so intense that the need for it to culminate was a kind of pain.
He slumped upon her, then after a moment apologized, and moved to roll the pair of them onto their sides, still joined.
“I like it,” she protested. “I like your weight.”
