Page 29 of The Butterfly
“Why?” she managed, trying to steady her voice, to cease blubbering like a child. “Did he do this to you because of me?”
She bent her head and kissed one of the marks, one just below the nape of his neck. He shivered at the touch of her lips, but did not pull away, allowing her to kiss away his hurts the way he had always done for her.
“No,” he said after a while. “He did it because I got too big for him to use his fists. I was too strong. I fought back. The only way for him to keep me in my place was to use the whip.”
She wrapped an arm around him, pressing her body against him from behind. She could never be strong enough to shelter him in her embrace the way he could her, but damn it, she could try.
One of his hands rested atop hers, his fingers interlacing with her own.
“Dinnae cry for me, Livvie. It’s all right.”
“It isn’t,” she insisted, kissing him, wetting him with tears that refused to abate. “It is not all right that you have suffered this way and I could do nothing to protect you. I would have, you know. If I’d known … if you’d told me …”
“My da is a mean drunk who hates himself, so he hates me, too, ’cause I’m a part of him. There’s nothing ye could do about that.”
She propped herself up on her elbow and gazed down at him, trying to urge him to turn back to her. “Niall, look at me. Please.”
He hesitated, as if ashamed to look her in the eye now that he had allowed her to see his closely guarded secrets, his deeply rooted pain.
“Niall, please,” she begged.
At last, he turned onto his back, staring up at her with as vulnerable an expression as she’d ever seen upon his face. He looked as if he waited for her to reject him, to tell him he was ugly, after all. Instead, she smiled through her tears and stroked his cheek, then his mouth.
“All knights carry the scars of their many battles. In fact, the more scars, the more feared the knight, because they are evidence of what he has survived. And, to me, they only make you more beautiful. My perfect knight …”
She bent her head to kiss his lips, gently at first, then with mounting urgency when he began to respond. His hands came against her back, holding her close, one of them sliding up and into her hair as he returned the kiss.
“Livvie,” he whispered against her mouth. “Ye cannae keep sayin’ things like that, or I’ll get it in my head that I can keep ye.”
The reminder that this could only be temporary nearly made her tears begin anew. But Olivia did not want to cry any more. She did not want sadness to rob them of what this night had given. So, she did the only other thing she knew to do.
She came on top of him, sitting astride his hips. “Show me what to do to please you.”
The simmering embers of desire in his dark eyes flared to life once more as he gazed down to where she straddled him. Wordlessly, he grasped her hips and shifted her so that he could access the placket of his trousers. Her mouth went dry as he began unbuttoning them, slowly revealing the impossibly large organ between his thighs. The thing had to be as thick as her wrist, which did not seem like much given her small stature. Even so, it appeared gargantuan now when she thought of it breeching her maidenhead, taking up space within her body. That was the one and only part of intercourse she’d ever understood, having witnessed animals mating enough times to realize that humans were not much different. How, then, could she have ever taken Niall’s cock inside her body? For a moment, she found herself almost grateful he’d decidednotto ruin her. Surely, he’d kill her with it.
Her wandering thoughts faded into nothing when he took hold of his shaft with one hand and gave it a stroke. Curiosity overwhelmed her then, as she watched him do it again, then again. The organ swelled even more—if such a thing were possible—the flared head glistening with a substance like what slicked the insides of her thighs.
Remembering what he’d just done to her, she lowered her head on impulse, flicking her tongue at the tip of him—producing even more of the wetness and a rough groan from Niall. She sneaked a tentative glance at him and found he’d made the sound out of pleasure. He was watching her, his chest heaving with every breath, his jaw tight.
“Again,” he ground out.
He stroked himself at the same time she lapped at him, the two of them moaning in harmony. He tasted wildly masculine, salty and so … well, so much the way she’d thought Niall would taste. She liked it.
He took one of her hands and wrapped it around him so it rested just above his. His free hand came over hers, and he began to show her how to touch him, how to pump his cock with her hand the way he’d just done himself. Only, when she began to do it, he gasped and groaned, his eyes sliding closed and his lips parting in an expression of pure rapture. Apparently, her touch affected him the same way his had her.
“Christ, yer hands … ye’ve the softest hands I ever felt.”
He urged her other hand to take hold of him, still using one of his to guide her, to show her how tight to hold him, moving her slowly, then more swiftly. The telltale flutters of lust began between her legs again, her own body responding to his pleasure as if he touched her, kissed her. But she would not have wanted him to just then, enjoying the sight of him beneath her, the big, strong knight reduced to a panting, moaning animal by only the touch of her hands.
She licked him, then enveloped his head inside her mouth, and his hips bucked, urging more of him between her lips.
“Shite,” he mumbled, his free hand tangling in her hair, holding her at just the right angle to thrust in and out of her mouth. “Just like that, Livvie. Christ … yer sweet little mouth feels so good.”
Her nipples tightened and tingled, her insides melting into liquid fire as he went on groaning and writhing beneath her. The things he whispered to her set her face aflame, but also emboldened her, hinting at what he liked, at what he needed to reach that rapturous height he had taken her to twice already. She suddenly wanted it for him more than anything, as well as for herself. She wanted to know what it sounded like to hear him climax, to taste his culmination on her tongue. So, she applied herself even more, tightening her grip on his cock, sucking more of him into her mouth, as much of him as she could take.
He spent with a hoarse shout, his grip on her hair growing almost painful as he thrust up into her mouth one last time before flooding her palate with the taste of his seed. She struggled to contain it all, the thick, salty fluid flooding from him and down her throat almost too fast for her to keep up.
Once she felt certain he was finished, his cock shrinking to a less intimidating size, she released him from her mouth and collapsed against him. He gathered her close, still trembling with the aftershocks of his finish, his breath harsh against her hair. She nuzzled his chest, enjoying the tickle of his soft, downy hair against her cheek, the pleasant mingling of their two scents becoming one, the security of his arms around her.
