To punctuate my words, I kiss her other nipple, the one I have yet to properly worship—closemouthed, almost chaste pecks first, then a graze with the moist inside of my lower lip, followed by leisurely licks and swirls of my tongue, before I draw the nubbin deep into my mouth and run my teeth lightly across it.
All the while my hand intensifies its wooing of her lower body. My fingers are hilt-deep inside her. My thumb teases and rubs one particularly exquisite point of sensitivity. Her breath catches, as does mine. It unnerves me how much I want—need—her pleasure to surge past that point of no return.
“How much do you hate it?” I whisper in her ear. “Shall I make it ten times worse? So terrible that you will shriek obscenities at the top of your lungs? Shall I kneel down before you and put my tongue where my hand is?”
I see it on her face—she shuts her eyes tight—before I feel it in her body: that ratcheting of tension, the tautening. She teeters on the edge for a long, long time before suddenly dissolving into quakes and shudders, the walls of her cunt contracting as if trying to pull my entire hand inside.
She does not shriek, but her mouth opens wide, her breaths ragged. Her face, her neck, and her breasts are suffused with an even lovelier shade of blush. My gaze drops down the expanse of her belly to the sight of my hand still lodged inside her. My knees nearly buckle. My body screams for release. And I long, even more than to rampage her, to pull her close and embrace her hard in relief and gratitude that yes, there is a part of her that is within my reach.
But I do no such thing. When she opens her eyes, still dazed, I hold up my hand and lick each finger. “Delicious,” I tell her. “Utterly delicious.”
WHEN I UNTIE HER FROM around the bedpost, she sags a little. But as I place my hand on her elbow to steady her, she jerks away, her gaze hard. “I can stand, thank you. Now where should I place myself next for your pleasure?”
“For your pleasure, you mean?” I counter, some of the happiness in my heart dissipating.
Her hair has fallen forward. She flicks the strands behind her shoulders, plainly exposing her breasts, as if to demonstrate how little she cares about being naked before me. “Please, Larkspear, you only ever think of yourself.”
I turn cold. There is no possible defense against such a charge. Again, I have only me to blame, having always presented myself as a frivolous prick before her, for fear that doing otherwise would allow her to guess my true feelings.
“Well, then, for my pleasure, madam, you will occupy this bed.”
Coolly she climbs up, turns around, and lies down. Her hair spreads out on the pillow, a delta of bright red locks. Her eyes are fixed on the ceiling, upon which a mural brims with fat cherubs and golden clouds.
I bring out the black silk sash again. The first time I bound her, she’d watched passively, almost uncomprehendingly, before becoming alert to my nefarious purposes. This time, however, as I fasten her wrists to one of the thick slats in the headboard, she flicks me a look of contempt—with a twinge of disquiet, as if she hadn’t expected that I would continue to bind her.
I could tell her the reason for the constraints: I’d rather her tied up than lying beneath me like a martyr, resisting by not resisting. But I keep it to myself.
Once she is secured, I strip off my waistcoat and pull my shirt over my head. My years of sports at school and university have built a musculature that has often been described as strapping. My bride turns her head and inspects me, her gaze giving no clue whether my physique passes muster.
With no warning she smiles. I feel a distinct chill in my marrow.
“Showing off, are we, Larkspear?”
“Is there a man who doesn’t take off his clothes on his wedding night?”
“You need not try to impress me, my lord,” she says, her tone as light as a soufflé. “I will never care for any aspect of you.”
It is a cold, long knife that twists in my kidney. She might not know exactly what I plan to do, but she means to deny me success in every endeavor.
Suddenly it is almost impossible to keep up the fa?ade of the blithe cad who just wants to fuck her for fun. I hold up another length of black silk sash. “Let’s make this a little more interesting, shall we? Besides, I do care so very much for my masculine modesty.”
Before she can offer any commentary, I tie the sash around her head, covering her eyes securely. And only then, when she cannot see my weakness, do I allow myself to brace my hand on the bedpost and breathe again.
The pain in my heart is an old one: the fear that my unrequited love will always remain unrequited. That whatever I do, I will not break through this wall of ice between us that I have helped build with my words and my actions all these years.
I stare at the blindfold itself, at the sharp contrast of dark, glossy silk against her skin. I stare at her slender throat, at the pulse I long to kiss. I stare at her gleaming shoulders, which I have stared at so often in the past, during dinners and soirées. In the firelight, she resembles a pagan sacrifice, a naked offering to the gods. My breaths grow more labored.