MELTING IN YOU

The door closed with a firm thud. Khushi heard it but only distantly. She was absorbed in the discovery that sometimes between leaving the hall with Arnav and arriving here in the lodge, the passage of mere moments, her heart had speeded up alarmingly and her breathing had become rapid little pants. She felt, and she thought also sounded, as though she had run miles.

He was moving around the room, closing the shutters although he left the oilcloths shades up so that the soft evening breeze wafted through the wooden slats. The fiery glow of embers in brazier illuminated his movements. She could not look away but stood, in the centre of the room, following him with her eyes. He was so graceful, amazingly so for his size, so perfectly formed, so utterly male as to bedazzle her.

Her throat was very dry. She had the sudden wish that she had quaffed a skin wine. Coward! Yet did instinct shimmer at the edge of her awareness, warning that this time would be different.

From the corner of his eye, Arnav saw her unease and smiled faintly. Ordinarily, he would not wish any woman to feel discomforted in his presence but she was the exception. His smile deepened, becoming wry. She was that in every possible way.

Arnav walked into the centre of the room where his wife stood. Deliberately, he came up behind her and set a hand on her shoulder. The startled little jump she gave was gratifying but merely a beginning. His long fingers brushed aside the silken fall of her hair, baring the slender line of her neck. He leaned closer, exhaling lightly, and smiled at the shiver that ran through her. Slowly, deliberately, he touched his mouth to the base of her throat, first on one side, then on the other. Her head fell back as she trembled.

"My Lord...?" Her voice was breathless and a little high. A good start.

"Hmmm?" She tasted of honeysuckle, whirls of piney smoke and her own elusive, purely female scent.

"It was so kind of you to let me ride Dawn. Have you had him and Night long? Are there other horses here not like them for surely none could be, but I wondered if perhaps you bred them? There is much to be said for that for good horses are always needed. I thought perhaps if you did already, I could help or if not, perhaps you would consider beginning. With such a fine stock it would only be matter of time before people from all over were clamoring for your horses. As you are much interested in trading_________"

Grinning, he turned her to face him. She was flushed and her eyes looked wide enough to swallow a man.

"We can discuss such matters at another time, wife. At the moment, all I am interested in is taking you to bed."

"I merely thought you might be tired," she said and raised winged brow. "After so long day and the journey itself."

His body, already powerfully aroused, tightened even further. Did she understand that she challenged his manhood? Probably not, for she was in many ways still an innocent. He smiled, but guardedly. "Such wifely concern but unnecessary, I assure you. The feast was to your liking? Running away are we?"

She looked up, met his gaze, and felt the tingle of surprise she always did at his height and size. His shoulders' blocked out the moonlight creeping through the slatted shutters, leaving only the glow of banked fire to illuminate his features. Cast between shadows, he looked carved from stone.

She tried to steel herself against it and could not, because his mouth was on her throat again, trailing shivers of delight, teasing and tormenting so enticingly. And his hands, his too-skillful hands, were easing her gown up her long, tapering legs, baring her skin to the cool night air.

"Trust me Love" and both together as she realised later when she surfaced just a little from the sea of pleasure into which he had cast her and, gasping, grabbed for air. A man as good as his words, he was that and more. So much more...

"Again, sweetheart," he murmured, his voice deep compelling, and raised his dark head from the cleft between her thighs. Panting softly, Khushi gazed down the length of herself and wondered whose body she inhabited. Who was this woman who trembled beneath him, whose breasts were swollen, her nipples almost painfully hard, and her legs spread shamelessly, her hips rising to the most daring caress? Who was she who's whole being focused on the rapidly coiling tension deep within her, drawing tighter and tighter until he bent his head once more, flicking her so lightly and she...

"Ahhh, nooo!"

Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling hard as she struggled against the paroxysms of pleasure that would not be dined. She had no chance against him and could scarcely remember why she would want one. He dazzled her sense with each touch, each look, and each word.

And he was smiling for he had won again, wresting from her the surrender she did not wish to give. Smiling as he moved up, pausing to drop kisses along her smooth belly, in the hollows beside her hip bones, the vale of her navel, lingering over her body, savoring her until finally having made her wait, he too her mouth with the deep possessive trust of his tongue.

Still, she tried to pull his hair out by the roots. He laughed then and grasped both her wrists, pressing them flat to either side of her head.

"My sweet little wife...so obedient...so compliant__"

"Damn you! You are unfair. Why will you not let me touch you?" as she ached to do, her need growing with each passing moment and unassuaged even by the pleasure he gave her again and again with such remorseless generosity.

He laughed once more and let go of her, rising to stand before the bed. Looking down at the delightfully wanton picture she presented, Arnav shook his head wryly. "Because I know my own limitations and do not care to reach them too quickly." Holding her gaze, he unabashedly pulled off his tunic and tossed it to one side. Satisfied that he had her attention, he made quick work of his sandals but did not immediately re-join her.
Instead, he went to the nearby table and poured ruby wine form a silver ewer. Filling two goblets of precious glass chased at the rims with gold, he carried them to the bed.

With the tip of her tongue Khushi moistened her lips as she stared at him. Truly, whatever deity was responsible for this man had overdone. From the massive sweep of his shoulders and chest down past narrow hips to thighs bulging with corded strength, he was magnificent. A splendour of nature that compiled her scrutiny as surely as her had her surrender. He moved with grace, utterly at ease with his nakedness and her gaze that trailed over him in helpless fascination. An arrow of hair running down his flat abdomen thickened at his groin.

"Should I be flattered?" he asked with a smile as he handed her one of the goblets. Re-joining her on the bed, he lay back against the pillows as though he had no thought other than to converse with her. Khushi swallowed fully half her wine without noticing. She felt flushed and uncertain, wanting to draw the covers up over herself but unable to reach them they were bunched at the foot of the bed without making her self-consciousness glaring obvious. His casual disregard of their mutual nudity and his blatant arousal made her all the more acutely aware of both. She struggled to match his composure even as she desperately sought some____any____distraction.

Her gaze settled suddenly on long white scar that bisected his left thigh, cutting clear across it in the arc descending blade that must have come very close to severing the limb entirely. Her breath caught. Hardly aware that she did so, she traced her finger along the scar, touching very lightly as though afraid she might somehow do him further damage. " What Happened?"

He shrugged. "A fight."

"This is killing wound yet you survived it and it seems to give you no trouble. How can that be?"

Arnav laughed, trying to ignore the effect her touch had on him. He was intensely aroused and unsure how much longer he could maintain his pose of calm control. Being stroked by her definitely didn't help. Neither did the tender concern he saw flash in eyes that not so very long ago had been spitting fire at him.

She was a contrary woman, capable of fierce pride and will yet also vulnerable and strong all at the same time. She could frustrate, bewilder, and mystify him. Something of her thoughts must have shown in her face for Arnav's mood changed suddenly. He took her wine goblet from her and set it with his own on the table beside the bed. She stiffened when he drew her into his arms but he ignored that and settled her head firmly against his shoulder.

"Watching you," he said, "is like watching swiftly changing weather move over the sea. One moment you seem tranquility itself, and the next you are roiled by storms."

Her voice was muffled against his skin, so close that he felt the movement of her lips. "Ever have I kept my feeling hidden, until now. Indeed, there were long stretches of time when I thought I had none." Her hair brushed against him like warm silk.

"I wonder," Arnav mused as he stroked her hair, "how long it will take you to realize that you are safe here."

She had no answer for him, nor did she particularly seek one. The shadows of her past cast into the present were no pleasant topic to contemplate, especially when far more enticing pursuit presented itself. It seemed he had forgotten his reluctance to be touched by her. But when she teasingly reached across his chest for the goblet hand to him, he pulled her back. So quickly that she had no chance to realize his intent, he turned them both, pressing her into the soft mattress as he loomed above her.

His teeth flashed white as he smiled. "Let us strike a bargain, wife."

"What sort of bargain?" She made no attempt to hide her suspicion.

"I will do as I please with no resistance from you, and when I am satisfied, you may do as you wish."

For just moment his even-handedness surprised her. Just a moment...

"Do you remember what I said about ignorance and innocence, my lord?"

"Very clearly, my lady."

"I have shucked off both. You toy with me. When you are satisfied, you will go to sleep and leave me to fume at having entered into so poor pact."

"You wound me, all the worse for wounding yourself. Do you not know you are temptress no man could resist?" He frowned at the sudden thought. "Although they had damn well better lest they be fodder for my sword." His big hand caught in her hair, drawing her head back, baring her throat to his caress. "Be advised, wife, I am a possessive man."

She took a breath, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and parted her legs, drawing him into the cradle of her hips. "Be advised, husband," she murmured close beside his ear just before she bit it lightly, "I am a possessive woman."

His big body tensed in her embrace, becoming suddenly urgent. She had scant moment to spare for thought of her daring at having said such a thing, for women were not supposed to place such demands upon their lords.

"I promise I will be only yours always" and he cupped her breasts, teasing his fingers over her nipples before suckling first one, then the other. The pleasure was, as always, almost too much so too was his fillings of her though he went gently, his face stained with the harshness of his control, entering her slowly but inexorably. She felt herself stretching to contain him as she had before it pained but there was sense of stunning completion that filled and filled her until all the empty places inside her seemed taken up by him.

Arnav raised himself on his powerful arms, gazing down at her and farther at them united. Though the night air was cool, sweat gleamed on his forehead, yet he moved within her hardly at all, holding himself almost entirely still save for the very tip of him that probed lightly, seeking then flexed against some hidden part of her being she had not known existed.

The world exploded and she with it. Without warning, she was sent hurtling over shattering peak. Scarcely had crest after crest of pleasure begun to ebb than he was moving within her, hard and deep, holding back nothing now but taking his due as man, lover, husband. Taking her with him as well as the wildness grew, rippling through her like waves vibrating ever outward form a center. Her head tossed back and forth helplessly on the pillow, her back arching as she strained to be even closer to him, take him even more deeply into herself, make them even more completely one.

"ARNAV...!"

No denial this but entreaty and demand together. She clung to him, her nails digging into his shoulders, as the world shattered yet again and took with it his formidable control. He claimed her mouth with the same rhythm as he drove within her, deeper, harder, faster...His orgasm seized him and went on and on, seemingly endless.;

Precap: Night is still on...😳😉