The Bourbon Thief(51)

The room was cool from the night wind, but he felt nothing but heat. Heat from his body, heat from hers. He kissed a path from her breast to her belly and lower and lower until his shoulders nudged her thighs wider. He kissed her stomach under her navel and above her curls.

“Levi?” His name sounded scared on her lips.

“This is what it is, Tamara,” he said firmly, but not coldly. He couldn’t blame her for being scared. “This is what happens, so better get used to it now.”

“I know.” Once again her eyes found the ceiling the most interesting part of the room. Not wanting to scare her, Levi sat up instead. He pushed her thighs wider and felt no resistance from her. He spread her inner lips apart and looked down at her, wanting to know what his wife looked like inside and out. He couldn’t see much in the low light of the lantern, but he could see she was wet finally. He pushed a finger into the hole and Tamara’s hips rose off the bed an inch, every muscle in her body seemingly tensing at once. But she had to get used to him inside her sooner or later and sooner suited him more than later. The heat inside her beckoned him, but he used only the one finger on her for the time being. He felt the softness around him, the inner folds ripening, swelling, opening up for him. He pushed up and right inside her and traced a straight line from the opening to the hard stop of her womb, where he could go no farther. As he moved in and out of her, her hips moved with him in slight pulses. Near the entrance he felt a tight knot of clenched muscle, and when he rubbed it, Tamara made a noise from the back of her throat—part whimper, part moan.

With his finger still in her and Tamara’s attention still focused on the ceiling, Levi lowered his head and kissed her curls again. This time she made no protest. She seemed beyond words now, lost to herself. She smelled like heat and tasted tart and he had to hold back from burying his tongue inside her. Without him telling her to do it, she pulled her knees to her chest, rested her heels on his back. She was open now, every part of her exposed to him. He licked the red flesh at her core, sucked her clitoris between his lips and massaged it with his tongue. Against his fingertip that knot inside her throbbed like a heart. He cherished the knowledge of it like a hidden treasure. No one on earth knew about it but him, not even Tamara.

Levi didn’t know if he should make her come yet or not. An orgasm might make her tighter even if it did make her wetter. He pushed a second finger into her and then a third without her protesting. His own body screamed at him to be inside her and the word it screamed was Hurry. His thighs felt like steel and his cock felt like iron. He was hard all over and she seemed as open and ready as any virgin could ever be. Rising up, he knelt between her thighs and draped her legs gently over his.

“Light on or light off?” he asked.

“Off,” Tamara said between breaths.

Levi had hoped that would be the answer. This was the beginning and everything worth beginning began in the dark. He positioned the tip between her folds right at the opening. As he leaned up and over her to blow out the wick, he went into her.

Tamara gasped. Levi blew the light out. The room went black.

At first he felt nothing but heat, burning heat, supple and soft, as Tamara enveloped him entirely. He heard a sound again like a strangled grunt and realized it came from him. He held her by her waist and pushed her down onto him as he pushed up and into her. He moved his hips in a roll, over and over, slowly, then even slower, not rushing or thrusting, not until she was totally open.

Levi didn’t know if his eyes were open or closed. In this blackness it didn’t matter. He didn’t need sight when he had touch. He could feel her all around him, a supple warm heat like melted candle wax. He needed to be closer to her. Carefully he eased his full weight onto her smaller body. He slid his hands under her, cupping her bottom to feel the muscles working.

“Like this,” he whispered into her ear. He used his hands to teach her how to move, how to raise and lower her hips, not up and down like a piston, but in a long slow sensual oval that allowed him to reach every inner inch of her. An apt pupil, soon she didn’t need his hands guiding her. He matched his rhythm to hers, pushing forward as she lifted to the apex, and withdrawing to the tip at the nadir. They were nothing but the coupling now. No other parts of them mattered. Tamara was ceaseless in her undulations, moving like she was made for him and this act that wasn’t an act but the opposite of an act. Masks removed. Pretenses stripped away. Roles abandoned in their abandon.

“Is it good, baby?” he asked her, needing to hear her say yes.

“This is what I wanted,” she said. “That day...on my birthday...this is what I wanted. Not—”

“Not what?”

“Nothing.” Tamara lifted her head and kissed his mouth. Immediately he forgot the question.

While they kissed and while he moved in her, he imagined what she felt and hoped it felt as good as he imagined it did—the penetration, the thickness of him spreading her wide over him, her burning lungs, her lips dry from hard breathing, her breasts full and heavy, nerves firing and dancing under her skin. He kissed a path down her neck and chest to her nipples because he knew she wanted them kissed and sucked without her telling him. And when he did, he felt her vagina clutching him in response. Her body was his body. His body was hers. He saw himself through her eyes—older, bigger, beautiful to her in that strange way girls found men beautiful, and knowing things she wanted to know. She envied him his freedom, that he was a man and could do anything he wanted to anyone he wanted, while she had to marry him to escape the prison of her life and the prison of the world’s expectations. In another world getting married was considered the epitome of settling down, behaving oneself, fulfilling one’s role as a woman in the world.