To Love Again - Bertrice Small [95]
“I … I had a husband,” Cailin told him.
“What happened to him, my beauty?” Aspar gently encouraged her.
“I do not know, my lord. I was betrayed into slavery,” she told him, and then went on to explain briefly. “Jovian says that Wulf was probably told I was dead,” she finished. Several tears slid down her cheeks. “I think he is correct. I just wish I knew what happened to our child. I am so afraid that Antonia may have sold it, too, if indeed it lived, but our child would be strong. I know it is alive!”
“You cannot change the past,” he counseled her wisely. “I understand that better than most, Cailin. If you will trust me, I will give you a happy present, and your future will be everything you could ever want.”
“It would seem, my lord, that I have no choice,” she replied. Trust, she thought, wryly. Why were men always asking you to trust them?
“Oh, my beauty,” he said with a smile, “we always have a choice. It is just sometimes our choices are not particularly pleasant. Your choices, however, are. You may love me now, or you may love me later.”
Cailin giggled. “Your choices, my lord, bear a great similarity to one and another.” She already liked this man. He was kind, and he had humor. These were not bad traits in one so powerful.
He smiled back at her. She excited him very much, rousing him in a way no woman really ever had, even his beloved Anna. It had been a long time since he had really desired a woman, although he had visited Villa Maxima quite regularly. He firmly believed that a man should not allow his juices to be pent up for too long. To do so foggled the brain and made a man irritable. He knew, however, looking at this beautiful girl before him, that he would never visit Villa Maxima again.
“I like it when you laugh, my beauty,” he said softly.
“I like it when you smile at me, my lord,” she responded, and then she kissed him on the lips, quickly, without passion, but sweetly.
In answer he cupped her head in one hand and began to kiss her face and throat with warm lips that sent tingles of pleasure throughout her entire being. She moaned low in the back of her throat, arching her body as his other hand began to knead at a breast and he pushed her back against the side of the pool. He ran his tongue over her lips, nibbled at her eyelids, tongued the column of her straining neck. His hand dug into the tightly bunched curls pinned atop her head, and then he groaned as if pained when her body pushed against his lower torso. Her arms slipped about his neck. Cailin, returning his kisses with fervor, realized she had no need to employ Casia’s tricks with Aspar. She felt his hungry arousal against her thigh, pushing, pressing with urgency.
“I want to wait,” he half sobbed, “but I cannot, Cailin!”
“Do not, my lord,” she encouraged him, tightening her hold about his neck as he slid his hands beneath her buttocks and sheathed himself within her passage, sighing with deep relief. He pumped her with long slow strokes of his weapon, and she felt him, hard but loving, within her body. She murmured low as he moved inside her over and over again until he could bear no more and his lover’s tribute exploded in hot bursts of passion that left him weak and Cailin shocked that she had felt nothing but his physical presence. She shuddered, horrified.
Aspar opened his eyes. “What is the matter?” he asked her. “You had no pleasure of it, did you, Cailin? Yet I think I do not displease you, my beauty, do I?” He was free of her body now, and they stood together facing each other, her back still against the bathing pool.
“Is there only pleasure with a husband?” she asked him, honestly confused, and needing