Chapter Six

Finally

Deep within the little wood, we found a grove where the trees had grown close, their branches knotting together to create a natural hollow.

I still didn't quite grasp what was happening as Nicolo lifted me by the thighs and I naturally wrapped my legs around his waist. Then he carried me into the hollow and laid me down while he checked the back of my head, as if doubting his own abilities.

"I'm fine," I said softly.

He didn't say anything, just nodded, as he turned his back to me and started to build a fire, something I hadn't even thought about even though the was now low in the sky and cloud cover was building. The air held a certain chill I hadn't noticed before and, as if on command, I felt a shiver rush down my body.

When the fire was crackling and the heat was billowing towards me, Nicolo turned back to face me. He smiled.

"You saved my life."

"And you saved mine."

"I'm the one who put you in danger in the first place."

That wasn't true, but I let it pass.

He shook his head. "I saw him closing in on you and… I've never felt anything like it." He breathed in deeply, as if there was something heavy on his mind. His gaze settled on his hands in front of him and as I watched, he stretched them out, splaying his fingers as he focused on them. "I didn't," he started but then shook his head again. When he looked up at me again, the violet of his eyes seemed to have deepened into a dark purple. Something weighty, heavy. "The idea of something happening to you, Charlotte..."

"I'm okay, Nicolo," I breathed, wondering if he would notice that I'd used his given name. He didn't even pause though, didn't hesitate.

"He could have killed you." He looked away then, as if he were battling with himself, as if he were trying to suppress his feelings. When he looked back at me, the emotion was thick in his eyes. "I don't remember ever feeling so… so afraid."

We were lying close in the coziness of the hollow, and his eyes were on mine—piercing and demanding. I was used to Nicolo looking at me, from our first encounter he'd found me attractive in a way that he did nothing to hide. But this was different. Those violet eyes, so alien and yet so warm and welcoming, didn't burn this evening. It wasn't lust, hunger or the fierce desire of the past that I read into his gaze, but something else entirely, and though I'd found the lust very flattering and I'd encouraged it, I liked this better. So much better. Because it felt real, sincere. It felt like he'd just opened himself to me—that he'd finally let me in.

I wondered if my eyes answered his in kind, as they always had in the past.

In an instant, he crossed the narrow gap between us and our lips met again, not locked together, but moving fast in a series of light, tender kisses, nervous and yet his touch felt so natural.

"Charlotte." It didn't seem to be a question, or a request for permission, he just liked to say my name, and I loved to hear it in his dark tones.

"Nicolo…"

The kisses became longer, languorous and sultry, as we dissolved into each other. I was only vaguely aware of his hands on me, seeking out the buckles and ties that sinched up my boyish squire's costume, because I was far more focused on seeking out the buckles and ties that stood between me and the body I'd glimpsed so many times but now wanted pressed against me.

There wasn't the furious urgency of desire that had on occasion existed between us before; we weren't racing, but eager. Clothes were quickly shed but we saw no reason to shed more than enough to allow easy access. Nicolo knelt back to draw my hose down my legs and cast them aside, leaving me in just my slip against the soft mossy ground.

He took a moment to look at me in the firelight and I looked back at him with the same sense of curiosity and adoration. I could feel it in my own eyes just as I could see it in his. We'd both wanted this and we'd wanted it for so long and now that the moment was finally here… well, it didn't even feel real.

I thought his eyes were both admiring and loving, and a little disbelieving, as if he couldn't quite accept what had been hidden under his loyal squire's clothes, what had been there all along, if only he'd thought to look. It wasn't the first time he'd seen me in some state of undress, of course, he'd even seen me naked, but it was the first time he'd looked at me like that.

I gasped and trembled as his hands touched the bare flesh of my legs, sliding up, featherlight, to push up the hem of my slip, baring my most intimate area to his wondrous gaze. For a moment he seemed almost transfixed by what he'd revealed, then his head lowered as if to pay homage.

And…

"Oh!"

With the touch of his lips and the sweet flick of his tongue, I lost control of my body and my voice. I'd spent much of my life in a dormitory shared with girls—maids or assassins—who will get up to things if left alone, either with each other or with boys smuggled in. I'd heard the extent of sounds that a woman will make in the throes of passion, but I'd never before made them myself.

By the time Nicolo lifted his head again, I felt as if the world had suddenly gotten a lot bigger, more brilliant, more colorful, more achingly wonderful than I could ever have previously imagined it to be. I already felt like a different woman. Nicolo leaned back in to give a tender kiss goodbye to a part of my body that would never be the same again, and the potentials of which I'd never previously grasped.

I'd already dragged off most of his clothing, giving me the delightful view of his broad chest, with its fascinating landscape of well-delineated muscle, but his hose remained. He now tugged off this final garment, and it was my turn to stare in wonder. At all of him—he was a marvel truly. I'd know he'd be a fine specimen of a man but seeing him now, in all his glory with the yellow-orange of the fire reflecting against him—it was as if some glorious statue had come to life. His arms, his chest, the definition in his abdomen, the swells of his muscular thighs and the beauty of the creature that hung between them.

I swallowed hard.

I'd known what was beneath his breeches of course—as ever, Mistress Aurore at the Guild had given us thorough instruction using detailed life-size models. Nicolo was larger than life-size, but that was only part of the difference. The reality, in hot, hard flesh, moving slightly as the blood surged through it or responding to whatever thoughts went through Nicolo's mind as he looked at me, that was something else. It was like a living thing with a mind of its own, when Nicolo moved, it followed but a beat later, as if held back by its own weight. It bounced before my eyes, buoyed up by its furious stiffness. I'd expected to fear it, but I loved it on sight.

"May I touch him?" I hadn't meant to call it ‘him' as if it was a separate person, but as soon as I'd said the word, it felt strangely right.

Nicolo smiled. "He practically insists."

He shuffled forward on his knees and I reached out eagerly. His manhood was hotter than I'd anticipated and I almost drew back my hand in shock when I felt it move in response to my touch, bouncing up as if it was happy to see me, like a friendly dog. Stupidly and with terrible timing, I remembered a dog owned by one of the masters at the Guild—it could be an aggressive, yappy thing with people it didn't know, but once you'd stroked it for a bit, you had its trust and you were its friend for life.

I had, of course, made the acquaintance of this strong, handsome gentleman before, when Nicolo and I had shared a bed during our pursuit of the traitor Duke Wylder, but to see it before my eyes now was something else entirely.

"Has he got a name?" I didn't mean to sound like a silly and inexperienced girl, but I couldn't help it. It was as if all my lessons, all my training on the anatomy of men, went right out the window. And I was just a girl holding the length of a man in her hands, a man she had dreamed about from the moment she'd met him.

Nicolo chuckled. "No."

Mistress Aurore had taught us about how to please a man by touch, and I'd come top of the class in ‘Manual Manipulation', but it all went out of my head now. All I wanted to do was explore, to touch every part of Nicolo, to know every inch of his manhood, to traverse my way from tip to root, stopping at every place of interest along the way. It was a long journey, and while I'd temporarily forgotten my training, the nameless ‘gentleman' in my hand seemed to enjoy my ministrations.

On an instinct, I suddenly leaned forward to kiss the head of my new friend and was rewarded with a sigh of pleasure from above me. Mistress Aurore had taught us to do that, yes, but I hadn't been thinking of my training; I just wanted to kiss him. The one thing that was stressed more than anything else in those intimate lessons was to be in the moment, to do what felt right. And this felt right.

So, I leaned in again and this time took Nicolo all the way into my mouth. He sighed once more and stroked my hair as I tried to give him some whisper of the pleasure he'd lavished upon me with his tongue. The novelty of the experience, the masculine taste of him, and the way he moved in my mouth, growing stronger all the time, made me tingle with private ecstasy.

But there was more I wanted. I'd tasted pleasure, now I wanted to dine.

I released my fine gentleman and lay back on the moss, looking up at Nicolo. He read my look and moved down to kiss me. I could feel the heated pressure of his weapon, moving slightly against the material of my slip, rubbing at my belly. I reached for him once more, urging him lower.

Nicolo broke the kiss and looked down at me. "Are you sure?" No doubt, he remembered I was still a maid.

"If you don't, then I think I might die," I answered very honestly.

Nicolo gave me another kiss. "Well, if it's going to save your life..."

I was putty in his expert hands, going where he moved me, opening myself for him instinctively and willingly. I felt the heat before the pressure, warming the sensitive skin between my legs. And then he pushed forward and I could feel myself spreading around him…

"OH!"

"Charlotte?"

I nodded to let him know I was okay and he pushed a little more.

"This might hurt," he whispered as he leaned down to kiss me. Meanwhile, his most expert fingers found the sensitive nub between my legs and he began rubbing that blissful little spot as I arched my neck back and moaned for him.

Another thrust and I felt a quick sting and almost yelped out but then the pain was gone and he was fully seated within me and before I could respond, he began pulling out again, only to thrust himself back inside me.

And by that point, I was already gone. Floating in a feeling no class had ever prepared me for.

***

I woke up in a different world.

Everything looked the same, but it couldn't be. Or maybe I was the one who had changed, so much so that the entire world had to change to fit me.

Or maybe that was all the silly rhetoric from a deflowered maid trying to put that first experience into perspective. ‘Deflowered' was an odd word, the wrong word it seemed to me. I couldn't speak to the experiences of other women, and I doubted many, if any, were lucky enough to have a man like Nicolo guide them into this new world, but I felt as if there were more flowers now, rather than less. I felt the proper word should have been that I'd been ‘flowered', for Nicolo had made me bloom.

More than once, in fact.

Actually, Nicolo seemed to have dedicated the night to introducing me to every type of pleasure my body could feel, from the raw and white hot to the gentle, unctuous, teased-out over long hours. Recognizing my inexperience, he'd given me a tour of what my body could do, a map of pleasure, which we then explored together in a way that rendered every lesson I'd had on the subject worthless. Completely and totally, utterly useless.

Like the gentleman he was, he put his own pleasure to one side and used his body to please mine, over and over, until satiety was far behind and I was overflowing with bliss, my body rippling with ecstasy that I couldn't stop. Only once I begged him to take his own pleasure did he reach his own bliss, and I was glad that, from the look on his face, it was worth the wait.

"Are you happy?" he'd whispered to me when we were cuddled up together in post-coital exhaustion.

‘Happy' was not the right word. It was more than I'd ever expected or dared to hope it would be. The night had surpassed my dreams and I truly thought I'd never be the same again.

But all I had said was. "Nicolo."

Which seemed to be enough.

Deftly, I lifted the cloak beneath which we slept and peered down. There he was; my ‘gentleman', lying across Nicolo's thigh. He was sleeping now, like his owner, my master, and they had both earned a rest. But even now, I could see the latent potency behind the slumber. Nicolo slept with the impression that he could spring to action at any moment, and I was sure that if I reached out, then my gentleman would likewise rise to the occasion.

But not right now. Even a girl exploring a new world for the first time has her limits.

I took one last look before lowering the cloak. To think what that thing had done to me, the sounds it had coaxed from me. And how it now looked so innocent.

Of course, I wasn't the first girl to whom Nicolo had introduced that fine gentleman, not by a long stretch. The reason Nicolo had been able to give me such a thorough grounding in every aspect of lovemaking and the reason he'd had the self-control to defer his own needs, was that he was very experienced. Countless women, of the court and the surrounding area, had experienced what I'd enjoyed last night.

And yet I also thought that they hadn't.

Perhaps it was a silly, childish hope, but I was sure that what other women had gotten from Nicolo was a purely bodily encounter. Which was certainly worth having, and I'm sure they were all the happier for it, but Nicolo and I had had something more. I was fairly sure we had, anyway. I knew I had (of course, I had nothing to compare it to, but that didn't change my mind). It was as if our bodies had connected in a way I hadn't expected—that we had bonded, become one.

I could only guess what thoughts lay behind his lidded eyes and I could only hope that what we'd shared had been as exquisite and special to him as it had been to me.

At the moment, it occurred to me that I'd never seen Nicolo sleep before. Of course, I hadn't; Nicolo never slept with another person. But here he was. Beside me and asleep. True, there were no alternative bedrooms in the woods, but he easily could have slept somewhere else, or not slept at all.

Didn't that mean something?

As I watched him, Nicolo shifted, and he opened his eyes. He smiled.

"Good morning, Charlotte."

"Good morning, Master."

His smile broadened to a grin. "Does it please you to call me that?"

"It does a bit—perhaps because it feels… comfortable."

Nicolo laughed. He seemed so easy and so relaxed, as if waking up naked with me was perfectly normal. He raised an arm, and I automatically snuggled up beside him, feeding off the heat of his body. There was no suggestion of anything naughty, just intimately close and warm. In its own way, this moment was every bit as exciting, as pleasurable and as mind-blowing as the night before.

Nicolo raised his head a few inches to look out of our hollow. "Is it me, or does this place look different this morning?"

I said nothing, but inside my heart sang.