She could feel a fleeting smile, there against her forehead; it was followed by a fleeting kiss, on the tip of her nose. "Then come for me."

"But you have yet to fulfill your part of the bargain."

That stillness again. "What is that?"

"You have yet to make me beg and cry."

Without warning, the body pinning her to the bed shifted. The thick shaft that filled her to capacity drew out and up, so that it sawed between her swollen nether lips. The angle stretched her unbearably as he slowly thrust back inside her, and again withdrew, thrust harder, withdrew, sawing back and forth, taunting and teasing the engorged bud at the top until suddenly

Raw heat replaced all traces of discomfort.

"Robert, please!" She dug her fingernails into his back.

"Please what, Abigail? Tell me. Shall I do it harder? Faster?" Robert matched words with action. "Slower? Deeper?"

Gritting her teeth in frustration, she churned her hips in a most unladylike manner. "No, no,do not slow down, harder, Robert, please, do it harder! Faster! Harder, Robert,harder!"

The breath whooshed from her lungs as he plunged inside herhard, fast, deep; harder, faster, deeper, a fantasy more compelling than any she had ever imagined.

"There! There!" She clawed at his slippery back and pumping buttocks to keep the necessary friction, the necessary speed, even as she wondered if she would ever be able to walk again. "Do not stop, Robert,please don't stop!"

"Open wider, Abigail. Beg me some more, cry for it.Make me forget that I have killed, damn you. Give memore. Let me know you want more. Come for menownownow!"

Rage. Pain. Desire.

Abigail should have been frightenedshe could not tell if the man inside her was the colonel who commanded obedience or the lover who wanted forgetfulness or the soldier who killed out of duty. Nor did she think that Robert could tell who he was in that second. But suddenly the black rage of the storm split apart under the pistoning pressure and Abigail screamed Robert's name as he demonstrated that a man can indeed give a woman pleasure.

Robert! carried through the night.

Just as she fell back inside her body, he ground his pelvis into hers. As if to become a part of her. Or perhaps he was trying to bury his past inside her. Then a scalding jet of liquid spurted into her and a strangled cry erupted from Robert's throat.

Her books mentioned a man's ejaculation; they failed utterly at describing the feel of it filling a woman's body.

A fantasy man did not drip with sweat or fall bonelessly atop a woman's body in the aftermath of passion while his breath gusted inside her ear like a bellows and his satisfaction echoed in the wind.

A fantasy man did not take away loneliness as well as give pleasure.

Abigail rubbed her hands down his slippery spine. "Thank you, Robert."

chapter 3

Before Robert had joined the Army he had been Robbie; once in the Army he had been Coally. Private Coally; Corporal Coally; Sergeant Coally; Lieutenant Coally; Captain Coally;sir. After a lifetime of doing other people's killing he had become Colonel Coally. Outside of battle with the occasional whore or even during battle with the occasional camp follower, he had remained anonymous. No one save Abigail had ever used his christened name.

No woman had ever screamed for him when reaching her pleasure.

No woman had ever thanked him for fucking her.

Small, firm breasts heaved against his chest. Tiny little contractions continued to ripple about his spent manhood.

Abigail's pleasure.

She was a ladythere was no doubting her accent or her mannerisms.

She was a twenty-nine-year-old spinsterwho had willingly sacrificed her virginity.

She had accepted his pain and his passion and given him the gift of her body.

Without her he would not have survived the storm.

And he knew, just as surely as he knew that he should get up and spend the rest of the night in the privy, that he would hold her to her promise. By the end of the storm there would be nothing that he did not know about her.

Including the reason she lied about her genteel status and hid herself in an isolated cabin with nothing but erotic literature for companionship.

Carefully levering himself onto his elbows to take the brunt of his weight off her, he pressed his mouth to her ear.

A bittersweet surge of pleasure washed over him.

It was such an innocent thinga woman's ear.

He suddenly wanted to know that ear, to taste each nook and cranny, to make it a part of himself.

He wanted to make Abigail a part of himself.

Her ear was shell-shapeddeceptively cool and delicate on the outside, like Abigail herself. He mapped the interior, slowly thrust the tip of his tongue into the hot, narrow channel.

The ripples in her vagina increased.

Shifting his weight onto one elbow, he swept his right hand down the length of her side, then burrowed between her and the quilt to grasp a soft cheek. The motion pushed him deeper inside her. "Did I hurt you?"

"A little." Her voice was husky in the night, the prickly formality mellowed by passion. "I think you hurt me more with your fingers than you did with the… other."

"That's because I used my fingers to stretch your maidenhead." He found her lips, swollen lips, sensitive lips that instinctively softened against the pressure of his. Lips that only he had kissed.

Gently he circled inside her, his tongue and his manhood.

Then, "What does your fantasy man do after he takes your virginity?"

"He… shares his body with me."

Impossibly, Robert felt his manhood stirring to life. Deliberately he flexed inside her. "How does he share his body with you?"

Her breath escaped in a small gasp. Short nails carved half-moons into his back. "He lets me touch him. And kiss him. And taste him. Everything you did to me."

Whores had kissed Robert and whores had taken him into their mouths, all for money. No woman had ever expressed a desire to do so out of pure pleasure.

Gently he disengaged his body from hers and rolled over onto his back.

He wasn't prepared for a woman like Abigail. His fantasy woman took his passion and his body and gave him only her pleasure. She did not seek to know his body as he did hers.

The mattress dipped. Cool fingers tentatively rested on his stomach, trailed up his chest. "Do men have feelings in their…" She lightly swept his chest in a searching motion, found him, and was instantly distracted. "You are smaller than I am."

He stared up into the darkness. "I am a man."

"But just as hard. When you touched my nipple, I felt it deep inside my womb. What does it feel like when I touch yours?"

She ran the pad of her thumb over his nipple. Again. And again. And again.

White fire shot straight to his groin. He grabbed her hand and held it flat against his chest, breathing in the scent of her body, of his body, of sex.

And wondered why a woman like Abigail, a woman who was filled with clean, innocent passion would take into herself a man like him, a man who had killed and confessed he would kill again.

"Does your fantasy woman suckle you, Robert?"

"All I need, Abigail, is a woman to give herself to me." His voice was even, remote. "I don't fantasize about giving myself to a woman."

"But you would?"

Not before tonight, he thought bleakly.

"Your fantasies, Abigail. Whatever you want."

"Then I want to suckle you, Robert."

Robert's chest swelled at the feel of her hot, wet mouth rooting through the coarse mat of his hair for his nipple. He was inexplicably overcome by a surge of vulnerability.

Women gave their breasts into the care of a man that he might nurture off her gentleness.

Men who killed did not nurture.

Men who killed had nothing to offer a lady.

Closing his eyes, he curved his hands around her head.

And realized that her hair was still caught up in the ugly bun that told the world she was a staid spinster, while inside her burned the same needs and wants that burned inside him, she caught up in a society that denied her womanhood, he caught up in a career that he had chosen when he was too young to know better.

He found a hairpinpulled it out.

The wet heat nuzzling his chest was abruptly replaced by cool air. A hand reached upgrabbed his that was searching for another pin.

"What are you doing?"

"Unveiling you."

Without warning Abigail scrambled up, mattress dipping, bed creaking. She gasped with dismay.

He opened his eyes, instantly alert, a soldier prepared for action.

"What is it?" he asked sharply.

"Nothing."

He reached outfound her knee. She was kneeling on the bed.

"Our bargain, Abigail." He tightened his grip. "Talk to me."

"It is just…" He could see her, a dark silhouette, head thrown back toward the black ceiling. "Oh, for heaven's sake, it is nothing, really. When I sat up, something…you… came out of me."

Robert's manhood leapt to full life.

Sitting up, he followed the line of Abigail's knee, soft and slender, growing softer, softer… Their fingers met on her thigh.

A cool, viscous fluid was smeared on it. Her fingertips rested on the outer parameters.

"My sperm." His voice was flat in the darkness.

"I know." Her voice sounded more like she was nine going on ten instead of twenty-nine going on thirty.

"There's still some inside you." He linked his fingers between hers and guided their hands between her legs. "Feel. Me. And you."

She gasped when he brought their joined fingers up to her hot, swollen lips.

There was more of him. And her.

The essence of a man and a woman.

He had never felt himself on a woman before. Had never felt himself inside her.

The combined sensation of the slick viscous fluids warmed by her body struck him with the force of a bullet.

When she would have jerked her hand away, he forced their fingers between her swollen, passion-slick lips, pushed upward until two fingers slid inside her flesh, one his and one hers.

"I never knew two people could be this close." Her voice was a sough of breath.

"Neither did I," he murmured hoarsely. "Why did you pull away from me when I started taking down your hair?"

"It gets tangled."

Robert recognized a lie when he heard one.

Another secret to unravel, another obstacle to overcome.

"I'll brush it for you tomorrow. Spread your legs wider."

Clumsily she acceded; her body dipped lower to the mattress, forcing their fingers further up inside her.

The muscles inside her vagina rippled. "Robert."

"What?"

"Did you really peep through the window?"

"You didn't open the door when I knocked."

She clenched her body, forcibly trapping their fingers inside her. "I was reading."

He wondered what sex act she had been reading about to put the sublime expression on her face that he had witnessed when looking through the window. "So I saw."

"What did you think I was reading?"

"Devotional literature."

He waited for her next question, could feel it trembling on the air.

When it didn't come, he answered her anyway. "I did not take you because I thought you were wanton, Abigail. I took you because I needed you. And you were right. What we shared tonight is not dirty."

The huskiness in her voice deepened. "Robert."

"What?"

"Lean forward."

"Why?"

"Because I want to kiss you."

Heart lurching inside his chesthe who killed without blinking an eyehe leaned forward, made her lean forward, too, for the pleasure of feeling her body adjust around their fingers.

Her lips missed his at first. She raised a cool hand and found his jaw, aligned her lips accordingly.

It was a virgin kiss.

A first kiss.

He let her learn his lips while inside her he could feel the myriad little convulsions the two of their fingers were causing. And then, suddenly, the wet heat that inundated his fingers covered his lips.

Abigail learned quickly. She rimmed the seam of his mouth with her tongue. Immediately he opened for her, allowed her to enter him as he entered her.

But he wanted more.

More of the storm.

More of Abigail.

He sucked her tongue more deeply inside him, then he suckled it as he had her clitoris and her nipple, suckled until the tiny ripples around their fingers became one large contraction, and with a little gasp she came into his mouth.

Gently he released her tongue and her hand. And found the remaining hairpins in her hair. They fell to the plank floor like a rain of firing pins. Carefully searching for more, but finding none, he plunged both hands into her hair and worked it loose until it hung wild and free down her back, a curtain of living silk.