Thirty-Three

HE gave her time to clean up and get back to looking presentable before they went down to the grounds to be with his men. Heads and headdresses bumped again. The Baron told her to do everything she was told to do, and that’s what she did, not minding any of them at all. She did not believe the books he had gifted her with had been coincidences, since the characters were royals and the setting was in the palace court. She believed he carefully chose them so she could learn from them while he was away with the duke and the knights.
She gained a few lessons from it about courtly manners, and had even practiced the curtsies and memorized titles and what to address each one, asking Odette for guidance if she looked like she was doing it the right way. But using them when the person wasn’t there as opposed to them standing right in front of her, she found, was very different, for she was so fearful of making a mistake when faced with the titled. So, she listened and observe others before venturing, and only if she had to.
Fabian’s friends were friendly. After the introduction, they gave her curious looks, but they were most solicitous.
Then Lady Veronique Moranville suddenly appeared before her, while Fabian had his back turned, as he was talking to other lords.
“My Lady,” she said, startled.
“Well, shall I call you ‘my Lady’, to humor the Baron?” the woman asked in an icy whisper, throwing a glance at the Baron’s back.
She froze, arrested by the pure hostility in the other woman’s face and voice.
But the look on her face suddenly became pitying as she whispered. “You only have a few moments to bask in your Lord’s glory, my lady. Enjoy it.”
And then, she plastered a lovely smile on her face and had stepped aside to greet the Baron, who had by then turned as if he knew suddenly that something was amiss.
“My Lord.” Lady Veronique curtsied gracefully. “At long last, I caught up with you. You are a very busy man,” she purred, then pouted her red lips.
The Baron smiled, but was Adalene the only one who could see that it did not reach his eyes? “My Lady, your loveliness enchanted the great hall. I did not think you needed my company when you have so much at your disposal.”
She tried to hide her face. The Baron—the Fabian she knew—never talked like that when he was in his own environment. He was always teasing, always calm, and always kind. But there was an edge of something displeasing in his tone right now, and she couldn’t imagine why, because all he’d said was true.
Lady Veronique inserted herself expertly between them and hooked her hand in the Baron’s arm. “Well, I need to talk to you about a matter of importance and it involved my cousin, the Duke. Come, my Lord. He asked me to bring you to his side as soon as I find you.”
Fabian was frowning, but he turned to his men and motioned to them with a look to stay near her. Three of them stepped nearer and surrounded her right away, with Odette and Olivie moved closer a little behind her.
“I will not be long, ma bichette,” he told her in a voice gentler and less formal. “But if you get tired, we can meet up at the rooms.”
She stifled a gasp.
It was a declaration that she and the Baron would be together later in the chambers, and it came from the Baron himself for all the others near them to hear! He did not whisper, and those around them heard him.
Lady Veronique’s face blazed angrily, and she almost stumbled when the Baron turned again to resume their leaving after pulling his arm from her, and they walked away without touching.
But not before the Lady threw a threatening look her way.
*How many days more do I have?* Adalene asked herself as she watched them leave with a heavy heart.

ADALENE thought she was dreaming.
She was standing by the river at the back of the cabin in the woods that was of the old happy crow Theresa. The sun was shining, and it was almost blinding her eyes, but the warmth of it felt good to her skin and her heart. She smiled as she heard the Baron whisper near her ear.
“My Adalene...”
She turned and did not even hear him approach, but his arms suddenly chained her, her mouth claimed by a searing kiss. She wasn’t in the river but in her bed, where he was hauling her up. Adalene opened sleepy eyes to peer at him as Fabian carried her through the hallway to his bedchamber.
“Fabian?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry it took me so long. Why didn’t you sleep in my bed, *ma bichette*?”
She blinked at him. “I didn’t know when you’ll be back. How late is it?”
“Almost morning,” he said. He opened his door and walked straight to the bed and deposited her in the middle of it before he stripped himself of his clothes.
She became more alert as more and more of his skin was exposed. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.
“Yes. I need you.”
And he was in the bed, and her nightgown was being hauled off her body before he was pinning her there on the mattress with his hand on her stomach while he pulled her undergarment off her thighs, then her legs. There was a marked tension on his face as he did so.
“My Lord...?” she whispered.
But he had opened her thighs, was lowering his head to hers. She sucked in her breath at the first raspy stroke of his tongue against her folds, and opened her mouth in a breathless whisper of his name as its tip found her tiny, sensitive bud to drill her of its attention. The drapes were still closed, but a few rays of soft morning sunlight have escaped through a tiny slit on the edges. She remembered the edge of the river where he first did this to her. Then she forgot everything else as fingers slid slickly inside her pussy’s slit, and it gently explored her.
His lovemaking was gentler than his initial mood. Over and over, his tongue swept at her, his mouth plundering into every crevice. His fingers played inside her until she moaned as the first waves of pleasure hit her. Her back left the bed as she writhed.
From there, his lips kissed his way up her navel, to her breasts, where he lovingly suckled at one nipple and kneaded the other breast. Powerful thighs pushed at her knees to open her more to him.
And then his hard-as-a-rock cock pierced her like a sword to skin, to the hilt.
She moaned again. He was always big, and as aroused as he was, always as hard as a pulsing stone, always pushing its way inside her in a rough penetration that he couldn’t seem to control, stretching her so tightly that if she was not always wet when he took her, she would bleed.
She still felt so tight, but she cried not because of pain, but of intense pleasure. As soon as he moved, tension gripped at her insides, drawing the forces of the next orgasm that would push her over the edge the second time.
“Fabian...!” she moaned, her hips already moving against him.
“You always feel so tight, *ma bichette*. And always so wet and ready for me,” he whispered, as if he was in pain. “Do you know how good it was for me to be inside you like this...? And I’ve been thinking of this the whole night... oohhhh...”
“Don’t stop, Fabian!”
“No sword or arrow can make me stop!” he cried harshly. He was pumping fiercely now, as if he knew she was almost there again.
And then one hard, deep thrust catapulted her into the sky, and whiteness and heat covered the inside of her eyelids as the powerful orgasm that shook her body carried her away.
He groaned harshly as he rode her climax, and then he, too, tensed and his body shuddered powerfully. Her velvety inner muscles clenched at him while his seed pulsed hotly into her.
And then he collapsed on top of her.
And they lay there together as their bodies cooled. He raised his head to kiss her lips tenderly, again and again while he remained inside her. He wasn’t pulling out.
“You haven’t slept?” she asked him as she held her to him, as close as possible.
He shook his head, “No. Stay here. Stay with me while I sleep,” he said.
“Hmm,” she whispered back. Her body still buzzing with the powerful lovemaking just spent. She closed her eyes and waited for him to sleep.
But he remained hard inside her.
“Fabian,” she moaned, laughing. “I can’t sleep with you still twitching inside me.”
“But it’s not over,” he said. And he moved again, catching her breath when she gasped within his sweet kiss.
“Is it always like this?” she whispered as soon as he let her lips go. “Ooh, Fabian!”
“No... but I can’t always seem to have enough of you.”
“Nor I of you,” she replied before pushing at him, straddling him as soon as he caught up to roll on his back. She raised her hips over him, and pushed down on his cock, grounding her hips against him as its head pierced the wall of her womb.
She could feel all of him all the way inside her. He was always magnificent, pain and pleasure alike, exquisite.
And she couldn’t help but be a wild wanton in his arms. She pushed down again and again, riding him with all that she got.
And he, again, caused another orgasm from her before he came hard, and finally withered.
She melted into him like there was no skin that hindered them from each other.
She didn’t move again as his arms held her tightly to him, as their heartbeats beat that crazy rhythm before settling down, calming into a regular beat that synchronized like one.
They slept the whole morning off in each other’s arms.