24 December 1959
Time had lost all meaning in that place; it did not matter, any more, how late the hour had grown, how long Jean had spent lost in Lucien's embrace, how many minutes were left to them. They had untold minutes, hours, days, to spend wrapped up in one another. There was no end in sight for them, nor was there any need of one; Jean was free, unconstrained by rules or inhibitions or responsibilities, allowed to do and be whatever she wished, and her heart had not known such peace for years, for decades.
At some point they had shifted further up the bed; Lucien sat with his back propped up against the headboard, his knees bent at Jean's back, cradling her in the shelter of his body while still she kissed him, hungrily, messily, delightedly. Such a simple thing, a kiss; how many times had she pressed her lips unthinking to Christopher's stubbled cheek, never knowing that one day she might long for such a beautiful gift? How often in their marriage had a kiss been no more than a prelude to something more, a brief tease that gave way to gasps and moans and shivers of delight? She had never known, before, how deeply she could long for something as sweet as a kiss, had not known until that little gesture had been denied her how much she could ache for it.
Now though, there was no stopping it. In their rapturous abandon Lucien had tugged her dress off over her head, and her slip with it, and now she perched upon his lap in just her underthings, her own hands busy with his shirt buttons while still her tongue danced and tangled with his. Surely it had not been so long, she thought, since Lucien had last kissed a lover himself, but he seemed as hungry for her as she was for him, did not try to hurry things along between them but only ran his fingers through her hair and let her mouth slant over his until both their lips were red and swollen, until she could feel the burn of his beard against her skin. Every now and then she teased him, made to pull back from him, only for his eager mouth to chase after her, pulling her once more down with him, as if he could no more bear to part from her than she could content herself with losing him.
But an urgent need was growing, in the place where Jean ground down against his lap. She could feel his hardness tenting his trousers, could feel it against the hot wet place where she burned for him, and as much as she was enjoying their tender kisses there was more she wanted from him besides. His shirt buttons were all unfastened, now, and so Jean pressed herself hard against him, tugged the fabric away from his skin while he surged forward, passion burning through her like wildfire everywhere they touched. The moment his hands were free from the shirt Lucien reached for her, his palms ghosting over her sides, gentle and yet full of promise, and Jean shivered in his embrace, and nipped at his bottom lip just to hear the way he groaned when she did.
It was not enough, though, only removing his shirt, and so Jean tugged at his vest, and even as she did he reached for the clasp of her bra. They struggled together, neither of them able to complete their task while the other remained unrelenting, breaking their kiss with a gentle laugh from each of them, though Lucien's lips pressed back against hers, once, twice, three times, teasing and joyful, and Jean relented. She let her hands fall away from him, love-drunk on the sweetness of his mouth, and was rewarded for her yielding by the way Lucien peeled her bra suddenly away, his hands reaching at once for her breasts.
A gasp escaped her, as his fingers traced her sensitive skin, and Lucien grinned against her mouth. They were hardly kissing, now, but still his lips just barely touched hers, mouths open, panting breaths passing back and forth between them. They were too close; she closed her eyes against his dizzying proximity and let herself be led by the sensations he evoked in her alone. His left hand clutched at her breast, held on to her as if she were a lifeline, and the fingers of his right hand plucked at her other nipple as a harpist at his strings, drawing a melody of desperate gasps from deep within her chest, her hips rocking against him in time to the rhythm he set with his hands. Still they maintained the almost-contact of their kiss; she threw her head back and Lucien followed her, eager, hungry, his body curving over hers in a complementary arch, the divine symmetry of lovers lost in one another. His knees at her back gave her strength, and his hardness between her thighs gave her hope.
"I want you," she breathed against his lips, reversing their angle at once. She pressed him back against the pillows, laughing when his tongue flicked against her teeth, her hands fisting in his vest while his own continued their delicious symphony against her chest. "I want you."
Such simple words, words she had spoken to him before, but they were no less monumental now than they had been the first time. For so many years Jean had approached sex as a business transaction, and her desires had not come into the bargain. She had slaked the desires of others in exchange for coin, and left her own heart by the wayside. Now, though, it was Lucien she wanted, not just his heavy cock thrusting within her - though she wanted that so badly her entire body seemed to clench with need at the very thought of it - but him, Lucien. She wanted him, his love, his laughter, his hand to hold, his life to share, everything he had ever promised her and every dream that had ever been born of her love of him. She wanted him, and she was tired of denying herself.
"Have me, then," he told her, punctuating his words with another kiss, lifting his hands away from her skin so that she could tug his vest free at last. "Whatever you want, Jean," he added, returning to her now shirtless, their bare chests pressed hard together. He tangled his hands in her hair, gently eased her head back just far enough for him to look into her eyes. "Whatever you want you shall have, my darling," he swore.
"What do you want?" she asked him breathlessly, her hips still rocking idly against him. She rather thought she knew the answer to that; she could, after all, feel his hardness between her legs, and she had read his letters so often she had them memorized. He had spoken to her of love, and devotion, and dreams of the future, and she rather felt she knew his heart as well as she knew her own, now.
"Everything," he growled in a low, dangerous voice, and before Jean could respond he had captured her lips once more in a heated kiss that knocked the breath from her lungs.
With all the smooth strength she had come to expect from his powerful body he flipped them easily, his fierce, dizzying kisses pressing Jean back against the mattress while her thighs rose up to cradle his hips.
Her hands drifted over the scarred plane of his back, his tongue surged between her lips, her heart raced in her chest, but Lucien did not linger overlong in their kiss, did not allow her a moment to orient herself before his hands began a descent all their own. Beneath her slip she'd worn her favorite cream satin underthings, the bra Lucien had already discarded, a heavy, unyielding girdle to maintain the smooth lines of her dress, her plain knickers, her silk stockings. Lucien's hands made quick work of the clasps on her stockings, and then he was tugging almost furiously at the girdle. Jean joined her hands to his, laughing, and together they wrenched it off her, but Lucien had no sooner flung it across the room than his right hand dove beneath her knickers and wrenched a whine born of longing out of Jean.
"I want everything," he panted at her, his beard burning her lips, while his fingertips dove through the wetness at her core and left her reeling. She mewled helplessly at his touch, her hips circling wildly as she sought to guide his hand where she most wanted it to go.
"I want to feel you come apart for me," he growled, and as he did two of his thick fingers drove easily into her slick heat and Jean whimpered, her fingernails digging into his shoulders as she clung to him for dear life, as she desperately tried to match the movement of her hips to the thrusting of his fingers within her.
"I want to hear you," he continued. Of course he could not stop himself from speaking now that the floodgates were open between them; Lucien never seemed to be quiet except in sleep, and the heat and longing of his words only drove her arousal higher, left her needing him more and more with each breath that passed between their open mouths. His nose brushed against hers, his beard burned her skin, and his hands; oh, his hands knew just where to go, his thumb circling, circling, circling furiously around the little nub at her center while his fingers curled hard into her, his heavy arm setting a powerful, relentless place that left her breathless and tense with desire.
"I want to feel you," he added. He knelt between her thighs, freed his left hand to rise up and clutch at her breast. Jean was reeling, her entire body tight with need and clutching at him, drawing him into her harder, and deeper. She took no note of the endless litany of gasps and whines and sobbing pants that left her, but Lucien did, whether she realized it or no, and he matched the fevered thrusts of his hand to her ragged breaths.
"I want to taste you," he said then, and she moaned and clutched at him, feeling herself rising higher and higher, fast approaching her own release. It was beautiful in a breathless, overwhelming way, and Jean felt as if she'd lost all control of herself, delivered her body into his powerful hands and been rewarded with a wet, heady pleasure that spun the coil of her desire tighter and tighter until she feared she might snap beneath the strain of it. Her every muscle was bent on pulling Lucien in to her, as if she sought to melt their bodies down into one single creature, grasping for him, chasing that lightning strike feeling of need as his fingers plunged into her, left her dripping and stretched taut, on the precipice of abandon. Still his mouth hovered over hers, his lips soft and warm, his body hard as marble, the strength of him unyielding as she shuddered and whimpered with need beneath him. At last, at last, it all grew too much to bear, and she thrust her hips hard against him even as he plunged his fingers once more inside her, and she tumbled from the cliff, crying out his name in joyous rapture while stars sparkled beneath her eyelids and the flood of her pleasure drowned her utterly.
She was, he thought, the most magnificent thing he'd ever seen in his life. Her stockings had slid low down her legs without the clasps to hold them up and her knickers were damp with the flood of her arousal where he'd pulled them to the side, too desperate to touch her to spare a moment to remove them. The sound of his name leaving her lips in her pleasure-soaked voice left him almost dizzy with need, and her sex pulsed around his fingers like a living, breathing thing, the heat and the wetness and the softness of her leaving him almost sobbing with the need to sate himself. She wanted him, had told him so herself, and the reckless, wild trembling of her body had proved the truth of those words. Nothing could be more beautiful, he thought, than this, than her, than them, together at last, without constraint, without limitation, free to drown in one another.
As she slowly calmed beneath him Lucien left his hand right where it was, her inner muscles clenching and fluttering around him while he feathered kisses over her face. The soft wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and her mouth, the rise of her cheek, the sharp line of her jaw, the tip of her nose; he kissed every inch of her he could reach until her hand slipped between them, delicate fingers wrapping around his wrist and drawing his hand from her dripping sex at last.
Lucien bowed his head, let his kisses drift down the elegant column of her throat, and tried to catch his own breath. Christ, this woman was going to be the end of him, he was sure, and he could think of no better way to go.