Chapter 12. Desire, Scarlett - March 27th 1875, midnight, Atlanta, Peachtree St.
March 27, 1875, midnight, Atlanta, Peachtree Street
Prissy helped her removing her beautiful dress and corset.
Now, Scarlett was lying in bed, thinking about the last events of the evening.
Ashley had been ecstatic about the acting and staging of Romeo and Juliet. She was more reserved. She had to admit that she was not fond of that story. Two teens loving each other and enduring the wrath of the other's family until death. Too romantic for her!
I am really sick of romance!
The fact that, at the end of the evening, Ashley had again ask her to marry her was proving it. While digging her dimples for soothing her answer, Scarlett gently but clearly refused his proposal.
Sadly, Ashley lowered his head in defeat. However, she was sure he would come back for more, because after so many years, he was finally allowing himself to lust after Clayton's former county belle.
He must be sure that some day he will succeed in convincing me. Poor Ashley! Oh! Ashley! My beautiful knight in shining armor! I have finally fulfilled my little girl's dream: your formal demand of becoming Mrs. Scarlett Wilkes. The irony is that I am not interested in that at all anymore!
Comfortably tucked under the sheets in her bed that was too big for her alone, Scarlett sighed: Ah! Ashley! It is too late, Ashley! There is no doubt though that I used to love you. My heart knows how deeply I have loved you! No matter what I said to Rhett the night Melly died.
However, just as Rhett's love for her had worn thin until it dried up, her mad passion for Ashley had long since turned into a warm tenderness.
I admit that his gentle eyes on me, no longer even hiding his ardor, is endearing. What better way to regain self-confidence than to feel lovingly desired?
Because Scarlett needed to regain her confidence. Rhett had done so much to her when he left! His cruelty had ravaged her. He had brought her down, mocked her weakness, and her physical deterioration. Therefore, to feel Ashley's feverish gaze admiring the curves of her body, was a real soothing. That was not enough though…
Tonight, as they sat in the balcony of the great amphitheater, Ashley's arm had brushed against her more than once. His voice took on a deep, sweet tone. And then he emboldened enough to brush his lips over the inside of her wrist with fervor.
Scarlett did not react, not with a snub, not with an invitation to continue. She pretended that nothing had happened. Nevertheless, she secretly enjoyed the attention. It had been so long since a man had touched her skin!
But, let's be honest! I did not feel butterflies in my stomach, as I did with Rhett, she added spitefully.
ooo
Rhett! The only man who had succeeded to awake her body. Yet... not really during their years of marriage! True, since Rough and Ready, his kisses had always transported her to unknown shores. Then, until Bonnie was born, their sexual intercourse had been pleasurable. It was such a change from the marital duty she had had to endure with her two previous husbands!.
Yes, Rhett had awakened her body. That famous night in 1871.
How frightened she had been when he had carried her furiously up the stairs to the dark limbo. She felt Rhett's body tremble. She had been scared that night and almost feared for her life when that drunken man had thrown her down on her bed unceremoniously and clung to her, ripping her nightgown off with his strong hands.
He released her from his grip for a few moments, the time for him to nervously undress and to be completely naked. Then he slumped on top of her. The vapors of alcohol of his breath were invading her throat. She protested. In vain. Anyway, he was so drunk he would not have been able to hear her.
His heavy weight was crushing her.
His behavior was so different from the one he had accustomed her! Rhett used to be a delicate lover, and had always been careful to relieve the pressure of his body over her at that specific moment of their intimacy. He used to treat her so gently in bed, as if he was afraid of hurting her, unless she would break and evaporate.
"That" night, he paid no attention to such considerations. Unable to move, she was suffocating under this mass of muscles. For the first time, the ferocious animal that had taken her husband's body, was terrifying her.
His unshaven cheek was scratching her skin. As he held her firmly under him, he moaned. He was muttering bits of meaningless phrases. At least, at that moment, she concluded that they were meaningless.
When, in the morning, she would think back on what he had said, she would wonder if they actually were declarations of love.
But, for now, Rhett was keeping his arms firmly at her sides so she would not move.
Then he undertook the little torture of running his burning lips over her bare body. He was kissing her, and licking every inch of her skin.
When she felt his mouth nibble the tip of her breast, she begged, "No, Rhett, please! »
He replied violently, "You are mine, Scarlett! Tonight there will be no escape. Only you and me. You are mine!"
His mouth resumed its journey. Scarlett's skin tingled. Rhett was continuing his inexorable descent toward his goal.
"Oh!" She could not help but exclaim as Rhett's tongue greedily started licking the birth of her lower abdomen. At that very moment, everything shifted. Her pelvis contracted with desire. An unknown sensation was radiating every pore of her skin until it made her toes contract.
Is this pleasure? Naively, Scarlett thought furtively of a Christmas present she had just unwrapped.
Then she released her hands from Rhett's grip and caressed the jet hair that were brushing her crotch. He groaned under the caress. "Oh Scarlett, I love you, my sweet! »
She did not want him to move. She held his head so Rhett's fleshy lips could continue to caress her where no man had. Even himself, her husband, too inhibited by the woman he loved to dare a rebuff from the cruel Scarlett if he ever dared.
Stammering incomprehensible words, Rhett started venturing lower, until the moment he kissed her soft brown hair.
"More! Rhett more! " she cried.
Their bodies were shaking on the same rhythm. Was Rhett shaken with frantic tremors, or whether his wife's flesh that was responding passionately?
As he inserted his tongue in her, an unknown sensation overwhelmed her, like a torrent of pleasure that took everything with it.
For the first time of her life, Scarlett initiated the caresses, and soliloquized unintelligible words with passion.
"Rhett! Please, please! I want…, I want.." What did she want? She did not even know, except that she was going to die of desire.
Then the experienced lover finally heard her call. He raised his head, looked at her, amazed by her face transfigured by desire, and quickly climbed to her head.
He kissed her passionately. While their tongues intertwined, she felt the pressure of the erection of her lover who hardened even more at the entrance of her sex. Finally, brutally, with rage, with the violence of his passion, he penetrated her.
Rhett took hold of her body completely. He wanted to swallow her, for their skins to burn into one indivisible entity.
His wife cried out in satisfaction at finally being full of him. Frantically, Rhett began his back and forth until she could not take it anymore, until he was at the end of his restraint, until they both exploded with pleasure.
Scarlett was hallucinating. Everything around her was turning white, that a kaleidoscope was showing her a myriad of sparkling diamonds.
When she felt to be swallowed into the abyss, a gush of pleasure overcame her. She moaned, "Rhett, I love you! I love you!" Like a litany, she could not stop.
Hearing the woman he had adored for so long express those magical words, at that very moment, Rhett roared with pain-like power, "Scarlett!" and flooded her with his seed.
They stayed like that without moving for some time. She was finally happy to feel him inside her. Her husband's body was still shaking. "Let's not move! " he praised. "Just staying inside you for eternity!
Slowly, she came back to earth. Her breathing was returning to its normal rhythm.
Finally, he withdrew from her. She felt a void, a lack. "Rhett!" she whined.
Immediately, he hugged her fiercely, ran kisses over her face, and finally buried his nose in Scarlett's hair.
Methodically, he covered his head with the long silky locks of the young woman, until her black hair transformed into a shroud that would isolate him, and imprison him, forever.
He selected the longest lock and wrapped it around his neck, intoxicated by its heady scent - a drug he had been addicted to for so long, that he had missed so much, that he had longed to be able to breathe it in once more.
He would have liked to stay hidden under that helmet of darkness all his life. "This is my home!"
Scarlett was moved immeasurably by his tender gestures, and the way the unflappable Rhett hid under her hair like a child hides under his mother's skirts.
It was certainly not the first time her husband had lost himself in the caresses of her hair. He who, every evening from the first day of their marriage until Bonnie was born, had taken conscientious care to free her from the bun that constrained her during the day.
He used to remove the hairpins one by one and systematically placed them in a crystal cup. Then he untangled her locks until he brushed them a hundred times, as his wife had been maniacally doing for years. When he had the satisfaction of hearing the spikes of hair crackle, he placed a thousand kisses on them.
In bed, after making love, he would only fall asleep after wrapping his neck with her longest braid, until he choked on it.
On the night of that mad passion, Scarlett had found that familiar gesture again. When he had done so the first time on their honeymoon, grabbing one of her curls and wrapping it around his own neck, she had been amused. She thought it looked like a fetish. The frivolous Rhett, fetishist! Soon she got used to it though. She faintly understood that it was a gesture of tenderness after lovemaking, a privileged moment of serenity when it was no longer time for arguments or sarcasm, but for communion and sweetness. She began to enjoy this unique interlude, as intimate to her as penetration.
Which is why, when Scarlett decided to kick Rhett out of her bed, she almost immediately regretted not being able to experience that special magical moment.
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Alone in bed on March 27, Scarlett continued to reminisce nostalgically about the night of love in 1871 that had followed Ashley's birthday.
Rhett taught her so much until the early morning! He introduced her to her own body, and guided her hand under his to roam and quiver under his touch. It was incongruous, but after three marriages and three children, Scarlett had never until now sought giving herself pleasure.
She owed it to the strict, castrating upbringing Ellen had instilled in her three young teenage daughters, so that they would conceive of their bodies only for a reproductive function and for their husband's exclusive pleasure.
"That" night, Rhett the lover felt his throat tightening when noticing again, how his wife had remained so innocent. He deeply regretted all the more not having had the audacity to teach her these pleasures.
Shyly, he asked her if she would touch him. It was certainly not a question of forcing her. At her slightest frown, he would have turned back.
At first, she was afraid to brush against this secret part of the man, and then, she became emboldened. At the slightest caress she lavished on him, Rhett moaned her name.
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That evening of March 27 1875, at the evocation of that ancient night of drunkenness, Scarlett's hand was travelling down and down to her intimacy.
Then she came.
Quickly though, her pleasure now sated, her intellect took over, and she turned ashamed of her weakness. Her body had betrayed her!
How stupid I am! After the humiliation you put me through, your sarcasm, and your abandonment, how can I be so foolish to still include you in my fantasies?
She rebelled loudly, "Oh, no! To hell with Captain Butler! I do not need you anymore!"
In the silent bedroom, her voice turned firm to better convincing herself: "The pleasure I discovered that night, I know I can feel it again with someone else. I am ready now to welcome other arms than yours!»
ooooOOoooo