* * *
It was more of a large shed than a barn, though some beast—a horse or mule—stirred in its stall at one end. There was a strong, clean tang of hops in the air, enough to overpower the milder scents of hay and manure; the Blue Bull brewed its own ale. Roger felt drunk, but not from alcohol.
The shed was very dark, and undressing her was both frustration and delight.
“And I thought it took blind people years to develop a keen sense of touch,” he murmured.
The warm breath of her laugh brushed his neck, making the tiny hairs at his nape stir and prickle.
“You’re sure it’s not like the poem about the five blind men and the elephant?” she said. Her own hand groped, found the opening of his shirt, and slid inside.
“ ‘No, the beast is like a wall,’ ” she quoted. Her fingers curved and flattened, curiously exploring the sensitive flesh around his nipple. “A wall with hair. Goodness, a wall with goose bumps, too.”
She laughed again, and he bent his head, finding her mouth on the first try, sightless and unerring as a bat snatching a moth from the air.
“Amphora,” he murmured against the wide, sweet curve of her lips. His hands slid over the wide, sweet curve of her hips, cupping smoothness cool and solid, timeless and graceful as the swell of ancient pottery, promising abundance. “Like a Grecian vase. God, you’ve got the most beautiful arse!”
“Jug-butt, huh?”
She vibrated against him, the quiver of laughter passing from her lips to his and into his bloodstream like infection. Her hand slid down his own hip, and up, long fingers fumbling loose the flap of his breeches, groping hesitantly and then more surely, gradually rucking his shirt up to disentangle him from the layers of fabric.
“ ‘No, the beast is like a rope’…oops…”
“Stop laughing, damn you.”
“…like a snake…no…well, maybe a cobra…gosh, what would you call that?”
“I had a friend once who called it ‘Mr. Happy,’ ” Roger said, feeling light-headed, “but that’s a bit whimsical for my tastes.” He grabbed her by the arms and kissed her again, long enough to put a stop to any further comparisons.
She was still quivering, but he didn’t think it was laughter. He slid his arms around her and pulled her closely against him, amazed as always by the sheer size of her—a good deal more amazed now that she was naked, those complex planes of bone and muscle transformed to immediate sensation in his arms.
He paused for breath. He wasn’t sure whether the sensation was more akin to drowning or to mountain climbing, but whatever it was, there wasn’t much oxygen left between them.
“I’ve never been able to kiss a girl without stooping before,” he said, making conversation in hopes of getting his breath back.
“Oh, good; we wouldn’t want you to have a stiff neck.” The quiver was back in her voice, and it definitely was laughter, though he thought it stemmed as much from nervousness as humor.
“Ha ha,” he said, and grabbed her again, oxygen be damned. Her breasts were high and round, pressed against his chest with that unique mixture of softness and firmness that so intrigued him whenever he touched her. One of her hands slid hesitantly between them, groping, then withdrew.
He couldn’t bring himself to stop kissing her long enough to finish undressing, but arched his back to let her push the breeches down over his hips. They were loose enough to fall in a puddle around his feet, and he stepped free of them, still holding her, only making a small noise in his throat when her hand came back between them.
She had eaten onions with her dinner. Blindness sharpened not only touch, but taste and smell as well. He tasted roast meat, and sour ale, and bread. And a faint sweet taste that he couldn’t identify, that reminded him somehow of green meadows full of waving grass. Did he taste it, or smell it in her hair? He couldn’t tell; he seemed to be losing track of his senses as he lost the boundaries between them, breathing her breath, feeling her heart beat as though it lay in his own chest.
She was grasping him a trifle too tightly for comfort, and he broke the kiss at last, breathing heavily.
“Would you consider letting go for a moment? I grant you, it’s an effective handle, but it’s got better uses.”
Instead of letting go, she dropped to her knees.
Roger made a slight move back, startled.
“Christ, are you sure you want to do that?” He wasn’t sure whether he hoped she did or not. Her hair tickled against his thighs, and his cock was quivering, desperate for engulfment. At the same time, he didn’t want to frighten or repulse her.
“Don’t you want me to?” Her hands moved up the backs of his thighs, tentative and ticklish. He could feel every hair on his body spring erect, from knees to waist. It made him feel like a satyr, goat-legged and reeking.
“Well…yes. But I haven’t bathed in days,” he said, rather awkwardly trying to detach himself.
Deliberately, she brushed her nose over his stomach and down, inhaling deeply. His skin pebbled with gooseflesh, the shiver having nothing to do with the temperature of the room.
“You smell good,” she whispered. “Like some kind of big male animal.”
He grasped her head hard, fingers twisted in the thick, silky hair.
“Too right about that,” he whispered. Her hand rested on his wrist, light and warm—God, she was warm.
Without his actually intending it, his grip loosened; he felt the fall of her hair brush his thighs and then stopped thinking anything coherent, as all of the blood left his brain, heading south at a high rate of speed.
“Mi oing i’ i’?”
“What?” He came out of his daze a few moments later as she drew back, brushing the hair away from her face.
“I said, am I doing it right?”
“Oh. Ah…I think so.”
“You think so? You don’t know for sure?” Brianna seemed to have been regaining her composure as fast as Roger had been losing his; he could hear the suppressed laughter in her voice.
“Well…no,” he said. “I mean, I haven’t…that is, no one’s…yeah, I think so.” He had hold of her head again, urging her gently forward.
He thought she was making a low humming noise, somewhere deep in her throat. It might be his own blood, though, thrumming through distended veins, purling in violent eddies like the trapped water of the ocean, seething through the rocks. Another minute, and he was going off like a waterspout.
He pulled away and before she could protest, lifted her to her feet, then urged her down, onto the heap of straw where he had thrown her clothes.
His eyes had adjusted to the dark, but the starlight from the window was still so faint that he could see no more of her than shapes and outlines, white as marble. Not cold, though; not cold at all.
He approached his own duty with mingled excitement and caution; he had tried this exactly once, only to be met with a faceful of a feminine hygiene product that smelled like the flowers in his father’s church on Sunday—an off-putting idea if ever there was one.
Brianna was not hygienic. The scent of her was enough to make him want to dispense with any preliminaries and throw himself on her in a pure abandonment of lust.