The Prisoners of Wyvern Castle

Husbands could touch wives. Could wives touch husbands?

Madeline was not prepared for his gentleness.

Her new husband started with her hands, tracing each finger with one of his, skimming her palms, laying one of her hands atop his own and covering it with the other. Then he began to explore one arm; tentative trails with his fingertips become firmer sweeps, caresses, even. He circled her wrists with his hand. "How fine your bones are," he marvelled, his voice soft with awe. He brushed up the inner surface of her arm to her elbow. "Your skin; it is so soft."

His touch soothed and made her restless, both at the same time.

As he moved to hover over her, she rolled to her back, watching his face, intent and focused, turned slightly to one side, as if listening to the silent movement of his palms. He had beautiful eyes: dark brown with flecks of green and gold. The lamp she had left burning, reasoning that it made no difference to him, and would allow her to see, illuminated the side of his face and gilded his dark hair, leaving the other side in shadow.

The calluses on his violinist fingers set tingles running in her arm and in other, more private, places. How much of her did he plan to 'see'? She blushed at the thought, hoping the heat was not obvious to the man currently stroking high up her arms, his hands under the sleeves of her nightrail.

Perhaps he sensed her discomfort, because he slid the fabric down again, leaving her perversely wishing for the return of his touch. He moved to her face then, murmuring as he documented each of her features, and again, her skin tingled in the wake of his touch: her cheeks, her chin, her nose, one eye and then the other, the fingers gentle, barely touching the lids, her lips, once, twice, three times, and back again, until her lips twitched with the effort of not kissing the sweet tormentors.

He traced her ears, stroking up to push away the mob cap she wore over her neatly plaited hair. "One day, I wish to run my hands through this silky fineness," he said, and she shivered at the thought.

Rupert hesitated, his fingers stopping their gentle massage of her scalp. "You don't like the idea?"

Her own voice was unfamiliar, breathless and thready. "I do not mind. If you wish." She could imagine it, and her whole scalp longed for it. But how could she tell him that?

"Help me, Madeline," Rupert pleaded. "Tell me what you like and what you do not like. I cannot see your face. I guess at what you are thinking and feeling, but I cannot know, unless you tell me."

"I..." She swallowed and tried again. "I cannot speak when you are touching me so, Rupert. I can barely think. I¾I like it. I like it very much." Surely, he could feel the heat of her blush, hovering over her face as he was, those magical fingers moving again down the sides of her cheeks.

Greatly daring, she put her own hand up to cup one side of his face, and he turned into it, kissing her palm and sending a bolt of sensation down her arm and into her core.

"Too much?" Rupert asked, anxiously.

"I like it," Madeline repeated. She wasn't sure it was true. Her skin, wherever his hands had roamed, felt thinner than it had ever been, as if his touch had stripped off several layers and left her near-raw, sensitive to slight shifts in the bedchamber's air.

He smiled in answer and caught her hand in his, kissing the palm again, then her wrist and up her forearm to her elbow.

Abruptly, he sat back, letting one hand trail down her side, over her hip, and down her leg to her foot. Then he began as he had with her hands, exploring each foot in turn, following up past the ankle to the knee until her legs, too, were yearning. And all the time, he described how she felt to his touch, exclaiming with wonder at her softness, her curves, the chilliness of her toes, which he amended by putting them, one by one, into his mouth.

"I like it," she managed again, when he stopped to make the query, and he continued, scraping his teeth experimentally, but gently, against the ball of her big toe. How peculiar. She felt the scrape all the way down her torso, deep inside, like an itch, but sweeter. How would it feel if he touched her there, in that private place where the sweetness centred?

Rupert was reaching further up under her nightrail now, and she shifted restlessly, embarrassed, but also hoping he would continue all the way up. But the nightrail's billowing fullness was in his way.

"What do you call this thing?" he asked, as he tried to roll the hem. "Can we take it off? It is a nuisance."

If she took off her nightrail, she would be naked. But her reasoning when she decided to leave the lamp lit still applied. There was no one here to see. Not even her husband, who surely had the right to remove her garments if he chose?

No. She could not do it. Not while he wore a nightshirt.

The answer was obvious.

"I will if you will," she told him, and without a word, he sat back on his heels, pulled his shirt over his head, and tossed it behind him on the floor.

In moments, they were both naked. Madeline hardly noticed the chill of the night air bringing goosebumps to her arms as she gaped at her new husband. She had known, of course, that men were different than women. He was angular where she was curved, his shoulders broad and muscular, his chest tightly defined planes. Where her skin was smooth and bare, his bore dark hair in the shape of a rough cross, the horizontal reaching from side to side, the vertical arrowing down to...

Her mouth dried as her eyes followed to where the line pointed. More dark curls, and among them, thicker and longer than she expected, his... Her kennel master called it a pizzle, but no dog had one that size! Of course, dogs were smaller altogether, and puppies, too, much smaller than a human child, and some people clearly enjoyed what was about to occur if the scandalous behaviour at harvest time could be taken in evidence.

Lady Wyvern, too, undoubtedly allowed Graviton... So it wasn't just the lower orders, and why would it be? A pedigree showed no more discretion than a mongrel when in heat, and the kennel hands needed to be alert to keep a determined bitch confined so she didn't...

He was reaching for her again, and all the words chattering on in her head tumbled to silence when she dragged her fascinated gaze upward to his intent face.

"May I?" He was asking for permission to touch her, and his courtesy was reassuring. Suddenly bold, she moved forward so his hands encountered her left arm and her right breast, and she put her own hands deliberately on his chest. Husbands could touch wives, of course. But surely wives could also touch husbands?