Geranium
Part Three


‘Well hast thou guessed, my love, I cried,
It is the tree by which she dies;
The tree which could content her,
All nature, [dear one], seeks the centre;
Yet let us still poor Eve forgive,
It's the tree by which we live;
For lovely woman still it grows,
And in the centre only blows.
But chief for thee it spreads its charms,
For paradise is in thy arms--
I ceased for nature kindly here:
Began to whisper in her ear,
And lovely [she] lay softly panting
While the geranium tree was planting.
'Til the heat of amorous strife,
She burst the mellow tree of life.
'Oh heaven!' [my love] cried with a sigh,
'The hour we taste--we surely die;
Strange raptures seize my fainting frame,
And all my body glows with flame;
Yet let me snatch one parting kiss
To tell my love I die with bliss:
That pleased thy [Dear One] yields her breath;
Oh! who would live if this be death!'’

---Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Geranium


He came awake slowly in the silence and darkness, uncertain at first of his bearings. His sleepy eyes collected the light and he looked down at the lovely woman asleep in his arms. Katherine. In only a moment, the entire evening--tumultuous, miraculous--flooded back into his flagging brain, his limbs and fingertips, and oh God yes, his instantly twitching cock, already far more awake than the rest of him.

Just past dawn. Katherine slept serenely, her face burrowed into his shoulder and her hand upon his heart. He lowered his chin to see her better and reached to smooth her wildly-tangled hair.

“Mmmm,” she murmured in response, stretching a little, eyes still closed. Then she moved her head, nuzzling his neck up behind his ear, so that he shivered and yelped softly.

“Archie,” Katherine whispered sensuously, purring again, right into his ear. He shivered once more, keenly aware of her small body pressed along the length of his, their legs entwined, her sex against his thigh, her thigh against his sex. He was stiff again, completely, and on the verge of pushing her onto her back, when she spoiled his plans by sitting up and reaching for her dressing gown, a pool of pale shimmering blue upon the carpet.

But it was a long way down and she tipped herself nearly off the bed, exposing a pale sweep of back, the curve of her waist, and the seductive swell of her hips. He caught her just there with both hands, pulling her back and reaching ’round to take the wrap from her hands before she could cover herself. He threw it off the other side of the bed, looking down at her with an eyebrow raised, an expression cheeky as any monkey so that she could not help but laugh.

She lay back then, and let him pull down the sheets and gaze upon her. No need to worry if she might appear less beguiling come the morning--the glint in his eye told her all. Just the same, she reached for the carafe of wine beside the bed and poured a glass for them to share.

“Wine for breakfast, Katherine? And here I was thinking that actresses led a disciplined life.”

“Only a sip, to sweeten kisses. Or perhaps I should leave you to freshen....”

He grinned and held the glass to her lips while she drank, then tossed off the rest and pulled her underneath him as he reached across her to set the glass carelessly back upon the bedside table.

His hand cupped her sweet breast as he kissed her deeply, tasting the wine on her tongue, relishing the notion that she was already becoming breathless. He knew full well that his head had swollen as well as his cock, for he had learned how easily he could cause her to mew like a kitten, make her wrap her slender legs around him and gasp his name.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

At the outset, he had expected her to continue leading him but instead she had melted into his arms, clung to him, and murmured in his ear. Her scent, the smooth texture of her skin, the rough velvet of her tongue all conspired to set him on fire at once.

He was dizzy with desire and the full realization of what was happening, what was about to happen, was such delicious agony that he feared he might spill at any moment. He began boxing the compass again, backwards this time and in near desperation. He did not think he could bear it if he came before he had even entered her, like some callow middy.

“Northwest by north,” he muttered against her satin shoulder. “North-northwest. Northwest by west.”

Kitty, who had been absorbed by the extremely pleasant sensation of Archie’s golden beard grazing her skin, whispered “What are you doing?”

She chided him laughingly. “Archie, dear! Have no fear, you could not fail to please me, no matter what happens.”

Something lurched inside him then and he felt his heart swelling, his chest expanding. He caressed her with hands that were gentle and strong. She sighed as he stroked her breast and bent his head to taste her peaked nipple. Searching for his thick, rampant prick, she wrapped one hand around the base and stroked upward with the other, making him laugh and gasp at the same time.

She continued stroking him and he lifted his head from her breast to kiss her yielding lips, moaning against her mouth. But she ached for him to discover her own arousal, the sweet syrupy secret of her own sex, and stopped kissing him to murmur into his ear. (She thought he had the most alluring ears, but decided to leave her appreciation of them for another time.)

“Give me your hand,” she said and took one hand from him to clasp his warm fingers, sliding them along her smooth belly to the soft hair that covered her little mound. He was in service to her purpose at once.

“Ah, love!” she cried as he slipped his index finger down along that enchanting cleft, brushing tenderly like a bee hovering over the petals of a flower, seeking its dewy center. One gentle push and he found all the honey he could wish. He explored with two fingers and felt his cock leap in her grasp as she squirmed beneath him, her legs parting to ease his way.

He would have pressed home, but she held him off, a hand braced against his lightly furred chest.

“Mmmm,” she said, smiling up at him in the faint light. “A little higher, yes?”

He wanted only to feel himself buried in all that creamy warmth, but strove to please her. Yet somehow she had made him feel that her suggestion was his own notion, and his stroking fingers were rewarded with Katherine’s voluptuous sighs and the heady realization that he was bringing her close to a crisis.

She stopped sighing and her hands clutched his shoulders. “Oh, now, love, yes!”

When he claimed her at last, she moaned his name as he whispered hers and he had never felt more sure of himself in his life.

He was heat and light. Kitty had a fanciful notion of being possessed by one of the seraphim--golden and glorious, so radiant in his aroused state that he could dispel the darkness. Her body was aflame in response to his, she was so close....

He pushed into her deeply and she wrapped her legs around his waist. His heart had never pounded so hard and he thrust into her again and again, unable to control his pace.

“Archie!”

Head thrown back and eyes closed, his beautiful Katherine shuddered beneath him, her fingernails digging into his back. Hearing his name on her lips at that moment pierced his heart. It struck him that if he lived to be a hundred he would never forget the sweetness of it. And then he was beyond thinking, beyond reason, his blood pulsing, the ache for release filling all his senses, until at last he cried out with the exquisite relief of his own climax.

He just managed to hold himself above her, panting, his forehead pressed to hers until his breathing slowed and his pounding heart quieted. When Katherine took his face in her hands he kissed her smiling lips, nuzzled her neck.

He had become so lost at the last that he was unsure if he had pleased her, but could not think what he should say.

“Katherine.”

She heard the question in his voice and stroked his cheek tenderly.

“Hush, love,” she whispered. “Everything is as it should be.”

“Are you...?”

“You could not have pleased me more,” she told him, not feeling the least put upon, for it was the truth.

Even in the shadow of the bed curtains, she could see his eyes growing heavy-lidded with fatigue and began to disentangle herself so that he could stretch out beside her. He put an arm around her and pulled her close.

“I can’t remember the last time I slept in such a big bed,” Archie murmured, for there was only a meager narrow one in his lodgings near Drury Lane.

“And should you like to sleep in such a bed for the rest of your leave?” she asked him.

Kitty sensed rather than heard his answer, for he smiled even though he was already fast asleep.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Barely a fortnight remained of his leave and he had never known time play such tricks with him. One moment he felt as though each lovely spring day in Katherine’s company was a lifetime. The next, it seemed as though the precious hours were rushing past them like high water in a river that had overflowed its banks.

Katherine did not seem to notice the passage of time at all. She lived each moment of each day with her whole being. The more time he spent in her company, the more he began to see the wisdom of her outlook. Each stroll in a garden, each performance or musicale they attended, each meal, each sip of wine, each time he made love to her could be its own lifetime. It was not one morning but countless mornings that they sat cross-legged in that great bed to drink bottomless cups of tea and feed each other toast and jam.

On one of those mornings, a sudden spring rain pattered upon the windowpanes. A sailor to his core, he turned one eye to the weather, then noticed a flash of red above the sill. “What are those flowers in the window box?” he asked her idly.

“The red ones? Geraniums. Cranesbill is another name for them. They smell spicy, like you.”

On the brink of drinking more tea, Archie nearly choked. “Ridiculous,” he muttered when Katherine stopped thumping his back.

“Sheridan wrote a poem about them, you know,” she ventured, her eyes full of mischief. “A scandalous one.”

He raised an eyebrow. “A scandalous verse about flowers? Surely not.”  He hoped his feigned skepticism would provoke her to recite it.

“ ‘Observe yon sweet geranium flower;
How straight upon its stalk it stands,
And tempts our violating hands:
Whilst the soft bud as yet unspread,
Hangs down its pale declining head:
Yet soon as it is ripe to blow,
The stem shall rise, the head shall glow.’ ”

“Oh, ho, scandalous indeed, Miss Cobham.” He put his tea aside and leaned back on his elbows, the bedclothes covering his middle but not much else. “Is there more?”

Katherine nodded soberly. “Oh, yes a great deal more.

‘Yon blushing strong triumphant flower,
Is in the crisis of its power:
But short, alas! its vigorous reign,
He sheds his seed and drops again;
The bud that hangs in pale decay,
Feels not as yet the plastic ray;
Tomorrow's sun shall bid him rise,
Then too he sheds his seed and dies....’ ”

“And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow....” he said, reaching for her and rolling over so that she was pinned beneath him.

“But tomorrow shall see you on your way to Portsmouth, yes?” She could have bitten her tongue; it was unlike her to dwell on the future, or what could not be helped. But Archie’s mind was still on poetry. Or perhaps titillation.

“Yes, but don’t let’s think about that now,” he was saying. “It happens I know another scandalous poem about a flower.”

“Never!” she exclaimed, delighted.

“Indeed I do.” He sat up, leaving her on her back, and struck a suitable pose. She put her hand over her mouth so that he would not see immediately how amusing and desirable she found him just at the moment.

“ ‘ The Graces naked danced about the place,
The winds and trees amazed
With silence on her gazed,
The flowers did smile, like those upon her face;
And as their aspen stalks those fingers band,
That she might read my case,
A hyacinth I wish'd me in her hand.’ ”

Kitty, laughing openly now, sat up herself. “I think you started in the middle, but never mind.” Her hand traveled stealthily beneath the covers.

“And is this your hyacinth, my friend? For ‘tis as thick as one. And as fragrant as one. And as strangely, compellingly attractive as one....” She threw the covers aside, slowly lowering her head toward his lap.

“Katherine! Ah, God!”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
 
It was much later that they ventured out to take the air, the rain having washed the world clean and fresh before departing. Strolling in the Green Park, they could not help but exchange a blushing sideways glance to see all of the purple hyacinths springing up beneath the plane trees.

Kitty sighed secretly, for their last tomorrow was upon them. Then she turned to gaze up at her lover.

“It’s delightful here in the park this afternoon,” she said. “But just at the moment I should like to go home.”

Archie grinned at her, doing his best not to acknowledge his own awareness of sands running through the hourglass. He held out his arm, wanting nothing more at this moment than to take her home and spend the night getting no sleep at all.

In the end, neither of them slept a wink.

The End

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