Read Lessons in French for Free Online

like her father's carriage.
    A bit too much like her father's carriage. That ceremonial vehicle stood yet in the coach
    house, only used on Sundays and for funerals. Enclosed and dark and set a little away
    from the stables, as it had always been, left to quiet and seclusion each week after the
    wheels had been cleaned of mud and the seats brushed down.
    She stared out at the slowly passing shapes of trees and hedges, all blue-white and
    black under the rising moon. Not for a long time had she thought about her father's
    carriage as anything more than the conveyance that she and Hermione, and now Lord and
    Lady Shelford, mounted inside to drive to church. But tonight, in a different carriage,
    with the thought and scent and touch of Trevelyan d'Augustin all about her, that other
    memory rose vivid and inescapable.
    It was Trev who had first perceived the commodious possibilities of the coach. It was
    not something Callie would have considered. But then, she had not been considering
    anything very rationally at the time. She had been so in love, and so besieged by the
    sensations he could evoke just by glancing down at her with that faint perceptive smile at
    the corner of his mouth—one of the peahens in the yard would have been more likely to
    hold a sensible exchange on the matter of where they might safely meet.
    His kisses she had already experienced. She was an authority on the topic. Trev said so.
    He said her kisses made him feel as if he were dying, which she had taken as a
    compliment, because his made her feel exactly the same way, and it was indeed a great

    deal like dying, or disintegrating, or falling down some infinite well that had no name but
    led somewhere that she was sure she had to go.
    It had led, in fact, into her father's carriage. Even now, years later, she moistened her
    lips and closed her eyes and put her gloved fingers to her mouth at the thought of the dim
    coach interior, lit only by a thin line of daylight that fell down from some high window
    and through the curtains, a streak of brightness across the red velvet seats. And silence,
    but for his breath at her ear and throat, and the little noises she made as he touched her.
    Protest and pleasure and fear almost to panic that someone would discover them, but
    when he had kissed her there and even there, his tongue and teeth on her breast, tugging
    through her gown, she had gasped and clung to his shoulders and begged with tiny
    whimpers.
    He'd sat up a little, his hair all mussed in the dusky light, looking as if he could not
    remember who he was. Then he had freed the buttons on his trousers and guided her
    hand, kissing the side of her neck. When she touched him, he shuddered and bruised her
    skin as he closed his teeth. A low sound in his throat seemed to make sparks shower
    down through her whole body.
    She arched up against him, pressed and tangled as they were on the seat, his leg over
    hers and her skirt all askew. She felt his hard man's part slide against her thigh, their
    fingers twisted together over it, as if both of them searched and prevented at once. She
    wanted him closer and pushed him away, frightened and seeking for more.
    As she pressed her legs together, he worked his fingers inside her, finding a place that
    made her sob with smothered pleasure. She'd tried to suppress the sounds that came from
    her throat, but he kissed her breasts again and thrust his fingers deeper, growling in his
    chest as he drew a half cry from her, delight and confusion and desperation, wanting and
    wanting and pushing herself up to meet his hand. She could hear herself panting, and
    him, their breath coming harder, mingling and rising until she felt a wave of such intense
    pleasure burst through her that she did cry out, forgetting everything but him. He rose
    over her, pressing himself hard into that intimate place, not his hand now but the thick
    head of his erection pushing for entry.
    " Callista!"
    The sound of her father's voice seemed to echo