Chapter Eighteen
Ben: "I have been charged by a bull, bitten by a goose, attacked by your chicken, and your goat headbutted my nether regions just by being in your presence today to atone for my, as you call it, bull-headed arrogance. Have I not yet earned your forgiveness?"
Griff: "Oh, very well, then."
(B & G conversation on forgiveness 3 years prior)
"Amy!" Oliver yelled, partly amused and partly determined to catch up to her and kiss her senseless. He stepped into a trot, closing the small distance she had on him, though why she had chosen to walk on the other side of the hedge instead of the lane they had been on befuddled him. "Hold on just a damn moment!"
She did no such thing. "The hour is late and I am quite cold," she told him pointedly, turning to look at him over the hedge. "Everything is quite eloquently laid out in the document you hold in your possession." Then her eyebrow quirked and a look of mischievousness overcame her face, his heart beating faster at how marvellous he found that expression. "Should you disagree to any of the terms, we can renegotiate on the morrow. Or when you have had time to review it."
"I wish to review presently," Oliver told her unhesitatingly. "I wish to negotiate it now."
"Can you read it presently, Ben?" she teased.
"You wrote the thing! Why don't you tell me?" He gave her a speaking look as she continued to traipse determinedly along on the other side of the hedge and he felt bereft at being unable to get closer to her with the obstruction between them. He silently lamented the lateness and darkness of the hour which inhibited him from perusing the document. If it were lighter he would have torn it open and began reading it right then and there. "And why are you walking in the pasture? You must surely be ruining your slippers."
There was a mysterious smile on her face now but she continued on. "There are a few points to consider carefully, Ben. But the gist of it is that we may court for thirty days and if at the end of those thirty days, you still... uh... desire me, then we may-" She glanced shyly to the side and even in the shadows he saw a blush form against her skin.
"Thirty days?" he repeated dumbly. "Thirty days?" He could damn well marry her in thirty days but he kept the thought to himself for now as he tried to understand the premise behind her conditions.
She shrugged the shawl she had draped over her shoulders closer. "I thought the duration a fair one," Amy explained lightly. "We have only ever known each other as friends. I believe the time will allows to reflect on the new roles of our relationship and establish if we will fit as... lovers."
"Amy," Oliver said slowly, "in order for us to ascertain if we will fit as lovers, we need to become lovers. Also, thirty days?"
She was blushing even more then and he could have vaulted over the hedge just to try and prove to her how thirty days would likely drive the both of them insane. He had been mad for his need of her, especially after what had transpired in the carriage. It had been a fantasy come to life, witnessing her soft thighs spread before him, so close he could have reached out and stroked her silken skin himself, while her hand worked herself furiously, her head tilted back and her neck straining with her beautiful release.
Thirty fucking days. She must be mad.
"It is hardly that long," she said wryly. "Besides, it will give you time to cry off if you believe we are unsuitable and because we would not have, uh... consummated our relationship, it would not be overly awkward between us."
"Griff, we have consummated our relationship," he pointed out fairly. "And if I think back and reflect really well, I remember how exquisitely tight you fit around my cock."
"Ben." She looked remarkably embarrassed at that and he grinned at her unrepentantly. "You need to read it and we can speak of it tomorrow," she urged.
He snorted, quite sure that whatever she had contrived he would find acceptable and heed at her request. Whatever she wanted him to do, however he needed to behave, he would do. For her. Oliver had made his mind up in London that Amy Griffiths was meant to be his wife and if she needed this time to adjust her own misgivings about the change in their relationship, so be it. He could be patient.
Thirty days, though.
"Very well," he sighed and tucked the parchment into the pocket of his coat. "Will you please join me on this side of the hedge, however? Why the deuce are you walking over there, anyway?"
Again that mysterious smile drifted over her lips and she gave him a very knowing look. "It is safer this side," she said simply.
"You'd be safer with me," Oliver muttered, irked that she would contrive to put a barrier between them as if she did not trust him to behave accordingly. Well, alright, he had been besieged with ideas of stealing kisses from her and running his hands over as much of her body as possible, but she hardly knew that.
"Oh, I do not even believe that you are safe presently," Amy said with mischievous grin that grooved her cheeks impishly.
What the hell did she mean by that? "Griff, you are being deliberately obtuse-"
As the narrow lane curved to the left and straightened out before him, Oliver suddenly knew exactly what she was about as some very angry hissing broke the silence of the night air and Mr Stuart's flock of belligerently hostile and violent geese blocked the rest of his path.
"You are the devil incarnate, Griff, honest to God," he growled and began to retreat, about twelve vehemently hissing geese following him.
"If you had been paying attention to what has been transpiring in Haventry, my lord, you would have noted that Mr Stuart is quite neglectful when it comes to containing his geese these days!" she called out to him, giggling, and continued on her merry way.
Never one to let a good prank go unpunished, Oliver knew he wanted to mete out his retribution and swiftly. The hedgerow was high and he would never be able to vault over it without either tumbling atop it direct or without a running start. Fortunately, he supposed, the geese were sure to see the latter was at least taken care of as they began to flap their wings aggressively and increase their speed towards him, disallowing him passage through their ranks to continue onwards. Unless he wanted to fall victim to those wickedly serrated beaks, and he had before- an experience he had no desire to repeat- Oliver had to run to ensure his escape.
He did so then, pivoting and falling into an easy, loping gait with feathered demons at his heels, flapping, honking and hissing in earnest now. Amy had known they would be loitering along the lane and had deliberately chosen to withhold the information from him while protecting her own hide... if Oliver wasn't running for the safety of his own, he would have laughed in appreciation of her deviously playful machinations, but as it were he had to pick up his pace dramatically.
After such it was easy enough to vault himself over the hedge a few yards back and the moment his boots thudded into the grass on the other side, he had pushed off and was sprinting towards Amy. The surprise on her face as she turned at his fast, thundering approach was testament to her disbelief at finding him this side of the hedge so suddenly. She had been giggling but stopped when she witnessed him bolting towards her, then she pivoted, shrieked, and began to run away from him.
"Ben," she said shrilly, laughing as he caught her about the waist and dragged her against his body, "it was a joke, a harmless-"
"Harmless!" he barked spinning her in his arms and dropping his mouth to the side of her neck. She shivered, a small sigh escaping her, and grasped the front lapels of his coat as she sank against him. "I could have been killed, violently mauled-"
She hunched her shoulders against his questing lips, laughter bubbling up and making her shake in his arms. "You would have been bitten perhaps!" she protested. "I have not heard of someone meeting their demise by goose before."
"I am sure, madam, I would have been the first at your contrivances!"
"It is not a contrivance." Amy squirmed away from him while he nipped gently at her sensitive skin and he allowed her a moment of reprieve, though his retribution had hardly begun, leaning back to regard her with a dry look. "It was merely an opportunity, like the time you convinced me to drink Florence Haythorne's new herbal tea and I was incapacitated for six hours."
He snorted at the memory, earning him a glower from the woman still in his arms. "You thought I was rather pretty that day," Oliver told her, unremorseful. He had to confine her within her cottage for the entirety, the effects of the tea and whatever inhibiting ingredient Florence Haythorne, Haventry's aging apothecary, had used ensuring that Amy was the most uninhibited Oliver had ever seen before. "But in my defence, I hardly knew that the tea would make you try to lick me... and all other services in your vicinity."
She groaned and covered her eyes with her hands. "Assuredly you deserve to be chased by the geese all damn night," Amy rebuked.
Oliver removed one hand he had spanned against the dip of her lower back, bringing his fingers to curl around one of her wrists and pulling her hand down to flatten against the centre of her chest, then he repeated the manoeuvre to her other hand, covering them both with his once that was done. "If that is what you truly desire, I'll endure it," he murmured, alleviating the humour that had settled between them and diverting her attention to something more intrinsically heated burgeoning in the places where his body touched hers, the feel of her thighs and stomach lightly pressed up against his own, his other hand gripping lightly at the curve of her waist. "If you have ordained that I need to wait one year in the terms of this contract of yours, I will do so. If I am required to befriend Henevieve in lieu of serving her for dinner, gladly I will do so. Your terms, Griff, are set in my heart already."
Her smile diminished at the tone of his words and her gaze flickered against his, searching and questioning. "You do not know the extent of them, yet you acquiesce readily no matter," she mused. "Why?"
"What is thirty days, or a year even," he said softly, dropping his head slightly so that their lips were only a breath apart. He felt her chest hitch against him in reaction to his intention to kiss her, though his hesitation made her eyelids flutter half-mast, and he felt her stare at the closeness of his mouth to hers almost longingly. "-when you have already given me the best years of my life? Thirty days in the greater spectrum of our lives together is nothing to wait just to have you."
To his amazement, she frowned. "Oh, do not say things like that!" she berated him.
He reared back an inch to examine her consternation. Really, he rather believed he was being quite romantic, though perhaps Amy wasn't the romantic sort. After all, they had never indulged in romantic pursuits before. The only sort of gift he had ever given her was to not push her into a frigid creek one year for her birthday and he had felt quite magnanimous for it. "Whyever not?" he demanded, hoping that she wouldn't lambast him for his flowery confessions or worse, giggle at it.
"Because," Amy murmured, her fingers clenching with gentle ardency into his coat and tugging him gently down to her, "you are making my conditions incredibly difficult to abide!"
And they shared their second kiss under the stars, with the distant hissing and honks of Mr Stuart's belligerent flock of geese heralding the quiet except for the softly indrawn gasp of pleasure Amy made when he swooped down to claim her lips, and perhaps it was more perfect than the first. His lips moulded to hers with an exquisiteness that simply fit, and there was no resistance when he moved against her mouth, sighing as she tilted into him, offering herself to him with a candid openness of submission and trust.
The first time he had kissed her at Lady Blackwood's ball he had exerted restraint in order to savour the feel of her lips for their first real kiss. Though they had shared clumsy, abrasive kisses in their youth 'that' day, though pleasant, it had been an exercise in experimentation-hardly a provocation of desire and response. This time, Oliver felt his body flare exquisitely and drive his need for her to claim her boldly, to mesh her against him so vividly he would never forget the feel of her soft, warm lips joined and pressed to him.
And when he coaxed her apart for him, she gave with a small feminine moan of delight, reaching up on her tiptoes to better accommodate him. Her fingers clenched harder into the fabric of his coat, a temporary leverage, and he clasped her waist tightly to him for support, sliding his arm around her lower back and hitching her into his body. His hand still covered hers where they lay upon his chest and he held her there, curling his fingers around the heatedly silken feel of her palms, grasping her tightly as he plunged his tongue into her mouth.
At the contact of his tongue meeting hers, Amy shuddered, inhaling sharply. Oliver allowed himself an opened mouth smile against her at her response which was abruptly quelled when she responded with her own caress, her own bold sweep of her tongue into his, resisting his intrusion and taking her own, delving into him as he had her. It almost broke him, the feel of her slick warmth, so bold and invasive, confident and mischievous, and he groaned harshly into her, slipping his hand down onto her hip, then further yet until the flesh of her soft, ample bottom filled his palm.
Angling her, he swept his tongue possessively against hers, forcing her to recede, and then he rolled his hips simultaneously with the movement.
His cock had been aching and heavy for her since before he had arrived at the parish, and witnessing her take charge of the small party to coordinate the smooth running of the Haventry Festival of Apples with a proud tilt of her chin and a gleam of confidence in those cinnamon eyes, he had fought off his arousal steadfastly. But now that restraint almost broke and he knew he was urgently hard, and he wanted her to know exactly how much she affected him if it was that concern for their capability together that worried her.
Using the hand that was planted against her bottom, he ground her against him, shifted her hips into his own so that she rubbed and shifted deliriously against every ridge of his erection. The fingers clasped within his own tightened and her hips made their own little movement of exploration, fitting him almost perfectly between her thighs. Together, they gasped slightly at the contact, heat flaring at their near joining even though layers of her skirts and his trousers separated their skin, and she was first to move her tongue, almost desperately now, with a needful thrust into his.
Amy continued to move against him, blindly rolling into his body where he was hard for her, a staggering little moan shuddering through her, and he met her, caught her, coaxed more from her, driven mad with her uninhibited and wanting him as much as he wanted her. They were locked together endlessly, revelling in the feel of the other in this new, transient embrace of affection and desire, with only the sounds of loud crickets and furious hissing-
Hissing?
Oliver tore his lips from hers, cocking his head to the side and listening intently. Amy protested inarticulately, her fingers writhing into his and urging him down, her tongue darting out and tracing the contour of his bottom lip-
"Griff," Oliver groaned, holding her tightly against him, "wait, just let me-"
She bit him them, dragging his bottom lip through her teeth, and he breathed out a curse, crushing his lips with a bruising force to hers, geese be damned-
There was honking now, quite louder than before, enough to draw them both apart suddenly. Their widened gazes met and the desirous haze shifted to one of another urgency altogether.
"Trust you to lead them here!" Amy admonished, glancing to the side quickly before her face dropped entirely.
"Me? This was entirely the result of your devious machinations-"
"Yes, yes, alright but-" She broke off and twirled from his arms, her fingers latching and lacing into his hand where they had been entwined against his chest. "We really ought to probably run now, Ben."
He sighed, much rather inclined to stay in the shadows behind the hedge and spend the rest of the evening locked in their now abandoned embrace. Then he glanced at where she had looked but moments before and realised how dire their situation had become.
A few yards away yet, the feathery fiends were winding through the shadows as if condemned to do Lucifer's bidding until death, honking, hissing and flapping most unwelcomingly. Oliver was not sure whether these particular geese could fly or whether Stuart opted to clip their wings to keep them contained in Haventry, though they must have found some way to scale the hedge that separated them from their human prey.
"It is quite fortunate for me then," he said, beginning to lope after her and squeezing her fingers tight in his grasp, "that I can outrun you. Hopefully, they will be too preoccupied pecking you to death to continue on after me!"
He was beside her now and quite able to easily receive her irate glower. "You wouldn't," she gritted out and he grinned, holding her hand even tighter then.
"Indeed, I would not." Then he pushed forward, the honking and hissing growing ever louder behind them, and kept her grasp firmly within his own as he began to sprint forwards. "Though I may hold it against you if I am compelled to spend the night in a tree to evade capture."
She was quiet for a moment as they thundered forward, the sounds of their feet against the damp earth louder than the geese a very short distance behind them, and then she started laughing.
Oliver glanced back at her briefly, too driven by his need to evade the geese to linger too long on her for fear that he would stumble, and he couldn't help but smile with her. With her skirts hitched in one hand, Amy was trawling relentlessly in his wake, pulled on by his hold on hand, and her laughter was loud, almost choking her with its exuberance, her dark curls wildly unbidden as they flew behind her, her shawl long disappeared due to their escape attempt.
Soon, the geese grew weary of their chase and turned back towards to the village as if to find easier, more susceptible human targets, and Oliver lessened their pace. He was panting with the exertion, his breath steaming in the cold night air, as he dropped into step beside Amy. Unable to help himself, he dropped his lips to her temple, quietly nuzzling the damp coils gathering there. At her questioning look, he slid his arm around her waist and drew her to his side while they continued to walk, her cottage looming at the end of the lane. "I think I am going to rather enjoy the next thirty days," he told her with a broad grin. "If you are able to meet your own terms."