remoulade, followed by a palate-cleansing mixed green salad, fresh from the Lake Pontchartrain garden plots. That had gotten them ready for grilled shrimps as big as his thumbs, and lemony seafood crepes that contained a meaty fish melange and sauce that was heavenly from the first hot bite to the last cooled forkful. Lastly had come a syrupy sweet trifle sort of pudding, lush with local oranges. So many wild oranges grew thereabouts (so he was amusingly told) that the local farmers fed most of them to their hogs… which made for a succulent Sunday ham!
'My last fine meal, aussi, cher Alain,' she sadly imparted, 'for I must leave the city and go visit my papa and maman upcountry. I hope I do not have to stay as long as Easter, but certainly I should be back about the time you come back from the wild Indians… if they do not scalp you, n 'est-ce pas!'' She giggled, then quickly went serious, reaching her fingertips to touch the back of Lewrie's hand. 'I will pray earnestly that they do not… for you have such a fine head of hair, mon cher. And the savages have such horrid habits when it comes to shearing White people… of their hair and their… other things, hein?' she teased with a fetching blush and grin. 'I do believe I would miss them all… equally. Oh la, l'addition. Will you take care of it, cher? Then, we shall go for a stroll. It will be good for your liver.'
'Nothing wrong with my liver, Charite,' Lewrie had said, claiming intimacy with the use of her Christian name in public; to which she made no prim objections.
'Oh, you English… you do not understand how important one's health depends on la digestion and proper care for one's liver!' she teased. 'Look at your John Bull… so choleric and pasty-fat… so full of nothing but roast beef and beer No wonder he is always so red in the face, hein?'
'A long walk, did you intend, then?' Lewrie had wondered aloud.
'Oh, lazy-bones!' Charite fondly teased him. 'If not a long stroll, you have another healthful exercise in mind,peut-etre?'
'Hmmm,' he leered.
'Oh, oui!' Charite squealed. 'Plus vite, plus fort, mon etalon!' And Lewrie gladly obliged, picking up his pace and slamming his groin against her firm and springy young buttocks. The taut bed-ropes supporting the mattress groaned and skreaked, the wooden bedstead parrot-squawked at its joins, and Lewrie himself groaned, panted, and uttered triumphal steer-like grunts as he thrust as she commanded: harder and faster… certainly not deeper, for he was already sheathed up to the hilt in her upraised, kneeling body. Charite clawed the pillows, the sheets, face pressed into a pillow now and then when her pleasure made her squawl out loud, shudder, then writhe and thrust back against him like a maddened serpent, grunting and lowing like a
heifer being taken by a rutting bull, her grunting a counterpoint to his that increased in fury and urgency 'til…
'Ah-ahh!' she screamed. 'I go, I go so… mon Dieu!'
A moment later, it was Lewrie who threw back his head, roaring incoherently as he burst in her like a flaming carcass-shell, jerkily thrusting through the last melting moments 'til he had to rock back on his heels and gasp for air, dragging her back with him, his grasp firm on her soft, sweaty-cool hips. Charite, still sobbing with ecstacy but as if in need of yet even more, shuffled back to him quickly on palms and knees, to half squat, splayed wide across his lap, rocking up and down to either side, petulant- sounding to milk the last frissons of sensation from him, to keep him pressed hard against her innermost flesh. He slid his hands up to cup her breasts from behind, wrap his arms about her, and hold her close to his heaving chest. Her arms took hold of his to keep him there, her head weakly lolling on his chest. Formidable… so formidable, mon amour,' she barely croaked.
'You are indeed, sweet'un,' he responded, muttering huskily in her damp mane of hair, some of which stuck to his mouth. 'Vraiment!'
'You have lied to me,' she accused, suddenly.
'Hah?' Lewrie gawped, stiffening in shock.
'You can speak French… when you care to.' Charite chuckled.
'Only enough to get in trouble, dear,' he laughed, greatly relieved that her plaint was harmless. To further distract her, he slid a hand down her sleek stomach and belly to her thatch, playfully twining his forefinger in her love-matted hair, flirting even lower round her clitoris, where his member was still sheathed inside her, making her roll her head, moan, and giggle.
'I am split… I am ruined, forever,' Charite vowed in a weak whisper. 'Zut!' she cursed a second later, as Lewrie limply slithered from her at last. Matter-of-factly, without shame, she flung herself forward to the headboard and piled pillows, rolled over face upwards, and swiped her damp hair from her forehead, with her fine, slim legs still wide apart, knees slightly raised as if welcoming another romp before sunset or suppertime.
Lewrie shuffled forward to recline alongside her, admitting to himself that he might not be the 'All-Night-In' Corinthian he had been in his wilder twenties… After four blissful bouts he was just about utterly spent, and a longish nap wouldn't exactly go amiss. He snaked an arm under her neck and about her shoulders, getting no closer for a bit, as they lay there and genteelly 'glowed'… perspired… on the nearly soaking sheets.
'You will miss me among the savages, mon Alain?' she pressed at last, rolling to her side to face him, propped up with a hand under her head.
'Desperately, ma cherie,' he earnestly, nigh honestly vowed, rolling his head to look at her and seeing her impish expression. 'And you? Et vous?'
'Et tu, Alain,' Charite amusedly insisted. 'Not the impersonal vous, but the intimate tu, mon etalon.' She stroked a hand over his hot chest, a fingertip circling his near-side nipple.
'Your stallion, hey?' He chuckled, feeling risible after all as she teased.
'Ah, oui. The stallion le plus puissant. You spoil me for… After you, the most powerful, what man could ever compare, mon amour?' Charite said, frowning for a second and lowering her eyes as if she had said the wrong thing, had come close to reminding him that other lovers had existed, would exist in the future.
'Then I'd best hurry back to New Orleans before you run across a better,' Lewrie suggested, tongue-in-cheek. 'So we can have days and days like this. Days and nights… early mornings, the crack of dawn?'
'Oh la, I tempt you so much, you would surrender all your other lovers for me, Alain?' she asked, trying to be light, but with a slight edginess in her voice, as if his reply actually mattered.
'Hah! What other lovers?' he barked with laughter. 'Damme, if you haven't spoiled me, d'ye know. If I had one, or a round dozen, a 'wife' in ev'ry port, I'd toss 'em all off a cliff, aye. Charite, you are sans pareil. Lovely, passionate… abandoned. Maddening! There, ye see? Another French phrase. We keep this up, I'll parler …'
She rolled half atop him, embraced him, twined with him and bestowed a dozen fond kisses to reward such gallantry.
'Oh, pooh!' she said after suddenly breaking away, pouting very prettily and desirably. 'It would all end in tears. I could not have an Anglais lover! You are not even Catholique! A heretic, Protestant… 'Bloody,' born and bred to kill the French, and Catholics? Never, not in a thousand years, could you be acceptable. What Papa and Maman would say… my brothers!'
'Well, don't they say that 'love conquers all'?' Lewrie jested.
'Oh, we marry, and I am disinherited?' Charite huffed, though still pressed against him, up on her elbows. 'I must go to a British seaport as your kept woman, your wife… when you admit that you
