“It might please you better,” he said, “to just take however much you want.”
His hands stilled on his buttons when she gave a small shake. Her body wanted his to cover her. “I trust you would stop,” she said. “You did before.”
A rueful glimmer in his eyes said he remembered their disastrous wedding night. “Yes,” he said. “I would stop.”
On the bed, their bodies seemed shaped to fit the other perfectly. Her own soft form seamlessly molded to the heat and weight of his, and when he finally eased into her, he held her, patiently, until she gradually shaped herself around the heavy warmth of him inside her, too. Then their joining became a blur of sensation. Warm skin tasting of arousal, muscle rippling beneath her palms, the guttural pleasure groans of a man enjoying himself. She opened her eyes when his movements lost their measured rhythm. She watched his face turn feral when he gave a last deep thrust and held himself inside her with his head thrown back.
He lay against her from behind with his thighs drawn up against the backs of hers, his body warming her like a well-heated brick. They were married, in all ways now. In her sated lethargy, the realization merely rippled through her.
“We must make haste, and prepare for supper,” Harriet finally murmured without any discernible enthusiasm. “We asked Mr. Matthews to meet us at seven o’clock.”
“Supper can go hang,” came Lucian’s deep voice.
He nudged her backside with his hips. He was hard again. More outrageously, she felt she would not refuse him.
He sat up, and she glanced at him, and her breath caught. His expression did not match his tone, or his crude nudging: his face was soft: eyes, lips soft, his hair deliciously rumpled. Her heartbeat stuttered. I could love such a face, she thought; I could love him badly. Goose bumps spread on her skin. She had always assumed that loving someone came first and desiring closeness followed. With Lucian, the urge to feel him inside her had come first, a risk she had taken. She felt very, very naked before him now. It seemed lust alone made for a flimsy blanket.
He had been stroking her hip; now he stopped. “Too sore?” he asked, his eyes searching hers.
She blushed. “No.”
He traced the color on her cheek with a tender fingertip. “If you’d rather not, tell me.”
His caress unwound something in her. She rolled onto her back. It might not be love, but whatever it was, right now, she wanted it, and needed him again, if only to douse the unexpected flicker of panic. Lucian spread her knees with an expression of restrained greed in his eyes that heated her core. Whatever it was, he badly wanted it, too. He made a noise in his throat when he entered her, an instinctive sound of almost pain, and she understood. Feeling him return to her was so good it hurt.
He slept a little afterward. She listened to his even breathing, thinking that the only time love had been mentioned between them had been the moment she had vowed to never, ever love him, and how this had not fazed him in the least.
Chapter 27
“Must you look at me … there?”
Lucian raised his chin from her bare thigh to meet her gaze. “Yes.”
They had woken late. Cool daylight filled the room, rendering visible freckles, creases, and scars, every secret of a naked body. And she was lying back in the pillows and allowing him liberties. She was far, far gone from the shores of propriety, adrift on a sea of passion, lost in a haze of lust. The weather had changed for the worse after their first night together, so Lucian had decided it was best to stay inside and keep warm, and since she had promised to honor and obey, she couldn’t very well object, alas. Over the past four days, her world had shrunk to a creaky bed, the sound of rain tapping against a window, and the addictive sensation of her husband’s hard, hot body easing into hers. When she was exhausted, she curled up and slept. When they were hungry, Lucian ordered a hearty meal to the room. They ate while wearing nothing but their robes. His had a habit of falling open at his chest and attracting her eye to exposed muscles, and that was when Lucian would put down his cutlery and drag her back to bed to slake more urgent appetites. They were creatures in a burrow, mating, eating, sleeping, becoming more instinctively attuned to each other as the physical boundaries posed by their bodies lost significance one heated encounter at a time.
Presently, Lucian’s desire was leashed, but his deliberate languor held its own lasciviousness.
“I want to look at your cunny all day,” he said, his deep voice husky with longing. “You are very pretty here.” He stroked softly with the pad of his thumb. “Like a flower.”