but she was not missish or shy and wanted exactly the same thing. She lay on the rug in just the same fashion as she lay on the bed, one arm flung over her head, the other resting on his shoulder. Her gown was bunched around her hips and he was settled between her raised knees. She felt him reach between their bodies and cup her mons. His fingers wandered with purpose.
She was wet. He teased her with his fingertips, dipping, stroking. Her hips jerked. Her body sought him out. There was no shame in wanting this man…her husband.
He shifted position, resting his weight on his forearms. His lips nudged hers. The kiss was no longer so sweet or soft. Hunger made it urgent, hard. This was all right as well. He could have bloodied her mouth in service of this kiss and she would have welcomed so much fierceness. He did not always have to be careful with her; she would not break under his touch. It was the lack of it that made her snappish and fragile, separation that made her less resilient. She was a woman with a woman’s needs, and there was no shame in that.
Her tongue touched the ridge of his teeth. It swept the interior of his mouth. She sipped on his lower lip, then the upper one. Through it all her eyes stayed open. Had there been candlelight, she thought, she would be darkly reflected in his eyes now, the wide pupils like black mirrors. She would see her own desire and not turn away from it.
“Shh,” he said. “Shh.”
At first she did not understand, then she heard her own whimpers. The sound was at the back of her throat, a soft mewling cry of need and satisfaction. She could not help it. Did he think she could? It was not possible to remain so quiet when his mouth was moving across the curve of her neck, then sipping the skin at the base of her throat. She would be marked there. In the morning there would be a purplish stain where his lips had been, proof that he had come to her, proof that he had been in her bed.
She whimpered again, this time because his mouth was stamping the high curve of her breast. He did not chastise her this time. Instead he made a damp spot in the batiste covering her aureole. He drew the flimsy fabric and the rosy tip of her nipple between his lips. He flicked it with his tongue, rolled it between his teeth.
Beneath him her body rose in a perfect arch. Even with his weight on her, the small of her back lifted from the bed. Her heels pressed hard into the mattress. She thought the bed shuddered slightly, but perhaps it was only that she did.
He pressed his entry. The fullness of his erection was so welcome to her that she almost sobbed with relief. Her thighs clutched his hips and in all ways she was open to him. She thrummed with pleasure as he seated himself inside her. His own quiet was unnerving. Did he not feel it, or was it only that he refused to give voice to it?
She was on the point of asking him what was wrong when she heard his soft groan. It was all right, then. They were all right. Fear of not being able to pleasure him was immediately forgotten.
“You are my heart.”
Had she said it aloud or only thought it? Neither, she realized. The words had come from him. So right. So perfect. She had not known how much she needed to hear those words until they were said. How had he known? How did he always know?
“Please,” she said softly.
“What is it?”
But she had no words to explain what she meant, only this one word and the hope that he would understand everything. “Please,” she said again.
“Just so.” He began to move in her, slowly, with long, sure strokes that she could match with the rise and fall of her hips. “Am I hurting you?”
She realized that he had wrested a cry from her. “No,” she said quickly. Immediately she knew he was not convinced. His next thrust was not as forceful as his last. “No, truly you are not. It is good. All of it.”
He stopped moving. Waited.
She was not proof against his patience. She was impulsive, occasionally reckless. He was the essence of fortitude. In a test of wills that involved forbearance, he would always be the victor.
“It is only that it has been so long,” she said. “I have been waiting for you ever so long.”
“You fit me as closely as a glove.”
Unintentionally she contracted around him. “Yes.”
“I’m afraid I will hurt—”
She did not let him finish. Even in the dark it was not difficult to find his mouth with hers. Against his lips, she whispered, “You cannot hurt me, not like this. It is only when you are gone from my bed, from my life, that I am hurt. Do not make me wait again.”
“It’s as if you’re a virgin.”
This made her laugh softly. “I’m not.”
He sucked on her lower lip. There was a corresponding tightness within her. She squeezed him and he moaned, closing his eyes and releasing her. “God, but you will be my undoing.”
She locked her hands around his neck. “If you mean to flatter me, then I will count that as a good thing.” Her sigh was audible as he began to move again. Her bottom lifted, fell. She knew his rhythm and his strength. They had done it just this way many times, and familiarity heightened her arousal rather than diminished it. She knew what to expect and when. Her responses were as measured as his. Her breast filled the warm cup of his hand, and her nipple scraped the center of his palm. Her breathing sharpened.
And just when she thought he could not—or would not—surprise her, he withdrew suddenly and turned her on her stomach. He lifted her hips and positioned himself behind her. She rested her cheek against the pillow sham and reached for the bedhead, bracing herself. He came into her with a short thrust, then a deeper one. His hands kept her tightly joined to him while hers sought purchase.
“Yes?” he asked, his voice husky.
She nodded, then realized that in the dark it was no answer. Desire made her voice thick, the consonants sibilant. “Yes. Please, yes.”
Between her thighs, he stroked her. Heat and wetness made her receptive. Just when his touch was so insistent as to make pleasure teeter on the edge of pain, he eased back, rubbing the hood of her clitoris and not the uncovered nub. She felt him gauge her breathing and her movement, marking when she was controlled and when she was on the cusp of having none.
How well he knew her body, but no better than she knew his. She was aware of even the small changes that had occurred in his absence. The weight of him was perhaps a stone heavier. The breadth of his shoulders was wider by a fraction, the muscles of his upper arms more taut. He did indeed work too hard. His labors had reshaped his frame, roughened the pads of his fingers and the heels of his hands. He still fit her exactly as she remembered, or mayhap it was that she fit him.
She had come to learn her own body in contrast to the planes and angles of his. She was not so curvaceous except when his palms were cupping her breasts or bottom, or when his hands were resting lightly on her hips. When he embraced her it seemed that her shoulders were no more broad than they should be, nor her waist too narrow. Her head fit snugly under his chin.
Elsewhere, it was he that was fit snugly. A faint smile touched her lips. She was rocked forward, then she did the rocking, this time backward, pressing into him with the full roundness of her bottom.
She felt changes in her body, a tightness under her skin, a ripple across her belly. Her eyelids fluttered closed, though she fought to keep them open. Her lips remained slightly parted. There was fierce heat where there had been only warmth and the first crests of pleasure where there had been only unhurried, rolling waves.
She cried out, though she wished she had not. He liked her to be silent, and she did not wish to be indifferent to what pleased him. She sucked in her lower lip and bit down hard enough to taste blood.
“No,” he said. His mouth was against her ear, and he was spilling his seed into her. His hard frame spasmed, and his neck arched. “No,” he said again.
She did not know what he said no to. Was he