Epilogue
The couple burst through the front doors of the castle, their lips locked in a frenzied dance of unbridled desire. Valerie stumbled backward as Adrian pressed her forward, one arm grasped tight around her waist to keep her balanced while the other cradled the back of her neck.
Most of the servants were at the party, meaning no one would witness their ardor. Indeed, though the party had been stressful to organize, she was now very thankful that she had not refused to arrange it.
“We can… wait for the wedding night,” Adrian murmured as he kissed his way down her throat, before catching her mouth once more in an urgent graze.
She moaned her protest against his lips. “No… no, I do not want to wait anymore.” Her fingertips slid into his hair, tugging gently. “Do you intend to change your mind and jilt me?”
“What?” He paused, staring at her. “No.”
“Then, there is no difference,” she said breathlessly. “In my mind, we are… as good as married.”
He smiled. “Well then, wife, let us not wait any more.”
She squealed as he hoisted her up into his arms, her legs locking around his waist as he carried her. At first, she thought he meant to take her all the way up the narrow stone staircase to her bedchamber, so it was a rather thrilling surprise when he turned down one of the hallways instead.
All the while, he kissed her, his mouth flitting between her lips, her throat, her neck, her cheeks, her brow, her collarbone, kissing every speck of bare skin he could find.
She kissed him back in kind, her mouth savoring the rough friction of his stubble, the corded lines of his neck, the broad shelf of his collarbone, the triangle of bare, warm skin where she had already thrown away his cravat and loosened his collar in the carriage.
Indeed, they had kissed all the way from town, but nothing more. An exercise in anticipation and exquisite torture that was finally coming to fruition.
Down the same hallway that she had stumbled along on her first night in the castle, helplessly trying to find Mr. Jarvis, Adrian kicked open the door to the library.
“My love,” he growled against the curve where her neck met her shoulder, his teeth nipping a gentle bite. “You are still my torment.”
She smiled, running her hands through his hair. “Still?”
“Yes, love, for I doubt I shall ever get enough of you,” he murmured, as he kicked the door shut behind him and carried her to the chaise-longue.
But he did not lay her down. Instead, he set her on her feet, his hands tugging at the ribbon around her waist. Once loose, he tossed it to the floor, the thin fabric fluttering down.
As they crashed together in a fresh frenzy of kisses, he grasped the skirts of her gown and raised the garment up, not slow and restrained, but eager for his torment to be over.
In perfect agreement, Valerie fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat and shirt, his tailcoat left behind in the carriage.
“There are altogether too many buttons,” she laughed, as she tore his shirt off him and threw it across the chaise, before reaching for the fastenings of his trousers.
“And too many laces,” he replied, his fingertips deftly undoing her stays.
Within minutes, they stood together, arms around one another, bare of everything but their love and desire for the other.
The hot press of his skin was a thing of wonder, greater than the fire that crackled in the hearth—as if, perhaps, some of the servants had known there might be evening visitors to the library.
“And you are sure you do not want to wait?” Adrian asked, easing the hair-slides from her hair, her honey golden locks tumbling down in fragrant waves.
She nodded. “I am certain. I cannot wait any longer.”
“What a relief,” he whispered with a smirk, as he kissed her harder, the pull of his arms crushing her against his body for a moment.
In his fierce embrace, she raked her fingernails lightly over the rippling muscle of his shoulders and his back, tracing her way down to the satisfying rise of his buttocks.
Stealing a mischievous squeeze of that fine flesh, she smiled against his mouth, so overcome with the force of her love for him that she felt she could fly.
With a gentle nudge from his body, the back of her knees bumping against the edge of the chaise-longue, she sat down upon the velvety surface.
Adrian kneeled before her, easing her thighs apart with his rough hands.
He did not draw his gaze away from her face, not for a moment, as his callused palm smoothed up her thigh and hip, gliding over the soft contours of her stomach and up between her breasts.
There, he pushed, urging her to lie back on the wide chaise-longue.
“I must steal a taste first,” he teased.
“Steal everything,” she gasped in reply, as the velvet cushioned her.
A moment later, she felt the slow, torturous roll of his tongue between her thighs, not just tasting but feasting.
He eased his tongue through the slick folds of her, taunting the entrance of her sex with a playful flick, before letting his tongue glide back toward the crackling bundle of nerves that longed for that intimate touch.
“Oh, my love…” she moaned, writhing as he delivered that first searing stroke. “Yes… yes, my love…”
In the weeks since the proposal, he had learned the language of her body, her pleasure until he knew it better than her.
He could listen to the tone of her gasps or the strength of her sighs and understand what she stirred her the most. He used that knowledge to its full advantage now, circling and sucking and licking, while his fingers slowly eased into her depths.
Within minutes, she was bucking and writhing on the chaise-longue, calling out his name. She tried to reach for him, and when she could not, she clawed at the velvet instead.
“Yes… oh, my love, yes!” she cried as that thunderous wave of bliss ripped through her, bending every part of her to its blissful will.
Her back arched and her legs shook, her body a vessel for the paradise that surged through every vein and nerve and muscle and limb.
And when that intensity slowly began to fade, she waited for a moment, to see if the temptation to possess him entirely, and be possessed in return, would recede with it.
But that unrelenting need did not retreat, burning hotter within her, stoked up by the rush of her first conclusion.
She would not be leaving this library with her virginity intact, she refused.
After all, her body and mind and heart already thought of this man as her husband, and when tomorrow was not guaranteed for anyone, there was no time to waste on silly doubts.
Adrian kissed his way back up to her mouth, his arm scooping underneath her. With his impressive strength, he maneuvered her properly onto the chaise-longue, so that she lay flat, and slowly moved up to join her.
Her breath caught in her throat as she felt him, a pressure against the entrance of her sex. Instinctively, her legs came up, bending at the knees while her thighs gripped his hips.
“You are certain?” he asked, gazing down at her.
She gave a playful roll of her eyes. “If you ask me that again, I shall have no choice but to send you out of this library until you see sense.”
“Very well,” he replied, with a soft smile. “But, my love, it may hurt. If it does, ask me to stop and I shall.”
She shook her head in defiance. “I will not.”
“You must,” he urged.
“Rather, I will not have any need to,” she corrected. “I know that I am ready now. Ready for you.”
A low growl rumbled in the back of his throat. “How unaware you are of the power of your words, my love.”
“I am entirely aware,” she replied, biting her lip.
He lowered his head to kiss her, and her arms looped around his neck, pulling him close. And as they kissed, he slowly rocked his hips back and forth, the hard flesh of his manhood sliding through the wet folds of her and over her pulsing bud, teasing her with what was to come.
She moaned against his mouth, kissing him harder as a fresh burst of pleasure began to spark within her; the beginnings of a new and powerful conclusion.
“Yes,” she urged. “My love, yes…”
Just then, with the backward tilt of his hips, the hard width of his manhood paused at her opening. And with the next rock of that stirring rhythm, he sank into her: a slow push that stole the breath from her lungs and turned that eruption of sparks into an explosion of wildfire.
A passionate cry caught in her throat as he continued to ease inside her, inch by tantalizing inch.
Indeed, she did not know if he had been worried about hurting her because of his immense size, but he need not have done; there was nothing but a faint discomfort, like a sore muscle being stretched of a morning.
“Are you hurt?” he murmured, lifting his head to look at her, his eyes glassy with his desire for her.
She shook her head, panting a breathless “no.”
The frown upon his brow relaxed, his mouth finding hers again as he stilled within her. As he did, that slight discomfort began to ease, her body becoming accustomed to the new and wondrous sensation of being joined with the man she loved.
A minute later, he began to withdraw, the slick friction sending a frisson of bliss through her nerves.
She gasped in wonderment, her back arching as if there was some silent communication taking place between her body and his, and his had full control of her.
Indeed, she was only too happy to surrender entirely.
He eased out until he almost left her bereft of that hard flesh, teasing her a little with slow, short pulses that rendered her breathless and trembling: her whole body now a bundle of crackling, sparking nerves.
Then, with a growl in the back of his throat, he sank back inside her, filling her up completely.
So, this is what I have been missing. It was difficult not to be furious with herself that she had waited so long, imagining all the weeks of pure ecstasy she could have had if she had just been bold.