Chapter 29 #2
He led her as far as the connecting door between their chambers, pushing it open to reveal that the bedside lamp burned low and his counterpane had been turned down, awaiting their arrival.
This was the place where they would truly become husband and wife.
He hoped to spend a lifetime of nights here with her entangled in his arms. Entangled in his heart.
A lump rose in his throat as they reached the side of the bed, and he swallowed tightly, his pulse continuing to gallop.
The towel he’d draped around her torso was one tug away from exposing every intimate part of her.
Her body one gentle push from flopping onto the bed and lying sprawled out for his perusal.
However, for every insistent nerve ending that snapped at him to hurry, a deeper part of him knew the occasion was far too important to rush.
He couldn’t unwrap her, couldn’t lay her out on the bed, without first telling her the truth.
“You need to know … When I asked to make love to you …” Christ, his neck was hot, his voice sounding unnaturally tight.
He’d never imagined he could feel this way about someone who, until not so long ago, had been a stranger.
That interest could turn to affection, which could turn to something so profound it was difficult to express it in words.
Yet there was one word that would make her understand. One word to sum up the extent of his longing, his admiration, his adoration. He brushed a wet curl from her forehead and let himself make free with it. “It’s because I do, Violet. I love you.”
Her eyes widened, cerulean irises glittering in the candlelight. “I love you, too.” Her voice was mostly breath, although loud enough to make the words plain. Loud enough to squeeze past his ribs and twist around his heart. “I trust you. I desire you.”
She pushed onto her tiptoes, her lips falling upon his chin. His throat. The sudden motion caused the towel to slip away, leaving her bare. Willing. Ready.
He really was the luckiest man in all of England. Make that the world. Because all at once, he’d been granted bloody everything.
He guided her to sit on the edge of the bed and lowered her head to the mattress, the sight every bit as breathtaking—more breathtaking—as he’d known it would be.
Instead of joining her, though, he sank to his knees on the floor in front of her, gently spreading her legs so he could nestle himself between them.
She wriggled onto her elbows, peering down at him questioningly with her lip caught between her teeth. In answer, he hooked a dew-dotted leg over each of his shoulders, pressing his mouth to the top of her thigh. To her newly exposed sex.
She gasped, her face going slack, her hand fisting in his hair.
“Do you like that, Violet?” Carefully, he moved along her folds, suckling her delicate flesh. God, a man could get drunk doing this. “Does it feel nice when I put my tongue on you?”
“I’m not sure that”—her words dissolved into a moan before she caught her breath—“nice does the sensation justice.”
A heady surge of desire cascaded through his veins. If he had everything, he needed to be damn certain that she did, too. It was imperative he make this good for her. That he gift her the same pleasure she gave him.
He tried again, his tongue finding the bud at the top of her sex where he knew she liked to be stroked.
Fingernails sank into his scalp, her hips jerking against the bed. Her exhale became a whimper. “Keep doing that.” She watched him for an instant longer from beneath the veil of her lashes before dropping her head back to the mattress. “Never stop.”
He readily complied, lapping at the swollen peak while his finger slid up to explore near her entrance.
No, nice didn’t come close to describing how it felt to sample the essence of her, musky and sweet.
To forget the step-by-step sequences to a woman’s pleasure he’d learned from pamphlets and instead lead by instinct, adjusting his rhythm and position based on her movements, the sounds she made.
To watch her eyes shutter in ecstasy and know her cries were because of him.
“Please, Benedict.” She pushed forward as his fingertip eased its way into the top of her channel, his cock enviously throbbing at the burst of wet heat. “I’m so … I need … I cannot …”
Her body was tight, quivering. So close to bursting with pleasure; even his limited experience with her allowed him to recognize as much. She just needed him to bring her that final step, the one that would tip her over the edge.
He lightly stroked her inner wall while his lips closed around her clitoris. Tongue circling, laving, never relenting. And suddenly, the tension within her broke, her body pulsing beneath his mouth, intimate muscles clutching tight to his finger.
He lapped at her until her moans subsided and her body stilled. Until the fingers in his hair loosened, her eyes drifted open, and her lips curved into a languid smile.
Never stop. He’d be happy to oblige, to stay with his head in this exact position until he’d memorized every secret, sensitive crease. Yet now that she lay breathless and slick, perhaps the time had come to take it a step farther. To know her in the most intimate way of all.
He rose on limbs that weren’t altogether steady, shifting her until her head hit the pillow and her legs extended along the length of the bed.
Then, he allowed himself the luxury of joining her, settling between her thighs and bracing his weight on his forearms so he could lean down to kiss her forehead. The bridge of her nose. Her mouth.
He was so close to where he wanted to be, his body hovering over hers, the curls on her mound brushing against his erection. Yet with anticipation, yearning, there also came hesitation.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he rasped, blood pounding through his ears, his cock. His nerves twisted into a bundle of knots. “I haven’t … I haven’t done this before.”
He assumed she knew as much, although there was something about uttering the statement aloud that made it feel particularly exposing.
When he chanced to meet her eye, though, the peerless blue showed nothing but openness.
Warmth. Trust. “Neither have I.” She slid her palm up to rest against his hammering heart. “But we’ll figure it out together.”
They would, wouldn’t they? Because he loved her. She loved him in return. And together, they could build something wondrous that they alone would share.
With his eyes locked on hers, he inched forward, the tip of his arousal nudging past her entrance.
Oh, Jesus, she was tight, her walls clamping down on him as if staking a claim.
He pushed a little farther, each motion bringing him one step closer to heaven.
However, upon seeing tension knit her brow, he stilled, a weight knocking against his chest. “Are you all right? Shall I st—”
“Keep going. All the way.” She curled her hands around his hips, setting her mouth in the determined line he recognized as a telltale sign there was no dissuading her. “You’re not hurting me. It’s just … fullness.”
Thank God. At her reassurance, he traversed the final distance to seat himself fully inside her, the jolt of sensation causing his exhale to stutter.
It was one thing to experience the headiness of exploring her with his fingers.
It was another, even more blissful thing entirely to have her wetness and heat enveloping his cock.
He forced himself to remain still, not wanting this to end before it truly began. Wanting her to have time to adjust, too. After a few moments, though, his arms started quivering with the effort of motionlessness, his body demanding amendments for the friction it lacked.
“I need to move,” he choked out, throat impossibly tight. Skin impossibly hot. “But you’ll tell me if it’s too much? If you wish for me to stop?”
She nodded, her hands giving him a slight tug forward. “I want to feel you move inside me. To know what it’s like.”
Her words created a fresh shock of longing in his bloodstream, invigorating him as he pulled himself up and sank back down. They both made a sound: hers high and breathy, his a low groan. The pure pleasure of the sensation went far beyond nice, or any other descriptor he could imagine.
Then again, he could think of very little beyond turning the motion into a rhythm. Up, thrust, up, thrust, each time a little deeper, a little faster. Violet’s head was tipped back, the tension in her features melting into blissful, uninhibited slackness.
He would stop if she asked him, just like he promised—even though the effort may well cause him to expire on the spot. However, the more he plunged into her, the more she seemed to get lost in the cadence of it, her cries developing the same lilt as when he’d set his tongue between her legs.
“Violet,” he ground out, kissing her throat, sliding a palm between their damp bodies to caress those plump, puckered nipples. His climax was bearing down on him at a pace he couldn’t control, sending him hurtling, soaring—
And then, before he could say another word, release hit him like a tidal wave, drowning him in bursts of pleasure so intense that light flashed before his eyes.
His body shuddered and jerked, and he suddenly became aware that she pulsed along with him, the squeeze of her muscles drawing out his ecstasy until every drop had been wrung from his veins.
He had no words to describe how glorious she was.
How damn beautiful, sensual, and altogether alluring.
Instead, he had to content himself with dropping to the mattress and gathering her into his arms, holding her secure against his chest while they both waited for their breathing to return to its normal pace.
Ultimately, it was Violet who spoke first, her voice airy and dreamlike. “I think I might like to do that again sometime.” Her fingers traced a languorous line from his collarbone to his navel and back again. “Preferably soon.”
The grin she flashed him held all the brilliance of the sun, blinding him to everything but his impeccable fortune. Like a man dazed, he captured her hand and pressed it to his heart, his mouth splitting with an unconstrained grin of his own. “Have I told you I love you?”
“In fact, you have.” She giggled, giving her tongue a coy swipe along her bottom lip. “But I don’t mind hearing it again.”
“I love you. I love you.” He caught that lip between his own, the longing he’d thought sated already stirring back to life. However, he pulled away this time before the kiss could deepen, refusing to let desire take over before he’d collected his words.
“You’re my light, Violet,” he said, grounding himself in the brilliant blue of her eyes.
“My courage. My desire. My everything. I came to Aldercombe feeling lost, like I had no means of finding my way again. But then, I met you. I married you. And before I knew it, everything missing and uncertain became whole and clear.”
Her playful grin vanished, but in its place was a look of such intense, earnest joy that his heart leaped beneath her palm.
“You changed everything for the better for me, too.” She nuzzled up to his chest, bringing her free hand to rest at his nape.
“I won’t pretend that my sudden departure for Wiltshire, after my father’s scandal, brought me any great enjoyment.
But little did I know, I traveled exactly where I was meant to go at exactly the right time.
For how else would I have encountered you in that ridiculous hut? ”
He chortled in spite of himself, the memory that had once made him cringe now seeming like the most fortuitous circumstance of his life.
“I couldn’t picture myself ever being content in the countryside,” she said, giving her head a rueful shake. “But now, when I envision my happiness, it’s the only place I see.”
Her smile returned, reaching up to her eyes and making them crinkle at the corners.
“I’m sure we’ll travel to London on occasion.
The day may even come when Parliamentary duties require you to spend the Season there.
But when I dream of the future, I imagine us here, at Aldercombe.
I think of the river and the beech tree on Skylark Ridge.
I think of Achilles and the sheep. And sometimes, I even imagine a child or two with spectacles and the wildest curls England has ever seen. ”
How could he describe the drumming in his chest?
The feeling that he was somehow more alive than on any other night of his life?
Perhaps the best word was whole. Or hopeful.
Because he suddenly had a vision of what she described.
Violet, heavy with his child. The patter of small feet, the ring of carefree laughter.
A new generation—an heir—not bound by ghosts of the past but raised in the spirit of love, truth, and belonging.
“Yes.” He closed his eyes, allowing the idea to percolate.
His arms wrapped around her so they could fall asleep in each other’s embrace and the vision would carry over to his dreams. “I know what I want from the future as well, and it’s you.
It’s Aldercombe. It’s everything we build together.
It’s any titles we inherit and any places we might dwell.
Because as long as you’re there, I’ll always know I’ve found my home. ”