Chapter Five #2
He went there to that most private place and ravaged her flesh as though she were a feast he was celebrating.
Shock held her fast and then the quivers of response and reaction began to hit her in waves.
Every wave built up to the next and long before she knew what was happening to her, she was flying up into the sun and an explosion of unbelievable pleasure was blasting through her every limb and rendering her helpless.
She flopped back into the pillows like a boneless rag doll.
Tore shifted over her and bent his tousled head to extract another deep, driving kiss filled with hunger.
And panic claimed her then because she knew that she hadn’t been a partner in any sense of the word.
She hadn’t touched him; she hadn’t touched any part of him.
While he had given her pleasure, she hadn’t reciprocated and that awareness shamed her.
‘Tore…’ she began as he twisted away to don protection.
‘You’re amazing,’ he turned back to tell her in a ringing surge of unconcealed approval.
Long fingers fluttered at the sensitive heart of her, toying with the newly tender flesh, stoking her earlier arousal afresh and adding a new urgency to that need that she had never felt before.
An ache began to build low in her belly.
He slid over her and a fleeting memory of the pain once before made her tense in dismay.
‘You’re very tight,’ he breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘Are you a virgin?’
‘Of course not,’ she declared with confidence in that fact at least.
He eased into her degree by degree and she tried not to tense at the sting of his entrance.
Even so, her body felt like one giant howl of craving that could only be sated by him sliding inside her.
But it felt like there was far too much of him and that added a faint edge of panic to her anticipation.
Keen to get over what she expected to be an anti-climax, she parted her thighs more and tilted up her hips to encourage him.
Finally, he buried himself deep. An unexpected burning sensation made her flinch and then there was a sharp little pain that made her whimper in dismay.
Tore froze and gazed down at her, intense green eyes holding her fast. ‘Are you sure I’m not your first? I hurt you.’
‘Only a little. It’s been years,’ Violet admitted grudgingly. ‘Ignore it, don’t stop.’
His ebony brows pleated into a frown.
Violet was fearful of being categorized as a freak then and she shifted her hips up again in welcome, keen to push the encounter to its usual denouement.
He shifted his hips, rolled them and the strangest sensation of pleasure feathered through her lower body.
She closed her eyes, giving herself up to that sensation, wanting so badly to feel what she knew some other women felt.
‘I can still stop,’ Tore breathed in a raw undertone.
‘No!’ she answered fiercely, convinced that she was doing absolutely the right thing and ridding them both of that dangerous curiosity that was making life difficult.
He tugged her thighs up even higher and surged deeper still.
The unfamiliar sensations came in a ripple that washed through her and then centred low in her belly like a little spark that was catching eager to burst into a flame.
And she discovered that once the discomfort and the stress had gone, she liked what she was feeling.
The weight of him over her, the provocative slide of his male body over hers, the piercing pleasure starting to pool like warm honey low in her body.
A frisson of excitement rippled through her. ‘Don’t stop,’ she warned him.
He startled her by sliding off her and flipping her over, pulling her up on her knees and sinking back into her in an urgent, commanding thrust. As long fingers brushed the bud of her clit, she gasped and the backwash of delight almost swallowed her alive.
His ferocious control was elemental and raw and savagely masculine, filling her with sensual energy and enjoyment.
His every movement controlled the enervating flow of that sweet pleasure and she ran with that earthy pull of sensation, losing herself in it, yielding control, wanting more and more until she reached the peak her body was unconsciously striving to attain.
A climax engulfed her in a surging rush of feeling and she cried out, her voice breaking in shock as he surged inside her one more time and groaned, attaining his own orgasm.
Soon afterwards, she slumped, utterly empty of response but luxuriating in the blissful aftermath of satisfaction.
Well, wasn’t exactly prepared for that, was her first coherent thought.
Tore strode into the bathroom but quickly rejoined her. He pulled her close and rolled her over, throwing back the sheet, his keen gaze homing in on the blood stains. ‘You were a virgin. You should’ve warned me. I would’ve gone slower and been more gentle—’
Violet’s eyes flew wide and she sat up. ‘I wasn’t… I couldn’t have been. I had sex when I was seventeen!’ she protested.
Tore tugged her back down to him. ‘Well, it didn’t take,’ he reasoned, closing both arms round her. ‘Let’s not argue about something immaterial to the present.’
Violet wanted to argue but she was remembering back to that night when Damien had lost interest, as it were, and they had drawn back from each other in mutual discomfiture that they had so misjudged their friendship that they had conducted such an experiment.
But it had hurt, she recalled, which had convinced her that the deed had been done and she was no longer physically innocent.
Now she didn’t know what to think because at the time there had been no embarrassing evidence on the bedding.
‘I hurt you… I wish I hadn’t,’ Tore continued.
‘I’ll recover,’ she muttered drowsily. ‘Well, have you conquered your curiosity?’
Tore laughed softly above her head. ‘It’s a little too early to say but I should admit that I’m already thinking of how much fun it would be to do it again…of course, awaiting your…er recovery.’
Violet tensed. ‘That’s not what I was hoping would happen.’
‘Does it matter right now?’
And just at that moment, warm and secure in his arms, nothing seemed to matter.
She postponed any regrets to be dealt with the next day and drifted off to sleep.
She only hoped that their new intimacy wouldn’t make it harder for them to endure three long years together.
If she was right in her earlier conviction, it would make them more relaxed and comfortable with each other.
But was it to only happen once? Hadn’t that been her first assumption?
Or would they continue to have sex? She supposed it was more what they both decided on and that she was probably worrying about nothing.
The next morning, while she was in the shower, aware with every tiny movement that she still ached between her thighs, she told herself squarely that she wasn’t going to do any morning-after regrets over what had happened between her and Tore.
It would be pointless to regret what couldn’t be changed.
Hopefully, now that curiosity had been sated, she and Tore would be less awkward with each other.
Tore, of course, had already vanished from their room to make his usual early start.
It wasn’t a promising new beginning but it was a gorgeous day and she chose a spicy red sundress to wear with sliders on her bare feet.
Belle was already gone from the nursery and everyone else seemed to be still asleep, so she went downstairs for breakfast as quietly as she could.
Stella was just settling Belle into her high chair when she arrived. Tore was seated with his coffee.
‘You should’ve woken me,’ Violet told him just as Belle squealed at the sight of her and tried to get out of the chair again.
In the ensuing fuss, Violet lifted her daughter to share their usual morning cuddle while Stella fetched the little girl’s breakfast. Tore poured her coffee and she studied him.
Heat mushroomed between her slender thighs as brilliant green eyes assailed hers.
For a split second, she couldn’t quite credit that the intimacy of the night hours had actually happened.
Without warning their whole relationship had gone from distant to much, much closer and she wasn’t quite sure how to handle that.
‘Where do we go from here?’ she heard herself ask uncertainly as Tore surveyed her with his characteristic cool, assessing gaze, and she lowered her head and began to feed Belle to occupy herself.
His lean, hard-boned features tightened. ‘No place different from where we were last night,’ Tore imparted with succinct bite.
Violet felt a little like she had been slapped down because on her terms, everything was different.
But Tore was evidently telling her that he didn’t want it any different outside the bedroom door.
Obviously, he wasn’t feeling the sense of closer connection that she was experiencing.
That physical togetherness had meant nothing to him.
‘I can tell you, though, that today we’re cutting out on our guests and having a day for ourselves,’ Tore continued smoothly, seemingly unaware that he had said anything likely to annoy or distress her.
‘Oh…?’ she said, off balanced by that statement.
‘We deserve an escape and some sightseeing. This is your first trip to Italy yet you have been nowhere and seen nothing. That’s pretty bad for a honeymoon that’s already more than a week old,’ he completed.
So once again, Tore was thinking of appearances, about adding a firmer foundation to the reality that they were newly marrieds and ensuring that they looked and behaved more like the average new couple. It was his birthday tomorrow. She would decorate the cake that evening, she decided numbly.
‘You didn’t want to get married, did you?’ she heard herself comment.