Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
She hadn’t been prepared. Not truly. Oh there had been stolen peeks at scandalous statuary, but they bore little resemblance to Julien in his full naked glory.
No mere fig leaf would conceal such endowment.
It was both thrilling and terrifying. But she trusted him.
Implicitly. As one should if one was willing to accept a marriage proposal.
He strode forward and scooped her into his arms, carrying her back to the bed where he placed her with gentleness.
But there was still a bit of playful teasing as his fingertips danced along her rib cage, tickling her ever so lightly.
She could not suppress an answering giggle, nor could she suppress the way her heart leapt at his devastating smile.
Her lips were still curving upward when he leaned in to capture her mouth with his own.
As kisses went, Caroline recognized that it was very different from anything else they had shared.
That element of cool control and just enough detachment had vanished.
In its place was a gesture so thoroughly carnal that it left her gasping and trembling beneath him when only their mouths had touched thus far.
But then his hands followed suit. Coasting delicately over her skin.
Mapping every curve and crest of her form.
But when he drug his mouth from hers and began to follow the paths his hands had taken, peppering her skin with kisses in places she had never imagined that she would be kissed, she felt a frisson of panic.
That frisson blossomed into full scale shock when she felt his tongue licking along her inner thigh.
Surely he did not mean to—there was no time to complete the thought, no time to consider the implication of it.
Instead, he hooked his arms around her thighs and tugged her down toward the edge of the bed, all the while splaying her thighs fully.
Then he pressed a kiss there, his lips brushing the dark golden curls that shielded her sex.
She might have gasped had there been air left in her to do so.
But any protests she might have uttered died on her lips quickly enough.
One sweep of his tongue along the tender seam of her sex and she moaned—a sound so raw and animalistic she barely recognized it as having been made by her.
Julien’s answer was simply to grip her thighs more firmly and to press himself more intimately against her.
Kissing, licking, suckling gently at that most sensitive part of her until at last she could take no more.
She was nearly begging him—whether to stop or to continue she could not be sure.
For his part, it seemed Julien had no intention of stopping. Every touch was designed to inflame. Every last breath was focused on driving her not just to the peak of pleasure but beyond it, to the place where one could lose themselves entirely. And that is precisely what he did.
With his hands once more hooked around her thighs, he hauled her down to the edge of the bed.
With her ankles resting on his shoulders, she felt him move between her thighs, the blunt tip of his arousal nudging at her entrance.
And then he was inside, but only just. Just enough to tease her, to make her want more even as the foreignness of the sensation startled her.
All the while she could only think that it was nothing at all like she might have expected, not that her expectations had been founded on anything beyond vague and florid descriptions of passion in Gothic novels.
“This may hurt… and I wish that were not the case. I would do anything not to cause you pain,” he told her. “But if it does, it will only be this one time. And I promise that what awaits us on the other side of it is glorious.”
“I trust you,” she whispered softly. Not out of hesitation or fear, but because it felt like a moment that called for the hush of reverence. “I will always trust you. And I do not care if it is painful. Make me yours…in every way.”
No further words were spoken. He pressed into her more deeply, parting her flesh with his own. Slowly, gently, but also relentlessly. And when she felt that instant flash of pain, it was gone as quickly as it had came.
It was so very different from everything that had passed between them prior to that moment.
And she realized just how much he had held back, just how much restraint he had shown in introducing her to such things with his particular brand of slow patience.
Because there was a needfulness to what they presently shared, a driving force to reach that penultimate moment of perfect release.
The intimacy of it, the feeling of being connected to him physically in a way that mirrored their other connection, was more than she could bear.
His movements became more insistent, his hardness surging into her in a way that was sharper, more insistent, but no less gentle for it.
And his intensifying need, spurred her own.
The pleasure built inside her in such a way that it felt as if the earth itself might fall away if she did not cling to it—to something.
So her hands tangled in the bedding, the fabric twisting in her hands as she strained toward him and that blissful shattering sensation she had come to know so well.
But she was not prepared. Not fully. For it was a very different thing when those ripples of pleasure began to rock through her and he was buried deep inside her.
A sharp keening cry escaped her as that sensation seemed to swallow her entirely.
The walls of her sex fluttered around his invading member, and then she felt the hot rush of him spilling inside her.
It was too much. It was too perfect and too much all at once.
All she could do was close her eyes, a single tear rolling from beneath her lashes.
A tear which he then brushed away with his thumb.
“I hurt you,” he said worriedly.
“No,” she corrected. “You did not hurt me. You’ve given me everything… It was a moment so perfect, I think it will live forever in my mind and my heart.”
He leans down, kissing her lips in a sweet and gentle way. “I am glad of that. Because it will live in mine as well… the culmination of a years’ long dream that I thought might never be realized. You, Mrs. Caroline Ashworth Harcourt, have been worth waiting for.”
“Will you think that even when people whisper about us?” She asked. “The deaths of Verity and William Sutton will mean that the gossip from last season shall spring anew as soon as we return to town… I could well become a pariah.”
“Then I shall have you all to myself,” he murmured, easing down on the bed beside her.
He pulled her against him, their limbs entwined.
“So let them whisper all they like. I’ve no opposition to spending not so quiet evenings at home alone with my wife…
I imagine we will find any number of ways to entertain ourselves. ”
“More than we already have?” She asked.
He grinned then, that expression smacking of pure masculine satisfaction.
“Oh, my darling bride, this is only the beginning… The possibilities are practically infinite. And I’ve spent the past six years dreaming of them over and over again…
we shall be the most well satisfied pariahs to ever be ignored by society. ”