Epilogue
“It looks so different,” Louisa said as she walked in through the door of old hunting lodge by the lake and began to look around.
“Do you like it?” asked Benedict, leaning back against the doorway and watching her with a smile as she examined the place.
The old carpets had been beaten, the wood polished and the windows cleaned. Fresh woodland flowers filled a vase on the table in the living room and a fire had been built in the grate, waiting to be lit if the evening grew cooler.
“I love it, Benedict! It was always so old and dusty in here when I was young, and no one ever stays here. Uncle Edgar pretends he will when he visits for duck hunting but then he always says his lumbago is coming on and stays at Rosemere instead.”
“We shall not suffer from lumbago, I promise,” laughed Benedict. “I have thought of everything. Come and see the bedroom.”
Louisa glanced at her new husband from under her lashes, wondering whether this was really an invitation of another sort.
Perhaps it was, but the boyish eagerness on his face told her he really did wish to show something too.
Following Benedict through the door, she saw that this chamber too had been transformed.
The two old rickety wooden cots were gone and in their place stood a sturdy bed of chestnut wood, topped with a comfortable-looking mattress and familiar Rosemere linen.
“It came from one of the guest rooms at Rosemere,” Benedict told her. “I chose it, with your aunt. She selected the mattress, though. I cannot take credit for that.”
“Aunt Beatrice is very particular about the mattresses at Rosemere,” observed Louisa.
“See how comfortable it is,” he added, throwing himself onto the bed with a grin, and then lying there, holding his arms out to her.
Louisa advanced to the bed with halting steps, shy again suddenly. Benedict turned on his side and smiled at her more gently.
“There’s no need to be scared. Tonight is going to be very slow and we don’t even have to start until you’re ready.”
“I know,” Louisa acknowledged, sitting down on the bed and patting it with her hand, finding it as well stuffed and fashioned as all the beds at Rosemere. “I thought I wasn’t nervous earlier, but now that we’re here, I am.”
Lying down then, she smiled and then rolled to Benedict’s side as he opened his arms again and embraced her, presently with more affection than passion.
“Can I tell you a secret?” he said, stroking the loose curls from Louisa’s face. “I am a little nervous too.”
“Really?” returned Louisa with surprise. “But you have… well, you have shared a bed with many women.”
“None of those women were you, Louisa,” Benedict answered seriously.
“None of them knew me, or cared for me as more than a friendly acquaintance. None of them saw me or understood me as you do. I am not a selfish lover and I have always wanted to please the women who came to my bed, but never half as much as I want to please you.”
“Oh,” Louisa said quietly, thinking about this. “Well, then, in some way, it will be a first time for both of us.”
“You say the right thing at the right time,” he replied.
“You do the right thing at the right time,” Louisa countered.
Benedict smiled again before kissing her gently and lovingly on the mouth and rolling them both to the edge of the bed.
“Let’s light all the candles and that fire in the living room before it gets too dark, and then we can consider how we want to spend our evening.”
A few minutes later Louisa watched as Benedict discarded his jacket and waistcoat and knelt before the fireplace.
“Pass me those tongs, would you?” he asked, striking a spark onto the kindling and then another, blowing them carefully into a small conflagration below the carefully stacked wood chips and logs of various sizes.
Louisa took the tongs from the other side of the fireplace and joined him on the soft, sheepskin rug, noting its familiarity as she did so.
“It’s the rug from the library, isn’t it?” she asked, running her hands over its surface.
“Yes, it certainly is,” Benedict replied, stoking up the fire a little and then replacing the grate.
“Did you know that I lay on this rug in the library when I first read your book about Sir Benedict Palmer and his daring exploits? A rose fell out of the book that night and I put it in my pocket. It has been there ever since.”
Louisa laughed and blushed.
“I remember all kinds of things about that night in the library,” she sighed, thinking of how they had both almost been swept away by the force of their longing. “I almost ended up on this rug with you, I believe.”
Benedict was facing her now, both of them seated on the sheepskin as the fire took hold in the grate.
“Yes, you did,” he answered honestly. “I remembered that too when I decided to bring it here for us. You ran away, for very good reasons, even though, I think, you wanted to be naked on this rug with me that night…”
Benedict’s gaze held Louisa’s like a physical embrace and she nodded.
“I was afraid,” she admitted. “I also wanted you so badly that it terrified me even more. You made me feel things I’d never felt before.”
Reaching out a hand, Benedict began to remove the pins from Louisa’s hair and lay them on a tile beside the hearth, each small touch a sensuous shiver.
“Desire is a very powerful sensation,” he remarked, now running his fingers through her freed honey-golden curls. “It can feel overwhelming.”
Louisa pressed her head into his caressing fingers like a cat, wanting to be touched and stroked.
“With trust, overwhelming desire can become overwhelming pleasure,” he added, pushing one side of Louisa’s dress from her shoulder and bending his head to kiss her there. “Do you think you could be naked on this rug with me tonight, and not want to run away?”
Now he had pushed the other side of Louisa’s dress from her other shoulder and kissed her there too, pausing then with a smile as her breathing quickened.
“I want us both naked, Benedict,” Louisa whispered. “I’m not running anywhere.”
Grinning, Benedict unfastened his shirt and threw it onto a chair so that he sat before Louisa bare chested, his well-muscled and dark-haired torso and strong arms fascinating her.
“Your turn,” he said and gently pulled down the neckline of her dress, spilling her full breasts from the fabric and light summer stays she wore beneath.
Pulled against Benedict for a hungry kiss, Louisa’s nipples brushed and pressed against Benedict’s chest and she cried out at the unfamiliar but searingly pleasurable feeling.
Somehow half sitting in his lap now while he kissed her and played with her sensitive breasts, Louisa could feel the hardness growing at his groin and a corresponding throbbing between her own thighs.
A few minutes ago, her mind had been nervously contemplating mattresses, furnishings and fire-lighting.
Now somehow, she was writhing with desire and more than ready to follow Benedict’s lead into passion.
His mouth was at Louisa’s lips, her neck, her arms, her breasts while his skillful hands unfastened the sash and buttons at the back of her dress.
None of Louisa’s garments seemed to present any difficulty to Benedict’s expertise in removing women’s clothing and she could not quite say how she came to be naked to her stockings, kneeling on the rug with him.
“I wanted you so much that night in the library, Louisa,” Benedict told her between kisses, his hands skimming the bare curves of her hips and bottom before he eased her onto her back.
“My lust was likely too great to remember that you ought to be kissed everywhere before you are mounted, especially the first time. You were right to run from me then.”
Louisa sighed as her breasts received further kisses and then her belly and even her thighs.
Then Benedict pressed a bewildering kiss into the dark golden hair that covered her mount of Venus and a strong erotic jolt shuddered through her.
When he said “everywhere” it had never occurred to Louisa that he might kiss her there too.
“Benedict?” she moaned, feeling him caressing her thighs with warm and gentle hands, urging them further apart.
“Does that feel good?” he asked in response, kissing her a second time on that patch of warm golden fur, his tongue flickering there this time and causing Louisa’s breath to catch in her throat.
“Oh, Benedict,” she moaned, his tongue having now fully emerged and licked the full length of her slit before his lips impressed themselves lightly on the swollen bud of flesh above. “Benedict…”
The pleasure of these kisses was delirious and Louisa had no idea how long it continued.
On the two occasions when Benedict had brought her to physical climax with his fingers, time had been short and the risk of interruption great.
Tonight, there was no urgency at all and the lapping of Benedict’s tongue and play of his lips reflected this.
Several times, he brought Louisa very close to what she recognized as the edge of that peak of joy, but then drew back, leaving her crying out for more and then soothing those cries by beginning all over again.
When Benedict finally drove her all the way over that edge, Louisa’s cry was close to a scream and the spasms deep in her womb so powerful that she felt them to her toes.
While she was still quivering and clinging to him, he drew the half-fainting Louisa up and lifted her in his arms to carry her into the bedroom.
“Now?” she panted as he laid her on the bed.
“Yes,” Benedict answered, kissing her with salty lips as he unfastened his trousers and undershorts and dropped them beside the bed. “While you are soft, wet and dazed with pleasure…”
Taking a pillow, he placed it under Louisa’s hips, the lewd raising and displaying of her private places shocking and thrilling her.
While Benedict caressed and arranged her body, aftershocks of pleasure and pangs of new desire shot back and forth at his touch, making her squirm and toss her head fitfully on the pillow.