Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
He had never imagined they would be here.
Not truly. When she’d consented to the marriage, he hadn’t considered making love to Harriet.
He hadn’t considered that he would feel such need, such desire for her.
In large part because he had not imagined such feelings could ever exist between them.
It was clear to him now how wrong he’d been.
Taking a moment to remove his shirt, he tossed it aside.
Then he felt her gaze upon him, felt her watching him and so he paused a moment, allowing her to look, to explore and study.
Only then did he join her on the bed, lying down beside her, his thigh draped over hers.
The curve of her hip pressing against him in a way that made further thought nigh to impossible.
But when she reached out, her hand sliding over his skin, touching his shoulder and his chest—tentative at first then with more confidence—he closed his eyes and dropped his head until his forehead rested against hers.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said softly. “I want to bring you pleasure as you did for me.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” he told her. “Feeling you touch me, your hand on my skin, your body pressed against me—that is pleasure, Harriet. More than you can imagine.”
“You know what I mean!”
“I do,” he agreed. “And we will have years together to learn all the different ways we can bring one another that kind of pleasure. But for tonight, I only want this to be as good for you as possible… and it isn’t always pleasant the first time.
Not for women. It’s unfair but that’s just the way of it, unfortunately. ”
“I do know that… well, I’ve heard that. Whispered conversations between maids can be very educational and also infuriatingly uninformative all at once.”
It was such a Harriet thing to say. And without volition, he offered the words, “I’ve loved you for all of my life, I think.
I didn’t notice it for so long because it had just always been there…
like the color of my hair or my eyes. It was just simply part of who I am.
And I shall never tell her so, but I will always be grateful for Mother’s machinations. ”
“I’ll tell her. Then you won’t have to,” Harriet offered.
Benedict kissed her again, claiming her mouth with a kind of carnality that he had not yet shown her. The kind of carnality that, until that moment, he’d held at bay by sheer dint of will. His restraint had been tested for too long.
Everything he’d learned moments earlier about the ways she liked to be touched, the places that made her gasp, those that made her shiver—he revisited all of them. And with each one, she offered the sweetest sounds which only spurred his own need to greater heights.
When he could wait no longer, he moved between her thighs and freed the fall of his breeches.
He pressed at her entrance, guiding himself into her—slowly, carefully, as gently as he could manage.
And Harriet welcomed him not with the pleasure he so wanted for her but with a kind of stoicism that was humbling.
The moment he encountered resistance, he halted. Breathing hard, as though he’d run miles, he held his weight on his forearms and looked down at her. “This is the not-so-wonderful part of it all… but after this moment, it only gets better.”
In answer, Harriet wrapped her arms about him and lifted her hips slightly.
It was an invitation and also an act of complete trust. Benedict took a steadying breath and then pressed forward.
She didn’t cry out or protest. But she tensed against him and he knew that it caused her pain—something he had never wanted to do.
It was only seconds, but when she began to relax against him, still he waited.
Then Harriet shifted beneath him, her hips moving subtly, experimentally.
The lack of pain apparently emboldened her, so she did it again, and that was the moment Benedict saw her expression shift from caution to abandon.
That was the moment he began to move within her, to guide them both to that miraculous peak.
Harriet began to tremble against him, her body quivering with that now familiar tension.
He gritted his teeth, clenching his jaw tight as he tried to hold himself in check for just a moment more.
Then the first ripple of pleasure arced through her.
He could feel the walls of her sheath spasm around him and it was the end.
There was no hope of control at that point.
He thrust once more, and then his own release claimed him, the heat of it rushing through him and into her.
They clung to one another and waited for the tremors to subside, for the world to right itself again, and for the whole of their relationship to have changed dramatically in an instant.
Hours later, Benedict awakened. He was still in Harriet’s bed.
He’d held her close, her naked body pressed to his as they slept.
She slumbered still, in fact. So he didn’t move.
Instead, he lay there holding her, contemplating how they’d come to be in their current situation.
Some outside force had simply needed to push them into a situation where they would have to actually see one another as they were rather than as the childhood friend and sometimes enemy that they had always been to one another.
“You are thinking,” she murmured sleepily. “I can hear it.”
He smiled at that. “I was thinking. In your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine we’d be here?”
At that point her eyes opened and she looked back at him over her shoulder. “Not even the greatest and most imaginative of writers could have envisioned this… but if it is a dream, I don’t wish to wake up from it. I should very much like to stay here forever.”
Benedict pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder. “Then we shall… until the world intrudes. Then we can tell them to go hang. Unless it’s Mrs. Mercer. She’s a bit too terrifying for that.”
Their laughter faded and passion flared again. Like everything that had ever passed between them, there was an ebb and flow. And their lives would be better for it, because they would never grow bored in one another’s presence.