“God in heaven, Wife…” His breathing grew harsh, and yet he held off. He did not want her in transports, he needed her in transports—and ecstasies and delights and entire floods of pleasure—before he could think of spending.
Her legs tightened around him, he felt her fingernails gripping his buttocks with a sweet, fierce sting.
And yet for a few more interminable moments, he held off.
“Evie… let go.”
Her breath came harsh against his throat as she started panting. “I can’t get my… I can’t…”
“You shall…” He anchored a hand under her derriere and held her steady for an onslaught of deep, measured thrusts that sent her over the edge. With her mouth open on his neck, he heard and felt the low, keening moan that slipped from her and felt the way her body seized around his cock in glorious, fisting spasms of gratification.
In the middle of it, as her passion was cresting audibly, she found his free hand, laced her fingers with his, and whispered his name.
He could not have held off at that moment to save his soul.
In the days following her wedding, Eve dwelled in an ever-expanding bubble of emotion characterized predominantly by the joy of one whose hopes and dreams have received not just a stay of execution, but a full, unconditional, royal pardon.
She was married—happily, joyously married—and not to some mincing, left-handed cipher, or a fortune hunter of dubious motives, but to a man whom she liked and esteemed greatly. She had chosen not just well, she had chosen wonderfully and wisely.
Better still, she’d chosen a man who showed her both affection and desire in abundance. That she’d been starving for both was a sobering realization, one that threw into high relief just how contorted she’d allowed her view of herself to become.
Of course she desired her husband—what sane woman would not want Lucas Denning in her bed?
Of course she enjoyed his company. He was charming, devoted, and open with her in a way she hadn’t expected but supposed characterized even her parents’ marriage behind closed doors.
The desire took her breath away, but the affection… Deene stole her heart with the pleasure he seemed to take in simply touching her and being in her company. They ate every meal together unless Deene was off in Town, meeting with his solicitors, and that was just the start of ways he found to share her company.
“You’ll come down to the stables when you’ve met with Mrs. Belt?”
Deene passed three juicy strawberries from his plate to hers. He’d had strawberries delivered to their rooms last night long after dark, and what he’d done with a mere, unprepossessing fruit… and that was before he’d started with the chocolate sauce.
Eve studied the treat on her plate and mentally reviewed what her husband had asked her. “I’ll be down as soon as we’ve established a schedule for the maids and footmen, worked out next week’s menus, arranged for the windows to be cleaned both inside and out, and—”
He put a finger to her lips. “And then you’ll come down to see us turn out your foal with his playmates for the first time.”
“Yes, Husband.” He did not understand that a household would not run itself, and having the maids clean the insides of the windows a month after the footmen cleaned the outsides meant the windows were never truly clean.
He kissed her on the lips and left her in a rosy, happy silence, contemplating the masculine pulchritude of his retreating form. She was still contemplating it when her sister-in-law, Anna, the Countess of Westhaven, came to call at midmorning.
“I was on my way into Town from Willow Bend and thought I’d just peek in. If you weren’t yet out of bed, I would have been on my merry way.”
Evie linked her arm through Anna’s and drew her along a path winding between beds of blooming irises. “You would have reported to the entire family that I was having a lie-in in the first week of my marriage, and Their Graces would have started getting ideas.”
Anna’s eyes lit with mischief. “Westhaven and I were nearly bedridden the first three months of our marriage. I know he’s your brother, but I want you to understand that the term wedded bliss can be grounded in fact, Eve.”
“We are not… bedridden.” Not when Deene could accost her in the linen closet, the butler’s pantry, the saddle room, and their bed.
“Are you happy with your choice, Evie?” Anna took a bench in the morning sun, and Eve settled beside her.
“I am quite, quite happy with my husband and with the state of holy”—horny, as Deene termed it—“matrimony. Deene is very considerate.”
Doting would have been a more accurate word.
“Considerate, bah.” Anna’s full mouth flattened. “Considerate, cordial, amicable, civilized. Such words have no place in the vocabulary of those newly wed. Your brothers are worried about you, Eve Denning. They like Deene, but they will cheerfully geld him if he’s not being a proper husband to you.”
St. Just had vowed as much on Eve’s very wedding day. “I should not like my husband gelded.”
Anna, blast her, waited while Eve tried to sort out the thoughts she could admit aloud from the ones she’d carry with her to her grave.
“I believe Deene has been lonely.”
Anna rearranged her skirts. “Go on.”
“He seems to want not just… not just to exercise his marital rights, but to have my company. I’m to join him for all of our meals. I’m to watch the lads with the horses. Deene says I have an instinct for what’s needed to make a horse-and-rider combination a partnership and more experience at it than I realize.”
She’d been particularly pleased with that compliment.
“One hopes a new husband would comment on his wife’s obvious gifts.”
Obvious, perhaps, though Eve herself had lost sight of that one. “I had not realized Deene has such an affectionate nature.”
“In what regard?”
This was an interrogation, plain and simple, and yet Eve wanted to share the state of her marriage—the wonderful state of her marriage—with somebody. “He likes to touch me and not just… all kinds of touches. He takes my hand. He puts his arm around my waist or my shoulders. When he takes a seat beside me, there’s no decorous space between us, even if we’re in company or before the servants. He’s like… a cat, or a dog. Proximity seems to comfort him.”
Brushing her hair comforted him, assisting her to dress and undress comforted him, feeding her, and most wonderful of all—cuddling up the entire night long, not just for a few minutes of postcoital lassitude, comforted him each and every night.
Eve admitted to herself that she took comfort from all these casual generosities on Deene’s part too. They nourished her confidence in some way she could not describe and fed some other emotion she wasn’t likely to discuss with anybody, ever.
“This is all very encouraging, Evie. Never forget to demonstrate to your husband that you appreciate his trust in this regard.”
His trust? “Whatever do you mean?”
The smile Anna sported now was diabolically sweet. “I realize Westhaven is a doting and affectionate brother devoted to his family, but it might surprise you to know that as a husband, he was initially plagued with a certain reticence.”
Reticence ought to have been one of Gayle’s several middle names. “I am dumbfounded to hear this.”
Anna sailed along, either missing the irony or choosing to ignore it. “He required reassurances that his small displays of affection and protectiveness were not merely tolerable but welcome.”
Westhaven requiring reassurances was an intriguing notion. “Do tell.”