After just a few minutes they were both hot and clammy. They were both breathing raggedly and audibly.
He had caught hold of the sides of her nightgown just above the knees, she realized suddenly, and was sliding it upward over her body. She raised her arms and he lifted it all the way off and dropped it to the floor beside them.
She was naked then, and the candles still burned on the dressing table. She did not care. She moved back against him and wrapped her arms about his neck and kissed his lips.
But he moved his head after a minute or so and kissed a hot, moist path down to her breasts again. He feathered kisses around one nipple while he circled the other with the tip of one finger, and then he licked it, inhaling through his mouth so that she felt a rush of cool air. She gasped, and he sucked the nipple into his mouth and suckled her while he rubbed a thumb over the other nipple.
She was so raw with desire that she could only lean into him for balance and throw back her head almost in agony and clutch his hair with both hands.
Her legs were weak. Up inside, where no man had ever been, she pulsed and throbbed with a need so intense it was indistinguishable from pain.
She let out a long breath on a ragged sigh. It sounded almost like a sob.
He lifted his head and kissed her softly on the mouth. One of his hands had gone down to cup over the throbbing place. And memory returned on a rush of sensation, the memory of his doing that once before and then… Stopping.
Not this time. Please, not this time.
“Please,” she murmured against his lips. “Please.”
He was looking down at her then with his lovely heavy-lidded eyes.
“Tell me you want me,” he whispered, rubbing his nose lightly across hers. “Tell me, Katherine.”
And for a split second she considered pulling away, breaking the spell, putting an end to this as he had done that other time. For he had promised she would desire him before he took her to bed, and he had fulfilled his promise-with the greatest ease. Just as he could have won his wager at Vauxhall if he himself had not decided to put an end to it.
Was this all a charade to him? Another easy conquest?
And did it matter?
She was his wife. This was their wedding night. She owed him surrender even if this were indeed no more than duty. But she wanted him. Oh, yes, she did. She did not care about anything else. She would think again in the morning.
Only a split second had passed-a jumble of thoughts that did not even have time to articulate themselves verbally in her mind.
“I want you,” she whispered back.
Please don’t stop. Not like that other time. Please don’t stop. He backed her the couple of feet to the side of the bed. She sat down on it, and then lay down and gazed up at him. But he had bent over her and kissed her openmouthed as he pulled his shirt free of the band of his pantaloons. He broke the kiss for the moment it took to pull the shirt off over his head, and then resumed it while he undid the buttons at his waist and removed his pantaloons and drawers.
He came onto the bed with her, looming over her, his hands braced on either side of her head, his knees straddling her legs.
He was gazing down into her eyes and it occurred to her that he had not thought of blowing out the candles. Or perhaps he had. Perhaps he had left them burning deliberately. She did not care.
She lifted both hands and cupped his face with them. She touched her thumbs to his lips, moving them outward lightly from the center to the corners.
“I want you,” she whispered again.
He kissed her, and his weight bore down on her, and his legs came between her own and pressed them wide until by sheer instinct she bent them at the knees and lifted them to twine about his, and she felt him position himself hard and hot against the most sensitive part of herself, and then…
Ah, then.
He came slowly in and in until there seemed nowhere else to come, and she clutched his back in fear of pain. And the pain came, sharp and terrifying-and was gone almost before she had felt it. And he came in and in until she was stretched and filled and aching with need from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.
“The consummation, then, my wife,” he murmured against her lips.
Her mind did not quite grasp the words.
He had moved his head to the pillow beside her, and he was withdrawing slowly from her, and then-before she could protest-pressing in again.
It amazed her that she could be twenty-three years old, that she could have grown up in the country surrounded by animals both wild and domestic, that she had known the basic facts of life for as far back as she could remember, and yet that she had never really known…
Ah, she had never known.
It went on for what seemed a very long time, the wonderful riding rhythm, the firm thrust and withdrawal, the hot wetness that she could even hear, the aching, the need, the pleasure, the pain, the… But, there were no words.
There were no words.
And then his face was above hers again and some of his weight had been lifted off her. He had braced himself on his forearms to look down at her.
And the rhythm changed. It was slower and deeper. His face glistened with sweat. She bit her lower lip and then frowned slightly.
Pleasure had become pain pure and simple.
And then the rhythm quickened until it became… unbearable.
She closed her eyes very tightly and pressed her head back into the pillow. She untwined her legs from about his, braced her feet against the mattress, and lifted, strained into the pain.
And…
Oh, and.
It shattered into a million pieces and revealed itself to be what it had been all along. Peace. Beauty.
Pure, beautiful peace.
She was aware that his weight had come down on her again, that he was pumping hard into her, that after a few moments he held still, straining into her until she felt a lovely gush of liquid heat at her core.
But it was all peace. All beauty.
Until, after a couple of minutes, he disengaged his body from hers and moved off her to lie beside her and pulled the bedcovers up over them.
She was suddenly damp, cold, uncomfortable, bereft.
Bewildered.
Herself again. Though not quite that. Not yet.
She turned over onto her side, facing away from him. She needed to get herself back. She needed…
She was aware of him turning onto his side too-away from her.
Why had peace given place so soon to turmoil? To two separate solitudes?
Because peace had been without thought? Without… integrity?
How could she have felt like that without love?
Was love essential?
Did it even exist-the love she had dreamed of all her life?
If it did, it was too late now for her to find it.
Must she make do with this instead, then?
Only this?
Pleasure without love?
Despite the troubled turmoil of her thoughts, she finally fell into a sleep of sheer exhaustion.
Jasper did not sleep. He lay staring at the door leading into their private sitting room. It stood slightly ajar.
The candles were still burning. He did not bother to get up to extinguish them.
He had known that she lied-duty rather than desire, indeed! He did not know why he had even asked the question. Just to see if she would be honest with him, he supposed.
And then she had challenged him with just the sort of defiant spirit she had shown at Vauxhall. She had challenged him to make her desire him.
He half smiled despite the fact that he was feeling very far from amusement.