“I just closed my eyes for a moment,” she said. “It has been a long day.”
“You are not going to plead exhaustion, Katherine, are you?” he asked. “On our wedding night?”
“No, of course not,” she said.
“And is it,” he asked her, “desire or duty that prompts that reply?”
She opened her mouth to give him an answer and closed it again.
His eyes bored into hers. He was still looming over her, waiting for a reply.
“Duty,” she said. “You will not find me undutiful, my-Jasper.”
“Ah, will I not?” He straightened up and held out a hand, palm up.
She set her own in it and got to her feet.
It was not just duty. It ought to be, but it was not.
He tugged slightly on her hand and she came against his full length, her hands splayed against his chest. She could feel him instantly, hard and male, from her shoulders to her knees. She could feel the bulge of his manhood pressed to her stomach.
His hands slid hard down her back. One remained against her waist. The other spread across her buttocks and pulled her even closer.
She tipped back her head.
“It will be desire, Katherine,” he said, and it seemed to her that his voice and expression were fierce, with none of the usual lazy humor. “Before I lay you on that bed and mount you, it will be desire more than duty.”
She had offended him, perhaps even hurt him. Hurt his pride. He prided himself on his seductive powers, on his sexual prowess. Perhaps he thought, foolish man, that in those things alone lay all his claim to manliness.
“You had better see to it, then,” she said, “that actions match words, Jasper. I do not want to be disappointed-again.”
The fierce look was gone instantly. The humor was back in his eyes, and he laughed aloud.
“You minx,” he said. “You saucy minx, Katherine.”
And his mouth was on hers again, open and demanding this time, not subtle at all. She opened her mouth against the onslaught, and his tongue pressed deep inside her mouth so that for a moment she gasped for air.
And then one hand came up to the back of her head and tipped it to one side, and his tongue ravished her mouth slowly, pulsing in and out, curling to stroke the roof of her mouth with exquisitely light strokes until she moaned and one hand gripped his shoulder while the fingers of the other twined in his hair.
She could feel with her stomach that he was hard and big.
His hands were stroking over her then, his palms firm, his fingers gentle and sensitive, rousing every nerve ending as they went-over her shoulders, down her arms to her elbows to her hands, over her breasts, lifting them in the cleft between his thumbs and forefingers, circling her nipples with his thumbs and then pressing lightly on them through the fabric of her nightgown until they were hard and aching, down over her waist and hips, in to her stomach, down to cup her between her legs, down the outsides of her thighs, up behind to circle and caress her buttocks, lifting her slightly so that he could rub his hardness between her thighs.
His mouth had followed his hands-down over her chin, along her throat, down to the cleft between her breasts.
And her own hands had not been idle-or her body. She explored the magnificent hard, muscled length of him, pressing her palms to him, teasing him, caressing him with her fingertips, rubbing her breasts against his chest, her stomach against his.
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…