She said it rather as if she were asking him to draw one of her teeth.
“Let’s sit down for a while, then,” he said, suiting actions to words and seating himself in the large chair beside the fire. He drew her down onto his lap and set one arm about her, coaxing her head onto his shoulder. “Just relax, Rosamund. There’s no hurry at all, is there? You aren’t a virgin by any chance, are you?”
“No,” she said hastily. “Of course not.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. And he began to unbutton her nightgown down the front.
It was strange to be sitting there talking, she thought, when she had expected business to begin without further delay. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore what his hand was doing. But when it reached inside the nightgown and moved lightly over one of her breasts, she turned her face in to his neck.
“Just relax,” he said quietly into her ear. “You’re very beautiful. Did your husband ever tell you that?”
“Yes,” she said.
His thumb stroked over the tip of her breast. She thought it felt slightly rough. It sent a strange ache up into her throat. Unexpectedly she felt herself relaxing, though it was not exactly relaxation either. But she was no longer frightened or even particularly embarrassed. She should have been— Leonard had never touched her there.
She was exquisite. He had always thought he liked large-breasted women—like Jude. Rosamund’s breasts were small and firm and shapely and petal-smooth. Her nipples hardened to his touch. She had relaxed. She was no longer stiff and unyielding. He lowered his head to kiss her cheek, and she turned her head until their mouths met.
Her lips were still closed, but they were yielding. She parted them tentatively to the probing of his tongue and he explored lightly the warm, moist flesh behind. She opened her mouth and her tongue trembled over his as he pushed it inside. He could feel himself becoming aroused. She was quite as alluring as he had expected her to be. Perhaps more so. She seemed strangely inexperienced. But then she had not had numerous bedfellows to teach her the tricks of the trade.
He slid the flannel nightgown off one shoulder and down her arm and lowered his head to kiss her throat, her shoulder, and her breast. She was warm, smooth, inviting. She smelled faintly of the perfume she had worn that morning. He lifted his head to look into her eyes.
“Shall we resume this conversation in bed?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said, sitting up and drawing the nightgown back up onto her shoulder.
Her heart began to thump again as she got to her feet. This was it, then. There could be no going back now without making an utter fool of herself. Not that there had been any going back for the last several minutes, of course. But she did not want to go back. She wanted more of his kisses, more of his hands.
He stopped her at the side of the bed and turned her toward him, his hands on her shoulders. He bent his head and kissed her briefly.
“Do you want the candles out?” he asked.
There would still be light from the fire. But not enough. She had chosen her course, and doubtless she would live with the guilt of it for months to come. But since she had chosen it and could feel no regret yet, she wanted to taste the whole of it.
“No,” she said.
He smiled, lifted the flannel back from her shoulders, and let the whole garment fall in a heap at her feet. He put his arms about her and drew her against him before she could die of embarrassment.
“This has never happened to you before, has it?” he said against her hair.
“No,” she said.
“It will be beautiful, I promise you,” he said. “You are beautiful. You have nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.”
She lay on the bed a moment later as he untied the sash of his dressing gown and shrugged out of it. As she had suspected, he was naked beneath it. And magnificent. And frightening. She caught her lower lip between her teeth.
It was strange, he thought a little later as he lay beside her on the bed, how making love to an innocent could be a far more wildly erotic experience than making love with the most experienced courtesan. And Rosamund Hunter was an innocent, even if she had been married for eight years. Her husband must have exercised his conjugal rights—she had said she was not a virgin—but she knew nothing.
But she responded to the touch of his hands and his mouth. And he found that he was in no hurry. He was fully aroused, but he was used to waiting for his pleasure so that it would be all the sweeter for the delay. And he liked to touch her, to feel her growing response, to hear her involuntary gasps, to feel her trembling hands on him.
He had set her hands against his chest, and she had left them there for a while, spread against rough hairs, afraid to move them. She could feel his naked thighs against hers, his hands on her, knowingly seeking out unerringly places that had her all but moaning out her pleasure and desire, his mouth at her throat, on her breasts, sucking at her nipples, on her mouth. And she could see him, his longish fair hair rumpled, his blue eyes heavy-lidded with passion.
After a while her hands began to move tentatively, curiously, wonderingly. Firm flesh, powerful muscles, narrow hips, small firm buttocks. She did not have the courage to move her hands forward. But she wanted him. Ah, she wanted him.
“Make love to me.”
His face was above hers. He was smiling down at her. “That is what I am doing.”
“I want more.”
