“You want me here?” he asked her, feathering kisses along her nose and across her mouth. “Is this where you want me, Rosamund?” His fingers were touching her, parting her, stroking. One pushed a little way inside her.
“Yes,” she said, inhaling sharply.
He smiled again. “In a moment,” he said. “Does that feel good?”
“ Yes,” she said, arching to him, biting down on her lower lip. “Too good. Justin!”
“Mm,” he said, kissing her more deeply. “Impatient, are you?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes when he lifted himself over her and brought his whole length down on top of her. His legs pushed hers wide.
She was all slim and supple grace and heat. He would have to be careful not to explode as soon as he was inside her. He wanted to be inside her for a good long while. Her eyes were wide again when he looked down into her face.
“I’ll just have to give you what you want, then, won’t I?” he said, and watched her eyes as he found her and pushed himself slowly and deeply inside. They widened ever farther.
Soft and warm and moist heat.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, shaken by the power of his own reaction to her. Her eyes rolled upward and closed when he withdrew as slowly as he had entered and pushed back inside her.
She had not expected this. Oh, she had not expected this. If she had only known what it was to be like, she would have thrown an armour about herself, she would have gone trudging off into the snow as soon as it stopped falling that afternoon. This was going to be no momentary fling.
She had not expected this—this complete knowing, this totally being known. Every inch of his body and her own-known, This close naked embrace, his body pressing hers into the mattress, his firm and slender hips clasped between her thighs, his manhood buried deep in her, knowing her with firm and steady rhythm . . .
This was to be no fleeting affair, this opening of her body and baring of her soul. Her body was being unfolded, like layers being stripped away carefully, one at a time, from a parcel. He was going to reach the very innermost core of her, the part of her that was her and no one else on this earth. She could feel that he was going to reach there. She had not known that a man could reach a woman that deeply.
“Justin!”
“Sh,” he said against her mouth. And a moment later, “Don’t fight me. I’m going to wait for you even if it takes all night.”
“Justin!”
He could feel the tightening of all her muscles. He could feel her climax coming. And he knew that she was terrified of it and fighting it. He slowed and deepened his rhythm.
“Come with me,” he said, raising his head and looking down into her eyes. “Let’s go together. We’ll hold each other and go together. Come with me?”
He was as terrified as she, if only she knew it. God, what had he got himself into? It was not just pleasure and his seed he was about to release into her. It was himself. A foolish, fanciful thought at such a moment.
“Yes,” she said,
And she kept her eyes on his as he pushed into her and nudged at her until he felt the inner tremors that would soon have her whole body shuddering. He withdrew once more and released all of his tension, all of himself into her in one final plunge.
She lifted her head to press her forehead against his neck, and she clung to him with arms and legs as she lost herself completely. When she returned to herself, she was lying against the pillow again, his cheek pressed to the side of her head, her arms about him, his whole weight pressing down on her. He was still buried inside her. She was throbbing with the aftermath of passion.
Well, she had wondered about younger men, she thought with the first rational and practical thought to come to her for many minutes. And now she knew.
Oh, dear God, now she knew!
Chapter 5
It was not a night for sleep. If Rosamund had expected him to return to his own bedchamber once it was finished, she was soon to learn differently. The candles gradually burned themselves out and the fire died down. He drew the blankets up around them and held her snugly in his arms.
They talked . . . about nothing in particular. She could never remember afterward what they had talked of that could have filled so many hours. And they kissed warmly, lazily, between times, and smiled at each other while there was light to smile by, and even after that.
“I have never lived through such an uncomfortable day as today,” he told her. “Or do I mean yesterday?”
“Me neither,” she said.
