His mouth found her where his fingers had found her in the garden, and the sensation was so intense that she cried out and grabbed fistfuls of the coverlet. He was patient—impossibly, infuriatingly patient—tasting her with slow, deliberate strokes that built the same devastating tide she had felt against the wall, but deeper now, more consuming, his tongue finding rhythms that her body recognised even if her mind didn’t.
She came apart beneath his mouth with a sob that she couldn’t contain and didn’t try to. The pleasure rolled through her in waves—great, shuddering waves that left her boneless and trembling and gasping for air.
He kissed his way back up her body. Settled beside her. Brushed the damp hair from her face with fingers that trembled.
“Are you—”
“If you ask me if I am well, I shall throw something at you,” she said, turning her head to him—and, despite everything, she laughed. “I am astonishingly well. I may never again be merely well.”
His smile answered hers—slow, warm, unguarded. “Good.”
“Your turn.” She shifted toward him, reaching for the fastening of his trousers. Her hands were uncertain, unpractised—but determined.
He helped her, shedding what remained of his clothing with efficient movements, and then he was bare before her—all hard muscle and scarred skin and the evidence of his arousal that made her breath catch and her cheeks burn.
“You are staring,” he said softly.
“I have never seen… I mean, I have seen illustrations, but they were—”
“Inadequate?”
“Entirely.”
His laugh was rough, breathless. He pulled her close, skin against skin for the first time, the full length of their bodies pressed together, and the sensation—the heat, the friction, the shocking intimacy of bare flesh against bare flesh—made them both groan.
“We can stop,” he said quietly against her hair. “At any point.”
“Dominic Vane.” She pulled back, meeting his eyes. “If you attempt to stop now, I shall write to Lord Julian and inform him that you are the greatest coward in England.”
“That,” he said, easing her back and settling between her thighs with careful tenderness, “is a most persuasive threat.”
He entered her slowly. Agonisingly slowly, watching her face with fierce attention, reading every flicker of expression for signs of pain. There was discomfort—a stretching, a fullness, a sensation of being opened that bordered on overwhelming—but not the sharp agony she had been warned about in whispered conversations with married women. Just pressure, and heat, and the strange, profound intimacy of having another person inside her body.
“Breathe,” he murmured, his forehead resting against hers. “Breathe, Lorraine.”
She did. The tension eased, softened, shifted into something deeper—something that spread through her body in a slow, gathering pulse.
“Move,” she whispered. “Please.”
He obeyed.
At first, slow and measured—allowing her to adjust, to meet him. Then more surely, guided by instinct and response, the rhythm building between them. She wrapped her legs about him, changing the angle, and they both reacted—sharper, deeper, more intense.
“Lorraine.” Her name broke from him, unsteady, reverent. “You feel… I cannot—”
“I know.” She pulled him closer, her arms around his neck, her face buried in his shoulder. “I know.”
The rhythm built. His control—that iron control he had maintained through four years of grief and isolation—finally, completely, irrevocably shattered. His movements became urgent, desperate, his breath harsh against her throat, his hands gripping her hips with a ferocity that would leave bruises she would cherish.
She met him stroke for stroke, her body answering his with an instinct she hadn’t known she possessed. The pleasure coiled tighter, building toward something enormous—not the sharp, focused peak of the garden or his mouth, but something vast and encompassing, a wave that was gathering force from somewhere so deep she could feel it in her bones.
“Look at me.” Her words this time, not his. “Dominic. Look at me.”
He raised his head. His eyes were grey storms—wild, unguarded, blazing with an emotion that had no name, or perhaps had the simplest name of all.
She held his gaze as they fell together.
The climax broke over them simultaneously—his body shuddering into hers, her own release cresting to meet his, their mouths finding each other in a kiss that tasted of salt and desperation and something that might have been joy. He groaned her name into her mouth, and she swallowed it, kept it, held it inside her where it glowed like an ember.
