Still holding her hand, he guided it to where he wanted to feel her touch, and while drawings in anatomy books had shown her what the male form entailed, nothing could have prepared her for what it felt like. Smooth and hard, with a broad circular base and a rounded tip that pulsed when she tentatively traced her thumb around it.
On a groan, Stephen stilled her hand before reaching between her thighs with his own where she was already wet and wanting. He eased his body on top of hers, his knees pressing into the mattress on either side of her hips.
Pressure.
Bold at first.
Breathtaking in its intensity.
Then more pleasure, a hurtling wave of it that towered higher and higher as he eased deeper and deeper until he buried himself to the hilt and they both cried out. The room blurred again, color blending into sound and scent as their bodies movedin tandem. The wave roared large, and when it crashed upon the surf Abigail crashed with it, her velvety tightness clenching around Stephen’s marble rigidity as they were both swept out to sea.
Chapter Eight
“Come with me,Abigail,” Stephen said hoarsely, reaching across the mattress to lay his hand on top of hers. It was the first hour of daylight after a night spent cuddled together for comfort that went beyond warmth. “I don’t want this separation. I need you by my side. As my wife. My lover. The mother of my children. Come with me, to England. Be my countess.”
Abigail almost said yes.
Her lips parted, prepared to gently remind him of their agreement, but instead... instead,she almost said yes. And that terrified her all the way down to the bone.
One night of heaven, and was she truly so ready to give up all that she’d worked for? To abandon her dreams when she was so close to finally fulfilling them? To trade the world she knew for a world that was as foreign to her as the surface of the moon?
Was Stephen’s hold on herthatpowerful?
As she gazed at their entwined fingers in the quiet spill of early morning winter sunlight streaming in through the window, Abigail was afraid of what her answer would be if she were honest with herself. If she searched way down inside, to those secret longings hidden beneath layers of science, ambition, and her mother’s voice, feeble from her failing health, ringing in her ear.
“You are in control of your destiny, my darling Abby. I haven’t been able to provide you with the material belongings you would have had if you’d grown up as the daughter of a duke, but the one thing I have given you cannot be bought. Freedom from men and the society that would bind you to them.”
She had already betrayed her mother by marrying Stephen, but at least she’d done so on her own terms... for the most part. After one night together, was she really going to tear those terms asunder so that she could follow her husband across the Atlantic like an obedient pet?
“I am a practicing physician,” she said aloud, not entirely sure if she was reminding her husband of that quite important fact... or herself. “I cannot leave my patients to become a countess. There is important work to be done here.”
The coverlet rode low on Stephen’s hipbone when he drew himself up on his elbow, revealing corded muscle and sinew drawn over a taut abdomen of sunset gold. In the glow of the candlelight, she’d caught only bronzed glimpses of his body. In the light of the day, he was a sculpture brought to life. A second David that rivaled the first withonenot-so-small exception.
“There is important work for you in England,” he said, lifting a loose curl off her pillow and twining it around his finger. “Having been raised as an American, I understand that you’ve an inherent loathing for the British aristocracy, but it is part of your heritage, Abigail. And there is more to it than boring balls and tea parties. You could start a charity, be a patron of the arts, or a benefactor for the local orphanage. Most wives take up similar positions outside of the daily running of the household.”
“I am not a wife,” she said stiffly, rolling off the mattress and taking the top linen with her. Wrapping it clumsily around her in a swath of layered white, she scowled at Stephen who remainedon the bed, a muscle ticking high in his jaw. “I am adoctor. A doctor helping people here, in Connecticut, where I live.”
He sat up, naked, with the wrinkled coverlet draped loosely over his left thigh. “Except you are a wife and a doctor. You’reboth, Abigail. It’s time you start to reconcile the two, because we did get married. And you will come to England.”
“In two years.” Panic skated across her skin, slick and cold, a pond freshly frozen over. “I have two years, and you’re not even supposed to be here. You’ve broken our agreement.”
“Our agreement did not address visitation.” His amber gaze hardened, giving her a glimpse of her husband she had never seen before and reminding her, once again, that she was married to a man she knew almost nothing about.
She knew what he looked like.
She knew the sound of his voice.
She knew the taste of his kiss . . .
...and the weight of his body pressing deliciously down on hers.
She also knew that he was a man capable of going to extreme lengths to attain whatever it was he sought. He’d blindly crossed an ocean to find her, hadn’t he? He’d hunted her down with all the ruthless determination of a hound after a vixen. How could she have ever thought that he’d stop his pursuit? That he’d be satisfied with the timeline they’d both decided on. That he’d leave her alone. That he’d forget about her.
He was a wealthy viscount.
No, anearl.
And while that meant little in America, she was not ignorant to the power and influence it gave him in England. To the power and influence it gave him overher, his wife and property. If he demanded she accompany him now, if he took their contract and ripped it to shreds, she would have no recourse. No court would hear her pleas. No one would help her.
