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“It doesn’t hurt?” Silvester rasped sometime later.

Stella was clinging to his muscled forearms, pressure building in her slowly as she chased a spark that threatened to become an inferno. She’d never felt anything like this when she played with her dildo, making up stories in which a duke kissed her on the dance floor.

“God, no,” Stella cried. She arched against him. “It’s not quite enough, if that makes sense.”

A bark of laughter broke from his throat.

“Are you supposed to be merry at this moment?” Stella asked, blinking at him.

“Never have been, with another woman,” Silvester told her. He adjusted, clamped a large, callused hand on her right hip and pulled her body toward him, just as he thrust forward.

The sound burst from Stella’s chest without volition: a raw, scorched cry.

“There,” he said, his own voice thicker and dark, not laughing.

“Again,” she breathed.

“Like this?”

“Harder.”

“Goddamn, I was so lucky to marry you,” Silvester whispered.

He began thrusting so hard that the bed slammed against the wall. Thankfully, he didn’t stop, just kept driving forward again and again, his eyes searching hers except when he pulled her into a scorching kiss, never losing his rhythm.

Before Stella knew it, she was careening toward another climax, this one threatening to be so powerful that she felt a little afraid and clung tighter to him. Which made him slow down and whisper ragged words in her ear.

She didn’t listen to them, but they sank into her anyway, a blessed flow of language broken by hoarse gulps of air. Always his hips kept up that even rhythm until she bit his lower lip. “Harder!”

That did it.

Silvester lost control, his face contorting, jaws clenched. There was nothing civilized about his face now. Sweaty with a red streak on each cheek, his eyes glittering through lowered lids, an instinctive grunt slipping from his lips every time he flexed his hips.

Stella looked at him, saw the pirate, saw the Roman warrior, saw the man she married and loved, and abruptly felt fire sweep through her. She clenched on him inwardly, a cry exploding from her lips.

Silvester groaned and ground his pelvis down on hers, shuddering, his hips jerking inelegantly over and over as he spasmed, spilling himself inside her.

And collapsing.

He caught himself on his elbows, his sweaty forehead touching hers. He looked as if there was no civilization in him. Sure enough, when he opened his mouth, a guttural sound came out.

Stella giggled.

Silvester shook his head. “You.”

She waited, but he let his head fall to the sheet. True, he had worked hard. A sheen of sweat spread over his back and his arse. She picked up the corner of the sheet and dried him off.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“I like it,” she whispered. “I love the way you smell. Sweaty. Real. Not scented. Not that I don’t like your soap, because I do.”

“Chatty.” He was clearly reduced to single words.

Stella did feel chatty. Happiness had burst inside her and was still drenching her with joy. She loved it when her articulate chatty husband was reduced to words like “virgin.”

Not that she was a virgin any longer.

“We can make this marriage work,” she whispered.