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The touch of his mouth was everything she had been pining for and she opened to him, parched for his love, aching for his touch. The heat of desire flowed through her like licking flames and yet it was this embrace she craved, the gentle question in his caress, the question she could answer with the trust of her kiss, the completeness of her yielding.
Eden overwhelmed her, and this, she knew, was just the beginning of their journey. Maude abandoned herself to the taste of him, the heat and the hardness, the scent of him. Her love, her husband, her—
‘Thank goodness!’ Bel’s voice jerked them both back to reality. Eden swung round defensively, Maude tight to his side. ‘We’d lost you,’ Bel explained, ‘And we didn’t know if Eden had found you or what you had said and your father is about to—oh, he’s started!’
She held back the curtain and they stepped out to find the orchestra had fallen silent, and so had the guests, all facing towards the podium where Lord Pangbourne was speaking.
‘…so I am delighted to announce, with all their friends here together, the betrothal of my daughter Maude to Mr Eden Ravenhurst.’ Gasps, cheers, a babble of voices rose. He cut them off with a lift of his hand. ‘Maude? Where are you?’
Holding tight to Eden’s hand, Maude let herself be led down the length of the ballroom, the crowd parting in front of them, smiling and reaching out to pat Eden on the back, or touch her hand, or simply stare in amazement until they reached the podium.
‘Papa.’
‘Come up here, both of you.’ Eden lifted her up, then came to stand beside her. ‘I hope you’ve asked her,’ her father said anxiously to him, provoking laughter from everyone close enough to hear.
‘Yes, sir,’ Eden said, smiling and lifting Maude’s hand to kiss it. ‘And she said yes.’
‘Well, Lady Maude Ravenhurst, are you quite exhausted by your wedding day?’ Eden put his arm around her, pulling her close as they looked out from her bedroom window across the darkness of the parkland towards the lights of Knight’s Fee, where the wedding guests were still celebrating, late into the night.
‘A little,’ Maude said, running the tip of her tongue along her lower lip and watching with interest the effect that had on her husband. ‘I might have to lie down in a minute.’ Eden had amused her and touched her, in equal parts, by the propriety of his behaviour towards her in the two months since their betrothal was announced. It had not been easy for her. For him, knowing what to expect from lovemaking, it must have been a strain. But she rather thought they were going to reap the benefit tonight.
‘Hmm, yes, of course you must lie down,’ he said now, deeply serious. ‘After all, you should try out this handsome new bed.’ To Maude’s vast relief Eden had been delighted with Lord Pangbourne’s suggestion that they use the Dower House as their own country home and decorating and furnishing it had kept her jittery nerves under control. It could not do much for them now as he took her hand and led her towards the elegant canopied bed with its rose pink hangings and silken coverlet.
‘I should leave you,’ he added, managing to look concerned. ‘You’ll want to sleep. At what hour do you like to take breakfast, my love?’
‘Eden Ravenhurst,’ Maude said, taking a firm hold of his lapels. ‘If you do not take all your clothes off, this minute, and then mine, and then make love to me, I am going to scream.’
‘I think,’ he said, his trained breath control suddenly all over the place, ‘that it might be faster if we both undress together.’
It was not faster, but it was, Maude discovered, both fun and intensely arousing. She had not expected to find herself giggling helplessly as Eden hopped from one foot to the other as he dragged off his stockings or that taking off her corset would be such a ticklish endeavour or that they would find themselves suddenly still, the laughter dying out of their faces as they just looked at each other.
It was like learning a language with a complex grammar and vocabulary, Maude thought hazily, as she let her hands wander over Eden’s long, naked body. There was what he looked like, how he felt, the textures of his skin, the contours of hard muscle and arching bone, the crisp friction of hair. There was the way he reacted to touch, to the caress of her breath, the tentative sweep of her tongue, the brave explorations of her hands.
He lay there, exotic and golden and beautiful, letting her touch and caress and wonder, doing nothing to alarm her, watching her with dark, heavy-lidded eyes while the pattern of his breathing changed and while his body stirred into rigid arousal.
‘May I touch?’ she asked, hand reaching a fraction of an inch above the heat of him.
‘Yes.’ He sounded as though he was gritting his teeth.
‘Oh,’ she murmured, fascinated by the soft skin over iron hardness, the movement, the…reaction.
‘Maude?’ She whipped her hand away. It sounded as though he was in pain. ‘Oh, my God, Maude.’ And he rolled her over on to her back, the silk slithering beneath her and his weight came down so that her body shifted, instinctively cradling him and his mouth found hers as she sighed and arched. He slipped a hand between their bodies to where she ached, where the heat and the moisture and the need focused in all their intensity, and stroked as he had
that night that seemed so long ago.
Muted against his mouth, her pleas and sobs were answered, not as before with his wicked, skilful fingers, but the thrust of his hips. He stopped just inside her and lifted his head. ‘Maude, look at me.’
She focused her eyes on his face, and saw every muscle strained with the effort of control, saw the love in his eyes, saw the question, and smiled. ‘Oh, yes, Eden, love me.’
Her cry as he entered her was soft and the smile became a gasp of pleasure as he filled her, completed her, thrust long and hard and inexorable into her core until she shattered, sobbing in his embrace and heard his cry, muffled against her breast.
A while later, when she stirred against his shoulder, he shifted her gently on to the pillow and propped himself up on one elbow to look down at her. His hair fell over his shoulder and she reached up to play with it. ‘Well, wife?’
‘Very well.’ She should, she supposed, be feeling shy, but all she felt was wonderful. ‘I had understood it was not very…that it took getting used to, at first.’
‘So did I,’ Eden said, thoughtful. ‘Do you suppose we have a natural talent for making love to each other?’
‘That must be the case,’ Maude agreed, letting go of his hair and using the end of a lock of hers to stoke his nipple experimentally. ‘Oh, look.’
