by Mary Balogh
What a thorough bouncer! She sighed even as she smiled.
But he /was /capable of humor, even if only of a very dry kind. He was not inhuman.
Well, of course he was not.
She set her forehead against the cool glass of the window and closed her eyes.
The bed behind her had been turned down for the night. She was very aware of its presence. Perhaps she should be lying in it. But she kept remembering how he had accused her a month ago of offering herself like a sacrificial lamb. She would look like one - she would /feel /like one - if she lay there waiting for him.
She felt like a virgin awaiting the deflowering, she thought in some disgust. She was /not /a virgin. She was an experienced woman.
Well, /almost /experienced anyway.
And if her brain did not soon cease its incessant chattering she would surely go mad.
There was a tap on her door and it opened before she could either cross the room or draw breath to call out.
He was wearing a wine-colored dressing gown that covered him from the neck to the ankles. He looked menacing. And gorgeous too, of course.
His face was blank of any nameable expression. His eyelids were half drooped over his eyes, as they had been the first time she saw him. He was looking steadily at her and she could not help thinking of the very different reaction she must be provoking in him.
She did not often wish for the impossible, but just /sometimes /she wished she were beautiful. As she did now, for example.
She was wearing the ice blue silk and lace nightgown that had been chosen specifically for tonight - by her new mother-in-law, not by her.
She thought its low neckline too revealing. And she very much feared that if she stood just so to any particular candle, a beholder would be able to see right through it.
She might not have minded so much if there had been something worth seeing.
She hated being self-conscious about her figure - or her lack thereof. "I suppose," she said, "we will grow accustomed to this." His eyebrows rose. "I suppose we will," he agreed as he stepped into the room and came toward her. "You are not /nervous /by any chance, are you? You are the experienced one, are you not? The one who knows how to please a man - in bed." If that was a joke, she was in no mood to laugh. "You know that was a boast," she said. "I admitted as much. It would be unkind of you to throw it in my teeth at every turn." Strangely, he looked even larger and more powerful in dressing gown and slippers than he did in his great-coat and boots. Or perhaps it just seemed so because he was in her bedchamber and it was their wedding night. "Well, Vanessa." He lifted one hand and cupped her neck and one side of her face with it. "It is time to discover just how much of a boast it was." He had shaved. She could smell his shaving soap or his cologne. Whatever it was, it was a masculine scent that made her want to keep on inhaling.
She swallowed.
And his lips touched hers. Though it was not really his lips. It was the soft, moist flesh inside them. His tongue pressed hard against her own lips, and she parted them. It pressed deep inside her mouth.
She inhaled sharply through her nose. Sensation darted like an arrow into her throat and downward through her breasts and her abdomen to set up a throbbing between her inner thighs.
She recognized the feeling for what it was - pure, raw sexual desire. She had felt it out by the lake at Warren Hall the day she asked him to marry her. She had denied it to herself then. It was impossible to do so now.
He drew back his head a few inches, and she realized in some shock that he had not yet touched her anywhere below the neck. He had hardly even /started/. "It is to be hoped," he said, "that you /do /know how to please me since you are my wife and my bedfellow for life." His eyes were still heavy-lidded, and the voice he used was a bedroom voice if ever she had imagined one. It was pure velvet. "The master has spoken," she murmured. "It is to be hoped that /you /know how to please /me, /since you are my husband and my bedfellow for life." He looked steadily at her for several moments, his face expressionless.
And then the hand that had been cupping her face and neck slid lower and along her shoulder beneath her nightgown and on down her arm. The nightgown, having nowhere else to go, went with his hand until her shoulder and breast were exposed.
And then his free hand pushed the garment off her other shoulder, and since it was a loose thing that was anchored in place only at the shoulders, it slithered its way down all the way to her feet.
Only her feet were covered. It was small comfort.
He held her just above the elbows and took a step back.
And looked.
Well, she supposed she had asked for this. She had challenged him and he was giving his answer without the medium of words.
A man's way.
She gazed steadily back into his face as she raised one hand and pulled loose the sash of his dressing gown. It fell open.
He was naked beneath it.
He raised his head to look directly into her eyes again and lowered his arms to his sides. Ah, an invitation. She lifted both arms to push the dressing gown off his shoulders. It fell to the floor without even having to slither its way down. /Oh, gracious heaven./ He looked like a classical sculpture of idealized Greek manhood, except that he was no sculpture. He was bronzed from head to toe. His broad, firmly muscled chest was lightly dusted with dark hair. And he was alive and warm - she could feel his body heat even though they stood several inches apart. She could see his chest rise and fall with each breath.
He was slim-hipped and long-legged. His thighs were powerfully muscled.
He was aroused. And that part of him was large and powerful too.
She looked back into his eyes. She had been looking him over as frankly as he had been doing with her, she realized.
How horribly mismatched they were physically.
But he /was /aroused.
She touched her fingertips to his chest and then slid her palms up to rest on his shoulders.
She had never been more terrified in her life. "It seems," he said softly, "that I have something to prove." Her inner thighs and the passage within throbbed with something that felt more like pain than the simple anticipation of pleasure. "Yes," she said.
But instead of waiting for her to walk toward the bed, he bent down to pick her up and carry her there before setting her down in the middle of the mattress. He peeled back all the bedcovers before joining her there.
Naked flesh had touched naked flesh. She felt as if she were on fire.
He did not extinguish the candles.
This was not, then, something that was going to be accomplished surreptitiously under cover of blankets and darkness.
He lay on his side next to her, raised himself on one elbow, and leaned over her to kiss her again. She opened her mouth to him this time, and when his tongue came inside, she suckled it, then sucked harder to draw it deep and pulsed her teeth against it.
He made a low sound in his throat.
His hand explored her, strong and warm and nimble-fingered. He found her nipples again, as he had by the lake, and rolled them as he had then between his thumb and forefinger, but harder this time until the raw ache she felt below spiraled upward into her throat too.
He ended the kiss and moved his head to one of her breasts, taking it into his mouth, sucking on it, teasing the swollen nipple with his tongue until she buried both hands in his hair and gripped hard.
Not that she had been idle. She had turned half onto her side and moved her leg along his. She moved closer to him and rubbed herself against him, circling her hips as she did so.
And when he raised his head from her breast in order to nuzzle her in the hollow between her shoulder and neck, she took his erection in her hand, caressing him lightly, tightening her fingers about him, causing him to make a sound rather like a growl.
One of his hands was exploring her too, his long fingers pushing between her legs, parting folds, caressing, teasing, reaching up a little way inside her.
She was wet, she realized. She could both feel and hear the wetness.
Desire became pure agony.
And then he turned her onto her back again and came over on top of her.
He was big and heavy.
Wonderfully big.
Wonderfully heavy.
His knees pressed between her thighs and pushed them wide. She lifted her legs and twined them about his as he slid his hands beneath her, raised her, and came all the way inside her with one long, firm thrust.
She drew a deep breath and then could not seem to expel it.
There was no pain, but she felt stretched, filled, invaded. She had not known there was so much room inside her.
Foolish thought!
He held still for a moment while he slid his hands free, and she hooked her legs more firmly about his, tilted herself, and relaxed about him.
There /was /room, and there would be for what was about to happen, and she wanted to feel the whole of it.
She tightened her inner muscles about him. He was rock-hard.
It was his turn to inhale sharply.
And then he moved.
It was pure, raw carnal delight. Each thrust and withdrawal both aggravated and soothed the ache of her desire. And each thrust came deeper than the last - or so it seemed. There was a rhythm to the act, and Vanessa learned it and adjusted her own movements to it, contracting and relaxing inner muscles to give both him and herself delight.
What she had told him had not been an utter boast.
She /did /know how to please a man.
And he had not boasted at all, of course.
She wanted it to last forever, this sensual delight that was beyond anything she could possibly have imagined. But of course it did not. And finally she was glad it did not. She would, she felt, have gone out of her mind if there had not been a sudden convulsive clenching of her muscles that refused to unclench themselves until something - it was impossible to give it a name - came flowing softly but inexorably up from deep inside where the muscles were and burst through them and through /her /until she was trembling with wonder and then limp with a satiety that also defied words.
He had fallen still, she realized.
But then his hands were beneath her again, and he was pumping into her hard and fast until he stopped abruptly again, deep inside her, and she felt a flow of heat at her core.
She wrapped her arms about him. He was hot and sweaty.
So was she.
How strangely enticing the smell of sweat could be.
She felt suddenly cold when he disengaged from her and moved off her to lie beside her. She shivered, and he reached down and pulled the covers up over them. His one arm came beneath her neck while the other lay heavy across her. And she was warm again.
And sleepy.
And then asleep.
And so it was done.
He was married before the age of thirty, just as his grandfather had expected and he had planned. For convenience he had married one of the Huxtable sisters. Now the other two could make their debut into society and he would feel no further responsibility for them.
He was married, his marriage had been consummated, and soon, it was to be hoped, his wife would be with child. And if he was fortunate, that child would be a boy, and another duty would be done. /Duty! /It was something that had weighed him down for more than a year now. How he longed sometimes to have his old carefree life back. But it could not be done, and now he had fulfilled his most pressing obligations to his family and his position.
Elliott lay awake for a long time.
Even tonight she had wanted to quarrel with him, staking her claim to be his equal. If she must please him because she was his wife and bedfellow, then /he /must please /her /for the complementary reasons.
She had not been educated in the ways of polite society, of course. If she had, she would have effaced herself and accepted the inequalities in silence and with dignity. /The master has spoken. It is to be hoped that you know how to please me since you are my husband and my bedfellow for life./ His lips twitched despite himself.
Vanessa stirred in his arms, muttered something, and burrowed closer.
Strangely, she /had /pleased him.
He was not at all sure why. She had about as unvoluptuous a body as he had ever beheld unclothed or had beneath him on a bed. And she had displayed no really extraordinary skills.
Perhaps it was simply the attraction of novelty.
The novelty of having such a lover would, of course, wear thin very soon. And then? Well, then he would settle into the rest of his life. It was not a bright prospect, though he supposed one must always hope. That was what she had said of her sister, was it not? Something to the effect that hope for the return of the absent military officer was all that gave meaning to Miss Huxtable's life?
Hope.
It was a thin chance for happiness. "Mmm," she said on a long sigh. Her nose was buried against his chest.
Novelty might as well be enjoyed while it /was /novelty.
He lifted her chin with one hand and kissed her openmouthed.
She tasted of sleep. She smelled of woman and sex. She was warm and relaxed, only half awake.
He turned her onto her back, covered her with his body, spread her legs wide with his own, and buried himself deep in her.
She was hot and wet. "Mmm," she said again, and her legs came up to twine about his while she tilted her hips to give him deeper access. "Again?" She sounded sleepy and surprised, and he half smiled in the darkness. "Yes, /again,/" he said against her ear. "What are wedding nights for?" She laughed softly. Just a few days ago, when she was still in London with his mother, he had remembered her laugh as something irritating.
Tonight it was not. It was a low, merry sound of genuine amusement.
It was sexy.
He moved in her with deep, rhythmic strokes, prolonging the encounter for as long as he could, listening to the wet, sucking sounds of their coupling, feeling her smooth, wet heat about the near-pain of his erection, knowing the relief of having a woman again after a long dearth.
She clung to him with her legs, spread her hands over his buttocks, and held herself open and relaxed. She made no other moves of her own. It was clever - or innocent. It gave him more time to savor the satisfaction of sex.
But after several long minutes, he became aware that she was no longer passive. Her inner muscles had tensed, and her hands were straining against his buttocks as if to hold him deep and prevent his withdrawal.
He quickened and deepened his strokes until he felt her sudden shudder of release a few moments before his own came.
He must remind her, he thought just before falling asleep, that he had fulfilled his part of the bargain. He had pleased her.
He woke an indeterminate time later, still on top of her, still inside her. He disengaged and moved to her side. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I must weigh a ton." "Only /half /a ton, I believe," she said. "You do not need to apologize.
Don't ever apologize." "Never?" he said. "Not for any reason?" She sighed sleepily. "I will have to think about that one," she said. "Perhaps we could arrange our lives so that we never do anything that calls for an apology." He found himself half smiling again in the darkness - the candle appeared to have burned itself out. "A happily-ever-after?" he said. "Do you really believe in such a thing?" "No," she said after giving the question some thought. "And I am not sure I would want it even if it were possible. What else would there be to hope for in life? What else would there be to work toward? I would prefer happiness to a happily-ever-after." "What /is /happiness?" he asked her. "A moment of joy," she said without hesitation. "Only a moment? It sounds not worth working for, then," he said. "Oh, there you are wrong," she told him. "The whole of life is a single moment. There is nothing else /but /this moment, is there? Always this moment." In his experience moments passed and were gone forever. "The whole of life is joy, then?" he said. "It is /all /happiness?" She could not possibly be /that /naive. "No,
of course not," she said. "But one moment of happiness can make the whole of life worth living - like leavening in bread. It can show what life can be and is meant to be. It can give one hope in the dark times.
It can give one faith in life and the future. Have you /never /been happy, Elliott?" He felt a huge nostalgia suddenly for the way life had used to be - a long, long time ago. A lifetime ago. "I was happy enough a few minutes ago," he said. "You think you are being flippant," she said. "You expect me to scold you for thinking that s - " She drew a breath and rushed onward. "For thinking that /sex /can bring happiness. But it can. Sex celebrates life and togetherness and love." "I thought," he said, "you did not love me." That silenced her for a while. "But I was not the one who said I was happy a few minutes ago," she said. "/I /was celebrating love, then?" he asked her. "Oh, you foolish man," she said. "Of course you were. There are many kinds of love. You are not in love with me. You do not even love me. But you love… this night." "Our wedding night," he said. "Sex." "Yes." "Sex is love?" "You want to provoke a quarrel with me," she said, and she lifted herself onto her elbow so that she could prop her head on her hand and look down at him. "Admit it." /Did /he? Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was trying to set this night into perspective. He had married a woman today whom he barely knew, who frequently irritated him, who was not even attractive. He had bedded her tonight because it was their wedding night, and he had enjoyed the sex because he had been without a woman since before Christmas.
And even tonight, even now she annoyed him. She was a romantic with her belief in happiness and love. For her even sex was love. She believed there was joy to be found in most of the situations of life.
And yet she had lost a young husband to consumption - a slow and cruel death. Presumably she had loved him. "You ought to be sleeping, not talking philosophy," he said more harshly than he intended. "I may want you again before the night is out." "/You /ought to be sleeping too," she said. "Perhaps /I /will want /you /." He almost laughed aloud. They were back where they had started this night. "Perhaps," he said, "we ought to do our wanting now while we are both wide awake and our sleeping afterward." He spread a hand over the back of her head and drew it downward so that he could kiss her.
