by Jo Goodman
His lips touched hers at the edge of her tremulous smile. He kissed her there, then moved slowly across her mouth until he had engaged it all in the kiss. “And here,” he whispered, touching his lips to her jaw. “Here also, at this hollow just beneath your ear.”
His breath, warm and humid against her skin, raised a frisson even before he touched her. She tilted her head to one side, surrendering the spot. The tip of his tongue made a damp line in the curve.
“I’m going to put my hand at the back of your neck.”
She nodded once. His fingers slid under her hair and lifted it just slightly. His mouth moved to her ear.
“A bite,” he said softly. “Just a small one.”
Her breath hitched as his teeth caught her earlobe and tugged. The pleasure that tripped down the length of her spine didn’t end there. It went all the way to her toes. She wriggled them.
Restell felt the movement under his hip. He was leaning at an awkward angle around her bent knees. She could not stretch and neither could he. “Will you lie down now?” he asked, raising his head a fraction. “It would be a comfort to me.”
She gave him a slightly bemused smile. “Yes, of course.”
He sat up to make room for her to unfold. “Shall I extinguish the candles?”
“No!” Her vehemence surprised them both. More softly, she said, “No. I am…that is, you will think me a child, but I am afraid in the dark.”
“Always?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Only recently.”
Restell was careful not to reveal a shred of pity for her. “Then the candles will remain as they are. If you like, I will light others.”
“No, it isn’t necessary.”
“Shall I draw the curtains around the bed?”
“A little, if you like.”
“What I like is that I shall be able to see my wife’s flushed cheeks.” Just as he knew she would, Emma obliged him by blushing. “You are in some ways predictable.”
Except to show her distaste for it, she did not favor that with a reply.
“I mean to kiss you again, you know.” He shifted his position on the bed so he was not lying across her, then he placed one finger to her lips. “Right here on your sulky mouth.”
“It is not sulky,” she said. “It is brooding.”
“Not even by half.” He leaned down and kissed her, thoroughly and warmly. He traced the seam of her lips with his tongue until she opened for him. When he had her mouth, he deepened the kiss, pressing his advantage more insistently, tangling his tongue with hers. He teased her senses with short raids and long explorations, and both made her slightly breathless.
“Your throat.” He said the words huskily against her skin. It was less a warning than a statement of fact. His fingers slid deeper into her thick hair. One of her ivory combs slipped from its moorings, and when he withdrew his fingers her dark hair spilled over the back of his hand, then the pillow. He raised his head to look at her, to admire the way her hair framed her face and the candlelight softened her features. The centers of her eyes had widened so that he could only glimpse the blue-green iris, but she regarded him as intently as he regarded her, mirroring the search of his face as he searched hers.
“What do you see, Emma?”
“You.” Her voice was but a thread of sound. Even more softly, she added, “My husband.”
He nodded, encouraged. His eyes dropped to the curve of her neck and shoulder. He thought he could make out the faint pulse of her heart. He placed a kiss there, sipping her skin lightly. She would bear a mark later, a faint bruise that would bring to mind this intimacy. He hoped she would think of it more fondly than all the other bruises she had suffered at a man’s hands.
He made a trail of kisses across her bare shoulder, then lower still as he followed the neckline of her soft chemise. Her hands had come to rest lightly at his own shoulders. Her fingers fluttered as if she was hesitant to rest them there, then they fell still when his mouth grazed her breast through the batiste. He realized she had not expected that.
Emma cut short his apology. “No,” she said quickly. “It was surprising in a different way, that’s all. I quite liked it.” She saw his faint frown. “Should I not have said so? Perhaps it is not done.”
In response, Restell rolled away from her and lay on his back. He stared at the ceiling where the flicker of candlelight against the curtains created waves of shadows. “I cannot do this, Emma.”
She sat up. “I have ruined it, haven’t I? I should have said nothing.”
“You may say whatever you like. It is not something that should be suffered in silence.”
“But I was not suffering.” She stared at him, comprehending. “You were, weren’t you? I didn’t realize. I thought—”
“I was not suffering,” he said firmly. “At least not in any way you can yet conceive.” He shifted his attention from the ceiling to her. “You understand, don’t you, that there may be some pain? I have never lain with a virgin so I cannot say if it is always thus or whether something might be done to make it less disagreeable.”
“I think the pain must be tolerable, else women would not submit.”
“I would have it that there is no pain.”
“Then you may as well place me upon the mantel where the maids can dust me from time to time. Even better, I will share a cage with the nightingale and be even less of a bother than that bird.” She brushed his hair gently with her fingertips. “I am not afraid of you, Restell. I have never been afraid of what you will do to me. Here, in this bed, I have never mistaken you for one of my attackers. Dr. Bettany says I was not touched in such a way.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps you wish I had been. I would not be a virgin.”
“Bloody hell, Emma.”
“I’m sorry.” She sighed. “Are we at an impasse?”
Restell placed his forearm over his eyes. “I don’t know. Mayhap we are.”
That was when she startled him. Her softly expelled breath, the faint fragrance of red wine, the warmth of her skin close to his, all of it alerted him—and all of it came to him at once. He only had a moment’s warning before her lips touched his.
Restell was not proof against her advance. He had been suffering, and what she promised him now was relief. Groaning softly, he gave himself up to what she was offering.
Emma stretched out beside him, fitting herself against him in the way she had when they were standing. The familiarity of his body was pleasing to her. The scent of his skin, the flavor of his mouth, the curve of his sheltering arm, the whole of it imparted to her a sense of sanctuary.
She eased her fingertips under the opening of his shirt, tracing the edge first, then laying her hand flat against his chest. His heart beat steadily beneath her palm. She moved aside the linen and pressed a kiss to his skin. “Will you not remove it?” she asked.
Restell tugged on the tails and pulled it free of his trousers. Holding up his hands, he allowed Emma to remove it for him. He watched it out of the corner of his eyes as it sailed over the side of the bed. “I showed a great deal more care with your clothes.”
“True, but you were playing the lady’s maid. I am your curious and anxious wife, not your valet.” To satisfy her curiosity and ease her anxiety, Emma began a tender exploration, first with her hands and eyes, then with her mouth. She traced his collarbone, drawing on his skin much as he had done to her. Her tongue teased a response from him as she kissed his shoulder, then the curve of his elbow, and finally the back of his hand, raising it up to her mouth, then holding it against her cheek.
She walked her fingers down his chest, gauging the ease of his breathing as she came closer to the button fly of his trousers. His abdomen retracted. Her hand slipped under the fabric of his drawers, and it was difficult for her to know which one of them was more shocked by her temerity. She would have withdrawn immediately if not for Restell taking her by the wrist and holding her exactly as she was.
“Do you ha
ve the least notion what you are about?” he asked.
She freely admitted she did not. “But I am depending upon you to tell me when I am about it wrong.”
He grunted softly and closed his eyes, somewhere between pleasure and purgatory. He released her wrist. “You have not erred thus far.” He glanced at her again. “Go on. Unbutton them.”
Emma removed her hand first, then allowed it to slide over the taut fabric of his fly. She could feel the heat of him through the material. His blood pulsed heavily here. She imagined that his heart was no longer as steady as it had been before. “I have studied anatomy, you know.”
“I didn’t, but you are good to mention it.”
“This is a bit different.”
“For me, also.”
“Illustrations are flat and sculpture is cold. You are neither.”
“Did you also study torture?” It was the end of enough. Restell sat up and quickly shucked himself of his trousers, drawers, and stockings while Emma slid under the coverlet and sheet to remove her shift. He was certain he heard her soft laughter, but when he turned, she was only smiling.
It really was the most splendid smile.
Restell joined her under the covers when she raised them. The invitation was clear. He had had mistresses who never tempted him so well. He raised himself on one elbow and used his knee to gently urge hers apart. “You will tell me if I hurt you.”
She nodded.
Restell did not believe her, but he could do no more than extract her promise. He laid his hand on her shoulder, passing his thumb across her collarbone. His hand drifted lower slowly, carrying the coverlet and sheet with it until her naked breast was visible through his splayed fingers. Her nipple, puckered and pink, arose at the center of an aureole that was the precise color of the blush he had observed in her cheeks.
He caressed her breast, first the slope, then the underside. He felt her swell slightly beneath his attentive hand. “I mean to kiss you here.” But he didn’t, not yet. He knew something about preparing his way and meant to do it.
The scent of her filled his nostrils. There was lavender and musk, one light, the other heady, and yet they arose from her skin in a harmony of fragrance. His palm made a pass across her rib cage and the inward curve of her waist. He stroked her hip, her thigh, then with infinite care, between her legs.
She stirred under his hand, restless now and unable to contain it. He watched her face and listened for the sounds that she could not help but make at the back of her throat.
She sucked in a breath as his palm passed over the flat of her abdomen. When he cupped her breast again he bent to kiss it. The suck of his mouth was hot. She arched beside him, wanting and not wanting, but giving him the right to choose for her. He chose not to neglect the other breast.
Restell slipped an arm under her back and fit himself closer, cautious of not lying heavily on her. She accommodated the change by shifting on her side so she faced him. He cupped her bottom. Her hips tilted forward until she was cradling his heavy, swollen sex against her belly and thighs.
He raised the knee he’d insinuated between hers, parting her thighs a fraction wider and slipping his hand into the space he’d made. His light caress rose higher each time he made a pass. He eased his fingers into the soft, springy nest of dark curls between her legs, then slid deeper, searching, finding, stroking until he had wrested a keening little cry from her.
He kissed her then, swallowing that cry, claiming the need and passion that he had coaxed from her as his own. She held his face in her hands and gave all to him willingly. Heat curled inside her, flushing color into her skin that he found so perfectly suited to her cheeks. She was like a pale pink rose, and where he caressed her most intimately her flesh had much in common with the velvet petals of that flower.
“It must be now,” he whispered against her mouth.
“All right.”
The simplicity of her response nearly undid him. Restell hitched her upper leg over his thigh, then guided himself into her. He watched her closely, anticipating resistance, even fear. She showed neither. Except to catch her lower lip between her teeth, she gave no sign of discomfort. When he judged she was ready, he turned her so she was finally under him and seated himself fully between her open thighs.
Her eyes, already so wide at the center as to be nearly colorless, widened further, this time starting with the lift of her eyebrows and lashes. Her nostrils flared slightly as she caught and held her breath. She shifted, lifting her hips for a moment, then raising her knees. Her heels found purchase in the mattress and bedsheets. Her palms slid from his shoulders, to his chest, then on either side of his ribs until they rested at his hips. It was all done in an effort to accommodate his entry, and none of it was the least bit conscious on her part.
“I seem to know what to do,” she whispered, imparting this as the profound revelation it was to her. It was then that Restell moved the narrowest fraction and her body contracted around him. Her mouth formed a perfect O of surprise.
Restell’s eyes closed momentarily, his self-control mastered with great effort. “You do.” His voice, then his kiss, was rough, and she answered in kind. When he broke away, his breathing was harsh. “You certainly do.”
“The illustrations I studied did not show me this.”
“That’s because you didn’t go to school at Hambrick.”
Emma was uncertain what that meant. It flitted through her mind to ask him, but he began to move and the thought she had became as nothing. His hips lifted then thrust, rocking her, and she became a counterpoint to that rhythm, rising and falling with each beat of his body.
Her fingers tightened; the nails made half-moon indentations in his flesh. She closed her eyes, all feeling now. Her skin seemed stretched too tautly to contain her much longer. Heat flickered, but there was no flame. It rolled through her in waves, every crest rising like a crescendo, leaving pleasure behind when one broke. She welcomed each tug on her senses, the spark that was part excited nerve and the rest that was nervous excitement.
Emma could not say when she stopped riding the wave and began climbing, only that something had changed and where she thought there might be a peak was naught but a plateau. Her hands dropped from Restell’s hips to the bed. She clutched the sheets in her fists and held on.
Restell plunged deeply. Once. Twice. He watched her face, wanting more for her. He wanted…Cursing softly, he felt the rhythm of his thrusts change, becoming quick and shallow and beyond what little control he had left. His climax approaching, he surrendered to it because no other course was possible.
He spilled his seed, remembering at the last moment not to rest himself heavily upon her. He collapsed to one side of Emma’s still body and withdrew more quickly than was his desire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her inching the sheet upward to cover herself. He lifted his hip, then his leg to make it easier for her to take back what covers he had stolen in the tangle of their limbs.
Restell felt his heartbeat slow and his faintly ragged breathing quiet. Emma had the sheet bunched in both fists just above her breasts, and she was regarding him with a certain wariness.
“That is not the expression I’d hoped to inspire,” he said.
Emma said nothing, though she continued to stare at him.
“Have I given you fear of me after all?”
She shook her head.
“You will have to tell me what you’re thinking, Emma. I cannot divine your thoughts.”
Still, she hesitated. Her eyes narrowed a bit as she searched his face. “I am wondering if you are all of a piece,” she said finally. “You shouted, you know. And it seemed as if you might have been in pain. I thought perhaps it was I who hurt you.”
Restell might have howled with laughter if she had not been so grave in her concern. Turning on his side, he slipped one arm under his pillow, raising his head slightly while he reached for her with the other. He laid his hand over her clenched fists. “I don’t know that pleasure such as
you gave me has ever been pretty, but I am certain it is rarely quiet.”
“Then you enjoyed it?”
“Yes,” he said honestly. “Except for knowing that you did not. I am sorry for that, Emma. I wanted it to be different.”
“It was not so painful as you were wont to believe. You made it quite tolerable.”
He grinned crookedly. “Now you damn me with very faint praise.”
“Oh, but I did not mean—”
Restell put a finger to her lips to stop her explanation. “I think it is for me to explain, better yet, to demonstrate.” He pried her fingers carefully from the sheet so that he might slip his hand under it. His fingertips glided between her breasts to her navel, then lower still. He cupped her mons. It was damp with the musk-scented dew of her previous excitement. The velvet folds were still as soft as they had been, but now they were wet. His fingers spread these lips in search of the hooded bud between them. He only had to graze the surface to elicit a response from her.
“See?” he said gently. “It is not possible to be quiet, not if the thing is done well.” He leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “Shall I make you scream, Emma?”
He could not do that, she told herself. And if he thought he could, it was because he had so little experience with women of her resolve and too much experience with opera dancers.
Restell observed the firm set of her jaw. “I think you mean to challenge me,” he said. “Good for you. It will only make what is inevitable that much sweeter.” The look she flashed him let him know she had misunderstood. She was too naive to comprehend that he was talking about her satisfaction, not his own.
His hand continued its gentle manipulation while he gauged the nuances of her every response. He listened for the subtle changes in her breathing and watched the fractional parting of her lips. She had taken up the sheet again, and her fists alternately loosened and tightened their grip. Sometimes she worried her lower lip; other times she dampened the upper one with the tip of her tongue. He judged it was better for her when she showed the ridge of her teeth. He applied just that much more pressure to see it again.