He arched there for a moment, his chest heaving, his belly just touching hers, his locked arms trembling with the force of his emotion. He dipped his head down and inhaled the warm scent of her neck. "Forgive me. I didn't know."
Emily said nothing. Her breath shuddered in her chest.
He lifted his head. "Are you hurt?"
Her head made a little shake. He wanted to lift the blindfold, to look in her eyes and read the truth. His balls were tightening under the waves of mind-spinning pleasure radiating from his prick, from the guilty primeval thrill that he was the first, he had breached her, she was untouched, she was his. God help him. "Forgive me."
Emily's fingers grazed his back. "Shh. I know." Her skin slid against his as she raised her knees. "I know."
Her breath was steadier now.
"Shall I stop?" he whispered, dreading the answer. Good God, what if she said Stop? Could he do it?
"No, don't stop."
Praise God. He swiveled his hips, and she flinched. "Does it hurt?"
"No."
He could tell that it did. A curse escaped his clenched mouth. Stupid, blundering beast. He kissed her lips, as gently as he could. "I'm sorry." He kissed her again. "I'm sorry."
Again, that tender brush of her fingers. She wiggled beneath him, adjusting herself to his intrusion, making his breath saw sharply. "No. I wanted this."
Emily, a virgin. His brain rocked with the knowledge, with the consequences. He'd known she wasn't experienced, but he'd never imagined this. What had a virgin been doing in these rooms? She had been so knowing, so . . . informed. So eager. The whole world shifted on its axis around him.
He pushed it all back. He would think about that later.
He hovered above her, not certain whether to move, desperately afraid of hurting her further. His mind cast wildly back to his wedding night, the details of which lay confused and dim in his memory. Had Isabelle enjoyed the act at all? What had he done? He didn't remember noticing. He'd been so young, so mad for it, knowing nothing about the business, thinking mostly of himself and his own need and the novelty of it all. He'd probably spent the instant he was inside her.
He was close to spending now, like the green and self-absorbed boy he'd once been. He fought back his release, fought back the sensation of clean, bright pleasure in his groin, fought back the overwhelming instinct to fill this tight little virgin quim with seed this instant.
Because this was Emily, his Emily, lying with a man for the first time in her life. She had chosen him to do this. She deserved everything he had to give her.
His breathing calmed; his heart calmed. He swiveled his hips again, and this time Emily didn't flinch. "Hurt?" he gasped out.
"No." She made a little urging movement of her own hips.
He pulled himself out a cautious fraction, and pushed back in.
"Oh!"
"Good?" he asked.
"Yeeeessss." She drew out the word, as if she weren't quite certain.
He pulled out a little more, and pushed back in. Emily moaned: a moan he recognized distantly. The good sort of moan.
A gust of a sigh emptied his lungs. Thank God.
He pulled out halfway, and pushed. And again, a little farther now, an inch more.
Again.
Soft, slick, snug female flesh. How had he lived without this? He was going to die of it, the sweetness of shoving his rigid tool into all that lovely heat, into that greedy silken sheath.
Into Emily.
She was meeting him now, her breath coming in delicious little pants. He bent to kiss her, more confident. "Good?"
"Don't stop!"
He began to thrust in a regular rhythm, not too fast, not too hard, mindful of the damage he had already inflicted on her. His mind could hardly recall the technique, but his body remembered. His body knew what to do, knew how to fall into that ancient pattern of shove and release, shove and release, matching his movements to hers, finding his approach, finding her perfect place of friction.
She was so sweet and eager, so yielding and yet firm.
He'd thought, in the beginning, that he would be tormented by Isabelle's ghost, but all memory of his wife had long since fled his mind: There was only Emily and the little animal sounds she made, the dig of her heels into his trousers, the way her tight little slit gripped him in a wholly new way, like a handprint all her own. A surge of long-forgotten emotion began to reclaim his brain: joy and urgency and exultation, the headlong drive toward consummation.
His release was rearing up again, enormous, tightening his balls, intense to the point of pain. It refused his control. He ground into Emily with increasing speed, struggling between gentleness and desperation, his skin hot and humid beneath his shirt and his breath coming in tortured gasps.
"Emily, I'm about to spend, ah God, so hard, I can't . . ." He raised himself a little higher, hoping to hold it off a moment longer, but at that instant she clenched around him, she gasped his name, and the lightning burst of his own climax blinded him without warning.
He had meant to pull out of her, as a considerate gentleman should do, but he hadn't the strength to deny himself this last selfish act in an evening of selfish acts. With a last mighty stroke he came inside Emily's flawless young body, and came and came, long, luxurious spurts of pleasure, giving her everything he had.
And then it was over. Empty, shocked, he sank into Emily and buried his head into the loosened strands of her hair.
I am damned, he thought.
FOURTEEN
She was blessed.
Ashland lay atop her, inside her, joined with her at last. Ashland. He had taken his pleasure with her; he had given her pleasure in return. He had made her body sting and hurt, and sing and come alive at his command.
He had been everything she had ever dreamed of in a lover, except perhaps for all that excess of clothing.
He was also every ounce as heavy as she'd feared.
Oddly enough, she didn't mind. His breathless bulk felt . . . rather lovely. A precious burden. In her black sightlessness, Ashland's enormous body was all there was in the universe.
She could not hear the clock in the other room, but she imagined that if she could, the ticks would arrive with a preternatural slowness, the way her heart beat now. As if held back by the hand of God.
Atop her, Ashland didn't move. His endless weight pressed her into the mattress, warm and delicious; his breath stirred her hair. The beat of his heart shattered through her, an even slower rhythm than her own: How was that possible?
How was it possible, that of all the manifold pleasures he had wreaked upon her unsuspecting body tonight, the greatest pleasure of all was lying with him afterward? Like this, as his breath and his heart mingled with hers, as his organ remained stiff and snug inside her? She flexed herself around him, just for the echo of sensation, and a little groan stirred in his throat.
Emilie drew a delicate line along his back with her finger. His shirt was stuck to his skin, damp with exertion. How heavenly, to touch him like this. Her thoughts meandered pleasantly through the mist in her brain. An image flashed and was gone: Ashland's nimble fingers moving a single chess piece in the candlelight. A knight. Those same nimble fingers that had just now parted her flesh, that had caressed her into ecstasy.
She could not believe her own memory.
But there was no denying the blissful lassitude in her muscles, the faint shimmer of aftermath. The stretching ache between her legs, where Ashland still laid claim.
It had happened. She had given herself to him. She had seized ownership of that invaluable and irreplaceable commodity-a princess's virginity-and awarded it according to her own choice. She had triumphed over her fate. There would be consequences, there would be endless complications, but she wouldn't think about that yet. She would only savor this simple and clear-edged moment.
Ashland stirred. She ran her hand down his arm, his right arm, and found the edge of his empty cuff. "How did you lose it?" she asked softly. "Did your enemies cut it off?"
He made as if to draw it away, but she held firm.
"No," he said. "A British army surgeon performed that service, after I returned to camp."
"How was it injured?"
He sighed and turned his head away from her. His hair prickled against her face. "The human hand contains an abundance of nerve endings, making it eminently suitable as an object of torture."
Emilie ran her fingers over the rounded end. It felt surprisingly smooth and unscarred, like an elbow. "Does it still hurt?"
"Not of any consequence."