Until she broke apart. Entirely. The growing pleasure at her center reached its pinnacle beneath his tender, fervent ministrations and made her cry out his name to the heavens, made her soul leap up and follow there, becoming a constellation in the winter night sky.
Limp and shattered, she knew it was not over, and he moved, groaning her name and placing the throbbing, hot length of himself at her entrance. With one hard stroke he entered her, and she cried out once more, a cry he gathered into his mouth with a kiss, his body stilling, his hands caressing, his lips promising everything through the kiss.
Words caressed her ear a moment later, and his promises became solid things.
“I’m sorry,” he said. A mantra. “I hurt you. I’m sorry. I could not stop myself, and—”
“I’m not hurt.” She stroked her fingers down his hair and flattened her palms as she rubbed them down the length of his back. “I’m not hurt. Please, Josiah.Please.”
“Yes.” And he moved, in and out, slowly. Oh-so-slowly.
So slowly she arched up and pressed her mound against him to ask for more, demand it. And he gave her what she asked for. Of course, he did. He pumped faster and faster as she clutched at his shoulders, his neck, his wonderfully muscled backside. Something else wonderful rolled within her as well. Another of those soul-singing moments. Impossible. But obviously possible, because when he thrust one last time and threw his head back to call her name, her entire body shook and shivered, a tree in the wind, and melted once more into peaceful perfection.
He collapsed atop her but didn’t stay long, wrapping steel-banded arms around her and rolling so she lay atop him. Warmer than before, with a mountain of blankets on top of her. Better than before. So much better than ever before.
ChapterNine
December 26
“Only marry a man who intends to spoil you in the manner you wish. No such man exists, though, so prepare to never marry.”–from The Masculine Inconvenience: Memoirs of a Superior Lady
Josiah awoke before the sun, and he did not need its snow-brightened yellow light to illuminate the focus of all his attention. He’d been watching Georgiana sleep, and even in the dark, he’d seen her well, loved her entirely.
Still so much lay between them, though. Namely, the entire distance between London and Apple Grove, but he’d figure out how to shrink it.
She stirred, her long legs stretching out, tangling against his, and then her eyelids fluttered open, revealing wide, shocked eyes that melted in memories, then sparkled with a smile.
“Good morning,” she said, as if this were not the first time she’d welcomed dawn in his arms.
“Good morning.” He loved her. He wanted to say so, but she’d not said the words yet, and he wanted to hear them, wanted to do something that might make her feel them so sharp and so true that she could not but speak them out loud.
He gathered her into his arms before she could say another word, before the reality of their lives, their preferences became a wall between them, and he stroked her to arousal, kissed her until she was a mewling mess breaking beneath him. Her nails scratched down his back, and he grabbed her, rolled, wanting to see every glorious inch of her before clothing became, once more, a necessity.
She straddled him, but confusion blinked in her lust-fogged eyes until she found a focus and grabbed his cock, rubbing the pad of her thumb against it, dipping low to kiss its tip, to lick its length, washing him in exquisite pleasure from head to foot. He tangled his hands in her hair and tugged, wanting inside her. He bent her head back, and their gazes locked, and then he drew a path with his nails down her neck and shoulders and ribs and waist until he could clasp her hips, encourage her to position just where he wanted her, and thrust into her. She sank down with a hiss and toss of her golden curls backward. Hair so long it teased his thighs. He kept his hands dug into her hips, helping her ride him, helping her find the right rhythm, the rhythm that made them both tighten and groan. Then he slipped his hand to the center of her body and rubbed her throbbing nub, and she shattered, and if he could watch her fall apart above him every day of his damn life, he would. He’d do anything. Give anything.
Her arms went limp for a brief moment before she dropped her gaze to his, heated his chest with her palms, splayed fingers, and dropped to kiss the place where his heart beat.
And he couldn’t hold out any longer. Faster, faster, until he shattered too, grabbing her to him and holding her, giving everything to her, whispering her name in her ear, whispering his love though she never did, welcoming sleep when it found them both.
The next time he woke, she was gone. He snapped upright, flinging his feet to the floor.
“Josiah. You’re awake.” She smiled at him from near the fire, half dressed in stockings and shift and untied stays. “Can you help me?”
He prowled toward, aware he was naked and heavy and hard and wanting her once more.
Her eyes widened. She’d noticed too, and she turned from him to offer him her back. He tightened her stays and then tied the tabs of her ruined gown. When she put her pelisse on, worry poked at him.
He found his own pants and shirt and threw them on, looking out the window. “Where are you going? The snow is too deep. We should stay here for a while.”
“Surely there’s a way to make a path to Apple Grove. They’ll be worried. And I’m certain you’ll wish to be there to give the tenants their baskets.”
True enough. But it felt like she was running.
“The sun is out this morning,” he said. “The sky is blue. No more snow on the horizon. It will soon melt, and then we can safely return to the big house.”
A bite of her lower lip and her wandering gaze riled the poke of worry into a gnawing creature, but he turned to the window and let her think, observe, and talk in her own time. Following his rampant desires had led nowhere good last time. He must allow her to set the pace. He pulled his waistcoat on as he watched her reflection move about the room in the window’s glass. She ran fingertips across rows of books and round the gilded edging of the looking glass where he shaved each morning.
“It’s a charming room,” she said, almost as if to herself.
