Another dip of his fingers, a swirl of his thumb. Her head dropped onto the pillow with a half-sob. It was true, she supposed. Their opportunities for such intimacy had been quite rare, and by nature had had to be rather furtive. There had never been much time for lingering, for petting, for stroking. Such intimacy had come only in stolen moments, in which the threat of being caught had been ever-present.
But it didn’t mean she wished to be torturednow. Her hand grasped fistfuls of his hair, yanked his head up to her. “Mercy,” she said against the corner of his lips. A desperate plea for the release which dangled just out of her reach.
A tiny nibble to his lower lip yielded a tremble and a conciliatory thrust of his fingers. Deeper this time, slower to withdraw, and stroking some place of incredible sensitivity within her as they did. Her breath began to thin, coming in short little pants.
“I can feel you,” he said against her lips. “Trying to hold my fingers.” The warmth in the words felt like praise, like kisses scattered across her skin. Another thrust, and another, and each time she tried to hold him, her thighs tensing with the effort to retain the exquisite sensation of fullness a moment longer than he allowed.
A mist of sweat beaded upon her brow, and her hands clutched at him in escalating desperation, nails carving divots into his flesh until at last he’d pushed her past the point of bearing and she bit his shoulder, pinching that muscle between her teeth.
His breath hissed through his teeth—not with pain, but with something far more primal and atavistic. His fingers withdrew, his hand curled around her thigh and lifted to grant himself more space there than the tight clench of them would have allowed.
A roll of his hips, and the blunt head of his cock prodded at her entrance, found the vulnerable opening of her body, and slid smoothly within. One perfect, even stroke, and he was embedded within her so deeply that what little breath he’d left to her escaped her lungs on a rush.
Yes.Perfect. Her head fell back onto the pillow in stark relief, that deepempty ache within her satiated. For the moment.
His thumb stroked her clitoris again, and pleasure sizzled through her veins as every inner muscle clenched around him. Within her, she could feel the throb of his cock, the breadth of him stretching tender tissues.
“God, you feel so damned good,” he whispered hoarsely. And then he moved. In sinuous motions, he thrust, and thrust again, and each time she welcomed him back, embraced him, caressed him. Her hands slipped in the sweat that misted his back; her mouth grazed his cheek, his chin, leaving her lips tingling with the scrape of the stubble burnishing his jaw.
Ah. That familiar tension low in her belly, building steadily toward the culmination she sought. Every muscle tightened to hold him. Her toes curled, her thighs clenched, and her hands slid down the sweat-slicked length of his back to clutch his arse. “Don’t leave me,” she said, whispering the words against the hot flesh of his shoulder, arching her hips into the plunge of his. “Don’t leave me.”
“God. Never.” He bit back a groan as she clasped him, the tendons in his neck straining with the effort not to spend. “I’ve dreamed of this,” he gritted out between the determined clench of his teeth. “Every night. For years.” His hand gripped her thigh, tilted her hips to a slight angle—and the next plunge rasped across over-sensitized flesh and stroked her in exactly the right way to set every nerve ablaze.
Stars burst behind her closed lids, that tension that had drawn every muscle so unbearably tight dissolving at last into blissful waves of pleasure emanating from her core. A sharp cry warbled from her lungs, abbreviated by the kiss he pressed to her lips. One last thrust, and he held hard and deep, his body shuddering above hers as he reached his own climax, spending himself inside her.
He never had before. They had had to be quite careful about such things, when the consequences could have been ruinous to them both. But now they were married, and a baby would only be a baby. A new little person to bind them closer; someone else to belong to, and to whom to belong in turn. A symbol of a future she hadn’t let herself dream of in a decade.
He’d given that back to her, too—the ability to dream again. And for a few minutes, in the hazy aftermath, she let herself drift in the sweet lassitude that swept over her and dreamed just a little. Imagined a beautiful future that stretched out into eternity.
“I’m too heavy.” It was a weary mumble somewhere near her ear, half-muffled against her neck.
“No,” she murmured. It wasn’t quite true; he’d gone to dead weight, no doubt exhausted by the stress of the last day and the fact that he’d not gotten any sleep at all. But she liked the solid weight of him pressing her down into the mattress, and the race of his heart where his chest rested against her breasts.
“You liar.” His lips touched her chin. “I’m crushing you.”
“Only a little.”
With great effort he managed to heave himself off of her, falling to his back beside her, sucking in a great, deep breath. “I’m going to sleep for a week,” he said on a sigh.
He was entitled to, she thought. Bereft of the heat of his body over hers, her skin began to cool, and a shiver slipped down her spine.
Ian thrust himself up onto his elbows, snatched for the counterpane that had become wedged toward the foot of the bed, and cast it over the both of them. “Turn,” he said, nudging her shoulder with his own, and she dutifully gave him her back. And there, the weight of his arm sliding about her waist, the heat of his chest at her back. The slight hiss of his breath as she tucked her feet back against his legs. “Your feet are stillfreezing.”
They wouldn’t be for long. He’d replenished the coals on the fire. She swallowed a laugh, but it crept into her voice anyway. “You didn’t seem to mind five minutes ago.”
“Darling, I don’t mindnow.” A satisfied sigh curled from his throat as he settled his head on the pillow beside hers. A moment later he lifted his arm from her waist and flailed behind him in search of something. She heard the slap of his palm against the solid surface of the nightstand.
And then as he settled again, his hand lifted before her face, dangling the ring before her eyes. “I did everything wrong,” he said softly. “I want to get it right this time around. And so now I am asking—onlyasking. Will you marry me?”
“Yes.” The word emerged a bit choked-sounding, since she had had to force it past the odd lump of emotion that had risen in her throat. “Yes,” she said again, beating back the thick counterpane to slide her left hand free to offer to him.
Carefully he slid the ring onto her finger, and retained possession of her hand a few moments longer than necessary. A resigned sigh blew against her shoulder. “Your sister was right,” he said. “Itisugly.”
Felicity laughed lightly, lacing her fingers through his and pulling his arm back over her waist and his hand to rest against her heart. “Beauty is in theeye of the beholder. It’s my ring, and I think it’s perfect.”
“Then I will bow to your greater wisdom.” This was delivered with a kiss against her shoulder. “We’ll sleep a little longer, hm? It’s been a hell of a day.”
Another little chuckle. “It’s not even noon.”
