raised her head until her lips met his and spoke breathlessly. “Don’t stop.”
He forced himself in still farther, this time he came up against a barrier. The maidenhead. He drew in his breath. “This may hurt. I’ve got to break through your chastity.”
Her head fell back against the pillow, and she nodded.
He was not sure what he should do next. Should he ram himself in so the unpleasantness would be quickly over? Or should he gently ease forward?
The decision was taken out of his hands when Fiona began to pulse against him. No pleasure he had ever known could equal this. She was so wet and warm and tight. And utterly willing. But his powerful emotions encompassed far more than just the physical.
When he tore through her barrier, she winced.
He stilled.
“Don’t stop,” she urged hungrily, moving against him.
He gradually regained the rhythm until the rhythm itself became the master and he its slave. They were both caught in the maelstrom, carried to a place where thoughts were fleeting fragments, where intense physical pleasure leaped at them like a raging fire, consuming them. Then she arched and stilled and began to tremble as her breath became ragged. He held her tightly as the orgasm rolled over her, lapping at her like an angry tide as she clenched him tighter and made throaty exclamations.
She pressed her lips into his, her fingers digging into his back as his seed began to fill her, as the rest of his length plunged into her.
How, she wondered, could such an uncomfortable action bring her such delirious pleasure? Would she always be this sore, or would the discomfort diminish with practice? Nick would know. If she had the brazenness to ask him. And, Good Lord, how could this bedchamber be this hot in the dead of winter? Were she wearing something it would have been completely drenched. Like her. Even her hair was damp and clung to her head.
When she felt Nick’s seed seeping through her, profound emotions swept over her. She really was his wife. She could quite possibly bear his child. Something in her heart rolled over at the thought. A very pleasant thought, to be sure.
From this moment on, there was no turning back. She was irrevocably bound to the enigmatic man whose shaft was buried in her at this very second.
Like she had done, he stilled, then began to tremble. Only he called out her name. “Oh God, Fiona!” At first she thought something was wrong with him, then she realized he was not dissatisfied. Not dissatisfied at all.
A moment later he slipped from her and rolled to her side, his body sleek with sweat. His gentle hand swept the moist hair from her brow, and he bent to press a soft kiss there. “There’s one other thing I neglected to tell you about being sexually aroused,” he said.
“What is that?” she asked in a breathless voice.
“After the deed is done, one feels as if one’s just run uphill.”
That explained the sweating. And the breathlessness. So far all of her reactions had been perfectly normal. Even the pointed nipples. The thought of her breasts being erotic sent pulsebeats of pleasure licking at her.
She lay there in the darkness, Nick tugging her to his chest, and she felt completely blissful. Except for the devilish soreness.
“Oh, love,” he murmured, “we are so good together. I couldn’t ask for a better wife.”
Her smile went deep as she buried her head into the crevice between his shoulder and chest. She could not have been any happier. Nick had called her love. Once tonight he had even said my love, which was infinitely better—considering the intimacy they had just shared. He was pleased with her. She truly believed he did not resent that she’d robbed his treasured bachelorhood.
And she truly hoped they could make love several times a night.
“Are you all right?” he asked a moment later, his voice gentle as he dropped soft kisses into her hair.
“I think so.”
He went suddenly stiff. “What’s the matter?” he asked in a concerned voice.
“I’ve heard that when a woman loses her chastity, there is blood?”
He drew in a deep breath. “There is.”
“Is that why I . . . experienced discomfort? Is it only for the first time?”
He held her tightly. “I’m not an authority on women’s virginity—you’re my first virgin—but I believe you may experience soreness for a week or so—until your . . . anatomy gets used to my invasion.”
“Will you answer me truthfully if I ask you a personal question?”
He did not answer for a moment. “Yes,” he finally said.
“Do the women you bed usually experience pain?”
“Never,” he said with authority. Then he sighed and tenderly stroked her back, her arms, her buttocks. “If you’d like, I won’t . . . enter you again until the soreness goes away.”
That’s not at all what she liked. She stiffened. “Is that what you wish?”
“You want the truth?”
She held her breath. “Yes.”
“ No.”
“I’m very glad to hear that for I’d like to do it all over again.”
He gave a husky chuckle. “There’s another thing you need to know about making love, my dear. Men are rather different from women. After a man has spilled his seed his size diminishes and he experiences a profound sense of exhaustion.”
She rather thought this lovemaking would be more pleasant if a man’s size was diminished! “Can a man not make love when he’s not so ‘expanded’?” she asked.
“He cannot!” he said with a laugh. “He needs to be quite hard in order to . . . slide in properly.” He pushed her over on her back and settled his lips on hers for a heated kiss. “However, Mrs. Birmingham, just speaking about being rigid seems to have made me hard.”
“Then we can do it again?”
“And again and again and again if you continue to have such an effect on me,” he growled as he covered her body with his.
Chapter 7
The sudden burst of light awakened her the next morning. For several seconds she lay there, her eyes closed, suffused with a deep sense of well-being, despite the soreness in a place whose existence had been unknown to her before yesterday. Gradually, she came fully awake and recognized her surroundings: her husband’s bedchamber. With glowing pride, she watched Nick—fully dressed and freshly shaven—move along a bank of tall windows, drawing open the blue silk draperies that had cloaked the room in darkness.
When he turned to face her, a crooked grin lifting one corner of his sensuous mouth, her heart leaped.
