was longer and thicker than she’d expected. Silky skin stretched tight over blood and muscle, growing slippery with the first drops of his seed. She wondered what it would be like when he entered her. Probably not as pleasant as she was imagining. In her experience, real life seldom lived up to imagination.
But the current moment was satisfying enough. As she moved her hand on him, his whole body seemed to tighten, tension building like a coiled spring. His eyes were open again, head had arched back so that he could stare at the ceiling and his lips worked, almost as though praying. In this moment, he was hers in a way that no man had ever been. It made her wish that she could keep him. Or, at least, that she could keep pretending for a lifetime.
She used his vulnerability to kiss his exposed throat, running teeth and tongue along the tendons until she heard the hitch in his breath. Then she released him, just for a second, to raise the hem of her nightdress, brushing him with the picot edging he had found so intriguing.
He shuddered at the contact. She changed her grip, wrapping him in the linen, and tightening her hand to finish him. Beneath her, his whole body jerked and his breath released in a moan. Then, as she had expected, he lost control and sagged helpless back on to the mattress.
She lay still against him, her palm flat against his chest, waiting until he had stopped trembling and his heartbeat began to slow again. Then she rubbed him gently with the linen, rolled away from him and stood to pull the soiled gown over her head and drop it on the floor beside her discarded nightcap.
She glanced at it with a frown. Should she summon a maid, or search in her own bureau for a replacement? She did not normally like sleeping bare. The vulnerability of it was so distressing that she could not rest easy. But tonight felt different. She stretched her arms above her head, noting the pull of muscle and skin, feeling stronger and more confident than before. She smoothed a hand over breast and belly, surprised at how warm they felt. Then she turned towards the connecting door between the rooms.
‘Stay.’
She looked back at Will, surprised. How could she have forgotten that he was there, just behind her, watching this shameless display of her body?
But she had nothing to fear. There was no avarice in his gaze. His look held more wonder than lust. He reached out a hand to her, as though to stop her departure. ‘Come back to bed. We need do nothing more. But sleep here tonight, at my side.’
‘Very well,’ she said. She came back to the bed and climbed beneath the covers, letting him gather her close. In less than a sigh, he was asleep.
She lay awake beside him, surprised at how relaxing it was to share a bed with William Felkirk. She dreaded those nights that Montague expected it of her, for it invariably meant that she would be wakened at some point and required to service him.
But judging by the slight snore that escaped his parted lips, the man at her side now was not likely to wake. His arm wrapped loosely around her, his thigh brushing her leg. But the limbs were as relaxed and heavy as they had been as he’d lain in a coma.
This feeling of skin against skin was a new thing as well. She ought to be frightened, lying hip to hip with a stranger. But this was more decadent than disturbing. She yawned. Perhaps this was what it was like to be a courtesan, taking and discarding lovers without a second thought.
Or perhaps it was how she’d have felt, had she been a wife.
The thought was gone as quickly as it had come, for she was slipping away, into a dark and peaceful sleep.
When Will awoke the next morning, she was gone from his bed. Perhaps last night’s release was what he had needed. It was the first real rest he’d had since waking from the coma. He’d slept so soundly that he had no idea whether she’d stayed as he asked.
He rather hoped she had. His dreams had been deliciously lurid, opium-drenched fantasies of some Turkish paradise where he reclined on a pillow while a nubile woman ministered to his every need.
He grinned. What he had thought of as a dream was very close to what had actually happened. She had seemed so prim when she came to him in her plain gown and cap. Then she had kissed him soundly and taken him to heaven with a single hand. After, she’d stripped naked at his bedside and stretched like a satisfied cat.
Was it any wonder that he had dreamed of paradise? When he closed his eyes he could still see her high, full breasts bobbing above a narrow waist and hips that made a man long to hold on to them. What had he been thinking, to invite her to bed so that they might simply talk? She had pleasured him to the point where it had not mattered in the slightest who she was or where she’d come from. His only concern had been that she continue until she had finished.
* * *
When he came down to breakfast, she was already there. He should not have been surprised. He thought himself an early riser, but she seemed to pride herself on being ahead of him. The post had come and she had kept a single letter for herself and arranged the rest at his place. Then she made sure that his plate and cup were prepared just as he would like it.
Today, instead of greeting her with a curt nod, he went to her side and kissed her lightly on the cheek. He glanced down at the paper in front of her.
He frowned. Despite what had happened between them, she still seemed to stiffen at the touch of his lips and shift nervously away as though fearing a blow. Her movement obscured the note, which had all but disappeared beneath her plate. Then she relaxed into the passive doll he had come to expect. ‘Good morning, William,’ she said dutifully.
‘And good morning to you, my dear.’ And where have you gone? It was not as if he expected her to arrive at the table like a slave in a harem, attired in nothing but scarves. But when he looked at her, he’d expected to find some sign of the change between them.
She glanced down at the paper peeping out from beneath her breakfast plate. ‘If you are wondering about the letter, it is a note from a friend of my parents, congratulating me upon our marriage. I will answer it after breakfast.’
‘Of course,’ he said. It was not so unusual that she had friends, nor that they would correspond with her. But since she had not mentioned them before, he had flattered himself that he was her entire world. It did him no credit that he felt jealous of the person who wrote to her and the time she would spend on them. ‘And you will write to your sister as we discussed?’
Her expression, which had been pensive, changed to a brief, radiant smile. Then it faded to the more sedate half-smile she usually wore. ‘If you still wish me to, I would like that.’
It was as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud only to disappear again. He grinned at her, hoping to remind her of the previous night. ‘Of course I still wish it. And if there is anything else that will make you smile as you have just done, you must ask immediately. On such a fine morning as this, I could deny you nothing.’
She glanced at the window, as though expecting to see a change in the weather. ‘I thought it rather chill, when I was walking.’ She looked back at him, giving no indication that she understood the reason for his happiness could be traced back to last night. She held out his cup, ‘Coffee?’
He took his usual seat and accepted the cup. ‘Thank you.’ Perhaps it was an ordinary thing for her, or had been so before the accident. If that was true, then
