“It means you gave me so much pleasure that you made me greedy for more.” He arched a brow. “Is that all right, my love? After all, this is your first time, and I do not wish to make you sore.”
“It is more than all right,” she answered while rocking her hips to meet his slow, steady thrusts. “Because you have made me greedy for more too.”
“Excellent, my love. That is all I needed to hear.”
*
Lazily draped acrosshim as if he were extra cushions for the settee, Fortuity smiled as Matthew’s steady heartbeat thumped against her cheek. “I can only imagine the conversation around the servants’ table downstairs.”
His hearty chuckle vibrated through her. “From the whisperings I have managed to overhear, they should be very pleased with us today. I believe they feared we were about to take up separate households due to incompatibility.”
“Well,Ifear we became rather loud. So there should be no doubt in their minds that we areverycompatible.”
He rumbled against her with a heartier laugh and tightened his arms around her. “Yes. Very compatible, indeed. By the way, your removal of my cravat was most impressive for an inexperienced virgin.”
She pushed up and propped herself on her elbow. “Are you doubting my purity?”
“I am not,” he said with an urgency that revealed his fear of insulting her. “But even old Ablesby takes longer to untie my neckcloths, and he’s been my valet for years.”
Toying with the dusting of dark hair across his chest, she debated whether to tell him a long-held Broadmere sister secret.
“Is it that dire?” he asked with a leery look, while enticingly running his hand up and down her side.
“You must swear to never tell a soul.”
He grinned and palmed her buttock as if checking it for ripeness. “I swear on this delectable arse.”
She rolled her eyes. “Papa and Mama were always very strict about us all arriving at the dinner table in a timely manner.Tardiness is a passive insult,Papa always said, and Mama insisted it was the height of rudeness.”
Matthew frowned. “What has that to do with your talent of whisking off a cravat in the blink of an eye?”
“When we were younger, Chance was even more unbearable than he is now. So, all of us sisters learned how to relieve him of his perfectly tied cravat when it was time to march down to dinner so he would have to return to his rooms and have it sorted. It always made him late, and he got into terrible trouble with Papa, who refused to believe his innocent daughters would know anything about untying a gentleman’s neckcloth.”
“Poor Chance.”
“Poor Chance?” She thumped Matthew on the chest. “He was a thoroughly insufferable jackass to us all—still can be, at times.”
Matthew caught her wrist before she could playfully thump him again and pulled her down for a long, slow kiss that left her deliciously breathless.
She drew back from him and teased him with a well-placed wiggle. “You are quite good at that, you know. Of course, I have no other with which to compare you.”
“And you never will, my love.” In one swift motion, he yanked the velvety throw off the back of the settee, tossed it onto the floor, then rolled them off on top of it. He stretched, grabbed a cushion, and placed it under her head.
“Ever the gentleman,” she said as she wound her arms and legs around him and pulled him down where he belonged. The inferno he had awakened within her was ready to be stoked once again.
Propped on his elbows, he gave her a look filled with such caring and concern that her heart threatened to burst with joy. “I try, and as a gentleman, I must ask ifthisis all right?” He nibbled a tender kiss across her mouth, then raised his head again. “I shall never get my fill of you, my love, because you are so exquisite. But I do not wish you to be miserable afterward because you are so very sore. This is a newactivityfor you.”
“You make me sound like a horse that has been overridden.”
He snorted with laughter, then quickly turned his head to bury his face in his shoulder. Once composed, he gave her as innocent a look as he had ever managed. “I would never compare you to a horse, my love.”
She squeezed his taut buttocks just as he’d squeezed hers. With a wicked grin, she wrapped her legs tighter around him and arched upward, aching for him to return her to ecstasy. “I am unsatisfied with that weak apology. I believe you should make it up to me,my lord.”
As he filled her and settled into that wonderful rocking motion that thrilled her, he managed a proper nod. “I am yours to command, my love. Ever yours to command.”
Chapter Eleven
“It pains meto see you so very miserable,” Fortuity told Blessing while inwardly cringing at the astonishing size of her sister’s middle. Mama had never gotten this large when expecting. Or, at least, Fortuity didn’t remember her ever becoming so huge. Blessing looked as if she had swallowed half of London. “Is there a possibility there could be more than one in there?”
