And then he moved again, withdrawing almost completely before sinking home. The breath hissed from his lungs. His heart pounded. The relentless ache inside him, the need to empty himself in her, grew. He reached between their enjoined bodies to pleasure her pearl as he thrust in and out of her. His rhythm grew faster. His body was needier.
So, too, was Catriona’s. She was moving, her breath coming in gasps. They found their pace together. Faster. Deeper. Harder. He staved off his climax for as long as he could, savoring the feeling of her silken depths clenching on him.
He rode her harder, relishing the tremors of her pleasure until he could not wait another moment. He came with a roar, filling her with his seed as white-hot desire exploded through him with such tremendous force, his vision went black.
His release was so potent, he collapsed onto her for a moment, burying his face in her throat, breathing in her sweet scent of jasmine. Feeling her heart pound in tandem with his.
He had not expected bedding his wife to feel so right.
To take his breath and drive every other thought but her from his mind.
As his wits slowly restored themselves, he forced himself to withdraw from Catriona. The undeniable smear of her blood on his cock seemed a recrimination. He had just consummated his marriage. Had taken his wife’s innocence.
And deep inside him, where his love for Maria hid, he felt at once only a grim sense of hollowness. The sooner he got Catriona with child, the sooner he could return to Spain, he reminded himself. This was duty. Obligation.
As natural as breathing.
But it did not feel natural. Instead, it felt like a betrayal.
*
Her husband regrettedmaking love to her.
Catriona understood it the moment he flung himself to his back as if she were a flame that had just burned him. In a way, she probably was. He was still in love with his first wife, and the reminder, in the form of his harsh countenance and the distance he had placed between them, was visceral.
Sobering.
He had made her body come to life.
And then he had withdrawn.
She lay there, acutely aware of her nudity. Should she retrieve the bedclothes? Should she excuse herself? What was the protocol for experiencing the most passionate encounter of her life, only to become the object of her husband’s guilt?
Not bursting into tears, as she longed to do, surely.
Her body still hummed with the pleasure he had given her. They had just become one, engaged in the deepest form of intimacy, and yet he was quiet at her side. Close enough to touch, but emotionally, he may as well have been an ocean away from her. He may as well have already returned to Spain.
Where his heart was.
Misery descended, warring with the bliss that had rendered her body so pleasantly sated. She swallowed against a rush of emotion she did not want. Emotion she could not face. Not yet. Perhaps, not ever.
She longed to say something, anything, to fill the silence with her words. But none would form upon her tongue. At least, not any she ought to speak.
“Are you well?” he asked, breaking the quiet with his question, so oddly stilted for a man who had just displayed a grand capacity for passion.
“No,” she replied, staring at the ceiling. For the first time since her arrival the day before, she took note of the elaborate Grecian plasterwork of the cornice. It was lovely. If only she could truly admire it.
“I am sorry,querida.”
The low rumble of his voice was her undoing. She turned her head toward him, and he looked so torn, so confused. Vulnerable, almost. He undid her, as always.
“What do you apologize for?” she asked.
“Hurting you.” He reached toward her in a gesture of surprising tenderness, cupping her jaw.
He had hurt her, but not in the way he supposed. The discomfort she had experienced—a pinch, then a dull throb, some soreness as he had stretched and filled her with his length—had been soon replaced by pleasure. The sensation of him lodged deep within her, sliding inside, then withdrawing, only to thrust home once more, had been nothing short of exquisite.
What hurt the most was the distance he created. The way he kept himself from her. Histrueself—his heart and soul—not just his physical body.
