As he softened, he closed his eyes and let her movements tell him all he needed to know. She was with him, all the way. It had been a mutual joy, a trip up the highest mountain which had resulted in them falling together into the mindless vortex.
He shuddered a little as he slid free and felt her legs collapse beside him. Carefully he eased himself to one side, slumping next to her, tangled in her limbs, and with a heart finally returning to its more customary pace.
“Are you all right?” He touched her face, a mere shade in the light of the dying candle.
“Oh yes,” she purred. “I am so all right I might die of it.”
He chuckled. “Please don’t. Marry me instead.”
To his surprise, she giggled, then turned in his arms to tuck her bottom into his groin. It was a perfect position and he settled next to her, enjoying the cuddle.
“You laugh at my proposal?”
Her head moved in a nod. “Of course, dear man. You are such a wonderful gentleman. But we’re long past the stage where such activities need result in a request for my hand. You don’t have to make an honest woman of me. I’ve done that myself.”
“Uh…” He was caught off guard; her reply practical yet puzzling. Did she think he spoke in jest? Ripe with the after effects of a mutually magnificent release?
He pulled her closer. “I mean it, my love. Marry me.”
A soft snore was the only response.
He couldn’t help but smile, even though his brain was trying to work out the logic behind her words. Didn’t shewanthim? Well, that would be a difficult argument to present, given what they’d experienced together in this very bed. A woman surely could not make sounds like that, or touch a man the way she had touched him if she were not finding the experience to be pleasant. He’d felt her come apart around his cock, for God’s sake. So that couldn’t possibly be what she meant.
Was she averse to marriage?
That might be a stronger cause for her reaction. She certainly had no particular reason to be eager to wed again, after her experience with her first husband.
But that must have been twenty years ago, at least. Grace was older than her brother Max, he knew. But not by much. Which would put her into her early forties. That tallied with a marriage at a young age and close to two decades since it had ended so tragically. But it did not preclude considerations of re-marriage. She was the perfect age for him; children were unlikely, but if they arrived he’d adore them with every fibre of his being, and he believed she would be a great mother, given her handling of the Muir children.
So that wasn’t any kind of impediment to marriage, in his opinion.
They were both self-sufficient. He had more than ample funds, and she wanted for very little. He was unfamiliar with the disposition of the Seton-Mowbray family fortune, or whether Chaney had left her anything, but clearly Grace was not obliged to pinch pennies.
Another matter off the list of things to be considered.
The room was pitch black now, the candle gutted, the drapes closed against the bitter night air. But Perry needed no light to keep him awake.
His mind turned over and over, revolving around the woman next to him and how to persuade her that they belonged together.
He’d found something he’d not anticipated—a woman who could fullfill every one of his fantasies. Her intelligence rendered her out of the ordinary, her musical talent defied description and her physical responses had nearly driven him out of his mind.
What more could a man ask for?
She stirred, turned and he heard her breathing change. “Perry?” she whispered.
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
The yawn she gave was quite clear. “Why are you not asleep?”
“Because you are lying naked beside me. Because I can breathe in your scent and feel your heat. I swear I can even hear your heartbeat.”
She chuckled softly. “You are a romantic, Sir Peregrine.”
“Only with you, dear Grace.”
She moved, rising beneath the covers, and—to his astonishment—straddling him, the folds of her sex rubbing against him in a deliciously teasing and tantalising manner.
“Grace,” he murmured, his cock hard as iron.
“Hush. I have always wanted to try this…to ride like this…”
He gulped and reached for her breasts. “Well, all right then…the reins are yours…”
It was quite some time before they slept again, but at least Perry had stopped thinking about anything but the woman above him.
After they were done, his snores joined hers and echoed around the silent chamber.
