A nod. A breath. “Yes.”
He reached down between them, and she felt the pleasure of his fingers, stroking, making sure she was open, ready… Then there was a thick, blunt heat at her core.
“My wife.” It was a whisper and a kiss. “Lucy. My wife.”
The pressure of him was a teasing, tormenting thing. And then the pressure built, licks of sensation shooting through her as he slowly entered her. He let out a rough breath, lips pressed to her temple as he pushed his way in, stretching her, sending tight, sharp bands deep through her, pleasurable and strange and burning andyes…
“Oh God,” she breathed.
“You’re alright?”
“Yes…”
He stayed still, a strange, hot, pulsing presence. “Min…? Lucy…?”
“I’m alright, I’m alright.”
“You feel so good, my love, so, so good…” It seemed an effort for him to speak. “But is it good…are you…?”
She nodded, but his eyes had sunk shut because she’d shifted her hips at the same time, in some instinctive, curious, hungry motion. Jack hissed, and then he pressed forwards again, one quick movement, and filled her so fully she saw stars.
“I love you,” he murmured. “God, I love you. I lovethiswith you. You’re perfect, perfect…”
His words broke off in a groan. He was incoherent, and she couldn’t speak at all. He began to move, rocking into her, slow but deep, then deeper still, his hand between them again, circling that indescribable spot until the pleasure surged beyond containing, and she was shuddering, gasping. Jack said her name, and then the pleasure took him too.
Thirty
Jack looked down at Lucy, who was clean and comfortable now, though still as unclothed as him, the coverlet pulled up over all the curves he’d recently lost his mind over.
He was propped on one elbow, toying endlessly with the spring of one of her curls. Until, that is, his attention snagged on one of her freckles and he traced a line from it to the next one along her cheekbone, then the next, and the next, down her jaw, her throat, and down—
“Jack.”
“Sorry.” He looked up with a sheepish grin. She smiled back.
“You can do that all night, except I still need to draw you.”
“I pass muster, do I? My body is now your muse?”
She laughed, pulling the cushion from beside her head and walloping him on the shoulder. “Go and stand over there and look…heroic and brooding. And bring me my sketchbook.”
“Yes, my lady.” He gave an ironic salute, brought the sketchbook to her, then went to stand by her dressing table, onefoot raised on the chair, chest exaggeratedly puffed, a hand on his hip. “Like so?”
She gave his groin a pointed look. “Veryheroic.”
He laughed. “If you haven’t noticed, you’re naked in a bed and the cover has fallen to your waist. And that isfarmore encouragement than I need, believe me. Just being in a room with you is enough.”
She laughed but blushed, fastening her attention to her sketchbook. He smiled to himself. How she could still be shy after everything they’d just shared, he didn’t know, but it was quintessential Lucy.
The flush on her cheeks wasn’t all embarrassment though. He eyed it with the pleasure of both memory and possession. He’d put it there. He’d made her his own, tonight and forever, and given himself in return. Mathematics might never have been one of his strong points, but he had the feeling some universal balance had been made whole. A vast sum, twenty-six years in the making, had finally been solved with the perfect answer.
He was deliriously happy at any rate.
“You’re meant to look heroic, not dopey.”
It amused him even more to discoverhewas apparently the more romantic one of the two.
“What I look like, my darling, is a man in love.”
