He felt her begin to shudder a moment before she knew what was happening herself. He drew back and let the cry come to her lips and took his own pleasure in the sound. His wolf’s eyes were narrowed, watching every fleeting expression of Lydia’s passion. There was a flush that rose from her breasts, across her shoulders, and finally colored her cheeks. Lydia’s lips were cherry red, parted, dewy. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, slumberous, deeply blue, and she was staring at him wonderingly.
Nathan took her wrist and raised it as he stood, bringing her with him. Rivulets of water ran over Lydia’s shoulders and between her breasts. She shivered, but it had the heat of Nathan’s eyes as the source, not the chilled air. He wrapped a towel around her, and when she looked at him oddly, he said, “So I can have the pleasure of taking it off.” Her eyes dropped away shyly but her faint smile was pleased. Nathan led her to the bed, sat down, and then brought her down on his lap. Her arms went naturally around his neck, and beneath her thigh she could feel his arousal. Their foreheads touched and her eyes were wide, searching. She shifted slightly and he sucked in his breath. “Don’t move,” he said. His mouth was very close to hers. She could almost taste his words. “Can you feel me, know how much I want you?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I’ve never had a virgin before. I’m not sure I’ve ever known one.”
A little thrill shot through Lydia. She could offer something to this beautiful man that no other woman had.
“This first time,” he said, “I may hurt you.”
“I don’t mind.” Her lips touched one corner of his mouth. “You’ve already given me pleasure.” Lydia’s fingers threaded in the fine dark hair at the back of Nathan’s neck. She held him immobile as she pressed her mouth to the opposite corner of his lips, then to his cheek, his jaw, and finally to his ear where her teeth caught his lobe and tugged gently. She felt his lips on the curve of her neck and she offered it up, kissing his temples, his brow, and the bridge of his nose.
Nathan caught her mouth with his own. It was a tasting at first. A whisper of flesh, a teasing of tongues. Neither was satisfied with that. Their mouths parted and clung and the kiss became a seeking. His tongue glided across her lips, probed, sought a match with hers, and found sweet pleasure in her response. Their desire had an energy of its own, feeding on itself, making the kiss harder and deeper so that it foreshadowed the thrustings of their bodies.
Lydia was toppled backward onto the bed. Her fingers worked quickly on the buttons of Nathan’s shirt. He stopped her, rose from the bed, and turned back the lamps so that only the narrowest shaft of moonlight and starshine entered the cabin. She wondered about him extinguishing the lamps, wondered if it was unseemly, even wanton, that she wanted to look at him and be seen by him in turn. Perhaps she wasn’t a virgin at all, she worried. Perhaps she had made love hundreds of times except with the man who was her husband now. Oh, God, she thought, what if she had lied to him? How would she explain?
Then he was in bed with her, tugging at her towel under the sheet, and he pulled her hips close, seeking for the natural cradle of her thighs for his erection, and Lydia accepted that she had worried needlessly. She had never felt anything like this before, had never known this aching need he was creating in her at this moment. It was not something she could have forgotten.
Her hands fluttered to Nathan’s shoulders, smoothing his flesh from the curve of his neck to his arms. His skin was warm and taut and her fingers danced over it. She felt a ridge across his back, a raised line of flesh that should not have been there, and she paused in her exploration. Lydia would have asked about the scar, for surely, she thought, that was what she felt, but Nathan redirected her curiosity, taking her by the wrists and bringing her palms flush to his chest. Her thumbs brushed his nipples, raising them, and bringing a small moan of satisfaction to Nathan’s lips.
He found the pins that anchored her beautiful hair and tugged at them. Burying his face against the curve of her neck, Nathan’s senses were filled with the fragrance of her, lavender and musk. He kissed the hollow of her throat, traced the line of her collarbone, then his body slipped lower, and while his hands learned the shape of her body, his mouth suckled her breast, sipping, laving, drawing the tip into his mouth and pulling the threads of pleasure that radiated to every other part of her.
Her fingers clutched his buttocks, and she pressed against him, rubbing, wanting him to satisfy the ache between her thighs and unable to say the words aloud. Her legs slid against his. Her toes curled as his mouth moved slowly to her other breast, circled, teased, and finally licked the shell-pink nipple with his tongue. She said his name then, while all her other thoughts remained unspoken, but it was as if he heard the things she couldn’t say.
One of his hands moved from the curve of her waist, over the flat plane of her belly, and when his knee slipped between her legs, parting her thighs, Nathan’s fingers began an intimate caress, touching, stroking the budding center of her pleasure. He found her wet and hot, ready for him, unafraid in her eagerness and innocence.
“Touch me, Liddy,” he said huskily. “Help me.”
She did as he asked, hesitant at first, then at his urging, with more confidence. She held his heavy cock, stroking, making a caress of her exploration. They shifted. She raised her knees and the soles of her feet slid along his calves as he knelt between her thighs. Her buttocks were lifted; her hand reached out blindly, searching, finding, guiding.
He came inside her slowly, watching her all the while, listening for some sound that warned him he was hurting her. She moved beneath him, trying to accommodate his entry and not let him know about the pain because she didn’t want him to stop. He felt her stiffen anyway and started to withdraw. Lydia’s legs curled around him and she held his forearms.
“No,” she whispered. “Come into me. I was meant to fit more than your hand. I was meant to fit all of you.”
“Oh, God, Lydia.” And even more quietly, “Forgive me.” He thrust inside her fully, covering her with his body. She was tight around him, and hot. He wanted to move in her right away and forced himself to hold back, waiting for her to adjust to the hard length of him. He kissed her long and deeply and sometime during the kiss they began to rock in unison, their limbs locked, their bodies sliding.
Everything he had made her feel before he made her feel again, this time more powerfully. Knowing what was awaiting her, Lydia was an eager participant, moving against Nathan, tightening around him. Her fingers tripped along his forearms and then fell to the mattress and curled in the sheets. She wanted to see his face, know that he was sharing in the pleasure as he was sharing in the passion.
Lydia cried out her need and his name as Nathan’s strokes quickened. The tension dissolved in her while it continued to build in Nathan, tightening the muscles across his back and in his thighs. Her hands were on him now, caressing him, clutching him, urging him toward finding his own release. And when he did, she held him in her arms and stroked his hair, her fingers a whisper against his neck, the tenderness that was so much a part of her nature inherent in her touch.
Nathan had never wanted to cry after making love to a woman before. He did now and barely understood it. Lydia made him ache in ways that had nothing to do with wanting her and everything to do with needing her. He had never been frightened of a woman before. Lydia scared him to death. He came close to telling her the truth then, just so she would hate him and never let him near her again. It was almost a physical blow to realize that that scared him just as much.
“Do you know what I regret?” Lydia asked quietly. Except for the gentle stroking of her hand, she was still. Nathan’s weight was comforting, somehow reassuring, and she didn’t wait for his response to her question. She knew he was awake because his thumb was making a pass across the inward curve of her waist. “I regret not remembering our wedding.”
He raised his head, kissed her on the tip of her nose. “As long as you don’t regret the wedding.”
“No. Not that.” She smiled to herself as Nathan’s head rested on her shoulder again and one of his legs trapped both of hers. “Actually, I do think I remember something of it. Father Patrick said the service, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
She sounded pleased with her capture of an elusive memory, Nathan thought. “Do you recall anything else?” he asked calmly, as if his future did not depend on her answer.
“No,” she said. “Nothing. But I’m never going to forget our wedding night.” There was another wedding night, the first one, though, that she could not bring to consciousness no matter how hard she tried. Nathan told her that after the ceremony in the orphanage’s chapel, they had taken a room above a tavern outside the city. She had been tired, he said, worried about the manner in which she’d left her parents. Going against their wishes had been hard on her. Lydia appreciated his honesty. He could have led her to believe differently and not risked as much, but he didn’t. That evening, when her weariness had become a relentless and pounding ache in her head, Nathan, instead of pressing her with his attentions, had given her his own mix of powder to help her sleep. Her first real memory was of waking up and finding Nathan kneeling at her bedside, sleeping, his cheek lying against the mattress, and his hand curled around hers.
“Do you know?” she asked, still thinking about the moment when her fingers had tightened in his and he came awake. “I sensed that I belonged with you as soon as I saw you.”
