Beneath the quilt and comforter, Roen’s fingers scrabbled at the hem of Lily’s gown. The heel of his hand brushed her bare leg as he lifted the shift. He laid his hand on the curve of her thigh. He used one of his legs to part hers.
Lily’s hands were equally busy. One of them moved across his shoulder blades while the other slipped under his nightshirt and palmed a buttock and squeezed. His hips jerked involuntarily. She shifted to accommodate him, and when his mouth found hers again, she met him eagerly, measure for full measure.
He was already aroused, but now his erection swelled and throbbed and demanded his attention. The rush of blood to his groin made him groan, and the sound was deep and rough and loud enough to wake them both.
Lily stared into Roen’s heavily lidded eyes. The look was slumberous, but there was no doubt in her mind that he was alert. She could feel that in every tense line of his body, just as she was sure he could feel the same in hers.
“Oh,” she whispered. “So here we are.”
He nodded, breathed shallowly and carefully, but didn’t move away. The light in the room was dimmer than it had been when he’d crawled into bed but sufficient for him to make out the contours of her face and the faint smile that shaped her lovely mouth.
“Where is the bundle?”
Roen didn’t look around for it. “I don’t know. It’s wherever you pushed it.”
“I didn’t move it. I think you kicked it out of the way.”
“Does it matter? You said it yourself. Here we are.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” Lily was not so much breathing shallowly as she was not breathing at all. It had to end, and when it did, her chest heaved and her breasts momentarily flattened against him. There was an unfamiliar ache between her thighs that was more disconcerting than the one that swelled and tightened her breasts. “What do we do now?”
“That’s up to you. It’s encouraging that you haven’t pushed me away like you did the bundle.”
“I did not—” Lily stopped because one corner of his mouth was a fraction higher than the other. She returned his uneven smile. “I’m encouraged, too.”
“Are you?”
She nodded. “I want this, Roen. I’m ready.”
He did not ask if she was certain. He took her at her word and lowered his mouth to hers. She welcomed him with damp kisses and the sweet sound of satisfaction. He felt her fingers graze his back, and the hand that rested on his ass slid sideways to his hip. He slipped his hand between their bodies and laid his palm against her abdomen. She sucked in a breath and her midriff dipped. His fingertips drew lower until they reached her mons. She grew very still and then he slipped two fingers inside her. Her head lifted off the pillow but dropped back almost immediately.
“What are you doing?” she asked. She despised the edge of panic in her voice and was glad when he didn’t answer. She squeezed her eyes closed as he moved his fingers back and forth, added a third. His thumb parted her lips and brushed her clitoris. Her hips rose and fell just as her head had done. She whimpered.
“It’s all right,” he whispered against her mouth. “Just feel.”
And she did. The movements were familiar but the consequences were not. There was pleasure here and none of it was because she was trying to please him. He wanted her to experience this, expected it actually, and knew infinitely more than she did about how to bring it about.
“Please,” she said. It struck her then that she had never uttered that word in bed except when commanded to say it. She offered it freely now and hoped he understood what should follow. She didn’t have any other words.
Roen removed his hand and parted her thighs. He slipped between them and told her to raise her knees. She complied without hesitation. He took her loosely by the wrist, dragged her hand toward his groin, and folded her fingers around his cock. “Show me,” he said. His voice grated at the back of his throat like sandpaper. He softened to a whisper that was only half as harsh. “Show me what you want.”
Lily lifted her hips and opened to him like the flower she was. She guided him inside her and they collapsed together when he made his first deep thrust. Lily’s hands went to his shoulders as he rose on his elbows. She knew her body would accommodate him, but the fit was tight and she was glad he gave her time to catch her breath. “Just feel,” he had said. She was doing that now. “Wonderful” was too insipid a word to describe what she felt. “Brilliant” was better. She felt brilliant, luminous, sparkling with flashes of heat and light.
Roen began to move and she was struck by how easily she moved with him, matching his rhythm without conscious thought. It simply came to her, and she knew it was right, just as she knew the man was right. She opened her mouth to tell him that, but he bent his head and kissed her and the words disappeared as she tasted him on her tongue. She savored his kiss, the heat and firmness, the edge of hunger and urgency, and she recognized herself as his equal and returned what she received.
The sparks she felt as tiny explosions skittered across her skin and down her spine. She flung her pillow aside and pressed her head and shoulders into the mattress. She dug in her heels. There was a quickening in her blood; something hot and purely pleasurable was lifting her. She was flooded with a tide of new sensation, sometimes delicately balanced on the crest for so long that she began to fear it would not break, and then fear it would.
She breathed in air as though she were sipping a fizzy through a straw. The sounds she made were little bubbles bursting in her throat. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to do them at the same time. What she did, though, was fly over the crest and shudder all the way to her toes.
Lily learned about restraint then. His. He began to move differently. His thrusts were rapid and shallow and sheunderstood how much he had held back, how careful he had been. She cupped the back of his head, threaded her fingers in his hair, and said his name over and over on a thread of sound so insubstantial that she couldn’t hear herself above the rattle of the bed and, finally, his guttural cry when he released his seed.
She expected him to collapse against her, might even have welcomed it, but she didn’t have to find out. He withdrew and heaved himself onto his side, still close enough that she could feel his heat and hear his breathing as it steadied. Her heart was still thrumming. She pressed three fingers above it.
“You’re a quiet lover,” he said eventually.
“Mm.”
“And just as quiet after.”
