“Oh, that!” She was dismissive. “I do feel wonderful.”
“Perhaps you should eat something. I can have a tray sent up.”
She smiled against his chest. Did she dare? Why not! “I am hungry,” she murmured, “very hungry—but not for food.”
He was still.
She glanced up.
“You are a minx,” he said softly, but he was smiling.
“Am I?” she said, pleased by his remark. She kissed the muscle beneath her cheek, then slid her hand down his rib cage and his abdomen. She felt the muscles there tense.
She kissed his skin again and brushed her fingers over his manhood, which lay half-stiff upon his belly. She watched it grow with real interest and teased her fingertips over it again.
“You play with fire, little one,” he murmured.
“Does this always happen so easily?” she had to ask as she began to explore both shape and texture.
There was no response.
Virginia closed her hand around him, and inside, she felt hugely hollow. She glanced slowly up.
He watched her, his face strained, his breathing harsh, uneven. He said, slowly, with effort, “If you do as you are doing, yes.”
She smiled, pleased, and stroked his length. “And if I do this?”
“Then I do this,” he growled, and she found herself lifted up above his body and held over his head, against the headboard. “What?” she began, and then his tongue swept over her.
Virginia held on to the headboard, gasping.
Clasping her buttocks in each hand, his tongue washed over her sex, swift and intent.
Virginia felt faint. “Oh, I can’t manage,” she gasped. “Do not stop now!”
He laughed as he tormented her, more deeply, more explicitly, than before.
Virginia felt her terrible climax begin and she grabbed his hand, squeezing it; he understood and before she knew it, he had pulled her down, and he was surging up into her; a moment later he had flipped her over and he was riding her hard.
She looked up into his beloved face and began to weep in pleasure. And he held her tightly, whispering, “Yes, my darling, yes.”
DEVLIN SAT IN THE CHAIR BYthe fire that barely blazed in the hearth, fully dressed in his naval uniform, his black hat on his knee. He stared at his bride.
Virginia slept deeply, a soft smile on her lovely face, a few diamonds still clinging to the masses of her curling hair. She lay on her side, her back bare where the hair revealed it, the covers pulled only to her waist. He had made love to her for two nights and the day in between, and he still wanted her again.
It was 5:02 a.m., December 14. In another fifty-eight minutes he would set sail for America. He did not want to leave his bride; he did not want to go.
He did not want to go.
He stood, hat in hand. What nonsense was this? What was happening to him? He was a warrior, it was all that he knew, and of course he wanted to go to war yet again.
She sighed in her sleep.
His heart ached suddenly, hugely, then. Good God, he was going to miss her—he missed her already and he had yet to leave.
The ever-present fear, a monster lurking behind him, threatening his very life, came closer, reaching out.What nonsense was this?He had a war to attend. He might be married now, but his bride could not make him soft, she could not change his character or his choices. All the other emotions he had been feeling since their wedding, both soft and huge, were not for him. He was not in love. Love was not for him. Once he set sail, once he became a part of the wind and the sea, his legs braced firmly as he rode the deck of theDefiance,he would not be feeling like such a romantic fool and he would not miss her, not at all.
Which meant that it was time to go, now, before his foolish brooding unmanned him.
