He withdrew. Thrust again. He moved slowly, deliberately, watching her. Always watching her.
Jane closed her eyes. She could not look at him any longer. What he was doing to her, what he was making her feel, made her only want to look inside herself. In her mind’s eye she thought she could see the inception of pleasure, and although it was white-hot, she could not look away.
Her hips moved. They rose and fell. She responded to a rhythm that she only heard distantly but was deeply felt. It was something that he did to her and she accepted it, not out of any sense of duty, but because it was what she wanted.
She felt as if she were being lifted, as if she were coming out of herself, out of her skin, when in reality, she was only coming. She was a single nerve, taut and twisted and trembling. Her eyes flew open and she saw Morgan’s face above her. She threw her head back. She dug in her heels. Between those two points, the entire length of her body bowed like an electrical arc.
Jane gasped. She might have said something in that moment, but if she did, it was unintelligible and unimportant. She shuddered, shuddered hard, and then she was still. The lightness that had lifted her vanished but not the awareness that Morgan was still moving inside her. It was only a short time before he was not.
He did not gasp. He groaned. Jane heard the sound as something that was in response to both relief and suffering. She did not mind his weight on her. They were joined in their lethargy. She put her arms around him and stroked his back. Sometimes her fingers would comb through the hair at the nape of his neck. She rubbed his calf with the sole of her foot.
When he hoisted himself up, Jane did not try to stop him. He rolled away and collapsed onto his back. She turned just enough to see him put his forearm over his eyes. She was becoming familiar with that posture. He did it when he was looking into himself, evaluating, reflecting. He did it when he found that even the flickering light of a lamp was too distracting.
Jane quieted her breathing, said nothing, and waited.
“Do you regret becoming my wife?”
When he finally spoke, Jane only wondered why she was not more surprised by his question. “I was your wife before tonight,” she said. “At least it seemed so to me.”
“And tonight?”
Jane refused to answer. Instead, she said, “Tell me what there is to regret.”
“The absence of love, perhaps.”
That pricked her heart, but she knew it was true. Under the covers, she found his hand and took it. He did not try to pull away as she thought he might, even when she squeezed it. “You will never convince me that of the pair of us, you are not the more romantic.” He snorted, which made her chuckle. “I saved all your letters. Sometimes I reread them.”
“Do you? Why?”
“Because sometimes, like now, you can’t help but hold onto a dark thing so tightly it swallows your joy, and those letters remind me that there is light in you. You would not have named this place Morning Star if that were not true.”
He did not lift his forearm. Under his breath, he said, “Jesus.”
Jane let it be. She moved his hand to his chest and inched closer before she released it. “Is it proper to tell you that you made me happy tonight?”
“I don’t know. Does it seem proper?”
“Yes. Yes, it does.”
“Then it probably is.” He finally removed his arm and looked at her sideways. “I trust your sense of what’s fitting. You have my men saying grace before meals.”
“This is a little different from that.”
“Hmm.” He crooked his finger at her and pointed to his shoulder. She put her cheek against the spot he intended for her. “I don’t want to sleep in the other room tonight. Or any night from now on.”
“I am not asking you to.” When he was quiet, she lifted her head and looked at him. “Did you think I was going to argue?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m still working out how marriage changes things. No woman’s ever let me stay in her bed.”
Jane blinked. She was quite certain it had required considerable effort for him to squeeze out these last words. “You mean I will be the first woman you’ve slept with?”
“Once we actually go to sleep, yes.”
Jane’s head dropped back to his shoulder. “I feel as if the appropriate response here is ‘I’ll be damned,’ but I defer to you on matters of blasphemous phraseology.”
Morgan gave a shout of laughter, turned, and pressed Jane’s shoulders into the mattress. “That mouth of yours,” he said, and then he brought his down on it and kissed her long and hard and deeply.
When he eventually let her go, Jane lay there, stunned into silence. After a moment, she carefully touched her lips with the back of her fingertips. It had been a very thorough kiss, and her mouth felt a bit tender and her lips still tingled. She wanted to hold onto the sensation awhile longer. Morgan, she noticed, was looking rather pleased with himself, and she bathed in the light that finally shone through his eyes.
