She couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped her, or the slight moan that followed it. The pleasure suffusing her was too intense to remain quiet. It seemed to awaken something deep inside her. It was hunger and thirst. Life and death.
In dozens of novels she’d read about desire, and in the vaguest sense, she’d understood it. But this was much more primal than the yearning of a girl who had never even been kissed as she consumed florid prose that only hinted and neverdetailed. This thing building inside her was hungry and sharp, driving her to clutch at his shoulders, for her fingers to spear through his hair and hold him to her breast as she savored the wet heat of his mouth on sensitive flesh.
When is hand slipped beneath the silk to coast along her thigh, she had no thought of stopping him. She welcomed his touch, parting eagerly for his touch. It was instinctual for her, the belief that he could somehow assuage the aching need within her.
His hand slid higher and higher until he reached the apex of her thighs, his hand brushing gently over the curls that shielded the most intimate parts of her. Eleanor shivered, desperate to feel more, even if she wasn’t entirely certain what that was. Then he parted her folds, his fingertips dancing over slick skin, touching her so expertly that she could only squeeze her eyes shut as the breath rushed from her.
And still he kept building that unbearable tension. He stroked her flesh until she was fevered with it, until every muscle had drawn taut and she strained against him, searching for something she did not yet understand.
It was a sudden thing, the intense feeling of release that swept through her. She cried out as pleasure wracked her, leaving her shuddering beneath his tender touch. Before she had even stopped trembling, he’d parted her thighs more fully and eased himself between them. She could feel the hard ridge of his arousal pressing against her. Even in her state of repletion, the eagerness for him had not truly abated. Because as much as she wanted that pleasure to never end, what she wanted more was the connection to him. The intimacy of their bodies joined together in the dimness of their chamber.
“Are you certain?” He asked.
“Never more so,” she replied. “I feel as if I have been waiting my entire life for this moment.”
He kissed her then, and she could feel him moving, easing the buttons of his trousers open. Then he was guiding himself into her, the softness of her body yielding to the hardness of his. It was shocking and terrifying and familiar and wonderous all at once. The slight stinging pain was there and gone as quickly as it had come. Then it was only pleasure. Only aching fullness and the gentle rocking of his hips against hers. And the climb began anew, that now familiar tension building inside her once more.
When the wave of her release claimed her that time, she was not alone. As it pulled her into the depths, he groaned her name, uttering it almost like a desperate prayer as he shuddered against her, his warmth spilling inside her.
It was perfection. It was everything she had dreamed of. It left her whole and wrecked at the same time. She had thought her world would change with their marriage. But in truth she was changed. She felt complete in a way she had never known. And he had given her that.
“I do love you so,” she whispered.
“I shall remind you of that daily… likely when you are cross with me,” he answered teasingly as he collapsed onto the bed beside her.
Glancing at him, she saw that he was still slightly breathless and wore a look of such smug satisfaction. But she hadn’t the heart to take exception to it. That smugness, she thought, was well earned. “I imagine there are other things you can do when I am cross with you that would be far more effective in curbing my ire.”
“I’ll remind you of that too,” he said. “After we rest for a bit, I may remind you again tonight. And tomorrow. And every night after if you permit it.”
She settled contentedly against his side, loving the way his fingertips traced light circles on her skin. “I should like thatvery much… I’m afraid I am discovering certain hedonistic tendencies that are… unanticipated.”
“My sweet, perfect, paragon of a wife…. who also happens to be perfectly wanton in my arms. I may be the luckiest man to ever walk this earth.”
She grinned then. “I will remind you of that when you are cross with me.”
The sound of their laughter carried along the corridors, filling the house with the sounds of joy. The sounds of love.
Chapter
Twenty
Caroline had not intended to linger at the edge of the ballroom, yet with the press of bodies and the weight of sympathetic glances, retreating felt like her only option. Everywhere she turned, conversations faltered, voices softened, and eyes filled with that dreadful mixture of pity and curiosity. She truly did not understand how something so quiet could feel so suffocating.
So she remained near the shadowed alcove beside the musicians’ platform, where the crush thinned and the masks lent a measure of anonymity. From there she could observe without being observed, a luxury she had not enjoyed since her humiliation had become social currency.
Across the room, Eleanor moved through the crowd on Adrian’s arm, her happiness unmistakable even beneath her mask. There was a lightness to her movements Caroline had never seen before, as though she had at last stepped into a life that fit her. The sight stirred no bitterness in Caroline — only relief. If one of them could be happy, then perhaps happiness had not been a complete fiction after all.
“Poor Mr. Grant,” a voice murmured nearby, low but pitched with deliberate carelessness. “One cannot imagine the mortification he must feel.”
Caroline stilled.
Miss Verity Langford stood only a few feet away, surrounded by two matrons and a pair of eager young ladies. Her fan fluttered lazily, though her eyes were sharp with relish. As discreetly as possible, Caroline maneuvered further behind the column that separated them. She concealed herself and listened with growing indignation.
“Mortification?” one of the matrons asked. “Surely you do not mean?—”
“Oh, I would never repeat gossip,” Verity replied, with the air of one who was beyond eager to do precisely that. “But I have heard from Lord Marklynne’s aunt, Lady Lyndehurst, that he withdrew his attentions only after discovering them in the most compromising of circumstances. Such an awkward position for a gentleman of his consequence. I daresay it his knowledge of Mr. Grant’s surrender to her wiles that compelled the man down the aisle and sent Lord Marklynne fleeing her inherent wickedness.”
The younger girls leaned closer.
