“You married an old man,” Robert said gently, “who obviously had a great many health problems. But I’m not an old man. You can’t hurt me. What you were doing just now, riding me, felt like heaven. And watching you edge up to release as your body gripped me, that was something I will never forget.”
She stared down at him. He was taking care of her so sweetly, not angry their interaction had been interrupted. And he wasn’t lewd about what she was capable of doing to a man, as so many might be. Nor was he teasing her, instead taking her pain seriously. No one had ever done that. No one had ever done anything that Robert had done in the time they’d been here in Abernathe.
In that moment she realized she didn’t just want him. She didn’t just like him despite all the reasons she had to put walls up between them.
She was in love with him.
And she blinked down at him in shock that the feeling existed, growing now that she’d named it in her heart.
“Will you let me take over?” he asked. “And show you that you can have pleasure and I can bear it?”
Her throat was thick and she couldn’t speak, not without confessing the thing she now knew. And he couldn’t love her. That much was clear. So she simply nodded. She would take this connection of bodies, even though she might not ever get a connection of souls.
He gripped her hips and rolled her to her back. Their bodies stayed connected, and at first she thought he would just start thrusting. But he didn’t. He withdrew, leaving her bereft until he began to trace his mouth down her naked body.
“This has been so worth the wait,” he murmured before he began sucking her nipple.
He was hard, firm, and her thoughts left her mind as she trembled at his expert touch. She drove her fingers into his thick hair, lifting her hips to his as the pleasure began to grow deep inside her once more.
He shifted, one hand gliding between them, and he positioned himself back at her entrance. She gasped as he speared her, filling her completely in one long thrust. He brought his mouth back to hers, devouring her with kisses as he circled his hips in long, slow, almost languid thrusts.
She was drowning. In his kiss, in his touch, in the intense sensation that flowed from their joined bodies through her entire being. All her fear, the terror that had gripped her, it faded as he brought her focus back to their joined bodies. She was with no one else but him, there was no moment but this one.
When she surrendered to that fully, that was when her orgasm began. She’d had them before, of course. Alone in her bed as she furtively touched herself, from the expert skill of Robert’s mouth and his fingers. But this…this was something different. Her body began to ripple, her sheath squeezing out of control. But this time he was inside of her and she had something to brace against as she cried out his name into the quiet room.
He continued to thrust, pulling his mouth from hers as he watched her arch and writhe beneath him. His pace increased. She felt that through the haze of her pleasure. When she opened her eyes, she saw the strain on his face, the edge of that control he always maintained.
“Please,” she whispered, begging for his pleasure now that she’d had her own.
He let out a low, raw sound of animal pleasure and then he withdrew. His seed splashed between them as he cried out and she lifted up to kiss him.
He collapsed over her, their tongues tangling wildly, then slower, then sweetly as the high of passion faded. Only then did he gather her in his arms and roll to his side. She was splayed half on top of him, their legs tangled as he just…held her, his fingers combing through her hair gently. Almost hypnotically.
“If you keep doing that, I shall fall asleep,” she said with a nervous laugh.
His fingers didn’t stop. “And what would be wrong with that?” he whispered.
She tensed and looked up at him. In the heat of a moment, she had declared to herself that she loved this man. In this new moment that felt even more true.
“I-I would think a man like you would normally be pushing his lovers out the door after he…finished,” she said.
He cupped her chin and drew her up for a kiss. She relaxed against him, the storm in her mind quieted for a moment by his touch. At last he drew back.
“I suppose normally I would. But these aren’t normal circumstances.” He shifted beneath her. “Stay with me tonight, Katherine. Let me make love to you over and over again. You can sneak back out before the servants begin their duties for the day. No one will be the wiser.”
She swallowed hard. He was offering her more passion. More connection. More of everything but his heart, which she could not dare ask for.
And she wanted to give it. Soon enough this would all be over and she knew what she would regret if she walked away tonight.
“Yes,” she whispered, then braced herself on the pillows to kiss him again. “Yes, yes, yes…”
Words she kept saying as he rolled her on her side and took her once again.
Chapter Eighteen
Robert had been trying to deny it to himself in the three days since Katherine surrendered her body to him, but the truth was impossible not to feel. He had a spring to his step as he walked beside her now, trailing behind the group of their friends and her aunt on their way to a picnic by the lake. She laughed at some silly thing he’d said and the music of that sound tickled his ears.
He was becoming far too comfortable with a woman in his life. That should have terrified him, and yet it…didn’t. The days with her felt peaceful, easy. The nights filled with passion as one of them snuck to the other’s chamber so they could make love until dawn. Leaving her as the sun rose and pretending it had never happened was the only pain he felt in the affair.
