As she settled into the mattress, reassured by having him all around her, surrounding her and holding her close, his thick, iron-hard erection nestled between the cheeks of her arse.
Without truly intending it, Lucy’s hips lifted, testing, rubbing along the satiny steel length.Gabriel dropped his head to breathe harshly into her neck, quick, hot puffs of air that made Lucy shiver.
“Like this,” he husked in her ear, and reached between their bodies to angle his prick down, between her thighs, to thrust full length against her.He didn’t breach her, but Lucy had only a moment to mourn the loss of that thick intrusion before the glorious friction caught up with her.
He glided on the evidence of Lucy’s arousal, the domed head nudging at her nether lips then forging a path straight to her pubis.She felt her secret flesh parting around him, slickening and guiding his way.Everything was slippery and hot and easy.Lucy moaned into the mattress.
Gabriel moved against her, all around her, his muscles tensing and flexing as he worked them both toward the climax.Needing more, Lucy pressed her thighs as tight as she could, crossing her ankles and using her muscles to massage Gabriel’s pistoning cock.
He gasped when she did it, which Lucy loved.She wanted to make him feel all the pleasure he’d given to her, and this all felt so good for her, too, and before she knew it, they were straining together, their bodies sticky with sweat and passion, everything coiling tighter and tighter until Gabriel’s hips stuttered against hers and unleashed a final volley of thrusts.
When he came, she felt it, the gush of his blistering hot spend the last sensation she needed to focus her pleasure into a single explosion so bright, it wiped out her sight for long, breathless moments after.
Or perhaps that was her lover’s tautly muscled body crushing her into the mattress.He shifted against her with a muttered apology that sounded like he was half drunk.Lucy made a protesting noise, but Gabriel only moved them both as far as their sides, still spooned tightly against her back.His softening prick slipped out from between her thighs, and Lucy felt a pulse of longing, missing the closeness already.
But as she lay there, sheltered by his big body and gently rocked by the rise and fall of his breaths, Lucy thought perhaps they’d found a new sort of closeness.
She only wished she could believe it would last.
“A good first time,” he murmured into her hair.She could hear the smile in his voice.“I hope it compared favorably with your actual first time.I wish it had been mine.”
Lucy felt an odd pang.She hadn’t really considered telling him about the men she’d slept with during her travels; it hardly seemed important, with everything else that was going on.And it was her own business, anyway.
She’d never worried about having to explain her choices to a husband expecting a virgin on their wedding night.For one, she didn’t intend to get married, and for another, she’d known too many girls who’d gone to the marital bed and reported back that their husbands seemed to have little or no idea what to expect from a virgin anyway.
Lucy was convinced that most men were too self-absorbed and ignorant of a woman’s body to have any idea whether she was a virgin or not.
But she found herself wanting to tell Gabriel everything anyway.It would be nice, she thought, to be able to be honest about her sexual history, even if she was lying about everything else.
And there was something in his voice when he said he wished that was his first experience that she didn’t altogether like—a shadow of contempt for himself that tugged at her chest.
“Do you believe it matters,” she asked, threading their fingers together to bring his hand to her lips for a kiss.“What we did before we found each other?”
He was silent for a moment.“Maybe it would matter less if I could remember more,” he finally said.“Or perhaps I would always feel unworthy of you.Tainted as I am by the things it seems I’ve done.”
“You think me so pure.”Lucy ducked her chin to her chest, which felt broken open and exposed.“But I’m twenty-four years old, Gabriel.I traveled the Continent for several years, living quite independently and freely.I have a past of my own.”
“Nothing you would have done could be as bad as the misdeeds that led to my current reputation,” he returned grimly.“I may not know much, but I am certain of that.”
“I’m sure my past exploits cannot compare with yours,” Lucy replied, a little miffed, “but I assure you, what you and I just shared in this bed was far and away better than my actual first time—which was with a Parisian aristocrat, in a garden gazebo during a ball.I also dallied with a different gentleman, after a musical salon at his house, and one man who pursued me so ardently, I thought I might as well try him as not.Oh, and there was an artist in Rome, who was there to restore a fresco in one of the cathedrals but spent quite a lot of time painting me instead.Am I tainted?Does any of that change how you feel about being here with me now?”
He went perfectly still behind her.Lucy bit her lip, afraid for a moment that he was shocked or disgusted, but when he spoke his voice was warm and rich with amusement.
“You little minx,” he growled in her ear.“It seems we’re better suited than I dared to hope.”
A smile curled Lucy’s lips.She knew she’d been right to trust him with this.It made her want to be as open with him as possible.“I know you have…concerns about what you’ve done, in those years you can’t remember.But our past does not have to dictate our present.And in the present, here and now, I can tell you that nothing else I’ve experienced comes close to the way I feel when I’m with you.”
“Lucy,” he whispered, and she turned her head far enough to meet his searching lips in the sweetest kiss they’d yet shared.“You don’t know how happy that makes me.”
“Me, too!”she said fervently, which made him laugh.Settling back against him, nestling herself comfortably, Lucy grinned.“I mean it.The way I feel when you touch me is a relief.I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me.”
“What could possibly be wrong with you?”
She loved the scowl she could hear in his voice.“Nothing awful, I suppose, just…the time I spent with those lovely Frenchmen was pleasant.I enjoyed it well enough; they were kind and concerned with my pleasure and all reputed to be excellent lovers.But I couldn’t seem to form an attachment to any of them, and the pleasure itself was…empty.Mechanical, almost—do you know what I mean?The physical responses were there, somewhat involuntary I suppose, but there was nothing in it.It reminded me of the way I felt when other girls would titter behind their fans and make eyes at the gentlemen across the ballroom, flirting and blushing and getting themselves all in a tizzy if he so much as smiled back.Some gentleman they’d never even spoken to!Or maybe they’d danced together once.And they considered themselves in love.”
Lucy shrugged, her shoulders moving against his chest.“I could never understand it.There was nothing there.Why did they want to be with someone they didn’t know at all?Someone who didn’t know them?”
It struck her suddenly that some might think this made Lucy something of a hypocrite, given her longstanding infatuation with The Gentle Rogue.But it had never felt like that to her as a young girl—she had felt that shedidknow The Gentle Rogue, and that he understood her in a way no one else in her life did or could.
