She reached out and gripped him with both hands. Not to steady herself, which she could certainly claim if he quizzed her. Nor to orient herself, because even in the darkness she knew exactly where she was. If she touched him, if she slid her hands down the length of him, amazed at the girth and the size, it was due to curiosity alone.
The surface was soft and heated; the instrument itself was quite stiff. She had the curious thought that it was not unlike a branch. In this case, a well-developed branch of an oak. It most certainly did not bend; could it break?
“Am I hurting you?” she asked, concerned.
“God no,” he said, but his voice had a note in it that she’d never before heard.
“Are you certain? It seems to be getting stiffer.”
A startled laugh was her answer.
“That’s in response to you, Sarah.”
“Oh.”
Her fingers traveled up its length and back down, fascinated with its size and the fact that it seemed like a separate sensate creature, responding to her touch with a quiver.
“I think I’ve made a huge mistake,” he said, rolling over again and depositing her flat on the bed.
He loomed over her and she waited for his kiss, but when it didn’t come she opened her eyes.
“I wish the first time could be painless for you, Sarah.”
“Painless?”
“It will not be. There will be some discomfort,” he said.
“Will there?”
How hideous that she’d not known that. Were men the only ones versed in the act of copulation? If so, how unfair.
“Will it be painful after the first time?” she asked.
“No, it will not,” he said softly.
She began to breathe again.
“Then we should quickly be about the business of dispensing with the first time, don’t you think?”
He laughed again. “No,” he said, “I don’t think we shall.”
Just what did that mean?
Before she could ask, he bent and kissed her again, spending several long minutes—or was it hours—on that delicious kiss. When he ended it, she almost moaned. Darkness and stars exploded behind her eyelids, and her breath was so tight she felt as if she’d just raced up four flights of steep stairs.
A second later, all the magic evaporated as her eyes flew open.
“Douglas!”
“Relax, Sarah.”
“How can I relax when you’re doing that?”
He was kissing her stomach, soft little sucking kisses that made her stomach flutter. That was not, however, the worst of it. His fingers were trailing from below her knee up to her thigh, and to the hair there. Nor was he stopping there.
“Douglas,” she said, attempting to roll toward him.
He rose, bent over her, and kissed her cheek softly and sweetly. The embrace one might give a friend, or a relative not long seen. Not a kiss one would give a wife while trailing a finger through a place fingers were not supposed to travel.
