“I’m sure,” she whispered, cupping her hand to his face and stroking his cheek. “I want you, John. I want this.”
He moved, settling more comfortably between her legs, his cock poised at her entrance. He saw her swallow and bite the inside of her lip. His anxiety matched hers. He didn’t know how to make this perfect for her—he knew the first time could be painful—but he’d do whatever he could for her so that she would remember this moment with satisfaction.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you in a way that I didn’t know was possible. I love your kindness. I love your confidence. I love the joy you give to the world. And I will love you for all time.”
She beamed, her cheeks flushing red and her eyes crinkling. “I love you too.”
Her words, unusually succinct, made his heart swell, and his soul—which had always sought solitude—dusted off a space next to it for her.
He leaned down to capture her lips with his, and as he did, he slowly entered her.
Good God, she was so hot. She was so wet. Her fingertips dug into his shoulders, and beneath him she stiffened a fraction.
He paused, but she shook her head and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. “No. Keep going. It’s all right.”
He inched himself forward, slowly, until he was fully seated inside her. He waited there, allowing her to become accustomed to him. Once her breathing had resumed, he withdrew and then smoothly seated himself again.
Her mouth dropped open. “Oh,” she breathed.
Slowly, he repeated himself. His exit sent pleasure ricocheting off every nerve in his body. His entrance setting those same nerves on fire until his very core was aflame.
Again and again he thrust, until the nervousness in her expression vanished, until her eyes closed and her hands twisted in the sheets, until her breathing matched his rhythm and his name escaped her lips—half exclamation, half plea.
Her hips pushed against his, as though both their bodies were determined to fuse together. As her back arched, he slipped his arms beneath her, one hand grasping at her shoulder, the other tightening across her waist. He buried his head in her neck, nipping and sucking at her skin, his teeth dragging across it harder as her fingernails dug into his shoulder.
Never before had intercourse felt like this. Previous experiences had sated a natural physical urge. Lovemaking with Charlotte was more than physical; it spoke to his heart and mind, and the deeper awareness in him. He could never have enough of her to sate those three things.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him even closer as though she, too, could not get close enough. The movement wrecked him. It tore through every intention he had of making this last as long as it could while they both enjoyed it.
He was so deep within her, the tip of his cock thrummed as pleasure waves coursed through it. His climax was stirring. One last thrust took him to the edge. Before he fell right over it, he withdrew, hand reaching for her drawers, which had tangled in the sheets. He spilled himself into them with a groan.
He was spent, and collapsed onto the mattress. Half lying across her, his face planted into the pillow next to her, there was not a hope of him moving. His muscles lay lifeless except for the rapid-fire flinching he could not control as aftershocks of his climax shot through him.
He should be tending to Charlotte. He’d just taken her innocence. Instead, it was she who was stroking his hair in a show of tenderness so foreign to him that it took a moment to identify that slow caress as the cause of his tightening heart.
He wanted her touch until the end of days.
Chapter 21
Charlotte woke, feeling more rested than she had in years. According to the clock in the corner of John’s room, it was almost midday. She’d slept the entire morning. She hadn’t done that in as long as she could remember; her mornings were too full of meetings with the housekeeper, breakfast with Fi and Edward to discuss plans for the day, hastening to this board meeting or checking in on that event before the traditional society house calls began.
Lying on her side in John’s big, four-poster bed, reveling in the way his thumb brushed over her stomach in slow, easy curves with nothing on her mind other than the way his chest pressed against her back and his arms encircled her, she felt a previously unexperienced peace.
Cocooned in his warmth and his scent, she could hear the rhythmic beating of his heart and the slow sigh of his breath in her hair.
“Are you sleeping?” she whispered.
“No,” he murmured back. “But I could fall asleep with you in my arms every night.”
She smiled and snuggled deeper into him. “Don’t be silly. You’ll be working. You don’t go to sleep until after I’ve woken.”
He squeezed his arms tighter around her. “The promise of you will bring me to bed. The chance to hold you like this is too good to pass up.”
She burrowed farther into him. There could be no moment more perfect than this. “Well, I will do my best not to wake you when I rise. I’ll breakfast downstairs and then pay calls. You can sleep as late as you need.”
He took a lock of her hair and twisted it in his fingers. “Will you come with me when I travel to our country estates? I must oversee them properly, but I know you hate to leave London.”
She turned over, so that she was on her back, looking up at him. “Of course, I will. It’s my job to help you manage them. Once William is well, and as long as we’re in London while parliament is sitting so that I can continue to support Edward, there’s no reason I can’t be in the country. And perhaps there’s something I can do to help you with your inventions.”
