“Then we are in perfect accord,” he growled, kissing his way back to her mouth. He rolled, centering himself on top of her, and the weight of him pushed the air from her lungs.
“Careful,” he breathed, rising onto his forearms. “I don’t want to crush you.”
“No,” she gasped, pulling his shoulders down, “I want . . . I want to feel all of you.”
“Lucky,” he managed, groaning, and he sunk a knee into the mattress between her legs. “Careful, darling,” he whispered into her ear. “Can you raise your leg? Remember, after the wedding, when we fell onto your bed at Leland Pa—”
Her knees came up on either side of his body. He chuckled into her neck, seeking out her hands and entwining their fingers.
“Ready, then?” he whispered into her ear. “Breathe, darling.”
And then he moved, and she felt a fullness . . . and then even more fullness . . . and then almost too much fullness . . .
“Breathe, Willow,” he whispered again.
Willow breathed, and then she gasped, and then she breathed again. By degrees, her body relaxed.
Cassin kissed her, and she had the idle thought,Oh, there is more kissing,and she kissed him back.
For a while they kissed, almost until she forgot he was inside of her, and then he made a guttural sound, and she blinked up at him. His face hovered above hers, his eyes closed, his expression anguished. He looked so anguished, in fact, that she almost asked him if he was quite alright. But then he moved, and the agony eased from his face, and she felt a snap of sharp pain.
She sucked in her breath, and he froze. She looked again, opening just one eye. The jokes and the intermittent conversation had tapered off. Everything had tapered off except the incredibly close, incredibly intense feeling of being so intimately joined. And now they felt locked, fused together, his face a mask of discomfort. Willow considered the onslaught of new sensations—the fullness, the pain, and now the ever so small, ever so persistent impulse to move—and decided to hitch her hips up, just once. An experiment.
As she did it, she watched his face. Cassin’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he made an indistinguishable sound—pleasure or pain?—and bit his lip.
She thrust again. He opened one eye and stared down at her. She smiled.
“You’re alright?” he asked on a breath.
Willow nodded and thrust a third time.
Cassin growled and swept his arms beneath her, pulling him to her, and resumed movement, far more demonstrative and powerful than she had been. But she met him, push for push, and he leaned down and kissed her.
When the explosion happened, Willow pressed her head into the pillow and cried out. No warning could have prepared her for the complete incineration of every nerve, inside and out. No warning could have prepared her for the floating, the tingling as she floated, the slow drift back to earth, the tiny shocks, the blissful feeling of release.
Cassin paused, understanding somehow, that it had happened. But he did not pause for long; in fact, she would have happily indulged in more pausing, more floating, but she understood now; he sought an explosion of his own, and the drive for this goal was nearly unstoppable.
He cried out when it happened, calling her name, and then he collapsed on top of her, and she gathered him up in her arms, however weak, and held him. He buried his face in her hair. Idly, she stroked the bands of muscle that formed his powerful back. He relaxed within seconds, growing heavy, drifting to the same, boneless state in which she now reveled . . . and she savored it.
I love him, she thought.
And then,I almost missed it all.
If we hadn’t needed to leave Surrey, and if marrying had not been the only way, I would have missed all of this.
But she hadn’t missed it.
He was here, and she was here, and he—
Well, if he had not yet said he loved her, he had said many other things. Things about the authenticity of their marriage and being together every day and for the rest of their lives.
And she had not said these precise words either, not yet, but she would.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
In the five months since the brides had moved to London, breakfast in Belgrave Square had settled into a lively, communal affair.
Willow would rise early, eager to be ready for whatever her aunt and uncle might require of her.
