He did it again.
“Nnngh.” Her eyes were on him but unfocused.
And he did it again. He was perilously close.
And then she was thrashing and he could feel her walls contract around his member and he stilled himself so he would not also spend. And she had her hands on his face and she was telling him that she loved him and even without movement, he felt that he would almost certainly release inside her in the next ten seconds. He came out of her and with one stroke of his hand, spilled again into the bedsheet.
He blew out the candle and shifted them both onto the other side of the bed. And he turned her and pulled her shoulder blades into his chest and the soft cheeks of her bottom into his groin. And he held her there, one arm under and around her waist with his hand splayed over her mound, the other over top of her side with that hand holding one of her sweet breasts.
And just before he fell asleep, he realized he was no longer a virgin.
And she loved him.
In the morning, he awoke alone and he was immediately regretful.
He was a physician. He knew what he had done with Arabella could lead to a child, despite spilling onto the sheets. As a novice, he should not have trusted that he would have been capable of withdrawing in time. And then he turned his face into the pillow and he smelled her. It was her sweet scent that he had smelled before. Was it his imagination or was it also tinted with the intoxicating musk of her arousal?
And then he remembered her flower, her wetness, her release that she had shown him. That had been a great intimacy shared with him, and he wished she were in the bed with him now. He longed to know if he could do for her what she had done for herself. He began to tumesce with the thought. Perhaps she would return shortly, and he would find out.
His initial feeling of regret was washed away by longing.
He knew what the events of last night meant to him. It meant they should wed, should have children, should spend the rest of their lives together as companions and lovers.
But did she have the same sense of import about their coupling? She, who had experienced it in the past as an act that did not lead to marriage.
It was clear to him that the immediate reason she had wanted to copulate arose from what she had just witnessed—the harrowing illness and near death of a previously healthy and hale man. She had seen her father die after a long illness at age eleven. But had she ever seen someone young like Lord Morpeth succumb? Perhaps not. Alasdair could see how that might lead someone to make an unwise decision. To throw caution to the winds in the pursuit of pleasure.Carpe diem. Seize the day.
But surely it had been more than pleasure? She had said she loved him when she had been in the throes of her own ecstasy. And before he had penetrated her, she had been very different than she had been in the carriage when she had made him spend, when she had alternately been coy and then cutting.
Last night, she had figuratively held his hand and led him to the threshold. And then she had dropped his hand and waited. For him. What a very delicate tightrope she had walked, he realized now. To make it absolutely clear what she wanted from him but still to allow him the very masculine privilege of taking her. To guide him to the precipice and to let him make his decision.
He almost laughed then. She was still an innocent. Did she really think that he would have been able to restrain himself from ravishing her once they were both naked in the bed?
And then he sobered. She was the reason that they were both in the bed. He would never have presumed to seek that out. Indeed, he would not have allowed that if she had not days ago playfully made it easy for him to lie in the bed andcourieinto her. She was the reason that they had both been naked; she had undressed both herself and him. And she had assured him that he would know what to do in order to couple with her. Adam and Eve. And then after she had helped him take her, she had very gently schooled him in her own pleasure.
And she had kept him from apologizing several times. She didn’t like his saying he was sorry, he decided. He knew she hated regret. So he wouldn’t offer apologies anymore. Even if he angered her.
Her anger. Yes. She had a temper. He would need to learn to be brave and face it. Not shrivel from it. Admit he was wrong when he was, but without apology.
But he wouldn’t change her temper, even if he could. He couldn’t imagine her without it. Wasn’t it part of her passion, her energy, her courage? Wasn’t her fire one of her great attractions? Dauntless Arabella.
And now he couldn’t wait to see her. He would go and find her. And he would ask her, without fear or apologies or regret, to be his wife.
No, that was a lie. There would be a great deal of fear.
But not fear of her temper.
Only that she might say no.
Thirty-One
After Alasdair had pulled her to him andcouriedinto her, both of them naked, Arabella had not slept.I will not miss a moment of this night.And she had stayed awake for the remaining hours of darkness—memorizing the sensation of his arms around her, the feel of his breath on her neck, the warmth of his body coiled around hers.
There had been two moments during their coupling that had been of great significance for her. She felt certain that if she asked Alasdair, he would tell her that the most important moment had been when he had first breached her flower with his member. That had been important, but only for her because it was for him. She had wanted him, yes, but it was more that she had wanted thisforhim.
But for her ... For her, there were two entirely different times that would be engraved in her memory forever.
The first had happened after he had spent himself the first time. He had then said to her that she could have him again. She had stopped breathing, thinking that the moment had come when he would promise her a future with him, an endless number of nights stretching into tomorrow and next week and next year and beyond.
