She got into the bed, marveling at how easy it all was.
“You want me,” she said, half with wonder, half with glee.
He did not answer, but his hand cupped her waist, his thumb drew a circle on her belly through her nightdress.
“I’ve done this before,” she volunteered.
He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. His face was in shadow, so she couldn’t even try to read his expression. His hand slid around her back, cupped her opposite flank, and the strong forearm attached to that hand brought her against him, knocked breath from her lungs, erased all thought from her head.
Because . . . sudden, sharp, forceful. It was a jerk. He had jerked her to him. The most thrilling jerk of her life.
Because he was all warm, naked man. And his warm, naked tallywag was hard and pressed snug between them. His other arm pushed beneath her, went under her, curled over her back, and reinforced his clasp.
“Oh,” she breathed. His nose nudged hers, asking. His breath was hot on her cheek. “Oh.” She sighed.
He must have taken her sigh as agreement because his mouth found hers.
Lips, pliable and yielding but not smooth. A little roughness, a little chapped bit on his lower lip. A prickle at the edges. The taste of port wine.
It was over too soon. It had demanded too little.
This time her mouth sought his, and she explored, kissing the bow of his top lip, so much more pronounced than her own, dipping into the corners of his mouth where a heady saltiness and the stiffness of his whiskers made her bring a hand up to stroke one corner as her own lips busied themselves in the other.
His breathing became a trifle more pressured, more jagged. One of his hands clutched her bottom. His tallywag felt bigger. She rubbed her lips along the bit of roughness on his lower lip and slid her hand between their bodies and touched his hard shaft with the tips of her fingers.
He did not loosen his grip, give her room to grasp him and pleasure him as Ned had once liked.
“Henry?”
It was the first time she had ever said his name to him, and he shuddered, pressed her even closer if such a thing were possible, gave her hand no room to move.
She whispered, “Do you not want me to . . .?”
“I want.” His voice was harsh. “I want to kiss you and hold you. I want to strip this nightrail from your body and do all kinds of unspeakably filthy things to you. I want to make you tremble and claw at me with your fingers and howl my name in ecstasy. But, more than anything, I want to do whatever will make you want to come back to my bed, over and over again.”
“Oh,” she said, even more out of breath than before. Everything he said sounded wonderful to her. But just to be clear?—
“You don’t favor a tug on your tallywag, is that what you’re saying?”
“Oh, my God,” he gasped. “Susannah. Did you just call my cock atallywag?”
“I did,” she said. Butcockwas better. She thought of a proud, strutting rooster. She rolled the syllable around in her mouth silently.Cock.
“I see,” he said. “No, I don’t favor a tug. Not at this moment. Thank you.”
Oh. She snatched her hand out from between their bodies, but she didn’t know what to do with it, so it fluttered at her side.
“Was that wrong of meto say?”
He rolled on top of her, and a startled Susannah flung her arms around his neck. His face came close to hers again, and he put his lips to her ear.
“Nothing you say can be wrong. Nothing you do can be wrong. Here. With me. You have free rein.”
She liked the weight of him pressing her into the mattress. And she liked his big hardness pressing into her, too, as if it had not been insulted one bit by being called atallywag. “But?—”
“I selfishly did not want to come to my end so quickly, that’s all.” He settled his hands flat on either side of her and pushed himself upwards, away from her, putting space between them. “But if it would please you, tug away.”
She loosened her arms from around his neck and peered down the length of his body. His chest was beautifully shaped and had a mat of thin, golden hair. His tal—er,cockresisted the pull of the earth as it arrowed resolutely towards his navel, but his belly was not as flat as she had thought it was. There was a slightest bit of doming there, under a whorl of light hair.
