He worked her skirts up until, at last, he felt bare thighs above her stockings. Groaning with pleasure, he slid his hands along her warm skin. She caught his face in her hands and locked her mouth on his, hot and wet and urgent. When she sucked his tongue, he felt it to his toes. He thought he would explode.
He cupped her bare buttocks, lifting her off the ground, and ground against her. His need was mindless, pulsing.
Afraid of frightening her with the violence of his passion, he leaned over her shoulder to rest his forehead against the door. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing. His effort at control was severely challenged when she wrapped her legs around him.
“Catherine, if you want me to stop, you must drop your legs,” he said in a ragged voice. He did not ease his pressure holding her against the door. “If you leave them around me like this, I cannot be sure I will hear you if you tell me later.”
Her breath in his ear was as hard and fast as his own.
“I want you inside me. Now.”
The saints preserve him! With one hand, he loosed the ties that held his leggings as he kissed her fiercely. Then, in one strong thrust, he was deep inside her. The only place he wanted to be. Sweet Jesus! He hoped she would forgive him, but he could not go slowly. Not this time. As he pumped into her, her high gasping breaths sent him to the very edge. She screamed in his ear, and he went over with her.
Afterward, his legs were so weak he was afraid he would topple to the floor with her. He leaned one arm against the door until he could get his balance. With her legs still wrapped around him, he managed to carry her into the bedchamber and collapse with her on the bed.
Good God!He was light-headed and out of breath. Never in his life had he wanted a woman that badly.
They lay side by side, barely touching, staring at the ceiling. When she still said nothing, he thought uneasily of the night he caused her to flee to the abbey. Though he was not drunk this time, his behavior was no less aggressive, no less coarse. Nay, he was worse this time.
God’s beard.He had taken her against the wall, faster than lightning, without so much as a greeting.
What had he been thinking? The truth, of course, was that he had not been thinking at all.
“I did not intend to misuse you,” he said. “I just wanted you so much.”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “And I you.”
Hearing no censure in her voice, he sighed with relief. “So you will not be packing off to join a nunnery the moment I close my eyes?” He was only half joking.
She laughed. “ ’Tis much too late for that!”
“Aye,” he agreed, smiling back at her. “No one who has seen us these past weeks would believe this marriage was not consummated.”
His heart turned in his chest as he looked into her face. The spark was back in Catherine’s eyes, as the abbess said. He meant to keep it there.
“Do you think I could be with child already?”
He heard the hopefulness in her voice and felt an unfamiliar joy rise in him. She would be the mother of his children. He had no words to tell her what this meant to him. Hoping to show her how grateful he was, he pulled her into his arms and gave her a long, gentle kiss.
One kiss led to another. This time, he took her with a slowness that nearly drove them both mad. When they finished, he lay sprawled across the bed. He felt suffused with well-being and peace.
He was jarred from this pleasant state when Catherine sat up and burst into convulsive weeping.
“What is it?” he asked, jolting upright. “What could be wrong?”
He had half expected something like this earlier, after he’d taken her against the door. But, God in heaven, why was she upset now? The second time, he’d been slow and gentle. She had certainly seemed to appreciate his efforts.
“I do not mean to weep,” she said, wiping her tears away with her hands.
Her shoulders shook again, and she tried to turn away from him, but he put his arms around her and held her.
“Kate,” he said into her hair. “Tell me.”
She took a shaky breath. “It is just that I feel so close to you when we are like this.”
He kissed her fingers and looked into her wet eyes, waiting for her to make sense of this for him.
“But I know it is an illusion.” She wiped her hand under her nose. “ ’Tis all false.”
