“Yes. Yes, please. I want only you. I want to be your wife.”
His head went back hard on an exhale and then he gathered her against him. They clung to each other tightly, wet cheek pressed against wet cheek, their bodies such a perfect fit it was hard to know whose hammering heart was whose.
He took her face in his hands, and laid his mouth on hers.
And between two scowling lions, he kissed her with such unrestrained longing that they were both in quite a state within seconds.
“I want you so,” she whispered against his neck. “I cannot bear it any longer. I have wanted you so.”
“We can be married inside a fortnight. I can obtain a special license.” The words were rushed, staccato with need. “But I want to do thisproperly, Catherine. I want to speak to your father first. But...” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Dear God, I want to make love to you.”
“Your home,” she said swiftly. “Is it fully rebuilt?”
“Very nearly. I’ve a chair.” He paused. “And a mattress on the floor.”
“Take me there now.”
He closed his eyes. “Catherine.”
“Please. What else am I going to do with this afternoon?” she added.
He gave a short, pained laugh.
“God help me,” he said. “If something happens to me between now and the time, we’re married...”
“It won’t. I will not allow it. Even so, I would have made love to you. And then I might get to carry your child. And then I would still have you with me forever. And this is all I want. You forever. Don’t you see? It’s urgent we not waste another moment.”
After a moment, he kissed her very softly and whispered, “So I see.”
He grasped her bonnet ribbon and pulled gently until it came undone.
He lifted it from her, and set it aside.
She turned so he could undo the laces of her dress.
His fingers trembled.
His cravat tangled as he tried to drag it off; she helped him free it. He flung it aside.
He gently lifted her dress from her, and her arms went up to abet him.
He tore off his own shirt.
She reached for his trouser buttons, feeling the jut of his swelling cock against them, and freed it, working the buttons swiftly with shaking fingers.
Thusly they swiftly, almost ceremoniously, unwrapped each other. This methodical statement of intent ramped her desire unbearably, and her nerves, too.
For there would be no return from being entirely mutually naked.
Dominic was somehow much more primal and fearsome without his clothes. He was also almost too beautiful to be borne. She had not quite anticipated this. He seemed an entirely new person, or rather, an additional person, and this made her faint with a sort of erotic fear. The vast vertical line of his shoulders and the bulge of his biceps, the slant of his torso to his narrow hips, the legs that might well have been turned on lathes, much of all of this scattered liberally with dark hair, was the most shockingly carnal construction she could have imagined.
This weakness she felt at her knees—she wondered if it was a deliberate feature of their species: this impulse to crumple in the face of overwhelming strength and beauty and just be taken.
His eyes were black with fierce longing, his face tight with surging emotion, and that’s how she knew he was undone, too.
She closed her eyes, shivering with nerves and desire.
He immediately clothed her in himself. Gathered her up into his naked body.
