A BETROTHAL’S FIRST NIGHT
Later that night
Although she’d been about to burst with wanting to show off the ring Ertugrul had given her before the opera started, Adeline instead climbed the stairs with everyone else and stayed quiet.
When they reached the second floor, they headed in different directions—George and Elizabeth to their apartments, David to his room, Ertugrul to his and Adeline to hers—and Bostwick House grew quiet.
Removing the pins from her hair, Adeline watched as the locks fell about her shoulders. She would usually braid it for bed, but she had no intention of doing so on this night.
Instead, she wriggled out of her gown and underthings, pulled on a nightrail and a pair of bed slippers, and pulled down her bed covers. She crawled into bed and rolled around a few times before carefully placing her feet on the floor.
When she didn’t detect any movement through the carpet—no servants or family members moving about—she crept from her room, carefully holding down the door handle whilst pulling it shut so the latch didn’t click.
Padding quietly down the side of the corridor to the other end, she reached Ertugrul’s room and stood before the door. Testing the handle, she was relieved when it easily lowered. A moment later, and she was in the dark room. She winced when she heard thesnickof the latch and held her breath. When she didn’t hear any other doors opening, she moved to the bed. Although the counterpane and linens had been pulled down, Ertugrul wasn’t in the bed. The sound of splashing came from the bathing chamber, though, and Adeline pondered what to do.
Her nervousness increasing, she climbed onto the bed to wait. After another moment, she slipped beneath the bed linens and inhaled the familiar scent ofhimwhen her head hit the pillow. She grinned at the thought that every night, for the rest of her life, she would fall asleep surrounded by it.
Ertugrul appeared in silhouette when he emerged from the lit bathing chamber, a bath linen wrapped about his waist. Apparently he didn’t notice her, for he doffed the towel and pulled a nightshirt over his head.
Adeline struggled to hold her breath. To resist the urge to gasp. For the briefest of moments, she had a view of his naked body, olive skin covered with dark hair stretched over a broad chest and taut torso, the hair narrowing down to the apex of his thighs where a nest of curls surrounded his manhood. His arms were thick from archery, his thighs muscled from horseback riding, and even after the nightshirt had settled over his shoulders, she could see he possessed strong calves.
He pulled something from the top of a trunk and unrolled it onto the floor. After that, he disappeared from her view, but she heard whispered words in a foreign language.
Prayers, she realized.
She prayed he wouldn’t send her away when he discovered she was in his bed. They had agreed to spend the night together whilst watching the opera, right after it was assured Thaddeus and Arline would end up together, but the final terms of their clandestine arrangement had been interrupted when her parents asked Ertugrul what he thought of the opera.
Every nerve ending of her body had been on high alert ever since. Now her body’s reaction to seeing him naked sent the oddest sensations coursing through her. Her breasts felt as if they were larger than usual, her nipples pushing against the fabric of her nightrail. The space at the top of her thighs fairly throbbed with her arousal. Her desire to touch him—to press her palms to his chest and kiss him—was nearly overwhelming.
When the linens were suddenly pulled from atop her, she inhaled sharply.
Ertugrul stared down at her. “I feared you were asleep,” he whispered with a grin as he stripped the nightshirt from his body and climbed into the bed.
This time, Adeline did gasp, for his manhood was fully erect. “Asleep? I cannot sleep. I’m too excited.”
His lips touched her forehead for a moment. “As am I,” he admitted.
She moved her hands to his head, her fingers spearing his dark hair as his lips claimed hers and his tongue swept across her teeth. At the same time, he moved a hand to her breast, hefting and molding the mound in his palm.
Inhaling sharply at the sensation, Adeline broke from the kiss, which had him trailing kisses down her jaw, along her collarbone and down to the top edge of her nightrail. She managed to find the end of the bow that kept the garment closed at the top and pulled it loose.
With a sweep of his hand, he had one shoulder and a breast exposed. She arched her back when his mouth covered her breast. When his tongue laved over her nipple, she thought she had never felt anything so heavenly before.
Leaving one hand against his head, she slid her other along the side of his body as far as she could reach and then to the small of his back, stunned at the warmth of his skin. Her fingers followed the trail of the bumps of his spine until he caught her arms and spread them wide. Forced to give up her hold on him, she mewled her disappointment.
When one of his hands reached down and smoothed her nightrail up her thigh, lifting a knee in the process, she inhaled sharply. His hand was so hot, she was sure he was branding her skin. When he moved it to her mound and pressed his palm against her damp folds, she gasped.
She wasn’t sure what he did next, but there was a moment when all she could do was grasp handfuls of the bed linens in an effort to stay on the bed. Her body felt as if it were being swept away on waves of pleasure that crested and crashed and were followed by more of the same.
Her attempt to remain mute lest she be discovered in his bed had her struggling against the urge to cry out. Instead she hummed and whispered ‘yes’ over and over again.
When he was suddenly over her, one of his hands reaching back to raise her other knee, she was practically boneless. A moment later, and his manhood, heavy and solid, slid along her damp folds and then the tip was at her entrance. She managed to lift her hips in invitation even as he lowered his mouth to her other breast. Wet and aching with need, she whispered, “Please.”
He was inside her in a single thrust, a groan vibrating through his body when he was fully pressed into her.
Despite the sensation of a pinch followed by fullness—at first uncomfortable but not painful—she lifted her thighs to grip his. She stared up at him, not sure what to do or say as her body adjusted to the swift invasion. She lifted her hands to his sides and gripped in an effort to hold on.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
