He got up on his hands and knees and shook his head.
He looked down at her breasts and sighed. How long he’d waited to see them. To touch them. He gave each nipple a light kiss, then wanted more. When he took the tip of one in his mouth and sucked, he was rewarded by her sharp intake of breath. He slid down to feel her body beneath him. She felt so good against his chest, his thighs, his shaft. All the while, he sucked her breast harder, losing himself in the sensation.
The urge to enter her was almost more than he could bear. Perhaps if she’d not kept him on edge every minute of the last week, he would not be so close to losing all control. He lifted his head and, breathing hard, tried to calm himself.
Dragging his gaze up from her breasts, he saw her perfect mouth. How had he missed kissing it? He desperately needed her kisses—deep, deep kisses—before he entered her. As he slid up her body to take her mouth, the sensation of skin rubbing against skin set his every nerve tingling.
She opened her legs as he moved, and he gasped as he unexpectedly found himself at the threshold. With all his being, he wanted to keep moving until he was deep inside her. One strong thrust. The urge almost overpowered him. And yet, he held back. He wanted her mouth on his first.
“Kate,” he moaned as he lowered his mouth to hers.
He anticipated a warm joining of mouths and tongues as a prelude to the joining of their bodies. But she kept her lips firmly together. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. But he was sliding into her now. It was too late. He could not stop. The urge overwhelmed him, taking over his body. His mind was one with his body, set on the same goal.
He had to have her. He had to have her now.
At last. At last. At last.
He came in an explosion of pent-up lust and longing, hunger and desire. She was his. She was his.
When he was able to move, he rolled to his side, taking her with him. He had not performed with such speed since his youth. Happy, but a little embarrassed, he held her close and kissed her face and hair.
“Sorry, Kate,” he whispered, and kissed the tip of her nose. “I shall go slower next time.”
“Slower?” she asked in a startled voice. She did not sound grateful for his good intentions.
He leaned up on one elbow to see her better, but he could not read her expression in the dim lamplight. Gently, he smoothed back her hair.
He hated to ask, but he had to know. “Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head and said in a soft voice, “It did not hurt at all this time.”
“It hurt you before? With Rayburn?” He did not want to remember that she had belonged to another man and disliked even more having to mention the man’s name here in his own bed.
Catherine tried to turn her head away, but he would not let her.
He rested his forehead lightly against hers and asked, “Did he never give you pleasure in bed?”
She drew her brows together.
This was worse than he had thought. He sighed and lay back down beside her. Perhaps he should have expected this. But he had not. In his vanity, he had never doubted that once he had her in bed, she would enjoy it.
He had heard, of course, of wives who considered going to their husbands’ beds a duty to be suffered, an obligation necessary to meet their husbands’ vulgar needs and produce heirs. All of his own experience, however, was with women who came to his bed for pleasure. They sought him out and returned for more.
His wife’s voice brought him back abruptly to the present.
“May I go to my chamber now?”
“You are welcome to sleep here.” He hoped she would.
“I am sure I could not sleep,” she said, her brows going up in surprise. “And Jamie would not know where to find me. He has bad dreams sometimes.”
“If you do not wish to stay tonight, I will not insist upon it,” he said, still hoping she would change her mind.
Her foot was on the step beside the bed almost before the words left his mouth.
“Catherine,” he said, grabbing her arm to delay her escape, “you have a husband now who wants you in his bed. You must tell Jamie he can find you here when you are not in your own bed.”
As she raced out the door, he called after her, “But teach the boy to knock.”