Chapter 19

With each kiss Prudence's certainty grew, each doubt crushed beneath the searing hunger of his touch.

Until she could remain still and quiet and small no longer.

She broke the kiss and pushed away from him, scooting toward the headboard.

He glanced up at her, a lock of hair falling over one eye, the other glinting from beneath lowered lids. "Want me to chase you, love?"

She grasped the tie at her bodice and tugged. "I want to find out if you really do like what you find beneath my… layers." The small bow holding her final scrap of clothing in place gave way easily beneath her fingers. The bodice sagged open, and one shoulder of the shift fell down her arm, revealing one breast, cold in the night air. She shivered.

The glint in his eye flashed, and she shivered again. Not from the cold, but from the way he worked up the bed toward her, slow and methodical, every ounce of his focus vibrating on her revealed body. He didn't need words for her to know—he liked the bit of her beneath all the layers quite well indeed.

His hand crept up her belly, between her breasts, and smoothed over her collarbone toward her shoulder. He hooked his thumb beneath the half of her shift still covering her other breast and took it with him, uncovering her inch by shiveringly delicious inch. She wriggled her arms out and wrapped them tight around his back. The muscles bunched beneath her touch. Backs? Muscular? She'd never considered it. Now she'd likely never stop considering it. His. The solid feel of him, a man to protect her heart. His easy movements rippling beneath his warm skin, a man to dance with her in pleasure.

When his breath warmed her breast, she hissed and arched, and when he rolled his tongue around her nipple, her hands became claws, her nails sinking into his back. Into the linen covering his back. She fisted it, tugged it, groaned when it would not budge, her brain clouded by the sensations he worked through her with his kisses. While his mouth tended one breast, his hand tended the other, and her body felt weightless, perfect.

Still his shirt would not budge. She released it and pressed her palms to his chest, shoved with a grunt. And with a laugh he popped off her, coming to his knees, straddling her, and yanking the shirt off above his head.

"You next," he said, his voice dark, his eyes darker. He clutched her shift at the neckline and tore, muscles bulging. The muslin gave way, and a rip screamed across the room.

Then she lay open and naked before him, and he looked like a starving man come to feast. He didn't touch her, though. He lifted one side of the destroyed shift and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger.

"Such very fine material. So very delicate. The very best for a duke's sister. Tore like paper. Shall I buy you stouter ones once we're wed?"

"Yes. You must have a challenge, after all. Can't make things too easy for you."

"You think you've been easy for me?" He fell forward onto his hands, which hit the mattress on either side of her head, caging her in as he dipped his head. The tips of their noses touched.

"Quite. I seem to give into you at every turn."

"You run from me. From yourself. No more, Lady P."

"No more." She twined her hands around her neck and pulled him down for another kiss.

His cock dug into her belly, a foreign sensation, but everything about this, new and different and wonderful.

He licked the spot between her breasts she'd never even thought about before. That, wonderful, too, and she raked her fingernails down his back to tell him so.

"What do you like, my well-read lady?" he asked, nipping down her belly to her navel.

"Whatever you do." She found his biceps, hard and well-formed working the presses, like knots beneath her palms, steadfast and strong. "Whatever you do, I like. As long as it's you."

He looked up at her, his head slightly shaking, the scruff on her chin, scraping her belly. That shake seemed to say he could not fathom it. But the gleam which took over his expression next said he did not care to dive into the fathoms of knowing. He planned to relish the reality.

He dove between her legs and pleasured her as he had in the boathouse. Each lick and suck more potent now that her skin had been revealed entirely to the air. No more barriers between them. Not a single one, and that drove her pleasure higher, deeper, harder.

But the man she loved moved slowly, so slow, as if they had the time to love every inch of skin and every inch of soul beneath that. He kissed up and down her arms, lingering in hollows. He worshiped her throat and behind her ears, and he made his way down her legs, returning after every exploration to her core, where she needed him most.

She did not stay idle during all this. She set out to discover what she liked best about him. Surely, she had a favorite bit, though with him large and strong and poised above her, her mind tended toward—everything. She adored everything about him in equal measure.

The wide chest which held his heart. The broad shoulders which carried those who needed his help. The trim waist and ridged abdomen he hid behind clothes too big for him. The thick legs which had kicked hard to reach her through the storm. The tongue he slipped inside her sex, making her moan. Those clever fingers teasing her nipples, and… oh yes, that too—his cock. She'd not truly touched it yet. In the boathouse, a barrier of wool had remained in place.

That same barrier remained.

Her hands flew to the buttons of his fall, flicking and tugging.

"Yes," he groaned, his hands joining hers, making short work of their shared goal. When the buttons all slipped loose, he wriggled out of the breeches, tossed them aside, and settled over her once more.

She did not hesitate to touch him, wrapping her hand about his length and reveling in the unexpected that astonished her from every direction. From above, Ben's hiss, his every muscle turning on at once. In her hand, the leap of his cock at her touch. In her own body, the surge of power. She could turn this man to velvet stone with a touch. That touch itself unexpected. Softer, hotter. She knew what to do with her hand just so. Up and down as he bracketed her head with his forearms dropped down to gift her with a wet kiss.

After several slides up and down his length, learning him, what rhythm and speed he liked, he jerked away from the kiss and unwrapped her hand, placed it flat on his chest as he reached between their bodies, and slipped two fingers inside her.

Their eyes met.

"Now," she said, biting her lip and loving how he looked at her as if he could not look away. She needed him now. Her every limb tingled, and that same perfection she'd experienced in the boathouse hovered just out of reach. She wanted it. She wanted him. All of him, all this. She knew the danger. Knew the outcome. A swollen belly and a new little human in nine months. But they were betrothed. No reason not to welcome such an event.

"You're sure?" he panted, positioning the tip of his shaft between her legs, teasing her with it in soft strokes of her sex.

"Yes, Ben. Yes."

He found her opening with his fingers first, and then he inched inside her carefully. She flinched and wrapped her arms around him more tightly. She felt so very full, and he'd barely begun his task. Her sisters had warned her about this, that it might feel… difficult at first. But they'd reassured her that the right man would take his time, would care for her pleasure as well as his.

"Prudence? Are you well?" His voice graveled near her ear. "I will not go further if it pains you."

Ben, the right man. No doubt there.

She dug her nails into his back and rolled her hips up, meeting his, inching him more deeply inside her. "I am well. As long as you are here with me, I am well."

He kissed her, the kind of kiss that made a woman forget everything else, and in the memory-demolishing pleasure of his lips, he thrust again, joining her fully.

She gasped.

And he kissed an apology into her lips.

It was fine, though. No real pain. Just an unexpected fullness, a tightness which eased with each passing moment, with each kiss and soothing word that dropped, as well, from his lips. Because he kept her mouth so well occupied, she tried to tell him with her body how wonderful she felt, rolling her hips against his and smoothing her arms up and down his body as far as they would reach. The more she moved her hips against him, the more he moved, as well, until his kisses slowed and he lifted slightly, panting, and gazing down into her eyes.

"I love your eyes," he said, slowly retreating from her body. "And I love your lips." He thrust back home. "I love your hair, too." He retreated and returned again, moving his hand to grasp her hair, making a fist around the tangle of it spread across the bed. "But your eyes, Prudence. There is always something happening behind them." In and out, harder and faster. "And I want to know what it is." Harder, faster.

Her body began to move with him, learning the rhythm, loving it, needing to meet each of his thrusts with one of her own. His words as much as his body moved her right up to the edge of decimating pleasure. And when he slipped a hand between their bodies and rubbed circles against that most aching bit of her, she fell entirely off that edge. Arms flung wide, she arched off the bed. He kissed her into silence, his hips losing the smooth rhythm from before to pump into her with a fervency beyond control. Each thrust doubled the pleasure already rippling through her, and though every muscle seemed impossible to move now, she opened her eyes. She found him watching. Again, as if he could not look away.

When he came with one final, hard thrust, he never blinked. She'd always felt he saw her across a ballroom when no one else ever did. Had always been able to pick her out of a crowd when no one else seemed willing to. And now he saw deeper, too, and she let him see, and when he collapsed against her, she welcomed the weight, hugged him hard, the only directive her arms seemed capable of following.

He gathered her close, and they scooted to the top of the bed. Without breaking touch, they climbed beneath the covers.

"I should leave," he yawned.

"Stay just a moment." She burrowed into his chest.

"I'll stay forever if you let me."

She fell asleep satisfied. Not just in body, but in the knowledge that forever looked so different, so much better than it had a month ago.