Chapter 20

She did trust him. Implicitly. But it was still shocking, not to mention slightly embarrassing. Only he had ever touched her there, but to have him looking at her so closely, to have him kissing her so intimately—it was beyond anything she might have imagined would transpire between them.

He moved a bit lower, and it was no longer just his lips that touched her. She felt the gentle sweep of his tongue over her. The rush of sensation came upon her so quickly that she nearly jolted off the bed. Had it not been for his arm draped over her abdomen and his shoulders pressing her spread thighs, she’d have shot upright at the shock of it. But pinned beneath him as she was, Charlotte could do nothing but feel, nothing but submit to the wickedness of his questing mouth on the most sensitive part of her.

Not everything was unfamiliar. The tension building inside her was no longer unknown. She understood perfectly what awaited her on the other side of it, but the intensity of it was greater and the rate at which she was hurtling toward that incredible rush of pleasure would have been frightening if she’d still possessed the power of conscious thought. But she did not. Her awareness of anything had been reduced simply to the points of contact between them.

Charlotte could no more halt the broken cry that escaped her as she crested than she could halt the trembling of her body from it. But there was no time to think or to even comprehend what had occurred. Ethan had moved up the bed, his hips now settled between her thighs and his weight braced on his arms. She could feel the press of his arousal against her. Instinctively, she moved, shifting her hips slightly beneath him.

It was not the mind numbing pleasure that he’d given her the night before, nor did it bear any similarity to what she’d just experienced. This was not painful, but was certainly not something she could imagine anyone writing sonnets about. It felt, honestly, quite uncomfortable. There was a stinging sensation as her sensitive flesh stretched to accommodate him. And then he simply halted, his gaze locked on her face. The fierceness she saw in him in that moment distracted her momentarily. But then came the flash of pain. He’d thrust deeply into her, and the stinging she’d felt earlier only intensified. So much so that she could only squeeze her eyes shut and pray that it ended soon.

Above her, Ethan was completely still, his breathing labored and every muscle in his body tensed. “Charlotte, look at me.”

Reluctantly, she did so, forcing her eyes open. “I don’t think I knew what I was asking for.”

A pained laugh escaped him. “I daresay you did not. But the worst is over. It will only get better from here.”

Charlotte bit back the retort that popped unbidden to her mind, that it would have to. The pain had begun to subside and in its wake was only the foreign sensation of being filled by him remained. It was unbearably intimate, so much so that she longed to close her eyes and look away from him. She felt exposed and vulnerable in a way she never had. But it was Ethan, and shying away from him, despite the urge to do so, seemed wrong somehow.

He shifted his weight to one arm, and then hooked his now free hand behind her knee. When he hitched her leg a bit higher over his hip, it altered everything. A whispered ‘oh’ of surprise escaped her.

“Better?” he asked.

“I think so,” she concurred.

He moved then, sinking deeper and then withdrawing from her slightly. And with that, Charlotte understood exactly what he meant about it getting better. The feeling of it was unlike anything else and beyond her ability to describe. When he repeated it a second time, she simply gave herself up to it, clinging to him as he set a rhythm that sparked that familiar tension again. Surely it wasn’t possible to experience such a thing more than once!

Ethan was holding on with the last shred of will he possessed. He’d never seen anything more beautiful than Charlotte when she was lost to passion. The need to go slow, to bring her to release once more, warred with the desire to seek his own pleasure. But this was more than physical. This was so much more than just carnal satisfaction.

When he felt her trembling, her thighs quivering, he quickened the pace, driving them both even closer to that precipice. And as Charlotte tumbled over the edge, her release sent him tumbling headlong himself. He drove into her twice more and then his entire body went still, his muscles locked and rigid as the pleasure swamped him.

Spent, he collapsed onto the bed beside her and immediately drew her into his arms, holding her to him as the sound of their labored breathing filled the room. Then he said the words he’d been holding back for years. “I love you, Charlotte.” He turned his head to look at her and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I have always loved you.”

“From first sight?” she asked the question with amusement in her voice, but also uncertainty.

“No. I believe, Charlotte, that I was born loving you… and simply had to wait for circumstanced to align for us to meet. And I know you do not feel the same yet. But I hope in time that you will.”

She rose on her elbow to look down at him. “What if I did love you already? No… let me be quite clear. I do love you already. Maybe I didn’t always as you have loved me, but I’ve never felt as close to another human being as I do to you. I feel safe and sheltered and desired when I am with you… and complete.”

“When? When did you know you loved me?” he asked.

Charlotte held up her hand with her betrothal ring. “When you gave me this, and it was perfect and made just for me because I knew, in that moment, that you saw me… and accepted me. You’d never wish for me to be more wealthy, more ambitious, more socially motivated. You’d never wish for me to be anything but who I am. And no one, in all of my life, has ever accepted me so fully, so wholly.”

He was silent for a long moment, simply gazing at her in that quietly intense way of his. Then, at long last, he said, “Is that not how you accepted me? Not wishing I said more, not wishing I was more sociable or more inclined to be witty and entertaining? There is nothing about you I would alter.”

“And I you.”