“Yes, yes, I have. Good night, children,” he said. He plucked the book from Plum’s hands and handed it to a startled India, scooping Plum up in his arms. “Finish the chapter.”
“Harry! I was reading to them—”
“India can read, taught her myself. Good for her.” He hoisted Plum high on his chest and quickly opened the door before she could slide down.
“But…but…the children—”
“Will be just fine without you.” He paused just before closing the door and leaned his head back into the nursery. “McTavish? How are you, lad?”
“Hungry!” the boy shouted, jumping up and down on the bed.
Harry nodded, said good night again, and stalked off down the stairs, ignoring Plum’s protests.
“You needn’t have made such a scene, you know. I would have finished the chapter and tucked them all in, and no one would know that you and I…that we…”
She really did blush in a most delightful manner. He grinned at her, warmed to the toes by the shy little glances she was giving him. “Sweetheart, not even the archbishop of Canterbury could stop me from bedding you tonight.”
“Harry!” Plum gasped in a delighted sort of way.
“Plum!” he gasped back to her as he kicked open the door to his room, just as delighted, if not more so.
She giggled.
He strode over to his bed, his lovely bed, his lovely big bed that would soon be all that much lovelier because it would hold Plum, and said in his best gothic villain voice, “You are in my power, alone with me, my seductive little wife. Now I shall ravish you as you have never been ravished.”
“Really?” Plum asked, her eyes aglow with excitement. Her eyelids dropped for a moment, then she peeked up at him in a most fetching manner. “Perhaps I have been ravished many ways before, my lord. What sort of ravishment did you have in mind?”
He set her on her feet, and without waiting for her to offer assistance, quickly stripped her of gown and stays, leaving her standing in her chemise and stockings. Since he was a gentleman and not an animal, he gave her a moment to recover her breath while he admired the scenery. He nodded his head. Twice. “Yes, yes, you’re lovely in your underthings. You do appreciate the fact that I think you’re lovely with your clothing on, don’t you? I’m not an animal who just wants you naked and writhing with pleasure beneath me while I thrust into you again and again, burying myself in you, losing myself in your heat, wanting to pound my flesh into yours until I pour every single last drop of life I have into your body? You know that, yes?”
Plum looked a bit dazed. “I…well…I suppose…”
“Good!” Without further ado, he grabbed the neckline of her chemise and tore it from top to bottom, gently pushing her on the bed at the same time he yanked off his dressing gown, tossing his spectacles onto the table.
“Harry!” Plum shrieked as he threw himself onto top of her, bracing his weight with his arms so he didn’t crush her into a woman-shaped bit of pulp.
“Yes, it’s me, how clever of you to recognize me without my spectacles. Now, what have we here? I don’t see too well without my spectacles, so you’ll have to excuse me if I need to examine very closely the various parts of you.” He leaned back to look at her, to allow his gaze to sweep her from crown to toes. “Mine,” he said in a voice laden with possession.
“Yes, I am yours, but Harry!”
He dragged his eyes up to hers.
“I still have my stockings on.”
He looked to where she gestured, admiring the lovely length of her legs. They weren’t too long, or too thin, just right, with the exact amount of curve and softness he required in his wife’s legs. “Yes, you do. It’s a bit shocking, isn’t it? I shall remove them. Later.” He leaned closer, his breath brushing her mouth. “With my tongue.”
“Oh,” she breathed, her eyes huge and filled with hope and desire and a good dollop of anticipation.
Harry gave her a heated look promising a reward for all that anticipation before focusing his attention on the twin mounds that heaved before him. “What’s this?” he asked, squinting slightly at one perfect breast. “Breasts?”
“Yes, I have two of them. They’re a set,” Plum said.
“Matched, too. I loved matched pairs.” His mouth closed over the taut little peak crowning her silky white breast. Plum bucked beneath him, her eyes alight with passion as he nibbled and kissed his way around her breasts. He was suddenly filled with the overpowering desire to taste her, all of her, to lick the satin skin that glowed with a pearly luminescence that seemed to fill his soul. He kissed the twin of the first breast just so it wouldn’t feel slighted, then licked a path down her ribs to the little mound of her belly. Plum moaned and writhed beneath the onslaught of his mouth, but Harry would not be stirred from his course. He held her down with a hand on either hip, and after kissing each hip bone, nipped his way across her belly, pleased by her reaction to his touch. Her breath shuddered within her, making her flesh quiver and contract wherever he licked. He dipped lower, breathing in the perfume that was the very essence of Plum, reveling in the thought that it was he who stirred her, that she was reacting to him and no other. He kissed a line across the top of her pubic mound, and then paused. “Give yourself to me, Plum. Open for me.”
Her legs tensed. “Harry, I’m not sure—”
“But I am,” he said, sliding a hand up the soft length of her thigh. He gently insinuated his fingers between the tightly clenched legs. “You’ll enjoy this. Trust me, Plum.”
He could almost hear her thinking it out, reasoning with that delicious mind of hers, weighing his words against her natural modesty and hesitancy. He willed her to yield, to give herself to him in an absolute show of trust, and thought his heart would be ripped from his chest if she didn’t. Just as her legs relaxed, allowing him to spread them and breathe in her scent, the knowledge struck him with blinding force.
His heart was already hers.
He shook the thought away, unwilling to acknowledge it, unwilling to admit that she had such power over him, and concentrated on giving his wife pleasure. He rubbed his cheeks gently along the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs, enjoying the hitch in her breathing his actions caused as he kissed a hot trail to the core of her womanhood.
“You are all pink and rose-hued,” he murmured, kissing the juncture between her legs. “You are soft like the finest silk, and these sweet petals hold your heat for me.”
Plum arched her back and thrust her hips up when he parted her woman’s flesh, his fingers dancing around her heat, stroking, teasing, rubbing her until she was moaning soft, endless moans, her head thrashing from side to side as she clutched handfuls of the bed linens.
“You’ll like this,” Harry promised and leaned forward to lick at the tiny focus of her pleasure.
“Blessed St. Genevieve!” Plum yelled and, grabbing Harry’s head, pulled him tighter to her. He held her firmly by the hips, dancing his tongue around her silken folds, suckling and nibbling her until she arched her back again and screamed his name.
“I told you that you would like it,” Harry said smugly, pleased with himself, pleased with her response to him, and a bit surprised that the pleasure he had given her was thrumming so strongly in his blood, leaving him hungry and aching with the need to plunge himself deep within her depths. Plum lay panting, quivering slightly with the aftereffects of her pleasure, but when he moved up to cover her, she suddenly twisted out from underneath him and pushed him down into the soft mattress.
“No,” she said, leaning forward to nip at his lower lip. “You’ve had your turn. Now it’s mine.”
Harry knew he’d never last through Plum’s exploration of him. He was nigh unto bursting now, and just the look in her dark, liquid eyes almost made him spill his seed.
She stroked her hand along his chest. “You have such a lovely chest, Harry. It has j
ust the right amount of hair, not too much, not too little, and your flesh is very firm.”
His muscles flinched beneath her fingers as she stroked down the length of his breastbone to his belly, leaving a fiery path in their wake. She leaned forward and gently kissed his collarbone, her hands on either side of his ribs, stroking and petting him.
“Your skin is so warm, so very warm. I like to touch you. I like to feel your muscles ripple beneath my fingers. You make me feel wild inside. You make me want to do things I didn’t know were possible. You make me want to—”
A thousand places he never knew existed suddenly kindled into flame as she stopped speaking and bent her head to kiss the breadth of his chest, her hair trailing little streaks of fire and ice as it brushed his skin. She paused for a moment over one of his nipples. He held his breath. Previous to Plum, he had never been a nipple man, had never really enjoyed women fondling him there. A nipple was a nipple was his motto. They were well and fine on women, enjoyable to tease and a sure way to arouse a woman, but his own set were nothing more than decoration as far as he was concerned. All that changed the night Plum pressed hot kisses to his chest. Now she was doing more than kissing, she was tormenting him just as he had tormented her. Her little white teeth closed gently over one brown nub of a nipple, converting Harry on the spot.
“St. Peter’s cods!” he bellowed, tears coming to his eyes with the burst of pleasure that burned through his chest. “Is this what you feel? Dear God, woman, do the other one before I expire!”
Plum chuckled a throaty chuckle that vibrated down to Harry’s toes. She leaned over to tickle his other nipple with the tip of her tongue. “I like the way you taste, Harry. You taste just like I thought you would—hot and masculine and very, very pleasing.”
Harry gulped air as Plum’s sweet little mouth closed over his nipple, sucking it and tugging it gently until he thought he would burst into flame.
“Enough,” he said hoarsely, trying to twist around so he could plunge himself into her depths.
“No, not yet,” Plum said, pushing him down into the bed. “I haven’t finished. I haven’t looked at the rest of you. You’re made so finely, every part of you in perfect accord with the rest. I want to touch you. I want to feel you. I want to kiss you as you kissed me. I want to take you into my mouth and taste you, husband. Will you like that?”
Harry’s brain ceased functioning at her question. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, could only stare at her with wide, hopeful eyes and nod his head vigorously. Plum smiled a smile that made his legs stiffen with the effort to keep from spilling his seed right then and there, and then she lowered her head and kissed his belly. He groaned his pleasure at her touch.
“You’re so hard, Harry, everywhere but your belly. Have I told you how much I love your belly?” She kissed the thin line of hair where it led down his stomach to his manhood. “I love your legs, too. You have a horseman’s thighs, all long muscles and beautiful contours.”
He gritted his teeth as she trailed kisses across one thigh, her hand closing around the two globes of softness between his legs. They contracted instantly, anticipating her touch elsewhere, enjoying the light scraping of her nails against the soft flesh.
“God in heaven,” he moaned, every muscle straining, waiting for her touch. Her breath steamed over the length of him as he stood hard and ready and near to bursting. It was his turn to grasp big handfuls of the bedding to keep from grabbing her, thrusting brutally into her, claiming her for his own.
She touched the very tip of him with her finger, spreading the moisture that had gathered there, gently pushing the outer layer of skin back. “It doesn’t look comfortable to be so very hard, husband. And you’re hot, I can feel the heat radiating from this part of you. I never thought it possible to be so hot, but you are, hot and very hard and yet your skin is like velvet here. You match the fire inside of me, you make me burn hotter for you.”
Her hand closed around the base of his shaft, squeezing slightly as her mouth descended upon him, her tongue rasping his length.
“St. Genevieve’s cods, Plum, you’re going to unman me!” Harry gasped, senseless to all but the euphoria she generated in him.
“You are so very different from what I remembered,” Plum murmured, sliding her hand along his hardness, stroking him as his hips thrust his length through her fingers. “Touching you like this makes me feel quivery inside. Do you feel quivery as well? You are enjoying this, are you not?”
Harry’s head snapped back as he thrust in time to her strokes, unable to keep himself still, oblivious to all but the ecstasy she was giving him. A gargled moan came from his throat as she bent over him again, her hair spilling like ink around his hips as her tongue teased the underside of his most sensitive spot. He moved twice, three times, and roared a wordless roar of elation as he reached his climax.
“Oh, my!” Plum said a scant few seconds later. Harry lay twitching slightly on the bed, too exhausted to open his eyes. He knew what he’d see when he did, and a faint flush rose over his cheeks at the thought of it. She had done what no other woman had: she had unmanned him.
“How interesting. I’ve never actually seen that happen before. This has been very enlightening.”
Harry felt the bed shift slightly and cracked one eye open to see his wife pad over to the washstand, her long hair sweeping just above her adorable behind. She wetted a cloth and brought it back to the bed, cleaning him with a tenderness that almost undid him. His cheeks reddened even more under her ministrations, and he was heartily glad when she finished and went to replace the cloth. He knew what he had to do, but every instinct within him cried against it. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right that he should have to apologize for a natural reaction, since it was entirely her fault he had succumbed to the lure of her hands and mouth. He wanted to proceed upon proper lines, but she had insisted, and he being a gentleman, naturally let her have her way. And now just look what he had to show for it! He had to apologize to his wife for his selfishness when it was really all her fault for making him lose control!
“You have my apology, madam,” Harry ground out, rolling to his side and giving her his back.
“Apology? For what?”
Good God, did she have to make it more difficult? “You have my apology for my thoughtless act just now.”
“What thoughtless act?” Plum queried. She placed a hand on his hip and tugged, but he would not be moved. He wouldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at her, probably would never be able to look at her again in his whole, entire—now miserable—life. “Harry? Are you angry about something? Did I hurt you? You seemed to be enjoying yourself—have I done something wrong? Would you like me to touch you again?”
Harry groaned in a breath and lurched as his wife’s hand closed around him. He was still partially aroused, still wanted to bury himself in her heat, to feel her silken folds closing around him as he thrust into her. He wanted to watch her eyes mist with passion as she found her own release, wanted to feel her buck and arch beneath him as he filled her. He shuddered with the effort to remain in control as her hand explored him, caressing and stroking him to full arousal.
“Harry?” Her breath was hot on his ear. “I’m glad I gave you pleasure. I felt how much you enjoyed it, and it made me happy, too. Perhaps we can share that joy again?”
Harry’s muscles quivered for one indecisive moment, then the choice was made. He whipped around, pulling her underneath him even as he was spreading her legs and settling himself at the entrance to her center.
“Look at me, Plum,” he demanded, the tip of him pressing against her heat. She arched her hips in invitation as her eyelids fluttered open. “I want to watch you as I take you. I want to watch the passion fill your eyes as I slide deep within you. I want to watch you lose your control when I pound into you, thrusting myself deep within your body. I want to watch you gasp when your pleasure overtakes you. I
want to watch you as I make you my wife.”
He stroked slowly into her, his soul singing with joy as her body yielded in welcome, a thousand little muscles gripping and holding him tight, parting with him reluctantly when he pulled back. He moved in time to the rhythm she set, her hips thrusting against his, her mouth welcoming when he bent his head to sip her sweetness. The bite of her nails stung his shoulders as she gripped him, crying soft little moans of delight, urging him wordlessly to move faster, deeper, stronger against her. Her hands slipped down the slickness of his back to his behind, clutching him and pulling him tighter to her. He grunted with the effort of holding back his own climax until he had brought her to satisfaction, denying himself and taking his pleasure in her cries of joy. His head dropped to her neck as he gasped for air, fighting the need to pour himself out into her, wanting her fire to fuel his own to a height he had not known before. As her hand slipped down over his behind, she wrapped her legs around his waist and bit his neck.
“Sweet St. Peter!” she cried, taking him deeper into her heat until it seemed as if he was touching her womb. “I love you, Harry. You are my life, my being, my everything. Dear God, how I love you!”
As her slickened muscles tightened around his length, he took her ecstasy into himself and with an effort that had to be nigh onto miraculous, pulled out of her body just before he spilled his seed. Her words echoed in his ears, fulfilling him, making him whole, joining him with her in a way he had not known possible. He shouted her name as he poured his life onto her thighs, and knew in that moment that he could not live without her. She was his homecoming, his safe harbor, and he knew with a knowledge inborn of man that his soul was inexorably bound to hers, that they were twined together, and nothing could ever part the two of them into separate people again.