To that end, he set about educating her senses and appeasing his own.
The firm curves of her breasts, even shielded by the fabric of her bodice, filled his hands as if sculpted exclusively for him. Her response to even the lightest of caresses spurred him on.
Spurred him to send one hand sliding down, over her stomach, over her hip, to caress the globes of her derriere, smoothing and molding the silks of her gown, learning the shape, tracing the curves, then splaying his hand and possessing.
Beneath his other palm, her heart leapt; so did his as he drew her nearer, angling her hips to his. Wanting her to sense all she did to him, to know and understand.
Her hands slid to frame his face; she gripped, holding him to the kiss as his tongue plundered and his hands closed and held, then he eased his grip and, with both hands, gently kneaded, and she made a soft sound in her throat.
Under the circumstances, disrobing wasn’t an act to be hurried. There was no need to rush. Unlacing her bodice took time and skill. When he tugged the last lace free and the material sagged, she drew back from the kiss—pushed back.
Curious, he allowed it. Watched as, her lips swollen, her fine skin faintly flushed, her expression passion-blank, she swiftly stripped the sleeves from her arms, then tossed the embroidered bodice away.
Leaving only the fine ivory silk of her chemise to screen her breasts from his hungry gaze.
His fingers had already shifted to the laces securing her skirt and petticoats. Impatient, she waited only until he’d unpicked the knots before she eased out the drawstring and wriggled and pushed both skirts and petticoats down her legs.
Her long, slender, shapely legs.
His mouth watered, but then she stepped from the mound of silk and linen directly to him, and with her luscious lips now firm, she grasped the sides of his coat, spread them wide, and tried to push the coat off his shoulders.
He chuckled and obliged, shedding the garment. By the time he’d drawn his arms from the sleeves, letting the coat crumple to the floor behind him, she was working her way down the large mother-of-pearl buttons of his waistcoat.
Jacqueline was determined to get her hands on the wide muscles of his chest. Determined to see what, to that point, she’d only imagined and feast her eyes on him. Although the night air was cool, warmth had risen beneath her skin, a delicious flush that left her breathless and hungry for more, eager to find the ways to fan the flames higher, to wallow and burn.
On walking into the room, she’d set aside all inhibitions, knowing beyond question that instinct, and he, would guide her. Now, instinct assured her that her most urgent and immediate needs would be met once she’d rid him of his clothes. She applied herself to that task with unrestrained fervor.
His lips curved; he seemed faintly amused, but also approving as he shrugged out of his waistcoat. She unraveled the knot of his cravat, dragged the long length from about his throat, and flung it aside, then focused on the ties of his shirt; she had them undone in seconds, then he stepped back and drew the billowing linen off over his head.
She barely waited until he straightened to set her hands, fingers splayed, to his chest. To the wondrous expanse of taut skin stretched over hard muscle. To the crinkly dark hair that adorned the splendor. Heat and welcoming warmth reached for her; sweeping her hands across his torso, she exalted and filled her senses. Her lids lowered as she drank in the reality, and his arms slowly closed about her, drawing her in, drawing her to him.
Richard quelled a shudder provoked by her questing touch and compounded by the evocative caress of her silk chemise over his bare chest. Those sensory delights were followed by the firm pressure of her breasts, screened by that single, flimsy layer. Torture of a sort, a suggestive, seductive teasing of his senses. Instinctively, she moved against him, side to side, settling, then pressing closer yet as she lifted her face—and he bent his head, found her lips with his, and whirled them and their now-clamoring senses back into the sensual fire.
The flames rose, desire fanning the embers of passion into a blaze, then into an all-consuming conflagration.
She was country-born; unlike naive, town-born innocents, she knew what was to follow. More, she was increasingly explicit in her eagerness to embrace the experience. Her lips and tongue engaged with his, flagrantly demanding. Her hands caressed, blatantly explored, then gripped and urged him on.
His control grew thin as her hot, greedy hands reached between them and closed about his iron-hard staff.
Possessing. Wanting.
Needing.
They turned to the bed. Her chemise floated to the floor. With all modesty long gone, between them, they dispensed with his boots and breeches and, in a heated breathless rush, fell onto the sheets.
Hands reached and found, and they drew each other closer, rolling body to body. Skin met naked skin—and a jolt of pure sensation lanced through them both.
Beneath him, she stilled, eyes closed, her breath, soft pants, washing over his cheek.
His body—his every muscle—tensed as he held against the roar of his instincts.
Then her hands clutched again, and her lips found his, and he fell into her kiss, into the moment—into the passion that rose and rushed through them and swept them into the age-old dance.
Jacqueline’s senses had imploded the instant their naked bodies had met, skin to skin. As if the sensual impact had been too great for her mind to encompass—not in that instant, not at first. Yet within seconds, her mind had caught up, and now, the rest of the world fell away as sensation flooded her, overwhelming her wits, tightening her nerves, and smothering her senses. Taking them—and her—over.
She gasped and clung, then flung herself headlong into the fire, into the beckoning cornucopia of sensual delights. She caught his lips with hers and kissed him ferociously, returning his ardent kiss with one even more fiery. She swallowed a moan as his palm, slightly roughened, closed about one breast. He kneaded, the possessive act underscored by his heavy body lying over hers, his weight pinning her to the sheet. Then, with his fingertips, he circled her nipple, teasing her senses; in wordless reaction, she sank her fingertips into the long muscles of his back, and he closed his fingers about her aching nipple—tight, tighter—and she arched beneath him as fire lanced through her, streaking down her veins to pool deep, a glowing furnace at her core.
She stroked his back, glorying in the long planes, the pliable, powerful strength of him. She reached farther, her fingertips skating over the upper swells of his buttocks.
He shifted and repeated his previous ministrations on her other breast—reducing her to wantonly writhing, breath bated, her heart thudding to an escalating rhythm.
A rhythm of want and need that only built as, between them, desire rose, a tangible entity, and stretched and flexed its claws.
It gripped, hard, and drove them on.
Her legs tangled with his. Driven to sensual distraction by the abrasion of her already sensitized skin by the wiry hair that dusted his, she arched and shifted and pressed herself to him, using her limbs to slide and stroke and caress.
With passion swelling, her skin feeling stretched and taut with need, she focused what little wit she had left to making him as desperate as she.
The rigid rod of his erection was pressed like a burning brand to her hip; she reached down, found the fine-skinned, silky head, and with the tips of her fingers, circled the flared rim. Then she reached farther, closed her fingers about the steely length, and stroked.
From the sudden tension that streaked through him, she sensed that she’d succeeded in capturing his attention.
Emboldened, she played, and he let her. Gradually, he returned to his own agenda, with increasingly explicit caresses playing on her senses and orchestrating a symphony of pleasure that steadily, caress by caress, built toward a crescendo.
The flames rose between them, more urgent, more potent than before as desire soared and whipped them on. With breathless, gasping murmurs, both directing and i
mploring, with touches and caresses both gentle and firm, wanting, hungry, and consumed by need, they forged on.
With deft, experienced touches, Richard built her desire and fanned her passions and readied her. She writhed beneath him, clutched, encouraged, flagrantly demanded, and ultimately, opened for him. Flowered for him.
The petals guarding her entrance were swollen and slick. Her honey scalded his probing fingers, stealing his breath, sending his need soaring. The pearl of her passion throbbed, tense and tight beneath its hood, begging for his touch. With one fingertip, he circled it and felt her nerves leap. He stroked, and she bowed beneath him, and a strangled moan escaped her lips.
He parted her folds and pushed one long finger deep.
She clutched and held him with a desperation to rival his own.
He refocused on their kiss, plundering evocatively, recapturing her attention, then he stroked, and beneath him, she trembled and quaked.
Jacqueline wanted him inside her with a certainty impossible to mistake and with a fervor impossible to deny, to hold back from.
She gripped, tugged, pulled back from the all-consuming kiss long enough to whisper, “Now. Please…”
Instantly, he moved over her, his heavy legs parting hers, his hips settling between her spread thighs. She felt the smooth head of his erection part her folds, and she tipped her head back into the pillow as expectation gripped, but then he recaptured her lips, kissed her with utterly rapacious ferocity, and ripped her senses and wits away.
With one sharp thrust, he breached her. The pain was nothing more than a brief sting, then the sudden intrusion of his body into hers swamped her mind. Heavy and alien, yet oh-so-welcome, his erection stretched her and impressed the reality of their joining on her body, on her senses, in myriad ways. He’d frozen, head bowed, the muscles of his arms locked and quivering as he held his chest above hers, giving her time to absorb and accept the undeniably novel, elementally intimate sensations.
Then, powerful and sure, he forged deeper.
Barely clinging to sanity—when had joining with a woman ever been this intense?—Richard eased the hold he’d clamped upon his most primal urges and nudged deeper yet, into the molten embrace of her body, forging in until he was sheathed to the hilt. Until she’d taken all of him and held him deep within her.
Then he showed her how to dance, how to drive their senses on. She was an avidly eager pupil; all too soon, she was demanding he dispense with every last rein and allow passion to have its way. To, between them, let desire hold uncontested sway and, unrestrained, whip them on and up passion’s peak until…with their skins slick and burning, their hands locked, fingers clutching, with eyes closed, with her breath coming in sharp pants and him with his head bowed, chest heaving, their bodies merged to an unrelenting beat in the last desperate rush toward completion.
And then they were there.
Ecstasy struck, the tension gripping them snapped, and they were flung into the void.
Their senses fractured—shattered, fragmented. Glory rained upon them and flared inside, scintillatingly brilliant and bright. Senses awash, overloaded, they clung to each other as ecstasy’s starburst blinded their minds.
Leaving one shining truth illuminated—clear to their senses, obvious to their minds, and anchored in their souls.
Linking them, fusing them, binding them for all time.
Gradually, the brilliance faded, and a different type of pleasure rolled in. Filling them, buoying them, soothing their senses.
Steeping them in its indescribable beauty before letting oblivion take them.
Eventually, the possibility that he was crushing the lady he had vowed to protect penetrated Richard’s mind. Wracked more profoundly than he could ever remember being, he stirred and raised his head enough to look down at her face.
Her features were relaxed, but a faint smile—a richly satiated expression—curved her lips.
He softly humphed, yet the sight sent smug satisfaction flowing through him. He dipped his head, brushed his lips across hers, then lifted from her.
She stirred and made a protesting sound that cut off when he settled in the bed beside her.
Despite the loss of Richard’s oddly comforting weight, Jacqueline remained enfolded by, engulfed in, a blissful warmth unlike anything she’d ever known could be. Pleasure still coursed beneath her skin; her senses seemed to glow, her nerves were softly humming, and satiation flowed like the very finest wine through her veins.
She’d had no idea it was possible to feel so thoroughly and deeply pleasured, much less so completely possessed. Nor to feel so certain that, in return, she’d pleasured and possessed him to the same degree.
The sensations of when they’d joined still echoed through her mind. The mutuality of the giving and taking, the true meaning of being intimate, had been so much more powerful than she’d imagined.
Content didn’t come close to what she felt. Euphoric, buoyed by a sense of rightness so profound there were no appropriate words with which to do it justice.
Him and her—together was how he and she were meant to be. Their joining that night had been the next step along their road. Their futures were one, their paths forward the same, irrevocably intertwined. Their fates were merged, now and forever, two halves of the one coin.
She lay amid the rumpled sheets and dwelled on the prospect with quiet joy.
Richard reached down and flicked the sheet free, then drew it over them. They settled; he raised his arm, and Jacqueline shifted to lay her head on his chest—but the moon had drifted farther on its arc, and the silvery light slanting through the window struck her full in the face.
“Hmm.” Eyes closed tightly against the glare, she frowned.
He smiled and nudged her. “Turn around.”
She did, and he followed, spooning his larger body around the soft curves of hers. She chuckled, then sighed deeply; he felt her muscles relax.
As, still smiling, he settled his head on the pillow behind hers, he noticed a mark on the back of her left shoulder, now illuminated by the moonlight.
Gently, he touched the spot. “You have a birthmark—just here.”
“Hmm? Oh, that. Yes, I know.” She snuggled deeper into the mattress. “It’s always been there.”
Her skin was like fine porcelain; even though the mark wasn’t that dark, it stood out in stark relief.
Fascinated, he traced the outline with one fingertip. Then, struck by the coincidence, he glanced across the room—at the orb sitting, once more, on her dressing table.
He stilled, staring, then murmured, “The orb. Did you have someone bring it up again?” She couldn’t have brought it upstairs herself; he’d been with her from the moment she’d placed the orb on the mantelpiece in the great hall.
“No—why?” Then he felt her stiffen. Clearly, she’d opened her eyes, looked across the room, and seen what he had. “Oh.” The exclamation fell softly from her lips. “There it is.”
After a moment, her voice a bare whisper, she confirmed what he’d suspected. “I didn’t ask anyone to bring it upstairs but…perhaps one of the maids saw it when they were clearing the hall and realized I would rather keep it here, safe, and so she brought it up.” After an instant’s pause, she stated, “That’s what must have happened.”
His “Presumably” was distinctly dry.
For half a minute, he stared at the orb—glowing with nothing more than the radiance one might expect from the moonlight caressing it—then he looked back at her birthmark. Took in the lines, the shape, once again. He hesitated, then told her, “Your birthmark is the same shape as the orb.”
She stiffened rather more, then she twisted her head and looked over her shoulder. She met his eyes and searched them, confirming he wasn’t inventing anything. Her lips parted on a silent exhalation. Then in a wondering tone, she said, “I’ve never truly seen the mark—well, even with a hand mirror, with the angle, it’s just a roundish blob to me.”
“It’s definitely t
he orb.” He traced the outline again. “The moonstone, its upper curve surrounded by the jagged tips of the claws, with the ornate base beneath.”
She nodded fractionally, then faced forward. After several silent seconds, she relaxed into the mattress again. “I suppose that means the orb belongs to me, and I belong with it—here.”
He couldn’t—didn’t wish to—add anything to that. He hesitated for a heartbeat, then bent his head and placed a soft kiss on the mark before lowering his head to the pillow.
A moment later, he drew her closer, cradling her back to his chest. She sighed and relaxed even more. He closed his eyes and felt sleep creep nearer.
Tomorrow, he knew, neither he nor she would mention the reappearance of the orb in her chamber. They wouldn’t ask who had moved it; they wouldn’t do anything to call attention to it moving.
As far as he was concerned, and he felt sure she would agree, the orb and its strange abilities was one mystery that could remain unsolved.
The orb was where it was meant to be—there, and therefore safe—and that was all he and she needed to know.
Chapter 12
They were married in July, with the fields green, Balesboro Wood in full leaf, and the summer sun beaming in benediction.
The ceremony was celebrated in the household chapel by no less an august personage than the Bishop of Bath and Wells. His Grace had insisted, claiming it as his right given Richard had been on his way to visit him when Cupid had struck.
That Cupid had struck was evident to all.
When, gowned in ivory silk trimmed with summer green, a circlet of white rosebuds atop her upswept hair, Jacqueline stepped into the chapel with Freddie steering Hugh in his chair beside her, the chamber was packed. People stood shoulder to shoulder on either side, all the way to the walls, leaving only a central aisle running from the door to the altar for her and her companions to pace down.