Page 32 of Unmasking the Silver Heiress
She looked like a sacrificial virgin, delivered into his bed and exposed for his pleasure in a ring of flickering flames, willing to be taken, anxious to hand her innocence over to his own depraved desires.
She did not shy away from his nudity, nor did she seem alarmed by the sight of his rigid erection. She moistened her lips and pushed her nightgown down over her waist and hips, leaving it in a pool around her knees so that he might see her exposed as well, and gaze upon her body uninhibited.
There were many things he intended to do with that body, many things he intended to indulge in once his animalistic frustration had been sated. He crawled back onto the bed, scooping her up with an arm behind her waist and lying her flat on her back.
"Oh! Careful!" she gasped when he pulled the nightgown along her shins and free of her feet. "It is delicate."
He nodded, too muddled to assure her that he could buy her two hundred identical nightgowns and still be willing to rip them to shreds in return for being allowed to remove them from her. It was not the time, and he did not trust he had the vocabulary. He laid it carefully over the dressing gown she'd looped over the bedpost and turned back to her, reclining back on his silk pillows.
She was the delicate thing here, the treasure he did not wish to damage. He pressed her knees gently apart and touched her, feather-light, at the core of her pleasure. She gasped, but did not seem to find it objectionable. Rather she spread her knees farther apart, leaning her head back onto the pillows and closing her eyes, as though she trusted him completely to do with her as he willed.
Be careful,her voice said again in his head.I am delicate.
He tested her entrance with his fingers, pleased to find her slick with her own desire. He would go as slow as he could stand. There would be time for abandon later, in the long lives they would spend together sharing this bed. The thought sent a bolt of heat through him as he climbed over her and positioned himself at her entrance.
"Stop me if I hurt you," he whispered, his voice strained with the last remnants of his self-control.
She nodded, seemingly eager, and shifted her hips forward, drawing the tip of him into the warm well of her body.
His eyes flickered shut, his head spinning as he began to ease himself into her, little by little, building a gentle rhythm as her wetness accommodated them both. She gasped sharply some seconds in, at the point where he assumed he had pierced her maidenhead, but she did not stop him, nor did she cry out in pain.
He pressed his forehead into hers as her arms wrapped around him, the softness of her thighs resting against his hips. He knew he would explode quickly, that this was a poor showing for her first encounter, but he could not stop himself anymore than he could prevent the sun rising. Not this time.
Once he had managed to sink himself into her enough for a steady rhythm, his body took over his senses. He did not lose his gentleness, but the sounds of her little gasps and the feel of her gripping at his shoulders and raking her fingers through his hair were somehow louder than any thought he'd ever had.
How he had managed to go so many years without indulging in this want, thisneed,was incomprehensible. He could not imagine this degree of pleasure from another woman, nor did he wish to.
He felt her soft, sweet little body welcoming him, and it was enough to push him over the ledge, as though a thousand years of restraint had finally breached a crack in the dam. He pumped his seed deep into her, groaning softly as he dropped his face into her hair and gradually slowed his thrusting to rocking to stillness.
She gave a shuddering breath, and cradled his head against her shoulder. She stroked his hair and let him lie there atop her until his breathing slowed.
When he looked up at her, wondering what apology he could possibly proffer for such a short and likely unsatisfying performance, she kissed him before he could speak.
"Will you hold me, at least until I'm asleep?" she whispered against his lips, and he felt the curve of her smile there when he said he would.
In the end, however, it was he who fell asleep first, wrapped in a comforting embrace.
Chapter 16
Nell did not sleep for a long time. It was well that Nathaniel had found his own rest so quickly, for she certainly would have insisted on being held for quite some time as she waited for oblivion to find her. She stroked his hair, resting her cheek on the soft crown of his head, and inhaled his scent as the minutes ticked past.
He had been so rigidly still when they had slept side-by-side in the coaching inns and in London. He had breathed so silently that she had at times thought perhaps he wasn't breathing at all. Tonight, he seemed for the first time like a warm, flesh-and-blood man, one who stirs in his sleep and breathes with enough force to be heard. It was as though he'd gone from marble to flesh all at once.
When he rolled away from her, curling onto his side against a pillow, she smiled. It wasn't because he had released her, for she knew that was not done deliberately and held no deeper meaning, but rather because some part of himself that he kept so firmly under lock and key seemed to have escaped in the act of their intimacy.
She slipped quietly from the bed and tiptoed to the end to gather her shift to her and tug it back over her head. She held it up above her waist and made her way to the washbasin to quickly rinse the maiden's blood from her thighs, exceedingly mindful not to stain her new things.
The fire was burning low, but she looked into it for a while, marveling at the way her skin felt so aware of every brush of the fabric that covered it. It was as though her sense of touch had been kindled past its previous limits and for the first time, she was truly within her own body.
She was tired, yes, and she knew she should sleep, but at the same time, she felt that she could run the length of the grounds and dive into the ocean and swim all the way to France without a moment's regret or doubt. It felt as though she were right on the cusp of something, which was ridiculous, because she had already discovered so much in the last hours.
She covered their discarded food with the cloth napkins that had fallen to the floor, and paced the perimeter of the room, extinguishing each lantern with a quick gust of breath, until only the glowing embers in the fireplace were left to give shape to the surroundings.
When she was finished and ready to climb back into the bed, she indulged in one final moment of whimsy, spinning in a circle to send her nervous energy out into the universe on the bell of her skirt. It was something she might have done as a child, and even one spin left her stifling her giggles, a bit lightheaded and dizzy. Perhaps girlish spinning and several glasses of wine did not mix well.
It was the closest she got to really considering what had passed here tonight, and what it might mean for the future. These were thoughts for tomorrow, when her head was clear and the sun shone bright. Tonight, she was simply a creature of sensation, driven from one impulse to the next.
She climbed into the bed, drawing the coverlet up over both of them, and curled her body around Nathaniel's back, burrowing her cheek into the warmth between his shoulders. She thought that if she must lie here awake for hours more, she would at least do so happily in this position.
