Page 20 of A Kiss Gone Wylde
Before she could even fully comprehend what had just happened, he had settled between her thighs. Placing one hand behind her knee, he hitched her leg higher on his hip. And suddenly she could feel the hard ridge of his arousal against her. Fear. Anticipation. Excitement. Uncertainty. All of those feelings swirled within her. Then he was nudging inside her, the rigid length of him pressing in slowly.
It was not what she had expected. Everything else had been so wonderful and this was… not unpleasant, but it certainly wasn’t thrilling.
“It gets better,” he said.
“When?”
“In just a moment,” he assured her. “This bit starts out rocky, but you’ll like the ending.”
He moved against her and there was a flash of pain. White hot, intense… and fleeting. It had passed almost before she could even register it. And then it was nothing but the pleasure he had promised. It was so different. The sensations he’d created within her with his skilled hands and then his oh-so wicked mouth had been intoxicating. But this… it was beyond anything she could have ever expected.
When that familiar tension built within her once more, Benny knew where it led. She knew what awaited her on the other side of it, and she was eager for it. Moving with him, straining beneath him, she matched the rhythm of his hips with her own. Instinctive. Primal. Without thought or reason. And when the pleasure crashed through her once more, she felt him stiffen, against her and groan as he found his own release.
“I told you that you would like it,” he murmured on a ragged breath and then kissed her ear. Immediately after, he withdrew from her and rolled onto his back.
“I’ll allow you to gloat,” she replied. “You certainly earned it.”
He was still grinning when he fell asleep beside her.
* * *
It was evening when Payne awakened. Pale light poured in through the windows and painted Benny’s naked flesh in shades of gold. The coverlet had slipped down, baring the curve of her hip and the elegant slope of her shoulder. Her dark hair was swept to the side, pooling on the pillow and exposing the completely irresistible curve of her neck. Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss there and she stirred.
“I think we’ve missed dinner,” he said.
“I think I could not face your mother right now, at any rate,” Benny admitted.
He shuddered. “I’m not particularly eager to face her either. I think I will offer mother a smaller house here in London or the opportunity to retire to the dower house in Somerset. After all, this is your household now and you should be able to run it as you choose.”
She sat up, grasping at the sheet and pulling it up to cover herself. “Oh, no. No. I am not ready to run a household like this! I wouldn’t know the first thing about planning a menu or overseeing the servants.”
“The house, for the most part, Benny, runs itself. Barrett and our housekeeper, Mrs. Turley, have been seeing to this house for years. I assure you that my mother is not overly involved in the process. If she were, I would have heard about it… at length. Daily. Perhaps even hourly.”
“I do not dislike your mother,” she offered, sounding somehow contrite and defensive at the same time.
“Well, she certainly has given you no reason to like her. In truth, I am not certain if I like her. Do not get me wrong… I love her. I truly do. She is my mother and I hold her in esteem for that fact. But I am not blind to her faults and the difficulty that is inherent in dealing with her.”
“My own family is… problematic, as well.” She uttered the admission ruefully. “My mother tends toward hysterics that are not only for effect, but quite genuine. Cordelia and I stashed smelling salts in every room in the house. And my father—let’s just say that he can have a terrible temper. He ignores us unless he’s angry about something we’ve done. Once he’s finished yelling, the ignoring begins anew.”
“I don’t really remember my father. I was nearly ten when he passed, but I was in the country or at school so much while he was here in London. Likely avoiding my mother as most try to do,” he mused. It wasn’t something he’d thought about overly much, but now, faced with the very real likelihood that he would, in the not too distant future, possibly be someone’s father, it certainly bore a bit of reflection. Getting up from the bed, he reached for the trousers he’d discarded earlier. “I have no wish to be an absent father in that way. Nor do I wish to be the kind of father that our children will want to avoid.”
She blinked in surprise. “I hadn’t thought about it. Having been labeled a spinster for years and deemed quite unmarriageable, the notion of children—much less what sort of mother I might be—had simply not been something I let myself consider.”
He’d thought about it years earlier. He’d thought about having children with Anne, though at that point in his life, his entire focus had been on the process of conception rather than the consequences of it. Thinking of how painfully young they had both been, he could easily see now that he had not been ready for marriage. Had he stayed and married her rather than taking that infernal tour through Europe, they might well have been miserable together. It was impossible to say. But he knew that Anne would never have stood up to him as Benny would do. He knew that she would never have been as brave and unflappable in the face of danger as Benny. Perhaps that was because of her youth at the time. And perhaps it was just because Anne had been possessed of a very different temperament. Not bad, not wrong, just impossibly different. It was very likely that he would have been a far different sort of husband with her than he hoped to be with the woman before him.
“You are rather pensive,” she remarked, pulling him from his swirling thoughts.
“I suppose I am. There is much to contemplate,” he agreed.
“About our potential progeny and our capabilities as parents?”
“Ham or roast duck,” he replied. “I’m utterly famished. If you put on your wrapper, we can sneak downstairs to the library with no one the wiser and I can bribe Barrett to bring us a tray.”
“Couldn’t we stay here and convince him to bring us one?”
“No,” Payne stated emphatically. “Because I believe you will love this library as much as I do and I want you to see it… the proper way.”
“What is the proper way?”
