Page 63 of My Own True Duchess
“May I have the honor?”
His question was curiously solemn. Theo responded by dropping her hands, though remaining passive was excruciating.
She meant to say: The pleasure is entirely mine. “Hurry, Jonathan.”
“That, I cannot do.” He untied the bow and brushed aside her chemise, leaving her breasts not only bared, but pushed forward by her stays. Theo was torn between arousal and self-consciousness, until Jonathan stroked a thumb over each nipple.
Self-consciousness fled, routed by shameless yearning. “Again, please.”
He paid homage to her breasts, and Theo bore it. His caresses, his mouth, his breath on her wet flesh, varying pressures, and teasing kisses. His skills were many and diabolically expert.
“You,” she managed. “Your falls. The buttons.”
“Scoot back.”
She did, though he kept a grasp of her left nipple, and the added pressure was exquisite. Then she was bereft of his touch, while he extracted a handkerchief from a pocket and laid it on the sofa cushions beside them. Next, he undid both sides of his falls, lifting his hips to rearrange his clothing.
Theo moved closer, a smooth, warm length of male flesh brushing against her sex. The wanting was a pleasure in itself, sensation to be savored rather than an anxiety to be assuaged.
How lovely to enjoy desire. To delight in longing, secure in the knowledge that satisfaction would come soon and thoroughly. Theo kissed her lover lingeringly, her frantic yearning coalescing into a pledge of mutual pleasure.
Jonathan must have understood her intent, for he sank lower against the cushions and guided himself to her sex.
The joining began without any other touching, Theo sinking down, Jonathan lifting up. His timing was perfect, her pleasure enormous. They teased each other, feinting and parrying, until Theo braced her hands on his shoulders and took him fully into her body.
“A moment,” he whispered, holding her by her hips when he was hilted inside of her.
Without moving, without even kissing, pleasure welled for Theo. She could not have stopped the oncoming tide if she’d commanded the powers of heaven, nor did she want to. She purely surrendered to gratification, letting it lash through her like a scouring summer cloudburst.
“I am sorry,” she said, dropping her forehead to Jonathan’s shoulder. “I hadn’t planned that.”
“I planned that. Hold me, Theo.”
She held on to him, while he moved, and she endured more of his planning. He knew exactly how to gauge tempo, depth, intensity, kisses, caresses, even stillness to render Theo panting, pleasure-glutted and utterly relaxed.
“I could do this until dawn,” he said, moving lazily, “but you’d be sore, and our hostess would be scandalized.”
Until dawn … Oh, marriage to Jonathan would be unbearably lovely. Theo wanted to weep, for all the lonely years, for the awkward moments she’d known as a wife, for sheer glee at having found Jonathan at last.
Jonathan, who was, in his indirect way, posing a question.
“If we must conclude this interlude,” she said, “then use the next five minutes well. I can’t be the only person to leave this encounter grinning like an imbecile.”
She was giving him permission to spend. That he’d leave the decision to her was grounds to fall in love with him all over again. For she surely had—when he’d lectured Diana in the park, when he’d sent Seraphina the perfect book of French poetry, when he’d dutifully danced attendance on women whose consequence had been raised by his notice.
Theo offered him that love as he held her close and breathed with her, gave him that love as satisfaction bore down on her again. She hadn’t thought pleasure could be more intense than what she’d already experienced, but with Jonathan intent on gratification, the joining became wild.
Not a wrestling match, for Jonathan’s passions were measured and silent, but so intimate, so consuming, that Theo’s past, her disappointing memories, her last regrets fell away in incandescent moments of oneness with the man to whom she’d given her future.
“Did I pleasure you all the way to sleep?” Jonathan asked, stroking her back in slow circles.
“Not to sleep, but to a place of perfect peace and joy.” A holy place, one Theo had never visited with her husband. “The rest of the Season will be interminable.”
She should sit up. She should sit up and tuck herself up and let Jonathan put himself to rights too. She bundled closer on a sigh.
“If you think I’ll wait until July to speak my vows, Theodosia, you are much mistaken. A special license will suit. We can be married next week.”
So fierce. She loved that about him too. “I have a household, a daughter, a sister, loyal servants. They all must be dealt with. You need to call on your solicitors. Besides, you haven’t proposed. You must pay me your addresses first, and I must write to the viscount.”
