Page 71 of Better Off Wed

“Then we’ll do it again,” she said, slipping free of his grasp.

His breath hissed from between his teeth as she brushed his erection in her haste to undo his fall, the pleasure so acute it was almost pain. “Let’s get you undressed first,” he said, stepping just out of her reach.

With a flounce of impatience, she stood and turned her back to him. “Hurry.”

The darkness was a hindrance, but as the fastenings of her gown gave way, memory supplied an image of her flawless skin. He pressed his lips to the top of her shoulder, kissing his way down as he unlaced her corset and peeled away layers of muslin and linen. He pictured her rosy-tipped breasts as he cupped them, and her tremor of pleasure as he dragged his thumbs over her nipples made him harder yet.

Momentarily releasing her with one hand, he pushed her clothes over her slender hips, listening to them rustle to the floor before sending his breeches to join them. Then he wrapped his arms around her, snugging their bodies together, the heat of his cock a brand against the comparative coolness of her bottom.

When a needy moan shuddered from her, he put his lips to her ear. “Your ankle—does it hurt to stand like this?” Her curls danced across his cheek as she shook her head. “Good. Then set your legs apart,” he said, dragging his palm over her belly to the top of her thigh.

She readily complied, inviting him into her warmth, into her wetness. He closed his eyes, the better to sharpen the memory of her golden-brown curls and slick pink folds, the memory of how she had touched herself and shown him how to pleasure her.

As his fingers explored, she arched helplessly against him, snaking one of her arms behind her, around him, to draw them closer together still. “Please. I want you inside me. I want to be yours.”

“You are mine,” he reminded her, accompanying that gentle scold with a pinch to one nipple. “And I know you can feel how much I want you.” With the middle finger of his other hand, he teased her nub. “But come for me first.”

“Yes. So good,” she sobbed as he ruthlessly built her pleasure.

“I had an excellent teacher.”

Her whole body shook as the crisis approached, then she went rigid with ecstasy before sagging in his arms. With practiced ease, he once more laid her on the bed, then kicked his feet free of his breeches and set one knee to the mattress beside her.

Whatever he’d fantasized as a randy adolescent, whatever he’d believed he was denying himself in all the years since, it had never come close to this, the sight of his Laura, soon to be his wife, the contours of her face just visible in the moonlight, drowsy and needy, reaching for him.

“What are you thinking about?” she whispered.

“There’s a moment—I suppose every code breaker has experienced it—when something that was a mystery just a moment before suddenly breaks open, and all the secrets are revealed.” He traced her lips with his fingertips, then reached up to brush a stray curl from her brow. “A beautiful, terrifying moment—just like this one.”

He felt, rather than saw, her bemused frown. “Terrifying?”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to disappoint you. But I’m afraid, in my eagerness and my ignorance, I’ll do both.”

The wrinkle in her brow smoothed itself out. “Oh, my love. The only way you could disappoint me, or hurt me, is if you tried to tell me you don’t need me the way I need you.” Her arms came up to encircle his shoulders, urging him closer. “Please.”

He slid over her body, let her hardened nipples graze his chest, as her legs parted wider to make room for his hips. “Guide me,” he murmured, and her cool fingers closed around his throbbing cock as she slicked him through her wet folds, set him at her entrance, and lifted her hips in invitation.

As slowly as he could bear to move, he nudged forward into her molten core, thrusting shallowly as her body adjusted to the invasion. After a moment, the tension ebbed from her, and he sank deeper, all the way to the hilt. “Oh,” she breathed, wriggling her hips experimentally. “That feels nice.”

Nice? Even he, who was fluent in a half-dozen languages, hadn’t words for the sensation of being fully inside her, surrounded by her. The discovery that something could be so perfect and so primal all at once. “I need to—” His hips thrust forward instinctively before he could even complete the thought.

“Yes,” she hissed, rising to meet him. “I want all of you. Don’t you dare hold back.”

He wasn’t sure he could have, and he certainly didn’t need to be urged twice. He surrendered himself to the moment, to the urge to claim her, fearing the act itself would be over far too soon and yet relishing the knowledge that they had a lifetime together to build on the love between them. A deep groan of satisfaction rumbled through his chest when he felt her shudder beneath him, the pulse of her orgasm setting off his own.

Afterward, he would have rolled off her, but she clutched him to her. “I hope I was worth waiting for.” The words were muffled against his shoulder, but he still heard an unaccustomed note of hesitancy in her voice.

He lifted himself on one elbow so he could press his lips against her forehead. “My love, it was worth everything to find my one and only Lady Sterling.”

Then he stretched out beside her, smiling when she burrowed against him in sleepy satisfaction. Their bodies entwined, he let himself drowse—at least until he recovered the energy to show her how much he loved her all over again.

Chapter 21

When Laura awoke, the room was gray with the light of early morning peering in around the edges of the draperies. With a careful stretch, so as not to wake Jeremy, she turned so she could examine what darkness had earlier hid from her eyes: a small, simply furnished room, with the bed tucked in one corner so as to make as much space as possible for a desk, a chair, and bookcases filled from top to bottom. She smiled to herself, unable to imagine a more perfect encapsulation of the man himself.

If she had set out to design a man to suit her, Jeremy Addison would not have been that man. Fate—in the person of General Scott, who had sent Jeremy into her life on such a curious whim—had had other ideas. She still scoffed at the notion that a woman needed a man to complete her or fulfill her. Sometime in the last few days, however, she had discovered that needing a person, the right person, was not a sign of weakness, but of strength.

She had been whole before she had met Jeremy. But she was stronger with him at her side.