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Henry landed noiselessly on his feet, closing the window behind him. “Where’s the challenge in that? Besides, I like all this sneaking about. Suits the secret marriage bit, don’t you think?”

He took her outstretched hands and pulled her a smidge too
enthusiastically to her feet. Her nose bumped against the hardened center of his chest.

“Oh,” he said, thumbing her chin. “Oh, Caroline, I’m terribly sorry. Are you all right? I only meant to, um . . . I forget sometimes that you’re so little, you see; I’m used to my brothers, as you know they’re rather large . . .”

Caroline looked up at Henry. Large was an understatement; like his older brothers, Henry was a broad-shouldered, ginger-haired giant with the wickedest cheekbones she had ever seen. His green eyes were even wicked
er
(if that was a word)—so brightly suggestive, so darkly penetrating, Caroline feared she might burst into flames every time he looked at her.

“I’ll have a devil of a time explaining that to my mother.”

Henry angled his neck and brushed his lips to her injured nose. “Bloody business, marriage.”

“Mm-hm,” she said, burrowing farther into the circle of his arms. Her ring of ribbon slipped from her finger—it was a tad too large—and she coaxed it back into place.

His hand slid from her cheek to cup the back of her neck. With his thumb he tilted her head and caught her mouth with his. He kissed her deeply, passionately, as if he were out to steal not only her heart but her soul, her body, her being.

Henry took her bottom lip between his teeth. She saw stars.

His hands were on her face now; Caroline clung to his wrists, fearful the rush in her knees might cause them to give out. She felt the scattershot beat of his pulse beneath her fingers, the jutting architecture of his bones. Strength rippled beneath the surface of his skin, strength she felt him struggling to restrain.

And yet he touched her with great care, gently, as awed by her shape as she was of his. His fingers tangled in the hair at her temples as his mouth moved to her neck, working the tender skin there with his lips.

Caroline let out a breath, desperate, suddenly, to be free of her stays and ridiculously ruffled muslin gown. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think; she was lost in the longing she’d felt for Henry from the moment they met eyes across the garden, three weeks before.

She was hardly seventeen, set to make her debut at St. James’s the following spring. Even so, Caroline knew the
intensity of her feelings for Henry was a rare thing, rare and fragile. The world seemed fanatically intent on nipping such reckless affection in the bud before it ever had a chance to bloom.

But Caroline was intent on blooming. Beneath Henry’s careful, confident touch, his insistent caresses, she felt herself unravel and open, giving as Henry took, and took, and kept taking.

She slipped her hands beneath the lapels of his jacket. Henry rolled back his shoulders and shrugged free of the garment, tossing it aside. He began to move forward, pressing his body into hers as he guided her farther into the room. His fingers found purchase in a row of buttons between the blades of her shoulders, working them free one at a time.

“Hold up your arms, darling,” he murmured against her mouth, and gently coaxed the gown over her head.

It fell with a rustling sigh to the floor. The night air felt coolly potent against the bare skin of her arms. She shivered.

Henry gathered her in his arms, surrounding her body with the heat of his own. She could smell his skin, the clean, citrusy spice of his soap. Her desire soared.

In a hushed frenzy of movement, they unclothed one another: his waistcoat, her stays, his neckcloth. His head caught in his shirt, and after several futile attempts to remove it, Henry ripped it open. Buttons ricocheted about the room, landing with small
ping
s as they rolled across the floor.

Caroline stared at his bare chest. She swallowed.

Henry took her hands and placed them on the center of his breastbone. She inhaled at the shock of warmth that met with her palms, the spring of wiry hair. She could feel his heart beating proudly within the cage of his ribs. Proudly, wildly, an echo of her own.

In the darkness she bent her neck, and pressed her lips to his chest. He inhaled sharply, his chest rising and falling beneath the working of her lips across his collarbone, up the corded slope of his neck.

Heavens, but she hoped his parents would not return for some hours yet; Caroline couldn’t have kept quiet if she’d wanted.

His fingers tugged at the neckline of her chemise as he took her bare shoulder in his mouth. The heat between her legs burned hotter. Henry coaxed the garment down the length of her body,
releasing one breast, then the other. Quickly his mouth moved to take her nipple between his teeth, rolling it in the velvet touch of his tongue. The sensation was so poignant it hurt.

“Henry,” she breathed, tangling her fingers in his hair. “Please. Show me.”

He raised his head, eyes luminescent, translucent; they were warm and soft and they were on her, gleaming with desire.

“I was hoping you’d show me,” he replied.

“You’ve never? Never . . . you’re almost twenty, I thought . . .”

“This is to be the first time for both of us, I’m afraid.”

“Then I really
am
to ravage you.”

He grinned. “If you don’t mind terribly.”

His mouth came down on hers, and he was digging at the pins in her hair with impatient fingers. She heard them fall, one by one, until at last her hair tumbled in soft waves about her shoulder blades. Henry drew his hands through its tangled mass to rest on the naked small of her back. He pulled her to him, skin to skin; the hardened knots of her nipples brushed against his chest and she nearly cried out in agony, in desire.

The backs of Caroline’s thighs met with the bed. Henry grasped her hips, and her breath caught in her throat as he tossed her lightly onto the mattress. The coverlet felt cool and deliciously soft against her bare skin.

Henry looked down upon her with narrowed eyes, his face suddenly tight.

“Caroline,” he said roughly, slowly. “You are so . . . so very lovely. Beautiful.”

He ran a hand up the side of her rib cage, cupping her breast; he thumbed her nipple and she arched into his touch.

And then both his hands moved to her legs, sliding off her stockings; his fingers were in the waistband of her pantalets, tugging them over the smooth expanse of her belly, her knees.

Caroline was naked. She winced at the sudden rush of cool air against the beating throb of her sex.
Please
,
she prayed.
Please let it be soon.

Henry unbuttoned his breeches and swept them down to his ankles. He rose; Caroline stared at his cock, heavy with need, as unrepentantly enormous and thickly veined as the rest of his body. It jutted out from the sharp angle of his hips, unembarrassed, and she was at once hesitant and terribly curious.

“Caroline,” he said.

She swallowed. “I’m all right.”

“Caroline,” he said again. “We don’t have to do this. I couldn’t bear it if I hurt you, if you weren’t ready.”

For a beat he did not move, as if waiting for her to change her mind, waiting for her to roll over and demand he escort her home, take back all they’d said and done this night.

“I want to,” she said. “We’re married now, remember? We get to do this at last.”

Caroline sat up and reached for him. He drew a breath as her hand followed the narrowing trail of hair down his hardened belly; his whole body tensed when she wrapped her hand around his cock. He felt hard and soft all at once, the skin impatiently hot and silken. She put her mouth on his belly. One of his hands went to her hair while the other moved down to cover her own around his manhood.

“How?” she whispered.

“Like this,” he said, and together their hands moved up and down the length of his cock, once, twice, until he groaned and pulled away, suddenly, as if she’d hurt him.

“Caroline,” he said, his face in her hair. “I love you.”

“I love you,” she whispered.

“I can’t wait much longer. I want—I need you. Badly. Here.” He reached behind him, producing his rumpled shirt. “Lie down on this, love. I’m afraid you might bleed.”

Bleed?

She swallowed for what felt the hundredth time that night. He wasn’t kidding about marriage being a bloody business.

Wedging the shirt beneath Caroline’s bottom, Henry coaxed her back onto the bed. He took her knees in his hands and moved them apart, stepping forward so that he was wedged between her legs. She was wide open to him. She was afraid; she was overwhelmingly aroused.

Henry reached down and they both drew a breath when his first two fingers slipped between her slick curls, revealing a warmth, a wetness, that neither of them expected. Her desire soared; she ached for him to be inside her.

“You’re”—he swallowed—“ready?”

“Yes,” she panted. “Please, Henry.”

“Once we . . . I can’t stop then.”

“I don’t want you to stop.”

He stepped forward. The bed was set high, so high that, even while standing, Henry’s hips were level with hers. He put his hands on the inside of her thighs, pushing her legs even wider.

“Bend your knees about me,” he said.

Caroline did as she was told. He wrapped her bent legs about his hips, hooking her feet at his buttocks. She felt his fingers on her sex, holding her open as, with his other hand, he guided his cock into her folds. He nudged against her, wincing.

“Is it . . . Are we going to work?” she asked.

“Yes,” he breathed. “It’s very small in there.”

“Is it, um, as it should be?”

He closed his eyes, lips curling into a pained half grin. “You’re perfect.”

She tried not to recoil as pressure mounted between her legs. She felt herself stretching. Her pleasure was edged with pain.

“Caroline,” he said. He was looking at her now, eyes wide with concern. “Tell me how you’re feeling, all right?”

“I’m all right.”

He guided himself farther against her, using his fingers to keep her open to him. He moved his hips, pressing into her. He pressed harder, sucking in a breath as the first bit of him entered her.

The pleasant throb between her legs heightened to burning discomfort. Her eyes smarted. Henry was saying her name but she told him to keep going, and he did. Slowly he slid into her wet warmth; they both paused when he met the barrier inside her. He looked at her. She nodded, overwhelmed by the sting, by the sense of fullness he brought her.

I’m all right, Henry. Keep going.

He inhaled through his nose, and then he bucked his hips. In a single heartbeat, he sank to the hilt. A sound escaped Caroline’s lips, something between a cry and a whimper.

He was bent over her then, taking her cry into his mouth as he set his forearms on either side of her head, surrounding her. His body was wound tightly; she could tell he wanted to move between her legs, but he waited.

He gritted his teeth.

The sting began to subside, her pleasure—her heart—rising in its place. Oh, this felt lovely. A little full. But lovely.

Her hips began to circle against him, asking for more. Henry let out the breath he’d been holding and gently rocked his hips, withdrawing, entering again. Their skin, damp with sweat, slid and stuck.

She surrendered.

She surrendered to the pounding beat of her passion. To the heavy weight of her love for him.

She surrendered to Henry.

They moved against each other ardently, lost in a whirl of pain and limbs and pleasure. Her hands moved over his shoulders, marveling at the roping and bunching of his back muscles as he worked between her legs. His lips trailed over her jaw and throat.

He slowed, suddenly, and then his eyes fluttered shut; he stilled and she could feel his cock pulse inside her.

“Christ,” he said when the pulsing subsided. His lips fluttered over her eyelashes. “I’m sorry, Caroline, I didn’t mean . . . I meant to be more careful, but you felt so good, I couldn’t stop. I wanted to stop.”

“I didn’t want you to stop,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to ever stop.”

Slowly he withdrew from inside her; she felt his seed seeping warmly from between her legs.

He cursed again when he looked down at the shirt beneath her.

“What is it?” she said.

“Blood,” he replied, mouth drawn into a line as he used the shirt to clean her. “A lot of it. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Caroline flexed her stiff legs. She felt very sore between them. “All right. Sore. A little sore.”

He crumpled the shirt between his hands and tossed it to the ground. He tugged the coverlet aside, holding it open for her. “Here, lie down. I’ll get a towel.”

She crawled between the bedclothes, smiling as she drew them up to her nose. They smelled like him. Like her husband.

He returned from the washstand with a damp towel, climbing into bed beside her. Thankfully he was still naked as the day he was born; he pressed his body against hers as he coaxed her legs apart, pressing the towel between them. It felt blessedly cool.

“I love you, Caroline,” he murmured in her ear, nicking the lobe with his teeth. She felt him smiling against her skin.
“Wife.”

She smiled, too, a wide, irrepressible thing she felt in every corner of her being. Despite everything—despite how it appeared, her ten-thousand-pound dowry and his lack of position—despite their youth, their parents’ disapproval . . . despite all that, she knew this was where she was meant to be.

Caroline loved him. She felt loved by him. And wasn’t that the end of everything?

Henry spun her around and tugged her against the hardened mass of his body, her back to his front. He pulled the sheets over their heads and she, giggling, yielded to his hands as he took her body again and again and again, until the sun burned away the darkness.

*   *   *

I
t happened the next afternoon. As she was wont to do when in need of solitude and space, Caroline disappeared into the garden. Henry—her
husband
!—had a habit of sneaking from his father’s house to meet her there besides; she had half a mind to toss him beneath a bush and ravage him soundly, as she promised she would last night.