The Marriage Bargain (19 page)

At this moment Kellworth did not feel like entrapment. It felt like a place of dreams, a place where everything he could ever want existed.

Emma.

He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. Laying her gently on the bed linens, he climbed in after her.

Stroking her cheek with the back of his hand, he murmured, “Don’t be afraid, Emma.”

“I am not afraid,” she murmured.

Her eyes were dark with passion, her breath eager. He reached around her, pulling the ribbon from her plait and loosening her thick and luxurious hair with his fingers. His senses quickened.

He was powerfully aroused, had been as soon as he’d seen her facing him in the doorway. He wanted to take her quick and ease the ache inside him. But she deserved more than some rough and hurried coupling. And he craved more as well.

“Emma,” he whispered, sliding close to her, grazing his lips near her ear. “I will make this pleasant for you.” He silently resolved this would be one promise to her he would keep.

Nuzzling the silky skin of her neck, he feathered her with light kisses. She smelled of lavender, a scent he knew would forever remind him of her, of this moment of making love with her.

She gasped, a tiny, vulnerable sound. He gently turned her head toward him and touched his lips to hers, barely grazing them at first. She met him with a gratifying fervor, and he rewarded the effort by deepening the kiss, coaxing her mouth open so he could fully taste her. She touched her tongue to his, mimicking his every move.

He admired her courage. She was not about to shirk from this experience, but showed herself willing to grasp for every part of it. He plied her with kisses and gradually intensified the pressure of his hand on her breasts, his fingers lightly circling until she made an urgent sound in the back of her throat.

No less urgent than he, for every muscle, sinew, and nerve in his body demanded he take her now, plunge into her and slake his desire. But there was so much more he could show her, wanted to show her, would show her.

“Let me see you,” he murmured, urging her to sit up.

She kept her gaze locked on his as he pulled her nightdress over her head and tossed it aside. She was a vision, breasts high and swollen from his touch, waist narrow, skin glowing in the dim light. He shrugged out of his banyan and watched her look at him much more tentatively than he’d looked at her. He touched her face gently and slid his hand languidly to her breast. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. He laid her back down. Slowly he moved his lips from her neck to her breast, tasting the sweetness of her, feeling her nipple harden under his tongue.

She gasped.

“Do you dislike this?” he murmured, determined to cease if she was not ready.

“No.” She groaned and pressed herself against him.

Again she would not retreat. She inflamed his senses anew and filled him with confidence that he would not disappoint her.

While he tasted her other breast and continued to explore her with his hands, she became more pliant under his touch. She showed only ease with each new touch, but he knew that he would soon have to hurt her. It made him feel he would betray her all over again.

“I must prepare you,” he said, sliding his hand to the dark thatch of hair that had tantalized his vision. She stiffened and he felt as if he’d already injured her. “Be easy,” he murmured as he fingered the opening. “This will make it less painful for you.”

He hoped.

His own excitement mounting, he gently explored her secret places. She squirmed beneath him, flinging her arms back over her head to clutch at the pillows.

He stopped. “Am I hurting you?”

“No.” She gasped. “No. Not hurting me.”

“I will stop if you wish it.” Though it might kill him to do so.

She shook her head. “Do not stop.”

When his fingers gingerly entered her, she stiffened, clamping her legs against his hand. He started to withdraw, but she relaxed and opened herself to him.

It touched him that she trusted him with such an intimacy, making him rue the need to pierce her virginity, but her eyes turned glassy and unfocused. It was time.

He rose above her. “Are you ready, Emma?”

She closed her eyes and nodded. He dropped his head and kissed her, not carefully this time but hungrily. Feeling as if he would burst, he eased himself inside her, moving as slowly and gently as he could. She was so trusting, so willing. Her pain would be the only way to show her what her body craved and his demanded. With a deep intake of breath he thrust hard.

She cried out and clutched his back.

He stilled. “I’m sorry, Emma.”

“Do not stop.” Her voice was taut with emotion.

He obliged her. The moment had passed, and soon they moved in rhythmic unison, climbing to the peak. Nearer. Nearer. So close now.

Until pain shot through his shoulder. “Ah!” he cried, his arm unable to hold him up. It gave way and he collapsed against her and rolled to the side. He clasped his palm against the site of his wound.

“What happened?” she asked breathlessly.

“I can’t hold myself up.” The throbbing made it hard to speak. “I can’t continue.” He felt like smashing something. Or felt like he’d been smashed in two, one half pulsating with need, the other paralyzed with pain.

“Is it over?” Emma’s voice was as taut as a string on a violin.

“No.” He pressed hard against where he’d been wounded, trying to still the pain radiating all the way down his arm. “My shoulder gave out.”

She rolled onto her side and sat up. “Your wound?”

She eased his hand away so she could inspect it, but the damage was internal. His injured muscle could not hold him over her any longer.

“It pains you?”

He nodded, damning his weakness, when he’d come so close to giving her the pleasure a man could give a woman.

“Did you . . . did you spill your seed?” she asked.

Spence squeezed his eyes shut, unreasonably wounded that she thought only of conceiving when he’d endeavored to show her so much more.

She could not guess at the pleasure, he reminded himself. He’d failed to show her. Failed her again.

“I did not spill my seed,” he answered, rolling onto his back. “But I can show you another way.”

He reached for her. “Come atop me.”

Her eyes widened, but she hesitated only a moment before mounting him as a man would mount a horse. “Like this?”

He tried to smile. “Yes. Like that.” The mere view of her above him aroused him again.

He lifted her at the hips and eased her onto him. She leaned down to kiss him as he had kissed her when their positions had been reversed. The gesture made him feel tender toward her. Guiding her hips, he set the rhythm. She caught on quickly and followed his lead. Then every thought left his head, and nothing in the world existed except Emma and the escalation of promised release. In unison their pace quickened. Nearly lost to the sensation, he watched her face reflect the same urgency, the same need.

She cried out, and he felt the spasm of her climax around him. No more need to hold back, he exploded within her and still she pulsed around him. They clutched each other as the pleasure rose, peaked, and plummeted, floating them into a haze of languor.

She lay atop him, her lips resting on his neck. He turned to kiss her one more time, a long, restful, leisurely kiss. She slipped off him, but he held her close to his side.

“I did not know it would be like that,” she murmured.

He planted a kiss atop her head.

He held her for a long time, before getting out of bed and bringing her a damp towel. Moving the covers off her, he washed her as gently as he could. Her breath quickened with his touch. After drying her with a towel, he saw to himself as she watched. It was enough to arouse him again, but he feared making her sore if he took her again. He crawled into bed beside her, nestling her against him, petting her hair until her breathing slowed and she slept.

Emma woke when the first glimmers of dawn peeked in the window. For a moment she was disoriented; then she realized she was in Spence’s bed, and Spence was warm and naked next to her. Just as shocking, she was naked herself.

He faced her, one arm flung over her body. In the growing light she examined his features. His strong brow, his sculpted lips. Lips she had kissed and had kissed her back. Nearly gasping aloud, she remembered all that had transpired the night before.

How could she have known it would be like that?

She had expected something pleasant. It would have to be pleasant for women to want to do it, as some seemed to. But nothing could have prepared her for how it actually felt. Her body sprang to life again from the mere memory.

Or from gazing at him.

He opened his eyes, as blue as the spring sky, and smiled at her, a knowing, intimate smile that made her feel he remembered the pleasure, too. He stroked her hair with a gentle hand. Suddenly, fiercely, she had need of him in a way she’d not known possible before.

She moved closer and dared to put her lips on his.

He groaned and rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. She could feel him hard beneath her. Now that she knew what to do, she was in a hurry to do it. She positioned herself so he could guide himself inside her. It hurt a little, then not at all, as she moved up and down, her body demanding release. The previous night had seemed like a lovely, leisurely walk, but this was a race, a wild, frenzied gallop that both exhilarated and left them damp with sweat.

They rode faster and faster, until it happened again, that magic, that spasm of pleasure, that shattering peak of sensation. How could she feel both scattered into tiny bits and glued fast to him as if they had become one person? In her waves of pleasure she felt him convulse and she knew his seed was inside her once more.

That had been all she thought she wanted—his seed inside her—but she had not reckoned on what went with it.

Her pleasure ebbed, her body relaxed, and she could think again. She would lose
this
when he left, as well as losing him. And she would lose a part of herself that now was part of him.

Forcing herself to smile, she blinked away tears. Her heart was lost to him and she must not show it.

He smiled back. “We ought to rise before Tolley bursts in and your maid goes searching for you.”

“I suppose.” She made no effort to move.

He cupped his hand around the back of her head and met her in one more, luxurious, soul-stealing kiss.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway. “Tolley.” Spence sat up.

Emma scrambled off the bed and grabbed her nightdress, not stopping to don it as she ran across the room to the connecting door.

As she was closing it behind her, she heard Tolley’s cheerful voice. “G’morning, my lord.”

It was silly to scurry away from the servants. The evidence of what they had done stained Spence’s bed linens. If Tolley did not put two and two together, the laundry maids certainly would. Emma expected all the servants would know by midday.

She lifted the nightdress over her head and put her arms through its sleeves.

The servants would never speak directly to her about it. She need not talk of it to anyone. How could she? Words could never do justice to the experience. In a day, news would likely reach the village that the earl had finally bedded his wife. Soon every woman in the valley would be watching her for signs of increasing.

She wrapped her arms around her stomach as a thrill raced through her. Spence’s child might be growing inside her right now.

Though if she were carrying a child, Spence would leave her.

Emma crawled into her own bed and buried herself beneath the covers, trying to escape this sudden plunge into desolation. How could she discover paradise, only to have it wrenched away?

Her kittens mewed from the little closet where their sandbox was kept. Dorrie had probably forgotten and closed them in as she was tidying up the previous night. Flinging off the covers, she hurried over to free them.

They came leaping out like reprieved prisoners. Immediately they crawled under her gown and rubbed against her legs, purring so loud she wondered if Spence could hear them.

“My poor little pusses,” she murmured, reaching down to scoop them into her arms. “You are free now.”

She carried them to her bed and petted them, while they kneaded the covers with their little paws.

“My darlings, what shall I do?” Her furry confidants blinked up at her. “What shall I do? He will leave again. I’ve done nothing more than delay him for a short time.”

Little Tom cocked his black head as if he understood. He bumped his head against her leg and meowed.

She laughed, though swiping at tears. “I will not regret this,” she said with resolve. “No matter what, I will not regret this glorious night.”

She picked up Tom, and his nose touched her cheek. With a scratchy tongue, he licked her salty tears.

“I will spend every night with him, Tom,” she said. “I will always have the memories, won’t I?”

Fluffy white Puss tried to climb up Emma’s nightdress to see what Tom was doing. Emma lifted the kitten onto her shoulder.

“I’ll have a child, as well,” she went on. “A part of Spence always.”

Emma played with her kittens until Dorrie rapped at the door and came in to help her dress. She donned her new yellow morning dress, and Dorrie tied up her hair with yellow ribbon. When Emma looked in the mirror, her eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed pink. She hoped Spence would think her pretty.

By the time she was ready to leave the room, Tom and Puss were sound asleep on her bed.

Emma descended the stairs nearly breathless with the hope that he might still be at breakfast. She hurried into the dining room, but Spence was not there.

Mr. Hale attended her, looking much more rested and refreshed. “Lord Kellworth asked me to convey his regrets. Mr. Larkin had need of him.”

“Are they in the library?” she asked.

“I believe they were to ride somewhere. My lord said he might be gone a good part of the day.” Mr. Hale bowed and left the room.

Emma pounded her fist on the table, then scolded herself for the outburst. She buttered her toast, telling herself she could last a couple of hours before seeing him again.