That thought, however, made him only more desperate to seize his first and possibly last opportunity to be truly intimate with her.

He stood her on her feet rather than toss her on the bed, ruck up her skirts, open his falls, and have at it. This had to be right for her, in every detail, for he might never have another chance to be his wife’s lover in fact.

So he turned her by the shoulders and forced his fingers to carefully undo the hooks running down the back of her dress. He untied the bows of her chemise then drew her to sit at the vanity, where he took the pins from her hair and finger-combed the mahogany silk of it over her shoulders.

“We usually undress at night,” Leah said, catching Nick’s eye in the mirror. “By candlelight.”

“You are glorious in any light.” Nick bent to kiss the juncture of her shoulder and her neck, to inhale her, to feast on her. “And you smell of spring and sunshine.” He nuzzled and nibbled lazily before raising up to regard her in the mirror. “And you taste of warmth and willingness and every man’s fondest desire.”

“I want only to taste of your fondest desire,” Leah replied, almost sternly. She rose and inspected her fully dressed husband, a wealth of meaning conveying itself in her single arched eyebrow.

Nick was stark naked in seconds.

“Come here.” He held out his arm the very next instant and beckoned with one hand toward his wife. “Come here, please.”

That word, Nick was finding, had a magical effect on his countess. She liked to hear him ask politely for what wasn’t polite at all. When she was standing next to him in her chemise and stockings, Nick perused her with such intensity she blushed.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said at length. “I don’t deserve what we’re about to share, and I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’ll presume on it anyway.”

As puzzlement at his words clouded Leah’s eyes, Nick distracted her by pushing her chemise off her shoulders and down over her hips. He knelt to step her out of it and to untie her garters and roll down her stockings, leaving her utterly naked in the soft afternoon sunshine streaming over the bed.

When Leah would have turned to climb onto the bed, Nick gathered her into his arms, her skin warm and smooth against his. He was already aroused, his erection arrowing up between their bodies and pressing against Leah’s abdomen. He pushed himself against her firmly, insisting she feel his desire even as his lips covered hers softly.

“God, how I want you,” he murmured against her neck. “To think…”

“I missed you,” Leah whispered, turning her face to his chest. “I wanted to ride into London and clobber you soundly on your handsome, stubborn, addled blond head.”

“I know,” Nick said, pushing her back so she sat on the high bed. “I deserved to be coshed. I am addled.”

“And you should be spanked.” Leah hiked back on her elbows and then must have noted a gleam in Nick’s eyes. “Oh, no, Husband. It’s daylight, for the love of God…”

“All the better to see you.” Nick snatched a pillow from the bed, tossed it at his feet, and knelt between Leah’s legs. “And pleasure you, and make you scream and beg and promise never to leave me.” When she would have squirmed back in protest, he wrapped an arm around each of her thighs and tugged her bottom to the edge of the mattress.

“And taste you,” he added, swiping the flat of his tongue right up the crease of her sex.

He tormented, teased, and suckled until Leah was whimpering and undulating with frustration. When he deigned to slip two fingers into her damp sheath, she convulsed around them, long and hard, much to Nick’s satisfaction.

“Tell me again that you missed me.” Nick smiled down at her as he stood beside the bed and took a sip of water. She was on her back, forearm shielding her eyes, her legs splayed in the most lovely testament to satiety Nick had ever seen.

Leah opened her eyes. “I still miss you. Inside me, here.” She slid her hand over her pelvic cradle. “I miss you. I grieve for the lack of you inside me.”

Grief. He’d caused his beloved wife not just heartache and disappointment, but grief. Nick set the water glass down and slipped his arms under Leah’s shoulders and knees, to arrange her on the mattress so her head was on the pillows.

“I miss you, too,” he said, coming down beside her and pushing her hair back from her forehead. “In here.” He took her hand and laid it over his heart. “And here,” his belly. “And here.” He wrapped her fingers around his cock and rolled to his back so Leah was the one on her side, regarding him as she stroked her fingers over his erection.

“You are uncomfortable?” she asked, sleeving him in a long, easy stroke.

“I ache,” Nick said, opening his eyes to meet hers. “I ache for you, for the sensation of being inside you and over you and… Merciful… Eternal… Leah.”

She bent and tongued his glans, a soft, hot swipe of dampness followed by gentle suction applied just under the tip.

“Lovey.” It came out “looovveeey.” Nick closed his eyes and cupped the back of her head gently. “I’ll spend.”

She ignored him, much as he’d ignored her earlier. Her fingers found the soft weight of his testes then eased up to stroke his shaft while her mouth tended to the velvety head of his cock.

“Please, lovey,” Nick whispered, and she answered his prayer by lifting her face so her hair brushed across his abdomen. “This time, I want to be inside you.”

Leah sat back and regarded him as he lay back against the pillows. “What has changed, Nicholas?”

He was glad she realized that something was different, that he was different, and that he wanted today to be a beginning for them.

“Everything,” he said, pushing up off the pillows and gently urging her down on her back. “Let me love you, please. I’ll be careful, I promise. I’ll go slowly, and I won’t hurt you.”

“You couldn’t hurt me.”

“I have hurt you,” Nick corrected her, easing his body over hers. “I hurt the heart you gave into my keeping, and… ah, God, Leah.” He slowly brushed his thumbs across her palms and hitched closer. The great length of his cock lay heavily on Leah’s stomach, hot, and still wet from her loving. She arched up against it and made a sound very like a growl near his ear.

“Shame on you,” Nick whispered, arching away from her. “I intend to make a proper job of this, Wife, and you will not rush me.”

“Hah.” Leah wrapped her legs around his flanks and pressed her wet sex to his shaft.

“You do not play fair, my lady. And I adored you before you started breaking the rules.”

“I’m merely making a proper job of it,” Leah whispered in his ear just as her thumbs brushed over his nipples.

Holy everlasting… He loved his wife, loved this mischievous, tantalizing, playful, inventive side to her. Her mouth brushed over one of his nipples, while her hand slid down, down the length of his back to grip his fundament. Nick fought a moment’s panic as his arousal threatened his control.

Proper job or not, he wasn’t going to last much longer, not with his she-devil wife intent on her own goals. With unerring instinct, he pressed the tip of his cock against Leah’s sex and succeeded in distracting her from her various plots against his sanity.

“Nicholas?”

“Let me,” he whispered, sensing the question in her body and in her heart. “I love you, and I would give you this. Give us both this, if you’re willing.”

He slipped his forearms under her neck and cradled the back of her head in one hand. She curled up against his chest, so he felt more than saw her single nod. She laid her cheek against his chest in a gesture of surrender, and Nick felt his cock leap in response.

They weren’t even joined yet, he’d merely seated himself snugly against the opening to her body, and already, his arousal strained at the leash of his control. So he distracted himself, kissing her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. He softly scraped her earlobe with his teeth and slipped one hand down to cup and knead a full breast then tug at a ruched nipple.

All the while, he pressed forward slowly with his cock, until Leah’s sex eased around him and teasing became the start of penetration. She exhaled, and Nick glided forward the first full inch.

“Steady,” Nick rasped when he felt her gather herself to roll her hips. “We’re just getting started.”

Started, indeed. Leah’s sheath convulsed around him in firm, glad contractions of pleasure, though she held completely still otherwise, as did he.

“Oh, my… Nicholas…” Her orgasm went on so long Nick thought he was going to expire from the frustration of holding still. He contented himself with tucking her face against his throat and synchronizing his breathing with hers, then counting the tight, murderously pleasurable spasms as they passed through her to him.

She held still through it all, but then pulled herself up to him in a snug embrace when the aftershocks had faded.

“You’re all right?” Nick asked, resting his cheek against her temple.

“That was wonderful. You are wonderful, but I want more, now, Nicholas, not in five minutes.”

Her voice had a purring quality that resonated through Nick bodily.

“You’ll have more,” he assured her, tentatively retreating from even the shallow ground he’d gained, then advancing again.

“Please, Nicholas.” She clutched at him with her legs around his flanks. “I need…”

“I know,” Nick replied softly, reassuring her with the beginning of a rhythm. “I know, lovey. I need, too.”

He plied her with more patience than he’d laid claim to in his entire life, easing forward, easing back, listening for the telltale hitch in breathing that might suggest he was moving too deeply, too quickly.

It never came. Instead, in the waiting stillness he heard the gradual acceleration of Leah’s breathing, the little sighs of pleasure and satisfaction, the soft groan of encouragement as she felt him truly stroking himself in and out of her body. When he was moving easily to her depths and back out again, Nick tightened his hold around Leah’s shoulders.

“Move with me,” he urged at last. “Love me back, lamb. Let me bring you pleasure.”

She lasted four well-coordinated strokes before her body gave itself up again to ecstatic contractions around his swollen cock. He thought he was going to outlast this onslaught as well, but then Leah added a purposeful clenching of her muscles to the thrust and buck of her pleasure.

Be gentle with her, for the love of God, be gentle…

“Nicholas!” Leah heaved up against him in a mighty shove of her hips, and gentleness was obliterated by mutual passion. Leah’s ankles locked at the small of Nick’s back, and she rode him in a hard resurgence of her orgasm. He met her thrusts with firm, measured strokes of his own, feeling pleasure bloom out from his cock to every particle of his physical and emotional being.

As his body surrendered to the ecstasy of an intimate joining, Nick felt at once the profound pleasure of genuine sexual gratification, and the profound bond forged with his wife. The moment was erotic, spiritual, passionate, and tender, all the wonderful things he’d thought to deny himself joined in a single, perfect procession of instants.

And the perfection did not end, though his sexual pleasure eventually spent itself in Leah’s body. Afterward, he took some of his weight on his forearms but kept his torso laid along hers, his arms snug around her.

Peace settled around him—peace and gratitude and a comprehension of the great depths to which love might grow with the woman sharing his bed.

Sharing his life, his heart.

“I could not love you more,” Nick whispered against Leah’s neck. He shifted to kiss her cheek, finding the dampness of her tears with his lips. “Lovey? Did I hurt you?”

Leah shook her head and found his hands on the pillow with her own. Lacing her fingers through his, she strained up to be closer to him.

“Love you, too, Husband,” she whispered. “So very much.”

She was as shaken as he, Nick concluded, reassured and moved beyond measure. He gathered her close and rolled to his back, so she could rest on him and he could keep his arms around her. His hands traced lazy patterns on her back, and a sweet, wondering silence came down on the sunbeams around them.

“Tell me again,” Leah said on a soft sigh.

“I love you. I love you. I love you,” Nick obliged, finding the saying of it more satisfying than he’d realized it would be.