Mary Balogh - Web of Love

He could feel the heat of her as soon as he touched her, the tautness of her, the eagerness to find his mouth in the darkness. She was warm, soft, shapely. Eager for him. Not with the feigned eagerness of the numerous courtesans with whom he had lain in the past, but with the hot straining eagerness of a woman for her lover.

She came to him, put herself against him, felt the warm length of his limbs, felt his arms close about her, his mouth reaching for hers. And there was no thought to holding back. She gave herself fully and eagerly. This was what she had wanted. What she had always wanted. She had always wanted him. Always loved him. And there was an enormous hurt somewhere that he would soothe for her. That he would take away.

He covered her mouth with his and traced her lips with his tongue before plunging into the warm, moist cavity beyond. She was beautiful. All woman. All eager hot yielding woman. Eager and hot for him. Yielding to him.

And he wanted her. God, he wanted her. Had wanted her for days. For weeks. All his life. He had always wanted her. Always searched for her. Only for her. He took fire.

And turned her beneath him on the bed. And rolled heavily on top of her and lay still until he could get the pain under control. He could not lift his weight away from her. He was forced to crush her into the mattress.

But she did not complain. She wrapped her arms about him, opened herself to him, raising her knees to his hips. And she lifted her face to his again.

“Ellen.” He kissed her, deeply, deeply. And moved his hands down her warm sides, past her breasts to her slim waist, over the very feminine curve of her hips. And beneath her. She hugged him with her thighs. And he found her in the darkness, the entrance to her, and he hid his face in the soft silkiness of her hair and pushed himself into the blessed deep heat of her.

They both gasped.

“Dominic. Dominic.”

Her hands were roving over his back, above and below the bandages, and she tilted herself to meet him, moved against him and with him so that he clenched his teeth and closed his eyes very tightly and willed control on himself.

“Yes. Oh, please. Yes.”

“Ellen. So beautiful. Oh, my love.”

“Yes. Dominic. Oh, please. Please.”

They found a rhythm together, and he moved his hands up into her hair and took her mouth with his again.

And this. Oh, yes, this. Dominic. He was loving her and she him. This was as it had to be. As it had always had to be. Dominic loving her and she loving him. Nothing held back. Giving and receiving. Together. Loving. Yes. Oh, this. Surely some part of her had always known.

He turned his face into her hair again and drove into her and into her until he lost himself-long before he wanted to and long before he was sure she was ready. He took all that she had to give and gave her all of himself until he lay throbbing and spent in her, all of his weight pressing down on her.

He rolled away from her, biting down hard on both his lips so that she would not hear his pain, and keeping one arm beneath her head. He pulled the bedclothes as neatly as possible around them and looked at her. Her eyes were open, he could see.

“I squashed you?” he asked, putting her hair back over her shoulder with his free hand.

“No.” She traced the line of his lower lip with one light finger and then closed her eyes.

There was a bewilderment. An emptiness. A disappointment. She had not been ready to let him go. And yet there was an exhilaration. A warm glow. A satisfaction. He was her lover. He loved her. He had been inside her. There was still the throbbing, the aching pain where he had been. And his arms still held her. She breathed in the warmth of him.

And she loved him.

She slept almost immediately. He could tell from the evenness of her breathing. He was breathing shallowly, waiting for the pain to recede, knowing that it must do so eventually if he lay very still.

And he watched her the while in wonder. Wonder at himself that he had not recognized her until that night. He had known her for a long time, had liked her, respected her, admired her. Even felt the pull of an unwilling attraction. But he had not recognized her. For three weeks while he had lain in this bed he had come to depend upon her, to feel comforted and happy only when she was there. And yet he had not recognized her. For days he had drawn closer to her, felt her beauty, the sweetness and strength of her character, known that he did not want these days to end. But he had still not recognized her.

He had searched for her for years. And he had persisted in looking for her in young girls who were frail and in need of his protection. But she was strong and had sheltered him with her protection. And she was no girl. He simply had not recognized her.

But here she was anyway, in this bed, in his arms, warm from his lovemaking. The woman of his life. The love of his life. Ellen.

He tested a somewhat deeper breath. The pain was receding.

Was she always as wildly passionate? Had she been like this for Charlie?

No, no, no, no. No! Lord Eden found that he was shaking his head from side to side on the bed and gritting his teeth. Not yet. Not that name. Not yet. He was not ready yet.

He gazed at Ellen and knew beyond any doubt that this was no brief passion for him. He loved her. She had just given everything with no demand for anything in return. But he would give anyway. All of himself. All that he had. It was all hers. He had searched all his life for her. Now that he had found her, all he had, all he was, was hers.

Ellen.

His pain had gone. Her bare legs felt warm and smooth against his own. He could smell her fragrance again. She felt very, very good.

He closed his eyes.

MADELINE CAME VISITING THREE TIMES. And Ellen went out each morning to buy food and to have some fresh air and exercise, and once she went to bid farewell to Mrs. Byng, who was going to join her husband in Paris. But apart from that they were alone together for six days. Six days and nights of magic that they both knew must come to an end but did not wish to end. Six days during which they both held at bay what both knew must be faced soon. Six days of wonder and of love.

Ellen had woken during that first night and removed herself from the bed and the room without waking him. And she had lain awake until dawn, not even trying to sleep, not wanting to sleep. There was too much wonderment to feel.

He was still sleeping the next morning when she plucked up the courage to take warm water and his shaving things in to him. But it took a great deal more courage to go back in with his breakfast tray. She could hear him moving about in his room. And she did not know how she should behave when she went in there, what she should say.

She need not have worried. He was lying in bed again, and he watched her come into the room as he always did, and he smiled as he always did and bade her good morning. And he sat up without her help, gritting his teeth so that she would not know that he was in pain-foolish man to believe that she did not know. The only thing different from usual was that when she set the tray across his lap, he took her hand and lifted it to his lips, kissed the palm, and smiled up at her. And she leaned forward, without any thought at all, and kissed him briefly on the lips.

They said nothing beyond the usual. She sat with him while he ate, and told him some of the gossip she had heard at market that morning, told him he was foolish when he announced that he was going to walk right out into the parlor that day and back again without any assistance, and said that, yes, there were more kidneys in the pan and he might have them, since all the food he had put inside himself in the last week had not yet killed him. And, no, she did not want them herself. How could he even think of eating kidneys for breakfast?

For six days they lived much as they had lived before, except that each day he sat and walked a little more than he had the day before, though each day he swore just as fiercely at his own weakness and his seemingly insatiable need of sleep.

Ellen sat with him through much of each day, sewing when he rested or slept, waiting to leap to her feet and run to his assistance when he walked, talking and listening tirelessly when he sat or lay awake. She listened avidly to stories of his childhood and boyhood, a time of great freedom and happiness, it seemed, except for the great blot of his father’s death and his mother’s near-breakdown for a year afterward. But he had had his brother-only nineteen at the time of their father’s death, but a rock of strength and cheerfulness and dependability, it seemed. And he had had his sister.

She told him more about her own girlhood, even up to the pain of that final dreadful quarrel, after which her mother had left, not to return. And during which she had told her husband that Ellen was not his daughter. Perhaps she would never have known, Ellen said, if her father-the earl, that was-had not been drunk at the time and had not come crying to her. He had told her and spent the following week drinking and crying and begging her not to leave him but to be his daughter anyway. But she had left.

Her father-her real father-had been a family acquaintance for years. He had been in London at the time, on leave from the army. She had gone to him and persuaded him to take her with him when he left again. He had never been unkind to her. He had always made sure that she had the best of care and all the necessary clothes and possessions. He had made an effort to spend time with her and to show her affection. But it had been difficult for both of them to suddenly play the role of father and daughter after so many years.

She never took her stories closer to the present than that. Neither of them told stories of the present or recent past. But the long-ago past was safe. And it drew them closer together. They came to know each other better, to like each other more.

Sometimes he held her hand as she sat beside his bed. And sometimes lifted it to his lips and kissed it, and her fingers one by one. Sometimes they smiled into each other’s eyes and let their eyes rove over each other’s faces. And never with embarrassment. Ellen even wondered about it when she was alone. Usually it was uncomfortable to look at someone without speaking. She never felt uncomfortable with Lord Eden, no matter how long the silence.

She called him that most of the time, though he always called her now by her given name. She called him by his only when he was making love to her. And they made love each night after that first. She did not know quite what to do the next night, but he called to her as she was putting out the lamp in the parlor, and she went to him, and it seemed perfectly natural to climb into the bed beside him.

She stayed with him for the whole night after that first time. And after that first time it was truly beautiful. He took her slowly and seemed to sense at each stage of their lovemaking when she was ready to move on to the next. On the second night and every night after that she came to him, shuddering and calling his name, while he still moved in her.

She had not known there could be such physical passion, such longing indistinguishable from pain, such a peace beyond the crest of her longing. She had never experienced real passion before. And yet, though the physical sensations were intensely personal, there was a meeting too of selves and emotions as well as bodies. It was true that man and woman could become one. She was always most intensely aware of him when she was being released into her own pleasure and when he was coming to his.

She loved totally. She felt cheated if she slept soundly the night through after their lovemaking. She liked to lie awake and watch him sleeping beside her. She liked to feel her love for him almost an ache in her. And she liked to feel the warmth from his body, to know that she might reach out and touch him, that she might wake him and know that his eyes would focus on her and smile.

She loved him with a totality that could come only from the unreality of the moment. Because it was unreal. And sometimes, before she firmly shuttered her mind, she knew that it was unreal, that there was a world beyond their doors, and that because of their humanity they were part of that world and at some time must go back out into it again. But not yet. Oh, please, not yet. She needed this time out of time. She needed him. She loved him.