His fingers fumbled with the knot on his own dressing gown. In his haste, he tightened it. Frustration bit at him as he attempted to loosen the bloody thing.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered. This was not part of the plan.
“Here, let me help,” she said softly, taking him by surprise when she shooed him away and her small, nimble fingers made short work of the knot.
His robe parted and his aching cock sprang free. He was obscenely hard, and he knew it. Sin felt like a satyr. His wife’s gaze was focused upon him, her countenance frozen with a combination of shock and curiosity.
He knew a moment of uncertainty—quite rare in his long and storied experience with the fairer sex. He wanted Calliope to want him. He wanted her to like what she saw. He longed for her to embrace their union. To let herself be free.
“Move into the center of the bed,” he told her, chasing away the doubt.
The sooner he made her his, the better. It had to be done. But while his mind told him this was his duty, his body told the opposite story. It was pleasure. Anything but duty.
She did not even protest, shocking him. Instead, she did as he asked, the effort making her delicious breasts move in maddening fashion. He dropped his dressing gown to the floor, not caring where it fell, and joined her on the bed, settling himself between her thighs.
The tension he had felt in her body earlier was present once more. He saw it in her clenched jaw, her expression, felt it in the stiffness of her body beneath his. Although everything in him screamed with the need to sink himself inside her and make her his, to lose himself, he knew he could not. He had to go slowly. Temper his need.
He kissed her. Gently this time. It was a tender exploration of her lips and tongue. She kissed him back after a moment of resistance, and then her hands settled on his shoulders. Her nails sank into his flesh, and he liked the sting.
“Sin,” she said, turning her head to the side and breaking the kiss.
His cock was burrowing into her belly. He was doing his best not to frighten her, but he could not last much longer. “What is the matter now?”
“My family calls me Callie,” she said.
Her family?
For a moment, Sin was completely befuddled.
What the devil was she saying?
“I will call you Sin if you will agree to call me Callie,” she added, her eyes meeting his in the light of the gas lamps.
Her defiance was still there, burning in the amber and mahogany depths of her eyes. But there was something else there as well. Acceptance? Desire? He could not say. And there was an answering something else within him. An unexpected surge of warmth at her asking him to call her what her family called her.
“Callie,” he tried.
The abbreviated version of her name suited her. It felt right on his tongue. Just as she felt right beneath him. The taste of her felt right in his mouth.
“Yes,” she whispered, her gaze searching his.
He did not know what she was looking for. Or if she found what she sought. He was desperate to be inside her now.
“I am going to make you mine, Callie,” he told her, and damn him if those simple words did not make his ballocks tighten.
She frowned and bit her lip. “It will never work.”
“Of course it will,” he countered, uncertain if she was referring to their lovemaking or their marriage.
“How can it?” she asked. “It is far too large.”
Sin stifled a startled laugh. “It shall fit, darling, I promise you.”
Her befuddled expression touched him in a place he had not believed existed. “How?”
Curious woman.
Delicious creature. How could he resist her?
“Let me show you,” he said, and then he kissed her lips once more.
He grasped his shaft and glided the head of his cock up and down her wet slit, making certain to coat himself with her essence to ease the breach. He was thick and hard, more than ready. But he was also cognizant that she was likely a neophyte, judging from her skittishness. He could not simply ram into her, no matter how much his body cried out with need.
She emitted a breathy little sigh into his kiss when he dragged himself over her pearl. Her eyes were glazed, her lashes low. Beneath him, her body was soft and supple and pliant. The tension had slowly ebbed from