Never.”
“I won’t if you prefer it.”
Without a word, he shrugged out of his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. Katrine swallowed. His shoulders were massive, and the deeply muscled chest was covered with a mat of the fairest hair she’d ever seen. He looked down at her, saying nothing, the blue eyes smoldering with passion. She recognized it immediately. Desire, instant and primal, rose within her, and she held out her arms.
He went into them. Bending his head, he kissed her, pushing her back on the pillows. A wave of white-hot sensation seared through her at the touch of his mouth on her throat. When his hands slid up under her gown, over her legs to her waist and then her breasts, she cried out and opened her legs, reveling in the heaviness, the power and strength of the rock-hard muscles between them.
There was pain when he entered her, pain and splintering light and rocking waves of pleasure. Afterward, he lay spent on the pillow beside her, and she played with the loose silvery hair spilling across her shoulder. Without his clothes and his neatly tied-back queue, he no longer looked like an English gentleman. He looked primitive and uncivilized, like a Viking plunderer from a different age. She smiled widely.
Richard felt the movement of her mouth against his shoulder and raised his head. “Christ, sweetheart,” he began.
“I know,” she replied.
His lips found the sensitive spot on her throat. “Shall we try again with a little less intensity?” he murmured.
Her eyes, in the pale oval of her face, were wide with surprise. “Good lord, why? Have you heard me complain?”
Startled, he sat up on his elbow to look down at her. Moonlight streamed in through the long window, illuminating the flushed skin, the high bones of her cheeks, and the clear gray eyes. There was nothing of guile or flirtation shining through the transparent depths, only trust and love and a pure, elemental gleam of anticipation. He did not deserve this woman. He, Richard Wolfe, known for his savoir faire in lovemaking, had come to his wife in blinding need. He had taken her like a rutting bull or an unskilled boy with his first barmaid, and still, she held out her arms to him. He flushed, his fair skin darkening with shame.
Katrine sat up, bracing herself on her arms. The bedclothes slipped down and he saw something else: the full, parted lips and long eyelashes, the smooth column of her pulsing throat, the warm olive tones of her skin, and the full rise of her taut, young breasts.
She smiled seductively and lowered her lashes. His eyes widened as he watched her slide her hands down her own body, lingering on the curve of her hip and the flat plane of her stomach. When she returned to her breasts and cupped them, his mouth was completely dry. She was driving him insane. Where would an innocent girl learn to do that?
With a groan, he pulled her beneath him, and his mouth locked on hers. Her response was immediate, and it gentled him. Exercising the self-control for which he was renowned, he set out, for the first time, to arouse the woman he loved.
Brushing the hair back from her forehead, he trailed light kisses from her ear to the base of her throat, sucking gently at the point where the blood leaped to life. Running his hand down the slope of her breast, he followed with his mouth, flicking the sensitive tip with his tongue until he felt her nipple harden. She gasped and arched up to meet him, holding his head down. He filled his mouth with her, moving from one mound to the other until she cried out, begging him to end it.
He was fully erect. Sliding his hand between her thighs, he parted them and moved over her.
Katrine had never imagined her body capable of such magic. She was beyond thought, beyond logic, reeling in a sea of pure sensation. Heat pooled in her womb, and the delicious tension rose and rose until she wanted nothing more than to pull the hardened flesh now probing at the entrance to her womanhood as deeply into the heart of her being as it would go. Who would have thought a man’s body, all hard lines and jutting angles, could hold such delights for a woman? She wanted him now. Boldly, she reached for him, her hand encircling the turgid flesh. He stiffened and froze, the veins in his neck standing out