to have a fit? He removed his neckcloth. Then he pulled his white shirt free of his knee breeches, crossed his arms, and drew it off over his head to drop onto the heap of their combined garments. And . . .
Oh my and goodness me.
And heaven help us.
He was magnificent. He definitely had not spent the past thirteen years sitting behind a desk wielding a pen. His upper arms, his shoulders, his chest, all rippled with firm muscle.
Jessica licked her lips, and his eyes dipped to watch the progress of her tongue. One hand came beneath her chin to hold it in the cleft between his thumb and fingers while the other hand spread over the back of her head. And he kissed her with open mouth while no other part of his body touched hers.
She would surely explode. And somehow not knowing what to do did not matter any longer, for he clearly did know. She was glad it was daytime, with sunshine and nothing of her own in the room except her person and her wedding clothes, all but her shift of which were on the floor. She was standing barefoot in the middle of them. His tongue was moving inside her mouth, stroking surfaces, tangling with her own tongue, and somehow—oh, how did he do that?—making her whole body sizzle with pain that was not pain at all and . . . Ah, and with a terrible longing for something else. Something more. Something she wanted. And wanted. She wanted him.
“Gabriel,” she said when he lifted his head. It came out on a gasp. Her arms, she realized, were at her sides. But she could feel him—his body heat, his masculinity—though he touched her nowhere except beneath her chin and against the back of her head.
Those heavy-lidded eyes gazed into hers. “Come to bed,” he said.
Yes. Oh yes, please. Please, please. She was not speaking the words aloud, she realized.
He waited until she was beside the bed and he had pulled back the bedcovers before grasping her shift at the hem and lifting it upward. She raised her arms, and the next moment there was a little pile of shift on the floor. He watched as she lay down on the bed, strangely unselfconscious about her nakedness, for he was clearly liking what he saw. He kicked off his shoes, peeled off his white stockings and then his breeches.
She closed her eyes briefly. Not out of fear or modesty or shock, though she certainly felt at least some of that last. She closed them because for the moment the desire she felt was more than she could bear.
He was on the bed with her then and raised on one elbow and leaning over her, his free hand touching now far more than her chin and the back of her head. It was touching her everywhere, exploring, caressing, pressing, even scratching lightly. And his mouth kissed her mouth and then her throat and then her breasts, drawing her nipples, one at a time, into his mouth and suckling them before he opened his mouth and exhaled warm air on them. His hand meanwhile had moved down to secret places to explore, to touch, to tease, to reach inside her with one finger. Shock hit her even as her own hands, without her quite knowing it, were moving over his upper body, feeling all those warm, powerful, rippling muscles as she breathed in the cologne and shaving soap smell of him.
“Jessie,” he murmured, his voice so low that everything from her toes on up curled just with the sound of it.
And he was on her and spreading her legs with his. And—ah, dear God, he was coming into her. Slowly, stretching her, bringing a sting of pain that was soon pain no longer but shock as he pressed deep. Wonderment. Happiness.
She considered irrelevantly, even though thought was not dominant at this precise moment, if theirs was a love match after all. Surely, oh surely, it was more than just a convenience for them both. She would think more on it later. Perhaps this, whatever it was, was enough.
He lifted some of his weight off her then and began to move in her, deeply, thoroughly, slowly at first while her body adjusted as she slid her legs up the mattress, first to brace them on either side of his, then to twine about their hard-muscled strength. And his movements quickened, rocking her, laying her bare seemingly to the soul,