properly pleasured me. Go ahead, spill your seed. I want you to do it.”
He almost did at the sound of those words. “Shut up, Helena. I have my pride to consider.”
“Hmm.” She kissed him on his neck—she licked his neck. Her hand slipped between their bodies to touch the base of his cock.
“Stop.” To punctuate his words, he withdrew and propelled into her again.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, my. What’s that?”
He did it yet again, deeper, harder. “This?”
She panted. “Yes, that.”
“This is what you are not getting more of if I come too early,” he growled.
“I changed my mind. I want you to keep pounding me like this.”
“God!” He swore, nearly undone by another surge of lust. “I am not going to last if you won’t be quiet.”
She was utterly merciless. “You must—you have your pride to consider. And I want to tell you how good you feel inside me, how big and hard and powerful.” She wrapped her legs about him. “I might let you have supper later, but I am not going to let you sleep. You are going to pleasure me all night.”
He kissed her to silence her, but there was no stopping her clever hands or her writhing body. Years of nighttime fantasy paled to utter insignificance before the reality of making love to her. For even in his wildest dreams she’d remained just a bit aloof. There was no aloofness here, no reluctance. She was all hot willingness and naughty touches, wanting him so much that she was already shuddering again, moaning deliriously against his lips.
He shook with his own climax, emptying into her more and for longer than he ever thought possible, each convulsion more pleasurable than the previous. She kissed his lips, his nose, the lids of his eyes. He collapsed atop her, his heart bursting with sweetness, utterly drained and utterly undone.
She tugged at his hair.
“I’m awake,” he murmured.
“You have been so silent,” she said, playing with his earlobe.
He smiled into the crook of her neck. “I was imagining Lake Sahara.”
She moved back slightly to look into his eyes. “What is that?”
He lifted one hand to touch her cheek. “I used to think being in love with you was like praying for rain in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Well, rain has come, such a rain that soon half of North Africa will be a lake. There will be new grasslands and forests, an endless supply of fish, abundant wildlife of all sorts. And when the sun rises, birds in flocks of thousands will fly over the lake, their wings white as sails in the morning light.”
She gazed at him, her eyes as green and soft as the grasslands of his imagination. “That is beautiful.”
He felt like a pilgrim standing on the shores of Lake Sahara, having walked barefoot over hundreds of miles, yet all the hardships forgotten, filled with only wonder and reverence at the marvel of it all.
She kissed him slowly, softly, and then said the loveliest words under the sky. “Let’s make it rain some more, David.”
CHAPTER 12
Helena was in high spirits. Who wouldn’t be, after a night of glorious lovemaking?
Moreover, standing on the platform of the rail station, she was surrounded by her family again—they were all leaving London, she and her David to Kent, Fitz and Millie to Somerset, and Lexington and Venetia to Derbyshire. And on top of that, her recovered memories were making themselves useful.
Two ladies, who were also waiting for their train, had stopped to tender Helena their good wishes for both her health and her wedded bliss. And Helena had not needed to be reintroduced to either, for she’d met them both at Venetia’s first wedding and recalled them perfectly.
And miraculously enough, nothing seemed to have changed about either. Miss Tallwood was still bespectacled and slightly stooped, more interested in the history of fabrics than the wearing of them. Her handsome sister Mrs. Damien had persisted in widowhood, preferring the nurture of orchids to the nurture of husbands and children.
Helena enjoyed listening to the sisters talk, though she was also aware that Fitz and David stood a little apart from the cluster, having a discreet conversation of their own.
Miss Tallwood was waxing poetic about a fifteenth-century bolt of brocade she’d recently added to her collection when Mrs. Damien cried, “Oh, look, isn’t it that nice Mr. Martin who helped you prove the provenance of your brocade?”
At the mention of that name, Helena’s heart thudded unpleasantly. Venetia, Millie, and Lexington all glanced at her—David