This was real, and it was different, quite different from their kisses before, different from the way she had dreamed it would be. As Adam’s mouth angled over hers, gently insistent as he caressed her lips with his, she realised what it was. There was no doubt, no guilt, no anxiety about why he was kissing her. She knew he was showing her his love and he knew that was what she wanted, too.
Her lips parted and she shuddered deliciously at the heat, at the shocking, velvet slide of his tongue over hers. She moaned a little, deep in her throat and he shifted his hands to bring her closer, one hand in the small of her back, the other at the back of her head, impelling her into his kiss.
It was not enough. Her hands splayed across the breadth of his shoulders, her fingers spreading as they traced the hard muscle under the broadcloth and linen. He was so big, so strong, so hard, that he frightened her and delighted her all at the same time. But she was strong too, she would match him, keep pace with him, incite him to love her without restraint.
Adam’s hands shifted again and she was in his arms, lifted tightly against his chest. Decima muttered a protest as he carried her through into the hall. ‘I don’t want to go yet.’ Her lips found the skin at the edge of his jaw, rough with the start of new stubble, and she nuzzled at it, making him gasp.
‘We aren’t going.’ She felt him begin to climb. ‘Decima, stop it or I’ll make love to you here and now on the stairs!’
‘Mmm,’ she murmured encouragingly. Under her lips she could feel the pulse in his neck, hammering.
‘Witch.’ It was a chuckle, albeit a breathless one. He shouldered open a door, took a few more strides and she found herself laid down on a bed. Reluctantly Decima opened her eyes. She was in a bedroom, but unlike the rooms downstairs that were occupied by only a few items of dust-sheeted furniture, this room was fully furnished with damask drapes at the windows and new candles in the sconces. Adam struck a spark from his tinderbox and set a taper to the fire, which stood ready-made in the grate.
‘You see my arrogance exposed,’ he said, coming towards her, shrugging out of his coat in a way that dried her mouth with desire. ‘I had this room prepared, right down to the fire.’
‘Not arrogance,’ she managed to say. ‘Hope.’
Adam sat on the side of the bed beside her, watching her with eyes that were tender, patient. ‘If you want to go back to London now, wait until we are married, then you only have to say.’ He clasped his hands together as though to show he was not going to touch her without her consent. ‘But if you wish to stay, no one will expect you back.’
‘It seems a very long time since that snowy New Year’s day,’ Decima said slowly. ‘You started something I think we should finish.’ She smiled at herself. ‘I find I am no longer very good at being patient.’
‘You will have to be.’ Adam began to tug off his neckcloth. ‘I have all those freckles to count.’ He tossed the crumpled muslin onto the floor and began on his shirt buttons. ‘Of course, I could always make love to you while I count…’
‘That would save time,’ Decima agreed solemnly, reaching for his shirt placket to help with the buttons. At last, skin. She slid her hands through the opening in the fine linen, sighing with satisfaction as her palms slid over smooth muscle.
‘Hmm.’ Adam pulled her close. ‘Now then, how does this gown unfasten?’ It seemed to be a rhetorical question, for he was managing very well with the tiny buttons and the row of hooks. And then it was sliding from her shoulders and somehow her chemise was going with it.
Decima found herself on her back on the bed, everything but her stockings and garters gone. She gave a little gasp of alarm and tried to cover herself with her hands, only to find them captured and kissed. ‘Let me look at you, sweetheart.’
Adam ran his hands gently over her body, down the length of her, his touch a caress, his expression tender. ‘You are so beautiful. No, don’t shake your head at me. Look at you, so long, so smooth, so rounded.’ His palm stroked lightly over the curve of her belly, cupped her hip lightly, dipped into her waist and up to her breasts. ‘Oh, yes, now these freckles. I cannot just count, I must kiss.’
He bent his head and began to touch her skin with his lips, down, along her collar bone, down to the swell of her breasts. Decima shifted restlessly under the relentlessly soft caress, then his lips captured one nipple and she arched up in shock. ‘Adam!’
‘Not so impatient.’ His breath teased across to the other breast, the other nipple, rousing an ache that filled her body. He nipped suddenly, gently, with his teeth, then, as she was writhing against his mouth, he released her and she sensed him moving away.
It was momentary. Adam’s weight came down on the bed beside her and she felt the whole length of him, naked against her side. His arm went across her body, holding her as she shivered in reaction. Tentatively Decima opened her eyes and found him watching her.
‘I love you,’ he murmured and his hand moved, slid downwards, cupped for a moment against the tangle of hair and then, as she moaned, unable to take her eyes from his, one finger slid into the secret place that was aching so insistently.
The flood of sensation was overwhelming, shameful, pleasurable, beyond her dreams. Decima closed her eyes and turned into Adam’s body, instinctively trying to hide her nakedness against his. He turned and she found herself beneath him, his knee gently urging her thighs to part.
‘Trust me, sweetheart.’ She nodded, gasped his name, hardly able to think rationally as her body took over, reacted to his hands and his body. She shifted, cradling him between her thighs, restless until his weight came down and she could arch beneath him, secure, held, throbbing with need for him.
‘Decima, open your eyes, look at me.’ She tried to obey, dragged her lids apart, gazed into the hot, grey-green depths of his and saw desire and need and love and a kind of worship. ‘Trust me.’ And he thrust, filling her as her body bowed up under his, then withdrawing, returning, while the sudden sharp pain vanished to be replaced by a building, driving need. She cried out, her arms tight around him, letting him sweep her along. It seemed she must die—no one could withstand this. Hazily she remembered thinking she was strong, that she could follow him where he led her.
‘Adam!’ She cried his name, words of love, gasps that were not words, and something happened, something crested and burst and the black behind her eyes vanished in a blaze of light and she was sinking down, back into a velvet, throbbing darkness.
She came to herself to find she was held against a bare chest. Tentatively she moved her legs and found that Adam was stretched full length beside her. Her body was heavy with the memory of pleasure, relaxed beyond anything she could ever recall. Opening her eyes was hard, but she wanted to see him, wanted to see what expression his eyes would hold.
He was watching her, waiting for her. Their eyes met and words did not seem necessary. His hands began to drift, then his lips found hers again and Decima discovered that it was possible for perfection to become better.
How much later it was when she woke she had no idea. This time Adam was out of bed, padding round the room in bare feet, his long frame clad in one of his gorgeous Oriental dressing gowns as he touched a taper to the candles.
He turned as he heard her stir and came across, bent and took her mouth with an intensity that had her reaching up for him. ‘I love you,’ she murmured.
‘I love you, too, and, if we don’t soon have something to eat, neither of us is going to have the strength to prove it all over again,’ he teased.
‘We have to cook?’ Decima stretched. Her muscles felt oiled and sleek.
‘No. Look.’ Adam opened a door. Decima got out of bed, blushed all over when she remembered she was naked, and caught a sheet around her. The next chamber was a dressing room and in the middle of it stood a tub, full of steaming water. The dressing table was set out with her brushes and little silver pots and hanging from the doors of the press were dresses and petticoats.
‘Pru?’