Page 64 of Bound By her Earl

She found herself growing far more forgiving when she realized what he was up to. He pulled off his trousers, tossing them over the end of the bed. When he kneeled up between her legs, it was in his full glory.

He was strong and rugged. Masculine and beautiful. Her gaze lingered on his manhood, shocked to see it extending in front of the rest of his body. She’d felt a…presence through his trousers, but this was…

Intriguing. There really was no better word for it. Again, her fingers itched with the desire to touch, to feel. She didn’t know what she wanted more—to look at him longer or to have him resume touching her.

When one of his hands casually touched his length, she amended that. No, shedefinitelywanted him to touch her.

“You’re a dream,” he growled, dropping to hands and knees, so he could kiss her so thoroughly that she felt lightheaded. “A bloody dream. Do you know that? You clever, brilliant,gorgeousgirl?—”

He cut off with a groan as he pressed against her, the pressure alien at first. She’d expected pain—it was nearly the only thing she knew about marital relations that a woman ought to expect pain—but it was a stretch, not an agony, and she was so aroused by hislengthytormenting of her body that she’d have accepted any amount of discomfort for some release.

Any mild protests that her body put up at his entrance soon yielded, however, both to his firm, sure press forward and to the mounting pleasure that his entry offered. When he was seated fully inside her, his face only inches from hers—and, damn it, Emily was happy with her height, too, in that moment—he paused.

“Benedict,” she said, her voice full of wonder.

“Emily,” he returned, the sound a sigh of relief. When he kissed her then, it was the gentlest kiss he’d ever offered. It was a promise. She let him take and take and then gave back to him in return.

And then, when she could take it no longer, she broke the kiss. “Pleasemove,” she begged because finally her body knew how to articulate what it needed.

He flashed her another one of those quick smiles beforefinallyobeying her command.

It was a marvelous feeling, strange and new and compelling. She felt him inside her, causing pleasure in a place she hadn’t known existed but that she now recognized astheplace in which she needed his touch the most. Their words fell silent, their breaths becoming a melody of pants, groans, moans. Dizzily, she admired the flexing motion of his arm, pressed to the side of her head, as he moved and moved.

“Oh,” she said after a while because there was something coming, something that she feared would make the previous day’s pleasure look laughably simple. “Oh. Benedict.”

His head fell forward, his forehead bracing against hers briefly. Then his mouth pressed to the space right below her ear, his breaths puffing against her in gasps that sounded almost pained. He reached one arm in between their bodies and touched his fingers to that sensitive place at the apex of her thighs.

And Emily died. For a moment, she did wonder if she’d truly died because surely such pleasure was an impossibility while still possessing of a human body? Except she must be alive, because the pleasure was clearlyinher body, was coursing through her, reaching for her toes and her fingers and the top of her head and herheart?—

Benedict cried out, his hips pressing to hers with one last, fevered push, like he felt he could never get close enough. And then his limbs went liquid in a limpness that was echoed in her own body. She wasn’t sure if she was pleased or disappointed that he had the presence of mind to drop to her side instead of directly atop her though she knew that she enjoyed the weight of his heavy arm and leg that still draped over her.

All she knew, really, was the absolute crushing delight of good sensation. Her body felt marvelous. Benedict’s body felt marvelous. The bed beneath her felt marvelous. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to form sentences again, but who cared, really, when the world was this beautiful and built of light?

She didn’t move when Benedict sat up, nor when he gently removed the rope from her ankles and wrists. She didn’t move when he rubbed softly against the place where the ties had been, nor when he pressed one soft, affectionate kiss to the inside of her right ankle.

She only moved, in fact, when Benedict said, the smallest note of worry in his voice, “Emily? Are you all right?”

Even then, she only cracked one eye, only smiled with one side of her mouth. It was the best she could do. And he, she noted with some satisfaction, looked only marginally less wrecked than she.

“Oh, yes,” she said, the words vaguely muddled. “I am wonderful, aren’t you?”

CHAPTER 18

Benedict had to commend himself. He was, as it turned out, an absolute genius.

He’d always known that a marriage of convenience was a good thing, after all. Plenty of people had mocked him—his good friend Evan came to mind—but they were all wrong, and Benedict was right.

Benedict was, actually, evenmoreright than he’d expected. Because he hadn’t anticipated the most convenient part of having a wife: that every morning, he woke up with a deliciously rumpled, marvelously tempting woman lying right beside him.

It would have been, he knew, a bit more proper to retire to his own bedchamber after lovemaking. That was really what he wasmeantto do. But whoever made that rule had neglected to remember that doing so was ratherinconvenient which was completely contrary to his purpose.

Also, he allowed, their lovemaking had ended up being rather more vigorous than he’d expected. He was tired. He didn’t want to get up and cross to his own room. It just seemed like an awful lot of work.

So, after the first few nights of bedding his wife, he stopped trying to convince himself that he was going to return to his own rooms and instead convinced her that she should just come to his rooms in the first place as his bed was bigger.

Convenient, he thought smugly as he rolled awake one morning to find Emily’s face, free of worries in sleep, already tucked pleasantly into his neck.

Her curls were spread out in a wild carpet beneath her head. She’d not braided it the night before which meant he’d properly tired her out before they’d fallen asleep. He grinned at the thought. She’d no doubt glare and mutter about “insatiable men” as her maid undertook the lengthy process of detangling her mass of hair, but he couldn’t feel sorry about it, no matter how much she glowered.

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