Page 71 of Lady of Charade
“What?” he asked, pretending to be offended.
“It is hard to imagine a man such as yourself in the rustic cabin where I grew up.”
“Yet you saw me often enough sleeping on the bare floor of lodgings far from where I was raised, and now in an inn near the Plymouth docks. I am a man of many disguises, my soon-to-be Mrs. Redmond.”
He said the words in jest, for it was how they had entered this inn, but now that he said them, he had to admit just how much he enjoyed hearing the words roll off of his tongue.
“I like that — Mrs. Redmond,” she said, echoing his thoughts, and he drew her closer to him once more.
“As do I.”
This time when his arms came around her, they did not remain on her back, but rather drifted down, cupping her buttocks and pressing her against him. He would never forget the feeling of being with her, inside of her, and he desperately longed to do so again.
But she was still so sweet, so innocent, that he didn’t want to rush this. No, he should take it slowly, showing her all of the love that she deserved to feel.
He brushed a hand over her hair, slowly removing the pins one at a time, relishing the process as the smooth silky strands cascaded over his fingers. She sighed into the crook of his neck, her breath causing tremors to shimmer down his spine. He found the end of the ribbon that tied her dress together at the bottom of her back, and it took but a few moments for him to release it. He was, at the moment, quite grateful for the fact that she had to ensure her dresses were easy enough to fasten and unfasten that she could do so herself.
As the sleeves of her dress began to slip off of her shoulders, Sarah lifted her hands to David’s jacket, releasing his arms from it, before it slid to the floor. As her dress began to pool around her waist, David boosted Sarah up so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and she widened her legs so that he was standing between them. He grinned at her forwardness as she tugged him toward her and began to unfasten the fall of his breeches. He tried to step back out of her grasp, for he was sure that if she touched him he would come apart, and he had far more work to do.
“Please?” she asked, looking up at him, and David knew that whenever she looked at him with those warm brown eyes, there was nothing he would ever be able to deny her. He nodded, swallowed hard, and willed himself to maintain control. The moment he was free, his breeches falling down, he made quick work of the remainder of her dress, her stays, and her chemise, before she was sitting in front of him exactly how he wanted her — but she wasn’t about to let him have only what he so desired.
No, Sarah now rose so that she was kneeling on the bed, and divested him of his waistcoat and linen shirt. David could have helped her — it certainly would have gone much faster if he did — but he far preferred watching her do the work.
As much as he had enjoyed what was before his eyes, however, when they were finally both free and he pulled her to him, he knew there would never be anything in his life that felt as good as her skin upon his. She was warm, pliant, and her fingertips were light as they ran up the planes of his back, coming over his shoulders and onto his chest.
David allowed his eyes to dip to take in all of her that was illuminated by the glow of the candlelight. Her skin was so soft, dotted in the same beautiful freckles that covered her nose. She was curved in all of the right places, her breasts, her hips, her waist all fitting so perfectly into his hands.
“I think you were made just for me,” he said, hearing the desperation in his voice, which emerged as just more than a whisper.
Her lips turned up ever so slightly in response as she tilted her head and gave a little shrug in agreement before raising her face to his, and he took her offered lips, tasting, teasing, loving as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close.
Unlike any other encounter he had ever had, David thought he could simply kiss Sarah forever and be perfectly happy. Of course, he longed for her, but in the same breath if faced with a choice, he would spend the rest of his days holding her in his arms with his lips upon hers as opposed to doing anything else with any other woman.
She, however, was interested in continuing what they had started — and David wasn’t one to argue. Sarah broke their kiss, inching back on the bed until she neared the headboard. David crawled toward her on his hands and knees until he was covering her body. At first, she was giggling, but then her expression turned serious once he approached her. She reached up to cup his face in her hands, bringing him back to her once more before he began to make his way south, along her collarbone to her breasts, where he paid attention to first one and then the other. She arched up off the bed toward him, but as much as David yearned to find where he belonged, he first wanted to show her just how good this could be.
He traveled her body with his lips, kissing her, caressing her in places he knew she hadn’t been aware could be the slightest bit erotic.
“What are you doing to me?” she groaned, and he grinned, having accomplished his goal. Catching his expression, she glared at him, but then he inched his fingers toward her center, stroked her, and she moaned.
“Are you ready now?” he murmured.
“I was ready the moment we walked into this room.”
David chuckled as he found her entrance, slowly sliding inside of her, surprised all over again at how perfectly the two of them fit together. Even their movements seemed to be more in sync than he ever could have imagined.
“Sarah,” he groaned as they moved as one, and, in but a few moments, came together in such resounding perfection he wasn’t sure that they would ever again be able to match it.
But they would certainly try.
“I love you,” he whispered, the words both foreign as well as so completely right.
“And I love you,” she returned, a smile on her face, which he returned.
Had anyone told David a month ago that he would be found in such a position, content with the thought of spending the rest of his life with one woman, and only one woman, he would have laughed at their joke. But now that he knew what it was like to have found the one who could make such a thing possible, he realized how idiotic he must have sounded to Berkley and Clarence when he was suggesting to them that perhaps committing to one woman was not the wisest choice.
As he and Sarah lay there blissfully together, however, David’s mind began to turn from this moment between the two of them to what was to come. For the truth was, he had only ever been responsible for himself before. Now, he would have a wife to support, and the likelihood was that he would no longer have access to any funds from his father. So what was he to do? David had a fine education, of course, but not really in anything particularly useful. The only occupation that even slightly appealed to him was perhaps that of a barrister, but first, he would require more education — education that he could no longer afford.
“Of what are you thinking?” Sarah asked softly, and he kissed her on the head.
