Page 58 of To Swoon and to Spar
It was like setting a flame to kindling. No sooner had her lips touched his than he was kissing her back furiously, lips and tongues and teeth—it was not a well-choreographed kiss, nor a terribly polite one. It was, quite simply, a kiss that made Jane feel as though there were a fire racing beneath her skin, and she wanted nothing more than for it to consume her.
One of his hands came to cup her jaw, his thumb resting at thespot in her throat where her pulse was pounding, and Jane pulled back, took a deep, shuddering breath, then kissed him again, both of her arms twining around his neck. His other hand came to her waist, pinning her to the wall with its force, then with the weight of his body as he pressed it against hers. She reached a leg out to wrap around his, pulling him even tighter against her, eliciting a satisfying groan from him in response.
He drew back, and she opened her eyes to see him gazing down at her through heavy-lidded eyes, color high in his cheeks.
“Do you know the date, Jane?” he asked, his breathing slightly ragged.
“I— What?” she asked stupidly.
“The date,” he repeated slowly, leaning in to take her mouth in a lingering kiss. Eventually, he pulled away. “It seems to me that it’s been about three months since we wed—and I do believe we’re meant to be revisiting our discussion on consummation.”
Jane nearly laughed; she bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself, and she could see a glint of triumph in his eyes, as if that had been his aim all along.
“Did you wish to call in a solicitor to help us sign a bit of paperwork, or can we simply get on with things?” She rolled her hips against his in an instinctive motion, and he bit off another groan.
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said, lowering his mouth to her neck; she closed her eyes again, tilting her head back against the wall to give him better access. She felt the scrape of teeth against sensitive skin, and she shuddered, then those same teeth tugging at the neckline of her gown, and the rush of cool air over her breast, soon replaced by the wet warmth of his mouth. She arched her back against the wall, her hands sliding into the short hair at thenape of his neck to keep him firmly in place, and she gasped out a wordless cry.
Penvale raised his head. “Did you hear that? It almost sounded like a ghost,” he said thoughtfully.
“So help me—”
“I’ll have to conduct further investigations,” he concluded, and lowered his head to her other breast, and all Jane was conscious of was warmth and suction and the feeling of his hands sliding up her legs, tugging her skirts up as they moved, the cool air of the room hitting the bare skin of her thighs above where her stockings ended, and then he had got a firm grasp under her thighs and lifted her so that she was braced more firmly against the wall, her legs wrapped wantonly around his hips. Then his mouth was on hers again, just as his hand was suddenly between her legs where she was warm and slick and wanting, his fingers striking up a rhythm that had Jane’s hips lifting, seemingly of their own accord, moving against him and seeking more,more,even as his mouth took hers in another bruising kiss—one that Jane broke on a gasp, then a cry, her head banging back against the wall and her eyes opening to stare unseeingly at the ceiling as sparks raced down her spine and she felt as though she was at the precipice of something, and then with one careful application of his thumb at the spot where all the nerves in her body seemed to be concentrated—
It was like falling from some great height, and before she could even properly return to herself, she could feel his hand on his trousers, and then his voice was in her ear, rough-edged in a way she had never heard it—
“Is this all right?”
And despite the fact that, at that moment, she could barelyremember her own name, much less summon anything more than a quick nod of consent, something within her went soft at the sound of that uneven quality to his voice, this private version of Penvale that only she got to see. Nothing about their marriage had been traditional thus far, and yet, in that moment, she felt the intimacy of the institution, of what they were doing, of all that they shared.
And then he was pushing into her, and now it was Jane who was kissing him, stealing the groan from his lips, and if she’d ever had cause to wonder about marital relations, about wedding nights and the loss of one’s virtue and perhaps the passion described in her books, nothing she imagined would have matched the rawness of this—of being pinned to a wall as he thrust within her, her arms and legs wrapped tight around him, of his tongue in her mouth until it wasn’t, until his breath was on her bare skin as he buried his face in her neck while he shuddered and then went still.
Slowly, Jane allowed her legs to unwind from his hips, and her feet slid to the ground; she reached out to grasp the wall for support as she once more bore her own weight on legs that were not quite steady—
And then—proving, perhaps once and for all, that marital relations conducted anywhere other than the decent, virtuous confines of a bed are truly dangerous—the wall chose that moment to remind Jane that it was not, in fact, a wall but, rather, a cleverly concealed door with a cleverly concealed latch behind a picture frame that Jane had not so cleverly managed to press by mistake, and it clicked silently inward, sending Jane and Penvale tumbling after it.
Chapter Twenty
It had been longer thanPenvale cared to admit since he’d last bedded a woman, and it had been considerably longer than that since he’d had anything approaching the experience he and Jane had just shared, so it was perhaps to be forgiven that his brain—along with all his other faculties and reflexes—was operating at a slower speed than usual. Meaning that when the wall behind Jane saw fit to suddenly turn into a door and send him tumbling to the floor, Penvale did not twist his body in a fit of noble contortions and take the brunt of the fall, thus preserving his sweet, just-deflowered wife from any pain and suffering.
Instead, he uttered a curse that was no doubt entirely inappropriate for the aforementioned wife’s ears, and then proceeded to fall directly on top of her.
“Oof,” Jane said.
“Oof,” Penvale said.
Jane poked him in the side. “If you do not remove yourself in the next three seconds—”
Penvale sprang lightly to his feet, then reached a hand down to Jane, which she reluctantly accepted. “Are you all right?” he asked, hastily tucking himself back into his trousers, as this did not seem like a moment in which he wished to be partially unclothed.
Jane paused in her attempts to adjust her bodice to something resembling decency. “It’s all a bit… sticky,” she said, wrinkling her nose and gesturing vaguely at her legs.
Penvale gave her an incredulous look. “I meant, did I injure you when Ifell on top of you?”
“Oh.” Jane waved a dismissive hand. “I’m fine. The stickiness is my primary complaint.”
Penvale, meanwhile, was a jumble of sensations—his elbows in particular, which had borne the brunt of the fall, were beginning to make their grievances known—but his primary feeling was…
Utter confusion.
