Page 69 of The Proposition
I should have read tawdrier novels.
Audric, for his part, did not seem nearly as out of sortswith the idea of them being alone in a context far different than any they had experienced before. He went purposefully to the hearth, where a fire had been lit. The room itself was far too large for ten people, let alone two, yet it housed a single opulent bed, ornate in a way that made Clemency think he had nothing to do with choosing the furnishings for Beswick. A pair of naked, playful cherubs pointed fingers at each other on the carved and lustrous bedframe.
She felt acutely aware of the bed too.
Tugging his cravat free, Audric leaned near the fire and picked up his monologue where it had trailed off while they had climbed their way to this room and this, for Clemency, meaningful aloneness.
“My sister and Ralston. I can hardly believe it, but then, I’m certain you noticed. I am always the last to know these things.”
“They do seem to share quite the profusion of glances,” Clemency replied, finding something to do with her hands by skipping them along the edge of the bedframe. Her forefinger landed on a rotund cherub bottom and she quickly pulled it away.
This was patently ridiculous. Wasn’t she a full-grown woman and he a full-grown man? She was a full-grownmarriedwoman. And had she not imagined them alone more than once, in all manner of wicked configurations that were not encouraged or described by the books she read? Yet her heart raced—his body and her own had never seemed so vital or so alive; she could practically hear the blood thrumming in her veins. She watched his pulse jump in his throat, coated gold by the fire, and realized with fading shame that she wanted to kiss—no, lick—that spot in particular.
Audric shed more clothes, and she discovered that she sincerely liked the way the fire sculpted his body, exaggerating hollows and angles she had never glimpsed before. With her gown still very much on, he came to her, and she reached out with fluttering hands to trace the broad plain of his chest, covered in coarse black and gray hair. A thread of fire tied itself to where her thumb brushed across his warm skin, a thread that ignited a path through her chest and belly, and startled her when it came to rest between her thighs.
“I think I am afraid,” she whispered.
“There is nothing to fear,” Audric told her. He took her hand and their fingers knitted together. “You may trust me as you trust a friend. Are we not friends?”
“We are,” she said and smiled. “You are my dearest friend.”
“Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections,” Audric quoted, half-solemn and half-grinning, “because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.”
“Mary Wollstonecraft, impressive,” Clemency murmured, chuckling. “Sir, I am seduced. Or maybe convinced.”
His smile remained, but in it she detected something wolfish and hungry. If there was more laughter to be had, it was swallowed and silenced by his lips descending, capturing hers, unexpectedly obliterating her fear. She felt the broad, intimidating strength of him just there beneath her hands, inviting now, and tempting.
Bethany Taylor had failed to mention the benefits of marriage in this regard, and Clemency, perhaps sheepishly, felt possessive of the heat and blood and bone that now felthers. Hers forever, hers to explore and cherish and know. Truly know. Miss Taylor warned that marriage diminished awoman, and maybe that was so, maybe that ugly surprise was yet to come, but so far Clemency only felt like more of herself, expansive and growing, a plant tended and watered with affection. If this was imprisonment, Audric made her feel strangely free.
Free.
Her gown was in his hands, flying over her head in one instant and cast onto the floor in the next. Neither of them had time to make sense of the tangle of her corset laces, not while locked in a frenzy of kisses, not while navigating around the end of the bed to the middle, and then the soft, giving mattress.
She had not anticipated wanting to cry out, and to cry, and to gasp so much—was that normal? There did not seem to be time to stop and ask. Each new foray of his hands up her bare legs or across her shoulders taught her a new hunger—to devour, to sate, to taste, to remember the new richness on the air, a scent she hadn’t known before, of their mingled perspiration and the wet trails of saliva left by seeking, wanting mouths. There was a certain music to this new activity that she had not expected but now relished—the sighs of open lips startled that way by pleasure, of smacking, of rustling fabric and nails scratching down heated skin.
At last Clemency found herself trapped beneath him, feeling the full weight of his body as it came to rest between her legs. The hearth fire blazed in Audric’s eyes, and he pulled her red-gold hair free of its ribbons, letting it spill fully over her shoulders. He craned forward and raked his fingers through her hair, the bite of his fingernails against her scalp a near undoing.
“You ignite me as no other woman could,” he told her, histeeth scraping across her neck, his hands searching and pulling, releasing the confines of her corset and exposing her breasts to the warm cupping of his palms.
She arched and keened, robbed of words. No, she had not read of this, or even come close in her occasional delves to this corner of her imagination. Nothing compared to the rich heat of his mouth around her nipple, or the flutter of her belly when his hand reached lower, a single nervous gasp managed before his fingers traced the slick heat of her sex, and nervousness turned to wonder.
The want devastated any desire she had to solve the mystery of lovemaking slowly. There would be other nights—all the nights in the world—to meander. She remembered marveling at the strength in his shoulders, poised and tense, and she remembered the expression of almost pain as he found her gaze and entered her for the first time. There was pain for her too, pressure like a pinch, but it was one wilted flower in a field of lilies.
Far more she knew she would remember Audric’s thumb worrying gently along her brow, and his whispered concern for her, then the brief flash of a smile when he was consoled by her whimpers of pleasure. She would remember his brow furrowing in concentration and the slap of their bodies meeting. There was a moment when the pain was gone, and Clemency felt herself open to him, and it felt like truth dawning—she had him, and they were married, and she could give herself over to the idea completely. She could let herself chase the itch that felt like it stayed in the back of her throat—to scratch it she needed more of him, and faster, and to be empty and full, and empty and full.
It was a word on the tip of her tongue, and then, finally,she remembered it. He clutched her hips hard, and went suddenly tense, then finished. Clemency remembered the word and gasped as he spilled inside her.
Complete.
Breathless again. Just like the whole of the wedding. Clemency laid on her back and Audric sprawled across her, both of them a sweaty tangle. The noises. The scents. The inescapable moistness of it all. No, none of her novels had communicated it well. She rubbed a small circle over her belly and let herself indulge in the odd feeling spreading through her and the almost pleasant soreness between her legs.
“Was there anything to fear?” Audric asked, crawling off her and turning onto his own back with a huff.
“No,” she said, giggling. “But much to learn.”
“In this discipline may we both become scholars.”
Clemency smirked and flicked him on the shoulder. “I’m too warm.”
