‘Perhaps you aren’t up to it, like last night,’ she suggested innocently. ‘You were so tired.’
Adam tweaked her nipple in retaliation. When she gasped, his eyes narrowed and he began to play with the hardening nub.
‘That has a mind of its own,’ Rose murmured, fascinated by the reaction, struggling to keep some control over her body and its riot of sensations.
‘Not the only thing,’ Adam said. When she looked at him his mouth twitched into a reluctant grin. Against her hip she could feel the eager jut of his erection.
My heavens, I am glad it was fast last night or I would have been shaking with apprehension. Dare I ask how he really is this morning? No, he did not need reminding about those dreadful memories and the effect they had on him. He would see it as weakness. Masculine pride was a delicate flower, Mama had observed.
Mama. This was no time to be trying to recall her mother. Rose twisted round and began to explore the curls of hair on Adam’s chest, scratched at his nipples and was immoderately pleased with herself when they tightened into knots.
‘Baggage.’ Adam’s eyes were closed.
Daring, she looked down, then curled her hand around him. ‘Is this right?’
His eyes flew open. ‘Tighter.’ It was a growl. ‘Like this.’ His hand closed over hers, moved as his eyes closed again.
Emboldened because he was not watching her, Rose came to her knees and bent over to study him better. So soft over so much hardness. So movable. With her free hand she cupped him below.
Adam groaned, pushed upwards into her fingers, then opened his eyes and caught her hand with his. ‘No…not unless you want this to be over very quickly.’ He tugged at her hand, pushed and moved her until she was lying spooned against him. ‘Lift your upper leg across mine, that’s it.’
But this is backwards… Confused, Rose gasped when his fingers slid through the curls at her apex. She was spread open for him, pinned like a butterfly against his unyielding body, his free hand encircling her to toy with her breasts.
‘Don’t resist me, just relax,’ he murmured in her ear and began to nuzzle the nape of her neck while one hand teased her nipples and the other explored the slick folds. One finger slid inside, then his thumb touched something that made her contract around the intrusive finger.
‘Adam!’
‘Shh. I have you.’ He shifted his hips, pushed and then slid slowly, inexorably into her from behind. It felt deeper than the first time. There was no soreness now, only fullness and pressure in places that were new and startling. Her head fell back into the angle of his shoulder as he moved in and out with relentless care.
‘I can’t…I can’t touch you.’ She was panting, needing, not understanding what her body wanted, only that he was driving her completely out of her mind.
‘You are all around me. Hold me.’
She tried to find some control of muscles she had never known she possessed and was rewarded by his gasp of pleasure. The pressure of his fingers on her nipple increased, the wicked, knowing pressure on that devilish little nub of flesh became more insistent, his thrusts slowed into deep, impossible, surging demands. She wanted to move, to thrash around, to scream. Rose jammed her palm against her mouth as everything reached fever pitch, erupted, threw her into lightning-spiked darkness.
She was barely conscious of her inner flesh convulsing around Adam, of his gasping breath, the urgency of his strokes. With a sudden jerk he came out of her body and she felt wet heat against her back as he pressed himself to her, groaned and went still, his arms lashing her to his torso.
‘Rose?’
She blinked and opened her eyes. How long had they lain there, entangled? Her body hummed with an entirely new satisfaction and a tingling desire to experience it again. And again. ‘I am here.’
‘So am I. It seems improbable.’
‘You…that was all right? I mean, I couldn’t do anything.’
Adam’s gasp of laughter tickled the back of her neck. ‘All right? It was more than all right, Rose. We are going to be good together, I promise you.’
She wriggled round into a sticky, tangled embrace. ‘I thought so,’ she murmured against his chest and the delicious friction of hair.
‘Wicked one,’ Adam murmured. ‘Are you tired or shall we try something else?’ He hardly waited for her murmur of assent.
*
Flint drowsed, listening to the bells. Nine. He could not recall the last time he had lain in so late, simply out of laziness or to enjoy a woman. Beside him Rose slumbered. There was a certain smug masculine satisfaction to be had in reducing a woman to that degree of boneless content. He found he was smiling as he climbed cautiously out of bed, pulled on his trousers and moved, soft-footed, to the door.
Downstairs Maggie was folding sheets with the maid-of-all-work, their stately to-and-fro dance taking up most of the kitchen as they reduced each sheet to a neat package. Moss was cleaning a musket in a corner and through the open door he could see the men lounging around the yard playing cards and yarning. One of the younger men sat propped up against a pillar, throwing a stick for Dog with his good hand.
All the heads came up as he entered the kitchen, there was a murmur of greeting and then they all, rather obviously, went back to what they had been doing. Flint contemplated calling an impromptu sick parade, just to shake them up, then settled for, ‘Good day’, before he dipped a pitcher full of hot water out of the copper and went back upstairs.