Instead she felt his hand on her hip, holding her steady and his cock against her opening. “You look ready, sweetheart. I’m coming in. So lovely, as if you wanted me before I touched you.”
He deserved the truth. “I did. I wanted you when I should have been thinking of other things.” In church, however hard she tried to turn her mind to spiritual matters, she couldn’t stop her awareness of the man next to her in the pew. Now she had him. All to herself.
He proved it by working his plump cockhead inside her, moving slowly but with a surety of purpose that dictated the inevitable.
The slight tension at her entrance gave way as her body accepted his. He drove deep inside her, his steady penetration not stopping until his pubic hair grazed her. She shivered. “You’ve filled me up.”
“I have. And, my lady, I intend to fuck you until you scream.”
John was a man of his word, she knew that. In this position he felt impossibly deep, inside her deeper than anyone had gone before, the sensation more intense, verging on pain. Faith grit her teeth and endured, until he withdrew and plunged back, his balls colliding with her, touching the soft, wet flesh between her legs.
She huffed, grunted when he powered inside her once more, and then gripped both her hips, dragging her back against him as he thrust, granting her no mercy. “Take it all,” he said. “You hear me?”
“Yes, yes, I hear you. Yes!” The last when he grazed a particularly sensitive spot, and she found herself unable to bear it. She wouldn’t beg him to stop, refused to allow it. This was new country, and what she recognised as pain didn’t actually hurt, it introduced her to a new level of lovemaking—fucking. He’d called it that, and he was right. He was taking her, teaching her body to accept his in any way he saw fit, fucking her senseless.
Her body responded, as if it was soaring out of her control. Faith loved it, adored the feeling of helplessness, of being taken. Used.
God knew she’d been used before, but not this way. Not with a care for her, how she felt, what she wanted. For he changed his angle of entry when she moaned his name after a particularly hard and fast plunge, kept at that place to stimulate her.
Their bodies connected with a sharp slap, the only sound, other than their breathing and their murmured words she could discern.
If traffic moved outside, she remained unaware of it. If maids went about their duties and the other occupants of the house spoke and called to each other, she didn’t hear it. If the whole of the street outside had exploded in a ball of fire, she wouldn’t have noticed.
Nobody but this man mattered, the man driving inside her, relentlessly urging her higher until she screamed his name. Her body froze for an instant and then blossomed into its own flames, consuming her. Then, when he made a noise low in his throat nearly animal in nature, him too. He jerked, gripped her with a hold that might show bruises later. Marks she’d wear with pride because of the glory of this moment.
With a torrent of language that she’d never thought to hear in the refined John Dalkington-Smythe, he sank to his knees. He drew her down to sit on his lap, their bodies still joined. With shaking hands he pulled her close against his half-clothed body, holding her safe and still while they recovered from the cataclysm that had consumed them.
Gentle now, in contrast with the violence of his taking a few moments before, he cradled her bare breast, stroked it, gently urged her nipple to harden. His breath sounded harsh in her ear, heat blasting past it. He kissed the rim, then lifted her away. “Get into bed,” he said. “I’ll join you in a moment.”
He did so, and she went gratefully into his arms, snuggling close.
She told herself she felt so needful of the contact because she was naked and the sheets cold, while he radiated heat that she soaked up with a sigh of happiness. Moments like these had come too rarely in her life, simple unadorned pleasure.
“We should make an afternoon nap a regular event.” He kissed the top of her head, then when she lifted her chin to gaze at him, her lips. “You are wonderful. I find it hard to believe you’ve not had a more adventurous love life.” He chuckled at her complacent smile. “Do you know how many women would slap me for saying that?”
“Why? It’s a compliment. You think I’m adventurous?”
He smiled, and something more than physical warmth spread through her, concentrating on his face, his eyes, relaxed in a rare unguarded moment. Like her, he was always playing, always covering what he truly felt. Once for the sake of the troops but now for the family, all it represented and the people who depended on it for their living.
In this room only they existed, John and Faith. “So audacious,”
he said, and he pressed his lips to her in a longer caress. “When you’re here, life doesn’t seem so terrible.”
“Life isn’t terrible.” She snuggled closer, stretching her leg over both of his, uncaring that the movement brought her sex hard against his thigh. It wasn’t as if she had anything to hide after what they’d just done.
“Not when you express it that way.” He curled one arm around her shoulders, holding her firmly and he used the other to stroke her, running down her back until she stretched, catlike. “I could learn to enjoy it. Do you want to sleep?”
“I don’t care. I’m not an invalid.”
“You’re finding your new position a strain, aren’t you?”
She tried to scoff, but knew he’d realise she wasn’t telling the truth. “Aren’t you?”
“Somewhat, but I’m used to this kind of life, at least in short bursts. I had other plans.”
“The army.”
“As you say. After my parents died, I had nothing to keep me here. I’d always longed to become a soldier.” He huffed a half-laugh.
“Of course it proved nothing like I’d expected.”
“Better?”
“Different.” He kissed the tip of her nose and she slid her hand over his chest. He had little chest hair, enough to stimulate, not enough to deter her, for she had seen men as hairy as a bear before.
She enjoyed the smattering of dark hairs that demonstrated his masculinity. As if he needed to. She wanted to touch him lower, didn’t know if she should. The only other man she’d shared her body with preferred to remain separate after he’d taken her. She tried hard not to compare them, but sometimes she couldn’t stop herself.
John ensured she reached satisfaction too. While her previous husband—her late husband—had not always ensured she was as content as he with the marital act, the reason was probably because he didn’t know what she should or should not feel and didn’t have the imagination to try, or to ask. Or he was too tired. All too often exhaustion took them, so all they had the strength to do was roll into bed—if they were lucky and could commandeer one.
“The army taught me I could live independent of anyone,” he said. “Perhaps I became too self-sufficient. Now a new life has begun, and I have to accept the inevitable.”
“As do I.”
His mouth flattened. “I know about the bag, the one you keep packed.” She flinched, but said nothing. “I understand it too. I remember never taking out more than I needed from my baggage in case we had to move on in a hurry. Never knowing where we would be from one week to the next. Is that it, Faith, or are you truly planning to leave?”
She thought and he gave her the time she needed to muster her ponderings. “You’re better off without me in the long run. I don’t know if I can give you children.” She had never hidden from the truth, or she had tried hard not to.
“Did you ever think it might be his fault?”
“I had no way of knowing.” She stopped, aware she’d given away too much by the quaver in her voice. Too late now, but she stared at his chest while she told him, too affected to meet his gaze. “He didn’t remain faithful to me. I couldn’t expect it. Why should I?