She gloried in every heated moment.
His tongue thrust forward, demanding entrance. Shock held her still, until he nipped at her lower lip and on a muffled gasp, she opened. Immediate passion rose. There was no grace in this famished meeting of mouths. Teeth, lips, tongues clashed like a war.
She gave a whimper of helpless pleasure and sucked his tongue deep into her mouth. He tasted like heaven. She angled higher and dug her fingernails into his back.
Kissing her as if he starved, he shoved her nightdress out of the way and thrust his hand between her legs. She’d been wet before she even realized that he meant to take her. When his fingers found her dripping, he gave a growl of approval against her lips. He was breathing hard, and she felt each unsteady inhalation under her palms.
He stroked her deep, but didn’t linger to bring her to climax. She didn’t care. She was close to coming with his kisses, rough as they were.
He caught her hips with ruthless hands and pushed forward.
She gave a sharp, hard cry. Her unpracticed body contracted with shock. She hadn’t had a man in her bed since Robert had gone away, and she was no longer used to hard masculine invasion.
Robert stopped, and she felt a ripple of sensation run through him. He was shaking. So was she.
Then she felt him tense under her hands until his back felt like warm granite. With a groan that made her ears vibrate, he slid forward until he was fully seated inside her. Her initial discomfort vied with a powerful wave of feminine satisfaction. Her trembling intensified, and every nerve sparked with incandescent sensation. Until the pain was gone, and all she felt was full and complete and possessed.
And however unjustified, loved.
She released a choked whimper and arched up in a silent plea for more.
* * *
Robert was lost to everything but the hot clasp of Morwenna’s body. This was even better than he remembered, and by God, he’d done a lot of remembering.
He pulled back, delighting in the succulent slide, then plunged forward. More welcome. She tightened around him and gave another of those damnable little sighs that had caused the problem in the first place.
The craving for release was a storm inside him. Every muscle tightened to agony. He shifted again. To his shame, he couldn’t hold on. It had been too long, and he wanted her too much.
Then just as the tide of fiery darkness overtook him, he felt her shudder with the ultimate response, and she cried out again.
Robert plunged into her and let an eon of bitterness and misery and loneliness flood out of him in a torrent of hot bliss. He filled her with every drop of his essence and collapsed upon her, exhausted, cleansed, finally understanding that he was home to stay.
When he buried his head in the curve of her shoulder, her skin was damp and fragrant against his face. Her arms twined around him, anchoring him at last in safe harbor. Her body quivered after what they’d just done.
He could stay like this forever, but he must be crushing her. Even scrawny from five years of captivity, he was much heavier than she was.
He made himself pull free, inciting another sleepy murmur from Morwenna. Then, unable to let her go, he rolled onto his side and tucked her back against him. She was boneless and unresisting.
Weary satisfaction weighted his limbs. And the greatest satisfaction of all was that Robert now knew that during their long separation, his wife hadn’t played him false.
Chapter Five
* * *
Robert stirred from the purest sleep he’d experienced since he’d left England on that last disastrous mission. Deep. Dreamless. Untroubled. He woke with a cock standing ready for his wife.
Automatically he reached across the bed, but his hand met emptiness. He opened heavy eyes to a shadowy room and a slender, dark-haired woman sitting beside the fire and regarding him out of unreadable blue eyes.
To his regret, she was dressed in a pretty buttercup yellow gown with a high neck, and she’d tied that glorious tumble of black hair up in an elaborate arrangement of plaits. She looked beautiful, but too self-contained for his liking. He couldn’t help recalling the wild, responsive creature in his arms last night.
“Good morning,” she said steadily. She rose to pour a cup of coffee from a tray on a table.
“Good morning.” He sat up and scratched his chest. “Is that for me?”
“Yes. You used to like it.”
He leaned against the heaped pillows and accepted the cup. She remembered how he took his coffee, he was pleased to notice.