Prudence had removed all her jewellery except the wide gold band and he lifted that to his lips for a kiss before he turned her and began on the tiny buttons of her gown. His mouth followed his fingers, his breath hot. Gown and petticoats slipped off together and he had the laces of her corset free in moments.
Chemise, stockings, garters. Oh, yes, she remembered Quinn’s way with stockings. Lina turned and slid the shirt from his shoulders, bending to kiss the healing scar of the duelling wound. There was time to touch him now, to place her palm against the spring of dark hair, to skim his nipples with a questing finger and find they responded just as they had before, hardening, and that the caress made him catch his breath.
He undid the fall of his trousers and she slid her hands inside, daring, exploring, finding the heat and power of him, using her soft hands to make him harder, longer. Hers.
Quinn growled and had her shift off, caught her in his arms and laid her on the bed and shed the rest of his clothes with an urgency that aroused and delighted her. As he stood beside the bed she rolled over, caught him in her hands again and kissed him, intimately, drugged with the feel of silken flesh against her lips, the musk of aroused man in her nostrils.
‘Oh, my wanton wife,’ he said, coming down over her, his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers. Time ceased to have meaning, moments flowed fast as water one second, slowed to a snail’s pace the next. His hands moved, stroked, teased, soothed, probed, pressed until Lina was gasping, aching, reaching for him and then, when she thought she would die of needing, he was there, surging into her, filling her slowly so that she could shift beneath him, adjust to the feel of him, caress him with muscles she was finding by instinct.
‘Oh, my love,’ Quinn murmured, his eyes dark as shadows in the mill pool. ‘Come with me now.’ And he moved, taking her, teaching her, driving her until the bliss she had known would be there caught her up, dizzying, all consuming and then, when she was limp with pleasure, dropped her down into darkness and safety and Quinn’s embrace.
‘Come with me,’ he said again, ‘and we will make love in countries you have never heard of, beside seas with no name and rivers with no beginning and no end.’
‘I will come,’ Lina told him, her lips pressed to the sweat-sleeked, beautiful muscles. ‘And we will travel together always, my love and all our dreams will come true.’