Isobel rose up on her knees. She took his hot, hard length in her palm, and sighed from the pure wonder of it. Of him. Royce was just what she needed, in every conceivable way, and she’d nearly lost him because of immaturity and preconceived notions. With tears in her eyes and her heart on her sleeve, she guided his member to her opening and then, while holding his gaze, she slowly lowered herself down, down, down onto him until she was fully impaled.
Their moans blended and echoed in the silence of the room.
“I’ll disappoint you. I’ll make mistakes. There will be gossip.” His girth filled her completely; his length rubbed comfortably along every sensitive spot she had.
“If I remember correctly, Hadleigh’s wife is very fond of saying that is how we learn.” He kissed her. “Society can go hang, for I’ll have you… if you’d ever answer my bloody question.”
“Patience, Doctor. You shouldn’t rush these things.” Perhaps she’d let him suffer a tiny bit more, for urgency compelled her to move. Isobel rose upward on his shaft and then plunged downward again for the sheer experience of feeling him fill her body. But her confidence faltered. “I’m not skilled in this position.”
He growled. The man actually growled as he grabbed hold of her hips. “Come down when I thrust up.” Then he moved, and she did too. They came together so hard and he was sent so deep that she cried out from the bliss of it.
Isobel rode him as best she could for as long as she could, and with each thrust her hold on reality slipped. “I’m losing it.” She fell off his shaft when her concentration scattered, but instead of refitting himself to her body, Royce merely chuckled.
“Perhaps this will help.” He wrapped his arms around her, shifted positions, and then laid her on the sofa, coming over her seconds later. “We’ll have a lifetime to practice that particular feat.”
“That assumes I’ll wish to marry you,” she said in a fair imitation of the line he’d teased her with earlier.
“Let me show you why you will.” With one arm cradling her head and the other holding his full weight off her, Royce settled himself between her bent knees. A heartbeat later, he’d speared into her again, and when he moved, Isobel locked her ankles at the small of his back. She canted her hips to better receive his thrusts.
The pressure within built and stacked and coiled, but she didn’t want this coupling to end. “More,” she begged in a choked whisper. “I need more of you.” Oh, her doctor was clever, for he took her instruction to heart. Over and over, he stroked. Again and again, he thrust. Faster and faster his hips moved until she moaned her approval and dug her fingers into his shoulders merely to keep from being shoved along the length of the sofa. “Oh… ah… yes!”
Sweat formed on his brow and upper lip. His eyes closed while an expression of fierce concentration lined his face. And still he worked to draw out her pleasure. He moved his hand to her hip, and when that apparently wasn’t what he wanted, he found her breast, rolled the erect tip, squeezed it lightly. “I’m nearly done.”
Isobel cried out. That prick of pleasure-tipped pain was all it took to smash through the dam holding back the insistent pressure deep in her lower belly. “Royce!” Her body stiffened before she shattered into a million pieces of light in his arms. Joy swept her into a tunnel of light and held here there, keeping her floating.
The doctor stroked once more before he, too, found his own release. His member pulsed and jerked inside her in a bid to match the fluttering contractions in her core. “Damnation, Isobel. You’re amazing.” His warm breath skated across her cheek. Then he collapsed onto her body, and she reveled in his unique weight, in his scent mixed with the more pungent scents of man and sweat and love-making. “Can you imagine thirty or forty more years of this?”
“I haven’t said yes.”
His sharp inhalation was the only response he showed. Carefully, he levered off her enough to hold her gaze. “You will, won’t you?” Panic shadowed his eyes.
“If you’d asked me that a month ago, my answer would have been no.”
He snorted. “I did ask earlier, in a roundabout way, and you did say no.”
“Yes, well.” Heat filled her cheeks. “After everything you’ve since told me, after everything you’ve done, after all that I’ve thought about, I’ve come to a decision.” She held his head between her hands. Oh, he was so dear to her already it nearly brought her to tears. Silly, stupid tears she couldn’t control, apparently. “Despite everything, no matter how many reservations or excuses I can invent, I’ve fallen in love with you, Royce Marsden.”
His lips formed a perfect “o” of surprise. She lightly rested the fingers of one hand against them.
“Let me finish.” When he nodded, Isobel dropped her hand to his shoulder. “Yes, these changes terrify me, and yes, the future baffles me, but somehow, if you’ll be by my side, I know I’ll be able to navigate my way through without losing myself in the storms of my own making.”
“Does that mean you’ll marry me?” Such hope rode on the question that she fell down, down, down deeper into love with him.
“Yes.” She couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up in her throat. “Yes, I’ll marry you—I love you—and I’ll be quite content to do so, whenever that may be, for it’s hardly a convenient time.”
“Finn has given me a good plan.” He struggled into a sitting position on the sofa. “And there’s this.” After digging into the pocket of his waistcoat, he brought forth a plain, slim silver band. “I didn’t think you’d want gemstones.”
“No.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “It’s perfect.”
Slowly, he slid the band onto the fourth finger of her left hand. “You shine more brightly than any jewels, sweeting. But should you change your mind, I bought a different ring.”
“I don’t know what to say but brace yourself. I’m going to dissolve into tears again.” What a maddening curse to have. “This isn’t the kind of woman I am.”
With a chuckle, Royce wrapped his arms about her and pulled her into his side. “I don’t mind, my love. This has been a rather emotional summer.”