After a moment of silence, Sarah whispered. “I can show you where the grave is.” And she snickered.
He peered at her over the top of his arm. “This is not amusing.”
“The image of you pissing on Owen’s grave amuses me a great deal.”
He straightened. “Tonight I am going to teach you a new word.”
She crossed her arms. “What new word?”
“Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“That’s the word.”
“What word?”
“Stop.”
“I already know that word.”
He gestured around the room. “But not in these circumstances.”
Her eyes narrowed, her cheeks pinched. “I do not understand.”
Matthew cupped her face in his hands. Her expression eased, and her arms uncrossed. “Sarah, you are wrong. What happens between a man and a woman should never be painful to either of them. There may be some discomfort, but if anything I do tonight causes you pain, enough pain for you to need whisky, then you must tell me to stop.”
Her words were airy and quiet. “What are you saying?”
“Other than the fact that your husband was a complete rotter, an arsehole who should have been flayed alive?”
Her eyes shone. “Yes, other than that.”
“I am saying that I intend to show you how a woman should be treated, should be cherished.”
He kissed her.
Sarah’s mind spunas Matthew’s lips toyed with hers, gentle butterfly brushes. His fingers curled into her hair and his thumbs stroked her cheeks as his tongue urged her mouth open. She closed her hands on his biceps, firm and unyielding beneath her palms, as he explored her mouth, delving deeper with each stroke. Her knees quivered as the kiss went on—she felt as if she were melting.
Owen’s last kiss had been at their wedding, and it was certainly nothing like this. A relentless heat built within her, spreading from her chest and belly down between her legs. She whimpered, and her body began to sag.
Matthew eased out of the kiss and circled his arms around her, holding her up. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, words not really forming in her brain or her throat.
He scooped her up in his arms, curling her against his chest, as if she were weightless. His strength startled her—no man had ever held her like this—and she put one arm around his neck, clinging to him.
“Please do not drop me.”
He looked down at her, glee lighting his eyes. “Never.” He pressed his lips to her temple again as he carried her to the bed. He eased her down against the pillows, then stood straight again, reaching to untie the sash of his banyan.
Sarah’s breath caught as he let it drop to the floor. Owen Ainsworth had never looked like this. Matthew’s tall frame was a mosaic of light and shadows, darker lines defining the muscles of his chest and thighs. A broad patch of dark curls covered his chest, and a line of them continued down his taut stomach to his groin, where his cock, engorged and erect, pushed from beneath them. Everything about him, including that beautiful cock, was larger and harder than Owen had ever been, even when they were first married.
Matthew was magnificent. Yet, Sarah closed her eyes, anticipating the coming pain.
Instead, she felt a light brush of his fingertips on her ankle. He traced slow circles over her heel and the top of her foot, then her ankle again. She shivered as a frisson of pleasure slid up her legs and into the peak of her sex.
“Look at me.”