“After my Season?” she added, her cheeks pink, and her hazel eyes twinkling. “Do you think I might still have it now? Even for just a few weeks? But with Father so ill and Mother unable to leave him, maybe it’s still impossible…”
“I don’t see why not.” Edmund smiled, her youthful burst of fun and concern for her parents both endearing. “With Birks off the stage, there should be a way. Perhaps if Lady Templeton agrees, we could even bring you to London, and my mother could launch you with my sister.”
“Oh, Edmund!” Diana threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “That would be wonderful!”
Laughing, he kissed her blonde curls and then her forehead before she turned her mouth up to his and captured one of his lips briefly and teasingly with her teeth. In response, he cupped and stroked a rounded breast under her thin muslin dress and was rewarded with a soft moan of pleasure.
Diana said his name again, her voice now huskier and her kisses hungrier. While she might have a young girl’s natural appetite for dancing and parties, she was certainly very much an adult woman in her other desires. The woman he loved.
“Let’s go further,” Edmund said, feeling a tightening in his loins and hearing the roughening of his voice. He sensed the metaphorical shackles being thrown off, and energy unleashed between them.
Hand in hand, they ran deeper into the woods until Edmund spotted a sunny glade a little distance away through the trees. He drew Diana with him off the path, chasing her as she ran ahead of him through the bushes and then lifting her off her feet when he caught her, letting out a cry of triumph as he kissed her.
There, on the dappled moss and grass of a forest glade edged with irises, Edmund stripped off every item of Diana’s clothing until she was entirely naked in his arms, breathless, tremulous, and eager for his touch. Her own desperately seeking hands had disposed of his shirt, waistcoat, jacket, and belt. Their boots lay discarded at the edge of the glade.
“Diana,” he sighed with enjoyment as she kissed and rubbed her face against his bare chest with affection and curiosity, the soft tickle of her hair and damp warmth of her flickering tongue exciting him unbearably. “Let me look at you, Diana,” he urged.
Holding her gently away from him, he took a step back and then gazed at her with unbridled lust, the woman he loved now seemingly merged with the forest nymph of his fantasy.
Unclothed against the woodland backdrop, every physical characteristic he had already observed seemed both accentuated and erotic. Diana was so small and sweetly curvaceous, her limbs slim and strong and her skin the color of pale golden cream with accents of pink on her lips, cheeks, and the stiffening tips of her quivering breasts.
Under the blond curls, her face was both mischievous and aroused. He could only imagine the slick heat waiting for him within the dark blonde triangle of hair below her belly.
Stepping close towards him again, Diana’s hands came to the front of his trousers, now distended almost painfully with his desire for her. She fumbled slightly with the unfamiliar buttons as his breathing grew more labored. Then, she pushed his breeches down, and he kicked them away.
It was Diana’s turn now to stand back and look at his naked form, her expression unafraid of what she saw, although a little uncertainty mingled with her desire.
“Now, we match,” she breathed, raising her eyes to his.
“Satyr or faun for my woodland nymph?” he asked.
“Neither. You’re my hero,” Diana said, holding out her arms to him and melting in his embrace as he laid her on the ground.
* * *
To be naked with Edmund in the woods, their bodies twining and pressing together, was something glorious. The day had been terrible, but she had been set free by what had happened. She was free to choose Edmund.
Her hands ran over every long, firm line of his body as he kissed her with alternating passion and tenderness that left her gasping. The intensity of Edmund’s expression and the tension in his body were visibly growing but still kept under some control. Just as she thought that his control must break, he paused and looked down at her face.
“I love you so much, Diana. This, what we do with our bodies here, it is more binding than a betrothal,” he managed to say. “You do understand that, don’t you? It’s important that you do.”
“I know that you could get me with child,” she said. “With this.”
She touched the most sensitive and male part of him cautiously and felt it surge slightly in her hand. Edmund groaned appreciatively at her touch.
“Aunt Henrietta told me all about this part of a man and where it goes. She warned me that it could hurt, but I’m not afraid of that if the man is you. I want you, Edmund.”
Edmund shook his head at the mention of her aunt and began to shift himself down her body, dropping kisses on her breasts, her belly and then her inner thighs.
“I expect Aunt Henrietta never told you about this,” he said, looking up from between her legs with a raised eyebrow as his hands spread open her sticky, swollen sex.
Diana cried out with an aching thrill, disorientation and surprise as Edmund’s tongue and fingers delved purposefully into her, seeking and finding her pathways to pleasure. He was right. Neither her aunt nor anyone else had ever spoken of the ecstasy to which he was now introducing her. Her climax under such stimulation was even stronger than the one delivered by Edmund’s fingers alone that night in his room.
When it was over and Diana lay back moaning and reflecting that she would never have believed such pleasure possible, she felt Edmund move to kneel between her open thighs. Looking into her eyes, he positioned his shaft at the still softly pulsing entrance to her body, causing a new jolt of impossible sensation.
“Yes, Edmund, yes!” she urged and then closed her eyes as his length surged forward and filled her. There was no pain, only overwhelming sensations of fullness and stretching, and a deep excitement at the very idea of Edmund’s body inside her own.
He thrust inside her so slowly and deeply, his face almost agonized by the pleasure. Both fascinated and aroused, Diana gradually found herself moving with her lover, pressing herself against him and clinging with desperate gasps at each thrust and swirl of his hips. Both helpless with desire and excitement, they peaked at almost the same moment, with Diana’s teeth at Edmund’s collar bone and the rhythmic throbbing of her core driving him over the edge.