Page 12 of The Forbidden Love of an Officer (The Marlow Family #7)

His hands slid the habit from her shoulders and down her arms. It fell to the floor. The cold air touched her bare arms.

She shivered.

‘Are you cold?’

‘A little.’

‘We will get into bed soon, and then you will be warm.’

She nodded as her stomach did another somersault.

He kissed her bare shoulder and smiled as his hands cupped her buttocks over her cotton chemise and pulled her body flush against his. Then he kissed her again. A kiss like the one they had shared when they had first come into the room, his tongue pressing into her mouth.

When he pulled back all the air had left from her lungs.

‘Ellen…’ he whispered. It was a question but she didn’t know what he asked. ‘Take my coat off for me,’ he encouraged then.

She bit her lip, realising she was too na?ve. Of course he would expect her to take part.

Her fingers worked on the glinting brass buttons of his military coat, but her hands shook too much to free them.

A sound of amusement left his throat as he took over the task.

Then he stripped his shirt off too…

She could not meet his gaze as he took it off. An aura of strength and masculinity radiated from him and it travelled through her flesh to her bones leaving her limbs as wobbly as aspic.

Heavens . He was beautiful. She touched his stomach and chest, where ripples of muscles defined his body, his skin was warm.

When she looked up, he smiled, with humour in his eyes. She smiled too.

‘Will you help me with my boots?’

She nodded as he turned to sit in one of the chairs. He began tugging at the heel of one boot. She helped him.

After his second boot fell to the floor he stood again, and still smiling, his hands gripped her chemise by her hips and fisted, clasping the fabric. Her stomach flipped another turn when he lifted it. But she raised her arms so he could strip it off over her head. It left her naked.

‘You are beautiful.’ His fingertips ran across the lower curve of her breast and her nipple. ‘You have the look of a goddess.’

She rose to her toes and kissed him. She needed that contact to ground her and hold her nerves steady.

His tongue pressed into her mouth as his hand closed about her breast and kneaded the soft flesh.

I love you . The words roared through her mind. She was not afraid of him.

When he broke the kiss, gentleness, and love, shone in his eyes. This battered, hardened, and young, warrior, who had the marks of war in scars on his skin, who she had seen kill a man – had a heart of gold.

‘Take off your stockings on the bed,’ he said, ‘then climb beneath the covers, so you do not become too cold. I will stoke the fire.’

As she sat, he walked to the hearth. She untied the ribbons holding up her stockings as he tipped coal from a scuttle onto the embers. The first stocking dropped onto the floorboards as he reached for a poker, then the second as he stirred up the embers so flames flickered into life.

She lifted the covers and lay between the sheets.

Her father would have called for a maid to tend the fire, and been angry that a servant had not already thought of it. He would never tend a fire himself. But then Paul had been his own master and servant for years.

The sheets were cold, and the dense feather-filled quilt which lay on top pressed the cold sheet against her naked skin. She shivered as her nipples peaked and pulled the covers up to her chin.

Paul smiled as he came to the bed. He unbuttoned his falls, holding her gaze, then bent as he slid both his pantaloons and his underwear down.

The air caught in her lungs and her heart thundered again; the movement of the muscles in his buttocks and thighs as he bent was something to behold…

then he pushed all his clothing off his feet and stood before her as naked as the day he was born.

She could not breathe.

He lifted the covers and she moved back to make room for him. He had not snuffed the candles but left them burning.

Immediately, his lips pressed against hers and his warm hand ran over her cold skin, from her hip to her breast, then he kneaded her flesh once more.

Blissful sensations twisted in her stomach as she rolled to face him and reached her arms about his neck.

His kiss travelled from her lips across her chin, down her neck to her shoulder.

Her back arched as if she knew what he was about to do, but she did not, not until the moment his lips kissed her breast once quickly, then closed over her nipple.

The pressure as he sucked was warm and gentle as his hand slid lower, brushing across her hip, making her shiver, but this time not because it was cold. His fingertips reached her inner thigh.

‘Paul?’

He continued sucking her breast as his fingertips brushed over the private place between her legs. The place she knew a man and woman would join. That was all she knew about what would happen tonight.

His fingertips sent tingles across her skin and an ache skipping upwards through her body.

She was warmer now. Her fingers combed through his hair.

He looked up. ‘Do you trust me, Ellen?’

She nodded, staring into his blue eyes and noticing the length of his brown eyelashes. ‘Yes.’

His fingers slid inside her body.

‘Oh.’ Her hands gripped his shoulders.

‘I will not hurt you.’

She nodded; she knew that. She bit her lip as his fingers slipped gently and intimately in and out of her body, invading then retreating.

His lips returned to hers, his tongue pressing into her mouth, distracting her mind. Paul . She did love him. She did.

His mouth left hers and returned to her breast, as his fingers continued their caress.

He was cherishing her; absorbed in her, she could feel it.

Warmth spread throughout her body, reaching in ripples as far out as her fingers and toes.

Her legs bent and her knees parted wider for him, as his invasion grew in speed and depth.

She was damp where he touched her, and the dampness increased as the warmth did too.

His head lifted. ‘Ellen, will you touch me too…’ His fingers slipped free of her then he clasped her hand and moved it to the part of him which would join them. He curled her fingers around him and moved her hand up and down.

Shyness prevailed over every other sense. His fingers slipped back inside her as she tried to do as he had asked. It was awkward and strange…

‘Lie on your back, Ellen.’

She rolled backwards, letting go of him and opening her legs wider as he came over her, so he could settle between her thighs.

‘It may hurt for a moment.’

She nodded as that part of him touched her, and then as she looked into his eyes, he thrust in, and yes, it did hurt, a bursting sensation pierced her, and then there was an uncomfortable pressure.

She felt a little sick. But it was done now; they were man and wife.

He withdrew then pressed in again.

She gripped his arms, realising it would not just be a single invasion. His jaw had been taut before but now a smile played with the edge of his lips as he withdrew again, and pressed in. Her hands lay on his shoulders.

‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’

She smiled, her shyness receding, and her senses absorbing the odd new feelings.

‘I will look after you, I swear it.’

She nodded, watching his face as he worked, casting spells in her body.

She could not take her gaze from his and he did not look away from her. She loved him so much. ‘This is wonderful,’ she told him.

He smiled more, and moved more quickly, pressing in and pulling out, again, and again. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as her knees bent higher so her toes could curl into the sheet, against the wool-filled mattress beneath it.

Her body was a flood of lovely sensations; they were tight in her lungs, catching at her breath and trembling through her stomach.

She had no breath left when he thrust harder and deeper…

Once… Twice… On the third movement, his body went as stiff as stone and his eyes shut as he sucked in a harsh breath before releasing it in a sigh which brushed over her cheek.

The part of him that was inside her pulsed.

He did not move for a while, and while he lay still, the pleasurable feelings he had engendered tingled through her nerves then ebbed away.

He opened his eyes and smiled, then withdrew and rolled onto his back beside her. ‘Come.’ He lifted his arm. ‘We will sleep now.’

She pillowed her head on his chest. She felt as though she had been shown a precious secret other people had been keeping.

He fell asleep. She listened to his breathing, watching the flickering orange candlelight dance about the room.

She was Mrs Harding.

* * *

Ellen woke in a silent room as daylight peeked through the cracks in the shutters.

She was curled up against Paul, who had turned on to his side in the night.

It was Christmas Day. Her sisters would be waking.

They would have come to her room if she had been at home.

She presumed Sylvia and Rebecca would go to Penny instead.

They would attend Mass and eat an informal luncheon with her mother, then dine formally in the afternoon with her father and there would be guests invited from local families.

Paul rolled to face her. ‘Good morning.’

‘Hello. Good tidings.’ She whispered her seasonal greeting.

His fingers stroked her hair back from her face as a smile curved his lips. ‘Merry Christmas.’ He kissed her for a while, then the weight of his hips rolled her backwards, and he was between her legs once more and pressing into her. She lost her breath.

He did delicious things, moving within her, the soft hair on his chest brushing against her breasts as he did so.

Both her hands embraced his nape as she held his gaze. He was so steady and strong. Her fingers slid down his back, exploring.

When his end came this time he growled, his eyes shutting again as he ground against her for a moment, then stilled.

He sighed when he rolled off her.

‘We will stay here today,’ he said. ‘I will order breakfast. I am hungry, and then I will ask for a bath and we can bathe together.’

That sounded naughty. She was certain no married couples she knew bathed together. Certainly not her parents. She laughed at that thought.

She missed her sisters and her mother, but she was with Paul and she was his wife.

They spent the rest of the day doing as he said; relaxing.

They ate breakfast in their room; she back in her habit for propriety’s sake as he sat in his pantaloons and shirt.

Then the inn’s attendants brought up a copper bath, and pails and pails of steaming water along with some lavender water to scent it.

It was a tight squeeze for them both to fit in it.

But Paul sat behind her with his legs bent and parted, and she draped her shins over the edge of the tub.

They lay in the water for an age as he ran the soap across her skin and brushed the water over her breasts.

They made love again when they got out and stayed in bed until he was hungry once more and wanted supper. Then they returned to bed and languished there without sleeping for hours.

She was happy.