His hopes for a perfect seduction went up in smoke. Which was not an altogether unpredictable outcome, considering the desire that had come to a boil between them. Taking a lady’s virginity, that of the woman he was to spend his life with, presented a delicate predicament.

He was thankful that he’d managed to remove her gown with a semblance of civility and had not torn off his shirt and smalls. He could only hope he would not damage his wife in the course of this long-awaited night. His body felt awkward and thick compared to the soft grace of hers. He would contrive for tenderness and understanding. Nevertheless, he pulsed with pure lust.

His adorable wife wanted him. She had granted him permission to please her. He wouldn’t be forced to ask for clemency or compromise. He would fall to his knees to thank her if he didn’t have other more desperate acts in mind.

“Do you need my help undoing your hair?” he asked rather disingenuously as she lifted her hand to the sleek knot at her nape. She shook her head, her blue eyes stormy and sensual. Pins dropped silently around her to the carpet like thorns springing up to guard a princess in her castle. Let each one pierce him. He couldn’t feel anything but need. Her dark curls tumbled to her hips. She crossed her arms belatedly over her breasts. He made out the rosy color and elongated shape of her nipples. His throat closed on a silent utterance.

His. Lovely and natural. He had captured her. Now what must he do to keep her? He’d wanted her for so long he was bereft of wiles. But not of instinct. His blood roiled in elation.

“Simon, you are staring.”

“Well, you are something to stare at.”

“Rhys told me I’m built like a bowling pin. Bigger below than above.”

“I beg to disagree,” he said, chuckling at the image. “You’re more beguiling than I ever dreamed. I’ve promised myself I would be gentle,” he added as he drew her slowly toward the bed.

“Explain that to my heart.”

In truth, his flesh and blood wife surpassed his secret yearnings. Her rounded belly and voluptuous hips more than aroused him. The imperfections she claimed unleashed potent fantasies in his mind. There wasn’t a smidge of her he didn’t intend to make his. Ravenna, unattainable and indifferent to his feelings, had been torture to ignore. Wanting her for years and letting her go had broken his heart. Now she stood before him in beckoning eagerness, and he was free to show her his love.

He cleared his throat, releasing her to apply his attention to removing his clothes. “Timpkins’s breeches are plastered to my crucial parts.”

“Shall I help?” she asked, her eyes downcast.

“Yes. Please. Why not? I welcome your touch.”

He bent. In awkward urgency they peeled off his shirt and recalcitrant breeches, pausing to kiss, to breathe. Ravenna chanced a glimpse at his hard torso, at his lean stomach. Why couldn’t she stare at him as he had her?

The sensation of his warm hand on her bare shoulder intruded on her speculations. He stroked her ribs and the curve of her belly. His touch might be refined. The fervor in her blood was anything but. That he could render her this willing to please him revealed his true power.

Perhaps that was why she had avoided him in the past. Simon had always seemed like he was guarding a locked door to his real self. What was it like within his world? Lonely? Full of shadows and yearning? If she remained outside, she would be safe. But she would never solve the enigma of the man who had become the most compelling figure in her life.

She needed to know everything about him.

“You used to terrify me slightly when we were younger,” she said between shallow breaths as he led her across the room.

“Now?” he asked in a low voice.

“A little,” she whispered as she fell beneath him on the bed.

“You terrify me, too, but I like the feeling.” As he spoke his fingers wandered down her stomach to her sex. She quivered in surprise. He waited a beat and eased one finger inside her. The pressure he exerted radiated to her core. Her body clenched in desperation as he stared down at her in moody absorption.

He leaned lower, rubbing the crest of his engorged cock across her belly. The sensation undid her. He kissed her again. His tongue slid in and out of her mouth in deep penetrating strokes, arousing an internal anarchy she could not quell. His finger distended her with tenderness, and yet she reveled in the hurt. Her hips rolled at the intrusion. Her sex throbbed and grew tight.

He whispered, “If I am to breach you with minimal distress, it helps that you are not tense and allow yourself to enjoy as much of this as possible.”

“Dear heaven.”

“Ask for what you want.” His voice was patient. “We have all night. And tomorrow. Forever, in fact. I await your lead, Ravenna.”

“What if I don’t want to wait another moment?”

His dark eyes traveled the length of her. “I would advise we not hurry this. I’m yours to command, of course.”

“I believe it’s the other way around.”

“What would please you?”

Her lips parted. She spread her thighs wider, offering herself to his perusal. “I want you to do things to me that I cannot name. I am in pain with these impulses.”

“Instincts,” he corrected her, studying her nakedness in unabashed fascination. She felt beautiful, mesmerized by his sultry stare.

“I want to please you,” she whispered. “I want you inside me.”

His nostrils flared. “I am the one who cannot wait.”

His knuckles settled between her saturated folds, stroking the bud of her sex in a languid rhythm that inflamed her. His brooding eyes studied her reaction as he pierced her with another finger, intensifying the pressure, taunting her beyond what she could endure. “How does this feel?” he whispered.

“Indescribable. Surely such a thing should not be discussed.”

“Why not?”

“It strikes me as too private a matter to discuss aloud.”

“Perhaps not at a supper party. Other than that, I disagree. A husband should speak honestly to his wife in their bed. Although by the time I put my cock inside you, neither of us will care to converse at all.”

Her small gasp stoked his arousal. He felt her arch her spine, felt the shivers that darted through her lower body.

“Give me mercy,” she whispered.

“Soon enough.”

Simon luxuriated in her invitation, her trust. As long as he could subdue the selfishness that wanted all of her immediately, their wedding night would be made of blissful moments and intimate secrets. Intensely sexual ones, to be sure. He covered her face and throat in proprietary kisses, light and fleeting. A sting of heat here and there, at first.

Then nearly everywhere. He kissed her ears, her nipples, her belly button, and the sensitive hollows behind her knees. He pressed his fingers even deeper inside her. He centered his mind on her pleasure, subdued the need for his own. He would bring her sweet oblivion when she was ready. Neither of them would forget their first joining.

Her full hips lifted from the bed as he played her, stretching her sex. He would punish them both by holding back until she needed him even more than he did her. Of course he might die first. He felt as if he had climbed a cliff in the dark. He was exhilarated. Her excitement mounted, and fed his own. Slow down, he thought. Slow down. Yet he wanted to devour her, drive into her snug warmth, and lose himself.

“No man could hope for a wife sweeter than you,” he said, studying her face. “I shall strive to meet your expectations as a husband.”

She sighed in drugged pleasure.

He spread his fingers inside her cleft. She shuddered in surprise. She might have writhed beneath his reach had he not gently stroked her hip to stillness with his other hand. “Should we rest for a while?” he asked.

“My heart is swinging like a pendulum,” she said in a ravaged whisper. “I’m filled with disgraceful urges. I don’t need rest. I need a … denouement.”

He smiled into her eyes. “I understand. I can’t refuse you.”

“I want everything,” she whispered, edgy and half-delirious.

“Give me another kiss,” he coaxed her.

“More than kisses.” She pushed up on her elbow to offer him her mouth. His kisses intoxicated her, but she wanted to feel the full strength of him. With an overt intent to tease her, he withdrew his fingers from her warmth.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, pulsing to the quick.

He swept his damp fingers across her nipples, pinching each tip in turn. “That feels decadent,” she said with a shiver.

“There is no wrong in a man pleasuring his bride,” he said as he bit lightly at her breast. “Or in her submitting to her husband.”

“Then I must grant you complete power?”

“I’ll do only what you allow. But know that you are not powerless in the least, as my response to you proves. You have resources you’ve not discovered.”

“Yet we aren’t equal,” she said, dropping back on the bed in breathless capitulation. “You could recite Mother Goose and render every rhyme an erotic invitation.”

“But you could be Mother Goose and I’d desire you.” He moved over her, kissing her again, her neck, her stomach until his mouth reached the seam of her sex.

“Simon?”

“I’m here.”

“I know where you are, but what are you doing?”

“Wait,” he said in a diabolical whisper.

He grasped her hips and buried his face in the delta of her thighs. She flexed her back, shivers running down her legs. “Simon, your tongue.”

For an interval she was too beset with sensation to do anything but stare at the nebulous shadow of his head between her legs. His tongue speared her folds, working her into a daze. Surely a lady should protest. But a wife? Why should she deny what infused every part of her with such pleasure? She strained, smothering a cry with the back of her hand.

“Is this what you needed?” he said, and flicked his fingertips back and forth across her swollen clitoris. Her inner muscles tightened like silk threads that broke all at once. She cried out, fragmented, rendered insensible by the relief that swept through her body.

Her belly trembled. She closed her eyes, entranced, and waited for what would happen now. She was, in fact, too disarranged to rouse, the echoes of her orgasm intense and deep-reaching. Distantly she realized he had not been afflicted with a similar lassitude.

Before her next breath, he was braced on his arms above her. She placed her hand against his hard-muscled chest. The tip of his thick penis stabbed at the entrance of her sex, and yet he denied her the complete penetration she silently pleaded for. “I don’t know you,” she whispered raggedly. “I don’t even recognize myself.”

“Know that I am yours only.”

His shoulders tensed. His muscles glistened lightly with a faint sheen of sweat. Their eyes met again. He raised higher to guide his prick inside her. He hesitated momentarily as she lapsed into an uncertain quietude. He was pulsing heat and yet reluctant to inflict what would be a necessary pain. She was so tight that he had to allow her time to accept his size. To his relief she exhaled and parted her thighs, sufficiently becalmed that he could enter her with some ease.

“I apologize in advance for what you need endure,” he said. “I will tear a small part of you when we make love. I’m embarrassed to admit I have the most cumbersome erection in my memory. That is a tribute to my desire for you, although it doesn’t sound like one.”

A soft laugh escaped her parted lips.

“Branwen?” he said in hesitation.

She blinked. “How long have you know my real name? And who revealed it to you?”

“I’ve known for years. I overheard Aunt Primrose reprimand you once, and she explained to me afterward that Branwen means white raven in Welsh. She was the goddess of love and you were named after her for your pale hair. But your hair turned as dark as a raven’s before your first birthday. Your English nursemaid called you Ravenna. I thought the original name was beautiful.”

“I should be privy to all your secrets.”

“I’ve told you. I have very few.” He dipped his head. “Breathe,” he said. “Listen to instinct.”

He pressed slowly inside her, tightening his lower torso, controlling the angle of his entry. He made a bid for steadiness. Soon he was moving in shallow, restrained strokes, rubbing the base of his cock against her bud. Breathe. Listen to instinct. Could he heed his own advice? His body urged him to go deeper. He didn’t want her to think he was an animal.

But in truth he was. Feral need took over.

He dominated, claimed, denied himself until the final instant. Her nipples hardened. Her essence coated his cock. His sweet duchess, a woman strong and made for him. Branwen. The goddess of love.

The only woman he had ever desired. His wife in every sense of the word.