His tongue began to move faster.

She sucked harder.

“Georgie,” he moaned, his words vibrating against her.

She grew tighter, tenser.

He worked her with his fingers, sliding two inside, even as his mouth nibbled and licked.

She exploded.

No, she came. That was the word for it, he’d told her, at least one of them. And it made an odd sort of sense, because when she came, when he brought her to the point that she came, she felt as if she had arrived somewhere very important.

She could not have explained it, could not have defined it, except that she knew she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

With him.

With Nicholas. Her husband.

Home.

“Oh my,” she sighed. She wasn’t sure she could move. He might have melted her bones.

“I love feeling you when that happens,” he said, moving up her body until his face was near hers. “It makes me want you even more.”

He nudged against her, not in a demanding way, but rather just a little reminder. He was hard, and he still wanted her.

“I need a moment,” Georgie somehow managed to say.

“Just a moment?”

She nodded, although in truth she had no idea. She was completely undone. Her skin was sensitized beyond belief. He was still touching her, lightly, just on her arm, but it made her shiver uncontrollably.

“What are we to do with you?” he murmured, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“I can’t move.”

“Not even a little bit?”

She shook her head, but she made sure to keep a teasing expression in her eyes. They lay side by side for a moment, squeezed together on his narrow bed, and finally Georgie said, “You didn’t even undo your breeches.”

“Do you want me to?”

She nodded.

He turned, kissed her cheek. “I thought you couldn’t move.”

“It might be possible to rouse me.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded again. “I want you to be pleased, too.”

His eyes turned serious. “You always please me, Georgie.”

“But you didn’t …”

His hand covered hers, and he rolled them both so they were face-to-face. “It’s not a quid pro quo. I give to you freely.”

“I would like to give to you freely,” she whispered. Then she felt her face grow sheepish. “When I can move again.”

“I can wait,” he said. He kissed her on the nose, then on each closed eyelid, then on her mouth. “For you, my love, I can wait forever.”

Chapter 22

“I don’t understand bloodletting.”

Nicholas looked at Georgie in surprise—nay, in shock.

Nay, in astonishment.

Because barely five minutes had passed since the most extraordinary sexual experience of his life—which perhaps wasn’t that meaningful a descriptor considering he’d only started having sexual experiences a few weeks earlier—but still.

He was quite sure they had turned the earth on its axis. Weather patterns would change. Day would be night.

Hell, he would not have been surprised if they had created their own gravitational force. They might have pulled down the moon.

None of which explained his wife’s sudden inquiry into the taking of blood.

“What did you just say?” he asked.

“Bloodletting,” she said again, not looking the least bit interested in romance despite their current position, which was to say, naked in bed. In one another’s arms. She shifted her weight so that she could look at him more directly. “I don’t understand it.”

“Is there any reason you should?” Nicholas hoped he was not condescending; he did not mean to be. But it was a complicated topic. Most laypeople did not understand the science behind it.

To be honest, he wasn’t sure he understood the science behind it. He wasn’t sure anyone did, just that it seemed to work. Some of the time, at least.

“Well, no,” Georgie said, scooting out from under him so that she could lie on her side, head propped up on her hand. “Not really. But I heard a little bit of the lecture earlier today. It didn’t make much sense to me.”

“Today’s lecture wasn’t specifically about bloodletting,” he told her. “It was just mentioned at the end as a disruptor of circulation.”

She blinked a few times.

“Which was the topic. Circulation.”

Again, she said nothing. And then, as if she’d decided she’d heard his words and found them irrelevant, she said, “Right. Well, here is the problem. I don’t understand how, if men regularly bleed to death on battlefields, not to mention all the other people who bleed to death at other times, people think that the removal of blood from the body can be helpful.” She stared at him for a moment. “It’s clear that blood is necessary for survival.”

“Ah, but is all of our blood necessary for survival?”

“Ah, but wouldn’t you think that more is better?”

“Not necessarily. Too much fluid in the body is called edema, and it can be very dangerous.”

“Edema?”

“Swelling,” he explained.

“This is like that ecchymosis thing,” she said with a slight curl of her lip. “Doctor-speak so the rest of us don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You mean a bruise?” he asked innocently.

She swatted him on the shoulder.

“You’ll ecchymose me,” he pretended to whine.

“Is that a word?”

“Not even slightly.”

She chuckled, but then, ever tenacious, returned to the topic at hand. “You still haven’t said—why do you bleed patients?”

“It’s all about balance,” Nicholas said. “Of the humors.”

“Humors,” she repeated skeptically. “This is accepted scientific fact?”

“There are some competing theories,” Nicholas admitted. “And in some schools of thought bloodletting is falling out of favor. It depends a great deal on whether the physician is a devotee of heroic medicine or solidism.”

This, she seemed to find too much to accept. “Wait just a moment. Are you telling me that there is such a thing as heroic medicine?”

“Some would say all medicine is heroic,” Nicholas tried to joke.

“Stop that,” she said impatiently. “I want to hear more about this. It seems very self-congratulatory for a branch of science to label itself heroic.”

“I’m not entirely certain of the origin of the phrase,” Nicholas admitted. “It is also known as heroic depletion theory.”

“That’s not off-putting at all,” Georgie muttered.

“Likely why the more basic term has prevailed,” he replied.

“But what does it mean?”

“It follows the idea that good health is achieved when the body’s humors are in balance.” He explained further: “Black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.”

“All liquids,” she observed.

“Precisely. Which is why the theory stands in contrast with solidism, which follows the idea that it is the solid parts of the body that are vital and susceptible to disease.”