“Why not?” he asked.
“It’s not—” But she couldn’t even bring into words all the things that this was not.
Lucius grinned at her. Blood was pounding through his body and pooling in his loins, but his brain was still functioning. Barely. “If we were Romans,” he said to her, and only the lazy, husky tone of his voice betrayed that they weren’t having a simple conversation, “we would both be unclothed.”
“And there would be a roof!” she said, going rigid as he cupped her. “Lucius, I really don’t think—”
But he couldn’t let her finish that foolish protest. “Your body would be laid out before me like a feast,” he said to her, his voice deepening even more. “The steam would make your skin slippery. I would probably lay you back on this bench”—he stopped to kiss her, to kiss her into silence—“I would lay you back, Tess, and I would kiss my way down your neck, and down your breast, and the curve of your stomach…”
Her eyes were dark as indigo ink. She didn’t seem to be breathing, just waiting.
“I would kiss you here,” he whispered, bending his head to her breast at the very same time he breached her thighs in a slow, dizzying lunge—an exploration, a delight, a curvaceous dance…His lips played the same wet dance with her breast, a rough caress that made her body quiver and shake under his touch, under his tongue.
All thought of footmen and picnics had fled Lucius’s head, leaving only the sleepy song of the grasshoppers, together with the warm, dappled light that spilled into the Roman bath and made Tess’s skin shimmer like diluted sunlight.
A moment, an hour later, he found himself on his knees, unwrapping his bride as if she were the most important present he’d ever received in his life. Under his shaking fingers, strings sang their way apart. Buttons fell apart as if they were never meant to fasten. It was the point of no return.
And at this crucial moment, Tess recovered her voice. It had deepened with desire to a huskier tone, a deeper hue, silken, wondering. “What are you doing now?” she wanted to know, when he pulled her gown over her head. “Are we playing Romans?”
“Undressing you,” he said, with a hard kiss, pulling off her chemise as well. And then without waiting for her to catch breath, he scooped her onto his lap and let his hand drift where it longed to be, shaping her breast again and making her cry out in delicious surrender.
Her eyes drifted shut and she leaned against him with utter trust. Blood pounded in his ears and he could hear nothing more than the gentle hum of bees working in the daisies in the banks above them, that and her little gasps of breath when his thumb rubbed in a lazy circle.
But it seemed that he hadn’t married a lady. Because she let out a hum of pleasure, a purring noise in her throat that didn’t have a trace of self-conscious disapproval in it. Instead, her breast seemed to plump into his hand, a small nipple taut against his palm, a warm sound in her throat for every move of his hand…
Of course, this could not go where it showed every sign of going. The weight of her bottom was delicious on his lap. He shifted her back on the bench as if she were that Roman matron he talked of, but she wouldn’t stay put. She sat up, all glowing skin, creamy pale curves that swelled to plump breasts, then the curve of her hips, a shy triangle of curls at her thighs.
“There were two Romans,” she said. “And they were both unclothed.”
His hands were wandering over her body with a harder stroke now, a possessive, take-no-prisoners kind of harshness that made her eyes lose their focus and her breath catch in her throat.
But: “You should have no clothing as well.” And: “Lucius!”
So he stood up and pulled off his boots, and, his eyes never leaving her, wrenched off his breeches and his smalls.
Tess could feel cool moss under her bare bottom and cool moss at her back. She could hardly believe that her body wasn’t burning an imprint. Lucius was all muscle:all smooth, hard lines, beautiful in the sunlight. He turned, and the long line of his flank looked like carved marble, and there in front—
She pressed back against the wall and a thrum of cowardice quivered in her heart. But there was something in his face she’d never seen there before. Was it joy? Desire. He looked free.
Perhaps all men had that wildness when they were—the very thought reminded her that she couldn’t imagine a single gentleman of her acquaintance allowing himself to be unclothed in Mr. Jessop’s field.
And yet, here was her husband. He was—magnificent. She reached out for him.
Throughout her entire life, Tess never forgot what it felt like when Lucius first snatched her off the bench and held her against his body, skin to skin, softness to muscle, man to woman.
There wasn’t room on the bench for the two of them, so they lay on a little nest of clothing, and she explored him. He was rigid—all over.
“I just want you to know,” he said, “that I won’t actually take you here, Tess. I would never do that.”
Her fingers stilled on the muscles of his flank. She had been thinking foggily that she would be more brave in touching him: after all, his fingers were everywhere.
So she slid her fingers there: over the clean smooth length of him, enjoying the hiss of breath from behind his clenched teeth, the involuntary jerk of his body.
But her skin longed for that feeling of him, so she came closer, until her breasts were against his chest, and he jerked again. She nuzzled his neck, and he made a rough sound in his throat; she ran her fingers over the muscles of his back, and her breasts rubbed against his chest again. He was shaking; she could feel his body shaking against hers.
Tess was the one grinning now. There is a great deal of pleasure in power, after all.
A second later she was flat on her back, and—the grin fled, like a dream in the night. One touch of his fingers, his lips at her breast, and she was crying out, twisting up toward him, lost in a fog of intoxicated sensation.
But Lucius was having a moment of clarity. “I can’t do it, Tess,” he gasped, stilling his fingers.
But she whimpered and bucked against him, so he answered her silent demand even though the slick welcome to his fingers turned his mind black, but still one thought caught. Her mother died years ago. She had no mother.
“It’s not a question of breeding, Tess,” he told her, trying to control his voice. “The first time for women is painful. There’s—there’s blood. You wouldn’t be comfortable here.”
She blinked, and he saw she did know that. But the knowledge slid away instantly, replaced by a haze of desire, and she arched against him again, the softness of her inflaming him, the wantonness of her snapping his control.
He didn’t seem to be able to stop touching her, his fingers taking a rhythm that they couldn’t stop. Her full breasts rubbed against his chest and left streaks of fire, and she was twisting under him, moaning and crying, and suddenly she grabbed his shoulders. Her eyes flew open. “This hurts, Lucius,” she said. “This hurts.”
He let his fingers sink into her warmth.
“That doesn’t hurt,” she gasped, and then pulled his head down and kissed him—a kiss that was a moan, a touch and sound at once.
He let his hand fall away. It took nothing more than a delicious thought to poise himself against her. He was hungry for her, desperate for her.