Emily felt herself blush more.
The chemise was pulled over her head. She heard his long indrawn breath. ‘You are lovely,’ he murmured. ‘So very lovely.’ In her dreams he kissed her and her whole body tingled. In her dreams his hands caressed her breasts and she ached for him. In her dreams… she had no idea what he would do next.
Blake’s breath danced, warm and teasing like a summer breeze down the curve of her breast, then his tongue, just the tip, touched the very point of her nipple and she gasped. His hands cupped the fullness of her breasts and held them as he moved from one to the other licking, sucking, nibbling with his lips while she writhed.
‘Blake…’
‘Dream of me,’ he whispered and she felt the air stir as he moved upwards, took her lips, kissed her slowly, so slowly, while his right hand caressed her breasts and his left speared into her hair, holding her. Her hands were on his shoulders and his skin was smooth under her palms and the muscles moved intriguingly. She stroked for a moment before he slid down so that her fingers were in his hair as he kissed her stomach and the delicate skin twitched and shivered.
Her body was no longer hers, it was reacting, quivering, aching with a building need that would have been frightening if it were not that she was safe, this was Blake, and a dream of Blake, and…
‘Oh,’ she whispered as his fingers sifted into the nest of curls at the apex of her thighs.
‘Open for me, sweet,’ he murmured and she did, parting her thighs, beyond shame as his long fingers gentled into the soft crevices. ‘So soft,’ he murmured, ‘so wet for me.’ One finger slid inside, then another and Emily stiffened, her inner muscles instinctively closing around the intrusion, pressing up against his palm. ‘Oh yes, like that, sweet.’
He played with her until she was almost sobbing with need, reaching for him, desperate for something more, for this delicious torture to end, for it to go on forever.
‘Is this real or a dream, Emily?’ Blake whispered in her ear.
‘Real,’ she gasped. ‘Oh, it is real and I want you. Blake, please, show me what to do.’
Light dazzled her eyes as he pulled the soft blindfold away. ‘Look at me, trust me,’ he said as he moved over her, pressing into the cradle of her thighs. She had expected effort and a brutal thrust and pain, but her body opened for him, gently, easily and she smiled up at him as he filled her. Then it all became tight and, suddenly, difficult.
‘Now,’ he said and thrust. There was soreness and the shock of how deep he was within her and then simply joy at the joining, the intimacy, the trust.
‘Oh yes,’ she murmured. ‘Oh, Blake.’ And he moved, slowly, until she caught the rhythm and then faster and harder until she was caught up in a twisting skein of sensation that burst, suddenly, and she cried out as his mouth came down and his own shout mingled with hers. His body went rigid over her and she felt the flood of heat at her core.
‘Wake up, sweet.’ Someone was blowing gently in her ear. Emily grumbled and wriggled and found herself caught tightly in Blake’s embrace. ‘Good morning, Lady Greystoke. I trust you feel married now?’
‘I feel –‘ Limp and sore and confused and quite wonderful, Emily thought, blinking at her husband. ‘ – Very married, thank you.’ There was still that heat in his eyes. Oh my goodness, he wants to do it again. Now. I don’t think I can… I need to get used to this.
‘Breakfast,’ she said brightly, slid out of bed and retreated behind the screen with a bundle of the clothes that Blake had tossed on the floor. ‘I’ll have hot water sent up,’ she said as she scrambled into them. ‘There’s some kind of reception room downstairs, I will wait for you there.’
Her husband lay on the bed, shamelessly naked and smiled at her. She could see he recognised, and understood, her confusion. Emily kept her eyes firmly fixed on his face. She was not going to look down, she did not think she was ready for that yet.
‘I’ll join you soon, once I’ve retrieved my portmanteau from the battlements,’ he said. ‘I seem to have acquired quite an appetite from somewhere.’ Pink-cheeked, Emily fled as fast as her rather shaky legs would allow.
Half an hour later Blake came down the old oak staircase in uniform, his sword and hat in hand, his face clean-shaven, his hair tied back at his nape. Emily caught a glimpse of him through the dining room door and time spun back to the moment she had first seen him walking down the stairs into the Caruthers’s ballroom: handsome, dashing in his full dress uniform, head up, eyes alert. He had seemed so confident, so utterly alive in comparison to the blasé rakes and fashionable young men who clustered round her.
‘In here,’ she called. ‘Mrs Tremayne will bring breakfast up in a minute.’ She felt more confident like this, neatly gowned in a fashionable walking dress, seated behind the coffee pot to confront her fully-clothed husband. ‘Coffee?’ She poured it black, as he liked it, and added cream to her own. ‘I had better go down to the Governor’s house and ask Janey if there is anything I can do to help her today.’
Blake took a gulp of coffee. The last thing he wanted was his newly-discovered wife disappearing into the Governor’s house just hours after he had found her. ‘We will certainly go down so I can express my feelings to Miss Morton on the subject of her romantic hospitality. I had nightmares last night about the shock it gave you.’
‘Please not say anything unkind to Janey, she is my dearest friend,’ Emily protested.
‘I was simply going to point out that her little plan almost had you pitching down the gap between house and battlements. And what if you had not gone out? What if I had come into your chamber in the dark when you were asleep? You would have been terrified.’
‘She meant well.’
‘The three most damning words in the English language,’ Blake said darkly, making inroads into a large steak. He was still tingling all over with the after-shock of making love to Emily. He had been dreaming about it for weeks; the reality was even better than he had expected. She was so sweet, and so shy and yet so naturally responsive. He looked up to find her regarding him with a worried frown.
‘Should we ask a doctor to look at your shoulder?’
‘It has been treated by a military surgeon and redressed by the ship’s doctor, I am in no need of further quackery.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Emily murmured.
Somehow he distrusted the meek wifeliness. He suspected she would inveigle him into a doctor’s surgery sooner or later. She took her duties as his wife seriously, it seemed, from what she had been doing at Greystoke. But how did she really feel about this marriage? She had cheerfully admitted she was happy to marry for mutual benefit, she had not appeared to pine for a love-match and that had suited him very well – eight weeks ago.