The Scottish Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 6)

“Yes?”

“I’m inside you. Just a bit more. You’re doing very well. I can feel your maidenhead. Can you feel me feeling it?”

“Yes.”

Then it was simply too much. The man and the vicar broke; he lost himself and all his good intentions. He couldn’t stop himself, he pushed hard until he broke through her maidenhead and went deep. Dear God, he was touching her womb. His heart pounded, his body was more alive than he’d ever felt in his entire life. He was on the edge of a cliff, and he wanted to leap off that cliff right this very instant, but he heard her crying. “Mary Rose? Are you all right?”

“Yes, Tysen, I swear it to you. That maidenhead part was a bit difficult, but you’re not moving now and it isn’t too bad.” She added, wonder in her voice, “I knew that a man came into a woman’s body, but I just never imagined it like this.”

Oh, dear God, he thought, he was so crazed with lust, so over the edge with a need that was eating him alive, that he thought he would die. It was soon over, and he’d never imagined anything like it in his life. He had died, he thought, a wonderful death. He was hanging over her, balanced on his elbows, breathing so hard, feeling his heart pounding against his chest, still beyond words, beyond any rational thought. It was wonderful, what had just happened. He’d forgotten—that, or he’d never experienced it. It was beyond wonderful.

Mary Rose wasn’t moving.

He said, once he could speak coherently, his voice all stiff with guilt, “I am sorry that I hurt you. That won’t happen again. Can you forgive me?”

“Yes, of course. You’re my husband, and I suppose things have to happen that aren’t always pleasant. I don’t know, Tysen.”

“I didn’t make you laugh,” he said, and he slowly came out of her. He lay beside her and pulled her into his arms. He realized that he’d jerked off his nightshirt and that he was naked and she could feel that he was naked. He could imagine that it would send her running from the bedchamber. “Let me put on my nightshirt,” he said, but Mary Rose just shook her head against his shoulder. “No, please don’t. You are so very warm, Tysen, and hard. I love the feel of you.”

He nearly swallowed his tongue. A woman—his wife—had said that to him. He didn’t say a thing because he simply couldn’t think of anything to say. Did a man thank a woman—his wife—when she said something like that to him? He didn’t know. He was, however, immensely grateful that she was still in her nightgown. That was for the best, given how her words had made him feel. It was sinful, what he was thinking, it was excessive, what he wanted to do again, and boorish and probably so pleasurable that he nearly groaned. No, it was time to sleep, time for her to ease with him, perhaps forgive him for hurting her, though she hadn’t seemed upset with him.

He snuffed out the single candle, then he was lying on his back, in the dark, and he could feel her pressing against him. She was soft and warm and her breasts were against his side. Yes, God be blessed that she was wearing a nightgown. He knew he should say something. It was difficult to tell her to trust him when it came to matters of the flesh, since he was such an ignoramus and a clod, but he tried. “Trust me,” he said, kissing her cheek when he missed her mouth. “Trust me.”

“I would trust you with my life, Tysen,” she said, her breath warm against his flesh, and he shuddered. He didn’t trust himself to say anything more. He just might start begging her to let him have her again.

He held her against the length of him. He wanted to come inside her again, right now.

He remembered overhearing Douglas and Ryder talking about how a man should never be a pig, it wasn’t worthy. He held himself very still, and eventually, he slept.

Mary Rose didn’t sleep for a very long time. How very odd, she thought, looking off into the darkness and feeling him so very warm and alive pressed next to her. He was a man, and he had actually been inside her, and he’d touched her, he’d kissed her. It hadn’t been awful. Well, not too awful. She knew he had enjoyed the business. No, for her it hadn’t been too bad. She sighed. She realized then how very wet and sticky she was. She heard Tysen’s breathing even out into sleep. Slowly, carefully, she eased away from him. She stripped off her nightgown and bathed herself. She was sore, muscles pulled. It was all quite strange. She grabbed up her nightgown and pulled it back over her head. It was chilly in the large bedchamber. The embers had burned themselves out.

She slipped back into bed beside him, nestling close. This part was nice, she thought, and laid her palm over his chest. Her palm wanted to go down his body, but she knew that wasn’t done, that wasn’t what she should want to do.

When at last she fell asleep, she felt optimistic. Tysen cared about her. He’d been sorry to hurt her, but she wondered if he truly had been all that sorry. She’d seen something in those beautiful eyes of his, something hot and pleased even as he’d been apologizing so sincerely. But how could she begin to understand him? He was, after all, a man, and she simply couldn’t grasp what they were all about. She wondered if any woman grasped anything about the thoughts of a man.

21

DAWN WAS TURNING the bedchamber a soft, vague gray. Tysen awoke, instantly alert, instantly aware of the wonderful soft and giving body beside him. He then realized it was freezing. He didn’t want Mary Rose to be cold when she awoke. He eased away from that wonderfully warm body and rose to light the fire. He was shivering when he returned to bed. He warmed himself, then came onto his side over her. “Mary Rose,” he said, and just saying her name made him as hard as the black basalt rocks below the castle. He was more than warm now, he was burning up, and it was from the inside out. He was roaring with heat, like a furnace that was being stoked so fast it was in danger of exploding.

He didn’t wait for her to stir. He began kissing her. Her flesh was flushed and warm, and he could see her lovely face now, pale and calm in sleep, her glorious red hair wild about her head. He realized that she was wearing his nightshirt and wondered how that had happened, but it didn’t matter, of course. He had that nightshirt off her in under two seconds. She wasn’t fighting him. She wasn’t stuttering with fear, wasn’t trying to stop him at all. She even lifted her hips for him to get the nightshirt off her. When she was naked and he’d hauled her up tightly against him, he felt all of her, every small bit of her. He moaned into her mouth when he realized that she was kissing him back. He felt so very urgent, nearly frantic in his need, that he simply didn’t think about it being daylight in the room, that he would shock her, that she knew he could see her body and she would be mortified.

Mary Rose was kissing him back, wildly now, and when he said against her mouth, “Open, I want to taste you,” she did, and he was shuddering with the power of it. When he kissed her breasts, his hands all over her, she made little mewling sounds, and they nearly drove him over the edge, those sounds and her mouth and her hands, now stroking his belly. He tried to arch up so she could touch him. When she did, he nearly became a pig. It was a very close thing. He pulled away from her, heaving

from the effort, and then everything suddenly was very clear to him. He wanted to kiss her everywhere, something he’d never done before, something that hadn’t really occurred to him before, but now he wanted it more than anything in the entire world. It seemed utterly natural, something he had to do if he wished to keep breathing. He came down her body, kissing and kneading her belly, then his hot breath was lower, and his mouth was on her and his tongue as well, hot and wild.

Mary Rose froze for a moment at what he was doing to her, but not longer than a moment. “Oh, my,” she said and pressed herself against his mouth and felt his fingers, stroking over her, easing inside her. “Tysen,” she said, nearly on a yell, then realized something incredible was happening to her. She lurched up, grabbed fistfuls of his hair, and screamed.

Then she fell back against the pillow, saying his name over and over, begging him not to stop, never stop, please, please. On and on it went, with her wild beneath him, and Tysen felt her frantic pleasure washing over him, coming deep inside him, and it shook him to his core. Never had he felt anything like this in his entire life. Slowly, he lessened his pressure, it just seemed the natural thing to do, and when he felt her ease, he raised his head and looked up her body. He could see her clearly in the morning light pouring through the windows. Her face was flushed, her lips parted, and she was staring at him, but her eyes were vague and soft, and she said, “Oh, goodness.” And then she held out her arms to him.

He’d never moved so fast in his life. He said as he came over her, “I hope you like this as well,” and he was inside her, deep and moving hard and fast. This time there was no doubt at all in Tysen’s mind that he was going to die. And it didn’t matter. He was ready to leave this earth. When he raised his head, arched his back, and yelled to the ceiling, she held him very close, and he felt her breath on his chest, and she was kissing his chest as well, her hands stroking everywhere, even between their bodies on his belly.

He fell flat on top of her, his head beside hers on the pillow. He felt her hands slow now, lightly stroking down his back, and every once in a while she kissed his ear, his neck, any part of him she could reach.

She said against his ear, “That was a very incredible thing, Tysen. I had no idea that being married could mean having feelings like that.”

He hadn’t either. He was floored. He thought of his brothers, who were worldly men and enjoyed making love to women immensely. They’d never been at all shy about speaking about such things. He’d always believed it was a sin, perhaps a sin of overindulgence, what his brothers did with great regularity, perhaps even a sin that they enjoyed their wives so very much. He’d felt superior to them, felt that they hadn’t achieved his ability to rely on his intellect, to let his spirit and his mind control his body. It had to be a sin, for didn’t it make a man forget himself, forget who and what he was, forget what was important in life and what wasn’t?

Had he truly been such a pompous idiot? Such an obnoxious prig? He grew hard inside her again, and he couldn’t help it, he started laughing. He laughed because for the first time in his thirty-one years, he finally knew the incredible joy of being a man and having a woman enjoy him as much as he did her.