Untouched

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.” Her voice was thick with suppressed tears. “I’ve never been any good at this. I thought it might be otherwise with you, but…”

“It wasn’t. I know I have amends to make.”

She wished he wouldn’t be kind. But he was a kind man. He’d been guilty of nothing more than excess enthusiasm at holding a woman in his arms at last. He’d tried his best to engage her participation before he took her.

His kindness and his awful loneliness, more than any wish to repeat the embarrassing, frustrating act, made her lie back. She tried to inject a note of humor into the fraught atmosphere. “Do your worst.”

He gave a soft laugh. In spite of everything, that laugh shivered through her and made her hot and uncomfortable again.

“My darling Grace, give me some credit. This time I intend to do my best.”

Chapter 16

Matthew twisted up on one arm to look down into Grace’s face. The view, while exquisite, wasn’t encouraging. Her expression was shuttered and her body vibrated with tension.

He was ready to embrace a radiant new world. She wanted to snap his head off.

He couldn’t blame her. Jesus, what a lumbering oaf he was.

Making love had opened a dazzling dimension of experience to him. Experience beyond anything he’d ever imagined. In his loneliness, he’d spent a lot of time imagining.

But he’d been unprepared for the heat, the closeness, the way he inhaled his lover’s sweat and breath and responses. The intimacy had been glorious. And astonishing.

He felt bound to Grace now. Forever.

Tonight’s joy would always be a thread of bright gold woven through his life’s ragged fabric.

He’d passed through a transforming fire.

She hadn’t.

He’d blundered badly. He was merely human and he’d been drunk with elation at making her his at last. All his desperate yearning and aching frustration had erupted into an inferno of release.

Finesse had been too much to ask.

God help him, he needed finesse now. More than he’d ever needed anything in his misbegotten life.

Somehow he must awaken the passion that infused every drop of her blood, every ounce of her flesh. He must heal the wounds her husband had left to fester in her heart. Even if that bastard Paget hadn’t harmed her physically, he’d wounded her soul. Perhaps mortally.

How was he to succeed? He was a novice. More a novice than she. And she was more a novice, he now realized, than he’d allowed for.

All he had were instincts and an almighty need to share the wild rapture he’d found in her arms.

Surely she was wrong about women never enjoying sex. Even as a boy, he’d known females interested in bed sport. And his school friends had been vocal about girls who were hot for it.

Not overwhelming evidence, but enough to raise doubts whether every woman endured the act merely for the sake of procreation or as wifely duty.

You’re a scientist. Approach this with your brain, not your balls.

He sucked in a deep breath and tried to list the facts as he would before a botanical experiment. Grueling when his mind clouded with desire and the woman he wanted more than life lay quivering with uncertainty beside him.

He closed his eyes and bit back a groan. Her beauty lured him to discard good intentions.

Focus still eluded him. Denying himself the sight of her only made him more aware of her scent, her warmth, the soft huff of her shallow breathing.

Hell, everything about her was temptation.

He had to do this right. For both their sakes.